She made as if to speak again, but words refused her.
After a moment, “Good-by,” he said, very steadily. “I thank you for the charity that has given me this little time with you — it will always be — precious to me — I shall always be your servant.” His steadiness did not carry him to the end of his sentence. “Good-by.”
She started toward him and stopped, without his seeing her. She answered nothing; but stretched out her hand to him and then let it fall quickly.
“Good-by,” he said again. “I shall go out the orchard gate. Please tell them good-night for me. Won’t you speak to me? Good-by.”
He stood waiting while the rising wind blew their garments about them. She leaned against the wall of the house. “Won’t you say good-by and tell me you can forget my — —”
She did not speak.
“No!” he cried, wildly. “Since you don’t forget it! I have spoiled what might have been a pleasant memory for you, and I know it. You were already troubled, and I have added, and you won’t forget it, nor shall I — nor shall I! Don’t say good-by — I can say it for both of us. God bless you — and good-by, good-by, good-by!”
He crushed his hat down over his eyes and ran toward the orchard gate. For a moment lightning flashed repeatedly; she saw him go out the gate and disappear into sudden darkness. He ran through the field and came out on the road. Heaven and earth were revealed again for a dazzling white second. From horizon to horizon rolled clouds contorted like an illimitable field of inverted haystacks, and beneath them enormous volumes of pale vapor were tumbling in the west, advancing eastward with sinister swiftness. She ran to a little knoll at the corner of the house and saw him set his face to the storm. She cried aloud to him with all her strength and would have followed, but the wind took the words out of her mouth and drove her back cowering to the shelter of the house.
Out on the road the dust came lashing and stinging him like a thousand nettles; it smothered him, and beat upon him so that he covered his face with his sleeve and fought into the storm shoulder foremost, dimly glad of its rage, scarcely conscious of it, keeping westward on his way to nowhere. West or east, south or north — it was all one to him. The few heavy drops that fell boiling into the dust ceased to come; the rain withheld while the wind-kings rode on earth. On he went in spite of them. On and on, running blindly when he could run at all. At least, the wind-kings were company. He had been so long alone. He could remember no home that had ever been his since he was a little child, neither father nor mother, no one who belonged to him or to whom he belonged, except one cousin, an old man who was dead. For a day his dreams had found in a girl’s eyes the precious thing that is called home — oh, the wild fancy! He laughed aloud.
There was a startling answer; a lance of living fire hurled from the sky, riving the fields before his eyes, while crash on crash of artillery numbed his ears. With that his common-sense awoke and he looked about him. He was almost two miles from town; the nearest house was the Briscoes’ far down the road. He knew the rain would come now. There was a big oak near him at the roadside. He stepped under its sheltering branches and leaned against the great trunk, wiping the perspiration and dust from his face. A moment of stunned quiet had succeeded the peal of thunder. It was followed by several moments of incessant lightning that played along the road and danced in the fields. From that intolerable brightness he turned his head and saw, standing against the fence, five feet away, a man, leaning over the top rail and looking at him.
The same flash staggered brilliantly before Helen’s eyes as she crouched against the back steps of the brick house. It scarred a picture like a marine of big waves: the tossing tops of the orchard trees; for in the same second the full fury of the storm was loosed, wind and rain and hail. It drove her against the kitchen door with cruel force; the latch lifted, the door blew open violently, and she struggled to close it in vain. The house seemed to rock. A lamp flickered toward her from the inner doorway and was blown out.
“Helen! Helen!” came Minnie’s voice, anxiously. “Is that you? We were coming to look for you. Did you get wet?”
Mr. Willetts threw his weight against the door and managed to close it. Then Minnie found her friend’s hand and led her through the dark hall to the parlor where the judge sat, placidly reading by a student-lamp.
Lige chuckled as they left the kitchen. “I guess you didn’t try too hard to shut that door, Harkless,” he said, and then, when they came into the lighted room, “Why, where is Harkless?” he asked. “Didn’t he come with us from the kitchen?”
“No,” answered Helen, faintly; “he’s gone.” She sank upon the sofa and drew her hand across her eyes as if to shade them from too sudden light.
