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

by me! None—none ever would believe that he had done this except by my order, if he should claim that; and he made plain that he was going to claim that. He called me a fool and defied me. Luke—even my own man, the only one left on the tug with us—believed it! And there was murder in it now, with Stafford dying there upon the deck and with the certainty that all those on the Miwaka could not be saved. I felt the noose as if it had been already tied about my neck! And I had done no wrong, Father! I had only thought wrong!

"'So long as one lived among those on the Miwaka who had seen what was done, I knew I would be hanged; yet I would have saved them if I could. But, in my comprehension of what this meant, I only stared at Stafford where he lay and then at Spearman, and I let him get control of the tug. The tug, whose wheel I had lashed, heading her into the waves, had been moving slowly. Spearman pushed me aside and went to the wheelhouse; he sent Luke to the engines, and from that moment Luke was his. He turned the tug about to where we still saw the lights of the Miwaka. The steamer had struck upon the reef; she hung there for a time; and Spearman—he had the wheel and Luke, at his orders, was at the engine—held the tug off and we beat slowly to and fro until the Miwaka slipped off and sank. Some had gone down with her, no doubt; but two boats had got off, carrying lights. They saw the tug approaching and cried out and stretched their hands to us; but Spearman stopped the tug. They rowed towards us then, but when they got near, Spearman moved the tug away from them, and then again stopped. They cried out again and rowed toward us; again he moved the tug away, and then they understood and stopped rowing and cried curses at us. One boat soon drifted far away; we knew of its capsizing by the extinguishing of its light. The other capsized near to where we were. Those in it who had no lifebelts and could not swim, sank first. Some could swim and, for a while they fought the waves.'"

Alan, as he listened, ceased consciously to separate the priest's voice from the sensations running through him. His father was Stafford, dying at Corvet's feet while Corvet watched the death of the crew of the Miwaka; Alan himself, a child, was floating with a lifebelt among those struggling in the water whom Spearman and Corvet were watching die. Memory; was it that which now had come to him? No; rather it was a realization of all the truths which the priest's words were bringing together and arranging rightly for him.

He, a child, saved by Corvet from the water because he could not bear witness, seemed to be on that tug, sea-swept and clad in ice, crouching beside the form of his father while Corvet stood aghast—Corvet, still hearing the long blasts of distress from the steamer which was gone, still hearing the screams of the men who were drowned. Then, when all were gone who could tell, Spearman turned the tug to Manitowoc.... Now again the priest's voice became audible to Alan.

Alan's father died in the morning. All day they stayed out in the storm, avoiding vessels. They dared not throw Stafford's body overboard or that of the engineer, because, if found, the bullet holes would have aroused inquiry. When night came again, they had taken the two ashore at some wild spot and buried them; to make identification harder, they had taken the things that they had with them and buried them somewhere else. The child—Alan—Corvet had smuggled ashore and sent away; he had told Spearman later that the child had died.

"Peace—rest!" Father Perron said in a deep voice. "Peace to the dead!"

But for the living there had been no peace. Spearman had forced Corvet to make him his partner; Corvet had tried to take up his life again, but had not been able. His wife, aware that something was wrong with him, had learned enough so that she had left him. Luke had come and come and come again for blackmail, and Corvet had paid him. Corvet grew rich; those connected with him prospered; but with Corvet lived always the ghosts of those he had watched die with the Miwaka—of those who would have prospered with Stafford except for what had been done. Corvet had secretly sought and followed the fate of the kin of those people who had been murdered to benefit him; he found some of their families destroyed; he found almost all poor and struggling. And though Corvet paid Luke to keep the crime from disclosure, yet Corvet swore to himself to confess it all and make such restitution as he could. But each time that the day he had appointed with himself arrived, he put it off and off and paid Luke again and again. Spearman knew of his intention and sometimes kept him from it. But Corvet had made one close friend; and when that friend's daughter, for whom Corvet cared now most of all in the world, had been about to marry Spearman, Corvet defied the cost to himself, and he gained strength to oppose Spearman. So he had written to Stafford's son to come; he had prepared for confession and restitution; but, after he had done this and while he waited, something had seemed to break in his brain; too long preyed upon by terrible memories, and the ghosts of those who had gone, and by the echo of their voices crying to him from the water, Corvet had wandered away; he had come back, under the name of one of those whom he had wronged, to the lake life from which he had sprung. Only now and then, for a few hours, he had intervals when he remembered all; in one of these he had dug up the watch and the ring and other things which he had taken from Captain Stafford's pockets and written to himself directions of what to do with them, when his mind again failed.

