CHAPTER VII.THE ALARM.
In her solitary bed little Alice slumbered on, moaning occasionally in her sleep, and at last when the clock struck nine, starting up and calling “Marian, Marian, where are you?” Then, remembering that Marian could not come to her that night, she puzzled her little brain with the great mystery, and wept herself to sleep for the second time.
In the kitchen old Dinah was busy with various household matters. With Frederic she had heard in the distance the bitter moan which Marian made when first she learned how she had been deceived, and like him she had wondered what the sound could be—then as a baby’s cry came from a cabin near by, she had said to herself, “some of them Higgins brats, I’ll warrant. They’re allus a squallin’,” and, satisfied with this conclusion, she had resumed her work. Once or twice after that she was in the house, feeling a good deal disturbed at seeing Frederic sitting alone without his bride, who, she rightly supposed, “was somewhar. But ’taint no way,” she muttered; “Phil and me didn’t do like that;” then reflecting that “white folks wasn’t like niggers,” she returned to the kitchen just as Bruno set up his first loud howl. With Dinah the howl of a dog was a sure sign of death, and dropping her tallow candle in her fright, she exclaimed—“for the Lord’s sake who’s gwine to die now? I hope to goodness ’taint me, nor Phil, nor Lid, nor VictoryEugeny,” and turning to Aunt Hetty, who was troubled with vertigo, she asked if “she’d felt any signs of an afterplax fit lately?”
“The Lord,” exclaimed old Hetty, “I hain’t had a drap o’ blood in me this six month, and if Bruno’s howlin’ for me, he may as well save his breath;” but in spite of this self-assurance, the old negress, when no one saw her, dipped her head in a bucket of water by way of warding off the danger.
Thus the evening wore away until at last Dinah, standing in the doorway, heard the whistle of the train as it passed the Big Spring station.
“Who s’posed ’twas half-past nine,” she exclaimed. “I’ll go this minit and see if Miss Marian wants me.”
Just then another loud piercing howl from Bruno, who was growing impatient, fell upon her ear and arrested her movements.
“What can ail the critter,” she said—“and he’s down on the bridge, too, I believe.”
The other negroes also heard the cry, which was succeeded by another and another, and became at last one prolonged yell, which echoed down the river and over the hills, starting Frederic from his deep reverie and bringing him to the piazza, where the blacks had assembled in a body.
“’Spects mebbe Bruno’s done cotched somethin’ or somebody down thar,” suggested Philip, the most courageous of the group.
“Suppose you go and see,” said Frederic, and lighting his old lantern Philip sallied out, followed ere long by all his comrades, who, by accusing each other of being “skeered to death,” managed to keep up their own courage.
The bridge was reached, and in a tremor of delight Bruno bounded upon Phil, upsetting the old man and extinguishing the light, so that they were in total darkness. The white handkerchief, however, caught Dinah’s eye, and in picking it up she also felt theglove, which was lying near it. But this did not explain the mystery—and after searching in vain for man, beast or hobgoblin, the party returned to the house, where their master awaited them.
“Thar warn’t nothin’ thar ’cept this yer rag and glove,” said Dinah, passing the articles to him.
He took them, and going to the light saw the name upon the handkerchief, “Marian Lindsey.” The glove too, he recognised as belonging to her, and with a vague fear of impending evil, he asked where they found them.
“On the bridge,” answered Dinah; “somebody must have drapped ’em. That handkercher looks mighty like Miss Marian’s hem-stitched one.”
“It is hers,” returned Frederic—“do you know where she is?”
“You is the one who orto know that, I reckon,” answered Dinah, adding that she “hadn’t seen her sense jest after dark, when she went up stars with Alice.”
Frederic was interested now. In his abstraction he had not heeded the lapse of time, though he wondered where Marian was, and once feeling anxious to know what she would say to the letter, he was tempted to go in quest of her. But he did not—and now, with a presentiment that all was not right, he went to Alice’s chamber, but found no Marian there. Neither was she in any of the chambers, nor in the hall, nor in the dining room, nor in his father’s room, and he stood at last in the library door. The writing desk was open, and on it lay three letters—one for Alice, one for him, the other undirected. With a beating heart he took the one intended for himself, and tearing it open, read it through. When Marian wrote that “she gave her life away,” she had no thought of deceiving him, for her givinghimup was giving her very life. But he did not so understand it, and sinking into a chair he gasped, “Marian is dead!” while his face grew livid and his heart sick with the horrid fear.
“Dead, Marster Frederic,” shrieked old Dinah—“who dars tell me my chile is dead!” and bounding forward like a tiger, she grasped the arm of the wretched man, exclaiming, “whar is she the dead? and what is she dead for? and what’s that she’s writ that makes yer face as white as a piece of paper?—Read, and let us hear.”
