The Indian Drum (1917)/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
THE LAND OF THE DRUM
ALAN went with Wassaquam into the front library, after the Indian had shown Spearman out.
"This was the man, Judah, who came for Mr. Corvet that night I was hurt?"
"Yes, Alan," Wassaquam said.
"He was the man, then, who came here twice a year, at least, to see Mr. Corvet."
"Yes."
"I was sure of it," Alan said. Wassaquam had made no demonstration of any sort since he had snatched at Spearman's wrist to hold him back when Alan had bent to the drawer. Alan could define no real change now in the Indian's manner; but he knew that, since Wassaquam had found him quarreling with Spearman, the Indian somehow had "placed" him more satisfactorily. The reserve, bordering upon distrust, with which Wassaquam had observed Alan, certainly was lessened. It was in recognition of this that Alan now asked, "Can you tell me now why he came here, Judah?"
"I have told you I do not know," Wassaquam replied. "Ben always saw him; Ben gave him money. I do not know why."
Alan had been holding his hand over the papers which he had thrust into his pocket; he went back into the smaller library and spread them under the reading lamp to examine them. Sherrill had assumed that Corvet had left in the house a record which would fully explain what had thwarted his life, and would shed light upon what had happened to Corvet, and why he had disappeared; Alan had accepted this assumption. The careful and secret manner in which these pages had been kept, and the importance which Wassaquam plainly had attached to them—and which must have been a result of his knowing that Corvet regarded them of the utmost importance—made Alan certain that he had found the record which Sherrill had believed must be there. Spearman's manner, at the moment of discovery, showed too that this had been what he had been searching for in his secret visit to the house.
But, as Alan looked the pages over now, he felt a chill of disappointment and chagrin. They did not contain any narrative concerning Benjamin Corvet's life; they did not even relate to a single event. They were no narrative at all. They were—in his first examination of them, he could not tell what they were.
They consisted in all of some dozen sheets of irregular size, some of which had been kept much longer than others, a few of which even appeared fresh and new. The three pages which Alan thought, from their yellowed and worn look, must be the oldest, and which must have been kept for many years, contained only a list of names and addresses. Having assured himself that there was nothing else on them, he laid them aside. The remaining pages, which he counted as ten in number, contained nearly a hundred brief clippings from newspapers; the clippings had been very carefully cut out, they had been pasted with painful regularity on the sheets, and each had been dated across its face—dates made with many different pens and with many different inks, but all in the same irregular handwriting as the letter which Alan had received from Benjamin Corvet.
Alan, his fingers numb in his disappointment, turned and examined all these pages; but they contained nothing else. He read one of the clippings, which was dated "Feb. 1912."
The passing away of one of the oldest residents of Emmet county occurred at the poor farm on Thursday of last week. Mr. Fred Westhouse was one of four brothers brought by their parents into Emmet county in 1846. He established himself here as a farmer and was well known among our people for many years. He was nearly the last of his family, which was quite well off at one time, Mr. Westhouse's three brothers and his father having perished in various disasters upon the lake. His wife died two years ago. He is survived by a daughter, Mrs. Arthur Pearl, of Flint.
He read another:
Hallford-Spens. On Tuesday last Miss Audrey Hallford, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bert Hallford, of this place, was united in the bonds of holy matrimony to Mr. Robert Spens, of Escanaba. Miss Audrey is one of our most popular young ladies and was valedictorian of her class at the high school graduation last year. All wish the young couple well.
He read another:
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Hal French, a daughter, Saturday afternoon last. Miss Vera Arabella French, at her arrival weighed seven and one-half pounds.
This clipping was dated, in Benjamin Corvet's hand, "Sturgeon Bay, Wis., Aug. 1914." Alan put it aside in bewilderment and amaze and took up again the sheets he first had looked at. The names and addresses on these oldest, yellowed pages had been first written, it was plain, all at the same time and with the same pen and ink, and each sheet in the beginning had contained seven or eight names. Some of these original names and even the addresses had been left unchanged, but most of them had been scratched out and altered many times—other and quite different names had been substituted; the pages had become finally almost illegible, crowded scrawls, rewritten again and again in Corvet's cramped hand. Alan strained forward, holding the first sheet to the light.
