Books: Quill\'s Window
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George Barr McCutcheon >> Quill\'s Window
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Like all the rest of the world, she was given to understand that
her father had cruelly abandoned her mother. In her soul she had
always cherished the hope that this heartless monster might one
day stand before her, pleading and penitent, only to be turned away
with the scorn he so richly deserved. She even pictured him as rich
and powerful, possessed of everything except the one great boon
which she alone could give him,--a daughter's love. And she would
point to the top of Quill's Window and tell him that he must first
look there for forgiveness,--under the rocks where his broken-hearted
victim slept.
The truth stunned her. She was a long time in realizing that her
grandfather, whom she both loved and feared,--this grim, adoring
old giant,--not only had murdered her father but undoubtedly had
killed her mother as well. The story that David Windom had written
out and signed at the certain approach of death, read aloud in
his presence by the shocked and incredulous lawyer, and afterwards
printed word for word in the newspapers at the old man's command,
changed the whole course of life for her. In fact, her nature
underwent a sharp but subtle change. There was nothing left to her
of the old life, no thought, no purpose, no fancy; all had been
swept up in a heap and destroyed in the short space of half an
hour. Everything in her life had to be reconstructed, made-over to
suit the new order. She could no longer harbour vengeful thoughts
concerning her father, she could no longer charge him with the
wanton destruction of her mother's happiness.
The grandfather she had loved all her life assumed another shape
entirely; he was no longer the same, and never again could be the
same. She did not hate him. That was impossible. She had never seen
her parents, so she had not known the love of either. They did not
belong in her life except through the sheerest imagination. Her
grandfather was the only real thing she had had in life, and she
had adored him. He had killed two people who were as nothing to her,
but he had taken the place of both. How could she bring herself to
hate this man who had destroyed what were no more than names to
her? Father,--Mother! Two words,--that was all. And for twenty
long years he had been paying,--Oh, how he must have paid!
She recalled his reason for taking her to England when she was less
than eight years old and leaving her there until she was twelve.
She remembered that he had said he wanted her to be like her
grandmother, to grow up among her people, to absorb from them all
that had made the first Alix so strong and fine and true. And then
he had come to take her from them, back to the land of her birth,
because, he said, he wanted her to be like her mother, the second
Alix,--an American woman. She recalled his bitter antipathy to
co-educational institutions and his unyielding resolve that she should
complete her schooling in a Sacred Heart Convent. She remembered
the commotion this decision created among his neighbours. In her
presence they had assailed him with the charge that he was turning
the girl over, body and soul, to the Catholic Church, and he had
uttered in reply the never to be forgotten words:
"If I never do anything worse than that for her, I'll be damned
well satisfied with my chance of getting into heaven as soon as
the rest of you."
When David's will was read, it was found that except for a few
small bequests, his entire estate, real and personal, was left to
his granddaughter, Alix Crown, to have and to hold in perpetuity
without condition or restriction of any sort or character.
The first thing she did was to have a strong picket fence constructed
around the base of the hill leading up to Quill's Window, shutting
off all accessible avenues of approach to the summit. Following
close upon the publication of David Windom's confession, large
numbers of people were urged by morbid curiosity to visit the
strange burial-place of Edward and Alix Crown. The top of Quill's
Window became the most interesting spot in the county. Alix the
Third was likewise an object of vast interest, and the old, deserted
farmhouse on the ridge came in for its share of curiosity.
Almost immediately after the double tragedy and the birth of little
Alix, David Windom moved out of the house and took up his residence
in the riverside village of Windomville, a mile to the south.
The old house was closed, the window shutters nailed up, the doors
barred, and all signs of occupancy removed. It was said that he never
put foot inside the yard after his hasty, inexplicable departure.
The place went to rack and ruin. In course of time he built a new
and modern house nearer the village, and this was now one of the
show places of the district.
The influence of Alix the First was expressed in the modelling
of house and grounds, the result being a picturesque place with a
distinctly English atmosphere, set well back from the highway in
the heart of a grove of oaks,--a substantial house of brick with
a steep red tile roof, white window casements, and a wide brick
terrace guarded by a low ivy-draped wall. English ivy swathed the
two corners of the house facing the road, mounting high upon the
tall red chimneys at the ends. There were flower-beds below the
terrace, and off to the right there was an old-fashioned garden.
The stables were at the foot of the hill some distance to the rear
of the house.
