Twenty miles out from Paradise, and fifteen miles short of Sunrise
City, Bildad Rose, the stage-driver, stopped his team. A furious snow
had been falling all day. Eight inches it measured now, on a level.
The remainder of the road was not without peril in daylight, creeping
along the ribs of a bijou range of ragged mountains. Now, when both
snow and night masked its dangers, further travel was not to be
thought of, said Bildad Rose. So he pulled up his four stout horses,
and delivered to his five passengers oral deductions of his wisdom.
Judge Menefee, to whom men granted leadership and the initiatory as
upon a silver salver, sprang from the coach at once. Four of his
fellow-passengers followed, inspired by his example, ready to explore,
to objurgate, to resist, to submit, to proceed, according as their
prime factor might be inclined to sway them. The fifth passenger, a
young woman, remained in the coach.
Bildad had halted upon the shoulder of the first mountain spur. Two
rail-fences, ragged-black, hemmed the road. Fifty yards above the
upper fence, showing a dark blot in the white drifts, stood a small
house. Upon this house descended--or rather ascended--Judge Menefee
and his cohorts with boyish whoops born of the snow and stress. They
called; they pounded at window and door. At the inhospitable silence
they waxed restive; they assaulted and forced the pregnable barriers,
and invaded the premises.
The watchers from the coach heard stumblings and shoutings from the
interior of the ravaged house. Before long a light within flickered,
glowed, flamed high and bright and cheerful. Then came running back
through the driving flakes the exuberant explorers. More deeply
pitched than the clarion--even orchestral in volume--the voice of
Judge Menefee proclaimed the succour that lay in apposition with
their state of travail. The one room of the house was uninhabited, he
said, and bare of furniture; but it contained a great fireplace, and
they had discovered an ample store of chopped wood in a lean-to at
the rear. Housing and warmth against the shivering night were thus
assured. For the placation of Bildad Rose there was news of a stable,
not ruined beyond service, with hay in a loft, near the house.
"Gentlemen," cried Bildad Rose from his seat, swathed in coats and
robes, "tear me down two panels of that fence, so I can drive in. That
is old man Redruth's shanty. I thought we must be nigh it. They took
him to the foolish house in August."
Cheerfully the four passengers sprang at the snow-capped rails. The
exhorted team tugged the coach up the slant to the door of the edifice
from which a mid-summer madness had ravished its proprietor. The
driver and two of the passengers began to unhitch. Judge Menefee
opened the door of the coach, and removed his hat.
"I have to announce, Miss Garland," said he, "the enforced suspension
of our journey. The driver asserts that the risk in travelling the
mountain road by night is too great even to consider. It will be
necessary to remain in the shelter of this house until morning. I beg
that you will feel that there is nothing to fear beyond a temporary
inconvenience. I have personally inspected the house, and find that
there are means to provide against the rigour of the weather, at
least. You shall be made as comfortable as possible. Permit me to
assist you to alight."
To the Judge's side came the passenger whose pursuit in life was the
placing of the Little Goliath windmill. His name was Dunwoody; but
that matters not much. In travelling merely from Paradise to Sunrise
City one needs little or no name. Still, one who would seek to divide
honours with Judge Madison L. Menefee deserves a cognomenal peg upon
which Fame may hang a wreath. Thus spake, loudly and buoyantly, the
aërial miller:
"Guess you'll have to climb out of the ark, Mrs. McFarland. This
wigwam isn't exactly the Palmer House, but it turns snow, and they
won't search your grip for souvenir spoons when you leave. _We've_ got
a fire going; and _we'll_ fix you up with dry Tilbys and keep the mice
away, anyhow, all right, all right."
One of the two passengers who were struggling in a _mélée_ of horses,
harness, snow, and the sarcastic injunctions of Bildad Rose, called
loudly from the whirl of his volunteer duties: "Say! some of you
fellows get Miss Solomon into the house, will you? Whoa, there! you
confounded brute!"
Again must it be gently urged that in travelling from Paradise
to Sunrise City an accurate name is prodigality. When Judge
Menefee--sanctioned to the act by his grey hair and widespread
repute--had introduced himself to the lady passenger, she had, herself,
sweetly breathed a name, in response, that the hearing of the male
passengers had variously interpreted. In the not unjealous spirit of
rivalry that eventuated, each clung stubbornly to his own theory. For
the lady passenger to have reasseverated or corrected would have seemed
didactic if not unduly solicitous of a specific acquaintance. Therefore
the lady passenger permitted herself to be Garlanded and McFarlanded and
Solomoned with equal and discreet complacency. It is thirty-five miles
from Paradise to Sunrise City. _Compagnon de voyage_ is name enough, by
the gripsack of the Wandering Jew! for so brief a journey.