Alan seized the clippings he had looked at before and compared them swiftly with the page he had just read; two of the names—Westhouse and French—were the same as those upon this list. Suddenly he grasped the other pages of the list and looked them through for his own name; but it was not there. He dropped the sheets upon the table and got up and began to stride about the room.
He felt that in this list and in these clippings there must be, somehow, some one general meaning—they must relate in some way to one thing; they must have deeply, intensely concerned Benjamin Corvet's disappearance and his present fate, whatever that might be, 
and they must concern Alan's fate as well. But in their disconnection, their incoherence, he could discern no common thread. What conceivable bond could there have been uniting Benjamin Corvet at once with an old man dying upon a poor farm in Emmet County, wherever that might be, and with a baby girl, now some two years old, in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin? He bent suddenly and swept the pages into the drawer of the table and reclosed the drawer, as he heard the doorbell ring and Wassaquam went to answer it. It was the police, Wassaquam came to tell him, who had come for Luke's body.
Alan went out into the hall to meet them. The coroner's man either had come with them or had arrived at the same time; he introduced himself to Alan, and his inquiries made plain that the young doctor whom Alan had called for Luke had fully carried out his offer to look after these things, for the coroner was already supplied with an account of what had taken place. A sailor formerly employed on the Corvet ships, the coroner's office had been told, had come to the Corvet house, ill and seeking aid; Mr. Corvet not being at home, the people of the house had taken the man in and called the doctor; but the man had been already beyond doctors' help and had died in a few hours of pneumonia and alcoholism; in Mr. Corvet's absence it had been impossible to learn the sailor's full name.
Alan left corroboration of this story mostly to Wassaquam, the servant's position in the house being more easily explicable than his own; but he found that his right there was not questioned, and that the police accepted him as a member of the household. He suspected that they did not think it necessary to push inquiry very actively in such a home as this.
After the police had gone, he called Wassaquam into the library and brought the lists and clippings out again.
"Do you know at all what these are, Judah?" he asked.
"No, Alan. I have seen Ben have them, and take them out and put them back. That is all I know."
"My father never spoke to you about them?"
"Once he spoke to me; he said I was not to tell or speak of them to any one, or even to him."
"Do you know any of these people?"
He gave the lists to Wassaquam, who studied them through attentively, holding them to the lamp.
"No, Alan."
"Have you ever heard any of their names before?"
"That may be. I do not know. They are common names."
"Do you know the places?"
"Yes—the places. They are lake ports or little villages on the lakes. I have been in most of them, Alan. Emmet County, Alan, I came from there. Henry comes from there too."
"Henry Spearman?"
"Yes."
"Then that is where they hear the Drum."
"Yes, Alan."
"My father took newspapers from those places, did he not?"
Wassaquam looked over the addresses again. "Yes; from all. He took them for the shipping news, he said. And sometimes he cut pieces out of them—these pieces, I see now; and afterward I burned the papers; he would not let me only throw them away."
"That's all you know about them, Judah?"
"Yes, Alan; that is all."
Alan dismissed the Indian, who, stolidly methodical in the midst of these events, went down-stairs and commenced to prepare a dinner which Alan knew he could not eat. Alan got up and moved about the rooms; he went back and looked over the lists and clippings once more; then he moved about again. How strange a picture of his father did these things call up to him! When he had thought of Benjamin Corvet before, it had been as Sherrill had described him, pursued by some thought he could not conquer, seeking relief in study, in correspondence with scientific societies, in anything which could engross him and shut out memory. But now he must think of him, not merely as one trying to forget; what had thwarted Corvet's life was not only in the past; it was something still going on. It had amazed Sherrill to learn that Corvet, for twenty years, had kept trace of Alan; but Corvet had kept trace in the same way and with the same secrecy of many other people—of about a score of people. When Alan thought of Corvet, alone here in his silent house, he must think of him as solicitous about these people; as seeking for their names in the newspapers which he took for that purpose, and as recording the changes in their lives. The deaths, the births, the marriages among these people had been of the intensest interest to Corvet.
It was possible that none of these people knew about Corvet; Alan had not known about him in Kansas, but had known only that some unknown person had sent money for his support. But he appreciated that it did not matter whether they knew about him or not; for at some point common to all of them, the lives of these people must have touched Corvet's life. When Alan knew what had been that point of contact, he would know about Corvet; he would know about himself.
