Gordon perceived a personal opportunity in the prospect of this guest for the evening. He must have counsel, he was thinking. He could not act on his own responsibility in this emergency that had suddenly confronted him. He was still too overwhelmed by the strange experience he had encountered, too shaken. This physician was a man of intelligence, of skill in his chosen profession, necessarily a man worth while in many ways. He was an intimate friend of the Keene family, and might the more heartily lend a helping hand. The thought, the hope, cleared Gordon"s brow, but still the impress of the stress of the afternoon was so marked that the girl was moved to comment in her brusque way as they stood together on the cool, fern-embowered veranda.
"Why, Mr. Gordon," she exclaimed in surprise, "you have no idea how strange you look! You must have overworked awfully this afternoon. Why, you look as if you had seen a ghost!"
To her amazement, he recoiled abruptly. Involuntarily, he pa.s.sed his hand over his face, as if seeking to obliterate the traces she had deciphered. Then, with an obvious effort, he recovered a show of equanimity; he declared that it was only because he was so tousled in contrast with her fresh finery that she thought he looked supernaturally horrible! He would go upstairs forthwith and array himself anew.
Gordon proved himself a true prophet, for Rigdon came to dine. With the postprandial cigars, the two gentlemen, at Gordon"s suggestion, repaired to the sitting-room to smoke, instead of joining their hostess on the veranda, where tobacco was never interdicted. Indeed, they did not come forth thence for nearly two hours, and were palpably embarra.s.sed when Geraldine declared in bewilderment, gazing at them in the lamplight that fell from within, through one of the great windows, that now both looked as if they had seen a ghost!
Despite their efforts to sustain the interest of the conversation, they were obviously distrait, and had a proclivity to fall into sudden silences, and Mrs. Keene found them amazingly unresponsive and dull. Thus it was that she rose as if to retire for the night while the hour was still early. In fact, she intended to utilize the opportunity to have some dresses of the first mourning outfit tried on, for which the patient maid was now awaiting her.
"I leave you a charming subst.i.tute," she said in making her excuses. "Geraldine need not come in yet-it is not late."
Her withdrawal seemed to give a fresh impetus to some impulse with which Rigdon had been temporizing. He recurred to it at once. "You contemplate giving it to the public," he said to Gordon; "why not try its effect on a disinterested listener first, and judge from that?"
Gordon a.s.sented with an extreme gravity that surprised Geraldine; then Rigdon hesitated, evidently scarcely knowing how to begin. He looked vaguely at the moon riding high in the heavens above the long, broad expanse of the Mississippi and the darkling forests on either hand. Sometimes a shaft of light, a sudden luminous glister, betokened the motion of the currents gliding in the sheen. "Last night," he said in a tense, bated voice-"last night Mr. Gordon saw the phantom of Bogue Holauba. Stop! Hush!"-for the girl had sprung half screaming from her chair. "This is important." He laid his hand on her arm to detain her. "We want you to help us!"
"Help you! Why, you scare me to death!" She had paused, but stood trembling from head to foot.
"There is something explained in one of Mr. Keene"s papers,-addressed to Mr. Gordon; and we have been much startled by the coincidence of his-his vision."
"Did he see-really--?" Geraldine had sunk back in her chair, her face ghastly pale.
"Of course it must be some illusion," said Rigdon. "The effect of the mist, perhaps--"
"Only, there was no mist," said Gordon.
"Perhaps a snag waving in the wind."
"Only, there was no wind."
"Perhaps a snag tossing in the motion of the water,-at all events, you can"t say there was no water." Dr. Rigdon glanced at Gordon with a genial smile.
"Mighty little water for the Mississippi," Gordon sought to respond in the same key.
"You know the record of these apparitions." Leaning forward, one arm on his knee, the doc.u.ment in question in his hand, Rigdon looked up into Geraldine"s pale face. "In the old days there used to be a sort of water-gypsy, with a queer little trading-boat that plied the region of the bends-a queer little old man, too-Polish, I think, foreign certainly-and the b.u.t.t of all the wags alongsh.o.r.e, at the stores and the wood-yards, the cotton-sheds and the wharf-boats. By some accident, it was thought, the boat got away when he was befuddled with drink in a wood-chopper"s cabin-a stout, trig little craft it was! When he found it was gone, he was wild, for although he saw it afloat at a considerable distance down the Mississippi, it suddenly disappeared near Bogue Holauba, cargo and all. No trace of its fate was ever discovered. He haunted these banks then-whatever he may have done since-screaming out his woes for his losses, and his rage and curses on the miscreants who had set the craft adrift-for he fully believed it was done in malice-beating his breast and tearing his hair. The Civil War came on presently, and the man was lost sight of in the national commotions. No one thought of him again till suddenly something-an apparition, an illusion, the semblance of a man-began to patrol the banks of Bogue Holauba, and beat its breast and tear its hair and bewail its woes in pantomime, and set the whole country-side aghast, for always disasters follow its return."