Soon the little party of wayfarers were happily seated in a cheerful
arc before the roaring fire. The robes, cushions, and removable
portions of the coach had been brought in and put to service. The
lady passenger chose a place near the hearth at one end of the arc.
There she graced almost a throne that her subjects had prepared. She
sat upon cushions and leaned against an empty box and barrel, robe
bespread, which formed a defence from the invading draughts. She
extended her feet, delectably shod, to the cordial heat. She ungloved
her hands, but retained about her neck her long fur boa. The unstable
flames half revealed, while the warding boa half submerged, her
face--a youthful face, altogether feminine, clearly moulded and calm
with beauty's unchallenged confidence. Chivalry and manhood were here
vying to please and comfort her. She seemed to accept their devoirs--not
piquantly, as one courted and attended; nor preeningly, as many of her
sex unworthily reap their honours; not yet stolidly, as the ox receives
his hay; but concordantly with nature's own plan--as the lily ingests
the drop of dew foreordained to its refreshment.
Outside the wind roared mightily, the fine snow whizzed through the
cracks, the cold besieged the backs of the immolated six; but the
elements did not lack a champion that night. Judge Menefee was
attorney for the storm. The weather was his client, and he strove by
special pleading to convince his companions in that frigid jury-box
that they sojourned in a bower of roses, beset only by benignant
zephyrs. He drew upon a fund of gaiety, wit, and anecdote,
sophistical, but crowned with success. His cheerfulness communicated
itself irresistibly. Each one hastened to contribute his own quota
toward the general optimism. Even the lady passenger was moved to
expression.
"I think it is quite charming," she said, in her slow, crystal tones.
At intervals some one of the passengers would rise and humorously
explore the room. There was little evidence to be collected of its
habitation by old man Redruth.
Bildad Rose was called upon vivaciously for the ex-hermit's history.
Now, since the stage-driver's horses were fairly comfortable and his
passengers appeared to be so, peace and comity returned to him.
"The old didapper," began Bildad, somewhat irreverently, "infested
this here house about twenty year. He never allowed nobody to come
nigh him. He'd duck his head inside and slam the door whenever a team
drove along. There was spinning-wheels up in his loft, all right. He
used to buy his groceries and tobacco at Sam Tilly's store, on the
Little Muddy. Last August he went up there dressed in a red bedquilt,
and told Sam he was King Solomon, and that the Queen of Sheba was
coming to visit him. He fetched along all the money he had--a little
bag full of silver--and dropped it in Sam's well. 'She won't come,'
says old man Redruth to Sam, 'if she knows I've got any money.'
"As soon as folks heard he had that sort of a theory about women and
money they knowed he was crazy; so they sent down and packed him to
the foolish asylum."
"Was there a romance in his life that drove him to a solitary
existence?" asked one of the passengers, a young man who had an
Agency.
"No," said Bildad, "not that I ever heard spoke of. Just ordinary
trouble. They say he had had unfortunateness in the way of love
derangements with a young lady when he was young; before he contracted
red bed-quilts and had his financial conclusions disqualified. I never
heard of no romance."
"Ah!" exclaimed Judge Menefee, impressively; "a case of unrequited
affection, no doubt."
"No, sir," returned Bildad, "not at all. She never married him.
Marmaduke Mulligan, down at Paradise, seen a man once that come from
old Redruth's town. He said Redruth was a fine young man, but when you
kicked him on the pocket all you could hear jingle was a cuff-fastener
and a bunch of keys. He was engaged to this young lady--Miss
Alice--something was her name; I've forgot. This man said she was the
kind of girl you like to have reach across you in a car to pay the fare.
Well, there come to the town a young chap all affluent and easy, and
fixed up with buggies and mining stock and leisure time. Although she
was a staked claim, Miss Alice and the new entry seemed to strike a
mutual kind of a clip. They had calls and coincidences of going to the
post office and such things as sometimes make a girl send back the
engagement ring and other presents--'a rift within the loot [86],' the
poetry man calls it.
