The Zeit-Geist Part 8

As she sewed she found herself looking up moment by moment at the window. It was not long before she saw the same figure there again, close now, and in the full light. Her hands dropped nerveless upon her knee; she sat gazing with strained whitened face. The outline of the clothes she a.s.sociated with the thought of Toyner, but from under the dark hat her father's face looked at her. Not the face of a man she thought, but the face of a spirit, as white as if it were lifeless, as haggard as if it were dead, but with blazing life in the eyeb.a.l.l.s and a line like red fire round their rims. In a moment it was gone again.

Ann started up possessed with the desire to prove the ghostly visitant material; pa.s.sing through the door, she fled outside with her lamp.

Whatever had been there had withdrawn itself more quickly than she had come to seek it.

She felt convinced now that her father was dead; she fell to imagining all the ways in which the tragic end might have come. No thought that came to her was satisfactory. What had Bart done? Why had his form seemed to her so inextricably confused with the form of her father at the moment of the apparition? The recognition of a man or his garments, although the result of observation, does not usually carry with it any consciousness of the details that we have observed; and she did not know now what it was that had made her think of Toyner so strongly.

The next morning, as the day was beginning to wear on, one of the Fentown men put his head into Ann's door.

"Do you happen to know where Toyner is?" he asked.

She gave a negative, only to be obliged to repeat it to several questions in quick succession.

"Seen him this morning?"

"Seen him last night?"

"Happen to know where he would likely be?"

The growing feeling of distress in Ann's mind made the shake of her head more and more emphatic. She was of course an object of more or less pity to every one at that time, and the intruder made an explanation that had some tone of apology.

"Oh, well, I didn't know but as you might have happened to have seen him since he came back. His boat's there at the landing all right, but his mother's not seen him up to the house."

During the day Ann heard the same tale in several different forms.

Toyner was one of those quiet men not often in request by his neighbours; and as he was known at present to have reason possibly for hidden movements in search of his quarry, there was not that hue and cry raised concerning the presence of the boat and the absence of the owner that would have been aroused in the case of some other; still, the interest in his whereabouts gradually grew, and Ann heard the talk about it. Within her own heart an unexpressed terror grew stronger and stronger. It was founded upon the sense of personal responsibility. She alone knew the secret mission upon which Toyner had left; she alone knew of the glimpse of her father which she had caught the night before, and she doubted now whether she had seen a spirit or visible man. What had happened in the dark hour in which Toyner and Markham had met, and which of them had brought back the boat? The misery of these questions grew to be greater than she could endure; but to confide her distress to any one was impossible. To do so might not only be to put her father's enemies upon his track, but it would be to confess Bart's unfaithfulness to his public duty; and in that curious revolution of feeling which so frequently comes about in hearts where it is least expected, Ann felt the latter would be the more intolerable woe of the two.

Then came another of those strange unearthly sunsets. Ann's mind was made up. Inactivity she could endure no longer. There was one explanation that appeared to her more reasonable than any other; that was, that Bart had wavered in his resolution to relieve Markham, that the latter had died upon the tree where he was hiding, and that Bart would not show himself for the present where Ann could see him. Ann did not believe in this explanation; but because of the apparition which she thought she had seen, because of the horrible nature of the fear it entailed, she determined that, come what would, she would go to that secret place which she alone knew and find out if her father had been taken from it or if any trace remained there to show what had really happened. It was when the sisters were again alone for the night that she first broke the silence of her fears.

"Christa, father came to the window last night, but went away again before I could catch him."

"Sure he would never show his face in this place, Ann. You must have been dreaming!"

"Well, I must try to find him. I tell you what I'm going to do. I've been along all the boats, and there's not one of them I could take without being heard except David Brown's canoe that is tied at the foot of his father's field. I could get that, and I expect to be back here long before it's light. If any one should come to the door asking for me, you say, like the other night, that I'm ill and can't see them."

"Yes," said Christa, without exhibiting much interest. Ann had been the _deus ex machina_ of the house since Christa's babyhood. It never occurred to her that any power needed to interfere on behalf of Ann.

"But if I shouldn't get back by daylight, you'll have to manage to say a word to David Brown. Tell him that I borrowed his canoe for a very special purpose. If you just say that, he'll have sense not to make a fuss."

"Yes," said Christa sleepily.

CHAPTER XIII.

The canoe did not answer to Ann's one slim Indian paddle so lightly as the boat she had taken before had answered to the oars. Kneeling upright in the stern, she was obliged to keep her body in perfect balance.

