The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge and Other Stories Part 1

The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge and Other Stories.

by Charles Egbert Craddock.

THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE

Across the narrow gorge the little foot-bridge stretched--a brace of logs, the upper surface hewn, and a slight hand-rail formed of a cedar pole. A flimsy structure, one might think, looking down at the dark and rocky depths beneath, through which flowed the mountain stream, swift and strong, but it was doubtless substantial enough for all ordinary usage, and certainly sufficient for the imponderable and elusive travellers who by common report frequented it.

"We ain't likely ter meet n.o.body. Few folks kem this way nowadays, 'thout it air jes' ter ford the creek down along hyar a piece, sence harnts an' sech onlikely critters hev been viewed a-crossin' the foot-bredge. An' it hev got the name o' bein' toler'ble onlucky, too,"

said Roxby.

His interlocutor drew back slightly. He had his own reasons to recoil from the subject of death. For him it was invested with a more immediate terror than is usual to many of the living, with that flattering persuasion of immortality in every strong pulsation repudiating all possibility of cessation. Then, lifting his gloomy, long-lashed eyes to the bridge far up the stream, he asked, "Whose 'harnts'?"

His voice had a low, repressed cadence, as of one who speaks seldom, grave, even melancholy, and little indicative of the averse interest that had kindled in his sombre eyes. In comparison the drawl of the mountaineer, who had found him heavy company by the way, seemed imbued with an abnormal vivacity, and keyed a tone or two higher than was its wont.

"Thar ain't a few," he replied, with a sudden glow of the pride of the cicerone. "Thar's a graveyard t'other side o' the gorge, an' not more than a haffen-mile off, an' a cornsider'ble pa.s.sel o' folks hev been buried thar off an' on, an' the foot-bredge ain't in nowise ill-convenient ter them."

Thus demonstrating the spectral resources of the locality, he rode his horse well into the stream as he spoke, and dropped the reins that the animal's impatient lips might reach the water. He sat facing the foot-bridge, flecked with the alternate s.h.i.+fting of the suns.h.i.+ne and the shadows of the tremulous firs that grew on either side of the high banks on the ever-ascending slope, thus arching both above and below the haunted bridge. His companion had joined him in the centre of the stream; but while the horses drank, the stranger's eyes were persistently bent on the concentric circles of the water that the movement of the animals had set astir in the current, as if he feared that too close or curious a gaze might discern some pilgrim, whom he cared not to see, traversing that shadowy quivering foot-bridge. He was mounted on a strong, handsome chestnut, as marked a contrast to his guide's lank and trace-galled sorrel as were the two riders. A slender gloved hand had fallen with the reins to the pommel of the saddle. His soft felt hat, like a sombrero, shadowed his clear-cut face. He was carefully shaven, save for a long drooping dark mustache and imperial.

His suit of dark cloth was much concealed by a black cloak, one end of which thrown back across his shoulder showed a bright blue lining, the color giving a sudden heightening touch to his attire, as if he were "in costume." It was a fleeting fas.h.i.+on of the day, but it added a certain picturesqueness to a horseman, and seemed far enough from the times that produced the square-tailed frock-coat which the mountaineer wore, constructed of brown jeans, the skirts of which stood stiffly out on each side of the saddle, and gave him, with his broad-brimmed hat, a certain Quakerish aspect.

"I dun'no' why folks be so 'feared of 'em," Roxby remarked, speculatively. "The dead ain't so oncommon, nohow. Them ez hev been in the war, like you an' me done, oughter be in an' 'bout used ter corpses--though I never seen none o' 'em afoot agin. Lookin' at a smit field o' battle, arter the rage is jes' pa.s.sed, oughter gin a body a realizin' sense how easy the sperit kin flee, an' what pore vessels fur holdin' the spark o' life human clay be."

Simeon Roxby had a keen, not unkindly face, and he had that look of extreme intelligence which is entirely distinct from intellectuality, and which one sometimes sees in a minor degree in a very clever dog or a fine horse. One might rely on him to understand instinctively everything one might say to him, even in its subtler aesthetic values, although he had consciously learned little. He was of the endowed natures to whom much is given, rather than of those who are set to acquire. He had many lines in his face--even his simple life had gone hard with him, its sorrows una.s.suaged by its simplicity. His hair was grizzled, and hung long and straight on his collar. He wore a grizzled beard cut broad and short. His boots had big spurs, although the lank old sorrel had never felt them. He sat his horse like the cavalryman he had been for four years of hard riding and raiding, but his face had a certain gentleness that accented the Quaker-like suggestion of his garb, a look of communing with the higher things.

