The Dark Star Read online

  CHAPTER II

  BROOKHOLLOW

  The mother, shading the candle with her work-worn hand, looked down atthe child in silence. The subdued light fell on a freckled cheek wheredark lashes rested, on a slim neck and thin shoulders framed by a massof short, curly chestnut hair.

  Though it was still dark, the mill whistle was blowing for sixo'clock. Like a goblin horn it sounded ominously through Ruhannah'sdream. She stirred in her sleep; her mother stole across the room,closed the window, and went away carrying the candle with her.

  At seven the whistle blew again; the child turned over and unclosedher eyes. A brassy light glimmered between leafless apple branchesoutside her window. Through the frosty radiance of sunrise a blue jayscreamed.

  Ruhannah cuddled deeper among the blankets and buried the tip of herchilly nose. But the grey eyes remained wide open and, under the fadedquilt, her little ears were listening intently.

  Presently from the floor below came the expected summons:

  "Ruhannah!"

  "Oh, _please_, mother!"

  "It's after seven----"

  "I know: I'll be ready in time!"

  "It's after seven, Rue!"

  "I'm so cold, mother dear!"

  "I closed your window. You may bathe and dress down here."

  "B-r-r-r! I can see my own breath when I breathe!"

  "Come down and dress by the kitchen range," repeated her mother. "I'vewarm water all ready for you."

  The brassy light behind the trees was becoming golden; slim bluishshadows already stretched from the base of every tree across frozenfields dusted with snow.

  As usual, the lank black cat came walking into the room, itsmysterious crystal-green eyes brilliant in the glowing light.

  Listening, the child heard her father moving heavily about in theadjoining room.

  Then, from below again:

  "Ruhannah!"

  "I'm going to get up, mother!"

  "Rue! Obey me!"

  "I'm _up_! I'm on my way!" She sprang out amid a tempest ofbedclothes, hopped gingerly across the chilly carpet, seized hergarments in one hand, comb and toothbrush in the other, ran into thehallway and pattered downstairs.

  The cat followed leisurely, twitching a coal-black tail.

  "Mother, could I have my breakfast first? I'm so hungry----"

  Her mother turned from the range and kissed her as she huddled closeto it. The sheet of zinc underneath warmed her bare feet delightfully.She sighed with satisfaction, looked wistfully at the coffeepotsimmering, sniffed at the biscuits and sizzling ham.

  "Could I have one little taste before I----"

  "Come, dear. There's the basin. Bathe quickly, now."

  Ruhannah frowned and cast a tragic glance upon the tin washtub on thekitchen floor. Presently she stole over, tested the water with herfinger-tip, found it not unreasonably cold, dropped the night-dressfrom her frail shoulders, and stepped into the tub with a perfunctoryshiver--a thin, overgrown child of fifteen, with pipestem limbs andevery rib anatomically apparent.

  Her hair, which had been cropped to shoulder length, seemed to turnfrom chestnut to bronze fire, gleaming and crackling under the combwhich she hastily passed through it before twisting it up.

  "Quickly but thoroughly," said her mother. "Hasten, Rue."

  Ruhannah seized soap and sponge, gasped, shut her grey eyes tightly,and fell to scrubbing with the fury of despair.

  "Don't splash, dear----"

  "Did you warm my towel, mother?"--blindly stretching out one thin anddripping arm.

  Her mother wrapped her in a big crash towel from head to foot.

  Later, pulling on stockings and shoes by the range, she managed toachieve a buttered biscuit at the same time, and was already betrayingfurther designs upon another one when her mother sent her to set thetable in the sitting-room.

  Thither sauntered Ruhannah, partly dressed, still dressing.

  By the nickel-trimmed stove she completed her toilet, then hastilylaid the breakfast cloth and arranged the china and plated tableware,and filled the water pitcher.

  Her father came in on his crutches; she hurried from the table, syrupjug in one hand, cruet in the other, and lifted her face to be kissed;then she brought hot plates, coffeepot, and platters, and seatedherself at the table where her father and mother were waiting insilence.

  When she was seated her father folded his large, pallid, bony hands;her mother clasped hers on the edge of the table, bowing her head; andRuhannah imitated them. Between her fingers she could see the catunder the table, and she watched it arch its back and gently rubagainst her chair.

  "For what we are about to receive, make us grateful, Eternal Father.This day we should go hungry except for Thy bounty. Without presumingto importune Thee, may we ask Thee to remember all who awake hungry onthis winter day.... Amen."

  Ruhannah instantly became very busy with her breakfast. The cat besideher chair purred loudly and rose at intervals on its hind legs totwitch her dress; and Ruhannah occasionally bestowed alms andconversation upon it.

  "Rue," said her mother, "you should try to do better with your algebrathis week."

  "Yes, I do really mean to."

  "Have you had any more bad-conduct marks?"

  "Yes, mother."

  Her father lifted his mild, dreamy eyes of an invalid. Her motherasked:

  "What for?"

  "For wasting my time in study hour," said the girl truthfully.

  "Were you drawing?"

  "Yes, mother."

