The Death Shot. Майн Рид
carried on in the same way.
Still, at that hour the young lady cannot—dares not—be abroad. All the more unlikely, that the Armstrongs are moving off—as all the neighbourhood knows—and intend starting next day, at an early hour.
The plantation people will long since have retired to rest; therefore an interview with his sweetheart can scarce be the cause of her son’s detention. Something else must be keeping him. What? So run the reflections of the fond mother.
At intervals she starts up from her seat, as some sound reaches her; each time gliding to the door, and gazing out—again to go back disappointed.
For long periods she remains in the porch, her eye interrogating the road that runs past the cottage-gate; her ear acutely listening for footsteps.
Early in the night it has been dark; now there is a brilliant moonlight. But no man, no form moving underneath it. No sound of coming feet; nothing that resembles a footfall.
One o’clock, and still silence; to the mother of Charles Clancy become oppressive, as with increased anxiety she watches and waits.
At intervals she glances at the little “Connecticut” clock that ticks over the mantel. A pedlar’s thing, it may be false, as the men who come south selling “sech.” It is the reflection of a Southern woman, hoping her conjecture may be true.
But, as she lingers in the porch, and looks at the moving moon, she knows the hour must be late.
Certain sounds coming from the forest, and the farther swamp, tell her so. As a backwoods woman she can interpret them. She hears the call of the turkey “gobbler.” She knows it means morning.
The clock strikes two; still she hears no fall of footstep—sees no son returning!
“Where is my Charles? What can be detaining him?”
Phrases almost identical with those that fell from the lips of Helen Armstrong, but a few hours before, in a different place, and prompted by a different sentiment—a passion equally strong, equally pure!
Both doomed to disappointment, alike bitter and hard to bear. The same in cause, but dissimilar in the impression produced. The sweetheart believing herself slighted, forsaken, left without a lover; the mother tortured with the presentiment, she no longer has a son!
When, at a yet later hour—or rather earlier, since it is nigh daybreak—a dog, his coat disordered, comes gliding through the gate, and Mrs. Clancy recognises her son’s favourite hunting hound, she has still only a presentiment of the terrible truth. But one which to the maternal heart, already filled with foreboding, feels too like certainty.
And too much for her strength. Wearied with watching, prostrated by the intensity of her vigil, when the hound crawls up the steps, and under the dim light she sees his bedraggled body—blood as well as mud upon it—the sight produces a climax—a shock apparently fatal.
She swoons upon the spot, and is carried inside the house by a female slave—the last left to her.
Chapter Fifteen.
A moonlight moving.
While the widowed mother, now doubly bereft—stricken down by the blow—is still in a state of syncope, the faithful negress doing what she can to restore her, there are sounds outside unheard by either. A dull rumble of wheels, as of some heavy vehicle coming along the main road, with the occasional crack of a whip, and the sonorous “wo-ha” of a teamster.
Presently, a large “Conestoga” wagon passes the cottage-gate, full freighted with what looks like house furniture, screened under canvas. The vehicle is drawn by a team of four strong mules, driven by a negro; while at the wagon’s tail, three or four other darkeys follow afoot.
The cortege, of purely southern character, has scarce passed out of sight, and not yet beyond hearing, when another vehicle comes rolling along the road. This, of lighter build, and proceeding at a more rapid rate, is a barouche, drawn by a pair of large Kentucky horses. As the night is warm, and there is no need to spring up the leathern hood—its occupants can all be seen, and their individuality made out. On the box-seat is a black coachman; and by his side a young girl whose tawny complexion, visible in the whiter moonbeams, tells her to be a mulatto. Her face has been seen before, under a certain forest tree—a magnolia—its owner depositing a letter in the cavity of the trunk. She who sits alongside the driver is “Jule.”
In the barouche, behind, is a second face that has been seen under the same tree, but with an expression upon it sadder and more disturbed. For of the three who occupy the inside seats one is Helen Armstrong; the others her father, and sister. They are en route for the city of Natchez, the port of departure for their journey south-westward into Texas; just starting away from their old long-loved dwelling, whose gates they have left ajar, its walls desolate behind thorn.
The wagon, before, carries the remnant of the planter’s property—all his inexorable creditor allows him to take along. No wonder he sits in the barouche, with bowed head, and chin between his knees, not caring to look back. For the first time in his life he feels truly, terribly humiliated.
This, and no flight from creditors, no writ, nor pursuing sheriff, will account for his commencing the journey at so early an hour. To be seen going off in the open daylight would attract spectators around; it may be many sympathisers. But in the hour of adversity his sensitive nature shrinks from the glance of sympathy, as he would dread the stare of exultation, were any disposed to indulge in it.
But besides the sentiment, there is another cause for their night moving—an inexorable necessity as to time. The steamboat, which is to take them up Red River, leaves Natchez at sunrise. He must be aboard by daybreak.
If the bankrupt planter be thus broken-spirited, his eldest daughter is as much cast down as he, and far more unhappily reflecting.
Throughout all that night Helen Armstrong has had no sleep; and now, in the pale moonlight of the morning, her cheeks show white and wan, while a dark shadow broods upon her brow, and her eyes glisten with wild unnatural light, as one in a raging fever. Absorbed in thought, she takes no heed of anything along the road; and scarce makes answer to an occasional observation addressed to her by her sifter, evidently with the intention to cheer her. It has less chance of success, because of Jessie herself being somewhat out of sorts. Even she, habitually merry, is for the time sobered; indeed saddened at the thought of that they are leaving behind, and what may be before them. Possibly, as she looks back at the gate of their grand old home, through which they will never again go, she may be reflecting on the change from their late luxurious life, to the log-cabin and coarse fare, of which her father had forewarned them.
If so, the reflection is hers—not Helen’s. Different with the latter, and far more bitter the emotion that stirs within her person, scalding her heart. Little cares she what sort of house she is hitherto to dwell in, what she will have to wear, or eat. The scantiest raiment, or coarsest food, can give no discomfort now. She could bear the thought of sheltering under the humblest roof in Texas—ay, think of it with cheerfulness—had Charles Clancy been but true, to share its shelter along with her. He has not, and that is an end of it.
Is it? No; not for her, though it may be for him. In the company of his Creole girl he will soon cease to think of her—forget the solemn vows made, and the sweet words spoken, beneath the magnolia—tree, in her retrospect seeming sadder than yew, or cypress.
Will she ever forget him? Can she? No; unless in that land, whither her face is set, she find the fabled Lethean stream. Oh! it is bitter—keenly bitter!
It reaches the climax of its bitterness, when the barouche rolling along opens out a vista between the trees, disclosing a cottage—Clancy’s. Inside it sleeps the man, who has made her life a misery! Can he sleep, after what he has done?
While