“Gone!” The judge dropped his book and stared across the table at the girl. “Gone! When?”
“Ten minutes — five — half an hour — I don’t know. Before the storm commenced.”
“Oh!” The old gentleman appeared to be reassured. “Probably he had work to do and wanted to get in before the rain.”
But Lige Willetts was turning pale. He swallowed several times with difficulty. “Which way did he go? He didn’t come around the house; we were out there till the storm broke.”
“He went by the orchard gate. When he got to the road he turned that way.” She pointed to the west.
“He must have been crazy!” exclaimed the judge. “What possessed the fellow?”
“I couldn’t stop him. I didn’t know how.” She looked at her three companions, slowly and with growing terror, from one face to another. Minnie’s eyes were wide and she had unconsciously grasped Lige’s arm; the young man was looking straight before him; the judge got up and walked nervously back and forth. Helen rose to her feet swiftly and went toward the old man, her hands pressed to her bosom.
“Ah!” she cried out, sharply, “I had forgotten that! You don’t think they — you don’t think — —”
“I know what I think,” Lige broke in; “I think I’d ought to be hanged for letting him out of my sight. Maybe it’s all right; maybe he turned and started right back for town — and got there. But I had no business to leave him, and if I can I’ll catch up with him yet.” He went to the front door, and, opening it, let in a tornado of wind and flood of water that beat him back; sheets of rain blew in horizontally, in spite of the porch beyond.
Briscoe followed him. “Don’t be a fool, Lige,” he said. “You hardly expect to go out in that.” Lige shook his head; it needed them both to get the door closed. The young man leaned against it and passed his sleeve across his wet brow. “I hadn’t ought to have left him.”
“Don’t scare the girls,” whispered the other; then in a louder tone: “All I’m afraid of is that he’ll get blown to pieces or catch his death of cold. That’s all there is to worry about. Those scalawags wouldn’t try it again so soon after last night. I’m not bothering about that; not at all. That needn’t worry anybody.”
“But this morning — —”
“Pshaw! He’s likely home and dry by this time — all foolishness; don’t be an old woman.” The two men reentered the room and found Helen clinging to Minnie’s hand on the sofa. She looked up at them quickly.
“Do you think — do you — what do you—” Her voice shook so that she could not go on.
The judge pinched her cheek and patted it. “I think he’s home and dry, but I think he got wet first; that’s what I think. Never you fear, he’s a good hand at taking care of himself. Sit down, Lige. You can’t go for a while.” Nor could he. It was long before he could venture out; the storm raged and roared without abatement; it was Carlow’s worst since ‘Fifty-one, the old gentleman said. They heard the great limbs crack and break outside, while the thunder boomed and the wind ripped at the eaves till it seemed the roof must go. Meanwhile the judge, after some apology, lit his pipe and told long stories of the storms of early days and of odd freaks of the wind. He talked on calmly, the picture of repose, and blew rings above his head, but Helen
saw that one of his big slippers beat an unceasing little tattoo on the carpet. She sat with fixed eyes, in silence, holding Minnie’s hand tightly; and her face was colorless, and grew whiter as the slow hours dragged by.
Every moment Mr. Willetts became more restless, though assuring the ladies he had no anxiety regarding Mr. Harkless; it was only his own dereliction of duty that he regretted; the boys would have the laugh on him, he said. But he visibly chafed more and more under the judge’s stories; and constantly rose to peer out of the window into the wrack and turmoil, or uneasily shifted in his chair. Once or twice he struck his hands together with muttered ejaculations. At last there was a lull in the fury without, and, as soon as it was perceptible, he declared his intention of making his way into town; he had ought to have went before, he declared, apprehensively; and then, with immediate amendment, of course he would find the editor at work in the “Herald” office; there wasn’t the slightest doubt of that; he agreed with the judge, but he better see about it. He would return early in the morning to bid Miss Sherwood good-by; hoped she’d come back, some day; hoped it wasn’t her last visit to Plattville. They gave him an umbrella and he plunged out into the night, and as they stood watching him for a moment from the door, the old man calling after him cheery good-nights and laughing messages to Harkless, they could hear his feet slosh into the puddles and see him fight with his umbrella when he got out into the road.
