CHAPTER XV

Allston blew out the big lamp on the table and sank down in a chair before the open fire. He was tired neither physically nor mentally. And yet in some ways he was glad to be alone. For the last few hours he had been under a nervous strain in Wilmer’s presence. He was like a man in a closed room with many doors trying to feel his way out through one opening and then another, discovering that some of the doors gave a little way and others not at all, in the end to be left exactly where he started. Further, to complicate matters, that thin voice in the dark outside still called to him. He heard it even now above the rustling and creaking and eerie moan of a rising wind beating against the house, presage of a storm.

It was extraordinary to him that such a situation could have developed out of such innocuous material. The whole adventure had begun so lazily and drowsily! Half asleep at the wheel of his wheezy gray runabout he had been keeping to twenty miles an hour over a country road that seemed as though it might end at any time in primeval forest. It was just the setting he had sought for that complete relaxation which was to allow his mind, muddied by two years of war, to settle into the placid pool it always had been. So it had seemed about to do when Roxie Kester appeared in the road and forced his head-on collision with a chestnut-oak. But that seemed merely like a temporary interruption. The kindness of the Howes offered him just as good an opportunity to bask in the sun as did the open road. This was a golden land dripping with milk and honey where a man need not keep his eyes more than half open. It was a country of blue sky and birds and shocked wheat and flowers and people at their ease.

It still was. If he could only get hold of that idea and keep it, he might find that the present crisis which appeared so acute was merely a morbid mental condition unwarranted by fact. He was only a guest in passing. He had distorted his values. This was only a bypath incident not to be taken too seriously. The main road of his life lay in another direction, though where only the Lord knew. Somehow it must be related to the past he had already lived, and must develope out of those surroundings with which he was already familiar.

Yet it was not easy to think of any future which should eliminate this girl who had just left him. He had known women twenty years, neighbors at home, whom he could banish with less difficulty. He had seen them with his eyes alone. He had never made them part of his thoughts--of his deeper thoughts. And they had never made him question himself. Nor had they ever made him feel.

It was at this point that he found himself most baffled in his relations with Wilmer. She made him think, but she parried every thought. She made him feel, but she checked every expression of that emotion. There were moments when he felt he could break through that reserve, but he never quite dared to try after his one attempt. Then, too, he was held in check by the conditions under which he was a guest here. Unvouched for, he was under even deeper obligations to his host than one accepted under the conventions. He was in honor bound not to violate the trust imposed upon him. He could advance no farther than he was asked. And Wilmer was not always easy to interpret.

To-night he was more bewildered by her than ever. The net result of this evening had been to increase the tension between them while leaving everything at loose ends. He could not fairly blame her alone for that, however, while he was ragged in his own thinking. It began to look as though this clarifying process which had appeared so simple during the first few days of his flight from home was becoming decidedly complicated. If he had succeeded in clearing his mind of one kind of jumble, that of troop trains and transports, and the braggart tyranny of superior officers, it was only to fill it with another kind dominated by quite as autocratic a type of tyranny. It seemed that a woman’s eyes could, in their way, bully as effectively as any uniformed overlord with his jingling spurs.

Allston began to pace the floor again. The wind was increasing in volume and driving scattered raindrops against the windows with the velocity of bullets. An occasional flash of lightning cut a blazing path through the dark like star shells, though the light was not held. And from a distance, beyond the mountains, he heard the low rumble of thunder so like the heavy guns that used to growl through the night over Flanders that at moments it was difficult for him not to believe he was back there again. This might have been one of those deserted houses in that old French town in which he had been billeted except that it lacked the marks of age. But it is the mood that counts in a picture; not the details. The Huns were attacking over Green Mountain and he was here to do his little part to drive them back. Barbarism was in a new clash with civilization. He felt this so keenly that his hand as another star shell burst went back to his automatic. And then came the voice again.

This time it was more individualized. It sounded like the voice of Roxie Kester. That was absurd, of course, but the notion gave him a start. The girl had acted strangely when she came back to the kitchen from across the fields. It was queer that she had been out there at all except that young women were subject to odd spells of that sort. He had not been satisfied when he left her and might have been considerably worried had not other matters come in to occupy his attention.