  "Rue! Again! Why do you persist in drawing pictures in your copybooks when you have an hour's lesson in drawing every week? Besides,you may draw pictures at home whenever you wish."

  "I don't exactly know why," replied the girl slowly. "It just happensbefore I notice what I am doing.... Of course," she explained, "I dorecollect that I oughtn't to be drawing in study hour. But that'safter I've begun, and then it seems a pity not to finish."

  Her mother looked across the table at her husband:

  "Speak to her seriously, Wilbour."

  The Reverend Mr. Carew looked solemnly at his long-legged and rapidlygrowing daughter, whose grey eyes gazed back into her father's sallowvisage.

  "Rue," he said in his colourless voice, "try to get all you can out ofyour school. I haven't sufficient means to educate you in drawing andin similar accomplishments. So get all you can out of your school.Because, some day, you will have to help yourself, and perhaps help usa little."

  He bent his head with a detached air and sat gazing mildly atvacancy--already, perhaps, forgetting what the conversation wasabout.

  "Mother?"

  "What, Rue?"

  "What am I going to do to earn my living?"

  "I don't know."

  "Do you mean I must go into the mill like everybody else?"

  "There are other things. Girls work at many things in these days."

  "What kind of things?"

  "They may learn to keep accounts, help in shops----"

  "If father could afford it, couldn't I learn to do something moreinteresting? What do girls work at whose fathers can afford to letthem learn how to work?"

  "They may become teachers, learn stenography and typewriting; theycan, of course, become dressmakers; they can nurse----"

  "Mother!"

  "Yes?"

  "Could I choose the business of drawing pictures? I know how!"

  "Dear, I don't believe it is practical to----"

  "Couldn't I draw pictures for books and magazines? Everybody says Idraw very nicely. You say so, too. Couldn't I earn enough money tolive on and to take care of you and father?"

  Wilbour Carew looked up from his reverie:

  "To learn to draw correctly and with taste," he said in his gentle,pedantic voice, "requires a special training which we cannot afford togive you, Ruhannah."

  "Must I wait till I'm twenty-five before I can have my money?" sheasked for the hundredth time. "I do so need it to educate myself. Whydid grandma do such a thing, mother?"
/>
  "Your grandmother never supposed you would need the money until youwere a grown woman, dear. Your father and I were young, vigorous, fullof energy; your father's income was ample for us then."

  "Have I got to marry a man before I can get enough money to takelessons in drawing with?"

  Her mother's drawn smile was not very genuine. When a child asks suchquestions no mother finds it easy to smile.

  "If you marry, dear, it is not likely you'll marry in order to takelessons in drawing. Twenty-five is not old. If you still desire tostudy art you will be able to do so."

  "Twenty-five!" repeated Rue, aghast. "I'll be an old woman."

  "Many begin their life's work at an older age----"

  "Mother! I'd rather marry somebody and begin to study art. Oh, _don't_you think that even now I could support myself by making pictures formagazines? Don't you, mother dear?"

  "Rue, as your father explained, a special course of instruction isnecessary before one can become an artist----"

  "But I _do_ draw very nicely!" She slipped from her chair, ran to theold secretary where the accumulated masterpieces of her brief careerwere treasured, and brought them for her parents' inspection, as shehad brought them many times before.

  Her father looked at them listlessly; he did not understand suchthings. Her mother took them one by one from Ruhannah's eager handsand examined these grimy Records of her daughter's childhood.

  There were drawings of every description in pencil, in crayon, inmussy water-colours, done on scraps of paper of every shape and size.The mother knew them all by heart, every single one, but she examinedeach with a devotion and an interest forever new.

  There were many pictures of the cat; many of her parents, too--odd,shaky, smeared portraits all out of proportion, but usuallyrecognisable.

  A few landscapes varied the collection--a view or two of the stonebridge opposite, a careful drawing of the ruined paper mill. But themajority of the subjects were purely imaginary; pictures of demons andangels, of damsels and fairy princes--paragons of beauty--withcastles on adjacent crags and swans adorning convenient ponds.

  Her mother rose after a few moments, laid aside the pile of drawings,went to the kitchen and returned with her daughter's schoolbooks andlunch basket.

  "Rue, you'll be late again. Get on your rubbers immediately."

  The child's shabby winter coat was already too short in skirt andsleeve, and could be lengthened no further. She pulled the bluetoboggan cap over her head, took a hasty osculatory leave of herfather, seized books and lunch basket, and followed her mother to thedoor.

  Below the house the Brookhollow road ran south across an old stonebridge and around a hill to Gayfield, half a mile away.

  Rue, drawing on her woollen gloves, looked up at her mother. Her liptrembled very slightly. She said:

  "I shouldn't know what to do if I couldn't draw pictures.... When Idraw a princess I mean her for myself.... It is pleasant--to pretendto live with swans."

  She opened the door, paused on the step; the frosty breath driftedfrom her lips. Then she looked back over her shoulder; her motherkissed her, held her tightly for a moment.

