The Eye of Dread

Mary and Bertrand were out in the little orchard at the back of the house, gazing up at the apple blossoms that hung over their heads in great pale pink clouds. A sweet odor came from the lilacs that hung over the garden fence, and the sunlight streamed down on the peaceful home, and on the opening spring flowers–the borders of dwarf purple iris and big clusters of peonies, just beginning to bud,–and on the beehives scattered about with the bees flying out and in. Ah! It was still the same–tempting and inviting.

He paused at the gate, looking wistfully at the open door, but did not enter. No, he must keep his own counsel and hold to his purpose, without stirring these dear old friends to sorrowful sympathy. So he passed on, unseen by them, feeling the old love for the place and all the tender memories connected with it revived and deepened. On he went, strolling toward the little schoolhouse where he had found dear Betty Ballard sleeping at the big school desk the evening before, and passed it by–only looking in curiously at the tousled heads bent over their lessons, and at Betty herself, where she sat at the desk, a class on the long recitation bench before her, and a great boy standing at the blackboard. He saw her rise and take the chalk from the boy’s hand and make a few rapid strokes with it on the board.

Little Betty a school-teacher! She had suffered much! How much did she care now? Was it over and her heart healed? Had other loves come to her? All intent now on her work, she stood with her back toward him, and as he passed the open door she turned half about, and he saw her profile sharply against the blackboard. Older? Yes, she looked older, but prettier for that, and slight and trim and neat, dressed in a soft shade of green. She had worn such a dress once at a picnic. Well he remembered it–could he ever forget? Swiftly she turned again to the board and drew the eraser across the work, and he heard her voice distinctly, with its singing quality–how well he remembered that also–“Now, how many of the class can work this problem?”

Ah, little Betty! little Betty! Life is working problems for us all, and you are working yours to a sweet conclusion, helping the children, and taking up your own burdens and bearing them bravely. This was Harry King’s thought as he strolled on and seated himself again under the basswood tree by the meadow brook, and took from his pocket the worn scrap of paper the wind had brought him and read it again.

“Out of my life, and into the night,
But never out of my heart, my own.
Into the darkness, out of the light,
Bleeding and wounded and walking alone.”

Such a tender, rhythmic bit of verse–Betty must have written it. It was like her.

After a time he rose and strolled back again past the little schoolhouse, and it was recess. Long before he reached it he heard the voices of the children shouting, “Anty, anty over, anty, anty over.” They were divided into two bands, one on either side of the small building, over which they tossed the ball and shouted as they tossed it, “Anty, anty over”; and the band on the other side, warned by the cry, caught the ball on the rebound if they could, and tore around the corner of the building, trying to hit with it any luckless wight on the other side, and so claim him for their own, and thus changing sides, the merry romp went on.

Betty came to the door with the bell in her hand, and stood for a moment looking out in the sunshine. One of the smallest of the boys ran to her and threw his arms around her, and, looking up in her face, screamed in wildest excitement, “I caught it twice, Teacher, I did.”

With her hand on his head she looked in his eyes and smiled and tinkled her little bell, and the children, big and little, all came crowding through the door, hustling like a flock of chickens, and every boy snatched off his cap as he rushed by her.

Ah, grave, dignified little Betty! Who was that passing slowly along the road? Like a wild rose by the wayside she seemed to him, with her pink cheeks and in her soft green gown, framed thus by the doorway of the old schoolhouse. Naturally she had no recognition for this bearded man, walking by with stiff, soldierly step, yet something caused her to look again, turning as she entered, and, when he looked back, their eyes met, and hers dropped before his, and she was lost to his sight as she closed the door after her. Of course she could not recognize him disguised thus with the beard on his face, and his dark, tanned skin. She did not recognize him, and he was glad, yet sore at heart.

He had had all he could bear, and for the rest of the morning he wrote letters, sitting in his room at Decker’s hotel. Only two letters, but one was a very long one–to Amalia Manovska. Out in the world he dared not use her own name, so he addressed the envelope to Miss McBride, in Larry Kildene’s care, at the nearest station to which they had agreed letters should be sent. Before he finished the second letter the gong sounded for dinner. The noon meal was always dinner at the hotel. He thrust his papers and the unfinished letter in his valise and locked it–and went below.

G. B. Stiles was already there, seated in the same place as on the day before, and Harry took his seat opposite him, and they began a conversation in the same facile way, but the manner of the dry-goods salesman towards him seemed to have undergone a change. It had lost its swagger, and was more that of a man who could be a gentleman if he chose, while to the surprise of Stiles the manner of the young man was as disarmingly quiet and unconcerned as before, and as abstracted. He could not believe that any man hovering on the brink of a terrible catastrophe, and one to avert which required concealment of identity, could be so unwary. He half believed the Swede was laboring under an hallucination, and decided to be deliberate, and await developments for the rest of the day.

After dinner they wandered out to the piazza side by side, and there they sat and smoked, and talked over the political situation as they had the evening before, and Stiles was surprised at the young man’s ignorance of general public matters. Was it ignorance, or indifference?

“I thought all you army men would stand by Grant to the drop of the hat.”

“Yes, I suppose we would.”

“You suppose so! Don’t you know? I carried a gun under Grant, and I’d swear to any policy he’d go in for, and what I say is, they haven’t had quite enough down there. What the South needs is another licking. That’s what it needs.”

“Oh, no, no, no. I was sick of fighting, long before they laid me up, and I guess a lot of us were.”

G. B. Stiles brought his feet to the floor with a stamp of surprise and turned to look full in the young man’s face. For a moment he gazed on him thus, then grunted. “Ever feel one of their bullets?”

“Oh, yes.”

“That the mark, there over your temple?”

