CHAPTER XVI

A TRIO AND CHORUS

The homesickness for father grew to agony in Doctor Garde’s little girl. She stood just outside the Furnace pressing her hands together.

When she was a smaller girl she dreamed once that father was dead. It was a smothering dream. Her heart weighed her down so she thought she could never skip or play blackman again. Driven by unendurable loneliness which nothing but the presence of father could cure, she persistently hunted him till she came to an enormous mansion which was heaven. Here she asked for him, and was told that he had just passed into another apartment, which she entered just in time to see the last fold of his garment disappearing through an opposite door. So from one vast room to another she still followed, calling him as she ran; but he never heard, and she never touched even the hem of his robe. The place grander than any town, was full of carvings, pictures and nameless elegances, such as Bluebell could not remember ever having seen before. Then she was in a forest where a wind-storm had passed. Fallen trees made a limitless bridge from her feet into the horizon, and there was the most brilliant moonlight over the whole visible world. She was crying to herself, hopeless of ever seeing father again, when he came walking over that endless corduroy bridge toward her. He came walking in a long white robe which covered him with light and trailed on the logs, his square serious face full of concern about her. He did not seem pleased to find her crying there, though he picked her up and soothed her! Then he told her she must be kind to the baby and be a good girl; and without her being able to detain him, he turned and trailed again out of sight across the moonlit logs.

This dream had made such a painful impression on Bluebell that she never had forgotten it. It always came across her mind at serious times. It seemed to belong to the same class of untold terrors as her superstition about Billy Bowl. But now it came up before her like reality. Or perhaps the reality which the child was facing stood before her like that dream.

The Fork’s roar came up through humid dusk which was thickening every minute to darkness. Some whippoorwills in the trees below the road were uttering their cry almost under her feet, so that she heard the guttural which preceded it:

“G’--whippoorwill, G’--whippoorwill!”

But presently out of the intermingled sounds of whippoorwills, water and frogs, there came something else very different.

It was not at first distinct; but when Bluebell listened intently, she did hear a voice calling:

“Hillo!”

The little girl ran along the road toward Mary Ann until she came to where the Narrows broadened to a hilly shoulder which sloped gradually to the Fork. Bluebell knew nothing about the descent. Within this hill and along under the Furnace, John Tegarden’s coal-fires were supposed to be perpetually burning. But her eyes were accustomed to the dark, and there was a fine starlight overhead.

It did seem dreadful to come down to the very edge of the Rocky Fork. Flecks of foam showed on it like threatening teeth. Black objects were continually passing down, out in the current. Sometimes these fish etched their fins on the low sky on the other side, when you saw that there were twigs and limbs of a floating tree.

When Bluebell had climbed down almost to a level with the Rocky Fork, she held on to a bush, and listened.

“Hillo!” called the voice again.

It was farther from her, and must be just under the Narrows opposite the Furnace.

“Father! Is father there?”

“Hillo! somebody come and help me!”

“Oh, father, are you drownin’! Oh, what shall I do?”

“Is that you, Bluebell? Who’s with you?”

“Nobody, father, but just myself! I can’t get to you, father--the water’s so deep!”

“Don’t think of trying to come to me!”

There was a pause. The Rocky Fork, the frogs, and the whippoorwills uttered their voices. Bluebell thought she heard a groan contributed to the chorus.

“Oh, father! _are_ you drownin’? Can’t you get out somehow?”

A horse’s feet made heavy thuds overhead: they sounded so loud she was not sure he heard her.

“Father! what must I do?”

“Bring somebody here.”

“But you’ll drown while I’m gone!” cried Bluebell, adding a blubbering sob by way of period.

“No, I sha’n’t.”

His little girl’s nerves were not equal to facing the bare possibility, and she sent up a wail.

“Don’t make a fuss,” came father’s voice, somewhat sternly.

“Who’s that down there!” called a voice from the road overhead; “Bluebell?”

“Sir?” She held to her bush and looked up: there was a blurred man on horseback against the deeper background of hill.

“Is that Bluebell Garde?”

“Yes, sir. My father’s here in the Rocky Fork, and I don’t know how to get him out!”

The man made his horse’s feet clatter, and he could be heard immediately afterwards, making his way down the bank himself.

“Who’s that?” called the doctor from his invisible position.

“It’s me, Abram Banks. I don’t seem to make you out, doctor.”

“I’m here in the shadow on a log.”

The Rocky Fork and the frogs and whippoorwills came in with a full chorus while Abram paused and caught his breath.

“Can you hold on a bit longer?”

“I think so. The water’s quiet. But my arm’s broken, and I can’t help myself, and it may turn me faint pretty soon, again. I’ve nearly fainted several times.”

“If you could hold on till I gallop back and get Ridenour’s canoe.”

Bluebell sobbed in her dress-skirt.

“Can’t you get a rope up at the Furnace, Abram? If I had one end of a long rope I could fasten it to the log, and then you could tow me to where you are.”

“Is it a big tree?”

“No, rather small. I managed to get it out of the current--broke off some branches and paddled.”

“Bluebell,” said Abram, deliberately pulling off his wamus and boots, “you go up the bank and see what my horse’s doin’. I tied him in such a hurry he may get loose, and then we’d be in a box for a way to git your father home.”