"I never blamed 'em," he went on, evidently reverting to the spectres of the bridge--"I never blamed 'em for comin' back wunst in a while. It 'pears ter me 'twould take me a long time ter git familiar with heaven, an' sociable with them ez hev gone before. An', my Lord, jes' think what the good green yearth is! Leastwise the mountings. I ain't settin' store on the valley lands I seen whenst I went ter the wars. I kin remember yit what them streets in the valley towns smelt like."

He lifted his head, drawing a long breath to inhale the exquisite fragrance of the fir, the freshness of the pellucid water, the aroma of the autumn wind, blowing through the sere leaves still clinging red and yellow to the boughs of the forest.

"Naw, I ain't blamin' 'em, though I don't hanker ter view 'em," he resumed. "One of 'em I wouldn't be afeard of, though. I feel mighty sorry fur her. The old folks used ter tell about her. A young 'oman she war, a-crossin' this bredge with her child in her arms. She war young, an' mus' have been keerless, I reckon; though ez 'twar her fust baby, she moughtn't hev been practised in holdin' it an' sech, an' somehows it slipped through her arms an' fell inter the ruver, an' war killed in a minit, das.h.i.+n' agin the rocks. She jes' stood fur a second a-screamin'

like a wild painter, an' jumped off'n the bredge arter it. She got it agin; for when they dragged her body out'n the ruver she hed it in her arms too tight fur even death ter onloose. An' thar they air together in the buryin'-ground."

He gave a nod toward the slope of the mountain that intercepted the melancholy view of the graveyard.

"Got it yit!" he continued; "bekase" (he lowered his voice) "on windy nights, whenst the moon is on the wane, she is viewed kerryin' the baby along the bredge--kerryin' it clear over, _safe an' sound_, like she thought she oughter done, I reckon, in that one minute, whilst she stood an' screamed an' surveyed what she hed done. That child would hev been nigh ter my age ef he hed lived."

Only the sunbeams wavered athwart the bridge now as the firs swayed above, giving glimpses of the sky, and their fibrous shadows flickered back and forth. The wild mountain stream flashed white between the brown bowlders, and plunged down the gorge in a succession of cascades, each seeming more transparently green and amber and brown than the other. The chestnut horse gazed meditatively at these limpid out-gus.h.i.+ngs, having drunk his fill; then thought better of his moderation, and once more thrust his head down to the water. The hand of his rider, which had made a motion to gather up the reins, dropped leniently on his neck, as Simeon Roxby spoke again:

"Several--several others hev been viewed, actin' accordin' ter thar motions in life. Now thar war a peddler--some say he slipped one icy evenin', 'bout dusk in winter--some say evil ones waylaid him fur his gear an' his goods in his pack, but the settlemint mostly believes he war alone whenst he fell. His pack 'pears ter be full still, they say--but ye air 'bleeged ter know he hev hed ter set that pack down fur good 'fore this time. We kin take nuthin' out'n this world, no matter what kind o' a line o' goods we kerry in life. Heaven's no place fur tradin', I understan', an' I _do_ wonder sometimes how in the worl' them merchants an' sech in the valley towns air goin' ter entertain tha.r.s.e'fs in the happy land o'Canaan. It's goin' ter be sorter bleak fur them, sure's ye air born."

With a look of freshened recollection, he suddenly drew a plug of tobacco from his pocket, and he talked on even as he gnawed a piece from it.

"Durin' the war a cavalry-man got shot out hyar whilst runnin' 'crost that thar foot-bredge. Thar hed been a scrimmage an' his horse war kilt, an' he tuk ter the bresh on foot, hopin' ter hide in the laurel. But ez he war crossin' the foot-bredge some o' the pursuin' party war fordin'

the ruver over thar, an' thinkin' he'd make out ter escape they fired on him, jes' ez the feller tried ter surrender. He turned this way an'

flung up both arms--but thar's mighty leetle truce in a pistol-ball.

That minute it tuk him right through the brain. Seems toler'ble long range fur a pistol, don't it? He kin be viewed now most enny moonlight night out hyar on the foot-bredge, throwin' up both hands in sign of surrender."

The wild-geese were a-wing on the way southward. Looking up to that narrow section of the blue sky which the incision of the gorge into the very depths of the woods made visible, he could see the tiny files deploying along the azure or the flecking cirrus, and hear the vague clangor of their leader's cry. He lifted his head to mechanically follow their flight. Then, as his eyes came back to earth, they rested again on the old bridge.

