The Heart of Rachael Part 56

The water was washing roughly against the running boards; to an onlooker the car would have had the appearance of being afloat, hub-deep, at sea.

Slowly, slowly, slowly they were still moving. The car stopped short. The engine was dead. Rachael touched her starter, touched it again and again. No use. The car had stopped. The rain struck in noisy sheets against the curtains. The sea gurgled and rushed about them. Derry moaned softly.

And now the full madness of the attempted expedition struck her for the first time. She had never thought that, at worst, she could not go back. What now? Should they stand here on the shifting sand of the Bar until the tide fell--it was not yet full.

Rachael felt her heart beating quick with terror. It began to seem like a feverish dream.

Neither maid spoke, perhaps neither one realized the full extent of the calamity. With the confidence of those who do not understand the workings of a car, they waited to have it start again.

But both girls screamed when suddenly a new voice was heard.

Rachael, starting nervously as a man's figure came about the car out of the black night, in the next second saw, with a great rush of relief, that it was Ruddy Simms. He was a mighty fellow, devoted to the Gregorys. He proceeded rather awkwardly to explain that he hadn't liked to think of their trying to cross the Bar, and so had come with them on the running board.

"Oh, Ruddy, how grateful I am to you!" Rachael said. "Perhaps you can go back and get us a tow? What can we do?"

"Stuck?" asked Ruddy, wading as unconcernedly about the car as if the sun were shining on the scene.

"No, I don't think so, not yet. But I can feel the road under us giving already. And I've killed my engine!"

Ruddy deliberated.

"Won't start, eh?"

"She simply WON'T!"

"Ain't got a crank, have ye?"

Rachael stared.

"Why, yes, we have, under my seat here. But is there a chance that she might start on cranking?" she said eagerly.

"Dun't know," Ruddy said non-committally.

Rachael was instantly on her feet, and after some groping and adjusting, the cranking was attempted. Failure. Ruddy went bravely at it again. Failure. Again Rachael touched the starter.

"No use!" she said with a sinking heart.

But Ruddy was bred of sea-folk who do not expect quick results. He tugged away again vigorously, and again after that. And suddenly-- the most delicious sound that Rachael's ears had ever heard--there was the sucking and plunging that meant success. The car panted like a giant revived, and Ruddy stood back in the merciless green light and sent Rachael a smile. His homely face, running rain, looked at her as bright as an angel's.

"Dun't know as I'd stand there, s'deep in my tracks!" shouted Ruddy.

Gingerly, timidly, she pushed the car on some ten feet. "What I's thinking," suggested Ruddy then, coming to put his face in close to hers, and shouting over the noise of wind and water, "is this: if I was to walk ahead of ye, kinder feeling for the road with my feet, then you could come after, d'ye see?"

"Oh, Ruddy, do you think we can make it, then?" Rachael's face was wet with tears.

"Dun't know," he said. He took off his immense boots and gray socks, and rolled up his wet trousers, the better to feel every inch of rise or fall in the ground beneath his feet, and Millie held these for him as if it were a sacred charge.

And then, with the full light of the lamps illumining his big figure, and with the water rushing and gurgling about them, and the rain pouring down as if it were an actual deluge, they made the crossing at Clark's Bar. The shifting water almost blinded Rachael sometimes, and sometimes it seemed as if any way but the way that Ruddy's waving arms indicated was the right one; as if to follow him were utter madness. The water spouted up through the clutch, and once again the engine stopped, and long moments went by before it would respond to the crank again. But Rachael pushed slowly on. She was not thinking now, she was conscious of no feeling but that there was an opposite sh.o.r.e, and she must reach it.

And presently it rose before them. The road ran gradually upward, a shallow sheet of running water covering it, but firm, hard roadway discernible nevertheless. Rachael stopped the car, and Ruddy came again and put his face close to hers, through the curtains.

"Now ye've got straight road, Mrs. Gregory, and I hope to the good Lord you'll have a good run. Thank ye, Millie--much obliged!"

"Ruddy!" said Rachael pa.s.sionately, her wet gloves holding his big, hairy hands tight. "I'll never forget this! If he has a chance to live at all, this is his chance, and you've given it to him! G.o.d bless you, a thousand times!"