The village of Windomville lay below, hugging the river, a relic of
the days when steamboats plied up and down the stream and railways
were remote, a sleepy, insignificant, intensely rural hamlet of
less than six hundred inhabitants. Its one claim to distinction was
the venerable but still active ferry that laboured back and forth
across the river. Of secondary importance was the ancient dock,
once upon a time the stopping place of steamboats, but now a rotten,
rickety obstruction upon which the downstream drift lodged in an
unsightly mass.
In the solid red-brick house among the oaks Alix the Third had spent
her childhood days. She was taken to England when she was eight
by her haunted grandfather, not only to receive the bringing-up of
an English child, but because David Windom's courage was breaking
down. As she grew older, the resemblance to Edward Crown became
more and more startling. She had his dark, smiling eyes; his wavy
brown hair; her very manner of speech was like his. To David Windom,
she was the re-incarnation of the youth he had slain. Out of her
eyes seemed to look the soul of Edward Crown. He could not stand it.
She became an obsession, a curious source of fascination. He could
not bear her out of his sight, and yet when she was with him, smiling
up into his eyes,--he was deathly afraid of her. There were times
when he was almost overcome by the impulse to drop to his knees
and plead for forgiveness as he looked into the clear, friendly,
questioning eyes of Edward Crown.
And her voice, her speech,--therein lay the true cause of his taking
her to England. When she came home to him, after four years, there
was no trace of Edward Crown in her voice or manner of speaking.
She was almost as English as Alix the First. But her eyes had not
changed; he was still a haunted man.
In the little graveyard on the outskirts of the village more than
a score of Windoms lie. With them lies all that was mortal of fair
Alix the First, and beside her is David Windom, the murderer.
CHAPTER III
COURTNEY THANE
"And what has become of Alix the Third?" inquired the young man,
squinting at his wristwatch and making out in the semi-darkness
that it was nearly half-past nine.
He had listened somewhat indulgently to the story of the three Alixes.
The old man, prompted and sometimes disputed by other members of
the family, had narrated in his own simple way the foregoing tale,
arriving at the end in a far more expeditious and certainly in a
less studied manner than the present chronicler employs in putting
the facts before his readers. The night was hot. He was occasionally
interrupted by various members of the little group on the front
porch of the big old farmhouse, the interruption invariably taking
the form of a conjecture concerning the significance of certain
signs ordinarily infallible in denoting the approach of rain. Heat
lightning had been playing for an hour or more in the gloomy west;
a tree-toad in a nearby elm was prophesying thunder in unmelodious
song: night-birds fluttered restlessly among the lofty branches;
widely separated whiffs of a freshening wind came around the corner
of the house. All of these had a barometric meaning to the wistful
group. There was a thunderstorm on the way. It was sure to come
before morning. The prayers inaugurated a month ago were at last
to be answered.
As old man Brown drily remarked: "There's one satisfaction about
prayin' for rain. If you keep at it long enough, you're bound to
get what you're askin' for. Works the same way when you're prayin'
for it to stop rainin'. My grandfather once prayed for a solid two
months before he got rain, and then, by gosh, he had to pray for
nearly three weeks to get it to quit."
Supper over, the young man had reminded his venerable angling
companion of his promise to relate the history of Quill's Window.
Old Caleb Brown was the father of Mrs. Vick,--Lucinda Vick, wife
of the farmer in whose house the young man was spending a month as
a boarder.
The group on the porch included Amos Vick, anxious, preoccupied,
and interested only in the prospect of rain; his daughter Rosabel,
aged eighteen, a very pretty and vivacious girl, interested only
in the young man from the far-off, mysterious city in the East; his
son Caleb, a rugged youth of nineteen; Mrs. Vick, and a neighbour
named White, who had come over for the sole purpose of finding out
just what Amos Vick thought about the weather. Two dogs lay panting
on the dry grass at the foot of the steps.
"Oh, she's living over there in the Windom house," said Mrs. Vick.
"Sort of running the place," explained Mr. Brown, a trace of irony
in his voice.
"Well," put in Amos Vick, speaking for the first time in many minutes,
"she's got a lot of sense, that girl has. She may be letting on
that she's running the farm, but she ain't, you bet. That's where
she's smart. She's got sense enough to know she don't know anything
about running a farm, and while she puts on a lot of airs and acts
kind of important like, the real truth is she leaves everything to
old Jim Bagley. I guess you don't know who Jim Bagley is, do you,
Courtney?"
"I can't say that I do," replied the young man.
