Shifting sands

Front matter

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Prologue

Two hundred miles from any sea — yet the sea-sand drifts and shifts as silently and ceaselessly here to-day as it has drifted and shifted through all the millions of years since the last great upheaval of this atom of a world prisoned the trilobites in the outcropping limestone of the neighbouring pasture, and, rolling back great waters, stranded this inland sand-dune.

Sand, sand, sand, white, fine, shifting sea-sand looking from far like a livid welt in the rock-broken face of the hills; sand that blowing sifts with a disturbing, mysterious whisper not to be heard by dulled ears ; sand that will not be held by any boundaries, but softly creeps through, mounts over every man-set barrier, — sea-sand shifting and drifting two hundred miles from any sea.

The sun of April had just set — that sun which at noontide hints of summer nearing, yet, as day wanes, remembers still the winter past. The sky above the horizon shone palely yellow, coldly primrose, shading up through faint clear green to tender grey. The country that lay below this quiet arch was a farming

i land, hardly redeemed from forest half a century ago, a land of wide sweeps, of windy, rounded hills and open valleys, dotted with white farmhouses and red barns; a land whose boast and beauty were its single stately, symmetrical elms and its wide flowing “creek” that, rising thirty miles distant in the North woods, rolled on to join the Mohawk River. An Indian land this had been, and the county now bore an Indian name.

“What,” thought Robert Dimmock, as he crossed the sand, his back to the widespread country and the evening sky, “had those early red men thought of this inland dune? How had they explained it?”

He stopped and turned back to say the words to Mary, his wife.

She was standing looking out across the farmland to the sunset. Something in her attitude stopped the commonplace before it reached his lips. Something about the stillness of her slender figure, there in the twilight facing the west, stirred him deeply to sadness.

It was a feeling without any apparent logical cause, yet it laid a hand on his heartstrings and lent a sharp note of anxiety to his voice.

“Mary!”

“Yes,” she turned slowly, looking at him from where she stood, a pace of sand between them.

He searched her face avidly for reassurance against the moment’s intolerable pain. Were there shadows beneath her eyes? Was she paler than she 2 should be? Had her cheek lost its delicate curve — or was it all some trick of the evening light?

Startled, their eyes questioned each other.

“What is it?” The question leaped from both. But she answered it, taking a step to him.

“It’s this place, I think. It always — troubles me.”

“ I know,” he said.

They walked on together, the sand-dune rising in billows to their right, falling away gradually to their left. Their feet sank deep at every step.

“ It frightens me,” Mary declared. “ I feel just as I used to when I was a child in the dark in a strange room at night. I want to shut my eyes and run. Is n’t it silly, Robert?”

He felt for her hand and covered it with his own. “You are catching my moods,” he said. They walked on in silence, hand in hand ; then he spoke again. “ It drifts. See? Up there it has smothered a tree, there it has lost a boundary — the fence is buried. Here we follow a track — it was a road a year ago.”

“You mean that it is resistless, that’s why I’m afraid?”

“As resistless as the law of change. All shifts — all changes — law, custom, convention — nothing is stable under the sun.” His voice was cold and even.

“You, a clergyman, Robert, say this?” Her answering tone was warm with challenge.

“Yes, when I am honest with myself. But why 3 fear change? Change is not chance. There’s a pattern traced by the wind on the shifting sand.”

She shiverecj. “ I want my pattern in stone! This is sinister. It will be sifting noiselessly over another road made vainly by some other man when we and our child — our Jean — yes, and her children and theirs — are dead and gone.”

“Poor Mary!”

“ Not poor, as long as you understand. There can be no fear really as long as I have you. But to be alone — how could one bear it? You know what I mean. All the outside pressing in and terror just waiting to swoop down and clutch, the terror of all that we accept as commonplace — day, night, sky, earth, ourselves — life — death. Just the glimpse I seem to get at moments terrifies me. Then I cling to you with my soul. In all the shifting there is love — ”

“And God.”

“The same — and, clinging, I am safe. Love brings a terror, an awareness, but the power to cast it out. See! The sand has drifted here since we crossed it two hours ago!”

