True and Other Stories Part 20

"Sylv," he said, "it ar' all fixed and done. Deely loves ye--she have told me--and I see that I ain't the one for her. I'm clean done with all that ar foolishness, Sylv, and I told her she'd got to marry ye, anyhow.

Steady away now, Sylv. D'ye listen to me?"

The burly, red-bearded brother slid his hands down the arms of the slender, dark-haired one, and held him as if he feared that he might still break away and escape.

Lance, looking on, thought he had never seen anything more tender, more brave and manly, than Dennie's expression and att.i.tude. He had never, he thought, heard finer sweetness in a man's voice than came from Dennie's lips.

Sylv broke down. "Dennie, boy," he cried; and then paused, choking.

"Dear old Dennie!" (His brother winced at that unconscious repet.i.tion of Adela's phrase.) "I never thought this would come! I was true when I said I did not love her. I couldn't know what it would be like, then.

But, you see, I tried to get out of the way. Oh, why didn't you let me die here!"

The morbid mood which had impelled him to the resource of slow suicide, by starvation in the swamp, could not at once be dispelled; but by dint of soothing words and of reminders that they must lose no time in getting back to the outer world, the two allies prevailed over Sylv's melancholy.

"Where's your boat?" asked Lance.

"I set it adrift," was the answer.

A fresh peril was thus intruded upon them; for the canoe would hold three persons only with the greatest precautions.

"You uns go, and then one can come back for me," Dennie suggested.

But Lance would not risk leaving him alone. It was decided, therefore, that they should all embark and make their way to safety, if possible.

The hazard and suspense of the situation, however, roused Sylv up thoroughly. All his finer qualities rea.s.serted themselves, and he became the guiding spirit in the endeavor of the party to extricate itself. He whom the others had come to recall to life was now eager to lead them out of the dilemma in which they had placed themselves on his account.

But in the anxiety of the moment he forgot one thing. The flame which he had kindled, like a torch in the gloomy vaults of death, was left burning; and they had paddled some distance before they remembered their neglect.

Meanwhile the lonely beacon, unwatched, had shot out an experimental tongue to try sundry dry vine-stems hard by. The stems responded with a brisk crackle. The flames scaled the side of a tree almost instantly, and ran along the boughs. Thence they transferred themselves with ease to another tree. Thus, in a few minutes, the blaze spread from the island into the rest of the dense wood, and became a conflagration.

The smoke blew lazily toward the occupants of the canoe; then a lurid glow shone along the murky water. They saw their danger, and paddled with might and main; but the danger of upsetting the overloaded craft handicapped them and r.e.t.a.r.ded their progress.

Soon the glow came nearer and burst into actual fire. The whole swamp seemed to be roofed with writhing flame. The heat was frightful: birds flew away madly through the labyrinth; the shadowy shapes of wild creatures scurried through the tangle, and scared serpents slipped out from their lairs, trailing across the sluggish stream. All the while the fire pursued the three human fugitives with what seemed a vindictive intelligence: the long draperies of gray moss caught the sparks, flas.h.i.+ng them on in vivid festoons, and wrapping the forest in a magnificent combustion.

Blinded, stifled, and dizzy, the canoeists were at last obliged to abandon their narrow bark and push their way through the fearful maze on sh.o.r.e. Luckily, however, when they were driven to this extreme they had come nearly to the edge of the wilderness.

Each struggling for himself, Lance and Sylv suddenly achieved safety: they set foot upon the solid ground, and felt the fierce wind from the sea. But at that juncture Dennie, who was behind them, stumbled, and was caught in the mire. The hissing ma.s.s of flame advanced upon him, and Sylv, seeing his danger, turned to help him.

Lance tried to hold Sylv back. He fought with him, in his desire to prevent what he thought a certain sacrifice of two lives instead of one.

But Sylv, nerved by an ecstatic force, sprang away from him and reached his brother's side. How it was done neither Lance nor Sylv could say afterward; but the attempt succeeded, and Sylv dragged Dennie out of danger, though not unscathed. The intense heat had blistered their faces and hands even in the few moments that it had to work upon them; and Dennie, hurt by the fall of a heavy branch which had struck his leg, lay in the road, unable to rise.

CHAPTER XVI.

"I LIVE, HOW LONG I TROW NOT."

One might well have supposed that the period of final destruction had come on that eventful day. Wind, fire, and sea all combined to make it a memorable one. For, while Lance and the De Vines were going through their adventures in Elbow-Crook Swamp, the incoming tides, fomented by the winds, not only swept away the paltry planking that joined Aunty Losh's headland to the main sh.o.r.e, but also proceeded to crunch up and dissolve a large portion of her real estate.

