Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Kathleen continued to hang out her wash without comment: Janet, at her ginseng pen, was busy nailing up more slats. As for Hal Glade, he continued to hang around the place for a while, his mean eyes ever shifting to the glen below, where the morning mist still rolled along the headlong course of Lynx Brook.

  At last, when the mist had gone and the entire valley glittered with dewy sunshine, he took himself off, satisfied that nobody was concealed under the fairy avalanche of vapour. And again Glade’s Bush became silent and tranquil in the pale golden splendour of a perfect morning.

  That morning Kathleen and Janet both saw the stranger; and they stood together watching him as he whipped pool after pool, rapid after rapid — a tall, loosely built young man in conventional fishing garb of khaki and shooting helmet, creel slung, landing-net suspended from his neck, and wearing knickerbockers instead of waders.

  If he ever glanced up at the shanty above him it was so cleverly done that the sisters could not discern the slightest movement. He seemed to be perfectly unconscious of Glade’s Bush, of the clothes drying on the line, of the unpainted house, of the two girls standing there in the sunshine.

  Kathleen said quietly:

  “He certainly acts like one of Burling’s men. There is no reason why he should not look up at us, Janet.”

  After a silence Janet drew a long, deep breath:

  “Are you going to tell Hal?”

  As her sister made no answer, she turned and saw the painful colour staining the smooth, young cheek where Glade had struck it.

  “I shall never again tell him anything,” said Kathleen in her colourless voice.

  So that evening, when Glade returned, nothing was said by the young wife until her husband asked her directly. And not yet having learned to lie, she told him the truth.

  An oil lamp shed a subdued light on the group of three, on the soiled weekly newspaper which Glade had unfolded to peruse. He let it fall on his greasy knees as his wife spoke. Then the man’s eyes blazed, and Kathleen shrank away.

  For a few minutes the silence, broken at intervals by the creak of Janet’s rocking chair, increased the tension of suspense. But Glade did not strike his wife; and when he began to question her there was in his voice an unsteady quality and in his questions a lack of decision which hinted of fear and an attempt to conceal it. And, as the exasperation of uncertainty and intermittent fear continued to invade and more fully possess the man, all cunning and caution — his only assets in emergencies — were forgotten in the irritation of increasing terror.

  “The damn fool,” he blurted out, “a-comin’ sneakin’ around here! Wait till the deer season opens! I’ll learn him! Me an’ Jim Wildrick is fixin’ to dog him! Me an’ Jim is plannin’ for to bark him onto a knoll an’ let it go for a accident — yaas! red Mackinaw or leather jacket—”

  His shrill, tremulous voice abruptly ceased and he darted a venomous look at his wife. In six months the girl had learned about things which she had never even dreamed could be.

  For she had come from the Hudson Valley, where law had more or less practical meaning, and where there was less ignorance than stupidity. But this was Sagamore County, where laws still remained theoretical, no jury so far having rendered them practical, even when a laggard district attorney awoke from a lethargy characteristic of the region — an inertia perhaps consequent upon malnutrition of mind and body.

  In Sagamore County men were not infrequently done to death and the findings of a coroner’s jury never acted upon. Slayers of men walked freely abroad after a few years’ prison, Or after none at all. Jury duty was desirable because of the pay; fire wardens were harassed by incendiaries who started forest destruction merely for the wages of a volunteer; fish and game were taken illegally and out of season, corrupt local “protectors” conniving. And Wildrick’s Tavern was becoming notorious.

  All this young Mrs. Glade had learned in the six months she had been a wife — if the marriage had been a genuine one — for Glade told her it was not; and she had no certificate.

  And all this knowledge and his personal treatment of her had so battered her, mind and body, that there seemed left in the girl only a dull, animal-like endurance. She appeared to possess no spirit to combat brutality, no intelligence to evade it; her only outlook for partial escape would open when school began again and she could drive, seven miles east to her scanty and ragged flock — spawn of the vagabonds who prowled the mountain-set forests around Glade’s Bush.