“The wind has risen.”

“The wind, which is God. So God makes change and saves from change, Robert. Stop a minute. I am out of breath.”

The two stood close together, Mary’s slight form pressed against her husband’s tall, spare figure, his arm about her.

“Sand left by an ocean rolled back aeons ago.

How it must have roared, Mary, sucked away suddenly/’

She nodded. “What did you read to me the other night? That our nineteen hundred years is as two seconds’ span in the twenty-four-hour day since creation? And this sand has been shifting and drifting ever since.”

“You are shivering. It’s the wind. You are cold. Beena will be anxious if I keep you out too late. We ’re a long way from home. Come.”

“I know, but — ” she lingered. “Oh, hold me close for a moment. No, I’m not crying. There!” She pushed him away, with a laughing break in her gentle voice. “I am good for the rest of the way. Here’s the birch wood at last. And the moon, Robert! See it through the trees ! ”

Side by side Robert Dimmock and Mary his wife followed the track in the moonlight, through the white birches, over the hill and out of sight.

Yet behind them the sea-sand, lifted by the rising wind, still drifted and shifted silently and ceaselessly over the sand-dunes.

Chapter I

The table at the Unitarian parsonage was laid for breakfast. Two places to-day, where there had been three. Otherwise all was unchanged.

The sun, through the high, many-paned windows, slanted, as usual, upon the white linen, upon the ° ‘acorn” silver tea-set, upon the thin old silver spoons, upon the clear blue and white of Canton china, which together represented no modern attempt at aesthetic effect, but a dead woman’s unconscious love of the gracious things in life.

For she who had treasured these things, to the wonder of her neighbours in this village of Tacitus, in northern New York, had left them all. Mary Dimmock, the minister’s wife, was dead and buried, the funeral but yesterday. Yet the house, under the capable management of the one old servant Beena, had already reassumed its outward peace after the crowded, hushed excitement of the past four days.

Beena had been up since dawn. She came in now from the kitchen, a tall, gaunt, grizzle-haired Scotchwoman, gravely stepping. She looked at the tall clock, ticking portentously, whose hands pointed to nine ; flicked a speck of dust from its tall mahogany case, glanced with a stiff face at the table laid for two ; then with hands tightly folded under her black apron returned to her waiting in the kitchen. Poor 6 man — let him sleep the heavy sleep of sorrow and exhaustion — and the child too.

But the child was not sleeping; wrapped in the folds of the dining-room curtain she had heard Beena come and go. She had slipped down some time before. She had stood for long moments in the hall, with her hand on the knob of the dining-room door, her small face set, before she had entered bravely. Then the commonplace detail of the table had struck sharply upon her consciousness. Her mother? There was no place for her. She was gone — gone. A swelling wave of grief had rushed over the child. She had stood still, bracing herself to meet it, until she heard Beena’s step approaching. Then, without reasoning, she had blindly sought to hide herself.

Now that Beena had gone, she still stood shivering, her thin little body crisped with dread of all that the table meant to her. For endless weeks — all dreary spaces of time — she must sit there alone, facing her father. Her imagination magnified the ordeal of every day, of every meal. A sob shook her. What could she say to him? Would he try to talk to her, or would he bring a book and read, as he had on the rare occasions of her mother’s absence? That would be better if he brought a book. The hope calmed her.

She pulled aside the curtain and looked out. But at the glimpse of the room, her trouble returned. She would have to talk. Her mother always did and 7 he liked it. What should she say? She strained her ears for his step, searching for her words. At any moment he might come. He might now be on the stair — and she would say —

“You’re down, child,” Beena said, poking her head in from the kitchen again and seeing her. “What are you doing there? Have you heard the minister movin’? I knocked twice, but he gave me no answer, so I let him sleep.”

“No, I have not heard my father.” The child answered precisely, stepping out from the curtain folds. “Shall I go up and call him?”

Beena glanced again at the clock, and Jean’s eyes followed hers. “We’ll give him five minutes more,” the woman said, and withdrew.

