Part 36 (1/2)
Closing the door which led into the house, I opened that which gave upon the yard, then placed a flickering candle on the counter, and my chair in front of it facing the darkness. All through the evening the drenching rain had fallen, with sob of dripping eaves. Now at the open doorway, loud, insistent, the great diapason of the rain was choral to those little sad voices which fluted, throbbed, and muttered near at hand, the lament of the water drops, the liquid note from every pool, the plaint of trickling streamlets.
It is the presence of the dead which makes their resting-places serene with quiet beauty, instinct with tenderness toward all living hearts.
That presence had entered the good log house, a home of human warmth, of kindly comfort, made holy, consecrate, where people would hush their voices, constrained to reverence.
And in the gracious monotone of the rain, compound of voices joined in requiem, I felt a soothing melancholy beauty, knowing well how peace not of this world had come into the homestead.
But outside that, beyond, in the dread forest, a threat, a menace filled the outer darkness. Fear clutched at my heart, a presentiment told me of evil, of instant danger. Then, as though the horror in the night moved other hearts as well as mine, the Chinese cook came groping his way through the dining-hall and humbly scratched at the door. I let him in and he crept to a stool in the near corner. I whispered to him:
”Are you frightened, Sam?”
”Too plenty much,” he quavered, ”me flitened bad.”
He lighted his pipe and seemed, like me, to be eased by human company.
Once only he moved, and in the queerest way came with his long yellow fingers to touch me, then timid, but rea.s.sured, crept back to his stool in the corner.
Soon Nurse Panton joined us, her hair in corkscrews, looking very plain, peevish because she had not been called at midnight. ”What's the matter?” she asked crossly, and for answer I pulled down the blinds. She s.h.i.+vered as she pa.s.sed the open door to take a chair behind it. She begged me to close the door, but the night was warm, and besides I dared not. Nurse and Chinaman each had a gla.s.s of port, and so did I, feeling much better afterward.
An hour pa.s.sed, the Chinaman nodding like those ridiculous mandarin figures with loose heads, the nurse pallid against the gloom, staring until she got on my nerves. I always disliked that woman with her precise routine and large flat feet.
Far off I heard the thud of a gunshot, then three shots all together, and afterward a fifth. The evil in the night was coming nearer, and I said to myself, ”If I were really frightened I should close that door.
I'm half a coward.”
The hero himself had strung his Victoria Cross upon a riband which I wore about my neck. Could I wear the cross and set an example of cowardice to these poor creatures who crouched in the corners of the room? To show fear is a privilege of the underbred. But I did long for Jesse.
Through the murmurs of the nearer rain, I felt a throb in the ground, then heard a sound grow, of a horse galloping. The swift soft rhythm, now loud, now very faint again, then very near, echoed against the barns, thundered across the bridge, splashed through the flooded yard, and ceased abruptly.
Billy had come home from the Falls, he was stabling his roan, he was crossing the yard in haste, his spurs clanked at the door-step and, dreading his news, a sudden panic seized me. I fled behind the bar.
He entered, astream with rain, shading his eyes against the candle-light; then as I moved he called out, as though I were at a distance, begging me for brandy. His face was haggard, his hand as he drank was covered with dried blood, he slammed the gla.s.s on the counter so that it broke.
”You heard the shots?” he said.
”At Spite House?” I whispered.
He nodded.
”You were there?” I asked.
”Half a mile beyond. When I got there it was all dark. Looked in through the end window, but the rain got down my neck, so I went round. The front door was standing open. I listened a while. No need to get shot myself. Thought the place was derelict. Then I heard groans.
”Struck a bunch of matches then, found the hall lamp, and got it alight.
Wished I'd got a gun, but there wasn't nothing handy except the poker, so I took that and the light--just followed the groans. He was lying on the barroom floor.”
”Brooke?”
”Yes. Shot through the throat, blood spurting down the side of his neck, making a big pool on the oil-cloth. You know the thing you make with a stick and a scarf to twist up? A tourniquet, yes. Well, it choked the swine, so I quit. He whispered something about my thumb hurting the wound, so I told him my father's neck hurt worse.
”Up to that I thought he was just acting, playing pathetic to touch my feelings. Once he muttered your name, and then he was dead.”
”Brooke dead!”