The remote sounds, caught by the man's trained ear, were now audible to the women. They arose. The Marchesa Soderrelli moved over to where the Duke stood looking up at the sky.
"They are coming," she said.
The man did not answer, and he did not move. The sounds, carried down to them on the night air, grew louder. The Marchesa became impatient.
"We must go on," she said.
The words, the tone of the woman's voice, were urgent. But the Duke remained with his face lifted to the tree tops. Presently, he turned swiftly and handed the rifle to Caroline Childers.
"We must try it now," he said, "while the moon is under that cloud. Each of you give me your hand."
The two women instantly obeyed, and the three persons went hurriedly down the bank into the river. The whole world was now dark. The man thus entered the water, between the two women; he held each by the wrist, his arms extended. It was the only way to cross the river swiftly, and to be certain that neither woman was carried away by the current. Caroline Childers was above with the rifle. The Marchesa Soderrelli was below. The wisdom of the Duke's plan was at once apparent. Neither of the women could have kept her footing without his aid; thus held, they managed to reach the middle of the river, and would doubtless have crossed without accident had the rock bed continued smooth. But there is to be found in the beds of rivers, especially when seamed with cracks, a species of green slimy fungus, clinging to these cracks, and streaming out below, slippery, like wisps of coarse hair boiled in soap.
As they approached the opposite shore, the Marchesa trod on one of these bits of fungus and fell. The current, at that point, was swift, but the water was shallow. Her knee struck heavily on the rock. The Duke held her, but she seemed unable to get again to her feet; her body swung out with the current; the river was intensely dark. Fortunately, in the shallow water, Caroline Childers managed to get ashore without the Duke's assistance; and having now his other arm free, he was able to lift the Marchesa, and carry her out of the river. He did not stop on the bank; he went on across the road, and into the wood beyond, still carrying the Marchesa Soderrelli. Caroline Childers followed with the rifle.
The wood, skirting the foot of the mountains, was here less densely packed than on the other side of the river. The Duke wished to cross it into the deeps of the forest before the moon emerged. He walked with tremendous strides in spite of his burden and in spite of the darkness. The ground under foot was open, and he was able to cross the strip of wood to the foot of the mountain before the moon came out. He stopped and put the woman down. There was a little light entering among the trees, although neither the road nor the river could be seen.
The Marchesa was not able to determine the extent of her injuries. The blow had been on the left knee; she did not think that any bone was broken, nevertheless, the joint gave way when she tried to get up. The three persons fully realized the alarming extent of this misfortune. Still no one spoke of it. Caroline Childers wanted to stop here, but the Duke insisted that they go on. He put his arm around the Marchesa, and she tried to walk. But she presently gave it up and sat down. Caroline Childers now insisted that they should stop; perhaps the Marchesa might be able to walk when the knee was rested. The Duke refused. He pointed out that the leg, if not broken, would presently be stiff, and more painful than it now was; that they were still so close to the road that beaters would easily find them; that the rising clouds indicated rain; and that the mountain would be infinitely harder to climb if the moss and leaves were wet. Moreover, he could not determine the lie of the mountains from this valley, and he wished to be high enough to locate directions when the dawn arrived.
He announced his intention to carry the disabled woman. The Marchesa protested. The Duke simply paid no attention. He took her up, and set out through the mountains. The forest grew more dense; the ascent became more difficult; still the man went on without slacking his pace. Sometimes he paused to rest, holding the woman on his knee; sometimes he put her down while he tried to discover the lie of the mountain. But he refused to stop, and always he continued to advance.
Usage, training, the rigor of discipline long followed toughen and strengthen the human body to an excellence past belief. This man carried the woman, hour after hour, up the mountain, through the fir forest, and he traveled quite as fast with his unwieldy burden as the girl behind him was able to do with no weight except that of the rifle. The night lengthened and darkened. The morning began to approach. Still black tree trunk followed black tree trunk, and the brown moss carpet under their feet stretched upward. The air, instead of cooling with the dawn, became warmer. A thin mist of rain began to fall. Presently the contour of the ground changed; the carpet became level; more light entered among the trees, and they came out into a bit of open.
It was now morning. They came into an ancient clearing; a patch once cut out by some pioneer's ax; the scar of an old wound, that the wilderness had taken from the invader. The blackened stumps still stood about, fragments of charred tree tops remained; and in the center of the clearing stood a log cabin, roofed with clapboards, its door fallen from its wooden hinges, its chimney, built of crossed sticks, daubed between with clay, tumbled down, but the hewn logs and the clapboards, split with the grain of the wood, remained.
The Duke crossed the bit of open and entered the cabin. It was dry, and covered with leaves carried in through the door by the wind. The three persons were scarcely under the protection of this shelter, when the threatening rain began to fall. It was one of those rains common to the coast line. There was no wind; the atmosphere seemed to form itself into a drenching mist that descended through the trees.
