The day of the ordeal arrived. Mary could not remember any occasion to
which she had gone with such a sense of terror and misgiving, but this
neither Mr. Lewis nor any of his subordinates suspected. It had pleased
the management to call a morning rehearsal, so Mary had not been able to
go home before her matinée début. Tomorrow, if all went well, she could
remove her parents to a greater comfort, so it was her affair to see
that all went well.
Her mother had been less well than usual during these last few days and
Mary had impressed upon old Tom Burton the necessity of remaining on
watch during her own absence. But, out of the advance she had received,
Old Tom had drawn a small allowance, and it was remarkable how greatly
the manner of bartenders had changed for the better in the brief space
of a few days. By forenoon Thomas Standish Burton was more than tipsy,
and by two o'clock as he emerged from a side door his step was so
unsteady that he found the slippery footing a matter requiring studious
attention. Once he would have fallen had a policeman not caught his arm.
"I thank you, sir," acknowledged the old man, "I am deeply gra'fle,
sir."
"You're deeply loaded," replied the officer. "I ought to run you in for
your own protection."
"I'm sure--" Burton's eyes were watery and his voice thick--"you
wouldn't do that. M' wife's sick an'--"
"Well, get on back to her, and--if you want good advice--when you get
indoors, stay in." With a kindly tolerance the policeman assisted the
pedestrian across the street and watched him tack along until he was
lost to sight.
It was a bad day for uncertain feet and legs. The town lay locked in a
grip of ice which sheeted streets and sidewalks with a treacherous
danger. Horses struggled with hooves that shot outward, and children
slid merrily and the elderly picked their way with a guarded caution.
Old Tom Burton made the trip back to the lodging-house and up the double
flight of stairs in safety. One leg was a little painful, for in that
fine irony, which sometimes seems to prove Life a cynical humorist,
Thomas Standish Burton had been endowed with a single relic of wealth
and epicureanism--he suffered from gout. So, as he climbed, he
laboriously favored the crippled foot.
Then he opened the door of his wife's room and entered. But after one
step he stood still, then he brushed a sleeve across his eyes to see
more clearly. Elizabeth Burton lay, full length, on the floor near her
chair--and she seemed unconscious. The old man hurried over to her and
succeeded in lifting her weight to the bed. She must have suffered a
heart-attack and fallen as she tried to cross the room alone. A great
fear seized upon his heart and in some degree sobered him. He listened
for the heart-beat and clasped shaking fingers to a wrist that at first
seemed pulseless. But at last he found a faint flutter of life in the
body he had thought lifeless--so faint and wavering a flutter that it
seemed only a whispered echo of a departed vitality.
For a while he stood stupefied, then he thought of Mary. Of course, he
must send word to Mary. Perhaps, too, life could still be coaxed back,
if a doctor came quickly enough. Down the stairs he hobbled with a speed
that drove him into a sort of frantic and clumsy gallop. On the first
floor he knocked on the landlord's door and implored him to call a
physician at once, while he himself went out to the telephone.
The nearest instrument was in a saloon and hither the old man hurried.
Mary had given him the number of the stage 'phone, and he called it.
Despite the coldness of the afternoon, perspiration burst out and beaded
his forehead as he waited--only to hear the exasperating voice of the
operator announce, "Busy." Three times this was repeated and while he
waited, pacing frenziedly back and forth, he sought, after each
successive failure, to allay the jump and tremor of his shocked nerves
with whiskey, and he poured generously.
At last he had the theater number and was told that Miss Burton could
not answer just then, but a message would be delivered.
"Tell her to come home at once," he shouted wildly into the receiver.
"Her mother's dying."
"Wait," came the somewhat startled reply. Then after a moment a new and
truculent voice sounded in his ear.
"What is this," it demanded, "a bum joke you're trying to put over, or
what? Come home at once!--Don't you know a packed house is waiting to
see Miss Burton in her act? What do ye mean, come home at once?"
"But I tell you--"
"Go tell it somewhere else." Thomas Burton did not know that it was
Abey Lewis himself who spoke. "I don't believe you--you're trying to
string somebody--and if the Queen of China was dying she couldn't come
now anyways."
Slowly Abey Lewis turned from the receiver he had abruptly hung up and
beckoned the subordinate who had first taken the message.
"Don't mention this to anybody," directed the chief tersely. "Do you get
me? The girl mustn't hear it--and if any telegrams or messages come, you
bring 'em to me, first, see?" Then to the stage door-man he gave a
similar command, and looked at his watch. It was two forty-five. Mary's
act, held for the latter part of the bill, was not due for an hour. For
just a moment Mr. Lewis considered the advisability of advancing it on
the program. That might be safer--but also it would mar the climacteric
effect and so offend his sense of artistic fitness. He thought that,
after all, he had safeguarded matters well enough.
But Old Tom Burton had rushed out of the saloon and was hastening at his
awkward gallop to the Eighth-street station of the elevated. He was
going to tell Mary in person and to bring her home.
