MEDFORD RIVER
Cousin Tom was giving rapid directions as they went out to the waiting
automobiles. "I will go on with Jasper and we will pick up some men
from the farms as we pass. Anthony, you had better come with Oliver,
we shall want to crowd in all the farmers we can. What is it, Polly?
You want to come with me? I suspect you think you are going to keep
your father out of danger and I think the same of you. There is room
in front here, between us; jump in!"
The engine grumbled and roared and the first car slid away into the
shadows.
"Get in," said Oliver curtly to Anthony Crawford, while Janet opened
the door of the second motor and slipped to the far side to give him
room. None of the three spoke as they went down the drive behind
Cousin Tom. As they came through the gate they could hear, faintly,
the wild clanging of the bell in the valley below.
Oliver was too much occupied with his driving to have any other
thought, Janet was awed into silence by the alien presence at her
side, but Anthony Crawford, in that same husky, broken voice,
suddenly began to speak as though he were following his thoughts out
loud.
"I don't know why I came back to Medford Valley," he said. "I had
lived through every sort of thing since I went away, but I was making
good at last. Martha--that's the girl I married, she was a miner's
daughter--had helped me to go straight. I was working in a mine,
harder work than I had ever dreamed of in my life. It was good for me,
yet I kept telling myself that it was being in prison. Perhaps it was,
but I had forgotten that prison was the place where I ought to be."
Oliver tilted back his head that he might hear better, but his only
answer was an inarticulate sound like a mutter of agreement. To reach
the valley as soon as possible and without mishap, was more important
to him, at that moment, than explanations. But Janet looked up with
round, wondering eyes, eager to hear the rest.
"I kept thinking how it was here at home, so green and clean and
peaceful, not like that stark, bare mountain country where I seemed to
be working my whole life away. I told myself that a certain portion of
Medford Valley belonged to me, that I could come back and live a life
of dignified idleness, if only I had my rights, if only Jasper would
give me what was my own."
"But it wasn't true. You knew that he wouldn't keep what belonged to
you," burst out Janet.
"I knew it wasn't true, but people love to deceive themselves, and I
had to explain to Martha. She would never have come if she had known
how things really stood; she was unwilling, even as it was. But I was
so sure, I thought I knew Jasper so well, exactly how I could threaten
him, just where I could hurt him most. Had I not learned, when I was a
boy, how proud and sensitive and generous he could be? I was as
successful as I had hoped to be, but I wanted more and more, and see
where it has brought me in the end!"
It seemed a relief to him to confess the very whole of his
wrong-doing, to leave hidden no single meanness or small-souled
thought. It was as though, in the clean night air, in the face of two
just and clear-seeing companions, he wished to cast aside all the
wrong of the past before making a new beginning.
"I am going away," he said. "It isn't because I found that my plan
didn't pay as I had hoped it would. It is because I was happier back
there in the West, serving out a sentence at hard labor, learning to
live by the work of my hands rather than by my dishonorable wits. I
can look back over my life and see just where my honesty began to
waver, just when I first compromised with my own conscience and
persuaded myself that something was fair and honest when I knew it was
not. We had all the same chance, Jasper and Tom and I; look at them
and look at me. You may wonder why I say all this to you. Perhaps it
is because you alone saw through me, dared to tell me that I had no
confidence even in my own claims, called me a man of straw and a bogy.
Well, after to-night I am going back, to be a real man again."
For the first time Oliver slackened the speed of the car and nearly
stopped in the road.
"Do you want to go now?" he inquired shortly. "We can take you to the
station if you do. They don't need us down there, as they do the
others."
"No, not now. I must know what my criminal bungling has amounted to,
first. When I have seen the flood go down, then it will be time to go.
I want to see this thing through."
They had straightened out into the level road and were forced to drive
more slowly, for the highway was no longer empty. A big tractor was
lumbering ahead, farm wagons turned out for them to pass, and hastily
dressed men were thronging alongside. Two of them jumped upon the
running board, but, seeing who sat in the car, muttered some
imprecation and dropped off again. Anthony Crawford stood up and
opened the door.
"I'll walk," he announced briefly. "Load in all the men you can carry.
You will need every one."
Janet climbed over to the place beside her brother, and the tonneau
filled up with men, who crowded the seats, clung to the step and the
fenders, and sat in a row across the back of the car. They came to the
end of the road at last where, in that place that had been so empty
and quiet half an hour ago, there was now gathered a surging crowd of
men, of horses, tractors, automobiles, and wagons. Oliver could see,
on a knoll above the others, Polly standing with two farmers' wives,
the only women there.
