The Indian Drum by William MacHarg (classic english novels txt) 📕

"Then you'll stay here with us until an answer comes."

"If we get a reply by to-morrow morning; I'll wait till then. If not, I'll ask you to forward it to me. I must see about the trains and get back to Frankfort. I can cross by boat from there to Manitowoc—that will be quickest. We must begin there, by trying to find out who sent the package."

"Henry Spearman's already sent to have that investigated."

Alan made no reply; but she saw his lips draw tighter quickly. "I must go myself as soon as I can," he said, after a moment.

She helped him put the muffler and the other articles back into the box; she noticed that the wedding ring was no longer with them. He had taken that, then; it had meant to him all that she had known it must mean....

In the morning she was up very early; but Alan, the servants told her, had risen before she had and had gone out. The morning, after the cool northern night, was chill. She slipped a sweater on and went out on the veranda, looking about for him. An iridescent haze shrouded the hills and the bay; in it she heard a ship's bell strike twice; then another struck twice—then another—and another—and another. The haze thinned as the sun grew warmer, showing the placid water of the bay on which the ships stood double—a real ship and a mirrored one. She saw Alan returning, and knowing from the direction from which he came that he must have been to the telegraph office, she ran to meet him.

"Was there an answer?" she inquired eagerly.

He took a yellow telegraph sheet from his pocket and held it for her to read.

"Watch presented Captain Caleb Stafford, master of propeller freighter Marvin Halch for rescue of crew and passengers of sinking steamer Winnebago off Long Point, Lake Erie."

She was breathing quickly in her excitement. "Caleb Stafford!" she exclaimed. "Why, that was Captain Stafford of Stafford and Ramsdell! They owned the Miwaka!"

"Yes," Alan said.

"You asked me about that ship—the Miwaka—that first morning at breakfast!"

"Yes."

A great change had come over him since last night; he was under emotion so strong that he seemed scarcely to dare to speak lest it master him—a leaping, exultant impulse it was, which he fought to keep down.

"What is it, Alan?" she asked. "What is it about the Miwaka? You said you'd found some reference to it in Uncle Benny's house. What was it? What did you find there?"

"The man—" Alan swallowed and steadied himself and repeated—"the man I met in the house that night mentioned it."

"The man who thought you were a ghost?"

"Yes."

"How—how did he mention it?"

"He seemed to think I was a ghost that had haunted Mr. Corvet—the ghost from the Miwaka; at least he shouted out to me that I couldn't save the Miwaka!"

"Save the Miwaka! What do you mean, Alan? The Miwaka was lost with all her people—officers and crew—no one knows how or where!"

"All except the one for whom the Drum didn't beat!"

"What's that?" Blood pricked in her cheeks. "What do you mean, Alan?"

"I don't know yet; but I think I'll soon find out!"

"No; you can tell me more now, Alan. Surely you can. I must know. I have the right to know. Yesterday, even before you found out about this, you knew things you weren't telling me—things about the people you'd been seeing. They'd all lost people on the lakes, you said; but you found out more than that."

"They'd all lost people on the Miwaka!" he said. "All who could tell me where their people were lost; a few were like Jo Papo we saw yesterday, who knew only the year his father was lost; but the time always was the time that the Miwaka disappeared!"

"Disappeared!" she repeated. Her veins were pricking cold. What did he know, what could any one know of the Miwaka, the ship of which nothing ever was heard except the beating of the Indian Drum? She tried to make him say more; but he looked away now down to the lake.

"The Chippewa must have come in early this morning," he said. "She's lying in the harbor; I saw her on my way to the telegraph office. If Mr. Spearman has come back with her, tell him I'm sorry I can't wait to see him."

"When are you going?"

"Now."

She offered to drive him to Petoskey, but he already had arranged for a man to take him to the train.

She went to her room after he was gone and spread out again on her bed the watch—now the watch of Captain Stafford of the Miwaka—with the knife and coins of more than twenty years ago which came with it. The meaning of them now was all changed; she felt that; but what the new meaning might be could not yet come to her. Something of it had come to Alan; that, undoubtedly, was what had so greatly stirred him; but she could not yet reassemble her ideas. Yet a few facts had become plain.

A maid came to say that Mr. Spearman had come up from his boat for breakfast with her and was downstairs. She went down to find Henry lounging in one of the great wicker chairs in the living room. He arose and came toward her quickly; but she halted before he could seize her.

"I got back, Connie—"

"Yes; I heard you did."

"What's wrong, dear?"

"Alan Conrad has been here, Henry."

"He has? How was that?"

She told him while he watched her intently. "He wired to Buffalo about the watch. He got a reply which he brought to me half an hour ago."

"Yes?"

"The watch belonged to Captain Stafford who was lost with the Miwaka, Henry."