"That's all right," said Ruddy, terribly embarra.s.sed. "You've always been awful good to my folks. I'm glad we done it! Good- night!" Then Ruddy had turned back for the walk home in the streaming blackness, and Rachael, drawing a deep breath, was on her way again. She stopped only for a quick question to Mary.

"No change?"

"Just the same."

The wet miles flew by; rain beat untiringly against the curtains, slished in two great feathers of water from under the rushing wheels. Rachael watched her speedometer; twenty-five--twenty- eight--thirty--they could not do better than that in this weather.

And they had a hundred miles to go.

But that hundred was only eighty-six now, only eighty. Villages flew by, and men came out and stood on the dripping porches of crossroad stores to marvel as the long scream of Rachael's horn cut through the night air. Twenty minutes past eight o'clock-- eight minutes of nine o'clock. The little villages began to grow dark.

There was nothing to pa.s.s on the road; so much was gain. Except in the villages, and once or twice where a slow, rattling wagon was plodding along on the wet mirror-like asphalt, Rachael might make her own speed. The road lay straight, and was an exceptionally good road, even in this weather. She need hardly pause for signboards. The rain still fell in sheets. Seventy-two miles to go.

"How is he, Mary?"

"The same, Mrs. Gregory. Except that he gives a little groan now and then--when it shakes him!"

"My boy! But not sleeping?" "Oh, no, Mrs. Gregory. He just lies quiet like."

"G.o.d bless him!" Rachael said under her breath. Aloud she said: "Millie, couldn't you lean over, and watch him a few minutes, and see what you think?"

Then they were flying on again. Rachael began to wonder just how long the run was. They always carelessly called it "a hundred miles." But was it really a hundred and two, or ninety-eight? What a difference two or three miles would make to-night! She fell into a nervous shiver; suppose they reached the bridge, and then Mary should touch her arm. "He doesn't look right, Mrs. Gregory!"

Suppose that for the little boy that they finally carried into New York there was no longer any hope. Her little Derry--

The child that might have been the joy of a happy home, that might have grown to a dignified inheritance of the love and tenderness that had been between his father and mother. Robbed in his babyhood, taken away from the father he adored, and now--this!

Sixty-one miles to go.

"Detour to New York." The sign, with all its hideous import, rose before her suddenly. No help for it; she must lose one or two, perhaps a dozen miles, she must give up the good road for a bad one. She must lose her way, too, perhaps. Had Kane gone over this road yesterday? It was much farther on that she had spoken to Kane. Perhaps he had, but she could not remember, doubt made every foot of the way terrible to Rachael. She could only plunge on, over rocks, over b.u.mps, into mud-holes. She could only blindly take what seemed of two turnings the one most probably right.

"Oh--Mother!" The little wail came from Derry. Rachael, her heart turned to ice, slowed down--stopped and leaned into the half darkness in the back of the car. The child's lovely eyes were opened. Rachael could barely see his white face.

"My darling!" she said.

"Will you not--b.u.mp me so, Mother?" the little boy whispered.

"I will try not to, my heart!" Rachael, wild with terror, looked to Mary's face. Was he dying, now and here?

"Oh Moth--it hurts so!"

"Does it, my darling?"

He drowsed again. Rachael turned back to her wheel. They must go more slowly now, at any cost.

The road was terrible, in parts, after the hours of heavy rain, it seemed almost impa.s.sable. Rachael pushed on. Presently they were back in the main road again, and could make better time. Of the hundred miles only fifty remained. But that meant nothing now. How much time had she lost in that frightful bypath? Rachael's face was dripping with rain, rain had trickled under her clothing at neck and wrists. Through her raincoat the breast of her gown was soaking, and her feet ached with the strain of controlling the heavy car. Water came in long runnels through the wind-shield, and struck her knees; she had turned her dress back, her thin silk petticoat was soaked, and the muscles of knees and ankles were cold and sore. But she felt these things not at all. Her eyes burned ahead, into the darkness, she heard nothing but the occasional fluttering moan from Derry; she thought nothing but that she might be too late--too late--too late!