Part 11

Fult waited until they were safely inside their tent. Then he said, exultantly, to Isabel: "Did you actually think for one minute I'd ever let you go away and not marry me? That I wasn't no more of a man than to fold my hands and give you up? You never knowed me, if you did--I don't allow nothing to stand between me and my desire. All the time I aimed to have you; all the time, knowing you'd never go of your free will, on account of Lethie, I planned to take you same as the Elf Knight took Lady Isabel, or Earl Brand, or them other men of old, took their true loves; and ever sence that day on the hill, when I made you show you liked me a little, I've been just watching my chance. Three nights I've laid wait here by the kitchen tent. And now I've got you, we'll ride to Hazard and get our license, and be married by sun-up."

Again Isabel struggled and fought with desperation, bound as she was. Fult held her in a grip of iron. "Fight on till you tire," he laughed. "I'm able to stand hit. Hit may scare you and hurt your feelings a little grain to be took off like this, but hit's the onliest way for your happiness and mine, and some day you'll thank me."

When she was exhausted, he picked her up again, saying, "I've got to carry you down now a piece to where the nag is," and strode swiftly down to where, by the light of a moon almost hidden by clouds, they could see his mare tied to a bush.

Leaping into the saddle, and sitting far back himself, he pulled Isabel up, gagged and bound, placing her before him as one would hold a child. "I hain't taking no chances on letting you set behind," he said; "you might throw yourself off and get bad hurt."

The mare picked her way slowly at first down the steep hollow, till they came out behind the courthouse. Then Fult put spur to her, and she sprang ahead like a flash, past the courthouse, across the street, down the dark lane between Madison Lee's store and the schoolhouse, and into the creek. The only light they saw in the village was a dim one in Lethie's window.

Along the creek they went plunging, past the back yards of the village on one side, and Uncle Ephraim's steep slopes on the other. When they came to the end of the town, Fult turned the mare into the road again alongside the creek, and slowed the pace. "We got the night before us to make the twenty mile," he said; "we'll get there long before the county clerk is up, anyhow; no use to kill the mare."

And Isabel? First there had been in her mind fear--hideous, panic, choking fear; and when that was somewhat abated, she was held for a long time as in a nightmare, every faculty paralyzed by the shock of the situation in which she found herself. The thing that was being done was unthinkable, impossible; yet it was happening, and she was powerless as a baby to prevent it.

Then she began making desperate efforts to gather her wits together, to grasp the situation and in some way deal with it.

She saw that Fult must have taken her emotion that day on the hill for a sign she loved him; and indeed, for a moment, sympathy and pity had led her pretty near the danger-line. Always her romantic temperament had drawn her into difficulties; but none that could be compared with this. Never before had she come across a man who dared to deal with matters in Fult's masterful and high-handed fashion. And she could not blame him--what he was doing he believed to be for her happiness quite as much as his own, and he was merely carrying it out in the simple and time-honored fashion of the old ballads he was always singing. Had the consequences not been so dreadful all round, his daring might have appealed to her.

But with Lethie broken in heart and life by the treachery of the two she loved and trusted; with her parents stricken and horrified when this bolt from out the blue should fall upon them; with the community hating her forever as the destroyer of Lethie's happiness; with the reproach that would be brought upon the whole summer's work of the women through this mad act--for of course no one would ever believe that she had been taken against her will; with the misery that was sure to result for Fult as well as for herself, since she did not love him and was not at all fitted for the life he could give her; the whole affair was fraught with terrible danger and calamity, and something must be done at once,--before it was forever too late,--to prevent its further carrying out.

But what to do? How, bound mouth, hands and feet as she was, to make her feeling known to Fult, to turn him from his wild purpose, and persuade him to take her back before the night was yet over, and the news of their going had become known? He would never give over his purpose if she was unable to speak until they reached the next county-seat and the clerk's office in the morning, and the escapade had become public property. His pride would not permit that. Whatever was to be done must be done at once, for they were traveling at a swift pace, and the time must be past midnight.

