CHAPTER II.
The Fall of the Tree.
Next morning the year had grown perceptibly older; or so it seemed to Stephanie, as she stood in the doorway of the log-cabin, looking across the misty clearing to the golden forests that encircled it. The fallen leaves looked browner, each furred at the edge with a delicate fringe of hoar-frost; and the newly risen sun strove as yet in vain to send some heat through the faint, cold haze. It was more penetratingly chill than if it had been the drier winter time. Stephanie snuggled into her little gray shawl with a keen appreciation of its rough warmth, and watched her breath floating as tiny silver clouds in the almost motionless air.
She was a tall, strong girl, with an unexpectedly plaintive face—a quaint, dark-eyed face which suited well with her quaint foreign name. Already she looked older than Dick, for her eyes were grave, and her mouth had taken a firm, responsible curve; it was a look which comes sometimes to motherless girls who have men-folk to manage and care for.
The room behind her was neat and clean, but almost bare of even such comforts as might have been found in pioneer homes. Here and there some little stool or shelf showed that her brother's deft fingers had been at work; but in this as in most things he lacked the steadiness of application which would have served to better their lot. And Captain Underwood was a broken man, plunged in a lethargy of remorse and disappointment which threatened never to lighten. Since her mother's death, life would have been almost unendurable to Stephanie had it not been for two things: these were the passionate affection existing between herself and Dick, and her intense love for and kinship with nature. All her scanty hours of idleness she spent roaming about the clearing or the edge of the forest—she knew the haunts of every weed and flower for a mile around. In the winter, flocks of little hungry birds were her pensioners, and it is likely that she would have seriously diminished their own stores in feeding them, had not Dick collected berries and wild rice and seeds in the fall as a provision for emergencies.
On this keen autumn morning there were very few birds about; the robins had flown, and the owls were going to bed; far away some noisy crows wheeled and cawed above the trees, but no longer could Stephanie hear the innumerable small twitterings and tentative songs of a morning in the summer. The forest was very silent. Indeed, the only sound that broke the half-awakened quietness was the distant thud and throb of axes biting deep into the trunk of a tree.
It was a curiously insistent sound, that seemed to claim more notice than it was worth. Very clearly on the clear air was borne the noise of every blow, and occasionally a faint crack as of a blade being wrenched away. It forced itself on Stephanie's attention, growing louder and fainter as slight breaths of wind moved the hazy air, but never ceasing in its continual, irregular thud—thud; thud—thud. Her father and Dick were chopping down the half-dead pine; she could distinguish the difference between the weight of their respective strokes.
Half unconsciously she listened. There was no cessation in the dull noise; and to her it seemed full of threat and menace. She fancied that the other trees must be shaking all their remaining leaves in fear that a like fate might befall them, and she hoped that Dick had remembered to chase the chipmunk out of his hole. The chipmunk had been a friend of hers, and she used to drop acorns at the foot of the tree where he might find them. Vaguely she wondered whether she would recognise the little fellow again if she saw him in some other tree, and concluded that it was scarcely possible. While all the time the thud—thud of the axes seemed to weave itself into a sort of irregular accompaniment to her wandering thoughts. And then suddenly she was aware that it had stopped, and that a brief silence had once more fallen over the golden woods and the hazy field of corn.
The silence was broken by a sharp crack. Then a series of small tearing, rushing, rending sounds ended in a mighty crash. Stephanie knew that the tree was down, and an odd little feeling of regret came over her; once more there was a moment of utter silence. Then, sharp and keen and terribly distinct, she heard a wild cry from Dick.
She had run down the garden almost before that cry ceased to ring in the air, and now she fled over the rough ground outside with as swift and sure a step as a young deer might use. Her face was grey and drawn with the sense of coming disaster, but neither her feet nor her breath failed her as she breasted the low rise of ground, slippery with pine needles, which lay between her and the place from which that cry had come.
As she gained the crest of the hill, she staggered back a step and almost fell, but recovered and ran on, though for a minute she was blind and deaf and scarcely conscious.
The pine, shorn of its few branches, lay upon the ground, and near the stump lay her father, with Dick kneeling beside him. When her sight came back to her, she found that she also was kneeling there, staring stupidly at her brother's agonised face, and at the great branch torn from a neighbouring maple, which told all the terrible tale. Somewhere in the silent woods a chipmunk chattered shrilly, and she wondered when it would stop, for the noise hurt her head. Someone seemed to be saying drearily over and over again, "What are we to do? What are we to do?" and she felt angry with the momentous question. Surely silence was the only fitting thing.
