Kitabı oku: «In a Mysterious Way», sayfa 13

"How I suffer," she murmured. "Lassie, I feel that I have entered into a maelstrom – a whirlwind. I seem to hear a dirge in that wind outside. I must go to-morrow – we must go to-morrow."

"Yes, we'll go," said Lassie, soothingly.

"It is my heart, just my heart. It is so hard to strike an even balance between the heart and the soul. My poor, thin, trembling flesh has ruled to-night, truly."

"Let me sleep with you," Lassie pleaded; "let me hold you fast and love you dearly."

Alva smiled in the dark. "Come, then," she said; "I fancy that I shall sleep if my hand clasps yours – and if I know that we leave to-morrow."

Later, after Lassie had slept thus for some hours, she was awakened by Alva's rising and going to the window.

"What is it, dear, you are not faint?"

Alva turned, the pale, early sunrise illuminated her face.

"Some riddle has been solved somewhere, dear," she said; "I'm quite calm now. The struggle for him as well as for me is over."

"Then come back and sleep with my arms tight round your neck," said the friend, stretching forth her arms.

Alva came back like an obedient child, crept in close beside her, and in a few minutes was sleeping as a child sleeps.

Later, when the real morning came and the real, enduring wakefulness with it, it was Alva who roused first again, and, sitting up in bed, put back her hair with both hands and smiled into her friend's eyes.

"You're all right, now?" Lassie said, joyfully.

"Very right, dear; the crisis is over. Forget last night. I shall never be like that again."

Lassie turned her face towards the window; looking out from where she lay she could see the valley one burst of flame, its wave of color sweeping off afar and the hoar frost sparkling over all the glory. "I feel as if I never had seen anything so beautiful in all my life before," the girl exclaimed; "I don't know what it makes me think of, but it is as if my soul were growing, I am so happy to see you happy again."

Alva sat there with the white coverlet heaped about her and smiled. "Thank you, dear," she said, with simplicity. "I am happy, and last night and this morning have caused both our souls to grow."

"It's too beautiful!" the girl said, after a long pause; "the valley is more beautiful than I ever realized before."

Presently Alva left the bed and went to close the window. "There's a mist lying low in the valley," she said then; "it lies there like an emblem of peace. Omens are curious. That cold, sad wind last night had its message, and the morning mist has another. I know that some change is at hand, but I know that whatever it is its burden is good. I feel equal to anything this morning. I feel as if God had come to me in the night and told me that he was charging Himself with my care."

Lassie looked at her with freshly awakened anxiety.

"Oh, don't look at me that way," she begged; "that is the very hardest of all – to have those to whom you talk regard you as if you were mad."

"But you astonish me so. Last night you were so frightened."

"Last night some struggle was on, my dear; this morning it is settled." She stopped and spoke very slowly. "I think, perhaps, that he knows now that he can never come to the house," she said, and although her lips quivered slightly her voice was clear and composed.

"Alva," Lassie cried, in sudden horror, "you think that he is dead – that is what you think."

As soon as the words had passed her lips, she was frightened at her own temerity; but Alva, whose back was towards her, now turned towards her smiling.

"He is not dead," she said; "he was thinking of me all last night and this morning. He is not dead. That I know."

"How can you be sure?"

"When people love as we do, they can be very sure. I was awfully shaken last night, Lassie; I confess it. Something big, that we shall know all about later, hung in the balance and I trembled. But it's settled now."

There came a tap at the door just then, announcing Mary Cody with their hot water.

"They're still asleep," she said in a whisper; "if the letter from the lawyer don't come in this morning's mail, Mr. O'Neil is going to eject them. Only think!"

Naturally this remark gave quite a new turn to the conversation.

"Unless they pay, you know," Alva reminded Mary Cody.

"How do you eject people?" Lassie asked, rejoicing in the cheerfulness of the commonplace. "If he puts them out the front door and they just walk around and come into the kitchen, what can any one do?"

"I don't know," said Mary Cody, apparently thunderstruck at the mental vision of the O'Neil House besieged by Mrs. and Miss Lathbun, trying to get in again. "I don't know what we could do. There's seven doors to this house."