Desperately she cast about in her mind for a plan; still more desperately she realized that she had none--was all at sea. She was not used to getting herself out of her difficulties--it was Thomas Vance who always did that. She had always, since babyhood, taken her troubles to him; and always he knew a way out for her. She felt confident that, if he were only at hand, he could help her out of this. She even had a feeling that, if she could call to him, he would hear her, two hundred miles away, and save her.

Suddenly she had a perfectly overwhelming longing for Thomas, he was such an old stand-by--the one thing she knew she could always count upon, though, of course, he laughed at her a good deal; ever since she grew up he had been content to play the part of elder brother, to hear all about her love-affairs and problems, and give her advice and counsel: pretty magnanimous of him if he really cared for her himself as he professed to do. Of course she had never thought of being in love with him; she had known him too long and well. Love, she had believed, would be something strange, unimagined, unknown, and its object some hero, all fire, romance, and beauty, who would one day drop from the skies and claim her. Well, here was the unimagined, the unknown, the romantic, with a vengeance,--a perfect cyclone of it,--and in the very midst of it, swept on by its relentless power, she was sighing, longing, desperately praying for just one moment of the accustomed, the ordinary, the known and tried--in short, for Thomas. She would have given her life for just one reassuring tone of his voice, one touch of his hand on her arm, one glance from his humorous, dependable brown eyes, even if they were laughing at her.

Suddenly the need of him became so poignant, so desperate, that she began to call upon him, to cry out for him, just as if her voice could really carry through those two hundred miles of space; the want became a delirium, a frenzy, the muffled cries more wild and sharp; violently, without restraint, she shook and sobbed in Fult's arms.

Her storm of distress finally brought Fult to a halt.

"I allow the straps are hurting you," he said; "or maybe you are cramped. I reckon there's time for us to walk a piece; I'll take the strap off your feet and we'll walk a while, if you say so."

She nodded vehement acquiescence.

He dropped her gently from the mare's back, got off himself, and unfastened the strap from her ankles. Together they walked along the road, he leading the mare with one hand and steadying Isabel with the other. The moon, though not bright, gave light enough for them to see by, except in some denser shadows of the trees.

The relief of having her feet free was immense. Struggling with a mighty effort for self-control, she ceased sobbing, and after a while motioned for him to take off the gag.

At first he seemed unwilling, then said: "Hit couldn't hurt none, though; there hain't a human being in two or three mile to hear you if you was to holler. And I reckon I'm able to stand what you have to say to me about Lethie. Of course, I know you'll have a plenty."

With difficulty he untied the gag, and Isabel drew great, gasping breaths of air into her lungs.

"I allow your wrists had better stay tied," he said. "They don't hurt you much, do they?"

"No," replied Isabel.

She walked on beside him, submitting meekly to his guiding hand on her arm, and not uttering one word of reproach. Her silence continued--became so prolonged and unnatural that Fult began to be troubled. He would rather have heard upbraidings.

"Hain't you got a word to say to me?" he asked at last. "Not a word for the man that loves you better than life, and has broke through everything to get you?"

She did not answer at once. Then she said, faintly: "Yes, I have things to say, but my mind doesn't seem to work very well; I seem to need time."

Fult laughed low. "Take all you want," he said. "I aim to give you everything you ever call for, and never to cross you noway."

For quite a distance they walked on, through dim patches of shadow and brighter spots of moonlight. Finally, as with a great effort, she spoke.

"You--you believed I was in love with you that day on the hill when we had our last talk, and I ran away from you?"

Fult laughed a low, joyous laugh. "Hit looked that way--like you were afeared you might be."

"I _was_ afraid--for a moment," she said. "I was all wrought up and troubled about you, and not quite myself."

"I knowed you never meant to show hit, never would unless you was compelled to some way; that was why I laid my plans to _make_ you show hit--I felt like I ought to, before I took you off."

