A Chariot of Fire Part 2

"Did he ever get over it--your little boy? Oh, I see; that was him I heard. 'Popper,' he says--'Popper.'"

Above the whir of the automobile, above the chatter of the exhaust, above the voice of the wind, the sound of a man's m.u.f.fled groan came distinctly to the ear that was fine enough to hear it.

"Trust me," said Chester, gently. "I'll get you there. I'll get you to your boy."

The gentleman's face was almost as white now as Jacob Dryver's. The fog glistened upon his mustache and made him look a gray-haired man, as he emerged from gulfs of darkness and shot by widely scattered dim street lamps. Both men had acquired something of the same expression--the rude face and the finished one; both wore the solemn, elemental look of fatherhood.

The heart of one repeated piteously: "It's Batty."

But the other thought: "What if it were Bert?"

"I'll let her out a little more," repeated Chester. The car throbbed and rocked to the words.

"How do you like my machine?" he added, in a comfortable voice. He felt that the mercury of emotion had mounted too far. "Mrs. Chester has named her," he proceeded. "We call her Aurora."

"Hey?"

"We've named the machine Aurora, I said."

"'Roarer,' sir?"

"Oh, well, that will do--'Roarer,' if you like. That isn't bad. It's an improvement, perhaps. By-the-way, how did you happen on my place to-night? There are a good many nearer the station; you had quite a walk."

"I see a little pair o' reins an' bells in the gra.s.s alongside--such as little boys play horse with. We had one once for Batty, sir."

"_Ah_! Was that it? What's your business, Dryver? You haven't told me. Do you fish?"

"Winters, I make paving-stones. Summers, I raise vegetables," replied Jacob Dryver. "I'm a kind of a quarry-farmer. My woman she plants flowers for the summer folks, and Batty bunches 'em up and delivers 'em. Batty--he--G.o.d! My G.o.d! Mebbe there _ain't any Batty_--"

The sentence broke. In truth, it would have been hard to find its remnants in the sudden onset of sound made by the motion of the machine.

The car was freed now to the limit of her mighty strength. She took great leaps like those of a living heart that is overexcited.

Powerfully, perfectly, without let or hindrance, without flaw or accident, the chariot of fire bounded through the night. A trail of smoke like the tail of a comet followed her. The dark scenery of the guarded sh.o.r.e flew by; Montserrat was behind; Prides' was gone; the Farms blew past.

They were now well out upon the beautiful, silent Manchester road, where the woods, solemn at noonday, are sinister at dead of night. The automobile, flying through them, encountered no answering sign of life.

Both men had ceased to speak. Awe fell upon them, as if in the presence of more than natural things. Once it seemed to Dryver as if he saw a boy running beside the machine--a little fellow, white, like a spirit, and, like a spirit, silent. Chester's hands had stiffened to the throttle; his face had the stern rigidity of those on whom life or human souls absolutely depend. Neither man spoke now aloud.

To himself Jacob Dryver repeated: "It's Batty! It's my Batty!"

And Hurlburt Chester thought: "What if it were Bert?"

Now the great arms of the sea began to open visibly before them. The fog on their lips grew salter, and they seemed to have entered the Cave of the Winds. Slender beach and st.u.r.dy headland slid by. West Manchester, Manchester, Magnolia rushed past. In the Magnolia woods they lost the sea again; but the bell-buoy called from Norman's Woe, and they could hear the moan of the whistling-buoy off Eastern Point.

In the Cape Ann Light the fog bell was tolling.

At the pace which the car was taking there was an element of danger in the situation which Jacob Dryver could not measure, since he feared safety ignorantly and met peril with composure. Chester reduced the speed a little, and yet a little more, but pushed on steadily. Once Jacob spoke.

"I'll bet your shove-her couldn't drive like you do," he said, proudly.

Fresh Water Cove slipped by; Old Stage Fort was behind; the Aurora b.u.mped over the pavement of the Cut, and reeled through the rough and narrow streets of Gloucester. He of Beverly was familiar with the route, and asked no questions. The car, now tangled among electric tracks, swung around the angle from Main Street carefully, jarred across the railroad, and took the winding, dim road to Annisquam.

Bay View flew behind--the bridge--the village--the pretty arcade known as Squam Willows. The automobile dashed into it and out of it as if it were a tunnel. Then Dryver gripped the other's arm and, without a word, pointed.

The car followed the guidance of his shaking finger, and, like a conscious creature, swung to a startling stop.

There were lights in the quarryman's cottage, and shadows stirred against drawn shades. Jacob Dryver tumbled out and ran. He did not speak, nor by a gesture thank his Beverly "neighbor." Chester slowly unb.u.t.toned his rubber coat and got at his watch. The Aurora had covered the distance--in dark and fog, over seventeen miles--in fifty-six minutes. Now, Jacob, das.h.i.+ng in, had left the door open, and Chester, as he put his watch back into its pocket, heard that which sent the blood driving through his arteries as the power had driven the pumps of the car. The sound that he heard was the fretful moan of a hurt child.