"Will Mr. O'Neil pull them out, or push them out?" Lassie asked further; "or will he just drive them out?"

"I don't know," said Mary Cody; "everybody in town'll be up at the post-office waiting to see if the letter from the lawyer comes, I expect. If it doesn't come, Mr. O'Neil is going to Ledge Centre and get a warrant."

"Oh, dear," said Lassie.

"You won't get any mail this morning," said Mary Cody; "there's a wreck on the road. Two coal trucks and a car of cabbages. There'll be no eastern mail till noon."

Then Mary Cody went away again.

"Isn't it strange that all this should happen just during the little time that we're here?" Lassie said; "it's made it very exciting."

Alva went on brushing her hair.

Lassie looked at her then, and saw that she bore many traces of her violent emotion of the night before.

"You won't try to go to-day, will you?" she said, suddenly.

"Oh, yes, I shall go." Then she turned and looked straight into the girl's eyes. "I must go," she said; "something has happened."

CHAPTER XXI
THE POST-OFFICE

From 8.30 A.M. on, the tide of travel in Ledge always tended towards the post-office, but on the famous morning when Mrs. Lathbun expected to hear from her lawyer, the post-office's vicinity resembled nothing so much as its own appearance upon Election Day. Every one that ever had received a letter intended to be there to see if Mrs. Lathbun would get hers. Long before train time not only the office itself, but the adjoining rooms and the porch outside, were comfortably crowded with a pleasantly anticipative collection of interested observers.

"The United States Government doesn't allow me to interfere in politics, or I'd come right square out with my views," said Mrs. Ray, who held public interest with a tight rein, while awaiting the mail. "My views may be uninteresting, but I hit enough nails on the head to box up a good many people a year."

"What do you think?" some one asked.

"I don't think anything," said Mrs. Ray; "I know!"

"Well, what do you know, then?"

"I know that a letter-getter stays a letter-getter, and the reverse the reverse. Just as I know that case-knives are suspicious and that picking chestnuts may be a bunco game as easy as anything else. I've found it nothing but a bunco game, myself. I've never made my chestnuts pay, just because they were so easy picked up by other people; and you can't hire boys to do your nutting for you, – boys eat up all the profits and most of the chestnuts into the bargain. Yes, indeed. And as for those two up at Nellie's – they'll get no letter. Wait and see."

"But what will happen to them then?" asked Joey Beall, aching to discuss the details of the arrest and the journey to Geneseo.

"I don't know, but I can tell you one piece of news, and it isn't gossip either; it come straight from Nellie O'Neil herself; she's been here this morning."

"Have they found out anything new?"

"Not about them; but her other two is leaving."

"What!"

"Yes, going this afternoon." Mrs. Ray folded her arms and leaned back against the shelves containing her grocery business.

The sensation caused by this extra and wholly unexpected bit of news was thorough and sincere. Everybody looked at everybody else.

Mrs. Dunstall pressed forward. "Haven't they paid, either?" she asked, with horror in her voice.

"Oh, yes, they've paid." Mrs. Ray was quickly reassuring on this point. "But with them, it's something else. I don't know for sure just what, but I guess that eldest one's beginning to see that it's no use as far as she's concerned; but she'll have to do something with that house she was fixing up to live in. Sarah Catt told me she never heard anything so crazy as building a house to live in while a dam that Mr. Ledge don't want built is being built. She says her husband says that dam never will be built. She says Mr. Ledge is very quiet, but he's very sensible and he says there's quicksands all under us."

This statement caused another flutter of sensation.

"Can't you dam a quicksand? I thought it run just like water." Thus Joey Beall's fiancée from the back.

"No, you can't," said Pinkie. "I know."

"I'd be sorry to see the dam go," said Mrs. Wiley. "Cousin Catterwallis Granger looked to see it raise all the property around here."

"Drown all the property around here, you mean," said Mrs. Ray. "I thank heaven it's the Dam Commission and not me who'll have to adjust all that dam's going to drown before it gets done. Josiah Bates says he heard that they'll have to take up all the cemeteries from here to Cromwell."