He made no reply; but waited.

"You may not have known that it was his; I mean, you may not have known that it was he who rescued the people of the Winnebago, but you must have known that Uncle Benny didn't."

"Yes; I knew that, Connie," he answered evenly.

"Then why did you let me think the watch was his and that he must be—dead?"

"That's all's the matter? You had thought he was dead. I believed it was better for you—for every one—to believe that."

She drew a little away from him, with hands clasped behind her back, gazing intently at him. "There was some writing found in Uncle Benny's house in Astor Street—a list of names of relatives of people who had lost their lives upon the lake. Wassaquam knew where those things were. Alan says they were given to him in your presence."

She saw the blood rise darkly under his skin. "That is true, Connie."

"Why didn't you tell me about that?"

He straightened as if with anger. "Why should I? Because he thought that I should? What did he tell you about those lists?"

"I asked you, after you went back, if anything else had happened, Henry, and you said, 'nothing.' I should not have considered the finding of those lists 'nothing.'"

"Why not? What were they but names? What has he told you they were, Connie? What has he said to you?"

"Nothing—except that his father had kept them very secretly; but he's found out they were names of people who had relatives on the Miwaka!"

"What?"

Recalling how her blood had run when Alan had told her that, Henry's whiteness and the following suffusion of his face did not surprise her.

He turned away a moment and considered. "Where's Conrad now, Connie?"

"He's gone to Frankfort to cross to Manitowoc."

"To get deeper into that mess, I suppose. He'll only be sorry."

"Sorry?"

"I told that fellow long ago not to start stirring these matters up about Ben Corvet, and particularly I told him that he was not to bring any of it to you. It's not—a thing that a man like Ben covered up for twenty years till it drove him crazy is sure not to be a thing for a girl to know. Conrad seems to have paid no attention to me. But I should think by this time he ought to begin to suspect what sort of thing he's going to turn up. I don't know; but I certainly suspect—Ben leaving everything to that boy, whom no one had heard of, and the sort of thing which has come up since. It's certainly not going to be anything pleasant for any of us, Connie—for you, or your father, or for me, or for anybody who'd cared for Ben, or had been associated with him. Least of all, I should say, would it prove anything pleasant for Conrad. Ben ran away from it, because he knew what it was; why doesn't this fellow let him stay away from it?"

"He—I mean Alan, Henry," she said, "isn't thinking about himself in this; he isn't thinking about his father. He believes—he is certain now—that, whatever his father did, he injured some one; and his idea in going ahead—he hasn't told it to me that way, but I know—is to find out the whole matter in order that he may make recompense. It's a terrible thing, whatever happened. He knows that, and I know; but he wants—and I want him for his sake, even for Uncle Benny's sake—to see it through."

"Then it's a queer concern you've got for Ben! Let it alone, I tell you."

She stood flushed and perplexed, gazing at him. She never had seen him under stronger emotion.

"You misunderstood me once, Connie!" he appealed. "You'll understand me now!"

She had been thinking about that injustice she had done him in her thought—about his chivalry to his partner and former benefactor, when Uncle Benny was still keeping his place among men. Was Henry now moved, in a way which she could not understand, by some other obligation to the man who long ago had aided him? Had Henry hazarded more than he had told her of the nature of the thing hidden which, if she could guess it, would justify what he said?

In the confusion of her thought, one thing came clearly which troubled her and of which she could not speak. The watch of Captain Stafford's and the ring and the coins, which had made her believe that Uncle Benny was dead, had not been proof of that to Henry. Yet he had taken advantage of her belief, without undeceiving her, to urge her to marry him at once.

She knew of the ruthlessness of Henry's business life; he had forced down, overcome all who opposed him, and he had made full use for his own advantage of other men's mistakes and erroneous beliefs and opinions. If he had used her belief in Uncle Benny's death to hasten their marriage, it was something which others—particularly she—could pardon and accept.

If she was drawn to him for his strength and dominance, which sometimes ran into ruthlessness, she had no right to complain if he turned it thus upon her.

She had made Alan promise to write her, if he was not to return, regarding what he learned; and a letter came to her on the fourth day from him in Manitowoc. The postoffice employees had no recollection, he said, of the person who had mailed the package; it simply had been dropped by some one into the receptacle for mailing packages of that sort. They did not know the handwriting upon the wrapper, which he had taken with him; nor was it known at the bank or in any of the stores where he had shown it. The shoe dealer had no recollection of that particular box. Alan, however, was continuing his inquiries.

In September he reported in a brief, totally impersonal note, that he was continuing with the investigations he had been making previous to his visit to Harbor Point; this came from Sarnia, Ontario. In October he sent a different address where he could be found in case anything more came, such as the