The Marchesa Soderrelli complained of pain in the injured knee, and the two women determined to improvise a bandage. The Duke arose and went out into the clearing. The forest was beginning to steam, and he wished, if possible, to get the lie of the mountain range before they were hemmed in with mist. The two women improvised a bandage from a petticoat ruffle, and bound the knee as tightly as they could. They did not talk; both were greatly fatigued, and both realized the desperate situation. They did not discuss it, but each prepared to meet it, in her own manner, with resolution.
When the Duke had got the points of the compass, he was not disturbed about what ought to be done. He knew that as soon as the two women were a bit rested, they should at once go on. It would be a day of fatigue and hunger; but no one of them would die of hunger in a day, and by night he hoped to come in sight of the coast. Then they could stop and meet the problem of food.
He was going back into the cabin to explain the necessities of this plan, when the Marchesa Soderrelli called him. He entered. Caroline Childers was standing, leaning against the logs by the tumbled-in fireplace; the Marchesa Soderrelli sat on the ground among the leaves; both, in physical aspect, had paid their tribute to the wilderness. The girl's hair and eyes seemed to dominate her face; the soft indiscriminate things, common to youth, were gone; she had become, in the eight hours departed, a woman, acquainted with the bitterness of fife, and facing its renunciations. The Marchesa Soderrelli, sitting on the floor of the abandoned cabin, was an old woman, her face flabby, her body fallen into baggy lines. But the spirit in her was unshaken, and her voice was compact and decisive.
"I wish to speak to you, my friend," she said; "won't you please sit down?"
The man looked from one woman to the other and sat down on the corner of a log, jutting out from the door wall. For the last half of this night, he had been, upon one point, content. He was like one who, desiring a thing above all others, and despairing of his ability to obtain it, finds that thing seized upon by a horde of brutal and hideous events and thrust into his arms. He stood now, past the outposts of uncertainty, with the possession in his hand.
Those under the oldest superstition in the world warn us that such a moment is above all others perilous. That it is the habit of Destiny to wait with fatal patience until one's life swims over this mark, and then, rising, like a whaler to drive in the iron.
The Marchesa Soderrelli continued, like one who has a final and difficult thing to say.
"My friend," she began, "I am a woman, and consequently you must expect me to go round about in what I have to say, and you must forgive me when I seem unreasonable."
She lifted her hands and put back her hair.
"I have no religion, as that word is generally defined, but I have a theory of life. I got it out of a book when I was little. In that book the disciples of a wise man came to him and said: 'Master, we can endure no longer being bound to this body, giving it food and drink, and resting it and cleansing it, and going about to court one man after another for its sake. Is not death no evil? Let us depart to whence we came.' And he answered them: 'Doth it smoke in the chamber? If it is not very much I will stay. If too much, I will go out; for remember this always, and hold fast to it that the door is open.' Well, the smoke has come to be intolerable."
She moved in the leaves.
"I have tested my fortune again and again as that wise man said one ought to do. There can be no longer any doubt. It is time for me to go."
The woman looked from the man to the girl standing by the chimney. Her eyes were appealing.
"You must forgive me," she said, "but you must believe me, and you must try to understand me. I want you and Caroline to go on."
She put up her hand.
"No, please hear me to the end of it. I know how the proposal looks to you. It seems cruel. But is it? I am come to the door, and I am going out through it. Is it not more cruel to force me to put my own hand to the latch?"
The woman paused. She sat huddled together in the leaves; there was something old, fated, irrevocable in the pose of her figure.
"I beg of you," she added, "as my friends, to spare me that."
The mist streaming up from the soaked forest lay in the cabin. It gathered about the woman on the floor. Presently she went on:
"I am afraid that I cannot make you see how completely I am done with life, but I will try. So long as one has a thing to love, or a thing to do in this world, the desire to remain here is a strong and moving impulse in him. But when these two things go, that desire also goes. And the loss of it is the sign—the beck to the door. That old wise man made it very clear, I think. He said: 'Another hath made the play, and not thee, and hath given thee thy lines to speak, and thou art not concerned, except to speak them well, and at the end of them to go.... And why shouldst thou wish to remain after that, until He, who conducts the play, shall come and thrust thee off?'"
"Now," she continued, "I have come to the end of my lines. They have not always been very pleasant lines. But I have contrived to speak them with a sort of courage. And I would not now be shamed before the Manager."
She peered through the thickening mist, as through a smoke, straining her eyes to see the face of the man by the door, the girl by the chimney; but she could not, and she tried a further argument.
"You must be fair to me," she said, "look at the situation. I cannot go on, that is certain, and for the two of you to remain here, on my account, is to charge me with your death. Dear me! I have enough on the debit side of the ledger without that."
