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diff --git a/8219.txt b/8219.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e100338 --- /dev/null +++ b/8219.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7364 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Desert and The Sown, by Mary Hallock Foote + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Desert and The Sown + +Author: Mary Hallock Foote + + +Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8219] +This file was first posted on July 3, 2003 +Last Updated: May 19, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESERT AND THE SOWN *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Clay Massei and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + +THE DESERT AND THE SOWN + + +By Mary Hallock Foote + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I. A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS + +II. INTRODUCING A SON-IN-LAW + +III. THE INITIAL LOVE + +IV. "A MAN THAT HAD A WELL IN HIS OWN COURT" + +V. DISINHERITED + +VI. AN APPEAL TO NATURE + +VII. MARKING TIME + +VIII. A HUNTER'S DIARY + +IX. THE POWER OF WEAKNESS + +X. THE WHITE PERIL + +XI. A SEARCHING OF HEARTS + +XII. THE BLOOD-WITE + +XIII. CURTAIN + +XIV. KIND INQUIRIES + +XV. A BRIDEGROOM OF SNOW + +XVI. THE NATURE OF AN OATH + +XVII. THE HIDDEN TRAIL + +XVIII.THE STAR IN THE EAST + +XIX. PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS + +XX. A STATION IN THE DESERT + +XXI. INJURIOUS REPORTS CONCERNING AN OLD HOUSE + +XXII. THE CASE STRIKES IN + +XXIII.RESTIVENESS + +XXIV. INDIAN SUMMER + +XXV. THE FELL FROST + +XXVI. PEACE TO THIS HOUSE + + + + +I + + +A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS + +It was an evening of sudden mildness following a dry October gale. +The colonel had miscalculated the temperature by one log--only one, he +declared, but that had proved a pitchy one, and the chimney bellowed +with flame. From end to end the room was alight with it, as if the +stored-up energies of a whole pine-tree had been sacrificed in the +consumption of that four-foot stick. + +The young persons of the house had escaped, laughing, into the fresh +night air, but the colonel was hemmed in on every side; deserted by +his daughter, mocked by the work of his own hands, and torn between the +duties of a host and the host's helpless craving for his after-dinner +cigar. + +Across the hearth, filling with her silks all the visible room in his +own favorite settle corner, sat the one woman on earth it most behooved +him to be civil to,--the future mother-in-law of his only child. That +Moya was a willing, nay, a reckless hostage, did not lessen her father's +awe of the situation. + +Mrs. Bogardus, according to her wont at this hour, was composedly doing +nothing. The colonel could not make his retreat under cover of her real +or feigned absorption in any of the small scattering pursuits which +distract the female mind. When she read she read--she never "looked at +books." When she sewed she sewed--presumably, but no one ever saw her +do it. Her mind was economic and practical, and she saved it whole, like +many men of force, for whatever she deemed her best paying sphere of +action. + +It was a silence that crackled with heat! The colonel, wrathfully +perspiring in the glow of that impenitent stick, frowned at it like +an inquisitor. Presently Mrs. Bogardus looked up, and her expression +softened as she saw the energetic despair upon his face. + +"Colonel, don't you always smoke after dinner?" + +"That is my bad habit, madam. I belong to the generation that +smokes--after dinner and most other times--more than is good for us." +Colonel Middleton belonged also to the generation that can carry a +sentence through to the finish in handsome style, and he did it with a +suave Virginian accent as easy as his seat in the saddle. Mrs. Bogardus +always gave him her respectful attention during his best performances, +though she was a woman of short sentences herself. + +"Don't you smoke in this room sometimes?" she asked, with a barely +perceptible sniff the merest contraction of her housewifely nostrils. + +"Ah--h! Those rascally curtains and cushions! You ladies--women, +I should say--Moya won't let me say ladies--you bolster us up with +comforts on purpose to betray us!" + +"You can say 'ladies' to me," smiled the very handsome one before him. +"That's the generation _I_ belong to." + +The colonel bowed playfully. "Well, you know, I don't detect myself, but +there's no doubt I have infected the premises." + +"Open fires are good ventilators. I wish you would smoke now. If you +don't, I shall have to go away, and I'm exceedingly comfortable." + +"You are exceedingly charming to say so--on top of that last stick, +too!" The colonel had Irish as well as Virginian progenitors. "Well," he +sighed, proceeding to make himself conditionally happy, "Moya will never +forgive me! We spoil each other shamefully when we're alone, but of +course we try to jack each other up when company comes. It's a great +comfort to have some one to spoil, isn't it, now? I needn't ask which it +is in your family!" + +"The spoiled one?" Mrs. Bogardus smiled rather coldly. "A woman we had +for governess, when Christine was a little thing, used to say: 'That +child is the stuff that tyrants are made of!' Tyrants are made by the +will of their subjects, don't you think, generally speaking?" + +"Well, you couldn't have made a tyrant of your son, Mrs. Bogardus. He's +the Universal Spoiler! He'll ruin my striker, Jephson. I shall have to +send the fellow back to the ranks. I don't know how you keep a servant +good for anything with Paul around." + +"Paul thinks he doesn't like to be waited on," Paul's mother observed +shrewdly. "He says that only invalids, old people, and children have any +claim on the personal service of others." + +"By George! I found him blacking his own boots!" + +Mrs. Bogardus laughed. + +"But I'm paying a man to do it for him. It upsets my contract with that +other fellow for Paul to do his work. We have a claim on what we pay for +in this world." + +"I suppose we have. But Paul thinks that nothing can pay the price of +those artificial relations between man and man. I think that's the way +he puts it." + +"Good Heavens! Has the boy read history? It's a relation that began when +the world was made, and will last while men are in it." + +"I am not defending Paul's ideas, Colonel. I have a great sympathy with +tyrants myself. You must talk to him. He will amuse you." + +"My word! It's a ticklish kind of amusement when _we_ get talking. Why, +the boy wants to turn the poor old world upside down--make us all stand +on our heads to give our feet a rest. Now, I respect my feet,"--the +colonel drew them in a little as the lady's eyes involuntarily took the +direction of his allusion,--"I take the best care I can of them; but +I propose to keep my head, such as it is, on top, till I go under +altogether. These young philanthropists! They assume that the Hands and +the Feet of the world, the class that serves in that capacity, have got +the same nerves as the Brain." + +"There's a sort of connection," said Mrs. Bogardus carelessly. "Some +of our Heads have come from the class that you call the Hands and Feet, +haven't they?" + +The colonel admitted the fact, but the fact was the exception. "Why, +that's just the matter with us now! We've got no class of legislators. +I don't wish to plume myself, but, upon my word, the two services are +about all we have left to show what selection and training can do. And +we're only just getting the army into shape, after the raw material that +was dumped into it by the civil war." + +"Weren't you in the civil war yourself?" + +"I was--a West Pointer, madam; and I was true to my salt and false to my +blood. But, the flag over all!--at the cost of everything I held dear +on earth." After this speech the colonel looked hotter than ever and a +trifle ashamed of himself. + +Mrs. Bogardus's face wore its most unobservant expression. "I don't +agree with Paul," she said. "I wish in some ways he were more like other +young men--exercise, for instance. It's a pity for young men not to love +activity and leadership. Besides, it's the fashion. A young man might +as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. Blood is a strange +thing," she mused. + +The colonel looked at her curiously. In a woman so unfrank, her +occasional bursts of frankness were surprising and, as he thought, not +altogether complimentary. It was as if she felt herself so far removed +from his conception of her that she might say anything she pleased, sure +of his miscomprehension. + +"He is not lazy intellectually," said the colonel, aiming to comfort +her. + +"I did not say he was lazy--only he won't do things except to what he +calls some 'purpose.' At his age amusement ought to be purpose enough. +He ought to take his pleasures seriously--this hunting-trip, for +instance. I believe, on the very least encouragement, he would give it +all up!" + +"You mustn't let him do that," said the colonel, warming. "All that +country above Yankee Fork, for a hundred miles, after you've gone fifty +north from Bonanza, is practically virgin forest. Wonderful flora +and fauna! It's late for the weeds and things, but if Paul wants game +trophies for your country-house, he can load a pack-train." + +Mrs. Bogardus continued to be amused, in a quiet way. "He calls them +relics of barbarism! He would as soon festoon his walls with scalps, as +decorate them with the heads of beautiful animals,--nearer the Creator's +design than most men, he would say." + +"He's right there! But that doesn't change the distinction between men +and animals. He is your son, madam--and he's going to be mine. But, fine +boy as he is, I call him a crank of the first water." + +"You'll find him quite good to Moya," Mrs. Bogardus remarked +dispassionately. "And he's not quite twenty-four." + +"Very true. Well, _I_ should send him into the woods for the sake of +getting a little sense into him, of an every-day sort. He 'll take in +sanity with every breath." + +"And you don't think it's too late in the season for them to go out?" + +There was no change in Mrs. Bogardus's voice, unconcerned as it was; yet +the colonel felt at once that this simple question lay at the root of +all her previous skirmishing. + +"The guide will decide as to that," he said definitely. "If it is, he +won't go out with them. They have got a good man, you say?" + +"They are waiting for a good man; they have waited too long, I think. +He is expected in with another party on Monday, perhaps, Paul is to meet +the Bowens at Challis, where they buy their outfit. I do believe"--she +laughed constrainedly--"that he is going up there more to head them off +than for any other reason." + +"How do you mean?" + +"Oh, it's very stupid of them! They seem to think an army post is part +of the public domain. They have been threatening, if Paul gives up the +trip, to come down here on a gratuitous visit." + +"Why, let them come by all means! The more the merrier! We will quarter +them on the garrison at large." + +"Wherever they were quartered, they would be here all the time. They are +not intimate friends of Paul's. _Mrs._ Bowen is--a very great friend. +He is her right-hand in all that Hartley House work. The boys are just +fashionable young men." + +"Can't they go hunting without Paul?" + +"Wheels within wheels!" Mrs. Bogardus sighed impatiently. "Hunting trips +are expensive, and--when young men are living on their fathers, it +is convenient sometimes to have a third. However, Paul goes, I half +believe, to prevent their making a descent upon us here." + +"Well; I should ask them to come, or make it plain they were not +expected." + +"Oh, would you?--if their mother was one of the nicest women, and your +friend? Besides, the reservation does not cover the whole valley. Banks +Bowen talks of a mine he wants to look at--I don't think it will make +much difference to the mine! This is simply to say that I wish Paul +cared more about the trip for its own sake." + +"Well, frankly, I think he's better out of the way for the next +fortnight. The girls ought to go to bed early, and keep the roses in +their cheeks for the wedding. Moya's head is full of her frocks and +fripperies. She is trying to run a brace of sewing women; and all those +boxes are coming from the East to be 'inspected, and condemned' mostly. +The child seems to make a great many mistakes, doesn't she? About every +other day I see a box as big as a coffin in the hall, addressed to some +dry-goods house, 'returned by ----'" + +"Moya should have sent to me for her things," said Mrs. Bogardus. "I am +the one who makes her return them. She can do much better when she is +in town herself. It doesn't matter, for the few weeks they will be +away, what she wears. I shall take her measures home with me and set the +people to work. She has never been _fitted_ in her life." + +The colonel looked rather aghast. He had seldom heard Mrs. Bogardus +speak with so much animation. He wondered if really his household was so +very far behind the times. + +"It's very kind of you, I'm sure, if Moya will let you. Most girls think +they can manage these matters for themselves." + +"It's impossible to shop by mail," Mrs. Bogardus said decidedly. "They +always keep a certain style of things for the Western and Southern +trade." + +The colonel was crushed. Mrs. Bogardus rose, and he picked up her +handkerchief, breathing a little hard after the exertion. She passed +out, thanking him with a smile as he opened the door. In the hall she +stopped to choose a wrap from a collection of unconventional garments +hanging on a rack of moose horns. + +"I think I shall go out," she said. "The air is quite soft to-night. Do +you know which way the children went?" By the "children," as the colonel +had noted, Mrs. Bogardus usually meant her daughter, the budding tyrant, +Christine. + +"Fine woman!" he mused, alone with himself in his study. "Splendid +character head. Regular Dutch beauty. But hard--eh?--a trifle hard in +the grain. Eyes that tell you nothing. Mouth set like a stone. Never +rambles in her talk. Never speculates or exaggerates for fun. Never runs +into hyperbole--the more fool some other folks! Speaks to the point or +keeps still." + + + + +II + + +INTRODUCING A SON-IN-LAW + +The colonel's papers failed to hold him somehow. He rose and paced the +room with his short, stiff-kneed tread. He stopped and stared into the +fire; his face began to get red. + +"So! Moya's clothes are not good enough. Going to set the people to +work, is she? Wants an outfit worthy of her son. And who's to pay for +it, by gad? Post-nuptial bills for wedding finery are going to hurt poor +little Moya like the deuce. Confound the woman! Dressing my daughter +for me, right in my own house. Takes it in her hands as if it were +her right, by----!" The colonel let slip another expletive. "Well," +he sighed, half amused at his own violence, "I'll write to Annie. I +promised Moya, and it's high time I did." + +Annie was the colonel's sister, the wife of an infantry captain, +stationed at Fort Sherman. She was a very understanding woman; at least +she understood her brother. But she was not solely dependent upon his +laggard letters for information concerning his private affairs. The +approaching wedding at Bisuka Barracks was the topic of most of the +military families in the Department of the Columbia. Moya herself had +written some time before, in the self-conscious manner of the newly +engaged. Her aunt knew of course that Moya and Christine Bogardus had +been room-mates at Miss Howard's, that the girls had fallen in love with +each other first, and with visits at holidays and vacations, when the +army girl could not go to her father, it was easily seen how the +rest had followed. And well for Moya that it had, was Mrs. Creve's +indorsement. As a family they were quite sufficiently represented in +the army; and if one should ever get an Eastern detail it would be very +pleasant to have a young niece charmingly settled in New York. + +The colonel drew a match across the top bar of the grate and set it +to his pipe. His big nostrils whitened as he took a deep in-breath. He +reseated himself and began his duty letter in the tone of a judicious +parent; but, warming as he wrote, under the influence of Annie's +imagined sympathy, he presently broke forth with his usual arrogant +colloquialism. + +"She might have had her pick of the junior officers in both branches. +And there was a captain of engineers at the Presidio, a widower, but an +awfully good fellow. And she has chosen a boy, full of transcendental +moonshine, who climbs upon a horse as if it were a stone fence, and has +mixed ideas which side of himself to hang a pistol on. + +"I have no particular quarrel with the lad, barring his great burly +mouthful of a name, Bo--gardus! To call a child Moya and have her fetch +up with her soft, Irish vowels against such a name as that! She had a +fond idea that it was from Beauregard. But she has had to give that up. +It's Dutch--Hudson River Dutch--for something horticultural--a tree, +or an orchard, or a brush-pile; and she says it's a good name where it +belongs. Pity it couldn't have stayed where it belongs. + +"However, you won't find him quite so scrubby as he sounds. He's very +proper and clean-shaven, with a good pair of dark, Dutch eyes, which he +gets from his mother; and I wish he had got her business ability with +them, and her horse sense, if the lady will excuse me. She runs the +property and he spends it, as far as she'll let him, on the newest +reforms. And there's another hitch!--To belong to the Truly Good +at twenty-four! But beggars can't be choosers. He's going to settle +something handsome on Moya out of the portion Madame gives him on his +marriage. My poor little girl, as you know, will get nothing from me but +a few old bits and trinkets and a father's blessing,--the same +doesn't go for much in these days. I have been a better dispenser than +accumulator, like others of our name. + +"I do assure you, Annie, it bores me down to the ground, this +humanitarian racket from children with ugly names who have just chipped +the shell. This one owns his surprise that we _work_ in the army! That +our junior officers teach, and study a bit perforce themselves. His own +idea is that every West Pointer, before he gets his commission, should +serve a year or two in the ranks, to raise the type of the enlisted man, +and chiefly, mark you, to get his point of view, the which he is to +bear in mind when he comes to his command. Oh, we've had some pretty +arguments! But I suspect the rascal of drawing it mild, at this stage, +for the old dragon who guards his Golden Apple. He doesn't want to poke +me up. How far he'd go if he were not hampered in his principles by the +fact that he is in love, I cannot say. And I'd rather not imagine." + +The commandant's house at Bisuka Barracks is the nearest one to the +flag-pole as you go up a flight of wooden steps from the parade ground. +These steps, and their landings, flanked by the dry grass terrace of the +line, are a favorite gathering place for young persons of leisure at +the Post. They face the valley and the mountains; they lead past the +adjutant's office to the main road to town; they command the daily +pageant of garrison duty as performed at such distant, unvisited posts, +with only the ladies and the mountains looking on. + +Retreat had sounded at half after five, for the autumn days grew short. +The colonel's orderly had been dismissed to his quarters. There was no +excuse, at this hour, for two young persons lingering in sentimental +corners of the steps, beyond a flagrant satisfaction in the shadow +thereof which covered them since the lighting of lamps on Officers' Row. + +The colonel stood at his study window keeping his pipe alive with slow +and dreamy puffs. The moon was just clearing the roof of the men's +quarters. His eye caught a shape, or a commingling of shapes, ensconced +in an angle of the steps; the which he made out to be his daughter, +in her light evening frock with one of his own old army capes over her +shoulders, seated in close formation beside the only man at the Post who +wore civilian black. + +The colonel had the feelings of a man as well as a father. He went back +to his letter with a softened look in his face. He had said too much; he +always did--to Annie; and now he must hedge a little or she would think +there was trouble brewing, and that he was going to be nasty about +Moya's choice. + + + + +III + + +THE INITIAL LOVE + +"Let us be simple! Not every one can be, but we can. We can afford to +be, and we know how!" + +Moya was speaking rapidly, in her singularly articulate tones. A reader +of voices would have pronounced hers the physical record of unbroken +health and constant, joyous poise. + +"Hear the word of your prophet Emerson!" she brought a little fist down +upon her knee for emphasis, a hand several sizes larger closed upon it +and held it fast. "Hear the word--are you listening? 'Only _two_ in the +Garden walked and with Snake and Seraph talked.'" + +The young man's answer was an instant's impassioned silence. Too close +it touched him, that vital image of the Garden. Then, with an effect of +sternness, he said,-- + +"Have we the right to do as we please? Have we the courage that comes of +right to cut ourselves off from all those calls and cries for help?" + +"_I_ have," said the girl; "I have just that right--of one who knows +exactly what she wants, and is going to get it if she can!" + +He laughed at her happy insolence, with which all the youth and nature +in him made common cause. + +"I shouldn't mind thinking about your Poor Man," she tripped along, "if +he liked being poor, or if it seemed to improve him any; or if it were +only now and then. But there is so dreadfully much of him! Once we +begin, how should we ever think about anything else? He'd rise up and +sit down with us, and eat and drink with us, and tell us what to wear. +Every pleasure of our lives would be spoiled with his eternal 'Where do +_I_ come in?' It was simple enough in _that_ garden, with only those +two and nobody outside to feel injured. But we are those two, aren't +we? Isn't everybody--once in a life, and once only?" She turned her face +aside, slighting by her manner the excessive meaning of her words. "I +ask for myself only what I think I have a right to give you--my absolute +undivided attention for those first few years. They say it never lasts!" +she hastened to add with playful cynicism. + +Young Bogardus seemed incapable under the circumstances of any adequate +reply. Free as they were in words, there was an extreme personal shyness +between these proud young persons, undeveloped on the side of passion +and better versed in theories of life than in life itself. They had +separated the day after their sudden engagement, and their nearest +approaches to intimacy had been through letters. Naturally the girl was +the bolder, having less in herself to fear. + +"That is what _I_ call being simple," she went on briskly. "If you +think we can be that in New York, let us live there. _I_ could be simple +there, but not with you, sir! That terrible East Side would be shaking +its gory locks at us. We should feel that we did it--or you would! Then +good-by to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!" + +"You are my life, liberty, and happiness, and I will be your almoner," +said Paul, "and dispense you"-- + +"Dispense _with_ me!" laughed the girl. "And what shall I be doing while +you are dispensing me on the East Side? New York has other sides. While +you go slumming with the Seraph, I shall be talking to the Snake! Now, +_do_ laugh!" she entreated childishly, turning her sparkling face to +his. + +"Am I expected to laugh at that?" + +"Well, what shall we do? Don't make me harden my heart before it has had +time to soften naturally. Give my poor pagan sympathies a little time to +ripen." + +"But you have lived in New York. Did you find it such a strain on your +sympathies?" + +"I was a visitor; and a girl is not expected to have sympathies. But to +begin our home there: we should have to strike a note of some sort. +How if my note should jar with yours? Paul, dear, it isn't nice to +have convictions when one is young and going to be married. You know it +isn't. It's not poetic, and it's not polite, and it's a dreadful bore!" + +The altruist and lover winced at this. Allowing for exaggeration, which +was the life of speech with her, he knew that Moya was giving him a bit +of her true self, that changeful, changeless self which goes behind all +law and "follows joy and only joy." Her voice dropped into its sweetest +tones of intimacy. + +"Why need we live in a crowd? Why must we be pressed upon with all this +fuss and doing? Doing, doing! We are not ready to do anything yet. Every +day must have its dawn;--and I don't see my way yet; I'm hardly awake!" + +"Darling, hush! You must not say such things to me. For you only to look +at me like that is the most terrible temptation of my life. You make +me forget everything a man is bound--that I of all men am bound to +remember." + +"Then I will keep on looking! Behold, I am Happiness, Selfishness, if +you like! I have come to stay. No, really, it's not nice of you to act +as if you were under higher orders. You are under my orders. What right +have we to choose each other if we are not to be better to each other +than to any one else?--if our lives belong to any one who needs us, or +our time and money, more than we need it ourselves? Why did you choose +me? Why not somebody pathetic--one of your Poor Things; or else save +yourself whole for all the Poor Things?" + +"Now you are 'talking for victory,'" he smiled. "You don't believe we +must be as consistent as all that. Hearts don't have to be coddled +like pears picked for market. But I'm not preaching to you. The heavens +forbid! I'm trying to explain. You don't think this whole thing with me +is a pose? I know I'm a bore with my convictions; but how do we come by +such things?" + +"Ah! How do I come not to have any, or to want any?" she rejoined. + +"Once for all, let me tell you how I came by mine. Then you will know +just where and how those cries for help take hold on me." + +"I don't wish to know. Preserve me from knowing! Why didn't you choose +somebody different?" + +He looked at her with all his passion in his eyes. "I did not choose. +Did you?" + +"It isn't too late," she whispered. Her face grew hot in the darkness. + +"Yes; it is too late--for anything but the truth. Will you listen, +sweet? Will you let the nonsense wait?" + +"Deeper and deeper! Haven't we reached the bottom yet?" + +"Go on! It's the dearest nonsense," she heard him say; but she detected +pain in his voice and a new constraint. + +"What is it? What is the 'truth'?" + +"Oh, it's not so dreadful. Only, you always put me in quite a different +class from where I belong, and I haven't had the courage to set you +right." + +"Children, children!" a young voice called, from the lighted walk above. +Two figures were going down the line, one in uniform keeping step beside +a girl in white who reefed back her skirts with one hand, the other was +raised to her hair which was blowing across her forehead in bewitching +disorder. Every gesture and turn of her shape announced that she was +pretty and gay in the knowledge of her power. It was Chrissy, walking +with Lieutenant Lane. + +"Where are you--ridiculous ones? Don't you want to come with us?" + +"'Now who were they?'" Paul quoted derisively out of the dark. + +"We are going to Captain Dawson's to play Hearts. Come! Don't be +stupid!" + +"We are not stupid, we are busy!" Moya called back. + +"Busy! Doing what?" + +"Oh, deciding things. We are talking about the Poor Man." + +"The poor men, she means." Christine's high laugh followed the +lieutenant's speech, as the pair went on. + +"He _is_ a bore!" Moya declared. "We can't even use him for a joke." + +"Speaking of Lane, dear?" + +"The Poor Man. Are you sure that you've got a sense of humor, Paul? +Can't we have charity for jokes among the other poor things?" + +Paul had raised himself to the step beside her. "You are shivering," he +said, "I must let you go in." + +"I'm not shivering--I'm chattering," she mocked. "Why should I go in +when we are going to be really serious?" + +Paul waited a moment; his breath came short, as if he were facing a +postponed dread. "Moya, dear," he began in a forced tone, "I can't help +my constraints and convictions that bore you so, any more than you can +help your light heart--God bless it--and your theory of class which to +me seems mediaeval. I have cringed to it, like the coward a man is when +he is in love. But now I want you to know me." + +He took her hand and kissed it repeatedly, as if impressing upon her +the one important fact back of all hypothesis and perilous efforts at +statement. + +"Well, are you bidding me good-by?" + +"You must give me time," he said. "It takes courage in these days for +a good American to tell the girl he loves that his father was a hired +man." + +He smiled, but there was little mirth and less color in his face. + +"What absurdity!" cried Moya. Then glancing at him she added quickly, +"_My_ father is a hired man. Most fathers who are worth anything are!" + +"My father was because he came of that class. His father was one before +him. His mother took in tailoring in the village where he was born. He +had only the commonest common-school education and not much of that. +At eleven he worked for his board and clothes at my Grandfather Van +Elten's, and from that time he earned his bread with his hands. Don't +imagine that I'm apologizing," Paul went on rapidly. "The apology +belongs on the other side. In New York, for instance, the Bogardus blood +is quite as good as the Bevier or the Broderick or the Van Elten; but +up the Hudson, owing to those chances or mischances that selected our +farming aristocracy for us, my father's people had slipped out of +their holdings and sunk to the poor artisan class which the old Dutch +landowners held in contempt." + +"We are not landowners," said Moya. "What does it matter? What does any +of it matter?" + +"It matters to be honest and not sail under false colors. I thought +you would not speak of the Poor Man as you do if you knew that I am his +son." + +"Money has nothing to do with position in the army. I am a poor man's +daughter." + +"Ah, child! Your father gives orders--mine took them, all his life." + +"My father has to take what he gives. There is no escaping 'orders.' +Even I know that!" said Moya. A slight shiver passed over her as she +spoke, laughing off as usual the touch of seriousness in her words. + +"Why did you do that?" Paul touched her shoulder. "Is it the wind? There +is a wind creeping down these steps." He improved the formation slightly +in respect to the wind. + +"Listen!" said Moya. "Isn't that your mother walking on the porch? +Father, I know, is writing. She will be lonely." + +"She is never lonely, more or less. It is always the same loneliness--of +a woman widowed for years." + +"How very much she must have cared for him!" Moya sighed incredulously. +What a pity, she thought, that among the humbler vocations Paul's father +should have been just a plain "hired man." Cowboy, miner, man-o'-war's +man, even enlisted man, though that were bad enough--any of these he +might have been in an accidental way, that at least would have been +picturesque; but it is only the possession of land, by whatsoever means +or title, that can dignify an habitual personal contact with it in the +form of soil. That is one of the accepted prejudices which one does not +meddle with at nineteen. "Youth is conservative because it is afraid." +Moya, for all her fighting blood, was traditionally and in social ways +much more in bonds than Paul, who had inherited his father's dreamy +speculative habit of thought, with something of the farm-hand's distrust +of society and its forms and shibboleth. + +Paul's voice took a narrative tone, and Moya gave herself up to +listening--to him rather more, perhaps, than to his story. + +Few young men of twenty-four can go very deeply into questions of +heredity. Of what follows here much was not known to Paul. Much that he +did know he would have interpreted differently. The old well at Stone +Ridge, for instance, had no place in his recital; and yet out of it +sprang the history of his shorn generation. Had Paul's mother grown up +in a houseful of brothers and sisters, governed by her mother instead +of an old ignorant servant, in all likelihood she would have married +differently--more wisely but not perhaps so well, her son would loyally +have maintained. The sons of the rich farmers who would have been her +suitors were men inferior to their fathers. They inherited the vigor and +coarseness of constitution, the unabashed materialism of that earlier +generation that spent its energies coping with Nature on its stony +farms, but the sons were spared the need of that hard labor which their +blood required. They supplied an element of force, but one of great +corruption later, in the state politics of their time. + + + + +IV + + +A MAN THAT HAD A WELL IN HIS OWN COURT + +In the kitchen court called the "Airy" at Abraham Van Elten's, there +was one of those old family wells which our ancestors used to locate so +artlessly. And when it tapped the kitchen drain, and typhoid took the +elder children, and the mother followed the children, it was called the +will of God. A gloomy distinction rested on the house. Abraham felt the +importance attaching to any supreme experience in a community where life +runs on in the middle key. + +A young doctor who had been called in at the close of the last case +went prying about the premises, asking foolish questions that angered +Abraham. It is easier for some natures to suffer than to change. If the +farmer had ever drunk water himself, except as tea or coffee, or mixed +with something stronger, he must have been an early victim, to his own +crass ignorance. He was a vigorous, heavy-set man, a grand field for +typhoid. But he prospered, and the young doctor was turned down with +the full weight and breadth of the Van Elten thumb, or the Broderick; +Abraham's build was that of his maternal grandmother, Hillotje +Broderick. + +On the Ridge, which later developed into a valuable slate quarry, +there was a spring of water, cold and perpetual, flowing out of the +trap-formation. Abraham had piped this water down to his barns and +cattle-sheds; it furnished power for the farm-work. But to bring it to +the house, in obedience to the doctor's meddlesome advice, would be an +acknowledgment of fatal mistakes in the past; would raise talk and blame +among the neighbors, and do away with the honor of a special visitation; +would cost no trifle of money; would justify the doctor's interference, +and insult the old well of his father and his father's father, the +fountain of generations. To seal its mouth and bid its usefulness cease +in the house where it had ministered for upwards of a hundred years was +an act of desecration impossible to the man who in his stolid way loved +the very stones that lined its slimy sides. The few sentiments that had +taken hold on Abraham's arid nature went as deep as his obstinacy and +clung as fast as his distrust of new opinions and new men. The question +of water supply was closed in his house; but the well remained open and +kept up its illicit connection with the drain. + +Old Becky, keeper of the widower's keys, had followed closely the +history of those unhappy "cases;" she had listened to discussions, +violent or suppressed, she had heard much talk that went on behind her +master's back. + +Employers of that day and generation were masters; and masters are meant +to be outwitted. Emily, the youngest and last of the flock, was now a +child of four, dark like her mother, sturdy and strong like her father. +On an August day soon after the mother's funeral, Becky took her little +charge to the well and showed her a tumbler filled, with water not +freshly drawn. + +"See them little specks and squirmy things?" Emmy saw them. She followed +their wavering motion in the glass as the stern forefinger pointed. +"Those are little baby snakes," said Becky mysteriously. "The well is +full of 'em. Sometimes you can see 'em, sometimes you can't, but they're +always there. They never grow big down the well; it's too dark 'n' cold. +But you drink that water and the snakes will grow and wriggle and +work all through ye, and eat your insides out, and you'll die. Your +mother"--in a whisper--"she drunk that water, and she died. Your sister +Ruth, and Dirck, and Jimmy, they drunk it, and they died. Now if Emmy +wants to die"--Large eyes of horror fastened on the speaker's face. +"No--o, she don't want to die, the Loveums! She don't want Becky to have +no little girl left at all! No; we mustn't ever drink any of that bad +water--all full of snakes, ugh! But if Emmy's thirsty, see here! Here's +good nice water. It's going to be always here in this pail--same water +the little lambs drink up in the fields. Becky 'll take Emmy up on the +hill sometime and show where the little lambs drink." + +Grief had not clouded the farmer's oversight in petty things. He noticed +the innocent pail on the area bench, never empty, always specklessly +clean. + +"What is this water?" he asked. + +Becky was surly. "Drinking water. Want some?" + +"What's it doing here all the time?" + +"I set it there for Emmy. She can't reach up to the bucket." + +Abraham tasted the water suspiciously. The well-water was hard, with +a tang of iron. The spring soft, and less cold for its journey to the +barn. + +"Where did you get this water?" + +"Help yourself. There's plenty more." + +"Becky, where did this water come from? Out o' the well?" + +Becky gave a snort of exasperation. "Sam Lewis brought it from the barn! +I'm too lame to be histin' buckets. I've got the rheumatiz' awful in my +back and shoulders, if ye want to know!" + +"Becky, you're lying to me. You've been listening to what don't concern +you. Now, see here. You are not going to ask the men to carry water for +you. They've got something else to do. _There's_ your water, as handy as +ever a woman had it; use that or go without." + +Abraham caught up the pail and flung its contents out upon the grass, +scattering the hens that came sidling back with squawks of inquiring +temerity. + +When next Emmy came for water, the old woman took her by the hand in +silence and led her into the dim meat-cellar, a half-basement with one +low window level with the grass. There was the pail, safe hidden behind +the soft-soap barrel. + +"I had to hide it from your pa," Becky whispered. "Don't you never let +him know you're afraid o' the well-water. He drunk it when he was a +little boy. He don't believe in the snakes. But _there wa'n't none +then_. It's when water gets old and rotten. You can believe what Becky +says. _She_ knows! But you mustn't ever tell. Your father 'd be as mad +as fire if he knowed I said anything about snakes. He'd send me right +away, and some strange woman would come, and maybe she'd whip Emmy. +Emmy want Becky to go?" Sobs, and little arms clinging wildly to Becky's +aproned skirts. "No, no! Well, she ain't goin'. But Emmy mustn't tell +tales or she might have to. Tattlers are wicked anyway. 