  "If I'm to be forbidden to draw pictures," repeated the girl, "I don'tknow what will become of me. Because I really live there--in thepictures I make."

  "We'll talk it over this evening, darling. Don't draw in study hourany more, will you?"

  "I'll try to remember, mother."

  * * * * *

  When the spindle-limbed, boyish figure had sped away beyond sight,Mrs. Carew shut the door, drew her wool shawl closer, and returnedslowly to the sitting-room. Her husband, deep in a paddedrocking-chair by the window, was already absorbed in the volume whichlay open on his knees--the life of the Reverend Adoniram Judson--oneof the world's good men. Ruhannah had named her cat after him.

  His wife seated herself. She had dishes to do, two bedrooms,preparations for noonday dinner--the usual and unchangeable routine.She turned and looked out of the window across brown fields thinlypowdered with snow. Along a brawling, wintry-dark stream, fringed withgrey alders, ran the Brookhollow road. Clumps of pines and elmsbordered it. There was nothing else to see except a distant crow in aten-acre lot, walking solemnly about all by himself.

  ... Like the vultures that wandered through the compound that dreadfulday in May ... she thought involuntarily.

  But it was a far cry from Trebizond to Brookhollow. And her husbandhad been obliged to give up after the last massacre, when everyconvert had been dragged out and killed in the floating shadow of theStars and Stripes, languidly brilliant overhead.

  For the Sublime Porte and the Kurds had had their usual way at last;there was nothing left of the Mission; school and converts were gone;her wounded husband, her baby, and herself refugees in a foreignconsulate; and the Turkish Government making apologies with its fattongue in its greasy cheek.

  The Koran says: "Woe to those who pray, and in their prayers arecareless."

  The Koran also says: "In the name of God the Compassionate, theMerciful: What thinkest thou of him who treateth our religion as alie?"

  Mrs. Carew and her crippled husband knew, now, what the Sublime Portethought about it, and what was the opinion of the Kurdish cavalryconcerning missionaries and converts who treated the Moslem religionas a lie.

  She looked at her pallid and crippled husband; he was still reading;his crutches lay beside him on the floor. She turned her eyes to thewindow. Out there the solitary crow was still walking busily about inthe frozen pasture. And again she remembered the vultures that hulkedand waddled amid the debris of the burned Mission.

  Only that had been in May; and above the sunny silence in that placeof death had sounded the unbroken and awful humming of a millionmillion flies....

  * * * * *

  And so, her husband being now hopelessly broken and useless, they hadcome back with their child, Ruhannah, to their home in Brookhollow.

  Here they had lived ever since; here her grey life was passing; hereher daughter was already emerging into womanhood amid the stark,unlovely environments of a country crossroads, arid in summer, ironnaked in winter, with no horizon except the Gayfield hills, no outlooksave the Brookhollow road. And that led to the mill.

  She had done what she could--was still doing it. But there was nothingto save. Her child's destiny seemed to be fixed.

  Her husband corresponded with the Board of Missions, wrote now andthen for the _Christian Pioneer_, and lived on the scanty pensionallowed to those who, like himself, had become incapacitated in lineof duty. There was no other income.

  There was, however, the six thousand dollars left to Ruhannah by hergrandmother, slowly accumulating interest in the Mohawk Bank atOrangeville, the county seat, and not to be withdrawn, under the termsof the will, until the day Ruhannah married or attained, unmarried,her twenty-fifth year.

  Neither principal nor interest of this legacy was available atpresent. Life in the Carew family at Brookhollow was hard sledding,and bid fair to continue so indefinitely.

  * * * * *

  The life of Ruhannah's father was passed in reading or in gazingsilently from the window--a tall, sallow, bearded man with the eyes ofa dreaming martyr and the hands of an invalid--who still saw in thewinter sky, across brown, snow-powdered fields, the minarets ofTrebizond.

  In reading, in reflection, in dreaming, in spiritual acquiescence,life was passing in sombre shadows for this middle-aged man who hadbeen hopelessly crushed in Christ's service; and who had neverregretted that service, never complained, never doubted the wisdom andthe mercy of his Leader's inscrutable manoeuvres with the soldiers whoenlist to follow Him. As far as that is concerned, the ReverendWilbour Carew had been born with a believing mind; doubt of divinegoodness in Deity was impossible for him; doubt of human goodnessalmost as difficult.

  Such men have little chance in a brisk, busy, and jaunty world; butthey
prefer it should be that way with them. And of these fewbelievers in the goodness of God and man are our fools and gentlemencomposed.

  On that dreadful day, the Kurd who had mangled him so frightfully thathe recovered only to limp through life on crutches bent over him andshouted in his face:

  "Now, you Christian dog, before I cut your throat show me how thisChrist of yours can be a god!"

  "Is it necessary," replied the missionary faintly, "to light a candlein order to show a man the midday sun?"

  Which was possibly what saved his life, and the lives of his wife andchild. Your Moslem adores and understands such figurative answers. Sohe left the Reverend Mr. Carew lying half dead in the blackeneddoorway and started cheerfully after a frightened convert prayingunder the compound wall.