Alan had seen among Corvet's books a set of charts of the Great Lakes. He went and got that now and an atlas. Opening them upon the table, he looked up the addresses given on Corvet's list. They were most of them, he found, towns about the northern end of the lake; a very few were upon other lakes—Superior and Huron—but most were upon or very close to Lake Michigan. These people lived by means of the lake; they got their sustenance from it, as Corvet had lived, and as Corvet had got his wealth. Alan was feeling like one who, bound, has been suddenly unloosed. From the time when, coming to see Corvet, he had found Corvet gone until now, he had felt the impossibility of explaining from anything he knew or seemed likely to learn the mystery which had surrounded himself and which had surrounded Corvet. But these names and addresses! They indeed offered something to go upon, though Luke now was forever still, and his pockets had told Alan nothing.
He found Emmet County on the map and put his finger on it. Spearman, Wassaquam had said came from there. "The Land of the Drum!" he said aloud. Deep and sudden feeling stirred in him as he traced out this land on the chart—the little towns and villages, the islands and headlands, their lights and their uneven shores. A feeling of "home" had come to him, a feeling he had not had on coming to Chicago. There were Indian names and French up there about the meetings of the great waters. Beaver Island! He thought of Michabou and the raft. The sense that he was of these lakes, that surge of feeling which he had felt first in conversation with Constance Sherrill was strengthened an hundredfold; he found himself humming a tune. He did not know where he had heard it; indeed, it was not the sort of tune which one knows from having heard; it was the sort which one just knows. A rhyme fitted itself to the hum,
"Seagull, seagull sit on the sand,
It's never fair weather when you're on the land."
He gazed down at the lists of names which Benjamin Corvet had kept so carefully and so secretly; these were his father's people too; these ragged shores and the islands studding the channels were the lands where his father had spent the most active part of his life. There, then—these lists now made it certain—that event had happened by which that life had been blighted. Chicago and this house here had been for his father only the abode of memory and retribution. North, there by the meeting of the waters, was the region of the wrong which was done.
"That's where I must go!" he said aloud. "That's where I must go!"
Constance Sherrill, on the following afternoon, received a telephone call from her father; he was coming home earlier than usual, he said; if she had planned to go out, would she wait until after he got there? She had, indeed, just come in and had been intending to go out again at once; but she took off her wraps and waited for him. The afternoon's mail was upon a stand in the hall. She turned it over, looking through it—invitations, social notes. She picked from among them an envelope addressed to herself in a firm, clear hand, which, unfamiliar to her, still queerly startled her, and tore it open.
Dear Miss Sherrill, she read,
I am closing for the time being, the house which, for default of other ownership, I must call mine. The possibility that what has occurred here would cause you and your father anxiety about me in case I went away without telling you of my intention is the reason for this note. But it is not the only reason. I could not go away without telling you how deeply I appreciate the generosity and delicacy you and your father have shown to me in spite of my position here and of the fact that I had no claim at all upon you. I shall not forget those even though what happened here last night makes it impossible for me to try to see you again or even to write to you.
She heard her father's motor enter the drive and ran to him with the letter in her hand.
"He's written to you then," he said, at sight of it.
"Yes."
"I had a note from him this afternoon at the office, asking me to hold in abeyance for the time being the trust that Ben had left me and returning the key of the house to me for safekeeping."
"Has he already gone?"
"I suppose so; I don't know."
"We must find out." She caught up her wraps and began to put them on. Sherrill hesitated, then assented; and they went round the block together to the Corvet house. The shades, Constance saw as they approached, were drawn; their rings at the doorbell brought no response. Sherrill, after a few instants' hesitation, took the key from his pocket and unlocked the door and they went in. The rooms, she saw, were all in perfect order; summer covers had been put upon the furniture; protecting cloths had been spread over the beds up-stairs. Her father tried the water and the gas, and found they had been turned off. After their inspection, they came out again at the front door, and her father closed it with a snapping of the spring lock.
Constance, as they walked away, turned and looked back at the old house, gloomy and dark among its newer, fresher-looking neighbors; and suddenly she choked, and her eyes grew wet. That feeling was not for Uncle Benny; the drain of days past had exhausted such a surge of feeling for him. That which she could not wink away was for the boy who had come to that house a few weeks ago and for the man who just now had gone.