Part 39 (1/2)

As she spoke there rose in my mind a sudden consciousness that perhaps my wisdom was at fault. How was it that I--a coa.r.s.e-fibred male animal, returned from slaughter, even now with the blood of fellow-creatures on my hands--should be discoursing of duty and of good and bad to this pure and gentle and sweet-souled woman? What was my t.i.tle to do this?--to rebuke her for not seeing the right? Had I been in truth generous? Rather had I not, in the purely selfish desire to win my own self-approbation, brought pain and perplexity down upon the head of this poor woman? I had thought much of my own goodness--my own strength of purpose and self-sacrifice and fidelity to duty. Had I given so much as a mental glance at the effect of my acts upon the one whom, of all others, I should have first guarded from trouble and grief?

My tongue was tied. Perhaps I had been all wrong. Perhaps I should not have brought back to her the man whose folly and obstinacy had so well-nigh wrecked her life. I could no longer be sure. I kept silence, feeling indirectly now that her woman's instinct would be truer and better than my logic. She was thinking; she would find the real right and wrong.

Ah, no! To this day we are not settled in our minds, we two old people, as to the exact balance between duty and common-sense in that strange question of our far-away youth.

There broke upon our ears, of a sudden, as we neared the wooded crest of the gulf, a weird and piercing scream--an unnatural and repellent yell, like a hyena's horrid hooting! It rose with terrible distinctness from the thicket close before us. As its echoes returned, we heard confused sounds of other voices, excited and vibrant.

Daisy clutched my arm, and began hurrying me forward, impelled by some formless fear of she knew not what.

”It is Tulp,” she murmured, as we went breathlessly on. ”Oh, I should have kept him back! Why did I not think of it?”

”What about Tulp?” I asked, with difficulty keeping beside her in the narrow path. ”I had no thought of him. I did not see him. He was not among the others, was he?”

”He has gone mad!”

”What--Tulp, poor boy? Oh, not as bad as that, surely! He has been strange and slow of wit for years, but--”

”Nay, the tidings of your death--you know I told you we heard that you were dead--drove him into perfect madness. I doubt he knew you when you came. Only yesterday we spoke of confining him, but poor old father pleaded not. When you see Tulp, you shall decide. Oh! what has happened?

Who is this man?”

In the path before us, some yards away, appeared the tall, gaunt form of Enoch, advancing slowly. In the dusk of the wooded shades behind him huddled the group of slaves. They bore nothing in their hands. Where was the canoe? They seemed affrighted or oppressed by something out of the common, and Enoch, too, wore a strange air. What could it mean?

When Enoch saw us he lifted his hand in a warning gesture.

”Have her go back!” he called out, with brusque sharpness.

”Will you walk back a little?” I asked her. ”There is something here we do not understand. I will join you in a moment.

”For G.o.d's sake, what is it, Enoch?” I demanded, as I confronted him.

”Tell me quick.”

”Well, we've had our five days' tussle for nothing, and you're minus a n.i.g.g.e.r. That's about what it comes to.”

”Speak out, can't you! Is he dead? What was the yell we heard?”

”It was all done like a flash of lightning. We were coming up the side nighest us here--we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs over--when all at once that hump-backed n.i.g.g.e.r of yours raised a scream like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it went, and he with it--rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!”

The negroes broke forth in a babel of mournful cries at this, and cl.u.s.tered about us. I grew sick and faint under this shock of fresh horrors, and was fain to lean on Enoch's arm, as I turned to walk back to where I had left Daisy. She was not visible as we approached, and I closed my eyes in abject terror of some further tragedy.

Thank G.o.d, she had only swooned, and lay mercifully senseless in the tall gra.s.s, her waxen face upturned in the twilight.

Chapter x.x.xVII.

The Peaceful Ending of It All.

In the general paralysis of suffering and despair which rested now upon the Valley, the terrible double tragedy of the gulf pa.s.sed almost unnoted.

Women everywhere were mourning for the husbands, sons, lovers who would never return. Fathers strove in vain to look dry-eyed at familiar places which should know the brave lads--true boys of theirs--no more. The play and prattle of children were hushed in a hundred homes where some honest farmer's life, struck fiercely at by a savage or Tory, still hung in the dread balance. Each day from some house issued forth the procession of death, until all our little churchyards along the winding river had more new graves than old--not to speak of that grim, unconsecrated G.o.d's-acre in the forest pa.s.s, more cruel still to think upon. And with all this to bear, there was no a.s.surance that the morrow might not bring the torch and tomahawk of invasion to our very doors.