"And how do you account for that phase?" asked Gordon, obviously steadying his voice by an effort of the will.
"The apparition always shows up at low water,-the disasters are usually typhoid," replied the physician.
"Mr. Keene died from malaria," Geraldine murmured musingly.
The two men glanced significantly at each other. Then Rigdon resumed: "I mustered the hardihood on one occasion to row up to the bank of Bogue Holauba for a closer survey. The thing vanished on my approach. There was a snag hard by, fast anch.o.r.ed in the bottom of the Bogue. It played slackly to and fro with the current, but I could not see any way by which it or its shadow could have produced the illusion."
"Is this what you had to tell me?" demanded Geraldine pertinently. "I knew all that already."
"No, no," replied the Doctor reluctantly. "Will you tell it, Mr. Gordon, or shall I?"
"You, by all means, if you will," said Gordon gloomily. "G.o.d knows I should be glad never to speak of it."
"Well," Rigdon began slowly, "Mr. Gordon was made by his cousin Jasper Keene not only the executor of his will, but the repository of a certain confession, which he may destroy or make public as he sees proper. It seems that in Mr. Keene"s gay young days, running wild in his vacation from college on a secluded plantation, he often lacked congenial companionship, and he fell in with an uncouth fellow of a lower social grade, who led him into much detrimental adventure. Among other incidents of very poor fun, the two were notable in hectoring and guying the old Polish trader, who, when drunk on mean whisky as he often was, grew violent and antagonistic. He went very far in his denunciations one fatal night, and by way of playing him a trick in return, they set his boat adrift by cutting the rope that tied the craft to a tree on the bank. The confession states that they supposed the owner was then aboard and would suffer no greater hardship than having to use the sweeps with considerable energy to row her in to a landing again. They were genuinely horrified when he came running down the bank, both arms out-stretched, crying out that his all, his all was floating away on that tumultuous, merciless tide. Before any skiff could be launched, before any effort could be made to reach the trading-boat, she suddenly disappeared. The Mississippi was at flood height, and it was thought that the boat struck some drifting obstruction, swamped, and went down in deep water. The agents in this disaster were never suspected, but as soon as Jasper Keene had come of age, and had command of any means of his own, his first act was to have an exhaustive search made for the old fellow, with a view of financial rest.i.tution. But the owner of the trading-boat had died, spending his last years in the futile effort to obtain the insurance money. As the little he had left was never claimed, no representative could profit by the rest.i.tution that Jasper Keene had planned, and he found what satisfaction he could in giving it secretly to an old man"s charity. Then the phantom began to take his revenge. He appeared on the banks of Bogue Holauba, and straightway the only child of the mansion sickened and died. Mr. Keene"s first wife died after the second apparition. Either it was the fancy of an ailing man, or perhaps the general report, but he notes that the spectre was bewailing its woes along the banks of Bogue Holauba when Jasper Keene himself was stricken by an illness which from the first he felt was fatal."
"I remember-I remember it was said at the time," Geraldine barely whispered.
"And now to the question: he leaves it to Mr. Gordon as his kinsman, solicitous of the family repute, to judge whether this confession should be made public or destroyed."
"Does he state any reasons for making it public?" demanded Geraldine, taking the doc.u.ment and glancing through its pages.
"Yes; as an expiation of his early misdeeds toward this man and, if any such thing there be, to placate the spirit of his old enemy; and lastly better to secure his peace with his Maker."
"And which do you say?" Geraldine turned an eager, spirited face toward Gordon, his dejected att.i.tude and countenance distinctly seen in the light from the lamp within the parlor, on a table close to the window.
"I frankly admit that the publication of that confession would humiliate me to the ground, but I fear that it ought to be given to the public, as he obviously desires!"
"And which do you say?" Geraldine was standing now, and swiftly whirled around toward Dr. Rigdon.
"I agree with Mr. Gordon-much against my will-but an honest confession is good for the soul!" he replied ruefully.
"You infidels!" she exclaimed tumultuously. "You have not one atom of Christian faith between you! To imagine that you can strike a bargain with the good G.o.d by letting a sick theory of expiation of a dying, fever-distraught creature besmirch his repute as a man and a gentleman, make his whole life seem like a whited sepulchre, and bring his name into odium,-as kind a man as ever lived,-and you know it!-as honest, and generous, and whole-souled, to be held up to scorn and humiliation because of a boyish prank forty years ago, that precipitated a disaster never intended,-bad enough, silly enough, even wicked enough, but not half so bad and silly and wicked as you, with your morbid shrinking from moral responsibility, and your ready contributive defamation of character. Tell me, you men, is this a testamentary paper, and you think it against the law to destroy it?"
"No, no, not that," said Rigdon.
"No, it is wholly optional," declared Gordon.
"Then, I will settle the question for you once for all, you wobblers!" She suddenly thrust the paper into the chimney of the lamp on the table just within the open window, and as it flared up she flung the doc.u.ment forth, blazing in every fibre, on the bare driveway below the veranda. "And now you may find, as best you can, some other means of exorcising the phantom of Bogue Holauba!"
