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Page 24
"Why, what is it?" asked James. Clemency had not been at the
dinner-table, but he had supposed her sulking, as she had been doing of
late, and that she had taken advantage of Doctor Gordon's absence at a
distant patient's to remain away from the table.
"She begged so hard to go out, and said the pain was quite well," gasped
Mrs. Ewing, "that I said she might go and see Annie, and here it is ten
o'clock at night, and Tom has gone to Grover's Corner, and may not be
home until morning, and Aaron is with him, and I had no one to send. I
thought I would not say anything to you. I thought every minute she
would come in, and Emma has walked half a mile looking for her, and I am
horribly worried."
"I will go directly and look for her," said James. "I will put the bay
in the light buggy, and drive to Westover. Don't worry. I'll bring her
back in half an hour."
"The bay is so lame she can't travel, I heard Tom say this morning,"
said Mrs. Ewing.
"Then I'll take the gray."
"She balks, you know."
James laughed. "Oh, I'll risk the balking," he said.
He hurried out to the stable and put the gray in the buggy. It was a
very short time before James was on the road, and the gray went as well
as could be desired, but just before she reached Westover she stopped
short, and James might as well have tried to move a mountain as that
animal with her legs planted at four angles of relentless obstinacy.
CHAPTER V
James had considerable experience with, horses. He knew at once that it
was probably a hopeless undertaking to change the mare's mind, or rather
her obstinacy. However, he tried the usual methods, touching with the
whip, getting out and attempting to lead, but they were all, as he had
supposed from the first, in vain. A terrible sense of being up against
fate itself seized him: an animal's will unreasoning, unrelenting,
bears, in fact, the aspect of fate itself. It is at once sensate and
insensate. James thought of Clemency, and decided to waste no more time.
The gray mare was near enough to a tree to tie her, and he tied her and
set out on foot. It was a very dark night, cloudy and chilly and
threatening snow. He walked on, as it were, through softly enveloping
shadows, which seemed to his excited fancy to be coming forward to meet
him. He began to be very much alarmed. He had wasted most of his young
sentiment upon Clemency's mother, but, after all, he suddenly
discovered that he had a feeling for the girl herself. He thought that
it was only the natural anxiety of any man of honor for the safety of a
helpless young girl out alone at night, and beset by possible dangers,
but he realized himself in a panic. His plan was of course to go
directly to Annie Lipton's home, some two miles farther on, then it
occurred to him that Clemency must inevitably have left there. If she
were lying dead or injured on the road, how in the world was he to see?
He felt in his pocket for matches, and found just one. He lit that and
peered around. While it burned he saw nothing except the frozen road
with its desolate borders of woods and brush, a fit scene for countless
tragedies. When the match burned out he thought of something else.
Supposing that Clemency were lying half-dead anywhere near the road, how
was she to know that a friend was near? Immediately he began to whistle.
Whistling was a trick of his, and he had a remarkably sweet, clear pipe.
He knew that Clemency, if she were to hear his whistle, would know who
was near. He whistled "Way down upon the Suwanee River" through, then he
began on the "Flower Song" from Faust, walking all the time quite
rapidly but with alert ears. He was half through the "Flower Song" when
he stopped short. He thought he heard something. He listened, and did
hear quite distinctly an exceedingly soft little voice, which might have
been the voice of shadows--"Is that you?"
"Clemency," he cried out, and rushed toward the wood, and directly the
girl was clinging to him. She was panting with sobs, but she kept her
voice down to a whisper. "Speak low, speak low," she said in his ear. "I
don't know where he is. Oh, speak low." She clung to him with almost a
spasmodic grip of her slender arms. "If you had been ten minutes longer
I think I should have died," she whispered. "Don't make a sound. I don't
know where he is."
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