IN THE DEPTHS
All the week the two girls worked together at the mill; a week which was to Helen one long nightmare, filled, as it was, with the hum and roar of machinery, the hot breath of the mill, and worst of all, the seared and deadening thought that she was disgraced.
In the morning she entered the mill hoping it might fall on and destroy her. At night she went home to a drunken father and a little sister who needed, in her childish sorrow, all the pity and care of the elder one.
And one night her father, being more brutal than ever, had called out as Helen came in: “Come in, my mill-girl!”
Richard Travis always drove her home, and each night he became more familiar and more masterful. She felt,—she knew—that she was falling under his fascinating influence.
And worse than all, she knew she did not care.
There is a depth deeper even than the sin—the depth where the doer ceases to care.
Indeed, she was beginning to make herself believe that she loved him—as he said he wished her to do—and as he loved her, he said; and with what he said and what he hinted she dreamed beautiful, desperate dreams of the future.
She did not wonder, then, that on one drive she had permitted him to hold her hand in his. What a strong hand it was, and how could so weak a hand as her's resist it? And all the time he had talked so beautifully and had quoted Browning and Keats. And finally he had told her that she had only to say the word, and leave the mill with him forever.
But where, she did not even care—only to get away from the mill, from her disgrace, from her drunken father, from her wretched life.
And another night, when he had helped her out of the buggy, and while she was close to him and looking downward, he had bent over her and kissed her on the neck, where her hair had been gathered up and had left it white and fair and unprotected. And it sent a hot flame of shame to the depths of her brain, but she could only look up and say—“Oh, please don't—please don't, Mr. Travis,” and then dart quickly into the old gate and run to her home.
But within it was only to meet the taunts and sneers of her father that brought again the hot Conway blood in defying anger to her face, and then she had turned and rushed back to the gate which Travis had just left, crying:
“Take me now—anywhere—anywhere. Carry me away from here.”
But she heard only the sound of his trotters' feet up the road, and overcome with the reflective anguish of it all, she had tottered and dropped beneath the tree upon the grass—dropped to weep.
After a while she sat up, and going down the long path to the old spring, she bathed her face and hands in its cool depths. Then she sat upon a rock which jutted out into the water. It calmed her to sit there and feel the rush of the air from below, upon her hot cheeks and her swollen eyes.
The moon shone brightly, lighting up the water, the rocks which held the spring pool within their fortress of gray, and the long green path of water-cresses, stretching away and showing where the spring branch ran to the pasture.
Glancing down, she saw her own image in the water, and she smiled to see how beautiful it was. There was her hair hanging splendidly down her back, and in the mirror of water beneath she saw it was tinged with that divine color which had set the Roman world afire in Cleopatra's days. But then, there was her dress—her mill dress.
She sighed—she looked up at the stars. They always filled her with great waves of wonder and reverence.
“Is mother in one of you?” she asked. “Oh, mother, why were you taken from your two little girls? and if the dead are immortal, can they forget us of earth? Can they be indifferent to our fate? How could they be happy if they knew—” She stopped and looking up, picked out a single star that shone brighter than the others, clinging so close to the top of Sunset Rock as to appear a setting to his crown.
“I will imagine she is there”—she whispered—“in that world—O mother—mother—will you—cannot you help me?”
She was weeping and had to bathe her face again. Then another impulse seized her—an impulse of childhood. Pulling off her stockings, she dipped her feet in the cool water and splashed them around in sheer delight.
The moonbeams falling on them under the water turned the pink into white, and she smiled to see how like the pictures of Diana her ankles looked.
She had forgotten that the old spring was near the public road and that the rail fence was old and fallen. Her revery was interrupted by a bantering, half drunken, jolly laugh:
“Well, I must say I never saw anything quite so pretty!”
She sprang up in shame. Leaning on the old fence, she saw Harry Travis, a roguish smile on his face. She thought she would run, then she remembered her bare feet and she sat down on the grass, covering her ankles with her skirt. At first she wanted to cry, then she grew indignant as he came tipsily toward her and sat down by her side.
