CHAPTER V
James had considerable experience with, horses. He knew at once that it was probably a hopeless undertaking to change the mare's mind, or rather her obstinacy. However, he tried the usual methods, touching with the whip, getting out and attempting to lead, but they were all, as he had supposed from the first, in vain. A terrible sense of being up against fate itself seized him: an animal's will unreasoning, unrelenting, bears, in fact, the aspect of fate itself. It is at once sensate and insensate. James thought of Clemency, and decided to waste no more time.
The gray mare was near enough to a tree to tie her, and he tied her and set out on foot. It was a very dark night, cloudy and chilly and threatening snow. He walked on, as it were, through softly enveloping shadows, which seemed to his excited fancy to be coming forward to meet him. He began to be very much alarmed. He had wasted most of his young sentiment upon Clemency's [pg 095] mother, but, after all, he suddenly discovered that he had a feeling for the girl herself. He thought that it was only the natural anxiety of any man of honor for the safety of a helpless young girl out alone at night, and beset by possible dangers, but he realized himself in a panic. His plan was of course to go directly to Annie Lipton's home, some two miles farther on, then it occurred to him that Clemency must inevitably have left there. If she were lying dead or injured on the road, how in the world was he to see? He felt in his pocket for matches, and found just one. He lit that and peered around. While it burned he saw nothing except the frozen road with its desolate borders of woods and brush, a fit scene for countless tragedies. When the match burned out he thought of something else. Supposing that Clemency were lying half-dead anywhere near the road, how was she to know that a friend was near? Immediately he began to whistle. Whistling was a trick of his, and he had a remarkably sweet, clear pipe. He knew that Clemency, if she were to hear his whistle, would know who was near. He whistled "Way down upon the Suwanee River" through, then he began on [pg 096] the "Flower Song" from Faust, walking all the time quite rapidly but with alert ears. He was half through the "Flower Song" when he stopped short. He thought he heard something. He listened, and did hear quite distinctly an exceedingly soft little voice, which might have been the voice of shadows—"Is that you?"
"Clemency," he cried out, and rushed toward the wood, and directly the girl was clinging to him. She was panting with sobs, but she kept her voice down to a whisper. "Speak low, speak low," she said in his ear. "I don't know where he is. Oh, speak low." She clung to him with almost a spasmodic grip of her slender arms. "If you had been ten minutes longer I think I should have died," she whispered. "Don't make a sound. I don't know where he is."
"Was it—" began James. He felt himself trembling at the thought of what the girl might be going to reveal to him.
"Yes, that same dreadful man. Uncle Tom was right. I stayed too long at Annie's. It was almost dark when I left there. She persuaded me to stay to dinner. They had turkey. I was about half a mile below here when he, the man, came out of the woods, [pg 097] just as he did before. I heard him, and I knew. I did not look around. I ran, and I heard his footsteps behind me. The darkness seemed to shut down all at once. I knew he could catch me, and remembered what I had heard about wild animals when they were hunted. I had gone a little past here, running just as softly as I could, when I turned right into the woods, and ran back. Then I lay right down in the underbrush and kept still. I heard him run past. Then I heard him come back. He came into the woods. I expected every minute he would step on me, but I kept still. Finally I heard him go away, but I have not dared to stir since! I made up my mind I would keep still until I heard a team pass. It did seem to me one must pass, and one would have at any other time, but it has been hours I have been lying there. Then I heard your whistle. I was almost afraid to speak then. Don't speak above a whisper now. Did you come on foot?"
"I had the gray mare, and she balked about half a mile from here. You are sure you are not hurt?"
"No, only I am trying hard not to faint. Let us walk on very fast, but step softly, and don't talk."
James put his arm around the girl and half carried her. She continued to draw short, panting breaths, which she tried to subdue. They reached the place where the gray mare loomed faintly out of the gloom with the dark mass of the buggy behind her.
"Let us get in," whispered Clemency. "Quick!"
"I am afraid she won't budge."
"Yes, she will for me. She has a tender mouth, that is why she balks. You must have pulled too hard on the lines. Sometimes I have made her go when even Uncle Tom couldn't."
Clemency ran around to the gray's head and patted her, and James untied her. Then the girl got into the buggy and took the reins, and James followed. He was almost jostled out, the mare started with such impetus. They made the distance home almost on a run.