Around the turn of the rails he saw a train coming, and, urged by his
obsession of haste, he strove for a greater speed. The top steps were
slippery, and Old Tom was giddy and his legs uncertain. His foot shot
sideways without warning, and his body went hurtling backward. He
clutched desperately for the hand-rail and missed it. Down the long
flight of iron-edged stairs, in a bundle of ragged old humanity, he
rolled limply, and lay shapeless on the pavement. At once, a rush of
feet brought a little crowd, and the same policeman who had helped him
home earlier bent over him.
"Who is he?" asked someone, and the officer shook his head.
"Search me," he said. "He smells like a booze-barrel. I ought to have
locked him up the first time."
An ambulance came with much clanging of its gong, and when they examined
him at Bellevue, searching his pockets, they found some letters and
Mary's memorandum. So they learned his identity, and sent a telephone
message to the theater--to be followed a half-hour later by a second
announcing that life was extinct.
But while old Thomas was making his dash for the top of the stairs at
the elevated, the landlord, followed by a physician, tapped on the door
of the room Thomas Burton had left--and, receiving no response, the pair
went in. Swiftly the doctor labored, and as the powerful hypodermic
worked, the old woman rallied a little and her lids wavered and opened.
Her eyes wandered about the place and she spoke with a feeble voice.
"Who are you?"
"I am the doctor, but you mustn't try to talk," came the grave reply.
"Where are my children--my boys and my girl?" Elizabeth Burton's face
suddenly became a face of terror and her eyes dilated. "Where are my
children?" she once more demanded.
"There is no one here just now." The doctor spoke as soothingly as he
could. "You mustn't talk."
A spark of returned sanity crept into the dying woman's pupils and she
groaned. "No one here! I remember," she said while she shook with a
sudden realization. "I remember--they're all gone." Her gaze traveled
around the squalid room, and realized what that meant, too. "Am I
dying?" she inquired. The physician murmured something evasive, and from
her thin lips broke a low, smothered outcry. "Yes," she said, striving
to rise and falling back, "I'm dying--alone--abandoned--by myself--in
this attic."
Then her eyes closed. The physician bent over the bed with his fingers
on the pulse, and then bent his ear to the breast.
"We have nothing more to do here," he announced briefly, "except to
notify her daughter and the coroner. Have you the young woman's 'phone
number?"
The landlord nodded.
All of these scraps of information were received by Mr. Abey Lewis. He
had taken his place near the 'phone and stood sentinel there. But when
the second communication arrived he procured a pair of clippers from the
stage carpenter and quietly cut the connecting wire close to the wall
where it would not show. He was taking no imprudent chances.
* * * * *
Smitherton reached the theater early and stood for a while at the elbow
of the ticket-taker, watching the throngs crowd in. But at the
commencement of the performance he went inside and sat near the back of
the house. It was only when he knew that Mary's act was due in a few
minutes that he went behind. She might want just a word or smile of
encouragement at the final moment.
For Mary this had been a morning and afternoon of soul-trying torture
and she had been sustained only by the knowledge that she was doing what
she was doing not for herself--but for those helpless ones whom she
loved.
As the moment drew nearer, she strained more tightly that elastic and
strong thread of courage which had so far held. As an antidote to the
increased loathing she fixed her mind on one supporting thought and
tried to hold it focused there. Tomorrow she could begin looking for
better quarters, and then the two old people should return, not to the
lavish wealth of former times, but to its more essential comfort.
She heard the orchestra tuning for the overture, and shivered. She felt
much more like a victim waiting her turn to be thrown to the lions than
a young woman about to make her début as a "headliner." To herself she
kept repeating under her breath, "Tomorrow they will be comfortable
again." She did not know that already they were comfortable without her
assistance and that her ordeal was pitifully wasted.
Her fortitude wavered momentarily as she looked at her watch--wavered,
but held, and at last she found herself on the stage with no concise
recollection of how she had reached it, beyond a shadowy memory of
Smitherton's smiling face in the wings. The curtain rose, and the
public--part of it was the rabble--fed its eyes on the beauty they had
paid to see--the beauty of a fallen royalty.
There are times when vaudeville galleries are not excessively polite.
This was such a time. For a few moments Mary Burton had the stage to
herself, and her acting was in dumb-show. This was the author's device
for allowing the audience a full realization of her remarkable
beauty--and to the device the audience responded.
From high up among the hoodlums Mary caught, quite distinctly, long low
whistles of very sensual admiration and such critical epigrams as
"Wow!" "Oi-yoi!"... "Me for that!" and "_Some_ girl!"
She felt for an instant that she was standing there wrapped in a blaze
of shame, bound to a stake of vulgar heckling. Then suddenly a scornful
fire mounted through her arteries and with that serene and regal dignity
that added majesty to her beauty she went on as though this stage were
her rightful throne and those people out there were gazing up at her
from a ground level.
The act ran twenty-five minutes, during which time Mr. Lewis and Mr.
Smitherton stood together in the wings. Mr. Lewis rubbed his hands.
"I ask you, Smitherton," he inquired, "could we have arranged it better
if we was running the world ... first-page stories again tomorrow in
every paper in town. We'll have to hire the Hippodrome."
