The Mystery of the Locks Part 21

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE RISE IN THE RIVER.

The rain had been falling at intervals for weeks, and the sluggish river, which usually crawled at the foot of the town in quiet submission, had become a dangerous torrent. Long since out of its banks, its waters poured through the bottoms with an angry roar, and at night those who gathered on the brink in the town to mark its steady rising could hear cries of distress from the heavy timber, the firing of guns, and other alarms.

For two days parties had been out with boats of every description, rescuing those who believed that the waters would soon go down, and remained until escape was impossible, imprisoned in the upper rooms of their houses; and each returning party brought the most distressing news yet heard of the havoc wrought by the flood. Reaching from hill to hill, the angry waters ploughed up fair fields like heavy shot fired in battle, and crept into pretty homes to destroy in a night the work of years, wresting treasures from their fastenings with remorseless fury, and hurrying away with them like living thieves.

The citizens of Davy's Bend feared that the sun had been drowned by the flood in the heavens, as the people were being drowned by the flood in the bottoms, for its kindly face had not appeared in two weeks. The roads and lanes in the country, highways no longer, were abandoned to the rain and the mist, for no travellers ventured upon them, and if the town had been dull before, it was now doubly so, giving the people abundance of time in which to recount their miseries. Men who ventured out in wagons told wonderful tales, on their return, of the reign of the waters, for insignificant streams which had long been regarded with familiar contempt had become dangerous rivers, roaring and cras.h.i.+ng through fruitful fields in mad haste to join the floods. Great lakes occupied the low places for so many days that the people feared the land itself had floated away, leaving caverns in the place of their fields, and there was distress in the country as well as in the town. Rude boats to ply upon the newly arrived waters were hastily constructed by men who did not know how to use them, never having lived near a navigable stream, but there seemed a chance for them to learn, for the waters increased steadily every hour.

As they lay in their beds at night, if they wakened and found that the rain had ceased, the people of the town hoped that the end had come at last, and that the waters would soon subside, but before they had framed their congratulations, the gentle patter of the rain was heard on their roofs once more, which continued through the long night, ceasing only occasionally, that the cries of distress and the alarms from the bottom might be heard, whereupon the rain commenced again with joyful vigor, sure that its fury was not without result.

The rocky hills above and below the town were oozy and wet; and those who roamed about heard great splashes in the water, and knew that portions of the bluff were tumbling into the river, as if tired of being steady and reliable while everything else was failing, and anxious to join the tide and aid in the general destruction, as well as to get away from a place which seemed so unfortunate.

The mild river, patient and uncomplaining so long, was master now, and it roared like a monster proud of its conquest, and declaring its intention to be wicked and fierce forever. The observers could not understand, so great was the awful flood, how the waters could ever subside, for surely all the lower country must have been flooded days before, and even those who lived in the hills were filled with grave apprehensions.

Every morning the simple registers, which the people put up along the creeks and sloughs, showed an alarming rise, and they feared that if the rain continued the earth itself would become liquid at last, and resolve itself into a vast sea without sh.o.r.es.

No one knew how the news came, but there seemed to be whispers in the air that in the upper country the flood was even worse than at Davy's Bend, which added to the general apprehension, and many believed that the rainbow was about to prove faithless at last. Houses of a pattern barely familiar to the people occasionally floated past the town in the current, and in one of them rode a man who refused to leave his property when the relief boats put off to him; for he said that he came from hundreds of miles above, and that since the world seemed to be turning into water, he preferred his strange craft to the crumbling hills. As he floated away, stark mad from excitement, fear, and hunger, he called back to the men to follow if they valued their lives; for a wave twenty feet high was coming down the river, carrying the towns along the bluffs with it.

Bridges which had been built across gullies in the highlands were seen hurrying by every hour, and it seemed that the hill on which Davy's Bend was built would shortly tremble, and start slowly down the river, at last gratifying the ambition of the people to get away.

Among those distressed by the unfortunate condition of those living in the bottoms were Allan Dorris and his wife, safe in their home above the town. The people seemed so fearful that the rain would never cease that they neglected to get sick, and Dr. Dorris would have greatly enjoyed the uninterrupted days he was permitted to spend with his pretty wife but for the distress around him.