And for Spearman, strong against all that assailed Corvet, there had been always the terror of the Indian Drum—the Drum which had beat short for the Miwaka, the Drum which had known that one was saved! That story came from some hint which Luke had spread, Corvet thought; but Spearman, born near by the Drum, believed that the Drum had known and that the Drum had tried to tell; all through the years Spearman had dreaded the Drum which had tried to betray him.

So it was by the Drum that, in the end, Spearman was broken.

The priest's voice had stopped, as Alan slowly realized; he heard Sherrill's voice speaking to him.

"It was a trust that he left you, Alan; I thought it must be that—a trust for those who suffered by the loss of your father's ship. I don't know yet how it can be fulfilled; and we must think of that."

"That's how I understand it," Alan said.

Fuller consciousness of what Father Perron's story meant to him was flowing through him now. Wrong, great wrong there had been, as he had known there must be; but it had not been as he had feared, for he and his had been among the wronged ones. The name—the new name that had come to him—he knew what that must be: Robert Alan Stafford; and there was no shadow on it. He was the son of an honest man and a good woman; he was clean and free; free to think as he was thinking now of the girl beside him; and to hope that she was thinking so of him.

Through the tumult in his soul he became aware of physical feelings again, and of Sherrill's hand put upon his shoulder in a cordial, friendly grasp. Then another hand, small and firm, touched his, and he felt its warm, tightening grasp upon his fingers; he looked up, and his eyes filled and hers, he saw, were brimming too.

They walked together, later in the day, up the hill to the small, white house which had been Caleb Stafford's. Alan had seen the house before but, not knowing then whether the man who had owned it had or had not been his father, he had merely looked at it from the outside. There had been a small garden filled with flowers before it then; now yard and roofs were buried deep in snow. The woman who came to the door was willing to show them through the house; it had only five rooms. One of those upon the second floor was so much larger and pleasanter than the rest that they became quite sure that it was the one in which Alan had been born, and where his young mother soon afterward had died.

They were very quiet as they stood looking about.

"I wish we could have known her," Constance said.

The woman, who had showed them about, had gone to another room and left them alone.

"There seems to have been no picture of her and nothing of hers left here that any one can tell me about; but," Alan choked, "it's good to be able to think of her as I can now."

"I know," Constance said. "When you were away, I used to think of you as finding out about her and—and I wanted to be with you. I'm glad I'm with you now, though you don't need me any more!"

"Not need you!"

"I mean—no one can say anything against her now!"

Alan drew nearer her, trembling.

"I can never thank you—I can never tell you what you did for me, believing in—her and in me, no matter how things looked. And then, coming up here as you did—for me!"

"Yes, it was for you, Alan!"

"Constance!" He caught her. She let him hold her; then, still clinging to him, she put him a little away.

"The night before you came to the Point last summer, Alan, he—he had just come and asked me again. I'd promised; but we motored that evening to his place and—there were sunflowers there, and I knew that night I couldn't love him."

"Because of the sunflowers?"

"Sunflower houses, Alan, they made me think of; do you remember?"

"Remember!"

The woman was returning to them now and, perhaps, it was as well; for not yet, he knew, could he ask her all that he wished; what had happened was too recent yet for that. But to him, Spearman—half mad and fleeing from the haunts of men—was beginning to be like one who had never been; and he knew she shared this feeling. The light in her deep eyes was telling him already what her answer to him would be; and life stretched forth before him full of love and happiness and hope.

THE END

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