True and Other Stories Part 19

"Because he hadn't anything left to live for! He was miserable," Adela answered, with vengeful emphasis. "It is Mr. Lance did it--sending me here. No! _I_ did it, because I would not tell him what I felt. I wanted to be true to you."

The truth burst upon Dennie like a flood, and his fierce temper rose to meet it. For an instant a blinding light flashed dazzingly by across everything that surrounded him; he grew giddy, and Adela had no more important existence in his eyes than the table and the chairs around him, or the lifeless walls of the room. His single desire was, in his rage, to destroy something, to create havoc and ruin, answering to the ruin of his own hopes. But the next instant he felt as if he were among the pines, with his gun aimed at Sylv; and the thought that Sylv at this very instant might be lying dead somewhere brought a ghastly picture before his eyes. The whirl of maddening light pa.s.sed away, and he stood humiliated, mournful, calm, motionless.

"Then it's true at last!" he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "You loved that man--my brother--and he loved you."

For a moment Adela could not speak. Her lips moved, without sound. At last she answered: "Yes. But I never told him, and he said nothing to me. 'Twas only after we came here."

Dennie replied in a voice that made her think of the m.u.f.fled breaking of the waves on the distant coast. "I was fearsome of it, Deely, but I swore I wouldn't think on't. It ar' best I know it now. We'll go and look for--for Sylv. If he ar' alive, I'll bring you to him."

CHAPTER XV.

ELBOW-CROOK SWAMP.

Without notice Hedson had appeared on the scene; he was hospitably received by Colonel Floyd, and asked Lance to show him over the ground in which the as yet unborn syndicate was expected to invest.

Accompanied by Sylv they were occupied in a general survey of the swamp, from the outside, at the time when Dennie was talking with Adela in Newbern. "Yes, yes; fine country for a cemetery," said the hale but sceptical Hedson. "To come down to bed-rock on this thing," he added, turning to Lance, "the expense of paring off the natural growth and filling in here would be enormous, to say nothing of what the lawyers call 'supplementary proceedings.' You know what that means, don't you, Mr. De Vine?" Here he included Sylv in the favored list of those for whom his remarks were intended.

The upshot of the exploratory drive was that Hedson gave a semi-adverse judgment; notwithstanding which he began to consult with himself inaudibly as to the best mode of going to work to buy some of the waste land in question on his private account.

Sylv showed an unmistakable eagerness to begin his task of investigating the interior of the swamp, and before he parted from Lance for the day he took him aside and told him that he should be in the swamp by daylight of the next morning.

Hedson and the colonel found plenty to talk about that evening, and Lance was left alone with Jessie.

The conversation that pa.s.sed between these two was somewhat ruffled.

Jessie found fault with her lover because he had gone to Newbern against her will, and Lance a.s.sured her that his eccentric interest in Adela Reefe was now appeased: he had done all that he wished to, in disclosing to her the probable relationship with the Floyds, and would henceforth leave her affairs, for the most part, alone. But Jessie was not content with that declaration.

"If she comes back here to live, as you say she is about to do," she asked, "what do you expect?"

"Simply that we shall receive her as one of us," said Lance. "I have befriended her and the De Vine boys, and I intend to keep on. They are inevitably a part of my system and my plans now."

"Then you are going to overturn everything," Jessie a.s.serted.

In short, silly though it was, they quarrelled more seriously than they had done hitherto.

Jessie, there is reason to believe, was very unhappy in consequence, and pa.s.sed a wretched night. And Lance scarcely slept a wink. He lay restless on his bed, turning and tossing, until it seemed to him that he veered this way or that with the varying gusts of the tempestuous wind that hourly grew more turbulent, until Fairleigh Manor shook in its angry clutch.

"How the wind roars!" he growled aloud, starting from a half doze; and after vainly waiting a while longer for repose he got up, dressed himself, and went out.