"Strange enough," he said, suddenly, "the skerriest tale I hev ever hearn 'bout that thar old bredge is one that my niece set a-goin'. She _seen_ the harnt _herself_, an' it shakes me wuss 'n the idee o' all the rest."

His companion's gloomy gaze was lifted for a moment with an expression of inquiry from the slowly widening circles of the water about the horse's head as he drank. But Roxby's eyes, with a certain gleam of excitement, a superst.i.tious dilation, still dwelt upon the bridge at the end of the upward vista. He went on merely from the impetus of the subject. "Yes, sir--she _seen_ it a-pacin' of its sorrowful way acrost that bredge, same ez the t'others of the percession o' harnts. 'Twar my niece, Mill'cent--brother's darter--by name, Mill'cent Roxby. Waal, Mill'cent an' a lot o' young fools o' her age--little over fryin'

size--they 'tended camp-meetin' down hyar on Tomahawk Creek--'tain't so long ago--along with the old folks. An' 'bout twenty went huddled up tergether in a road-wagin. An', lo! the wagin it bruk down on the way home, an' what with proppin' it up on a crotch, they made out ter reach the cross-roads over yander at the Notch, an' thar the sober old folks called a halt, an' hed the wagin mended at the blacksmith-shop. Waal, it tuk some two hours, fur Pete Rodd ain't a-goin' ter hurry hisself--in my opinion the angel Gabriel will hev ter blow his bugle oftener'n wunst at the last day 'fore Pete Rodd makes up his mind ter rise from the dead an' answer the roll-call--an' this hyar young lot sorter found it tiresome waitin' on thar elders' solemn company. The old folks, whilst waitin', set outside on the porches of the houses at the settlemint, an'

repeated some o' the sermons they hed hearn at camp, an' more'n one raised a hyme chune. An' the young fry--they hed hed a steady diet o'

sermons an' hyme chunes fur fower days--they tuk ter stragglin' off down the road, two an' two, like the same sorter idjits the world over, leavin' word with the old folks that the wagin would overtake 'em an'

pick 'em up on the road when it pa.s.sed. Waal, they walked several mile, an' time they got ter the crest o' the hill over yander the moon hed riz, an' they could look down an' see the mist in the valley. The moon war bright in the buryin'-groun' when they pa.s.sed it, an' the head-boards stood up white an' stiff, an' a light frost hed fell on the mounds, an' they showed plain, an' shone sorter lonesome an' cold. The young folks begun ter look behind em' fur the wagin. Some said--I b'lieve 'twar Em'ry Keenan--they could read the names on the boards plain, 'twar so light, the moon bein' nigh the full: but Em'ry never read nuthin' at night by the moon in his life; he ain't enny too capable o' wrastlin' with the alphabet with a strong daytime on his book ter light him ter knowledge. An' the shadows war black an' still, an' all the yearth looked ez ef nuthin' lived nor ever would agin, an' they hearn a wolf howl. Waal, that disaccommodated the gals mightily, an'

they hed a heap more interes' in that old wagin, all smellin' rank with wagin-grease an' tar, than they did in thar lovyers; an' they hed ruther hev hearn that old botch of a wheel that Pete Rodd hed set onto it comin' a-creakin' an' a-complainin' along the road than the sweetest words them boys war able ter make up or remember. So they stood thar in the road--a-stare-gazin' them head-boards, like they expected every grave ter open an' the reveilly ter sound--a-waitin' ter be overtook by the wagin, a-listenin', but hearin' nuthin' in the silence o' the frost--not a dead leaf a-twirlin', nor a frozen blade o' gra.s.s astir.

An' then two or three o' the gals 'lowed they hed ruther walk back ter meet the wagin, an' whenst the boys 'lowed ter go on--nuthin' war likely ter ketch 'em--one of 'em bust out a-cryin'. Waal, thar war the eend o'

that much! So the gay party set out on the back track, a-keepin' step ter sobs an' sniffles, an' that's how kem _they_ seen no harnt. But Mill'cent an' three or four o' the t'others 'lowed they'd go on. They warn't two mile from home, an' full five from the cross-roads. So Em'ry Keenan--he hev been waitin' on her sence the year one--so he put his skeer in his pocket an' kem along with her, a-shakin' in his shoes, I'll be bound! So down the hill in the frosty moonlight them few kem--purty nigh beat out, I reckon, Mill'cent war, what with the sermonizin' an'

the hyme-singin' an' hevin' ter look continual at the sheep's-eyes o'

