The Indian Drum Part 23

"Seagull, seagull sit on the sand, It's never fair weather when you're on the land."

He gazed down at the lists of names which Benjamin Corvet had kept so carefully and so secretly; these were his father's people too; these ragged sh.o.r.es and the islands studding the channels were the lands where his father had spent the most active part of his life. There, then--these lists now made it certain--that event had happened by which that life had been blighted. Chicago and this house here had been for his father only the abode of memory and retribution. North, there by the meeting of the waters, was the region of the wrong which was done.

"That's where I must go!" he said aloud. "That's where I must go!"

Constance Sherrill, on the following afternoon, received a telephone call from her father; he was coming home earlier than usual, he said; if she had planned to go out, would she wait until after he got there?

She had, indeed, just come in and had been intending to go out again at once; but she took off her wraps and waited for him. The afternoon's mail was upon a stand in the hall. She turned it over, looking through it--invitations, social notes. She picked from among them an envelope addressed to herself in a firm, clear hand, which, unfamiliar to her, still queerly startled her, and tore it open.

Dear Miss Sherrill, she read,

I am closing for the time being, the house which, for default of other ownership, I must call mine. The possibility that what has occurred here would cause you and your father anxiety about me in case I went away without telling you of my intention is the reason for this note.

But it is not the only reason. I could not go away without telling you how deeply I appreciate the generosity and delicacy you and your father have shown to me in spite of my position here and of the fact that I had no claim at all upon you. I shall not forget those even though what happened here last night makes it impossible for me to try to see you again or even to write to you.

ALAN CONRAD.

She heard her father's motor enter the drive and ran to him with the letter in her hand.

"He's written to you then," he said, at sight of it.

"Yes."

"I had a note from him this afternoon at the office, asking me to hold in abeyance for the time being the trust that Ben had left me and returning the key of the house to me for safekeeping."

"Has he already gone?"

"I suppose so; I don't know."

"We must find out." She caught up her wraps and began to put them on.

Sherrill hesitated, then a.s.sented; and they went round the block together to the Corvet house. The shades, Constance saw as they approached, were drawn; their rings at the doorbell brought no response. Sherrill, after a few instants' hesitation, took the key from his pocket and unlocked the door and they went in. The rooms, she saw, were all in perfect order; summer covers had been put upon the furniture; protecting cloths had been spread over the beds up-stairs.

Her father tried the water and the gas, and found they had been turned off. After their inspection, they came out again at the front door, and her father closed it with a snapping of the spring lock.

Constance, as they walked away, turned and looked back at the old house, gloomy and dark among its newer, fresher-looking neighbors; and suddenly she choked, and her eyes grew wet. That feeling was not for Uncle Benny; the drain of days past had exhausted such a surge of feeling for him. That which she could not wink away was for the boy who had come to that house a few weeks ago and for the man who just now had gone.

CHAPTER XIII

THE THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS

"Miss Constance Sherrill, Harbor Springs, Michigan."

The address, in large scrawling letters, was written across the brown paper of the package which had been brought from the post office in the little resort village only a few moments before. The paper covered a shoe box, crushed and old, bearing the name of S. Klug, Dealer in Fine Shoes, Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The box, like the outside wrapping, was carefully tied with string.

Constance, knowing no one in Manitowoc and surprised at the nature of the package, glanced at the postmark on the brown paper which she had removed; it too was stamped Manitowoc. She cut the strings about the box and took off the cover. A black and brown dotted silk cloth filled the box; and, seeing it, Constance caught her breath. It was--at least it was very like--the m.u.f.fler which Uncle Benny used to wear in winter.

Remembering him most vividly as she had seen him last, that stormy afternoon when he had wandered beside the lake, carrying his coat until she made him put it on, she recalled this silk cloth, or one just like it, in his coat pocket; she had taken it from his pocket and put it around his neck.

