Part 20
Kenniston laughed slyly in his sleeve. One can hardly better appreciate the immense distance that mechanical appliance has brought man from his normal state of natural, unassisted faculties than in the effort to point out, with such accuracy as to enable another to distinguish, an object in those fair and foreign fields of heaven, by the unaided means of the index finger. A suffusion of self-gratulatory pride is apt to overspread the consciousness, the unit assuming the credit of all that the genius of invention has achieved in the generic name of mankind. Kenniston had not even a slight expectation of being able to distinguish the particular star, but the affectation of effort, in his own interests, in some sort constrained his will. He looked about the skies with that vague sense of recollection which animates one who turns the leaves of a volume written in a half-forgotten language. He had not been the familiar of the stars. His choicest ambitions had lifted him no further than a reasonably safe height for an attic, or those fantastic simulations of turrets, with which the new architecture apes _haud passibus æquis_ the old. He had naught in common with the full-pulsed aspiring audacity of those architects of eld who builded in the plain of Shinar; his was but a low-studded Babel. He had not cared for a higher outlook, and his building had no definite designs touching heaven. It had been so long since he had regarded the upper atmosphere other than barometrically that he hardly made shift to see the Swan arch her snowy neck from those great lakes of ether, whose indented shores seemed marked and foliage-fringed by the wooded summits of the Great Smoky Mountains. The assertive brilliance of Lyra he noted near the meridian, with the harp-strings all vibrant, doubtless, with that music of the spheres which we are told by the scientist is no longer a mere figment of poesy. The Cor Caroli gleamed pure and splendid amongst the mists of a struggling recollection. And where was Scorpio?--how low in the sky, how far to the southwest, how near to its setting! Through a water-gap of Chilhowee, cloven to the very heart of the range, he marked the gleaming coils. Of strangely melancholy intimations were the stars, seen so far through the steep wooded defile, dark and rugged on either hand; but he only remembered the relation of its early setting and the season, for it was near the end of September. How little building weather the year might spare him yet! How heavy the rains of to-day, and the west still harbored portents! Unless he relinquished all and left the field, baffled and beaten, he must have the incendiary behind the bars. To jail a suspect, at all events, would intimidate the lawless population, and point the moral of "Hands off!"
"I don't see it," he said, reverting to the prosecution of his intention to win the mountaineer's secret information as to the origin of the fire. "I'm sorry I can't see it, Mr.--Excuse me, what did you say your name is?"
His visitor had not said, but all thrown off his guard the young man replied promptly, "Lar'bee,--Jasper Lar'bee. Ef ye look jes' a leetle ter the right of that thar batch o' stars ez 'pears some similar ter a kyart-wheel"--He raised once more the futile inefficiency of his index finger.
But Kenniston was not looking. This name,--he placed it at once. In the short interview which he had had with the deputy sheriff touching the incendiary, without whose apprehension he feared to recommence the building, it had recurred repeatedly to Rodolphus Ross's lips coupled with many an imprecation. Kenniston had paid scant heed at the time to the story of the search for Espey, of the pretended arrest, of the escape of the supposed Larrabee and the inference of some crime which his flight fostered. It had all happened during his absence from the Cove, and shortly before the beginning of the building of the hotel. He could not conceive of any reasons for connecting one with the other; but this man indubitably knew something of the crime; his long and mysterious disappearance had baffled all the devices of the officers, and surely it was a strange subterfuge which had brought him hither. Strange to the minds of others as well, for sundry figures were detached now and again from the illumined thresholds near at hand; presently the foreman had joined the two, and several of the workmen approached, all pausing at intervals and craning their necks up toward the sky, having noticed the intent scrutiny of it, and expectant of some _lusus naturæ_,--comet, or aurora borealis, or other phenomenon,--the observation of which might serve to break the monotony. The resonant tone of the banjo now and again sounded loud in the damp air, as the musician who carried it under his arm jostled against one of the other men. Their attitudes and faces expressed an alert curiosity, for they were not altogether indistinguishable, the two star-gazers having insensibly changed their positions, and come within the line of light falling from one of the open doors.
