The Pool of Stars/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
RUNNING WATER
IT was a thrush, singing in the early morning rain, that awakened Betsey next day. She had slept at the cottage, on the couch beside the toy-cupboard and had seen through the window, as she dropped asleep, the sky all bright with stars and had thought vaguely of how they must be shining in the pool. Through her dreams, however, she had heard, toward the dawn, the patter of rain on the sloping roof above her head and she had remembered how dry the grass was growing and how thirsty the garden, and had smiled to hear it fall. The thrush seemed to be glad also, for he sat just opposite her window, hidden among the wet leaves, and singing with all his soul to greet the gray morning. She got up and knelt by the casement to watch him, while he, too intent upon his trills and warbles and flute-like runs, seemed to pay no heed to the fact that some one was peering at him over the sill. When he had finished and flown away, when the cool rain had ceased and the sun was beginning to send long rays into the dripping garden, she remembered for the first time that this was the long-dreaded day, the morning of the examinations.
For some reason that she could not explain, she no longer minded the thought at all. The events of the day before had seemed to clear her mind, to drive the cobwebs from her brain, to give her courage. David, she knew, when there was nothing more he could do in preparation, had begun to look forward to the occasion since the very fact that the chances were against him lent some excitement to the affair. What he did know he had mastered well, but did he know the right things? He had reached a point where he was quite on edge to find out. It was necessary for him to take his examinations at the college itself, so that he would be gone for the three days that they lasted and would not see Betsey again until the trials of both of them were over. As she dressed and went downstairs she was so busy wishing him luck that she had little time to think of herself.
After all her nervous worry, she was astonished at her present calm, that lasted even while she sat in the big quiet school room with fifty others, waiting for questions to be distributed. The one thought that kept going through her head, oddly enough, was, "I am so glad I did not go with Aunt Susan!" The paper was handed to her, Plane and Solid Geometry, the most difficult subject first as it should be. She smiled joyfully as she saw, like the face of an old friend looking up at her, the question concerning the frustum of a pyramid.
It was three days later and the last of the trial was over. Elizabeth had felt unexcited throughout, but now was beginning to seem a little jaded, as though the pouring out of so much knowledge had left her limp and empty. She had not seen much of Miss Miranda, so full had the days been, merely contenting herself with telephoning or consulting with Mrs. Bassett at the kitchen door. But now she was climbing the hill again, with none too energetic feet, to be sure, and rather a dull and vacant head, but with a heart lightened of a very definite burden. She could not know her exact standing for some days, but she had, she admitted to herself frankly, no great doubt as to the result. Nothing had seemed very difficult, for steady and conscientious labor had proved its value at last. She felt rather more concerned about David. His work, also, would be finished to-day, so that she might hope to see him at the cottage that evening.
A telegraph messenger passed her, coasting joyously down the hill on his bicycle as she was toiling upward. At the gate she found Michael, the yellow dispatch still in his hand.
"I'm going in, shall I take it to Miss Miranda?" she said, but the old Irishman shook his head.
"It is for me," he answered, and, as though to prove it, turned the envelope so that she could see the address, "Mr. Michael Martin, Somerset Lane."
Michael somehow seemed rather an unexpected person to be receiving telegrams, but he was in one of his silent moods, unfortunately, and did not offer to tell his news.
"I am needing help in the garden," was all he condescended to say as he pocketed the envelope; "could you give me a hand with pulling the lettuce? Miss Miranda has not been able to come inside the place for a week."
"I'll just go in and speak to her first," Elizabeth said, a remark that seemed to displease him greatly.
"As you will," he returned, shrugging his shoulders grumpily, "but it will be dark before long and plenty of time for visiting then. It will be black darkness, too, for there is no moon now."
With a sigh Betsey agreed that he was probably right and that he should, at any rate, be humored. The garden did indeed look neglected and in want of the care Miss Miranda was accustomed to give it. The very hens and ducks seemed to be moping and less cheerful in their clucks and quackings, as though they missed their mistress and found the unsympathetic Michael a very sorry substitute. When Betsey was once established between the lettuce rows he went away at once to hoe the sweet corn, so that conversation was impossible.
They labored in silence for a long time until it began to grow too dark to see clearly.
"I will not stop before he does," Betsey told herself, rather nettled at his uncordial behavior; "he will think I am shirking if I do."
