CHAPTER XX
THE SOUNDING OF THE DRUM
Noises of the wind and the roaring of the lake made inaudible any soundof his approach to the cabin; she heard his snowshoes, however, scrapethe cabin wall as, after taking them off, he leaned them beside thedoor. He thrust the door open then and came in; he did not see her atfirst and, as he turned to force the door shut again against the wind,she watched him quietly. She understood at once why the Indian womanhad been afraid of him. His face was bloodless, yellow, andswollen-looking, his eyes bloodshot, his lips strained to a thin,straight line.
He saw her now and started and, as though sight of her confused him, helooked away from the woman and then back to Constance before he seemedcertain of her.
"Hello!" he said tentatively. "Hello!"
"I'm here, Henry."
"Oh; you are! You are!" He stood drawn up, swaying a little as hestared at her; whiskey was upon his breath, and it became evident inthe heat of the room; but whiskey could not account for this conditionshe witnessed in him. Neither could it conceal that condition; someturmoil and strain within him made him immune to its effects.
She had realized on her way up here what, vaguely, that strain withinhim must be. Guilt--guilt of some awful sort connected him, and hadconnected Uncle Benny, with the _Miwaka_--the lost ship for which theDrum had beaten the roll of the dead. Now dread of revelation of thatguilt had brought him here near to the Drum; he had been alone upon thebeach twelve hours, the woman had said--listening, counting the beatingof the Drum for another ship, fearing the survival of some one fromthat ship. Guilt was in his thought now--racking, tearing at him. Butthere was something more than that; what she had seen in him when hefirst caught sight of her was fear--fear of her, of Constance Sherrill.
He was fully aware, she now understood, that he had in a measurebetrayed himself to her in Chicago; and he had hoped to cover up and todissemble that betrayal with her. For that reason she was the lastperson in the world whom he wished to find here now.
"The point is," he said heavily, "why are you here?"
"I decided to come up last night."
"Obviously." He uttered the word slowly and with care. "Unless youcame in a flying machine. Who came with you?"
"No one; I came alone. I expected to find father at Petoskey; hehadn't been there, so I came on here."
"After him?"
"No; after you, Henry."
"After me?" She had increased the apprehension in him, and heconsidered and scrutinized her before he ventured to go on. "Becauseyou wanted to be up here with me, eh, Connie?"
"Of course not!"
"What's that?"
"Of course not!"
"I knew it!" he moved menacingly. She watched him quite without fear;fear was for him, she felt, not her. Often she had wished that shemight have known him when he was a young man; now, she was aware that,in a way, she was having that wish. Under the surface of the man whosestrength and determination she had admired, all the time had been thisterror--this guilt. If Uncle Benny had carried it for a score ofyears, Henry had had it within him too. This had been within him allthe time!
"You came up here about Ben Corvet?" he challenged.
"Yes--no!"
"Which do you mean?"
"No."
"I know then. For him, then--eh. For him!"
"For Alan Conrad? Yes," she said.
"I knew it!" he repeated. "He's been the trouble between you and meall the time!"
She made no denial of that; she had begun to know during the last twodays that it was so.
"So you came to find him?" Henry went on.
"Yes, Henry. Have you any news?"
"News?"
"News of the boats?"
"News!" he iterated. "News to-night! No one'll have more'n one newsto-night!"
From his slow, heavy utterance, a timbre of terrible satisfactionbetrayed itself; his eyes widened a little as he saw it strikeConstance, then his lids narrowed again. He had not meant to say itthat way; yet, for an instant, satisfaction to him had becomeinseparable from the saying, before that was followed by fright--thefright of examination of just what he had said or of what she had madeof it.
"He'll be found!" she defied him.
"Be found?"
"Some are dead," she admitted, "but not all. Twenty are dead; butseven are not!"
She looked for confirmation to the Indian woman, who nodded: "Yes." Hemoved his head to face the woman, but his eyes, unmoving, remainedfixed on Constance.
"Seven?" he echoed. "You say seven are not! How do you know?"
"The Drum has been beating for twenty, but not for more!" Constancesaid. Thirty hours before, when she had told Henry of the Drum, shehad done it without belief herself, without looking for belief in him.But now, whether or not she yet believed or simply clung to thesuperstition for its shred of hope, it gave her a weapon to terrifyhim; for he believed--believed with all the unreasoning horror of hissuperstition and the terror of long-borne and hidden guilt.
"The Drum, Henry!" she repeated. "The Drum you've been listening toall day upon the beach--the Indian Drum that sounded for the dead ofthe _Miwaka_; sounded, one by one, for all who died! But it didn'tsound for him! It's been sounding again, you know; but, again, itdoesn't sound for him, Henry, not for him!"
"The _Miwaka_! What do you mean by that? What's that got to do withthis?" His swollen face was thrust forward at her; there was threatagainst her in his tense muscles and his bloodshot eyes.