The woman's head oscillated on her shoulders. Her right hand wrung the fingers of her left. She considered for a moment, her chin fallen on her bosom. Then she sat up, like one under the impulse of some final and desperate hazard.
"I am going to ask each of you a question," she said, "and I entreat you, as one in the presence of death, to answer the truth. And let it be a test between us."
Then she leaned forward, straining through the mist, to the Duke of Dorset.
"My friend," she said, "can you think of any interest in this life that you would like to follow; any plan that you would like to carry out; any hope that you would like to realize? because I cannot, and if you can, it is I, and not you who should remain here."
There was absolute silence. The wet mist continued to enter, to obscure, to separate each of the three persons. The man did not reply, and the Marchesa swung around toward the dim figure of the girl, standing by the ruined chimney. The leaves crackled under the woman's body. She rested on her hand.
"Caroline," she said, "a man may have many interests in life, but we do not. With us all roads lead through the heart. Now, if you have any affection for any living man, you must go on. I make it the test before God. If you have, you must go. If you have not, you may remain. But I have the right to the truth—the right of one about to decide who shall live and who shall not live."
The man at the door arose slowly to his feet, as under the pressure of a knife, breaking the skin between his shoulders. Every fiber in him trembled. Every muscle in his body stood out. Every pore sweated. The shadow of the descending iron was black on him.
But if this question disturbed Caroline Childers, there was now no evidence of it. She replied at once, without pause, without equivocation.
"I shall remain with you," she said.
The Marchesa Soderrelli, sitting on the floor among the leaves, bit her lip, until the blood flowed under her teeth.
The man, standing by the door, did not move. The mist mercifully hid him; it packed itself into the cabin. The three persons changed into gray indefinite figures, into mere outlines, into nothing. The mist became a sort of darkness. It became also a dense, tangible thing, like cotton-wool, that obscured and deadened sound.
Something presently entered the clearing from the forest, tramped about in it, and finally approached the door.
There is no phenomenon of weather so swiftly variable as that of mist. It may lie at a given moment on the sea or on the mountain—a clinging, opaque mass, as dense and impenetrable as darkness; darkness, in fact, leeched of its pigment, a strange, hideous, unnatural, pale darkness—and the next moment it may be swept clean away by the wind. This is especially true on high altitudes; the ridges of hills; the exposed shoulders of mountains, where the fog lies clear in the path of the wind. On Western mountain ranges, adjacent to the sea, this protean virtue of the weather is sometimes a thing as instantaneous as sorcery. The soft rain is often followed by a stiff, heady breeze, sucked in landward from the ocean. This breeze travels like a broom sweeping its track. Thus, the Marchesa Soderrelli, wrapped in this mist, like a toy in wool, sitting on the floor of the cabin, believed herself present at some enchantment, when suddenly the mist departed, a cool wind blew in on her, and the sun entered.
She uttered a cry of astonishment, and pointed to the door. A huge, gaunt mule stood directly before the cabin, and almost instantly the tall figure of a man, equally gaunt, loomed in the door.
"Good mornin'," he said, with an awkward, shy bob of the chin. His eyes were gentle; his craggy, rugged feature placid like those of some old child. "I had a right smart trouble to find you."
The tragic nature of a situation is an intangible essence purely mental. It does not lie in any physical aspect; it is a state of the mind. Let that state of the mind change, and the whole atmosphere of the situation changes. The scene may stand in every detail precisely as it was, the actors in it remain the same, Nature and every phase of Nature the same, and yet everything is changed. It is a state of the mind! On the instant, the scene of breaking tension staged in this mountain cabin descended into commonplace. Life, and the promise of life travel always in one zone; death, and the threat of death in another—but shifting imperceptibly, and on the tick of the clock.
One arriving now at this cabin would have marked only signs of fatigue in the aspect of the three persons in it. Of this fatigue, the girl and the older woman gave much less evidence than the man. He seemed wholly exhausted. The vitality of the two women arose with the advent of the mountaineer. They gave interest and aid to his efforts to provide a meager breakfast. He produced from a sack across the mule's saddle a piece of raw bacon, flour and a frying pan.
The Duke of Dorset, after his first welcome to the mountaineer, and his brief explanation to the others, had returned to his seat on the log by the door. He seemed too tired even to follow events. The mountaineer had produced sulphur matches from the inside of his hat—the only dry spot about him—wrapped in a piece of red oilcloth, cut doubtless from the cover of some cabin table. He was now on his knees by the tumbled-in chimney, lighting a fire. Caroline Childers, with the knife, which the Duke had once borrowed, was cutting the bacon into strips. The Marchesa Soderrelli, still seated on the floor, was in conversation with the mountaineer, her strong, resolute nature recovering its poise.