The child remained at the window, her hands twisting together, her eyes still on the clock. “ Beena shan’t see me cry,” she whispered fiercely. “ No one shall see me cry.” She paused, her hands still. “You hear, No one!” She flung the assurance around the room, from the clock to the silver candlesticks on the high white mantel-shelf, to the tiny figures that posed upon the blue jar, full of paper spills, to the familiar shapes of cherished porcelain in the diamond -paned corner cupboard, to the old prints in their worn gilt frames upon the wall.

All these things had, like her, known her mother’s gentle touch; must miss her. She had hidden from Beena, but here were things that understood. She advanced into the room. “You all understand,” she 8 said breathlessly. “ And you know that I know that you do. Things understand more than people lots of times. People are more wooden than things lots of times. Gardens understand and trees — and I am going out now.”

Her voice was brave. She opened the door into the broad hall which ran through the house from front to back. Here, too, sympathy seemed to her to vibrate in the air. “The whole house knows and is sorry,” she thought.

As she quickly opened the back door and stepped into the pale April sunshine, her mind was busy with this idea, twisting it and turning it and wringing consolation from it. “Everything knows,” she decided, “ and oh, they’ll be sorry when she does n’t come again. They’ll wonder, maybe, why she does n’t come. But the big trees will whisper and the little trees will hear and tell the grass and the flowers till every littlest thing will know. At least, they do know now and they’re sorry, and they say if I’ll come out to them, she’ll be here to help.”

She went down the path, talking in a monotonous undertone at random, soothing herself with her imaginings. In the borders green shoots were piercing the mould. She saw them and stopped. She crouched on her heels and touched them softly. Brave little things from the long winter dark underground — the dark underground — she rested for an instant motionless, gazing at them, then with a shudder drew away and rose.

’ “Jean!” Beena’s voice rang sharply. “Jeanie!”

! Jean turned. Beena was coming ponderously toward her.

“Your father’s not in his room, nor anywhere in the house. Have you seen him?”

The child’s eyes caught the woman’s look of apprehension. For a moment they returned each other’s gaze. The child was the first to speak.

“ I have n’t seen him.”

Beena paused. “Well,” she said. “Never mind. Come to breakfast. Perhaps he’s already back.”

Jean followed, without comment, to the house. She knew that he was not back and that Beena did not believe that he was. As they reached the door she paused with a certain dignity. “Beena,” she said firmly, “we must not say anything to anybody even if we are frightened — yet. Papa would not like it. If he does n’t come, we will go and tell Dr. Erskine. He is papa’s friend.”

Before Beena could answer, the sound of the knocker, hesitatingly lifted, sounded at the other end of the hall.

With foreboding Beena pushed Jean into the dining-room. “Stay there,” she said.

The knocking was repeated, more boldly now. She walked to the front door, wiped her hands nervously on her black apron, and turned the brass knob.

In the porch stood two men. Apology strove with alarm in their faces. Beena bent a stern gaze upon them. It must, indeed, be something of imporio tance which should bring this oddly consorted pair to the door of the Unitarian parsonage.

1 ‘Well?” Beena’s voice was harshly imperative.

Mr. Donner, who was a farmer, and the taller of the two men, fell back a step, as if in deference to his companion’s rusty black coat and wide-brimmed black hat.

The Welsh preacher, Owen Owens by name, braced his thin figure, and gravely removed the hat from his large head. His face had the look of stale cream cheese, his hair was lank and black, but his thin-lipped mouth was clever and his bulging brow gave evidence of thought. He swallowed hard, then cleared his throat.

“Woman,” he said solemnly, speaking in a throaty Welsh accent, “the hand of God has fallen. The meenister is dead. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

“ Dead ! ” Beena repeated the words mechanically. Her hands fell heavily at her sides, yet in her strong face there was no surprise. She had felt the approach of calamity. “Dead!” She closed the door carefully behind her and stepped out to them. “Dead!” she said a third time.

V “Murdered, ma’am.” The farmer spoke. “Struck on the head with a spade or some such thing out to the graveyard.”