  All the following morning Glade’s small, mean eyes watched his wife intently, shifted to her sister, flickered for a moment’s swift survey of the glen, but always reverted to Kathleen. And just before he left the house he spoke:

  “Red Mackinaw or leather jacket,” he repeated, moistening his slit of a mouth with a tobacco-stained tongue,— “and what women-folk guess at they’d better forgit. ‘Tain’t any too damn healthy for no woman to think too much in Sagamore Country.... She might get her face caved in.... Like as if she fell by accident down onto them p’nted rocks.... An’ brok’ her fool neck.... By accident.... ‘r somethin’.”

  Kathleen picked up a wet and ragged garment and walked listlessly to the clothes line. Janet’s blue eyes sparkled and her colour rose, but she said nothing, though the tightening grip of her hand on the hammer hurt her small fingers.

  When Glade slouched off toward Wildrick’s, far down the trail he could hear the rat-tat of Janet’s hammer as she nailed the slats over her ginseng lattice.

  About noon she called to Kathleen in a low voice. The unknown angler was at it again along the stream; and they watched him from the window as long as he remained in view. But he never once as much as glanced up at the clearing and shanty at Glade’s Bush.

  Whether or not Glade became aware of what had happened, he asked no questions that night or the next morning. But he was busy all the forenoon digging up deer heads from the waste edges of the vegetable garden, and sinking them in a small swamp behind the house. Also, very industriously he cleaned up all bones and filthy traces left where game had been hung and drawn. And he obliterated as well as he could the scarcely perceptible trail to his ice cave, brushed up moss and swale grass, drew sprays and branches across, and never again went there twice by the same route. Also he removed all deadfalls and twitch-ups from “lined” trails, reset them by dead reckoning, and left access to them a matter for instinct or blind memory.

  Kathleen continued the dull, sordid routine of existence through the yellowing forest month: Janet roamed after wild ginseng.

  Again and again, lying concealed or standing as motionless as a slim and dappled forest sapling, she saw the stranger fishing Lynx Brook — saw him sometimes at close range — so near at times that it seemed to her the quick, loud beating of her own heart must be audible to him.

  The first time she saw him he could have touched her with his nine-foot trout rod, so near was he to her.

  He appeared to be young, wiry, and much bronzed by the weather; and his mouth seemed always to retain a pleasant expression as though the memory of something agreeable still lingered.

  But in the course of the next week or two, she came to find out that this agreeable expression was not a smile, merely the natural formation of his mouth.

  And always she remained silent and motionless in her concealment until he had passed on along the noisy stream, his rod flashing and curving, the silk line curling forward and back, the cast glistening like a silvery strand of spider’s gossamer in the sun.

  Then Janet would steal forth once more from the shelter of thicket, bowlder, or beech, to search for her wild ginseng. And always, like a faint ray of sun, the memory of that half smile on his lips followed her through tangle and thicket, making the woodland less dim and softening the dreariness and monotony of her world to a curious and tranquil acquiescence in the destiny that had brought her to Glade’s Bush.

  After a week or two she began to think of this young man at night. Then he invaded her dreams. And, one day, suddenly awa
re that the end of the trout season was already at hand, panic seized her. For she realized that after today he would come no more to fish Lynx Brook. As she loitered along the water, searching the undergrowth for ginseng, or scanning the stream vista for the glitter of his rod, she concluded that, if he truly were one of Burling’s men, he might remain in the vicinity upon some other pretext than fishing — unless he had already acquired such information as he might have come for.

  Whether it was the possibility of his going out of her life forever that now made her careless of discovery; whether the child was making of her dreamy romance even more than its filmy fabric warranted; whether her first curiosity concerning him had become an interest bordering on solicitude, and was now even edging on fear, she did not try to analyze.

