At Fault Part 27

"You gwine git hu't, woman; I done tole you dat; don' wan' listen,"

returned Nathan with halting breath.

"Who gwine hu't me?"

Whether from tardy gallantry or from pre-occupation with his arduous work, Nathan offered no reply to this challenge, and his silence left Aunt Agnes in possession of the field.

They were in full mid-stream. Hosmer and the teamster were in the fore end of the boat; Nathan in the rear, and Aunt Agnes standing in the center between the wagon and the protecting railing, against which she leaned her clasped hands that still upheld the semblance of umbrella.

The ill-mated horses stood motionless, letting fall their dejected heads with apathetic droop. The rain was dripping from their glistening coats, and making a great patter as it fell upon the tarpaulins covering the cotton bales.

Suddenly came an exclamation: "Gret G.o.d!" from Aunt Agnes, so genuine in its amazement and dismay, that the three men with one accord looked quickly up at her, then at the point on which her terrified gaze was fixed. Almost on the instant of the woman's cry, was heard a shrill, piercing, feminine scream.

What they saw was the section of land on which stood Marie Louise's cabin, undermined--broken away from the main body and gradually gliding into the water. It must have sunk with a first abrupt wrench, for the brick chimney was shaken from its foundation, the smoke issuing in dense clouds from its shattered sides, the house toppling and the roof caving. For a moment Hosmer lost his senses. He could but look, as if at some awful apparition that must soon pa.s.s from sight and leave him again in possession of his reason. The leaning house was half submerged when f.a.n.n.y appeared at the door, like a figure in a dream; seeming a natural part of the awfulness of it. He only gazed on. The two negroes uttered loud lamentations.

"Pull with the current!" cried the teamster, first to regain his presence of mind. It had needed but this, to awaken Hosmer to the situation.

"Leave off," he cried at Nathan, who was wringing his hands. "Take hold that oar or I'll throw you overboard." The trembling ashen negro obeyed on the instant.

"Hold fast--for G.o.d's sake--hold fast!" he shouted to f.a.n.n.y, who was clinging with swaying figure to the door post. Of Marie Louise there was no sign.

The caved bank now remained fixed; but Hosmer knew that at any instant it was liable to disappear before his riveted gaze.

How heavy the flat was! And the horses had caught the contagion of terror and were plunging madly.

"Whip those horses and their load into the river," called Hosmer, "we've got to lighten at any price."

"Them horses an' cotton's worth money," interposed the alarmed teamster.

"Force them into the river, I say; I'll pay you twice their value."

"You 'low to pay fur the cotton, too?"

"Into the river with them or I'll brain you!" he cried, maddened at the weight and delay that were holding them back.

The frightened animals seemed to ask nothing more than to plunge into the troubled water; dragging their load with them.

They were speeding rapidly towards the scene of catastrophe; but to Hosmer they crawled--the moments were hours. "Hold on! hold fast!" he called again and again to his wife. But even as he cried out, the detached section of earth swayed, lurched to one side--plunged to the other, and the whole ma.s.s was submerged--leaving the water above it in wild agitation.

A cry of horror went up from the spectators--all but Hosmer. He cast aside his oar--threw off his coat and hat; worked an instant without avail at his wet clinging boots, and with a leap was in the water, swimming towards the spot where the cabin had gone down. The current bore him on without much effort of his own. The flat was close up with him; but he could think of it no longer as a means of rescue. Detached pieces of timber from the ruined house were beginning to rise to the surface. Then something floating softly on the water: a woman's dress, but too far for him to reach it.

When f.a.n.n.y appeared again, Hosmer was close beside her. His left arm was quickly thrown about her. She was insensible, and he remembered that it was best so, for had she been in possession of her reason, she might have struggled and impeded his movements. He held her fast--close to him and turned to regain the sh.o.r.e. Another horrified shriek went up from the occupants of the flat-boat not far away, and Hosmer knew no more--for a great plunging beam struck him full upon the forehead.

When consciousness came back to him, he found that he lay extended in the flat, which was fastened to the sh.o.r.e. The confused sound of many voices mingled with a ringing din that filled his ears. A warm stream was trickling down over his cheek. Another body lay beside him. Now they were lifting him. Therese's face was somewhere--very near, he saw it dimly and that it was white--and he fell again into insensibility.

XVI

To Him Who Waits.

The air was filled with the spring and all its promises. Full with the sound of it, the smell of it, the deliciousness of it. Such sweet air; soft and strong, like the touch of a brave woman's hand. The air of an early March day in New Orleans. It was folly to shut it out from nook or cranny. Worse than folly the lady thought who was making futile endeavors to open the car window near which she sat. Her face had grown pink with the effort. She had bit firmly into her red nether lip, making it all the redder; and then sat down from the unaccomplished feat to look ruefully at the smirched finger tips of her Parisian gloves. This flavor of Paris was well about her; in the folds of her graceful wrap that set to her fine shoulders. It was plainly a part of the little black velvet toque that rested on her blonde hair. Even the umbrella and one small valise which she had just laid on the seat opposite her, had Paris written plain upon them.

These were impressions which the little grey-garbed conventional figure, some seats removed, had been noting since the striking lady had entered the car. Points likely to have escaped a man, who--unless a minutely observant one,--would only have seen that she was handsome and worthy of an admiration that he might easily fancy rising to devotion.