At first he could not see the water, but, as they pressed into the
crowd, he caught sight of the broad pool, dark even in the moonlight.
It was over the road, now, through the fence, and had crept halfway
across the stretch of grass before John Massey's door. Tom Brighton's
white-clad figure was going back and forth among the men, but it was
Cousin Jasper, standing high above the others on the seat of a wagon,
who was directing operations and getting this confused army of workers
into rapid organization.
"Tom, take half the men to shovel dirt and pile up the sand sacks, and
send the other half back to the sand pits to fill them. Clear the road
so that the wagons can go back and forth. Henry Brook, take out your
horses and join your team with Johnson's, the tractor can pull two
wagons and we need four horses to each of the others. Now, go to it
and bring the sandbags as fast as they can be filled. We can't save
John Massey's house, but we will build a dam to hold the water a
hundred yards back, where the ground begins to rise. And remember, you
can't be too quick if you want to save the valley."
Oliver took off his coat and jumped out of the car.
"Go over where Polly is," he told Janet "I am going into this game
with the others."
He was in every portion of it, as the night wore by, never quite
knowing how he passed from one task to another, but following orders
blindly, hour after hour. He helped to dig, but was not quite so quick
as the others; he carried the sacks of sand that were brought up,
loaded high upon the wagons, but he had not the quick swing of the
more sturdy farmers. He found himself at last on the high, vibrating
seat of the heavy tractor, rumbling down the road with a line of
wagons behind him, stopping at the sand pits to have them filled, then
turning laboriously to haul them back again. The owner sat beside him
on the first trip, directing him how to manage the unfamiliar machine,
but as they made ready for a second he ejaculated, "You'll do," and
jumped down to labor with the diggers. Oliver was left to drive his
clumsy, powerful steed alone.
He saw the broad, semicircular wall of piled sandbags, banked with
earth, rise slowly as the men worked with feverish haste, he saw the
water come up to the foot of it, seem to hesitate, and then creep up
the side. He saw, suddenly, just as they had all stopped to breathe, a
long portion of the dike begin to tremble, then cave in with a
hideous, sucking crash that shook the ground under them, he saw the
flood of muddy water come roaring in and sweep against the painfully
built rampart which swayed and crumbled to its fall.
In a wild turmoil of running, shouting men, backing wagons and rearing
horses, he managed to extricate the clumsy monster that had been put
under his care, brought it laboring and snorting out on higher ground
and fell to work again. The barrier they had set up with so much toil
was tumbling and collapsing in great gaps where the hungry current
flung against it, but it held just long enough for them to raise
another wall, longer, higher, firmer than the other and built with the
frantic haste of desperate men.
The hours went by, it was long after midnight, with the sky growing
pale for the morning. Once or twice Oliver had seen Anthony Crawford
working among the rest, carrying sacks of sand, jostled and cursed by
the men about him, but in spite of their abuse, toiling steadily
onward. When the dike collapsed and the men ran for their lives, one
wagon lurched off the road; its driver was flung from the seat and
caught under the wheel, while the horses, having jammed the tongue
against the bank, reared and plunged helplessly. Oliver saw Anthony
Crawford run out, with the swift, muddy water flowing knee-deep around
him, watched him extricate the man, drag him to the seat, and back the
frantic horses away from the bank to bring them struggling through the
water to safety. There was no time for words of commendation. Both men
at once went back to their task of carrying sacks as the slow building
of another wall began.
Some one had built a fire on the knoll, and here the farmers' wives,
with Janet and Polly among them, were boiling coffee, frying bacon,
and serving out food to the hungry, worn-out men. Oliver had munched a
generous sandwich as he drove down the road. As he came back again he
noticed a strange lull and observed that the men were leaning on their
shovels and that the work had ceased. Tom Brighton, wet and muddy from
head to foot, motioned him to come near.
"We've done all we can," the big farmer beside them was saying, "the
sacks are nearly gone and the men are dead beat. If she breaks through
now, the whole valley will have to go under."
The water was halfway up the side of the earth-banked wall and was
still rising. Here and there a muddy trickle came oozing through, to
be stopped by a clod of earth, but otherwise there was nothing to do.
To Oliver it seemed that they stood for hours, staring, waiting as the
water lifted slowly, rose half an inch, paused and rose again. It was
three-fourths of the way up; it was a foot below the lip of the wall.
The space of a foot dwindled to six inches.
"If there should be a wind, now," said the man beside him hoarsely.