She started with trembling fingers to take it from the box; then, realizing from the weight of the package that the cloth was only a wrapping or, at least, that other things were in the box, she hesitated and looked around for her mother. But her mother had gone out; her father and Henry both were in Chicago; she was alone in the big summer "cottage," except for servants. Constance picked up box and wrapping and ran up to her room. She locked the door and put the box upon the bed; now she lifted out the cloth. It was a wrapping, for the heavier things came with it; and now, also, it revealed itself plainly as the scarf--Uncle Benny's scarf! A paper fluttered out as she began to unroll it--a little cross-lined leaf evidently torn from a pocket memorandum book. It had been folded and rolled up. She spread it out; writing was upon it, the small irregular letters of Uncle Benny's hand.

"Send to Alan Conrad," she read; there followed a Chicago address--the number of Uncle Benny's house on Astor Street. Below this was another line:

"Better care of Constance Sherrill (Miss)." There followed the Sherrills' address upon the Drive. And to this was another correction:

"Not after June 12th; then to Harbor Springs, Mich. Ask some one of that; be sure the date; after June 12th."

Constance, trembling, unrolled the scarf; now coins showed from a fold, next a pocket knife, ruined and rusty, next a watch--a man's large gold watch with the case queerly pitted and worn completely through in places, and last a plain little band of gold of the size for a woman's finger--a wedding ring. Constance, gasping and with fingers shaking so from excitement that she could scarcely hold these objects, picked them up and examined them--the ring first.

It very evidently was, as she had immediately thought, a wedding ring once fitted for a finger only a trifle less slender than her own. One side of the gold band was very much worn, not with the sort of wear which a ring gets on a hand, but by some different sort of abrasion.

The other side of the band was roughened and pitted but not so much worn; the inside still bore the traces of an inscription. "As long as we bo ... all live," Constance could read, and the date "June 2, 1891."

It was in January, 1896, Constance remembered, that Alan Conrad had been brought to the people in Kansas; he then was "about three years old." If this wedding ring was his mother's, the date would be about right; it was a date probably something more than a year before Alan was born. Constance put down the ring and picked up the watch.

Wherever it had lain, it had been less protected than the ring; the covers of the case had been almost eroded away, and whatever initialing or other marks there might have been upon the outside were gone. But it was like Uncle Benny's watch--or like one of his watches. He had several, she knew, presented to him at various times--watches almost always were the testimonials given to seamen for acts of sacrifice and bravery. She remembered finding some of those testimonials in a drawer at his house once where she was rummaging, when she was a child. One of them had been a watch just like this, large and heavy. The spring which operated the cover would not work, but Constance forced the cover open.

There, inside the cover as she had thought it would be, was engraved writing. Sand had seeped into the case; the inscription was obliterated in part.

"For his courage and skill in seam ... master of ... which he brought to the rescue of the pa.s.sengers and crew of the steamer _Winnebago_ foundering ... Point, Lake Erie, November 26th, 1890, this watch is donated by the Buffalo Merchants' Exchange."

Uncle Benny's name, evidently, had been engraved upon the outside.

Constance could not particularly remember the rescue of the people of the _Winnebago_; 1890 was years before she was born, and Uncle Benny did not tell her that sort of thing about himself.

The watch, she saw now, must have lain in water, for the hands under the crystal were rusted away and the face was all streaked and cracked.

She opened the back of the watch and exposed the works; they too were rusted and filled with sand. Constance left the watch open and, shivering a little, she gently laid it down upon her bed. The pocket knife had no distinguishing mark of any sort; it was just a man's ordinary knife with the steel turned to rust and with sand in it too.

The coins were abraded and pitted discs--a silver dollar, a half dollar and three quarters, not so much abraded, three nickels, and two pennies.

Constance choked, and her eyes filled with tears. These things--plainly they were the things found in Uncle Benny's pockets--corroborated only too fully what Wa.s.saquam believed and what her father had been coming to believe.--that Uncle Benny was dead. The m.u.f.fler and the sc.r.a.p of paper had not been in water or in sand. The paper was written in pencil; it had not even been moistened or it would have blurred. There was nothing upon it to tell how long ago it had been written; but it had been written certainly before June twelfth.