The dripping from the eaves of The Locks at night--he thought of it again--reminded him of the dripping from the coffin of a body packed in ice, which he was commissioned to watch, and long before day he left his bed and walked the floor. His wife soon joined him, and they looked out of the window at the blank darkness.

"How it reminds me of the first night I came here," he said. "But what a different man I am! Then I cursed my existence, and was so disturbed in mind that night was a season of terror. I dreaded its approach as heartily then as I now hail it as a season of repose, and every day I have new reason to rejoice that I am alive. What a fortunate fellow I am! I can sleep nine hours out of every night, and arise every morning entirely refreshed, not a day older. I am content now to lie down at night, and let the world wag, or quarrel, or do whatever it likes, for the only part of it I care for is beside me. Sometimes I waken, and forget you for a moment, when I wonder how I ever induced such sound sleep to come to my eyes; but when I remember it all, I feel like cheering, and go off into dreamland again with the comfort of a healthy child. It is a wonderful change, and you are responsible for it all; you have made one man entirely happy, if you have accomplished nothing else."

As they stood by the window, he had his arms around her, and when she looked up at him he kissed her tenderly on the forehead.

"Our marriage has brought no more happiness to you than it has to me,"

she answered. "Since you became my husband, I have known only content and gladness, except when I become childish and fear you are surrounded by some grave danger. If I could charge you with a wish I could think of nothing to ask."

"Who would harm me? Who would dare?" he asked.

His wife thought to herself, as she looked at him, that it would be a dangerous undertaking to attempt to do him an injury. There were few men his equal in physical strength, and he could hold her out at arm's length.

"Danger is a game that two can play at," he said, and there was a frown on his face so fierce as to indicate that some one who was his enemy had come into his mind. "I have seen the day when I would have allowed almost any one the privilege of taking my life, if it would have afforded them pleasure, but let them keep out of my way now! The tiger fighting for her whelps would not be fiercer than I, if attacked. I have more to live for than any other man in the world, and I would fight, not only with desperation, but with skill and wickedness. If any one wants my life, let him see that he does not lose his own in attempting to take it."

Allan Dorris had been oppressed with a vague fear ever since his marriage that his long period of rest meant a calamity at last, though he had always tried to argue the notion out of his wife's mind. He had often felt that he was watched, though he had seen nothing, heard nothing, to warrant this belief. He could not explain it to himself; but frequently while walking about the town he turned his head in quick alarm, and looked about as if expecting an attack. Once he felt so ill at ease at night, so thoroughly convinced that something was wrong, that he left his wife quietly sleeping, and crawled under the trees in The Locks' yard for an hour, with a loaded pistol in his hand. But he had seen nothing, heard nothing, and his own actions were so much like the presence he half expected to find, that he was ashamed of them, and laughed at his fears.

But the dark night and the cheerless rain brought the old dread into his mind, and he said to his wife,--

"We are all surrounded by danger, though I am as exempt from it as other men, but if I should meet with an accident some time--I take many long rides at night, and I have often been in places when a single misstep of my horse would have resulted in death--I want you to know that your husband was an honorable man. I have my faults, and I have regrets; but as the world goes I am an honest man. Your love for me, which is as pure and good as it can be, has had as much warrant as other wives have for their love. It was never intended that a perfect man or woman should exist on this earth, as a reproach to all the other inhabitants, and I have my faults; but I have as clear a conscience as it was intended that the average man should have."

"I am sure of that," his wife answered. "You always impress me as being a fair man, and this was one reason why I forget myself in loving you. I did not believe you would be unjust to anyone; surely not to one you loved."

"I believe I am ent.i.tled to the compliment you pay me," he replied. "I know myself so well that a compliment which I do not deserve does not please me; but I deserve the good opinion you have just expressed. I have known people whose inclinations were usually right; but mine were usually wrong--either that, or I have been so situated that, by reason of hasty conclusions, duty has always been a task; but notwithstanding this I have always tried to be honest and fair in everything. It sometimes happens that a man is so situated that if he would be just to himself he must be unjust to others. I may have been in that situation, and there may be those who believe that I have wronged them; but I am sure that an honest judge would acquit me of blame. I have often wanted to tell you my brief and unimportant history; but you have preferred not to hear it. While I admire you for this exhibition of trust in me, I have often wondered that your woman's curiosity did not covet the secret."

