第61章 CHAPTER XII(5)

An honourable man is an honourable man,and a liar is a liar;both are born and not made.One cannot change to the other any more than that same old leopard can change its spots.After a man tells a woman the first untruth of that sort,the others come piling thick,fast,and mountain high.The desolation they bring in their wake overshadows anything I have suffered completely.If he had lived six months more I should have known him for what he was born to be.It was in the blood of him.His father and grandfather before him were fiddling,dancing people;but I was certain of him.I thought we could leave Ohio and come out here alone,and I could so love him and interest him in his work,that he would be a man.Of all the fool,fruitless jobs,making anything of a creature that begins by deceiving her,is the foolest a sane woman ever undertook.

I am more than sorry you and Margaret didn't see your way clear to tell me long ago.I'd have found it out in a few more months if he had lived,and I wouldn't have borne it a day.The man who breaks his vows to me once,doesn't get the second chance.I give truth and honour.

I have a right to ask it in return.I am glad I understand at last.Now,if Elnora will forgive me,we will take a new start and see what we can make out of what is left of life.

If she won't,then it will be my time to learn what suffering really means.""But she will,"said Wesley."She must!She can't help it when things are explained.""I notice she isn't hurrying any about coming home.

Do you know where she is or what she is doing?""I do not.But likely she will be along soon.I must go help Billy with the night work.Good-bye,Katharine.

Thank the Lord you have come to yourself at last!"They shook hands and Wesley went down the road while Mrs.Comstock entered the cabin.She could not swallow food.

She stood in the back door watching the sky for moths,but they did not seem to be very numerous.Her spirits sank and she breathed unevenly.Then she heard the front screen.She reached the middle door as Elnora touched the foot of the stairs.

"Hurry,and get ready,Elnora,"she said."Your supper is almost spoiled now."Elnora closed the stair door behind her,and for the first time in her life,threw the heavy lever which barred out anyone from down stairs.Mrs.Comstock heard the thud,and knew what it meant.She reeled slightly and caught the doorpost for support.For a few minutes she clung there,then sank to the nearest chair.After a long time she arose and stumbling half blindly,she put the food in the cupboard and covered the table.She took the lamp in one hand,the butter in the other,and started to the spring house.Something brushed close by her face,and she looked just in time to see a winged creature rise above the cabin and sail away.

"That was a night bird,"she muttered.As she stopped to set the butter in the water,came another thought.

"Perhaps it was a moth!"Mrs.Comstock dropped the butter and hurried out with the lamp;she held it high above her head and waited until her arms ached.

Small insects of night gathered,and at last a little dusty miller,but nothing came of any size.

"I must go where they are,if I get them,"muttered Mrs.Comstock.

She went to the barn after the stout pair of high boots she used in feeding stock in deep snow.Throwing these beside the back door she climbed to the loft over the spring house,and hunted an old lard oil lantern and one of first manufacture for oil.Both these she cleaned and filled.

She listened until everything up stairs had been still for over half an hour.By that time it was past eleven o'clock.

Then she took the lantern from the kitchen,the two old ones,a handful of matches,a ball of twine,and went from the cabin,softly closing the door.

Sitting on the back steps,she put on the boots,and then stood gazing into the perfumed June night,first in the direction of the woods on her land,then toward the Limberlost.

Its outline was so dark and forbidding she shuddered and went down the garden,following the path toward the woods,but as she neared the pool her knees wavered and her courage fled.The knowledge that in her soul she was now glad Robert Comstock was at the bottom of it made a coward of her,who fearlessly had mourned him there,nights untold.She could not go on.She skirted the back of the garden,crossed a field,and came out on the road.Soon she reached the Limberlost.She hunted until she found the old trail,then followed it stumbling over logs and through clinging vines and grasses.

The heavy boots clumped on her feet,overhanging branches whipped her face and pulled her hair.But her eyes were on the sky as she went straining into the night,hoping to find signs of a living creature on wing.

By and by she began to see the wavering flight of something she thought near the right size.She had no idea where she was,but she stopped,lighted a lantern and hung it as high as she could reach.A little distance away she placed the second and then the third.The objects came nearer and sick with disappointment she saw that they were bats.Crouching in the damp swamp grasses,without a thought of snakes or venomous insects,she waited,her eyes roving from lantern to lantern.Once she thought a creature of high flight dropped near the lard oil light,so she arose breathlessly waiting,but either it passed or it was an illusion.She glanced at the old lantern,then at the new,and was on her feet in an instant creeping close.

Something large as a small bird was fluttering around.

Mrs.Comstock began to perspire,while her hand shook wildly.

Closer she crept and just as she reached for it,something similar swept past and both flew away together.

Mrs.Comstock set her teeth and stood shivering.For a long time the locusts rasped,the whip-poor-wills cried and a steady hum of night life throbbed in her ears.Away in the sky she saw something coming when it was no larger than a falling leaf.Straight toward the light it flew.

Mrs.Comstock began to pray aloud.

"This way,O Lord!Make it come this way!Please!

O Lord,send it lower!"