The contrast between the degrees of fatigue manifest in the two women and the man by the door was striking. He looked like a human body from which all the energies of life had been removed. In the case of the two women, Nature was beginning to recover. But, in the aspect of the man, there was no indication that she ever intended to make the effort.
Now, as the effect of mere exertion, this result was excessive. The man was hardy and powerful; he was young; he was accustomed to fatigue. Eight hours of stress would not have brought such a frame to exhaustion. Eight days would hardly have done it. Moreover, within the last hour, the man had entered the clearing with no marked evidence of fatigue. The transformation carried the aspect of sorcery, or that of some obscure and hideous plague, traveling in the mist.
Occult and unknowable, swift and potent are the states of the mind. The blasting liquors, fabled of the Borgia, were not more toxic than certain ones brewed, on occasion, in the vats of the brain.
The Marchesa Soderrelli took over the conduct of affairs. She brought now to the promise of life that same resolution and directness which she had summoned to confront the advent of death. She spoke from her place on the floor, her voice compact and decisive. She estimated with accurate perspective the difficulties at hand, and those likely to arise. Now as determined to go on as she had been a little earlier determined to remain. Her conversation, almost wholly to the mountaineer, was concise, deliberate and to the point. But while she talked directly to him, she looked almost continually at the Duke of Dorset. She seemed to carry on, side by side, two distinct mental processes—one meeting the exigencies of the situation, and the other involving a study of the man seated by the door—and to handle each separately as a thing apart from the other.
The coast could be reached by trails known to the mountaineer in eight or nine hours, perhaps in less time. If they set out at once they would arrive in the afternoon. Nevertheless, the Marchesa Soderrelli, coming to a decision on the two problems before her, declared that they should remain where they were until midday. It is possible that she considered the Duke of Dorset too fatigued to go on; but she gave no reason.
This careful scrutiny of the changed aspect of the man by the door was not confined to the Marchesa Soderrelli. The circuit rider observed it, considered the man's physical needs, and agreed to the delay. Caroline Childers, behind the Marchesa Soderrelli, sitting by the bit of fire, her hands around her knees, also studied the man; but she did not regard him steadily. She sat for the most part, looking into the fire at the cooling embers, at the white ash gathering on the twigs. Now and then, fitfully, at intervals, her eyes turned toward him. The expression of the girl's face changed at such a time. It lifted always with concern and a certain distress, and it fell again, above the fire, into a cast of vague, apparently idle speculation; but, unlike the scrutiny of the other woman, it continued.
The Marchesa having reached a conclusion turned about and began to probe the mountaineer with queries. She wished to know where he had been, how he had come to follow, and by what means he had found them.
The old man was not easily drawn into a story. The history of the night came up under the Marchesa's searching hand in detached fragments. Fragments that amazed and fixed her interest. This story failed to hold the girl's exclusive interest, although absorbing that of the Marchesa. Her eyes traveled continually to the Duke of Dorset while she listened to it as though placing each incident in its proper relation to him. As though each incident, so coupled up, entered in and became a part of some big and overpowering conception that her mind again and again attempted to take hold of. She seemed, unlike the older woman, not able to carry the two things side by side in her mind. She swung from the one abruptly to the other.
The mountaineer, under the searching queries of the Marchesa, was disturbed and apologetic. He had been slow to find the party, he thought; and, as preface to the story, meekly issued his excuse, including a word for the mule.
"Jezebel's a-gittin' on, an' I hain't as spry as I was."
Not as spry as he was! The traveling of this man for the last half of the night would have appalled a timber wolf. He had beat the mountains, on both sides of the river, for four hours, running through the forest. He had gone along the face of the mountains for at least five miles, backward and forward, parallel with the great road, traveling faster than that wolf. He was desolated, too, because "God Almighty" had sent him in haste, like that man of God out of Judah, and he had stopped "to eat bread and to drink water."
Stopped to eat bread and to drink water!
For eight hours the man had not stopped except to feed the mule. For ten hours he had not eaten a mouthful, and had drank only when he waded through a river. Why, since he carried food, he had not eaten, the Marchesa So-derrelli, with all her dredging, could not get at. The man seemed to have had some vague idea that the food would be needed, and an accounting of it required of him. He was distressed for what the mule had eaten, but one must be merciful to his beast, for the Bible said it.
Moreover, he had been "afeard."
Afeard! The man had been all night in the immediate presence of death. He had stood unmoved and observing under the very loom of it. He had crossed again and again under its extended arm, under its descending hand; within a twinkling of the eye, a ticking of the clock of death.
It ought to be remembered that the Marchesa Soderrelli was an experienced and educated woman, skilled in the subtleties of speech, and in deft probing. And yet, with all the arts and tricks of it, she was not clearly able to discover wherein the mountaineer accused himself of fear.