"It is not a secret since you offer to tell it to me," she replied. "But I prefer not to know it now. You once said to me that every life has its sorrow; mine is the belief that I know what your history is; but I prefer to hope that I am wrong rather than know my conjecture is right."

He looked at her with incredulity, and was about to inquire what she knew, when she continued:

"You never speak to me that I do not get a sc.r.a.p of your past history; I read you as easily as I read a book. But I knew it when I became your wife, and I think less of it now than ever; you are so kind to me that I think I shall forget it altogether in time. It is scarcely a sorrow; rather a regret, as I regret during my present happy life that I am growing old. Sometimes I think I love you all the more because of your misfortune, though I never think of it when I am with you; it is only when I am alone that it occupies my mind."

"You are sure that you have not made it worse than it is?"

"Quite sure."

"Who was in the right?"

"You were."

"That much is true, anyway," he answered, looking out at the torrent in the river, which the approaching daylight now made visible. "I formerly had a habit of talking in my sleep; you may have learned something in that way."

"A great deal," she replied. "I learned your name."

For the first time since she had known him he seemed confused, and there was a flush of mortification in his face. He picked up a sc.r.a.p of paper and pencil which were lying on a table near them, and handing them to her, said,--

"Write it."

Without the slightest hesitation, she wrote quickly on the paper, and handed it back to him. He looked at it with a queer smile, tore up the sc.r.a.p, and said,--

"That would have come out in the story you refused to hear. I have never deceived you in anything."

"Except in this," she answered, putting her arms around him. "You are a much better man than I believed you were when we were first acquainted; you have deceived me in that. My married life could not be happier than it is."

"I do not take much credit to myself that we are content as husband and wife," he replied. "I think the fact that we are mated has a great deal to do with it. There are a great many worthy people--for the world is full of good women, if not of good men--who live in the greatest wretchedness; who are as unhappy in their married relations as we are happy. I have known excellent men married to excellent wives, who are wretched, as I have known two excellent men to fail as partners in business. You and I were fortunate in our alliance. It often occurs to me that Mrs. Armsby should have had a better husband, poor woman. How many brave, capable men there are in the world who would rejoice in the possession of such a wife; worthy, honest men who made a mistake only in marrying the wrong woman, and who will die believing there is nothing in the world worth living for, as I believed before I met you. Everyone who is out in the world a great deal knows such men, and pities them, as I do; for when I contrast my past with my present, I regret that others, more deserving than I, cannot enjoy the contentment which love brings.

You and I are not phenomenal people in any respect, but we are man and wife in the fullest sense of the term; and others might enjoy the peace we enjoy were they equally fortunate in their love affairs. It is a grand old world for you and I, and those like us, but it is a h.e.l.l for those who have been coaxed into unsuitable marriages by the devil."

"There is as much bitterness in your voice now as there was when you said to me in the church that you were going away never to come back,"

his wife said, looking at him with keen apprehension.

"I am a different man now to what I was then," he replied, with his old good-nature. "Have you never remarked it?"

"Often; every time I hear you speak."

"I find that there are splendid people even in Davy's Bend, and I imagine that when the mind is not tortured they may be found anywhere.

In my visits to the homes of Davy's Bend, I hear it said in every quarter that surely the neighbors are the best people in the world, and their kindness in sickness and death cause me to believe that as a rule the people are very good, unless you chain two antagonistic spirits together, and demand that they be content. I know so much of the weakness of my race--because it happens to be my business--that I wonder they are as industrious and honorable as I find them. This never occurred to me before, and I think it is evidence that I am a changed man; that I am more charitable than I ever was before, and better."

They both looked out the window in silence again. A misty morning, threatening rain, and the river before them like a sea.

"I must do something to help those who are imprisoned in their homes by the flood," Allan Dorris said, as if a sight of the river had suggested it to him. "I will go down where boats are to be had presently, and row over into the timber. Do you see that line of trees?"

Below the town, in the river bend, a long line of trees made out into the channel, which were on dry land in ordinary times, but the point was covered now, for the flood occupied the bottom from bluff to bluff. He pointed this out, and when his wife saw the place he referred to, she nodded her head.

"My boat will be carried down the stream by the strong current, and I will probably enter the timber there. I will wave my good-by to you from that point."