"Well, he's about the slickest citizen you ever saw. From what
father here says about your granddad, he must have been a purty
hard customer to deal with, but, by ginger, if he was any worse
than Jim Bagley in driving a bargain, I'm glad he died as long ago
as he did."
"You're just sore, Amos," said his wife, "because Mr. Bagley got
the best of you in that hog deal three years ago."
"Oh, Lord, ain't you ever going to get tired of throwin' that up
to me?" groaned Mr. Vick. "I never mention Jim Bagley's name but
what you up and say something about them hogs. Now, as a matter of
fact, them hogs--"
"For goodness sake, Pa, you're not going to tell Mr. Thane about
that hog business, are you?" cried Rosabel.
"Well, when your Ma begins to insinuate that I got the worst of--"
"I don't say that you got the worst of it, Amos," interrupted Mrs.
Vick good-humouredly. "I only say that he got the best of it."
"Well, if that don't come to the same--"
"Looks to me, Amos, like we'd get her good and plenty before mornin',"
broke in Mr. White. He was referring to the weather. "That ain't
all heat lightnin' over there. Seems to me I heard a little thunder
just now."
"Alix Crown is away a good part of the time, Courtney," said Mrs.
Vick, taking up the thread where it had been severed by recrimination.
"All through the war,--long before we went in,--she was up in town
working for the Belgiums, and then, when we did go in, she went
East some'eres to learn how to be a nurse or drive an ambulance or
something,--New York, I believe. And as for money, she contributed
quite a bit--how much do they say it was, Amos?"
"Well, all I know is that Mary Simmons says she gave ten thousand
dollars and Josie Fiddler says it was three hundred,--so you can
choose between 'em."
"She did her share, all right," said young Caleb defensively.
"That's more'n a lot of people around here did."
"Gale's in love with her, Mr. Thane," explained Rosabel. "She's
five years older than he is, and don't know he's on earth."
"Aw, cut that out," growled Caleb.
"Is she good-looking?" inquired Courtney Thane.
"I don't like 'em quite as tall as she is," said Mr. White.
"She's got a good pair of legs," said old Caleb Brown, shifting
his cigar with his tongue.
"We're not talking about horses, father," said Mrs. Vick sharply.
"Who said we was?" demanded old Caleb.
"Most people think she's good-looking," said Rosabel, somewhat
grudgingly. "And she isn't any taller than I am, Mr. White."
"Well, you ain't no dwarft, Rosie," exclaimed Farmer White, with a
brave laugh. "You must be five foot seven or eight, but you ain't
skinny like she is. She'd ought to weigh about a hunderd and sixty,
for her height, and I'll bet she don't weigh more'n a hunderd and
thirty."
"I wouldn't call that skinny," remarked Courtney.
"She wears these here new-fangled britches when she's on horseback,"
said old Caleb, justifying his observation. "Rides straddle, like
a man. You can't help seeing what kind of--"
"That will do, Pa," broke in his wife. "It's no crime for a woman
to wear pants when she's riding, although I must say I don't think
it's very modest. I never rode any way except side-saddle,--and
neither has Rosabel. I've brought her up--"
"Don't you be too sure of that, Ma," interrupted young Caleb
maliciously.
"I never did it but once, and you know it, Cale Vick," cried Rosabel,
blushing violently.
The subject was abruptly changed by Mr. White.
"Well, I guess I'll be moseyin' along home, Amos. That certainly
did sound like thunder, didn't it? And that tree-toad has stopped
signallin',--that's a sure sign. Like as not I'll get caught in
the rain if I don't,--what say, Lucindy?"
"Do you want an umberell, Steve?"
"I should say not! What do you want me to do? Scare the rain off?
No, sir! Rain's the funniest thing in the world. If it sees you
got an umberell it won't come within a hunderd miles of you. That's
why I got my Sunday clothes on, and my new straw hat. Sometimes
that'll bring rain out of a clear sky,--that an' a Sunday-school
picnic. It's a pity we couldn't have got up a Sunday-school
picnic,--but then, of course, that wouldn't have done any good.
You can't fool a rainstorm. So long, Amos. Night, everybody. Night,
Courtney. As I was sayin' awhile ago, I used to go to school with
your pa when him an' me was little shavers,--up yonder at the old
Kennedy schoolhouse. Fifty odd years ago. Seems like yesterday.
How old did you say you was?"
"Twenty-eight, Mr. White."
"And your pa's been dead--how long did you say?"
"He died when I was twenty-two."
"Funny your ma didn't bring him out here and bury him 'longside his
father and all the rest of 'em up in the family burying-ground,"
was Mr. White's concluding observation as he ambled off down the
gravel walk to the front gate.