It seemed that the man, following a definite impulse which he believed to be a direction of God, had arrived on the spur of the mountain above the château before the revolt was on. But here in the deeps of the forest he had stopped to consider what he ought to do, and in this he had been "afeard," not for his life, but to trust God. He should have gone on into the château, then he might have brought all safely away. But he had "taken thought."
When he heard the cracking of the rifle, he had tied the mule to a tree, and descended the stone steps. But he arrived there after the attack was ended. Concealed by the vines, he had concluded that the occupants of the château were already gone out on the road to the coast.
He had returned for the mule, made a detour around to the road, and advanced toward the château. But he found no one. The château was in flames. He now thought that if any of its occupants had escaped, they would be in the mountain from which he had descended, and would come down the trail to the river. He had, therefore, traveled with the mule as fast as he could to that place on the road. But no one had come over the river there. He could tell that, because one, coming up out of the water, would have made wet tracks on the dry moss of the bank, and the dry carpet of the road.
Now, extremely puzzled, he had hidden the mule in the forest, and set out to see if the escaping persons had crossed the road farther on. He had traveled for several miles, but had found no wet track on the dry road. Then he had crossed the river and followed up on the opposite bank. He had hunted that face of the mountain before the pursuing mob. Finally ascending the bank of the river, he had come by chance on the Marchesa's skirt. This had given him a clew to the direction taken by the party, and following it he had finally located, by the trodden moss, the place where the river had been crossed. He had waded the river there, hoping to follow the wet tracks, but the rain had now begun to descend, and he could not tell what direction they had taken. He had returned for the mule, and followed the road to the summit of the mountain. Here he again tied the mule in the woods and began that long, tireless searching, backward and forward along the whole face of the mountain.
Finally, in despair, he returned to the mule, and as he put it, "left the thing to Jezebel an' God Almighty." And the mule, doubtless remembering, in the uncomfortable rain, the shelter of the abandoned cabin, had gone along the backbone of the mountain into the clearing. And so he had found them.
But to the circuit rider it was God's work; the angel of the Lord in the night, in the impenetrable mist, walking by the beast's bridle. He was depressed and penitent. He had been one of little faith, one of that perverse and headstrong generation; afraid, like the Assyrian, to trust God. And so, in spite of him, they had been found.
The man was so evidently distressed that the Marchesa Soderrelli hastened to reassure him. She told him how the Duke of Dorset had gone twice to a window to kill him. She thought the deep religious nature of the man would see here a providential intervention—the hand of Yahveh thrust out for the preservation of His servant. But in this she was mistaken. He had been in the presence, not of God's mercy, but of His anger. The hand had been reached out, not to preserve, but to dash him into pieces. He believed in the austere God of the ancient Scriptures, who visited the wavering servant with punishments immediate and ruthless; the arrow drawn at a venture and the edge of the sword.
The astonishment of the Marchesa Soderrelli at the man did not equal his astonishment at her. He sat looking at the woman in wonder. How could she doubt a thing so clear? Was not the Bible crowded with the lesson? Presently he arose and went out into the clearing. The gaunt mule was cropping vines in the open before the door. He paused to caress her lovingly with his hands. Then he crossed the clearing and disappeared into the forest. The Marchesa concluded that the man had gone to post himself somewhere as a sentinel, and she composed herself to wait.
The morning was drawing on to midday. The sun lay warm on the forest. The soft haze stretched a blue mist through the hollows of the mountains. The peace, the stillness, the serenity of autumn lay through the cabin. The air was soft. No one in the cabin moved. Caroline Childers sat where she had been, fallen apparently into some vague and listless dreaming. Her hands wandered idly among the leaves, breaking a twig to bits, making now and then a foolish, irrelevant gesture. The Duke sat with his elbow on his knee, and his chin resting in the hollow of his hand. The girl, now and then, looked up at him and then back again to her aimless fingers crumbling the leaves.
A droning as of bees outside arose. It seemed in the intense stillness, to increase, to take on volume. The sound deepened. It became like the far-off humming of a wheel under the foot of a spinner. It drew the attention of the Mar-chesa Soderrelli. She began to listen intently.
"Do you hear that sound, Caroline?" she said, "what is it?"
The girl arose and listened. She went noiselessly to the door, and out into the clearing. She came to the mule, stopped, and began, like the old mountaineer, to stroke its big, kindly face. A breath of wind carried the sound to her from the forest. It was a human voice, rising and falling in a deep muttering cadence.
"I've been in the presence of Thy wrath, O God Almighty, an' the j'ints of my knees are loosened. I hain't like David, the son of Jesse. Uit's Thy hand, O Lord, that skeers me. Preserve me from Thy sword, an' I'll take my chancet with the sword of mine enemies. Fur I'm afeard of Thee, but I hain't afeard of them."
The girl stood a moment, her hand under the mule's muzzle, then she walked slowly back to the cabin. At the door she stopped and answered the Marchesa's question.
