Pemrose Lorry, Radio Amateur

In the dawn-blink the gray dawn-blink, Pemrose Lorry sat before her radio instruments. All night long, when she was not out searching upon the mountain, she had been sending out the call-letters of every station, near-by, within her New England district, seeking to get one where she “came in strong enough” upon the air, to ask whether any one had seen a girl upon a bay horse passing.

At last came the answer from one mountain farm, “blanked out”, at first, by a whining in the set.

“Bah! like chickens squealing—that tube-howling!” she murmured restively to herself—and dropped her head, with a dry sob, upon her receiver, for she remembered how Una had once laughed at that simile.

But the air had played true. Her call had gone home, home to hearts among the Green Mountains. That young farmer had not even a telephone. Radio was his one ear, listening afar to the world’s pulse. “Mr. Grosvenor’s daughter—only daughter!” He flung himself upon a tired farmhorse. A new Revere, he galloped to the next farm—to the lonely one beyond that. He held up every belated pedestrian.

Among these mountaineers whom the lost girl had entertained at her flower party, were strugglers whom her father, out of his munificence, had helped; now, it was a loan obtained on easy terms for one who wanted to fight Nature for a farm and oust the “growing” rocks with backaches, again it was a mortgage paid up on the eve of foreclosure. “We’ll find his daughter, for him, if she’s above ground,” so stern men pledged themselves.

And, here and there, the mountains burned with lights, following upon that call of the air.

But, as yet, no signal had been sent up to say that she was found.

During the earlier part of the night, following upon the arrival of Sanbie and his lantern, Guardian and girls had sought up and down, but without a clue. Una was not in camp. She was nowhere. Girl and horse had vanished in the darkness as if the mountain swallowed them.

“Perhaps she got distracted with the excitement—the terror—of the fire and started to ride home—all that distance,” suggested one and another of the girls blankly.

Pemrose shook her head: “Never! She never would have done that. Una is timid and fanciful, doesn’t depend on herself very much—has never depended on herself—but to ride off, and leave me—us—in danger fighting fire....” The girl shook her dew-wet head again, choking.

And the Camp Fire sisters admitted that her play-marrow, heart of her heart, knew her best.

“But, still....” Here came the Guardian’s ordeal, from which she must not flinch, but which, at the bitter moment, she would rather have died than face. “But, still I had better go down myself to the horse-farm and telephone her home. Her parents have just got back.”

And now, in the dawn-blink Mr. Grosvenor was expected here, at any minute. The Guardian and Sanbie, in whose young heart the laugh seemed forever frozen black by the consciousness that he had better have let all the choice “stock” on the mountainside perish than incur this loss, were out searching slope and stream-edge hopelessly again.

Weary girls, purple-lipped from exhaustion—heavy-lidded—white-cheeked, had been condemned, as they felt it, to rest, or try to rest, a little.

Pemrose flatly rebelled. “If anything, has happened to Una, I don’t want to live,” she said in her passionate, tearless way. “I—I shouldn’t want to live on,” with a quaver, “but I suppose—they’d make me.”

Who was to enforce the boon of Life? Her father—her other joke-fellow—play-fellow—Treff?

There was a sudden sound of hoofs without the camp, hoofs slipping upon rolling stones—striking flinty flashes out of the dawn, the pale, primrose dawn?

Pemrose was at the door, feeling suffocated.

A haggard youth threw himself off a lame horse. It was not Sanbie.

“Treff-ff!”

The boy as he saw her face, held out his arms to her. She threw herself into them. She caught him by the shoulders convulsively. And in the dawn the tears came—washed her blue eyes in a silent flood, a silent, helpless stream.

“Treff!”

“Una! Have you found—her?” His voice was hoarse.

“No.” The girl shook him. “You-ou! How did you know? Have you—heard—”

“Anything about her—no! But I got your radio. Cut in when you were talking with Station Y.V.Z. that farmer-fellow. Picked up enough, just enough to know who was missing. Oh—heavens!” The young aviator threw up his hands, rocking, groaning—looking as if the destruction of his plane by fire had been a light “note”, compared to this. “Dad—you see he had been telling me things—s-such things!” he finished lamely.