The moon did not rise now until late, but the smoke that had for two days hung so still and dim had been lifted on a light breeze that came with the darkness. The stars were clear above, and Ann's eyes were well accustomed to the wood and stream.

Ah! how long it seemed before she came round the bend of the river and down to the blasted tree. She felt a repulsion for the whole death-like place to-night that she had not felt before. She had been sure the other night of meeting some one at the end of her secret journey, and now the best she could hope was that the place would be empty; and even if it were empty, perhaps, for all she knew, one of the men for whom she was seeking might be lying dead in the water beneath. Certainly the inexplicable appearance of her father the night before had shaken her nerves. Ann was doing a braver thing than she had ever done in her life, because she was a prey to terror. Lonely as the desolate Ahwewee was, to turn from it into the windings of the secret opening seemed like leaving the world behind and going alone into a region of death. There was no sound but the splash of paddle, the ripple of the still water under the canoe, the occasional voice of a frog from the swampy edges of the lake, and the shrill murmur of crickets from the dry fields beyond.

When Ann came near she saw the bound figure reclining in the arms of the fallen tree. Then she believed that her worst fear had been true--that Bart had been unfaithful, and that her father had died in this wretched place. He must be dead because she had seen his spirit!

She came nearer. He had not died of starvation; the bag of food which she had hung upon the branch hung there yet. She set the canoe close against the tree, and, holding by the tree, raised herself in it. She had to be very careful lest the canoe should tip under her even while she held by the tree. Then she put forth a brave hand, and laid it upon the breast of the unconscious man.

He was not dead. The heart was beating, though not strongly; the body was warm.

"Father, father." She shook him gently.

The answer was a groan, very feeble. It told her at once that the man before her was stricken with some physical ill that made him incapable of responding to her.

And now what was she to do? It was necessary by some means to get her father into the canoe. To that she did not give a second thought, but while he still lived it seemed to her monstrous to take him either back to Fentown Falls or down to The Mills. Her horror of prison and of judgment for him had grown to be wholly morbid and unreasonable, just because his terror of it had been so extreme. Only one course remained.

She had the chart that David Brown had given her. He had told her that at that northern edge of the swamp, which could be reached by the way he had marked out, a small farmhouse stood. Possibly the people in this house might not yet have heard of Markham the murderer; or possibly, if they had heard, they might be won for pity's sake to let him regain strength there and go in peace. It was her only chance. The moon was rising now, and she would find the way. She felt strength to do anything when she had realised that the heart beneath her hand was still beating.

Ann moved the canoe under the fallen log, and moving down it upon her knees, she took the rope from the prow, secured it round the log from which the sick man must descend, and fastened it again to the other end of the boat. This at least was a guarantee that they could not all sink together. Even yet the danger of upsetting the canoe sideways was very great. It was only necessity that enabled her to accomplish her task.

"Father, rouse yourself a little." She took Markham's old felt hat, upon which the insensible head was lying, and set it warmly over his brow.

She unfastened the bands that tied his body to the log. She had not come without a small phial of the rum that was always necessary for her father, in the hope that she might find him alive. She soaked some morsels of bread in this, and put it in the mouth of the man over whom she was working. It was very dark; the only marvel was, not that she did not recognise Toyner, but that she and he were not both engulfed in the black flood beneath them in the struggle which she made to take him in the canoe.

Twice that day Toyner had stirred and become conscious; but consciousness, except that of confused dreams, had again deserted him.

The lack of food, if it had preserved him from fever, had caused the utmost weakness of all his bodily powers; yet when the small amount of bread and rum which he could swallow gave him a little strength, he was roused, not to the extent of knowing who he was or where, but enough to move his muscles, although feebly, under direction. After a long time she had him safely in the bottom of the canoe, his head lying upon her jacket which she had folded for a pillow. At first, as she began to paddle the canoe forward, he groaned again and again, but by degrees the reaction of weakness after exertion made him lapse into his former state that seemed like sleep.

