George Gibbs - The Silent Battle

“No, no—you mustn’t,” she whispered, stifling. “It can’t—it mustn’t be. I don’t–”

But he had seized her more closely in his arms and shackled her lips with his kisses.

“I’m mad—I know—but I want you, Jane. I love you—I love you—I want the woods to hear–”

She wrenched one arm free and pushed away, her eyes wide, for the horror of him had dawned slowly.

“Oh!” she gasped. “ You! ”

As he seized her again, she drew back, mad with fear, shrunken within herself, like a snake in a thicket coiling itself to thrust and then struck viciously.

He felt the impact of a blow full in the face and staggered back releasing her. And her accents, sharp, cruel, vicious, clove the silence like sword-cuts.

“You cad! You brute! You utter brute!”

He came forward like a blind man, mumbling incoherently, but she avoided him easily, and fled.

“Jane!” he called hoarsely. “Come back to me, Jane. Come back to me! Oh, God!”

He stumbled and fell; then rose again, putting his hands to his face and running heavily toward the spot where she had vanished into the bushes—the very spot where three days ago she had appeared to him. He caught a glimpse of her ahead of him and blundered on, calling for forgiveness. There was no reply but the echo of his own voice, nor any glimpse of her. After that he remembered little, except that he went on and on, tripping, falling, tearing his face and clothes in the briars, getting to his feet and going on again, mad with the terror of losing her—an instinct only, an animal in search of its wounded mate.

He did not know how long he strove or how far, but there came a time when he fell headlong among some boulders and could rise no more.

That morning two Indian guides in search of a woman who had been lost, met another Indian at the headwaters of a stream, and together they followed a fresh trail—the trail of a big man wearing hob-nailed boots and carrying a burden. In the afternoon they found an empty shack beside which a fire was burning. Two creels hung side by side near the fire and upon the limb of a tree was the carcass of a deer. There were many trails into the woods—some made by the feet of a woman, some by the feet of a man.

The three guides sat at the fire for awhile and smoked, waiting.

Then two of them got up and after examining the smaller foot-marks silently disappeared. When they had gone the third guide, a puzzled look on his face, picked up an object which had fallen under a log and examined it with minute interest. Then with a single guttural sound from his throat, put the object in his pocket and bending well forward, his eyes upon the ground, glided noiselessly through the underbrush after them.

A storm of wind and rain had fallen out of the Northwest, and in a night had blown seaward the lingering tokens of Autumn. The air was chill, the sunshine pale as calcium light, and distant buildings came into focus, cleanly cut against the sparkling sky at the northern end of the Avenue; jets of steam appeared overhead and vanished at once into space; flags quivered tensely at their poles; fast flying squadrons of clouds whirled on to their distant rendezvous, their shadows leaping skyward along the sunlit walls. In a stride Winter had come. The city had taken a new tempo . The adagio of Indian Summer had come to a pause in the night; and with the morning, the baton of winter quickened its beat as the orchestra of city sounds swung into the presto movement. Upon the Avenue shop-windows bloomed suddenly with finery; limousines and broughams, new or refurbished, with a glistening of polished nickel and brass, drew up along the curbs to discharge their occupants who descended, briskly intent on the business of the minute, in search of properties and backgrounds for the winter drama.

In the Fifth Avenue window of the Cosmos Club, some of the walking gentlemen gathered in the afternoon and were already rehearsing the familiar choruses. All summer they had played the fashionable circuit of house-parties at Narragansett, Newport and other brief stands, and all recounted the tales of the road, glad at last to be back in their own corners, using the old lines, the old gestures, the old cues with which they had long been familiar.

If its summer pilgrimage had worked any hardship, the chorus at the windows of the Cosmos Club gave no sign of it. It was a well-fed chorus, well-groomed, well-tailored and prosperous. Few members of it had ever played a “lead” or wished to; for the tribulations of star-dom were great and the rewards uncertain, so they played their parts comfortably far up-stage against the colorful background.

Colonel Broadhurst took up the glass which Percy Endicott had ordered and regarded it ponderously.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” he asked sententiously of no one in particular, “pretty, innocent, winking bubbles! Little hopes rising and bursting.”

“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” put in the thirsty Percy promptly. “Luck, Colonel!” and drank.

With a long sigh the Colonel lifted his glass. “Why do we do it?” he asked again. “There’s nothing—positively nothing in it.”

“You never said a truer thing,” laughed Ogden Spencer, for the Colonel had set his empty glass upon the table.

“Oh, for the days of sunburnt mirth—of youth and the joyful Hippocrene!” the Colonel sighed again.

“Write—note—Chairman—House Committee,” said Coleman Van Duyn, arousing from slumber, thickly, “mighty poor stuff here lately.”

“Go back to sleep, Coley,” laughed Spencer. “It’s not your cue.”

Van Duyn lurched heavily forward for his glass, and drank silently. “Hippocrene?” he asked. “What’s Hippocrene?”

“Nectar, my boy,” said the Colonel pityingly, “the water of the gods.”

“Water!” and with a groan, “Oh, the Devil!”

He joined good naturedly in the laugh which followed and settled back in his leather chair.

“Oh, you laugh, you fellows. It’s no joke. Drank nothing but water for two months this summer. Doctors orders. Drove the water wagon, I did—two long months. Think of it!” The retrospect was so unpleasant that Mr. Van Duyn leaned forward immediately and laid his finger on the bell.

“Climb off, Coley?” asked Spencer.

“No, jumped,” he grinned. “Horse ran away.”

“You’re looking fit.”

“I am. Got a new doctor—sensible chap, young, ambitious, all that sort of thing. Believes in alcohol. Some people need it, you know. Can’t be too careful in choice of doctor. Wants me to drink Lithia water, though. What’s this Hippo—hippo–”

“Chondriac!” put in Percy.

“Hippocrene,” said Broadhurst severely.

“Sounds like a parlor car—or—er—a skin food. Any good, Colonel?”

“No,” said Colonel Broadhurst with another sigh, “It wouldn’t suit your case, Coley.”

A servant entered silently, took the orders and removed the empty glasses.

“Where were you, Coley?” asked Percy.

“Woods—Canada.”

“Fishing?”

“Yep—some.”

“See anything of Phil Gallatin?”

“No. I was with a big outfit—ten guides, call ’em servants, if you like. Air mattresses, cold storage plant, chef , bottled asparagus tips, Charlotte Russe—fine camp that!”

“Whose?”

“Henry K. Loring. You know—coal.”

“Oh—I see. There’s a girl, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

Van Duyn reached for his glass and lapsed into surly silence.

But Percy Endicott was always voluble in the afternoon.

“You didn’t hear about Phil?”

“No—not another–”

“Oh, no, he hasn’t touched a drop for weeks. Got lost up there. I heard the story at Tuxedo from young Benson who just come down. He had it from a guide. It seems that Phil got twisted somehow in the heart of the Kawagama country and couldn’t find his way back to camp. He’s not much of a woodsman—hadn’t ever been up there before, and the guide couldn’t pick up his trail–”