CHAPTER XIX
THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH
Constance went up to her own rooms; she could hear her mother speaking,in a room on the same floor, to one of the maids; but for her presentanxiety, her mother offered no help and could not even be consulted.Nor could any message she might send to her father explain thesituation to him. She was throbbing with determination and action, asshe found her purse and counted the money in it. She never in her lifehad gone alone upon an extended journey, much less been alone upon atrain over night. If she spoke of such a thing now, she would beprevented; no occasion for it would be recognized; she would not beallowed to go, even if "properly accompanied." She could not,therefore, risk taking a handbag from the house; so she thrustnightdress and toilet articles into her muff and the roomy pocket ofher fur coat. She descended to the side door of the house and,unobserved, let herself out noiselessly on to the carriage drive. Shegained the street and turned westward at the first corner to a streetcar which would take her to the railway station.
There was a train to the north every evening; it was not, she knew,such a train as ran in the resort season, and she was not certain ofthe exact time of its departure; but she would be in time for it. Themanner of buying a railway ticket and of engaging a berth were unknownto her--there had been servants always to do these things--but shewatched others and did as they did. On the train, the berths had beenmade up; people were going to bed behind some of the curtains. Sheprocured a telegraph blank and wrote a message to her mother, tellingher that she had gone north to join her father. When the train hadstarted, she gave the message to the porter, directing him to send itfrom the first large town at which they stopped.
She left the light burning in its little niche at the head of theberth; she had no expectation that she could sleep; shut in by thegreen curtains, she drew the covers up about her and stared upward atthe paneled face of the berth overhead. Then new frightened distrustof the man she had been about to marry flowed in upon her and becameall her thought.
She had not promised Uncle Benny that she would not marry Henry; herpromise had been that she would not engage herself to that marriageuntil she had seen Uncle Benny again. Uncle Benny's own act--hisdisappearance---had prevented her from seeing him; for that reason shehad broken her promise; and, from its breaking, something terrifying,threatening to herself had come. She had been amazed at what she hadseen in Henry; but she was appreciating now that, strangely, in herthought of him there was no sense of loss to herself. Her feeling ofloss, of something gone from her which could not be replaced, was forAlan. She had had admiration for Henry, pride in him; had she mistakenwhat was merely admiration for love? She had been about to marry him;had it been only his difference from the other men she knew that hadmade her do that? Unconsciously to herself, had she been growing tolove Alan?
Constance could not, as yet, place Henry's part in the strangecircumstances which had begun to reveal themselves with Alan's comingto Chicago; but Henry's hope that Uncle Benny and Alan were dead wasbeginning to make that clearer. She lay without voluntary movement inher berth, but her bosom was shaking with the thoughts which came toher.
Twenty years before, some dreadful event had altered Uncle Benny'slife; his wife had known--or had learned--enough of that event so thatshe had left him. It had seemed to Constance and her father,therefore, that it must have been some intimate and private event.They had been confirmed in believing this, when Uncle Benny, in madnessor in fear, had gone away, leaving everything he possessed to AlanConrad. But Alan's probable relationship to Uncle Benny had not beenexplanation; she saw now that it had even been misleading. For apurely private event in Uncle Benny's life--even terriblescandal--could not make Henry fear, could not bring terror ofconsequences to himself. That could be only if Henry was involved insome peculiar and intimate way with what had happened to Uncle Benny.If he feared Uncle Benny's being found alive and feared Alan's beingfound alive too, now that Alan had discovered Uncle Benny, it wasbecause he dreaded explanation of his own connection with what hadtaken place.
Constance raised her window shade slightly and looked out. It wasstill snowing; the train was running swiftly among low sand hills,snow-covered, and only dimly visible through snow and dark. Adeep-toned, steady roar came to her above the noises of the train. Thelake! Out there, Alan and Uncle Benny were fighting, still strugglingperhaps, against bitter cold and ice and rushing water for their lives.She must not think of that!
Uncle Benny had withdrawn himself from men; he had ceased to be activein his business and delegated it to others. This change had beenstrangely advantageous to Henry. Henry had been hardly more than acommon seaman then. He had been a mate--the mate on one of UncleBenny's ships. Quite suddenly he had become Uncle Benny's partner.Henry had explained this to her by saying that Uncle Benny had feltmadness coming on him and had selected him as the one to take charge.But Uncle Benny had not trusted Henry; he had been suspicious of him;he had quarreled with him. How strange, then, that Uncle Benny shouldhave advanced and given way to a man whom he could not trust!