She did not shrink back from him, or move; and now he was not waitingfor her answer. Something--a sound--had caught him about. Once itechoed, low in its reverberation but penetrating and quite distinct.It came, so far as direction could be assigned to it, from the treestoward the shore; but it was like no forest sound. Distinct too was itfrom any noise of the lake. It was like a Drum! Yet, when the echohad gone, it was a sensation easy to deny--a hallucination, that wasall. But now, low and distinct it came again; and, as before,Constance saw it catch Henry and hold him. His lips moved, but he didnot speak; he was counting. "Two," she saw his lips form.
The Indian woman passed them and opened the door, and now the sound,louder and more distinct, came again.
"The Drum!" she whispered, without looking about. "You hear? Three,I've heard. Now four! It will beat twenty; then we will know if moreare dead!"
The door blew from the woman's hand, and snow, swept up from the driftsof the slope, swirled into the room; the draft blew the flame of thelamp in a smoky streak up the glass chimney and snuffed it out. Themoonlight painted a rectangle on the floor; the moonlight gave a green,shimmering world without. Hurried spots of cloud shuttered away themoon for moments, casting shadows which swept raggedly up the slopefrom the shore. The woman seized the door and, tugging it aboutagainst the gale, she slammed it shut. She did not try at once torelight the lamp.
The sound of the Drum was continuing, the beats a few seconds apart.The opening of the door outside had seemed to Constance to make thebeats come louder and more distinct; but the closing of the door didnot muffle them again. "Twelve," Constance counted to herself. Thebeats had seemed to be quite measured and regular at first; but nowConstance knew that this was only roughly true; they beat rather inrhythm than at regular intervals. Two came close together and therewas a longer wait before the next; then three sounded before themeasure--a wild, leaping rhythm. She recalled having heard that thestrangeness of Indian music to civilized ears was its time; the drumsbeat and rattles sounded in a different time from the song which theyaccompanied; there were even, in some dances, three different timescontending for supremacy. Now this seemed reproduced in the strange,irregular sounding of the Drum; she could not count with certaintythose beats. "Twenty--twenty-one--twenty-two!" Constance caughtbreath and waited for the next beat; the time of the interval betweenthe measures of the rhythm passed, and still only the whistle of thewind and the undertone of water sounded. The Drum had beaten its
rolland, for the moment, was done.
"Now it begins again," the woman whispered. "Always it waits and thenit begins over."
Constance let go her breath; the next beat then would not mean anotherdeath. Twenty-two, had been her count, as nearly as she could count atall; the reckoning agreed with what the woman had heard. Two had died,then, since the Drum last had beat, when its roll was twenty. Two morethan before; that meant five were left! Yet Constance, while she wasappreciating this, strained forward, staring at Henry; she could not becertain, in the flickering shadows of the cabin, of what she was seeingin him; still less, in the sudden stoppage of heart and breathing thatit brought, could she find coherent answer to its meaning. But stillit turned her weak, then spurred her with a vague and terrible impulse.
The Indian woman lifted the lamp chimney waveringly and scratched amatch and, with unsteady hands, lighted the wick; Constance caught upher woolen hood from the table and put it on. Her action seemed tocall Henry to himself.
"What are you going to do?" he demanded.
"I'm going out."
He moved between her and the door. "Not alone, you're not!" His heavyvoice had a deep tone of menace in it; he seemed to consider and decidesomething about her. "There's a farmhouse about a mile back; I'm goingto take you over there and leave you with those people."
"I will not go there!"
He swore. "I'll carry you then!"
She shrank back from him as he lurched toward her with handsoutstretched to seize her; he followed her, and she avoided him again;if his guilt and terror had given her mental ascendency over him, hisphysical strength could still force her to his will and, realizing theimpossibility of evading him or overcoming him, she stopped.
"Not that!" she cried. "Don't touch me!"
"Come with me then!" he commanded; and he went to the door and laid hissnowshoes on the snow and stepped into them, stooping and tighteningthe straps; he stood by while she put on hers. He did not attemptagain to put hands upon her as they moved away from the little cabintoward the woods back of the clearing; but went ahead, breaking thetrail for her with his snowshoes. He moved forward slowly; he couldtravel, if he had wished, three feet to every two that she could cover,but he seemed not wishing for speed but rather for delay. They reachedthe trees; the hemlock and pine, black and swaying, shifted theirshadows on the moonlit snow; bare maples and beeches, bent by the gale,creaked and cracked; now the hemlock was heavier. The wind, whichwailed among the branches of the maples, hissed loudly in the needlesof the hemlocks; snow swept from the slopes and whirled and drove aboutthem, and she sucked it in with her breath. All through the wood werenoises; a moaning came from a dark copse of pine and hemlock to theirright, rose and died away; a wail followed--a whining, whimperingwail--so like the crying of a child that it startled her. Shadowsseemed to detach themselves, as the trees swayed, to tumble from theboughs and scurry over the snow; they hid, as one looked at them, thendarted on and hid behind the tree trunks.
Henry was barely moving; now he slowed still more. A deep, dullresonance was booming above the wood; it boomed again and ran into arhythm. No longer was it above; at least it was not only above; it wasall about them--here, there, to right and to left, before, behind--thebooming of the Drum. Doom was the substance of that sound of the Drumbeating the roll of the dead. Could there be abiding in the wood aconsciousness which counted that roll? Constance fought the madfeeling that it brought. The sound must have some natural cause, sherepeated to herself--waves washing in some strange conformation of theice caves on the shore, wind reverberating within some great hollowtree trunk as within the pipe of an organ. But Henry was not denyingthe Drum!
