XXV
TERROR
A woman fleeing from publicity as one flies from death--a refined woman,too, whose life had hitherto been passed in the open!
When Antoinette Duclos, after a night and morning of unprecedentedfatigue and extraordinary fears, with little to upbear her in the way offood, stepped from the train which brought a few local passengers intothe quiet village of Rexam, she hardly would have been recognized by herbest friend, such marks may a few hours leave upon one battling withuntoward Fate in one supreme effort.
She seemed to realize this, for meeting more than one eye fixedinquiringly upon her she drew down the veil wound about a sort of cap shewore till it concealed not only her features but her throat which arestless pulse had tightened almost to the exclusion of her breath. Readyto drop, she yet made use of the little energy left her, to approach withfaltering steps a lumbering old vehicle waiting in the dust and smoke forsuch passengers as might wish to be taken up Long Hill.
There was no driver in sight, but she did not hesitate to take her seatinside. There was extra business at the station, for this was the firsttrain to come in for two days; and if anyone noticed her in the shadowyrecesses of the cumbrous old coach, nobody approached her; nor was she inany way disturbed. When the driver did show himself, she was almostasleep, but she woke up quickly enough when his good-natured face peeredin at her and she heard him ask where she wanted to go and whether shehad any baggage.
"I want to go up Long Hill and be set down at the first cross-road," shesaid. "My baggage is here." And she pointed to the space at her feet.But that space was empty; she had no baggage. She had dropped both bagand umbrella at the side of the road after one of her long climbs under afitful moon and had not so much as thought of them since.
Now she remembered and flushed as she met the eyes of the man looking inat her with his hand on his whiskers, smoothing them thoughtfully downbut saying nothing, though his countenance and expression showed him tobe one of the loquacious sort. If any smiles remained to her from the olddays, now was the time for one; but before she could twist her dry lipsinto any such attempt, he had uttered a cheerful "All right" and turnedaway to clamber up into his seat.
The relief was great, and she settled back, rejoicing in the fact thatthey would soon be moving and that she was likely to be the solepassenger. But she soon came to rue this fact, for the driver wanted totalk and even made many abortive attempts that way. But she could notfall in with his mood, and seeing this, he soon withheld all remarksand bent his full energies to the task of urging his horses up theinterminable incline.
Houses, at which she scarcely looked, disappeared gradually from view,and groups of spreading trees and patches of upland took their places,deepening into the forest as they advanced. When halfway up, the farthermountains, which had hitherto been hidden by nearer hills, burst intoview. Behind them the sun was setting, and the scene was glorious. Ifshe saw it at all, she gave no sign of pleasure or even of admiration.Her head, which she had held straight up for the first quarter of a mile,sank lower and lower as they clambered on; yet she gave no signs ofdrowsiness--only of a mortal weariness which seemed to attack the verysprings of life. The pomp and pageantry of the heavens, burning withall the pigments of the rainbow, failed to appeal to a soul shut withindungeon bars. Rocks and mighty gorges darkling to the eye and stirring tothe imagination held no story for her; she looked neither to the rightnor to the left while the beauty lasted, much less when the last gleamhad faded from the mountain tops and a troop of leaden clouds, coming upfrom the east, added their shadows to those of premature night.
The driver, who had been eying these clouds for some little time, feltthat he ought to speak if she did not. Pulling up his horses as though togive them a breathing spell, he remarked over his shoulder with a strainof anxiety in his voice:
"I hope your friends live near the top of the hill, missus. A storm iscoming up, and it's getting very dark. Will you have to walk far?"
"No, no," she assured him with a quick glance up and around her. "Alittle way, a very little way!" Then she became quiet and absorbed again.
"I've got to go on," he broke in again as the top of the hill came insight. "I've a passenger for the eight-fifty train waiting for me morethan a mile along the road. I shall have to leave you after I set youdown."
"That's right; I expect that. I can take care of myself--don't worry. Notbut what you're very kind," she added after a moment, in her culturedvoice, with just enough trace of accent to make it linger sweetly in theear.
"Then here we are," he called back a moment later, jerking his horses toa standstill and jumping down into the road. "Goin' east or goin' west?"he asked as he took another glance at her frail and poorly protectedfigure.
"This way," she answered, pointing east.
He stopped and stared at her.
"Nobody lives that way," he said, "--that is, nobody near enough for youto reach shelter before the storm bursts."