"I wish you'd brought your croix de guerre along with you, Mr.
Thane," said young Caleb, his eyes gleaming in the faint light
from the open door. "I guess I don't pronounce it as it ought to
be. I'm not much of a hand at French."
"You came pretty close to it," said Thane, with a smile. "You see,
Cale, it's the sort of thing one puts away in a safe place. That's
why I left it in New York. Mother likes to look at it occasionally.
Mothers are queer creatures, you know. They like to be reminded of
the good things their sons have done. It helps 'em to forget the
bad things, I suppose."
"You're always joking," pouted Rosabel, leaning forward, ardour
in her wide, young eyes. "If I was a boy and had been in the war,
I'd never stop talking about it."
"And I'd have been in it, too, if pa hadn't up and told 'em I was
only a little more than fifteen," said Cale, glowering at his father
in the darkness.
"You mustn't blame your pa, Cale," rebuked his mother. "He knows
what a soldier's life is better than you do. He was down in that
camp at Chattanooga during the Spanish War, and almost died of
typhoid, Courtney. And when I think of the way our boys died by
the millions of the flu, I--well, I just know you would have died
of it, sonny, and I wouldn't have had any cross or medal to look
at, and--and--"
"Don't begin cryin', Lucindy," broke in old Caleb hastily. "He didn't
die of the flu, so what's the sense of worryin' about it now? He
didn't even ketch it, and gosh knows, the whole blamed country was
full of it that winter."
"Well," began Mrs. Vick defensively, and then compressed her lips
in silence.
"I think it was perfectly wonderful of you, Mr. Thane, to go over
to France and fight in the American Ambulance so long before we
went into the war." This from the adoring Rosabel. "I wish you'd
tell us more about your experiences. They must have been terrible.
You never talk about them, though. I think the real heroes were the
fellows who went over when you did,--when you didn't really have
to, because America wasn't in it."
"The American Ambulance wasn't over there to fight, you know,"
explained Courtney.
"What did you get the cross for if you weren't fighting?" demanded
young Cale.
"For doing what a whole lot of other fellows did,--simply going
out and getting a wounded man or two in No-Man's Land. We didn't
think much about it at the time."
"Was it very dangerous?" asked Rosabel.
"I suppose it was,--more or less so," replied Thane indifferently.
He even yawned. "I'd rather talk about Alix the Third, if it's all
the same to you. Is she light or dark?"
"She's a brunette," said Rosabel shortly. "All except her eyes.
They're blue. How long were you up at the front, Mr. Thane?"
"Oh, quite a while,--several months, in fact. At first we were in
a place where there wasn't much fighting. Just before the first
big Verdun drive we were transferred to that sector, and then we
saw a lot of action."
"Some battle, wasn't it?" exclaimed young Cale, a thrill in his
voice.
"Certainly was," said Courtney. "We used to work forty-eight hours
at a stretch, taking 'em back by the thousands."
"How near did the shells ever come to you?"
"Oh, sometimes as close as twenty or thirty feet. I remember one
that dropped in the road about fifty feet ahead of my car, and
before I could stop we ran plunk into the hole it made and upset.
I suppose the Windom estate must be a pretty big one, isn't it,
Mr. Vick?"
"Taking everything into consideration, it amounts to nearly a million
dollars. David Windom had quite a bit of property up in the city,
aside from his farm, and he owned a big ranch out in Texas. The
grain elevator in Windomville belonged to him,--still belongs to
Alix Crown,--and there's a three mile railroad connecting with the
main line over at Smith's Siding. Every foot of it is on his land.
He built the railroad about twenty year ago, and the elevator,
too,--out of spite, they say, for the men that run the elevator at
Hawkins a little further up the road. Hawkins is the place where
his daughter and Edward Crown got off the train the night of the
murder."
"And this young girl owns all of it,--farms, ranch, railroad and
everything?"
"Every cent's worth of it is her'n. There ain't a sign of a mortgage
on any of it, either. It's as clear as a blank sheet of writin'
paper."
"When was it you were gassed, Mr. Thane?" inquired young Caleb.
"Oh, that was when I was in the air service,--only a few weeks
before the armistice."
"You left your wings at home, too, I suppose?"
"Yes. Mother likes to look at the only wings I'll probably ever
have,--now or hereafter."
"How does it come, Court, that you went into the British air corpse,
'stead of in the U. S. A.?" inquired old Caleb.
