familiar face four thousand miles from home seems more familiar than
it really is. Miss Northrop answered confidingly: "I will tell you all
about it, and then you will know what to do. I wrote to Judge
Garvey--some one referred me to him at Sacramento--and asked if I
might teach the school. He wrote back that I might, fixed the day, and
directed me to a boarding-place that he had engaged for me. So I came
by yesterday evening's train, and sent word that I was here. This
morning he called and told me--with most oppressive civility--that as
I had not answered his last letter, the place had been given to some
one else. He said 'professional etiquette' here demands an answer in
such a case, and failure to answer is equivalent to a withdrawal of
the application."
"He lied," said Will, parenthetically, walking along with his eyes on
the ground; she, on the contrary, looked at him often, with frank
directness.
"He did not impress me," she said, "as the soul of candor. I said as
little as possible to him, but when he was gone I asked about the rest
of the committee, and as soon as I heard your name I hoped it was you;
I knew you were somewhere in California. This afternoon I received his
letter written to prevent my coming. It had followed me up here by the
same train that I came on." She held the letter in her hand, and Will
quietly took it and kept it. "I would not raise any controversy about
such a thing," she went on, "if I had any idea in the world where else
to go or what to do." Her voice sharpened a little again, with a note
of pathos.
Will did not know how to answer without seeming to question or
comment, so there came a pause; then he said:
"This Coakley was an electioneering agent of Garvey's, and doesn't
know enough to teach babies. He seems to have turned up suddenly
wanting help, and the Judge is willing enough to keep him on hand and
under obligations until next election."
Miss Northrop stopped short and looked at him with brows a little
raised, and her bearing became impalpably more distant.
"But I cannot enter into contest with--these men for permission to
teach school here," she said.
She was right, in her quick feeling that Will Strong's training could
not have made work and discomfort and contact with vulgarity seem
outside the sphere of women. If it had been one of his own sisters he
would have said: "Oh, well, we have to take the world as we find it.
Brace up, little girl; I'll put you safe through, and you'll find it's
not so bad, after all."
But what he said to Winifred Northrop was: "It is outrageous! Such
brutes as Garvey have no business to look at a lady! If you really
prefer not to take the school," he went on, with some embarrassment,
"I hope you will call on me to help you in any other way; but if you
want the school you shall have it, and no annoyance with it that I can
help."
Miss Northrop repented that she had repented her confidence. "I
remembered that you were kind of old, Will"--and her manner was
irresistibly winning when she said such a thing--"but you are so very
kind now that you make me ashamed. I only meant to ask you what I must
do. Yes, I must take this position if I can, for I have no
alternative."
"There is nothing for you to do," he said. "It is my place, as an
officer of the school, to see that its rightful teacher is not
defrauded."
"So it is," she said, relieved. "But I am none the less grateful."
"It is a pleasure to me to be able to do anything for you," he said,
gravely, somewhat stiffly--from his tone you would not have suspected
much more truth than usual in the formula.
She only said: "You are very kind," and then he lifted his hat, and
left her at Mrs. Stutt's gate.
He deliberately and literally believed, as he walked down the
street--directly to Green's--that he was the happiest man in the
world. For that matter, it is not impossible that he was. He was
absolutely innocent of conscious hyperbole in saying, "It would be
worth a life-time of trouble only to have _seen_ her; and I know her
and am able to do her a service!"
He scored one advantage in having seen Miss Northrop early; he saw
Green before Garvey had talked with him. The report of the quarrel had
by no means failed to reach "The American Eagle," and when Strong came
in Uncle Billy Green was just expressing himself with regard to
Coakley:
"Of course the Judge'll provide for his man when he gets a chance.
That's where he's sharp. And if Coakley is smart enough to suit Judge
Garvey, he's smart enough to teach _my_ children--that's what _I_
say."
A private audience with him would have been merely postponing the hour
of general discussion, so Strong made a brief exposition of his
case--gently enough, but with considerable force--then and there,
displaying the letter he carried by way of proof. He hardly expected
to elicit anything but the usual laugh and comment on the Judge's
smartness. But there was a marked seriousness of tone in the remarks
when he ended.
