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The Whisperer
by
The man stirred violently in his sleep, cried out, and started up. As he did so, a snake, disturbed in its travel past him, suddenly raised itself in anger. Startled out of sleep by some inner torture, the man heard the sinister rattle he knew so well, and gazed paralyzed.
The girl had been but a few feet away when she first saw the man and his angry foe. An instant, then, with the instinct of the woods and the plains, and the courage that has habitation everywhere, dropping her basket she sprang forward noiselessly. The short, telescoped fishing-rod she carried swung round her head and completed its next half-circle at the head of the reptile, even as it was about to strike. The blow was sure, and with half-severed head the snake fell dead upon the ground beside the man.
He was like one who has been projected from one world to another, dazed, stricken, fearful. Presently the look of agonized dismay gave way to such an expression of relief as might come upon the face of a reprieved victim about to be given to the fire or to the knife that flays. The place of dreams from which he had emerged was like hell, and this was some world of peace that he had not known these many years. Always one had been at his elbow–“a familiar spirit out of the ground”–whispering in his ear. He had been down in the abysses of life.
He glanced again at the girl, and realized what she had done: she had saved his life. Whether it had been worth saving was another question; but he had been near to the brink, had looked in, and the animal in him had shrunk back from the precipice in a confused agony of fear. He staggered to his feet.
“Where do you come from?” he said, pulling his coat closer to hide the ragged waistcoat underneath, and adjusting his worn and dirty hat–in his youth he had been vain and ambitious, and good-looking also.
He asked his question in no impertinent tone, but in the low voice of one who “shall whisper out of the dust.” He had not yet recovered from the first impression of his awakening, that the world in which he now stood was not a real world.
She understood, and half in pity and half in conquered repugnance said:
“I come from a camp beyond”–she indicated the direction by a gesture. “I had been fishing”–she took up the basket–“and chanced on you–then.” She glanced at the snake significantly.
“You killed it in the nick of time,” he said, in a voice that still spoke of the ground, but with a note of half-shamed gratitude. “I want to thank you,” he added. “You were brave. It would have turned on you if you had missed. I know them. I’ve killed five.” He spoke very slowly, huskily.
“Well, you are safe–that is the chief thing,” she rejoined, making as though to depart. But presently she turned back. “Why are you so dreadfully poor–and everything?” she asked, gently.
His eye wandered over the lake and back again before he answered her, in a dull, heavy tone, “I’ve had bad luck, and, when you get down, there are plenty to kick you farther.”
“You weren’t always poor as you are now–I mean long ago, when you were young.”
“I’m not so old,” he rejoined, sluggishly–“only thirty-four.”
She could not suppress her astonishment. She looked at the hair already gray, the hard, pinched face, the lustreless eyes.
“Yet it must seem long to you,” she said, with meaning.
Now he laughed–a laugh sodden and mirthless. He was thinking of his boyhood. Everything, save one or two spots all fire or all darkness, was dim in his debilitated mind.
“Too far to go back,” he said, with a gleam of the intelligence which had been strong in him once.
She caught the gleam. She had wisdom beyond her years. It was the greater because her mother was dead, and she had had so much wealth to dispense, for her father was rich beyond counting, and she controlled his household and helped to regulate his charities. She saw that he was not of the laboring classes, that he had known better days; his speech, if abrupt and cheerless, was grammatical.