Part 1 (2/2)
”But I'm not a wild beast,” he protested, inwardly. ”I'm a man--with human rights. By G.o.d, I'll never let them go!”
He wheeled round again, toward the lower lands and the lake. The lights glowed more brightly as the darkness deepened, each lamp s.h.i.+ning from some little nest, where men and women were busied with the small tasks and interests that made life. This was liberty! This was what he had a claim upon! All his instincts were civilized, domestic. He would not go back to the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had been from choice. There had been pleasure then, in waking to the smell of balsam and opening his eyes upon the stars. But to do the same thing from compulsion, because men had closed up their ranks and ejected him from their midst, was an outrage he would not accept. In the darkness his head went up, while his eyes burned with a fire more intense than that of any of the mild beacons from the towns below, as he strode back to the old root-hedge and leaped it.
He felt the imprudence, not to say the uselessness, of the movement, as he made it; and yet he kept on, finding himself in a field in which cows and horses were startled from their munching by his footstep. It was another degree nearer to the organized life in which he was ent.i.tled to a place.
s.h.i.+elded by a shrubbery of sleeping goldenrod, he stole down the slope, making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and came home. Following the trail, he pa.s.sed a meadow, a potato-field, and a patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch with the civilization that clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and promontories of the lake, while its tendrils withered as soon as they were flung up toward the mountains.
Only a few steps more, and, between the yews, he saw the light streaming from the open doors and windows of a house.
It was such a house as, during the two years he had spent up in the high timber-lands, he had caught sight of only on the rare occasions when he came within the precincts of a town--a house whose outward aspect, even at night, suggested something of taste, means, and social position for its occupants. Slipping nearer still, he saw curtains fluttering in the breeze of the August evening, and Virginia creeper dropping in heavily ma.s.sed garlands from the roof of a columned veranda. A French window was open to the floor, and within, he could see vaguely, people were seated.
The scene was simple enough, but to the fugitive it had a kind of sacredness. It was like a glimpse into the heaven he has lost caught by a fallen angel. For the moment he forgot his hunger and weakness, in this feast for the heart and eyes. It was with something of the pleasure of recognizing long-absent faces that he traced the line of a sofa against the wall, and stated to himself that there was a row of prints hanging above it. There had been no such details as these to note in his cell, nor yet in the courtroom which for months had const.i.tuted his only change of outlook Insensibly to himself, he crept nearer, drawn by the sheer spell of gazing.
Finding a gate leading into the garden, he opened it softly, leaving it so, in order to secure his retreat. From the shelter of one of the rounded yew-trees he could make his observations more at ease. He perceived now that the house stood on a terrace, and turned the garden front, its more secluded aspect, in his direction. The high hedges, common in these lakeside villages, screened it from the road; while the open French window threw a shaft of brightness down the yew-tree walk, casting the rest of the garden into gloom.
To Norrie Ford, peeping furtively from behind one of the domes of clipped foliage, there was exasperation in the fact that his new position gave him no glimpse of the people in the room. His hunger to see them became for the minute more insistent than that for food. They represented that human society from which he had waked one morning to find himself cut off, as a rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from the mainland of which it has formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to span the gulf separating him from his own past that he peered now into this room, whose inmates were only pa.s.sing the hours between the evening meal and bedtime. That people could sit tranquilly reading books or playing games filled him with a kind of wonder.
When he considered it safe he slipped along to what he hoped would prove a better point of view, but, finding it no more advantageous, he darted to still another. The light lured him as it might lure an insect of the night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He knew the danger of his situation, but he could not bring himself to turn and steal away till he had fixed the picture of that cheerful interior firmly on his memory. The risk was great, but the glimpse of life was worth it.
With powers of observation quickened by his plight, he noted that the home was just such a one as that from which he had sprung--one where old engravings hung on the walls, while books filled the shelves, and papers and periodicals strewed the tables. The furnis.h.i.+ngs spoke of comfort and a modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children, seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin, might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell over the hand and arm supporting her cheek, so that Ford could only guess at the blue eyes concealed behind them. Now and then the boy turned a page before she was ready, whereupon followed pretty cries of protestation. It was perhaps this mimic quarrel that called forth a remark from some one sitting within the shadow.
”Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you stay up as late as this at home.”
”Oh yes, they do,” came Billy's answer, given with st.u.r.dy a.s.surance. ”I often stay up till nine.”
”Well, it's half past now; so you'd both better come and say good-night.”
With one foot resting on the turf and the other raised to the first step of the terrace, as he stood with folded arms, Ford watched the little scene, in which the children closed their book, pushed back their chairs, and crossed the room to say good-night to the two who were seated in the shadow. The boy came first, with hands thrust into his trousers pockets in a kind of grave nonchalance. The little girl fluttered along behind, but broke her journey across the room by stepping into the opening of the long window and looking out into the night. Ford stood breathless and motionless, expecting her to see him and cry out. But she turned away and danced again into the shadow, after which he saw her no more. The silence that fell within the room told him that the elders were left alone.
Stealthily, like a thief, Ford crept up the steps and over the turf of the terrace. The rising of the wind at that minute drowned all sound of his movements, so that he was tempted right on to the veranda, where a coa.r.s.e matting deadened his tread. He dared not hold himself upright on this dangerous ground, but, crouching low, he was blotted from sight, while he himself could see what pa.s.sed within. He would only, he said, look once more into kindly human faces and steal away as he came.
He could perceive now that the lady who had spoken was an invalid reclining in a long chair, lightly covered with a rug. A fragile, dainty little creature, her laces, trinkets, and rings revealed her as one clinging to the elegancies of another phase of life, though Fate had sent her to live, and perhaps to die, here on the edge of the wilderness. He made the same observation with regard to the man who sat with his back to the window. He was in informal evening dress--a circ.u.mstance that, in this land of more or less primitive simplicity, spoke of a sense of exile. He was slight and middle-aged, and though his face was hidden, Ford received the impression of having seen him already, but from another point of view.
His habit of using a magnifying-gla.s.s as, with some difficulty, he read a newspaper in the light of a green-shaded lamp, seemed to Ford especially familiar, though more pressing thoughts kept him from trying to remember where and when he had seen some one do the same thing within the recent past.
As he crouched by the window watching them, it came into his mind that they were just the sort of people of whom he had least need to be afraid.
The sordid tragedy up in the mountains had probably interested them little, and in any case they could not as yet have heard of his escape. If he broke in on them and demanded food, they would give it to him as to some common desperado, and be glad to let him go. If there was any one to inspire terror, it was he, with his height, and youth, and wildness of aspect. He was thinking out the most natural method of playing some small comedy of violence, when suddenly the man threw down the paper with a sigh. On the instant the lady spoke, as though she had been awaiting her cue.
”I don't see why you should feel so about it,” she said, making an effort to control a cough. ”You must have foreseen something of this sort when you took up the law.”
The answer reached Ford's ears only as a murmur, but he guessed its import from the response.
”True,” she returned, when he had spoken, ”to foresee possibilities is one thing, and to meet them is another; but the antic.i.p.ation does something to nerve one for the necessity when it comes.”
Again there was a murmur in which Ford could distinguish nothing, but again her reply told him what it meant.
”The right and the wrong, as I understand it,” she went on, ”is something with which you have nothing to do. Your part is to administer the law, not to judge of how it works.”
Once more Ford was unable to catch what was said in reply, but once more the lady's speech enlightened him.
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