The Unknown Quantity Part 18

II

But that sermon was not to be delivered. Mr. North woke very early, before it was light, and could not find sleep again. In the gray of the morning, when the little day was creeping among the houses of Glendour, he heard steps in the street and then a whisper of voices at his gate. He threw his wrapper around him and went down quietly to open the door.

A group of men were there, with trouble in their faces. They told him of an accident on the river. A sleigh crossing the ice during the night had lost the track. The horses had broken into an air-hole and dragged the sleigh with them. The man went under the ice with the current, and came out a little while ago in the big spring-hole by the point. They had pulled the body ash.o.r.e. They did not know for sure who it was--a stranger--but they thought--perhaps----

The minister listened silently, s.h.i.+vering once or twice, and pa.s.sing his hand over his brow as if to brush away something. When their voices paused and ceased, he said slowly, "Thank you for coming to me.

I must go with you, and then I can tell." As he went upstairs softly and put on his clothes, he repeated these words to himself two or three times mechanically--"yes, then I can tell." But as he went with the men he said nothing, walking like one in a dream.

On the bank of the river, amid the broken ice and trampled yellow snow, the men had put a couple of planks together and laid the body of the stranger upon them turning up the broad collar of his fur coat to hide his face. One of the men now turned the collar down, and Nathaniel North looked into the wide-open eyes of the dead.

A horrible tremor shook him from head to foot. He lifted his hands, as if he must cry aloud in anguish. Then suddenly his face and figure seemed to congeal and stiffen with some awful inward coldness--the frost of the last circle of the Inferno--it spread upon him till he stood like a soul imprisoned in ice.

"Yes," he said, "this is my brother Abel. Will you carry him to my house? We must bury him."

During the confusion and distress of the following days that frozen rigidity never broke nor melted. Mr. North gave no directions for the funeral, took no part in it, but stood beside the grave in dreadful immobility. He did not mourn. He did not lament. He listened to his friends' consolation as if it were spoken in an unknown tongue.

Nothing helped him, nothing hurt, because nothing touched him. He did no work, opened no book, spoke no word if he could avoid it. He moved about his house like a stranger, a captive, shrinking from his children so that they grew afraid to come close to him. They were bewildered and harrowed with pity. They did not know what to do. It seemed as if it were their father and not their uncle who had died.

Every attempt to penetrate the ice of his anguish failed. He gave no sign of why or how he suffered. Most of the time he spent alone in his book-room, sitting with his hands in his lap, staring at the unspeakable thought that paralysed him, the thought that was entangled with the very roots of his creed and that glared at him with monstrous and malignant face above the very altar of his religion--the thought of his last prayer--the effectual prayer, the fervent prayer, the d.a.m.nable prayer that branded his soul with the mark of Cain, his brother's murderer.

The physician grew alarmed. He feared the minister would lose his reason in a helpless melancholia. The children were heart-broken. All their efforts to comfort and distract their father fell down hopeless from the mask of ice, behind which they saw him like a spirit in prison. Daniel and Ruth were ready to give up in despair. But Esther still clung to the hope that she could do something to rescue him.

One night, when the others had gone to bed, she crept down to the sombre study. Her father did not turn his head as she entered. She crossed the room and knelt down by the ink-stained table, laying her hands on his knee. He put them gently away and motioned her to rise.

"Do not do that," he said in a dull voice.

She stood before him, wringing her hands, the tears streaming down her face, but her voice was sweet and steady.

"Father," she said, "you must tell me what it is that is killing you.

Don't you know it is killing us too? Is it right for you to do that? I know it is something more than uncle's death that hurts you. It is sad to lose a brother, but there is something deeper in your heart. Tell me what it is. I have the right to know. I ask you for mother's sake."

He lifted his head and looked at her. His eyelids quivered. His secret dragged downward in his breast like an iron hand clutching his throat-strings. His voice was stifled. But no matter what it cost him, to her, the first child of his love, his darling, he must speak at last.

"You have the right to know, Esther," he said, with a painful effort.

"I will tell you what is in my soul. I killed my brother Abel. The night of his death, I knelt at that table and prayed that he might be prevented from coming to this house. My only thought, my only wish was that he must be kept away. That was all I asked for. G.o.d killed him because I asked it. His blood is on my soul."