The freakish inroads of the sea on the North Carolina coast are scarcely subjects for exaggeration, because they themselves outdo fancy. The ocean thereabouts has an occasional fit of map-making. Not content with changing the soundings as it pleases, it sometimes closes up an old inlet, at a single mad flurry, or insists upon opening a new avenue in any place that may suit its convenience. And so, at this particular crisis, having thundered at the outer gates and found no admission, it sent a heavy tide into the Sound, and played havoc there. The green waters, ordinarily manageable enough, converted themselves into cataracts. They heaved, frothed, billowed and raged, until Aunty Losh's demesne, once an innocent promontory, became a very perilous and uncomfortable island.

The watery ditch turned into a rus.h.i.+ng tide-way; then it became a deep channel; and lastly it widened into an angry reach of turbulent waves, which could be crossed only by boat. All this transformation, be it remembered, was accomplished in a few hours.

Meanwhile, Aunty Losh and Jessie cowered in the little cabin on the dwindling territory, and expected every moment to be swallowed up by the surges that lashed so wildly around them.

But the retreating coachman had known what he was about. He had gone at once to Hunting Quarters, where he had found Adela, who was herself distracted with anxiety for Sylv, and therefore in a perfect mood for venturing upon the wildest scheme of rescue that could be imagined. It so chanced that the dug-out was harbored in a cove which the girl could reach. The rude sloop clung there, thumping heavily on the bottom, and lurching now and then against the sh.o.r.e, with an impact that would have smashed any other sort of craft at short notice. But this was precisely what she was made for, and so she endured the strain.

Adela prepared to take her out to the now isolated cabin, and bring off the inmates. Old Reefe remonstrated. He said it was certain death to go; that no boat could live in such a wind on a short, shallow sea; and that his daughter must wait until the storm abated.

"No," cried Adela; "I am going, whether it's death or not! How do you know what will happen to them out there if I wait? The cabin itself may be swept away, and poor old aunty in it. Then, Dennie is there, and--and perhaps Sylv." For one instant, as she uttered this name, her voice sank. "If they had any boat, 'twould be another thing. But they're cut off--they can't help themselves--and I'm going."

The brave girl hardly believed that she could make the trip in safety, but she thanked her stars that Dennie had brought her up to handle a tiller--and the rest she left to Providence.

The water was swas.h.i.+ng up close to the door of the little hut, and Aunty Losh and Jessie sat within, holding on to each other in silence when, through the deep, prolonged roar of the tempest, they fancied that they heard a shout--a woman's shout. Simultaneously with it there came a thud, like the dropping of some heavy weight upon the ground just outside of the house. "Lord be praised!" Aunty Losh exclaimed, "Thar ain't nothin' could do that ar but the ole dug-out. Open the do', Miss Jessie."

Jessie considered this as a command to invite dissolution into their fragile shelter; but she obeyed.

In a few moments they were on board the sloop, bouncing and reeling through the violent waves. By this time Colonel Floyd, having also received the alarm, reached the spot on horseback. Waiting with old Reefe on the sh.o.r.e, he noted every motion of the plunging sail, which was let out barely enough to give the dug-out headway. Adela stood at the helm, strong and masterful as a man, but with a quick, feminine eye for every chance or change of the terrific gale, and with a touch that responded instantly to her observation. She ignored her two pa.s.sengers absolutely.

But when, after several escapes from foundering and a weary battle of tacking from one point to another, the sloop rounded, with her heavy prow, into the cove and touched the land, the girl dropped down in the stern, exhausted.

There had been no time for delay or inquiry, and indeed it would have been impossible to talk in the over-powering bl.u.s.ter of the storm, while fighting a way through it; but Adela had been very much astonished both by Jessie's presence at the cabin, and by the absence of Dennie. She now tried to learn from Aunty Losh what had become of him; but the poor old woman's mind was in such confusion from fright and from the suddenness of her rescue that she could not furnish much enlightenment. As for Jessie, she had gone to the headland without any knowledge of Lance's actual whereabouts, but thinking it probable that her lover would go there, since she had heard something vaguely about his arrangements with Sylv. It was now noon, and the suspense in which she remained about Lance, joined to Adela's fearful dread concerning Sylv, would not permit them to rest. The colonel, who had been thrown into a wild excitement by the failure both of his daughter and of Lance to return to the house, hugged Jessie close to his heart with silent prayers of thanksgiving, and wrung Adela's hand with grat.i.tude, while the tears ran down his cheeks. The carriage had followed him with fresh horses, bringing dry wraps, food, and restoratives; and the colonel insisted that the best thing to be done was for the three women to get in and go at once to the manor with him.