"First-page stories, what do you mean?"
Lewis looked at the young man and enlightened. "Oh, I forgot you didn't
know the latest. Well, the girl's mother is dead and the old man's just
followed suit in a pauper's cot in Bellevue. How's that for
heart-interest? You're a reporter. I ask you, will they feature that on
Park row? Will they give us space for _that_ I ask you?"
"And she went on ... my God!"
"Oh, of course I ain't told her yet," Mr. Lewis hastened to add. "She
might have gone up."
Smitherton caught him violently by the arm and backed him farther
against the wall. His own face was suddenly pale. "You withheld the news
and let her go on? You did that?"
But the vaudeville manager only gazed blankly back into those indignant
eyes and his face was full of perplexity.
"For God's sake, Smitherton, what are you pulling all this tragedy stuff
about? Ain't you her manager? Did you want the whole act queered? Wasn't
the old woman nutty and the old man a bum, and weren't they dead-weight
for her to carry? Didn't they have to die sometime--and could they ever
have picked a luckier time to do it? I ask you now, could they?"
"Great God!" exclaimed the reporter. But the manager went on.
"I call it a miracle of luck. God's good to some folks! Here that girl
gets all her troubles settled at a single stroke--and tomorrow she's the
biggest headliner on Broadway ... and you, the feller that ought to be
out hustling her business interests, stand there gaping like you was
sore because she didn't fliver. I don't get you."
Mr. Lewis's voice was freighted with disgust, then, seeing that the
climax had been reached on the stage, he turned away and signaled to
ring down. "Take all the curtains you can get out of it," he instructed
the stage-manager--as he once more rubbed his hands.
Smitherton stood silent, seeing the curtain descend, then rise and fall
time after time to a thunder of applause. He saw Mary Burton, with all
her distaste masked behind the regal tranquillity of her splendid eyes
and her cruelly wasted courage, bowing, not like an actress, but like an
empress. Then she passed them and closed the door of her dressing-room.
Smitherton heard Lewis' voice once more, accompanied by something like a
sigh. "Now comes the tough part," said the manager. "I've got to go and
break it to her. Of course, just at first she ain't likely to see the
lucky side of it."
The reporter stopped him.
"To hell with you!" he cried out fiercely. "I'll tell her myself--and if
you interrupt me or say a word to her--I'm going to hurt you."
He went slowly to the door, but the manager had followed him with some
excitement, and with no realization that his voice was loud, as he
prompted.
"Put it to her tactful. Remind her that she's made on Broadway, and, now
that the old man and old woman are both dead, she's free."
The dressing-room door suddenly opened, and they saw the girl standing
there unsteadily, but as they approached she took a backward step and
leaned against the wall.
Her eyes had slowly widened, as they had widened before under the
sickening and staggering blows of tragedy. Her lips moved to speak, but
for a while could shape no words. From her shaken bosom came a long and
pitiful moan, which was not loud, and then her voice returned, and she
said, "I heard you. They are--gone."
Smitherton knew that words could hardly help. He closed the door again
and turned aside. Even Lewis moved away and stood silent.
But a few minutes later the dressing-room door once more swung outward
and they saw her at the threshold. She had thrown a cloak around her.
The deadly pallor of her cheeks was grotesquely heightened by the
remnants of rouge which her shaking fingers had failed to completely
remove. Her eyes were wide and staring, gazing into the future or the
past ... into eternity it might have been.
Mr. Abey Lewis laid a hand on her arm.
"Miss Burton," he suggested, "you ain't quite got the paint off yet. It
needs a little more cold cream, still." But Mary did not hear him. She
heard nothing; saw nothing of these surroundings which stood for the
pitifully wasted crucifixion of all her instincts of delicacy.
"This evening at eight," the manager reminded her. "Don't forget--and
maybe you'll feel better then."
For a moment she halted. She had reached the stage-door, other
performers were leaving the theater. She gazed back into the face of Mr.
Abey Lewis, and said blankly, "This evening--what is this evening?"
They sought to stop her, but there was something in those wide eyes that
petrified them all. For the time Mr. Lewis remained as one hypnotized.
The door-man was gazing at her with an expression of awe and wonderment.
Mary herself stood there with the cloak falling open so that the
convulsive throbbing of her throat was laid bare. The two marvelous and
mismated eyes looked at them all and did not see them. The sister of
Hamilton Burton, the woman whom two continents had toasted, was seeing
other things. "Let me pass," she commanded, and they stood aside and saw
her go out into the gathering night and the blizzard.
Smitherton rushed after her.
"Let me at least put you in a taxi'," he pleaded, but she shook her
head.
"You can do only one thing now," she said. "For God's sake, leave me
alone."
Though he knew she was in no condition to be left to herself, the spell
of those eyes was upon him, too. It was impossible to disobey. He stood
there and saw her turn the corner, buffeted by the wind, and disappear.
Then he became conscious of a newsboy's shrieking: "Last 'dition--All
'bout the Burton trad-egy!"