'Telltale tit! +Your tongue shall be slit, and all the little dogs'--There! run now! +There's your poppy. Don't you never,--never!" + +Emmy let her eyes be wiped, and with one long, solemn, secret look of +awed intelligence she ran out to meet her father. She did not love him, +and the smile with which she met him was no new lesson in diplomacy. But +her first secret from him lay deep in the beautiful eyes, her mother's +eyes, as she raised them to his. + +"Ain't that wonderful!" said Becky, with a satisfied sigh, watching her. +"Safe as a jug! An' she not five years old!" For vital reasons she had +taught the child an ugly lesson. Such lessons were common enough in her +experience of family discipline. She never thought of it again. + +That year which took Emmy's mother from her brought to the child her +first young companion and friend. Adam Bogardus came as chore-boy to +the farm,--an only child himself, and sensitive through the clashing +of gentle instincts with rough and inferior surroundings; brought up +in that depressed God-fearing attitude in which a widow not strong, +and earning her bread, would do her duty by an only son. Not a natural +fighter, she took what little combativeness he had out of him, and made +his school-days miserable--a record of humiliations that sunk deep and +drove him from his kind. He was a big, clumsy, sagacious boy, grave +as an old man, always snubbed and condescended to, yet always trusted. +Little Emmy made him her bondslave at sight. His whole soul blossomed in +adoration of the beautiful, masterful child who ordered him about as her +vassal, while slipping a soft little trustful hand in his. She trotted +at his heels like one of the lambs or chickens that he fed. She brought +him into perpetual disgrace with Becky, for wasting his time through her +imperious demands. She was the burden, the delight, the handicap, the +incentive, and the reward of his humble apprenticeship. And when he was +promoted to be one of the regular hands she followed him still, and got +her pleasure out of his day's work. No one had such patience to tell +her things, to wait for her and help her over places where her tagging +powers fell short. But though she bullied him, she looked up to him +as well. His occupations commanded her respect. He was the god of the +orchards and of the cider-making; he presided at all the functions of +the farm year. He was a perfect calendar besides of country sports in +their season. He swept the ice pools in the meadow for winter sliding, +after his day's work was done. He saved up paper and string for +kite-making in March. He knew when willow bark would slip for April's +whistles. In the first heats of June he climbed the tall locust-trees +to put up a swing in which she could dream away the perfumed hours. +At harvest she waited in the meadow for him to toss her up on the +hay-loads, and his great arms received her when she slid off in the +barn. She knelt at his feet on the bumping boards of the farm-wagon +while he braced himself like a charioteer, holding the reins above +her head. He threshed the nut-trees and routed marauding boys from her +preserves, and carved pumpkin lanterns to light her to her attic chamber +on cold November nights, where she would lie awake watching strange +shadows on the sloping roof, half worshiping, half afraid of her idol's +ugliness in the dark. + +These were some of Paul's illustrations of that pastoral beginning, and +no doubt they were sympathetically close to the truth. He lingered +over them, dressing up his mother's choice instinctively to the little +aristocrat beside him. + +When Emmy grew big enough to go to the Academy, three miles from the +farm, it was all in the day's work that Adam should take her and fetch +her home. He combined her with the mail, the blacksmith, and other +village errands. Whoever met her father's team on those long stony hills +of Saugerties would see his little daughter seated beside his hired man, +her face turned up to his in endless confiding talk. It was a face, as +we say, to dream of. But there were few dreamers in that little world. +The farmers would nod gravely to Adam. "Abraham's girl takes after her +mother; heartier lookin', though. Guess he'll need a set o' new tires +before spring." The comments went no deeper. + +Abraham was now well on in years; he made no visits, and he never drove +his own team at night. When his daughter began to let down her frocks +and be asked to evening parties, it was still Adam who escorted her. +He sat in the kitchen while she was amusing herself in the parlor. She +discussed her young acquaintances with him on their way home. The +time for distinctions had come, but she was too innocent to feel +them herself, and too proud to accept the standards of others. He was +absolutely honest and unworldly. He thought it no treachery to love her +for herself, and he believed, as most of us do, that his family was as +good as hers or any other. + +It would be hard to explain the old man's obliviousness. Perhaps he had +forgotten his own youth; or class prejudice had gone so deep with him as +to preclude the bare thought of a child of his falling in love with one +of his "men." His imagination could not so insult his own blood. But +when the awakening came, his passion of anger and resentment knew no +bounds. To discharge his faithless employee out of hand would be the +cripple throwing away his crutch. Though he called Adam _one_ of his +men, and though his pay was that of a common laborer, his duties had +long been of a much higher order. Abraham had made a very good bargain +out of the widow's son. Adam knew well that he could not be spared, and +pitied the old man's helpless rage. He took his frantic insults as part +of his senility, and felt it no unmanliness to appease it by giving his +promise that he would speak no more of love to Emmy while he was taking +her father's wages. But Emmy did not indorse this promise fully. To her +it looked like weakness, and implied a sort of patience which did +not become a lover such as she wished hers to be. The winter wore on +uncomfortably for all. Towards spring, Becky's last illness and passing +away brought the younger ones together again, and closer than before. +Adam kept his promise through days and nights of sickroom intimacy; but +though no word of love was spoken, each bore silent witness to what was +loveliest in the other, and the bond between them deepened. + +Then spring came, and its restlessness was strong upon them both. But it +was Emmy to whom it meant action and rebellion. + +They stood on the orchard hill one Sunday afternoon at the pause of the +year. Buds were swelling and the edges of the woods wore a soft blush +against the vaporous sky. The bare brown slopes were streaked with snow. +A floe of winter ice, grinding upon itself with the tide, glared yellow +as an old man's teeth in the setting sun. From across the river came +the thunder of a train, bound north, two engines dragging forty cars of +freight piled up by some recent traffic-jam; it plunged into a tunnel, +and they waited, listening to the monster's smothered roar. Out it +burst, its breath packed into clouds, the engines whooped, and round +the curve where a point of cedars cut the sky the huge creature unwound +itself, the hills echoing to its tread. + +Emmy watched it out of sight, and breathed again. "Hundreds, hundreds +going every day! It seems easy enough for everybody else. Oh, if I were +a man!" + +"What do you want I should do, Emmy?" Adam knew well what man she was +thinking of. + +"_I_ want? Don't you ever want things yourself?" + +"When I want a thing bad, I gen'ly think it's worth waiting for." + +"People don't get things by waiting. I don't know how you can stand +it,--to stay here year after year. And now you've tied yourself up with +a promise, and you know you cannot keep it!" + +"I'm trying to keep it." + +"You couldn't keep it if you cared--really and truly--as some do!" She +dropped her voice hurriedly. "To live here and eat your meals day after +day and pass me like a stick or a stone!" + +The slow blood burned in Adam's face and hammered in his pulses. His +blue eyes were bashful through its heat. "I don't feel like a stick nor +a stone. You know it, Emmy. You want to be careful," he added gently. +"Would going away look as if I cared?" + +"Why--why don't you ask me to go with you?" The girl tried to meet his +eyes. She turned off her question with a proud laugh. + +"Be--careful, child! You know why I can't take you up on that. Would +you want we should leave him here alone--without even Becky? You're only +trying me for fun." + +"No; I am not!" Emmy was pale now. Her breast was rising in strong +excitement. "If we were gone, he would know then what you are worth to +him. Now, you're only Adam! He thinks he can put you down like a boy. He +won't believe I care for you. There's only one way to show him--that +is, if we do care. In one month he would be sending for us back. Then we +could come, and you would take your right place here, and be somebody. +You would not eat in the kitchen, then. Haven't you been like a son to +him? And why shouldn't he own it?" + +"But if he won't? Suppose he don't send for us to come back?" + +"Then you could strike out for yourself. What was Tom Madden, before +he went away to Colorado, or somewhere--where was it? And now everybody +stops to shake hands with him;--he's as much of a man as anybody. If you +could make a little money. That's the proof he wants. If you were rich, +you'd be all right with him. You know that!" + +"I'd hate to think it. But I'll never be rich. Put that out of your +mind, Emmy. It don't run in the blood. I don't come of a money-making +breed." + +"What a silly thing to say! Of course, if you don't believe you can, you +can't. Who has made the money here for the last ten years?" + +"It was his capital done it. It ain't hard to make money after you've +scraped the first few thousands together. But it's the first thousand +that costs." + +"How much have you got ahead?" + +Adam answered awkwardly, "Eleven hundred and sixty odd." He did not like +to talk of money to the girl who was the prayer, the inspiration, of his +life. It hurt him to be questioned by her in this sordid way. + +"You earned it all, didn't you?" + +"I've took no risks. Here was my home. He give me the chance and he +showed me how. And--he's your father. I don't like to talk about his +money, nor about my own, to you." + +"Oh, you are good, good! Nobody knows! But it's all wasted if you +haven't got any push--anything inside of yourself that makes people know +what you are. I wish I could put into you some of my _fury_ that I +feel when things get in my way! You have held yourself in too long. You +can't--_can't_ love a girl, and be so careful--like a mother. Don't you +understand?" + +"Stop right there, Emmy! You needn't push no harder. I can let go +whenever you say so. But--do _you_ understand, little girl? Man and wife +it will have to be." + +Emmy did not shrink at the words. Her face grew set, her dark eyes full +of mystery fixed themselves on the slow-moving ice-floe grinding along +the shore. + +"I know," she assented slowly. + +"I can't give you no farm, nor horses and carriages, nor help in the +kitchen. It's bucklin' right down with our bare hands--me outside and +you in? And you only eighteen. See what little hands--If I could do it +all!" + +"Your promise is broken," she whispered. "I made you break it. You will +have to tell him now, or--we must go." + +"So be!" said Adam solemnly. "And God do so to me and more also, if I +have to hurt my little girl,--Emmy--wife!" + +He folded her in his great arms clumsily--the man she had said was like +a mother. He was almost as ignorant as she, and more hopeful than he had +dared to seem, as to their worldly chances. But the love he had for her +told him it was not love that made her so bold. The first touch of +such love as his would have made her fear him as he feared her. And the +subtle pain of this instinctive knowledge, together with that broken +promise, shackled the wings of his great joy. It was not as he had hoped +to win the crown of life. + +Paul, it may be supposed, had never liked to think of his mother's +elopement. It had been the one hard point to get over in his conception +of his father, but he could never have explained it by such a scene as +this. It would have hampered him terribly in his tale had he dreamed of +it. He passed over the unfortunate incident with a romancer's touch, and +dwelt upon his grandfather's bitter resentment which he resented as +the son of his mother's choice. The Van Eltens and Brodericks all fared +hardly at the hands of their legatee. + +It was not only in the person of a hireling who had abused his trust +that Abraham had felt himself outraged. There were old neighborhood +spites and feuds going back, dividing blood from blood--even brothers of +the same blood. There was trouble between him and his brother Jacob, of +New York, dating from the settlement of their father's, Broderick Van +Elten's, estate; and no one knows what besides that was private and +personal may have entered into it. It was years since they had met, +but Jacob kept well abreast of his brother's misfortunes. A bachelor +himself, with no children to lose or to quarrel with, it was not +displeasing to him to hear of the breaks in his brother's household. + +"What, what, what! The last one left him,--run off with one of his men! +What a fool the man must be. Can't he look after his women folks better +than that? Better have lost her with the others. Two boys, and Chrissy, +and the girl--and now the last girl gone off with his hired man. Poor +Chrissy! Guess she had about enough of it. Things have come out pretty +much even, after all! There was more love and lickin's wasted on Abe. +Father was proudest of him, but he couldn't break him. Hi! but I've +crawled under the woodshed to hear him yell, and father would tan him +with a raw-hide, but he couldn't break him; couldn't get a sound out +of him. Big, and hard, and tough--Chrissy thought she knew a man; she +thought she took the best one." + +With slow, cold spite Jacob had tracked his brother's path in life +through its failures. Jacob had no failures, and no life. + + + + +V + + +DISINHERITED + +Proud little Emmy, heiress no longer, had put her spirit into her +farm-hand and incited him to the first rebellion of his life. They +crossed the river at night, poling through floating ice, and climbed +aboard one of those great through trains whose rushing thunder had made +the girlish heart so often beat. This was long before the West Shore +Line was built. Neither of them had ever seen the inside of a Pullman +sleeper. Emmy could count the purchased meals she had eaten in her life; +she had never slept in a hotel or hired lodging till after her marriage. +Hardly any one could be so provincial in these days. + +Adam Bogardus was a plodder in the West as he had been in the East. He +was an honest man, and he was wise enough not to try to be a shrewd one. +He tried none of the short-cuts to a fortune. Hard work suited him best, +and no work was too hard for his iron strength and patient resolution. +But it broke the spirit of a man in him to see his young wife's despair. +Poverty frightened and quelled her. The deep-rooted security of her old +home was something she missed every day of her makeshift existence. It +was degradation to live in "rooms," or a room; to move for want of means +to pay the rent. She pined for the good food she had been used to. Her +health suffered through anxiety and hard work. She was too proud to +complain, but the sight of her dumb unacceptance of what had come to +her through him undoubtedly added the last straw to her husband's mental +strain. + + * * * * * + +"It is hard for me to realize it as I once did," said Paul, as the story +paused. "You make tragedy a dream. But there is a deep vein of tragedy +in our blood. And my theory is that it always crops out in families +where it's the keynote, as it were." + +"Never mind, you old care-taker! We Middletons carry sail enough to need +a ton or two of lead in our keel." + +"But, you understand?"-- + +"I understand the distinction between what I call your good blood, and +the sort of blood I thought you had. It explains a certain funny way you +have with arms--weapons. Do you mind?" + +"Not at all," said Paul coldly. "I hate a weapon. I am always ashamed of +myself when I get one in my hand." + +"You act that way, dear!" + +"God made tools and the Devil made weapons." + +"You are civil to my father's profession." + +"Your father is what he is aside from his profession." + +"You are quite mistaken, Paul. My father and his profession are one. +His sword is a symbol of healing. The army is the great surgeon of the +nation when the time comes for a capital operation." + +"It grows harder to tell my story," said Paul gloomily;--"the short and +simple annals of the poor." + +"Now come! Have I been a snob about my father's profession?" + +"No; but you love it, naturally. You have grown up with its pomp and +circumstance around you. You are the history makers when history is most +exciting." + +"Go on with your story, you proud little Dutchman! When I despise you +for your farming relatives, you can taunt me with my history making." + +Paul was about two years old when his parents broke up in the Wood +River country and came south by wagon on the old stage-road to Felton. +Whenever he saw a "string-bean freighter's" outfit moving into Bisuka, +if there was a woman on the driver's seat, he wanted to take off his hat +to her. For so his mother sat beside his father and held him in her arms +two hundred miles across the Snake River desert. The stages have been +laid off since the Oregon Short Line went through, but there were +stations then all along the road. + +One night they made camp at a lonely place between Soul's Rest and +Mountain Home. Oneman Station it was called; afterwards Deadman Station, +when the keeper's body was found one morning stiff and cold in his bunk. +He died in the night alone. Emily Bogardus had cause to hate the man +when he was living, and his dreary end was long a shuddering remembrance +to her, like the answer to an unforgiving prayer. + +The station was in a hollow with bare hills around, rising to the +highest point of that rolling plain country. The mountains sink below +the plain, only their white tops showing. It was October. All the wild +grass had been eaten close for miles on both sides of the road, but over +a gap in the Western divide was the Bruneau Valley, where the bell-mare +of the team had been raised. In the night she broke her hopples and +struck out across the summit with the four mules at her heels. Towards +morning a light snow fell and covered their tracks. Adam was compelled +to hunt his stock on foot; the keeper refusing him a horse, saying he +had got himself into trouble before through being friendly with the +company's horses. He started out across the hills, expecting that the +same night would see him back, and his wife was left in the wagon camp +alone. + + * * * * * + +"I know this story very well," said Paul, "and yet I never heard it but +once, when mother decided I was old enough to know all. But every word +was bitten into me--especially this ugly part I am coming to. I wish +it need not be told, yet all the rest depends on it; and that such an +experience could come to a woman like my mother shows what exposure and +humiliation lie in the straightest path if there is no money to smooth +the way. You hear it said that in the West the toughest men will be +chivalrous to a woman if she is the right sort of a woman. I'm afraid +that is a romantic theory of the Western man. + +"That night, before his team stampeded, as he sat by the keeper's fire, +father had made up his mind that the less they had to do with that man +the better. He may have warned mother; and she, left alone with the +brute, did not know the wisdom of hiding her fear and loathing of him. +He may have meant no more than a low kind of teasing, but her suffering +was the same. + +"Father did not come. She dared not leave the camp. She knew no place to +go to, and in his haste, believing he would soon be with her again, he +had taken all their little stock of funds. But he had left her his gun, +and with this within reach of her hand in the shelter of the wagon hood, +without fire and without cooked food, she kept a sleepless watch. + +"The stages came and went; help was within sound of her voice, but she +dared make no sign. The passengers were few at that season, always +men, on the best of terms with the keeper. He had threatened--well, no +matter--such a threat as a more sophisticated woman would have smiled +at. She was simple, but she was not weak. It was a moral battle between +them. There were hours when she held him by the power of her eye alone; +she conquered, but it nearly killed her. + +"One morning a man jumped down from the stage whose face she knew. He +had recognized my father's outfit and he came to speak to her, amazed +to find her in that place alone. There was no need to put her worst fear +into words; he knew the keeper. He made the best he could of father's +detention, but he assured her, as she knew too well, that she could not +wait for him there. He was on his way East, and he took us with him as +far as Mountain Home. To this day she believes that if Bud Granger had +led the search, my father would have been found; but he went East to +sell his cattle, the snows set in, and the search party came straggling +home. The man, Granger, had left a letter of explanation, inclosing one +from mother to father, with the keeper. He bribed and frightened him, +but for years she used to agonize over a fear that father had come back +and the keeper had withheld the letter and belied her to him with some +devilish story that maddened him and drove him from her. Such a fancy +might have come out of her mental state at that time. I believe that +Granger left the letter simply to satisfy her. He must have believed my +father was dead. He could not have conceived of a man's being lost in +that broad country at that season; but my father was a man of hills and +farms, all small, compact. The plains were another planet to him. + +"The letter was found in the keeper's clothing after his death; no +one ever came to claim it of his successor. Somewhere in this great +wilderness a tired man found rest. What would we not give if we knew +where! + +"And she worked in a hotel in Mountain Home. Can you imagine it! Then +Christine was born and the multiplied strain overcame her. Strangers +took care of her children while she lay between life and death. She had +been silent about herself and her past, but they found a letter from one +of her old schoolmates asking about teachers' salaries in the West, and +they wrote to her begging her to make known my mother's condition to +her relatives if any were living. At length came a letter from +grandfather--characteristic to the last. The old home was there, for her +and for her children, but no home for the traitor, as he called father. +She must give him up even to his name. No Bogardus could inherit of a +Van Elten. + +"She had not then lost all hope of father's return, and she never +forgave her father for trying to buy her back for the price of what she +considered her birthright. She settled down miserably to earn bread for +her children. Then, when hope and pride were crushed in her, and faith +had nothing left to cling to, there came a letter from Uncle Jacob, the +bachelor, who had bided his time. Out of the division in his brother's +house he proposed to build up his own; just as he would step in and buy +depreciated bonds to hold them for a rise. He offered her a home and +maintenance during his lifetime, and his estate for herself and her +children when he was through. There were no conditions referring to our +father, but it was understood that she should give up her own. This, +mainly, to spite his brother, yet under all there was an old man's plea. +She felt she could make the obligation good, though there might not be +much love on either side. Perhaps it came later; but I remember enough +of that time to believe that her children's future was dearly paid for. +Grandfather died alone, in the old rat-ridden house up the Hudson. He +left no will, to every one's surprise. It might have been his negative +way of owning his debt to nature at the last. + +"That is how we came to be rich; and no one detects in us now the crime +of those early struggles. But my father was a hired man; and my mother +has done every menial thing with those soft hands of hers." A softer one +was folded in his own. Its answering clasp was loyal and strong. + +"Is _this_ the story you had not the courage to tell me?" + +"This is the story I had the courage to tell you--not any too soon, +perhaps you think?" + +"And do you think it needed courage?" + +"The question is what you think. What are we to do with Uncle Jacob's +money? Go off by ourselves and have a good time with it?" + +"We will not decide to-night," said Moya, tenderly subdued. But, though +the story had interested and touched her, as accounting for her lover's +saddened, conscience-ridden youth, it was no argument against teaching +him what youth meant in her philosophy. The differences were explained, +but not abolished. + +"It was spite money, remember, not love money," he continued, reverting +to his story. "It purchased my mother's compliance to one who hated her +father, who forced her to listen, year after year, to bitter, unnatural +words against him. I am not sure but it kept her from him at the last; +for if Uncle Jacob had not stepped in and made her his, I can't help +thinking she would have found somehow a way to the soft place in his +heart. Something good ought to be done with that money to redeem its +history." + +"You must not be morbid, Paul." + +"That sounds like mother," said Paul, smiling. "She is always jealous +for our happiness; because she lost her own, I think, and paid so +heavily for ours. She prizes pleasure and success, even worldly success, +for us." + +"I don't blame her!" cried Moya. + +"No; of course not. But you mustn't both be against me, and Chrissy, +too. She is so, unconsciously; she does not know the pull there is on +me, through knowing things she doesn't dream of, and that I can never +forget." + +"No," said Moya. "I am sure she is perfectly unconscious. We exchanged +biographies at school, and there was nothing at all like this in hers. +Why was she never told?" + +"She has always been too strained, too excitable. Every least incident +is an emotion with her. When she laughs, her laugh is like a cry. +Haven't you noticed that? Startle her, and her eyes are the very eyes of +fear. Mother was wise, I think, not to pour those old sorrows into her +little fragile cup." + +"So she emptied them all into yours!" + +"That was my right, of the elder and stronger. I wouldn't have missed +the knowledge of our beginnings for the world. What a prosperous fool +and ass I might have made of myself!" + +"Morbid again," said Moya. "You belong to your own day and generation. +You might as well wear country shoes and clothes because your father +wore them." + +"Still, if we have such a thing in this country as class, then you and I +do not belong to the same class except by virtue of Uncle Jacob's money. +Confess you are glad I am a Bevier and a Broderick and a Van Elten, as +well as a Bogardus." + +"I shall confess nothing of the kind. Now you do talk like a _nouveau_ +Paul, dear," said Moya, with her caressing eyes on his--they had paused +under the lamp at the top of the steps--"I think your father must have +been a very good man." + +"All our fathers were," Paul averred, smiling at her earnestness. + +"Yes, but yours in particular; because _you_ are an angel; and your +mother is quite human, is she not?--almost as human as I am? That +carriage of the head,--if that does not mean the world!"-- + +"She has needed all her pride." + +"I don't object to pride, myself," said the girl, "but you dwell so upon +her humiliations. I see no such record in her face." + +"She has had much to hide, you must remember." + +"Well, she can hide things; but one's self must escape sometimes. What +has become of little Emily Van Elten who ran away with her father's +hired man? What has become of the freighter's wife?" + +"She is all mother now. She brought us back to the world, and for our +sakes she has learned to take her place in it. Herself she has buried." + +"Yes; but which is--was herself?" + +"And you cannot see her story in her face?" + +"Not that story." + +"Not the crushing reserve, the long suspense, the silence of a sorrow +that even her children could not share?" + +"I know her silence. Your mother is a most reticent woman. But is she +now the woman of that story?" + +"I don't understand you quite," said Paul. "How much are we ourselves +after we have passed through fires of grief, and been recast under the +pressure of circumstances! She was that woman once." + +"The saddest part of the story to me is, that your father, who loved her +so, and worked so hard for his family, should have served you all the +better by his death." + +"Oh, don't say that, dear! Who knows what is best? But one thing we do +know. The sorrow that cut my mother's life in two brought you and me +together. It rent the stratum on which I was born and raised it to the +level of yours, my lady!" + +"I shall not forget," whispered Moya with blissful irony, "that you are +the Poor Man's son!" + + + + +VI + + +AN APPEAL TO NATURE + +The autumn days were shortening imperceptibly and the sunsets had +gained an almost articulate splendor: cloud calling unto cloud, the west +horizon signaling to the east, and answering again, while the mute dark +circle of hills sat like a council of chiefs with their blankets drawn +over their heads. Soon those blankets would be white with snow. + +Behind the Post where the hills climb toward the Cottonwood Creek +divide, there is a little canon which at sunset is especially inviting. +It hastens twilight by at least an hour during midsummer, and in autumn +it leads up a stairway of shadow to the great spectacle of the day--the +day's departure from the hills. + +The canon has its companion rivulet always coming down to meet the +stage-road going up. As this road is the only outlet hillward for all +the life of the plain, and as the tendency of every valley population is +to climb, one thinks of it as a way out rather than a way in. Higher up, +the stage-road becomes a pass cut through a wall of splintered cliffs; +and here it leads its companion, the brook, a wild dance over boulders, +and under culverts of fallen rock. At last it emerges on what is +called The Summit; and between are green, deep valleys where the little +ranches, fields and fences and houses, seem to have slid down to the +bottom and lie there at rest. + +A party of young riders from the post had gone up this road one evening, +and two had come down, laughing and talking; but the other two remained +in the circle of light that rested on the summit. Prom where they sat +in the dry grass they could hear a hollow sound of moving feet as the +cattle wandered down through folds of the hills, seeking the willow +copses by the water. On the breast of her habit Moya wore the blossoms +of the wild evening primrose, which in this region flowers till the +coming of frost. They had been gathered for her on the way up, and as +she had waited for them, sitting her horse in silence, the brown owls +gurgled and hooted overhead from nest to nest in the crannies of the +rocks. + +"You need not hold the horses," she commanded, in her fresh voice. +"Throw my bridle over your saddle pommel and yours over mine.--There!" +she said, watching the horses as they shuffled about interlinked. "That +is like half the marriages in this world. They don't separate and they +don't go astray, but they don't _get_ anywhere!" + +"I have been thinking of those 'two in the Garden,'" mused Paul, resting +his dark, abstracted eyes on her. "Whether or no your humble servant has +a claim to unchallenged bliss in this world, there's no doubt about your +claim. If my plans interfere, I must take myself out of the way." + +"Oh, you funny old croaker!" laughed the girl. "Take yourself out of the +way, indeed! Haven't you chosen me to show you the way?" + +"Moya, Moya!" said Paul in a smothered voice. + +"I know what you are thinking. But stop it!" she held one of her crushed +blossoms to his lips. "What was this made for? Why hasn't it some work +to do? Isn't it a skulker--blooming here for only a night?" + +"'Ripen, fall, and cease!'" Paul murmured. + +"How much more am I--are you, then? The sum of us may amount to +something, if we mind our own business and keep step with each other, +and finish one thing before we begin the next. I will not be in a hurry +about being good. Goodness can take care of itself. What you need is to +be happy! And it's my first duty to make you so." + +"God knows what bliss it would be." + +"Don't say 'would be.'" + +"God knows it is!" + +"Then hush and be thankful!" There was a long hush. They heard the far, +faint notes of a bugle sounding from the Post. + +"Lights out," said Moya. "We must go." + +"You haven't told me yet where our Garden is to be," he said. + +"I will tell you on the way home." + +When they had come down into the neighborhood of ranches, and Bisuka's +lights were twinkling below them, she asked: "Who lives now in the +grandfather's house on the Hudson?" + +"The farmer, Chauncey Dunlop." + +"Is there any other house on the place?" + +"Yes. Mother built a new one on the Ridge some years ago." + +"What sort of a house is it?" + +"It was called a good house once; but now it's rather everything it +shouldn't be. It was one of the few rash things mother ever did; build a +house for her children while they were children. Now she will not change +it. She says we shall build for ourselves, how and where we please. +Stone Ridge is her shop. Of course, if Chrissy liked it--But Chrissy +considers it a 'hole.' Mother goes up there and indulges in secret +orgies of economy; one man in the stable, one in the garden--'Economy +has its pleasures for all healthy minds.'" + +"Economy is as delicious as bread and butter after too much candy. I +should love to go up to Stone Ridge and wear out my old clothes. Did any +one tell me that place would some day be yours?" + +"It will be my wife's on the day we are married." + +"That is where your wife, sir, would like to live." + +"It is a stony Garden, dear! The summer people have their places nearer +the river. Our land lies back, with no view but hills. For one who has +the world before her where to choose, it strikes me she has picked out a +very humble Paradise." + +"Did you think my idea was to travel--a poor army girl who spends +her life in trunks? Do we ever buy a book or frame a picture without +thinking of our next move? As for houses, who am I that I should be +particular? In the Army's House are many mansions, but none that we +can call our own. Oh, I'm very primitive; I have the savage instinct to +gather sticks and stones, and get a roof over my head before winter sets +in." + +To such a speech as this there was but one obvious answer, as she rode +at his side, her appealing slenderness within reach of his arm. It did +not matter what thousands he proposed to spend upon the roof that should +cover her; it was the same as if they were planning a hut of tules or a +burrow in the snow. + +"It is a poor man's country," he said; "stony hillsides, stony roads +lined with stone fences. The chief crop of the country is ice and stone. +In one of my grandfather's fields there is a great cairn which Adam +Bogardus, they say, picked up, stone by stone, with his bare hands, and +carted there when he was fourteen years old. We will build them into the +walls of our new house for a blessing." + +"No," said Moya. "We will let sleeping stones lie!" + + + + +VII + + +MARKING TIME + +There was impatience at the garrison for news that the hunters had +started. Every day's delay at Challis meant an abridgment of the +bridegroom's leave, and the wedding was now but a fortnight away. It +began to seem preposterous that he should go at all, and the colonel +was annoyed with himself for his enthusiasm over the plan in the first +place. Mrs. Bogardus's watchfulness of dates told the story of her +thoughts, but she said nothing. + +"Mamsie is restless," said Christine, putting an arm around her mother's +solid waist and giving her a tight little hug apropos of nothing. "I +believe it's another case of 'mail-time fever.' The colonel says it +comes on with Moya every afternoon about First Sergeant's call. But +Moya is cunning. She goes off and pretends she isn't listening for the +bugle." + +"'First Sergeant or Second,' it's all one to me," said Mrs. Bogardus. "I +never know one call from another, except when the gun goes off." + +"Mamsie! 'When the gun goes off!' What a civilian way of talking. You +are not getting on at all with your military training. Now let me give +you some useful information. In two seconds the bugle will call the +first sergeant--of each company--to the adjutant's office, and there +he'll get the mail for his men. The orderly trumpeter will bring it to +the houses on the line, and the colonel's orderly--beautiful creature! +There he goes! How I wish we could take him home with us and have him +in our front hall. Fancy the feelings of the maids! And the rage on the +noble brow of Parkins--awful Parkins. I should like to give his pride a +bump." + +Mother and daughter were pacing the colonel's veranda, behind a partial +screen of rose vines--October vines fast shedding their leaves. Every +breeze shook a handful down, which the women's skirts swept with them as +they walked. Mrs. Bogardus turned and clasped Christine's arm above the +elbow; through the thin sleeve she could feel its cool roundness. It was +a soft, small, unmuscular arm, that had never borne its own burdens, to +say nothing of a share in the burdens of others. + +"Get your jacket," said the mother. "There is a chill in the air." + +"There is no chill in me," laughed Christine. "You know, mamsie, you +aren't a girl. I should simply die in those awful things that you wear. +Did you ever know such a hot house as the colonel keeps!" + +"The rooms are small, and the colonel is--impulsive," Mrs. Bogardus +added with a smile. + +"There is something very like him about his fire-making. I should know +by the way he puts on wood that he never would have "--Mrs. Bogardus +checked herself. + +"A large bank account?" Christine supplied, with her quick wit, which +was not of a highly sensitive order. + +"He has a large heart," said her mother. + +"And plenty of room for it, bless him! The slope of his chest is like +the roof of a house. The only time I envy Moya is when she lays her head +down on it and tries to meet her arms around him as if he were a tree, +and he strokes her hair as if his hand was a bough! If ever I marry a +soldier he shall be a colonel with a white mustache and a burnt-sienna +complexion, and a sword-belt that measures--what is the colonel's +waist-measure, do you suppose?" + +Mrs. Bogardus listened to this nonsense with the smile of a silent +woman who has borne a child that can talk. Moya had often noticed how +uncritical she was of Christine's "unruly member." + +"It isn't polite to speak of waist-measures to middle-aged persons like +your mother and the colonel," she said placidly. "You like it very much +out here?" + +"Fascinating! Never had such a good time in my whole life." + +"And you like the West altogether? Would you like to live here?" + +"Oh, if it came to living, I should want to be sure there was a way +out." + +"There generally is a way out of most things. But it costs something." +Mrs. Bogardus was so concise in her speech as at times to be almost +oracular. + +"Army people are sure of their way out," said Christine, "and I guess +they find it costs something." + +"Why do they buy so many books, I wonder? If I moved as often as they +do, I'd have only paper covers and leave them behind." + +"You are not a reader, mummy. You're a business woman. You look at +everything from the practical side." + +"And if I didn't, who would?" Mrs. Bogardus spoke with earnestness. "We +can't all be dreamers like Paul or privileged persons like you. There +has to be one in every family to say the things no one likes to hear and +do the things nobody likes to do." + +"We are the rich repiners and you are the household drudge!" Christine +shouted, laughing at her own wit. + +"Hush, hush!" her mother smiled. "Don't make so much noise." + +"I should like to know who's to be the drudge in Paul's privileged +family. It doesn't strike me it's going to be Moya. And Paul only +drudges for people he doesn't know." + +"Moya is a girl you can expect anything of. She is a wonderful mixture +of opposites. She has the Irish quickness, and yet she has learned to +obey. She has had the freedom and the discipline of these little lordly +army posts. She is one of the few girls of her age who does not measure +everything from her own point of view." + +"Is that a dig at me, ma'am?" + +At that moment Moya came out upon the porch. + +She was very striking with the high color and brilliant eyes that +mail-time fever breeds. Christine looked at her with freshly aroused +curiosity, moved by her mother's unwonted burst of praise. The faintest +tinge of jealousy made her feel naughty. As Moya went down the board +walk, the colonel's orderly came springing up the steps to meet her with +the mail-bag. He saluted and turned off at an angle down the embankment +not to present his back to the ladies. + +"Did you see that! He never raised his eyes. They are like priests. You +can't make them look at you." Moya looked at Christine in amazement. +The man himself might have heard her. It was not the first time +this privileged guest had rubbed against garrison customs in certain +directions hardly worth mentioning. Moya hesitated. Then she laughed +a little, and said: "Only a raw recruity would look at an officer's +daughter, or any lady of the line." + +"Oh, you horrid little aristocrat! Well, I look at them, when they are +as pretty as that one, and I forgive them if they look at me." + +Moya turned and hovered over the contents of the mail-bag. In the +exercise of one of her prerogatives, it was her habit to sort its +contents before delivering it at the official door. + +"All, all for you!" she offered a huge packet of letters, smiling, to +Mrs. Bogardus. It was faced with one on top in Paul's handwriting. "All +but one," she added, and proceeded to open her own much fatter one in +the same hand. She stood reading it in the hall. + +Mrs. Bogardus presently followed and remained beside her. "Could I speak +to your father a moment?" she asked. + +"Certainly, I will call him," said Moya. + +"Wait: I hear him now." The study door opened and Colonel Middleton +joined them. Mrs. Bogardus leading the way into the sitting-room, the +colonel followed her, and Moya, not having been invited, lingered in the +hall. + +"Well, have the hunters started yet?" the colonel inquired in his breezy +voice, which made you want to open the doors and windows to give it +room. "Be seated! Be seated! I hope you have got a long letter to read +me." + +Mrs. Bogardus stood reflecting. "The day this letter was mailed they got +off--only two days ago," she said. "Could I reach them, Colonel, with a +telegram?" + +"Two days ago," the colonel considered. "They must have made Yankee Fork +by yesterday. Today they are deep in the woods. No; I should say a man +on horseback would be your surest telegram. Is it anything important?" + +"Colonel, I wish we could call them back! They have gone off, it seems +to me, in a most crazy way--against the judgment of every one who knows. +The guide, this man whom they waited for, refused, it appears, to go +out again with another party so late in the fall. But the Bowens were +determined. They insisted on making arrangements with another man. Then, +when 'Packer John,' they call him, heard of this, he went to Paul and +urged him, if he could not prevent the others from going, to give up the +trip himself. The Bowens were very much annoyed at his interference, +and with Paul for listening to him. And Paul, rather than make things +unpleasant, gave in. You know how young men are! What silly grounds are +enough for the most serious decisions when it is a question of pride or +good faith. The Bowens had bought their outfit on Paul's assurance that +he would go. He felt he could not leave them in the lurch. On that, the +guide suddenly changed his mind and said he would go with them sooner +than see them fall into worse hands. They were, in a way, committed to +the other man, so they took _him_ along as cook--the whole thing done in +haste, you see, and unpleasant feelings all around. Do you call that a +good start for a pleasure trip?" + +"It's very much the way with young troops when they start +out--everything wrong end foremost, everybody mad with everybody else. A +day in the saddle will set their little tempers all right." + +"That isn't the point," Mrs. Bogardus persisted gloomily. As she spoke, +the two girls came into the room and stood listening. + +"What is the point, then?" Christine demanded. "Moya has no news; all +those pages and pages, and nothing for anybody or about anybody!" + +"'Such an intolerable deal of sack to such a poor pennyworth of bread,'" +the colonel quoted, smiling at Moya's bloated envelope. + +"But what do you think?" Mrs. Bogardus recalled him. "Don't you think +it's a mistake all around?" + +"Not at all, if they have a good man. This flat-footed fellow, John, +will take command, as he should. There is no danger in the woods at any +season unless the party gets rattled and goes to pieces for want of a +head." + +"Father!" exclaimed Moya. "You know there is danger. Often, things have +happened!" + +"Why, what could happen?" asked Christine, with wide eyes. + +"Many things very interesting could happen," the colonel boasted +cheerfully. "That is the object of the trip. You want things to happen. +It is the emergency that makes the man--sifts him, and takes the chaff +out of him." + +"Take the chaff out of Banks Bowen," Moya imprudently struck in, "and +what would you have left?" She had met Banks Bowen in New York. + +"Tut, tut!" said the colonel. "Silence, or a good word for the +absent--same as the"--The colonel stopped short. + +"You are so scornful about the other men, now you have chosen one!" +Christine's face turned red. + +"Why, Chrissy! You would not compare your brother to those men! Papa, I +beg your pardon; this is only for argument." + +"I don't compare him; but that's not to say all the other men are +chaff!" Christine joined constrainedly in the laugh that followed her +speech. + +"You need not go fancying things, Moya," she cried, in answer to a +quizzical look. "As if I hadn't known the Bowen boys since I was so +high!" + +"You might know them from the cradle to the grave, my dear young lady, +and not know them as Paul will, after a week in the woods with them." + +The colonel had missed the drift of the girls' discussion. He was +considering, privately, whether he had not better send a special +messenger on the young men's trail. His assurances to the women left +a wide margin for personal doubt as to the prudence of the trip. Aside +from the lateness of the start, it was, undoubtedly, an ill-assorted +company for the woods. There was a wide margin also for suspense, as all +mail facilities ceased at Challis. + + + + +VIII + + +A HUNTER'S DIARY + +Early in November, about a week before the hunters were expected home, a +packet came addressed to Moya. It was a journal letter from Paul, mailed +by some returning prospector chance encountered in the forest as the +party were going in. Moya read it aloud, with asterisks, to a family +audience which did not include her father. + +"To-day," one of the first entries read, "we halt at Twelve-Mile Cabin, +the last roof we shall sleep under. There are pine-trees near the cabin +cut off fifteen feet above the ground, felled in winter, John tells us, +_at the level of the snow!