The earliest gray of daybreak was visible in the eastern sky, but the atmosphere was so surcharged with storm that he fancied he could hear the seething of the angry ocean in the blasts that whirled around him, though he was not within ten miles of the open sea.

An hour after he had left the manor a worn-out wagon from Beaufort drew up in front of the door, and Dennie alighted. Dennie raised such a clamor at the door that at last the inmates began to arouse themselves.

Jessie was the first to respond to the summons. She gathered hastily from Dennie the object of his untimely call, and learned that Adela was with him in the wagon. They were looking for Sylv; had been detained at Beaufort, and were only just arrived; so they had come at once to the manor to ask Lance if he knew anything of Sylv's whereabouts, since Lance had been mentioned in the letter of farewell. But, a servant being sent to Lance's room, it was discovered that he was not at home; and Dennie forthwith started to drive to the sh.o.r.e, hoping that he might get some clew from Aunty Losh.

Imagine Jessie's wonder and anxiety when she found that Lance had disappeared! Her conscience had already stung her for the absurdity of her quarrel with him; but now that he was out of reach, and that Dennie had brought to her the apprehension of something tragic impending over Sylvester, her excitement rose to fever-height. Daylight broadened while she sat up, nervous and speculating, amid the noises of the disturbed household; and the wind-storm increased in violence every moment, keeping pace with her terror and her perplexity. Filled with forebodings, and finding it impossible to remain inactive, she completed her toilet, had one of the stable-hands called, and, leaving word for her father that she had gone to the headland in quest of Lance, she started to drive through the plantations.

Hunting Quarters being the nearer point, Dennie dropped the reins when the jaded team which he drove brought him to a fork in the roadway, and told Adela to drive to her father's house. He himself set out on a full run for Aunty Losh's, and never paused until he reached the cabin-door.

Aunty Losh reported that Sylv had risen before dawn and gone toward Elbow-Crook Swamp, saying that he had something to do there for Mr.

Lance.

The storm raged more furiously than ever. The ocean could be heard thundering at the outer bulwarks of the coast irresistibly. The great billows were actually at that moment surging far beyond their wonted limits and shaking the very roots of the low hills out by Hatteras, though Dennie could not see them there. He could guess the tumult that was in progress at Ocrac.o.ke and lower; the air was full of mist and flying spray; the sea was literally pulling down the outer sand-heaps, eating into them, doing its best to tear open a new inlet; and the waters of the Sound were furrowed, foaming, and uncontrollable. Yet Dennie could not delay. He began at once to retrace his course, heading for the swamp, for he had several miles to go. It was only for an instant, as he crossed the planks over the ditch he had so recently made, that he observed how the water from the Sound was boiling through the artificial channel.

He went on in headlong haste.

Before he had been twenty minutes out of sight Jessie drove up to within a few rods of the ditch, and sped across the intervening s.p.a.ce. Her coachman warned her not to go thither. "You'll be blown away, missy," he cried, despairingly. "Dis yer am a hurricane, and de hosses can't stan'

it much longer."

But, if she heard him, she paid no attention. In a few moments she had crossed the narrow planks, which, bedded though they were in the earth, trembled at the a.s.saults of the wind. She had no more than vanished among the trees around the cabin when the tide, rushing in renewed volumes through the ditch, swept away the frail bridge as if it had been straw. The banks began to crumble; and the coachman, barely able to guide his horses, whipped up and drove away as well as he could, in search of aid.

Dennie got over the ground with marvellous rapidity, taking the shortest line for the swamp. The wind was blowing inland, and bore him along with it; so, when he had gone two thirds of the way, it seemed to him that but a few minutes had elapsed. He was on the regular road, now; but it was providential, nevertheless, that he should encounter in that spot another man. He hailed him loudly, amid the howling of the wind; and the man, turning round, proved to be Lance! He, too, was on his way to the swamp. Going forth aimlessly, he had made up his mind to join Sylv, if he could find him, in the proposed expedition. Alarmed by the prodigious force of the tempest, however, he would have turned back and endeavored to regain the manor, if he had not met Dennie.