"Oh, I am so glad," panted Clemency. "You see I can seem to feel her mouth when I hold the lines, and she knows. Was poor mother worried?"
"A little."
"I know she was almost crazy."
"She will be all right when she sees you safe," said James.
"Is Uncle Tom home yet? No, of course I know he isn't, or he would have come instead of you. Oh, dear, I know he will scold me. I shall have to tell him, but I mustn't tell mother about the man. What shall I tell her? It is dreadful to have to lie, but sometimes one would rather run the risk of fire and brimstone for one's self than have anybody else hurt. If I tell mother she will have one of her dreadful nervous attacks. I can't tell her. What shall I tell her, Doctor Elliot?"
"I think the simplest thing will be to say that Miss Lipton persuaded you to stay to supper, and so you were late, and I overtook you," said James.
"Mother will never believe that I stayed so long as that," said Clemency. "I shall have to lie more than that. I don't know exactly what to say. I could have Charlie Horton come in to play whist, and be taking me home in his buggy. He always drives, and you could meet me on the road."
"Yes, you could do that."
"It is a very complicated lie," said Clemency, "but I don't know that a complicated lie is any worse than a simple one. I think I shall have to lie the complicated one. You [pg 100] need not say anything, you know. You can take the mare to the stable, and I will run in and get the lie all told before you come. You won't lie, will you?"
James could not help laughing. "No, I don't see any need of it," he replied.
"It is rather awful for you to have to live with people who have to lie so," remarked Clemency, "but I don't see how it can be helped. If you had seen my mother in one of her nervous attacks once, you would never want to see her again. There is only one thing, I do feel very weak still, and I am afraid I shall look pale. Hold the lines a minute. Don't pull on them at all. Let them lie on your knees."
"What are you doing?" asked James when he had complied.
"Doing? I am pinching my cheeks almost black and blue, so mother won't notice. I don't talk scared now, do I?"
"Not very."
"Well, I think I can manage that. I think I can manage my voice. I am all over being faint. Oh, I will tell you what I will do. You haven't got your medicine-case with you, have you?"
"No, I started so hurriedly."
"Well, I will go in the office way. I know where Uncle Tom keeps brandy, and I will be so chilled that I'll have to take a little before mother sees me. That will make me all right. I wouldn't take it for myself, but I will for her."
"And you are chilled, all right," said James.
"Yes, I think I am," said Clemency. "I did not think of it, but I guess it was cold there in the woods keeping still so long." Indeed, the girl was shaking from head to foot, both with cold and nervous terror. "It was awful," she said in a little whisper.
James felt the girl shaking from head to foot. Suddenly a great tenderness for the poor, little hunted thing came over him. He put his arm around her. "Poor little soul," he said. "It must have been terrible for you lying out there in the cold and dark and not knowing—"
Clemency shrank into his embrace as a hurt child might have done. "It was perfectly terrible," she said, with a little sob. "I didn't know but he might come back any minute and find me."
"It is all over now," James said soothingly.
"Yes, for the time," Clemency replied with a little note of despair in her voice, "but there is something about it all that I don't understand. Only think how long I have had to stay in the house, and he must have been on the watch. I don't know when it is ever going to end."
"I think that I will end it to-morrow," said James with fierce resolution.
"You? How?"
"I am going to put a stop to this. If an innocent girl can't step out of the house for weeks at a time without being hounded this way, it is high time something was done. I am going to get a posse of men and scour the country for the scoundrel."
"Oh, will you do that?"
"Yes, I will. It is high time somebody did something."
"You saw him. You know just how he looks?"
"I could tell him from a thousand."
Clemency drew a long breath. "Well," she said doubtfully, "if you can, but—"
"But what?"
"Nothing, only somehow I doubt if Uncle Tom will think it advisable. There must be some mystery about all this or Uncle Tom [pg 103] himself would have done that very thing at first. I don't understand it. But I don't believe Uncle Tom will consent to your hunting for the man. I think for some reason he wants it kept secret." Suddenly, Clemency gave a passionate little outcry. "Oh, how I do hate secrets!" she said. "How I have always hated them! I want everything right out, and here I seem to be in a perfect snarl of secrets! I wonder how long I shall have to stay in the house."
"Perhaps you are wrong, and your uncle will take measures now this has happened for the second time," said James.
"No, he won't," replied the girl hopelessly. "I am almost sure that he will not."