It was strange, too, that if--as Henry had said--their quarrels hadbeen about the business, Uncle Benny had allowed Henry to remain incontrol.
Their quarrels had culminated on the day that Uncle Benny went away.Afterward Uncle Benny had come to her and warned her not to marryHenry; then he had sent for Alan. There had been purpose in these actsof Uncle Benny's; had they meant that Uncle Benny had been on the vergeof making explanation--that explanation which Henry feared--and that hehad been--prevented? Her father had thought this; at least, he hadthought that Uncle Benny must have left some explanation in his house.He had told Alan that, and had given Alan the key to the house so thathe could find it. Alan had gone to the house--
In the house Alan had found some one who had mistaken him for a ghost,a man who had cried out at sight of him something about a ship--aboutthe _Miwaka_, the ship of whose loss no one had known anything exceptby the sounding of the Drum. What had the man been doing in the house?Had he too been looking for the explanation--the explanation that Henryfeared? Alan had described the man to her; that description had nothad meaning for her before; but now remembering that description shecould think of Henry as the only one who could have been in that house!Henry had fought with Alan there! Afterwards, when Alan had beenattacked upon the street, had Henry anything to do with that?
Henry had lied to her about being in Duluth the night he had foughtwith Alan; he had not told her the true cause of his quarrels withUncle Benny; he had wished her to believe that Uncle Benny was deadwhen the wedding ring and watch came to her--the watch which had beenCaptain Stafford's of the _Miwaka_! Henry had urged her to marry himat once. Was that because he wished the security that her father--andshe--must give her husband when they learned the revelation which Alanor Uncle Benny might bring?
If so, then that revelation had to do with the _Miwaka_. It was of the_Miwaka_ that Henry had cried out to Alan in the house; they were thenames of the next of kin of those on the _Miwaka_ that Uncle Benny hadkept. That was beginning to explain to her something of the effect onHenry of the report that the Drum was telling that some on Ferry Number25 were alive, and why he had hurried north because of that. TheDrum--so superstition had said--had beat the roll of those who diedwith the _Miwaka_; had beaten for all but one! No one of those whoaccepted the superstition had ever been able to explain that; but Henrycould! He knew something more about the _Miwaka_ than others knew. Hehad encountered the _Miwaka_ somehow or encountered some one saved fromthe _Miwaka_; he knew, then, that the Drum had beaten correctly for the_Miwaka_, that one was spared as the Drum had told! Who had that onebeen? Alan? And was he now among those for whom the Drum had not yetbeat?
She recalled that, on the day when the _Miwaka_ was lost, Henry andUncle Benny had been upon the lake in a tug. Afterwards Uncle Bennyhad grown rich; Henry had attained advancement and wealth. Herreasoning had brought her to the verge of a terrible disc
overy. If shecould take one more step forward in her thought, it would make herunderstand it all. But she could not yet take that step.
In the morning, at Traverse City--where she got a cup of coffee andsome toast in the station eating house--she had to change to a daycoach. It had grown still more bitterly cold; the wind which swept thelong brick-paved platform of the station was arctic; and even throughthe double windows of the day coach she could feel its chill. Thepoints of Grand Traverse Bay were frozen across; frozen across too wasTorch Lake; to north of that, ice, snow-covered, through which frozenrushes protruded, marked the long chain of little lakes known as the"Intermediates." The little towns and villages, and the rolling fieldswith their leafless trees or blackened stumps, lay under drifts. Ithad stopped snowing, however, and she found relief in that; searchersupon the lake could see small boats now--if there were still smallboats to be seen.
To the people in her Pullman, the destruction of the ferry had beenonly a news item competing for interest with other news on the frontpages of their newspapers; but to these people in the day coach, it wasan intimate and absorbing thing. They spoke by name of the crew as ofpersons whom they knew. A white lifeboat, one man told her, had beenseen south of Beaver Island; another said there had been two boats.They had been far off from shore, but, according to the report cabledfrom Beaver, there had appeared to be men in them; the men--herinformant's voice hushed slightly--had not been rowing. Constanceshuddered. She had heard of things like that on the quick-freezingfresh water of the lakes--small boats adrift crowded with men sittingupright in them, ice-coated, frozen, lifeless!