"Some ter the right o' that batch o' stars ez be some similar ter a kyart-wheel," repeated Larrabee urgently.
"I don't know which you mean," replied Kenniston, drawing himself back to the subject with difficulty.
"Don't ye view one ez ye never viewed afore?" demanded Jasper breathlessly. "Ef ye know 'em, ye air 'bleeged ter see that thar one air strange!"
"Mr. Jackson,"--Kenniston turned to the foreman,--"do you see anything unusual in that sky?"
The foreman answered with a prompt and businesslike negative, and then appealed in turn to one of the workmen. None of them could perceive aught amiss, although they all turned about and critically surveyed the majesty of the heavens.
"It's a new star," protested Larrabee, unconsciously adopting the scientific term of description. "I seen it kindle up myself 'bout three weeks ago."
There was an astounded silence; then a resonance broke out abruptly as the young musician smote his bullet head with the banjo, apparently inadvertently, but with the view of intimating to his fellows that all was not accurately adjusted in the cranium of their queer visitor.
Kenniston hesitated for a moment. There lay in his mind the residuum, so to speak, of an impression that new stars or temporary stars are not of infrequent occurrence in the economy of worlds, rating time by the long astral lengths. He could not say at once,--such scant commerce he had had with the stars of late years, to be sure! His mind had reverted instantly to the question upon what pretext he should seek to detain the man. He only saw rather than noted the workmen slowly turning aside, the long lane of yellow light streaming through the door, the lustrous mirror-like suggestions in the darkness hard by where the pools lurked and the frogs were still croaking, the outlines of the clustering roofs of the other little buildings, shadowy in the deeper shadow, the dense woods surrounding all, and above the great amphitheatre of the mountains on every side. The voice of the foreman recalled him:--
"That's a queer customer. First crank I've seen here."
"Where is he?" cried Kenniston, with a start, the freedom of the criticism notifying him of the absence of its subject. "Stop him! Call him! Hold on to him!"
But the effort was vain. Larrabee had departed as suddenly, as tracklessly, as if the night had swallowed him up.
XVII.
It was a buoyant, elated spirit that Jasper Larrabee bore as he slipped swiftly away through the darkness and the woods, unaware of the sudden vehement search for him, unhearing the hue and cry. He had put his discovery to the test,--the most searching that he could devise. And not the man learned in letters, who even knew the stars by name, not the clear-headed, prosperous, efficient foreman, not the humbler handicraftsmen, could see that gracious, splendid stellular presence still shining,--shining down into the wilderness, doubtless with some message, some token, some personal relation, that would be in due season made known. He had no uncertainties; he had said to himself that if it were invisible to others he would accept it as a revelation to himself. For had he not seen it even as it first kindled in the blank spaces of the midnight sky?
He felt with a sort of surprise that his limbs were trembling as he went, his breath was short; more than once he paused, with a reeling sense as if he should fall, and he beheld the summit line of demarkation where the dark woods touched the clear sky describe a long curve upward, and once more sink to its place. He had not known the physical exhaustion that ensues upon strong and long-continued mental excitement. Beyond the moment's impatient realization he gave it no heed. He was glad, glad beyond all power of analysis, expectant, breathless, his eyes continually fixed upon the star, unmindful whither his failing feet carried him. He passed without a thought the door of the store of the Lost Time mine, from which so lately he had escaped as it were with his life in his hand. He might have seen, if he had chosen, the twinkle of Cornelia Taft's fire through the chinking, as she nodded on the hearth and vainly waited for her father's return to supper. He heard naught,--no voice from the woods, no stir of leaf, no sigh of wind, no lapsing of the alien sheets of water, not even the full rush of the stream from the portal of the Lost Time mine, loud, sinister, seemingly charged with cavernous echoes from those hidden haunted recesses whence it came, wild, turbulent, with thrice its normal volume hurling out into the black night. Only once he paused. The unseen air and the invisible moisture were at their jugglery again, weaving from nothingness wondrous symmetries of scrolls tenuous to the eye, marvelous winged suggestions endowed with the faculty of flight and airy poise, graces of fabric, tissues, fold on fold of impalpable pearl-tinted consistencies; and now a floating film passed before the star, and again it shone out more splendid still, and anon dimly through the gathering haze, and so was lost to sight.