[FOOTNOTE 86: rift . . . loot--Tennyson, _Idylls of the King:
Merlin and Vivien_:
"It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all."]
"One day folks seen Redruth and Miss Alice standing talking at the
gate. Then he lifts his hat and walks away, and that was the last
anybody in that town seen of him, as far as this man knew."
"What about the young lady?" asked the young man who had an Agency.
"Never heard," answered Bildad. "Right there is where my lode of
information turns to an old spavined crowbait [87], and folds its
wings, for I've pumped it dry."
[FOOTNOTE 87: spavined crowbait--a lame, emaciated horse (from
spavin, an inflammation of the tarsal or ankle
joint of a horse, causing lameness, and an
appearance that causes carrion birds to think a
meal is in the offing)]
"A very sad--" began Judge Menefee, but his remark was curtailed by a
higher authority.
"What a charming story!" said the lady passenger, in flute-like tones.
A little silence followed, except for the wind and the crackling of
the fire.
The men were seated upon the floor, having slightly mitigated its
inhospitable surface with wraps and stray pieces of boards. The man
who was placing Little Goliath windmills arose and walked about to
ease his cramped muscles.
Suddenly a triumphant shout came from him. He hurried back from a
dusky corner of the room, bearing aloft something in his hand. It was
an apple--a large, red-mottled, firm pippin, pleasing to behold. In
a paper bag on a high shelf in that corner he had found it. It could
have been no relic of the lovewrecked Redruth, for its glorious
soundness repudiated the theory that it had lain on that musty shelf
since August. No doubt some recent bivouackers, lunching in the
deserted house, had left it there.
Dunwoody--again his exploits demand for him the honours of
nomenclature--flaunted his apple in the faces of his fellow-marooners.
"See what I found, Mrs. McFarland!" he cried, vaingloriously. He held
the apple high up in the light of the fire, where it glowed a still
richer red. The lady passenger smiled calmly--always calmly.
"What a charming apple!" she murmured, clearly.
For a brief space Judge Menefee felt crushed, humiliated, relegated.
Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished
man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover
the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a
function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece
of comedy--and have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, the lady
passenger was regarding this ridiculous Dunboddy or Woodbundy with
an admiring smile, as if the fellow had performed a feat! And the
windmill man swelled and gyrated like a sample of his own goods,
puffed up with the wind that ever blows from the chorus land toward
the domain of the star.
While the transported Dunwoody, with his Aladdin's apple, was
receiving the fickle attentions of all, the resourceful jurist formed
a plan to recover his own laurels.
With his courtliest smile upon his heavy but classic features, Judge
Menefee advanced, and took the apple, as if to examine it, from the
hand of Dunwoody. In his hand it became Exhibit A.
"A fine apple," he said, approvingly. "Really, my dear Mr. Dudwindy,
you have eclipsed all of us as a forager. But I have an idea. This
apple shall become an emblem, a token, a symbol, a prize bestowed by
the mind and heart of beauty upon the most deserving."
The audience, except one, applauded. "Good on the stump, ain't he?"
commented the passenger who was nobody in particular to the young man
who had an Agency.
The unresponsive one was the windmill man. He saw himself reduced to
the ranks. Never would the thought have occurred to him to declare his
apple an emblem. He had intended, after it had been divided and eaten,
to create diversion by sticking the seeds against his forehead and
naming them for young ladies of his acquaintance. One he was going to
name Mrs. McFarland. The seed that fell off first would be--but 'twas
too late now.
"The apple," continued Judge Menefee, charging his jury, "in modern
days occupies, though undeservedly, a lowly place in our esteem.
Indeed, it is so constantly associated with the culinary and the
commercial that it is hardly to be classed among the polite fruits.
But in ancient times this was not so. Biblical, historical, and
mythological lore abounds with evidences that the apple was the
aristocrat of fruits. We still say 'the apple of the eye' when we wish
to describe something superlatively precious. We find in Proverbs the
comparison to 'apples of silver [88].' No other product of tree or
vine has been so utilised in figurative speech. Who has not heard of
and longed for the 'apples of the Hesperides [89]'? I need not call
your attention to the most tremendous and significant instance of the
apple's ancient prestige when its consumption by our first parents
occasioned the fall of man from his state of goodness and perfection."