Petoskey, with its great hotels closed and boarded up, and its curioshops closed and locked, was blocked with snow. She went from thetrain directly to the telegraph office. If Henry was in Petoskey, theywould know at that office where he could be found; he would be keepingin touch with them. The operator in charge of the office knew her, andhis manner became still more deferential when she asked after Henry.
Mr. Spearman, the man said, had been at the office early in the day;there had been no messages for him; he had left instructions that anywhich came were to be forwarded to him through the men who, under hisdirection, were patroling the shore for twenty miles north of LittleTraverse, watching for boats. The operator added to the report she hadheard upon the train. One lifeboat and perhaps two had been seen by afarmer who had been on the ice to the south of Beaver; the second boathad been far to the south and west of the first one; tugs were cruisingthere now; it had been many hours, however, after the farmer had seenthe boats before he had been able to get word to the town at the northend of the island--St. James--so that the news could be cabled to themainland. Fishermen and seamen, therefore, regarded it as more likely,from the direction and violence of the gale, that the boats, if theycontinued to float, would be drifted upon the mainland than that theywould be found by the tugs.
Constance asked after her father. Mr. Sherrill and Mr. Spearman, theoperator told her, had been in communication that morning; Mr. Sherrillhad not come to Petoskey; he had taken charge of the watch along theshore at its north end. It was possible that the boats might drift inthere; but men of experience considered it more probable that the boatswould drift in farther south where Mr. Spearman was in charge.
Constance crossed the frozen edges of the bay by sledge to HarborPoint. The driver mentioned Henry with admiration and with pride inhis acquaintance with him; it brought vividly to her the recollectionthat Henry's rise in life was a matter of personal congratulation tothese people as lending luster to the neighborhood and to themselves.Henry's influence here was far greater than her own or her father's; ifshe were to move against Henry or show him distrust, she must workalone; she could enlist no aid from these.
And her distrust now had deepened to terrible dread. She had not beenable before this to form any definite idea of how Henry could threatenAlan and Uncle Benny; she had imagined only vague interference andobstruction of the search for them; she had not foreseen that he couldso readily assume charge of the search and direct, or misdirect, it.
At the Point she discharged the sledge and went on foot to the house ofthe caretaker who had charge of the Sherrill cottage during the winter.Getting the keys from him, she let herself into the house. Theelectric light had been cut off, and the house was darkened byshutters, but she found a lamp and lit it. Going to her room, sheunpacked a heavy sweater and woolen cap and short fur coat--winterthings which were left there against use when they opened the housesometimes out of season--and put them on. Then she went down and foundher snowshoes. Stopping at the telephone, she called long distance andasked them to locate Mr. Sherrill, if possible, and instruct him tomove south along the shore with whomever he had with him. She went outthen, and fastened on her snowshoes.
It had grown late. The early December dusk--the second dusk sincelittle boats had put off from Number 25--darkened the snow-locked land.The wind from the west cut like a knife, even through her fur coat.The pine trees moaned and bent, with loud whistlings of the wind amongtheir needles; the leafless elms and maples crashed their limbstogether; above the clamor of all other sounds, the roaring of the lakecame to her, the booming of the waves against the ice, the shatter offloe on floe. No snow had fallen for a few hours, and the sky was evenclearing; ragged clouds scurried before the wind and, opening, showedthe moon.
Constance hurried westward and then north, following the bend of theshore. The figure of a man--one of the shore patrols--pacing the icehummocks of the beach and staring out upon the lake, appeared vaguelyin the dusk when she had gone about two miles. He seemed surprised atseeing a girl, but less surprised when he had recognized her. Mr.Spearman, he told her, was to the north of them upon the beachsomewhere, he did not know how far; he could not leave his post toaccompany her, but he assured her that there were men stationed allalong the shore. She came, indeed, three quarters of a mile fartheron, to a second man; about an equal distance beyond, she found a third,but passed him and went on.
Her legs ached now with the unaccustomed travel upon snowshoes; thecold, which had been only a piercing chill at first, was stoppingfeeling, almost stopping thought. When clouds covered the moon,complete darkness came; she could go forward only slowly then or muststop and wait; but the intervals of moonlight were growing longer andincreasing in frequency. As the sky cleared, she went forward quicklyfor many minutes at a time, straining her gaze westward over thetumbling water and the floes. It came to her with terrifyingapprehension that she must have advanced at least three miles since shehad seen the last patrol; she could not have passed any one in themoonlight without seeing him, and in the dark intervals she hadadvanced so little that she could not have missed one that way either.
