"Short!"

She saw Henry stiffen. "Yes," she said swiftly. "They say the Drum began sounding last night, and that at first it sounded for only two lives; it's kept on beating, but still is beating only for four. There were thirty-nine on the ferry--seven pa.s.sengers and thirty-two crew.

Twelve have been saved now; so until the Drum raises the beats to twenty-seven there is still a chance that some one will be saved."

Henry made no answer; his hands fumbled purposelessly with the lapels of his coat, and his bloodshot eyes wandered uncertainly. Constance watched him with wonder at the effect of what she had told. When she had asked him once about the Drum, he had professed the same scepticism which she had; but he had not held it; at least he was not holding it now. The news of the Drum had shaken him from his triumph over Alan and Uncle Benny and over her. It had shaken him so that, though he remained with her some minutes more, he seemed to have forgotten the purpose of reconciliation with her which had brought him to the house.

When a telephone call took her out of the room, she returned to find him gone to the dining-room; she heard a decanter clink there against a gla.s.s. He did not return to her again, but she heard him go. The entrance door closed after him, and the sound of his starting motor came. Then alarm, stronger even than that she had felt during the morning, rushed upon her.

She dined, or made a pretence of dining, with her mother at seven. Her mother's voice went on and on about trifles, and Constance did not try to pay attention. Her thought was following Henry with ever sharpening apprehension. She called the office in mid-evening; it would be open, she knew, for messages regarding Uncle Benny and Alan would be expected there. A clerk answered; no other news had been received; she then asked Henry's whereabouts.

"Mr. Spearman went north late this afternoon, Miss Sherrill," the clerk informed her.

"North? Where?"

"We are to communicate with him this evening to Grand Rapids; after that, to Petoskey."

Constance could hear her own heart beat. Why had Henry gone, she wondered; not, certainly, to aid the search. Had he gone to--hinder it?

CHAPTER XIX

THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH

Constance went up to her own rooms; she could hear her mother speaking, in a room on the same floor, to one of the maids; but for her present anxiety, her mother offered no help and could not even be consulted.

Nor could any message she might send to her father explain the situation to him. She was throbbing with determination and action, as she found her purse and counted the money in it. She never in her life had gone alone upon an extended journey, much less been alone upon a train over night. If she spoke of such a thing now, she would be prevented; no occasion for it would be recognized; she would not be allowed to go, even if "properly accompanied." She could not, therefore, risk taking a handbag from the house; so she thrust nightdress and toilet articles into her m.u.f.f and the roomy pocket of her fur coat. She descended to the side door of the house and, un.o.bserved, let herself out noiselessly on to the carriage drive. She gained the street and turned westward at the first corner to a street car which would take her to the railway station.

There was a train to the north every evening; it was not, she knew, such a train as ran in the resort season, and she was not certain of the exact time of its departure; but she would be in time for it. The manner of buying a railway ticket and of engaging a berth were unknown to her--there had been servants always to do these things--but she watched others and did as they did. On the train, the berths had been made up; people were going to bed behind some of the curtains. She procured a telegraph blank and wrote a message to her mother, telling her that she had gone north to join her father. When the train had started, she gave the message to the porter, directing him to send it from the first large town at which they stopped.

She left the light burning in its little niche at the head of the berth; she had no expectation that she could sleep; shut in by the green curtains, she drew the covers up about her and stared upward at the paneled face of the berth overhead. Then new frightened distrust of the man she had been about to marry flowed in upon her and became all her thought.

She had not promised Uncle Benny that she would not marry Henry; her promise had been that she would not engage herself to that marriage until she had seen Uncle Benny again. Uncle Benny's own act--his disappearance---had prevented her from seeing him; for that reason she had broken her promise; and, from its breaking, something terrifying, threatening to herself had come. She had been amazed at what she had seen in Henry; but she was appreciating now that, strangely, in her thought of him there was no sense of loss to herself. Her feeling of loss, of something gone from her which could not be replaced, was for Alan. She had had admiration for Henry, pride in him; had she mistaken what was merely admiration for love? She had been about to marry him; had it been only his difference from the other men she knew that had made her do that? Unconsciously to herself, had she been growing to love Alan?