Larrabee stood for a time spellbound, still gazing up into heaven. But winds were astir in the region of the clouds. Heavy purple masses, with here and there flocculent white drifts in their midst, and showing lines of white at their verges, were spreading over the sky; the temperature had fallen suddenly; he was shivering. Vagrant gusts seemed to issue from defiles of the mountain, and he heard the awakening of the pines. Out of sight of the star his flagging energies failed. The definite realization of his fatigue, his hunger, his faintness, pressed upon his aroused senses. He could hardly support his tottering limbs to the door of the Lost Time mine, and drag himself up on the rocks, out of the reach of the water, to rest, as he waited till the clouds should pass, till the sight of the star should be renewed to his longing gaze. Even in its eclipse, in a certain yearning sense of bereavement, in his disappointment, he had a patience and calm acquiescence begotten of confidence. For he should see it again. Was it not his own, his very own, charged with some unimagined significance to him? He shifted his posture once, reckoning upon its position in the sky, that it might not fail his sight the moment the baffling clouds should withdraw. He was conscious of a high degree of happiness despite his tremulous thrills of suspense. He gazed upward, as he reclined on the ledge of rock, with smiling eyes and a heart full of deep content. He had gone far enough within to have an upward view through the jagged portal of rough-hewn rocks. Beyond their edges the sky seemed of lighter tint, so black it was within. He could mark here how the clouds made sail, how swiftly the wind sped them. He watched a section of a branch close at hand sway in sight, and swing back on the wind, and once more wave, nodding, plumelike, into view. He heard the sharp bark of a fox outside in the woods; it roused far-away baying of drowsy hounds, and again all was still, but for the reverberation of the water loud against the echoing walls of the darksome place. The sound affected his nerves; he was dizzy for a moment. Then something cold, clammy, suddenly struck him in the face. His heart seemed to stand still with the recollection of the spectral terrors of the place. The soft chill buffet came again and again, and the air was vaguely fanned about his brow before he recognized the noiseless flight of bats on their way to the outer darkness. He lay back upon the ledge, finding a solace in the mere posture of rest in his extreme fatigue, and once more watched the jagged black portal and the purple clouds with their hoary drifts, as in endless unbroken folds they rolled before the serene white splendors of that wondrous star. Again and again he would lift himself upon his elbow, fancying that the cloud textures waxed thin, and that presently, when they should fall away from before it, he would behold anew the sidereal incandescent glory that meant so much, that should mean more to him. Not once did his faith fail him. Not once did he doubt that the white fires of this star, which none else could see, were miraculously kindled and charged with some deep significance for him, with the vouchsafed will of God. For were not stars messengers in the olden time? Had he not read of one, supremely blessed and brilliant, which had led men, the wisest men, to the cradled Christ? As he lay back in the dense darkness, with the gathering clouds outside, and the air freighted with the sense of black noiseless invisible wings of creatures of ill favor and ill omen, he seemed to have a vision of that guiding star,--not a chill splendid crystalline glitter like his own, high, high in the sky, but low down in the dark east, and of a soft supernal silver sheen in the purple shadowy mist above the shadowy purple hills of Judea, that stretched out in ever-lengthening perspectives, as it fared on and slowly on its mystic way, for Bethlehem might still be far to seek.
And suddenly, with a start, Larrabee became aware that it was a real light at which he was gazing far down in the Lost Time mine. He had slept he knew not how long, nor in what danger, for the lantern whose starry lustre shone so far in the dark cavernous depths was swinging in the hands of one of two men who must have passed him as he lay dreaming and unconscious. He hardly dared move at first, so far those slanting, divergent rays extended from the white focus into the darkness. He lay still, struggling for a moment with the idea of the traditional spectres of the place, whose grisly renown had served to make it so solitary. It was the lantern which proved so redoubtable an exorcist. The sight of the little mundane contrivance appealed to his logical faculty as no mere theory of the impossibility of spectres could have done. He lifted himself cautiously on his elbow, and gazed down the vistas of the gloomy place with a suspicious, inquisitive worldly pulse beating in every vein. These were men in truth; and what was their mission here? One of them was singularly gesticulatory of manner. The other slouched heavily. It was the latter who had just lighted the lantern, for he was evidently throwing away a match, an article which the Lost Time store had made common in the Cove. Suddenly they were joined by a third figure, somehow detached from the darkness, for Larrabee could hardly have said whence he had approached, and who turned with a light, lithe motion, swinging to his shoulder an implement which the thickset man had handed him. It was a pick. How often Larrabee had heard its vibrations ring through these storied depths while he threaded the dark tunnel to the still, and shivered at the thought of the two dead miners digging and digging the graves these thirty years for their bones which only the waters had buried!
