The Guardian Angel Part 8

A cry as of a young person's voice was heard faintly, coming from the direction of the river. Something in the tone of it struck to his heart, and he sprang as if he had been stabbed. He flung open his chamber window and leaped from it to the ground. He ran straight to the bank of the river by the side of which the village of Alderbank was built, a little farther down the stream than the house in which he was living.

Everybody that travels in that region knows the beautiful falls which break the course of the river just above the village; narrow and swift, and surrounded by rocks of such picturesque forms that they are sought and admired by tourists. The stream was now swollen, and rushed in a deep and rapid current over the ledges, through the rocky straits, plunging at last in tumult and foam, with loud, continuous roar, into the depths below the cliff from which it tumbled.

A short distance above the fall there projected from the water a rock which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, h.o.a.rded a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it, but a few slender twigs were seen above their surface.

A skiff was lying close to this rock, between it and the brink of the fall, which was but a few rods farther down. In the skiff was a youth of fourteen or fifteen years, holding by the slender twigs, the boat dragging at them all the time, and threatening to tear them away and go over the fall. It was not likely that the boy would come to sh.o.r.e alive if it did. There were stories, it is true, that the Indians used to shoot the fall in their canoes with safety; but everybody knew that at least three persons had been lost by going over it since the town was settled; and more than one dead body had been found floating far down the river, with bruises and fractured bones, as if it had taken the same fatal plunge.

There was no time to lose. Clement ran a little way up the river-bank, flung off his shoes, and sprang from the bank as far as he could leap into the water. The current swept him toward the fall, but he worked nearer and nearer the middle of the stream. He was making for the rock, thinking he could plant his feet upon it and at the worst hold the boat until he could summon other help by shouting. He had barely got his feet upon the rock, when the twigs by which the boy was holding gave way. He seized the boat, but it dragged him from his uncertain footing, and with a desperate effort he clambered over its side and found himself its second doomed pa.s.senger.

There was but an instant for thought.

"Sit still," he said, "and, just as we go over, put your arms round me under mine, and don't let go for your life!"

He caught up the single oar, and with a few sharp paddle-strokes brought the skiff into the blackest centre of the current, where it was deepest, and would plunge them into the deepest pool.

"Hold your breath! G.o.d save us! Now!"

They rose, as if with one will, and stood for an instant, the arms of the younger closely embracing the other as he had directed.

A sliding away from beneath them of the floor on which they stood, as the drop fails under the feet of a felon. A great rush of air, and a mighty, awful, stunning roar,--an involuntary gasp, a choking flood of water that came bellowing after them, and hammered them down into the black depths so far that the young man, though used to diving and swimming long distances underwater, had well-nigh yielded to the fearful need of air, and sucked in his death in so doing.

The boat came up to the surface, broken in twain, splintered, a load of firewood for those who raked the river lower down. It had turned crosswise, and struck the rocks. A cap rose to the surface, such a one as boys wear,--the same that boy had on. And then--after how many seconds by the watch cannot be known, but after a time long enough, as the young man remembered it, to live his whole life over in memory--Clement Lindsay felt the blessed air against his face, and, taking a great breath, came to his full consciousness. The arms of the boy were still locked around him as in the embrace of death. A few strokes brought him to the sh.o.r.e, dragging his senseless burden with him.

He unclasped the arms that held him so closely encircled, and laid the slender form of the youth he had almost died to save gently upon the gra.s.s. It was as if dead. He loosed the ribbon that was round the neck, he tore open the checked s.h.i.+rt--

The story of Myrtle Hazard's s.e.x was told; but she was deaf to his cry of surprise, and no blush came to her cold cheek. Not too late, perhaps, to save her,--not too late to try to save her, at least!

He placed his lips to hers, and filled her breast with the air from his own panting chest. Again and again he renewed these efforts, hoping, doubting, despairing,--once more hoping, and at last, when he had almost ceased to hope, she gasped, she breathed, she moaned, and rolled her eyes wildly round her, she was born again into this mortal life.

He caught her up in his arms, bore her to the house, laid her on a sofa, and, having spent his strength in this last effort, reeled and fell, and lay as one over whom have just been whispered the words,

"He is gone."

CHAPTER X. MR. CLEMENT LINDSAY FINISHES HIS LETTER--WHAT CAME OF IT.

The first thing Clement Lindsay did, when he was fairly himself again, was to finish his letter to Susan Posey. He took it up where it left off, "with an affection which----" and drew a long dash, as above. It was with great effort he wrote the lines which follow, for he had got an ugly blow on the forehead, and his eyes were "in mourning," as the gentlemen of the ring say, with unbecoming levity.

"An adventure! Just as I was writing these last words, I heard the cry of a young person, as it sounded, for help. I ran to the river and jumped in, and had the pleasure of saving a life. I got some bruises which have laid me up for a day or two; but I am getting over them very well now, and you need not worry about me at all. I will write again soon; so pray do not fret yourself, for I have had no hurt that will trouble me for any time."

Of course, poor Susan Posey burst out crying, and cried as if her heart would break. Oh dear! Oh dear! what should she do! He was almost killed, she knew he was, or he had broken some of his bones. Oh dear! Oh dear!

She would go and see him, there!--she must and would. He would die, she knew he would,--and so on.

It was a singular testimony to the evident presence of a human element in Mr. Bytes Gridley that the poor girl, on her extreme trouble, should think of him as a counsellor. But the wonderful relenting kind of look on his grave features as he watched the little twins tumbling about his great books, and certain marks of real sympathy he had sometimes shown for her in her lesser woes, encouraged her, and she went straight to his study, letter in hand. She gave a timid knock at the door of that awful sanctuary.