He leaned back in his chair exhausted, and shut his eyes.

The girl stood dazed for a moment, struck dumb by the grotesque horror of what she had heard. Then the light of Heaven-sent faith flashed through her and the courage of human love warmed her. She sprang to her father, sobbing, almost laughing in the joy of triumph. She flung herself across his knees and put her arms around him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She flung herself across his knees and put her arms around him.]

"Father, did you teach us that G.o.d is our Father, our real Father?"

The man did not answer, but the girl went bravely on:

"Father, if I asked you to kill Ruth, would you do it?"

The man stirred a little, but he did not open his eyes nor answer, and the girl went bravely on:

"Father, is it fair to G.o.d to believe that He would do something that you would be ashamed of? Isn't He better than you are?"

The man opened his eyes. The light of his old faith kindled in them.

He answered firmly:

"He is infinite, absolute, and unchangeable. His Word is sure. We dare not question Him. There is the promise--the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."

The girl did not look up. She clung to him more closely and buried her face on his breast.

"Yes, father dear, but if what you asked in your prayer was wrong, were you a righteous man? Could your prayer have any power?"

It was her last stroke--she trembled as she made it. There was a dead silence in the room. She heard the slow clock ticking on the mantel, the wind whistling in the chimney. Then her father's breast was shaken, his head fell upon her shoulder, his tears rained upon her neck.

"Thank G.o.d," he cried, "I was a sinner--it was not a prayer--G.o.d be merciful to me a sinner!"

THE RETURN OF THE CHARM

I

"Nor I," cried John Harcourt, pulling up in the moon-silvered mist and clapping his hand to his pocket, "not a groat! Stay, here is a crooked sixpence of King James that none but a fool would take. The merry robbers left me that for luck."

d.i.c.k Barton growled as he turned in his saddle. "We must ride on, then, till we find a cousin to loan us a few pounds. Sir Empty-purse fares ill at an inn."

"By my sore seat," laughed Harcourt, "we'll ride no farther to-night.

Here we 'light, at the sign of the Magpie in the Moon. The rogues of Farborough Cross have trimmed us well; the honest folk of Market Farborough shall feed us better!"

"For a crooked sixpence!" grumbled Barton. "Will you beg our entertainment like a pair of landlopers, or will you take it by force like our late friends on the road?"

"Neither," said Harcourt, "but in the fas.h.i.+on that befits gentlemen--with a bold face, a gay tongue, and a fine coat well carried. Remember, d.i.c.k, look up, and no snivelling! Tell your ill-fortune and you bid for more. 'Tis Monsieur Debonair that owns the tavern."

Their l.u.s.ty shouts brought the hostler on the trot to take their steaming horses, and the landlord stood in the open door, his broad face a welcome to such handsome guests. They entered as if the place belonged to them, and called for the best it contained as if it were just good enough. The whole house was awake and astir with their coming. The smiling maids ran to and fro; the rustics in the long room stared and admired: the table was spread with a fair cloth and loaded with a smoking supper; and afterward there were pots of ale for all the company, and a song with a chorus. The landlord, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, patted himself to see his business go so merrily. But the landlady came to the door, now and then, and looked in with anxious eyes.

"Mark the mistress," whispered Barton; "she has her suspicions."

"Her troubles," answered Harcourt, "and that I relish not. I will have all happy around me, else my spirit sinks and the game is lost. I'll talk with her."

He beckoned her to his side with a courteous gesture.

"A famous supper, Mistress," said he, "but your face is too downcast for the maker of such a masterpiece. What is it that ails you?"

"It is my child," she answered; "kind sir, my little Faith is ill of fever, and the physician has been called away. He has left her a draught, but she grows worse, and the fever holds her from sleep. It may be that you know something of the healing art."

"As much as any man," said Harcourt, confidently. "You see in me, despite my youth, a pract.i.tioner of the oldest school in the world, a disciple of Galen's grandfather. Let me go with you to look at the child."

The little girl lay in a close room. Her curls were tangled on the pillow and her thin, brown arms tossed on the hot counterpane. By her side was a gla.s.s of some dark medicine, and her black eyes held more of rebellion than of fever as she gazed at the stranger.