  But that day, when at last she caught the distant glimmer of his rod, scarcely knowing why, she waited for him among a group of beeches. And when he came abreast of her along the stream she called to him: “Elease — would you come to me a moment?”

  But the roar of the water made her voice inaudible; and he passed on, rod curving, springing back, curving, and shooting out the long silk line over the tumbling cataracts of Lynx Brook. And she had no more courage left as she stood there, both hands pressing her breast, lips parted, and her face surging with colour to the roots of her hair.

  Glade had forbidden Kathleen to resume her teaching. That avenue of temporary escape was closed.

  Glade had remained now for three entire days at Wildrick’s; but the evening before the deer season opened he reappeared in his dingy forest garb, carrying sack, rope, hatchet, knife, and a rusty rifle.

  Not a word did he vouchsafe to his wife or to Janet as he squatted there at table, all hunched up over his supper. Kathleen waited on him; Janet sat in silence, eyes remote, thinking, always thinking of the stranger who, when the fishing season closed, had returned no more to Lynx Brook.

  At dawn Kathleen arose to cook breakfast for her lord and master, but discovered that Glade had risen before she was awake, had devoured whatever he found, and was gone with his rifle into parts unknown.

  So she and Janet cooked and ate together; then the latter went down into the glen, as usual, on her ceaseless search for ginseng — perhaps, too, in wistful hope of something rarer and more valuable than the strange root worth its weight in Chinese gold.

  For the memory of this man had never faded; the restless, incessant desire to see him again had never left her. And what the child’s fancy had made of him or of the pitiful romance that had never even budded for her, God alone knows.

  So Janet went down along the rapids of Lynx Brook; and first she searched the vista with undaunted eyes, although no fisherman might whip that sparkling flood again until the snows of a winter yet to come had melted and the frail buds and leaves of May had opened in the sun once more.

  Mist still drifted along the stream; sunlight sparkled aloft on yellow leaves. Her errant steps led her from thicket to swale, from slope to intervale, through woodlands golden and scarlet with the drifting splendour of autumn, through little sunless hollows still opalescent with the fog.

  All fairyland surrounded her, the great beeches were pillars of pure silver supporting arches of burnt gold; over the maples stretched a canopy of crimson from which exquisite shreds came winnowing down. And under foot the deep green pile of moss covered the floor of a magic world, so that she stepped in silence through the magnificence of this still and painted mystery.

  And suddenly she came upon him, where he was standing amid the golden glory of dropping leaves, leaning upon his rifle, all alone.

  For a moment the heavenly wonder of it stunned her; breathless, dazed, she halted, looking into the face so familiar to her in dreams: scarcely knowing what she did, she moved forward toward him, her eyes never swerving, even when on his pleasant lips a smile broke out and a wonderful voice spoke to her, half laughingly, calling her by name.

  His rifle lay cradled along the hollow of his left arm; but his right hand closed firmly over both of hers as he stepped forward.

  “Janet,” he repeated smilingly,’ “has there not been silence enough between us two to last us for the rest of our lives?”

  The miracle that he knew her name thrilled her till she shivered, then passed like a flash of celestial flame, scorching her cheeks with fire.

  “It is — so long since I have seen you” — said the child, “except in dreams.”

  “But I have seen you, often, since the trout season closed,” he said, looking at her intently.

  “I did not know that you had ever seen me at all,” she said.

  “Always.”

  “In the beginning, too?”

  “Yes, I saw you the first day I ever fished Lynx Brook. You and your sister were watching me from Glade’s Bush.”

  “Yes.”

  “After than you watched me very often, yonder, along the stream.”

  “Did you see me?” she asked.

  “Every time.”

  “But — I never thought — I never saw you look at me — at anything except your rod and line and at the water. How could you have seen me?”

  “I often see without looking,” he said smilingly.

  She regarded him very intently:

  “Are you one of Burling’s men?”

  His smile altered, but he said quietly:

  “Does Hal Glade think so?”