"Come in, Susan Posey," was its answer, in a pleasant tone. The old master knew her light step and the maidenly touch of her small hand on the panel.

What a sight! 'there were Sossy and Minthy intrenched in a Sebastopol which must have cost a good half-hour's engineering, and the terrible Bytes Gridley besieging the fortress with hostile manifestations of the most singular character. He was actually discharging a large sugar-plum at the postern gate, which having been left unclosed, the missile would certainly have reached one of the garrison, when he paused as the door opened, and the great round spectacles and four wide, staring infants'

eyes were levelled at Miss Susan Posey.

She almost forgot her errand, grave as it was, in astonishment at this manifestation. The old man had emptied his shelves of half their folios to build up the fort, in the midst of which he had seated the two delighted and uproarious babes. There was his Cave's "Historia Literaria," and Sir Walter Raleigh's "History of the World," and a whole array of Christian Fathers, and Plato, and Aristotle, and Stanley's book of Philosophers, with Effigies, and the Junta Galen, and the Hippocrates of Foesius, and Walton's Polyglot, supported by Father Sanchez on one side and Fox's "Acts and Monuments" on the other,--an odd collection, as folios from lower shelves are apt to be.

The besieger discharged his sugar-plum, which was so well aimed that it fell directly into the lap of Minthy, who acted with it as if the garrison had been on short rations for some time.

He saw at once, on looking up, that there was trouble. "What now, Susan Posey, my dear?"

"O Mr. Gridley, I am in such trouble! What shall I do? What shall I do?"

She turned back the name and the bottom of the letter in such a way that Mr. Gridley could read nothing but the few lines relating their adventure.

"So Mr. Clement Lindsay has been saving a life, has he, and got some hard knocks doing it, hey, Susan Posey? Well, well, Clement Lindsay is a brave fellow, and there is no need of hiding his name, my child. Let me take the letter again a moment, Susan Posey. What is the date of it?

June 16th. Yes,--yes,--yes!"

He read the paragraph over again, and the signature too, if he wanted to; for poor Susan had found that her secret was hardly opaque to those round spectacles and the eyes behind them, and, with a not unbecoming blush, opened the fold of the letter before she handed it back.

"No, no, Susan Posey. He will come all right. His writing is steady, and if he had broken any bones he would have mentioned it. It's a thing his wife will be proud of, if he is ever married, Susan Posey," (blushes,) "and his children too," (more blushes running up to her back hair,) "and there 's nothing to be worried about. But I'll tell you what, my dear, I've got a little business that calls me down the river tomorrow, and I shouldn't mind stopping an hour at Alderbank and seeing how our young friend Clement Lindsay is; and then, if he was going to have a long time of it, why we could manage it somehow that any friend who had any special interest in him could visit him, just to while away the tiresomeness of being sick. That's it, exactly. I'll stop at Alderbank, Susan Posey. Just clear up these two children for me, will you, my dear?

Isosceles, come now,--that 's a good child. Helminthia, carry these sugar-plums down--stairs for me, and take good care of them, mind!"

It was a case of gross bribery and corruption, for the fortress was immediately, evacuated on the receipt of a large paper of red and white comfits, and the garrison marched down--stairs much like conquerors, under the lead of the young lady, who was greatly eased in mind by the kind words and the promise of Mr. Byles Gridley.

But he, in the mean time, was busy with thoughts she did not suspect. "A young person," he said to himself,--"why a young person? Why not say a boy, if it was a boy? What if this should be our handsome truant?--'June 16th, Thursday morning!'--About time to get to Alderbank by the river, I should think. None of the boats missing? What then? She may have made a raft, or picked up some stray skiff. Who knows? And then got s.h.i.+pwrecked, very likely. There are rapids and falls farther along the river. It will do no harm to go down there and look about, at any rate."

On Sat.u.r.day morning, therefore, Mr. Byles Gridley set forth to procure a conveyance to make a visit, as he said, dawn the river, and perhaps be gone a day or two. He went to a stable in the village, and asked if they could let him have a horse.

The man looked at him with that air of native superiority which the companions.h.i.+p of the generous steed confers on all his a.s.sociates, down to the lightest weight among the jockeys.

"Wal, I hain't got nothin' in the shape of a h'oss, Mr. Gridley. I've got a mare I s'pose I could let y' have."

"Oh, very well," said the old master, with a twinkle in his eye as sly as the other's wink,--he had parried a few jokes in his time,--"they charge half-price for mares always, I believe."

That was a new view of the subject. It rather took the wind out of the stable-keeper, and set a most ammoniacal fellow, who stood playing with a currycomb, grinning at his expense. But he rallied presently.

"Wal, I b'lieve they do for some mares, when they let 'em to some folks; but this here ain't one o' them mares, and you ain't one o' them folks.

All my cattle's out but this critter, 'n' I don't jestly want to have n.o.body drive her that ain't pretty car'ful,--she's faast, I tell ye,--don't want no whip.--How fur d' d y' want t' go?"

Mr. Gridley was quite serious now, and let the man know that he wanted the mare and a light covered wagon, at once, to be gone for one or two days, and would waive the question of s.e.x in the matter of payment.

Alderbank was about twenty miles down the river by the road. On arriving there, he inquired for the house where a Mr. Lindsay lived. There was only one Lindsay family in town,--he must mean Dr. William Lindsay. His house was up there a little way above the village, lying a few rods back from the river.

He found the house without difficulty, and knocked at the door. A motherly-looking woman opened it immediately, and held her hand up as if to ask him to speak and move softly.

"Does Mr. Clement Lindsay live here?"

"He is staying here for the present. He is a nephew of ours. He is in his bed from an injury."

"Nothing very serious, I hope?"