A few hasty words gave him knowledge of the threatened catastrophe; and the two men joined forces in the forlorn attempt to find Sylv and prevent his self-destruction.

Dennie knew where a boat could be had to launch upon the devious river that ran through the swamp; and, fortunately, it turned out that Sylv had not taken this boat for himself.

Together they entered the gloomy jungle. They not only plunged into the desperate undertaking of trying to save the life of another man, who had resorted to this convenient cover with the evident purpose of never emerging thence, but they also engaged in a struggle which, for themselves, was very like a life-and-death matter.

For some time they could not use their boat. They were obliged to drag it through a tangled ma.s.s of roots and vines and treacherous brake, until they could reach the stream. The exertion they made was almost super-human, and would have been impossible to them except under the terrible incentive that drew them on. Only when they were afloat, and paddling warily along the dubious and unfamiliar current, did they understand how their labor had sapped their strength. And only then, also, did they perceive that they had pa.s.sed from a world of uproar and elemental upheaving into a realm as secluded and quiet as a tomb.

The mighty winds, it is true, rumbled through the tops of the trees under which they were buried; but the dense ma.s.s of boughs and springing verdure that walled in the secret places of the swamp, as with a hundred separate walls, would not permit that wild commotion of the outer air to reach them. Birds had fled hither from the hurricane, and even dared to chirp in the lonely and forsaken thickets of this uncouth wilderness.

Day was spreading above the thick canopy of boughs, and was pouring its light all round the vast area of the swamp at its edges; but here, within, there reigned a perpetual and awful twilight. The slow, brown stream ran on ahead, turning here and there, opening into blind creeks, sprawling through the dusk like some great snaky thing with a hundred sinuous arms and feelers; but it was rather by instinct and touch than by any other means that the two men in the canoe traced the main body of the slimy current. No landmarks were to be counted on there: the points of the compa.s.s were obliterated.

The swamp was the home of oblivion. They moved through it as through a place set apart for those who are condemned to a death in life.

From time to time they shouted aloud. Having no weapons with them, they could make no other signal. They called to Sylv, with a hope that he might answer to them from the next bend in the stream, or from some adjoining depth of bough and bramble. Yet always the same dead silence swallowed up the sound of their voices, and no human response came back.

The raw air, the shade, the moisture of the oozing current, gradually invaded them with a chill that seemed to run through their very bones; but it was with a more deadly chill that they gazed into one another's eyes, and thought, without saying it, that perhaps they were even then pushing their way over the liquid grave in which Sylv might have sought relief.

How long they urged that ghostly chase it would not be easy to say: they could form no judgment of the time. But at last Dennie caught sight of what appeared to be a ruddy flame on a low island in the muddy flood, some distance in advance. Neither of the paddlers was quite positive that it was a real flame, but they put new vigor into their strokes, and hallooed again. Once more, no answer.

Still, the flame grew more distinct. The canoe swept rapidly forward and rubbed against the roots and sediment of the tiny island. No other boat was moored there, but the fire flickered and spurted up more vividly.

Beside it they beheld Sylv, haggard, inert, and seemingly unconscious of their approach.

"Sylv! Sylv!" cried Dennie.

"What are you doing here?" Lance demanded.

Sylv shrank back, then started to his feet; the flame-light--looking so garish in that gloomy place--thrown upward on to his wan checks in such wise as to make them seem more hollow than they were in fact.

"I came here to die," he answered, without emotion. "Why did you follow me? It would have been over before long."

They heard the booming of the storm-wind in the trees overhead, like the groan of some remote unknown mult.i.tude of sufferers; and it chimed in well with the lonely reverberation of his voice.

"It is over now!" Lance exclaimed. "Don't you see that we won't let you die? It was mad of you to think of such a thing, Sylv!"

Dennie drew close to his brother swiftly, and put his arm around him, as though to guard him from an unseen enemy.