Allston tiptoed through the kitchen and outdoors to see if her light was burning. Her window was dark. The wind whipped his face and drove him in. Still he was not satisfied. Action whetted his fears. It became necessary now, if he hoped to get any rest, to allay his anxiety once for all. Striking a match he made his way up the stairs to the door of Roxie’s room. It was closed, but he listened there for sound of her breathing. He heard nothing, but that proved nothing. Reluctantly and not at all sure of the explanation of his action he could give if she did answer, he knocked. He received no reply and knocked again--louder this time. But even so he was held back by his dread of rousing the rest of the household. It would be easier, should his alarm prove groundless, to explain his conduct to Roxie than to either Howe or Wilmer.

The continued silence became ominous and oppressive. He was finding it difficult to breathe as though the hall were being exhausted of air. Cautiously he turned the handle and pushed. The door opened, but the room was in utter darkness.

He whispered her name:

“Roxie.”

Then:

“Are you there, Roxie?”

Silence now gave him a direct answer. He struck a match and held it above his head. The bureau drawers were open and one shoe stood in the middle of the room. The white bed was empty and undisturbed. On the table he saw a lamp and lighted this. Then he caught sight of the note on the pillow. The fact it was addressed to him was significant. Under ordinary circumstances she would have written to Wilmer. As he read, every word justified his suspicions. But at the sentence, “Please don’t hunt for me,” he saw as clear as daylight the hand of Bud Childers in the affair.

The note dropped from Allston’s nervous fingers to the floor. He did not pick it up. He knew every word by heart. For two hours she had been calling to him and he had not answered.

But why, if in danger, had she not called upon him when he sought her after dinner and offered his aid? The note answered that. She was trying to protect him. In some way, by some ruse, Bud had bullied her into following him and she had deliberately sacrificed her one chance of escape. The inevitable deduction swept Allston back to that night at the bend in the road when she stood before him with her head tilted back and her eyes closed. In her white dress silvered with moonlight she had made a romantic figure. She was like some gentle creature sung of in idyls. A man might well pray to be saved from such a temptation as she offered him then. He had not been insensible, though, thank God, he had held steady. It had for him been but a passing moment, but for her it had meant more. He saw it now--fool that he had been. He saw it now when it was possibly too late.

There was one chance in a hundred that Roxie had gone home. After that the chances were a hundred to one that she had gone with Bud Childers. It was now ten o’clock. Within two hours he would know.

Allston had not been so coolly sure of himself since he stepped out of uniform. His face hardened and something of that merciless tint of blue steel took the place in his eyes of their natural color. His thoughts clicked into place like cartridges in a machine gun. All the qualities that military discipline had trained into him reasserted themselves with automatic precision. He moved quickly and without hesitancy.

Crossing the room he extinguished the lamp and came out, closing the door behind him. There was no need of rousing the others. They had much better sleep on. He meant to have the girl back here before morning, and in that case there was no reason why they should ever be disturbed by knowledge of the episode.

He came downstairs and went to his room for a coat and hat. Here he stopped to examine his revolver and to slip into his pocket the remainder of his cartridges. He found about a dozen. He closed his own door, returned to the sitting-room to make sure the fire was safe there, and hurried out.

It was pitch dark--inky dark. The wind was still blowing and the rain increasing in volume. He bent against it as he took the road to Roxie’s house he had followed before. It was pitiful that he should be obliged to waste the time necessary to eliminate that faint possibility, but it was essential. Before he ventured to force himself into Childers’s shack he must be certain of his facts. That was too grim a business to undertake except upon firm ground.

His progress was slow and labored. The road was rough, and he frequently found himself out of it and floundering among the bushes. Always there was the temptation to quicken his pace and always he resisted that. He must take no chances of spraining an ankle. And he must keep plenty of strength in reserve. He had seen too much of the reckless folly of advancing to a point farther than support warranted. He had watched whole regiments wiped out as they occupied their forward positions with spent strength, the helpless victims of fresh attacking troops. He must not be exhausted when he finally reached the home of Bud Childers.

Not that he anticipated any such weakness. He had learned that, given the occasion, one’s resources are well-nigh inexhaustible. Again and again in France he had found himself just beginning to draw on his strength at the point where in civil life he would have been ready to quit. And never had he been dominated by so inflexible a will as now. Duty and patriotism will carry a man far, but such a call as this which now urged him on will carry a man even farther. Here was Duty linked, not with an abstract idea, but with the most concrete appeal a man can know--that of a woman in need of his strength.