Helen’s room was over the porch, the windows facing north, looking out upon the pike and across the fields beyond. “Please don’t light the lamp, Minnie,” she said, when they had gone upstairs. “I don’t need a light.” Miss Briscoe was flitting about the room, hunting for matches. In the darkness she came to her friend, and laid a kind, large hand on Helen’s eyes, and the hand became wet. She drew Helen’s head down on her shoulder and sat beside her on the bed.
“Sweetheart, you mustn’t fret,” she soothed, in motherly fashion. “Don’t you worry, dear. He’s all right. It isn’t your fault, dear. They wouldn’t come on a night like this.”
But Helen drew away and went to the window, flattening her arm against the pane, her forehead pressed against her arm. She had let him go; she had let him go alone. She had forgotten the danger that always beset him. She had been so crazy, she had seen nothing, thought of nothing. She had let him go into that, and into the storm, alone. Who knew better than she how cruel they were? She had seen the fire leap from the white blossom and heard the ball whistle, the ball they had meant for his heart, that good, great heart. She had run to him the night before — why had she let him go into the unknown and the storm to-night? But how could she have stopped him? How could she have kept him, after what he had said? She peered into the night through distorting tears.
The wind had gone down a little, but only a little, and the electrical flashes danced all around the horizon in magnificent display, sometimes far away, sometimes dazingly near, the darkness trebly deep between the intervals when the long sweep of flat lands lay in dazzling clearness, clean-cut in the washed air to the finest detail of stricken field and heaving woodland. A staggering flame clove earth and sky; sheets of light came following it, and a frightful uproar shook the house and rattled the casements, but over the crash of thunder Minnie heard her friend’s loud scream and saw her spring back from the window with both hands, palm outward, pressed to her face. She leaped to her and threw her arms about her.
“What is it?”
“Look!” Helen dragged her to the window. “At the next flash — the fence beyond the meadow — —”
“What was it? What was it like?” The lightning flashed incessantly. Helen tried to point; her hand only jerked from side to side.
“Look!” she cried.
“I see nothing but the lightning,” Minnie answered, breathlessly.
“Oh, the fence! The fence — and in the field!”
“Helen! What was it like?”
“Ah-ah!” she panted, “a long line of white — horrible white — —”
“What like?” Minnie turned from the window and caught the other’s wrist in a fluttering clasp.
“Minnie, Minnie! Like long white gowns and cowls crossing the fence.” Helen released her wrist, and put both hands on Minnie’s cheeks, forcing her around to face the pane. “You must look — you must look,” she cried.
“They wouldn’t do it, they wouldn’t — it isn’t!” Minnie cried. “They couldn’t come in the storm. They wouldn’t do it in the pouring rain!”
“Yes! Such things would mind the rain!” She burst into hysterical laughter, and Minnie, almost as unnerved, caught her about the waist. “They would mind the rain. They would fear a storm! Ha, ha, ha! Yes — yes! And I let him go — I let him go!”
Pressing close together, shuddering, clasping each other’s waists, the two girls peered out at the flickering landscape.
“Look!”
Up from the distant fence that bordered the northern side of Jones’s field, a pale, pelted, flapping thing reared itself, poised, and seemed, just as the blackness came again, to drop to the ground.
“Did you see?”
But Minnie had thrown herself into a chair with a laugh of wild relief. “My darling girl!” she cried. “Not a line of white things — just one — Mr. Jones’s old scarecrow! And we saw it blown down!”
“No, no, no! I saw the others; they were in the field beyond. I saw them! When I looked the first time they were nearly all on the fence. This time we saw the last man crossing. Ah! I let him go alone!”
Minnie sprang up and enfolded her. “No; you dear, imagining child, you’re upset and nervous — that’s all the matter in the world. Don’t worry; don’t, child, it’s all right. Mr. Harkless is home and safe in bed long ago. I know that old scarecrow on the fence like a book; you’re so unstrung you fancied the rest. He’s all right; don’t you bother, dear.”