Ann had lost now all her fears of unknown and unseen dangers. All that she feared was the loss of her way, or the upsetting of her boat. The strength that she put into the strokes of her paddle was marvellous. She had just a mile to go before she came to another place where a stretch of still water opened through the trees. There were several of these blind channels opening off the bed of the Ahwewee. They were the terror of those who were travelling in boats, for they were easily mistaken for the river itself, and they led to nothing but impenetrable marsh. From this particular inlet David Brown had discovered a pa.s.sage to the land, and Ann pursued the new untried way boldly. Somewhere farther on David had told her a little creek flowed in where the eye could not discern any wider opening than was constantly the case between the drowned trees. Its effect upon the current of the water was said to be so slight that the only way to discover where it ran was by throwing some light particles upon the water and watching to see whether they drifted outwards from the wood steadily. She turned the boat gently against a broken stump from which she could take a decaying fragment. An hour pa.s.sed. She wearily crossed the water to and fro, casting out her chips of punk, straining her eyes to see their motion in the moonlight. The breeze that had moved the smoke had gone again. Above the moon rode through white fleecy clouds. The water and air lay still and warm, inter-penetrated with the white light. The trees, without leaf or twigs, cast no shadow with the moon in the zenith.

The patient experimenting with the chips was a terrible ordeal to Ann.

The man whom she supposed to be her father lay almost the whole length of the canoe so close to her, and yet she could not pa.s.s his outstretched feet to give him food or stimulant. At last, at last, to her great joy, she found the place where the chips floated outward with steady motion. She then pushed her canoe in among the trees, thankful to know that it, at least, had been there before, that there would be no pa.s.s too narrow for it. The canoe itself was almost like a living creature to her by this time. Like an intelligent companion in the search, it responded with gentle motion to her slightest touch.

It seemed to Ann that the light of the moon was now growing very strong and clear. Surely no moon had ever before become so bright! Ann looked about her, almost for a moment dreading some supernatural thing, and then she realised that the night was gone, that pale dawn was actually smiling upon her. It gave her a strange sense of lightheartedness. Her heart warmed with love to the sight of the purple tint in the eastern sky, that bluish purple which precedes the yellow sunrise. On either side of her boat now the water was so shallow that sedge and rushes rose above it.

The herons flapped across her path to their morning fishing.

The creek still made a narrow channel for the canoe. Pretty soon its current flowed between wild undulating tracts of bright green moss in which the trees still stood dead, but bark and lichen now adhered to their trunks, and a few more strokes brought her to the fringes of young spruce and balsam that grew upon the drier knolls. She smelt living trees, dry woods and pastures in front. Then a turn of the narrow creek, and she saw a log-house standing not twenty paces from the stream. Above and around it maples and elms held out green branches, and there was some sort of a clearing farther on.

Ann felt exultant in her triumph. She had brought her boat to a place of safety. She seemed to gather life and strength from the sun; although it still lay below the blue horizon of lake and forest which she had left behind her, the sky above was a gulf of sunshine.

She stepped out of the boat and pushed away the hat to look in her father's face. She saw now who it was that she had rescued. Toyner stirred a little when she touched him, and opened his eyes, the same grave grey eyes with which he had looked at her when he bade her good-bye. There was no fever in them, and, as it seemed to her, no lack of sense and thought. Yet he only looked at her gravely, and then seemed to sleep again.

The girl sprang upright upon the bank and wrung her hands together. It came to her with sudden clearness what had been done. Had Toyner told his tale, she could hardly have known it more clearly. Her father, had tried to murder Bart; her father had tied him in his own place; it was her father who had escaped alone with the boat. It was he himself, and no apparition, who had peered in upon her through the window. She was wrought up into a strong glow of indignation against the baseness that would turn upon a deliverer, against the cruelty of the revenge taken.

No wonder that miserable father had not dared to enter her house again or to seek further succour from her! All her pity, all the strength of her generosity, went out to the man who had ventured so much on his behalf and been betrayed. That unspoken reverence for Toyner, a sense of the contrast between him and her father and the other men whom she knew, which had been growing upon her, now culminated in an impulse of devotion. A new faculty opened within her nature, a new mine of wealth.

The thin white-faced man that lay half dead in the bottom of the canoe perhaps experienced some reviving influence from this new energy of love that had transformed the woman who stood near him, for he opened his eyes again and saw her, this time quite distinctly, standing looking down upon him. There was tenderness in her eyes, and her sunbrowned face was all aglow with a flush that was brighter than the flush of physical exercise. About her bending figure grew what seemed to Bart's half-dazzled sense the flowers of paradise, for wild sunflowers and sheafs of purple eupatorium brushed her arms, standing in high phalanx by the edge of the creek. Bart smiled as he looked, but he had no thoughts, and all that he felt was summed up in a word that he uttered gently:

"Ann!"

She knelt down at once. "What is it, Bart?" and again: "What were you trying to say?"

It is probable that her words did not reach him at all. He was only half-way back from the region of his vision; but he opened his eyes and looked at her again.