As he had admitted, he was a Christian--sometimes; and he said, "Oh, thank G.o.d!" with all his generous heart. Indeed, as he did so, he took off his heavy cap and bared his head.

Then he heard the sobbing of a shaken man close beside him.

"Sir! Oh, sir! The G.o.d of Everlastin' bless you, sir. Won't you come and look at him?"

Batty lay quietly; he had put his little fingers in his father's hand; he did not notice the stranger. The boy's mother, painfully poised on one elbow in the position that mothers take when they watch sick children, lay upon the other side of the bed. She was a large woman, with a plain, good face. She had on a polka-dotted, blue cotton wrapper which n.o.body called a negligee. Her mute, maternal eyes went to the face of the visitor and reverted to the child.

There was a physician in the room--a very young, to the trained eye an inexperienced, man; in fact, the medical situation was unpromising and complicated. It took Chester but a few moments to gauge it, and to perceive that his mission to this afflicted household had not ended with a lost night's sleep and an automobile record.

The local doctor, it seemed, was away from home when Batty's accident befell; the Gloucester surgeon was ill; some one had proposed the hospital, but the mother had the prejudices of her cla.s.s. A neighbor had suggested this young man--a new-comer to the town--one of the flotsam pract.i.tioners who drift and disappear. Recommended upon the ground that he had successfully prescribed headache pills to a Swedish cook, this stranger had received into his unskilled hands the emergency of a dangerously wounded lad. The accident, in fact, was more serious than Chester had supposed. He had now been told that the child was crushed by an automobile racing through Annisquam Willows the day before.

The boy, it was plain, was sorely hurt, and ignorant suffering lay at the mercy of ignorant treatment, in the hopeless and helpless subjection to medical etiquette which costs so many lives.

"Dryver," said Chester, quietly, "you need a surgeon here at once.

Your physician is quite willing to consult with any one you may call."

He shot one stern glance at the young doctor, who quavered a frightened a.s.sent. "I know a distinguished surgeon--he is a friend of mine; it was he who saved my boy in that accident I told you of, this summer.

He is not far away; he is at a hotel on Eastern Point. I can have him here in twenty--well, say twenty-five minutes. Of course, we must wait for him to dress."

The woman raised her head and stared upon the gentleman. One swift, brilliant gleam shot from her heavy eyes. She had read of angels in the Bible. She had noticed, indeed, that they were men angels. But she had never heard of one in a rubber touring-coat, drenched from head to foot with fog, spattered from foot to head with mud, and with a wedding-ring upon his fine hand.

Jacob Dryver began: "Sir! The G.o.d of Everlastin'--" but he sobbed so that he could not finish what he would have said. So Chester went out and oiled the Aurora, opened the throttle, and started off again, and dashed through the rude streets of Gloucester to her summer sh.o.r.e.

Dawn was rose-gray over Eastern Point, and the tide had turned upon the harbor, when the "Roarer" curved up quietly to the piazza of the hotel.

It was rose-gray upon Annisquam, and the tide was rising up the river, when the great surgeon went into the little place where the lad lay fighting for his mangled life. There had been some delay in rousing the sleeper--it was a trip of six rough miles twice taken--and it was thirty-five minutes before his "merciless merciful" hands went to work upon the mortal need of the boy.

The child had been crushed across the hips and body, and only an experienced or only an eminent skill could have saved the little fellow.

In the blossoming day Jacob Dryver limped out and stood in the front yard among his wife's flowers that Batty "bunched up" and sold to summer people. He could not perceive the scent of the flowers--only that of the ether. His big boot caught in a sweet-pea vine and tore it. One of the famous carmine dahlias of Cape Ann seemed to turn its large face and gaze at him.

An old neighbor--a cross-eyed lobsterer, going to his traps--came by, cast a shrewd look, and asked how the boy was. Jacob did not reply to the lobsterer; he lifted his wet eyes to the sky, then they fell to a bed of blazing nasturtiums, which seemed to smoke before them. His lips tried to form the words which close like a strangling hand upon the throat of the poor in all the emergencies of life. Till he has answered this question a poor man may not love a woman or rear a child; he may not bury his dead or save his living.

"_What will it cost?_" asked Jacob Dryver. He looked piteously at the great surgeon, whose lips parted to speak. But Hurlburt Chester raised an imperious hand.

"That," he said, "is my affair."

It was broad, bright day when the Aurora came whirring home. Chester nodded to his wife at the window, but went directly to the stables. It was a little longer than she expected before he returned. She waited at the head of the stairs, then hurried half-way down to meet him. Her white robe was ungirdled and flowing; it fell apart--the laces above from the laces below--and the tired man's kiss fell upon her soft throat.