The Chief Legatee Part 12

There was a rustle within, a cry which was half a sob, then the sound of a hand fumbling with the lock. Meanwhile, Mr. Ransom had bent his ear to his wife's door.

"All still in here," he cried. "Not a sound. Something dreadful has happened--"

Just then Anitra's door fell back and a wild image confronted him and such others as had by this time collected in the pa.s.sageway. With only a shawl covering her nightdress, the gipsy-like creature stood clawing the air and answering the looks that appealed to her, with wild gurgles, till suddenly her hot glances fell on Roger Ransom, when she instantly became rigid and stammered out:

"She's gone! I saw her black figure go by my window. She called out that the waterfall drew her. She went by the little balcony and the roof. The roof was slippery with the rain and she fell. That's why I screamed. But she got up again. What is she going to do at the waterfall? Stop her!

stop her! She hasn't steady feet like me, and I wasn't really angry. I liked her; I liked her."

Sobs choked the rest. Her terror was infectious. Mr. Ransom reeled, then flung himself at Georgian's door. It resisted but the silence within told him that she was not there. Neither was she in Anitra's room. They could all look in and see it bare to the window.

"You saw her climbing past there?" he cried, forgetting she was deaf.

"Yes, yes," she chattered, catching his meaning from his pointing finger.

"There's a balcony. She must have jumped on it from her own window. She didn't come in here. See! the door is locked on her side."

This was true.

"I woke and saw her. My eyes are like lynx's. I got out of bed to watch.

She fell--"

The noise of a breaking lock snapped her words in two. One of the men present had flung himself against this communicating door. Immediately they all crowded into the adjoining room. It was empty and bitterly cold and wet. An open window explained why, and possibly the letter lying on the bureau inscribed with her husband's name would explain the rest. But he stopped to read no letters now.

"Show me the way to those falls," he cried, pocketing the letter as he rushed by the disheveled Anitra into the open hall. "I'm her husband, Roger Ransom. Who goes with me? He who does is my friend for life."

The clerk and one or two others rushed for their coats and lanterns. He waited for nothing. The roar of the waterfall had told him too many tales that day. And the will! Her will just signed!

"Georgian!"

They could hear his cry.

"Georgian! Georgian! Wait! wait! hear what I have to say!" thrilled back through the mist as he stumbled on, followed by the men waving their lanterns and shouting words of warning he probably never heard. Then his cry further off and fainter. "Georgian! Georgian!" Then silence and the slow drizzle of rain on the soggy walk and soaked roofs, with the far-off boom of the waterfall which Mrs. Deo and the trembling maids gazing at the wide-eyed Anitra s.h.i.+vering in the center of her deserted room, tried to shut out by closing window and blind, forgetting that she was deaf and only heard such echoes as were thundering in her own mind.

CHAPTER XIII

WHERE THE MILL STREAM RUNS FIERCEST

Two o'clock.

Three o'clock.

Two men were talking below their breaths in the otherwise empty office.

"That 'ere mill stream never gives up anything it has once caught,"

muttered one into the ear of the other. "It's swift as fate and in certain places deep as h.e.l.l. Dutch Jan's body was five months at the bottom of it, before it came up at Clark's pool."

The man beside him s.h.i.+vered and his hand roamed nervously towards his breast.

"Did Jan, the Dutchman you speak of, fall in by accident, or did he--throw himself over--from homesickness, or some such cause?"

"Wa'al we don't say; on account of his old mother, you know, we don't say. It was called accident."

The other man rose and walked restlessly to the window.

"Half the town is up," he muttered. "The lanterns go by like fire-flies.

Poor Ransom! It's a hopeless job, I fear." And again his hand wandered to that breast pocket where the edge of a doc.u.ment could be seen. "I have half a mind to go out myself; anything is better than sitting here."

But he sat down just the same. Mr. Harper was no longer a young man.

"The storm's bating," observed the one.

"But not the cold. Throw on a stick; I'm freezing."

The other man obeyed; then looking up, stared. A girl stood before them in the doorway. Anitra, with cheeks ablaze and eyes burning, her traveling dress flapping damp about her heels, and on her head the red shawl she preferred to any hat. Behind her shoulder peered the anxious face of Mrs. Deo.

"I'm going out," cried the former in the loud and unmodulated voice of the deaf. "He don't come back! he don't come back! I'm going to see why."

The lawyer rose and bowed; then resolutely shook his head. He did not know whether she had appealed to him or not. She had not looked at him, had not looked at any one, but he felt that he must protest.

"I beg you not to do so," he began. "I really beg you to remain here and wait with me. You can do no good and the result may be dangerous." But he knew he was talking to deaf ears even before the landlady murmured:

"She doesn't hear a word. I've talked and talked to her. I've used every sign and motion I could think of, but it's done no good. She would dress and she will go out; you'll see."

The next minute her prophecy came true; the wild thing, with a quick whirl of her lithe body, was at the front door, and in another instant had flashed through it and was gone.

"It is my duty to follow her," said the lawyer. "Help me on with my coat; I'll find some one to guide me."

"Here is a lantern. Excuse me for not going with you," pleaded Mrs. Deo, "but some one must watch the house."

The New Yorker nodded, took the lantern offered him, and went stoically out.

He met a man on the walk in front. He was faced his way and was panting heavily.

"h.e.l.lo," said he, "what news?"

"They haven't found her; but there's no doubt she went over the fall. The fellow who calls himself her husband has just been reading a letter they say she left on her bureau for him. It was a good-by, I reckon, for you can't tear him from the spot. He says he'll stay there till daylight. I couldn't stand the sight of his misery myself. Besides, it's mortal cold; I've just been running to get warm. Who was the girl who just went scurrying by out of here? It's no place for wimmen down there. One lost gal is enough."

"That's what I think," muttered the lawyer, hurrying on.

He was not a very imaginative man; some of his best friends thought him a cold and prosaic one, but he never forgot that walk or the sensations accompanying it. Dark as it still was, the way would have been impa.s.sable for a stranger, had it not been for the guidance given by the noisy pa.s.sing to and fro of the awakened townspeople. Those coming from the river approached in a direct line from one spot; those going to it advanced in the same line and to the same spot. A ring of lanterns marked it. It was near, very near where the heavy waters fell into a deep pool.

No one now spoke of Anitra; she had evidently been warned by her first encounter to move with less precipitancy.

As he approached the place of central interest, he moved more warily too.

The ground was very bad; he had never walked in such slush. Once and again he tripped; once he came down upon his face. The boom of the waters was now very near; he could see nothing but the flicker of the lanterns, but he felt the near rush of the stream, and presently was at its very edge. Startled by the nearness of his escape, for he had almost lost his footing by his sudden halt, he started back, looked again at the lanterns, took a turn and came upon the dozen or more men bending over the edge of the stream where the waters ran most swiftly. But he did not join them. Another sight attracted his eyes and presently himself. This was the sight of Ransom crouched on the wet earth, staring down at a slip of paper he held in his hands. A lantern set in the sand at his feet sent its feeble rays over his face and possibly over the paper; but he was no longer reading it, he was simply so lost in its sorrowful contents that all power of movement had deserted him.

Harper approached to his side, but he did not address him. Something stirred in his own breast and kept him silent. But there was another person near who was not so deterred. As Harper stood watching Ransom's crouched, almost insensible figure, he perceived a slight dark form steal from the shadows and lay a hand on the stooping man's shoulder, then as he failed to move or give any token of feeling this touch, he heard Anitra's voice say in accents almost musical: