The Ordeal Part 6

He was glad to get Lillian out of her sight and hearing. With every muscle relaxed, almost collapsed, curiously ghastly in her gay gown, she was lifted bodily into the vehicle, repeating constantly with bloodless lips and a strange, false, mechanical voice, "Take me to my dead child!"

Once as they spun swiftly through the misty sheen and dewy shadow, the moisture-laden boughs that thrust across the narrow roadway now and again filliping them on the cheeks with perfumed showers, she turned that death-smitten face toward him and said in her natural, smooth tones, "You have your revenge at last. It couldn't be a heavier blow!"

"I want you to be still!" he cried with vehement rudeness. "I can't drive straight if you rattle me. I am taking you to your child."

And once more broke forth the eerie shrilling anew: "Take me to my child!

Take me to my dead child!"

At the first house that Bayne roused, he was enc.u.mbered and hara.s.sed by her strange intolerance that they should speak of Briscoe at all; for the summer sojourner was a favorite with his humble neighbors, and a great tumult of concern ensued on the suggestion that he had encountered disaster in some sort.

It all seemed to the jealous mother-heart to minimize her own sacred grief. "But he had my child with him, my dead child!" she would shrill out. And the slow rustic's formulation of a suggestion or a plan must needs tarry in abeyance as he gazed awestruck at this ghastly apparition, decked in trim finery, mowing and wringing her hands, shown under the hood of the phaeton in the blended light of the moon and the mountaineer's lantern, while his household stood half-clad in the doorway and peered out, mute and affrighted, as at a spectre.

The scanty population of the district turned out to the last man. The woods of the vicinity were pervaded with exploring parties, now and again hallooing their signals, till the crags rang with the melancholy interchange of hail and hopeless response. In fact, the night was nearly spent before a hunter, roused by the echoing clamors, joined the search with the statement that he had been at a "deer stand" in the valley during the afternoon, and had noted at a distance some object crash down from the summit of a certain crag. He had fancied it only a fragment of the rock falling, and had not the curiosity to leave his occupation and go so far to investigate the nature of a circ.u.mstance seemingly of so little significance.

Thus it came about that the inquisition of the coroner's jury resulted in a verdict of death by accident. It was supposed that the little child's body was crushed indistinguishably in the mangled ma.s.s of horse and man, themselves scarcely to be disintegrated in the fall from so stupendous a height. The big white beaver hat of the child was found floating on the surface of a deep pool hard by, half quagmire, half quicksand, and would in itself have sufficed to dispel any doubts of his fate, had doubt been entertained. The burial was accomplished as best might be, and the dolorous incident seemed at an end. But throughout the dry, soft Indian summer the little boy's jaunty red coat swung in the wind, unseen, unheeded, on the upper boughs of a tree in the valley, where it had chanced to lodge when the treacherous Copenny had cast it forth from the bluff above to justify the hypothesis of the fall of the little fellow from those awful heights.

Gradually the catastrophe ceased to be the paramount sensation of the country-side. Bayne's interests of necessity had drawn him back to his city office. He had remonstrated against the decision of the two bereaved women to remain in the bungalow for a time. He had advocated change, travel, aught that might compa.s.s a surcease of the indulgence of sorrow and dreary seclusion, that are so dear and so pernicious to the stricken heart. But in their affliction the two clung together and to the place endeared by tender a.s.sociations of the recent habitation of the beloved and vanished. They said that none could feel for them as each for the other, and, in fact, their awful tragedy had cemented an affection already almost sisterly. Thus the bungalow caged through the opening of wintry weather these tenants of woe who had come like the birds for sunshine and summer only. Since the community continued in absolute ignorance that any crime had been committed, there was no sense of insecurity or apprehension of danger, other than might menace any country house, isolated and secluded in situation. The normal precautions were taken, the household was strengthened, and Mrs. Marable, Lillian's aunt, or rather her uncle's wife, who had come to her at the first news of her affliction, had consented to remain during her stay. Owing to the discovery of the intrusion into the hotel, with no other fear than material injury to the property by frisky boys of the vicinity, the management had installed there a caretaker with his family, who was also, as weather favored, to superintend some repairs to the building. It had been arranged by Bayne, previous to his departure, that the eldest son, a stalwart youth of twenty, should sleep in a room at the bungalow, having his rifle loaded and pistols at hand, provided against any menace of disturbance. Thus the winter closed in upon a seclusion and solitude of funereal intimations.

