CHAPTER XXXIX
The fussy little engine had at last completed its task and the train was ready to start. A crowd of small boys was hanging around it—the greatest marvel of the world to the mountain lads. Its big funnel-shaped smoke-stack sent wonder’s own thrills down their backs, and when the wheels slipped on the cast iron rails they shook with delight. “What a engine!” one of them said. “It’s ’most as tall as a man!”
The engineer was busy pulling off a sliver that had started from one of the rails, which experience had taught him might creep upward, farther and farther, till a car wheel caught it, and sent it through the bottom of a passenger coach, for it was but cast iron, after all.
Helen Preston turned to go, and her eyes caught sight of the Attacoa—highest of all the Blue Ridge, save the forehead of Grandfather’s Mountain. The stranger coming to the village sees it first, and the inhabitant turns invariably as to an old friend to say good-bye when he leaves.
“I love old Attacoa,” she said. “It was there that Light conquered Darkness.”
One by one the mountains sank away behind her, and the forest gave way to the wheat. Pines and chunky oats ran the fuzzy-fingered spruce and slender limbed larches away, and at last when night was settling down over all, after a record-breaking run, averaging twelve miles per hour, she reached Charlotte, and the queer little passenger coach with its twelve-paned window sashes was abandoned.
It was early morning when she left for Charleston, and from the window of her car she watched the red embankments, last semblances of things familiar, become fewer and fewer, and the soft, gray soil of the low country take its place. The harsh blowing of the engine became mellower as the rolling hillocks flattened into fertile plains and juniper trees hastened to claim place by black, sluggish streams. As she neared the city, interminable cypress swamps closed in round them, and long festoons of gray moss hung from every limb. Forests of long leaved pines took their places when the track left the river bottoms, and all the rocks crumbled into sand. When the engine stopped for wood, she heard a bob-white calling his mate, and she fell asleep to dream of the ruffed grouse in the Silver Creek valley.
The depot was a long, low wooden building, and Helen soon found a colored driver who knew where the Chronicle office was, knew Colonel Masters and was sure he was in the city. The cold of the mountain had vanished, and the air was soft and balmy as she drove through the streets. At last they stood before a two-storied building that faced the bay, and over the door the sign of the Chronicle could be deciphered. Underneath was the simple legend, “What is it but a map of busy life?”
Tremblingly mounting the steps, she found herself looking through the open door of the office. An old man sat before the fireplace, holding a tattered flag in his hand. His lips seemed moving slowly, but Helen could not hear his words, as he muttered:
“Ervin, my son, my son, would God I had died for thee!”
“Is this Colonel Masters?” she inquired, trying to be brave, as his kindly blue eyes turned towards her.
“It is, madam, your servant, Colonel Masters. Pray be seated.”
“Colonel Masters, I came to ask if you could tell me where Mr. McArthur is. He is ill somewhere, and I am come to—to find him.”
He looked at her as if he were reading a chapter in his own love story.
“Is—he—ill?” he asked, slowly.
“Yes, sir, he is. I am sure he is. I had hoped that you knew where!”
“I was not aware that he was—ill.”
“He must be—a messenger told me!”
“Could he not tell you where?”
“No, it was not a messenger that could speak.”
Colonel Masters understood. Such messengers had spoken to him many times.
“You loved him,” he said, simply.
A scarlet glow crept over her cheeks.
“I—yes. When did you see him last?”
“When I saw him last he was well, I am sure he was well.”
“How long ago, sir, when—”
“May I be pardoned for asking the name of my pretty inquisitor?”
“It is Helen Preston. I am from Dunvegan.”
“He loved a Helen.”
Again the scarlet flush came. The colonel noticed her eyes light for the first time.
“I must go, sir. Can you not tell me where to find him?”
“Yes, I know where you will find him,” he said, smiling tenderly. “Heaven will not be far from where you find him.”
Helen returned his smile trustingly.
“Perhaps Mrs. Adams, his landlady, has heard something of him. I will send Joe to her house,” Colonel Masters continued, looking, not at the girl, but at the flag he held in his hand. Helen insisted on accompanying Joe, for her impatience could not brook delay in her loving search.
Mrs. Adams herself came to the door when Helen rang the bell, and was stupefied with amazement at the first question:
“Is Mr. McArthur in?”
“Mr. McArthur, madam? Has he risen—has he come back?”
“He is ill somewhere—is it not here?” Her heart sank, for she knew already the answer.
“He—isn’t he dead?”
“Dead!”
The girl from the far hills fainted on the doorstep.
Mrs. Adams bore her quietly to the settee and stood over her till she opened her eyes again.
“Did you—did he die here?”
“No, miss, now do be quiet. Maybe he ain’t dead at all,” the good woman said, soothingly.
“But the pigeon—did he—not loose the pigeon last week?”
At the mention of the pigeon, Mrs. Adams started. Could the girl, whose accent betrayed her highland blood, know that she had freed the dragoon? It was an accident that he had escaped, and he had disappeared instantly, only circling once over the house.
“To be sure, Miss, did he loose the pigeon?”
“Yes, a white one—a big dragoon.”
“Well, now I wonder!”
Then a happy thought came to her.
“If he’s sick, Miss, he must be at the hospital.”
Helen rose, half dazed.
“It is very, very strange,” she said. “Nobody seems to know where he is, yet you know—you must know. May I go to his room?”
“Certainly, ma’am, but there hasn’t anybody seen him in so long that how could we be blamed for thinking him dead?”
They had reached McArthur’s room. Everything was neatly in place. Suddenly Helen started. A glove with a little brown splotch on it hung over a daguerreotype portrait.
“Whose—whose is that?” she faltered.
“I don’t know, Miss; I don’t know at all.”
“Did—did Mr. McArthur like—anybody?”
Mrs. Adams looked at her sharply.
“Mr. McArthur, Miss, didn’t ever let anybody know his secrets!”
But Helen knew the woman knew, and said quietly:
“You would not hurt my feelings, please tell me.”
“Well, Miss, to be perfectly—that is candid—I think he did.”
“And her name?”
“I think—that is—her name is Helen.”
The highland lassie’s face beamed with pleasure.
“Do you know where she lived?” she asked, wishing to make very sure.
“I—not exactly—her home was not here—I think it was in—”
“Never mind,” said Helen, hurriedly, as if Dunvegan had already been pronounced. “I will go to the hospital—perhaps he is there.”