_ + +"These cabins are all deserted now; the tide of prospecting has turned +another way. The great hills that crowd one another up against the sky +are so infested and overridden by this enormous forest-growth, and the +underbrush is so dense, it would be impossible for a 'tenderfoot' to +gain any clear idea of his direction. I should be a lost man the moment +I ventured out of call. Woodcraft must be a sixth sense which we lost +with the rest of our Eden birthright when we strayed from innocence, +when we ceased to sleep with one ear on the ground, and to spell our way +by the moss on tree-trunks. In these solitudes, as we call them, +ranks and clouds of witnesses rise up to prove us deaf and blind. Busy +couriers are passing every moment of the day; and we do not see, nor +hear, nor understand. We are the stocks and stones. Packer John is our +only wood-sharp;--yet the last half of the name doesn't altogether fit +him. He is a one-sided character, handicapped, I should say, by some +experience that has humbled and perplexed him. Two and two perhaps +refused to make four in his account with men, and he gave up the +proposition. And now he consorts with trees, and hunts to live, not +to kill. He has an impersonal, out-door odor about him, such as the +cleanest animals have. I would as soon eat out of his dry, hard, cool +hand, as from a chunk of pine-bark. + +"It is amusing to see him with a certain member of the party who tries +to be fresh with him. He has a disconcerting eye when he fixes it on a +man, or turns it away from one who has said a coarse or a foolish thing. + +"'The jungle is large,' he seems to say, 'and the cub he is small. Let +him think and be still!'" + +"Who is this 'certain member' who tries to be 'fresh'?" Christine +inquired with perceptible warmth. + +"The cook, perhaps," said Moya prudently. + +"The cook isn't a 'member'!--Well, can't you go on, Moya? Paul seems to +need a lot of editing." Moya had paused and was glancing ahead, smiling +to herself constrainedly. + +"Is there more disparagement of his comrades?" Christine persisted. + +"Christine, be still!" Mrs. Bogardus interfered. "Moya ought to have the +first reading of her own letter. It's very good of her to let us hear it +at all." + +"Oh dear, there's no disparagement. Quite the contrary! I'll go on with +pleasure if you don't mind." Moya read hurriedly, laughing through her +words:-- + +"'If you were here, (Ah, _if_ you were here!) You should lend me an +ear--One at the least Of a pair the prettiest'--which is, within a foot +or two, the rhythm of 'Wood Notes.' Of course you don't know it!" + +"This is a gibe at me," Moya explained, "because I don't read Emerson. +'It is the very measure of a marching chorus,' he goes on to say, 'where +the step is broken by rocks and tree-roots;'--and he is chanting it +to himself (to her it was in the original) as they go in single file +through these 'haughty solitudes, the twilight of the gods!'" + +"'Haughty solitudes'!" Christine derided. + +Mrs. Bogardus sighed with impatience, and Moya's face became set. "Well, +here he quotes again," she haughtily resumed. "Anybody who is tired of +this can be excused. Emerson won't mind, and I'm sure Paul won't!" She +looked a mute apology to Paul's mother, who smiled and said, "Go on, +dear. I don't read Emerson either, but I like him when Paul reads him +for me." + +"Well, I warn you there is an awful lot of him here!" Moya's voice was a +trifle husky as she read on. + +"Old as Jove, Old as Love'" + +"I thought Love was young!"--Christine in a whisper aside. + +"'Who of me Tells the pedigree? Only the mountains old, Only the waters +cold, Only the moon and stars, My coevals are.'" + +Moya sighed, and sank into prose again. "There is a gaudy yellow moss +in these woods that flecks the straight and mournful tree-trunks like a +wandering glint of sunlight; and there is a crepe-like black moss that +hangs funeral scarfs upon the boughs, as if there had been a death in +the forest, and the trees were in line for the burial procession. The +grating of our voices on this supreme silence reminds one of 'Why will +you still be talking, Monsieur Benedick?--nobody marks you.' + +"There are silences, and again there are whole symphonies of sound. The +winds smites the tree-tops over our heads, a surf-like roar comes up +the slope, and the yellow pine-needles fall across the deepest darks as +motes sail down a sunbeam. One wearies of the constant perpendicular, +always these stiff, columnar lines, varied only by the melancholy +incline where some great pine-chieftain is leaning to his fall supported +in the arms of his comrades, or by the tragic prostration of the 'down +timber'--beautiful straight-cut English these woodsmen talk. + +"Last evening John and I sat by the stove in the men's tent, while the +others were in the cabin playing penny-ante with the cook (a sodden +brute who toadies to the Bowens, and sulks with John because he objected +to our hiring the fellow--an objection which I sustained, hence his +logical spite includes me). John was melting pine gum and elk tallow +into a dressing for our boots. I took a mean advantage of him, his hands +being in the tallow and the tent-flap down, and tried on him a little +of--now, don't deride me!--'Wood Notes.' It is seldom one can get the +comment of a genuine woodsman on Nature according to the poets.'" + +Moya read on perfunctorily, feeling that she was not carrying her +audience with her, and longing for the time when she could take her +letter away and have it all to herself. If she stopped now, Christine, +in this sudden new freak of distrustfulness, would be sure to +misunderstand. + + "'For Nature ever faithful is + To such as trust her faithfulness. + When the forest shall mislead me, + When the night and morning lie, + When sea and land refuse to feed me, + Will be time enough to die. + + Then will yet my Mother yield + A pillow in her greenest field; + Nor the June flowers scorn to cover + The clay of their departed lover.'" + +"That is beautiful," Mrs. Bogardus murmured hastily. "Even I can +understand that." Moya thanked her with a glance. + +"And what did the infallible John say?" Christine inquired. + +"John looked at me and smiled, as at a babbling infant"-- + +"Good for John!" + +"Christine, be still!" + +"John looked at me and smiled," Moya repeated steadily. Nothing could +have stopped her now. She only hoped for some further scattering mention +of that "certain member" who had set them all at odds and spoiled what +should have been an hour's pure happiness. "'You'll get the pillow all +right,' he said. 'It might not be a green one, nor I wouldn't bank much +on the flowers; but you'll be tired enough to sleep without rocking +about the time you trust to Nature's tuckin' you in and puttin' victuals +in your mouth. I never _see_ nature till I came out here. I'd seen +pretty woods and views, that a young lady could take down with her +paints; but how are you going to paint that?'--he waved his tallow-stick +towards the night outside. 'Ears can't reach the bottom of that +stillness. That's creation before God ever thought of man. Long as I've +been in the woods, I never get over the feeling that there's _something +behind me_. If you go towards the trees, they come to meet you; if you +go backwards, they go back; but you can't sit down and sit still without +they'll come a-creeping up and creeping up, and crowding in'-- + +"He stirred his 'dope' awhile, and then he struck another note. 'I've +wintered alone in these mountains,' he said, 'and I've seen snowslides +pounce out of a clear sky--a puff and a flash and a roar; an' trees four +foot across snappin' like kindlin' wood--not because it hit 'em; only +the breath of it struck them; and maybe a man lying dead somewheres +under his cabin timbers. That's no mother's love-tap. Pillows and +flowers ain't in it. But it's good poetry,' he added condescendingly. + +"I have not quoted him right, not being much of a snap-shot at dialect; +and his is an undefined, unclassifiable mixture. Eastern farm-hand and +Western ranchman, prospector, who knows what? His real language is in +his eye and his rare, pure smile. And just as his countenance expresses +his thoughts without circumlocution or attempt at effect, so his body +informs his clothing. Wind and rain have moulded his hat to his head, +his shoes grip the ground like paws; his buckskins have a surface like +a cast after Rodin. They are repousseed by the hard bones and sinews +underneath. I can think of nothing but the clothing of Millet's peasants +to compare with this exterior of John's. He is himself a peasant of the +woods. He has not the predatory instincts. If he could have his way, not +a shot would be fired by any of us for the mere idle sport of killing. +Shooting these innocent, fearless creatures, who have not learned that +we are here for their destruction, is too like murder and treachery +combined. Hunger should be our only excuse. My forbearance, or weakness, +is a sort of unspoken bond between us. But I am a peasant, too, you +know. I do not come of the lordly, arms-bearing blood. I shoot at a live +mark always under protest; and when I fairly catch the look in the great +eye of a dying elk or black-tail, it knocks me out for that day's hunt." + +"Paul is perfectly happy!" Christine broke in. "He has got one of his +beloved People to grovel to. They can sleep in the same tent and eat +from the same plate, if you like. Why, it's better than the East Side! +He'll be blood brother to Packer John before they leave the woods." + +Moya blushed with anger. + +"You have said enough on that subject, Christine." Mrs. Bogardus bent +her dark, keen gaze upon her daughter's face. "Come"--she rose. "Come +with me!" + +Christine sat still. "Come!" her mother repeated sternly. "Moya,"--in +a different voice,--"your letter was lovely. Shall you read it to your +father?" + +"Hardly," said Moya, flushing. "Father does not care for descriptions, +and the woods are an old story to him." + +Mrs. Bogardus placed her hands on the girl's shoulders and gave her one +of her infrequent, ceremonious kisses, which, like her finest smile, she +kept for occasions too nice for words. + + + + +IX + + +THE POWER OF WEAKNESS + +Christine followed her mother to their room, and the two faced each +other a moment in pale silence. + +Mrs. Bogardus spoke first. "What does this mean?"--her breath came +short, perhaps from climbing the stairs. She was a large woman. + +"What does what mean? I don't understand you, mother." + +"Ah, child, don't repulse me! Twice you and Moya have nearly quarreled +about those men. Why were you so rude to her? Why did you behave so +about her letter?" + +"Paul is so intolerant! And the airs he puts on! If he is my own brother +I must say he's an awful prig about other men." + +"We are not discussing Paul. That is not the question now. Have you +anything to tell me, Christine?" + +"To tell you?--about what, mother?" Christine spoke lower. + +"You know what I mean. Which of them is it? Is it Banks?--don't say it +is Banks!" + +"Mother, how can I say anything when you begin like that?" + +"Have you any idea what sort of a man Banks Bowen really is? His father +supports him entirely--six years now, ever since he left the law school. +He does nothing, never will do anything. He has no will or purpose in +life, except about trifles like this hunting-trip. As far as I can see +he is without common sense." + +Christine stood by the dressing-table pleating the cover-frilling with +her small fingers that were loaded with rings. She pinched the folds +hard and let them go. "Why did no one ever say these things before?" + +"We don't say things about the sons of our friends, unless we are +compelled to. They were implied in every way possible. When have I asked +Banks Bowen to the house except when everybody was asked! I would never +in the world have come out in Mr. Borland's car if I had known the +Bowens were to be of the party." + +"That made no difference," said Christine loftily. + +"It was all settled before then, was it?" + +"Have I said it was settled, mother? He asked me if I could ever care +for him; and I said that I did--a little. Why shouldn't I? He does what +I like a man to do. I don't enjoy people who have wills and purposes. It +may be very horrid of me, but I wouldn't be in Moya's place for worlds." + +"You poor child! You poor, unhappy child!" + +"Why am I unhappy? Has Paul added so much to our income since he left +college?" + +"Paul does not make money; neither does he selfishly waste it. He has a +conscience in his use of what he has." + +"I don't see what conscience has to do with it. When it is gone it's +gone." + +"You will learn what conscience has to do with a man's spending if ever +you try to make both ends meet with Banks Bowen. I suppose he will go +through the form of speaking to me?" + +"Mother dear! He has only just spoken to me. How fast you go!" + +"Not fast enough to keep up with my children, it seems. Was it you, +Christine, who asked them to come here?" + +Christine was silent. + +"Where did you learn such ways?--such want of frankness, of delicacy, of +the commonest consideration for others? To be looking out for your own +little schemes at a time like this!" Mrs. Bogardus saw now what must +have been Paul's reason for doing what, with all her forced explanations +of the hunting-trip, she had never until now understood. He had taken +the alarm before she had, and done what he could to postpone this family +catastrophe. + +Christine retreated to a deep-cushioned chair, and threw herself into +it, her slender hands, palm upwards, extended upon its arms. Total +surrender under pressure of cruel odds was the expression of her pointed +eyebrows and drooping mouth. She looked exasperatingly pretty and +irresponsibly fragile. Her blue-veined eyelids quivered, her breath came +in distinct pants. + +"Perhaps you will not be troubled with my 'ways' for very many years, +mother. If you could feel my heart now! It jumps like something trying +to get out. It will get out some day. Have patience!" + +"That is a poor way to retaliate upon your mother, Christine. Your +health is too serious a matter to trifle with. If you choose to make it +a shield against everything I say that doesn't please you, you can cut +yourself off from me entirely. I cannot beat down such a defense as +that. Anger me you never can, but you can make me helpless to help you." + +"I dare say it's better that I should never marry at all," said +Christine, her eyes closed in resignation. "You never would like anybody +I like." + +"I shall say no more. You are a woman. I have protected you as far as +I was able on account of your weakness. I cannot protect you from the +weakness itself." + +Mrs. Bogardus rose. She did not offer to comfort her child with +caresses, but in her eyes as she looked at her there was a profound, +inalienable, sorrowing tenderness, a depth of understanding beyond +words. + +"I know so well," the dark eyes seemed to say, "how you came to be the +poor thing that you are!" + +The constraint which she felt towards her mother threw Chrissy back upon +Moya. Being a lesser power, she was always seeking alliances. Moya had +put aside their foolish tiff as unworthy of another thought; she was +embarrassed when at bedtime Christine came humbly to her door, and +putting her arms around her neck implored her not to be cross with +her "poor pussy." It was always the other person who was "cross" with +Christine. + +"Nobody is cross with anybody, so far as I know," said Moya briskly. A +certain sort of sentimentality always made her feel like whistling or +singing or asserting the commonplace side of life in some way. + + + + +X + + +THE WHITE PERIL + +Mrs. Bogardus received many letters, chiefly on business, and these she +answered with manlike brevity, in a strong, provincial hand. They took +up much of her time, and mercifully, for it was now the last week in +November and the young men did not return. + +The range cattle had been driven down into the valleys, deer-tracks +multiplied by lonely mountain fords; War Eagle and his brethren of the +Owyhees were taking council under their winter blankets. The nights were +still, the mornings rimy with hoarfrost. Fogs arose from the river and +cut off the bases of the mountains, converting the valley before sunrise +into the likeness of a polar sea. + +"You have let your fire go out," said the colonel briskly. He had +invaded the sitting-room at an unaccustomed hour, finding the lady at +her letters as usual. She turned and held her pen poised above her paper +as she looked at him. + +"You did not come to see about the fire?" she said. + +"No; I have had letters from the north. Would you step into my study a +moment?" + +Moya was in her father's room when they entered. She had been weeping, +but at sight of Paul's mother she rose and stood picking at the +handkerchief she held, without raising her eyes. + +"Don't be alarmed at Moya's face," said the colonel stoutly. "Paul was +all right at last accounts. We will have a merry Christmas yet." + +"This is not from Paul!" Mrs. Bogardus fixed her eyes upon a letter +which she held at arm's length, feeling for her glasses. "It's not for +me--'_Miss_ Bogardus.'" + +"Ah, well. I saw it was postmarked Lemhi--Fort Lemhi, you know. Sit +down, madam. Suppose I give you Mr. Winslow's report first--Lieutenant +Winslow. You heard of his going to Lemhi?" + +"She doesn't know," whispered Moya. + +"True. Well, two weeks ago I gave Mr. Winslow a hunter's leave, as we +call it in the army, to beat up the trail of those boys. I thought it +was time we heard from them, but it wasn't worth while to raise a hue +and cry. He started out with a few picked men from Lemhi, the Indian +Reservation, you know. I couldn't have sent a better man; the thing +hasn't got into the local papers even. My object, of course, has been +to save unnecessary alarm. Mr. Winslow has just got back to Challis. He +rounded up the Bowen youths and the cook and the helper, in bad shape, +all of them, but able to tell a story. The details we shall get +later, but I have Mr. Winslow's report to me. It is short and probably +correct." + +"Was Paul not with them?" his mother questioned in a hard, dry voice. +"Where is he then?" + +"He is in camp, madam, in charge of the wounded." + +"Dear father! if you would speak plain!" Moya whispered nervously. + +"Certainly. There is nothing whatever to hide. We know now that on their +last day's hunt they met with an accident which resulted in a division +of the party. A fall of snow had covered the ice on the trails, and +the guide's horse fell and rolled on him--nature of his injuries not +described. This happened a day's journey from their camp at Ten-Mile +cabin, and the retreat with the wounded man was slow and of course +difficult over such a trail. They put together a sort of horse-litter +made of pine poles and carried him on that, slung between two mules +tandem. A beastly business, winding and twisting over fallen timber, +hugging the canon wall, near a thousand feet down--'Impassable' the +trail is marked, on the government military maps. This first day's march +was so discouraging that at Ten Mile they called a council, and the +packer spoke up like a man. He disposed of his own case in this way. If +he were to live, they could send back help to fetch him out. If not, +no help would be needed. The snows were upon them; there was danger in +every hour's delay. It was insane to sacrifice four sound men for one, +badly hurt, with not many hours perhaps to suffer." + +A murmur from the mother announced her appreciation of the packer's +argument. + +"It was no more than a man should do; but as to taking him at his word, +why, that's another question." The colonel paused and gustily cleared +his throat. "They were up against it right then and there, and the party +split upon it. Three of them went on,--for help, as they put it,--and +Paul stayed behind with the wounded man." + +"Paul stayed--alone?" Mrs. Bogardus uttered with hoarse emphasis. "Was +not that a very strange way to divide? Among them all, I should think +they might have brought the man out with them." + +"Their story is that his injuries were such that he could not have borne +the pain of the journey. Rather an unusual case," the colonel added +dryly. "In my experience, a wounded man will stand anything sooner than +be left on the field." + +"I cannot understand it," Mrs. Bogardus repeated, in a voice of +indignant pain. "Such a strange division! One man left alone--to nurse, +and hunt, and cook, and keep up fires! Suppose the guide should die!" + +"Paul was not _left_, you know," the colonel said emphatically. "He +_stayed_. And I should be thankful in your place, madam, that my son was +the man who made that choice. But setting conduct aside, for we are not +prepared to judge, it is merely a matter of time our getting in there, +now that we know where he is." + +"How much time?" Mrs. Bogardus opened her ashen lips to say. + +The colonel's face fell. "Mr. Winslow reports heavy snows for the past +week,--soft, clogging snow,--too deep to wade through and too soft to +bear. A little later, when the cold has formed a crust, our men can get +in on snowshoes. There is nothing for it but patience, Mrs. Bogardus, +and faith in the boy's endurance. The pluck that made him stay behind +will help him to hold out." + +Moya gave a hurt sob; the colonel stepped to the desk and stood there a +moment turning over his papers. Behind his back the mother sent a glance +to Moya expressive of despair. + +"Do you know what happened to his father? Did he ever tell you?" she +whispered. + +Moya assented; she could not speak. + +"Twice, twice in a lifetime!" said the older woman. + +With a gesture, Moya protested against this wild prophecy; but as Paul's +mother left the room she rushed upon her father, crying: "Tell _me_ the +truth! What do you think of it? Did you ever hear of such a dastardly +thing?" + +"It was a rout," said the colonel coolly. "They were in full flight +before the enemy." + +"What enemy? They deserted a wounded comrade, and a servant at that!" + +"The enemy was panic,--panic, my dear. In these woods I've seen strong +men go half beside themselves with fear of something--the Lord knows +what! Then, add the winter and what they had seen and heard of that. +Anyway, you can afford to be easy on the other boys. The honors of the +day are with Paul--and the old packer, though it's all in the day's work +to him." + +"And you are satisfied with Paul, father?" + +"He didn't desert his command to save his own skin." The colonel smiled +grimly. + +"When the men of the Fourth discovered those other fellows they had +literally sat down in the snow to die. Not a man of them knew how to +pack a mule. Their meat pack slipped, going along one of those high +trails, and scared the mule, and in trying to kick himself free the +beast fell off the trail--mule and meat both gone. They got tired of +carrying their stuff and made a raft to float it down the river, and +lost that! Paul has been much better off in camp than he would have been +with them. So cheer up, my girl, and think how you'd like to have your +bridegroom out on an Indian campaign!" + +"Ah, but that would be orders! It's the uselessness that hurts. There +was nothing to do or to gain. He didn't want to go. Oh, daddy dear, I +made fun of his shooting,--I did! I laughed at his way with firearms. +Wretched fool and snob that I was! As if I cared! I thought of what +other people would say. You remember,--he went shooting up the gulch +with Mr. Lane, and when he hit but didn't kill he wouldn't--couldn't put +the birds out of pain. Jephson had to do it for him, and he told it in +barracks and the men laughed." + +"How did you know that! And what does it all amount to! Blame yourself +all you like, dear, if it does you any good, but don't make him out a +fool! There's not much that comes to us straight in this world--not +even orders, you'll find. But we have to take it straight and leave the +muddles and the blunders as they are. That's the brave man's courage and +the brave woman's. Orders are mixed, but duty is clear. And the boy +out there in the woods has found his duty and done it like a man. That +should be enough for any soldier's daughter." + +An hour passed in suspense. Moya was disappointed in her expectation of +sharing in whatever the letter from Fort Lemhi might contain. Christine +was in bed with a headache, her mother dully gave out, with no apparent +expectation that any one would accept this excuse for the girl's +complete withdrawal. The letter, she told Moya, was from Banks Bowen. +"There was nothing in it of consequence--to us," she added, and +Moya took the words to mean "you and me" to the unhappy exclusion of +Christine. + +Mrs. Bogardus's face had settled into lines of anxiety printed years +before, as the creases in an old garment, smoothed and laid away, will +reappear with fresh wear. Her plan was to go back to New York with +Christine, who was plainly unfit to bear a long siege of suspense. There +she could leave the girl with friends and learn what particulars could +be gathered from the Bowens, who would have arrived. She would then +return alone and wait for news at the garrison. That night, with Moya's +help, she completed her packing, and on the following day the wedding +party broke up. + + + + +XI + + +A SEARCHING OF HEARTS + +Fine, dry snowflakes were drifting past the upper square of a window +set in a wall of logs. The lower half was obscured by a white bulk +that shouldered up against the sash in the likeness of a muffled figure +stooping to peer in. + +Lying in his bunk against the wall, the packer watched this sentinel +snowdrift grow and become human and bold and familiar. His deep-lined +visage was reduced to its bony structure. The hand was a claw with +which he plucked at the ancient fever-crust shredding from his lips: an +occupation at once so absorbing and so exhausting that often the hand +would drop and the blankets rise upon the arch of the chest in a sigh of +retarded respiration. The sigh would be followed by a cough, controlled, +as in dread of the shock to a sore and shattered frame. The snow came +faster and faster until the dim, wintry pane was a blur. Millions of +atoms crossed the watcher's weary vision, whirling, wavering, driven +with an aimless persistence, unable to pause or to stop. And the blind +white snowdrift climbed, fed, like human circumstance, from disconnected +atoms impelled by a common law. + +There were sounds in the cabin: wet wood sweating on hot coals; a step +that went to and fro. Outside, a snow-weighted bough let go its load and +sprang up, scraping against the logs. Some heavy soft thing slid off +the roof and dropped with a _chug_. Then the door, that hung awry like a +drooping eyelid, gave a disreputable wink, and the whole front gable of +the cabin loomed a giant countenance with a silly forehead and an evil +leer. Now it seemed that a hand was hurling snow against the door, as +a sower scatters grain,--snow that lay like beach sand on the floor, or +melted into a crawling pool--red in the firelight, red as blood! + +These and other phantasms had now for an unmeasured time been tenants +of the packer's brain, sharing and often overpowering the reality of +the human step that went to and fro. To-day the shapes and relations of +things were more natural, and the step aroused a querulous curiosity. + +"Who's there?" the sick man imagined himself to have said. A croaking +sound in his throat, which was all he could do by way of speech, brought +the step to his bedside. A young face, lightly bearded, and gaunt almost +as his own, bent over him. Large, black eyes rested on his; a hand with +womanish nails placed its fingers on his wrist. + +"You are better to-day. Your pulse is down. I wouldn't try to talk." + +"Who's that--outside?" + +"There is no one outside," Paul answered, following the direction of his +patient's eyes. "That? That is only a snowdrift. It grows faster than I +can shovel it away." + +The packer had forgotten his own question. He dozed off, and presently +roused again as suddenly as he had slept. His utterance was clearer, but +not his meaning. + +"What--you want to fetch me back for?" + +"Back?" Paul repeated. + +"I was most gone, wa'n't I?" + +"Back to life, you mean? You came back of yourself. I hadn't much to do +with it." + +"What's been the matter--gen'ly speaking?" + +"You were hurt, don't you remember? Something like wound fever set in. +The altitude is bad for fevers. You have had a pretty close call." + +"Been here all the time?" + +"Have I been here?--yes." + +"'Lone?" + +"With you. How is your chest? Does it hurt you still when you breathe?" + +The sick man filled his lungs experimentally. "Something busted inside, +I guess," he panted. "'Tain't no killing matter, though." + +Nourishment, in a tin cup, warm from the fire was offered him, refused +with a gesture, and firmly urged upon him. This necessitated another +rest. It was long before he spoke again--out of some remoter train of +thought apparently. + +"Family all in New York?" + +"My family? They were at Bisuka when I left them." + +"You don't _live_ West!" + +"No. I was born in the West, though. Idaho is my native state." + +The patient fell to whimpering suddenly like a hurt child. He drew up +the blanket to cover his face. Paul, interpreting this as a signal for +more nourishment, brought the sad decoction,--rinds of dried beef cooked +with rice in snow water. + +"Guess that'll do, thank ye. My tongue feels like an old buckskin +glove." + +"When I was a little fellow," said the nurse, beguiling the patient +while he tucked the spoonfuls down, "I was like you: I wouldn't take +what the doctor ordered, and they used to pretend I must take it for +the others of the family,--a kind of vicarious milk diet, or gruel, or +whatever it was. 'Here's a spoonful for mother, poor mother,' they would +say; and of course it couldn't be refused when mother needed it so much. +'And now one for Chrissy'"-- + +"Who?" + +"My sister, Christine. And then I'd take one for 'uncle' and one for +each of the servants; and the cupful would go down to the health of the +household, and I the dupe of my sympathies! Now you are taking this for +me, because it's nicer to be shut up here with a live man than a dead +one; and we haven't the conveniences for a first-class funeral." + +"You never took a spoonful for 'father,'--eh?" + +Paul answered the question with gravity. "No. We never used that name in +common." + +"Dead was he?" + +"I will tell you some time. Better try to sleep now." + +Paul returned the saucepan to the fire, after piecing out its contents +with water, and retired out of his patient's sight. + +Again came a murmur, chiefly unintelligible, from the bunk. + +"Did you ask for anything?" + +The sick man heaved a worried sigh. "See what a mis'rable presumptuous +piece of work!" he muttered, addressing the logs overhead. "But that +Clauson--he wa'n't no more fit to guide ye than to go to heaven! +Couldn't 'a' done much worse than this, though!" + +"He has done worse!" Paul came over to the bunk-side to reason on this +matter. "They started back from here, four strong men with all the +animals and all the food they needed for a six weeks' trip. We came in +in one. If they got through at all, where is the help they were to send +us?" + +"Help!" The packer roused. "They helped themselves, and pretty frequent. +I said to them more than once--they didn't like it any too well: 'We +can't drink up here like they do down to the coast. The air is too +light. What a man would take with his dinner down there would fit him +out with a first-class jag up here, 'leven thousand above the sea!'" + +"It's a waste of breath to talk about them--breath burns up food and we +haven't much to spare. We rushed into this trouble and we dragged you in +after us. We have hurt you a good deal more than you have us." + +The sick man groaned. He flung one hand back against the logs, +dislodging ancient dust that fell upon his corpse-like forehead. It was +carefully wiped away. Helpless tears stole down the rigid face. + +"John," said Paul with animation, "your general appearance just now +reminds me of those worked-out placer claims we passed in Ruby Gulch, +the first day out. The fever and my cooking have ground-sluiced you to +the bone." + +John smiled faintly. "Don't look very fat yourself. Where'd you git all +that baird on your face?" + +"We have been here some time, you know--or you don't know; you have been +living in places far away from here. I used to envy you sometimes. And +other times I didn't." + +"You mean I was off my head?" + +"At times. But more of the time you were dreaming and talking in your +dreams; seeing things out loud by the flash-light of fever." + +"Talking, was I? Guess there wa'n't much sense in any of it?" The hazard +was a question. + +"A kind of sense,--out of focus, distorted. Some of it was opium. Didn't +you coax a little of his favorite medicine out of the cook?" + +Packer John apologized sheepishly, "I cal'lated I was going to be left. +You put it up on me--making out you were off with the rest. _That_ was +all right. But I wa'n't going to suffer it out; why should I? A gunshot +would have cured me quicker, perhaps. Then some critter might 'a' found +me and called it murder. A word like that set going can hang a man. No, +I just took a little to deaden the pain." + +"The whole discussion was rather nasty, right before the man we were +talking about," said Paul. "I wanted to get them off and out of hearing. +Then we had a few words." + +At intervals during that day and the next, Paul's patient expended his +strength in questions, apparently trivial. His eyes, whenever they were +open, followed his nurse with a shrinking intelligence. Paul was on his +guard. + +"What day of the month do you make it out to be?" + +"The second of December." + +"December!" The packer lay still considering. "Game all gone down?" + +"I am not much of a pot-hunter," said Paul. "There may be game, but I +can't seem to get it. The snow is pretty deep." + +"Wouldn't bear a man on snowshoes?" + +"He would go out of sight." + +"Snowing a little every day?" + +"Right along, quietly, for I don't know how many days! I think the sky +is packed with it a mile deep." + +"How much grub have we got?" + +Paul gave a flattering estimate of their resources. The patient was not +deceived. + +"Where's it all gone to? You ain't eat anything." + +"I've eaten a good deal more than you have." + +"I was livin' on fever." + +"You can't live on fever any longer. The fever has left you, and you'll +go with it if you don't obey your doctor." + +"But where's all the stuff _gone_ to?" + +"There were four of them, and they allowed for some delay in getting +out," Paul explained, with a sickly smile. + +"Well, they was hogs! I knew how they'd pan out! That was why"--He +wearied of speech and left the point unfinished. + +On the evening following, when the two could no longer see each other's +faces in the dusk, Paul spoke, controlling his voice:-- + +"I need not ask you, John, what you think of our chances?" + +"I guess they ain't much worth thinking about." The fire hissed and +crackled; the soft subsidence of the snow could be heard outside. + +"We are 'free among the dead,' how does it go? 