The fresh green lettuce heads had grown huge and compact like gigantic roses and filled, heaping full, the big basket he had set beside her. She went on thinning them out, pulling chance weeds, clipping the long stalks, determined to make no move until the unapproachable Michael suggested it. She thought much of David as she worked there in the dusk. Had he done well or had chance gone against him? Would he come soon to report how things were or would his return be so late that she would have to wait until morning to hear how he had fared. With a little good luck he should have got through famously but, somehow, good luck had not lately seemed to be the order of the day.
"I am beginning to be just like Michael," she reproved herself severely when she reached this point in her meditations. It was fortunate that she did not speak aloud for there was the old gardener himself, just behind her.
She thought that he had come to bid her stop working but, instead, he stood leaning on his hoe, saying nothing. But he was there with something to say, that was evident, for presently, having shifted his feet once or twice and cleared his throat, he was able to begin.
"Miss Betsey," he said slowly, "you don't believe in bad spirits, do you, the kind that bring ill luck to people that deserve only the best and fairest fortune on earth?"
She was quite startled that his thoughts and hers should have been following so closely the same channel, but she would not admit the fact.
"No, Michael, I don't," she answered firmly. "Do you?"
"I'm not sure that I don't, nor yet that I do," he replied doubtfully; "sometimes I think I have let my fancies run away with me my whole life through, so now that I am a foolish old man, I cannot believe my own senses. You don't think for instance—" he lowered his voice almost to a whisper and looked at her keenly through the shadows, "you don't think that there is anything queer amiss up yonder at the old house?"
"Michael!" cried Betsy, too much astonished to keep up her pretense of calmness. "Michael, have you noticed it too? What was it you saw?"
"It was not so much what I saw, for my eyes are dim and old now, it was what I heard. On the very night when Mr. Donald was here and Mr. Reynolds was stricken, that was when I heard. Something moving in the dark, something that muttered to Itself, that stood by the pool for a minute there in the black and white of the moonlight. I heard the water splash like a fish jumping, but I am thinking it was more like a charm for bad luck being dropped in, as such Creatures love to do. I used to think that the bad spell was only on the old house but it is on the water now also, on that pool that lies so deep and quiet and pictures back the stars. If it was running water, now, the spell would carry away, but not with a still basin as that is, the evil lies there so quiet and works and works—"
"Michael," cried Betsey, " you should not believe such things!"
He shook his head.
"I'd like to put it by," he declared, "but how can a man do so? Can you deny there is sorrow come to this house, undeserved and unforeseen? Yes, the curse of ill luck will lie on a house until some one knows how to drive it away. And the best time for lifting such a spell is in the hour before midnight and in the dark of the moon."
Betsey stood up and took her basket.
"I am not going to believe what you say," she insisted stoutly, "and I am going in to see Miss Miranda. You have not told me yet how her father is."
"I had orders not to tell you until I must," he said gently. "He is worse, much worse. The doctor has been here all day and Miss Miranda looks like a ghost."
"Oh," cried Betsey in distress, then added with almost a sob of relief, "Oh, here's David!"
For David, striding out of the shadows, seemed a very comforting presence.
"I nailed them," he announced elegantly the moment he came near. "The examiners were a clever set of fellows, they managed to guess at all the things I knew and to ask me about very little else. I make them my compliments. And now, how are things going?"
He heard the bad news in troubled silence, took up Elizabeth's basket without a word and turned to the house. Poor old Michael stood staring after them, hopeless and distressed, unable to speak.
Miss Miranda stood by the door, talking to the doctor who was just going.
"He is quieter," the doctor was saying, "and the night may pass easily. But if he should be delirious again—"
"I will be here, sir," David announced briefly, at his side.
"You will? Good, you can be of some help if things go badly. And be sure to call me the moment there is any change. If there were only something that would rouse him from that stupor!"
Miss Miranda looked much like a shadow, but she greeted them as cheerily as ever and seemed most eager to know how their affairs had gone during the last three days, and was as happy as they were in the hopeful report of results.
"I was rather worried about David," she admitted, and he confessed cheerfully that he had been much worse than worried about himself.
"At the last minute I began quite to enjoy the excitement of it," he declared, "but I don't care to go through it a second time. I will never cut things quite so close again."
The cottage was to be crowded that night for Elizabeth was to sleep there, upon Miss Miranda's urging it, and David, since there were no more spare beds, undertook to make up a couch for himself on one of the low benches in the workshop. Elizabeth had opportunity, while Miss Miranda had gone to fetch some blankets, of telling David that Michael, too, had been seeing strange things in the garden of the ruined house.