[FOOTNOTE 88: apples of silver--_Proverbs_ XXV: "A word fitly
spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of
silver."]
[FOOTNOTE 89: apples of the Hesperides--the eleventh labor of
Hercules was to retrieve the golden apples of Zeus,
which were guarded by a hundred-headed dragon and
by the Hesperides, daughters of Atlas]
"Apples like them," said the windmill man, lingering with the
objective article, "are worth $3.50 a barrel in the Chicago market."
"Now, what I have to propose," said Judge Menefee, conceding an
indulgent smile to his interrupter, "is this: We must remain here,
perforce, until morning. We have wood in plenty to keep us warm. Our
next need is to entertain ourselves as best we can, in order that the
time shall not pass too slowly. I propose that we place this apple in
the hands of Miss Garland. It is no longer a fruit, but, as I said,
a prize, in award, representing a great human idea. Miss Garland,
herself, shall cease to be an individual--but only temporarily, I am
happy to add"--(a low bow, full of the old-time grace). "She shall
represent her sex; she shall be the embodiment, the epitome of
womankind--the heart and brain, I may say, of God's masterpiece of
creation. In this guise she shall judge and decide the question which
follows:
"But a few minutes ago our friend, Mr. Rose, favoured us with an
entertaining but fragmentary sketch of the romance in the life of
the former possessor of this habitation. The few facts that we have
learned seem to me to open up a fascinating field for conjecture, for
the study of human hearts, for the exercise of the imagination--in
short, for story-telling. Let us make use of the opportunity. Let each
one of us relate his own version of the story of Redruth, the hermit,
and his lady-love, beginning where Mr. Rose's narrative ends--at
the parting of the lovers at the gate. This much should be assumed
and conceded--that the young lady was not necessarily to blame for
Redruth's becoming a crazed and world-hating hermit. When we have
done, Miss Garland shall render the JUDGEMENT OF WOMAN. As the Spirit
of her Sex she shall decide which version of the story best and most
truly depicts human and love interest, and most faithfully estimates
the character and acts of Redruth's betrothed according to the
feminine view. The apple shall be bestowed upon him who is awarded the
decision. If you are all agreed, we shall be pleased to hear the first
story from Mr. Dinwiddie."
The last sentence captured the windmill man. He was not one to linger
in the dumps.
"That's a first-rate scheme, Judge," he said, heartily. "Be a regular
short-story vaudeville, won't it? I used to be correspondent for a
paper in Springfield, and when there wasn't any news I faked it. Guess
I can do my turn all right."
"I think the idea is charming," said the lady passenger, brightly. "It
will be almost like a game."
Judge Menefee stepped forward and placed the apple in her hand
impressively.
"In olden days," he said, profoundly, "Paris awarded the golden apple
to the most beautiful."
"I was at the Exposition," remarked the windmill man, now cheerful
again, "but I never heard of it. And I was on the Midway, too, all the
time I wasn't at the machinery exhibit."
"But now," continued the Judge, "the fruit shall translate to us
the mystery and wisdom of the feminine heart. Take the apple, Miss
Garland. Hear our modest tales of romance, and then award the prize
as you may deem it just."
The lady passenger smiled sweetly. The apple lay in her lap beneath
her robes and wraps. She reclined against her protecting bulwark,
brightly and cosily at ease. But for the voices and the wind one might
have listened hopefully to hear her purr. Someone cast fresh logs upon
the fire. Judge Menefee nodded suavely. "Will you oblige us with the
initial story?" he asked.
The windmill man sat as sits a Turk, with his hat well back on his
head on account of the draughts.
"Well," he began, without any embarrassment, "this is about the way I
size up the difficulty: Of course Redruth was jostled a good deal by
this duck who had money to play ball with who tried to cut him out of
his girl. So he goes around, naturally, and asks her if the game is
still square. Well, nobody wants a guy cutting in with buggies and
gold bonds when he's got an option on a girl. Well, he goes around
to see her. Well, maybe he's hot, and talks like the proprietor, and
forgets that an engagement ain't always a lead-pipe cinch. Well, I
guess that makes Alice warm under the lace yoke. Well, she answers
back sharp. Well, he--"
"Say!" interrupted the passenger who was nobody in particular, "if you
could put up a windmill on every one of them 'wells' you're using,
you'd be able to retire from business, wouldn't you?"
The windmill man grinned good-naturedly.