She was used to the smell of whiskey on the breath. Its slightest odor she knew instantly. To her it was the smell of death.
“Got to the Gov'nor's private bottle to-night,” he said familiarly, “and took a couple of cocktails. Going over to see Nellie, but couldn't resist such beauties as”—he pointed to her feet.
“It was mean of you to slip upon me as you did,” she said. Then she turned the scorn of her eyes on him and coolly looked him over, the weak face, the boyish, half funny smile, the cynical eyes,—trying to be a man of the world and too weak to know what it all meant.
The Conway spirit had come to her—it always did in a critical moment. She no longer blushed or even feared him.
“How, how,” she said slowly and looking him steadily over, “did I ever love such a thing as you?”
He moved up closer. “You will have to kiss me for that,” he said angrily. “I've kissed you so often I know just how to do it,” and he made an attempt to throw his arms around her.
She sprang away from him into the spring branch, standing knee deep in the water and among the water-cresses.
He arose hot with insolence: “Oh, you think you are too good for me now—now that the Gov'nor has set his heart on you. Damn him—you were mine before you were his. He may have you, but he will take you with Cassius' kisses on your lips.”
He sprang forward, reached over the rock and seized her by the arm. But she jerked away from him and sprang back into the deeper water of the spring. She did not scream, but it seemed that her heart would burst with shame and anger. She thought of Ophelia, and as she looked down into the water she wiped away indifferently and silently the cool drops which had splashed up into her face, and she wondered if she might not be able to drop down flat and drown herself there, and thus end it all.
He had come to the edge of the rock and stood leering drunkenly down on her.
“I love you,” he laughed ironically.
“I hate you,” she said, looking up steadily into his eyes and moving back out of his reach.
The water had wet her dress, and she stooped and dipped some of it up and bathed her hot cheeks.
“I'll kiss you if I have to wade into that spring.”
“If I had a brother,—oh, if I even had a father,” she said, looking at him with a flash of Conway fire in her eyes—“and you did—you would not live till morning—you know you wouldn't.”
She stood now knee-deep in water. Above her the half-drunken boy, standing on the rock which projected into the spring, emboldened with drink and maddened by the thought that she had so easily given him up, had reached out and seized her around the neck. He was rough, and it choked her as he drew her to him.
She screamed for the first time—for she thought she heard hoof beats coming down the road; then she heard a horseman clear the low fence and spur into the spring branch. The water from the horse's feet splashed over her. She remembered it only faintly—the big glasses—the old straw hat,—the leathern bag of samples around his shoulders.
“Most unusual,” she heard him say, with more calmness it seemed to Helen than ever: “Quite unusual—insultingly so!”
Instinctively she held up her arms and he stooped in the saddle and lifted her up and set her on the stone curbing on the side farthest from Harry Travis.
Then he turned and very deliberately reached over and seized Harry Travis, who stood on the rock, nearly on a line with the pommel of the saddle. But the hand that gripped the back of Harry's neck was anything but gentle. It closed around the neck at the base of the brain, burying its fingers in the back muscles with paralyzing pain and jerked him face downward across the saddle with a motion so swift that he was there before he knew it. Then another hand seized him and rammed his mouth, as he lay across the pommel of the saddle, into the sweaty shoulders below the horse's withers, and he felt the horse move out and into the road and up to the crossing of the ways just as a buggy and two fast bay mares came around the corner.
The driver of the bays stopped as he saw his cousin thrown like a pig over the pommel and held there kicking and cursing.
“I was looking for him,” said Richard Travis quietly, “but I would like to know what it all means.”
The big glasses shone in kindly humor. They did not reflect any excitement in the eyes behind them.
“I am afraid it means that he is drunk. Perhaps he will tell you about it. Quite unusual, I must say—he seemed to be trying to drown a young lady in a spring.”
He eased his burden over the saddle and dropped him into the road.
Richard Travis took it in instantly, and as Clay rode away he heard the cousin say: “You damned yellow cur—to bear the name of Travis.”