Edwin Brothertoft/Part III Chapter XVIII
Chapter XVIII.
The other party of fugitives took a more circuitous route, to the east, through that scantily peopled region.
Volante stepped proudly along, pricking up her ears to recognize familiar bugbears, and to question strange stocks and stones, whether they were “miching malicho” to horse-flesh.
Brothertoft walked by his daughter’s side. Only now and then in their hurried march could he take her hand and speak and hear some word of tender love. But the consciousness in each of the other’s presence, and the knowledge of the new birth of the holiest of all the holy affections between them, was sufficient. A vague bliss involved them as they hurried through the dim night. And both evaded the thought of that Hate they had left behind, — that embodied Hate, helpless and alone, at Brothertoft Manor.
The negroes trotted along, babbling comically together.
Jierck Dewitt led the way in silence.
“I shall never dare to face Major Skerrett again, if I don’t bring these people straight through,” — so he thought. “I am just sober enough to walk my chalk if I pin my eyes to it. If I look at anything else, or think of anything else, this path’ll go to zigzagging, and splitting up into squirrel-tracks, and climbing up trees. Old Voltaire says he don’t know these back roads very well. If I lose the track, we shall be nowhere.”
The region a mile back from the river was mostly forest then, with scattered clearings. Often the course of our fugitives was merely a wood-road, or a cow-path, or an old trail. There were giant boles stopping the way, and prone trunks barricading it. There were bogs and thickets to avoid.
It is bewildering business to travel through a forest in the dark. Jierck Dewitt knew this well. He did not distract his attention with talk, or recalling the events of the evening. He held tight with all his eyes and all his wits to the track, commanding it not to divide or meander. This severe application steadied his brain. He slowly sobered. The fine fumes of his potations of Brothertoft Madeira, in the cellar, exhaled. The coarser gases of rum from the paternal jug split their exit through the sutures of his skull.
It seemed a moment, it seemed a millennium, it was an hour, when the party reached the foot of Cedar Ridge, almost three miles from the Manor-House.
Cedar Ridge is a famous look-out. “What you cannot see from there is not worth seeing,” say the neighbors. It rises some three hundred feet above the level of the river, and surveys highlands north, uplands and lowlands south, with Janus-like vision.
Long before Hendrecus Hudson baptized the North River, Cedar Ridge was a sacred mount — a hill of Sion — to the Redskins. Fire had disforested the summit, and laid bare two bosomy mounds, stereoscopic counterparts, with a little depression between. A single cedar, old as the eldest hills, grew in this hollow. Around it had generations of frowzy Indian braves held frantic powwows, and danced their bow-legged minuets. Many a captive had suffered the fate of Saint Sebastian against its trunk, and dabbled the roots with his copper-colored blood. Savory fragments of roast Iroquois had fattened the soil. Fed on this unwholesome diet, and topped every winter by Boreas, the tree made hard, red flesh, and bloated into a stunted, wicked-looking Dagon, as gnarled and knobby as that old yew-tree of Fountains Abbey, which — so goes the myth — was Joseph of Arimathea’s staff, — planted by him there when he was on his tour to convert the hairy Britons from Angli to Angeli.
A famous point of view was Cedar Ridge, named after this little giant, this squat sovereign among evergreens.
Such a landmark attained without error, Jierck Dewitt began to feel secure. He could relax his strict attention to his duties as guide, and let his thoughts confuse him again.
The moment he began to review the events of the evening with a sobered brain, he grew suddenly troubled.
He halted where the forest ceased on the ridge, and the two bare mounds with the low cedar appeared against the sky. He paused there, and let Voltaire overtake him.
This was the third night of that old brave’s travels. The present pace was telling on him. He was puffing loud and long, as he stopped at Jierck’s signal. The others passed on up the ridge. The white mare became a spot of light in the open.
“Voltaire,” whispered Jierck, “I didn’t see the Mistress around when we left the Manor. Do you know what was done with her?”
“Where was you, that you didn’t see?” asks Voltaire, taking and yielding air in great gasps between every word.
“Never mind that! What became of her?”
“Why you know (puff) that she fired (gasp) a pistol (explosion and sigh) at Master; and everybody thought (wheeze) that she’d shot him dead.” Here Voltaire took in a gallon or so of night air, and delivered it slowly back, by the pint, in the form of a chain of clouds, as white as if they came from the lungs of a pure Caucasian.
This speech explained half the mystery to Jierck. His curiosity seemed to become more troublesome. He continued anxiously: “Yes, yes, I know,” — which he did not until this moment. “But what was done with her afterwards. I was outside, doing my part there.”
“You was outside, was you?” says Voltaire, slowly recovering fluency. “Well, I guess they wanted you inside.”
“A man can’t be in two places at once. What did they want me for?”
“Them two boys — the root-doctor’s son and Samuel Galsworthy — is as spry as any two boys I ever see. Mighty spry and strong and handy boys they is; but they had a’most a orkud job with Mistress, she tearing and scratching so. They wanted another hand bad; but they got through, and fixed her up right at last.”
“Fixed her! How?”
“What you in such an orful hurry about? Let a man take breff, won’t you?”
“Yes; but speak quick! What did they do with her? Is she left there?”
“Leff thar!” says Voltaire, relapsing into full patois. “Whar would dey leave her? She’s done tied up in a big arm-cheer in de parlor. An’ dar she’ll stay all dis bressed night, jess like a turkey truss up fur to be roast.” And he gave a little, triumphant chuckle, that seemed to remember old cruelties he had suffered at her hands.
Jierck made no answer. He seemed to need breath as much as the negro. He gave a little gasp, and sprang up the hill-side.
Puzzled, Voltaire followed slowly after.
While they talked, the others had climbed to the top of the ridge, and halted to rest where the old cedar stood barring the way.
Jierck Dewitt came panting up to the summit.
He turned and glanced hastily over the hazy breadth of slumbering landscape below.
Belts of mist lay in the little valleys. Beyond was the river, a broad white pathway, like a void. And beyond again, the black heaps of the mountains westward. Here and there in the vague, a dot of light marked a farm-house. The lanterns of the British frigates were to be seen twinkling like reflections of stars in water.
It may have been fancy, but in the silence Lucy thought that she heard the far-away sound of the Tartar’s bell striking four bells, ten o’clock, and her consorts responding.
Jierck continued peering intently into the dark.
His seeming alarm communicated itself to the party.
“What is it?” said Brothertoft. “Do you fear pursuit?”
“No,” whispered Jierck.
His monosyllable sent a shiver to all their hearts. There was a veiled scream in this single word, — a revelation of some terrible panic awaiting them.
“I must see farther,” resumed Dewitt, in the same curdling tone; and he sprang up the mound on the right.
Edwin Brothertoft, impressed by this strange terror, followed.
He was within a dozen feet of the summit, and its wider reach of view, when Jierck leaped down and seized him tight by both shoulders. Jierck caught breath. Then, with his face close to the other’s, — “My God!” he hissed, “I’ve set the house on fire. We’ve left that woman there, tied, to burn to death.”