Horace Chase

Jared, however, made a gesture of repugnance. "I couldn't eat; I've no appetite. The party doesn't trouble me – I'll go to bed. There'll be plenty to do in the morning, if we are to catch that nine o'clock train."

Chase therefore took leave, and Jared accompanied him down to the street door. Dancing was going on in the parlors on each side of the hall, and the two, as they passed, caught a glimpse of pretty girls in white, with flowers in their hair. After making an early appointment for the next day, Chase said good-night, and turned down the tree-shaded street towards his hotel.

His step was never a hurried one; he had not, therefore, gone far when a person, who had left the house two minutes after his own departure, succeeded in overtaking him. "If you please – will you stop a moment?" said this person. She was panting, for she had been running.

Chase turned; by the light from a street-lamp, which reached them flickeringly through the foliage, he saw a woman. Her face was in the shadow, but a large flower, poised stiffly on the top of her head, caught the light and gleamed whitely.

"I am Mrs. Nightingale," she began. "Mr. Franklin, the gentleman you called awn this evenin', is a member of my family. And I've been right anxious about Mr. Franklin; I'm thankful somebody has come who knows him. For indeed, sir, he's more sick than he likes to acknowledge. I've been watchin' for you to come down; but when I saw he was with you, I had to wait until he'd gone up again; then I slipped out and ran after you."

"I've been noticing that he looked bad, ma'am," Chase answered.

"Oh, sir, somebody ought to be with him; he has fever at night, and when it comes awn, he's out of his head. I've sat up myself three nights lately to keep watch. He locks his do'; but there's an empty room next to his where I stay, so that if he comes out I can see that he gets no harm."

"He walks about, then?"

"In his own room – yes, sir; an' he talks, an' raves."

"Couldn't you have managed to have him see a doctor, ma'am?"

"I've done my best, but he won't hear of it. You see, it only comes awn every third night or so, an' he has no idea himself how bad it is. In the mawnin' it's gone, an' then all he says is that the breakfast is bad. He goes to his business every day regular, though he looks so po'ly. And he doesn't eat enough to keep a fly alive."

Chase reflected. "I'll have a doctor go with us on the sly to-morrow," he thought, "and I'll engage a whole sleeper at Weldon to go through to New York. I'll wire to Gen to start at once; she needn't be more than a day behind us if she hurries." Then he went on, aloud: "Do you think he is likely to be feverish to-night, ma'am?"

"I hope not, sir, as last night was bad."

"I guess it will be better, then, not to wake him up and force a doctor upon him now, as he told me he was going to bed. I intend to take him north with me to-morrow morning, ma'am, and in the meantime – that little room you spoke of next to his —I'll occupy it to-night, if you'll let me? I'll just go down to the hotel and get my bag, and be back soon. I'm his brother-in-law," Chase continued, shaking hands with her, "and we're all much obliged, ma'am, for what you've done; it was mighty kind – the keeping watch at night."

He went to his hotel, made a hasty supper, and returned, bag in hand, before the half-hour was out. Mrs. Nightingale ushered him down one of the long wings to her own apartment at the end, a comfortless, crowded little chamber, full of relics of the war – her husband's sword and uniform (he was shot at Gettysburg); his portrait; the portrait of her brother, also among the slain; photographs of their graves; funeral wreaths and flags.

"Excuse my bringin' you here, sir; it's the only place I have. Mr. Franklin hasn't gone to bed yet; I slipped up a moment ago to see, and there was a light under his do'. I'm afraid it would attract his attention if you should go up now, sir, for he knows that the next room is unoccupied."

"You've occupied it, ma'am. But I guess you know how to step pretty soft," Chase answered, gallantly. For now that he saw this good Samaritan in a brighter light, he appreciated the depth of her charity. The mistress of the boarding-house was the personification of chronic fatigue; her dim eyes, her worn face, her stooping figure, and the enlarged knuckles and bones of her hands, all told of hard toil and care. Her thin hair was re-enforced behind by huge palpably false braids of another shade, and the preposterous edifice, carried over the top of the head, was adorned, in honor of the party, by the large white camellia, placed exactly in the centre – "like a locomotive head-light," Chase thought – which had attracted his notice in the street. But in spite of her grotesque coiffure, no one with a heart could laugh at her. The goodness in her faded face was so genuine and beautiful that inwardly he saluted it. "She's the kind that'll never be rested this side the grave," he said to himself.