Part III
THE MOUNTAIN TOP
THE STORY THAT WAS
CHAPTER XXXV
It was a June day with the sparkle and lilt of summer's brightest and
tunefulest mood in the sky and a softness and warmth in the air. The
most distant peaks of the mountains slept in a quiet and purple glory
and their nearer slopes still held a forest-freshness undulled by heat
and sunburn.
Deep in the woods of the White Mountains the wild flowers were springing
joyously and the birds were pouring out the fulness of life and joy and
love from trilling throats.
The waters of Lake Forsaken were like a mirror holding in their still
bosom all the vivid color which summer paints into its first and
sweetest days while an after-note of spring's youth still lingers. The
blue of the sky was broken only by white cloud-sails that rode high and
buoyant in the upper air currents, like galleons of dreams, and all
these things were given back in reflection from depths where the bass
leaped and the sun shimmered. On the lake's farther margin a red-brown
shape came down with careful feet gingerly lifted and set down, to raise
its antlered head. But the gentle eyes were not charged with fear, for
this was a season of security and truce with mankind.
If the world held trouble anywhere, no shadow of its passing riffled or
marred the landscape here. And yet in this smile and song of nature,
there must be a certain disregard for human affairs, because the
movement which held the deer's gaze, as he stood there at the water's
edge, looking across the width of Lake Forsaken, was the movement of
human beings trailing along the road in a funeral cortège.
The road along which it traveled was no longer a deeply scarred trail,
rutted through its clay surface by the hauling of lumber. It was metaled
and smooth. There were many changes in the character of things
hereabouts--all changes which attested that the curse of decay and
hopeless sterility had been lifted. Off through a rift in the hills
loomed the white concrete abutment of an aqueduct--and through the
valley wound a railroad. A man might have walked many miles and come
upon few deserted habitations, preyed upon by the twin vandals Time and
Decay and staring blankly out through unglazed windows. What had once
been a land of abandoned farms, a battle-ground where poverty had fought
and defeated humanity, was now a land redeemed. Honest thrift and
substantial comfort had crowned it with reclamation.
The church to which the hearse was making its way had also changed in
aspect. The tumbledown building had become a more worthy house of
worship, unelaborate, but renewed. Its belfry stood upright and on the
Sabbath spoke out in the music of its chimes. Graves where once the
headstones had teetered in neglect lay now in rows of ordered care, and
those who slept in them no longer slept among the briars of over-grown
thickets.
About the building, waiting for the coming of a new tenant in the acre
of the dead, were gathered a score or more of neighbors, because the
body which was to be laid to rest today had been, in life, the member of
a family which they delighted to honor and respect.
Along the stone wall which skirted the road, and under the wild apple
trees, were hitched the wagons and buggies that had brought them from
many miles around, across the hills. Some of them came from houses far
back where roads narrowed and grew precipitous.
Yet even among those who stood waiting in the churchyard near the
reminder of an open grave, the lyric tunefulness of this June morning
refused to surrender unconditionally to sadness. Off between the fence
and the rising slope of the nearest hill a ripple ran across a yellow
field of buckwheat and from a fence-post a golden-breasted lark sang
merrily.
Those who had arrived earliest gossiped of such commonplace matters as
make the round of life where small things take the place of large
excitement, and their faces were not gloomy faces. Young men and girls
among them were strolling apart, and the smiles in their eyes told that
to them death was an incident, but June and love a nearer fact--a thing
closer to their youth.
Then around the turn came the procession which they awaited--a hearse,
followed by several buck-boards and buggies.
At the open gate it halted and the pall-bearers lifted down the casket
from its place, and bore it to the spot which had been prepared for its
reception. There were no formal designs from the shop of any florist,
but from every neighborhood garden had come contributions out of that
wealth which this golden month was squandering in blossom. Roses and
peonies and a brave display of those varied flowers that go in rows
about old-fashioned gardens had been gathered and brought by
sympathetic hands.
But it was chiefly upon the woman who came here to bury the last of her
dead that the bared heads turned eyes of reverent interest. At her side
walked a young farmer, whose tanned face and curling hair and
straight-gazing gray eyes proclaimed a robust and simple manhood.
The girl herself was well worth looking at, even had she not claimed
interest by reason of her bereavement. She walked straight and lithe and
upright with the free grace of some wild thing, as though she shared
with the deer which had looked across the lake the untrammeled strength
of the hills. She was slender, but the fine lines of her figure were
rounded to the fullness of perfect health, and the color of her cheeks,
though now paler than their wont, was like that of delicate rose-leaves,
and her lips were the curved petals of a deeper blossom. Her hair, under
a black mourning hat, tangled in the meshes of its heavy coils the glint
of sunlight on amber and brightened now and then into a hint of
burnished copper, but the features which must have challenged the gaze
of any observer not dead to a sense of color and beauty were the
marvelous and mismated eyes. One was a rich brown like illuminated agate
with a fleck or two of jet across the iris, while its twin was of a
colorful violet and deeply vivid. Now, of course, the heavy lashes were
wet with tears, but the gorgeous beauty of the eyes was not dimmed.
