Ramshackle House. Footner Hulbert
that he was going to get Aunt Maria Garner, he ran out of the house. The negro cabin was some three hundred yards behind the big house.
Pen used the interim to get her thoughts in some kind of order. She began to be conscious of a sort of exaltation. Her thoughts ran: “He’s in trouble! I shall not lose him now!… Every man’s hand is raised against him. He has no one but me to depend on. He’s mine!” There was a terrible joy in the thought of standing side by side with him against the whole world. Her breast burned with a fire of resolution. She even had a fleeting regret that he was not guilty; if he had been it would have required her to give so much more. “I love him! I love him!” she said to herself now without shame.
Pendleton returned with Aunt Maria. Pen was aware of Ellick’s and Theodo’s black faces peering in at the windows. This interfered with her plans.
“Send them away,” she murmured. “There is nothing they can do.”
Aunt Maria went out on the porch and shooed her sons home.
Coming back the big negress picked Pen up without more ado and carried her up the stairs. Aunt Maria had been the first person in the world to receive Pen into her arms, and appeared to be unconscious of any increase in her darling’s weight. Pendleton fluttered about her like a hen crying at every step:
“Be careful! Oh, be careful!”
Aunt Maria laid Pen down on her bed.
In the midst of his passionate solicitude, a queer little suspicion flickered up in Pendleton’s eyes. “While I am gone for the doctor don’t let her exert herself in the slightest,” he commanded.
Aunt Maria reassured him and he hastened out of the house.
The instant the front door closed behind him Pen sat up in bed, and felt of her hair. Aunt Maria took it as a matter of course. Unlettered though she might be, she had a fully-developed set of instincts; she knew that all sorts of expedients were required to manage those unreasonable creatures, men, and she awaited the explanation with an air of being surprised at nothing and ready for anything.
“I’ve got to go out,” said Pen, exchanging her evening slippers for a pair of rubber-soled sneakers.
Aunt Maria looked rather dubious.
Pen saw that she would win her more securely by appealing to her sense of romance. She began: “That young man who had lunch and dinner with us…”
Aunt Maria’s broad face softened and her eyes rolled zestfully.
“There is a story in the paper accusing him of murder!”
It was not what Aunt Maria expected. Her chin dropped, and her eyes almost started from her head. “Bless God!” she murmured.
“Father means to give him up. So I’m going down to warn him.”
In Aunt Maria fear overcame romance. “Honey…honey!” she stammered. “Doan yo’ go down there! Doan yo’ take no chances! If he’s a bad man he’ll hurt yo’!”
“A bad man!” cried Pen with shining eyes. “Aunt Maria where were your eyes!”
The old negress was awed by that light in her child’s eyes. “Well…well…” she murmured, “he sho was a pretty young man!”
Seizing a sweater to cover her bare arms and neck, Pen ran out of the room and down the stairs. Aunt Maria sat down muttering and shaking her head.
Softly closing the big door behind her, Pen sped over the weedy drive. The main gate to the grounds was in the side fence near the edge of the bank. Half of it hung askew on one hinge and the other half lay rotting on the earth. Outside the gate there was a grassy road which made a right-angled turn there. In one direction it ran back between the fields and on up the Neck; in the other it went straight ahead along the edge of the bank and presently descended to the old steamboat wharf on the property. So swift had Pen been that her father was still in sight, his lantern jogging agitatedly down the road in front of her. He always carried a lantern irrespective of the moon. She slackened her pace.
The road ran gently down a natural fault in the high bank. The earth was powdered with silver dust; a mocking-bird sang its casual and thrilling song nearby, and farther off whip-poor-wills. The bushes that rose between the road and the edge of the bank were festooned with the vines of the wild grape. It was the moment of its flowering and in this place its strange, poignant fragrance drowned the honeysuckle. In after life Pen never smelled that scent without living this night over. She was quite collected now. Terror, anxiety, shame and such feelings had been burned up by her great determination.
The road ended before the dilapidated wharf where no steamer had tied up for many years past. Pendleton’s skiff was drawn up on the sand alongside, and the Pee Bee anchored a hundred feet out in the stream. Pen hung back in the shadows until her father should get away. Off to the left where the white beach curved beautifully out to the point she saw Counsell’s little tent pitched in the sand with a fire burning before it, and the dark canoe drawn up. Off the end of the point the spidery lighthouse fixed her with the baleful glare of its red eye.
Pendleton pushed off to his motor-boat with an amount of caution absurd under the circumstances, for as soon as he turned over the engine she exploded like a gun. This time there was no hesitation in the Pee Bee; she moved off at once with her usual violence, shattering the night. Pen, watching the tent saw Counsell come out and look in the direction of the sound. But presently he went back again.
As soon as it was safe to do so, she picked her way out over the broken floor of the wharf. The piles were gnawed and broken, and the pushing of the ice during many seasons had given the whole structure a rakish cant towards the Bay. Pen dropped over the side into an inch or two of water and gingerly picked her way towards the tent.
It was a little lean-to tent open to the fire in front, but with a mosquito curtain hanging down. He heard her splashing towards him and came out. He must have been sitting there looking at the fire and smoking. His pipe was still between his teeth. He stared at her as at a ghost without making a sound. His body had a tense look. She could not read his face because the moon was behind him. Its light was strong in her face.
“It is I, Miss Broome,” she said in her direct way.
He seemed to come to life. “You!” he cried in a voice of delight. He laughed shakily. “I thought…how foolish of me… I was thinking of you… I thought…” He seemed unable to go on.
“I came through the water to avoid making tracks in the sand.”
“I understand!” he said eagerly. “I’ll carry you ashore.”
Pen stamped her foot in the water. “You don’t understand! Stay where you are and I’ll tell you!”
“There’s nothing wrong is there?” he asked anxiously. “I heard the motor-boat start off.”
“Wrong enough,” said Pen simply. Since nothing was to be gained by beating around the bush, she blurted out the truth. “Collis Dongan has been found shot dead in his rooms, and you are accused of having done it.”
“What!” he cried with so perfect an expression of astonishment that Pen’s breast was warmed and comforted. No guilty man could possibly have simulated that look. She had not doubted him, nevertheless it was sweet to be reassured. The tears sprang to her eyes; she hung her head to hide them. He did not notice them. He was dazed.
“Collis Dongan dead!” he muttered. “When… How?”
She told the main facts of the story slowly, distinctly as to a stupid person.
“Good God! how terrible!” he muttered. “How quick can I get back to New York? It was suicide of course. He had cause enough.”
“What cause?” Pen asked quickly.
“He had swindled and betrayed me,” Counsell said bitterly. “And I found him out… But he’s dead! I’m sorry now for the things I said to him!” His thoughts flew