"You laid your plans to make me show it? How so?" she asked, in astonishment. "I fear I don't understand."

He laughed easily. "Oh, nothing; just by working on your feelings a little grain."

"Working on my feelings? When?"

"That last day on the hill."

"When you sang to me, and showed such sorrow at giving me up?"

"Yes," he said.

"Do you mean to say you were not really sad or suffering that day--that you put it all on, just to see the effect on me?"

"How could I be sad and suffering," he asked, "when I never for one minute aimed to be parted from you, or to give you up? I had my plans fixed even then to take you." He laughed delightedly. "But I allowed I'd just see how things really was with you, before I finally did."

Isabel stopped where she stood, in blank amazement.

"Do you mean to tell me it was just play-acting--all that moving scene?"

"All's fair in love and war," laughed Fult; "hit wasn't play-acting about the way I loved you; but the rest I reckon was."

Her voice took on a new and stern note as she continued: "In other words, you deliberately deceived me and worked on my sympathy and got my feelings wrought up? Those tears you shed were crocodile tears, those heart-broken words and looks were all just a piece of fine acting?"

"I allowed myself hit was pretty well done," replied Fult, in a self-congratulatory tone.

"And you were entirely satisfied with the result of it?" Her voice now took on an edge.

"I was, too." Again he laughed the low, triumphant laugh.

"You were quite satisfied I loved you? It didn't occur to you that a moment of excitement and distress was not a reliable time to judge a person by?"

"What I saw was enough for me," he said. "I knowed if you loved me even a little, I could learn you to love me better and better."

"But suppose," said Isabel,--and her voice was hard and cold,--"suppose that you should be mistaken. Suppose I could never learn to love a man who deliberately deceives me, and then gloats over it. Suppose I did not love you in the first place and, after that, never could?"

Anger mounted in Fult's voice as he replied: "But I done hit all for you!"

"No, you didn't, you did it for your own sake, to gratify your vanity, I suppose. The very fact you could do it shows you cared nothing for me. Real love doesn't deceive and play-act. And I'm glad I found out what you had done, because I had believed that you really were suffering, and it is a great relief to me to know that you were not, and that in reality you care nothing more for me than I do for you."

"But I _do_ love you," cried Fult, furiously; "and you love me, too; you _have_ to, when you're going to be my wife by sun-up!"

"Maybe I'm going to be your wife by sun-up,--maybe I can't help myself,--but if I am, it will be with anything but love in my heart."

Fult stopped in his tracks. "I won't hear you say that!" he cried, threateningly.

"I not only do not love you, but I do love another man," continued Isabel, standing straight and unabashed before him. "I found it out to-night--it all came over me like a flood when I believed I had lost him forever."

"Hit's a lie!" he exclaimed, savagely.

"It's the truth," she said, tensely. "It's someone I have known always; he lived on the next place to ours, we grew up together, he is as much a part of my life as breathing; but because I knew him so well, and believed love to be something strange, unknown, romantic, I didn't realize it was love I felt for him. I found it out to-night on this ride, when I wanted him above all things in the universe. He's not so picturesque or handsome as you are; but he's good, he's unselfish, he's true--he'd die rather than deceive anybody, or treat a girl as you have been willing to treat Lethie. And he's _mine_. And it was the thought of him, even more than of her, that broke my heart to-night."

Seizing Isabel by the shoulders, Fult shook her with such violence that all her joints seemed loosened. "Hush!" he commanded. "Don't drive me too far; I don't want to kill you!"

"I'm not at all afraid that you will," she replied. "That wouldn't mend matters."

"No other man shall ever have you!" he said between his teeth. His hand moved toward his pistol pocket.