Oliver looked back along the valley at the arch of sky showing blue
instead of gray, at the trees moving gently in a morning breeze that
touched the hilltop, but that did not stir the still air below. He
heard Tom Brighton suddenly draw a sharp breath and he looked back
quickly. Was that space above the water a little wider, was there a
wet black line that stretched all along the rough wall where the flood
had touched and fallen again? He was not dreaming; it was true. The
level of the muddy tide was dropping, the crest of the flood had
passed.
It was broad daylight now, with the morning sunlight moving slowly
down the slope into the valley. For the first time Oliver could see
clearly the sullen, yellow pool of water, the crevasse in the dike,
and John Massey's little house, submerged to its very eaves. He
watched the shining streak of wet earth that marked the drop in the
water, he saw it broaden into a ribbon and from a ribbon turn into a
wide, glistening zone of safety that proved to all the danger had gone
by.
"We can go now," said Cousin Tom at last. "There is work enough still
to do, but it is time for us all to rest a little. We are certainly a
wet and weary-looking crew."
They had breakfast, all of the cousins together, at Cousin Jasper's
house, where Mrs. Brown, having spent half the night wringing her
hands in helpless anxiety, had seemed to spend the other half
superintending the preparation of a feast that should be truly worthy
of the occasion. The guests were all cheerful and were still so keyed
up by the struggle of the night that they did not yet feel weariness.
Anthony Crawford sat on one side of Cousin Jasper, Tom Brighton on
the other, while the three younger members of the party watched them
wonderingly from the other end of the table. Everything, for the
moment, seemed forgotten except the old comradeship of their boyhood.
The only reminder of the unhappy days just passed lay in the
atmosphere of relief and peacefulness that seemed to pervade the whole
house.
The windows stood wide open and the morning wind came in to lift the
long curtains and to stir the great bowl of flowers on the table.
Oliver, hungrily devouring chicken and rolls and bacon and sausages
and hot waffles with maple sirup, was saying little but was listening
earnestly to the jokes and laughter of Cousin Jasper. After a day and
night of anxiety, depression, struggle, and victory, he seemed
suddenly to have become a new man. They were talking, the three
elders, of their early adventures together, but Oliver noticed that
the reminiscences never traveled beyond a certain year, that their
stories would go forward to the time when they were nearly grown, and
then would slip back to their younger days again. Some black memory
was laid across the happy recollection of their friendship, cutting
off all that came after; yet they talked and laughed easily of the
bright, remote happiness that was common to them all. The boy noticed,
also, as they sat together, that Anthony was like the others in
certain ways, that his eyes could light with the same merriment as
Cousin Jasper's, and that his chin was cut in the same determined
line as Tom Brighton's. Yet--no--there was something about his face
that never could be quite like theirs.
They had finished at last, and Anthony Crawford, pushing back his
chair, came abruptly out of the past into the present. He thrust his
hand into the inner pocket of his coat and brought out some
legal-looking papers like those that Cousin Tom had locked away in the
tin box.
"Here is the deed that you made out, Jasper, for the house and the
land that you gave up to me. I put it in my pocket yesterday morning;
it seems a year ago. The purpose I had then is something that I would
rather forget, if I ever can. But this is what I do with it now."
He tore the heavy paper into pieces, smaller and smaller, as though he
could not demolish completely enough the record of what he had
demanded. The breeze from the garden sent the scraps fluttering over
the table and across the rug, it carried the round, red seal along the
tablecloth and dropped it into Janet's lap.
"Tom will have to make out some official papers," he said, "but I want
you to understand this fully, that there among those fragments lies
the end of this whole affair."
Cousin Jasper was about to speak, but Tom Brighton broke in ahead of
him.
"It has turned out better than we could have hoped, Anthony," he
began, "so that we can all agree to let bygones be bygones."
Anthony Crawford turned very slowly and looked, with those penetrating
gray eyes, at Oliver.
"We owe a great deal to these children here," he said, "and as for one
of them----"
Convinced that something was about to be said of him, Oliver got up
quickly, pretending that it was merely because he had finished his
breakfast and wished to be excused, hurried across the room, and
slipped out through one of the long windows that opened on the
terrace. He could still hear Anthony Crawford's voice, however, in the
room behind him saying:
"It was these children who found the leak in the dike; it was Oliver
who thought of going to look for it. It was Oliver who saw through me,
saw that I had not a shred of honor or honesty behind my claim and
told me what I was."
The boy moved farther away from the window so that he could not hear
and stood, his hands clenched on the terrace rail, looking out over
the garden, across the pools of color and stretches of green lawn,
over the wall and down the white road that led away the length of the
valley. No matter what words they might speak of him they could never
make him forget how he had walked away down that road, meaning to
leave all this vaguely understood trouble behind him. Only a chance
meeting, the Beeman's friendly smile, the interest of a story that
had caught him for a moment, and all would have been changed. No,
there should be no words of praise for him.