"Well, that _is_ pretty rough."
"Yes, sir, that's going too far. The Judge ought to know where to
stop. I don't stand by no man when it comes to a shabby trick on an
unprotected school-marm."
"A real lady, too--I could see that when she went by with you,
Strong."
Even Green said, uneasily, "No, I shouldn't think the Judge ought to
do that, quite."
It was evident that Green's Ferry drew its lines as much as any other
town. The moral support it offered Strong was mainly negative,
however, and Green, after several alternate conversations with his two
fellow trustees during this Saturday evening, went off early Sunday
morning to visit his married daughter at the old Meeker place, leaving
word that they must fix it between them. Judge Garvey closed the
somewhat stormy conference of Saturday evening with a promise to break
down Miss Northrop's school in a week, and Strong's paper in a month.
"Do you flatter yourself I should not have had your contemptible sheet
in powder under my feet, sir, before this, if I had thought it worth
the attention?" Nevertheless, as there was nothing on which the Judge
prided himself more than on his invariable civility to ladies ("the
courtly Judge" was his favorite phrase in writing up a local notice of
any affair at which he had been present), Strong, having possession of
the school-house key, was able to put Miss Northrop into possession on
Monday morning without opposition. The Judge even visited her during
the day and addressed the school with extreme suavity.
He was, however, very seriously affronted, and had not passed his
Sunday without diligent preparation among parents and children to make
Miss Northrop's position untenable. It would have been no difficult
task, either, but for an altogether unprecedented obstacle--a factor
that he had not dreamed of in his calculations, and that Strong
himself had underestimated. The children, who had gone to school
Monday morning primed for mutiny, surrendered their hearts in a body
to Miss Northrop by night; three days later, Uncle Billy Green's
niece, who taught the primary school, gave in adoring allegiance; by
the end of the week everybody who had seen her was her advocate. It
was certainly an unprecedented thing that Judge Garvey's best
exertions should come to naught, because of a woman's way of smiling
and speaking; but Miss Northrop's tenure of the school was secure. It
was not entirely speech and smile, however. Miss Northrop was
interested in everything, and consequently had common ground with
everybody; and she met each one on that ground, not so much ignoring
as temporarily forgetting differences.
The year wore on from gray to gray; the parching north wind poured
down the plain and darkened the air with gritty dust; the sky, though
cloudless, grew murkier every day. Then the wind shifted to the south,
and the sky grew darker yet with surging heaps of clouds, and at last
down came the late November rain; and next morning Miss Northrop could
see, like a miraculous creation of the night, up and down every
east-and-west street, a range of azure mountains along either horizon,
snow-crowned, clear-cut, against an exquisite blue sky. Every two or
three weeks the surge of clouds would come rolling up with the south
wind, and the rain would come down in torrents for days, till the
Sacramento, yellow with mud, roared level with its banks; and then the
storm would break away, and there would be a week or two of blue sky
and brilliant air and green earth.
One Sunday in March, between the early and the latter rains, Miss
Northrop and Will Strong walked out together several miles over the
plain. The gravel had long disappeared under green burclover and
_filaria_, thickly dotted with the little yellow clover blossoms, the
lilac ones of the _filaria_, and with small blue gilias. The flocks
and herds had been driven down from the mountains where they spend
their summers and autumns, and the air was full of the bleating of
lambs. Up and down either horizon, converging toward the north, were
the long ranks of the Sierras and Coast Range, deep blue, ruggedly
tipped with white peaks of all shapes--the Lassen Buttes, the Yallo
Balleys, and many a lesser one. Northward, in the interval between the
ranges, miles and miles away, the solitary peak of Shasta rose above
the dark oak-knolls, sharp-white from base to tip, against a stainless
sky. They sat down on the warm clover, beside a noisy yellow stream
that ran full to its banks on its way to the Sacramento. Winifred
pushed back her hat, dropped her hands in her lap, and let her senses
be played upon by the delicious air, the blue and white of mountains
and sky and clouds, the luminous green, the rushing of water close by,
and the bleating of flocks in the distance. It gave Will a good chance
to watch her face--the sweetness of the mouth; the nobility of the
level brows; the frankness of the eyes; the soft wave of her hair.