She stood before him, calm, unflinching. "You are too much of a man for such talk as that," she said. "Let's try to look at things sensibly and see what can be done. You deceived yourself, and me, into thinking you cared for me, when in reality you didn't--your play-acting proves that. And because you saw I admired the old ballad-heroes and their ways, you thought it would please me to have you copy after them. Well, it didn't--it shocked me almost to death instead, and made me feel how cruel you were willing to be toward Lethie, and how selfish to destroy all the influence of our summer's work in this way. The whole thing, you see, has been just a mistake. But it may not be too late to retrieve it. Nobody knows that I am not asleep in my tent to-night; nobody will know before morning. If it is possible for us to ride back there by daybreak, not a soul will ever know, and no real harm will be done. If, on the contrary, we do not get back by morning, there will be a great hue and cry, your absence as well as mine will be discovered, they will put two and two together, and as much harm will be done as if we had actually been married. If you can possibly get me there, don't you think you had better take me back to The Forks at once?"

Fult looked at her fiercely. "I never took a backtrack in my life," he said, chokingly.

"Do you want to marry me, knowing I love another man?"

"No, I wouldn't have you as a precious gift! But I aim to ride on--I don't know nor care where, so I never see you again. You get back the best way you can."

In another instant he had flung himself on the mare, and spurred her forward in great leaps.

Isabel was left entirely alone in the night, ten or eleven miles from The Forks. But, at least, she was free. She knew there was no possible chance of her reaching there before day; still, she would do her best. She turned and began to run along the road, and, when her breath was exhausted by this, to walk on as swiftly as possible.

Probably it was twenty minutes before she heard the beat of hoofs behind her, and then Fult's voice, saying, coldly: "I can't leave you this way; hit wouldn't be right. No use to have the talk about you, though, for my part, I don't care. Get on behind, and I'll try to get you back in time, though hit'll be a hard ride."

Taking off his coat, he spread it behind him, and rode up alongside a bank.

"I believed you'd think better of it," said Isabel.

Thankfully she jumped on, and grasped the hantle of the saddle. Thus had she ridden behind him the day he brought her up Troublesome into the village. Now they were to ride up Troublesome again, but in how different a manner!

With only the words, "Hold on, for hit's aiming to be the hardest ride you ever had," he turned the mare around, dashed the spurs into her side, and they were off, over rocks, roots, bowlders, up hill and down hill, through water above their stirrups--on, on, with never a pause or a break in the wild gallop.

But always Isabel managed to hang on, though sometimes by the skin of her teeth; and always in her heart hope was singing--they would get there in time after all: Lethie's happiness was not to be destroyed, the summer's work was not to be made a reproach instead of a benefit, she herself was free, free--for Thomas. Fervently she prayed; thankfully she heard Fult urge on the wearying mare.

Finally, as there was the first lightening of the sky in the east, they turned up Fult's hollow, past his house, which she had never seen before, and almost straight up the mountain in the rear, as far as the panting horse could take them. Then Fult spoke.

"You couldn't never get in by way of The Forks without somebody seeing you. But by taking to the ridge here, you can go along it and down the spur to the tents, without no danger."

He helped her down, turned the mare loose, and in silence they climbed to the high rocks and walked swiftly along the ridge--the same ridge where she and Amy and Virginia had discovered the still.

Dawn was rosy in the sky when they came out over the spur where the women's tents were, and stopped in the shelter of the trees.

"Go on by yourself now," said Fult; "there hain't nothing to hurt you. And I've got you here in time; I don't see nobody stirring."

Isabel turned to him, and held out her hand.

"Don't think I don't appreciate what you have done for me," she said. "I can never, never tell how grateful I am for your generosity. And I want to beg a favor of you. There are only two more days of our stay: be just the same you have been to us; don't let anyone see there is any change. You are a very important part of the entertainment on Monday, and if you are not there, it cannot go on. For everybody's sake, will you come?"

"I'll be there," he said, shortly. He turned and strode rapidly back along the ridge; and Isabel, slipping silently down the spur, entered the tent where Amy and Virginia were still sleeping, and crept into her cot without a sound.