Constance could not, as yet, place Henry's part in the strange circ.u.mstances which had begun to reveal themselves with Alan's coming to Chicago; but Henry's hope that Uncle Benny and Alan were dead was beginning to make that clearer. She lay without voluntary movement in her berth, but her bosom was shaking with the thoughts which came to her.

Twenty years before, some dreadful event had altered Uncle Benny's life; his wife had known--or had learned--enough of that event so that she had left him. It had seemed to Constance and her father, therefore, that it must have been some intimate and private event.

They had been confirmed in believing this, when Uncle Benny, in madness or in fear, had gone away, leaving everything he possessed to Alan Conrad. But Alan's probable relationship to Uncle Benny had not been explanation; she saw now that it had even been misleading. For a purely private event in Uncle Benny's life--even terrible scandal--could not make Henry fear, could not bring terror of consequences to himself. That could be only if Henry was involved in some peculiar and intimate way with what had happened to Uncle Benny.

If he feared Uncle Benny's being found alive and feared Alan's being found alive too, now that Alan had discovered Uncle Benny, it was because he dreaded explanation of his own connection with what had taken place.

Constance raised her window shade slightly and looked out. It was still snowing; the train was running swiftly among low sand hills, snow-covered, and only dimly visible through snow and dark. A deep-toned, steady roar came to her above the noises of the train. The lake! Out there, Alan and Uncle Benny were fighting, still struggling perhaps, against bitter cold and ice and rushing water for their lives.

She must not think of that!

Uncle Benny had withdrawn himself from men; he had ceased to be active in his business and delegated it to others. This change had been strangely advantageous to Henry. Henry had been hardly more than a common seaman then. He had been a mate--the mate on one of Uncle Benny's ships. Quite suddenly he had become Uncle Benny's partner.

Henry had explained this to her by saying that Uncle Benny had felt madness coming on him and had selected him as the one to take charge.

But Uncle Benny had not trusted Henry; he had been suspicious of him; he had quarreled with him. How strange, then, that Uncle Benny should have advanced and given way to a man whom he could not trust!

It was strange, too, that if--as Henry had said--their quarrels had been about the business, Uncle Benny had allowed Henry to remain in control.

Their quarrels had culminated on the day that Uncle Benny went away.

Afterward Uncle Benny had come to her and warned her not to marry Henry; then he had sent for Alan. There had been purpose in these acts of Uncle Benny's; had they meant that Uncle Benny had been on the verge of making explanation--that explanation which Henry feared--and that he had been--prevented? Her father had thought this; at least, he had thought that Uncle Benny must have left some explanation in his house.

He had told Alan that, and had given Alan the key to the house so that he could find it. Alan had gone to the house--

In the house Alan had found some one who had mistaken him for a ghost, a man who had cried out at sight of him something about a ship--about the _Miwaka_, the ship of whose loss no one had known anything except by the sounding of the Drum. What had the man been doing in the house?

Had he too been looking for the explanation--the explanation that Henry feared? Alan had described the man to her; that description had not had meaning for her before; but now remembering that description she could think of Henry as the only one who could have been in that house!

Henry had fought with Alan there! Afterwards, when Alan had been attacked upon the street, had Henry anything to do with that?

Henry had lied to her about being in Duluth the night he had fought with Alan; he had not told her the true cause of his quarrels with Uncle Benny; he had wished her to believe that Uncle Benny was dead when the wedding ring and watch came to her--the watch which had been Captain Stafford's of the _Miwaka_! Henry had urged her to marry him at once. Was that because he wished the security that her father--and she--must give her husband when they learned the revelation which Alan or Uncle Benny might bring?

If so, then that revelation had to do with the _Miwaka_. It was of the _Miwaka_ that Henry had cried out to Alan in the house; they were the names of the next of kin of those on the _Miwaka_ that Uncle Benny had kept. That was beginning to explain to her something of the effect on Henry of the report that the Drum was telling that some on Ferry Number 25 were alive, and why he had hurried north because of that. The Drum--so superst.i.tion had said--had beat the roll of those who died with the _Miwaka_; had beaten for all but one! No one of those who accepted the superst.i.tion had ever been able to explain that; but Henry could! He knew something more about the _Miwaka_ than others knew. He had encountered the _Miwaka_ somehow or encountered some one saved from the _Miwaka_; he knew, then, that the Drum had beaten correctly for the _Miwaka_, that one was spared as the Drum had told! Who had that one been? Alan? And was he now among those for whom the Drum had not yet beat?