“By the side of her gr-r-ave.” The preacher’s throaty roll gave to the word a deep significance. “By the side of her grave.”

ii

Beena withdrew herself. She could bear no familiarity of sympathy.

“ Murdered? ” she repeated, addressing the farmer, “out at the graveyard?” Her tone demanded explanation.

With a glance at the preacher the farmer stepped awkwardly nearer, and yet, with deference, spoke behind his raised hand.

At his whispered words the woman recoiled.

“I’ve alius said the graveyard’s too far from the village,” the farmer declared aloud. “He went out to visit her grave, finds ’em there or they come and findin’ him there ’s a struggle and they make an end of him. Plain as day. As I was cornin’ by into town an hour ago, I see the cemetery gate open. I got down to shut it an’ glanced in and see’d somethin’ dark lyin’ there. It was him. I’ve alius said the graveyard’s a lonesome place.”

Horror held Beena’s slow mind. She felt for the doorknob uncertainly.

The preacher motioned the farmer to silence, and himself continued gently. “ Brother Donner met me just as he got to your door. We went first across the road.” He motioned with his head to the big square stone house which stood opposite retired in its grove of elms. “To Dr. Erskine’s. As he is a prominent member of the congregation and a friend of the deceased, it seemed more fitting that he should break the news. But Miss Roxina said she could not see her way to wake him. He had been up all night 12 with a case and is worn out. She said she ’d tell him as soon as he was up and he ’d come across — Now, if there is anything more we can do for you — any one else — •”

Beena shook her head. “I must go in,” she said dully. 4 ‘ They ’ll be bringin’ him and there ’s the child

The farmer hitched himself up in his boots. “ ‘There ain’t no hurry,” he said kindly. “ Coroner’s gone fishin’ up the creek. It’ll be an hour or two ’fore we can get an inquest. Good-day, ma’am. Sorry to bring bad news. As we was a-sayin’, it’s rough on the kid.”

He turned away. The preacher hesitated. “ I am sorry he's gone,” he said in a deep voice. “Though the Lord’s will be done. We never had much to say to one another, but Brother Dimmock was a fair man.” He turned and followed the farmer down the steps of the porch, down the short strip of beaten graveled path, and down the stone steps that led to the broad, grass-bound village street.

Motionless, Beena watched them go. With an effort she pulled herself round, opened the house door and stood on the threshold surveying the hall. The faded, large-patterned scarlet-and-green Brussels carpet was speckless. Against the left wall, between the doors to the sitting-room and dining-room, a huge black horsehair sofa stood stiffly, while against the right wall, between the two doors that led to the narrow staircase and to the parlour, stood a slender-legged mahogany table.

With rigid face Beena took careful note of all, then laid her hand on the door of the seldom-used “best room” and looked in. It, too, was in perfect order, but the blinds must again be opened, the furniture pushed aside, all Mary Dimmock’s treasured possessions disclosed to the curious eyes of the village. She closed the door sharply. Yes — again the hall would be muddied by many feet, the table would hold a motley array of hats, and people would stare.

She had forgotten the child in her unreasoning bitterness against the people of Tacitus, against the men who had come, against the man who was dead. Now the thought of the ordeal before her drew tight lines of pain about her mouth. She walked rigidly to the dining-room door, and even as Jean had waited, not daring to enter, so Beena waited now. But it had to be done. She slowly opened the door. Jean stood just within. She looked up.

“You need n’t tell me,” she said blankly. “ I know. Papa is dead.”

Fighting the strong reticence of years, Beena put out her hand to the child, but with a wild sob Jean dashed by her out of the room and out of the house. She rushed through the garden, across the rough lawn to a group of tall hemlock trees. There, parting the low, sweeping branches, she pushed through and threw herself face downward on the shiny carpet within. ;

“Help me, help me, help me,” she sobbed. “I did n’t want to see him, and now he’ll never come back; oh, father, I did love you. I did love you. Oh, mother, tell him that I loved him — oh, mother — mother — mother — ”

Chapter II

“S’pose we had better go and tell the news at the store,” Mr. Donner said, as he and the preacher turned along the quiet village street towards the one centre of life, the square. He spoke in a hushed voice, conscious that he was the bearer of tidings to shock and startle the little community.