The big, motherly girl took her companion in her arms and rocked her back and forth soothingly, and petted and reassured her, and then cried a little with her, as a good-hearted girl always will with a friend. Then she left her for the night with many a cheering word and tender caress. “Get to sleep, dear,” she called through the door when she had closed it behind her. “You must, if you have to go in the morning — it just breaks my heart. I don’t know how we’ll bear it without you. Father will miss you almost as much as I will. Good-night. Don’t bother about that old white scarecrow. That’s all it was. Good-night, dear, good-night.”
“Good-night, dear,” answered a plaintive little voice. Helen’s hot cheek pressed the pillow and tossed from side to side. By and by she turned the pillow over; it had grown wet. The wind blew about the eaves and blew itself out; she hardly heard it. Sleep would not come. She got up and laved her burning eyes. Then she sat by the window. The storm’s strength was spent at last; the rain grew lighter and lighter, until there was but the sound of running water and the drip, drip on the tin roof of the porch. Only the thunder rumbling in the distance marked the storm’s course; the chariots of the gods rolling further and further away, till they finally ceased to be heard altogether. The clouds parted majestically, and then, between great curtains of mist, the day-star was seen shining in the east.
The night was hushed, and the peace that falls before dawn was upon the wet, flat lands. Somewhere in the sodden grass a swamped cricket chirped. From an outlying flange of the village a dog’s howl rose mournfully; was answered by another, far away, and by another and another. The sonorous chorus rose above the village, died away, and quiet fell again.
Helen sat by the window, no comfort touching her heart. Tears coursed her cheeks no longer, but her eyes were wide and staring, and her lips parted, for the hush was broken by the far clamor of the court-house bell ringing in the night. It rang, and rang, and rang, and rang. She could not breathe. She threw open the window. The bell stopped. All was quiet once more. The east was growing gray.
Suddenly out of the stillness there came the sound of a horse galloping ove
r a wet road. He was coming like mad. Some one for a doctor? No; the horse-hoofs grew louder, coming out from the town, coming this way, coming faster and faster, coming here. There was a splashing and trampling in front of the house and a sharp “Whoa!” In the dim gray of first dawn she made out a man on a foam-flecked horse. He drew up at the gate.
A window to the right of hers went screeching up. She heard the judge clear his throat before he spoke.
“What is it? That’s you, isn’t it, Wiley? What is it?” He took a good deal of time and coughed between the sentences. His voice was more than ordinarily quiet, and it sounded husky. “What is it, Wiley?”
“Judge, what time did Mr. Harkless leave here last night and which way did he go?”
There was a silence. The judge turned away from the window. Minnie was standing just outside his door. “It must have been about half-past nine, wasn’t it, father?” she called in a shaking voice. “And, you know, Helen thought he went west.”
“Wiley!” The old man leaned from the sill again.
“Yes!” answered the man on horseback.
“Wiley, he left about half-past nine — just before the storm. They think he went west.”
“Much obliged. Willetts is so upset he isn’t sure of anything.”
“Wiley!” The old man’s voice shook; Minnie began to cry aloud. The horseman wheeled about and turned his animal’s head toward town. “Wiley!”
“Yes.”
“Wiley, they haven’t — you don’t think they’ve got him?”
“By God, judge,” said the man on horseback, “I’m afraid they have!”
CHAPTER X. THE COURT-HOUSE BELL
THE COURT-HOUSE BELL ringing in the night! No hesitating stroke of Schofields’ Henry, no uncertain touch, was on the rope. A loud, wild, hurried clamor pealing out to wake the country-side, a rapid clang! clang! clang! that struck clear in to the spine.
The court-house bell had tolled for the death of Morton, of Garfield, of Hendricks; had rung joy-peals of peace after the war and after political campaigns; but it had rung as it was ringing now only three times; once when Hibbard’s mill burned, once when Webb Landis killed Sep Bardlock and intrenched himself in the lumber-yard and would not be taken till he was shot through and through, and once when the Rouen accommodation was wrecked within twenty yards of the station.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 13