"Why?" asked Pinkie.

"Why? Why, because no matter what powers a commission can hold over the living, no legislature can find a law for drowning the dead, I guess. They've all got to be moved and set out in rows again in a new place. Seems like I never will see the last of Mr. Ray's two wives! But I shan't have to pay for their new start in life this time, anyway."

"Where will they put them next, do you suppose?" said Mrs. Dunstall, referring to the cemeteries – not to Mr. Ray's former wives.

"I guess we'll all want to know that," said Mrs. Ray, turning her head as if she heard the train (the tension in the room was increasing momentarily, – so was the crowd). "I'm sure I wonder what will become of Mr. Ray. I never could feel that I really was done with him, and now it seems maybe I ain't. I wish they'd buy my three-cornered cow pasture for a new cemetery. Then I could cut his grass when I went to milk my cow."

"The dam'll have to pay for the new cemeteries, won't it?" asked Lucia Cosby in some trepidation.

"The dam'll pay for everything. That's why every one wants it so bad," said Mrs. Ray.

"Yes, it is," said Pinkie.

"Which room have the Lathbuns got?" some one asked, looking down towards the O'Neil House.

"The end one," said Mrs. Dunstall.

"The curtains are down," said Nathan, elbowing his way to the window.

"They never get up till noon."

There was a hush, – sudden but intense. The train was approaching.

"Yes, that's the train," said Mrs. Ray; "well, we'll soon know now." She tucked her shawl tighter than ever, and got the key ready.

"Mrs. O'Neil'll be pretty lonesome to-night with them all gone at once," hazarded a bystander.

"She'll miss those girls," said Mrs. Dunstall; "they're real nice young ladies, she says. But she won't miss the Lathbuns."

"We'll miss the Lathbuns," said Mrs. Wiley; "they've been so interesting to talk about. We've even got Uncle Purchase to where he knows they live at Nellie's. I tell you that was work. He's so deaf now." She sighed.

"I guess it wasn't any worse than what the Bentons went through with Gran'ma Benton teaching the parrot when they lived at Nellie's," said Mrs. Ray. "Poor Clay Wright Benton was in here yesterday to see if I'd board Gran'ma Benton and the parrot again. He says Sarah says she won't come home till the parrot leaves, and he's most wild. Gran'ma Benton's been teaching the parrot to say something new. She says 'Where's the Lathbuns, Polly?' and the parrot says 'Out chestnutting,' only it won't say it days. It just says it nights. And nights it's wild over saying it. Last night no one in the house got one wink of sleep. Clay sit up till midnight to ask it where the Lathbuns was, and then Gran'ma Benton sit up and asked it where they was till morning. Poor Clay! He says it's too awful how she's spoiled that parrot. It's afraid of spiders, and it's so afraid of them at night that they have to keep a night-light burning so it can see all over whenever it wakes."

"Such doings!" said Mrs. Wiley, in disgust.

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Ray. "I'd like to see myself burning a night-light for a parrot. If it boards with me, it'll take its spiders just as they come."

"That's right," said Pinkie, with decision.

"Well, we don't need any parrot," said Mrs. Wiley. "We've got Uncle Purchase. Not but what I'm amused hearing about the parrot. But then, I've been amused hearing about the Lathbuns, too," she sighed heavily.

"Something else'll come up," said Mrs. Dunstall, cheerfully, "and you don't really need anything to talk about while you've got your Uncle Purchase, you know."

"Well, I suppose maybe not," said Mrs. Wiley, and sighed again.

"Well, thank Heaven," said Mrs. Ray, "I'm never short of two things, – work and talk." She began to finger the key as she spoke, and all ears were at once strained to listen for the sound of the feet of the bearer of the mail-bag.

Deathly silence reigned. In a few seconds the footsteps did approach, the gate creaked and then banged. Mrs. Ray stepped with majestic haste to the window and called out:

"Wipe your feet!"