  “Yes.... Why are you wearing a red Mackinaw?”

  “The law.”

  Twice he glanced behind him while speaking. Finally he turned, and she unconsciously fell into step beside him, tightening her hold on his right hand. “What you must be told,” she said, “is this: Hal said to us that, red Mackinaw or leather jacket, he and Jim Wildrick would get you by ‘accident.’.. I think of it every night and all day long.... Once by the stream I called to you, but the water made such a noise you did not hear me.... And — I was afraid to — go to you.”

  “Afraid?”

  He turned and looked at her, laughingly; then suddenly became grave. For in the clear, sweet eyes he had surprised what no man can discover unmoved — the blameless adoration of a child transfigured by the dawn of womanhood.

  Flushed and suddenly abashed by his comprehension, she loosened her fingers from his with a nervous movement and stood aside, very still, looking fixedly away from him. He, also, had halted, and for a little while remained quite motionless, leaning on the muzzle of his rifle.

  After a few moments he fell back a step or two beside her.

  “I have often thought about you,” he said very gently. “I think you have not been out of my mind for a single hour since I first saw you last summer.” She could not answer or speak at all, or even look at him. It was all becoming unreal to her — the gold and crimson forest, this man beside her — nay, she herself was changing where she stood into something strange, unfamiliar, wonderful.

  With an effort she strove to rouse herself, to listen and understand what he was saying to her:

  “Your and your sister Kathleen came here from Waiontha Landing,” he repeated, “did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “To teach school.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your sister married Hal Glade.”

  She nodded.

  He shook his head, slowly, and the smile faded from his face.

  As at one accord they had begun to move forward together once more. After a little while she found her hand in his again. But it was a long time before she ventured to lift her enchanted eyes to his.

  There was a tiny hollow, knee-deep with gold and scarlet autumn leaves. Sunlight fell in it, deep moss upholstered it. They descended, her small hand in his. For a while, curled up on the leaves beside him, her cheek rested against the moss; later it rested against his.

  “All this I have dreamed,” she said.

  “Have you dreamed more than this, Janet?”

  She turned on his shoulder, looking into his eyes, then sighed, yielding her
lips to his.

  And once, opening her blue eyes, she looked up into a sky no bluer, between crossed branches overhead.

  Like bits of crumpled tissue beaten out of gold, the leaves fell constantly from the sky, drifting, slanting, spinning into the pit. And over everything Magic spun its web, thicker and thicker, exquisitely soft and dense, until the very throb of the whirring loom beat softly in her ears like the loud echo of a human heart.

  She sat up cautiously, listening. His eyes opened at the same moment, and he looked up at her, smiling.

  “Do you hear the dogs?” she asked timidly.

  “Yes, Janet.”

  “If you are one of Burling’s men you will report deerhounds loose in the forest, won’t you?”

  “These dogs have only two legs, Janet.”

  “Men!” she exclaimed.

  “Men,” he nodded, “barking some knoll for deer.” They had now risen to their knees. After a while he stood up, drew her out to the knoll, where they seated themselves, listening in silence to the distant tumult.

  “No wonder the deer run,” he said grimly. “It sounds exactly like hounds on a trail.”

  A little later she looked at him, questioningly; but for the moment his tranquillity reassured her. The next instant, however, she turned to him in fresh alarm, and caught his arm:

  “Why are those dogs — I mean those men — coming this way?” she faltered.

  “I, also, have been wondering why,” he replied.

  “Are — are they barking this hill?” she demanded. “It rather sounds like it,” he admitted, staring at the woods ahead of him. Then, glancing around at her, he found her deathly white.

  “Janet!” he said. “What is the matter?”

  “If — if it should be Hal — and some of Wildrick’s men?”

  The young man laughed, then suddenly his keen eyes narrowed, and he stood up, listening intently.

  “Take off that red Mackinaw!” she whispered.

  “Nonsense, Janet—”

  “Do it! Please do it!”