She stood there by the open grave and the masses of simple flowers, with
summer and June and green hills and blue skies at her back; and, of all
their loveliness, she might have been a living impersonation.
The preacher whose duty it was to give a rendering of the burial rites
had grown old in this pastorate, and to him all these people were his
children. He had been with many of them at baptism, he had married them
and buried their dead; they were his flock, and they listened to his
words as to one ripe in wisdom and sainted in his life.
He looked about the little burial ground and his eyes took on an earnest
light and his voice a deep thrill as he spoke.
"If," said he, "there is anywhere a spot which is hallowed ground it is
this spot where we are now laying to her eternal rest what yesterday was
mortal of Elizabeth Burton. She is, save her daughter, the last of the
name to be taken; and in that greater life to which she goes, she will
be reunited with those who loved her and who went before.
"She will share with them--" the preacher paused for a moment then went
on--"the glory of reward which, I think, God loves best to bestow upon
those who, with steadfast unselfishness, have lived simple lives and
left their fellows better for having lived. I do not know how God
measures the deeds of men, or with what degrees of reward he fixes their
place in Paradise; but I feel that I stand on holy ground as my eyes
wander here and fall upon these graves where the Burtons sleep. I know
that once this was a land of want and misery; a country of abandoned
farms. Today I look about me, and, under skies that seem to sing, I see
a land redeemed. It was not redeemed by great wealth from without, but
by resolution and dauntless effort from within. I have spoken of the
headstones that mark these graves, but the Burtons have a nobler
monument. The roads and schools and the aqueduct--all the things that
transformed the land are memorials to the man who lies just there
beyond this grave where today we place his mother. On that slab we find
only the dates of birth and death and the name of Hamilton Burton; but
when I look at it, I seem to read a nobler epitaph in letters of bronze
which no weather can dim or tarnish. I seem to read--'Here lies one who
put aside a blazing dream to cast his lot into a life of humbler duty.'
If he who makes two blades of grass grow where one had grown before has
done a noble thing, then surely he who has turned a land of want into a
land of independence and made crops grow where none grew before has won
his place near the throne."
Again the aged pastor paused and his eyes grew misty. With bared heads
bent and a stillness broken only by the rustle of the breeze through the
trees and the song of a bird, his listeners stood attentive, and he
resumed.
"I need not tell you, for you know, what the energy and loyal
steadfastness of Hamilton Burton have done for these hills. What they
were when he came to manhood and what they are now is the answer to
that--an answer which needs no further eulogium. But there is a thing,
which you may not know, for I think--once his hard decision was made--he
never spoke of that again. Yet now I wish to speak of it. It is a thing
which should put the name of Hamilton Burton among those of the
great--the humble great. In his boyhood heart blazed a mighty vision. In
his brain burned a hunger for conquest. The man who dwelt so simply here
among us, working a regeneration, and who died among us, still young,
was gifted with a power which he might have put to more selfish uses.
Standing in the wintry loneliness of a mountain snowstorm, his eyes
could see visions of mighty things and his soul could dream unmeasured
dreams. His heart beat responsively to an inward voice which assured him
that he might equal and surpass the greatness of Destiny's greatest
sons. He fretted for a larger world, knowing that in it he could
conquer. In Hamilton Burton dwelt the soul of a Napoleon or a Cæsar ...
he might have built an empire."
The voice had grown fervent as it rose with its words, then the speaker
let it fall again to quieter tones.
"And these roads and schools and this aqueduct and these redeemed acres
are the monument to the sacrifice which turned its back on such a dream
as that. Hamilton Burton wrestled with his soul's hunger and conquered
it. He elected to remain here, fighting at the head of his own community
for his own land, and finding contentment in the realization that he had
done his duty. At one time--for his forcefulness was great--he had
persuaded his family to countenance his great adventure--and then he
dreamed. It seemed to him that he had looked ahead, and the whole great
panorama of the life which lay before him, should he take that turning
of the road, passed in review. Hamilton Burton did not take it. _He
remained here._ His work was the work of the sons of Martha.
"'As in the thronged and the lightened ways, so in
the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days, that their brethren's
days may be long in the land.'
"If Hamilton Burton put aside such ambitions as most of us never know in
our dreams, and chose the humbler combat of a simple life, close to
God's immortal granite, you have all been sharers in the benefit of his
decision.
"And as it was with him, so in a lesser way it was with those others who
sleep here close beside him.
"'Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.'"
In the pause which followed a low breath of reverent surprise ran
through the crowd that stood about the speaker. They had lived day by
day with Hamilton Burton until his death, and none of them had, in the
shoulder-touch of life, ever suspected those deeper things of which now
for the first time they heard. They were hearing it all from lips which
were to them as the lips of a prophet. But the preacher was not through.
"And there was Paul. You all knew him and loved him. A nature was given
him at birth almost too delicate for a world of hard affairs, but
fragrant with a tenderness of love for his fellow-men. He was attuned to
harmony and his heart was that of a troubadour.