The obedience that ensued whetted curiosity to more ravenous desire than ever. People had lost sight of the main issue and were all riveted to the single question – would Mrs. Lathbun get her letter?

The door opened and Clay Wright Benton came in with the bag.

"Lay it here," commanded Mrs. Ray, and Clay Wright Benton laid it there and fell back into the crowd behind. Mrs. Ray put on her spectacles and adjusted her shawl. In the intense excitement of the moment, nobody said a word. The room was as full as it would hold, and people who had apparently been secreted in other portions of the house now came pouring in through the doors connecting therewith. The one window facing the porch had turned into a mere honey-comb of faces.

Mrs. Ray took up the key. A thrill went around as she inserted it in the padlock and slowly turned it. Then she took it out of the padlock and the padlock out of the lock. She laid key and padlock carefully aside. "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note," as she slowly drew the lengthwise iron from the rings and laid that aside. A sort of fresh intenseness pervaded the atmosphere as she opened the mouth of the bag and inserted her arm. While her arm was in and her hand was feeling for the mail, a boy sneezed and every one turned and looked at him witheringly. This little incident was taken in the same light as the inter-mission between two numbers of a concert, for all who were at the doors at once took advantage of it to squeeze inside. The small room, which had been unpleasantly full before, was now packed to suffocation. Mrs. Ray drew out her arm. The interest was mounting each second. She laid two packages, tied each with United States Government twine, upon the counter, turned the bag upside down and shook it. If a pin had fallen out, any one could have heard it, but nothing fell out. Mrs. Ray folded the bag carefully and laid it on the floor behind her. The atmosphere was breathless in every sense of the word. Mrs. Ray untied the first package, taking a full minute to pick out the knot. She hung up the string. The string fell off from where she hung it, and she picked it up and hung it up a second time, this time more slowly and carefully. Then she took out the postmarking machine. A sudden sigh went around; every one had forgotten the necessity of the postmark. Mrs. Ray turned the package face down and post-marked every piece carefully without reading a single address. Then she turned them over, gave her shawl a fresh and most careful adjustment, and proceeded to sort the mail. When it was sorted, she called the roll of names amidst a hush that was awe-inspiring. The few who had letters crowded to the fore, received them and stayed there, greatly to the aggravation of those who had none, and got shoved to the rear accordingly.

Mrs. Ray now untied the second package, and hung up that string. Both strings fell off together. She took up both strings at once, smoothed them out and hung them up again. They stayed hung this time. Then she post-marked the second package. It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene, – the wrought-up faces, the fixed calm of Mrs. Ray herself. Then she called the roll for the second batch. Each time a name was read off, a wave of psychic emotion swept the room. One has to get into the real true life of the country to appreciate the tremendous tumulus which gossip had erected upon which to rear the monument of this moment. One by one the names were all called; one by one the pile of letters in Mrs. Ray's hand diminished. When it came to the last one, and the last one was for Joey Beall, Joey received it almost as if it were some species of sacrament.

"Is that all?" some one in the back asked.

"That's all," said Mrs. Ray.

All turned to go. The outburst of pent-up feelings was tremendous.

"I told you so," Mrs. Ray said over and over again. "I knew they'd got no letter." The babel all of a sudden rose into so much noise that it was evident that the heights to which popular feeling had risen were going a bit higher yet. The egress from the stifling room ceased. Nobody knew just what it was, but all became aware that something fresh had happened. Nobody knew what had happened, and nobody seemed able to find out. All that was known was that something held every one spellbound and motionless in spite of their individual desire to go on out.

After what seemed a deadlock of long duration but which was in fact a matter of but a few seconds, it developed that the trouble arose around the door leading on to the porch. Then it appeared that while every one in the post-office was trying to get out by that door, Mary Cody was trying to get in by the same way, and Mary Cody was young, strong, and determined.

For a few seconds the battle pressed wildly. Then Mary Cody won out and entered. She was out of breath and disheveled.

"Why, what is the matter?" Joey Beall, who was nearest, asked; "there's something new down your way, I'll bet a peanut."