"I can guess what Michael thought if he saw that moving light," the boy observed. "He would have a hundred explanations where we have not been able to find one. When we get some of these other affairs off our minds, we will have to go and watch for it again."
"Y—yes," assented Betsey. She was not entirely sure whether she cared to investigate further.
"There is one thing that I have found out," he went on. "I came across the grounds of the old house this evening while it was still light, to gather up some of the books I used to keep there and that I will not use again. And I found that these last spring storms have weakened and washed out those broken walls worse than ever, so that nothing but a ghost or goblin could walk over them without coming to grief."
Betsey said good night to David, good night to Miss Miranda, tiptoed down the dimly lighted hall and closed the door of her own room.
"You must go to sleep early," Miss Miranda had said. "I know you are tired after your hard three days."
Weary she was, but not sleepy at all. She felt a restless uneasiness nor, try as she would, could she shake off the haunting depression caused by Michael's fantastic notion. She sat by the window, watching big dark clouds creep upward from the horizon and blot out the stars, she wandered about the room, she tried to read, she tried to sleep, but all to no purpose. It was impossible to put out of her mind the seriousness of Mr. Reynolds' illness, nor could she forget Michael's solemn belief that ill luck lay heavy on the place and would not be driven away.
"It's nonsense," she told herself again and again. "Why did I ever listen to him?"
The pressure of excitement and distress became greater and greater instead of less, became almost unendurable. She sat down before Miss Miranda's desk and lifted her hand to the key of the toy cupboard. How often she had read in fairy stories of how the heroine of the tale, when in complete despair, would break the magic nut, uncover the enchanted box for a charm to bring help in time of need. She felt as though it were much the same thing she was doing when she opened the doors of the toy cupboard.
One after another she took down the treasures and set them before her, the silver Saint Christopher, the little jade tree, the bowls and cups, the ornaments and carvings. She tried to recollect the stories she had heard but a few days ago, the gay adventures, the odd, absorbing tales. Yet she came wandering back to the two of which she had heard first, the silver saint and the little tree. They seemed to be more closely bound up with her daily life, with Michael's superstition and with that steadfast purpose that dwelt in the Reynolds' blood. From the two friends who built their clipper ship in the face of all opposition down to Miss Miranda and her father, all were willing to sacrifice so much and work so untiringly to put into reality the substance of a dream. She set the tree on the shelf again and in doing so brushed Saint Christopher to the ground. Poor Michael, what strange ideas had taken possession of his faithful old Irish soul!
"That pool that lies so deep and quiet and pictures back the stars. If it was running water, now!"
Why did his rambling, senseless talk keep running through her head. Little by little, however, calm and comfort seemed to come back to her and at last, so late did she sit before the toy cupboard that drowsiness came from mere force of habit and she got up and stumbled to her bed.
She slept soundly, but for a very little time, awakening with a start. The rising clouds had brought high winds with them, winds that were blustering about the corners of the little house and blowing sticks and broken boughs across the steep roof above her head. Starting up with all sleepiness vanished, she sat staring into the dark. There was a sound above the others that she did not quite recognize, a sound like a door banging or—no—it was the slamming of a gate. Again and again she heard it, an unlocked gate swinging in the wild night wind. There was none near enough for her to hear so plainly save the one in the high garden wall.
Then suddenly there came into her mind, not gradually as answers to puzzles often come, but all at once, full, clear and plain, the truth as to that mystery of the goblin light. Why had she been so dense before, why had she thought of it so late, when real harm might have already come? She fumbled for her clothes in the dark, stumbling here and there in too great haste even to find the lamp; she dressed pell-mell, flung open the door and ran down the stairs. She was quiet in the upper hall, but, in her hurry, had little thought of silence as she unbarred the outer door.
The high, warm wind whirled her halfway across the lawn the moment she stepped off the doorstep. The gate in the wall was swinging open just as she had guessed, the path beyond stretched away like a black tunnel through the trees. She was afraid, she hated to go alone, she felt very small and powerless in all that empty darkness. Why had she not stopped to call David? But no, it would have taken more time than she could afford to lose. She was buffeted by the wind, brushed with ghostly hands by the low-reaching shrubs; she was half sobbing with terror, but nevertheless she ran onward.