MARK SEES THE DAWN
That same Tuesday afternoon Mark sat in the doorway of the cowshed
looking at the road.
It was the first period of rest and ease he had had since his arrival. He
had found the household disorganized, his father hovering, frantic, round
the sick bed, and Sadie distractedly distributing her energies between
her mother's room and the kitchen. It was he who had driven over to
Stockton and brought back a nurse, insisted on the doctor staying in the
house and made him a shakedown in the parlor. When things began to look
better he had turned his hand to the farm work and labored through the
week's accumulation, while the old man sat beside his wife's pillow, his
chin sunk on his breast.
Today the tension had relaxed, for the doctor said Mother was going to
pull through. An hour ago he had packed his kit and driven off to his own
house up the valley, not to be back till tomorrow. It was very peaceful
in the yard, the warm, sleepy air full of the droning of insect life
which ran like a thin accompaniment under a low crooning of song from the
kitchen where Sadie was straightening up. On the front porch, the farmer,
his feet on the railing, his hat on his nose, was sunk in the depths of a
recuperating sleep.
Astride the milking stool Mark looked dreamily at the familiar prospect,
the black carpet of shade under the live oak, the bright bits of sky
between its boughs, beyond the brilliant vividness of the landscape.
This was crossed by the tall trunks of the eucalyptus trees, all ragged
bark and pendulous foliage, the road striped with their shadows. He
looked down its length, then back along the line of the picket fence, his
glance slowly traveling and finally halting at a place just opposite.
Here his imagination suddenly restored a picture from the past--the
tramp asking for water. His senses, dormant and unobserving, permitted
the memory to attain a lifelike accuracy and the figure was presented to
his inward eye with photographic clearness. Very still in the interest
of this unprovoked recollection, he saw again the haggard face with its
lowering expression, and remembered Chrystie's question about
recognizing the man.
He felt now that he could, even in other clothes and a different
setting. The eyes were unmistakable. He recalled them distinctly--a very
clear gray as if they might have had a thin crystal glaze like a watch
face. The lids were long and heavy, the look sliding out from under them
coldly sullen.
As he pictured them--looking surlily into his--a conviction rose upon
him that he had seen them since then, somewhere recently. They were not
as morose as they had been that first time, had some vague association
with smiles and pleasantness. He was puzzled, for he could only seem to
get them without surroundings, without even a face, detached from all
setting like a cat's eyes gleaming from the dark. Unable to link them to
anything definite he concluded he had dreamed of them. But the
explanation was not entirely satisfactory; he was left with a tormenting
sense of their importance, that they were connected with something that
he ought to remember.
He shook himself and rose from the stool--no good wasting time chasing
such elusive fancies. The tramp had brought to his mind the money found
in the tules and he decided to walk up the road and try to locate the
spot described to him that morning by Sadie.
On the hillock, where eight months earlier Mayer had sat and cursed the
marshes, he came to a stand, his glance ranging over the long, green
floor. By Sadie's directions he set the place about midway between where
he stood and the white square of the Ariel Club house. If it _was_ the
tramp he had gone across from there, which would argue a knowledge of the
complicated system of paths and planks. It was improbable--from his
childhood he could remember the hoboes footing it doggedly round the head
of the tules.
His thoughts were broken into by a voice hailing him, a fresh,
reed-sweet pipe.
"Hello, Mark--what you doin' there?"
It was Tito Murano returning from the Swede man's ranch up the trail,
with a basket of eggs for his mother. Tito had become something of a hero
in the neighborhood. In the preceding autumn he had developed typhoid,
nearly died, and been sent to a relative in the higher land of the
foothill fruit farms. From there he had only recently returned with the
_reclame_ of one who has adventured far and seen strange lands.
Barelegged, his few rags flapping round his thin brown body, he charged
forward at a run, holding the egg basket out at arm's length. His face
was wreathed in happy smiles, for the encounter filled him with delight.
Mark was his idol and this was the first time he had seen him.