Mary Cody gasped. "Oh, my," she said, "I run right up to tell you. We've just found out as their room is empty. They must of skipped in the night."

"Skipped in the night!" cried Mrs. Dunstall.

"Skipped!" cried Pinkie.

"Oh, Mrs. Ray," wailed Mrs. Wiley, "how'll we ever be able to tell Uncle Purchase!"

But Mrs. Ray stood forth like a modern Medusa in her rage.

"I've been expecting it all along," she exclaimed wrathfully. "I'm a great judge of character, and I never looked for nothing else. Now, how can they be arrested? We must catch 'em!"

"If we can catch 'em!" said Josiah Bates.

"If we can catch them!" said Mrs. Ray, – "if! Young man, they'll be caught. You wait and see!" She hastily threw her shawl over her head, and rushed wildly out with the excited crowd. It is proverbial that there are times when a common sentiment merges all classes into one.

CHAPTER XXII
AFTERMATH

The excitement broke up into wide-spreading waves. All divided at once into two distinct parties, – those who wanted to discuss the matter further, and those who were filled with the hunter instinct and so craved to set off at once in pursuit of "the foxy pair." Mrs. Ray justly remarked that "they couldn't possibly get more than twelve hours' start, in just one night," and as it was incredible to suppose that they would return in the direction from which they had originally come, it followed that there was only two-thirds of the horizon to scour in any case. Elmer Hoskins and his dog lost no time, but set forth at once.

Mary Cody walked back down the hill telling a deeply interested circle the story of how, etc. (and that for the fifth time in ten minutes); another group stood excitedly on Mrs. Ray's porch; another set off to break the news to Ledgeville, and still others spread here and there, after the manner of distracted bees into whose hive some great and disturbing force has suddenly penetrated.

"We won't be able to begin to get this in Uncle Purchase's head for two days, at least," mourned Mrs. Wiley; "and Uncle Purchase is so awful fond of knowing things, too."

"They'll never catch them," said Lucia Cosby; "they know all the roads too well. They know every road there is to know."

"I should think they did!" said Mrs. Dunstall. "They've not got out of practice walking in this locality, I can tell you. Josiah Bates was down at the bottom of the St. Helena hill the other day, and if he didn't see them there. Oh, they know the roads."

"I'm sorry for the girl," said Clay Wright Benton.

"I ain't a bit sorry for her," said Mrs. Ray; "as a woman who works from before dawn to far on into the night to make a honest living by eleven different kinds of sweat on her brow, I ain't a bit sorry for either of them. And Jack O'Neil ain't going to be sorry for them, either; he told me last night if they was men, he'd get hold of 'em and take 'em out behind the wood-pile and he knew what they'd get. To-day isn't going to alter his views."

"If I was Mrs. O'Neil, I'd wash that shawl Mrs. Lathbun wore all the time," said Sarah Catt, one of the party escorting Mary Cody back to the hotel.

"It's in the tub already," said Mary Cody.

Mrs. O'Neil came running forth to meet them, her brown eyes shining more than ever.

"Oh, but they were a 'foxy pair,'" she exclaimed; "haven't they gone and left that hair-brush done up in a paper so that it's 'baggage,' and shows they want the room held for them till they come back. Oh, they've got the law at their finger-tips – those two."

The whole crowd entered the house. Alva and Lassie, packing in their room, had heard the news ten minutes earlier from Mrs. O'Neil herself. Lassie had watched her friend's face curiously, but Alva had too much else pressing upon her to be more than simply saddened.

When Mrs. O'Neil had gone Lassie had said almost hesitatingly: "They were adventuresses, weren't they, and Miss Lathbun's romance wasn't true, was it?"

"Let us not judge, even now," said Alva, quietly; "let us try to hope in some way. After all, what little things they were in life – so little, and probably beset beyond their strength. And such great things are pressing on me to-day. What do they matter? God forgive me for saying it."

Lassie was silenced.

When the Eastern mail train arrived about noon, belated as usual, their packing was quite finished. Mary Cody brought up the letters. Alva took hers into her room and a minute later she came to the door.