"It's the wind," she said, "in the tops of the fir trees."
At noon they set out through the mountains, the Marchesa Soderrelli riding the mule, the old man leading with the rope bridle over his arm, and the sack swinging on his shoulder. Caroline Childers walked beside the mountaineer. The Duke followed with the rifle. The world had changed; it was now a land of sun, of peace, of vast unending stillness. The carpet of the wilderness was dry; the dark-green tops of the fir trees brightened as with acid; the far-off stretch of forest, fresh, as though wiped with a cloth; the air like lotus.
The old man traveled along the backbone of the mountain, not as the crow flies, to the coast, but in the great arc of a circle swinging to the west. He thus avoided abrupt and perilous descents and the dense undergrowth of the hollows. The forest along these summits was open. Cyrus Childers had cleaned them of their fallen timber. They were now great groves of fir trees, shooting up their brown bodies into the sky, and stretching there a green, unending trellis through which the sunlight filtered.
0359
The little party, traveling in these silent places, through this ancient wilderness, would have fitted into the morning of the world. The gigantic old man, the lank, huge mule, and the woman riding on the pack saddle might have come up in some patriarchal decade out of Asia. The girl, straight, slim, lithe and beautiful as a naiad, her cloudy black hair banked around her face, belonged in sacred groves—in ancient sequestered places—one of those alluring, mysterious, fairy women of which the fable in every tongue remains. Called by innumerable sounds in the mouths of men, but seen thus always in the eye of the mind when those sounds are uttered. The Marchesa Soderrelli was right, on that day in Oban, when she set youth first among the gifts of the gods. It is the beautiful physical mystery that allures the senses of men. And youth, be it said, is the essence of that sorcery.
The Duke of Dorset came, too, with fitness into the picture; he was the moving, desolate figure of that canvas. Man arriving at his estate in pride, in strength, in glory, and fallen there into the clutch of destiny. In his visible aspect he had recovered in a degree; he no longer bore the evidences of extreme fatigue, he walked with the rifle under his arm, and with a casual notice of events.
There is a certain provision of Nature wholly blessed. When one is called to follow that which is dearest to him, nailed up in a coffin, to the grave; when the bitterness of death has wracked the soul to the extreme of physical endurance; then, when under the turn of the screw blood no longer comes, there exudes, instead of it, a divine liquor that numbs the sensibilities like an anæsthetic, and one is able to walk behind the coffin in the road, to approach the grave, to watch the shovelful of earth thrown in, and to come away like other men, speaking of the sun, the harvest, the prospects of the to-morrow; it is not this day that is the deadliest; it is the day to follow—the months, the years to follow, when the broken soul has no longer an opiate.
The Duke of Dorset was in the door of life, in that golden age of it when the youth has hardened into the man, when the body has got its glory, and the mind its stature. And he moved here in this forest behind the others, a weapon in his hand, a figure belonging to the picture. He was the leader of the tribe, and its defense against its enemies; but a leader who had lost a kingdom, and whose followers had been put to the sword.
They followed the mountain ridges through the long afternoon, through this ancient, primeval forest. Below, the tops of the fir trees descended into an amphitheater of green, broken by shoulders of the mountain, and farther on into hollows that widened in perspective and filled themselves in the remote distances with haze.
About four o'clock they came out onto the ridge where the two men had first stopped in their journey from the coast. Here was the knoll, rising above them like a hump on the ridge, and set about with ancient fir trees; and here below it was the spring of water gushing into its stone bowl. The mountaineer stopped and lifted the Marchesa down from the mule, then he handed the rope bridle to the girl and indicated the spring with a gesture.
"You'll have to hold Jezebel or she'll poke her nose in hit first feller," he said; "I guess I'll look around some." Then he went up onto the crest of the knoll.
The Marchesa Soderrelli drank, scooping up the water with her hands; Caroline Childers drank, kneeling, wisps of hair falling beside her slim face into the pool. The Duke of Dorset approached, and remained standing, the butt of the rifle on the ground, his hands resting on the muzzle, watching, in his misery, this sylvan creature come out of the deep places of the wood to drink.
In a few minutes the old circuit rider appeared, and beckoned to the Duke of Dorset. Then he came down a few steps and spoke to the two women.
"Don't be skeered," he said, "we're agoin' to try how the gun shoots."
Then he went with the Duke up onto the high ground of the ridge. This summit commanded a view of the road ascending the mountain in a long, easy sweep—a beautiful brown ribbon stretched along a bank of scarlet. On this road two figures were advancing, a mile away, like tiny mechanical toys moving up the middle of the ribbon. The old man pointed them out with his finger.
"Them'll be scouts," he said. "How fur will your gun carry?"
The Duke of Dorset estimated the distance with his eye.
"One cannot be certain," he answered; "above six hundred yards."
