man, with a cunning grin; "I've done enough o' that for the family,
thank you. So did his mother--she died of it. No, there's money
enough for all, and it only needs a little planning. The thing is,
never take a risk. Wait for a sure thing. Take from the kind that
takes from _your_ kind--they'll never miss it. Work alone, and never
try to get too much. Who are the ones that get caught? The 'pals'!
No, I've just done for myself, and contented to sell at a big loss,
and only wanted to get my twenty-five hundred a year for Jim, and
something over for his vacations--those camps cost a lot--and enough
to dress as I may need to."
Lindsay cleared his throat.
"Do you mean to say that Jim never asked you what your business
was?"
"He didn't know I ever changed till last month. He thought I
traveled for the Comp'ny. Of course he didn't like that any too
well--you know, you wouldn't expect him to, brought up as he's
been--and I guess he thought 'twould be kinder to me not to
mention it much. He thought I didn't know, but I did. Last
month--last month--" the man paused and his mouth worked,
though he bit his lips.
"Well, last month?" Lindsay repeated pitilessly.
"I got my hunch to quit. That fortune woman and--and other things.
The doctor told me to keep quiet and not get on my nerve. And I sort
of fixed it up with Jim in a letter. I told him I'd sold out my
interest in the firm and I was going to send him one more thousand
for graduatin' with and I was going to let him try for himself after
that. I knew that was all right, because he's told me of plenty of
rich young swells who had to. Fathers believed in it."
"He was going with Buck Williamson on the ranch," said Lindsay
slowly.
"That's it! Buck Williamson. He asked me wouldn't I look 'em up
after they got settled and try it out there. It was an awful nice
letter," said the man softly, "he's a real gentleman."
Lindsay jerked his head toward the dining-room.
"Was this the 'thousand'?" he asked coldly.
The man nodded.
"I've never been with him more than a day or two, you see, and I
thought I'd go up to New Haven this spring--when he graduated, and
see him. Just a day or two. And then I was planning to drop out. Of
course I never meant to see him much. I was always deadly afraid
something'd happen, and I didn't want to get connected up with Jim.
But I've been careful. There's not a line o' writing anywhere, and
the man that sold the stuff for me in Jersey City is close as wax."
"But your friends--" Lindsay was wrung with an angry pity.
"I don't care for much of anybody but Jim," said the man.
Caroline was moving restlessly about in the dining-room again.
Lindsay shook himself nervously.
"Of course, this is very awkward for me," he began, "I mean--I--oh,
the devil! You know what I've got to do, of course?"
The man looked appealingly at him. "You've got it all back," he said
quickly, "and you know Jim--"
"Yes, plague take it--I know Jim," the boy muttered, "we all know
Jim."
"Known well, isn't he?" the man inquired eagerly, "there's no
cleverer scholar there, much cleverer, I mean, is there?"
Lindsay shook his head. "Not that amounts to anything," he said
shortly.
"I'll bet there's no better fellow there than Jim--none of the big
bugs?"
"There is no better fellow anywhere," said Lindsay.
Caroline tapped fretfully on the door. "Aren't we ever going, Lin?"
she begged; "it's all put back."
"Yes, yes, in a minute!" he answered, and turned to the man. "I'm
damned sorry to have to do it," he began, "it's a horrible thing to
do, but I can't see that there are any two ways about it. I don't
want to hear you say any more. If you'll come quietly, well and
good. If it was anybody else--but in my uncle's house--and the
community--and--well, will you come?"
The man sighed. He looked ten years older. "All right," he said, "I
didn't know but--well, never mind. My nerve's gone. I never had a
failure, you see. An' I always knew I couldn't stand one. Never even
left a trail. I couldn't afford to, workin' as I did. I always knew
'twas bound to come, though, and here it is. But it's hard. Jim was
telling me last month about this singer that he'd heard was so
careless, and I noted it down for use some day. You have to notice
those things. He never said his friends lived here. I--it makes me
feel dreadful when I think how he'd feel if he knew I'd been working
his _friends_ this way--he'd never stand for that, Jim wouldn't. It
makes me feel--oh, well, what's the odds? But I wish you didn't
belong to Yale College."