"You are mistaken," she said, cringing involuntarily as the first bigclap of thunder rolled in endless echoes among the mountains. And turningabout, she started hurriedly into the shadows of the narrow cross-road.
He gave one glance back at his horses, the twitching of whose ears showednervousness, uttered some familiar word and launched out after the woman."Pardon me, missus," he cried, "but is it Miss Brown's you mean?"
The widow stopped, glanced back at him over her shoulder, made a quick,protesting gesture and dashed on.
With a shake of his head and a muttered, "Well, women do beat the devil!"he retraced his steps; and she proceeded on alone.
As the last sound of his horses' hoof-beats died out on the road, asecond clap of thunder seemed to bring heaven and earth together. Shescarcely looked up. She was approaching a little weather-beaten housenestled among trees on the edge of a deep gorge. As her eyes fell on it,her footsteps quickened, and lifting a hasty hand, she pulled off herveil. A change quite indescribable, but real for all that, had takenplace in her worn and waxen features. Not joy, but a soft expectancyrelieved them from their extreme tension. If a friend awaited her, thatfriend would have no difficulty in recognizing her now. But alas!
A few steps more, and she stood before the door. It had a desolate look;the whole house had a desolate look, possibly because every shade wasdrawn. But she did not notice this; she was too sure of her welcome.Raising her hand to the knocker, she gave two sharp raps. Then shewaited. No answer from within--no sound of hurrying steps--only anotherrumble in the sky and a quick rustling of the trees on either side of heras if the wind which made the horizon black had sent an _avant-courieur_over the hilltops.
"Elvira is out--gone to some church meeting or social gathering down inthe village. She will be back. But I won't wait. I will try and get in inthe old way. The storm may delay her indefinitely."
Leaving the door, which was raised only two steps above the road, shewalked to the corner of the house and stooping down, felt behind aprojecting stone for what she had certainly expected to find there--a keyto the front door.
But her hand came away empty.
Surprised, for this was not her first visit to this house (she had oncespent weeks there and knew the habits of its mistress well), she feltagain in the place where the key should be, and where she had so oftenfound it when her friend was out. But all to no avail. It was not there,and presently she was in the road again staring at the closed-up front.
As she did so, these words left her lips:
"And she knew I might come at any minute!"
Tottering from fatigue, she caught at the trunk of a great tree whichheld roof and wall in its embrace.
Why did it quiver? Why did the ground beneath her feet seem to rock andall nature darken as with the falling of a pall. The storm was upon her.It had rolled up with incredible swiftness and was about to break overher head. With a shock she realized her position. No shelter, and thestorm of the season upon her! What should she do? There was no way ofgetting into the ho
use at the rear, for the bushes were too thick. Shemust accept her fate, be drenched to the skin, perhaps smitten by thenext thunderbolt. But Antoinette Duclos was no coward, so far as physicalills were concerned. She drew herself up straight against the trunk ofthe tree, thinking that this, bad as it was, was better than shelter withthe enemy at the door. She would be calm, and she was fast growing sowhen she suddenly became aware of a man standing very near and huntingher out through the dusk.
She never knew why the scream which rose in her throat did not pass herlips. Her terror was unspeakable, for she had heard no advance; indeed,there was too much noise about her for that. But it was the silent terrorof despair, for she thought it was the man from whom she had made thisgreat effort at escape. But he soon proved to her he was not. It was justthe driver of the stagecoach, returned to see what had become of her. Hehad feared to find her stricken down in the road, and when he saw herclinging alone and in a maddened way to this tree, he made no bones ofspeaking to her with all necessary plainness.
"I asked you if it was Missus Brown you had come to see," he called toher through the din. "And you wouldn't answer."
"Why should I?" she shouted back. "Why do you speak like that? Hasanything happened to her?"
"Don't you know?"
"No, no--she was well when I heard from her last, and expecting me, or soshe wrote. Is she--she--"
"Dead, missus. We buried her last Tuesday. I'm sorry, but--"
Why finish? She was lying out before him, straight and stark in the road.A bolt of lightning which at that moment tore its way through the heavensbrought into startling view her face, white with distraction, framed in amass of iron-gray locks released by her fall.
"Good heaven!" burst from the lips of the frightened man as he stooped tolift her. "What am I going to do now?"