"Oh, I ain't no _Guy de Mopassong_," he said, cheerfully. "I'm
giving it to you in straight American. Well, she says something like
this: 'Mr. Gold Bonds is only a friend,' says she; 'but he takes me
riding and buys me theatre tickets, and that's what you never do.
Ain't I to never have any pleasure in life while I can?' 'Pass this
chatfield-chatfield thing along,' says Redruth;--'hand out the mitt to
the Willie with creases in it or you don't put your slippers under my
wardrobe.'
"Now that kind of train orders don't go with a girl that's got any
spirit. I bet that girl loved her honey all the time. Maybe she only
wanted, as girls do, to work the good thing for a little fun and
caramels before she settled down to patch George's other pair, and be
a good wife. But he is glued to the high horse, and won't come down.
Well, she hands him back the ring, proper enough; and George goes away
and hits the booze. Yep. That's what done it. I bet that girl fired
the cornucopia with the fancy vest two days after her steady left.
George boards a freight and checks his bag of crackers for parts
unknown. He sticks to Old Booze for a number of years; and then the
aniline and aquafortis gets the decision. 'Me for the hermit's hut,'
says George, 'and the long whiskers, and the buried can of money that
isn't there.'
"But that Alice, in my mind, was on the level. She never married, but
took up typewriting as soon as the wrinkles began to show, and kept
a cat that came when you said 'weeny--weeny--weeny!' I got too much
faith in good women to believe they throw down the fellow they're
stuck on every time for the dough." The windmill man ceased.
"I think," said the lady passenger, slightly moving upon her lowly
throne, "that that is a char--"
"Oh, Miss Garland!" interposed Judge Menefee, with uplifted hand, "I
beg of you, no comments! It would not be fair to the other
contestants. Mr.--er--will you take the next turn?" The Judge
addressed the young man who had the Agency.
"My version of the romance," began the young man, diffidently clasping
his hands, "would be this: They did not quarrel when they parted.
Mr. Redruth bade her good-by and went out into the world to seek his
fortune. He knew his love would remain true to him. He scorned the
thought that his rival could make an impression upon a heart so fond
and faithful. I would say that Mr. Redruth went out to the Rocky
Mountains in Wyoming to seek for gold. One day a crew of pirates
landed and captured him while at work, and--"
"Hey! what's that?" sharply called the passenger who was nobody in
particular--"a crew of pirates landed in the Rocky Mountains! Will you
tell us how they sailed--"
"Landed from a train," said the narrator, quietly and not without some
readiness. "They kept him prisoner in a cave for months, and then they
took him hundreds of miles away to the forests of Alaska. There a
beautiful Indian girl fell in love with him, but he remained true to
Alice. After another year of wandering in the woods, he set out with
the diamonds--"
"What diamonds?" asked the unimportant passenger, almost with
acerbity.
"The ones the saddlemaker showed him in the Peruvian temple," said the
other, somewhat obscurely. "When he reached home, Alice's mother led
him, weeping, to a green mound under a willow tree. 'Her heart was
broken when you left,' said her mother. 'And what of my rival--of
Chester McIntosh?' asked Mr. Redruth, as he knelt sadly by Alice's
grave. 'When he found out,' she answered, 'that her heart was yours,
he pined away day by day until, at length, he started a furniture
store in Grand Rapids. We heard lately that he was bitten to death by
an infuriated moose near South Bend, Ind., where he had gone to try to
forget scenes of civilisation.' With which, Mr. Redruth forsook the
face of mankind and became a hermit, as we have seen.
"My story," concluded the young man with an Agency, "may lack the
literary quality; but what I wanted it to show is that the young lady
remained true. She cared nothing for wealth in comparison with true
affection. I admire and believe in the fair sex too much to think
otherwise."
The narrator ceased, with a sidelong glance at the corner where
reclined the lady passenger.
Bildad Rose was next invited by Judge Menefee to contribute his story
in the contest for the apple of judgment. The stage-driver's essay was
brief.
"I'm not one of them lobo wolves," he said, "who are always blaming on
women the calamities of life. My testimony in regards to the fiction
story you ask for, Judge, will be about as follows: What ailed Redruth
was pure laziness. If he had up and slugged this Percival De Lacey [90]
that tried to give him the outside of the road, and had kept Alice in
the grape-vine swing with the blind-bridle [91] on, all would have been
well. The woman you want is sure worth taking pains for.