X

FAREWELL TO SUMMER

The last day of the women's stay on Troublesome dawned bright and fair. Early in the morning the work of packing began, the smaller things being put in boxes and carried down the hill by Fult and his friends to the hotel, ready to be placed in wagons the following morning. Later, the tents were taken down and packed--all but one, which was to be used as a dressing-room for the "show" in the afternoon.

Aunt Ailsie came in early to help, as did also Charlotta and Ruby Fallon, Lethie, and others of the girls.

Between nine and ten the county people began to ride in in numbers. The women and children came on up the hill, but the men tarried in the village. For, all unknown to the quare women, Uncle Ephraim had had boys stationed at the three roads, requesting all the men to come to the courthouse to a meeting.

About eleven-thirty the men ascended the hill in a body, and joined their families for dinner. Aunt Ailsie had invited Amy and Virginia and the others to eat with her, and her capacious baskets held enough for forty people.

Numerous gifts also were brought in to the women on this last day--handsome large gourds, yarn mitts, turkey-wings for fans, hand-woven linen towels, and, from Aunt Ailsie, fine striped linsey petticoats for each of the six.

Shortly after dinner, the "show" began. A platform built just in front of Pulpit Rock, and closely curtained on four sides, aroused much curiosity, nothing in the nature of a dramatic entertainment ever having been seen before.

There was first a short speech of welcome by Giles Kent, the school-teacher; then songs by the children of different grades; then a short talk by the nurse on ways of preventing typhoid, tuberculosis, and other diseases; then marching and songs by the little kindergartners.

Afterward came the great feature and surprise of the day: a number of tableaux--scenes from old ballads and folk-tales, long known to the imaginations of the people, but here enacted before their eyes by the young folks in beautiful costumes.

Fult sang the ballads and, at the proper time, the curtains were drawn back and the scenes revealed. There were two from "Barbara Allen," three from "Jackaro," and two from "Turkish Lady"; the latter being especially striking, with Darcy Kent as the noble English captive and Charlotta Fallon as the Turkish Lady who sets him free and afterward follows him to his castle in England, where all ends happily.

Last came two incidents from "Lord Lovel" (this ballad was sung by Charlie, not by Fult). The hero, bound "strange countries for to see," bids farewell to the lovely Lady Nancibelle, and rides away on his milk-white steed (only it had to be changed to "coal-black," being Fult's mare, with Fult as rider). He returns, after a year and a day of wandering, to find the people all gathered around the bier of Lady Nancibelle, who has pined away and died of longing for him; and thereupon he himself dies of a broken heart. Annette took the part of the "lovely Lady Nancibelle," and Fult was beautiful in the velvet clothes and plumed hat of Lord Lovel.

Then followed several folk-tales, done by the children: Red Riding-Hood, Cinderella, and Blue-beard, the tales being told by Amy as the scenes were given.

And now came the surprise of the occasion--no one had known of it but Isabel and the performers: two tableaux from "The Sleeping Beauty."

The curtain opened with the young princess, under the spell of the wicked fairy, lying asleep, surrounded by the court people, and the king and queen on their thrones, all likewise sleeping. Lethie, in a rich robe of pink satin, with her pale golden hair falling over the dark velvet couch, was very lovely. But it was in the second scene, where the prince (Ronald Kent, a younger brother of Giles, a beautiful dark-eyed stripling) enters the court, kisses the princess, raises her to her feet, and leads her forward, that Lethie's full loveliness broke upon the assembly.

Standing there, the golden veil of her hair streaming down from a coronet of pearls over the rich, flowing folds of satin, her bare neck and arms white as their strings of pearls, her pale cheeks for once pink with excitement, her large eyes starry, her lips gravely smiling, she was a vision of delight. Women, children, men gazed spellbound. Never had they seen, or imagined, anything to compare with this. Her beauty was of the kind that brings tears to the eyes, a pang to the heart, because of its very perfection. And a spiritual quality shone through the fleshly vessel as a clear light in a vase of alabaster. People asked themselves if it were possible this was their Lethie; or was it in truth a fairy princess, a creature not of this earth?