“W-what had he been telling—you?” Through the girl’s lips, bruised by suffering, the whisper could scarcely creep.

“Merciful hop.... I mean don’t ask me; I don’t know where—how—to begin. He only got back from his fishing trip last night—Dad.”

“Yes?”

“And he got me so worked up—talking, talking—that I couldn’t sleep, so I was just making an owl’s night over the outfit—radio—for fun, you know—” the young fellow threw out his hands again—“when I tuned in on your talk with the other station. After midnight then,” he licked his dry lips, “but I made a howling dash for the nearest farm, borrowed that ‘plug’,” pointing to a lathered, drooping horse—“at night, wouldn’t trust the plane.... Water! Is there any?” He caught at the collar of his khaki shirt.

“Oh! heavens—if I could only—begin to tell you, b-but—but I feel up-choked.” He drained the last drop of water.

“Don’t be a mope.” Pemrose grinned it at him, in fury. “Una!... Una!”

“Well, you know that little figure we saw, queer little figure on horseback, the day—the day I flew over the Gap, stampeded the outfit—woman I said looked as if she wanted it ‘here’?” He touched his forehead.

“Yes! Oh! I don’t know why, but, somehow, I’ve been thinking of her, on and off—all night. The—Little Lone Lady—all the names they give her!” The girl’s teeth were just chattering now.

“I mentioned her to Dad last evening, described her, you know—the slight deformity, the big, queer eyes, made you feel as if she had a ‘nick-in-the-neck’ somehow—a peculiarity within, as without—oh-h! I’ve met her once or twice on the trail—since—then.” He panted heavily.

“And—and Dad he just leaped to his feet and caught at the camp table, so that he pulled it over: ‘I’ll bet my life,’ he said, ‘I’ll bet my living body! it’s that queer stepsister of Grosvenor’s—back—again ... not that I would have called her queer long ago,’ he went on; ‘she had some strange gifts—powers—that may be as natural as radio; she influenced all our young set, in which she was, with them; she had a way of telling what was going on inside us, boy, what we were thinking of—and sometimes what was going to happen to us, too, that took our breath away.’

“Then—my gracious! he described her as if he had seen her only yesterday—yesterday.” The boy caught at his collar again,—at his working throat. “She was the daughter of Uncle Dwight Grosvenor’s mother, by a first marriage, he said. Her name was Margaret Deane.”

“They call her ‘Margot’ here—some of the mountain folk,” screamed Pemrose.

“And she always lived with Uncle Dwight, swayed him as she swayed the rest, but he—he’s my uncle by marriage, you know—married father’s sister, and that sister, Aunt Carolyn, simply couldn’t bear her. And when Una was born—this was after Dad went out West, but he heard about it since he came back—the feeling between the two women grew, for this peculiar step-aunt just worshiped the baby, would sit staring at it as if she saw something akin to herself in the little mite—Una—and wanted to bring it out.

“At last Aunt Carolyn couldn’t stand it any longer. She told Uncle Dwight that his stepsister had got to go. She wouldn’t have her child brought up under such influence. They were keeping it dark, until they could find a nice home for her—but she cleared out of herself, without saying good-by.”

“And haven’t they seen her since—oh! since long ago?” Pemrose was staring weirdly.

“No—nor heard from her, either. She drew a little money that she had, not enough Dad says, to support her, eked it out, he supposes by using her strange powers in distant cities, as—as this woman has done among the mountain people; and, in time, got to eking them out by trickery; she’d be a witch at that, he said, for she had a good education—knew something of chemistry and physics.”

“But Una—Una—you don’t think—” Pemrose was catching at her throat now.

“Well—when I told my old Dad about that ‘elfin music’ we heard on the old mountain—how we showed it up, played ‘choir invisible’ with tuning forks—his lips worked for quite a while silently—you know he was a terror at queer tricks himself—then he turned a sly cheek on me and said: ‘That may have been no crank of a musician, boy, out testing bird-songs, or pine-songs—or pipes o’ Pan—or any of the rest of it. If this queer little figure is Margaret Deane and she’s lonely—longing to see Una, the baby she so worshiped, and thinks the parents won’t let her, she would be quite likely to work upon Una’s curiosity—or her “hifalutin” imagination—in some fantastic way ... if only to pay your Aunt Carolyn out. Or, perhaps, to get the girl off by herself into the woods. She would have done it even when I knew her—and she isn’t likely to have gathered balance, “a rolling stone.”’”