She recalled that, on the day when the _Miwaka_ was lost, Henry and Uncle Benny had been upon the lake in a tug. Afterwards Uncle Benny had grown rich; Henry had attained advancement and wealth. Her reasoning had brought her to the verge of a terrible discovery. If she could take one more step forward in her thought, it would make her understand it all. But she could not yet take that step.

In the morning, at Traverse City--where she got a cup of coffee and some toast in the station eating house--she had to change to a day coach. It had grown still more bitterly cold; the wind which swept the long brick-paved platform of the station was arctic; and even through the double windows of the day coach she could feel its chill. The points of Grand Traverse Bay were frozen across; frozen across too was Torch Lake; to north of that, ice, snow-covered, through which frozen rushes protruded, marked the long chain of little lakes known as the "Intermediates." The little towns and villages, and the rolling fields with their leafless trees or blackened stumps, lay under drifts. It had stopped snowing, however, and she found relief in that; searchers upon the lake could see small boats now--if there were still small boats to be seen.

To the people in her Pullman, the destruction of the ferry had been only a news item competing for interest with other news on the front pages of their newspapers; but to these people in the day coach, it was an intimate and absorbing thing. They spoke by name of the crew as of persons whom they knew. A white lifeboat, one man told her, had been seen south of Beaver Island; another said there had been two boats.

They had been far off from sh.o.r.e, but, according to the report cabled from Beaver, there had appeared to be men in them; the men--her informant's voice hushed slightly--had not been rowing. Constance shuddered. She had heard of things like that on the quick-freezing fresh water of the lakes--small boats adrift crowded with men sitting upright in them, ice-coated, frozen, lifeless!

Petoskey, with its great hotels closed and boarded up, and its curio shops closed and locked, was blocked with snow. She went from the train directly to the telegraph office. If Henry was in Petoskey, they would know at that office where he could be found; he would be keeping in touch with them. The operator in charge of the office knew her, and his manner became still more deferential when she asked after Henry.

Mr. Spearman, the man said, had been at the office early in the day; there had been no messages for him; he had left instructions that any which came were to be forwarded to him through the men who, under his direction, were patroling the sh.o.r.e for twenty miles north of Little Traverse, watching for boats. The operator added to the report she had heard upon the train. One lifeboat and perhaps two had been seen by a farmer who had been on the ice to the south of Beaver; the second boat had been far to the south and west of the first one; tugs were cruising there now; it had been many hours, however, after the farmer had seen the boats before he had been able to get word to the town at the north end of the island--St. James--so that the news could be cabled to the mainland. Fishermen and seamen, therefore, regarded it as more likely, from the direction and violence of the gale, that the boats, if they continued to float, would be drifted upon the mainland than that they would be found by the tugs.

Constance asked after her father. Mr. Sherrill and Mr. Spearman, the operator told her, had been in communication that morning; Mr. Sherrill had not come to Petoskey; he had taken charge of the watch along the sh.o.r.e at its north end. It was possible that the boats might drift in there; but men of experience considered it more probable that the boats would drift in farther south where Mr. Spearman was in charge.

Constance crossed the frozen edges of the bay by sledge to Harbor Point. The driver mentioned Henry with admiration and with pride in his acquaintance with him; it brought vividly to her the recollection that Henry's rise in life was a matter of personal congratulation to these people as lending l.u.s.ter to the neighborhood and to themselves.

Henry's influence here was far greater than her own or her father's; if she were to move against Henry or show him distrust, she must work alone; she could enlist no aid from these.

And her distrust now had deepened to terrible dread. She had not been able before this to form any definite idea of how Henry could threaten Alan and Uncle Benny; she had imagined only vague interference and obstruction of the search for them; she had not foreseen that he could so readily a.s.sume charge of the search and direct, or misdirect, it.

At the Point she discharged the sledge and went on foot to the house of the caretaker who had charge of the Sherrill cottage during the winter.