'Like unto them that are +wounded and lie in the grave.' What we say to each other here will stop +here with our breath. Let us put our memories in order for the last +reckoning. I think, John, you must, at some time in your life, have +known my father, Adam Bogardus? He was lost on the Snake River plains, +twenty-one years ago this autumn." + +Receiving no answer, the pale young inquisitor went on, choosing his +words with intense deliberation as one feeling his way in the dark. + +"Most of us believe in some form of communication that we can't explain, +between those who are separated in body, in this world, but closely +united in thought. Do I make myself clear?" + +There was a sound of deep breathing from the bunk; it produced a similar +conscious excitement in the speaker. He halted, recovered himself, and +continued:-- + +"After my father's disappearance, my mother had a distinct +presentiment--it haunted her for years--that something had happened to +him at a place called One Man Station. Did you ever know the place?" + +"I might have." The words came huskily. + +"Father had left her at this place, and to her knowledge he never came +back. But she had this intimation--and suffered from it--that he did +come back and was foully dealt with there--wronged in body or mind. The +place had most evil associations for her; it was not strange she should +have connected it with the great disaster of her life. As you lay +talking to yourself in your fever, you took me back on that lost +trail that ended, as we thought, in the grave. But we might have been +mistaken. Is there anything it would not be safe for you and me to speak +of now? Do you know any tie between men that should be closer than the +tie between us? Any safer place where a man could lay off the secret +burdens of his life and be himself for a little while--before the end +answers all? I know you have a secret. I believe that a share of it +belongs to me." + +"We are better off sometimes if we don't get all that belongs to us," +said John gratingly. + +"It doesn't seem to be a matter of choice, does it? If you were not +meant to tell me--what you have partly told me already--where is there +any meaning in our being here at all? Let us have some excuse for this +senseless accident. Do you believe much in accidents? How foolish"--Paul +sighed--"for you and me to be afraid of each other! Two men who have +parted with everything but the privilege of speaking the truth!" + +The packer raised himself in his bunk slowly, like one in pain. He +looked long at the listless figure crouching by the fire; then he sank +back again with a low groan. "What was it you heared me say? Come!" + +"I can't give you the exact words. The words were nothing. Haven't you +watched the sparks blow up, at night, when the wind goes searching over +the ashes of an old camp-fire? It was the fever made you talk, and +your words were the sparks that showed where there had been fire once. +Perhaps I had no right to track you by your own words when you lay +helpless, but I couldn't always leave you. Now I'd like to have my share +of that--whatever it was--that hurt you so, at One Man Station." + +"You ought to been a lawyer," said the packer, releasing his breath. +There was less strain in his voice. It broke with feeling. "You put up a +mighty strong case for your way of looking at it. I don't say it's best. +There, if you will have it! Sonny--my son! It--it's like startin' a +snow-slide." + +The sick man broke down and sobbed childishly. + +"Take it quietly! Oh, take it quietly!" Paul shivered. "I have known it +a long time." + +Hours later they were still awake, the packer in his bunk, Paul in his +blankets by the winking brands. The pines were moving, and in pauses of +the wind they could hear the incessant soft crowding of the snow. + +"When they find us here in the spring," said the packer humbly, "it +won't matter much which on us was 'Mister' and which was 'John.'" + +"Are you thinking of that!" Paul answered with nervous irritation. "I +thought you had lived in the woods long enough to have got rid of all +that nonsense!" + +"I guess there was some of it where you've been living." + +"We are done with all that now. Go to sleep,--Father." He pronounced +the word conscientiously to punish himself for dreading it. The darkness +seemed to ring with it and give it back to him ironically. "Father!" +muttered the pines outside, and the snow, listening, let fall the +word in elfin whispers. Paul turned over desperately in his blankets. +"Father!" he repeated out loud. "Do _you_ believe it? Does it do you any +good?" + +"I wouldn't distress myself, one way or t' other, if it don't come +natural," the packer spoke, out of his corner in the darkness. "Wait +till you can feel to say it. The word ain't nothing." + +"But do you feel it? Is it any comfort to you at all?" + +"I ain't in any hurry to feel it. We'll get there. Don't worry. And +s'pose we don't! We're men. Man to man is good enough for me." + +Paul spent some wakeful hours after that, trying not to think of Moya, +of his mother and Christine. They were of another world,--a world that +dies hard at twenty-four. Towards morning he slept, but not without +dreams. + +He was in the pent-road at Stone Ridge. It was sunset and long shadows +striped the lane. A man stood, back towards him, leaning both arms on +the stone fence that bounds the lane to the eastward,--a plain farmer +figure, gazing down across the misty fields as he might have stood a +hundred times in that place at that hour. Paul could not see his face, +but something told him who it must be. His heart stood still, for he saw +his mother coming up the lane. She carried something in her hand covered +with a napkin, and she smiled, walking carefully as if carrying a treat +to a sick child. She passed the man at the fence, not appearing to have +seen him. + +"Won't you speak to him, mother? Won't you speak to"--He could not utter +the name. She looked at him bewildered. "Speak? who shall I speak to?" +The man at the fence had turned and he watched her, or so Paul imagined. +He felt himself choking, faint, with the effort to speak that one word. +Too late! The moment passed. The man whom he knew was his father, the +solemn, quiet figure, moved away up the road unquestioned. He never +looked back. Paul grew dizzy with the lines of shadow; they stretched on +and on, they became the ties of a railroad--interminable. He awoke, +very faint and tired, with a lost feeling and the sense upon him of some +great catastrophe. The old man was sleeping deeply in his bunk, a ray +of white sunlight falling on his yellow features. He looked like one who +would never wake again. But as Paul gazed at him he smiled, and sighed +heavily. His lips formed a name; and all the blood in Paul's body dyed +his face crimson. The name was his mother's. + + + + +XII + + +THE BLOOD-WITE + +A few hours seemed days, after the great disclosure. Both men had +recoiled from it and were feeling the strain of the new relation. Three +times since their first meeting the elder had adjusted himself quietly +to a change in the younger's manner to him. First there had been +respectful curiosity in the presence of a new type, combined with the +deference due a leader and an expert in strange fields. Then indignant +partisanship, pity, and the slight condescension of the nurse. This had +hurt the packer, but he took it as he accepted his physical downfall. +The last change was hardest to bear; for now the time was short, and, as +Paul himself had said, they were in the presence of the final unveiling. + +So when Paul made artificial remarks to break the pauses, avoiding his +father's eye and giving him neither name nor title, the latter became +silent and lay staring at the logs and picking at his hands. + +"If I was hunting up a father," he said to himself aloud one day, "I'd +try to find a better lookin' one. I wouldn't pa'm off on myself no such +old warped stick as I be." The remark seemed a tentative one. + +"I had the choice, to take or leave you," Paul responded. "You were an +unconscious witness. Why should I have opened the subject at all?" + +Both knew that this answer was an evasion. By forcing the tie they had +merely marked the want of ease and confidence between them. As "Packer +John" Paul could have enjoyed, nay, loved this man; as his father, the +sum and finality of his filial dreams, the supplanter of that imaginary +husband of his mother's youth, the thing was impossible. And the father +knew it and did not resent it in the least, only pitied the boy for +his needless struggle. He was curious about him, too. He wanted to +understand him and the life he had come out of: his roundabout way of +reaching the simplest conclusions; his courage in argument, and his +personal shying away from the truth when found. More than all he longed +for a little plain talk, the exile's hunger for news from home. It +pleased him when Paul, rousing at this deliberate challenge, spoke up +with animation, as if he had come to some conclusion in his own mind. It +could not be expected he would express it simply. The packer had become +used to his oddly elaborate way of putting things. + +"If we had food enough and time, we might afford to waste them +discussing each other's personal appearance. _I_ propose we talk to some +purpose." + +"Talking sure burns up the food." The packer waited. + +"I wish I knew what my father was doing with himself, all those years +when his family were giving him the honors of the dead." + +"I warned ye about this pumping out old shafts. You can't tell what +you'll find in the bottom. I suppose you know there are things in this +world, Boy, a good deal worse than death?" + +"Desertion is worse. It is not my father's death I want explained, it +is his life, your life, in secret, these twenty years! Can you explain +that?" + +The packer doubled his bony fist and brought it down on the bunk-side. +"Now you talk like a man! I been waiting to hear you say that. Yes, I +can answer that question, if you ain't afeard of the answer!" + +"I am keeping alive to hear it!" said Paul in a guarded voice. + +"You might say you're keeping me alive to tell it. It's a good thing to +git off of one's mind; but it's a poor thing to hand over to a son. All +I've got to leave ye, though: the truth if you can stand it! Where do +you want I should begin?" + +"At the night when you came back to One Man Station." + +"How'd you know I come back?" + +"You were back there in your fever, living over something that happened +in that place. There was a wind blowing and the door wouldn't shut. And +something had to be lifted,"--the old man's eyes, fixed upon his son, +took a look of awful comprehensions,--"something heavy." + +"Yes; great Lord, it was heavy! And I been carrying it ever since!" His +chest rose as if the weight of that load lay on it still, and his breath +expired with a hoarse "haugh." "I got out of the way because it was _my_ +load. I didn't want no help from them." He paused and sat picking at his +hands. "It's a dreadful ugly story. I'd most as soon live it over again +as have to tell it in cold blood. I feel sometimes it _can't be!_" + +"You need not go back beyond that night. I know how my mother was left, +and what sort of a man you were forced to leave her with. Was it--the +keeper?" + +"That's what it was. That was the hard knot in my thread. Nothing +wouldn't go past that. Some, when they git things in a tangle, they just +reach for the shears an' cut the thread. I wa'n't brought up that way. +I was taught to leave the shears alone. So I went on stringin' one year +after another. But they wouldn't join on to them that went before. There +was the knot." + +"It was between you and him--and the law?" said Paul. + +"You've got it! I was there alone with it,--witness an' judge an' jury; +I worked up my own case. Manslaughter with extenuatin' circumstances, +I made it--though he was more beast than man. I give myself the outside +penalty,--imprisonment for life. And I been working out my sentence +ever since. The Western country wa'n't home to me then--more like a big +prison. It's been my prison these twenty-odd years, while your mother +was enjoying what belonged to her, and making a splendid job of your +education. If I had let things alone I might have finished my time out: +but I didn't, and now the rest of it's commuted--for the life of my +son!" + +"Don't put it that way! I am no lamb of sacrifice. Why, how can we let +things alone in this world! Should I have stood off from this secret and +never asked my father for his defense?" + +"Do you mean to say a boy like you can take hold of this thing and +understand it?" + +"I can," said Paul. "I could almost tell the story myself." + +"Put it up then!" said the packer. The fascination of confession was +strong upon him. + +"You had been out in the mountains--how long?" + +"Two days and three nights, just as I left camp." + +"You were crazed with anxiety for us. You came back to find your camp +empty, the wife and baby gone. You had reason to distrust the keeper. +Not for what he did--for what you knew he meant to do." + +"For what he meant and tried to do. I seen it in his eye. The devil that +wanted him incited him to play with me and tell me lies about my wife. +She scorned the brute and he took his mean revenge. He kep' back her +letter, and he says to me, leerin' at me out of his wicked eyes, 'Your +livestock seems to be the strayin' kind. The man she went off with +give me that,'--he lugged a gold piece out of his clothes and showed +me,--'give me that,' he says, 'to keep it quiet.' He kep' it quiet! Half +starved and sick's I was, the strength was in me. But vengeance in the +hand of a man, it cuts both ways, my son! His bunk had a sharp edge +to it like this. He fell acrost it with my weight on top of him and he +never raised up again. There wasn't a mark on him. His back was broke. +He died slow, his eyes mocking me. + +"'You fool,' he says. 'Go look in that coat hangin' on the wall.' I +found her letter there inside of one from Granger. He watched me read it +and he laughed. 'Now, go tell her you've killed a man!' He knew I didn't +come of a killin' breed. There was four hours to think it over. Four +hours! I thought hard, I tell you! 'T was six of one and half a dozen of +t' other 'twixt him and me, but I worked it back 'n' forth a good long +while about her. First, taking her away from her father, an old man +whose bread I'd eat. She was like a child of my own raising. I always +had felt mean about that. We'd had bad luck from the start,--my +luck,--and now disgrace to cap it all. Whether I hid it or told her and +stood my trial, I'd never be a free man again. There he lay! And a sin +done in secret, it's like a drop of nitric acid: it's going to eat its +way out--and in! + +"I knew she'd have friends enough, once she was quit of me. That was the +case between us. The thing that hurt me most was to put her letter +back where I found it, and leave it, there with him. Her little cry to +me--and I couldn't come! I read the words over and over, I've said 'em +to myself ever since. I've lived on them. But I had to leave the letter +there to show I'd never come back. I put it back after he was dead. + +"The sins of the parents shall be visited,--when it's in the blood! But +I declare to the Almighty, murder wa'n't in my blood! It come on me like +a stroke of lightning hits a tree, and I had a clear show to fall alone. + +"That's the answer. Maybe I didn't see all sides of it, but there never +was no opening to do different, after that night. Now, you've had an +education. I should be glad to hear your way of looking at it?" + +"I should think you might stand your trial, now, before any judge or +jury, in this world or the next," Paul answered. + +"There is only one Judge." The packer smiled a beautiful quiet smile +that covered a world of meanings. "What a man re'ly wants, if he'd own +up it, is a leetle shade of partiality. Maybe that's what we're all +going to need, before we git through." + +Paul was glad to be saved the necessity of speech, and he felt the swift +discernment with which the packer resumed his usual manner. "Got any +more of that stuff you call soup? Divide even! I won't be made no baby +of." + +"We might as well finish it up. It's hardly worth making two bites of a +cherry." + +"Call this 'cherry'! It's been a good while on the bough. What's it +mostly made of?" + +"Rind of bacon, snow water,--plenty of water,--and a tablespoonful of +rice." + +"Good work! Hungry folks can live on what the full bellies throw away." + +"Oh, I can save. But there comes a time when you can't live by saving +what you haven't got." + +"That's right! Well, let's talk, then, before the bacon-rind fades out +of us." + +The packer's face and voice, his whole manner, showed the joy of a soul +that has found relief. Paul was not trying now to behave dutifully; they +were man to man once more. The quaint, subdued humor asserted itself, +and the narrator's speech flowed on in the homely dialect which +expressed the man. + +"I stayed out all that winter, workin' towards the coast. One day, along +in March, I fetched a charcoal burner's camp, and the critter took me in +and nursed my frost-bites and didn't ask no questions, nor I of him. We +struck up a trade, my drivin' stock, mostly skin and bone, for a show in +his business. He wa'n't gettin' rich at it, that was as plain as the hip +bones on my mules. I kep' in the woods, cuttin' timber and tendin' kiln, +and he hauled and did the sellin'. Next year he went below to Portland +and brought home smallpox with him. It broke out on him on the road. He +was a terrible sick man. I buried him, and waited for my turn. It didn't +come. I seemed kind o' insured. I've been in lots of trouble since then, +but nothing ever touched me till now. I banked on it too strong, though. +I sure did! My pardner was just such another lone bird like me. If +he had any folks of his own he kep' still about them. So I took his +name--whether it was his name there's no knowing. Guess I've took full +as good care of it as he would. 'Hagar?' folk would say, sort o' lookin' +me over. 'You ain't Jim Hagar.' No, but I was John, and they let it go +at that. + +"I heard of your mother that summer, from a prospector who came up past +my camp. He'd wintered in Mountain Home. He told me my own story, the +way they had it down there, and what straits your mother was in. I had +scraped up quite a few dollars by then, and was thinking how I'd shove +it into a bank like an old debt coming to Adam Bogardus. I was studying +how I was going to rig it. There wasn't any one who knew me down there, +so I felt safe to ventur' a few inquiries. What I heard was that she'd +gone home to her folks and was as well off as anybody need be. That +broke me all up at first. I must have had a sneakin' notion that maybe +some day I could see my way to go back to her, but that let me out +completely. I quit then, and I've stayed quit. The only break I made was +showin' up here at the 'leventh hour, thinking I could be some use to my +son!" + +"It was to be," said Paul. "For years our lives have been shaping +towards this meeting. There were a thousand chances against it. Yet here +we are!" + +"Here we are!" the packer repeated soberly. "But don't think that I lay +any of my foolishness on the Almighty! Maybe it was meant my son should +close my eyes, but it's too dear at the price. Anybody would say so, I +don't care who." + +"But aside from the 'price,' is it something to you?" + +"More--more than I've got words to say. And yet it grinds me, every +breath I take! Not that I wish you'd done different--you couldn't and be +a man. I knew it even when I was kickin' against it. Oh, well! It ain't +no use to kick. I thought I'd learned something, but I ain't--learned--a +thing!" + + + + +XIII + + +CURTAIN + +A greater freedom followed this confession, as was natural. It became +the basis for lighter confidences and bits of autobiography that came to +the surface easily after this tremendous effort at sincerity. Paul found +that he could speak even of the family past, into which by degrees he +began to fit the real man in place of that bucolic abstraction which +had walked the fields of fancy. He had never dared to actuate the "hired +man," his father, on a basis of fact. He knew the speech and manners of +the class from which he came,--knew men of that class, and talked with +them every summer at Stone Ridge; but he had brooded so deeply over the +tragic and sentimental side of his father's fate as to have lost sight +of the fact that he was a man. + +Reality has its own convincing charm, not inconsistent with plainness or +even with commonness. To know it is to lose one's taste for toys of +the imagination. Paul, at last, could look back almost with, a sense of +humor at the doll-like progenitor he had played with so long. But when +it came to placing the real man, Adam Bogardus, beside that real woman, +once his wife, their son could but own with awe that there is mercy in +extinction, after all; in the chance, however it may come to us, for +slipping off those cruel disguises that life weaves around us. + +In the strange, wakeful nights, full of starvation dreams, he saw his +mother as she would look on state occasions in the hostess's place at +her luxurious table; the odor of flowers, the smell of meats and wines, +tantalized and sickened him. Christine would come in her dancing frocks, +always laughing, greedy in her mirth; but Moya, face to face, he could +never see. It was torture to feel her near him, a disembodied embrace. +Passionate panegyrics and hopeless adjurations he would pour out to +that hovering loveliness just beyond his reach. The agony of +frustration would waken him, if indeed it were sleep that dissolved his +consciousness, and he would be irritable if spoken to. + +The packer broke in, one morning, on these unnerving dreams. "You +wouldn't happen to have a picture of her along with you?" + +Paul stared at him. + +"No, of course you wouldn't! And I'd be 'most afeard to look at it, if +you had. She must have changed considerable. Time hasn't stood still +with her any more than the rest of us." + +"I have no picture of my mother," Paul replied. + +The packer saw that his question had jarred; he had waited weeks to ask +it. He passed it off now with one of his homely similes. "If you was to +break a cup clean in two, and put the halves together again while the +break was fresh, they'd knit so you wouldn't hardly see a crack. But you +take one half and set it in the chainy closet and chuck the other half +out on the ash-heap,--them halves won't look much like pieces of the +same cup, come a year or two. The edges won't jine no more than the lips +of an old cut that's healed without stitches. No; married folks they +grow together or they grow apart, and they're a-doing of the one or the +other every minute of the time, breaks or no breaks. Does she go up to +the old place summers?" + +"Not lately, except on business," said Paul. "A company was formed to +open slate quarries on the upper farm, a good many years ago. They are +worth more than all the land forty times over." + +"I always said so; always told the old man he had a gold mine in that +ridge. Was this before he died?" + +"Long after. It was my mother's scheme mainly. She controls it now. She +is a very strong business woman." + +"She got her training, likely, from that uncle in New York. He had the +business head. The old man had no more contrivance than one of the bulls +in his pastures. He could lock horns and stay there, but it wa'nt no +trouble to outflank him. More than once his brother Jacob got to the +windward of him in a bargain. He was made a good deal like his own land. +Winters of frost it took to break up that ground, and sun and rain to +meller it, and then't was a hatful of soil to a cartful of stone. The +plough would jump the furrows if you drew it deep. My arms used to ache +as if they'd been pounded, with the jar of them stones. They used to +tell us children a story how Satan, he flew over the earth a-sowing +it with rocks and stones, and as he was passing over our county a hole +bu'st through his leather apron and he lost his whole load right slam +there. I could 'a' p'inted out the very spot where the heft on it fell. +Ten Stone meadow, so-called. Ten million stone! I was pickin' stone in +that field all of one summer when I was fifteen year old. We built a +mile of fence with it. + +"Them quarries must have brought a mint of money into the country. +Different sort of labor, too. Well, the world grows richer and poorer +every year. More difference every year between the way rich folks and +poor folks live. I wouldn't know where I belonged, 't ain't likely, if +I was to go back there. I'd be way off! One while I used to think a +good deal about going back, just to take a look around. It comes over +me lately like hunger and thirst. I think about the most curious things +when I'm asleep--foolish, like a child! I can smell all the good home +smells of a frosty morning: apple pomace, steaming in the barnyard; +sausage frying; Becky scouring the brass furnace-kittle with salt and +vinegar. Killin' time, you know--makes you think of boiling souse and +head-cheese. You ever eat souse?" The packer sucked in his breath with a +lean smile. "It ain't best to dwell on it. But you can't help yourself, +at night. I can smell Becky's fresh bread, in my dreams, just out of the +brick oven. Never eat bread cooked in a stove till I came out here. I +never drunk any water like that spring on the ridge. Last night I was +back there, and the maples were all yellow like sunshine. Once it +was spring, and apple-blooms up in the hill orchard. And little Emmy, +a-setting on the fence, with her bunnit throwed back on her neck. +'Addy!' she called, way across the lot; 'Addy, come, help me down!' She +was a master hand for venturin' up on places, but she didn't like the +gettin' down. + +"Well, she 'a learned the ups and downs by this time. She don't need +Addy to help her. I'd have helped a big sight more if I had kep' my +distance. It's a thing so con-demned foolish and unnecessary--I can't be +reconciled to it noway!" + +"You see only one side of it," said Paul. Unspeakable thoughts had kept +pace with his father's words. "Nothing that happens, happens through +us--or to us--alone. There was a girl I knew, outside. She was as happy, +when I knew her first, as you say my mother used to be. Then she met +some one--a man--and the shadow of his life crossed hers. He would have +wrapped her up in it and put out her sunshine if he had stayed in the +same world. Now she can be herself again, after a while. It cannot take +long to forget a person you have known only a little over a year." + +The packer rose on one elbow. He reached across and shook his son. + +"Where is that girl? Answer me! Take your face out of your hands!" + +"At Bisuka Barracks. She is the commandant's daughter. I came out to +marry her." + +"What possessed ye not to tell me?" + +"Why should I tell you? We buried the wedding-day months back, in the +snow." + +"Boy, boy!" the packer groaned. + +"What difference can it make now?" + +"_All_ the difference--all the difference there is! I thought you were +out here touring it with them fool boys and they were all the chance +you had for help outside. You suppose her father is going to see her git +left? _They_'ll get in here, if they have to crawl on their bellies or +climb through the tree-limbs. They know how! And we've wasted the grub +and talked like a couple of women!" + +"Oh, don't--don't torment me!" Paul groaned. "It was all over. Can't you +leave the dead in peace!" + +"We are not the dead! I 'most wish we were. Boy, I've got a big word to +say to you about that. Come closer!" The packer's speech hoarsened and +failed. They could only hear each other breathe. Then it seemed to the +packer that his was the only breath in the darkness. He listened. A +faint cheer arose in the forest and a crashing of the dead underlimbs of +the pines. + +He turned frantically upon his son, but no pledge could be extorted now. +Paul's lips were closed. He had lost consciousness. + + + + +XIV + + +KIND INQUIRIES + +The colonel's drawing-room was as hot as usual the first hour after +dinner, and as usual it was full of kindly participant neighbors who had +dropped in to repeat their congratulations on the good news, now almost +a week old. Mrs. Bogardus had not come down, and, though asked after by +all, the talk was noticeably freer for her absence. + +Mrs. Creve, in response to a telegram from her brother, had arrived from +Fort Sherman on the day before, prepared for anything, from frozen feet +to a wedding. She had spent the afternoon in town doing errands for +Moya, and being late for dinner had not changed her dress. There never +was such a "natural" person as aunt Annie. At present she was addressing +the company at large, as if they were all her promising children. + +"Nobody talks about their star in these days. I used to have a star. I +forget which it was. I know it was a pretty lucky one. Now I trust in +Providence and the major and wear thick shoes." She exhibited the shoes, +a particularly large and sensible kind which she imported from the East. +Everybody laughed and longed to embrace her. "Has Moya got a star?" she +asked seriously. + +"The whole galaxy!" a male voice replied. "Doesn't the luck prove it?" + +"Moya has got a 'temperament,'" said Doctor Fleming, the Post surgeon. +"That's as good as having a star. You know there are persons who attract +misfortune just as sickly children catch all the diseases that are +going. I knew that boy was sure to be found. Anything of Moya's would +be." + +"So you think it was Moya's 'temperament' that pulled him out of the +snow?" said the colonel, wheeling his chair into the discussion. + +"How about Mr. Winslow's temperament? I prefer to leave a little of the +credit to him," said Moya sweetly. + +A young officer, who had been suffering in the corner by the fire, +jumped to his feet and bowed, then blushed and sat down again, +regretting his rashness. Moya continued to look at him with steadfast +friendliness. Winslow had led the rescue that brought her lover home. +A glow of sympathy united these friends and neighbors; the air was +electrical and full of emotion. + +"I suppose no date has been fixed for the wedding?" Mrs. Dawson, on the +divan, murmured to Mrs. Creve. The latter smiled a non-committal assent. + +"I should think they would just put the doctor aside and be married +anyhow. My husband says he ought to go to a warmer climate at once." + +"My dear, a young man can't be married in his dressing-gown and +slippers!" + +"No! It's not as bad as that?" + +"Well, not quite. He's up and dressed and walks about, but he doesn't +come down to his meals,--he can eat so very little at a time, and +it tires him to sit through a dinner. It isn't one of those ravenous +recoveries. It went too far with him for that." + +"His mother was perfectly magnificent through it all, they say." + +"Have you seen much of Mrs. Bogardus?" + +"No; we left them alone, poor things, when the pinch came. But I used to +see her walking the porch, up and down, up and down. Moya would go off +on the hills. They couldn't walk together! That was after Miss Chrissy +went home. Her mother took her back, you know, and then returned alone. +Perfectly heroic! They say she dressed every evening for dinner as +carefully as if she were in New York, and led the conversation. She used +to make Moya read aloud to her--history, novels--anything to pretend +they were not thinking. The strain must have begun before any of us +knew. The colonel kept it so quiet. What is the dear man doing with your +bonnet?" + +The colonel had plucked his sister's walking-hat, a pert piece of +millinery froward in feathers, from the trunk of the headless Victory, +where she had reposed it in her haste before dinner. + +"Mustn't be disrespectful to the household Lar," he kindly reminded her. + +"Where am I to put my hats, then? I shall wear them on my head and come +down to breakfast in them. Moya, dear, will you please rescue my hat? +Put it anywhere, dear,--under your chair. There is not really a place +in this house to put a thing. A wedding that goes off on time is bad +enough, but one that hangs on from month to month--and doesn't even take +care of its clothes! Forgive me, dear! The clothes are very pretty. +I open a bureau-drawer to put away my middle-aged bonnet--a puff of +violets! A pile of something white, and, behold, a wedding veil! There +isn't a hook in the closet that doesn't say, 'Standing-room only,' and +the standing-room is all stood on by a regiment of new shoes." + +"My dear woman, go light on our sore spots. We are only just out of the +woods." + +"Isn't it bad to coddle your sore spots, Doctor? Like a saddle-gall, +ride them down!" Mrs. Creve and Dr. Fleming exchanged a friendly smile +on the strength of this nonsense. On the doctor's side it covered a +suspicion: "'The lady, methinks, protests too much'!" The colonel, too, +was restless, and Moya's sweet color came and went. She appeared to be +listening for steps or sounds from some other part of the house. + +The men all rose now as Mrs. Bogardus entered; one or two of the ladies +rose also, compelled by something in her look certainly not intended. +She was careful to greet everybody; she even crossed the room and gave +her hand to Lieutenant Winslow, whom she had not seen since the night of +his return. The doctor she casually passed over with a bow; they had met +before that day. It was in the mind of each person present not of the +family, and excepting the doctor, to ask her: 'How is your son this +evening?' But for some reason the inquiry did not come off. + +The company began suddenly to feel itself _de trop_. Mrs. Dawson, who +had come under the doctor's escort, glanced at him, awaiting the moment +when it would do to make the first move. + +"I hear you lost a patient from the hospital yesterday?" said Lieutenant +Winslow, at the doctor's side. + +"_From_, did you say? That's right! He was to have been operated on +to-day." The doctor shrugged his shoulders. + +"What!" + +"Two broken ribs. One grown fast to the lung." + +"Wh-ew!" + +"He just walked out. Said I had ordered him to have fresh air. There was +a new hall-boy, a greenhorn." + +"He can't go far in that shape, can he?" + +"Oh, there's no telling. The constitution of those men is beyond +anything. You can't kill him. He'll suffer of course, suffer like an +animal, and die like one--away from the herd. Maybe not this time, +though." + +"Was he afraid of the operation?" + +"I can't say. He did not seem to be either afraid or anxious for help. +Not used to being helped. He would be taken to the Sisters' Hospital. +Wouldn't come up here as the guest of the Post, not a bit! I believe +from the first he meant to give us the slip, and take his chance in his +own way." + +"Did you hear,"--Mrs. Creve spoke up from the opposite side of the room +under that hypnotic influence by which a dangerous topic spreads,--"did +you hear about the poor guide who ran away from the hospital to escape +from our wicked doctor here? What a reputation you must have, Doctor!" + +"All talk, my dear; town gossip," said the colonel. "You gave him his +discharge, didn't you, Doctor?" The colonel looked hard at the medical +officer; he had prepared the way for a statement suited to a mixed +company, including ladies. But Doctor Fleming stated things usually to +suit himself. + +"There was a man who left the Sisters' Hospital rather informally +yesterday. I won't say he is not just as well off to-day as if he had +stayed." + +"Who was it? Was it our man, father?" + +"The doctor has more than one patient at the hospital." Colonel +Middleton looked reproachfully at the doctor, who continued to put aside +as childish these clumsy subterfuges. "I think you ladies frightened him +away with your attentions. He knew he was under heavy liabilities for +all your flowers and fancy cookery." + +"Attentions! Are we going to let him die on the road somewhere?" cried +Moya. + +"Miss Moya?" Lieutenant Winslow spoke up with a mixture of embarrassment +and resolution to be heard, though every voice in the room conspired +against him. "Those men are a big fraternity. They have their outfitting +places where they put in for repairs. Packer John had his blankets sent +to the Green Meadow corral. They know him there. They say he had money +at one of the stores. They all have a little money cached here and +there. And they _can't_ get lost, you know!" + +Moya's eyes shone with a suspicious brightness. + + "'When the forest shall mislead me; + When the night and morning lie.'" + +She turned her swimming eyes upon Paul's mother, who would be sure to +remember the quotation. + +Mrs. Bogardus remained perfectly still, her lips slightly parted. She +grew very pale. Then she rose and walked quickly to the door. + +"Just a breath of cold air!" she panted. The doctor, Moya, and Mrs. +Creve had followed her into the hall. Moya placed herself on the settle +beside her and leaned to support her, but she sat back rigidly with her +eyes closed. Mrs. Creve looked on in quiet concern. "Let me take you +into the study, Mrs. Bogardus!" the doctor commanded. "A glass of water, +Moya, please." + +"How is she? What is it? Can we do anything?" The company crowded +around Mrs. Creve on her return to the drawing-room. She glanced at +her brother. There was no clue there. He stood looking embarrassed and +mystified. "It is only the warm welcome we give our friends," she said +aloud, smiling calmly. "Mrs. Bogardus found the room too hot. I think I +should have succumbed myself but for that little recess in the hall." + +The colonel attacked his fire. He thought he was being played with. +Things were not right in the house, and no one, not the doctor, or even +Annie, was frank with him. His kind face flushed as he straightened up +to bid his guests good-night. + +"Well, if it's not anything serious, you think. But you'll be sure +to let us know?" said Mrs. Dawson. "Well, good-night, Mrs. Creve. +_Good_-night, Colonel! You'll say good-night to Moya? Do let us know if +there is anything we can do." + +Dr. Fleming was in the hall looking for his cape. The colonel touched +him on the shoulder. "Don't be in a hurry, Doctor. Mrs. Dawson will +excuse you." + +"I don't think you need me any more to-night. Moya is with Mrs. +Bogardus. She is not ill. The room was a little close." + +"Never mind the _room_! Come in here. I want a word with you." + +The doctor laughed oddly, and obeyed. + +"Annie, you needn't leave us." + +"Why, thank you, dear boy! It's awfully good of you," Annie mocked him. +"But I must go and relieve Moya." + +"I don't believe you are wanted in there," said Doctor Fleming. + +"It's more than obvious that I'm not in here." + +"Oh, do sit down," said the teased colonel. + +The fire sulked and smoked a trifle with its brands apart. Doctor +Fleming leaned forward upon his knees and regarded it thoughtfully. The +colonel sat fondling the tongs. In a deep chair Mrs. Creve lay back and +shaded her face with the end of her lace scarf. By her manner she might +have been alone in the room, yet she was keenly observant of the men, +for she felt that developments were taking place. + +"What is the matter with your patient upstairs, Doctor?" the colonel +began his cross-examination. Doctor Fleming raised his eyebrows. + +"He's had nothing to eat to speak of for six weeks, at an altitude"-- + +"Yes; we know all that. But he's twenty-four years old. They made an +easy trip back, and he has been here a week, nearly. He's not as strong +as he was when they brought him in, is he?" + +"That was excitement. You have to allow for the reaction. He has had +a shock to the entire system,--nerves, digestion,--must give him time. +Very nervous temperament too much controlled." + +"Make it as you like. But I'm disappointed in his rallying powers, +unless you are keeping something back. A boy with the grit to do what he +did, and stand it as he did--why isn't he standing it better now?" + +"We are all suffering from reaction, I think," said Mrs. Creve +diplomatically; "and we show it by making too much of little things. +Tom, we oughtn't to keep the doctor up here talking nonsense. He wants +to go to bed." + +"_I_'m not talking nonsense," said the doctor. "I should be if I +pretended there was anything mysterious about that boy's case upstairs. +He has had a tremendous experience, say what you will; and it's pulled +him down nervously, and every other way. He isn't ready or able to +talk of it yet. And he knows as soon as he comes down there'll be forty +people waiting to congratulate him and ask him how it was. I don't +wonder he fights shy. If he could take his bride by the hand and walk +out of the house with her I believe he could start to-morrow; but if +there must be a wedding and a lot of fuss"-- + +Mrs. Creve nodded her head approvingly. The three had risen and stood +around the hearth, while the colonel put the brands delicately together +with the skill of an old campaigner. The flames breathed again. + +"I don't offer this as a professional opinion," said the doctor. "But a +case like his is not a disease, it's a condition"-- + +"Of the mind, perhaps?" the colonel added significantly. He glanced at +Mrs. Creve. "You've thought about that, Doctor? The letter his mother +consulted you about?" + +"Have you been worrying about that, Colonel? Why didn't you say so? +There is nothing in it whatever. Why, it's so plain a case the other +way--any one can see where the animus comes from!" + +"Now you _are_ getting mysterious, and I'm going to bed!" said Mrs. +Creve. + +"No; we're coming to the point now," said the colonel. + +"What is it you want Bogardus to do?" asked Doctor Fleming. "Want him to +get up and walk out of the house as my patient did at the hospital? Dare +say he could do it, but what then? Will you let me speak out, Colonel? +No regard to anybody's feelings? Now, this may be gossip, but I think +it has a bearing on the case upstairs. I'm going to have it off my mind +anyhow! When Mrs. Bogardus came to see the guide,--Packer John,--day +before yesterday, was it?--he asked to see her alone. Said he had +something particular to say to her about her son. We thought it a queer +start, but she was willing to humor him. Well, she wasn't in there above +ten minutes, but in that time something passed between them that hit +her very hard, no doubt of that! Now, Bogardus holds his tongue like +a gentleman as to what happened in the woods. He doesn't mention +his comrades' names. And the packer has disappeared; so he can't be +questioned. Seems to me a little bird told me there was an attachment +between one of those Bowen boys and Miss Christine? + +"Now we, who know what brutes brute fear will make of men, are not going +to deny that those boys behaved badly. There are some things that can't +be acknowledged among men, you know, if there is a hole to crawl out of. +Cowardice is one of them. Well then, they lied, that's the whole of +it. The little boys lied. They wrote Mrs. Bogardus a long letter from +Lemhi,"--the doctor was reviewing now for Mrs. Creve's benefit,--"when +they first got out. They probably judged, by the time they had had, +that Paul and the packer would never tell their own story. Very well: it +couldn't hurt Paul, it might be the saving of them, if they could show +that something had queered him in the woods. They asked his mother +if she had heard of the effects of altitude upon highly sensitive +organizations. They recounted some instances--I will mention them later. +One of the boys is a lawyer, isn't he? They are a pair of ingenious +youths. Bogardus, they claim, avoided them almost from the time they +entered the woods,--almost lived with the packer, behaved like a crank +about the shooting. Whereas they had gone there to kill things, he made +it a personal matter whenever they pursued this intention in a natural +and undisguised manner. He had pangs, like a girl, when the creatures +expired. He hated the carcases, the blood--forgive me, Mrs. Creve. In +short, he called the whole business butchery." + +"Do you make _that_ a sign of lunacy?" Mrs. Creve flung in. + +"I am quoting, you know." The doctor smiled indulgently. "They declare +that they offered--even begged--to stay behind with him, one of them, at +least, but he rejected their company in a manner so unpleasant that they +saw it would only be courting a quarrel to remain. And so, treating him +perforce like a child _or_ a lunatic _pro tem._, and having but little +time to decide in, they cut loose and hurried back for help. This is the +tale, composed on reflection. They said nothing of this to Winslow--to +save publicity, of course! Mrs. Bogardus's lips are doubly sealed, for +her son's sake and for the sake of the young scamp who is to be her +son, by and by! I saw she winced at my opinion, which I gave her +plainly--brutally, perhaps. And she asked me particularly to say +nothing, which I am particularly not doing. + +"This, I think, you will find is the bitter drop in the cup of rejoicing +upstairs. And they are swallowing it in silence, those two, for the sake +of the little girl and the old friends in New York. Of course she has +kept from Paul that last shot in the back from those sweet boys! The +packer had some unruly testimony he was bursting with, which he had +sense enough to keep for her alone, and she doesn't want the case to +spread. It is singular how a man in his condition could get out of +the way as suddenly as he did. You might think he'd been taken up in a +cloud." + +"Doctor, what do you mean by such an insinuation as that?" + +"Colonel, have I insinuated anything? Did I say she had oiled the wheels +of his departure?" + +"Come, come! You go too far!" + +"Not at all. That's your own construction. I merely say that I am not +concerned about that man's disappearance. I think he'll be looked after, +as a valuable witness should be." + +"Well," the colonel grumbled uneasily, "I don't like mysteries myself, +and I don't like family quarrels nor skeletons at the feasts of old +friends. But I suppose there must be a drop in every cup. What were your +altitude cases, Doctor?" + +"The same old ones; poor Addison, you know. All those stories they tell +an Easterner. As I pointed out to Mrs. Bogardus, in every case there was +some predisposing cause. Addison had been too long in the mountains, and +he was frightfully overworked; short of company officers. He came to me +about an insect he said had got into his ear; buzzed, and bothered him +day and night. The story got to the men's quarters. They joked about the +colonel's 'bug.' I knew it was no joke. I condemned him for duty, but +the Sioux were out. They thought at Washington no one but Addison could +handle an Indian campaign. He was on the ground, too. So they sent him +up higher where it was dry, with a thousand men in his hands. I knew +he'd be a madman or a dead man in a month! There were a good many of the +dead! By Jove! The boys who took his orders and loved the old fellow and +knew he was sending them to their death! Well for him that he'll never +know." + +"The 'altitude of heartbreak,'" sighed Mrs. Creve. The phrase was her +own, for many a reason deeply known unto herself, but she gave it the +effect of a quotation before the men. + +"Then you think there is no 'altitude' in ours?" + +"No; nor 'heartbreak' either," said the doctor, helping himself to one +of the colonel's cigars. "But I don't say there isn't enough to keep a +woman awake nights, and to make those young men avoid the sight of each +other for a time. Thanks, I won't smoke now. I'm going to take a look at +Mrs. Bogardus as I go out." + + + + +XV + + +A BRIDEGROOM OF SNOW + +The doctor had taken his look, feeling a trifle guilty under his +patient's counter gaze, yet glad to have relieved the good colonel's +anxiety. If he loved to gossip, at least he was particular as to whom he +gossiped with. + +Moya closed the door after him and silently resumed her seat. Mrs. +Bogardus helped herself to a sip of water. She was struggling with a +dry constriction of the throat, and Moya protested a little, seeing the +effort that it cost her to speak, even in the hoarse, unnatural tone +which was all the voice she had left. + +"I want to finish now," she said, "and never speak of this again. It was +I who accused them first--and then I asked him:--if there was anything +he could say in their defense, to say it, for Chrissy's sake! 