“But—but you don’t think—he doesn’t think—that she would go the length—the length of carrying Una off—doing anything to her?” Pem’s voice rose to a shriek now.

“I can’t help feeling that she has something—something to do with it.” The boy choked. “Dad was frightened, too, when I woke him—told him. He said for me to tear right over here— he’d follow when he got his car out of hospital.”

“But how could she—even in the confusion of the fire? The last Dorothy saw of Una her bucket had rolled away.”

“She managed to stupefy her in some way, slide something into her—perhaps rubbed it on the bucket.” The boy was roughly pacing the floor. “Got her, in a dazed state, on her horse.”

“But why—why ... such a hor-ri-ble thing—”

“Brooding resentment, perhaps,” said Treff moodily, “to get even with her parents. Maybe a wild yearning to get Una to herself for a while. Maybe because she has become quite unbalanced—Dad says people of her temperament generally do.”

“But Una—” Pem was fairly screaming now, her hands clutching at the pale air, opening, closing—“Una—why! she’ll go mad herself, carried off like that—by a strange, wild woman—away from us all. And she’ll be so helpless,” it was a choking sob, “any other girl, Madeline, Naomi, Frances—even Dorothy—might think of something to do—but Una—”

“No-o, the bottom will be out of everything; she’ll just drop through.” Treff stared gloomily out of the window. “But we’ll find her—together.” He caught at Pemrose’s hands. “Oh-h! there isn’t cover enough on the old mountain, nor kinks enough in the brain of that crazy creature, to prevent.... Gosh! Automobile wheels on the road below—her father! I—I’d rather crawl through an air hole, five thousand feet up, than have to tell him this!” The young aviator’s neck writhed in its khaki collar. “He idolizes Una—and his sister ... always a sore subject, Dad said!”

“That’s why-y he looked so worried that day in the sun-parlor, when Una had a story about hearing something strange, unearthly, in the wood; she reminded him of his stepsister.” Pemrose’s lips were uncontrollably twitching.

“Well!” Treff was bracing himself for an ordeal, “I guess old Andrew hasn’t let much grass grow under that car—has got here as fast as God and gasolene would let him!”

“Andrew!” It was a new cry from the girl’s lips. “Oh! Andrew would go through fire and water for her; she makes him think of his own daughter that he lost away back in Scotland. And he was brought up among mountains—wild mountains!

“He knows these hills, too—has fished among them—sent father and me the trout, last year.” Pem’s hands were clasped against her lips, as she watched the climbing figures. “Oh: Andrew! he can hear so far, see so far ... it’s as if he saw into things, too.”

“He’s a canny chauffeur, anyway,” said Treff.

But it was no chauffeur who stood among them now, while Treff’s story was repeated to Una’s stricken father; it was a Church Elder and a passionate Highlander to boot—released from all ceremony and convention.

“Gosh! I wouldn’t give much for Margot’s chances—wretched kidnapper—if he tracks her among the mountains and finds that she has injured Una, directly or indirectly; he’d wring her neck, as he’d wring a hen’s,” said Treff, half-aloud, watching the ex-chauffeur’s grim face.

But the latter was thinking of rescue, not revenge now; of the girl who in her sweet democratic way had called him her “fuffle-daddy”, the girl who was eye-sweet, the girl whom his wife and he had taken to their hearts as a symbol of their own daughter.

He clasped his hands. He flung his long arms to heaven—towering among the reassembling search party.

But the prayer which he prayed was the same which had sprung to his lips when, a shepherd-boy among his native hills, he had missed a tender one from his flock:

“Noo, gin onything be lost or strayed—gin ony lamb be lost or strayed, may the Almighty in his mercies fetch it back!

“An’, noo, I’m awa’ to find her!” said Andrew, the Scot.