Part 3 (1/2)
A mile more down the windings of the lake, and Ann began counting the trees between certain landmarks. Then into an opening between the trees which could not have been observed by a casual glance she steered her boat, and worked it on into a little open pa.s.sage-way among their trunks. The way widened as she followed it, and then closed again. Where the pa.s.sage ended, one great tree had fallen, and its trunk with upturned branches was lying, wedged between two standing trunks, in an almost horizontal position. On it a man was sitting, a wild, miserable figure of a man, who looked as if he might have been some savage being who was at home there, but who spoke in a language too vicious and profane for any savage.
He leaned out from his branch as far as he dared, and welcomed the girl with curses because she had not come sooner, because it was now the small hours of the night and he had expected her in the evening.
”Be quiet, father,” said the girl; ”what's the use of talking like that!” Then she held the boat under the tree and helped him to slip down into it, where, in spite of his rage, he stretched his legs with an evident animal satisfaction. He wallowed in the straitened liberty that the boat gave, lying down in the bottom and gently kicking out his cramped limbs, while the girl held tight to the trees, steadying the boat with her feet.
It was this power of taking an evident sensual satisfaction in such small luxuries as he was able to obtain that had alone attached Markham to his daughter. His character belonged to a type found both among men and women; it was a nature entirely selfish and endowed with an instinctive art in working upon the unselfish sentiments of others--an art which even creates unselfishness in other selfish beings.
”I came as soon as I could,” she said. ”I suppose you did not want me to put Toyner on your track.”
”Yee owe,” said the wretched man, stretching himself luxuriously. ”I've been a-standin' up and a-sittin' down and a-standin' up since last night, an'----” Here he suddenly remembered something. He sat up and looked round fearfully.
”When it got dark before the moon came I saw the devil! One! I think there was half a dozen of them! I saw them comin' at me in the air. I'd have gone mad if they hadn't gone off when the moon rose.”
”Lie still, father, until I give you something to eat,” she said.
While she was unfastening her bundle, she looked about her, and saw how the s.p.a.ces of shadow between the grey branches might easily seem to take solid form and weird shape to a brain that was fevered with excitement of crime and of flight and enforced vigil. She had a painful thing to tell this man--that she could not, as she had hoped, release him from his desperate prison that night; but she did not tell him until she had fed him first and given him drink too. She insisted upon his taking the food first. It was highly seasoned, beef with mustard upon it, and pickles. All the while he watched her hand with thirsty eye. When he had gulped his food to please her, she produced a small bottle. He cursed her when he saw its size, but all the same he held out his hand for it eagerly and drank its contents, shutting his eyes with satisfaction and licking his lips.
All this time she was steadying the boat by holding on to a tree with a strong arm.
”Now it's hard on you, father, but you'll have to stay here another night. Down at The Mills they're watching for you, and it would be sure death for you to try and get through the swamp, even if I could take you in the boat to the edge anywhere.”
The man, who had been entirely absorbed with eating and drinking and stretching himself, now gave a low howl of anguish; then he struggled to his knees and shook his fist in her face. ”By ---- I'll throw you out of this 'ere boat, I will; what do yer come tellin' me such a thing as that for? Don't yer know I'd liefer die--don't yer know that?” He brought his fist nearer and nearer to her eyes. ”Don't yer know that?”
It appeared that he would have struck her, but by a dexterous twist of her body and a pull upon the tree she jerked the boat so that he lost his balance, not entirely, but enough to make him right himself with care and sit down again, realising for the time being that it was she who was mistress of this question--who should be thrown out of the boat and drowned.
”Of course I'll row you to The Mills, if it's to jail you want to go; but Walker is pretty bad, they say. I think it'll be murder they'll bring you up for; and it ain't no sort of use trying to prove that you didn't do it!”
The miserable man put his dirty knotted hands before his face and howled again. But even that involuntary sound was furtive lest any one should hear. He might have shrieked and roared with all the strength that was in him--there was no human ear within reach--but the instinct of cowardice kept him from making any more noise than was necessary to rend and break the heart of the woman beside him,--that, although he was only half conscious of it, was his purpose in crying. He had a fiendish desire to make her suffer for bringing him such news.
Ann was not given to feeling for others, yet now it was intense suffering to her to see him shaking, writhing, moving like a beast in pain. She did not think of it as her suffering; she transferred it all to him, and supposed that it was the realisation of his misery that she experienced.
At last she said: ”There's one fellow up to the falls that knows a track through the north of the marsh to sound ground; I heard him tell it one day how he'd found it out. It's that David Brown that's been coming round to see Christa. Christa can get the chart he made from him by to-morrow night--I know she can. I'll try to be here earlier than I was to-night. And I brought you strips of stuff, father, so that you could tie yourself on to the tree and have a sort of a sleep; and I brought a few drops of morphia, just enough to make you feel sleepy and stupid, and make the time pa.s.s a bit quicker.”
For a long while he writhed and cried, telling her that it took all the wits that he had to keep awake enough to keep the devils off him without taking stuff to make him sleep, and that he was sure she'd never come back, and that he would very likely be left on the tree to rot or to fall into the water.
All that he said came so near to being true that it caused her the utmost pain to hear it. He was clever enough by instinct, not by thought, to know that mere idle cries could not torture her as did the true picture of the fears and dangers that encompa.s.sed him in his wild hiding-place. The endurance of this torture exhausted her as nothing had ever exhausted her before; yet all the time she never doubted but that the pain was his, and that she was merely a spectator.
She soothed him at last, not by gentleness and caresses--no such communication ever pa.s.sed between them--but by plain, practical, hopeful suggestions spoken out clearly in the intervals of his whining. At length she esteemed it time to use the spur instead of stroking him any longer. ”Get up on the tree, father, and I will give you the rest of the things when you are fixed on the branch. If Toyner's stirring again before I get home, he'll find means to keep me from coming to-morrow night. Climb up now. I'll give you the things. There--there isn't enough of the morphia drops to get you to sleep, only to make you feel easy; and here's the strips of blanket I've sewed together to tie yourself on with. It's nice and soft--climb up now and fix yourself. It's Toyner that will catch me, and you too, if I don't get back. Look at the moon--near the middle of the sky.”
She established him upon the branch again with the comforts that she had promised, and then she gave him one thing more, of which she had not spoken before. It was a bag of food that would last, if need be, for several days.
He took it as evidence that she had lied to him in her a.s.surance that she could return the next night. As she moved her boat out of the secret openings among the dead trees, she heard him whining with fear and calling a volley of curses after her.
That her father's words were all profane did not trouble Ann in the least. It was a meaningless trick of speech. Markham meant no more at this time by his most shocking oaths than does any man by his habitual expletive. Ann knew this perfectly. G.o.d knew it too.
Yet if his profanity was mechanical, the man himself was without trace of good. There was much reason that Ann's heart should be wrung with pity. It is the divine quality of kins.h.i.+p that it produces pity even for what is purely evil. Ann rowed her boat homeward with a hard determination in her heart to save her father at any cost.
CHAPTER V.
An hour later the small solitary boat crept up the current of the moonlit river. The weary girl plied her oars, looking carefully for the nook under the roots of the old pine whence she had taken the boat.