Left alone in her poor little temple of memories, he went to the window and looked out. It was midnight, and the waning moon – the same moon which had been full when Ruth made her happy pilgrimage at St. Augustine – was now rising in its diminished form; diminished though it was, it gave out light enough to show the Northerner that the old house had at the back, across both stories, covered verandas – "galleries," Mrs. Nightingale called them. Above, the pointed roof of the main building towered up dark against the star-decked sky, and from one of its dormer-windows came a broad gleam of light. "That's Jared's room," thought Chase. "He is writing to Gen, telling her all about it; sick as he is, he sat up to do it. Meanwhile she was comfortably asleep at ten."

At last, when Jared had finally gone to bed, Mrs. Nightingale (who made no more sound than a mouse) led the way up to the attic. Chase followed her, shoeless, treading as cautiously as he could, and established himself in the empty room with his door open, and a lighted candle in the hall outside. By two o'clock the party down-stairs was over; the house sank into silence.

There had been no sound from Jared. "He's all right; I shall get him safely off to-morrow," thought the watcher, with satisfaction. "At New York, if he's well enough to talk, I shall have to invent another yarn about that steamer. But probably the doctors will tell him on the spot that he isn't able to undertake it. So that'll be the end of that."

His motionless position ended by cramping him; the chair was hard; each muscle of both legs seemed to have a separate twitch. "I might as well lie down on the bed," he thought; "there, at least, I can stretch out."

He was awakened by a sound; startled, he sat up, listening. Jared, in the next room, was talking. The words could not be distinguished; the tone of the voice was strange. Then the floor vibrated; Jared had risen, and was walking about. His voice grew louder. Chase noiselessly went into the hall, and stood listening at the door. There was no light within, and he ventured to turn the handle. But the bolt was fast. A white figure now stole up the stairs and joined him; it was Mrs. Nightingale, wrapped in a shawl. "Oh, I heard him 'way from my room! He has never been so bad as this before," she whispered.

Chase had always been aware that the naval officer disliked him; that is, that he had greatly disliked the idea of his sister's marriage. "If he sees me now, when he is out of his head, will it make him more violent? Would it be better to have a stranger go in first? – the doctor?" – these were the questions that occupied his mind while Mrs. Nightingale was whispering her frightened remark.

From the room now came a wild cry. That decided him. "I am going to burst in the lock," he said to his companion, hurriedly. "Call up some one to help me hold him, if necessary." His muscular frame was strong; setting his shoulder against the door, after two or three efforts he broke it open.

But the light from the candle outside showed that the room was empty, and, turning, he ran at full speed down the three flights of stairs, passing white-robed, frightened groups (for the whole house was now astir), and, unlocking the back door, he dashed into the court-yard behind, his face full of dread. But there was no lifeless heap on the ground. Then, hastily, he looked up.

Dawn was well advanced, though the sun had not yet risen; the clear, pure light showed that nothing was lying on the roof of the upper gallery, as he had feared would be the case. At the same instant, his eyes caught sight of a moving object above; coming up the steep slope of the roof from the front side, at first only the head visible, then the shoulders, and finally the whole body, outlined against the violet sky, appeared Jared Franklin. He was partly dressed, and he was talking to himself; when he reached the apex of the roof he paused, brandishing his arms with a wild gesture, and swaying unsteadily.

Several persons were now in the court-yard; men had hurried out. Two women joined them, and looked up. But when they saw the swaying figure above, they ran back to the shelter of the hall, veiling their eyes and shuddering. In a few moments all the women in the house had gathered in this lower hall, frightened and tearful.

Chase, meanwhile, outside, was pulling off his socks. "Get ladders," he said, quickly, to the other men. "I'm going up. I'll try to hold him."

"Oh, how can you get there?" asked Mrs. Nightingale, sobbing.

"The same way he did," Chase answered, as he ran up the stairs.

