The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 26

Upon those who remained Brother Hawkins wheeled and swept out his hands in a gesture of imperative dismissal.

"Leave us alone, men," he commanded. "I needs ter work alone hyar--with ther holp of Almighty G.o.d."

But he worked kneeling, tearing away the clothing over the wounded breast, and while he did so he prayed with a fervor that was fiercely elemental, yet abating no whit of his doctor's efficiency with his surprisingly deft hands, while his lips and heart were those of the religionist.

"Almighty Father in Heaven," he pleaded, "spare this hyar child of Thine ef so be Thy wisdom suffers. .h.i.t."

There he broke off and as though a different man were speaking, shot over his shoulder the curt command: "Fotch me water speedily--Because Almighty Father, she's done fell a victim of evil men thet fears Thee not in th'ar hearts!"

After a little Brother Hawkins dismissed even the father and Spurrier from the room and worked on alone, the voice of his praying sounding over his activity.

Ten minutes later, in a crowded room, Bud Hawkins, preacher and physician, laid one hand on Spurrier's shoulder and the other on Cappeze's.

"Men," he said in a hushed voice, "I fears me ther shot thet hit her was a deadener. Yit I kain't quite fathom hit nuther. She's back in her rightful senses ergin--but she don't seem ter _want_ to live, somehow. She won't put for'ard no effort."

Spurrier wheeled to face them both and his voice came with tense, gasping earnestness.

"Before she dies, Brother Hawkins," he pleaded, "you're a minister of the gospel--I want you to marry us." He wheeled then on the rescuers, who stood breathing heavily from exertion and fight.

"Two of you men stay here as wedding witnesses," he commanded. "One of you ride h.e.l.l-for-leather to the nearest telephone and call up Lexington. Have a man start with bloodhounds on a special train. The rest of you get into the timber and finecomb it for some sc.r.a.p of cloth--or anything that will give the dogs a chance when they get here."

Once more Spurrier was the officer in command, and snappily his hearers sprang to obedience, but when the place had almost emptied, the three turned and went into the back room, and, kneeling there beside the wounded girl, Spurrier whispered:

"Dearest, the preacher has come--to wed us."

Glory's eyes with their deeps of color were startlingly vivid as they looked out of the pallid face upon which a little while ago John Spurrier had believed the white stamp of death to be fixed.

The features themselves, except the eyes, seemed to have shrunken from weakness into wistful smallness, and if the girl had returned, in the phrases of the preacher, "to her rightful senses" it had been as one coming out of a dream who realizes that she wakes to heartburnings which death had promised to smooth away.

Now, as the man stretched out his hand to take hers and drew a ring from his own little finger, the violet eyes on the rough pillow became transfigured with a luminous and incredulous happiness. But at once they clouded again with gravity and pain.

Spurrier was offering to marry her out of pity and grat.i.tude. He was seeking to pay a debt, and his authoritative words were spoken from his conscience and not from his heart.

So the lips stirred in an effort to speak, failed in that and drooped, and weakly but with determination Glory shook her head. She had been willing to die for him. She could not argue with him, but neither would she accept the perfunctory amends that he now came proffering.

Spurrier rose, pale, and with a tremor of voice as he said to the others: "Please leave us alone--for a few moments." Then when no one was left in the room but the girl on the bed and the man on his knees beside it, he bent forward until his eyes were close to hers and his words came with a still intensity.

"Glory, dearest, though I don't deserve it, you've confessed that you love me. Now I claim the life you were willing to lay down for me--and you can't refuse."

There was wistfulness in her smile, but through her feebleness her resolution stood fast and the movement of her head was meant for a shake of refusal.

"But why, dear," he argued desperately, "why do you deny me when we know there's only one wish in both our hearts?"

His hands had stolen over one of hers and her weak fingers stirred caressingly against his own. Her lips stirred too, without sound, then she lay in a deathlike quiet for a moment or two summoning strength for an effort at speech, and he, bending close, caught the ghost of a whisper.

"I don't seek payment ... fer what I done." A gasp caught her breath and silenced her for a little but she overcame it and finished almost inaudibly. "It was ... a free-will gift."

John Spurrier rose and sat on the side of the bed. His voice was electrified by the thrill of his feeling; a feeling purged of all artificiality by the rough shoulder touch of death.

"I'm asking another gift, now, Glory; the greatest gift of all. I'm asking yourself. Don't try to talk--only listen to me because I need you desperately. Except for you they would have killed me to-day--but my life's not worth saving if I lose you after all. I'm two men, dearest, rolled into one--and one of those men perhaps doesn't deserve much consideration, but there's some good in the other and that good can't prevail without you any more than a plant can grow without sun."