Meanwhile Sylv and Lance, helping the disabled Dennie between them, had arrived at the house, and were taking care of the sufferer.

I need not detail the recitals and explanations that followed. I will say only that Jessie treated Adela like a sister that day, and ever afterward. It was strange, mysterious, yet beautiful, to Lance's eyes, to see them together; one of them the latest offspring of Gertrude Wylde, rescued from oblivion--coaxed back, as it were, from the forest shadows and the red race to her own race and kin--the other a descendant of Gertrude's cousin, to-day rescued by her kinswoman from the engulfing waters of the Sound. The whims and prejudices that had hampered Jessie before were now totally dissolved; and Lance's dream was realized, after all. The wild thought which had crossed his mind, of devoting his life to Adela, proved to be simply a perversion of the ardent desire which he had felt, that she ought to be included somehow in the lines of relations.h.i.+p and love prescribed by her ancestry. His allegiance to Jessie, never really shaken, was perfect and enduring. But these results would never have come about had not the actors in the curious drama remained, through all their troubles, sound and sincere of heart. They had, every one, risen somewhat higher than they were when their relations began. Each had advanced in his or her own way. Sylv strove upward by means of intellectual effort and by will; Dennie attained to as lofty a standard of conduct through the working out of instinct and pa.s.sion. But in whatever manner they had proceeded, all were true.

The wild storm went down that night, though the rolling sea and the curling breakers of the Sound continued to heave for hours, throwing out in the darkness broad lines and crests of phosph.o.r.escence that made them look like fluid white fire. Then the rain came, in torrents; and it was well that it came, for the danger to the inflammable pine-plantations, from the conflagration in Elbow Crook, had become alarming. Not even the sullen fierceness of that furnace--in which the swamp-woods, with all their intricacies of flickering boughs, like some gigantic red coral work, were melting down--could withstand the providential rain-streams.

The fire faded away as if by magic; and the next day, when Hedson went out, with scores of other gazers, to look at the expanse of charred _debris_ where the wood had been, he remarked tersely (but in an undertone) to Lance: "That property is now worth just one hundred percent more for our purpose than it was day before yesterday. The clearing has been done free of charge."

By the middle of the summer the county awoke to the fact that a syndicate of Northern capitalists had purchased the tract and were going to develop it into a prodigious vegetable garden. The reed-pulp paper-mill went up; there was an immense quant.i.ty of ditching and levelling carried on in the swamp. Little houses began to make their appearance; now dwellers came to live in them; and a school and church were found to be necessary. There is now a flouris.h.i.+ng community in that place; and while Lance, I am glad to say, has made a good deal of money, his pleasure has grown largely from the knowledge that he has brought about improvements which others also enjoy. Sylv acts as his chief adviser and confidential agent.

Dennie's accident left him somewhat lame, but he has still found it possible to be of service in some of Lance's undertakings. He prefers, however, to retain a degree of independence by living on the island with Aunty Losh, and following more or less his old employment in a superior dug-out schooner, which has replaced the sloop. On the island he has remained ever since the marriage of Sylv and Adela and their installation in a pretty house which was built for them, near enough to the manor to make it convenient for the children of Jessie and Adela to meet often when they shall grow a little older.

One slight question came up, I must admit, as to who had the best right to appropriate the old Wharton Hall motto. Sylv acknowledged that it belonged primarily to Lance, by inheritance from Guy Wharton; but, then, had it not been handed down to Adela as well? The point was settled without dispute; for Sylv's house was built before Lance was ready to remodel the manor, and when the plans were submitted to Lance he proposed--with Jessie's permission--that he should be allowed to contribute as his gift a tablet for the hall, on which were to be shown (not cut in, but raised in bold relief) the lines beginning

"I live, how long I trow not."

Dennie has no new house and no old motto. I cannot suppose that he is altogether a contented man; but I believe he is happy in having taken the right course.

"My old heart do ache for ye, Dennie," said Aunty Losh to him, about the time of the wedding. "There ain't much on't left at my time o' life; but what there be of heart in me do ache, for sure. But ye done right, boy.

'Tain't no use tryin' to drive a woman. It's mighty like when ye tryin'

to make a pa.s.sel o' hens come into the house; and ye chase 'em up and say, 'Shoo!' and gits 'em a'most to the do'; and then they jist run straight past it. No; ye can't drive a woman, Dennie, if she's sot her mind ag'in it. That's what."

Dennie looked up from the tackle he was mending, and smiled. "Wal, aunty," he said, "you and me make out to git along pretty squar'

together, don't we? I don't want for to drive ye, and ye can't look to drive me, neither. _I_ don't complain."

The last three words will do for his motto; and they make a sufficiently honorable one.