There was a marked sadness in her face in repose; to wonder why, was
to transgress the code of loyal humility that Will set himself; he had
not even considered it due chivalry to speculate, much less ask, as to
the reason of so amazing a phenomenon as her presence in California at
all, and the incongruity of her school-teaching. Her pose was perfect,
and yet nothing could be more unconscious. Was that marvellous
spontaneity, that simple dignity, the regular thing among the men and
women Winifred belonged with? It made him feel left very far out to
think so. How incapable of effort for admiration she was, yet how
invariably admirable!
She caught him looking at her, in time. "What is it?" she said,
simply.
He colored with some confusion, but confessed a piece of his thought.
"I was wondering if you really do not care at all for admiration. Most
people would think they got the good of their living in being praised
a fraction as much as you've been. If that's impertinent I beg your
pardon; you asked me."
The portion of aristocrat's pride that was in Winifred was largely
concentrated in an objection to talking of herself or letting other
people do it; so she looked a little annoyed. She began with some
constraint:
"Yes--I care--at first--when it is the right one that praises. But
there is always a reaction of self-distrust. It seems humiliating,"
she went on more frankly, "to have been praised for having done some
common thing--solved a problem, or written a poem, or handled a
piano--a little more or less cleverly, when one comes to think what
education and art are. And _personal_ admiration--that always seems a
contemptible sort of folly, if you think of what great things there
are to do and be in the world, and the lives the great lonely souls
have lived."
"Your achievement seems little to you," said Will, with some gloom,
"because, I suppose, more always opens to you. To me, who have made
none--"
"Why, Will," she cried, with the most genuine dissent. "You have done
more than almost any one I know. Do you call it nothing to do a
college curriculum alone and under all sorts of hindrances? And I know
that it was done well and thoroughly."
"Oh, yes," he said, indifferently, tossing bits of clover into the
stream, "I could have passed an A. B. fast enough. But you know better
than I do, Winifred, that that's the least of a college course. I've
seen fellows that had to work their way through and had no spare time
or energy, and they always lacked a great deal of the college flavor;
the education didn't permeate 'em. Then there are other things--music,
art, social opportunities, capacity of expression--that are no slight
things to miss; they make up more of first-class living than Greek
optatives or the equation of a surface. It isn't really possible for a
man, not backed by circumstances, to get himself into a position that
some are born to." He let the clover be and looked up. "Oh, I'm not
growling, Winifred," he said, hastily, smiling, as he saw her about to
speak eagerly. "I'm only making philosophical observations, and using
myself as an illustration. Why in the world should I growl to find
myself stranded half way up, when there is a townful of people behind
us clear down at the bottom, and no more their fault than mine? Why
should I mind that I am left out from the best chances, any more than
that a thousand other fellows are? 'What Act of Legislature was there
that' _I_ should be cultured?"
She was leaning forward with her irresistible eyes full on his, and
face and voice vivified with that sympathetic expressiveness that
makes speech count for far more than the words.
"Will, that is true," she cried, "but it is only part of the truth.
'Close thy' Carlyle; 'open thy' Emerson. It's true, you have missed
some things that you deserved to have and that many of your inferiors
have for nothing. But your life is only begun, and your ability and
pluck can do so much that you needn't waste regret on anything they
may fail to do. Even if circumstances be unconquerable that stand
between you and some good things, are the things you have gained
instead of less value?--your courage and patience, your self-reliance
and trustworthiness and helpfulness? Why, Will, _character_ is worth
more than knowledge of art, or familiarity with good society; just to
live bravely is worth more than all the rest. Do you suppose I would
exchange your companionship for that of a dozen 'cultured' people who
could talk to me about 'sincere furniture'"--this was in the last
decade, remember--"and Rauss's heads, as you can't, and who never
showed me one spark of genuine feeling about the great things of life,
as you can?"
Will was overwhelmed. Winifred had talked of his affairs much,
following them with unvarying interest, but of himself or herself,
never; and it was actually a new idea to the young fellow that she
could have any very high opinion of him. Moreover, it was the first
time he had heard her speak with unveiled and ardent feeling.