Em'ry Keenan--he wears my patience ter the bone! So she concluded ter take the short-cut. An' Em'ry he agreed. So they tuk the lead, the rest a followin', an' kem down thar through all that black growth"--he lifted his arm and pointed at the great slope, dense with fir and pine and the heavy underbrush--"keepin' the bridle-path--easy enough even at night, fur the bresh is so thick they couldn't lose thar way. But the moonlight war mightily slivered up, fallin' through the needles of the pines an'

the skeins of dead vines, an' looked bleached and onnatural, an' holped the dark mighty leetle. An' they seen the water a-s.h.i.+nin' an' a-plungin'

down the gorge, an' the glistenin' of the frost on the floor o' the bredge. Thar war a few icicles on the hand-rail, an' the branches o' the firs hung ez still ez death; only that cold, racin', shoutin', jouncin'

water moved. Jes ez they got toler'ble nigh the foot-bredge a sudden cloud kem over the face o' the sky. Thar warn't no wind on the yearth, but up above the air war a-stirrin'. An' Em'ry he 'lowed Mill'cent shouldn't cross the foot-bredge whilst the light warn't clar--I wonder the critter hed that much sense! An' she jes' drapped down on that rock thar ter rest"--he pointed up the slope to a great fragment that had broken off from the ledges and lay near the bank: the bulk of the ma.s.s was overgrown with moss and lichen, but the jagged edges of the recent fracture gleamed white and crystalline among the brown and olive-green shadows about it. A tree was close beside it. "Agin that thar pine trunk Em'ry he stood an' leaned. The rest war behind, a-comin'

down the hill. An' all of a suddenty a light fell on the furder eend o'

the foot-bredge--a waverin' light, mighty white an' misty in the darksomeness. Mill'cent 'lowed ez fust she thunk it war the moon. An'

lookin' up, she seen the cloud; it held the moon close kivered. An'

lookin' down, she seen the light war movin'--movin' from the furder eend o' the bredge, straight acrost it. Sometimes a hand war held afore it, ez ef ter s.h.i.+eld it from the draught, an' then Mill'cent 'seen twar a candle, an' the white in the mistiness war a 'oman wearin' white an'

carryin' it. Lookin' ter right an' then ter lef' the 'oman kem, with now her right hand s.h.i.+eldin' the candle she held, an' now layin' it on the hand-rail. The candle shone on the water, fur it didn't flare, an' when the 'oman held her hand before it the light made a bright spot on the foot-bredge an' in the dark air about her, an' on the fir branches over her head. An' a thin mist seemed to hang about her white frock, but not over her face, fur when she reached the middle o' the foot-bredge she laid her hand agin on the rail, an' in the clear light o' the candle Mill'cent seen the harnt's face. An' thar she beheld her own face; _her own face_ she looked upon ez she waited thar under the tree watchin' the foot-bredge; _her own face_ pale an' troubled; her own self dressed in white, crossin' the foot-bredge, an' lightin' her steps with a corpse's candle." He drew up the reins abruptly. He seemed in sudden haste to go.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PHANTOM OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE]

His companion looked with deepening interest at the bridge, although he followed his guide's surging pathway to the opposite bank. As the two dripping horses struggled up the steep incline he asked, "Did the man with her see the manifestation also?"

"He _'lows_ he did," responded Roxby, equivocally. "But when Mill'cent fust got so she could tell it, 'peared ter me ez Em'ry Keenan fund it ez much news ez the rest o' we-uns. Mill'cent jes' drapped stone-dead, accordin' ter all accounts, an' he an' the t'other young folks flung water in her face till she kem out'n her faint; an' jes' then they hearn the wagin a-rattlin' along the road, an' they stopped it an' fetched her home in it. She never told the tale till she war home, an' it skeered me an' my mother powerful, fur Mill'cent is all the kin we hev got.

Mill'cent is gran'daddy an' gran'mammy, sons an' daughters, uncles an'

aunts, cousins, nieces, an' nephews, all in one. The only thing I ain't pervided with is a nephew-in-law, an' I don't need him. Leastwise I ain't lookin' fur Em'ry Keenan jes' at present."