The voices were louder behind him, for the three men were passing
through the library, and Cousin Jasper was speaking just within.
"We still have to talk over this matter of rebuilding the dike," he
said. "We must have your advice in that, Anthony."
"Go into the study," Anthony Crawford replied. "I must speak to Oliver
for a moment."
He came out through the window while the others walked on together.
Oliver turned to face him.
"I am going now," Anthony said quietly. "I thought you would be ready
to help me when it was time."
Oliver reddened when he remembered the promptness of his offer the
evening before.
"Do you need to go," he said awkwardly, "when you are friends again
with every one here? Even the men in the valley don't hate you," he
added bluntly, "after what you did last night. I believe Cousin Jasper
will want you to stay."
"If I let him tell me so, I will not go," the other replied quickly.
"It must be this minute, while my mind is still made up, or never. I
will write to Martha to follow, I cannot even trust myself to wait for
her. It is better that I should go, better for them, in the study
there, better for the community, for myself, even better for you,
Oliver, I know. Come," he insisted, as the boy still hesitated, "my
confidence in you will be less great if you do not tell me that you
know it also."
"Yes," returned Oliver grudgingly at last. "Yes, I know it too."
They drove away down the rain-washed, empty road with the early
morning wind rushing about their ears. As they climbed to the highest
ridge, Anthony Crawford stood up to look back down the sun-filled,
green length of Medford Valley. Yet he did not speak until they had
reached the station, with the train thundering in just as they drew up
beside the platform.
"Good-by, Oliver," he said briefly.
The boy knew that the word of farewell was not for him but for all
that the man was leaving--friends, memories, the place that he had
loved in his strange, crooked way, all that he was putting behind him
forever. A bell rang, a voice shouted the unintelligible something
that stands for "All aboard," the train ground into motion, and he was
gone.
Almost every one in Medford Valley must have slept that morning
through the long hours until far past noon. But by four o'clock Oliver
had slumbered all his weariness away, and so had Janet. They were
restless after their excitement of the night before, and they found
the house very still and with Cousin Jasper nowhere visible. They went
out to the garage, got into the car, and set off along the familiar
way toward the Windy Hill.
"Just to see if they are there," as Oliver said to Janet.
They came up the slope through the grass and saw the blue wood smoke
rising lazily above them, unmistakable signal that the Beeman was at
work. Polly greeted them gayly, for she, like them, was quite
refreshed by the hours of slumber that had passed. Her father still
looked weary, as though he had spent the interval in troubled thought
rather than sleep, but he hailed them cheerily. All up and down the
hill was a subdued and busy humming, for the day after rain is the
best of all seasons for bees to gather honey.
"We thought we must find out what the storm had done to our hives,"
the Beeman said. "Only three were blown over, but there must have been
a great commotion. Now we have everything set to rights and we are not
in the mood, to tell the truth, for a great deal more work to-day."
"Are you too tired," Janet asked, "for--for a story?"
"No," he answered, "stories come easily for a man who has had training
as Polly's father. I thought there was no one like her for demanding
stories, but you are just such another."
They sat down on the grass with the broad shadow of the oak tree lying
all about them and stretching farther and farther as the afternoon sun
moved down the sky. They had chosen the steeper slope of the hill so
that they could look down upon the whole length of the winding
stream, the scattered house-tops, and the wide green of those
gardenlike stretches that still lay, safe and serene, ripening their
grain beside the river. The Beeman's eyes moved up and down the
valley, resting longest upon the slope opposite, where the yellow
farmhouse stood at the edge of its grove of trees and showed its wide
gray roof, its white thread of pathway leading up to the door, its row
of broad windows that were beginning to flash and shine under the
touch of the level rays of the sun.
"Poor Anthony," he said slowly at last, "to be banished from a place
he loved so much. And yet a person thinks it a little thing when he
first confuses right with wrong!"
He drew a long breath and then turned to the girls with his old cheery
smile.
"A story?" he repeated. "It will not be like the others, a tale from
old dusty chronicles of Medford Valley, to tell you things that you
should know. We have lived the last chapter of that tale and now we
will go on to something new."
Oliver leaned back luxuriously in the grass, to stare up at the clear
sky and the dark outline of the oak tree, clear-cut against the blue.
Its heavy branches were just stirring in the unfailing breeze that
blew in from the sea, and its rustling mingled sleepily with the
Beeman's voice as he began:
"Once upon a time----"
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