He had stopped in front of her, half turned her way; his body swayedand bent to the booming of the Drum, as his swollen lips counted itssoundings. She could see him plainly in the moonlight, yet she drewnearer to him as she followed his count. "Twenty-one," hecounted--"Twenty-two!" The Drum was still going on."Twenty-four--twenty-five--twenty-six!" Would he count another?
He did not; and her pulses, which had halted, leaped with relief; andthrough her comprehension rushed. It was thus she had seen himcounting in the cabin, but so vaguely that she had not been certain ofit, but only able to suspect. Then the Drum had stopped short oftwenty-six, but he had not stopped counting because of that; he hadmade the sounds twenty-six, when she and the woman had made them,twenty-two; now he had reckoned them twenty-six, though the Drum, asshe separated the sound from other noises, still went on!
He moved on again, descending the steep side of a little ravine, andshe followed. One of his snowshoes caught in a protruding root and,instead of slowing to free it with care, he pulled it violently out,and she heard the dry, seasoned wood crack. He looked down, swore; sawthat the wood was not broken through and went on; but as he reached thebottom of the slope, she leaped downward from a little height behindhim and crashed down upon his trailing snowshoe just behind the heel.The rending snap of the wood came beneath her feet. Had she brokenthrough his shoe or snapped her own? She sprang back, as he cried outand swung in an attempt to grasp her; he lunged to follow her, and sheran a few steps away and stopped. At his next step, his foot entangledin the mesh of the broken snowshoe, and he stooped, cursing, to stripit off and hurl it from him; then he tore off the one from the otherfoot, and threw it away, and lurched after her again; but now he sankabove his knees and floundered in the snow. She stood for a momentwhile the half-mad, half-drunken figure struggled toward her along theside of the ravine; then she ran to where the tree trunks hid her fromhim, but where she could look out from the shadow and see him. Hegained the top of the slope and turned in the direction she had gone;assured then, apparently, that she had fled in fear of him, he startedback more swiftly toward the beach. She followed, keeping out of hissight among the trees.
To twenty-six, he had counted--to twenty-six, each time! That toldthat he knew one was living among those who had been upon the ferry!The Drum--it was not easy to count with exactness those wild,irregularly leaping sounds; one might make of them almost what onewished--or feared! And if, in his terror here, Henry made the counttwenty-six, it was because he knew--he knew that one was living! Whatone? It could only be one of two to dismay him so; there had been onlytwo on the ferry whose rescue he had feared; only two who, living, hewould have let lie upon this beach which he had chosen and set asidefor his patrol, while he waited for him to die!
She forced herself on, unsparingly, as she saw Henry gain the shore andas, believing himself alone, he hurried northward. She went with him,paralleling his course among the trees. On the wind-swept ridges ofthe ice, where there was little snow, he could travel for longstretches faster than she; she struggled to keep even with him, herlungs seared by the cold air as she gasped for breath. But she couldnot rest; she could not let herself be exhausted. Merciless minuteafter minute she raced him thus-- A dark shape--a figure lay stretchedupon the ice ahead! Beyond and still farther out, something whichseemed the fragments of a lifeboat tossed up and down where the wavesthundered and gleamed at the edge of the floe.
Henry's pace quickened; hers quickened desperately too. She left theshelter of the trees and scrambled down the steep pitch of the bluff,shouting, crying aloud. Henry turned about and saw her; he halted, andshe passed him with a rush and got between him and the form upon theice, before she turned and faced him.
Defeat--defeat of whatever frightful purpose he had had--was his nowthat she was there to witness what he might do; and in his realizationof that, he burst out in oaths against her-- He advanced; she stood,confronting--he swayed slightly in his walk and swung past her andaway; he went past those things on the beach and kept on along the icehummocks toward the north.
She ran to the huddled figure of the man in mackinaw and cap; his facewas hidden partly by the position in which he lay and partly by thedrifting snow; but, before she swept the snow away and turned him toher, she knew that he was Alan.
She cried
to him and, when he did not answer, she shook him to get himawake; but she could not rouse him. Praying in wild whispers toherself, she opened his jacket and felt within his clothes; he waswarm--at least he was not frozen within! No; and there seemed somestir of his heart! She tried to lift him, to carry him; then to draghim. But she could not; he fell from her arms into the snow again, andshe sat down, pulling him upon her lap and clasping him to her. Shemust have aid, she must get him to some house, she must take him out ofthe terrible cold; but dared she leave him? Might Henry return, if shewent away? She arose and looked about. Far up the shore she saw hisfigure rising and falling with his flight over the rough ice. A soundcame to her too, the low, deep reverberation of the Drum beating oncemore along the shore and in the woods and out upon the lake; and itseemed to her that Henry's figure, in the stumbling steps of itsflight, was keeping time to the wild rhythm of that sound. And shestooped to Alan and covered him with her coat, before leaving him; forshe feared no longer Henry's return.