She tried to go faster as she realized this; but now travel had becomemore difficult. There was no longer any beach. High, precipitousbluffs, which she recognized as marking Seven Mile Point, descendedhere directly to the hummocked ice along the water's edge. She fellmany times, traveling upon these hummocks; there were strange,treacherous places between the hummocks where, except for hersnowshoes, she would have broken through. Her skirt was torn; she lostone of her gloves and could not stop to look for it; she fell again andsharp ice cut her ungloved hand and blood froze upon her finger tips.She did not heed any of these things.
She was horrified to find that she was growing weak, and that hersenses were becoming confused. She mistook at times floating ice,metallic under the moonlight, for boats; her heart beat fast then whileshe scrambled part way up the bluff to gain better sight and soascertained her mistake. Deep ravines at places broke the shores;following the bend of the bluffs, she got into these ravines and onlylearned her error when she found that she was departing from the shore.She had come, in all, perhaps eight miles; and she was "playing out";other girls, she assured herself--other girls would not have weakenedlike this; they would have had strength to make certain no boats werethere, or at least to get help. She had seen no houses; t
hose, sheknew, stood back from the shore, high upon the bluffs, and were noteasy to find; but she scaled the bluff now and looked about for lights.The country was wild and wooded, and the moonlight showed only thewhite stretches of the shrouding snow.
She descended to the beach again and went on; her gaze continued tosearch the lake, but now, wherever there was a break in the bluffs, shelooked toward the shore as well. At the third of these breaks, theyellow glow of a window appeared, marking a house in a hollow betweensnow-shrouded hills. She turned eagerly that way; she could go onlyvery slowly now. There was no path; at least, if there was, the snowdrifts hid it. Through the drifts a thicket projected; the pines onthe ravine sides overhead stood so close that only a silver tracery ofthe moonlight came through; beyond the pines, birch trees, stripped oftheir bark, stood black up to the white boughs.
Constance climbed over leafless briars and through brush and came upona clearing perhaps fifty yards across, roughly crescent shaped, as itfollowed the configuration of the hills. Dead cornstalks, above thesnow, showed ploughed ground; beyond that, a little, black cabinhuddled in the further point of the crescent, and Constance gasped withdisappointment as she saw it. She had expected a farmhouse; but thisplainly was not even that. The framework was of logs or poles whichhad been partly boarded over; and above the boards and where they werelacking, black building paper had been nailed, secured by big tindiscs. The rude, weather-beaten door was closed; smoke, however, camefrom a pipe stuck through the roof.
She struggled to the door and knocked upon it, and receiving no reply,she beat upon it with both fists.
"Who's here?" she cried. "Who's here?"
The door opened then a very little, and the frightened face of anIndian woman appeared in the crack. The woman evidently hadexpected--and feared--some arrival, and was reassured when she saw onlya girl. She threw the door wider open, and bent to help unfastenConstance's snowshoes; having done that, she led her in and closed thedoor.
Constance looked swiftly around the single room of the cabin. Therewas a cot on one side; there was a table, home carpentered; there werea couple of boxes for clothing or utensils. The stove, a good rangeonce in the house of a prosperous farmer, had been bricked up by itspresent owners so as to hold fire. Dried onions and yellow ears ofcorn hung from the rafters; on the shelves were little birchbarkcanoes, woven baskets, and porcupine quill boxes of the ordinary sortmade for the summer trade. Constance recognized the woman now as onewho had come sometimes to the Point to sell such things, and who couldspeak fairly good English. The woman clearly had recognized Constanceat once.
"Where is your man?" Constance had caught the woman's arm.
"They sent for him to the beach. A ship has sunk."
"Are there houses near here? You must run to one of them at once.Bring whoever you can get; or if you won't do that, tell me where togo."
The woman stared at her stolidly and moved away. "None near," shesaid. "Besides, you could not get somebody before some one will come."
"Who is that?"
"He is on the beach--Henry Spearman. He comes here to warm himself.It is nearly time he comes again."
"How long has he been about here?"