They sat side by side on the knoll and Tito told of his wanderings. At
times he spit to show his growth in grace, and after studying the long
sprawl of Mark's legs disposed his own in as close an imitation as their
length would permit. It was when his story was over and the conversation
showed a tendency to languish that Mark said:
"I was just looking out over there and trying to locate the place where
the bandits had their cache."
Tito raised a grubby hand and pointed.
"Right away beyont where you see the water shinin'. It's a sort of
island--I was out there after I come back but the hole was all washed
away and filled up."
"_You_ were out there? Do you know the way?"
Tito spit calmly, almost contemptuously.
"_Me? _I bin often--there ain't a trail I don't know. I could lead you
straight acrost. I took a tramp wonct; anyways I would have took him if
he'd let me."
"A tramp!" Mark straightened up. "When?"
The episode of the tramp had almost faded from Tito's mind. What still
lingered was not the memory of his fear but the way he had been swindled.
Now in company with one who always understood and never scolded, he was
filled with a desire to tell it and gain a tardy sympathy. He screwed up
his eyes in an effort to answer accurately.
"I guess it was last fall. Yes, it was, just before school commenced. I
wouldn't 'a done it--Pop'd have licked me if he'd 'a known--but he
promised me a quarter."
"Who promised you a quarter?"
"Him--the tramp. And I was doin' it, but he got awful mean, swore
somethin' fierce and said I didn't know. And how was he to tell and us
only halfway acrost?"
"You mean you only took him halfway?"
"It was all he'd let me," said Tito, on the defensive. "I tolt him it was
all right, but he just stood up there cursin' me. And then he got to
throwin' things, almost had me here"--he put his hand against his
ear--"like he was plumb crazy. But I guess he wasn't, for he wouldn't
give me the quarter."
"Did you leave him there?"
"Sure I did. I run, I was scairt. Pop and Mom'd always be tellin' me to
have nothin' to do with tramps. And it was awful lonesome out there and
him swearin' and firin' rocks."
Tito did not receive that immediate consolation he had looked for. His
friend was silent; a side glance showed him studying the tules with
meditative eyes. For a moment the little boy had a dreary feeling that
his confidence was going to be rewarded by a reprimand, then Mark said:
"Do you remember what the man looked like?"
"Awful poor with long whiskers all sort 'er stragglin' round. He'd a
straw hat and a basket and eyes on him like he was sleepy."
Again Mark made no response, and Tito, feeling that he had not grasped
the full depths of the tragedy, piped up plaintively:
"I'd 'a stood the swearin' and I could 'a dodged the rocks if he'd given
me the quarter. But I couldn't get it off him--not even a dime."
That had a good effect, much better than Tito's highest hopes had
anticipated.
"Well, he treated you mean, old man. And, take it from me--don't you go
showing the way to any more tramps. They're the kind to let alone. As for
the quarter I guess that's due with interest. Here it is." And a half
dollar was laid on Tito's knee.
At the first glance he could hardly believe it, then seeing it immovable,
a gleaming disk of promise, his face flushed deep in the uprush of his
joy. He took it, weighed it on his palm, wanted to study it, but instead
slipped it mannishly into the pocket of his blouse. His education had
not included a training in manners, so he said nothing, just straightened
up and sent a slanting look into Mark's face. It was an eloquent look,
beaming, jubilant, a shining thanks.
They walked back together, or rather Mark walked and Tito circled round
him, curvetting in bridling ecstasy. Mrs. Murano's temper being historic,
Mark took the egg basket, and Tito, all fears of accident removed,
abandoned himself to the pure joys of the imagination. He became at once
a horse and his rider, pranced, backed, took mincing sidesteps and long,
spirited rushes; at one moment was all steed, mettlesome and wild; at the
next all man, calling, gruff-voiced, in quelling authority.
Mark, the eggs safe, was thoughtful. So it must have been the tramp as he
had suspected. But the eyes--he could not shake off that haunting fancy
of a second encounter. All the way home his mind hovered round them,
strained for a clearer vision, seemed at moments on the edge of
illumination, then lost it all.