Clemency was right. After she had made her entry and told her little lie successfully, and explained that she had taken some brandy because she was chilled, and Mrs. Ewing had gently scolded her for staying so late, and kissed and embraced her, and gotten back her own composure, Doctor Gordon arrived, and James, who had waited for him in the study, told him the story in whispers. "Now I think you had better let me get a posse of men and scour the country to-morrow," he [pg 104] concluded. "It seems to me that this thing has gone far enough."
Doctor Gordon sat huddled up before him in an arm-chair. He had not even taken off his overcoat, which was white with snow. The storm had begun. "It will be easy to track him on account of the snow," added James.
"Tracking is not necessary," replied Gordon, with his haggard face fixed upon James. "I know exactly where the man is, and have known from the first."
"Then—" began James.
"You don't know what you are talking about," Gordon said gloomily. "I would have that fiend arrested to-morrow. I would have him hung from the nearest tree if I had my way, but I can do absolutely nothing."
"Nothing?"
"No, I can do nothing, except what I have been doing, so far in vain, it seems, to try to tire him out. I traded too much on his impatience, it seemed. I did not think he would have held out so long."
"You mean you will have to keep that poor little thing shut up the way you have been doing?"
"I see no other way. God knows I have tried to think of another, day and night."
"I don't see why you or I could not take her out sometimes when we visit patients anyway," said James in a bewildered fashion.
"You don't understand," replied Doctor Gordon irritably. "The main point is: the girl must not be even seen by that man. That is the trouble. Driving, she might be perfectly safe; in fact, in one way she is safe anyhow. She is not in any danger of bodily harm, as you may think, but I don't want her seen."
"Why not let me take her out sometimes of an evening then?" said James, more and more mystified. "If she wore a veil, and went out driving in the evening, I can't see how anybody could get a glimpse of her."
"You don't understand that we have to deal with a very devil incarnate," said Doctor Gordon wearily. "He will be on the watch for just that very manœuvre. However, perhaps we may be able to manage that; I will see."
"She will be ill if she remains in the house so closely," said James, "especially a girl like her, who has been accustomed to lead such an outdoor life. In fact, I don't think she does look very well now. It is telling on her."
"Yes, I think it is," agreed Doctor Gordon gloomily, "but again, I say, I see no other way out of it. However, perhaps you or I can take her out sometimes of an evening. I suppose it had better be you, on some accounts. I will see. Well, I will take off my coat and get something to eat. I suppose Clara and Clemency have gone to bed."
"They went hours ago," replied James. It was, in fact, two in the morning. James followed the doctor, haggard and weary, into the kitchen, where, according to custom at such times, some dinner had been left to keep warm on the range. "I'll sit down here," said Doctor Gordon. "It is warmer than in the dining-room, and I am chilled through. If you don't mind, Elliot, I wish you would get me a bottle of apple-jack from the dining-room. I must have something to hearten me up, or I shall go by the board, and I don't know what will become of her—of them."
James sat and waited while the doctor ate and drank. When he had finished he looked a little less haggard. He stretched himself before the warm glow from the range and laughed. "Now I feel my fighting blood is up again," he said. "After all, if there is anything in the Good Book, the wicked shall [pg 107] not always triumph, and I may win out. I shall do my best anyhow. But I confess you took the wind out of me with what you told me when I came in. I am glad Clara does not know. Poor little Clemency having to pave her way with lies, but it would kill Clara. Oh, God, it does seem as if I had enough before. Take my advice, young man, and try to think more of yourself than anybody else in the world. Don't let your heart go out to anybody. Just as sure as you do, the door of the worst torture-chamber in creation swings open. The minute you become vulnerable through love, you haven't a strong place in your whole armor."
"What a doctrine!" observed James.
"I know it, but I have taken a fancy to you, boy; and hang it if I want you to suffer as I have to."
"But a man would not be a man at all if he did not think enough of somebody to suffer," said James, and now he was thinking of poor little Clemency, and how she had nestled up to him for protection.
"Maybe," said Doctor Gordon gloomily, "but sometimes I wonder whether it pays in the long run to be what you call a man. Sometimes I wish that I were a rock or a tree. I do to-night."
"You will feel better after you have had a little sleep," James said, as the two men rose.