[FOOTNOTE 90: Percival De Lacey--possibly derived from Maurice
De Bracy in Sir Walter Scott's _Ivanhoe_]
[FOOTNOTE 91: blind-bridle--a bridle with flap-like extensions
partly covering the horse's eyes to prevent him
from looking to the side or turning his head to
the side]
"'Send for me if you want me again,' says Redruth, and hoists
his Stetson, and walks off. He'd have called it pride, but the
nixycomlogical name for it is laziness. No woman don't like to run
after a man. 'Let him come back, hisself,' says the girl; and I'll be
bound she tells the boy with the pay ore to trot; and then spends her
time watching out the window for the man with the empty pocket-book
and the tickly moustache.
"I reckon Redruth waits about nine year expecting her to send him a
note by a nigger asking him to forgive her. But she don't. 'This game
won't work,' says Redruth; 'then so won't I.' And he goes in the
hermit business and raises whiskers. Yes; laziness and whiskers was
what done the trick. They travel together. You ever hear of a man with
long whiskers and hair striking a bonanza? No. Look at the Duke of
Marlborough and this Standard Oil snoozer. Have they got 'em?
"Now, this Alice didn't never marry, I'll bet a hoss. If Redruth had
married somebody else she might have done so, too. But he never turns
up. She has these here things they call fond memories, and maybe a
lock of hair and a corset steel that he broke, treasured up. Them
sort of articles is as good as a husband to some women. I'd say she
played out a lone hand. I don't blame no woman for old man Redruth's
abandonment of barber shops and clean shirts."
Next in order came the passenger who was nobody in particular.
Nameless to us, he travels the road from Paradise to Sunrise City.
But him you shall see, if the firelight be not too dim, as he responds
to the Judge's call.
A lean form, in rusty-brown clothing, sitting like a frog, his arms
wrapped about his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. Smooth,
oakum-coloured hair; long nose; mouth like a satyr's, with upturned,
tobacco-stained corners. An eye like a fish's; a red necktie with a
horseshoe pin. He began with a rasping chuckle that gradually formed
itself into words.
"Everybody wrong so far. What! a romance without any orange blossoms!
Ho, ho! My money on the lad with the butterfly tie and the certified
checks in his trouserings.
"Take 'em as they parted at the gate? All right. 'You never loved me,'
says Redruth, wildly, 'or you wouldn't speak to a man who can buy you
the ice-cream.' 'I hate him,' says she. 'I loathe his side-bar buggy;
I despise the elegant cream bonbons he sends me in gilt boxes covered
with real lace; I feel that I could stab him to the heart when he
presents me with a solid medallion locket with turquoises and pearls
running in a vine around the border. Away with him! 'Tis only you I
love.' 'Back to the cosy corner!' says Redruth. 'Was I bound and
lettered in East Aurora? Get platonic, if you please. No jack-pots for
mine. Go and hate your friend some more. For me the Nickerson girl on
Avenue B, and gum, and a trolley ride.'
"Around that night comes John W. Croesus. 'What! tears?' says he,
arranging his pearl pin. 'You have driven my lover away,' says little
Alice, sobbing: 'I hate the sight of you.' 'Marry me, then,' says John
W., lighting a Henry Clay. 'What!' she cries indignantly, 'marry you!
Never,' she says, 'until this blows over, and I can do some shopping,
and you see about the licence. There's a telephone next door if you
want to call up the county clerk.'"
The narrator paused to give vent to his cynical chuckle.
"Did they marry?" he continued. "Did the duck swallow the June-bug?
And then I take up the case of Old Boy Redruth. There's where you
are all wrong again, according to my theory. What turned him into a
hermit? One says laziness; one says remorse; one says booze. I say
women did it. How old is the old man now?" asked the speaker, turning
to Bildad Rose.
"I should say about sixty-five."
"All right. He conducted his hermit shop here for twenty years. Say
he was twenty-five when he took off his hat at the gate. That leaves
twenty years for him to account for, or else be docked. Where did he
spend that ten and two fives? I'll give you my idea. Up for bigamy.
Say there was the fat blonde in Saint Jo, and the panatela brunette at
Skillet Ridge, and the gold tooth down in the Kaw valley. Redruth gets
his cases mixed, and they send him up the road. He gets out after they
are through with him, and says: 'Any line for me except the crinoline.