The thunder answered him, or rather it robbed him for the moment of allthought. Peal after peal rattled over the neighboring peaks, rocking theair on the uplands and filling his soul with dismay. But when quiet hadcome again, hope returned with it. She was not only standing upright butwas crying in his ear:
"Can I get into the house? If I could stay there to-night, I could goback to-morrow."
"I'll see that you get in, if I have to break in a window," he answered."But you're sure that you will not be afraid to stay out this terriblestorm in a house with no neighbors within half a mile?"
"I know the house. I have been here before, and if Elvira Brown couldface the storms of forty years from her solitary home, I can surely facea single one, without losing my courage."
He said no more, but approaching the house, began to test such windows ashe could reach. He finally broke in a pane and released the latch; afterthat, entrance was easy.
Yet after he had opened the way for her and she had stepped into the diminterior, he felt loth to leave her. Duty called him away. The passengerawaiting him up the road was a man he could not afford to disappoint; yethe stood there longer than the occasion warranted, with the knob of thedoor in hand, watching her struggle with the lamp, which she at lastsucceeded in lighting. As the walls of the hall and her anxiously bendingfigure burst into view, he uttered a quick "Good-by!"
She turned, smiled and tried to thank him, but the words failed to leaveher lips. A nearer and fiercer bolt had shot to earth at that instant,striking a tree so near that the noise of its fall mingled with the crashof the heavens. When it had ceased, he had gone. He could not face thelook with which she met this new catastrophe.
That look never again left her. When she saw herself in a glass, as shepresently did, on entering one of the rooms lamp in hand, she wasstartled and muttered:
"My own mother would pass me by if she saw me now. I could go anywhere Iwished without fear or dread. Why did I leave New York?" And setting thelamp down, she covered her face and wept.
The storm abated; a few minutes of fiercely pouring rain, and all wasover. She was left in ghastly quiet--a quiet which was almost worse thanthe turmoil which had preceded it--to face her memories and accustomherself to the thought that the solitary woman with whose life everythingshe looked upon was so intimately connected was gone, never to passthrough these doors again or touch with deft and careful fingers theinfinite number of little belongings with which the house was filled.
For as yet nothing had been changed, nothing had been moved. How fittingthis was, Antoinette knew better than anybody else, perhaps, for she wasthe only person whom Elvira Brown had ever allowed to spend any length oftime with her, and she could remember--alas! how vividly, in spite of theone great fear forever gnawing at her heart--that an article, no matterhow small, when once given place in this house, held that place alwaystill broken or in some other way robbed of its usefulness. She looked ather friend's pet chair standing just in the one spot where she had seenit eight years before, and her heart swelled, and a tear rose in her eye.But there was not time for another. A sense of the straits in which shefound herself placed by the death of this dependable friend returned uponher in full force; the past retired into its old place, and the present,with its maddening problems, seized upon her nerve and quelled her onceindomitable spirit.
The fate which had pursued her ever since she had left her happy homein France had not spared her at this crisis. The storm, of so littleconsequence to her, had roused the driver's sympathy. This had not onlyfixed her image in his mind but given away her destination. All hope ofhiding herself among the mountains was therefore gone. She would have tomove on; but where? If she were but able to leave now, she might beforemorning find some covert from which help might be given her for furtherescape. But the condition of the roads, as well as her own weakness,forbade that. She needed food: she needed sleep. Of food she would findplenty, she was sure; but sleep! How could she sleep, with the promiseof the morrow before her? Yet she must; everything depended upon herstrength. How could she win that rest which alone would secure it.
Pausing in the midst of the hall whither her restless thought had drivenher, she stared in a fruitless inquiry at the wall confronting her. Hermind, like her feet, was at a standstill. She could neither think noract. In fact, she was at the point of a nervous collapse, when slowlyfrom out the void there rose to her view and pierced its way into hermind the outline of the door upon which she had been steadily looking butwithout seeing it till now. Why did she start as it thus took on shapebefore her? There was nothing strange or mysterious about it. It lednowhere; it hid nothing, unless it was the yard upon which it directlyopened.
But that yard! She remembered it well. It was unlike any other she hadever seen in this country or her own. It was small and semicircular; itwas shut in by a high board fence except at the extreme end, where it wasmet by a swinging bridge topping a forty-foot chasm. That bridge ledthrough a sparsely wooded forest to a road running in a quite differentdirection from the one by which the house was approached. As she stroveto recall her memories of it, she became more and more assured that herone and only opportunity for a successful flight lay that way. Moved tojoy at the thought, she bowed her head for one wild moment in heartfeltthankfulness and then quickly drew the bolts of the door which offeredher this happy deliverance.