“I can’t, I can’t,” moaned the stricken man. “Oh, has it come to this? Marian, Marian—won’t somebody bring her back?”
“If marster’ll tell me whar to look, I’ll find her, so help me, Lord,” said uncle Phil, the tears rolling down his dusky cheeks.
“You found her handkerchief upon the bridge,” returned Frederic, “and Bruno has been howling there—don’t you see? She’s in the river!—She’s drowned! Oh, Marian—poor Marian, I’ve killed her—but God knows I did not mean to;” and in the very spot where not long before poor Marian had fallen on her face, the desolate man how lay on his, and suffered in part what she had suffered there.
It was a striking group assembled there. The bowed man, convulsed with strong emotion, and clutching with one hand the letter which had done the fearful work. The blacks gathered round, some weeping bitterly and all petrified with terror, while into their midst when the storm was at its hight the little Alice groped her way—her soft hair falling over her white night dress, her blind eyes rolling round the room, and her quick ear turned to catch any sound which might explain the strange proceedings. She had been roused from sleep by the confusion, and hearing the uproar in the hall and library, had felt her way to the latter spot, where in the doorway she stood asking for Marian.
“Bless you, honey, Miss Marian’s dead—drownded,” said Dinah, and Alice’s shriek mingled with the general din.
“Where’s Frederic?” asked the little girl, feelingintuitively that he was the one who needed the most sympathy.
At the sound of his name Frederic lifted up his head, and taking the child in his arms, kissed her tenderly, as if he would thus make amends for his coldness to the lost Marian.
“‘Tain’t no way to stay here like rocks,” said Uncle Phil at last. “If Miss Marian’s in the river, we’d better be a fishin’ her out,” and the practical negro proceeded to make the necessary arrangements.
Before he left the room, however, he would know if he were working for a certainty, and turning to his master, said, “Have you jest cause for thinkin’ she’s done drownded herself—’case if you hain’t, ’taint no use huntin’ this dark night, and it’s gwine to rain, too. The clouds is gettin’ black as pitch.”
Thus appealed to, Frederic answered, “She says in the letter that she’s going away forever, that she shall not come back again, and she spoke of giving her life away. You found her handkerchief and glove upon the bridge, with Bruno watching near, and she is gone. Do you need more proof?”
Uncle Phil did not, though “he’d jest like to know,” he said, “why a gal should up and dround herself on the very fust night arter she’d married the richest and han’somest chap in the county—but thar was no tellin’ what gals would do. Gener’ly, though, you could calkerlate on thar doin’ jest con-tra-ry to what you’d ’spect they would, and if Miss Marian preferred the river to that twenty-five pound feather-bed that Dinah spent mor’n an hour in makin’ up, ’twas her nater, and ’twan’t for him to say agin it. All he’d got to do was to work!”
And the old man did work, assisted by the other negroes and those of the neighbors who lived near to Redstone Hall. Frederic, too, joined, or rather led the search. Bareheaded, and utterly regardless of the rain which, as Uncle Phil had prophesied, began to fall in torrents, he gave the necessary directions,and when the morning broke, few would have recognized the elegant bridegroom of the previous day in the white-faced, weary man, who, with soiled garments and dripping hair, stood upon the narrow bridge, and in the grey November morning looked mournfully down the river as it went rushing on, telling no secret, if secret, indeed, there were to tell, of the wild despair which must have filled poor Marian’s heart and maddened her brain ere she sought that watery grave.
Before coming out he had hurriedly read his father’s letter, and he could well understand how its contents broke the heart of the wretched girl, and drove her to the desperate act which he believed she had committed.
“Poor Marian,” he whispered to himself, “I alone am the cause of your sad death;” and most gladly would he then have become a beggar and earned his bread by the sweat of his brow, could she have come back again, full of life, of health and hope, just as she was the day before.
But this could not be, for she was dead, he said, dead beyond a doubt; and all that remained for him to do was to find her body and lay it beside his father. So during that day the search went on, and crowds of people were gathered on each side of the river, but no trace of the lost one could be found, and when a second time the night fell dark and heavy round Redstone Hall, it found a mournful group assembled there.
To Alice Frederic had read the letter left for her, and treasuring up each word the child groped her way into the kitchen, where, holding the note before her sightless eyes as if she could really see, she repeated it to the assembled blacks,
“Lor’ bless the child,” sobbed Dinah from behind her woolen apron, “I knowed she would remember me.”
“And me,” joined in Hetty. “Don’t you mind how I is spoke of, too? She was a lady, every inchof her, Miss Marian was, an’ if I said any badness of her, I want you to forgive me, Dinah. Here’s my hand,” and these two old ladies took each other’s hand in token that they were joined together now in one common sorrow.