The hermit trade is not overdone, and the stenographers never apply to
'em for work. The jolly hermit's life for me. No more long hairs in
the comb or dill pickles lying around in the cigar tray.' You tell me
they pinched old Redruth for the noodle villa just because he said he
was King Solomon? Figs! He _was_ Solomon. That's all of mine. I guess
it don't call for any apples. Enclosed find stamps. It don't sound
much like a prize winner."
Respecting the stricture laid by Judge Menefee against comments upon
the stories, all were silent when the passenger who was nobody in
particular had concluded. And then the ingenious originator of the
contest cleared his throat to begin the ultimate entry for the prize.
Though seated with small comfort upon the floor, you might search
in vain for any abatement of dignity in Judge Menefee. The now
diminishing firelight played softly upon his face, as clearly
chiselled as a Roman emperor's on some old coin, and upon the thick
waves of his honourable grey hair.
"A woman's heart!" he began, in even but thrilling tones--"who can
hope to fathom it? The ways and desires of men are various. I think
that the hearts of all women beat with the same rhythm, and to the
same old tune of love. Love, to a woman, means sacrifice. If she be
worthy of the name, no gold or rank will outweigh with her a genuine
devotion.
"Gentlemen of the--er--I should say, my friends, the case of Redruth
_versus_ love and affection has been called. Yet, who is on trial? Not
Redruth, for he has been punished. Not those immortal passions that
clothe our lives with the joy of the angels. Then who? Each man of
us here to-night stands at the bar to answer if chivalry or darkness
inhabits his bosom. To judge us sits womankind in the form of one of
its fairest flowers. In her hand she holds the prize, intrinsically
insignificant, but worthy of our noblest efforts to win as a guerdon
of approval from so worthy a representative of feminine judgment and
taste.
"In taking up the imaginary history of Redruth and the fair being
to whom he gave his heart, I must, in the beginning, raise my voice
against the unworthy insinuation that the selfishness or perfidy or
love of luxury of any woman drove him to renounce the world. I have
not found woman to be so unspiritual or venal. We must seek elsewhere,
among man's baser nature and lower motives for the cause.
"There was, in all probability, a lover's quarrel as they stood at
the gate on that memorable day. Tormented by jealousy, young Redruth
vanished from his native haunts. But had he just cause to do so? There
is no evidence for or against. But there is something higher than
evidence; there is the grand, eternal belief in woman's goodness, in
her steadfastness against temptation, in her loyalty even in the face
of proffered riches.
"I picture to myself the rash lover, wandering, self-tortured, about
the world. I picture his gradual descent, and, finally, his complete
despair when he realises that he has lost the most precious gift life
had to offer him. Then his withdrawal from the world of sorrow and the
subsequent derangement of his faculties becomes intelligible.
"But what do I see on the other hand? A lonely woman fading away as
the years roll by; still faithful, still waiting, still watching for a
form and listening for a step that will come no more. She is old now.
Her hair is white and smoothly banded. Each day she sits at the door
and gazes longingly down the dusty road. In spirit she is waiting
there at the gate, just as he left her--his forever, but not here
below. Yes; my belief in woman paints that picture in my mind. Parted
forever on earth, but waiting! She in anticipation of a meeting in
Elysium; he in the Slough of Despond."
"I thought he was in the bughouse," said the passenger who was nobody
in particular.
Judge Menefee stirred, a little impatiently. The men sat, drooping, in
grotesque attitudes. The wind had abated its violence; coming now in
fitful, virulent puffs. The fire had burned to a mass of red coals
which shed but a dim light within the room. The lady passenger in her
cosy nook looked to be but a formless dark bulk, crowned by a mass
of coiled, sleek hair and showing but a small space of snowy forehead
above her clinging boa.
Judge Menefee got stiffly to his feet.
"And now, Miss Garland," he announced, "we have concluded. It is for
you to award the prize to the one of us whose argument--especially,
I may say, in regard to his estimate of true womanhood--approaches
nearest to your own conception."
No answer came from the lady passenger. Judge Menefee bent over
solicitously. The passenger who was nobody in particular laughed low
and harshly. The lady was sleeping sweetly. The Judge essayed to take
her hand to awaken her. In doing so he touched a small, cold, round,
irregular something in her lap.
"She has eaten the apple," announced Judge Menefee, in awed tones, as
he held up the core for them to see.