'I will +never break bread with them again,' said he,--'either Banks or Horace. +I will not eat with them, or drink with them, or speak with them again!' +Think of it! How are we to live? How are they to inhabit the same +city? He thinks I have been weak. I am weak! The only power I have is +through--the property. Banks will never marry a poor girl. But that +would be a dear-bought victory. Let her keep what faith in him she can. +No; in families, the ones who can control themselves have to give in--to +those who can't. If you argue with Christine she simply gives way, and +then she gets hysterical, and then she is ill. It's a disease. Mothers +know how their children--Christine was marked--marked with trouble! I +am thankful she has any mind at all. She needs me more than Paul does. I +cannot be parted from my power to help her--such as it is." + +"When she is Banks Bowen's wife she will need you more than ever!" said +Moya. + +"She will. I could prevent the marriage, but I am afraid to. I am +afraid! So, as the family is cut in two--in three, for I--" Mrs. Bogardus +stopped and moistened her lips again. "So--I think you and Paul had +better make your arrangements and go as soon as you can wherever it +suits you, without minding about the rest of us." + +Moya gave a little sobbing laugh. "You don't expect me to make the first +move!" + +"Doesn't he say anything to you--anything at all?" + +"He is too ill." + +"He is not ill!" Mrs. Bogardus denied it fiercely. "Who says he is ill? +He is starved and frozen. He is just out of the grave. You must be good +to him, Moya. Warm him, comfort him! You can give him the life he needs. +Your hands are as soft as little birds. They comfort even me. Oh, don't +you understand!" + +"Of course I understand!" Moya answered, her face aflame. "But I cannot +marry Paul. He has got to marry me." + +"What nonsense that is! People say to a girl: 'You can't be too cold +before you are married or too kind after!' That does not mean you and +Paul. If you are not kind to him _now_, you will make a great mistake." + +"He is not thinking of marriage," said Moya. "Something weighs on him +all the time. I cannot ask him questions. If he wanted to tell me he +would. That is why I come downstairs and leave him. But he won't come +down! Is it not strange? If we could believe such things I would say a +Presence came with, him out of that place. It is with him when I find +him alone. It is in his eyes when he looks at me. It is not something +past and done with, it is here--now--in this house! _What_ is it? What +do _you_ believe?" + +The eyes she sought to question hardened under her gaze. Here, too, was +a veil. Mrs. Bogardus sat with her hands clasped in her lap. She was +motionless, but the creaking of her silks could be heard as her bosom +rose and fell. After a moment she said: "Paul's tray is on the table in +the dining-room. Will you take it when you go up?" + +Moya altered her own manner instantly. "But you?" she hesitated. "I must +not crowd you out of all your mother privileges. You have handed over +everything to me." + +"A mother's privilege is to see herself no longer needed. I can do +nothing more for my son"--her smile was hard--"except take care of his +money." + +"Paul's mother!" + +"My dear, do you suppose we mind? It is a very great privilege to be +allowed to step aside when your work is done." + +"Paul's _mother!_" Moya insisted. + +Mrs. Bogardus rose. "You don't remember your own mother, my dear. You +have an exaggerated idea of the--the importance of mothers. They are +only a temporary arrangement." She put out her hands and the girl's +cheek touched hers for an instant; then she straightened herself and +walked calmly out of the room. Moya remained a little longer, afraid +to follow her. "If she would not smile! If she would do anything but +smile!" + +Paul was walking about his room, half an hour later, when Moya stopped +outside his door. She placed the tray on a table in the hall. The door +was opened from within. Paul had heard his mother go up before, heard +her pause at the stairs, and, after a silence, enter her own room. + +"She knows that I know," he said to himself. "That knowledge will be +always between us; we can never look each other in the face again." To +Moya he endeavored to speak lightly. + +"It sounded very gay downstairs to-night. You must have had a houseful." + +"I have been with your mother the last hour," answered Moya, vaguely on +the defensive. Since Paul's return there had been little of the old free +intercourse in words between them, and without this outlet their mutual +consciousness became acute. Often as they saw each other during the day, +the keenest emotion attached to the first meeting of their eyes. + +Paul was unnerved by his sudden recall from death to life. Its contrasts +were overwhelming to his starved senses: from the dirt and dearth and +grimy despair of his burial hutch in the snow to this softly lighted, +close-curtained room, warm and sweet with flowers; from the gaunt, +unshaven spectre of the packer and his ghostly revelations, to Moya, +meekly beautiful, her bright eyes lowered as she trailed her soft skirts +across the carpet; Moya seated opposite, silent, conscious of him +in every look and movement. Her lovely hands lay in her lap, and the +thought of holding them in his made him tremble; and when he recalled +the last time he had kissed her he grew faint. He longed to throw +off this exhausting self-restraint, but feared to betray his helpless +passion which he deemed an insult to his soul's worship of her. + +And she was thinking: "Is this all it is going to mean--his coming +home--our being together? And I was almost his wife!" + +"So it was my mother you were talking to in the study? I thought I heard +a man's voice." + +"It was the doctor. Your mother was not quite herself this evening. He +came in to see her, but he does not think she is ill. 'Rest and change,' +he says she needs." + +Paul gave the words a certain depth of consideration. "Are you as well +as usual, Moya?" + +"Oh, I am always well," she answered cheerlessly. "I seem to thrive on +anything--everything," she corrected herself, and blushed. + +The blush made him gasp. "You are more beautiful than ever. I had +forgotten that beauty is a physical fact. The sight of you confuses me." + +"I always told you you were morbid." Moya's happy audacity returned. +"Now, how long are you going to sit and think about that?" + +"Do I sit and think about things?" His reluctant, boyish smile, which +all women loved, captured his features for a moment. "It is very rude of +me." + +"Suppose I should ask you what you are thinking about?" + +"Ah! I am afraid you would say 'morbid' again." + +"Try me! You ought to let me know at once if you are going to break out +in any new form of morbidness." + +"I wish it might amuse you, but it wouldn't. Let me put you a +case--seriously." + +Moya smiled. "Once we were serious--ages ago. Do you remember?" + +"Do I remember!" + +"Well? You are you, and I am I, still." + +"Yes; and as full of fateful surprises for each other." + +"I bar 'fateful'! That word has the true taint of morbidness." + +"But you can't 'bar' fate. Listen: this is a supposing, you know. +Suppose that an accident had happened to our leader on the way home--to +your Lieutenant Winslow, we'll say"-- + +"_My_ lieutenant!" + +"Your father's--the regiment's--Lieutenant Winslow 'of ours.' Suppose we +had brought him back in a state to need a surgeon's help; and without a +word to any one he should get up and walk out of the hospital with his +hurts not healed, and no one knew why, or where he had gone? There would +be a stir about it, would there not? And if such a poor spectre of a +bridegroom as I were allowed to join the search, no one would think it +strange, or call it a slight to his bride if the fellow went?" + +"I take your case," said Moya with a beaming look. "You want to go after +that poor man who suffered with you." + +"Who went with us to save us from our own headstrong folly, and would +have died there alone"-- + +"Yes; oh, yes!--before you begin to think about yourself, or me. Because +he is nobody 'of ours,' and no one seems to feel responsible, and we go +on talking and laughing just the same!" + +"Do they talk of this downstairs?" + +"To-night they were talking--oh, with such philosophy! But how came you +to know it?" + +Paul did not answer this question. "Then"--he drew a long breath,--"then +you could bear it, dear?--the comment, even if they called it a slight +to you and a piece of quixotic lunacy? Others will not take my case, +remember." + +"What others?" + +"They will say: 'Why doesn't he send a better man? He is no trailer.' It +is true. Money might find him and bring him back, but all the money +in the world could not teach him to trust his friends. There is a +misunderstanding here which is too bitter to be borne. It is hard to +explain,--the intimacy that grows up between men placed as we were. But +as soon as help reached us, the old lines were drawn. I belonged with +the officers, he with the men. We could starve together, but we could +not eat together. He accepted it--put himself on that basis at once. +He would not come up here as the guest of the Post. He is done with us +because he thinks we are done with him. And he knows that I must know +his occupation is gone. He will never guide nor pack a mule again." + +"Your mother and my father, they will understand. What do the others +matter?" + +"I must tell you, dear, that I do not propose to tell them--especially +them--why I go. For I am going. I must go! There are reasons I cannot +explain." He sighed, and looked wildly at Moya, whose smile was becoming +mechanical. "I hate the excuse, but it will have to be said that I go +for a change--for my health. My health! Great God! But it's 'orders,' +dear." + +"Your orders are my orders. You are never going anywhere again without +me," said Moya slowly. Her smile was gone. She stood up and faced him, +pale and beautiful. He rose, too, and stooped above her, taking her +hands and gazing into her full blue eyes arched like the eyes of angels. + +"I thought she was a girl! But she is a woman," he said in a voice of +caressing wonder. "A woman, and not afraid!" + +"I am afraid. I will not be left--I will not be left again! Oh, you +won't take me, even when I offer myself to you!" + +"Don't--don't tempt me!" Paul caught her to him with a groan. "You don't +know me well enough to be afraid of _me!_" + +"You! You will not let me know you." + +"Oh, hush, dear--hush, my darling! This isn't thinking. We must think +for our lives. I must take care of you, precious. We don't know where +this search may take us, or where it will end, or what the end will be." +He kissed the sleeve of her dress, and put her gently from him, so that +he could look her in the eyes. She gave him her full pure gaze. + +"It is the poor man again. You said he would spoil our lives." + +"He is _our_ poor man. You didn't go out of your way to find him. And +your way is mine." + +"It is so heavenly to be convinced! Who taught you to see things at a +glance,--things I have toiled and bungled over and don't know now if I +am right! _Who_ taught you?" + +"Do you think I stood still while you were away! Oh, my heart was sifted +out by little pieces." + +"You shall sift mine. You shall tell me what to do. For I know nothing! +Not even if I may dare to take this angel at her word!" + +"I knew you would not take me!" the girl whispered wildly. "But I shall +go." + + + + +XVI + + +THE NATURE OF AN OATH + +"Your tray! It is after ten o'clock. Your 'angel' is a bad nurse." Moya +brought the tray and set it on a little stand beside Paul's chair. He +watched her shy, excited preparations as she moved about, conscious of +his eyes. The saucepan staggered upon the coals and they both sprang +to save the broth, and pouring it she burnt her thumb a little, and he +behaved quite like any ordinary young man. They were ecstatic to find +themselves at ease with each other once more. Moya became disrespectful +to her charge; such sweet daring looked from her eyes into his as made +him riotous with joy. + +"Won't you take some with me?" He turned the cup towards her and watched +her as she sipped. + +"'It was roast with fire,'" he pronounced softly and dreamily, 'because +of the dreadful pains. It was to be eaten with bitter herbs'"-- + +"What _are_ you saying?"-- + +"'To remind them of their bondage.'" + +"I object to your talking about bondage and bitter herbs when you are +eating aunt Annie's delicious consomme." + +He gravely sipped in turn, still with his eyes in hers. "Can you +remember what you were doing on the second of November?" + +"Can I remember!" + +"Yes; tell me. I have a reason for asking." + +"Tell _me_ the reason first." + +"May we have a little more fire, darling? It gives me chills to think of +that day. It was the last of my wretched pot-hunting. There was nothing +to hunt for--the game had all gone down, but I did not know that. +Somewhere in the woods, a long way from the cabin, it began to occur to +me that I should not make shelter that night. A fool and his strength +are soon parted. It was a little hollow with trees all around so deep +that in the distance their trunks closed in like a wall. Snow can make +a wonderful silence in the woods. I seemed to hear the thoughts of +everybody I loved in the world outside. There had been a dullness over +me for weeks. I could not make it true that I had ever been happy--that +you really loved me. All that part of my life was a dream. Now, in that +silence suddenly I felt you! I knew that you cared. It was cruel to +die so if you did love me! It brought the 'pang and spur'! I fought the +drowsiness that was taking away my pain. I had begun to lean on it as +a comfortable breast. I woke up and tore myself away from that siren +sleep. It was my darling,--her love that saved me. Without that thought +of you, I never would have stirred again. Where were you, what were you +thinking that brought you so close to me?" + +"Ah," said Moya in a whisper. "I was in that room across the hall, +alone. They were good to me that day; they made excuses and left me to +myself. In the afternoon a box came,--from poor father,--white roses, +oh, sweet and cold as snow! I took them up to that room and forced +myself to go in. It was where my things were kept, the trunks half +packed, all the drawers and closets full. And my wedding dress laid +out on the bed. We girls used to go up there at first and look at the +things, and there was laughing and joking. Sometimes I went up alone and +tried on my hats before the glass, and thought where I should be when +I wore them, and--Well! all that stopped. I dreaded to pass the door. +Everything was left just as it was; the shutters open, the poor dress +covered with a sheet on the bed. The room was a death-chamber. I went +in. I carried the roses to my dead. I drew down the sheet and put my +face in that empty dress. It was my selfish self laid out there--the +girl who knew just what she wanted and was going to get it if she could. +Happiness I dared not even pray for--only remembrance--everlasting +remembrance. That we might know each other again when no more life +was left to part us--_my_ life. It seemed long to wait, but that was +my--marriage vow. I gave you all I could, remembrance, faith till +death." + +"Then you are my own!" said Paul, his face transformed. "God was our +witness. Life of my life--for life and death!" Solemnly he took a +bridegroom's kiss from her lips. + +"How do _you_ know that it is life that parts?" + +"Speak so I can understand you!" Moya cried. "Ah, if I might! A man +must not have secrets from his wife. Secrets are destruction, don't you +think?" + +Moya waited in silence. + +"Now we come to this bondage!" He let the words fall like a load from +his breast. "This is a hideous thing to tell you, but it will cut us +apart unless you know it. It compels me to do things." He paused, and +they heard a door down the passage open,--the door of his mother's room. +A step came forward a few paces. Silence; it retreated, and the door +closed again stealthily. + +"She has not slept," Paul murmured. "Poor soul, poor soul! Now, in what +I am going to say, please listen to the facts, Moya dear. Try not to +infer anything from my way of putting things. I shall contradict myself, +but the facts do that. + +"The--the guide--John, we will call him, had a long fever in the woods. +It would come on worse at night, and then--he talked--words, of a +shocking intimacy. They say that nothing the mind has come in contact +with under strong emotion is ever lost, no matter how long in the past. +It will return under similar excitement. This man had kept stored away +in his mind, under some such pressure, the words of a woman's message, +a woman in great distress. Over and over, as his pulse rose, countless +times he would repeat that message. I went out of the hut at night and +stood outside in the snow not to hear it, but I knew it as well as he +did before we got through. Now, this was what he said, word for word. + +"'Do not blame me, my dear husband. I have held out in this place as +long as I can. Don't wait for anything. Don't worry about anything. Come +back to me with your bare hands. Come!--to your loving Emmy!' + +"'Come, come!' he would shout out loud. Then in another voice he would +whisper, 'Come back to me with your bare hands!' And he would stare at +his hands and his face would grow awful." + +Moya drew a long sigh of scared attention. + +"Those words were all over the cabin walls. I heard them and saw them +everywhere. There was no rest from them. I could have torn the roof down +to stop his talking, but the words it was not possible to forget. And +where was the horror of it? Was not this what we had asked, for years, +to know?" + +"You need not explain to me," said Moya, shuddering. + +"Yes; but all one's meanest motives were unearthed in a place like that. +Would I have felt so with a different man? Some one less uncouth? Was it +the man himself, or his"-- + +"Paul, if anything could make you a snob, it would be your deadly fear +of being one!" + +"Well, if they had found us then, God knows how that fight would have +ended. But I won it--when there was nothing left to fight for. I owned +him--in the grave. We owned each other and took a bashful sort of +comfort in it, after we had shuffled off the 'Mister' and 'John.' I grew +quite fond of him, when we were so near death that his English didn't +matter, or his way of eating. I thought him a very remarkable man, +you remember, when he was just material for description. He was, he is +remarkable. Most remarkable in this, he was not ashamed of his son." + +"Do please let that part alone. I want to know what he was doing, hiding +away by himself all these years? I believe he is an impostor!" + +"We came to that, of course; though somehow I forgave him before he +could answer the question. In the long watch beside him I got very close +to him. It was not possible to believe him a deserter, a sneak. Can you +take my word for his answer? It was given as a death-bed confession and +he is living." + +"I would take your word for anything except yourself!" Moya did not +smile, or think what she was saying. + +"That answer cleared him, in my mind, with something over to the credit +of blind, stupid heroism. He is not a clever man. But, speaking as one +who has teen face to face with the end of things, I can say that I know +of no act of his that should prevent his returning to his family--if he +had a family--not even his deserting them for twenty years. _If_, I say! + +"When the soldiers found us we were too far gone to realize the issue +that was upon us. He was the first to take it in. It was on the march +home, at night, he touched me and began speaking low in our corner of +the tent. 'As we came in here, so we go out again, and so we stay,' he +said. I told him it could not be. To suppress what I had learned would +make the whole of life a lie, a coward's lie. That knowledge belonged to +my mother. I must render it up to her. To do otherwise would be to treat +her like a child and to meddle with the purposes of God. 'No honest man +robs another of his secrets,' he said. He was very much excited. She +was the only one now to be considered--and what did I know about God's +purposes? He refused to take my scruples into consideration, except such +as concerned her. But, after a long argument, very painful, weak as we +were and whispering in the dark, he yielded this much. If I were bent on +digging up the dead, as he called it, it must be done in such a way as +to leave her free. Free she was in law, and she must be given a chance +to claim her freedom without talk or publicity. Absolute secrecy he +demanded of me in the mean time. I begged him to see how unfair it was +to her to bring her face to face with such a discovery without one word +of preparation, of excuse for him. She would condemn him on the very +fact of his being alive. So she would, he said, if she were going +to judge him; not if she felt towards him as--as a wife feels to her +husband. It was that he wanted to know. It was that or nothing he would +have from her. 'Bring me face to face with her alone, and as sudden as +you like. If she knows me, I am the man. And if she wants me back, she +will know me--and that way I'll come and no other way.' Was not that +wonderful? A gentleman could hardly have improved on that. Whatever +feeling he might be supposed to have towards her in the matter we +could never touch upon. But I think he had his hopes. That decision was +hanging over us--and I trembled for her. Day before yesterday, was it, I +persuaded her to see the sick guide. She wondered why I was faint as +she kissed me good-by. I ought to have prepared her. It was a horrible +snare. And yet he meant it all in delicacy, a passionate consideration +for her. Poor fool. How could I prepare _him!_ How could he keep +pace with the changes in her! After all, it is externals that make +us,--habits, clothes. Great God! Things you could not speak of to a +naked soul like him. But he would have it 'straight,' he said--and +straight he got it. And he is gone; broke away like an animal out of +a trap. And I am going to find him, to see at least that he has a roof +over his head. God knows, he may not die for years!" + +"She has got years before her too." + +"She!--What am I saying! We have plunged into those damnable inferences +and I haven't given you the facts. Wait. I shall contradict all this in +a moment. I thought, she must have done this for her children. She +must be given another chance. And I approached the thing on my very +knees--not to let her know that I knew, only to hint that I was not +unprepared, had guessed--could meet it, and help her to meet the +problems it would bring into our lives. Help her! She stood and faced +me as if I had insulted her. 'I have been your father's widow for +twenty-two years. If that fact is not sacred to you, it is to me. Never +dare to speak of this to me again!'" + +"Ah," said Moya in a long-drawn sigh, "then she did not"-- + +"Oh, she did, explicitly! For I went on to speak of it. It was my last +chance. I asked her how she--we--could possibly go through with it; how +with this knowledge between us we could look each other in the face--and +go on living. + +"'Put this hallucination out of your mind,' she said. 'That man and I +are strangers.'" + +"Was that--would you call that a lie?" asked Moya fearfully. + +"You can see your answer in her face. I do not say that hers was the +first lie. It must always be foolish, I think, to evade the facts of +life as we make them for ourselves. He refused to meet his facts, from +the noblest motives;--but now I'm tangling you all up again! Rest your +head here, darling. This is such a business! It is a pity I cannot tell +you his whole story. Half the meaning of all this is lost. But--here is +a solemn declaration in writing, signed John Hagar, in which this man we +are speaking of says that Adam Bogardus was his partner, who died in the +woods and was buried by his hand; that he knew his story, all the scenes +and circumstances of his life in many a long talk they had together, as +well as he knew his own. In his delirium he must have confused himself +with his old partner, and half in dreams, he said, half in the crazy +satisfaction of pretending to himself he had a son, he allowed the +delusion to go on; saw it work upon me, and half feared it, half +encouraged it. Afterwards he was frightened at the thought of meeting +my mother, who would know him for an impostor. His seeming scruples were +fear of exposure, not consideration for her. This was why he guarded +their interview so carefully. 'No harm's been done,' he says, 'if you'll +act now like a sensible man. I'll be disappointed in you if you make +your mother any trouble about this. You've treated me as square as any +man could treat another. Remember, I say so, and think as kindly as +you can of a harmless, loony old impostor'--and he signs himself 'John +Hagar,'--which shows again how one lie leads to another. We go to find +'John Hagar.'" + +"Have you shown your mother this letter? You have not? Paul, you will +not rob her of her just defense!" + +"I will not heap coals of fire on her head! This letter simply completes +his renunciation, and he meant it for her defense. But when a man signs +himself 'John Hagar' in the handwriting of my father, it shows that +somebody is not telling the truth. I used to pore over the old farm +records in my father's hand at Stone Ridge in the old account books +stowed away in places where a boy loves to poke and pry. I know it as +well as I know yours. Do you suppose she would not know it? When a man +writes as few letters as he does, the handwriting does not change." Paul +laid the letter upon the coals. "It is the only witness against her, but +it loses the case." + +"She never could have loved him. I never believed she did!" said Moya. + +"She thinks she can live out this deep-down, deliberate--But it will +kill her, Moya. Her life is ended from this on. How could I have +driven her to that excruciating choice! I ought to have listened to him +altogether or not at all. There is a hell for meddlers, and the ones who +meddle for conscience' sake are the deepest damned, I think." + +Moya came and wreathed her arm in his, and they paced the room in +silence. At length she said, "If we go to find John Hagar, shall we not +be meddling again? A man who respects a woman's freedom must love his +own. It is the last thing left him. Don't hunt him down. I believe +nothing could hurt him now like seeing you again." + +"He shall not see me unless he wants to, but he shall know where I stand +on this question of the Impostor. It shall be managed so that even he +can see I am protecting her. No, call himself what he will, the tie +between him and me is another of those facts." + +"But do you love him, Paul?" + +"Oh--I cannot forget him! He is--just as he used to be--'poor father out +there in the cold.' We must find him and comfort him somehow." + +"For our own peace of mind? Forgive me for arguing when everything is so +difficult. But he is a man--a brave man who would rather be forever out +in the cold than be a burden. Do not rob him of his right to _be_ John +Hagar if he wants to, for the sake of those he loves. You do not tell me +it was love, but I am sure it was, in some mistaken way, that drove him +into exile. Only love as pure as his can be our excuse for dragging him +back. He did not want shelter and comfort from her. Only one thing. Have +we got that to give him?" + +"Well then, I go for my own sake--it is a physical necessity; and I go +for hers. She has put it out of her own power to help him. It will ease +her a little to know I am trying to reach him in his forlorn disguise." + +"But you were not going to tell her?" + +"In words, no. But she will understand. There is a strange clairvoyance +between us, as if we were accomplices in a crime!" + +Moya reflected silently. This search which Paul had set his heart upon +would equally work his own cure, she saw. Nor could she now imagine for +themselves any lover's paradise inseparable from this moral tragedy, +which she saw would be fibre of their fibre, life of their life. A +family is an organism; one part may think to deny or defy another, but +with strange pains the subtle union exerts itself; distance cannot break +the thread. + +They kissed each other solemnly like little children on the eve of a +long journey full of awed expectancy. + +Mrs. Bogardus stood holding her door ajar as Moya passed on her way +downstairs. "You are very late," she uttered hoarsely. "Is nothing +settled yet?" + +"Everything!" Moya hesitated and forced a smile, "everything but where +we shall go. We will start--and decide afterwards." + +"You go together? That is right. Moya, you have a genius for happiness!" + +"I wish I had a genius for making people sleep who lie awake hours in +the night thinking about other people!" + +"If you mean me, people of my age need very little sleep." + +"May I kiss you good-night, Paul's mother?" + +"You may kiss me because I am Paul's mother, not because I do not +sleep." + +Moya's lips touched a cheek as white and almost as cold as the frosted +window-panes through which the moon was glimmering. She thought of the +icy roses on her wedding dress. + +Downstairs her father was smoking his bedtime cigar. Mrs. Creve, very +sleepy and cosy and flushed, leaned over the smouldering bed of coals. +She held out her plump, soft hand to Moya. + +"Come here and be scolded! We have been scolding you steadily for the +last hour." + +"If you want that young man to get his strength back, you'd better not +keep him up talking half the night," the colonel growled softly. "Do you +see what time it is?" + +Moya knelt and leaned her head against her father. She reached one hand +to Mrs. Creve. They did not speak again till her weak moment had passed. +"It will be very soon," she said, pressing the warm hand that stroked +her own. "You will help me pack, aunt Annie; and then you'll stay--with +father? I know you are glad to have me out of the way at last!" + + + + +XVII + + +THE HIDDEN TRAIL + +Because they had set forth on a grim and sorrowful quest, it need not +be supposed that Paul and Moya were a pair of sorrowful pilgrims. It was +their wedding journey. At the outset Moya had said: "We are doing the +best we know. For what we don't know, let us leave it and not brood." + +They did not enter at once upon the more eccentric stages of the search. +They went by way of the Great Northern to Portland, descending from snow +to roses and drenching rains. At Pendleton, which is at the junction +of three great roads, Paul sent tracers out through express agents +and train officials along the remotest slender feeders of these lines. +Through the same agents it was made known that for any service rendered +or expense incurred on behalf of the person described, his friends would +hold themselves gratefully responsible. + +At Portland, Paul searched the steamer lists and left confidential +orders in the different transportation offices; and Moya wrote to his +mother--a woman's letter, every page shining with happiness and as free +from apparent forethought as a running brook. + +They returned by the Great Northern and Lake Coeur d'Alene, stopping +over at Fort Sherman to visit Mrs. Creve, who was giddy with joy +over the wholesome change in Paul. She, too, wrote a woman's letter +concerning that visit, to the colonel, which cleared a crowd of shadows +from his lonely hearth. + +Thence again to Pendleton came the seekers, and Paul gathered in his +lines, but found nothing; so cast them forth again. But through all +these distant elaborations of the search, in his own mind he saw the +old man creeping away by some near, familiar trail and lying hid in some +warm valley in the hills, his prison and his home. + +It was now the last week in March. The travelers' bags were in the +office, the carriage at the door, when a letter--pigeon-holed and +forgotten since received some three weeks before--was put into Paul's +hand. + +I run up against your ad. in the Silver City Times [the communication +began]. If you haven't found your man yet, maybe I can put you onto +the right lead. I'm driving a jerky on the road from Mountain Home to +Oriana, but me and the old man we don't jibe any too well. I've got +a sort of disgust on me. Think I'll quit soon and go to mining. Jimmy +Breen he runs the Ferry, he can tell you all I know. Fifty miles from +Mountain Home good road can make it in one day. Yours Respecfully, + +J. STRATTON. + +It was in following up this belated clue that the pilgrims had come to +the Ferry inn, crossing by team from valley to valley, cutting off a +great bend of the Oregon Short Line as it traverses the Snake River +desert; those bare high plains escarped with basalt bluffs that +open every fifty miles or so to let a road crawl down to some little +rope-ferry supported by sheep-herders, ditch contractors, miners, +emigrants, ranchmen, all the wild industries of a country in the dawn of +enterprise. + +Business at the Ferry had shrunk since the railroad went through. The +house-staff consisted of Jimmy Breen, a Chinese cook of the bony, tartar +breed, sundry dogs, and a large bachelor cat that mooned about the empty +piazzas. In a young farming country, hungry for capital, Jimmy could not +do a cash business, but everything was grist that came to his mill; and +he was quick to distinguish the perennial dead beat from a genuine case +of hard luck. + +"That's a good axe ye have there," pointing suggestively to a new one +sticking out of the rear baggage of an emigrant outfit. "Ye better l'ave +that with me for the dollar that's owing me. If ye have money to buy +new axes ye can't be broke entirely." Or: "Slip the halter on that calf +behind there. The mother hasn't enough to keep it alive. There's har'ly +a dollar's wort' of hide on its bones, but I'll take it to save it +droppin' on the road." Or, he would try sarcasm: "Well, we'll be +shuttin' her down in the spring. Then ye can go round be Walter's Ferry +and see if they'll trust ye there." Or: "Why wasn't ye workin' on the +Ditch last winter? Settin' smokin' your poipe in the tules, the wife and +young ones packin' sagebrush to kape ye warm!" + +On the morning after their distinguished arrival, Jimmy's guests came +down late to a devastated breakfast-table. Little heaps of crumbs here +and there showed where earlier appetites had had their destined hour and +gone their way. At an impartial distance from the top and the foot of +the table stood the familiar group of sauce and pickle bottles, every +brand dear to the cowboy, including the "surrup-jug" adhering to its +saucer. There was a fresh-gathered bunch of wild phlox by Moya's plate +in a tumbler printed round the edge with impressions of a large moist +male thumb. + +"Catchee plenty," the Chinaman grinned, pointing to the plain outside +where the pale sage-brush quivered stiffly in the wind. "Bymbye plenty +come. Pretty col' now." + +"You'll be getting a large hump on yourself, Han, me boy. 'T is a cash +crowd we have here--and a lady, by me sowl!" Thus Jimmy exhorted his +household. Times were looking up. They would be a summer resort before +the Ditch went through; it should be mentioned in the Ditch company's +prospectus. Jimmy had put his savings into land-office fees and had a +hopeful interest in the Ditch. + +A spur in the head is worth two in the heel. Without a word from "the +boss" Han had found time to shave and powder and polish his brown +forehead and put on his whitest raiment over his baggiest trousers. +There was loud panic among the fowls in the corral. The cat had +disappeared; the jealous dogs hung about the doors and were pushed out +of the way by friends of other days. + +Seated by the office fire, Paul was conferring with Jimmy, who was +happy with a fresh pipe and a long story to tell to a patient and paying +listener. He rubbed the red curls back from his shining forehead, +took the pipe from his teeth, and guided a puff of smoke away from his +auditor. + +"I seen him settin' over there on his blankets,"--he pointed with +his pipe to the opposite shore plainly visible through the office +windows,--"but he niver hailed me, so I knowed he was broke. Some, whin +they're broke, they holler all the louder. Ye would think they had an +appointment wit' the Governor and he sint his car'iage to meet them. But +he was as humble, he was, as a yaller dog.--Out! Git out from here--the +pack of yez! Han, shut the dure an' drive thim bloody curs off the +piazzy. They're trackin' up the whole place.--As I was sayin', sor, +there he stayed hunched up in the wind, waitin' on the chanst of a team +comin', and I seen he was an ould daddy. I stud the sight of him as long +as I cud, me comin' and goin'. He fair wore me out. So I tuk the boat +over for 'im. One of his arrums he couldn't lift from the shoulder, and +I give him a h'ist wit' his bundle. Faith, it was light! 'Twinty years +a-getherin',' he cackles, slappin' it. 'Ye've had harrud luck,' I says. +''T is not much of a sheaf ye are packin' home.' 'That's as ye look at +it,' he says. + +"I axed him what way was he goin'. He was thinking to get a lift as far +as Oriana, if the stages was runnin' on that road. 'Then ye 'll have to +bide here till morning,' I says, 'for ye must have met the stage +goin' the other way.' 'I met nothing,' says he; 'I come be way of the +bluffs,'--which is a strange way for one man travelin' afoot. + +"The grub was on the table, and I says, 'Sit by and fill yourself up.' +His cheeks was fallin' in wit' the hunger. With that his poor ould eye +begun to water. 'Twas one weak eye he had that was weepin' all the time. +'I've got out of the habit of reg'lar aitin',' he says. 'It don't take +much to kape me goin'.' 'Niver desave yourself, sor! 'T is betther feed +three hungry men than wan "no occasion."' His appetite it grew on him +wit' every mouthful. There was a boundless emptiness to him. He lay +there on the bench and slep' the rest of the evening, and I left him +there wit' a big fire at night. And the next day at noon we h'isted him +up beside of Joe Stratton. A rip-snorter of a wind was blowin' off the +Silver City peaks. His face was drawed like a winter apple, but he wint +off happy. I think he was warm inside of himself." + +"Did you ask him his name?" + +"Sure. Why not? John Treagar he called himself." + +"Treagar? Hagar, you mean!" + +"It was Treagar he said." + +"John Hagar is the man I am looking for." + +"Treagar--Hagar? 