The preacher, holding his hat in one hand, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

“You don’t need me for that, Brother Donner,” he said in his thick voice. “You can get on now, and there’s a bit o’ delicate work waiting in my shop this meenit — a fine timepiece it is, waitin’ to be returned to the judge’s wife in Attica.” He spoke the names quite simply. Every one knew that Owen Owens’s skill was even more widely known than in that neighbouring city, and that strange and beautiful things found their way to his hands for restoration and repair. “I’ve dawdled long enough thro’ respect to the meenister,” he went on soberly, “so I ’ll just be goin’ on. But I ’m thinking what will the doctor say?”

“You know your own business,” Mr. Donner agreed. “And we can’t do much without the doctor, that’s a fact.”

The two men nodded and the preacher walked on across the square, past the big green watering- 16 trough and down by the post-office, while the farmer stood still, arrested by a woman’s voice which spoke over the fence at his side.

“What’s that I heard? What about the minister? What’s the matter? You do look solemn.”

As she spoke, Mrs. Beebe opened her gate and appeared, broom in hand. “What is it?” she asked crisply.

The farmer nodded awkwardly, then through fear of the little woman’s compelling gaze blurted out the truth.

No horror could daunt Maria Beebe.

“Doctor know?” she snapped. “No?” She turned decisively, whisking off her apron as she ran up the path. “I am going straight to the parsonage,” she called back.,

“Trust you for getting in yer sharp nose where ’t isn’t wanted,” the farmer grumbled. “Wish I hadn’t told her,” he thought. “Still, she’d ’a’ known in a minute. Sam would run acrost with the news. Every bit o’ news Sam gits to the store is grist fer her mill. There he is now.”

The farmer crossed the road and stolidly ascended the unpainted wooden steps which led up to the door of the general store. Sam Beebe stood on the threshold, chewing a toothpick, his hands in his pockets and his slouching figure framed between the heterogeneous collection of objects exposed in the two shop windows. Even his laziness was galvanised into energy by the news.

“ What’s the doctor say?” he demanded. “What had we better do? Do you hear this?” He turned into the store and reported the news to two or three men within. And at once, and wherever it was received in Tacitus that day, the first question that inevitably came was “What does the doctor say? Does the doctor know? What does the doctor think?” For in Tacitus, John Erskine, the doctor, was the head of the community. He held the place not so much by virtue of inheritance as by personal force. It no longer suffices in these quiet villages for a man to be doctor, minister, or lawyer in order to command respect. He must have more than the professional tag to which alone fifty years ago his fellow citizens gladly raised the hat.

It was not because John Erskine lived in the old house of his fathers, not because he had an education, that Tacitus turned to him. It was that, born among them, understanding them, he unconsciously embodied to them an ideal of manliness which they admired and understood.

Their fathers had known his fathers ; yet when he had returned from abroad at his father’s death, after an absence of ten years in school, college, and postgraduate study, to take the old doctor’s practice, they had held their sympathy in abeyance until he had won their confidence. He himself, fresh from a professional triumph in Paris, had acknowledged to himself that Tacitus would not take him on faith, and respecting them for it, he had set himself to the 18 task of winning them — of proving that he was a worthy successor to those of his name who had preceded him.

In 1780 the first Erskine had journeyed on horseback from his home in Massachusetts, lured by the word “unknown” scrawled on the map over the country to the west of Albany; and having passed the last block-house fort at a fording of the West Canada Creek, had come through rock-seamed hills into a lovely, fertile valley. There he had camped and shortly made claim to the Government for a grant of land. There he had built his house, such an one as had never yet been raised west of Albany. It took a year to build. The beams were of oak, hand-hewn from the forest; the walls of stone quarried in the hillside; and all the fittings of the interior came the long road from Albany. All the fine, hand-wrought wooden moulding, every single “egg and dart,” every palmette in wainscot, door, or over-mantel, — all was carved in Albany for its place in that house which old General Erskine built in the wilderness.

