The Shield of Silence Part 3

"I want you to go to Stone Hedgeton to-morrow, Uncle Jed. You better start early. You must meet every train until you see a young lady--she will be looking about for someone--and bring her here. In between trains make yourself and the horses comfortable at the tavern. I'm glad you do not drink, Jed."

"Yes-m," pondered Jed, "but I 'spect there might be mo' dan one young lady. I reckon it would be disastering if I fotched the wrong one. Isn't thar something 'bout her discounterments as might be leading, as yo'

might say, ma'am?"

"Jed, I rely upon you to bring the right young lady!"

There was no use of further arguing. Jed shuffled off.

Alone, of all the household, little Mary Allan was not taken into Sister Angela's confidence, and this was unfortunate, for Mary ran well in harness, but was apt to go a bit wild if left to her own devices.

What people did not confide to Mary she generally found out for herself.

Mary was known to Silver Gap as the "last of them Allans." Her father and mother both died soon after Mary showed signs of persisting--her ten brothers and sisters had refused to live, and when Mary was left to her fate Sister Angela rescued her, and the girl had been trained for entrance into a Sisterhood later on.

She was abnormally keen but discouragingly superst.i.tious; she had moods when the Sisters believed they had overcome her inheritance of reticence and aloofness. She would laugh and chat gaily and appear charmingly young and happy, but without warning she would lapse back to the almost sullen, suspicious att.i.tude that was so disconcerting. Sister Angela demanded justice for Mary and received, in return, a kind of loyalty that was the best the girl had to give.

She regarded, with that strange interpretation of the lonely hills, all outsiders as foreigners. She was receiving benefits from them, her only chance of life, and while she blindly repaid in services, Mary's roots clung to the cabin life; her affections to the fast-decaying hovel from which she had been rescued.

Jed was the only familiar creature left to Mary's inner consciousness.

He belonged to the hills--if not of them, and while his birthright made it possible for him to a.s.similate, he shared with Mary the feeling that he was among strangers.

Jed thought in strains of "quality"; Mary in terms of "outlanders." But both served loyally.

The morning that Jed was to start on his mysterious errand--and he gloried in the mystery--Mary was "minding" bread in the kitchen and "chuncking" wood in the stove with a lavish hand. The Sisters were at prayer in the tiny chapel which had been evolved from a small west room; and old Aunt Becky Adams was plodding down the rugged trail from Thunder Peak. Meredith Thornton, too, was nearing her destination and The Ship was on The Rock.

Presently Mary, having tested the state of the golden-brown ovals in the oven--and she could do it to a nicety--came out of the kitchen, followed by a delicious smell of crisping wheat, and sat down upon the step of the porch to watch Jed polishing the harness of Washington and Lincoln--the grave, reliable team upon whom Jed spared no toil.

Mary looked very brief and slim in her scanty blue cotton frock and the ap.r.o.n far too large for her. The hair, tidily caught in a firm little knot, was making brave efforts to escape in wild little curls, and the girl's big eyes had the expression seen in the eyes of an animal that has been trapped but not conquered.

"Uncle Jed," she said in an awed tone, and planting her sharp elbows on her knees in order to prop her serious face, "The Ship is on The Rock."

All the morning Jed had been trying to keep his back to the fact.

"Yo' sure is one triflin' child," he muttered.

"All the same, The Ship is there, Uncle Jed, and that means that something is going to happen. It is going to happen long o' Ridge House--and nothing has happened here before. Things have just gone on--and--on and on----"

The girl's voice trailed vaguely--she was looking at The Ship.

Jed began to have that sensation described by him as "shivers in the spine of his back." Mary was fascinating him. Suddenly she asked:

"Uncle Jed, what are they-all sending you to--fetch?" Mary almost said "fotch."

"How you know, child, I is goin' to fotch--anything?" Jed's spine was affecting his moral fibre.

Mary gave her elfish laugh. She rarely smiled, and her laugh was a mere sound--not harsh, but mirthless.

"I _know!_" she said, "and it came--no matter what it is on The Ship, and I 'low it will go--on The Ship."

"Gawd A'mighty!" Jed burst out, "you make me creep like I had pneumonia fever." With this Jed turned to The Rock and confronted The Ship.

"Gawd!" he murmured, "I sho' am anxious and trubbled."

Then he turned, mounted the step of the creaky carriage, and gave his whip that peculiar twist that only a born master of horses ever can.

It was like Jed to do that which he was ordained to do promptly.

Mary watched him out of sight and then went indoors. She was depressed and nervous; her keen ear had heard much not intended for her to hear, but not enough to control the imagination that was fired by superst.i.tion.

"A happening" was looming near. Something grave threatened. The evil crew of The Ship was but biding its time to strike, and Mary thrilled and feared at once.

The bread, as Mary sniffed, was ready to be taken from the oven. The first loaf was poised nicely on the girl's towel-covered hand when a dark, bent old woman drifted, rather than walked, into the sunny kitchen. She came noiselessly like a shadow; she was dirty and in rags; she looked, all but her eyes, as if she might be a hundred years old, but her eyes held so much fire and undying youth that they were terrible set in the crinkled, rust-coloured face.

"I want her!" The words, spoken close to her shoulder caused Mary to drop the loaf and turn in affright.

"I want--her!"

"Gawd! Aunt Becky!" gasped Mary, dropping, like a cloak, the thin veneer of all that Ridge House had done for her. "Gawd! Aunt Becky, I done thought you was--dead and all. I ain't seen you in ages. Won't you set?"

The woman stretched a claw-like hand forth and laid it on the shoulder of the girl.

"Don't you argify with me--Mary Allan. I want her."

There seemed to be no doubt in Mary's mind as to whom Aunt Becky wanted.

"Sister Angela is at prayer, Aunt Becky," she whispered, trying to escape from the clutch upon her shoulder.

"Mary Allan--go tell her I want her. Go!" There was that in Becky's tone that commanded obedience. Mary started to the hall, her feet clattering as she ran toward the chapel on the floor above.

Becky followed, more slowly. She got as far as the opened door of the living room, then she paused, glanced about, and went in.

There are some rooms that repel; others that seem to rush forward with warm welcome. The living room at Ridge House was one that made a stranger feel as if he had long been expected and desired. It was not unfamiliar to the old woman who now entered it. Through the windows she had often held silent and unsuspected vigil. It was her way to know the trails over which she might be called to travel and since that day, three years before, when Sister Angela had met her on the road and made her startling proposition, Becky had subconsciously known that, in due time, she would be compelled to accept what then she had so angrily refused.

On that first encounter Sister Angela had said:

"They tell me that you have a little granddaughter--a very pretty child."

"Yo' mean Zalie?" Becky was on her guard.

"I did not know her name. How old is she?"

"Nigh onter fifteen." The strange eyes were holding Sister Angela's calm gaze--the old woman was awaiting the time to spring.

"It is wrong to keep a young girl on that lonely peak away from everyone, as I am told that you do. Won't you let her come to Ridge House? We will teach her--fit her for some useful work."

Sister Angela at that time did not know her neighbours as well as she later learned to know them. Becky came nearer, and her thin lips curled back from her toothless jaws.

"You-all keep yo' hands off Zalie an' me! I kin larn my gal all she needs to know. All other larnin' would harm her, and no Popish folk ain't going to tech what's mine."