HIS CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
He yearned for a sign from the heavens. Could one intimation be vouchsafed him, how it would confirm his faltering faith! Jubal Kennedy was of the temperament impervious to spiritual subtleties, fain to reach conclusions with the line and rule of mathematical demonstration. Thus, all unreceptive, he looked through the mountain gap, as through some stupendous gateway, on the splendors of autumn; the vast landscape glamorous in a transparent amethystine haze; the foliage of the dense primeval wilderness in the October richness of red and russet; the "hunter"s moon," a full sphere of illuminated pearl, high in the blue east while yet the dull vermilion sun swung westering above the ma.s.sive purple heights. He knew how the sap was sinking; that the growths of the year had now failed; presently all would be shrouded in snow, but only to rise again in the rea.s.surance of vernal quickening, to glow anew in the fullness of bloom, to attain eventually the perfection of fruition. And still he was deaf to the reiterated a.n.a.logy of death, and blind to the immanent obvious prophecy of resurrection and the life to come.
His thoughts, as he stood on this jutting crag in Sunrise Gap, were with a recent "experience meeting" at which he had sought to canva.s.s his spiritual needs. His demand of a sign from the heavens as evidence of the existence of the G.o.d of revelation, as a.s.surance of the awakening of divine grace in the human heart, as actual proof that wistful mortality is inherently endowed with immortality, had electrified this symposium. Though it was fashionable, so to speak, in this remote cove among the Great Smoky Mountains, to be repentant in rhetorical involutions and a self-accuser in fine-spun interpretations of sin, doubt, or more properly an eager questioning, a desire to possess the sacred mysteries of religion, was unprecedented. Kennedy was a proud man, reticent, reserved. Although the old parson, visibly surprised and startled, had gently invited his full confidence, Kennedy had hastily swallowed his words, as best he might, perceiving that the congregation had wholly misinterpreted their true intent and that certain gossips had an unholy relish of the sensation they had caused.
Thereafter he indulged his poignant longings for the elucidation of the veiled truths only when, as now, he wandered deep in the woods with his rifle on his shoulder. He could not have said to-day that he was nearer an inspiration, a hope, a "leading," than heretofore, but as he stood on the crag it was with the effect of a dislocation that he was torn from the solemn theme by an interruption at a vital crisis.
The faint vibrations of a violin stirred the reverent hush of the landscape in the blended light of the setting sun and the "hunter"s moon." Presently the musician came into view, advancing slowly through the aisles of the red autumn forest. A rapt figure it was, swaying in responsive ecstasy with the rhythmic cadence. The head, with its long, blowsy yellow hair, was bowed over the dark polished wood of the instrument; the eyes were half closed; the right arm, despite the eccentric patches on the sleeve of the old brown-jeans coat, moved with free, elastic gestures in all the liberties of a practiced bowing. If he saw the hunter motionless on the brink of the crag, the fiddler gave no intimation. His every faculty was as if enthralled by the swinging iteration of the sweet melancholy melody, rendered with a breadth of effect, an inspiration, it might almost have seemed, incongruous with the infirmities of the crazy old fiddle. He was like a creature under the sway of a spell, and apparently drawn by this dulcet lure of the enchantment of sound was the odd procession that trailed silently after him through these deep mountain fastnesses.
A woman came first, arrayed in a ragged purple skirt and a yellow blouse open at the throat, displaying a slender white neck which upheld a face of pensive, inert beauty. She clasped in her arms a delicate infant, ethereal of aspect with its flaxen hair, transparently pallid complexion, and wide blue eyes. It was absolutely quiescent, save that now and then it turned feebly in its waxen hands a little striped red-and-yellow pomegranate. A st.u.r.dy blond toddler trudged behind, in a checked blue cotton frock, short enough to disclose cherubic pink feet and legs bare to the knee; he carried that treasure of rural juveniles, a cornstalk violin. An old hound, his tail suavely wagging, padded along the narrow path; and last of all came, with frequent pause to crop the wayside herbage, a large cow, brindled red and white.
"The whole fambly!" muttered Kennedy. Then, aloud, "Why don"t you uns kerry the baby, Basil Bedell, an" give yer wife a rest?"
At the prosaic suggestion the crystal realm of dreams was shattered. The bow, with a quavering discordant sc.r.a.pe upon the strings, paused. Then Bedell slowly mastered the meaning of the interruption.
"Kerry the baby? Why, Aurely won"t let none but herself tech that baby." He laughed as he tossed the tousled yellow hair from his face, and looked over his shoulder to speak to the infant. "It air sech a plumb special delightsome peach, it air,-it air!"
The pale face of the child lighted up with a smile of recognition and a faint gleam of mirth.
"I jes" kem out ennyhows ter drive up the cow," Basil added.
"Big job," sneered Kennedy. ""Pears-like it takes the whole fambly to do it."