"That air purty long shootin'; air you certain the bullet'll carry up?"
"Quite certain," replied the Duke.
The old man bobbed his chin, and pointed his finger down the mountain to a dead tree, standing like a mile post on the road.
"When they come up to that air fir," he said, "draw a bead on'em."
The Duke of Dorset elevated the sights for five hundred yards, and the two men waited without a word for the tiny toy figures on the velvet ribbon to approach. The knoll on which they stood was elevated above the surrounding wilderness of tree tops. Below, these deep green tops sloped, as though clipped beautifully with some gigantic shears. It was like looking downward over a green cloth with an indolent sun, softened by haze, lying on its surface. The Duke of Dorset stood with one foot advanced, the weight of his body resting on the foot that was behind the other, in the common attitude of one oppressed by fatigue. The old circuit rider stood beside him, bare-headed, his hat on the ground, a faint breeze stirring his gray hair.
The brooding, lonely silence of the afternoon lay on the world. A vagrant breath of wind moved on the ridge, idly through the tops of the ancient firs, but it did not descend into the forest. There, under the blue nimbus, nothing moved but the quaint figures traveling on the long brown band. When these two figures began to come up the last sweep of the road toward the dead fir, the Duke of Dorset raised the rifle to his shoulder. The old circuit rider watched him; he observed that the man's hand was unsteady, and that the muzzle of the gun wavered.
"Stranger," he said, "air you one of them shots that wobbles onto your mark?"
Now, there was among the frontiersmen, in the day of the hair trigger, a school of wilderness hunters, to be found at every shooting match, who maintained that no man could hold steadily on an object. They asserted that the muzzle of the rifle should be allowed to move, either in a straight line up or down onto the target, or across it in the arc of a circle. The trigger to be pulled when the line of sight touched on the target. The first disciples of this school were called the "line shots," and the second the "wobblers." Almost every pioneer followed one of these methods, and no more deadly marksmen at short range ever sighted along a gun barrel. They could drive a nail in with a bullet; they could split the bullet, at a dozen paces, on the edge of an ax; they could pick the gray squirrel out of the tallest hickory at eighty, at a hundred yards, when, lying flat to the limb, it presented a target not higher than an inch.
The Duke took down the rifle. He understood the delicate reference to his nerves.
"Perhaps I would better lie down," he said. Then his eye caught the bullet swinging to its leather string at the old man's middle, and he remembered the history of it. He handed the rifle to the mountaineer. "I am not fit to-day," he said; "will you try?" And he explained the mechanism of the rifle.
The old man took the gun, weighed it in his hands, tried the pull-of the trigger, and examined the sights.
"Hit air about the weight of the ole Minie rifle," he said, "an' the sights air fine. Do hit shoot where you hold it?"
"I think it may be depended on at this range," replied the Duke.
"Well," said the old man, "I hain't shot for a purty long spell, but I'll jist try it a whet."
He lifted the gun to his shoulder, pressed his bronzed cheek to the stock, and slipped his left hand out to the full length of the arm under the barrel. The two figures were within a dozen paces of the dead fir tree. The Duke thought one of them was the Japanese whom he had seen watching the château, and the other a forester, but he could not be certain at the distance. For perhaps thirty seconds the mountaineer stood like a figure cast in plaster, then the muzzle of the rifle began slowly to descend, and the report crashed out over the tree tops.
The forester, a little in advance of the other, fell in the road, his head and shoulders doubled up under him. The other, at the report, jumped as high as he could into the air, turned entirely around before he touched the earth, and began to run down the road. He ran, evidently in terror, his legs moving grotesquely on the center of the brown ribbon. The old mountaineer remained unmoving; his left hand far out under the barrel of the rifle, his face set to the stock. He moved the bolt and returned his finger to the trigger. Then the rigid muzzle of the rifle began once more to descend, in a dead straight line, and the report followed. The quaint figure, its legs twinkling on the ribbon, shot up into the air, and then fell spraddled out in the road, its arms and legs extended.
The Duke of Dorset turned to the mountaineer.
"My friend," he said, "that is the best shooting I ever saw—a moving target at more than five hundred yards."
The old man removed the gun from his shoulder and handed it to the Duke, stopped, picked up his hat and put it on his head. Then he replied to the Duke's compliment.
"Stranger," he said, "hit air the Almighty that kills."
It must be remembered that this man's God was the God of the Tishbite, who numbered his followers by the companies who drew the sword.
The two men returned at once to the spring, and the little party again set out through the mountains. The plan of travel was now changed. The circuit rider took a trail down the mountain in a direct line to the coast, and he hurried; the trail was at places rough and steep; the injured woman with difficulty kept her place on the pack saddle. They reached the low-lying foot hills, crossed the long broken hollow, dense with thickets, and ascended the next mountain, going due west. The old man traveled as fast as he could; he urged the mule, speaking to it as one might to a careless, lagging child, "Come along, Jezebel; mind where you're walkin'"; and when the mule stumbled, a gentle, scolding note came into his voice, "Pshaw! Jezebel, air your eyes in the back of your head?"