"Lassie," she said, "there is something here that I must attend to at once. Go down and have dinner, and I'll come a little late."

So Lassie went down to dine alone, and found Ingram waiting for her. She told him that Alva would come in a little.

"Has she had bad news?" he asked, startled by a presentiment of immediate sorrow.

"No, I think not," Lassie said; "she didn't speak so."

But Ingram stayed, distressed. "She has had bad news," he said; "poor girl – her tragedy is closing in fast. I can feel its end, myself."

His eyes went to the window. "Couldn't you go out with me for just an hour after dinner?" he asked wistfully. Then he smiled a little. "We can talk about the dam," he said – "or help hunt the Lathbuns."

She looked at him and they both knew that she would go. It was a very simple, almost childish, romance, theirs – but its lack of stress made it all the more alluring to two who were living under the wings of so much tragedy.

"I'll get my hat," Lassie said, and ran up-stairs. Alva's door was closed. "I'm lying down, please let me sleep. It's nothing but my head," she called from behind it. Lassie slipped on her wraps quickly and ran down; and they went out towards the Falls.

Mrs. Ray saw them go from the post-office window. The excitement having somewhat subsided, she was now left alone with Joey Beall's fiancée, who was there to try on her wedding dress.

"Such is life," Mrs. Ray commented; "that woman's pulled her shades down for a nice nap, and off they skip for a good-by down by the Falls. Oh, my, but those Falls are a blessing to the young! It's too far between roots and rocks for children to get down there, and as soon as anybody's married they never want to have nothing to do with love-making any more; so steep romantic places is just made for the only kind of people that have any reason for wanting to get to them."

"The Falls is full of meaning for lovers," said Joey Beall's fiancée, sentimentally. "Joey and I never get tired of them."

"You wait till you're married," said Mrs. Ray; "you'll find no meaning in climbing up and down those banks and having Joey jerk your arms out of the sockets, then. Yes, indeed. They call it tempestuous affection beforehand, but it comes to a plain jerk in the end. Life is full of learning."

"Gran'ma Benton's learning the parrot a great deal," said Sarah Catt. "I come by there just now and she's beginning already to teach it a new sentence. She says: 'Where are the Lathbuns, now?' and the parrot's got to learn to say 'Skipped,' – she's just set her heart on it."

"I d'n know but what I'm going to end by being sorry for that parrot," remarked Mrs. Ray, thoughtfully. "I think Gran'ma Benton's overdoing it a little, if she means it to keep up with the Lathbuns. You can force even a parrot beyond its strength. She's made it nervous, already. She's got to hold its claw all through every thunderstorm all summer long, and if a fly gets in its milk, it won't touch either the fly or the milk, which I call spoiling the parrot – not to speak of the fly and the milk, for of course no one else in a house is going to eat a fly or drink milk that a parrot won't look at."

"Sarah told me they had to take away all the looking-glasses every spring, or it cried the whole time it was moulting – over its tail feathers, you know," said the caller, thoughtfully.

"Well, if they come to live here, I shan't spoil it, I know that," said Mrs. Ray. "I shall be pleasant to it and I shall be kind, and it can run after me all it likes and I'll be careful never to step on it for the very simple reason that I don't want to take the time to clean up any sort of smashed creature, but it won't have no night-light here, nor get its claw held when it thunders, nor have the looking-glasses took down to spare its feelings. No one ever took a looking-glass down to spare my feelings, and I can't begin to take them down to spare a parrot's. Well, Sarah, I guess you can try on now. Wait till I fill up on pins. Oh, my lands alive, I wish I knew where those foxy Lathbuns are this minute."

"I guess Mr. Adams'll be glad to know they're caught," said Sarah Catt; "he's so nervous for fear they'll stop with him to-night. Joey saw him just after dinner. He was more scared even than Gran'ma Benton's parrot in a thunderstorm."

Mrs. Ray was thoughtfully putting pins in her mouth. "There's a great difference between a man's hand and a parrot's claw," she said with some difficulty. "Yes, indeed. Even in a thunderstorm."