The lantern swayed, the shadows all flickered, the group was on the move. Larrabee sprang hastily to his feet to follow.
He could not easily judge how far the feeble glimmer led them, so rugged and winding was the way. Once, as the mouth of a submerged shaft yawned suddenly before his unprescient feet, he hesitated, half deterred; he was fain to skulk with the skulking shadows, lest the light should reveal his presence, and thus the dangers which his precursors braved menaced him doubly. He marveled that they dared the possibilities of the place, as he noted that the half-fallen timbers in a cross-cut through which they passed barely supported the masses of earth which any jar might dislodge. Everywhere was the sound of water working its secret will still on the ruins that it had made, and its tone added to the awe of the place, and the desolation, and the darkness, and the eerie effect of the bats that flew after the lantern and smote blindly against it.
The light was set down presently, and as the men seemed stirring about their work Larrabee ventured to approach nearer behind a pile of broken rock in the darkness, and mopped the cold perspiration from his brow. He caught his breath at the sight of the faces which the lantern revealed.
For they were all recruited from his mother's hearth. Some crazy folly, doubtless, of old man Haight had drawn him here. He had been one of the miners before that catastrophe which had closed the work forever; Larrabee remembered in what deep, blood-curdling tones he was wont to curse the Lost Time mine. And his daughter Jerusha's husband,--it had always been a marvel where and how he obtained the whiskey he so indubitably consumed; perhaps, in consideration of his age and infirmities, Mrs. Larrabee furnished a too ample allowance of liquor to old man Haight, who, for services rendered in this wild enterprise, furnished his son-in-law.
"We-uns hev been toler'ble good customers o' the Lost Time still," Larrabee muttered sarcastically.
And there was Jack Espey! The sanity of _his_ presence here was easily demonstrable; nowhere else could he so safely be. How he had chanced to coöperate in this strange work with the dotard and the sot was soon explained.
"Gimme a holt o' that thar grub," he said gruffly, with a look of poignant hunger on his thin face.
Old Haight, with a deprecatory expression and shaking hand, made haste to give him a small basket, of the queer shape and aspect which bespoke the work of the Indians of Quallatown. The young man voraciously thrust his hand into its narrow mouth, and as he drew forth its meagre contents gave vent to his disappointment.
"My Lord!" he exclaimed, "is that all? An' ye expec' me ter kem hyar night arter night--from--from"--the effort of his heavy flight of imagination showed in his face--"from 'way over yander whar I live now, an' holp ye dig an' sech, an' gin me sech forage ter work on ez that!" He pointed contemptuously at the food, albeit his mouth was full.
"Now, now, Jack, now, bubby, lemme tell you," expostulated the old man, his jaw quivering painfully as he spoke, and his wrinkled face showing, in the glimmer of the lantern, at once grotesque and piteous, encircled as it was by the brilliant hues of a little shawl of Mrs. Larrabee's, in which his head was tied up for protection against the weather, and which was surmounted by his hat. "Ye dunno how durned hard it war ter git that much. This hyar Henrietty Timson hev got us down on half rations, mighty short commons. 'Tain't like 'twar whenst you-uns lived with us, Jack. Oh my! Oh my, no!" and he shook his queerly upholstered head as he sat quaking and shivering on a ledge of the rock. He impressed Larrabee as much out of place,--so habituated was he to the sight of the old man in the chimney corner,--as the oven, or pot, or crane, or any other naturalized appurtenance of the fireside might have been. He let his veinous old shaking hands fall on his knees with a gesture deeply significant of grief. "I wisht ter Gawd," he cried, "ez S'briny war hyar!"