"Here in this little place of our worship, his fingers on the keys have
often led us nearer to God's presence than could the poor and broken
messages I tried to preach to you. For the other world was always close
to Paul Burton and there was a magic in his minstrelsy, which was a
gift from God. I sometimes wonder if in a less simple world he could
have been so happy or if his life would have been so unmarred, away from
the songs of birds and the lilt of mountain breezes. But among us he,
too, lived and died--because Hamilton Burton turned his back on the lure
of the mirage his dreaming eyes had seen. Even now when Paul has gone,
those chimes, which you put there above our church in memory of him,
seem to sing of the things for which he stood. When their notes peal out
on the Sabbath and go softly across the valley, I like to imagine that,
through the nobler music which immortal ears may hear, he still catches
their echo.
"There, close together, stand two more headstones, and beneath them
sleep the father and the aunt of these men. Thomas Burton, too, lived
out a life of stalwart worth. To all men, his fearless character and
unshakable integrity were precepts. He went his way and looked into
every eye that met his own. In the activities that have wrought these
changes, he was always the first and last to work with tireless zeal.
When the railroad came it was through his untiring effort. He held the
determination with fighting Burton courage that adversity should not
drive him from the land his forefathers had conquered.
"In wondering what things would have befallen all these people had a
lad's ambition led them into a different life, I find myself treading
paths of doubt. Perhaps noble achievements might have resulted--but I
know that in remaining here they have made our land to blossom and to me
it seems enough. I can, for some reason, no more think of Thomas Burton
transplanted without hurt than I can think of some great patriarch of
the forest, which has buffeted storms and hail for decades, being
uprooted and planted anew in a trim garden and a different clime. Then
he died, too--
"'And as he trod that day to God, so walked he from his birth,
In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean mirth.'"
The speaker talked deliberately. At times his voice mounted into a sort
of oratorical fire. At times it fell until his listeners bent forward
that they might miss none of his words. Now and again he would stop
altogether and his eyes would turn to the blue skies, and when they did
a devout and intense light glowed in their pupils. His hearers were
simple and easily touched and an occasional sob came from the women.
"I said that Hamilton Burton died young," he resumed. "He died almost a
boy with a boy's youthful heart beating in his bosom. If he could so
bring out of desolation a land like this, while yet he was hardly a man
in years, who can say that his dream of power was all a dream? If he who
never left these hills and never saw the world beyond save as he saw it
in the exaltation of his flaming imagination, could do such things, what
man can say that with maturity and opportunity he might not have become
a Cæsar? But the feet of these people never trod beyond the nearer ways
of a simple life. Hamilton Burton burned to go out and try the eagle's
wings of his life. He had won the acquiescence of his family. He did not
go. None of them went. They lived here and died here and they fought
discontent, and to my mind they were conquerors of the earth."
Once more there was a pause and after it came other words.
"I suppose that they all dreamed. After the stress of that hurricane of
powerful personality, with which the boy had won them to his heart's
desire, these people could never have again lived their simple lives
without dreams coming--and doubts. To say, 'God knows best,' meant to
repress the disturbing thoughts that must have often arisen.
"In these hills boys become men, and one boy became something more. This
was a family of beautiful and devoted love. The brothers were what God
meant brothers to be, friends whose hearts were linked. For every member
of this little group of one blood, all the others felt a mighty bond of
affection. And here they stayed." The four words might have been the
text, and through the talk it ran with the insistence of a refrain,
until it sank into the brain of every man and every woman who listened.
"Here they stayed, and if each one of them thought often of what may
have been given up by that decision, no one of them said so.
"Perhaps Paul, with the golden pattern of his dreams, may often have
mused upon what the outer world could have given him. Perhaps he thought
of himself as swaying audiences with his fingers on the keys and dreamed
of lips that parted and eyes that grew misty--because they listened to
the voices he could send pealing to their hearts. But he stayed here and
the audiences that sat spellbound were those little neighborhood
audiences, who stood a long way off from a full understanding of his
soul's ethereal web and woof.
"Perhaps Thomas Burton, whose hands were calloused with toil, sometimes
permitted himself to think, at the end of his day's labors, of the ease
and comfort which might have come to him, had his son's great ambition
actually drawn him into mighty battles and victories instead of only
beckoning him.
"Perhaps the woman, who must have felt that her children were not
ordinary children, may have shed a tear at times, because she was denied
the triumph of beholding their triumph. _But they stayed_--and if their
peaceful lives were troubled with misgivings, at least they knew that
this was certain and that doubtful--and that, while they might miss much
of achievement, they also missed much of peril, for none can say what a
journey means along an untried road. Who knows what an epic their lives
might have spelled--or what tragedy? But they stayed.
"And now we are gathered to do homage by the grave of the woman whose
quiet life ran its course with theirs--the woman who bore these children
and taught them, at her knee, those lessons which made them
benefactors--and although we stand in the presence of death, it seems to
me that we stand, too, in the presence and the glory of that life which
is above death--and we stand on hallowed ground."