"After June 12th," it said.

That day was August the eighteenth.

It was seven months since Uncle Benny had gone away. After his strange interview with her that day and his going home, had Uncle Benny gone out directly to his death? There was nothing to show that he had not; the watch and coins must have lain for many weeks, for months, in water and in sand to become eroded in this way. But, aside from this, there was nothing that could be inferred regarding the time or place of Uncle Benny's death. That the package had been mailed from Manitowoc meant nothing definite. Some one--Constance could not know whom--had had the m.u.f.fler and the scrawled leaf of directions; later, after lying in water and in sand, the things which were to be "sent" had come to that some one's hand. Most probably this some one had been one who was going about on ships; when his ship had touched at Manitowoc, he had executed his charge.

Constance left the articles upon the bed and threw the window more widely open. She trembled and felt stirred and faint, as she leaned against the window, breathing deeply the warm air, full of life and with the scent of the evergreen trees about the house.

The "cottage" of some twenty rooms stood among the pines and hemlocks interspersed with hardwood on "the Point," where were the great fine summer homes of the wealthier "resorters." White, narrow roads, just wide enough for two automobiles to pa.s.s abreast, wound like a labyrinth among the tree trunks; and the sound of the wind among the pine needles was mingled with the soft lapping of water. To south and east from her stretched Little Traverse--one of the most beautiful bits of water of the lakes; across from her, beyond the wrinkling water of the bay, the larger town--Petoskey--with its hilly streets pitching down steeply to the water's edge and the docks, and with its great resort hotels, was plainly visible. To westward, from the white life-saving station and the lighthouse, the point ran out in shingle, bone white, outcropping above the water; then for miles away the shallow water was treacherous green and white to where at the north, around the bend of the sh.o.r.e, it deepened and grew blue again, and a single white tower--Ile-aux-Galets Light--kept watch above it.

This was Uncle Benny's country. Here, twenty-five years before, he had first met Henry, whose birthplace--a farm, deserted now--was only a few miles back among the hills. Here, before that, Uncle Benny had been a young man, active, vigorous, ambitious. He had loved this country for itself and for its traditions, its Indian legends and fantastic stories. Half her own love for it--and, since her childhood, it had been to her a region of delight--was due to him and to the things he had told her about it. Distinct and definite memories of that companionship came to her. This little bay, which had become now for the most part only a summer playground for such as she, had been once a place where he and other men had struggled to grow rich swiftly; he had outlined for her the ruined lumber docks and pointed out to her the locations of the dismantled sawmills. It was he who had told her the names of the freighters pa.s.sing far out, and the names of the lighthouses, and something about each. He had told her too about the Indians. She remembered one starry night when he had pointed out to her in the sky the Indian "Way of Ghosts," the Milky Way, along which, by ancient Indian belief, the souls of Indians traveled up to heaven; and how, later, lying on the recessed seat beside the fireplace where she could touch the dogs upon the hearth, he had pointed out to her through the window the Indian "Way of Dogs" among the constellations, by which the dogs too could make that journey. It was he who had told her about Michabou and the animals; and he had been the first to tell her of the Drum.

The disgrace, unhappiness, the threat of something worse, which must have made death a relief to Uncle Benny, she had seen pa.s.sed on now to Alan. What more had come to Alan since she had last heard of him?

Some terrible substance to his fancies which would a.s.sail him again as she had seen him a.s.sailed after Luke had come? Might another attack have been made upon him similar to that which he had met in Chicago?

Word had reached her father through shipping circles in May and again in July which told of inquiries regarding Uncle Benny which made her and her father believe that Alan was searching for his father upon the lakes. Now these articles which had arrived made plain to her that he would never find Uncle Benny; he would learn, through others or through themselves, that Uncle Benny was dead. Would he believe then that there was no longer any chance of learning what his father had done?

Would he remain away because of that, not letting her see or hear from him again?

She went back and picked up the wedding ring.