"Since before noon. Sit down. I will make you tea."
Constance gazed at her; the woman was plainly glad of her coming. Herrelief--relief from that fear she had been feeling when she opened thedoor--was very evident. It was Henry, then, who had frightened her.
The Indian woman set a chair for her beside the stove, and put water ina pan to heat; she shook tea leaves from a box into a bowl and broughta cup.
"How many on that ship?"
"Altogether there were thirty-nine," Constance replied.
"Some saved?"
"Yes; a boat was picked up yesterday morning with twelve."
The woman seemed making some computation which was difficult for her.
"Seven are living then," she said.
"Seven? What have you heard? What makes you think so?"
"That is what the Drum says."
The Drum! There was a Drum then! At least there was some sound whichpeople heard and which they called the Drum. For the woman had heardit.
The woman shifted, checking something upon her fingers, while her lipsmoved; she was not counting, Constance thought; she was more likelyaiding herself in translating something from Indian numeration intoEnglish. "Two, it began with," she announced. "Right away it went tonine. Sixteen then--that was this morning very early. Now, all dayand to-night, it has been giving twenty. That leaves seven. It is notknown who they may be."
She opened the door and looked out. The roar of the water and thewind, which had come loudly, increased, and with it the wood noises.The woman was not looking about now, Constance realized; she waslistening. Constance arose and went to the door too. The Drum! Bloodprickled in her face and forehead; it prickled in her finger tips. TheDrum was heard only, it was said, in time of severest storm; for thatreason it was heard most often in winter. It was very seldom heard byany one in summer; and she was of the summer people. Sounds werecoming from the woods now. Were these reverberations the roll of theDrum which beat for the dead? Her voice was uncontrolled as she askedthe woman:
"Is that the Drum?"
The woman shook her head. "That's the trees."
Constance's shoulders shook convulsively together. When she hadthought about the Drum--and when she had spoken of it with others who,themselves, never had heard it--they always had said that, if therewere such a sound, it was trees. She herself had heard those strangewood noises, terrifying sometimes until their source wasknown--wailings like the cry of some one in anguish, which were causedby two crossed saplings rubbing together; thunderings, which were onlysome smaller trees beating against a great hollow trunk when a strongwind veered from a certain direction. But this Indian woman must knowall such sounds well; and to her the Drum was something distinct fromthem. The woman specified that now.
"You'll know the Drum when you hear it."
Constance grew suddenly cold. For twenty lives, the woman said, theDrum had beat; that meant to her, and to Constance too now, that sevenwere left. Indefinite, desperate denial that all from the ferry mustbe dead--that denial which had been strengthened by the news that atleast one boat had been adrift near Beaver--altered in Constance toconviction of a boat with seven men from the ferry, seven dying,perhaps, but not yet dead. Seven out of twenty-seven! The score weregone; the Drum had beat for them in little groups as they had died.When the Drum beat again, would it beat beyond the score?
The woman drew back and closed the door; the water was hot now, and shemade the tea and poured a cup for Constance. As she drank it,Constance was listening for the Drum; the woman too was listening.Having finished the tea, Constance returned to the door and reopenedit; the sounds outside were the same. A solitary figure appearedmoving along the edge of the ice--the figure of a tall man, walking onsnowshoes; moonlight distorted the figure, and it was muffled too in agreat coat which made it unrecognizable. He halted and stood lookingout at the lake and then, with a sudden movement, strode on; he haltedagain, and now Constance got the knowledge that he was not looking; hewas listening as she was. He was not merely listening; his body swayedand bent to a rhythm--he was counting something that he heard.Constance strained her ears; but she could hear no sound except thoseof the waters and the wind.
"Is the Drum sounding now?" she asked the woman.
"No."
Constance gazed again at the man and found his motion quiteunmistakable; he was counting--if not counting something that he heard,or thought he heard, he was recounting and reviewing within himselfsomething that he had heard before--some irregular rhythm which hadbecome so much a part of him that it sounded now continually within hisown brain; so that, instinctively, he moved in cadence to it. Hestepped forward again now, and turned toward the house.
Her breath caught as she spoke to the woman. "Mr. Spearman is comingh
ere now!"
Her impulse was to remain where she was, lest he should think she wasafraid of him; but realization came to her that there might beadvantage in seeing him before he knew that she was there, so shereclosed the door and drew back into the cabin.