The winds were loosed and rioted through the lonely recesses of the craggy ravines and the valley with a wild and eerie blare; the leaves, rustling shrilly, all sere now, so long the weather had held dry, fled in myriads before the gusts. Soon they lay on the ground in dense ma.s.ses, and in the denudation of the trees the brilliant tints of the little coat, swinging so high in the blast, caught the eye of a wandering hunter. At first sight, he thought it but a flare of the autumnal foliage, and gave it no heed, but some days afterward its persistence struck his attention. It seemed a tragic and piteous thing when he discovered its nature. He cut the tree down, too high it was lodged for other means to secure it, and after the county officials had examined it, he brought it to the mother.

Over it Lillian shed such tears as have bedewed the relics of the dead since first this sad old world knew loss, since first a grave was filled.

How unavailing! How lacerating! How consoling! She began to feel a plaintive sympathy for all the bereaved of earth, and her heart and mind grew more submissive as she remembered that only for this cause Jesus wept, albeit a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."

The little coat, so gayly decorated, reminded her of another coat of many colors, its splendor testimony of the gentlest domestic affection, brought stained with blood to another parent long ago, to interpret the cruel mystery of a son's death. And after all these centuries she felt drawn near to Jacob in the tender realization of a common humanity, and often repeated his despairing words, "I shall go down into the grave unto my son mourning."

Then her heart was pierced with self-pity for the contrast of his gratuitous affliction with her hopeless grief. So happy in truth was he, despite his thought of woe, that he should have lamented as dead his son, who was so full of life the while, whose future on earth was destined to be so long and so beneficent. She spoke of this so often and so wistfully that it seemed to Gladys to precipitate an illusion, which afterward absorbed her mind to the exclusion of all else.

VIII.

One sinister day when the slate-hued clouds hung low, and the valley was dark and drear with its dense leafless forests, when the mountains gloomed a sombre purple and no sound but the raucous cawing of crows broke upon the sullen air, Lillian's paroxysms of grief seemed to reach a climax. Their intensity alarmed her two companions, and the forced composure and latent strength of character of Gladys were tried to the utmost to sustain her own equilibrium. But as the afternoon wore away Lillian grew calmer, though her mind never deviated from the subject. The trio had ceased to sit in the large reception hall, for its gun-rack and rods and reels, its fur rugs, its trophies of sport, its mandolin and flute and piano, were now pathetically reminiscent of the vanished presence of its joyous and genial owner. They used instead the small library which opened from it, where a s.p.a.cious bay-window gave ample light in the dreary days, and the big wood fire sent its flash and fragrance to the remotest corner. It filled with a rich glow the fabric of the little red coat as the mother held the sleeve to her lips and then turned it to readjust the cuff creased in folding. "He used to look so pretty in it. My beauty! My baby! My own!" she cried out in a voice m.u.f.fled, half-smothered, by her choking throat. "And he thought it so fine! He valued it beyond all his other possessions," she continued presently with a melancholy smile, even while the tears, so bitter that they stung her cheeks, coursed down her face; for she had begun to find a languid, sad pleasure now and then in discursive reminiscence, and Gladys, who knew the little fellow so well, could respond with discretion and stimulate this resource for the promotion of calm and resignation.

"You remember, Gladys, don't you, how he delighted in these pockets? You were with me when he first got the coat. He doubted if he were really going to have pockets, because there were none in his little white reefer. Do you remember how he looked when I lifted the flap--isn't the embroidery lovely?--and put his dear little hand into his first pocket?

How surprised he was when I showed him this pocket between the facing and the lining! I wanted him to have enough pockets--he admired them so! He had never dreamed of finding one here. I told him it was his inside pocket--he called it his 'shy pocket.'"

"A good name for it, too," commented Gladys. "n.o.body would ever think to find a pocket there."

Lillian had suddenly ceased to speak. She had suited the action to the word and slipped her own fingers into the pocket. There was something within. She drew it forth, startled, her pale face all contorted and ghastly. It was a bit of stone, of white stone, fashioned by curious nature in the similitude of a lily, wrought in the darkness, the silence of the depths of the earth. Lillian had previously seen such things; she recognized the efflorescence of a limestone cavern. She sprang up suddenly with a scream that rang through the room with the force and volume of a clarion tone.

"This child has been in a cave!" she shrilled, remembering the raid on the moonshiners' cavern. "He is not dead. He is stolen, _stolen_!"

The logic of the possibilities, cemented by her renewal of frantic hope, had constructed a stanch theory. She was reasoning on its every phase.

The coercion of this significant discovery had suggested the truth. "This coat was left as a blind, a bluff, to cover the tracks of a crime.

Gladys, Gladys, think--_think_!"

But poor Gladys, in her deep mourning gown, all her splendid beauty beclouded by grief, sadly shook her head, unconvinced. The child had possibly found the stone, she argued.

"Would he not have shared his joy with every creature in the household?"

demanded Lillian. "Did he ever have a thought that I did not know?"

"It might have been given to him," Gladys sadly persisted.

"Remember his disposition, Gladys, his grateful little heart. He would have worn us all out, showing the gift and celebrating the generosity of the giver. How flattered he was, always, to be considered! He never seemed in the least to care for the value of the thing. He would cherish an empty spool from a friend's hand. It was wonderful how he loved to be loved. I feel sure, I _know_, that coat was taken from him; and he is alive, _stolen_."

And from this conviction she would not depart. It was a folly, a frenzy, her two friends contended. Its indulgence would threaten her sanity. They besought her to consider anew. The discovery of such a stone in this mountain region was altogether devoid of significance. Right reason and religion alike dictated submission to the decrees of Providence.

These arguments were all thrown away. Neither could urge aught to restrain her. With a swift strength of gait that seemed amazing to those who had witnessed her feeble dragging about the house for weeks past, Lillian flashed through the door, and suddenly there was the keen tinkle of a bell in the darkening, chill s.p.a.ces of the unused hall. The other two, startled, appalled, as in the contemplation of the aberrations of acute mania, scarcely knowing whether to follow or to call for help, remained motionless, gazing at each other in pallid agitation, awaiting developments, of which they could divine naught.

Lillian, however, was perfectly calm as she called up "Long Distance" and gave the address of Julian Bayne in the city of Glaston--the number of his office and his residence as well.

The two women in the firelight glanced at each other in mute significance. Then Lillian urged the operator at Shaftesville to the utmost diligence. "Find him wherever he is. Send special messenger. Get him to the 'phone at once. Emergency call! Make them understand that at the Glaston exchange."

Mrs. Marable, a little, precise, wrinkled old lady, with a brown taffeta gown and a Marie Stuart lace cap, cherished the traditions of the old school of propriety, and the controlling influence proved strong even amidst this chaos of excitements. As Mrs. Royston returned in a state of absolute exaltation to the fireside, "Lillian," said Mrs. Marable coldly, "the officers of the law are the proper parties for you to appeal to, if you are going to pursue this obsession. Why should you call up that--man?

Why don't you call the sheriff of the county?"

"Because I want Julian Bayne. I believe in him! I can trust him! It is almost like the hand of omnipotence--there is help in the very thought of him."

There were no more tears. She sat strong, elate, her head held high, her hands folded calmly on the c.r.a.pe pleats of the black gown she wore for the child's sake, ready to wait the evening through. But there was a prompt response. When the telephone-bell jarred out suddenly in the dim stillness of the hall, Gladys sprang up with a sharp cry, her hands to her ears, as if to shut out the sound. But Lillian ran lightly out of the room, and the two heard in wonder the sure vibrations of her clear composed accents. "Yes, Long Distance, this is Mrs. Royston." Then suddenly her tones were pervaded with embarra.s.sment: "Oh, Mr. _John_ Bayne.... Oh, the father of Mr. Julian Bayne.... No, no, no commands....

Thank you very much. Only the present address of Mr. Julian Bayne."

Once more the two in the library exchanged a glance expressive of more than either would have been willing to put into words. For there was a very definite interval of delay at the telephone, and it would need no sorcerer to divine that the father might deem that this lady, who had so signally befooled his son heretofore, had no beneficent concern to serve with his address. But the old gentleman was evidently the pink of punctilio. Moreover, Julian Bayne had already proved himself man enough to be safely chargeable with his own affairs.

"At Crystal?... Thirty miles from Shaftesville?... Telephone exchange there?... So much obliged! Good-by!"