But in spite of the direct route and every effort of the old man they traveled slowly. The sun had gone down when they began the ascent of the second mountain. They stopped for a few minutes, and ate what remained of the food, then they pushed on, climbing toward the summit.
Meanwhile, night descended. A deep-blue twilight emerged from the hollows, the remote valleys, the hidden nooks and corners of the wilderness, crept in among the brown trunks of the fir trees, and climbed to the ridges. Then, imperceptibly, as though pigment flowed in, the twilight deepened, the stars came out, and it was night.
They crossed the summit of the second mountain, descended for perhaps three hundred yards, then turned due north and came out abruptly into the great road. The moon was beginning to come up, its hidden disk preceded by a golden haze that feebly lighted the world. The road lay outlined in shadow, running in a long sweep around a shoulder of the mountain on its way to the sea. The four persons continued down this road to the coast. The mountaineer leading the mule, on which the Marchesa Soderrelli rode, and the two others following behind them.
Caroline Childers, walking beside the Duke of Dorset, lagged as though worn out with fatigue. The space between the four persons widened and drew out into a considerable distance. Presently, when the mule turned the shoulder of the mountain, the girl stopped. At the same time, as upon some signal, the moon arose, pouring its silver light into the wilderness over the green tops of the fir trees and down into the road, etching delicate fantastic shadows on the bed of brown fir needles, filtering in among the vines massed on the wall, and turning the dark earth as by some magic into a soft, shimmering, illumined fairy world. The whole wilderness of tree tops rising to the sky was bathed in light. A mist, silvered at its edges, lay on the sea, hiding it, as under an opaque film.
When the girl spoke, her voice hurried as with an explanation.
"You did not understand the Marchesa Soderrelli. She merely wanted us to go on; to save ourselves."
"And you," said the man, "was that your reason, too?"
The girl hesitated. Then she answered, adding one sentence out of sequence to another. "She could not go on. I thought... I mean, you could get away alone—but not with us. You had done enough. It was not fair... any more. You had a right to your chance... to... your life."
"To my life!" the man echoed.
"Yes," replied the girl, "I mean your life is worth something. But she... but I... I have lost so much last night. I have lost... I have lost everything. But you... everything remains to you. You have lost nothing."
The man made an abrupt gesture with both hands.
"Lost nothing!" he repeated. Then he said the words over slowly, like one stating an absurd, incredible accusation before he answers it, each word distinctly, softly, as though it stood apart from its fellow.
"Lost nothing!"
He took a step or two nearer to the girl. The moon fell on his tall athletic body, projecting a black, distorted shadow on the road. The half of his face was in the light, and it was contracted with despair. The tendons in his hands were visible, moving the doubled fingers. His voice was low, distinct, compact.
"I have lost," he said, "everything, beginning from the day I was born. All the care and labor that my mother took when I was little is lost; all the bread that I have eaten, all the water that I have drunk, all the sun that has warmed me is lost. And the loss does not stop with that. I have lost whatever things the days, arriving one after the other, were bringing to me, except the blessed gift that the last one will bring. I am utterly and wholly ruined."
The man's words followed, one after the other, as though they were material things, having dimensions and weight.
"Death is nothing. It is life now, that is awful. I shall have to go on when it is no use to go on. I shall have to go on seeing you, hearing your voice, remembering every word you have said, the tone and expression with which you have said it, and every little unimportant gesture you have made. Every day that I live, I shall see and understand more vividly all that I have lost. And it will not get better. It will get worse. Every day I shall see you a little more clearly than I did the day before; I shall remember your words a little more distinctly; I shall understand a little more completely all that you would have been to me. And all of this time I shall be alone. So utterly alone that my mind staggers at the thought of it. I love you! I love you! Don't you see, don't you understand how I love you?"
The girl had not moved while the man was speaking.
"Do you love me like that?" she said.
"Yes," he answered.
"And have you loved me all along like that?"
"All along," he said.
"And will you always love me like that?"
"Like that," he said, "although I have lost you."
The girl stood with her arms hanging, her lips parted, her slender face gleaming like a flower, her hair spun darkness. The silence, the vast unending silence, the mystery of a newly minted world, lay about her, as they lay about that first woman, created by Divine enchantment, in the wilderness of Asia.
When she spoke again, her voice was so low that the man could hardly hear it. It was like a voice carried by the night over a great distance.
"But you have not lost me," she said.
Meanwhile, out of the mist, out of that opaque film lying on the sea, a rocket arose, described a great arc, and fell hissing among the tree tops.