Indeed, for once, the Higginses and Smitherses forgot their ancient feud and united in extolling the virtues of the lost one. After reading the letter as many as three times—for when their grief had somewhat subsided, the blacks would ask to hear it again, so as to have fresh cause for tears—Alice returned to the parlor, where she knew Frederic was sitting. Her own heart was throbbing with anguish, but she felt that his was a sorrow different from her own, and feeling her way to where he sat she wound her little arms around his neck, and whispered tenderly: “We must love each other more now that Marian is gone.”
He made no answer except to take her on his lap and lay her head upon his bosom; but Alice was satisfied with this, and after a moment she said, “Frederic, do you know why Marian killed herself?”
“Oh, Alice, Alice,” he groaned. “Don’t say those dreadful words. I cannot endure the thought.”
“But,” persisted the child, “she couldn’t have known what she was doing, and God forgave her.—Don’t you think He did? She asked him to, I am sure, when she was sinking in the deep water.”
The child’s mind had gone further after the lost one than Frederic’s had, and her question inflicted a keener pang than any he had felt before. He had ruined Marian, body and soul, and Alice felt his hot tears dropping on her face as he made her no reply. Her faith was stronger than his, and putting up her waxen hand, she wiped his tears away, saying to him, “We shall meet Marian again, I know, and then if you did anything naughty which made her go away, you can tell her you are sorry, and she’ll forgive you, for she loved you very much.”
Alice’s words were like arrows to the heart of theyoung man, and still he felt in the first hours of his desolation that she was his comforting angel, and he could not live without her. More than once she asked him if he knew why Marian went away, and at last he made her answer, “Yes, Alice, I do know, but I cannot tell you now. You would not understand it.”
“I think I should,” persisted the child, “and I should feel so much better if I knew there was a reason.”
Thus importuned, Frederic replied, “I can only tell you that she thought I did not love her.”
“And did you, Frederic. Did you love her as Marian ought to be loved?”
The large brown blind eyes looked earnestly into his face, and with that gaze upon him Frederic Raymond could not tell a lie, so he was silent, and Alice, feeling that she was answered, continued, “But you would love her now if she’d come back.”
He couldn’t say yes to that, either, for he knew he did not love her even then, though he thought of her as a noble, generous hearted creature, worthy of a far different fate than had befallen her—and had she come back to him, he would have striven hard to make the love which alone could atone for what she had endured. But she did not come—and day after day went by, during which the search was continued at intervals, and always with the same result—until when a week was gone and there was still no trace of her found, people began to suggest that she was not in the river at all, but had gone off in another direction.—Frederic, however, was incredulous—she had no money that he or any one else knew of, or at least but very little. She had never been away from home alone, and if she had done so now, somebody would have seen her ere this, and suspected who it was—for the papers far and near teemed with the strange event, each editor commenting upon its cause according to his own ideas, and all uniting in censuring the husband, who at last was described as a cruel, unfeelingwretch, capable of driving any woman from his house, particularly one as beautiful and accomplished as the unfortunate bride! It was in vain that Frederic winced under the annoyance—he could not help it—and the story went the rounds, improving with each repetition, until at last an Oregon weekly outdid all the rest by publishing the tale under the heading of “Supposed Horrible Murder.” So much for newspaper paragraphs.
Meantime Frederic, too, inserted in the papers advertisements for the lost one, without any expectation, however, that they would bring her back. To him she was dead, even though her body could not be found. There might be deep, unfathomable sink-holes in the river, he said, and into one of these she had fallen—and so, with a crushing weight upon his spirits, and an intense loathing of himself and the wealth which was his now beyond a question, he gave her up as lost and waited for what would come to him next.
Occasionally he found himself thinking of Isabel, and wondering what she would say to his letter.—When he last saw her, she was talking of visiting her mother’s half-brother, who lived at Dayton, Ohio, and he had said to her at parting, “If you come as far as that, you must surely visit Redstone Hall.”
But he had little faith in her coming—and now he earnestly hoped she would not, for if he wronged the living he would be faithful to the dead; and so day after day he sat there in his desolate home, brooding over the past, trying to forget the present, and shrinking from the future, which looked so hopeless now. Thoughts of Marian haunted him continually, and in his dreams he often heard again the wailing sound, which he knew must have been her cry when she learned how she had been deceived. Gradually, too, he began to miss her presence—to listen for her girlish voice, her bounding step and merry laugh, which he had once thought rude. Her careful forethought forhis comfort, too, he missed—confessing in his secret heart at least that Redstone Hall was nothing without Marian.
And now, with these influences at work to make him what he ought to be, we leave him awhile in his sorrow, and follow the fugitive bride.