The bitter disappointment! The torturing delay! Gladys dreaded to witness their effects on Lillian, baffled at the outset in this miserable delusion that her child still lived, because of a bit of stone in the pocket of a coat he had worn. It would debilitate her as completely as if her belief were founded on cogent reason. But Lillian, with a singularly fresh aspect, with a buoyant energy, swept into the room after calling up Crystal, cool, collected, as competent of dealing with delay and suspense as factors in her plan as if it were some commonplace matter of business, and naturally dependent on the contingencies which environ the domain of affairs. The lamps came in and filled the room with a golden glow, as she sat in a majestic a.s.surance that gave her an aspect of a sort of regal state. Her hair, ill-arranged, disordered in lying down throughout the day in her reclining chair, showed in its redundance the splendor of its tint and quality; her face, lately so wan and lean and ghastly, was roseate, and the lines had strangely filled out in soft curves to their wonted contour; her hands lay supple and white and quiet in her lap, with not a tense ligament, not a throbbing fibre--delicate, beautiful hands--it seemed odd to her companions to think how they had seen her wring them in woe and clench them in despair. Her black gown with its heavy folds of c.r.a.pe had an element of incongruity with that still, a.s.sured, resolved presence, expressing so cheerful a poise, so confident a control of circ.u.mstance. She did not expend herself in protest when at ten o'clock they besought her to go to bed, to be called should the telephone-bell ring. Her negation was so definite that they forbore futile importunacy. She did not even waste her strength in urgency when they declared that they would keep the vigil with her. She merely essayed a remonstrance, and, since it was obviously vain, she desisted. She would not discuss the theme. She had no words. It even seemed that she had no thoughts, no fears, no plans. She was annulled in waiting--waiting for the moment, the opportunity to take action. While the time went by, she sat there as under a spell of suspended animation, fresh, clear, capable, tireless, silent. The housemaid came in once and mended the fire, but later Gladys, mindful of the curiosity of servants, forbore to ring the bell and threw on the logs herself; then sat down to gaze again into the depths of the coals, flickering to a white heat at the end of the glowing red perspective, and wonder what was to come to them all--indeed, what was this strange thing that had already befallen them in the obsession of this silent woman, who sat so still, so suddenly endued with vigor, so brilliant with health and freshness, out of a state of mental anguish bordering on nervous prostration? Was it all fict.i.tious?--and was there something terrible to ensue when it should collapse? And what action was inc.u.mbent on her hostess, left to face this problem in this lonely country house in the dead hours of night?

IX.

The wind had risen; the swaying of the great trees outside was partially visible as well as drearily audible to the group, for Gladys had postponed ordering the shutters closed, and then had forgotten them. The gigantic dim shapes of the oaks surged to and fro in an undiscriminated shadowy turmoil. It was a dark night, and cloudy. Vast ma.s.ses of vapor were on the march, under the coercion of the blast that followed fast and scourged and flouted the laggards. Mrs. Marable noted now and again a light and tentative touch on the panes, and began to wonder how far the illumined window could be seen down the road. Was it not calculated to allure marauders and nighthawks to this lonely house? She was moved to hope that the stalwart son of the hotel caretaker, who occupied a room at the bungalow for the greater security of its occupants, was not a heavy sleeper; though from the stolid, phlegmatic appearance of the young man, of a sluggish temperament, she drearily thought it possible that he could be roused by no less means than applying a torch to his bed furniture to bring him out in a light blaze. She experienced a great revulsion of relief when she began to recognize the mysterious sound that had attracted her attention. It was sleet--no longer slyly touching the gla.s.s here and there, but dashing with all the force of the wind in tinkling showers against it. The sound had its chilly influence even before the warm fire.

Suddenly the shock of the bell, jangling out its summons in the dark cold hall! Again Lillian's composed, swift exit in response. Crystal had answered, and here was Mr. Julian Bayne at the hotel and on the wire.

Could he come to her at once, at her utmost need, and by the first train?

Oh! (at last a poignant cadence of pain) there was no train? Crystal was not on a railroad at all? (A pause of silent, listening expectancy, then the keen vibration of renewed hope.) Oh, could he? Could he really drive across country? But wasn't it too far? Oh, a fast horse? Fifty miles? But weren't the roads dreadful?

"Oh--oh, Gladys, he has rung off! He was in such a hurry I could hardly understand him. I could hear him calling out his orders in the hotel office to have his horse harnessed, while he was talking to me."

The effort was triumphantly made, and Julian Bayne was coming, but as she returned from the chill hall to the illumined, warm room the tinkle of ice on the window-pane caught her attention for the first time.

"Snow?" she said, appalled; then, listening a moment: "And there is sleet! I wonder if it is more than a flurry."

She ran to the window, but, already frozen, the sash refused to rise. She pressed her cheek to the pane and beheld aghast a ghostly and sheeted world, so fast had the snowflakes fallen, and still the sleet sent its crystal fusillade against the gla.s.s.