“No, it didn’t do any harm to speak of. That’s–where something–struck me.”

“Oh, you don’t say!” Harry King rose. “Leaving?”

“No. I have a few letters to write–and–”

“Sorry to miss you. Staying in town for some time?”

“I hardly know. I may.”

“Plans unsettled? Well, times are unsettled and no money stirring. My plans are all upset, too.”

The young man returned to his room and continued his writing. One short letter to Betty, inclosing the worn scrap of paper the wind had brought him; he kissed it before he placed it in the envelope. Then he wrote one to her father and mother jointly, and a long one to Hester Craigmile. Sometimes he would pause in his writing and tear up a page, and begin over again, but at last all were done and inclosed in a letter to the Elder and placed in a heavy envelope and sealed. Only the one to Amalia he did not inclose, but carried it out and mailed it himself.

Passing the bank on the way to the post office, he dropped in and made quite a heavy deposit. It was just before closing time and the clerks were all intent on getting their books straight, preparatory to leaving. How well he remembered that moment of restless turning of ledgers and the slight accession of eagerness in the younger clerks, as they followed the long columns of figures down with the forefinger of the left hand–the pen poised in the right. The whole scene smote him poignantly as he stood at the teller’s window waiting. And he might have been doing that, he thought! A whole lifetime spent in doing just that and more like it, year in and year out!

How had his life been better? He had sinned–and failed. Ah! But he had lived and loved–lived terribly and loved greatly. God help him, how he loved! Even for life to end here–either in prison or in death–still he had felt the tremendous passions, and understood the meaning of their power in a human soul. This had life brought him, and a love beyond measure to crown all.

The teller peered at him through the little window behind which he had stood so many years peering at people in this sleepy little bank, this sure, safe, little bank, always doing its conservative business in the same way, and heretofore always making good. He reached out a long, well-shaped hand,–a large-veined hand, slightly hairy at the wrist, to take the bank notes. How often had Harry King seen that hand stretched thus through the little window, drawing bank notes toward him! Almost with a shock he saw it now reach for his own–for the first time. In the old days he had had none to deposit. It was always for others it had been extended. Now it seemed as if he must seize the hand and shake it,–the only hand that had been reached out to him yet, in this town where his boyhood had been spent.

A young man who had preceded Harry King at the teller’s window paused near by at the cashier’s desk and began asking questions which Harry himself would have been glad to ask, but could not.

He was an alert, bright-eyed young chap with a smiling face. “Good afternoon, Mr. Copeland. Any news for me to-day?”

Mr. Copeland was an elderly man of great dignity, and almost as much of a figure there as the Elder himself. It was an act of great temerity to approach him for items of news for the Leauvite Mercury. Of this fact the young reporter seemed to be blithely ignorant. All the clerks were covertly watching the outcome, and thus attention was turned from Harry King; even the teller glanced frequently at the cashier’s desk as he counted the bank notes placed in his hand.

“News? No. No news,” said Mr. Copeland, without looking up.

“Thank you. It’s my business to ask for it, you know. We’re making more of a feature of personal items than ever before. We’re up to date, you see. ‘Find out what people want and then give it to them.’ That’s our motto.” The young man leaned forward over the high railing that corralled the cashier in his pen apart from the public, smilingly oblivious of that dignitary’s objections to an interview. “Expecting the return of Elder Craigmile soon?”

At that question, to the surprise of all, the cashier suddenly changed his manner to the suave affability with which he greeted people of consequence. “We are expecting Elder Craigmile shortly. Yes. Indeed he may arrive any day, if the voyage is favorable.”

“Thank you. Mrs. Craigmile accompanies him, I suppose?”

“It is not likely, no. Her health demands–ahem–a little longer rest and change.”

“Ah! The Elder not called back by–for any particular reason? No. Business going well? Good. I’m told there’s a great deal of depression.”

“Oh, in a way–there may be,–but we’re all of the conservative sort here in Leauvite. We’re not likely to feel it if there is. Good afternoon.”

No one paid any attention to Harry King as he walked out after the Leauvite Mercury reporter, except Mr. Copeland, who glanced at him keenly as he passed his desk. Then, looking at his watch, he came out of his corral and turned the key in the bank door.

“We’ll have no more interruptions now,” he said, as he paused at the teller’s window. “You know the young man who just went out?”

“Sam Carter of the Mercury. Old Billings no doubt sent him in to learn how we stand.”

“No, no, no. Sam Carter–I know him. Who’s the young man who followed him out?”

“I don’t know. Here’s his signature. He’s just made a big deposit on long time–only one thousand on call. Unusual these days.”

Mr. Copeland’s eyes glittered an instant. “Good. That’s something. I decided to give the town people to understand that there is no need for their anxiety. It’s the best policy, and when the Elder returns, he may be induced to withdraw his insane offer of reward. Ten thousand dollars! It’s ridiculous, when the young men may both be dead, for all the world will ever know.”

“If we could do that–but I’ve known the Elder too long to hope for it. This deposit stands for a year, see? And the ten thousand the Elder has set one side for the reward gives us twenty thousand we could not count on yesterday.”

“In all the history of this bank we never were in so tight a place. It’s extraordinary, and quite unnecessary. That’s a bright boy–Sam Carter. I never thought of his putting such a construction on it when I admitted the fact that Mrs. Craigmile is to remain. Two big banks closed in Chicago this morning, and twenty small ones all over the country during the last three days. One goes and hauls another down. If we had only cabled across the Atlantic two weeks ago when I sent that letter–he must have the letter by now–and if he has, he’s on the ocean.”

“This deposit tides us over a few days, and, as I said, if we could only get our hands on that reserve of the Elder’s, we’d be safe whatever comes.”