The Shield of Silence Part 35

"David, somehow I've hurt that girl." Doris spoke wearily.

"How?" Martin questioned.

Doris looked up and shook her head.

"How have I, Davey? I cannot tell."

"She's not hurt--but she's in line to be sacrificed if we don't look out. I'm the guilty one--I thought only of you."

And then the two planned for the winter.

Nancy took her dogs and went for a walk--a safe and near walk. The colour crept into her pale face, but her eyes had a furtive look and every noise in the bushes set her trembling. She had a conscious feeling of wanting to get away--far, far away. The Gap frightened her; she remembered old stories about it. Suddenly she looked up at The Rock and her breath almost stopped.

Fascinated, she stared; her eyes seemed to be following an invisible finger--The Ship was on The Rock!

Try as she might, Nancy could eat but little lunch. The small table was on the porch. Doris had recovered from her headache and was particularly gay--the planning for Nancy had done more for her than it had for Nancy herself.

"You had better go to your room and lie down," Martin suggested, eyeing the girl.

"Yes, I will, Uncle David."

But once in the dim quiet of the west wing chamber fresh memories a.s.sailed her.

This was the room, she recalled, into which Mary had seen--how absurd it was!--the dolls turned to babies. Such foolish, childish memories to cling and grip! How much better to be like Joan and laugh away the idle tales! Joan had always laughed--she was laughing now somewhere, looking her gayest and forgetting troubling things.

Then Nancy cried, not bitterly or enviously, but because she was tired of playing Joan's accompaniment!

Presently she got up and bathed.

"I'm going to Mary's!" she suddenly thought, and then felt as if she had been getting ready to go all day. She felt deceitful, sly, in spite of her constant reiteration that it had just occurred to her.

She left the house unseen; she hid behind a bush when she saw the hounds raise their heads from the sunny porch--she wanted to go alone to the cabin across the river.

It was three o'clock when she reached it, and she had hurried along the short trail, too. Mary was not in sight, but the living-room door was open and Nancy stood looking in with a baffling sense of unreality; the place looked different; almost as if she had never seen it before. She mentally took note of the furniture as though checking the pieces off.

The big bed, gay with patchwork quilts--Nancy knew all the patterns: Sunrise on the Peaks; Drunkard's Path; the Rainbow--Mary was making up for all that her forebears had neglected to do. Early and late she spun and wrought--she piled her bed high with the results of her labours; she covered the floor with marvellous rugs; she filled her chest of drawers with linen--Nancy glanced at the chest and fancied that she smelt the lavender that was spread on the folded treasures.

How the candlesticks shone; how sweet and clean it was, how safe!

Nancy stepped inside and sat down. The logs were laid ready for the lighting on the cracked but dustless hearth.

And then, quite unconsciously, the girl began to croon an old song, swaying back and forth, her arms folded and her eyes peaceful and waiting.

Mary, returning from her garden planting, stood by the door, unnoticed, and grimly took in the scene.

What it was that disturbed and angered her she could not have told, but she could not see Nancy sitting so--and--and--looking as she looked!

Mary strode across the room, causing Nancy to start nervously.

"What ails yo'?" Mary asked, "you look powerful sorry."

"I'm--I'm frightened, Mary."

Oddly enough, it was easy to speak frankly to the stern, plain woman across the hearth. And it was easy for Mary, after her first glance, to be ready with anything that could comfort the girl near her.

"What frightened yo'--the storm? I thought 'bout you."

"Yes--the storm, but--Mary, who lives on Thunder Peak?"

Some people are unnerved by surprise; Mary was always steadied.

"There ain't any one," she said, quietly, and leaned over to light the fire; the afternoon was growing chilly.

"Who used to live there, Mary? There is a cabin there."

Mary did not flinch, but she was feeling her way, always a little ahead of Nancy.

"There was an old woman lived there--long ago; she died."

"Are you sure, Mary?"

"I'm right certain. She plumb broke down when she was ninety, and that was years back."

"Mary, there's a grave there!"

"Yes; when folks die they just naturally have a grave." A cold, icy light flickered in Mary's eyes; she reached and took up another log and carefully placed it.

"Mary, I went to Thunder Peak, I was following the trail. I came suddenly into the open and I saw an old woman. She touched me"--here Nancy shuddered. "She--she seemed to--to think she knew me. She called me a queer name. I cannot remember it. I was terribly frightened. Are you _quite_, quite sure the old woman died, Mary?"

"She died, she surely died. Old women ain't such precious sights among the hills. Like as not it was someone from Huckleberry Bald, t'other side of Thunder, as has taken over the deserted cabin and just wants to frighten folks, like you, off. They are mighty cute, those old women on Bald. They want their own place, and--and they sometimes shoot at any one that comes nigh."

The voice and words were cool and even. Nancy drew a long breath.

"Oh, Mary," she said, "you just take all the fear away. I kept feeling that old hand on my arm as if it were dragging me; the feeling is gone now. Jed said"--here Nancy wavered--"he said the place was haunted."

"Jed was a born fool and yo' can't do much with that kind. They grows more fool-like at the end."

Nancy laughed.

"I'm just a silly myself," she said rising and stretching her pretty arms over her head as if awakening from sleep. Then:

"Mary, I'm going to New York next winter. Going to have--a wonderful time."

And now Mary looked up and her eyes brightened.

"At last," she muttered; "you're to have your chance!"

"My--chance, Mary?"