The Re-Creation of Brian Kent Part 24

Judy spoke first, and her shrill monotone emphasized her excited state of mind: "That there n.i.g.g.e.r said as how Missus Kent was a-wantin' ter see me. Be ary one of youuns sure 'nough Missus Kent?"

The group drew apart a little, and every face was turned from Judy to the woman sitting on the top step of the veranda with her back against the post.

Judy went slowly toward the woman, her beady eyes fixed and staring as though at some ghostly vision. The woman rose to her feet as Judy paused before her.

"Be you-all Brian Kent's woman?" demanded Judy.

The excited exclamation from the company and the manner of the woman suddenly aroused the mountain girl to a realization of what she had done in speaking Brian Kent's name. With an expression of frightened dismay, she turned to escape; but the group of intensely interested spectators drew closer. Every one waited for Martha to speak.

"Yes," she said, slowly, watching the mountain girl; "I am Mrs. Brian Kent. Do you know my husband?"

Judy's black beady eyes s.h.i.+fted slyly from one face to another, and her twisted body moved uneasily.

"No, ma'm; I ain't a-sayin' I knows him exactly. I done heard tell 'bout him nigh 'bout a year ago, when there was some men from the city come through here a-huntin' him. Everybody 'lows as how he was drowned at Elbow Rock."

"The body was never found, though," murmured one of the men in the group.

"Who lives in that little log house over there, Judy?" Harry Green asked suddenly, pointing.

"There? Oh, that there's Auntie Sue's place. I 'lowed everybody knowed that," returned the girl.

"Who is Auntie Sue?" came the next question.

One of the women answered, before Judy could speak: "Auntie Sue is that old-maid school-teacher they told us about. Don't you remember, Harry?"

"Is Auntie Sue at home now, girl?" asked Mrs. Kent.

Judy's gaze was fixed on the ground as she replied: "I don't know, ma'm.

I ain't got no truck with anybody on yon side the river."

"Is there any one living with Auntie Sue?" asked some one; and in the same breath from another came the question, "Who is Mr. Burns?"

Judy jerked her twisted shoulders and threw up her head with an impatient defiance, as she returned shrilly: "I'm a-tellin' youuns I don't know nothin' 'bout n.o.body. Hit ain't no sort er use for youuns ter pester me. I don't know nothin' 'bout hit, an' I wouldn't tell youuns nothin' if I did."

And with this, the mountain girl escaped into the house.

While her friends on the veranda were looking at each other in questioning silence, Mrs. Kent, without a word, turned and walked away into the woods.

As she disappeared among the trees, one of the men said, in a low tone: "You better go after her, Harry. She is on, all right, that it's Brian Kent. She never did believe that story about his death, you know. There is no knowing what she'll do when she gets to thinking it all over."

"It is a darned shame," exclaimed one of the women, "to have our party spoiled like this!"

"Spoiled nothing," answered another. "Martha is too good a sport to spoil anything. Go on, Harry. Cheer her up. Bring her back here. We'll all help get her good and drunk to-night, and she'll be all right."

There was a laugh at this, and some one said: "A little something wouldn't hurt any of us just now, I'm thinking. Here, Jim!"

Harry Green found Mrs. Kent sitting on the riverbank some distance above the boat landing.

She looked up at the sound of his approach, but did not speak. Dropping down beside her, the man said: "I'm d.a.m.ned sorry about this, Martha.

I never dreamed I was starting anything, or I would have kept my mouth shut."

"It is Brian, all right, Harry," she answered, slowly. "It is funny, but he has been on my mind all day. I never dreamed that it was this part of the country where he was supposed to have been drowned, or I wouldn't have come here."

"Well, what does it matter, anyway?" returned the man. "I don't see that it can make any difference. We don't need to go down there where he is, and it is d.a.m.ned certain that they won't call on us."

Looking out over the river, the woman spoke as if thinking aloud: "This is just the sort of place he would love, Harry--the river and hills and woods. He never cared for the city--always wanted to get away into the country somewhere. Tell me, what is she really like? Does she look like--like--well,--like any of our crowd?"

One by one, the man picked a number of pebbles from among the dead leaves and the short gra.s.s within reach of his hand, as he answered: "Oh, I was just kidding when I raved about her to the bunch." One by one, he flipped the bits of stone into the water. "She really doesn't amount to much. Honestly, I hardly noticed her."