"You do not mean"--and he formed his words with difficulty--"that I
could meet on equal ground people that--such people as _your_
associates."
"No; you would meet most of them on higher ground. If they didn't know
it, that would be their discredit. I should think you could see
that," she added, in a quick, parenthetic averse way, "from _their_
associate. If you want to get a higher opinion of the value of your
life, compare it with an ordinary, foolish, useless one--like mine."
She gave him no chance to answer that, but was the next moment on her
feet, suggesting that they walk on, and wishing they were not to stop
short of the Lassen Buttes, whose apparent nearness, scores of miles
distant as they were, was still a perpetual surprise to her eastern
eyes.
When everything has been made ready for it, a few sentences may easily
make or mark an era in life; and it is probable that if Miss Northrop
had not in effect told young Strong he was quite good enough for her,
he might have remained her contented vassal for years. Six months of
being her nearest friend worked their result, to be sure; but the
humility they were gnawing at was of mediaevally tough fibre, and of
twice six years' growth. His depreciation of himself, however, had
only meant sense of distance from her; therefore, his sense of the
significance of her speech was enormous. He felt his relation to her
changed; he was shaken from all his moorings, and thrown into a mighty
agitation that possessed him night and day, and only grew with time.
For this was what it all came to: Was the distance between Winifred
and himself greater than the distance between her and any other man?
And when he had once thought that, the gate was open, and the
besieging host marched in and took possession of every corner of him
with longing and desire and a madness of tenderness.
He thought of nothing else. He wrote his editorials and set type under
an unceasing sense of it, as people have done brain-work and
finger-work to an accompaniment of unceasing physical pain. For there
was nothing joyous about it to him; it was all a bitter pain of mad
desire to be something to her--to secure her, somehow, before this
great, dark future swept her away from him. And yet the latter rains
came and went, the green faded from the ground, the mountains grew
dimmer and duller, and at last disappeared in the summer murk, before
he took in his own mind the next step--from lover to suitor, as before
from vassal to lover.
He did so simply because he could not stand it any longer. It stood to
reason that there must be a way out of such active torments. And,
after all, why not he as well as any other man? It was absurd to
suppose that Winifred could ever be _in love_ with any man, as a man
would be with her. It occurred to Will that the thing to do was
natural enough, after all--not to ask Winifred's love, but to offer
her his. And he walked down to Mrs. Stutt's to do it, one August
evening, a little before school opened after vacation. He was in good
spirits, too; to come to action and to speech, after so long
repression, was an inestimable relief. And she had been doubly
friendly to him all this time.
Mrs. Stutt was in her little strip of grass and oleanders. "That you,
Mr. Strong?" she called out cheerily as he lifted the gate-latch.
"Well, Miss Northrop's in the sitting-room, I s'pose. You go right in,
and I'll come in when I've done my watering."
"Thank you," said Will, absently, and walked on into the house.
Winifred was not in the dark little sitting-room. He walked to the
open window and stood there, expecting her to come in presently. There
were veils of Madeira vine over the window, just opening their whitish
tassels of bloom, and the air was full of the smell of them. Mrs.
Stutt began to water the grass outside, and the shower of water from
her hose glimmered through the Madeira vine; the noise of the water
came to him, and the crying of crickets, and the smell of the freshly
wet earth. Then he heard a step on the porch, and saw Winifred go down
the short path to the gate. He could see by her white dress that she
stood still there; so he went out, too, to join her. Mrs. Stutt was
watering at the other side of the house now, and the two were alone.
Will stopped a moment in the darkness and faint odor of a great
oleander, a few feet from the motionless girl at the gate, to realize
well the grace of her dim white figure, and her unconscious attitude.
She stood in a weary way, with her head a little fallen back, and her
hands hanging loosely clasped before her. There was so much and so
incomprehensible emotion in the attitude, that Will felt vaguely
thrust out into another world from that where her interests lay. She
had not heard him approach, for the train from the south was just
coming to a stand at the station, not a stone's throw off, and there
was a great noise of jarring cars, and shouting men, and escaping
steam, and ringing bell. He waited till the noise should be quite
over. Some one came walking rapidly from the station; Will, glancing
at the dark figure, thought it had, even in this dimness, an
unfamiliar look. It paused close by the gate.