He ended, and about him was the solemnity of simple hearts, stirred and
responsive, and over him was the serenity of June, and the warmth of the
earth pregnant with fruitfulness.
When it was over, the crowd scattered to their vehicles and the wheels
clattered over the metaled roads, but in the burial ground, when all the
rest were gone, two figures tarried.
For a moment the minister also stayed after the crowd had left. He went
over to the girl and spoke softly, with a hand laid tenderly on her
shoulder.
"My daughter," he said simply, "you, too, have conquered. Every woman
has something of restless yearning in her eyes at some time. To a woman
with great charm and beauty the world sings a siren song. I saw this
thing in your eyes--and soul. I saw it come and go--and I knew that you
had won your fight, and won through to life's sweetest benison. You have
love. These lives are ended, but yours is beginning." Then he, too,
turned away, and only the girl and young man were left.
Mary's beautiful eyes were bright with tears, and, as she stood there
slim and straight, her companion came close and his arm slipped about
her. For a moment she seemed unconscious of his presence, then she
turned and her eyes looked steadfastly into his, and as they looked they
smiled through their mistiness.
"Mary"--the man's voice was earnest and very tender--"Mary, I know that
now you're thinking about other things and they're very sacred things.
Besides, my heart is overflowing and words don't give it enough power of
expression. Since I fell in love with you life has been all poetry to
me--but not a poetry of words.... You are thinking of them--" He paused
and his sober eyes took in the headstones, lingering for a moment on
this newest grave upon which the flowers were banked. They were fine
eyes, for in them dwelt an intrinsic honesty and courage, and, though it
was a moment of deep gravity, the little wrinkles that ran out from them
were assurances that they were often laughing eyes. This man seemed to
fit into the picture of the hills with the appropriateness of the
native-born. In his free-flung shoulders and broad chest was the health
of the open, but on one finger he wore a heavily carved ring from which
glowed the cool light of a large emerald, and in his scarf was a black
pearl, which hardly seemed characteristic of native wear. Then he went
on:
"But, after all, Mary, they lived good lives and died good deaths,
and--" he hesitated, then said slowly--"and, after all, it's June, and
you and I are young. Can't it always be June for us, dear?"
A bird from a great oak lifted its voice. It was a happy bird and would
tolerate no sadness. It caroled to its mate and to the sky and through
her tears Mary Burton smiled and the gorgeous vividness of her face was
illuminated.
"While we've got each other," she said, "I guess it can be June."
Suddenly she put out her slender, but strong, young hands and caught his
two arms, and stood there looking at him.
"Once, dear," she said, "when I was a very little girl, I used to dream
of going out and seeing all the wonderful things beyond those hills. I
used to dream of having rich men and titled men come to me and make
love. I used to cry because I thought I was ugly--and then I met you by
the roadside--and you were my fairy prince--but I didn't guess you were
going to be my own--for always."
Jefferson Edwardes smiled and into his eyes came a fervent glow.
"I can see you now," he said, "as you stood that first day I ever saw
you, when I told you that your beauty would be the beauty of
gorgeousness--when I warned you that the only thing you need ever fear
was--the loss of your simplicity. The woods were flaming at your back,
but your loveliness outblazed their color, and then you were a thin
little girl--a trifle chippendale in plan."
In spite of her sadness a smile came to her lips.
"And you were fighting your fight for life--with only an even chance.
Suppose--" she shuddered--"suppose you had lost it!"
"I had too much to live for," he assured her. "I couldn't lose it. You
and your hills gave me life and a dream, and you and your hills laid
their claim upon me. How could I lose?"
"I've lain awake at night," said Mary Burton, as her long lashes drooped
with the confession of her heart. "I've lain awake at night wondering
if--now that you don't have to stay--if your own world won't call you
back--away from me. I've thought of all it holds for you--and how little
these mountains hold. I've wondered if your heart didn't ache for
foreign lands and wonderful cities--and all those things. If it does,
dear--" she paused and said very seriously--"you mustn't let me keep you
here. I belong here, but you--" The words fell into a faint note and
died away unfinished.
"How little these hills hold for me," he exclaimed in a dismayed voice,
"when they hold you!" Then he laughed and told her as his eyes dwelt
steadfastly and with worship on her face, "I belong here no less than
you. This has been the land of my salvation and of my love. For me it is
enough. I have traded the unrest of cities for the tranquillity of the
hills and the clamor of unhappy streets for the echoes of the woods, and
the woods sing of you as the streets could never sing. I have traded at
a splendid profit, dear."
"And you won't tire of it--and of me?"
"I wish life could be long enough to give me a fair test of that," he
smiled, and then he added in a serious voice, "It is in the cities that
men and women grow tired. It is under artifice that the soul wearies.
That life I knew, and left with the bitterness of exile--but that was
long ago. When I go into it now, it shall be only for the joy of coming
back here again--of coming home."
The girl looked up into his face, and the breeze fluttered a tendril of
curl against her temple.
"You were the first person who ever called me pretty." Through the
sadness of her face came a glimmer of shy merriment. "You said I was--as
beautiful as starlight on water."