The little girl scrambled up, holding to the grass in places, and before she reached the top, she heard a plunge which told Abram had taken to the water.

Abram’s horse was tied to a sapling across the road, and was stretching his neck to browse.

The breathing of the Fork and the frogs was interrupted by splashings and half-exclamations. Bluebell was reassured by hearing her father’s voice more plainly. The log was being pushed cautiously out of its harbor. He directed Abram not to turn it towards the current, but to steer it against another log. Abram’s replies were interspersed with grunts.

It was not a very long time before they struggled up the hill, Abram helping the doctor. His own hair was sending little streams of water down his wamus, but Doctor Garde was dripping from head to foot. When the light from the Furnace fell on him, he showed in a ghastly plight.

“Have you got a knife, Abram?” asked the doctor.

Abram groped in his homespun and brought out what he called a jack-knife.

“Now, cut my sleeves open, will you?”

This was done. The doctor took his coats off.

“That rubber sleeve compressed it, or seemed to. It’s considerably swollen.” He examined his right arm. Bluebell could see him closing his lips.

“Just git on the horse now and I’ll put sissy up behind you. Or can’t you manage it?”

The doctor took the horse’s bridle in his left hand, and placing one foot in the stirrup, leaped up as he did on his Arabian. But this time he sank back and leaned on the plough-horse’s neck.

“Afraid I can’t do it, Abram. A few ribs a little out of normal condition, too.”

“Can’t you step on that rock, father?” said Bluebell, caressing his sound elbow. In her comfort at having him again, she would have been his stepping-stone herself.

The faintness passing away, he followed Abram and the horse to a rock and succeeded in mounting from that. The farmer flung up Bluebell behind him, and took the bridle. This small cavalcade started at once.

“It’d be safer to go the long way around the hill,” suggested Abram. “They’re a-huntin’ you b’low at the ford, and we might meet ’em with lights or somethin’, and this horse might cut up. She’s always simple along the Narrows.”

“The nearest way will be the safest to-night. I want to get home, Abram.”

So they passed the Furnace in a quick walk and entered the Narrows. The night-workmen were busy inside, and probably speculating about the recovery of Doctor Garde’s body.

“Father,” cried Bluebell, hugging him carefully below his arms, “Ballie came home with the saddle all turned over!”

She laid her cheek against his dear wet back, ashamed to make louder demonstrations of joy. Now that he was out of the water, the whole disaster seemed a mere extension of that painful dream.

“And you started out to find where she left me, did you?” said father in a bantering tone which indicated that he was touched.

“Yes, sir, and I thought you fell over the Narrows.”

“Did you say they were searching at the ford?”

“Got out Ridenour’s canoe and draggin’ with a log-chain.”

“Who?”

“The whole neighborhood, nigh about. That g’ography man he first brought word to me, and the Furnace-hands heard, and they come. But it wasn’t my theory that it--that you’d stop there. I felt pretty clear you’d went with the current. Liza, she come runnin’ to tell me some mischance had happened to you. The g’ography-teacher, he looked scared out a year’s growth,” said Abram, having recourse to the time-honored humor of his region.

“He was badly scared.” The young doctor’s face shone with a phosphorescent smile. “If I had left him to his fate he couldn’t have stood it, perhaps, as well as I can. It was folly in him to try the Fork, any way. But he plunged in because I did, and I felt bound to help him over.”

“He told us,” remarked Abram slowly, “that you was kind of took off by the current and your horse kicked you, and you sunk.”

The doctor laughed.

“Well, he certainly was scared out of his sense. Why, I had crossed the current, diagonally, as the mare always takes a swift current, and was just at the opposite bank, when he yelled to me. He had come in holding his horse’s head down, and it was about to drown; they spun around in the current and started down stream. When I got to him I seized his bridle and tried to lead him out, and then the horse began to struggle, and the first thing I knew I was dropped off and thrashed around, and his gray gave me a few kicks which might have been fatal out of the water, and I saw Ballie spinning along the road with her gearing half off, and the young man getting safely out on his horse. I tried to swim, but my best arm was so numb I couldn’t use it, so I just kept out of the way of drift as well as I could, and finally found a log I could crawl upon. I think he called me once or twice, but I found it necessary to fix my whole mind on what I was doing. When I got on my log and as far as the Narrows, it took hard work to get out of the current. Can’t we move on a little faster, Abram?”

The horse’s pace was quickened. Bluebell had not listened for the crumbling of earth below, nor did she much mind the gutter under Table Rock hole. Her soul was given up to indignation.

“He didn’t act the man, apparently,” pronounced Abram, having turned all the incidents over.

“I’ll never go to his g’ography school again!” cried Bluebell from a bursting heart.

[Illustration: “I SEIZED HIS BRIDLE AND TRIED TO LEAD HIM OUT.”--_Page 183._]

“Tut!” said father, “little girls should be seen and not heard. Abram, would you mind trotting? I think I could stand it.”

They trotted.

Bluebell’s face intensified behind the wet back. Her imagination rehearsed a scene. She put Mr. Runnels before the geography school, and especially before Mr. Pitzer’s spectacles, and pointing to him said, “He is just as bad as Billy Bowl, for he let my father get pushed into the Rocky Fork after my father had helped to pull him out! Old Billy Bowl! Old Billy Bowl!”