The old nurse sprang to her feet. She lost control of herself, for all day she had felt this queer presentiment, and now was it really true? She blamed herself for not taking Helen that morning.

She threw herself against the door. It was strong and secure.

Jud met it with a jeering laugh.

"Oh, you're safe an' you'll never see her agin. I don't mind tellin'

you she has run off with Richard Travis--they'll go North to-night.

You'll find other folks can walk off with yo' gals--'specially the han'sum ones--besides yo'se'f."

The old nurse was stricken with weakness. Her limbs shook so she sat down in a heap at the door and said pleadingly:--"Are you lyin' to me, white man? Will--will he marry her or--"

"Did you ever hear of him marryin' anybody?" came back with a laugh.

"No, he's only took a deserted young 'oman in out of the cold--he'll take care of her, but he ain't the marryin' kind, is he?"

The reputation of Richard Travis was as well known to Mammy Maria as it was to anyone. She did not know whether to believe Jud or not, but one thing she knew--something--something dreadful was happening to Helen. The old nurse called to mind instantly things that had happened before she herself had left Millwood--things Helen had said--her grief, her despair, her horror of the mill, her belief that she was already disgraced. It all came to the old nurse now so plainly. Tempted as she was, young as she was, deserted and forsaken as she thought she was, might not indeed the temptation be too much for her?

She groaned as she heard Jud laugh and walk off.

"O my baby, my beautiful baby!" she wept, falling on her knees again.

The mill grew strangely silent and dark. On a pile of loose cotton she fell, praying after the manner of her race.

An hour pa.s.sed. The darkness, the loneliness, the horror of it all crept into her superst.i.tious soul, and she became frantic with religious fervor and despair.

Pacing the room, she sang and prayed in a frenzy of emotional tumult.

But she heard only the echo of her own voice, and only the wailings of her own songs came back. Negro that she was, she was intelligent enough to know that Jud Carpenter spoke the truth--that not for his life would he have dared to say this if it had not had some truth in it. What?--she did not know--she only knew that harm was coming to Helen.

She called aloud for help--for Edward Conway. But the mill was closed tight--the windows nailed.

Another hour pa.s.sed. It began to tell on the old creature's mind.

Negroes are simple, religious, superst.i.tious folks, easily unbalanced by grief or wrong.

She began to see visions in this frenzy of religious excitement, as so many of her race do under the nervous strain of religious feeling.

She fell into a trance.

It was most real to her. Who that has ever heard a negro give in his religious experience but recognizes it? She was carried on the wings of the morning down to the gates of h.e.l.l. The Devil himself met her, tempting her always, conducting her through the region of darkness and showing her the lakes of fire and threatening her with all his punishment if she did not cease to believe. She overcame him only by constant prayer. She fled from him, he followed her, but could not approach her while she prayed.... She was rescued by an angel--an angel from heaven ... an angel with a flaming sword. Through all the glories of heaven this angel conducted her, praised her, and bidding her farewell at the gate, told her to go back to earth and take this: _It was a torch of fire!_

"_Burn! burn!_" said the angel--"_for I shall make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire on a sheaf. And they shall devour all the people around about, on the right hand and the left; and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem._"

She came out of the trance in a glory of religious fervor: "Jerusalem shall be inhabited ag'in!--the Angel has told me--told me--Burn--burn,"

she cried. "Oh Lord--you have spoken and Zion has ears to hear--Amen."

Quickly she gathered up the loose cotton and placed it at the door, piling it up to the very bolt. She struck a match, swaying and rocking and chanting: "Yea, Lord, thy servant hath heard--thy servant hath heard!"

The flames leaped up quickly enveloping the door. The room began to fill with smoke, but she retreated to a far corner and fell on her knees in prayer. The panels of the door caught first and the flames spreading upward soon heated the lock around which the wood blazed and crackled.

It burned through. She sprang up, rushed through the blinding smoke, struck the door as it blazed, in a broken ma.s.s, and rushed out. Down the long main room she ran to a low window, burst it, and stepped out on the ground:

"Jerusalem shall be inhabited again," she shouted as she ran breathless toward home.

CHAPTER XXI

THE GREAT FIRE

Edward Conway sat on the little porch till the stars came out, wondering why the old nurse did not return. Sober as he was and knew he would ever be, it seemed that a keen sensitiveness came with it, and a feeling of impending calamity.

"Oh, it's the cursed whiskey," he said to himself--"it always leaves you keyed up like a fiddle or a woman. I'll get over it after a while or I'll die trying," and he closed his teeth upon each other with a nervous twist that belied his efforts at calmness.

But even Lily grew alarmed, and to quiet her he took her into the house and they ate their supper in silence.

Again he came out on the porch and sat with the little girl in his lap. But Lily gave him no rest, for she kept saying, as the hours pa.s.sed: "Where is she, father--oh, do go and see!"

"She has gone to Millwood through mistake," he kept telling her, "and Mammy Maria has doubtless gone after her. Mammy will bring her back.

We will wait awhile longer--if I had some one to leave you with," he said gently, "I'd go myself. But she will be home directly."

And Lily went to sleep in his lap, waiting.

The moon came up, and Conway wrapped Lily in a shawl, but still held her in his arms. And as he sat holding her and waiting with a fast-beating heart for the old nurse, all his wasted life pa.s.sed before him.

He saw himself as he had not for years--his life a failure, his fortune gone. He wondered how he had escaped as he had, and as he thought of the old Bishop's words, he wondered why G.o.d had been as good to him as He had, and again he uttered a silent prayer of thankfulness and for strength. And with it the strength came, and he knew he could never more be the drunkard he had been. There was something in him stronger than himself.

He was a strong man spiritually--it had been his inheritance, and the very thought of anything happening to Helen blanched his cheek. In spite of the faults of his past, no man loved his children more than he, when he was himself. Like all keen, sensitive natures, his was filled to overflowing with paternal love.

"My G.o.d," he thought, "suppose--suppose she has gone back to Millwood, found none of us there, thinks she had been deserted, and--and--"

The thought was unbearable. He slipped in with the sleeping Lily in his arms and began to put her in bed without awakening her, determined to mount his horse and go for Helen himself.

But just then the old nurse, frantic, breathless and in a delirium of religious excitement, came in and fell fainting on the porch.

He revived her with cold water, and when she could talk she could only p.r.o.nounce Helen's name, and say they had run off with her.

"Who?"--shouted Conway, his heart stopping in the staggering shock of it.

The old woman tried to tell Jud Carpenter's tale, and Conway heard enough. He did not wait to hear it all--he did not know the mill was now slowly burning.

"Take care of Lily"--he said, as he went into his room and came out with his pistol buckled around his waist.

Then he mounted his horse and rode swiftly to Millwood.

He was astonished to find a fire in the hearth, a lamp burning, and one of Helen's gloves lying on the table.

By it was another pair. He picked them up and looked closely. Within, in red ink, were the initials: _R. T._

He bit his lips till the blood came. He bowed his head in his hands.

Sometimes there comes to us that peculiar mental condition in which we are vaguely conscious that once before we have been in the same place, amid the same conditions and surroundings which now confront us. We seem to be living again a brief moment of our past life, where Time himself has turned back everything. It came that instant to Edward Conway.