With full realization, he was pitching his whole argument to the note of his own selfish needs and wishes, and yet he was guided by a sure insight into her heart. Brother Hawkins had said she had no wish to live and would make no fight, and he knew that he might plead endlessly and in vain unless he overcame her belief that he was actuated merely by pity for her. If she could be convinced that it was genuinely he who needed her more than she needed him, her woman quality of enveloping in supporting love the man who leaned on her, would bring consent.

"I sought to strengthen myself for success in life," he went on, "by strangling out every human emotion that stood in the way of material results. I serve men who sneer at everything on G.o.d's earth except the practical, and I had come to the point where I let those men shape me and govern even my character."

She had been listening with lowered lids and as he paused, she raised them and smiled wanly, yet without any sign of yielding to his supplications.

"The picture that you saw," he swept on torrentially, "was that of a girl whose father employs me. He's a leader in big affairs and to be his son-in-law meant, in a business sense, to be raised to royalty.

Vivien is a splendid woman and yet I doubt if either of us has----" he fumbled a bit for his next words and then floundered on with self-conscious awkwardness, "has thought of the other with real sentiment. Until now, I haven't known what real sentiment meant. Until now I haven't appreciated the true values. I discovered them out there in the road when you came into my arms--and into my heart. From now on my arms will always ache for you--and my heart will be empty without you.'"

"But--," Glory's eyes were deeper than ever as she whispered laboriously, "but if you're plighted to her----"

"I'm not," he protested hotly. "There is no engagement except a sort of understanding with her father: a sort of condescending and tacit willingness on his part to let his successor be his son-in-law as well."

She lay for a s.p.a.ce with the heavy ma.s.ses of her hair on the rough pillow framing the pale and exquisite oval of her face, and her vivid eyes troubled with the longing to be convinced. Then her lips shaped themselves in a rather pitiful smile that lifted them only at one corner.

"Maybe ye don't ... know it Jack," she murmured, "but ye're jest seekin' ... ter let me ... die ... easy in my mind ... and happy."

"Before G.o.d I am _not_," he vehemently contradicted her. "I'm not trying to give but to take. Whether you get well or not, Glory, I want to fight for your life and your love. We've faced death, together.

We've seen things nakedly--together. For neither of us can there ever be any true life--except together."

His breath was coming with the swift intensity that was almost a sob and, in the eyes that bent over her, Glory read the hunger that could not be counterfeited.

"Anyhow," she faltered, "we've had--this minute."

Spurrier rose at last and called the others back. He himself did not know when once more he took her hand and the preacher stood over them, whether her responses to the services would be affirmative or negative.

To Spurrier marriage had always seemed an opportunity. It was a thing in which an ambitious man could no more afford yielding to uncalculating impulses than in the forming of a major business connection. Marriage must carry a man upward toward the peak of his destiny, and his wife must bring as her dowry, social reenforcements and distinction.

Now, in the darkening room of a log house, with figures clad in patches and hodden-gray, he held the hand that was too weak to close responsively upon his own, and listened to the words of a s.h.a.ggy-headed preacher, whose beard was a stubble and whose lips moved over yellow and fanglike teeth.

Confusedly he heard the questions and his own firm responses to the simple service of marriage as rendered by the backwoods preacher, then his heart seemed to stop and stand as the words were uttered to which Glory must make her answer.

"Will you, Glory, have this man, John Spurrier----"

What would her answer be--a.s.sent or negation?

The pause seemed to last interminably as he bent with supplication in his glance over her, and the breath came from his lips with an unconscious sibilance, like escaping steam from a strained boiler, when at last the head on the pillow gave the ghost of a nod.

Even at that moment there lurked in the back of his mind, though not admitted as important, the ghost of realization that he was doing precisely the sort of thing which, in his own world, would not only uncla.s.s him but make him appear ludicrous as well.

As for that world of lifted eye-brows he felt just now only a withering contempt and a scalding hatred.

Almost as soon as the simple ceremony ended, Glory sank again into unconsciousness, and the father and preacher, sitting silent in the next room, were unable to forget that though there had been a wedding, they were also awaiting the coming of death.

The night fell with the soft brightness of moon and stars, and through the tangled woods the searchers were following hard on the flight of the a.s.sailants--doggedly and grimly, with the burning indignation of men bent on vindicating the good name of their people and community.

Yet, so far, the fugitive squad had succeeded not only in eluding capture or recognition, but also in carrying with them their wounded.