"Winifred!"
Will did not know the voice; the tone turned him blind and dizzy.
Winifred started violently, and turned; she clasped her hands tightly,
and lifted them to her breast in a frightened way, as she fell back a
step.
"Oh, my God!" she cried, under her breath. There was a rattle of the
gate-latch, a sharp flying open of the gate, and the stranger held her
in his arms.
"My darling, my darling!" he said, with an infinite tenderness. "Did
you think you could hide anywhere in all this wide world where I
should not find you?"
For just an instant she yielded to his clasp--then she drew back. "You
must not," she said, softly, with unmistakable pain in her voice. "You
know that. I thought if I was utterly out of sight or hearing, you
would forget me, and _I_ might--forget myself."
He broke in before she had fairly spoken. "You were mistaken,
Winifred; there was no one between us. O my foolish little hot-head!
if you had not been so headlong in your self-sacrifice--if you had
only waited till I came back--I could have showed you in ten minutes
that there was no place for it. Mollie is married to John Gates and is
very happy. And you and I--my little girl, how nearly our two lives
have been spoiled! Sweetheart," he said, laughing with a shaky voice,
"I think I shall never dare let go of you again"--and he drew her back
to him.
She hesitated--surrendered--clung to him with a long sobbing breath.
"Oh, I have wanted you so, I have _wanted_ you so!" she cried. "Oh,
don't be a dream and melt away this time!"
Will Strong, standing close in the darkness of the oleander, acquiring
a life-long association with smell of Madeira vine and oleander and
wet earth, cry of crickets and noise of sprinkling water, gathered
himself together enough to creep away. He was _going_ to realize it
pretty soon, he thought; he did not yet; it seemed likely to be beyond
endurance when he did. As he passed the door some one opened it, and
the lamp-light streamed about him; Winifred looked around and saw his
face for an instant, and then he had slipped away through a side gate.
He walked out from town across miles of dark plain, until he came to
the empty channel of the stream by which they had sat in March.
Underfoot not a blade of grass or green thing; no stranger would have
believed that living thing had ever grown there. The flocks and herds
had long since gone to the mountain pastures. The dry channel between
shelvy banks of gravel showed white in the unclouded yet dull
starlight. The air was lifeless, and faintly tainted with smoke from
forest fires in the mountains.
Will threw himself down on his face, clutching with his fingers at the
gritty dirt. He knew as surely then, looking forward to his life, as
he will know at the end looking back, that this would never be an
out-lived romance. Nor could he creep back into that temple of dreams
from which Winifred's own hand had lured him--it had crumbled to dust
behind him. Nor was he like one who, losing a woman, loses only his
best pleasure and best ambition; she was the vital condition to every
pleasure, every ambition; losing her, he lost all. The realization
clutched him by this time like a tiger. There was not a living
creature within miles; a man might go down to primal depths, might
drop even the restraint of the human in outcries and struggles as free
as a tortured beast's. It may be that solitude sees more such scenes
than a decently decorous world would like to think.
Yet there was a sense upon him of some moral demand, some decision to
be made; and in time he began to try to collect himself for it. It
would seem as if there could hardly be a position that left less for
him to decide. There was no question of renouncing--he had never had
anything to renounce. Nevertheless, his instinct was correct in urging
him to a moral conflict and a momentous decision. The question was
simply whether he could pick up his life again, could find faith that
anything was worth living for; or whether life was to be a hollow
going through the forms--frustrated, purposeless, full of brooding
regret and jealousy, shame, and sense of wrong. But he could not drag
his bruised mind up to the question; he could not even think what it
was. He lifted himself up, stepped down into the dry channel, and
knelt on the white stones, obeying old association with the attitude;
laid his arms and head on a shelf of the bank, and let the stunned and
nerveless will lie passive, while the accumulated forces of years--of
generations--passion and pain and despair and love, shame and
bitterness and loyalty--trampled back and forth over him, fighting out
for him his battle.