'T is comin' pretty close to it." + +"About what height and build was he?" + +"He was not to say a tall man; and he wasn't so turrible short neither. +His back was as round as a Bible. A kind of pepper and saltish beard he +had, and his hair was blacker than his beard but white in streaks." + +"A _dark_ man, was he?" + +"He would be a _dark_ man if he was younger." + +"The man I want is blue-eyed." + +"His eyes was blue--a kind of washed-out gray that maybe was blue wanst; +and one of them always weepin' wit' the cold." + +"And light brown hair mixed with gray, like sand and ashes--mostly +ashes; and a thin straggling beard, thinner on the cheeks? A high head +and a tall stooping figure--six feet at least; hands with large joints +and a habit of picking at them when"-- + +"Ye are goin' too fast for me now, sor. He was not that description of +a man, nayther the height nor the hair of him. Sure't is a pity for ye +comin' this far, and him not the man at all. Faith, I wish I was the man +meself! I wonder at Joe Stratton anyhow! He's a very hasty man, is Joe. +He jumps in wit' both feet, so he does. I could have told ye that." + + * * * * * + +Moya, always helplessly natural, and now very tired as well, when Paul +described with his usual gravity this anti-climax, fell below all the +dignities at once in a burst of childish giggling. Paul looked on +with an embarrassed smile, like a puzzled affectionate dog at the +incomprehensible mirth of humans. Paul was certainly deficient in humor +and therefore in breadth. But what woman ever loved her lover the less +for having discovered his limitations? Humor runs in families of the +intenser cultivation. The son of the soil remains serious in the face of +life's and nature's ironies. + + + + +XVIII + + +THE STAR IN THE EAST + +So the search paused, while the searchers rested and revised their +plans. Spring opened in the valley as if for them alone. There were +mornings "proud and sweet," when the humblest imagination could have +pictured Aurora and her train in the jocund clouds that trooped along +the sky,--wind-built processions which the wind dispersed. Wild flowers +spread so fast they might have been spilled from the rainbow scarf of +Iris fleeting overhead. The river was in flood, digging its elbows into +its muddy banks. The willow and wild-rose thickets stooped and washed +their spring garments in its tide. + +Primeval life and love were all around them. Meadow larks flung their +brief jets of song into the sunlight; the copses rustled with wings; +wood-doves cooed from the warm sunny hollows, and the soft booming of +their throaty call was like a beating in the air,--the pulse of spring. +They had found their Garden. Humanity in the valley passed before them +in forms as interesting and as alien as the brother beasts to Adam: +the handsome driver of the jerky, Joe Stratton's successor, who sat at +dinner opposite and combed his flowing mustache with his fork in a lazy, +dandified way; the darkened faces of sheep-herders enameled by sun and +wind, their hair like the winter coats of animals; the slow-eyed farmers +with the appetites of horses; the spring recruits for the ranks of labor +footing it to distant ranches, each with his back-load of bedding, and +the dust of three counties on his garments. + +The sweet forces of Nature shut out, for a season, Paul's _cri du +coeur_. One may keep a chamber sacred to one's sadder obligations and +yet the house be filled with joy. Further ramifications of the search +were mapped out with Jimmy's indifferent assistance. For good reasons of +his own, Jimmy did little to encourage an early start. He would explain +that his maps were of ancient date and full of misinformation as to +stage routes. "See that now! The stages was pulled off that line five +year ago, on account of the railroad cuttin' in on them. Ye couldn't +make it wid'out ye took a camp outfit. There's ne'er a station left, and +when ye come to it, it's ruins ye'll find. A chimbly and a few rails, +if the mule-skinners hasn't burned them. 'Tis a country very devoid +of fuel; sagebrush and grease-wood, and a wind, bedad! that blows the +grass-seeds into the next county." + +When these camping-trips were proposed to Moya, she hesitated and +responded languidly; but when Paul suggested leaving her even for a day, +her fears fluttered across his path and wiled him another way. Vaguely +he felt that she was unlike herself--less buoyant, though often +restless; and sometimes he fancied she was pale underneath her +sun-burned color like that of rose-hips in October. Various causes kept +him inert, while strength mounted in his veins, and life seemed made for +the pure joy of living. + +The moon of May in that valley is the moon of roses, for the heats once +due come on apace. The young people gave up their all-day horseback +rides and took morning walks instead, following the shore-paths lazily +to shaded coverts dedicated to those happy silences which it takes two +to make. Or, they climbed the bluffs and gazed at the impenetrable +vast horizon, and thought perhaps of their errand with that pang +of self-reproach which, when shared, becomes a subtler form of +self-indulgence. + +But at night, all the teeming life of the plain rushed up into the sky +and blazed there in a million friendly stars. After the languor of the +sleepy afternoons, it was like a fresh awakening--the dawn of those +white May nights. The wide plain stirred softly through all its miles +of sage. The river's cadenced roar paused beyond the bend and outbroke +again. All that was eerie and furtive in the wild dark found a curdling +voice in the coyote's hunting-call. + +In a hollow concealed by sage, not ten minutes' walk from the Ferry inn, +unknown to the map-maker and innocent of all use, lay a perfect floor +for evening pacing with one's eyes upon the stars. It was the death mask +of an ancient lake, done in purest alkali silt, and needing only the +shadows cast by a low moon to make the illusion almost unbelievable. +Slow precipitation, season after season, as the water dried, had left +the lake bed smooth as a cast in plaster. Subsequent warpings had lifted +the alkali crust into thin-lipped wavelets. But once upon the floor +itself the resemblance to water vanished. The warpings and Grumblings +took the shape of earth as made by water and baked by fire. Moya +compared it to a bit of the dead moon fallen to show us what we are +coming to. They paced it soft-footed in tennis shoes lest they should +crumble its talc-like whiteness. But they read no horoscopes, for they +were shy of the future in speaking to each other,--and they made no +plans. + +One evening Moya had said to Paul: "I can understand your mother so much +better now that I am a wife. I think most women have a tendency towards +the state of being _un_married. And if one had--children, it would +increase upon one very fast. A widow and a mother--for twenty years. How +could she be a wife again?" + +Paul made no reply to this speech which long continued to haunt him; +especially as Moya wrote more frequently to his mother and did not offer +to show him her letters. In their evening walks she seemed distrait, and +during the day more restless. + +One night of their nightly pacings she stopped and stood long, her head +thrown back, her eyes fixed upon the dizzy star-deeps. Paul waited a +step behind her, touching her shoulders with his hands. Suddenly she +reeled and sank backwards into his arms. He held her, watching her +lovely face grow whiter; her eyelids closed. She breathed slowly, +leaning her whole weight upon him. + +Coming to herself, she smiled and said it was nothing. She had been that +way before. "But--we must go home. We must have a home--somewhere. +I want to see your mother. Paul, be good to her--forgive her--for my +sake!" + + + + +XIX + + +PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS + +Aunt Polly Lewis was disappointed in the latest of her beneficiaries. +It was nine years since her husband had locked up his savings in the +Mud Springs ranch, a neglected little health-plant at the mouth of the +Bruneau. If you were troubled with rheumatism, or a crick in the back, +or your "pancrees" didn't act or your blood was "out o' fix, why, you'd +better go up to Looanders' for a spell and soak yourself in that blue +mud and let aunt Polly diet ye and dost ye with yerb tea." + +When Leander courted aunt Polly in the interests of his sanitarium, she +was reputed the best nurse in Ada County. The widow--by desertion--of a +notorious quack doctor of those parts: it was an open question whether +his medicine had killed or her nursing had cured the greater number of +confiding sick folk. Leander drove fifty miles to catechise this notable +woman, and finding her sound on the theory of packs hot and cold, and +skilled in the practice of rubbing,--and having made the incidental +discovery that she was a person not without magnetism,--he decided on +the spot to add her to the other attractions of Mud Springs ranch; and +she drove home with him next day, her trunk in the back of his wagon. + +The place was no sinecure. Bricks without straw were a child's pastime +to the cures aunt Polly and the Springs effected without a pretense +to the comforts of life in health, to say nothing of sickness. Modern +conveniences are costly, and how are you to get the facilities for "pay +patients" when you have no patients that pay! Prosperity had overlooked +the Bruneau, or had made false starts there, through detrimental schemes +that gave the valley a bad name with investors. The railroad was still +fifty miles away, and the invalid public would not seek life itself, +in these days of luxurious travel, at the cost of a twelve hours' +stage-ride. However, as long as the couple had a roof over their +heads and the Springs continued to plop and vomit their strange, +chameleon-colored slime, Leander would continue to bring home the sick +and the suffering for Polly and the Springs to practice on. Health +became his hobby, and in time, with isolation thrown in, it began to +invade his common sense. He tried in succession all the diet fads of the +day and wound up a convert to the "Ralston" school of eating. Aunt Polly +had clung a little longer to the flesh-pots, but the charms of a system +that abolished half the labor of cooking prevailed with her at last, and +in the end she kept a sharper eye upon Leander at mealtime than ever he +had upon her. + +The ignorant gorgings of their neighbors were a head-shaking and a +warning to them, and more than once Leander's person was in jeopardy +through his zealous but unappreciated concern for the brother who eats +in darkness. + +He had started out one winter morning from Bisuka, a virtuous man. His +team had breakfasted, but not he. A Ralstonite does not load up his +stomach at dawn after the manner of cattle, and such pious substitutes +for a cup of coffee as are permitted the faithful cannot always be had +for a price. At Indian Creek he hauled up to water his team, and to +make for himself a cinnamon-colored decoction by boiling in hot water +a preparation of parched grains which he carried with him. This he +accomplished in an angle of the old corral fence out of the wind. There +is no comfort nor even virtue in eating cold dust with one's sandwiches. +Leander sunk his great white tushes through the thick slices of +whole-wheat bread and tasted the paste of peanut meal with which they +were spread. He ate standing and slapped his leg to warm his driving +hand. + +A flutter of something colored, as a garment, caught his eye, directing +it to the shape of a man, rolled in an old blue blanket, lying +motionless in a corner of the tumble-down wall. "Drunk, drunk as a hog!" +pronounced Leander. For no man in command of himself would lie down to +sleep in such a place. As if to refute this accusation, the wind +turned a corner of the blanket quietly off a white face with closed +eyelids,--an old, worn, gentle face, appealing in its homeliness, though +stamped now with the dignity of death. Leander knelt and handled the +body tenderly. It was long before he satisfied himself that life was +still there. Another case for Polly and the Springs. A man worth saving, +if Leander knew a man; one of the trustful, trustworthy sort. His heart +went out to him on the instant as to a friend from home. + +It was closing in for dusk when he reached the Ferry. Jimmy was away, +and Han, in high dudgeon, brought the boat over in answer to Leander's +hail. He had grouse to dress for supper, inconsiderately flung in upon +him at the last moment by the stage, four hours late. + +"Huh! Why you no come one hour ago? All time 'Hullo, hullo'! Je' Cli'! +me no dam felly-man--me dam cook! Too much man say 'Hullo'!" + +The prospect was not good for help at the Ferry inn, so, putting his +trust in Polly and the Springs, Leander pushed on up the valley. + +When Aunt Polly's patients were of the right sort, they stayed on after +their recovery and helped Leander with the ranch work. But for the most +part they "hit the trail" again as soon as their ills were healed, +not forgetting to advertise the Springs to other patients of their own +class. The only limit to this unenviable popularity was the size of the +house. Leander saw no present advantage in building. + +But in case they ever did build--and the time was surely coming!--here +was the very person they had been looking for. Cast your bread upon the +waters. The winter's bread and care and shelter so ungrudgingly bestowed +had returned to them many-fold in the comfortable sense of dependence +and unity they felt in this last beneficiary, the old man of Indian +Creek whom they called "Uncle John." + +"The kindest old creetur' ever lived! Some forgitful, but everybody's +liable to forgit. Only tell him one thing at once, and don't confuse +him, and he'll git through an amazin' sight of chores in a day." + +"Just the very one we'll want to wait on the men patients," Aunt Polly +chimed in. "He can carry up meals and keep the bathrooms clean, and wash +out the towels, and he's the best hand with poultry. He takes such good +care of the old hens they're re'lly ashamed not to lay!" + +It was spring again; old hopes were putting forth new leaves. Leander +had heard of a capitalist in the valley; a young one, too, more prone to +enthusiasm if shown the right thing. + +"I'm going down to Jimmy's to fetch them up here!" Leander announced. + +"Are there two of them?" + +"He has brought his wife out with him. They are a young couple. He's the +only son of a rich widow in New York, and Jimmy says they've got money +to burn. Jimmy don't take much stock in this 'ere 'wounded guide' +story--thinks it's more or less of a blind. He's feeling around for +a good investment--desert land or mining claims. Jimmy thinks he +represents big interests back East." + +Aunt Polly considered, and the corners of her mouth moistened as she +thought of the dinner she would snatch from the jaws of the system on +the day these young strangers should visit the ranch. + +"By Gum!" Leander shouted. "I wonder if Uncle John wouldn't know +something about the party they're advertising for. That'd be the way +to find out if they're really on the scent. I'll take him down with +me--that's what I'll _do_--and let him have a talk with the young man +himself. It'll make a good opening. Are you listening, Polly?" She was +not. "I wish you'd git him to fix himself up a little. Layout one o' +my clean shirts for him, and I'll take him down with me day after +to-morrow." + +"I'll have a fresh churning to-morrow," Aunt Polly mused. "You can take +a little pat of it with you. I won't put no salt in it, and I'll send +along a glass or two of my wild strawberry jam. It takes an awful time +to pick the berries, but I guess it'll be appreciated after the table +Jimmy sets. I don't believe Jimmy'll be offended?" + +"Bogardus is their name," continued Leander. "Mr. and Mrs. Bogardus, +from New York. Jimmy's got it down in his hotel book and he's showing +it to everybody. Jimmy's reel childish about it. I tell him one swallow +don't make a summer." + +Uncle John had come into the room and sat listening, while a yellow +pallor crept over his forehead and cheeks. He moved to get up once, and +then sat down again weakly. + +"What's the matter, Uncle?" Aunt Polly eyed him sharply. "You been out +there chopping wood too long in this hot sun. What did I tell you?" + +She cleared the decks for action. Paler and paler the old man grew. He +was not able to withstand her vigorous sympathies. She had him tucked up +on the calico lounge and his shoes off and a hot iron at his feet; but +while she was hurrying up the kettle to make him a drink of something +hot, he rose and slipped up the outside stairs to his bedroom in the +attic. There he seated himself on the side of his neat bed which he +always made himself camp fashion,--the blankets folded lengthwise with +just room for one quiet sleeper to crawl inside; and there he sat, +opening and clinching his hands, a deep perplexity upon his features. + +Aunt Polly called to him and began to read the riot act, but Leander +said: "Let him be! He gits tired o' being fussed over. You're at him +about something or other the whole blessed time." + +"Well, I have to! My gracious! He'd forgit to come in to his meals if I +didn't keep him on my mind." + +"It just strikes me--what am I going to call him when I introduce him to +those folks? Did he ever tell you what his last name is?" + +"I wouldn't be surprised," Aunt Polly lowered her voice, "if he couldn't +remember it himself! I've heard of such cases. Whenever I try to draw +him out to talk about himself and what happened to him before you found +him, it breaks him all up; seemingly gives him a back-set every time. +He sort of slinks into himself in that queer, lost way--just like he was +when he first come to." + +"He's had a powerful jar to his constitution, and his mind is taking a +rest." Leander was fond of a diagnosis. "There wasn't enough life left +in him to keep his faculties and his bod'ly organs all a-going at once. +The upper story's to let." + +"I wish you'd go upstairs, and see what he is doing up there." + +"Aw, no! Let him be. He likes to go off by himself and do his thinking. +I notice it rattles him to be talked to much. He sets out there on the +choppin'-block, looking at the bluffs--ever notice? He looks and +don't see nothin', and his lips keep moving like he was learning a +spellin'-lesson. If I speak to him sharp, he hauls himself together and +smiles uneasy, but he don't know what I said. I tell you he's waking up; +coming to his memories, and trying to sort 'em out." + +"That's just what _I_ say," Aunt Polly retorted, "but he's got to eat +his meals. He can't live on memories." + +Uncle John was restless that evening, and appeared to be excited. He +waited upon Aunt Polly after supper with a feverish eagerness to be of +use. When all was in order for bedtime, and Leander rose to wind the +clock, he spoke. It was getting about time to roll up his blankets +and pull out, he said. Leander felt for the ledge where the clock-key +belonged, and made no answer. + +"I was saying--I guess it's about time for me to be moving on. The grass +is starting"-- + +"Are you cal'latin' to live on grass?" Leander drawled with cutting +irony. "Gettin' tired of the old woman's cooking? Well, she ain't much +of a cook!" + +Uncle John remained silent, working at his hands. His mouth, trembled +under his thin straggling beard. "I never was better treated in my life, +and you know it. It ain't handsome of you, Lewis, to talk that way!" + +"He don't mean nothing, Uncle John! What makes you so foolish, Looander! +He just wants you to know there's no begrudgers around here. You're +welcome, and more than welcome, to settle down and camp right along with +us." + +"Winter and summer!" Leander put in, "if you're satisfied. There's +nobody in a hurry to see the last of ye." + +Uncle John's mild but determined resistance was a keen disappointment +to his friends. Leander thought himself offended. "What fly's stung you, +anyhow! Heard from any of your folks lately?" + +The old man smiled. + +"Got any money salted down that needs turning?" + +"Looander! Quit teasing of him!" + +"Let him have his fun, ma'am. It's all he's likely to get out of me. I +have got a little money," he pursued. "'T would be an insult to name it +in the same breath with what you've done for me. I'd like to leave it +here, though. You could pass it on. You'll have chances enough. 'T ain't +likely I'll be the last one you'll take in and do for, and never git +nothing out of it in return." + +There was a mild sensation, as the speaker, fumbling in his loose +trousers, appeared to be seeking for that money. Aunt Polly's eyes +flamed indignation behind her tears. She was a foolish, warm-hearted +creature, and her eyes watered on the least excuse. + +"Looander, you shouldn't have taunted him," she admonished her husband, +who felt he had been a little rough. + +"Look here, Uncle John, d'you ever know anybody who wasn't by way of +needing help some time in their lives? We don't ask any one who comes +here"-- + +"He didn't come!" Aunt Polly corrected. + +"Well, who was brought, then! We don't ask for their character, nor +their private history, nor their bank account. I don't know but you're +the first one for years I've ever took a real personal shine to, and +we've h'isted a good many up them stairs that wasn't able to walk much +further. I'd like you to stay as a favor to us, dang it!" + +Leander delivered this invitation as if it were a threat. His +straight-cut mustache stiffened and projected itself by the pressure of +his big lips; his dark red throat showed as many obstinate creases as an +old snapping-turtle's. + +"I'm much obliged to you both. I want you to remember that. We--I--I'll +talk with ye in the morning." + +"That means he's going all the same," said Leander, after Uncle John had +closed the outside door. + +Sure enough, next morning he had made up his little pack, oiled his +boots, and by breakfast-time was ready for the road. They argued the +point long and fiercely with him whether he should set out on foot or +wait a day and ride with Leander to the Ferry. It was not supposed he +could be thinking of any other road. By to-morrow, if he would but wait, +Aunt Polly would have comfortably outfitted him after the custom of the +house; given his clothes a final "going over" to see everything taut +for the journey, shoved a week's rations into a corn-sack, choosing such +condensed forms of nourishment as the system allowed--nay, straining a +point and smuggling in a nefarious pound or two of real miner's coffee. + +Aunt Polly's distress so weighed with her patient that he consented +to remain overnight and ride with Leander as far as the dam across the +Bruneau, at its junction with the Snake. There he would cross and take +the trail down the river, cutting off several miles of the road to the +Ferry. As for going on to see Jimmy or Jimmy's "folks," the nervous +resistance which this plan excited warned the good couple not to press +the old man too far, or he might give them the slip altogether. + +A strangeness in his manner which this last discussion had brought out, +lay heavy on aunt Polly's mind all day after the departure of the team +for the Ferry. She watched the two men drive off in silence, Leander's +bush beard reddening in the sun, his big body filling more than his half +of the seat. + +"Well, by Gum! If he ain't the blamedest, most per-sistent old fool!" +he complained to his wife that night. Their first words were of the old +man, already missed like one of the family from the humble place he had +made for himself. Leander was still irritable over his loss. "I set him +down with his grub and blankets, and I watched him footing it acrost the +dam. He done it real handsome, steady on his pins. Then he set down +and waited, kind o' dreaming, like he used to, settin' on the +choppin'-block. I hailed him. 'What's the matter?' I says. 'Left +anything?' No: every time I hailed he took off his hat and waved to me +real pleasant. Nothing the matter. There he set. Well, thinks I, I can't +stay here all day watching ye take root. So I drove on a piece. And, by +Gum! when I looked back going around the bend, there he went a-pikin' +off up the bluffs--just a-humping himself for all he was worth. I +wouldn't like to think he was cunning, but it looked that way for +sure,--turning me off the scent and then taking to the bluffs like he +was sent for! Where in thunder is he making for? He knows just as well +as I do--you have heard me tell him a dozen times--the stages were +hauled off that Wood River road five year and more ago. He won't git +nowhere! And he won't meet up with a team in a week's walking." + +"His food will last him a week if he's careful; he's no great eater. I +ain't afraid his feet will get lost; he's to home out of doors almost +anywhere;--it's his head I'm afraid of. He's got some sort of a skew on +him. I used to notice if he went out for a little walk anywhere, he'd +always slope for the East." + + + + +XX + + +A STATION IN THE DESERT + +That forsworn identity which Adam Bogardus had submitted to be clothed +in as a burial garment was now become a thing for the living to flee +from. He had seen a woman in full health whiten and cower before +it;--she who stood beside his bed and looked at him with dreadful eyes, +eyes of his girl-wife growing old in the likeness of her father. Hard, +reluctant eyes forced to own the truth which the ashen lips denied. +Are we responsible for our silences? He had not spoken to her. Nay, the +living must speak first, or the ghostly dead depart unquestioned. He +asked only that he might forget her and be himself forgotten. If it were +that woman's right to call herself Emily Bogardus, then was there no +Adam her husband. Better the old disguise which left him free to work +out his own sentence and pay his forfeit to the law. He had never +desired that one breath of it should be commuted, or wished to accept an +enslaving pardon from those for whose sake he had put himself out of the +way. If he could have taken his own comparative spiritual measurement, +he might have smiled at the humor of that forgiveness promised him in +the name of the Highest by his son. + +For many peaceful years solitude had been the habit of his soul. Gently +as he bore with human obligations, he escaped from them with a sense of +relief which shamed him somewhat when he thought of the good friends to +whom he owed this very blessed power to flee. It was quite as +Leander had surmised. He could not command his faculties--memory +especially--when a noise of many words and questions bruised his brain. + +The stillness of the desert closed about him with delicious healing. +He was a world-weary child returned to the womb of Nature. His old +camp-craft came back; his eye for distance, his sense of the trail, his +little pet economies with food and fire. There was no one to tell him +what to eat and when to eat it. He was invisible to men. Each day's +march built up his muscle, and every night's deep sleep under the great +high stars steadied his nerves and tightened his resolve. + +He thought of the young man--his son--with a mixture of pain and +tenderness. But Paul was not the baby-boy he had put out of his arms +with a father's smile at One Man station. Paul was himself a man now; he +had coerced him at the last, neither did he understand. + +The blind instinct of flight began after a while to shape its own +direction. It was no new leaning with the packer. As many times as he +had crossed this trail he never had failed to experience the same pull. +He resisted no longer. He gave way to strange fancies and made them his +guides. + +At some time during his flight from the hospital, in one of those blanks +that overtook him, he knew not how, he had met with a great loss. The +words had slipped from his memory--of that message which had kept him in +fancied touch with his wife all these many deluding years. Without them +he was like a drunkard deprived of his habitual stimulant. The craving +to connect and hold them--for they came to him sometimes in tantalizing +freaks of memory, and slipped away again like beads rolling off a +broken thread--was almost the only form of mental suffering he was now +conscious of. What had become of the message itself? Had they left it +exposed to every heartless desecration in that abandoned spot?--a scrap +of paper driven like a bit of tumble-weed before the wind, snatched at +by spikes of sage, trampled into the mire of cattle, nuzzled by wild +beasts? Or, had they put it away with that other beast where he lay with +the scoff on his dead face? Out of dreams and visions of the night that +place of the parting ways called to him, and the time was now come when +he must go. + +He approached it by one of those desert trails that circle for miles +on the track of water and pounce as a bird drops upon its prey into the +trampled hollow at One Man station--a place for the gathering of hoofs +in the midst of the plain. + +He could trace what might have been the foundation of a house, a few +blackened stones, a hearthstone showing where a chimney perhaps had +stood, but these evidences of habitation would never have been marked +except by one who knew where to look. He searched the ground over for +signs of the tragedy that bound him to that spot--a smiling desolation, +a sunny nothingness. The effect of this careless obliteration was +quieting. Nature had played here once with two men and a woman. One of +the toy men was lost, the other broken. She had forgotten where she +put the broken one. There were mounds which looked like graves, but the +seeker knew that artificial mounds in a place like this soon sink into +hollows; and there were hollows like open graves, filled with unsightly +human rubbish, washed in by the yearly rains. + +He spent three days in the hollow, doing nothing, steeped in sunshine, +lying down to rest broad awake in the tender twilight, making his peace +with this place of bitter memory before bidding it good-by. His thoughts +turned eastward as the planets rose. Time he was working back towards +home. He would hardly get there if he started now, before his day was +done. He saw his mother's grave beside his father's, in the southeast +corner of the burying-ground, where the trees were thin. All who drove +in through the big gate of funerals could see the tall white shafts of +the Beviers and Brodericks and Van Eltens, but only those who came on +foot could approach his people in the gravelly side-hill plots. "I'd +like to be put there alongside the old folks in that warm south corner." +He could see their names on the plain gray slate stones, rain-stained +and green with moss. + +On the third May evening of his stay the horizon became a dust-cloud, +the setting sun a ball of fire. Loomed the figure of a rider topping +the heaving backs of his herd. All together they came lumbering down +the slopes, all heading fiercely for the water. The rider plunged down +a side-draw out of the main cloud. Clanking bells, shuffling hoofs, the +"Whoop-ee-youp!" came fainter up the gulch. The cowboy was not pleased +as he dashed by to see an earlier camp-fire smoking in the hollow. But +he was less displeased, being half French, than if he had been pure-bred +American. + +The old man, squatting by his cooking-fire, gave him a civil nod, and +he responded with a flourish of his quirt. The reek of sage smoke, the +smell of dust and cattle rose rank on the cooling air. It was good to +Boniface, son of the desert; it meant supper and bed, or supper and +talk, for "Bonny" Maupin ("Bonny Moppin," it went in the vernacular) +would talk every other man to sleep, full or empty, with songs thrown +in. To-night, however, he must talk on an empty stomach, for his chuck +wagon was not in sight. + +"W'ich way you travelin'?" he began, lighting up after a long pull at +his flask. The old man had declined, though he looked as if he needed a +drink. + +"East about," was the answer. + +"Goin' far?" + +"Well; summer's before us. I cal'late to keep moving till snow falls." + +"Shucks! You ain' pressed for time. Maybe you got some friend back +there. Goin' back to git married?" He winked genially to point the jest +and the old man smiled indulgently. + +"Won't you set up and take a bite with me? You don't look to have much +of a show for supper along." + +"Thanks, very much! I had bully breakfast at Rock Spring middlin' late +this morning. They butcherin' at that place. Five fat hog. My chuck +wagon he stay behin' for chunk of fresh pig. I won' spoil my appetide +for that tenderloin. Hol' on yourself an' take supper wis me. No?--That +fellah be 'long 'bout Chris'mas if he don' git los'! He always behin', +pig or no pig!" + +Bonny strolled away collecting fire-wood. Presently he called back, +pointing dramatically with his small-toed boot. "Who's been coyotin' +round here?" The hard ground was freshly disturbed in spots as by the +paws of some small inquisitive animal. There was no answer. + +"What you say? Whose surface diggin's is these? I never know anybody do +some mining here." + +"That was me"--Bonny backed a little nearer to catch the old man's +words. "I was looking round here for something I lost." + +"What luck you have? You fin' him?" + +"Well, now, doos it reely matter to you, sonny?" + +"Pardner, it don' matter to me a d--n, if you say so! I was jus' askin' +myself what a man _would_ look for if he los' it here. Since I strike +this 'ell of a place the very groun' been chewed up and spit out +reg'lar, one hundred times a year. 'T'is a gris' mill!" + +"I didn't gretly expect to find what I was lookin' for. I was just +foolin' around to satisfy myself." + +"That satisfy me!" said Bonny pleasantly; and yet he was a trifle +discomfited. He strolled away again and began to sing with a boyish show +of indifference to having been called "sonny." + +"Oh, Sally is the gal for me! Oh, Sally's the gal for me! On moonlight +night when the star is bright--Oh"-- + +"Halloa! This some more your work, oncle? You ain' got no chicken wing +for arm if you lif' this.--Ah, be dam! I see what you lif' him with. +All same stove-lid." Talking and swearing to himself cheerfully, Bonny +applied the end of a broken whiffletree to the blunt lip of the old +hearthstone which marked the stage-house chimney. He had tried a +step-dance on it and found it hollow. More fresh digging, and marks upon +the stone where some prying tool had taken hold and slipped, showed he +was not the first who had been curious. + +"There you go, over on you' back, like snap' turtle; I see where you lay +there before. What the dev'! I say!" Bonny, much excited with his find, +extracted a rusty tin tobacco-box from the hole, pried open the spring +lid and drew forth its contents: a discolored canvas bag bulging with +coin and whipped around the neck with a leather whang. The canvas was +rotten; Bonny supported its contents tenderly as he brought it over to +the old man. + +"Oncle, I ask you' pardon for tappin' that safe. Pretty good lil' +nest-egg, eh? But now you got to find her some other place." + +"That don't belong to me," said the old man indifferently. + +"Aw--don't be bashful! I onderstan' now what you los'. You dig +here--there--migs up the scent. I just happen to step on that +stone--ring him, so, with my boot-heel!" + +"That ain't my pile," the other persisted. "I started to build a fire +on that stone two nights ago. It rung hollow like you say. I looked and +found what you found--" + +"And put her back! My soul to God! An' you here all by you'self!" + +"Why not? The stuff ain't mine." + +"Who _is_ she? How long since anybody live here?" + +"I don't know,--good while, I guess." + +"Well, sar! Look here! I open that bag. I count two hondre' thirteen +dolla'--make it twelve for luck, an' call it you' divvee! You strike her +first. What you say: we go snac'?" + +"I haven't got any use for that money. You needn't talk to me about it." + +"Got no h'use!--are you a reech man? Got you' private car waitin' for +you out in d' sagebrush? Sol' a mine lately?" + +"I don't know why it strikes you so funny. It's no concern of mine if a +man puts his money in the ground and goes off and leaves it." + +"Goes off and die! There was one man live here by himself--he die, they +say, 'with his boots on.' He, I think, mus' be that man belong to this +money. What an old stiff want with two hondre' thirteen dolla'? That +money goin' into a live man's clothes." Bonny slapped his chappereros, +and the dust flew. + +"I've no objection to its going into _your_ clothes," said the old man. + +"You thing I ain' particular, me? Well, eef the party underground was +my frien', and I knew his fam'ly, and was sure the money was belong to +him--I'd do differend--perhaps. Mais,--it is going--going--gone! You +won' go snac'?" + +The old man smiled and looked steadily away. + +"Blas' me to h--l! but you aire the firs' man ever I strike that jib at +the sight of col' coin. She don' frighten me!" + +Bonny always swore when he felt embarrassed. + +"Well, sar! Look here! You fin' you'self so blame indifferend--s'pose +you _so_ indifferend not to say nothing 'bout this, when my swamper +fellah git in. I don' wish to go snac' wis him. I don' feel oblige'. +See?" + +"What you want to pester me about this money for!" The old man was +weary. "I didn't come here, lookin' for money, and I don't expect to +take none away with me. So I'll say good-night to ye." + +"Hol' on, hol' on! Don' git mad. What time you goin' off in the +morning?" + +"Before you do, I shouldn't wonder." + +"But hol'! One fine idea--blazin' good idea--just hit me now in the +head! Wan' to come on to Chicago wis me? I drop this fellah at Felton. +He take the team back, and I get some one to help me on the treep. Why +not you? Ever tek' care of stock?" + +"Some consid'able years ago I used to look after stock. Guess I'd know +an ox from a heifer." + +"Ever handle 'em on cattle-car?" + +"Never." + +"Well, all there is, you feed 'em, and water 'em, and keep 'em on their +feets. If one fall down, all the others they have too much play. They +rock"--Bonny exhibited--"and fall over and pile up in heap. I like to +do one turn for you. We goin' the same way--you bring me the good luck, +like a bird in the han'. This is my clean-up, you understand. You bring +me the beautiful luck. You turn me up right bower first slap. Now it's +goin' be my deal. I like to do by you!" + +The packer turned over and looked up at the cool sky, pricked through +with early stars. He was silent a long time. His pale old face was like +a fine bit of carving in the dusk. + +"What you think?" asked Moppin, almost tenderly. "I thing you better +come wis me. You too hold a man to go like so--alone." + +"I'll have to think about it first;--let you know in the morning." + + + + +XXI + + +INJURIOUS REPORTS CONCERNING AN OLD HOUSE + +A Rush of wheels and a spatter of hoofs coming up the drive sent +Mrs. Dunlop to the sitting-room window. She tried to see out through +streaming showers that darkened the panes. + +"Isn't that Mrs. Bogardus? Why, it is! Put on your shoes, Chauncey, +quick! Help her in 'n' take her horse to the shed. Take an umbrella with +you." Chauncey the younger, meekly drying his shoes by the kitchen +fire, put them on, not stopping to lace them, and slumped down the +porch steps, pursued by his mother's orders. She watched him a moment +struggling with a cranky umbrella, and then turned her attention to +herself and the room. + +Mrs. Bogardus made her calls in the morning, and always plainly on +business. She had not seen the inside of Cerissa's parlor for ten years. +This was a grievance which Cerissa referred to spasmodically, being +seized with it when she was otherwise low in her mind. + +"My sakes! Can't I remember my mother telling how _her_ mother used +to drive over and spend the afternoon, and bring her sewing and the +baby--whichever one was the baby. They called each other Chrissy and +Angevine, and now she don't even speak of her own children to us by +their first names. It's 'Mrs. Bowen' and 'Mr. Paul;' just as if she was +talking to her servants." + +"What's that to us? We've got a good home here for as long as we want to +stay. She's easy to work for, if you do what she says." + +Chauncey respected Mrs. Bogardus's judgment and her straightforward +business habits. Other matters he left alone. But Cerissa was ambitious +and emotional, and she stayed indoors, doing little things and thinking +small thoughts. She resented her commanding neighbor's casual manners. +There was something puzzling and difficult to meet in her plainness of +speech, which excluded the personal relation. It was like the cut and +finish of her clothes--mysterious in their simplicity, and not to be +imitated cheaply. + +When the two met, Cerissa was immediately reduced to a state of +flimsy apology which she made up for by being particularly hot and +self-assertive in speaking of the lady afterward. + +"There is the parlor, in perfect order," she fretted, as she stood +waiting to open the front door; "but of course she wouldn't let me take +her in there--that would be too much like visiting." + +The next moment she had corrected her facial expression, and was +offering smiling condolences to Mrs. Bogardus on the state of her +attire. + +"It is only my jacket. You might put that somewhere to dry," said the +lady curtly. Raindrops sparkled on the wave of thick iron-gray hair that +lifted itself, with a slight turn to one side, from her square low brow. +Her eyes shone dark against the fresh wind color in her cheeks. She had +the straight, hard, ophidian line concealing the eyelid, which gives +such a peculiar strength to the direct gaze of a pair of dark eyes. If +one suspects the least touch of tenderness, possibly of pain, behind +that iron fold, it lends a fascination equal to the strength. There was +some excitement in Mrs. Bogardus's manner, but Cerissa did not know her +well enough to perceive it. She merely thought her looking handsomer, +and, if possible, more formidable than usual. + +She sat by the fire, folding her skirts across her knees, and showing +the edges of the most discouragingly beautiful petticoats,--a taste +perhaps inherited from her wide-hipped Dutch progenitresses. Mrs. +Bogardus reveled in costly petticoats, and had an unnecessary number of +them. + +"How nice it is in here!" she said, looking about her. Cerissa, with the +usual apologies, had taken her into the kitchen to dry her skirts. +There was a slight taint of steaming shoe leather, left by Chauncey when +driven forth. Otherwise the kitchen was perfection,--the family room +of an old Dutch farmhouse, built when stone and hardwood lumber were +cheap,--thick walls; deep, low window-seats; beams showing on the +ceiling; a modern cooking-stove, where Emily Bogardus could remember +the wrought brass andirons and iron backlog, for this room had been her +father's dining-room. The brick tiled hearth remained, and the color of +those century and a half old bricks made a pitiful thing of Cerissa's +new oil-cloth. The woodwork had been painted--by Mrs. Bogardus's orders, +and much to Cerissa's disgust--a dark kitchen green,--not that she liked +the color herself, but it was the artistic demand of the moment,--and +the place was filled with a green golden light from the cherry-trees +close to the window, which a break in the clouds had suddenly illumined. + +"You keep it beautifully," said Mrs. Bogardus, her eyes shedding +compliments as she looked around. "I should not dare go in my own +kitchen at this time of day. There are no women nowadays who know how to +work in the way ladies used to work. If I could have such a housekeeper +as you, Cerissa." + +Cerissa flushed and bridled. "What would Chauncey do!" + +"I don't expect you to be my housekeeper," Mrs. Bogardus smiled. "But I +envy Chauncey." + +"She has come to ask a favor," thought Cerissa. "I never knew her +so pleasant, for nothing. She wants me to do up her fruit, I guess." +Cerissa was mistaken. Mrs. Bogardus simply was happy--or almost +happy--and deeply stirred over a piece of news which had come to her in +that morning's mail. + +"I have telephoned Bradley not to send his men over on Monday. My son is +bringing his wife home. They may be here all summer. The place belongs +to them now. Did Chauncey tell you? Mr. Paul writes that he has some +building plans of his own, and he wishes everything left as it is for +the present, especially this house. He wants his wife to see it first +just as it is." + +"Well, to be sure! They've been traveling a long time, haven't they? And +how is his health now?" + +"Oh, he is very well indeed. You will be glad not to have the trouble of +those carpenters, Cerissa? Pulling down old houses is dirty work." + +"Oh, dear! I wouldn't mind the dirt. Anything to get rid of that old +rat's nest on top of the kitchen chamber. I hate to have such out of the +way places on my mind. I can't get around to do every single thing, +and it's years--years, Mrs. Bogardus, since I could get a woman to do a +half-day's cleaning up there in broad daylight!" + +Mrs. Bogardus stared. What was the woman talking about! + +"I call it a regular eyesore on the looks of the house besides. And it +keeps all the old stories alive." + +"What stories?" + +"Why, of course your father wasn't out of his head--we all know +that--when he built that upstairs room and slep' there and locked +himself in every night of his life. It was only on one point he was a +little warped: the fear of bein' robbed. A natural fear, too,--an old +man over eighty livin' in such a lonesome place and known to be well +off. But--you'll excuse my repeating the talk--but the story goes now +that he re'ly went insane and was confined up there all the last years +of his life. And that's why the windows have got bars acrost them. +Everybody notices it, and they ask questions. It's real embarrassin', +for of course I don't want to discuss the family." + +"Who asks questions?" Mrs. Bogardus's eyes were hard to meet when her +voice took that tone. + +"Why, the city folks out driving. They often drive in the big gate and +make the circle through the grounds, and they're always struck when they +see that tower bedroom with windows like a prison. They say, 'What's the +story about that room, up there?'" + +"When people ask you questions about the house, you can say you did +not live here in the owner's time and you don't know. That's perfectly +simple, isn't it?" + +"But I do know! Everybody knows," said Cerissa hotly. "It was the talk +of the whole neighborhood when that room was put up; and I remember how +scared I used to be when mother sent me over here of an errand." + +Mrs. Bogardus rose and shook out her skirts. "Will Chauncey bring my +horse when it stops raining? By the way, did you get the furniture down +that was in that room, Cerissa?