Beside herself and the little grey-garbed figure was an interesting family group at the far end of the car. A husband, but doubly a father, surrounded and sat upon by a small band of offspring. A wife--presumably a mother--absorbed with the view of the outside world and the elaborate gold chain that hung around her neck.

The presence of a large valise, an overcoat, a cane and an umbrella disposed on another seat, bespoke a further occupant, likely to be at present in the smoking car.

The train pushed out from the depot. The porter finally made tardy haste to the a.s.sistance of the lady who had been attempting to open the window, and when the fresh morning air came blowing in upon her Therese leaned back in her seat with a sigh of content.

There was a full day's journey before her. She would not reach Place-du-Bois before dark, but she did not shrink from those hours that were to be pa.s.sed alone. She rather welcomed the quiet of them after a visit to New Orleans full of pleasant disturbances. She was eager to be home again. She loved Place-du-Bois with a love that was real; that had grown deep since it was the one place in the world which she could connect with the presence of David Hosmer. She had often wondered--indeed was wondering now--if the memory of those happenings to which he belonged would ever grow strange and far away to her. It was a trick of memory with which she indulged herself on occasion, this one of retrospection. Beginning with that June day when she had sat in the hall and watched the course of a white sunshade over the tops of the bending corn.

Such idle thoughts they were with their mingling of bitter and sweet--leading nowhere. But she clung to them and held to them as if to a refuge which she might again and again return to.

The picture of that one terrible day of f.a.n.n.y's death, stood out in sharp prominent lines; a touch of the old agony always coming back as she remembered how she had believed Hosmer dead too--lying so pale and bleeding before her. Then the parting which had held not so much of sorrow as of awe and bewilderment in it: when sick, wounded and broken he had gone away at once with the dead body of his wife; when the two had clasped hands without words that dared be uttered.

But that was a year ago. And Therese thought many things might come about in a year. Anyhow, might not such length of time be hoped to rub the edge off a pain that was not by its nature lasting?

That time of acute trouble seemed to have thrown Hosmer back upon his old diffidence. The letter he wrote her after a painful illness which prostrated him on his arrival in St. Louis, was stiff and formal, as men's letters are apt to be, though it had breathed an untold story of loyalty which she had felt at the time, and still cherished. Other letters--a few--had gone back and forth between them, till Hosmer had gone away to the sea-sh.o.r.e with Melicent, to recuperate, and June coming, Therese had sailed from New Orleans for Paris, whither she had pa.s.sed six months.

Things had not gone well at Place-du-Bois during her absence, the impecunious old kinsman whom she had left in charge, having a decided preference for hunting the _Gros-Bec_ and catching trout in the lake to supervising the methods of a troublesome body of blacks. So Therese had had much to engage her thoughts from the morbid channel into which those of a more idle woman might have drifted.

She went occasionally enough to the mill. There at least she was always sure to hear Hosmer's name--and what a charm the sound of it had for her. And what a delight it was to her eyes when she caught sight of an envelope lying somewhere on desk or table of the office, addressed in his handwriting. That was a weakness which she could not pardon herself; but which staid with her, seeing that the same trifling cause never failed to awaken the same unmeasured delight. She had even trumped up an excuse one day for carrying off one of Hosmer's business letters--indeed of the dryest in substance, and which, when half-way home, she had torn into the smallest bits and scattered to the winds, so overcome was she by a sense of her own absurdity.

Therese had undergone the ordeal of having her ticket scrutinized, commented upon and properly punched by the suave conductor. The little conventional figure had given over the contemplation of Parisian styles and betaken herself to the absorbing pages of a novel which she read through smoked gla.s.ses. The husband and father had peeled and distributed his second outlay of bananas amongst his family. It was at this moment that Therese, looking towards the door, saw Hosmer enter the car.

She must have felt his presence somewhere near; his being there and coming towards her was so much a part of her thoughts. She held out her hand to him and made place beside her, as if he had left her but a half hour before. All the astonishment was his. But he pressed her hand and took the seat she offered him.

"You knew I was on the train?" he asked.

"Oh, no, how should I?"

Then naturally followed question and answer.

Yes, he was going to Place-du-Bois.

No, the mill did not require his presence; it had been very well managed during his absence.

Yes, she had been to New Orleans. Had had a very agreeable visit.

Beautiful weather for city dwellers. But such dryness. So disastrous to the planters.

Yes--quite likely there would be rain next month: there usually was in April. But indeed there was need of more than April showers for that stiff land--that strip along the bayou, if he remembered? Oh, he remembered quite well, but for all that he did not know what she was talking about. She did not know herself. Then they grew silent; not from any feeling of the absurdity of such speech between them, for each had but listened to the other's voice. They became silently absorbed by the consciousness of each other's nearness. She was looking at his hand that rested on his knee, and thinking it fuller than she remembered it before. She was aware of some change in him which she had not the opportunity to define; but this firmness and fullness of the hand was part of it. She looked up into his face then, to find the same change there, together with a new content. But what she noted beside was the dull scar on his forehead, coming out like a red letter when his eyes looked into her own. The sight of it was like a hurt. She had forgotten it might be there, telling its story of pain through the rest of his life.

"Therese," Hosmer said finally, "won't you look at me?"

She was looking from the window. She did not turn her head, but her hand went out and met his that was on the seat close beside her. He held it firmly; but soon with an impatient movement drew down the loose wristlet of her glove and clasped his fingers around her warm wrist.