The woman continued speaking as though thinking her thoughts aloud: "Brian was a good man, Harry. That bank affair was really my fault. He never would have done such a thing if I hadn't devilled him all the time for more money, and made such a fuss about his wasting so much time in his everlasting writing. I'd hate to have him caught and sent to the 'pen' now."

"You're a good sport, Martha," he returned heartily. "I know just how you feel about it. And I can promise you that there is not one of our crowd that will ever whisper a thing. They are not that kind, and you know how they all like you. Come, dear. Don't bother your head about it any more. I don't like to see you like this. Let us go up to the house, and show them how game you are,--shall we?"

He put his arm about her, but the woman gently pushed him away. "Don't do that, now, Harry. Let me think."

"That is just what you must not do," he retorted, with a laugh.

"Thinking can't help matters. Come, let us go get a drink. That is what you need."

She looked at him some time before she answered; then, with a quick movement, she sprang to her feet:

"All right! You're on!" she cried, with a reckless laugh. "But you'll go some if you keep up with me to-night."

And so, that evening, while Brian Kent and Betty Jo from the porch of the little log house by the river watched the twinkling lights of the clubhouse windows, the party with mad merriment tried to help a woman to forget.

But save for the unnatural brightness of her eyes and the heightened color in her face, drink seemed to have little effect on Martha Kent that night. When at a late hour the other members of the wild company, in various flushed and dishevelled stages of intoxication, finally retired to their rooms, Martha, in her apartment, seated herself at the window to look away over the calm waters of The Bend to a single light that showed against the dark mountainside. The woman did not know that the light she saw was in Brian Kent's room.

Long after Betty Jo had said good-night, Brian walked the floor in uneasy wakefulness. The meeting with the man Green and his too-evident thoughts as to the relations of the man and woman who were living together in the log house by the river filled Brian with alarm; while the very presence of the man from the city awoke old apprehensions that in his months of undisturbed quiet in Auntie Sue's backwoods home had almost ceased to be. Through Auntie Sue's teaching and influence; his work on his book; the growing companions.h.i.+p of Betty Jo and their love, Brian had almost ceased to think of that absconding bank clerk who had so recklessly launched himself on a voyage to the unknown in the darkness of that dreadful night. But, now, it all came back to him with menacing strength.

The man, Green, would talk to his companions of his visit to the log house that afternoon. He would tell what he had discovered. Curiosity would lead others of the clubhouse party to call. Some one might remember the story of the bank clerk, who was supposed to have lost his life in that neighborhood, but whose body was never found. There might even be one in the party who knew the former clerk. Through them the story would go back to the outside world. There would be investigations by those whose business it was never to forget a criminal who had escaped the law.

Brian felt his Re-Creation to be fully established; but what if his ident.i.ty should be discovered before the rest.i.tution he would make should be also accomplished? And always, as he paced to and fro in his little room in the log house, there was, like a deep undercurrent in the flow of his troubled thought, his love for Betty Jo.

It is little wonder that, to Brian Kent, that night, the voices of the river were filled with fearful doubt and sullen, dreadful threatenings.

And what of the woman who watched the tiny spot of light that marked the window of the room where the re-created Brian Kent kept his lonely vigil? Did she, too, hear the voices of the river? Did she feel the presence of that stream which poured its dark flood so mysteriously through the night between herself and the man yonder?

Away back, somewhere in the past, the currents of their lives in the onward flow of the river had drawn together. For a period of time, their life-currents had mingled, and, with the stream, had swept onward as one. Other influences--swirls and eddies and counter-currents of other lives--had touched and intermingled until the current that was the man and the current that was the woman had drawn apart. For months, they had not touched; and, now, they were drawing nearer to each other again.

Would they touch? Would they again mingle and become one? What was this mysterious, unseen, unknown, but always-felt, power of the river that sets the ways of its countless currents as it sweeps ever onward in its unceasing flow?

The door of her room opened. Harry Green entered as one a.s.sured of a welcome. The woman at the window turned her head, but did not move.

Going to her, the man, with an endearing word, offered a caress; but she put him aside. "Please, Harry,--please let me be alone to-night?"

"Why, Martha, dear! What is wrong?" he protested, again attempting to draw her to him.

Resisting more vigorously, she answered: "Everything is wrong! You are wrong! I am wrong! All life is wrong! Can't you understand? Please leave me."

The man drew back, and spoke roughly in a tone of disgust: "h.e.l.l! I believe you love that bank clerk as much as you ever did!"

"Well, and suppose that were true, Harry?" she answered, wearily.