--the old secretary? I am going to have +it put in order for Mr. Paul's room. Old furniture is the fashion now, +you know." + +Cerissa caught her breath nervously. "Mrs. Bogardus--I couldn't do a +thing about it! I wanted Chauncey to tell you. All last week I tried +to get a woman, or a man, to come and help me clear out that place, +but just as soon as they find out what's wanted--'You'll have to get +somebody else for that job,' they say." + +"What is the matter with them?" + +"It's the room, Mrs. Bogardus; if I was you--I'm doing now just as I'd +be done by--I would not take Mrs. Paul Bogardus up into that room--not +even in broad daylight; not if it was my son's wife, in the third month +of her being a wife." + +"Well, upon my word!" said Mrs. Bogardus, smiling coldly. "Do you mean +to say these women are afraid to go up there?" + +"It was old Mary Hornbeck who started the talk. She got what she called +her 'warning' up there. And the fact is, she was a corpse within six +months from that day. Chauncey and me, we used to hear noises, but old +houses are full of noises. We never thought much about it; only, I must +say I never had any use for that part of the house. Chauncey keeps his +seeds and tools in the lower room, and some of the winter vegetables, +and we store the parlor stove in there in summer." + +"Well, about this 'warning'?" Mrs. Bogardus interrupted. + +"Yes! It was three years ago in May, and I remember it was some such a +day as this--showery and broken overhead, and Mary disappointed me; but +she came about noon, and said she'd put in half a day anyhow. She got +her pail and house-cloths; but she wasn't gone not half an hour when +down she come white as a sheet, and her mouth as dry as chalk. She set +down all of a shake, and I give her a drink of tea, and she said: 'I +wouldn't go up there again, not for a thousand dollars.' She unlocked +the door, she said, and stepped inside without thinkin'. Your father's +old rocker with the green moreen cushions stood over by the east window, +where he used to sit. She heard a creak like a heavy step on the floor, +and that empty chair across the room, as far as from here to the window, +begun to rock as if somebody had just rose up from them cushions. She +watched it till it stopped. Then she took another step, and the step she +couldn't see answered her, and the chair begun to rock again." + +"Was that all?" + +"No, ma'am; that wasn't all. I don't know if you remember an old wall +clock with a brass ball on top and brass scrolls down the sides and a +painted glass door in front of the pendulum with a picture of a castle +and a lake? The paint's been wore off the glass with cleaning, so the +pendulum shows plain. That clock has not been wound since we come to +live here. I don't believe a hand has touched it since the night he was +carried feet foremost out of that room. But Mary said she could count +the strokes go tick, tick, tick! She listened till she could have +counted fifty, for she was struck dumb, and just as plain as the clock +before her face she could see the minute-hand and the pendulum, both of +'em dead still. Now, how do you account for that! + +"I told Chauncey about it, and he said it was all foolishness. Do all I +could he would go up there himself, that same evening. But he come down +again after a while, and he was almost as white as Mary. 'Did you see +anything?' I says. 'I saw what Mary said she saw,' says he, 'and I heard +what she heard.' But no one can make Chauncey own up that he believes it +was anything supernatural. 'There is a reason for everything,' he says. +'The miracles and ghosts of one generation are just school-book learning +to the next; and more of a miracle than the miracles themselves.'" + +"Chauncey shows his sense," Mrs. Bogardus observed. + +"He was real disturbed, though, I could see; and he told me particular +not to make any talk about it. I never have opened the subject to a +living soul. But when Mary died, within six months, folks repeated what +she had been saying about her 'warning.' The 'death watch' she called +it. We can't all of us control our feelings about such things, and she +was a lonely widow woman." + +"Well, do you believe that ticking is going on up there now?" asked Mrs. +Bogardus. + +Cerissa looked uneasy. + +"Is the door locked?" + +"I re'ly couldn't say," she confessed. + +"Do you mean to say that all you sensible people in this house have +avoided that room for three years? And you don't even know if the door +is locked?" + +"I--I don't use that part for anything, and cleaning is wasted on a +place that's never used, and I can't _get_ anybody"-- + +"I am not criticising your housekeeping. Will you go up there with me +now, Cerissa? I want to understand about this." + +"What, just now, do you mean? I'm afraid I haven't got the time this +morning, Mrs. Bogardus. Dinner's at half-past twelve. It's a quarter to +eleven"-- + +"Very well. You think the door is not locked?" + +"If it is, the key must be in the door. Oh, don't go, please, Mrs. +Bogardus. Wait till Chauncey conies in"-- + +"I wish you'd send Chauncey up when he does come in. Ask him to bring a +screw-driver." Mrs. Bogardus rose and examined her jacket. It was still +damp. She asked for a cape, or some sort of wrap, as her waist was thin, +and the rain had chilled the morning air. + +For the sake of decency, Cerissa escorted her visitor across the hall +passage into the loom-room--a loom-room in name only for upwards of +three generations. Becky had devoted it to the rough work of the +house, and to certain special uses, such as the care of the butchering +products, the making of soft soap and root beer. Here the churning was +done, by hand, with a wooden dasher, which spread a circle of white +drops, later to become grease-spots. The floor of the loom-room was +laid in large brick tiles, more or less loose in their sockets, with +an occasional earthy depression marking the grave of a missing tile. +Becky's method of cleaning was to sluice it out and scrub it with an old +broom. The seepage of generations before her time had thus added their +constant quota to the old well's sum of iniquity. + +Mrs. Bogardus had not visited this part of the old house for many years. +After her father's death she had shrunk from its painful associations. +Later she grew indifferent; but as she passed now into the gloomy +place--doubly dark with the deep foliage of June on a rainy morning--she +was afraid of her own thoughts. Henceforth she was a woman with a +diseased consciousness. "What can't be cured must be _seared_," flashed +over her as she set her face to the stairway. + +These stairs, leading up into the back attic or "kitchen chamber," being +somewhat crowded for space, advanced two steps into the room below. As +the stair door opened outward, and the stairs were exceedingly steep +and dark, every child of the house, in turn, had suffered a bad fall in +consequence; but the arrangement remained in all its natural depravity, +for "children must learn." + +Little Emmy of the old days had loved to sit upon these steps, a trifle +raised above the kitchen traffic, yet cognizant of all that was going +on, and ready to descend promptly if she smelled fresh crullers frying, +or baked sweet apples steaming hot from the oven. If Becky's foot were +heard upon the stairs above, she would jump quick enough; but if the +step had a clumping, boyish precipitancy, she sat still and laughed, +and planted her back against the door. Often she had teased Adam in this +way, keeping him prisoner from his duties, helpless in his good nature +either to scold her or push her off. But once he circumvented her, +slipping off his shoes and creeping up the stairs again, and making his +escape by the roof and the boughs of the old maple. Then it was Emmy who +was teased, who sat a foolish half hour on the stairs alone and missed a +beautiful ride to the wood lot; but she would not speak to Adam for two +days afterward. + +Becky's had been the larger of the two bedrooms in the attic, Adam's the +smaller--tucked low under the eaves, and entered by crawling around the +big chimney that came bulking up to the light like a great tree caught +between house walls. The stairs hugged the chimney and made use of +its support. Adam would warm his hands upon it coming down on bitter +mornings. From force of habit, Emily Bogardus laid her smooth white hand +upon the clammy bricks. No tombstone could be colder than that heart of +house warmth now. + +The roof of the kitchen chamber had been raised a story higher, and the +chimney as it went up contracted to quite a modern size. This elevation +gave room for the incongruous tower bedroom that had hurt the symmetry +of the old house, spoiled its noble sweep of roof, and given rise to so +much unpleasant conjecture as to its use. It was this excrescence, the +record of those last unloved and unloving years of her father's life, +which Mrs. Bogardus would have removed, but was prevented by her son. + +"You go back now, Cerissa," she said to the panting woman behind her. "I +see the key is in the lock. You may send Chauncey after a while; there +is no hurry." + +"Oh!" gasped Cerissa. "Do you see _that!_" + +"What?" + +"I thought there was something--something behind that slit." + +"There isn't. Step this way. There, can't you see the light?" + +Mrs. Bogardus grasped Cerissa by the shoulders and held her firmly in +front of a narrow loophole that pierced the partition close beside +the door. Light from the room within showed plainly; but it gave an +unpleasantly human expression to the entrance, like a furtive eye on the +watch. + +"He would always be there," Cerissa whispered. + +"Who?" + +"Your father. If anybody wanted to see him after he shut himself in +there for the night, they had to stand to be questioned through that +wall-slit before he opened the door. Yes, ma'am! He was on the watch in +there the whole time like a thing in a trap." + +"Are you afraid to go back alone?" Mrs. Bogardus spoke with chilling +irony. + +Cerissa backed away in silence, her heart thumping. "She's putting it +on," she said to herself. "I never see her turn so pale. Don't tell _me_ +she ain't afraid!" + +There was a hanging shelf against the chimney on which a bundle of dry +herbs had been left to turn into dust. Old Becky might have put them +there the autumn before she died; or some successor of hers in the years +that were blank to the daughter of the house. As she pushed open the +door a sighing draught swept past her and seemed to draw her inward. +It shook the sere bundle. Its skeleton leaves, dissolving into motes, +flickered an instant athwart the light. They sifted down like ashes on +the woman's dark head as she passed in. Her color had faded, but not +through fear of ghost clocks. It was the searing process she had to +face. And any room where she sat alone with certain memories of her +youth was to her a torture chamber. + + * * * * * + +"She's been up there an awful long time. I wouldn't wonder if she's +fainted away." + +"What would she faint at? I guess it's pretty cold, though. Give me some +more tea; put plenty of milk so I can drink it quick." + +Chauncey's matter of fact tone always comforted Cerissa when she was +nervous. She did not mind that he jeered or that his words were often +rude; no man of her acquaintance could say things nicely to women, or +ever tried. A certain amount of roughness passed for household wit. +Chauncey put the screw-driver in his pocket, his wife and son watching +him with respectful anxiety. He thought rather well of his own courage +privately. But the familiar details of the loom-room cheered him on his +way, the homely tools of his every-day work were like friendly faces +nodding at him. He knocked loudly on the door above, and was answered by +Mrs. Bogardus in her natural voice. + +"Bosh--every bit of it bosh!" he repeated courageously. + +She was seated by the window in the chair with the green cushions. Her +face was turned towards the view outside. "What a pity those cherries +were not picked before the rain," she observed. "The fruit is bursting +ripe; I'm afraid you'll lose the crop." + +Chauncey moved forward awkwardly without answering. + +"Stop there one moment, will you?" Mrs. Bogardus rose and demonstrated. +"You notice those two boards are loose. Now, I put this chair +here,"--she laid her hand on the back to still its motion. "Step this +way. You see? The chair rocks of itself. So would any chair with a +spring board under it. That accounts for _that_, I think. Now come over +here." Chauncey placed himself as she directed in front of the high +mantel with the clock above it. She stood at his side and they listened +in silence to that sound which Mary Hornbeck, deceased, had deemed a +spiritual warning. + +"Would you call that a 'ticking'? Is that like any sound an insect could +make?" the mistress asked. + +"I should call it more like a 'ting,'" said Chauncey. "It comes kind o' +muffled like through the chimbly--a person might be mistaken if they was +upset in their nerves considerable." + +"What old people call the 'death-watch' is supposed to be an insect that +lives in the walls of old houses, isn't it? and gives warning with a +ticking sound when somebody is going to be called away? Now to me that +sounds like a soft blow struck regularly on a piece of hollow iron--say +the end of a stove-pipe sticking in the chimney. When I first came up +here, there was only a steady murmur of wind and rain. Then the clouds +thinned and the sun came out and drops began to fall--distinctly. Your +wife says the ticking was heard on a day like this, broken and showery. +Now, if you will unscrew that clock, I think you will find there's a +stove-pipe hole behind it; and a piece of pipe shoved into the chimney +just far enough to catch the drops as they gather and fall." + +Chauncey went to work. He sweated in the airless room. The powerful +screws blunted the lips of his tool but would not start. + +"I guess I'll have to give it up for to-day. The screws are rusted in +solid. Want I should pry her out of the woodwork?" + +"No, don't do that," said Mrs. Bogardus. "Why should we spoil the panel? +This seems a very comfortable room. My son is right. It would be foolish +to tear it down. Such a place as this might be very useful if you people +would get over your notions about it." + +"I never had no notions," Chauncey asserted. "When the women git talkin' +they like to make out a good story, and whichever one sees the most and +hears the most makes the biggest sensation." + +Mrs. Bogardus waited till he had finished without appearing to have +heard what he was saying. + +"Where is the key to this door?" she laid her hand over a knob to the +right of the stairs. + +"I guess if there is one it's on the other side. Yes, it's in the +key-hole." Chauncey turned the knob and shoved and lifted. The door +yielded to his full strength, and he allowed Mrs. Bogardus to precede +him. She stepped into a room hardly bigger than a closet with one +window, barred like those in the outer room. It was fitted up with +toilet conveniences according to the best advices of its day. Over all +the neat personal arrangements there was the slur of neglect, a sad +squalor which even a king's palace wears with time. + +Chauncey tested the plumbing with a noise that was plainly offensive +to his companion, but she bore with it--also with his reminiscences +gathered from neighborhood gossip. "He wa'n't fond of spending money, +but he didn't spare it here: this was his ship cabin when he started +on his last voyage. It looked funny--a man with all his land and houses +cooped up in a place like this; but he wanted to be independent of the +women. He hated to have 'em fussin' around him. He had a woman to come +and cook up stuff for him to help himself to; but she wouldn't stay here +overnight, nor he wouldn't let her. As for a man in the house,--most +men were thieves, he thought, or waiting their chance to be. It was real +pitiful the way he made his end." + +"Open that window and shut the door when you come out," said Mrs. +Bogardus. "I will send some one to help you down with that secretary. +Cerissa knows about it. It is to be sent up on the Hill." + + + + +XXII + + +THE CASE STRIKES IN + +Christine's marriage took place while Paul and Moya were lingering in +the Bruneau, for Paul's health ostensibly. Banks and Horace had been +left to the smiling irony of justice. They never had a straight chance +to define their conduct in the woods; for no one accused them. No +awkward questions were asked in the city drawing-rooms or at the clubs. +For a tough half hour or so at Fort Lemhi they had realized how they +stood in the eyes of those unbiased military judges. The shock had a +bracing effect for a time. Both boys were said to be much improved +by their Western trip and by the hardships of that frightful homeward +march. + +Mrs. Bogardus had matched her gift of Stone Ridge to her son, which +was a gift of sentiment, with one of more substantial value to her +daughter,--the income from certain securities settled upon her and her +heirs. Banks was carefully unprovided for. The big house in town was +full of ghosts--the ghosts that haunt such homes, made desolate by a +breach of hearts. The city itself was crowded with opportunities for +giving and receiving pain between mother and daughter. Christine had +developed all the latent hardness of her mother's race with a sickly +frivolity of her own. She made a great show of faith in her marriage +venture. She boomed it in her occasional letters, which were full of +scarce concealed bravado as graceful as snapping her fingers in her +mother's face. + +Mrs. Bogardus leased her house in town, and retired before the ghosts, +but not escaping them; Stone Ridge must be put in order for its new +master and mistress, and Stone Ridge had its own ghosts. She informed +her absentees that, before their return, she should have left for +Southern California to look after some investments which she had +neglected there of late. It was then she spoke of her plan for restoring +the old house by pulling down that addition which disfigured it; and +Paul had objected to this erasure. It would take from the house's +veracity, he said. The words carried their unintentional sting. + +But it was Moya's six lines at the bottom of his page that changed +and softened everything. Moya--always blessed when she took the +initiative--contrived, as swiftly as she could set them down, to say the +very words that made the home-coming a coming home indeed. + +"Will Madam Bogardus be pleased to keep her place as the head of her +son's house?" she wrote. "This foolish person he has married wants to be +anything rather than the mistress of Stone Ridge. She wants to be always +out of doors, and she needs to be. Oh, must you go away now--now when we +need you so much? It cannot be said here on paper how much _I_ need you! +Am I not your motherless daughter? Please be there when we come, and +please stay there!" + +"For a little while then," said the lonely woman, smiling at the image +of that sweet, foolish person in her thoughts. "For a little while, till +she learns her mistake." Such mistakes are the cornerstone of family +friendship. + + * * * * * + +It was an uneventful summer on the Hill, but one of rather wearing +intensity in the inner relations of the household, one with another; for +nothing could be quite natural with a pit of concealment to be avoided +by all, and an air of unconsciousness to be carefully preserved in +avoiding it. Moya's success in this way was so remarkable that Paul half +hated it. How was it possible for her to speak to his mother so lightly; +never the least apparent premeditation or fear of tripping; how look at +her with such sweet surface looks that never questioned or saw beneath? +He could not meet his mother's eyes at all when they were alone +together, or endure a silence in her company. + +Both women were of the type called elemental. They understood each other +without knowing why. Moya felt the desperate truth contained in the +mother's falsehood, and broke forth into passionate defense of her as +against her husband's silence. + +He answered her one day by looking up a little green book of fairy tales +and reading aloud this fragment of "The Golden Key." + +"'I never tell lies, even in fun.' (The mysterious Grandmother speaks.) + +"'How good of you!' (says the Child in the Wood.) + +"'I couldn't if I tried. It would come true if I said it, and then I +should be punished enough.'" + +Moya's eyes narrowed reflectively. + +"How constantly you are thinking of this! I think of it only when I +am with you. As if a woman like your mother, who has done _one thing_, +should be all that thing, and nothing more to us, her children!" + +Moya was giving herself up, almost immorally, Paul sometimes thought, +to the fascination Mrs. Bogardus's personality had for her. In a keenly +susceptible state herself, at that time, there was something calming and +strengthening in the older woman's perfected beauty, her physical poise, +and the fitness of everything she did and said and wore to the given +occasion. As a dark woman she was particularly striking in summer +clothing. Her white effects were tremendous. She did not pretend to +study these matters herself, but in years of experience, with money to +spend, she had learned well in whom to confide. When women are shut up +together in country houses for the summer, they can irritate each other +in the most foolish ways. Mrs. Bogardus never got upon your nerves. + +But, for Paul, there was a poison in his mother's beauty, a dread in +her influence over his impressionable young wife, thrilled with the +awakening forces of her consonant being. Moya would drink deep of every +cup that life presented. Motherhood was her lesson for the day. "She is +a queen of mothers!" she would exclaim with an abandon that was painful +to Paul; he saw deformity where Moya was ready to kneel. "I love her +perfect love for you--for me, even! She is above all jealousy. She +doesn't even ask to be understood." + +Paul was silent. + +"And oh, she knows, she knows! She has been through it all--in such +despair and misery--all that is before me, with everything in the world +to make it easy and all the beautiful care she gives me. She is the +supreme mother. And I never had a mother to speak to before. Don't, +don't, please, keep putting that dreadful thing between us now!" + +So Paul took the dreadful thing away with him and was alone with it, and +knew that his mother saw it in his eyes when their eyes met and avoided. +When, after a brief household absence, he would see her again he +wondered, "Has she been alone with it? Has it passed into another +phase?"--as of an incurable disease that must take its time and course. + +Mrs. Bogardus did not spare her conscience in social ways all this time. +It was a part of her life to remember that she had neighbors--certain +neighbors. She included Paul without particularly consulting him +whenever it was proper for him to support her in her introduction of his +wife to the country-house folk, many of whom they knew in town. + +All his mother's friends liked Paul and supposed him to be very clever, +but they had never taken him seriously. "Now, at last," they said, "he +has done something like other people. He is coming out." Experienced +matrons were pleased to flatter him on his choice of a bride. The +daughters studied Moya, and decided that she was "different," but "all +right." She had a careless distinction of her own. Some of her "things" +were surprisingly lovely--probably heirlooms; and army women are so +clever about clothes. + +Would they spend the winter in town? + +Paul replied absently: they had not decided. Probably they would not go +down till after the holidays. + +What an attractive plan? What an ideal family Christmas they would have +all together in the country! Christine had not been up all summer, +had she? Here Moya came to her husband's relief, through a wife's dual +consciousness in company, and covered his want of spirits with a flood +of foolish chatter. + +The smiling way in which women the most sincere can posture and prance +on the brink of dissimulation was particularly sickening to Paul at this +time. Why need they put themselves in situations where it was required? +The situations were of his mother's creation. He imagined she must +suffer, but had little sympathy with that side of her martyrdom. Moya +seemed a trifle feverish in her acceptance of these affairs of which +she was naturally the life and centre. A day of entertaining often faded +into an evening of subtle sadness. + +Paul would take her out into the moonlight of that deep inland country. +The trees were dark with leaves and brooded close above them; old +water-fences and milldams cast inky shadows on the still, shallow ponds +clasped in wooded hills. No region could have offered a more striking +contrast to the empty plains. Moya felt shut in with old histories. The +very ground was but moulding sand in which generations of human lives +had been poured, and the sand swept over to be reshaped for them. + +"We are not living our own life yet," Paul would say; not adding, "We +are protecting her." Here was the beginning of punishment helplessly +meted out to this proud woman whose sole desire was towards her +children--to give, and not to receive. + +"But this is our Garden?" Moya would muse. "We are as nearly two alone +as any two could be." + +"If you include the Snake. We can't leave out the Snake, you know." + +"Snake or Seraph--I don't believe I know the difference. Paul, I cannot +have you thinking things." + +"I?--what do I think?" + +"You are thinking it is bad for me to be so much with her. You, as a man +and a husband, resent what she, as a woman and a wife, has dared to do. +And I, as another woman and wife, I say she could do nothing else and be +true. For, don't you see? She never loved him. The wifehood in her has +never been reached. She was a girl, then a mother, then a widow. How +could she"-- + +"Do you think he would have claimed her as his wife? Oh, you do not know +him;--she has never known him. If we could be brave and face our duty +to the whole truth, and leave the rest to those sequences, never dreamed +of, that wait upon great acts. Such surprises come straight from God. +Now we can never know how he would have risen to meet a nobler choice +in her. He had not far to rise! Well, we have our share of blessings, +including piazza teas; but as a family we have missed one of the +greatest spiritual opportunities,--such as come but once in a lifetime." + +"Ah, if she was not ready for it, it was not _her_ opportunity. God is +very patient with us, I believe." + + + + +XXIII + + +RESTIVENESS + +Mothers and sons are rarely very personal in their intimacy after +the son has taken to himself a wife. Apart from certain moments +not appropriate to piazza teas, Paul and his mother were perhaps as +comfortable together as the relation averages. It was much that they +never talked emotionally. Private judgments which we have refrained from +putting into words may die unfruitful and many a bitter crop be spared. + +"This is Paul's apology for being happy in spite of himself--and of +us!" Moya teased, as she admired the beautifully drawn plans for the +quarrymen's club-house. + +"It doesn't need any apology; it's a very good thing," said Mrs. +Bogardus, ignoring double meanings. No caps that were flying around ever +fitted her head. Paul's dreams and his mother's practical experience +had met once more on a common ground of philanthropy. This time it was +a workingmen's club in which the interests of social and mental +improvement were conjoined with facilities for outdoor sport. Up to date +philanthropy is an expensive toy. Paul, though now a landowner, was far +from rich in his own right. His mother financed this as she had many +another scheme for him. She was more openhanded than heretofore, but all +was done with that ennuyed air which she ever wore as of an older +child who has outgrown the game. It was in Moya and Moya's prospective +maternity that her pride reinstated itself. Her own history and +generation she trod underfoot. Mistakes, humiliations, whichever way she +turned. Paul had never satisfied her entirely in anything he did until +he chose this girl for the mother of his children. Now their house might +come to something. Moya moved before her eyes crowned in the light of +the future. And that this noble and innocent girl, with her perfect +intuitions, should turn to _her_ now with such impetuous affection was +perhaps the sweetest pain the blighted woman had ever known. She lay +awake many a night thinking mute blessings on the mother and the child +to be. Yet she resisted that generous initiative so dear to herself, +aware with a subtle agony of the pain it gave her son. + +One day she said to Paul (they were driving home together through a +bit of woodland, the horses stepping softly on the mould of fallen +leaves)--"I don't expect you to account for every dollar of mine you +spend in helping those who can be helped that way. You have a free +hand." + +"I understand," said Paul. "I have used your money freely--for a purpose +that I never have accounted for." + +"Don't you need more?" + +"No; there is no need now." + +"Why is there not?" + +Paul was silent. "I cannot go into particulars. It is a long story." + +"Does the purpose still exist?" his mother asked sharply. + +"It does; but not as a claim--for that sort of help." + +"Let me know if such a claim should ever return." + +"I will, mother," said Paul. + + * * * * * + +There came a day when mother and son reaped the reward of their mutual +forbearance. There was a night and a day when Paul became a boy again in +his mother's hands, and she took the place that was hers in Nature. She +was the priestess acquainted with mysteries. He followed her, and hung +upon her words. The expression of her face meant life and death to him. +The dreadful consciousness passed out of his eyes; tears washed it out +as he rose from his knees by Moya's bed, and his mother kissed him, and +laid his son in his arms. + +The following summer saw the club-house and all its affiliations in +working order. The beneficiaries took to it most kindly, but were +disposed to manage it in their own way: not in all respects the way of +the founder's intention. + +"To make a gift complete, you must keep yourself out of it," Mrs. +Bogardus advised. "You have done your part; now let them have it and run +it themselves." + +Paul was not hungry for leadership, but he had hoped that his interest +in the men's amusements would bring him closer to them and equalize the +difference between the Hill and the quarry. + +"You have never worked with them; how can you expect to play with them?" +was another of his mother's cool aphorisms. Alas! Paul, the son of the +poor man, had no work, and hence no play. + +It was time to be making winter plans again. Mrs. Bogardus knew that +her son's young family was now complete without her presence. Moya had +gained confidence in the care of her child; she no longer brought every +new symptom to the grandmother. Yet Mrs. Bogardus put off discussing the +change, dreading to expose her own isolation, a point on which she was +as sensitive as if it were a crime. Paul was never entirely frank with +her: she knew he would not be frank in this. They never expressed their +wills or their won'ts to each other with the careless rudeness of a +sound family faith, and always she felt the burden of his unrelenting +pity. She began to take long drives alone, coming in late and excusing +herself for dinner. At such times she would send for her grandson in +his nurse's arms to bid him good-night. The mother would put off her +own good-night, not to intrude at these sessions. One evening, going up +later to kiss her little son, she found his crib empty, the nurse gone +to her dinner. He was fast asleep in his grandmother's arms, where she +had held him for an hour in front of the open fire in her bedroom. She +looked up guiltily. "He was so comfortable! And his crib is cold. Will +he take cold when Ellen puts him back?" + +"I am sure he won't," Moya whispered, gathering up the rosy sleeper. But +she was disturbed by the breach of bedtime rules. + +In the drawing-room a few nights later she said energetically to Paul. + +"One might as well be dead as to live with a grudge." + +"A good grudge?" + +"There are no good grudges." + +"There are some honest ones--honestly come by." + +"I don't care how they are come by. Grudges 'is p'ison.'" She laughed, +but her cheeks were hot. + +"Do you know that Christine has been at death's door? Your mother heard +of it--through Mrs. Bowen! Was that why you didn't show me her letter?" + +"It was not in my letter from Mrs. Bowen." + +"I think she has known it some time," said Moya, "and kept it to +herself." + +"Mrs. Bowen!" + +"Your mother. Isn't it terrible? Think how Chrissy must have needed her. +They need each other so! Christine was her constant thought. How can +all that change in one year! But she cannot go to Banks Bowen's house +without an invitation. We must go to New York and make her come with +us--we must open the way." + +"Yes," said Paul, "I have seen it was coming. In the end we always do +the thing we have forsworn." + +"_I_ was the one. I take it back. Your work is there. I know it calls +you. Was not Mrs. Bowen's letter an appeal?" + +Paul was silent. + +"She must think you a deserter. And there is bigger work for you, too! +Here is a great political fight on, and my husband is not in it. Every +man must slay his dragon. There is a whole city of dragons!" + +"Yes," smiled Paul; "I see. You want me to put my legs under the same +cloth with Banks and ask him about his golf score." + +"If you want to fight him, have it out on public grounds; fight him in +politics." + +"We are on the same side!" + +Moya laughed, but she looked a little dashed. + +"Banks comes of gentlemen. He inherited his opinions," said Paul. + +"He may have inherited a few other things, if we could have patience +with him." + +"Are you sorry for Banks?" + +"I shall be sorry for him--when he meets you. He has been spared that +too long." + +"Dispenser of destinies, I bow as I always do!" + +"You will speak to your mother at once?" + +"I will." + +"And do it beautifully?" + +"As well as I know how." + +"Ah, you have had such practice! How good it would be if we could only +dare to quarrel in this family! You and I--of course!" + +"_We_ quarrel, of course!" laughed Paul. + +"I _love_ to quarrel with you!" + +"You do it beautifully. You have had such practice!" + +"I am so happy! It is clear to me now that we shall live down this +misery. Christine will love to see me again; I know she will. A wife is +a very different thing from a girl--a haughty girl!" + +"I should think the wife of Banks Bowen might be." + +"And we'll part with our ancient and honorable grudge! We are getting +too big for it. _We_ are parents!" + +Paul made the proposition to his mother and she agreed to it in every +particular save the one. She would remain at Stone Ridge. It was +impossible to move her. Moya was in despair. She had cultivated an +overweening conscience in her relations with Mrs. Bogardus. It turned +upon her now and showed her the true state of her own mind at the +thought of being Two once more and alone with the child God had given +them. Mrs. Bogardus appeared to see nothing but her own interests in +the matter. She had made up her mind. And in spite of the conscientious +scruples on all sides, the hedging and pleading and explaining, all were +happier in the end for her decision. She herself was softened by it, and +she yielded one point in return. Paul had steadily opposed his mother's +plan of housekeeping, alone with one maid and a man who slept at the +stables. The Dunlops, as it happened, were childless for the winter, +young Chauncey attending a "commercial college" in a neighboring town. +After many interviews and a good deal of self-importance on Cerissa's +part, the pair were persuaded to close the old house and occupy the +servants' wing on the Hill, as a distinct family, yet at hand in case +of need. It was late autumn before all these arrangements could be made. +Paul and Moya, leaving the young scion aged nineteen months in the care +of his nurse and his grandmother, went down the river to open the New +York house. + + + + +XXIV + + +INDIAN SUMMER + +The upper fields of Stone Ridge, so the farmers said, were infested that +autumn by a shy and solitary vagrant, who never could be met with face +to face, but numbers of times had been seen across the width of a lot, +climbing the bars, or closing a gate, or vanishing up some crooked lane +that quickly shut him from view. + +"I would look after that old chap if I was you, Chauncey. He'll be +smoking in your hay barns, and burn you out some o' these cold nights." + +Chauncey took these neighborly warnings with good-humored indifference. +"I haven't seen no signs of his doin' any harm," he said. "Anybody's at +liberty to walk in the fields if there ain't a 'No Trespass' posted. +I rather guess he makes his bed among the corn stouks. I see prints of +someone's feet, goin' and comin'." + +Mrs. Bogardus was more herself in those days than she had been at +any time since the great North-western wilderness sent her its second +message of fear. Old memories were losing their sting. She could bear to +review her decision with a certain shrinking hardihood. Had the choice +been given her to repeat, her action had been the same. In so far as she +had perjured herself for the sake of peace in the family, she owned the +sacrifice was vain; but her own personality was the true reason for what +she had done. She was free in her unimpeachable widowhood--a mother who +had never been at heart a wife. She feared no ghosts this keen autumn +weather, at the summit of her conscious powers. Her dark eye unsheathed +its glance of authority. It was an eye that went everywhere, and +everywhere was met with signs that praised its oversight. Here was +an out-worn inheritance which one woman, in less than a third of her +lifetime, had developed into a competence for her son. He could afford +to dream dreams of beneficence with his mother to make them good. Yes, +he needed her still. His child was in her keeping; and, though brief the +lease, that trust was no accident. It was the surest proof he could have +given her of his vital allegiance. In the step which Paul and Moya were +taking, she saw the first promise of that wisdom she had despaired of in +her son. In the course of years he would understand her. And Christine? +She rested bitterly secure in her daughter's inevitable physical need +of her. Christine was a born parasite. She had no true pride; she was +capable merely of pique which would wear itself out and pass into other +forms of selfishness. + +This woman had been governed all her life by a habit of decision, and +a strong personality rooted in the powers of nature. Therefore she +was seldom mistaken in her conclusions when they dealt with material +results. Occasionally she left out the spirit; but the spirit leaves out +no one. + +Her long dark skirts were sweeping the autumn grass at sunset as she +paced back and forth under the red-gold tents of the maples. It was a +row of young trees she had planted to grace a certain turf walk at the +top of the low wall that divided, by a drop of a few feet, the west +lawn at Stone Ridge from the meadow where the beautiful Alderneys were +pastured. The maples turned purple as the light faded out of their tops +and struck flat across the meadow, making the grass vivid as in spring. +Two spots of color moved across it slowly--a young woman capped and +aproned, urging along a little trotting child. Down the path of their +united shadows they came, and the shadows had reached already the +dividing wall. The waiting smile was sweet upon the grandmother's +features; her face was transformed like the meadow into a memory of +spring. The child saw her, and waved to her with something scarlet which +he held in his free hand. She admired the stride of his brown legs above +their crumpled socks, the imperishable look of health on his broad, +sweet glowing face. She lifted him high in her embrace and bore him up +the hill, his dusty shoes dangling against her silk front breadths, +his knees pressed tight against her waist, and over her shoulder he +flourished the scarlet cardinal flower. + +"Where have you been with him so long?" she asked the nursemaid. + +"Only up in the lane, as far as the three gates, ma'am." + +"Then where did he get this flower?" + +"Oh," said the pretty Irish girl, half scared by her tone, and tempted +to prevaricate. "Why--he must have picked it, I guess." + +"Not in the lane. It's a swamp-flower. It doesn't grow anywhere within +four miles of the lane!" + +"It must have been the old man gev it him then," said the maid. "Is it +unhealthy, ma'am? I tried to get it from him, but he screamed and fussed +so." + +"What old man do you mean?" + +"Why, him that was passin' up the lane. I didn't see him till he was +clean by--and Middy had the flower. I don't know where in the world he +could have got it, else, for we wasn't one step out of the lane, was we, +Middy! That's the very truth." + +"But where were you when strangers were giving him flowers?" + +"Why, sure, ma'am, I was only just a step away be the fence, having a +word with one o' the boys. I was lookin' in the field, speakin' to him +and he was lookin' at me with me back to the lane. 