Getting the keys from him, she let herself into the house. The electric light had been cut off, and the house was darkened by shutters, but she found a lamp and lit it. Going to her room, she unpacked a heavy sweater and woolen cap and short fur coat--winter things which were left there against use when they opened the house sometimes out of season--and put them on. Then she went down and found her snowshoes. Stopping at the telephone, she called long distance and asked them to locate Mr. Sherrill, if possible, and instruct him to move south along the sh.o.r.e with whomever he had with him. She went out then, and fastened on her snowshoes.

It had grown late. The early December dusk--the second dusk since little boats had put off from Number 25--darkened the snow-locked land.

The wind from the west cut like a knife, even through her fur coat.

The pine trees moaned and bent, with loud whistlings of the wind among their needles; the leafless elms and maples crashed their limbs together; above the clamor of all other sounds, the roaring of the lake came to her, the booming of the waves against the ice, the shatter of floe on floe. No snow had fallen for a few hours, and the sky was even clearing; ragged clouds scurried before the wind and, opening, showed the moon.

Constance hurried westward and then north, following the bend of the sh.o.r.e. The figure of a man--one of the sh.o.r.e patrols--pacing the ice hummocks of the beach and staring out upon the lake, appeared vaguely in the dusk when she had gone about two miles. He seemed surprised at seeing a girl, but less surprised when he had recognized her. Mr.

Spearman, he told her, was to the north of them upon the beach somewhere, he did not know how far; he could not leave his post to accompany her, but he a.s.sured her that there were men stationed all along the sh.o.r.e. She came, indeed, three quarters of a mile farther on, to a second man; about an equal distance beyond, she found a third, but pa.s.sed him and went on.

Her legs ached now with the unaccustomed travel upon snowshoes; the cold, which had been only a piercing chill at first, was stopping feeling, almost stopping thought. When clouds covered the moon, complete darkness came; she could go forward only slowly then or must stop and wait; but the intervals of moonlight were growing longer and increasing in frequency. As the sky cleared, she went forward quickly for many minutes at a time, straining her gaze westward over the tumbling water and the floes. It came to her with terrifying apprehension that she must have advanced at least three miles since she had seen the last patrol; she could not have pa.s.sed any one in the moonlight without seeing him, and in the dark intervals she had advanced so little that she could not have missed one that way either.

She tried to go faster as she realized this; but now travel had become more difficult. There was no longer any beach. High, precipitous bluffs, which she recognized as marking Seven Mile Point, descended here directly to the hummocked ice along the water's edge. She fell many times, traveling upon these hummocks; there were strange, treacherous places between the hummocks where, except for her snowshoes, she would have broken through. Her skirt was torn; she lost one of her gloves and could not stop to look for it; she fell again and sharp ice cut her ungloved hand and blood froze upon her finger tips.

She did not heed any of these things.

She was horrified to find that she was growing weak, and that her senses were becoming confused. She mistook at times floating ice, metallic under the moonlight, for boats; her heart beat fast then while she scrambled part way up the bluff to gain better sight and so ascertained her mistake. Deep ravines at places broke the sh.o.r.es; following the bend of the bluffs, she got into these ravines and only learned her error when she found that she was departing from the sh.o.r.e.

She had come, in all, perhaps eight miles; and she was "playing out"; other girls, she a.s.sured herself--other girls would not have weakened like this; they would have had strength to make certain no boats were there, or at least to get help. She had seen no houses; those, she knew, stood back from the sh.o.r.e, high upon the bluffs, and were not easy to find; but she scaled the bluff now and looked about for lights.

The country was wild and wooded, and the moonlight showed only the white stretches of the shrouding snow.

She descended to the beach again and went on; her gaze continued to search the lake, but now, wherever there was a break in the bluffs, she looked toward the sh.o.r.e as well. At the third of these breaks, the yellow glow of a window appeared, marking a house in a hollow between snow-shrouded hills. She turned eagerly that way; she could go only very slowly now. There was no path; at least, if there was, the snow drifts hid it. Through the drifts a thicket projected; the pines on the ravine sides overhead stood so close that only a silver tracery of the moonlight came through; beyond the pines, birch trees, stripped of their bark, stood black up to the white boughs.