"Mary, Mary!" The lover caught her slender figure in his strong arms and
held her so close that her breath came fragrantly against his tanned
cheek. "You _are_ as beautiful as starlight on water, and to me you're
more beautiful. You're the sun and moon and stars and music--you're
everything that's fine and splendid!"
"For your sake," she said shyly, "I wish I were much more beautiful."
Even the near shadow of death cannot banish the god of love. Mary Burton
felt the arms of the man she loved about her, and her eyes as she looked
into his face unmasked their secrets until he could read her soul and
its message. For the moment they had forgotten all else. Then, quite
abruptly, her expression changed and became rapt, almost frightened.
Slowly she straightened up and her pupils dilated as though they were
seeing something invisible to other eyes. Her lips parted and she drew
away from his grasp and stood gazing ahead. Then she brushed one arm
across her forehead. With instant alarm Edwardes caught her shoulders.
"What is it?" he demanded. "Is anything wrong?"
She shook her head and spoke wonderingly with a far-away, detached sort
of utterance. "I don't know what it was--I guess I was a little faint."
But she still stood with an awed and bewildered fixity upon her face and
after a little while, he asked slowly:
"Did you ever seem to see and hear something as though it had come out
of a different life; as though you were living it over again?"
He smiled and shook his head. "I've often heard of such things," he
reassured. She had been nursing her mother through a long illness;
perhaps, he thought, the strain had left her nervous.
"It was as real as if it had truly happened," she assured him as she put
up both hands and pressed her fingers against her temples. "You were
standing there--right where you are standing now, and you smiled--like
you smiled at me that day in the road.... There were little wrinkles
around your eyes."
"That is all real enough," he laughed. "I was and am doing all those
things."
"Yes, I know, but--" Once more she shook her head and her voice carried
the detached tone of a trance-like vagueness--"but somehow it was all
different. You were you--and I was I--and yet we were in another life
... we didn't seem to belong here ... and there seemed to be some
terrible danger hanging over us."
"Did we seem to talk?" he asked her.
"Yes." The girl's words came very low but with a tense emphasis. "You
said, _'Maybe there's some land beyond the stars where every mistake we
make here can be remedied ... where we can take up our marred lives and
live them afresh as we have dreamed them. Perhaps in that other world we
can go back to the turning of the road where we lost our ways and
choose the other path.'_ You said that and then after a moment you
smiled again."
"It's strange," said the young man. He unconsciously took off his hat,
baring the curly hair over the tanned face. He was very wholesome and
honest and strong, and the girl's eyes lighted into a smile of pride and
love.
"Yes," she said. "It was you and me--in some other life. I don't know
what it means--but somehow it seems to--to guarantee everything."
They turned and walked together to the last buggy hitched against the
stone wall under the wild apple trees.
After a while she demanded--"After you got well--why did you stay here?"
and as promptly as an echo came his answer--
"Because _you_ stayed."
* * * * *
The moon was up early that night and it flooded the mountains with a
glory of silver mists. The shoulders of the peaks stood out in blue
barriers, strong, abiding, beautiful. In the valleys it was all a
nocturne of dove grays and dreamlike softness. The stars, too, shone
down in a million splinters of happy light, but the radiance of the moon
paled them.
The vines which covered the walls of the Burton house hung out their
lacy tendrils and through the windows came the soft glow of lamplight.
There was nothing dreary or poverty-stricken about the old farm-house
now. From its front, where every shutter, by day, shone in the healthy
trim of fresh paint, to the gate upon the road went rows of flowers,
nodding their bright heads above the waving grass. The barns at the
back stood substantial and in repair, and now out beyond the road, Lake
Forsaken mirrored the stars and broke in light when a fish leaped under
the moon.
Mary Burton and her lover walked down to the gate, and he said simply:
"Now, dear, there is nothing more to hold you here. If you still long to
see beyond the sky-line, I can take you wherever you want to go."
But she wheeled and laid a hand in protest on his arm.
"No!" she exclaimed tensely. "No, this is where I belong." After a
moment she went on. "Life holds enough for me here. This is home to me.
I don't want anything else."
"I am glad. It's what I hoped to hear you say," he responded. "I don't
think somehow I could be as happy anywhere else, but the world's a big
place and you--you have the right to the best it holds--anywhere."
"Once, dear, you know," she told him gravely, "we threshed that out and
we had almost made up our minds to leave here. We were almost
whipped--and Ham had his dreams. He wanted to go out and try life in a
bigger world--and you recognized his power. I wanted it all, too--but we
stayed. I don't know what would have happened if we hadn't, but I do
know--" she looked up into his face and smiled; into her eyes came a
regal serenity--"I do know that I don't have to go out and hunt for
life--life has come to me, and I'm happy."
The man caught her to him and she clasped her hands behind his head.
Before them was June and starlight and youth and life--and love. He bent
his head and pressed his lips to hers and felt her heart beat against
his own.
In the mirror of Lake Forsaken, back of her, gleamed the splintered
light of a thousand stars, and in his heart gleamed a million.
"As beautiful as starlight on water," he whispered.