Suddenly one of Doctor Gordon's inexplicable changes of mood came over him. He laughed. "If it were not so late we would go down to Georgie K.'s," said he. "I never felt more awake. Well, I guess it's too late. You must be dead tired yourself. I have not thanked you at all for your rescue of the girl. She would have been down with a serious illness if you had not gone, for she would have lain in that place being snowed over until somebody came."
"She was mighty clever to do what she did," said James.
"Yes, she is clever," returned Doctor Gordon. "She is a good girl, and it stings me to the very heart that she has to suffer such persecution. Well, 'all's well that ends well.' Did it ever occur to you that God made up to mankind for the horrors of creation, by stating that there would be an end to it some day? Good God, if this terrible world had to roll on to all eternity!" Doctor Gordon laughed again his unnatural laugh. "Fancy if you were awakened to-night by the last trump," he said. "How small everything would [pg 109] seem. Hang it, though, if I wouldn't try to have a hand at that man's finish before the angel of the Lord got his flaming sword at work."
James looked at him with terror.
"Don't mind me, boy," said Gordon. "I don't mean to blaspheme; but Job is not in it with me just now. You cannot imagine what I had to contend with before this melodramatic villain appeared on the stage. Sometimes I think this is the finish," Gordon's mouth contracted. He looked savage. James continued to stare at him. Gordon laid his hand on James's shoulder. "Thank the Lord for one thing," he said almost tenderly, "that he sent you here. Between us we will take care of poor little Clemency anyhow. Now go to bed, and go to sleep."
James obeyed as to the one, but he could not as to the other. He became, as the hours wore on, so nervous that he was half-inclined to take a sleeping powder. The room seemed full of flashes of lightning. He heard sounds which made him cold with horror. He was highly strung nervously, and was really in a state bordering upon hysteria. The mystery which surrounded him was the main cause. He was never himself before an unknown [pg 110] quantity. He had too much imagination. He made all sorts of surmises as to the stranger who was haunting Clemency. Starting with two known quantities, he might have accomplished something, but here he had only one: Clemency herself. He had a good head for algebra, but a man cannot work out a problem easily with only one known quantity. He began to wonder if the poor girl herself were sleeping. He realized a sort of protective tenderness for her, and indignation on her behalf. It did not occur to him as being love. Still the image of her wonderful mother dominated him. But his mind dwelt upon the girl. He thought of a piazza whose roof opened as he knew upon Clemency's room. He wondered if a man like that would stick at anything. Then he recalled what Doctor Gordon had said about Clemency's not being in any bodily danger, and again he speculated. The room began to grow pale with the late winter dawn. Familiar objects began to gain clearness of outline. There were two windows in James's room. They gave upon the piazza. Suddenly James made a leap from his bed. He sprang to one of the windows. Flattened against it was the face of the man. But the face was so destitute of consciousness of him, [pg 111] that James doubted if he saw rightly. The wide eyes seemed to gaze upon him without seeing him, the mouth smiled as if at something within. The next moment James was sure that the face was not there. He drew on his trousers, thrust his feet into his shoes, and was out of his room and the house, and on the piazza. It was still snowing, but the dawn was overcoming the storm. The whole world was lit with dead white pallor like the face of a corpse. James rushed the length of the piazza. He looked at the walk leading to it. He thought he could distinguish footprints. He looked on the piazza, but the wind, being on the other side of the house, there was not enough snow there to make footprints visible. The snow on the walk was drifted. He looked at it closely, and made sure of deep marks. He stood for a moment undecided what to do. He disliked to arouse Doctor Gordon. He was afraid of awakening Mrs. Ewing, if he ventured into the upper part of the house. Then he thought of the man Aaron who slept in a room over the stable. He reëntered the house, locked the front door, went softly into the doctor's study, and out of the door which was near the stable. Then he made a hard snowball, [pg 112] and threw it at Aaron's window. The window opened directly, and Aaron's head appeared. James could see, even in the dim light, and presumably just awakened from sleep, the rotary motion of his jaws. He was probably not chewing anything, simply moving his mouth from force of habit. "Hullo!" said Aaron, "that you Doctor Gordon?"
"No, it is I," replied James. "Put on something as quick as you can, and come down here. Something is wrong."
Aaron's head disappeared. In an incredibly short space of time the stable door was unlocked and slid cautiously back, and Aaron stood there, huddled into his clothes. "What's up?" he asked.
"I don't know. Have you got a lantern in the stable?"
"Yep."
"Light it quick, then, and come along with me."