He pronounced her name as if she were a sort of minor providence, as indeed she had been to him.
"Leetle as ye hed, ye mought hev brung it sooner," grumbled Jack, stuffing the half of a very fat, very heavy biscuit into his mouth.
"Law, Jack," cried the old man, "we-uns air plumb 'feared ter leave the house sooner,--even arter all war bedded up for the night. That thar 'oman hev got her pryin' nose in every mortal thing; 'pears ter me the longest, sharpest nose I even seen," he added injuriously, and with sudden sprightly interest, "ain't it, Tawm?"
His fellow-sufferer from its pointed inquisitiveness had seemed about to fall asleep in a heavy, shapeless lump, but he roused himself at this to add his testimony with some sincere acridity.
"Longes' an' sharpes' _I_ ever seen," he protested thickly, "an' I hev known 'em p'inted an' drawn out to _de_-straction." His snore followed so promptly that one might have doubted whether he had spoken at all; his remark presented the phenomenon of a waking parenthesis, as it were, in the midst of the somnolent text.
"I tell ye, it's good fur S'briny ter go, ter let we-uns savor how we miss her," said the old man. "Sech a house, Jack, sech quar'lin' an' scufflin' an' tormentin', f'om mornin' till night,--crowdin' _Me_ up on the h'a'thstone, an' shovin' _my_ cheer, an' talkin' 'bout useless cumberers, whenst I hev been treated with sech _re_-spec' by S'briny Lar'bee ez ef I hed been her own dad, stiddier jes' her husband's step-dad,--sech _re_-spec' an' hot vittles, an' the fus' sarved, an' the bes' o' everything!" His old face flushed with the recollection of the recent indignities offered him. "The pa'son tells ye ter lean on the Lord. Ef ye ain't got the grace ter do that, S'briny Lar'bee's a mighty good help!"
For the life of him, Jasper Larrabee could not harden his heart.
"Her pet tur-rkey air dead," old man Haight presently observed disconnectedly.
"Glad of it," said Jack callously. "I never seen a beast so pompered, an' fairly hanker ter git stepped on, forever flusterin' 'roun' the floor underfoot."
"_She_'ll be powerful sorry. She sot a heap o' store by it, an' doctored it cornsider'ble. She 'lowed it hed the quinsy." Then after a pause, "Whenst I gits my money back," said the old man meditatively, "I be goin' ter buy S'briny Lar'bee suthin' ez will s'prise her,--I dunno what. I studies on it some mighty nigh every day. A spry young filly, mebbe, or a good cow an' calf,--I dunno. I'd gin her the money, ef she wouldn't be sure ter fool it away on them wuthless triflin' cattle of chil'n an' folks she contrives fur all the time. I'd gin S'briny half o' the cold cash, an' ennyhow I lay off ter spend half fur a presint fur her."
Espey, his energies recruited by food, and perhaps willing to postpone the evil hour of shoveling and digging, looked up with a satiric eye and a rallying laugh.
"Whar's my sheer, ef ye be goin' ter gin Mis' Lar'bee haffen the money? Ye 'lowed Tawm hed hed his pay in whiskey,"--he cast a side glance at the bloated slumbering face and collapsed figure in the shadow,--"an' he's hed a plenty, too, fur he's nuthin' but a cag o' liquor set a-goin' on two legs; but I'm durned ef I'll take my pay out in Mis' Timson's sour yeast an' raw dough." He twirled the empty basket over contemptuously. "Ye 'lowed that night, three weeks ago, whenst I--ye--whenst we run on one another, an' s'prised one another, ez ye'd pay me solid silver ef I wouldn't tell nobody, but holp ye; now didn't ye?"
Espey's tone was so obviously that of one who speaks in flagrant jest that Larrabee perceived he gave the unknown enterprise no serious support or credence, and that he was only utilizing some preposterous delusion of the old man touching his work in the Lost Time mine to secure food to sustain him while he evaded the pursuit of the law.