The men remonstrated. Two of them hurried after him. But he was ahead, and, mounting to the sill of Jared's window, he stepped outside. Then, not allowing himself to look at anything but the apex directly above him, he walked slowly and evenly towards it up the steep incline, his head and shoulders bent forward, his bare feet clinging to the moss-grown shingles, while at intervals he touched with the tips of his fingers the shingles that faced him, as a means of steadying himself.

Down in the court-yard no word was now spoken. But the gazers drew their breath audibly. Jared appeared to be unaware of any one below; his eyes, though wide open, did not see the man who was approaching. Chase perceived this, as soon as he himself had reached the top, and he instantly took advantage of it; he moved straight towards Jared on his hands and knees along the line of the ridge-pole. When he had come within reach, he let himself slip down a few inches to a chimney that was near; then, putting his left arm round this chimney as a support, he stretched the right upward, and with a sudden grasp seized the other man, throwing him down and pinning him with one and the same motion. Jared fell on his back, half across the ridge, with his head hanging over one slope and his legs and feet over the other; it was this position which enabled Chase to hold him down. The madman (his frenzy came from a violent form of inflammation of the brain) struggled desperately. His strength seemed so prodigious that to the watchers below it appeared impossible that the rescuer could save him, or even save himself. The steep roof had no parapet; and the cruel pavement below was stone; the two bodies, grappled in a death-clutch, must go down together.

"Oh, pray! Pray to God!" called a woman's voice from the court below.

She spoke to Chase. But at that moment nothing in him could be spared from his own immense effort; not only all the powers of his body, but of his heart and mind and soul as well, were concentrated upon the one thing he had to do. He accomplished it; feeling his arm growing weak, he made a tremendous and final attempt to jam down still harder the breast he grasped, and the blow (for it amounted to a blow) reduced Jared to unconsciousness; his hands fell back, his ravings ceased. His strength had been merely the fictitious force of fever; in reality he was weak.

The ladders came. Both men were saved.

"Come, now, if the roof had been only three inches above the ground – how then?" Chase said, impatiently, as, after the visit of a doctor and the arrival of two nurses, he came down for a hasty breakfast in Mrs. Nightingale's dining-room, where the boarders began to shake hands with him, enthusiastically. "The thing itself was simple enough; all that was necessary was to act as though it was only three inches."

CHAPTER XV

A week later, early in the evening, a four-horse stage was coming slowly down the last mile or two of road above the little North Carolina village of Old Fort at the eastern base of the Blue Ridge. It was a creaking, crazy vehicle, thickly encrusted with red clay. But as it had pounded all the way from Asheville by the abominable mountain-road, no doubt it had cause to be vociferous and tarnished. Above, the stars were shining brightly; and the forest also appeared to be starlit, owing to the myriads of fire-flies that gleamed like sparks against the dark trees.

A man who was coming up the road hailed the stage as it approached. "Hello! Is Mr. Hill inside? The Rev. Mr. Hill of Asheville?"

"Yes," answered a voice from the back seat of the vehicle, and a head appeared at the window. "What – Mr. Chase? Is that you?" And, opening the door, Malachi Hill, with his bag in his hand, jumped out.

"I came up the road, thinking I might meet you," Horace Chase explained. "Let's walk; there's something I want to talk over." They went on together, leaving the stage behind. "I've got a new idea," Chase began. "What do you say to going up to New York to get my wife? I had intended to go for her myself, as you know, starting from here to-night, as soon as I had put the other ladies in your charge, to take back to Asheville. But Mrs. Franklin looks pretty bad; and Dolly – she might have one of her attacks. And, take it altogether, I've begun to feel that it's my business to go with 'em all the way. For it's a long drive over the mountains at best, and though the night's fine so far, there's no moon, and the road is always awful. I have four men from Raleigh along – the undertaker (who is a damn fool, always talking), and his assistants; and so there'll be four teams – a wagon, the two carriages, and the hearse. I guess I know the most about horses, and if you can fix it so as to take my place, I'll see 'em through."

"Certainly. I am anxious to help in any way you think best," answered Malachi. "I wish I could start at once! But the stage is so late to-night that, of course, the train has gone?"