'There's the old man +again,' he says, shiftin' his eye. I turned me round and there, so he +was, but he was by and walkin' on up the lane. And Middy had the flower. +He wouldn't be parted from it and squeezed it so tight I thought the +juice might be bad on his hands, and he promised he'd not put it to his +mouth. I kep' my eye on him. Ah, the nasty, na-asty flower! Give it here +to Katy till I throw it!" + +"There's no harm in the flower. But there is harm in strangers making up +to him when your back is turned. Don't you know the dreadful things we +read in the papers?" + +Mrs. Bogardus said no more. It was Middy's supper-time. But later she +questioned Katy particularly concerning this old man who was spoken of +quite as if his appearance were taken for granted in the heart of the +farm. Katy recalled one other day when she had seen him asleep as she +thought in a corner of the fence by the big chestnut tree when she and +the boy were nutting. They had moved away to the other side of the tree, +but while she was busy hunting for nuts Middy had strayed off a bit and +foregathered with the old man, who was not asleep at all, but stood with +his back to her pouring a handful of big fat chestnuts into the child's +little skirt, which he held up. She called to him and the old man had +stepped back, and the nuts were spilled. Middy had cried and made her +pick them up, and when that was done the stranger was gone quite out of +sight. + +Chauncey, too, was questioned, and testified that the old man of the +fields was no myth. But he deprecated all this exaggerated alarm. The +stranger was some simple-minded old work-house candidate putting off the +evil day. In a few weeks he would have to make for shelter in one of the +neighboring towns. Chauncey could not see what legal hold they had upon +him even if they could catch him. He hardly came under the vagrancy law, +since he had neither begged, nor helped himself appreciably to the means +of subsistence. + +"That is just the point," Mrs. Bogardus insisted. "He has the +means--from somewhere--to lurk around here and make friends with that +child. There may be a gang of kidnappers behind him. He is the harmless +looking decoy. I insist that you keep a sharp lookout, Chauncey. There +shall be a hold upon him, law or no law, if we catch him on our ground." + +A cold rain set in. Paul and Moya wrote of delays in the house +preparations, and hoped the grandmother was not growing tired of her +charge. On the last of the rainy days, in a burst of dubious sunshine, +came a young girl on horseback to have tea with Mrs. Bogardus. She was +one of that lady's discoverers, so she claimed, Miss Sallie Remsen, very +pretty and full of fantastic little affectations founded on her intense +appreciation of the picturesque. She called Mrs. Bogardus "Madam," and +likened her to various female personages in history more celebrated for +strength of purpose than for the Christian virtues. Mrs. Bogardus, in +her restful ignorance of such futilities, went no deeper into these +allusions than their intention, which she took to be complimentary. Miss +Sallie hugged herself with joy when the rain came down in torrents for +a clear-up shower. Her groom was sent home with a note to inform her +mother that Mrs. Bogardus wished to keep her overnight. All the mothers +were flattered when Mrs. Bogardus took notice of their daughters,--even +much grander dames than she herself could pretend to be. + +They had a charming little dinner by themselves to the tune of the rain +outside, and were having their coffee by the drawing-room fire; and Miss +Sallie was thinking by what phrase one could do justice to the massive, +crass ugliness of that self-satisfied apartment, furnished in the +hideous sixties, when the word was sent in that Mrs. Dunlop wished to +speak with Mrs. Bogardus. Something of Cerissa's injured importance +survived the transmission of the message, causing Mrs. Bogardus to smile +to herself as she rose. Cerissa was waiting in the dining-room. She kept +her seat as Mrs. Bogardus entered. Her eyes did not rise higher than the +lady's dress, which she examined with a fierce intentness of comparison +while she opened her errand. + +"I thought you'd like to know you've got a strange lodger down to the +old house. I don't seem to ever get moved!" she enlarged. "I'm always +runnin' down there after first one thing 'n' another we've forgot. This +morning 't was my stone batter-pot. Chauncey said he thought it was +getting cold enough for buckwheat cakes. I don't suppose you want to +have stray tramps in there in the old house, building fires in the +loom-room, where, if a spark got loose, it would blaze up them draughty +stairs, and the whole house would go in a minute." Cerissa stopped to +gain breath. + +"Making fires? Are you sure of that? Has any smoke been seen coming out +of that chimney?" + +"Why, it's been raining so! And the trees have got so tall! But I could +show you the shucks an' shells he's left there. I know how we left it!" + +"You had better speak--No; I will see Chauncey in the morning." Mrs. +Bogardus never, if she could avoid it, gave an order through a third +person. + +"Well, I thought I'd just step in. Chauncey said 't was no use +disturbing you to-night, but he's just that way--so easy about +everything! I thought you wouldn't want to be harboring tramps this wet +weather when most anybody would be tempted to build a fire. I'm more +concerned about what goes on down there now we're _out_ of the house! I +seem to have it on my mind the whole time. A house is just like a child: +the more you don't see it the more you worry about it." + +"I'm glad you have such a home feeling about the place," said Mrs. +Bogardus, avoiding the onset of words. "Well, good-evening, Cerissa. +Thank you for your trouble. I will see about it in the morning." + +Mrs. Bogardus mentioned what she had just heard to Miss Sallie, who +remarked, with her keen sense of antithesis, what a contrast _that_ +fireside must be to _this_. + +"Which fireside?" + +"Oh, your lodger upon the cold ground,--making his little bit of a +stolen blaze in that cavern of a chimney in the midst of the wet trees! +What a nice thing to have an unwatched place like that where a poor +bird of passage can creep in and make his nest, and not trouble any one. +Think what Jean Valjeans one might shelter"-- + +"Who?" + +"What 'angels unawares.'" + +"It will be unawares, my dear,--very much unawares,--when I shelter any +angels of that sort." + +"Oh, you wouldn't turn him out, such weather as this?" + +"The house is not mine, in the first place," Mrs. Bogardus explained +as to a child. "I can't entertain tramps or even angels on my son's +premises, when he's away." + +"Oh, he! He would build the fires himself, and make up their beds," +laughed Miss Sallie. "If he were here, I believe he would start down +there now, and stock the place with everything you've got in the house +to eat." + +"I hope he'd leave us a little something for breakfast," said Mrs. +Bogardus a trifle coldly. But she did not mention the cause of her +uneasiness about this particular visitor. She never defended herself. + +Miss Sallie was delighted with her callousness to the sentimental rebuke +which had been rather rubbed in. It was so unmodern; one got so weary +of fashionable philanthropy, women who talked of their social sympathies +and their principles in life. She almost hoped that Mrs. Bogardus had +neither. Certainly she never mentioned them. + +"What did she say? Did she tell you what I said to her last night?" +Cerissa questioned her husband feverishly after his interview with Mrs. +Bogardus. + +"She didn't mention your name," Chauncey took some pleasure in stating. +"If you hadn't told me yourself, I shouldn't have known you'd meddled in +it at all." + +"What's she going to do about it?" + +"How crazy you women are! 'Cause some poor old Sooner-die-than-work +warms his bones by a bit of fire that wouldn't scare a chimbly swaller +out of its nest! Don't you s'pose if there'd been any fire there to +speak of, I'd 'a' seen it? What am I here for? Now I've got to drop +everything, and git a padlock on that door, and lock it up every night, +and search the whole place from top to bottom for fear there's some one +in there hidin' in a rathole!" + +"Chauncey! If you've got to do that I don't want you to go in there +alone. You take one of the men with you; and you better have a pistol or +one of the dogs anyhow. Suppose you was to ketch some one in there, and +corner him! He might turn on you, and shoot you!" + +"I wish you wouldn't work yourself up so about nothin' at all! Want +me to make a blame jackass of myself raisin' the whole place about a +potato-peel or a bacon-rind!" + +"I think you might have some little regard for my feelings," Cerissa +whimpered. "If you ain't afraid, I'm afraid for you; and I don't see +anything to be ashamed of either. I wish you _wouldn't_ go _alone_ +searching through that spooky old place. It just puts me beside myself +to think of it!" + +"Well, well! That's enough about it anyhow. I ain't going to do anything +foolish, and you needn't think no more about it." + +Whether it was the effect of his wife's fears, or his promise to her, +or the inhospitable nature of his errand founded on suspicion, certainly +Chauncey showed no spirit of rashness in conducting his search. He +knocked the mud off his boots loudly on the doorsill before proceeding +to attach the padlock to the outer door. He searched the loom-room, +lighting a candle and peering into all its cobwebbed corners. He +examined the rooms lately inhabited, unlocking and locking doors +behind him noisily with increasing confidence in the good old house's +emptiness. Still, in the fireplace in the loom-room there were signs of +furtive cooking which a housekeeper's eye would infallibly detect. +He saw that the search must proceed. It was not all a question of his +wife's fears, as he opened the stair-door cautiously and tramped slowly +up towards the tower bedroom. He could not remember who had gone out +last, on the day the old secretary was moved down. There had been +four men up there, and--yes, the key was still in the lock outside. He +clutched it and it fell rattling on the steps. He swung the door open +and stared into the further darkness beyond his range of vision. He +waved his candle as far as his arm would reach. "Anybody _in_ here?" he +shouted. The silence made his flesh prick. "I'm goin' to lock up now. +Better show up. It's the last chance." He waited while one could count +ten. "Anybody in here that wants to be let free? Nobody's goin' to hurt +ye." + +To his anxious relief there was no reply. But as he listened, he heard +the loud, measured tick, tick, of the old clock, appalling in the +darkness, on the silence of that empty room. Chauncey could not have +told just how he got the door to, nor where he found strength to lock it +and drag his feet downstairs, but the hand that held the key was moist +with cold perspiration as he reached the open air. + +"Well, if that's rain I'd like to know where it comes from!" He looked +up at the moon breaking through drifting clouds. The night was keen and +clear. + +"If I was to tell that to Cerissa she'd never go within a mile o' that +house again! Maybe I was mistaken--but I ain't goin' back to see!" + +Next morning on calmer reflection he changed his mind about removing the +lawn-mower and other hand-tools from the loom-room as he had determined +overnight should be done. The place continued to be used as a storeroom, +open by day. + +At night it was Chauncey's business to lock it up, and he was careful to +repeat his search--as far as the stair-door. Never did the silent room +above give forth a protest, a sound of human restraint or occupation. He +reported to the mistress that all was snug at the old house, and nobody +anywhere about the place. + + + + +XXV + + +THE FELL FROST + +After the rain came milder days. The still white mornings slowly +brightened into hazy afternoons. The old moon like a sleep walker stood +exposed in the morning sky. The roads to Stone Ridge were deep in fallen +leaves. Soft-tired wheels rustled up the avenue and horses' feet fell +light, as the last of the summer neighbors came to say good-by. + +It was a party of four--Miss Sallie and a good-looking youth of the +football cult on horseback, her mother and an elder sister, the delicate +Miss Remsen, in a hired carriage. Their own traps had been sent to town. + +Tea was served promptly, as the visitors had a long road home before +their dinner-hour. In the reduced state of the establishment it was +Katy who brought the tea while Cerissa looked after her little charge. +Cerissa sat on the kitchen porch sewing and expanding under the deep +attention of the cook; they could see Middy a little way off on the +tennis-court wiping the mud gravely from a truant ball he had found +among the nasturtiums. All was as peaceful as the time of day and the +season of the year. + +"Yes," said Cerissa solemnly. "Old Abraham Van Elten was too much +cumbered up with this world to get quit of it as easy as some. If his +spirit is burdened with a message to anybody it's to _her_. He died +unreconciled to her, and she inherited all this place in spite of him, +as you may say. I've come as near believin' in such things since the +goings on up there in that room"-- + +"She wants Middy fetched in to see the comp'ny," cried Katy, bursting +into the sentence. "Where is he, till I clean him? And she wants some +more bread and butter as quick as ye can spread it." + +"Well, Katy!" said Cerissa slowly, with severe emphasis. "When I was a +girl, my mother used to tell me it wasn't manners to"-- + +"I haven't got time to hear about yer mother," said Katy rudely. "What +have ye done with me boy?" The tennis-court lay vacant on the terrace in +the sun; the steep lawn sloped away and dipped into the trees. + +"Don't call," said the cook warily. "It'll only scare her. He was there +only a minute ago. Run, Katy, and see if he's at the stables." + +It was not noticed, except by Mrs. Bogardus, that no Katy, and no boy, +and no bread and butter, had appeared. Possibly the last deficiency had +attracted a little playful attention from the young horseback riders, +who were accusing each other of eating more than their respective +shares. + +At length Miss Sallie perceived there was something on her hostess's +mind. "Where is John Middleton?" she whispered. "Katy is dressing him +all over, from head to foot, isn't she? I hope she isn't curling his +hair. John Middleton has such wonderful hair! I refuse to go back to +New York till I have introduced you to John Middleton Bogardus," she +announced to the young man, who laughed at everything she said. Mrs. +Bogardus smiled vacantly and glanced at the door. + +"Let me go find Katy," cried Miss Sally. Katy entered as she spoke, +and said a few words to the mistress. "Excuse me." Mrs. Bogardus rose +hastily. She asked Miss Sallie to take her place at the tea-tray. + +"What is it?" + +"The boy--they cannot find him. Don't say anything." She had turned ashy +white, and Katy's pretty flushed face had a wild expression. + +In five minutes the search had begun. Mrs. Bogardus was at the +telephone, calling up the quarry, for she was short of men. One order +followed another quickly. Her voice was harsh and deep. She had frankly +forgotten her guests. Embarrassed by their own uselessness, yet unable +to take leave, they lingered and discussed the mystery of this sudden, +acute alarm. + +"It is the sore spot," said Miss Sally sentimentally. "You know her +husband was missing for years before she gave him up; and then that +dreadful time, three years ago, when they were so frightened about +Paul." + +Having spread the alarm, Mrs. Bogardus took the field in person. Her +head was bare in the keen, sunset light. She moved with strong, fleet +steps, but a look of sudden age stamped her face. + +"Go back, all of you!" she said to the women, who crowded on her heels. +"There are plenty of places to look." Her stern eyes resisted their +frightened sympathy. She was not ready to yield to the consciousness of +her own fears. + +To the old house she went, by some sure instinct that told her the road +to trouble. But her trouble stood off from her, and spared her for one +moment of exquisite relief; as if the child of Paul and Moya had no part +in what was waiting for her. The door at the foot of the stairs stood +open. She heard a soft, repeated thud. Panting, she climbed the stairs; +and as she rounded the shoulder of the chimney, there, on the top step +above her, stood the fair-haired child, making the only light in the +place. He was knocking, with his foolish ball, on the door of the +chamber of fear. Three generations of the living and the dead were +brought together in this coil of fate, and the child, in his happy +innocence, had joined the knot. + +The woman crouching on the stairs could barely whisper, "Middy!" lest +if she startled him he might turn and fall. He looked down at her, +unsurprised, and paused in his knocking. "Man--in there--won't 'peak to +Middy!" he said. + +She crept towards him and sat below him, coaxing him into her lap. The +strange motions of her breast, as she pressed his head against her, kept +the boy quiet, and in that silence she heard an inner sound--the awful +pulse of the old clock beating steadily, calling her, demanding the +evidence of her senses,--she who feared no ghosts,--beating out the +hours of an agony she was there to witness. And she was yet in time. The +hapless creature entrapped within that room dragged its weight +slowly across the floor. The clock, sole witness and companion of its +sufferings, ticked on impartially. Neither is this any new thing, it +seemed to say. A life was starved in here before--not for lack of food, +but love,--love,--love! + +She carried the child out into the air, and he ran before her like a +breeze. The women who met them stared at her sick and desperate face. +She made herself quickly understood, and as each listener drained her +meaning the horror spread. There was but one man left on the place, +within call, he with the boyish face and clean brown hands, who had +ridden across the fields for an afternoon's idle pleasure. He stepped to +her side and took the key out of her hand. "You ought not to do this," +he said gently, as their eyes met. + +"Wednesday, Thursday, Friday," she counted mechanically. "He has been +in there six days and seven nights by my orders." She looked straight +before her, seeing no one, as she gave her commands to the women: fire +and hot water and stimulants, in the kitchen of the old house at once, +and another man, if one could be found to follow her. + +The two figures moving across the grass might have stepped out of an +illustration in the pages of some current magazine. In their thoughts +they had already unlocked the door of that living death and were face to +face with the insupportable facts of nature. + +The morbid, sickening, prison odor met them at the door--humanity's +helpless protest against bolts and bars. Again the young man begged his +companion not to enter. She took one deep breath of the pure outside +air and stepped before him. They searched the emptiness of the barely +furnished room. The clock ticked on to itself. Mrs. Bogardus's companion +stood irresolute, not knowing the place. The fetid air confused +his senses. But she went past him through the inner door, guided by +remembrance of the sounds she had heard. + +She had seen it. She approached it cautiously, stooping for a better +view, and closing in upon it warily, as one cuts off the retreat of a +creature in the last agonies of flight. Her companion heard her say: +"Show me your face!--Uncover his face," she repeated, not moving her +eyes as he stepped behind her. "He will not let me near him. Uncover +it." + +The thing in the corner had some time been a man. There was still enough +manhood left to feel her eyes and to shrink as an earthworm from the +spade. He had crawled close to the baseboard of the room. An old man's +ashen beard straggled through the brown claws wrapped about the face. As +the dust of the threshing floor to the summer grain, so was his likeness +to one she remembered. + +"I must see that man's face!" she panted. "He will die if I touch him. +Take away his hands." It was done, with set teeth, and the face of the +football hero was bathed in sweat. He breathed through tense nostrils, +and a sickly whiteness spread backward from his lips. Suddenly he loosed +his burden. It fell, doubling in a ghastly heap, and he rushed for the +open air. + +Mrs. Bogardus groaned. She raised herself up slowly, stretching back her +head. Her face was like the terrible tortured mask of the Medusa. She +had but a moment in which to recover herself. Deliberately she spoke +when her companion returned and stood beside her. + +"That was my husband. If he lives I am still his wife. You are not to +forget this. It is no secret. Are you able to help me now? Get a blanket +from the women. I hear some one coming." + +She waited, with head erect and eyes closed and rigid tortured lips +apart, till the feet were heard at the door. + + + + +XXVI + + +PEACE TO THIS HOUSE + +Mrs. Remsen and her delicate daughter had driven away to avoid +excitement and the night air. + +Chauncey hovered round the piazza steps, talking, with but little +encouragement, to Miss Sallie and the young man who had become the +centre of all eyes. + +"I don't see how anybody on the face of the earth could blame her, nor +me either!" Chauncey protested. "If the critter wanted to git out, why +couldn't he say so? I stood there holdin' the door open much as five +minutes. 'Who's in there?' I says. I called it loud enough to wake the +dead. 'Nobody wants to hurt ye,' says I. There want nothing to be afraid +of. He hadn't done nothing anyway. It's the strangest case ever I heard +tell of. And the doctor don't think he was much crazy either." + +"Can he live?" asked Miss Sallie. + +"He's alive now, but doctor don't know how long he'll last. There he +comes now. I must go and git his horse." + +The doctor, who seemed nervous,--he was a young local +practitioner,--asked to speak with Miss Sallie's hero apart. + +"Did Mrs. Bogardus say anything when she first saw that man? Did you +notice what she said?--how she took it?" + +The hero, who was also a gentleman, looked at the doctor coolly. + +"It was not a nice thing," he said. "I saw just as little as I could." + +"You don't understand me," said the doctor. "I want to know if Mrs. +Bogardus appeared to you to have made any discovery--received any shock +not to be accounted for by--by what you both saw?" + +"I shouldn't attempt to answer such a question," said the youngster +bluntly. "I never saw Mrs. Bogardus in my life before to-day." + +The doctor colored. "Mrs. Bogardus has given me a telegram to send, and +I don't know whether to send it or not. It's going to make a whole lot +of talk. I am not much acquainted with Mrs. Bogardus myself, except by +hearsay. That's partly what surprises me. It looks a little reckless +to send out such a message as that, by the first hand that comes along. +Hadn't we better give her time to think it over?" He opened the telegram +for the other to read. "The man himself can't speak. But he just pants +for breath every time she comes near him: he tries to hide his face. He +acts like a criminal afraid of being caught." + +"He didn't look that way to me--what was left of him. Not in the least +like a criminal." + +"Well, no; that's a fact, too. Now they've got him laid out clean and +neat, he looks as if he might have been a very decent sort of man. But +_that_, you know--that's incredible. If she knows him, why doesn't he +know her? Why won't he own her? He's afraid of her. His eyes are ready +to burst out of his head whenever she comes near him." + +"Did Mrs. Bogardus write that telegram herself?" + +"She did." + +"And what did she tell you to do with it?" + +"Send it to her son." + +"Then why don't you send it?" + +This was the disputed message: "Come. Your father has been found. Bring +Doctor Gainsworth." + +In the local man's opinion, the writer of that dispatch was Doctor +Gainsworth's true patient. What could induce a woman in Mrs. Bogardus's +position to give such hasty publicity to this shocking disclosure, +allowing it were true? The more he dwelt on it the less he liked the +responsibility he was taking. He discussed it openly; and, with the +best intentions, this much-impressed young man gave out his own +counter-theory of the case, hoping to forestall whatever mischief might +have been done. He put himself in the place of Mr. Paul Bogardus, whom +he liked extremely, and tried to imagine that young gentleman's state +of mind when he should look upon this new-found parent, and learn the +manner of his resurrection. + +This was the explanation he boldly set forth in behalf of those most +nearly concerned. [He was getting up his diagnosis for an interesting +half hour with the great doctor who had been called in consultation.] +The shock of that awful discovery in the locked chamber, he attested, +had put Mrs. Bogardus temporarily beside herself. Outwardly composed, +her nerves were ripped and torn by the terrible sight that met her +eyes. She was the prey of an hallucination founded on memories of former +suffering, which had worn a channel for every fresh fear to seek. There +was something truly noble and loyal and pathetic in the nature of her +possession. It threw a softened light upon her past. How must she have +brooded, all these years, for that one thought to have ploughed so deep! +It was quite commonly known in the neighborhood that she had come back +from the West years ago without her husband, yet with no proof of his +death. But who could have believed she would cling for half a lifetime +to this forlorn expectancy, depicting her own loss in every sad hulk of +humanity cast upon her prosperous shores! + +Every one believed she was deceiving herself, but great honor was hers +among the neighbors for the plain truth and courage of her astonishing +avowal. They had thought her proud, exclusive, hard in the security +of wealth. Here she stood by a pauper's bed in the name of simple +constancy, stripping herself of all earthly surplusage, exposing her +deepest wound, proclaiming the bond--herself its only witness--between +her and this speechless wreck, drifting out on the tide of death. She +had but to let him go. It was the wild word she had spoken in the name +of truth and deathless love that fired the imagination of that slow +countryside. It was the touch beyond nature that appeals to the higher +sense of a community, and there is no community without a soul. + +The straight demands of justice are frequently hard to meet, but its +ironies are crushing. Mrs. Bogardus had fallen back on the line of a +mother's duty since that moment of personal accountability. She read +the unspoken reverence in the eyes of all around her, but she put in +no disclaimer. Her past was not her own. She could not sin alone. Only +those who have been honest are privileged under all conditions to remain +so. + +On his arrival with the doctor, Paul endeavored first to see his +mother alone. For some reason she would not have it so. She took the +unspeakable situation as it came. He was shown into the room where she +sat, and by her orders Doctor Gainsworth was with him. + +She rose quietly and came to meet them. Placing her hand in her son's +arm, and looking towards the bed, she said:-- + +"Doctor--my husband." + +"Madam!" said Doctor Gainsworth. He had been Mrs. Bogardus's family +physician for many years. + +"My husband," she repeated. + +The doctor appeared to accept the statement. As the three approached the +bed Mrs. Bogardus leaned heavily upon her son. Paul released his arm and +placed it firmly around her. He felt her shudder. "Mother," he said to +her with an indescribable accent that tore her heart. + +The doctor began his examination. He addressed his patient as "Mr. +Bogardus." + +"Mistake," said a low, husky voice from the bed. "This ain't the man." + +Doctor Gainsworth pursued his investigations. "What is your name?" he +asked the patient suddenly. + +The hunted eyes turned with ghastly appeal upon the faces around him. + +"Paul, speak to him! Own your father," Mrs. Bogardus whispered +passionately. + +"It is for him to speak now," said Paul. "When he is well, Doctor," he +added aloud, "he will know his own name." + +"This man will never be well," the doctor answered. "If there is +anything to prove, for or against the identity you claim for him, it +will have to be done within a very few days." + +Doctor Gainsworth rose and held out his hand. He was a man of delicate +perceptions. His respect at that moment for Mrs. Bogardus, though +founded on blindest conjecture, was an emotion which the mask of his +professional manner could barely conceal. "As a friend, Mrs. Bogardus, I +hope you will command me--but you need no doctor here." + +"As a friend I ask you to believe me," she said. "This man _is_ my +husband. He came back here because this was his home. I cannot tell you +any more, but this we expect you and every one who knows"-- + +The dissenting voice from the bed closed her assertion with a hoarse +"No! Not the man." + +"Good-by, Mrs. Bogardus," said the doctor. "Don't trouble to explain. +You and I have lived too long and seen too much of life not to recognize +its fatalities: the mysterious trend in the actions of men and women +that cannot be comprised in--in the locking of a door." + +"It is of little consequence--what was done, compared to what was not +done." This was all the room for truth she could give herself to turn +in. The doctor did not try to understand her: yet she had snatched a +little comfort from merely uttering the words. + +Paul and the doctor dined together, Mrs. Bogardus excusing herself. + +"There seems to be an impression here," said the doctor, examining +the initials on his fish-fork, "that your mother is indulging an +overstrained fancy in this melancholy resemblance she has traced. +It does not appear to have made much headway as a fact, which rather +surprises me in a country neighborhood. Possibly your doctor here, who +seems a very good fellow, has wished to spare the family any unnecessary +explanations. If you'll let me advise you, Paul, I would leave it as +it is,--open to conjecture. But, in whatever shape this impression +may reach you from outside, I hope you won't let it disturb you in the +least, so far as it describes your mother's condition. She is one of the +few well-balanced women I have had the honor to know." + +Paul did not take advantage of the doctor's period. He went on. + +"Not that I do know her. Possibly you may not yourself feel that you +altogether understand your mother? She has had many demands upon her +powers of adaptation. I should imagine her not one who would adapt +herself easily, yet, once she had recognized a necessity of that sort, +I believe she would fit herself to its conditions with an exacting +thoroughness which in time would become almost, one might say, a second, +an external self. The 'lendings' we must all of us wear." + +"There will be no explanations," said Paul, not coldly, but helplessly. + +"Much the best way," said the doctor relieved, and glad to be done with +a difficult undertaking. "If we are ever understood in this world, it +is not through our own explanations, but in spite of them. My daughters +hope to see a good deal of your charming wife this winter. I hear great +pleasure expressed at your coming back to town." + +"Thank you, Doctor. She will be up this evening. We shall stay here +with my mother for a time. It will be her desire to carry out +this--recognition--to the end. We must honor her wishes in the matter." + +The talk then fell upon the patient's condition. The doctor left certain +directions and took shelter in professional platitudes, but his eyes +rested with candid kindness upon the young man, and his farewell +hand-clasp was a second prolonged. + +He went away in a state of simple wonderment, deeply marveling at Paul's +serenity. + +"Extraordinary poise! Where does it come from? No: the boy is happy! He +hides it; but it is the one change in him. He has experienced a great +relief. Is it possible"-- + +On his way down the river the doctor continued to muse upon the dignity, +the amazingly beautiful behavior of this rising family in whose somewhat +commonplace city fortunes he had taken a friendly interest for years. He +owned that he had sounded them with too short a line. + + * * * * * + +Watching with the dying man hours when she was with him alone, Emily +Bogardus continued to test his resolution. He never retracted by a +look--faithful to the word she had spoken which made them strangers. + +It was the slightest shell of mortality that ever detained a soul on +earth. The face, small like the face of an old, old child, waxed finer +and more spiritual, yet ever more startlingly did it bear the stamp of +that individuality which the spirit had held so cheap--the earthly +so impenetrated with the spiritual part that the face had become a +sublimation. As one sees a sheet of paper covered with writing wither +in flame and become a quivering ash, yet to the last attenuation of +its fibre the human characters will stand forth, till all is blown up +chimney to the stars. + +Still, peaceful, implacable in its peace, settling down for the silence +of eternity. Still no sign. + +The younger ones came and went. The little boy stole in alone and pushed +against his grandmother's knee,--she seated always by the bed,--gazed, +puzzled, at the strange, still face, and whispered obediently, +"Gran'faver." There was no response. Once she took the boy and drew him +close and placed his little tender hand within the dry, crumpled husk +extended on the bedclothes. The eyes unclosed and rested long and +earnestly on the face of the child, who yawned as if hypnotized and +flung his head back on the grandmother's breast. She bent suddenly and +laid her own hand where the child's had been. The eyes turned inward +and shut again, but a sigh, so deep it seemed that another breath might +never come, was all her answer. + +Past midnight of the fourth night's watch Paul was awakened by a light +in his room. His mother stood beside him, white and worn. "He is +going," she said. It was the final rally of the body's resistance. A +few moments' expenditure, and that stubborn vitality would loose its +hold.--The strength of the soil! + +The wife stood aside and gave up her place to the children. Her +expression was noble, like a queen rebuked before her people. There was +comfort in that, too. A great, solemn, mutual understanding drew this +death-bed group together. Within the sickle's compass so they stood: +the woman God gave this man to found a home; the son who inherited +his father's gentleness and purity of purpose; the fair flower of the +generations that father's sacrifice had helped him win; the bud of +promise on the topmost bough. Those astonished eyes shed their last +earthly light on this human group, turned and rested in the eyes of +the woman, faded, and the light went out. He died, blessing her in one +whispered word. Her name. + +Before daybreak on the morning of the funeral, Paul awoke under pressure +of disturbing dreams. There were sounds of hushed movements in the +house. He traced them to the door of the room below stairs where his +father lay. Some one had softly unlocked that door, and entered. He knew +who that one must be. His place was there alone with his mother, before +they were called together as a family, and the mask of decency resumed +for those ironic rites in the presence of the unaccusing dead. + +The windows had been lowered behind closed curtains, and the air of the +death chamber, as he entered, was like the touch of chilled iron to the +warm pulse of sleep. Without, a still dark night of November had frosted +the dead grass. + +The unappeasable curiosity of the living concerning the Great +Transition, for the moment appeared to have swept all that was personal +out of the watcher's gaze, as she bent above the straightened body. +And something of the peace there dawning on the cold, still face was +reflected in her own. + +"You have never seen your father before. There he is." She drew a +deep sigh, as if she had been too intent to breathe naturally. All her +self-consciousness suddenly was gone. And Paul remembered his dream, +that had goaded him out of sleep, and vanished with the shock of waking. +It gave him the key to this long-expected moment of confidence. + +"The old likeness has come back," his mother repeated, with that new +quietness which restored her to herself. + +"I dreamed of that likeness," said Paul, "only it was much +stronger--startling--so that the room was full of whispers and +exclamations as the neighbors--there were hundreds of them--filed past. +And you stood there, mother, flushed, and talking to each person who +passed and looked at him and then at you; you said--you"-- + +Mrs. Bogardus raised her head. "I know! I have been thinking all night. +Am I to do that? Is that what you wish me to do? Don't hesitate--to +spare me." + +"Mother! I could not imagine you doing such a thing. It was like +insanity. I wanted to tell you how horrible, how unseemly it was, +because I was sure you had been dwelling on some form--some outward"-- + +"No," she said. "I know how I should face this if it were left to me. +But you are my only earthly judge, my son. Judge now between us two. Ask +of me anything you think is due to him. As to outsiders, what do they +matter! I will do anything you say." + +"_I_ say! Oh, mother! Every hand he loved was against him--bruising his +gentle will. Each one of us has cast a stone upon his grave. But you +took the brunt of it. You spoke out plain the denial that was in my +coward's heart from the first. And I judged you! I--who uncovered +my father's soul to ease my own conscience, and put him to shame and +torture, and you to a trial worse than death. Now let us think of the +whole of his life. I have much to tell you. You could not listen before; +but now he is listening. I speak for him. This is how he loved us!" + +In hard, brief words Paul told the story of his father's sin and +self-judgment; his abdication in the flesh; what he esteemed the rights +to be of a woman placed as he had placed his wife; how carefully he had +guarded her in those rights, and perjured himself at the last to +leave her free in peace and honor with her children. She listened, not +weeping, but with her great eyes shining in her pallid face. + +"All that came after," said Paul, taking her cold hands in his--"after +his last solemn recantation does not touch the true spirit of his +sacrifice. It was finished. My father died to us then as he meant to +die. The body remained--to serve out its time, as he said. But his brain +was tired. I do not think he connected the past very clearly with the +present. I think you should forget what has happened here. It was a +hideous net of circumstance that did it." + +"There is no such thing as circumstance," said Mrs. Bogardus with +loftiness. Her face was calm and sweet in its exaltation. "I cannot +say things as you can, but this is what I mean. I was the wife of his +body--sworn flesh of his flesh. In the flesh that made us one I denied +him, and caused his death. And if I could believe as I used to about +punishment, I would lock myself in that room, and for every hour he +suffered there, I would suffer two. And no one should prevent me, +or hasten the end. And the feet of the young men that carried out my +husband who lied to save me, should wait there for me who lied to save +myself. All lies are death. But what is a made-up punishment to me! I +shall take it as it comes--drop by drop--slowly." + +"Mother--my mother! The fashion of this world does not last; but one +thing does. Is it nothing to you, mother?" + +"Have I my son--after all?" she said as one dreaming. + +The night lamp expired in smoke that tainted the cold air. Paul drew +back the curtains one by one, and let in the new-born day. + +"'Peace to this house,'" he said; "'not as the world giveth,'" his +thought concluded. + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Desert and The Sown, by Mary Hallock Foote + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESERT AND THE SOWN *** + +***** This file should be named 8219.txt or 8219.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/2/1/8219/ + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Clay Massei and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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