"I joined the Royal Flying Corps, Mr. Brown, because the Americans
wouldn't have me," replied Thane tersely. "I tried to get in, but
they wouldn't pass me. Said I had a weak heart and a whole lot
of rubbish like that. It's no wonder the American Air Service was
punk. I went over to Toronto and they took me like a shot in the
Royal British. They weren't so blamed finicky and old womanish.
All they asked for in an applicant was any kind of a heart at all
so long as it was with the cause. I don't suppose I ought to say
it, but the American Air Service was a joke."
"I hope you ain't turning British in your feelings, Court," remarked
Amos Vick. "It's purty difficult to be both, you know,--English
and Yankee."
"I'm American through and through, Mr. Vick, even though I did
serve under the British flag till I was gassed and invalided out."
"Affects the lungs, don't it?" inquired old Caleb.
"I don't like to talk about it, Mr. Brown. I'm trying to forget
what hell was like. I was in hospital for four months. It took a
lot more nerve to draw a breath then than it did to fly over the
German lines with the Boches popping away from all sides. I didn't
mind the wounds I sustained,--but the gas! Gee, it was horrible."
"Your ma said in her letter to me that you'd had pneumonia twice
since you got back," said Mrs. Vick. "Was that due to the gas?"
"I suppose so. They thought I had tuberculosis for awhile, you
see. Then, this spring, I had to go and have a bout with typhoid.
I ought to be dead, with all I've had,--but here I am, alive and
happy, and if you keep on feeding me as you have been for the past
three days, I'll live forever."
"You mustn't overdo, Courtney," warned the farmer's wife. "Your ma
sent you out here to get well, and I feel a kind of responsibility
for you. I guess it's about time you was off to bed. Come on, Amos.
It isn't going to bring rain any sooner for you to be setting out
here watching for it."
Old Caleb had his say. "I suppose it was all right for you to serve
with the British, Court, but if you'd waited a little while longer
you might have carried a gun over there under the Stars and Stripes.
But, as you say, you couldn't bear to wait. I give you credit for
it. I'm derned glad to see one member of the Thane family that had
the nerve to volunteer. At the time of the Civil War your grandpa
was what we call a slacker in these days. He hired a feller to go
in his place, and when that feller was killed and a second call
for volunteers come up, dogged if he didn't up and hire another
one. One of your grandpa's brothers skipped off to Canada so's he
wouldn't have to serve, and the other,--his name was George Washington
Thane, by the way,--accidentally shot two of his fingers off while
his company was in camp down at Crawfordsville, gettin' ready to
go down and meet Morgan's Riders,--and that let him out. I admit
it takes right smart of courage to accidentally shoot your fingers
off, specially when nobody is lookin', but at any rate he had a
uniform on when he done it. Course, there wasn't any wars during
your pa's day, so I don't know how he would have acted. He wasn't
much of a feller for fightin', though,--I remember that. I mean fist
fightin'. I'm glad to know you don't take after your granddad. I
never had any use for a coward, and that's why I'm proud to shake
hands with you, my boy. There was a derned bad streak in your family
back in your granddad's day, and it certainly is good to see that
you have wiped it out. It don't always happen so. Yeller streaks
are purty hard to wipe out. Takes more than two generations to do
it as a rule. I'm happy to know you ain't gun shy."
The young man laughed. "I don't mind telling you, Mr. Brown, that
I never went into action without being scared half out of my boots.
But I wasn't alone in that, you see. I never knew a man over there
who wasn't scared when he went over the top. He went, just the
same,--and that's what I call courage."
"So do I," cried Rosabel.
"Did you ever know for sure whether you got a German?" asked the
intense young Caleb. "I mean,--did you ever KILL one?"
"That's pretty hard to say, Cale. We never knew, you see,--we
fellows up in the clouds. I was in a bombing machine. I'd hate to
think that we WASTED any bombs."
"Come now,--all of you,--off to bed," interposed Mrs. Vick. "I
don't want to hear any more, Courtney. I wouldn't sleep a wink."
"Strikin' ten," said Amos, arising from his rocking-chair and
turning it upside down at the back of the porch.
"Don't do that, Amos," protested old Caleb. "It'll NEVER rain if
you--Why, dog-gone it, ain't you learned that it's bad luck to turn
a chair bottom-side up when rain's needed? Turn it right-side up
and put it right out here in front again where the rain can get at
it. Nothin' tickles the weather more'n a chance to spoil something.
That's right. Now we c'n go to bed. Better leave them cushions on
the steps too, Rosie."
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