"That's just it – I kept it," Chase answered; "I knew one of us would want to take it. You'll have to wait over at Salisbury in the usual stupid way. But as Ruth can't be here in time for the funeral, it's not of vital importance. The only thing that riles me is that, owing to that confounded useless wait, you can't be on the dock to meet her when her steamer comes in at New York; you won't be able to get there in time. There'll be people, of course – I've telegraphed. But no one she knows as well as she knows you."

Reaching the village, they walked quickly towards the railroad and finished their talk as they stood beside the waiting train. There was no station, the rails simply came to an end in the main street. A small frame structure, which bore the inscription "Blue Ridge Hotel," faced the end of the rails.

"He's in there," said Chase, in a low tone, indicating a lighted window of this house; "that room on the ground-floor. And the old lady – she is sitting there beside him. She is quiet, she doesn't say anything. But she just sits there."

"Mrs. Jared and Miss Dolly are with her, aren't they?" said the young clergyman.

"Well, Dolly is keeping Gen in the other room across the hall as much as she can. For Dolly tells me that her mother likes best to sit there alone. Women, you know, about their sons – sometimes they're queer!" remarked Chase.

"The mother's love – yes," Malachi answered, his voice uncertain for a moment. He swallowed. "There isn't a man who doesn't feel, sooner or later, after it has gone, that he hasn't prized it half enough – that it was the best thing he had! It was brain-fever, wasn't it?" he went on, hurriedly, to cover his emotion. For he, too, had been an only son.

"Yes, and bad. He was raving; he knocked down one of the doctors. After the fever left him, it was just possible, they told me, that he might have pulled through, if he had only been stronger. But he was played out to begin with; I discovered that myself as soon as I reached Raleigh. Gen got there in time to see him. But the old lady was too late; and pretty hard lines for her! She kept telegraphing from different stations as she and Dolly hurried up from Charleston; and I did my best to hearten her by messages that met her here and there; but she missed it. By only half an hour. When I saw that it had come – that he was sinking and she wouldn't find him alive – I went out and just cursed, cursed the luck! For Gen had his last words, and everything. And his poor old mother had nothing at all."

Here the conductor came up.

"Ready?" said Chase. "All right, here's your through ticket, Hill – the one I bought for myself. And inside the envelope is a memorandum, with the number and street of our house in New York, and other items. I'm no end obliged to you for going." They shook hands cordially. "When you come back, don't let my wife travel straight through," added the husband. "Make her stop over and sleep."

"I'll do my best," answered Hill, as the train started. In deference to the mourning party which it had brought westward, there was no whistle, no ringing of the bell; the locomotive moved quietly away, and the clergyman, standing on the rear platform, holding on by the handle of the door, watched as long as he could see it the lighted window of the room where lay all that was mortal of Jared Franklin.

An hour later the funeral procession started up the mountain. First, there was a wagon, with the undertaker and his three assistants. Then followed the large, heavy hearse drawn by four horses. Next came a carriage containing Mrs. Franklin and Dolly; and, finally, a second carriage for Genevieve and Horace Chase.

"Poor mamma is sadly changed," commented Genevieve to her companion. "She insisted upon being left alone with the remains at the hotel, you know; and now she wishes her carriage to be as near the hearse as possible. Fortunately, these things are very unimportant to me, Horace. I do not feel, as they do, that Jay is here. My husband has gone – gone to a better world. He knew that he was going; he said good-bye to me so tenderly. He was always so —so kind." And covering her face, Genevieve gave way to tears.

"Yes, he thought the world and all of you, Gen. There's no doubt about that," Chase answered.

He did full justice to the sobbing woman by his side. He was more just to her than her husband's family had ever been, or ever could be; he had known her as a child, and he comprehended that according to her nature and according to her unyielding beliefs as to what was best, she had tried to be a good wife. In addition (as he was a man himself), he thought that it was to her credit that her husband had always been fond of her, that he had remained devoted to her to the last. "That doesn't go for nothing!" he said to himself.

The ascent began. The carriages plunged into holes and lurched out of them; they jolted across bits of corduroy; now and then, when the track followed a gorge, they forded a brook. The curves were slippery, owing to the red clay. Then, without warning, in the midst of mud would come an unexpected sharp grind of the wheels over an exposed ledge of bare rock. Before midnight clouds had obscured the stars and it grew very dark. But the lamps on the carriages burned brightly, and a negro was sent on in advance carrying a pitch-pine torch.