As Allston fought his way on, as he pitted his might against the obstacles in his path, Roxie became still more clearly outlined. He thought of her less as a child. This startled him at first. It left him uneasy. It was better, in some ways, to think of her as a child.

But this thing she had done for him--if his deductions were correct--was the act of a woman. And such a woman! Unreasonable and unwarranted it was! Unjustified and uncalled-for it was! But also it was magnificent!

This much Allston appreciated and responded to with a thrill. And yet even so he had not begun to plumb the depths of her intense little being. He interpreted her act as one of heroic self-sacrifice based upon an exaggerated sense of gratitude for the protection he had given her. That was enough, God knows, to spur him on, but it left out, too, so much--so much.

The windows of the Kester house were dark when he reached there. That told him nothing. He pounded at the door without response and that told him more. Roxie would not have been as difficult as this to rouse. With his worst fears revived, he kicked at the wooden panels as the rain beat down upon him. The passing minutes were becoming of more and more value. He tried the latch and shook it impatiently when he heard shuffling footsteps within. A voice called to him--the voice of an old and timid woman.

“Who’s thet?” she demanded.

He answered with a question.

“Is Roxie there?”

“Roxie hyar? No, Roxie ain’t hyar. She’s up to Miss Wilmer’s. Who be you-all?”

Allston had already taken a step back. The wind tore his reply to shreds. He must make the mountain road now as fast as the night would let him--remembering always to keep plenty of strength in reserve.

One thing helped him; the afternoon he had returned from that little cove on the mountain-side Howe had questioned him as to where he had been. As he told, Howe clapped a hand upon his shoulder.

“Big Laurel is up there. Keep away,” he warned.

“Why?”

“You must have been within a few hundred yards of Childers’s shack.”

It was not that fact which left so vivid an impression in Allston’s mind, but what he had thought while walking by the side of Wilmer. He was glad enough now, however, that it served to place him. He could have returned to that cove with his eyes shut.

Against a background of storm-rent clouds and the formidable bulk of mountains and a sea of tossing trees, a man is but a tiny object. With the night and the winds and the beating rain against him, it would seem that he would count for no more than a dead leaf. And yet ever since man was man and not merely some grubbing insect, the elements have spent their fury against him in vain. Again and again on the ocean and on the desert, in the frozen North and the tropic South, on mountain-top and plain, man has faced their worst and often enough survived. If at times he is pitifully easy to kill, at other times he is unconquerable.

Yard by yard Allston fought his way along the mountain road that follows the slope of the hills and past the Lutheran church which gave him his bearings. With the creek on his right he stumbled through a heavy growth of hemlocks, passing several shacks in darkness. Each time he mastered the temptation to rouse the occupants and inquire his way. To do this would be possibly to reveal his business--would inevitably reveal his presence in the neighborhood--and that seemed unwise. These people were certain to be more friendly to Bud than to himself. In the end he might be obliged to take that risk, but he knew that Bud’s shack opened somewhere from this road into a clearing, and he felt sure that however late the hour he would find it lighted. If he knew Roxie there would be little sleep for Bud that night. Whatever club the bully held over her head to make her follow would not be effective enough to cow her utterly. If left alone Bud might win in the end, but he would have a fight on his hands that could not be settled in a few hours.

That was a fair argument, and yet with every passing minute Allston felt the strain of the delay. She might not be conquered, but she must be suffering. And for every second of pain he was responsible. Unwittingly she had placed him in a position where this could not be otherwise.

So for another ten minutes he floundered on, and then, to the right and ahead, he caught through the trees--flashing on and off as the waving branches passed before it--a yellow gleam. He pressed on faster and nearer. A sharp turn brought him to the log which crossed the creek to the clearing before the shack. Cautiously he moved over this. The light from the uncurtained window did not carry far and the rain dripping down the panes obscured his sight of the room within. He paused now, a little out of breath. It was not easy to wait when so near, but this was no easy task he had before him. A single careless move might end for all time his usefulness.

He had once read somewhere that there is no such thing as an accident; that every mishap can be traced directly to some one’s mistake. He had always remembered that. It had served him in good stead in the war. It helped him to a cool judgment that cut down his own mistakes.

When he moved a few steps nearer the window, he was in complete command of himself. The driving rain was to his advantage. It made it easier to look in than to look out. With his automatic in his hand he crept to within a few feet of the shack, and standing a little to one side of the window peered in. What he saw made it very difficult for him to breathe normally.