Before the house was finished, its owner was followed by his friend Peter Vanderveld, a Dutch refugee of some consequence, who, asking only for liberty of thought and conscience, built himself a more modest habitation, and these two families so founded that village which, in their common love of the classics, they called Tacitus.

Generations had come and gone since that day, the old Dutch stock had long since died out, but the more sturdy Erskine stock had taken root and flourished.

It was down the delicately bannistered, wide staircase of the old house that John Erskine came to-day, to be met by old Martha with the grim news poured forth in horrified volubility.

“Good God, woman! And you never called me!” His face was stern, his voice indignant.

“What’s the use o’ callin’ ye for a corpse?” the old woman grumbled as she followed him into the dining-room. “Naught can happen in this place but they won’t have ye in it.”

“ In it?” John Erskine wheeled to face her.

The old woman sniffed scornfully, her small eyes bright. “Inter everything,” she declared. “It’s you they want and you they’ve got to have.”

“The coffee,” he interrupted, turning away. “Nothing else. I must go at once.”

“There’s no pleasin’ men,” Martha declared audibly. “Called me ‘woman,’” she sniffed, as she hurried to the kitchen. “Never did I see Mr. John in such a way.” She had served in the house since he was a baby.

Alone for a moment, John Erskine stood at the mantelpiece, his head upon his crossed arms. The only man whom he called his friend in the sense of equal, in Tacitus, was dead. Robert Dimmock was dead. He raised his head, turned to the whiskey decanter on the sideboard, checked himself, then 20 stepped to the table and poured himself a glass of water which he drank, as Martha entered with the tray. She was followed by John Erskine’s housekeeper, Miss Roxina Adams, a distant relation called “cousin” by courtesy, whose anxious features were mottled with emotion.

“Oh, Cousin John — you’ve heard. What shall we do? That poor child. What shall we do?”

R Before she had ended her questions she wished she had held her peace, for John Erskine turned a face of still exasperation on her. It frightened her into further futile speech, which was checked by a sudden outburst from him . His blue eyes were steely.

“It seems a pity to cultivate emotion at the expense of intelligence. If either you or Martha had the brains of a polypus you would have called me when those men came. Certainly a physician, more than any one else, needs some one in his house who has judgement enough to interpret his orders.”

“But you said — ”

“Of course I said,” he repeated as he rose from the table and left the room.

“If the minister was his friend, he need not be takin’ the murder out on us,” Martha grumbled as the door closed. “ It were none of our doin’s.”

“I know Cousin John does not mean to be unkind,” Miss Adams whimpered through her handkerchief.

“I am sure that he does when he’s like that,” Martha answered shortly.

Dr. Erskine passed into the hall, picked up his hat and gloves and, straightening his shoulders, faced towards the parsonage. As he walked down the straight drive between the elm trees from the house to the stone gateposts he saw a buggy holding three men dash by on the road. The mood of acute exasperation held him. He cursed under his breath the rural appetite for horrors. Half the village would be on the way — while he must go to the child. Half the village — all the men and the older boys freed from the small stone schoolhouse would be running, gabbling, hurrying out to see. He cursed them again as he crossed the road.

How many times since his return had he come this way to spend an hour with Robert and Mary Dimmock. So short a time ago and they both awaited him here — Robert his friend and Mary with the deep and shadowed beauty. Ah, he had fought for her life. He had fought ! He had brought all his skill, all the skill of Europe to bear on her case. Yet it had baffled him, as it had baffled his masters in Paris. He had not saved her. With her husband he had seen her die — still young, in all her faded, touching loveliness. He straightened himself to endure the memory. How she had dreaded leaving the child! How the child was doubly bereft. He hastened. For her sake, he was hurrying to the child, though other work awaited him. For his friend, Robert Dimmock, lay dead — murdered. He clenched his hands in the pockets of his 22 greatcoat. Why had he left the man alone the past night! why had he left him! The thought was torture. His head bent, he steadily mounted the stone steps to the parsonage.