Then her senses seemed suddenly to wake into painful life again, and she stood up and looked about in dry-eyed desperation. That her father was seriously injured she knew, for the branch had struck him at the base of the head. But he appeared to be still living; and what were they to do for the best? A feeling of their utter loneliness swept over her, bringing back that other irremediable loss of two years ago. Once more she knelt in the rustling leaves, sobbing her heart out. "Oh, mother!" she cried, "oh, mother, mother, mother!"
The words held the most passionate prayer she had ever prayed in her life. And presently she rose to her feet again, with dimmed eyes and trembling lips, but strong to do and to endure. She seemed almost to have grown a woman in that moment, and unconsciously she took the lead, though she was the younger of the two.
"Dick," she said steadily, "go and harness Murphy. We must take father to the Collinsons."
Dick stumbled off blindly to do her bidding. Murphy was the one lean ox who had done all their carting and ploughing; and before long the boy came back again, driving the slow brute in the clumsy, creaking ox-cart. Between them they managed to draw their father up two inclined boards until his inert body rested safely in the cart; and then fleet-footed Stephanie ran back to the cabin for all the coverings and pillows in their poor store. Before half-an-hour had passed, the clumsy conveyance was creaking down the rough old Indian trail which led by many windings to the Collinson homestead, bearing the unconscious Captain, while Dick and Stephanie walked beside, urging Murphy to his best pace. Their hearts were sick with dread; motherless they had been for two years—were they now to be fatherless also?
It had all been so terribly sudden they had scarcely time to think, but it was the best thing they could do. At the Collinson homestead their father would be certain to receive the tenderest care, and perhaps medical attendance if things turned out fortunately. But would they ever get him alive over those long, jolting miles? The same fear was in the eyes of each as they looked at one another.
They were never to reach their journey's end. Before long the Captain began slowly to regain consciousness, and his first question was a faintly-uttered "What's this? Where are you taking me?"
They told him, with white, anxious faces bending over the rough sides of the cart, while Murphy tried to reach a tempting bit of green grass under the trees. But the injured man shook his head. "It is no use, my dears," he said feebly, "another two miles would kill me at once. And I must die where she died, for I cannot recover. Stephanie"—it was curious how he turned from the elder child to his younger—"Stephanie, take me back! Promise to take me back!"
Who could have withstood the pitiful appeal in his eyes? With aching hearts they promised, and once more he relapsed into unconsciousness, muttering fragments of old orders which he had given as captain of the great merchantman Theseus, in the long ago days. They looked at each other in miserable helplessness.
Dick broke the wretched silence. "Stephanie," he said, "you must take him home again, and I must go on to the Collinsons—for if he will not be taken to help, help must be brought to him. I shall be able to take two or three short cuts, and they will ride or drive back with me, so it won't be so very long. But oh, my dear, I do hate to leave you!"
Stephanie shook her head. "We are thinking of him now," she said quietly, and without another word turned Murphy round. With a last hurried look, Dick plunged rapidly into the bushes at the side of the trail, and she could hear the rustling of his footsteps growing fainter in the distance. Then began the weary journey home again.
They had only travelled a short distance from the little clearing, but to Stephanie it seemed hours before the log-cabin and the field of corn came into view. And having reached home, she had to face a new difficulty. She could not, unaided, lift her father from the cart. So she backed it into a sheltered place among the trees, and brought the rough chairs and barrels from the log-cabin to support the shafts. Then she unharnessed Murphy, and led him to his shed, moving as if she were in some terrible dream.
Returning to the cabin, which already looked deserted and strange, she ransacked every corner until she found a little of some coarse, crude spirit in an old bottle. Mixing it with water, she strove to force some into her father's mouth, but he did not seem able to swallow. So she began her long helpless vigil beside the cart, knowing that there was nothing she could do. If only Dick were there! The shadows grew long and longer, and still the Captain lay motionless in the cart beneath the great trees; and still Stephanie kept her patient watch beside him. Only once did her father speak in all those terrible hours. She had been bending over him adjusting his coverings, when she found him looking up at her with a brighter, more gentle look than she had seen upon his face for years. "I thought you were your mother, little girl," he said faintly, "your hands move as hers did."
"They are not as soft as hers, father," said Stephanie in a broken voice.
"No," answered the Captain, "they are not as soft, poor brave little hands. But their touch is as tender, my dear, their touch is as tender."
After that the silence fell again—a greater, deeper, more divine silence, though Stephanie did not know it. And still she sat beside the cart in the gathering shadows, waiting for the help that was to come.