She did not mean to seek escape to-night, but an irresistible impulse,which quite robbed her of her judgment, drove her to take a look into theyard and make sure for herself that the bridge was still there andeverything as she had last seen it.
But when with the help of the wind she pulled open the heavy door andstood, throbbing under the force of the gale, on the shallow stepoutside, she found herself confronted by a darkness so hollow and soabsolute that she felt as though she had stumbled into a pit. But insteadof retreating, if only to procure a lantern, she took the one step downto the narrow walk which led through grass and flowers to the edge of theplateau from which the bridge extended. Would she be satisfied now? No,she must see the bridge, or if she could not see it, must feel it withher foot or touch it with her hand. Once sure of its presence there, shewould return, take off her c
lothing and seek refreshment.
But how was she to find her way in such absolute darkness? Alone with thedying tempest, now moaning in fitful gusts, now shrieking a last protestin her ear, she stood peering helplessly before her. Already her arms hadgone out like those of a blind person loosed upon an unknown road. Shewas conscious of a great fear. All the solitude of her position hadrushed upon her. She felt herself lost, forsaken; yet she had no idea ofturning back. If she could but find some support--something upon whichto lay her fingers. She thought of the fence, and her courage revived. Ifshe could but reach and follow that!
There were obstacles in her way. She was sure of this, for she rememberedsome of them, and Elvira no more changed her garden than her house. Butwith care she succeeded in getting around these, and soon she knew by thelessened force of the wind that she was near, if not directly under, thehigh fence upon which she depended for guidance. A few bushes--anotherunexpected obstacle, followed by a bad stumble--separated her from thecontact for which she had reached; then by a final effort her fingersfound the boards and she went eagerly on, dragging herself through thewet without knowing it, and only stopping with a sense of shock, when herhand, sliding from the boards, fell groping about in midair with nothingto grasp at. She had come to the end of the fence and was within a footof the bridge--if the bridge was still there.
But her fears on this score were few, and she felt about with hand andfoot till the former struck the rail at her side, and the latter thenarrow planking spanning the gorge.
She hesitated now. Who would not? But the impulse which had led her thusfar continued to urge her on. She stepped upon the bridge and proceededto cross it, clinging to the rail with a feverish clutch, and feelingevery board with her foot before venturing to trust her full weight uponit. She found them seemingly firm, and when about halfway across shestopped to listen for the roar of the mountain stream which she knew tobe rushing over its rocky bed some forty awesome feet below her.
She heard it, but the swish of the trees lining the gorge was in herstraining ears and half drowned its sullen sound. With feelingsimpossible to describe, she tossed up her arms to the skies, where asingle brilliant star was looking through the mass of quickly flying,quickly disintegrating clouds. Then she sought again the safety of theguiding rail, and clinging desperately to it, took one more step andstopped with a smothered shriek. The rail had snapped under her hand andhad gone tumbling down into the abyss. She heard it as it struck, orthought she did, and for a moment stood breathless and fearing to move,the world and all it held vanishing in semi-unconsciousness from heartand mind. What was she but a trembling atom floating in an unknown voidon the fathomless sea of eternity! Then, as her mind steadied, she beganto feel once more the boards under her feet, and to hear the smitingtogether of the great limbs wrestling in the depths of the forest. Sheeven caught such a homely sound as the violent slamming of the door shehad left unlatched behind her; and summoning up all her courage, whichwas not small when she was released from her first surprise, she steppedfirmly backward till she felt the rail strong again under her clutch.Then she turned resolutely and retraced her steps along the bridge and soacross the plateau to the house whose light had acted as a beacon to herwhenever the door blew wide enough to let the one inner beam be seen.
When she was inside again, she lingered for a long time in the darkeninghall, her slight form and whitened head leaning against the wall in adesolation such as few hearts know. Then something within the womanflared up in a rekindled flame, and she passed quickly into the roomwhere she had left her lamp burning; and blowing it out, she threwherself down on a couch and tried to sleep.
An hour later the moon shone in upon her pale features and wild, staringeyes upturned to meet it. Then it vanished, and she and the whole housewere given up again to darkness.
She had forgotten to eat, though the cupboards, in this well-storedhouse, were quite full.