Aaron obeyed. "Anybody sick," he asked, coming alongside with the flashing lantern. He threw a cloth over it so as to prevent the rays shining into the house windows. "I don't want to frighten her," he said, and James knew that he meant Mrs. Ewing. "She's awful nervous," said Aaron. Then he said again, "What's up?"
"I saw a man's face looking into one of my windows," replied James.
Aaron gave a low whistle. "Somebody wanted the doc?" he inquired.
"No," replied James shortly, "it was not."
"Must have been."
"No, it was not."
"Must have been," repeated Aaron, chewing.
"I tell you it was not. I knew—" James stopped. He suddenly wondered how much he ought to tell the man, how much Doctor Gordon had told him.
Aaron chewed imperturbably, but a sly look came into his face. "I have eyes, and they see, and ears, and they hear," he said, after an odd Scriptural fashion, "but don't you tell me nothin', Doctor Elliot. Either I take what I get from the fountain-head, or I makes my own conclusions that I can't help. Don't you tell me nothin'. S'pose we look an' see ef there's footprints that show anythin'."
Aaron flashed the lantern, all the time carefully shading it from the house windows, over the walk which led to the front door and the piazza. James followed him. "Well," said Aaron, "there's been somebody here, but, with snow like this, it might have been a monkey [pg 114] or a rhinoceros or an alligator. You can't make nothin' of them tracks. But they do go out to the road, and turn toward Stanbridge."
"Suppose we—" began James. He was about to suggest following the prints, when he remembered Doctor Gordon's injunction to the contrary.
However, Aaron anticipated him. "Might as well leave the devil alone," said he. "It might have been the old one himself, for all we can tell by them tracks. You had better go back to bed, Doctor Elliot. You ain't got much on. It ain't near breakfast time yet. Better go back to bed."
And James thought such a course the wiser one himself. He went back to bed, but not to sleep. He kept his eyes fixed upon the windows. He was prepared at any instant, should the man reappear, to spring out. He felt almost murderous. "It has come to a pretty pass," he thought, "if that scoundrel, whoever he may be, is lurking around the house at night."
The daylight came slowly on account of the storm. When it did come, it was an opaque white daylight. James began to smell coffee and frying ham. He rose and dressed himself, [pg 115] and looked out of the window. It was like looking into a blurred mirror. He began to wonder if he could have been mistaken, if possibly that face had been simply a vision which had come from his overwrought brain. He wondered if he should tell Doctor Gordon, if it might not disturb him unnecessarily. He wondered if he should have enforced secrecy upon Aaron. He was still undecided when the Japanese gong sounded, and he went out to breakfast. Clemency was looking worn and ill. Somehow the sight of her piteous little face decided James. He thought how easily an athletic man could climb up one of those piazza posts, which was, moreover, encircled by a strong old vine which might almost serve as ladder. He made up his mind to tell Doctor Gordon, and he did tell him when they were out upon their rounds, tilting and sliding along the drifted country roads in an old sleigh. "I don't think I can be mistaken," he said when he had finished.
Doctor Gordon looked at him intently. "You are sure," he said. "You are a nervous subject for a man, and you had not slept, and you had this man very much on your mind, and there must have been some snow [pg 116] on the window which could produce an illusion. Be very sure, because this is serious."
James thought again of Clemency's little white face. "Yes," he said, "I am sure."
"You have no doubt at all?"
"None. The man had his face staring into the room. He did not seem to see me, but looked past me at the bed."
"He might easily have thought that room, being on the ground floor and accessible to night-calls, was mine," said Doctor Gordon, as if to himself.
"I thought how easily he could have climbed up one of the piazza posts to her room," said James.
The Doctor started. "Yes, that is so," he said. "He might have had two motives. That is so."
The next call was at a patient's who had a slight attack of grippe. Doctor Gordon left James there, saying that he would make another call and be back for him directly. James noticed how he urged the horses out of the drive at almost a run. He was back soon, and James having made up his prescription, went out and got into the sleigh. Doctor Gordon looked at him gloomily. "He is no longer where he has been staying," he [pg 117] said, and his face settled into a stern melancholy. That evening, although the storm continued, he suggested a visit to Georgie K.'s; and at supper time he insisted upon Clemency's occupying another room that night. "The wind is on your side of the house," he said, "and I am afraid you will take more cold." Clemency stared and pouted, then said, "All right, Uncle Tom!"