In the middle of the night, at the top of the pass, there was a halt. Chase had made Genevieve comfortable with cushions and shawls, and soon after their second start she fell asleep. Perceiving this, he drew up the window on her side, and then, opening the carriage-door softly, he got out; it was easy to do it, as all the horses were walking. Making a detour through the underbrush, so that he should not be seen by Mrs. Franklin and Dolly in case they were awake, he appeared by the side of the hearse.

"Don't stop," he said to the driver, in a low tone; "I'm going to get up there beside you." He climbed up and took the reins. "I'll drive the rest of the way, or at least as far as the outskirts of the town. For between here and there are all the worst places. You go on and join that fellow in front. You might carry a second torch; you'll find some in the wagon."

The driver of the hearse, an Asheville negro, who knew Chase, gave up his seat gladly. There were bad holes ahead, and there was a newly mended place which was a little uncertain; he would not have minded taking the stage over that place (none of the Blue Ridge drivers minded taking the stage anywhere), but he was superstitious about a hearse. "Fo' de Lawd, I'm glad to be red of it!" he confided to the other negro, as they went on together in advance with their flaring torches. "It slips an' slews when dey ain't no 'casion! Sump'n mighty quare 'bout it, I tell you dat!"

Presently the plateau came to an end, and the descent began. Rain was now falling. The four vehicles moved slowly on, winding down the zigzags very cautiously in the darkness, slipping and swaying as they went.

After half an hour of this progress, the torch-bearers in front came hurrying back to give warning that the rain had loosened the temporary repairs of the mended place, so that its edge had given away; for about one hundred and forty yards, therefore, the track was dangerously narrow and undefended, with the sheer precipice on one side and the high cliff on the other; in addition, the roadway slanted towards this verge, and the clay was very slippery.

Chase immediately sent word back to the drivers of the carriages behind to advance as slowly as was possible, but not to stop, for that might waken the ladies; then, jumping down from the hearse, and leaving one of the negroes in charge of his team, he hurried forward to make a personal inspection. The broken shelf, without its parapet, certainly looked precarious; so much so that the driver of the wagon, when he came up, hesitated. Chase, ordering him down, took his place, and drove the wagon across himself. Whereupon the verbose undertaker began to thank him.

"Don't worry; I didn't do it for you" answered Chase, grimly. "If you'd gone over, you'd have carried away more of the track; that was all." Going back, he resumed his place on the hearse. Then speaking to his horses, he guided them on to the shelf. Here he stood, in order to see more clearly, the men on the far side watching him breathlessly, and trying meanwhile (at a safe distance) to aid him as much as they could, by holding their torches high. The ponderous hearse began to slip by its own weight towards the verge. Then, with strong hand, Chase sent his team sharply towards the cliff that towered above them, and kept them grinding against it as they advanced, the two on the inside fairly rubbing the rock, until, by main strength, the four together had dragged their load away. But in a minute or two it began over again. It happened not once merely, but four times. And, the last time, the hind wheels slipped so far, in spite of Chase's efforts, that it seemed as if they would inevitably go over, and drag the struggling horses with them. But Chase was as bold a driver as he was speculator. How he inspired them, the horror-stricken watchers could not discover; but the four bays, bounding sharply round together, sprang in a heap, as it were, at the rocky wall on the left, the leaders rearing, the others on top of them; and by this wild leap, the wheels (one of them was already over) were violently jerked away. It was done at last; the dark, ponderous car stood in safety on the other side, and the spectators, breathing again, rubbed down the wet horses. Then Horace Chase went back on foot, and, in turn, drove the two carriages across. Through these last two transits not a word was spoken by any one; he mounted soundlessly, so that Genevieve slept on undisturbed, and Mrs. Franklin and Dolly, unaware of the danger or of the new hand on the reins, continued to gaze vaguely at the darkness outside, their thoughts pursuing their own course. Finally, leaving one of the negroes on guard to warn other travellers of the wash-out and its perils, Chase resumed his place on the hearse, and the four vehicles continued their slow progress down the mountain.