That night in his room under the eaves he did not sleep till late. The
house sank early into the deep repose following emotional stress, the
nurse's lamp brightening one window in its black bulk. Outside the night
brooded, deep and calm, with whispers in the great oak's foliage, open
field and wooded slope pale and dark under the light of stars. Mark, his
hands clasped behind his head, looked at the blue space of the window and
dreamed of Lorry. He saw her in various guises, a procession of Lorrys
passing across the blue background. Then he saw her as she had been the
last time and that Lorry had not passed with the rest of the procession.
She had lingered, reluctant to follow the fleeting, unapproachable
others, had seemed to draw nearer to him, almost with her hands out,
almost with a shining question in her eyes. Holding that picture of her
in his heart he finally fell asleep.
Some hours later he woke with the sound of her voice in his ears. She was
calling him--"Mark, Mark," a clear, thin cry, imploring and urgent. He
sat up answering, heard his own voice suddenly fill the silence loud and
startling, "Lorry," and then again lower, "Lorry." For a moment he had no
idea where he was, then the starlight through the open window showed him
the familiar outlines, and, looking stupidly about, he repeated, dazed,
certain he had heard her, "Lorry, where are you?"
The silence of the house, the large outer silence enfolding it,
answered him.
He was fully awake now and rose. The reality of the cry in its tenuous,
piercing importunity, grew as his mind cleared. He could not believe but
that he had heard it, that she might not be somewhere near calling to him
in distress. He opened the door and looked into the hall--not a sound. At
the foot of the stairs the light from his mother's room fell across the
darkness in a golden slant. He turned and went to the window. His
awakening had been so startling, his sense of revelation so acute, that
for the moment he had no consciousness of prohibiting conditions. When he
looked out of the window he would have felt no surprise if he had seen
Lorry below gazing up at him.
After that he stood for a space realizing the fact. He had had no dream,
the voice had come to him from her, a summons from the depths of some
dire necessity. He knew it as well as if he had heard her say so, as if
she _had_ been outside the window calling him to come. He knew she was
beset, needed him, that her soul had cried to his and in its passionate
urgency had broken through material limitations.
He struck a match and consulted his watch--a quarter to four. Then, as he
dressed and threw some clothes into a bag, he thought over the quickest
route to the city. A stage line to Stockton crossed the valley eight
miles to the south. By making a rapid hike he could catch the down stage
and be in San Francisco before midday. He scrawled a few lines to Sadie,
stood the note up across the face of the clock, and, his shoes in his
hand, stole down the stairs and out of the house.
The country slept under the hush that comes before the dawn. There was
not a rustle in the roadside trees, a whisper in the grass. Farmhouse
and mansion showed in forms of opaque black, muffled in black foliage
and backed by a blue-black horizon. Above the heavens spread, vast and
far removed, paved with stars and mottlings of star dust. The sparkling
dome, pricked with white points and blotted with milky stains, diffused
a high, aerial luster, palely clear above the land's dense darkness.
Mark looked up at it, unaware of its splendors, mind and glance raised
in an instinctive appeal to some remote source of strength in those
illumined heights.
As his glance fell back to the road he suddenly knew where he had seen
the eyes. There was no jar of recognition, no startled uncertainty. He
saw them looking at him from the face of Boye Mayer, standing in Lorry's
drawing-room with his hands resting on the back of a chair.
He stopped dead, staring ahead. Lorry's summons, the tramp, the man in
evening dress against the background of the rich room--all these drew to
a single point. What their connection was he could not guess, was only
aware of them as related, and, accepting that, forged forward at a
swinging stride. The beat of his feet fell rhythmic on the dust; his
breath came deep-drawn and even; his eyes pierced the dark ahead, fixed
on landmarks to be passed, goals to be gained, stations to leave behind
him in his race to the woman who had called.
Unnoted by him a pale edge of light stole along the east, throwing out
the high, crumpled line of the Sierra. The landscape developed from
nebulous shadows and enfoldings to hill slopes, tree domes, the clustered
groupings of barns. A stir passed, frail and delicate, over the earth's
face, a light tentative trembling in the leaves, a quiver through the
grain. Birds made sleepy twitterings; the chink of running water came
from hidden stream beds; plowed fields showed the striping of furrows on
which the dew glistened in a silvery crust. The day was at hand.