The pace was brisker when the two horses, bending their strength st.u.r.dily to the task, had pressed up the ma.s.sive slope from the deep cleft of the gorge. As the road curved about the outer verge of the mountain, the valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting valleys and transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval wildernesses, and rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and with chasms cut in the solid rock by centuries of erosion, traces of some remote cataclysmal period, registering thus its throes and turmoils. The blue sky, seen beyond a gaunt profile of one of the farther summits that defined its craggy serrated edge against the ultimate distances of the western heavens, seemed of a singularly suave tint, incongruous with the savagery of the scene, which clouds and portents of storm might better have befitted. The little graveyard, which John Dundas discerned with recognizing eyes, albeit they had never before rested upon it, was revealed suddenly, lying high on the opposite side of the gorge. No frost glimmered now on the lowly mounds; the flickering autumnal suns.h.i.+ne loitered unafraid among them, according to its languid wont for many a year. Shadows of the gray unpainted head-boards lay on the withered gra.s.s, brown and crisp, with never a cicada left to break the deathlike silence. A tuft of red leaves, vagrant in the wind, had been caught on one of the primitive monuments, and swayed there with a decorative effect. The enclosure seemed, to unaccustomed eyes, of small compa.s.s, and few the denizens who had found shelter here and a resting-place, but it numbered all the dead of the country-side for many a mile and many a year, and somehow the loneliness was a.s.suaged to a degree by the reflection that they had known each other in life, unlike the great herds of cities, and that it was a common fate which the neighbors, huddled together, encountered in company.

It had no discordant effect in the pervasive sense of gloom, of mighty antagonistic forces with which the scene was replete; it fostered a realization of the pitiable minuteness and helplessness of human nature in the midst of the vastness of inanimate nature and the evidences of infinite lengths of forgotten time, of the long reaches of unimagined history, eventful, fateful, which the landscape at once suggested and revealed and concealed.

Like the sudden flippant clatter of castanets in the pause of some solemn funeral music was the impression given by the first glimpse along the winding woodland way of a great flimsy white building, with its many pillars, its piazzas, its "observatory," its band-stand, its garish intimations of the giddy, gay world of a summer hotel. But, alack! it, too, had its surfeit of woe.

"The guerrillas an' bushwhackers tuk it out on the old hotel, sure!"

observed Sim Roxby, by way of introduction. "Thar warn't much fightin'

hyar-abouts, an' few sure-enough soldiers ever kem along. But wunst in a while a band o' guerrillas went through like a suddint wind-storm, an' I tell ye they made things whurl while they war about it. They made a sorter barracks o' the old place. Looks some like lightning hed struck it."

He had reined up his horse about one hundred yards in front of the edifice, where the weed-grown gravelled drive--carefully tended ten years agone--had diverged from the straight avenue of poplars, sweeping in a circle around to the broad flight of steps.

"Though," he qualified abruptly, as if a sudden thought had struck him, "ef ye air countin' on buyin' it, a leetle money spent ter keerful purpose will go a long way toward makin' it ez good ez new."

His companion did not reply, and for the first time Roxby cast upon him a covert glance charged with the curiosity which would have been earlier and more easily aroused in another man by the manner of the stranger. A letter--infrequent missive in his experience--had come from an ancient companion-in-arms, his former colonel, requesting him in behalf of a friend of the old commander to repair to the railway station, thirty miles distant, to meet and guide this prospective purchaser of the old hotel to the site of the property. And now as Roxby looked at him the suspicion which his kind heart had not been quick to entertain was seized upon by his alert brain.

"The cunnel's been fooled somehows," he said to himself.

For the look with which John Dundas contemplated the place was not the gaze of him concerned with possible investment--with the problems of repair, the details of the glazier and the painter and the plasterer.

The mind was evidently neither braced for resistance nor resigned to despair, as behooves one smitten by the foreknowledge of the certainty of the excess of the expenditures over the estimates. Only with pensive, listless melancholy, void of any intention, his eyes traversed the long rows of open doors, riven by rude hands from their locks, swinging helplessly to and fro in the wind, and giving to the deserted and desolate old place a spurious air of motion and life. Many of the shutters had been wrenched from their hinges, and lay rotting on the floors. The ball-room windows caught on their shattered gla.s.s the reflection of the clouds, and it seemed as if here and there a wan face looked through at the riders wending along the weed-grown path. Where so many faces had been what wonder that a similitude should linger in the loneliness! The pallid face seemed to draw back as they glanced up while slowly pacing around the drive. A rabbit sitting motionless on the front piazza did not draw back, although observing them with sedate eyes as he poised himself upright on his haunches, with his listless fore-paws suspended in the air, and it occurred to Dundas that he was probably unfamiliar with the presence of human beings, and had never heard the crack of a gun. A great swirl of swallows came soaring out of the big kitchen chimneys and circled in the sky, darting down again and again upward. Through an open pa.s.sage was a glimpse of a quadrangle, with its weed-grown s.p.a.ces and litter of yellow leaves. A tawny streak, a red fox, sped through it as Dundas looked. A half-moon, all a-tilt, hung above it. He saw the glimmer through the bare boughs of the leafless locust-trees here and there still standing, although outside on the lawn many a stump bore token how ruthlessly the bushwhackers had furnished their fires.