Lindsay scowled and motioned to the door.
"Shut up and come on, will you?" he blurted.
The man got up.
"I guess I won't see Jim again, then," he said, "will I? Of course
there isn't one chance in a hundred he'll ever know. But I couldn't
explain why I didn't go up to New Haven, nor send the thousand, and
it'll be five years, anyhow--ten, maybe. And I shan't hold out that.
The doctor only gave me two."
"Ten years? Oh, no!" Lindsay cried.
"It's grand larceny," said the man simply.
"Lin, Lin, come _on_!" called Caroline.
"You've got the pin, and I'll tear the picture up," said the man.
"I've got it all planned, o' course--I give the name of Barker.
And--and _if_ Jim ever says anything to you or any of his friends
about me being mean about the thousand, when I'd promised it, just
kind of give a hint, will you, that things may have happened so's I
couldn't? I hope he'll think I died. I wish he was through Yale,
though. The thousand won't make any difference with graduatin', will
it?"
Lindsay swallowed hard; his nerves were strained to snapping.
"Good God, no!" he shouted. He stepped to the French window, opened
it, and threw the revolver over the sill.
"Get out!" he said briefly, turning to the man, "get out of my
sight! If Jim ever receives another penny from you, I'll tell him
all I know."
The man swayed towards the chair. "Do you mean it?" he gasped,
"honest?"
He began to sob and choke a little, and turning half bent over the
chair, hunted with his hand for his hat.
"Get out!" Lindsay repeated violently, looking persistently
sidewise.
The man leaned over and fumbled for the picture on the floor, found
it and straightened himself.
Suddenly he leaped back and fell into the chair again; a dreadful
pallor reached the roots of his hair.
"All up, I guess--twice to-day--'Jim good-by," he said very quickly,
and rolled against Lindsay, the picture tight in his hand.
"Lin! If you don't come pretty soon"--Caroline pushed open the door
a little.
"Hush! Run and bring that whisky!" her cousin whispered, his face
drawn and frightened.
She waited outside while he labored mysteriously, breathing hard.
"Is Mr. Barker sick, Lin?" she whispered fearfully when he came back
to the door.
"Y--yes. I guess he's pretty sick," he said slowly, stepping out
with her and turning the knob carefully. The dining-room reeked with
the whisky on his hands and his coat.
"We'll go for the doctor," he went on, "both of us, because we'll
have to fix--I'll have to talk to you on the way. You needn't hurry
so, Caroline. There's no--we don't have to hurry." He tried the
outside door twice, to make sure it was latched, and glanced hastily
at the library windows.
"I'd better wire Uncle Joe," he said half to himself; "he'll know
what to do--oh, there's the dog. Come on, Hamlet--he's Buck
Williams's--gentle as a kitten."
"Yes, he'll know," she repeated, contentedly, reaching for Hamlet's
black muzzle.
"But I don't think that was right, do you, Lin, even for a joke?"
she queried, following him down the side path. The big hound padded
on behind them.
"No," he agreed briefly.
"Wasn't it funny he had one of your pins?" She was trotting rapidly,
to keep up with him.
Lindsay stopped short and almost faced her. He looked very young and
tired.
"I swear, Caroline, I believe worse men have worn it!" he said.
V
A PILLAR OF SOCIETY
Caroline slipped out of the woodshed with Henry D. Thoreau barking
under his breath at her heels, and struck across the dusty mountain
road into the trail. The advantages of the woodshed were many: it
was cool and dark, the stacked wood had a soothing odor and a neat,
restful appearance, and one was more or less forgotten there. More
important, it lay directly under the long living-room, and sounds
carried easily through the primitive plank floor. Up to now the
murmur of the company's voices had been a negligible quantity, a
background for thought, merely, but suddenly a familiar intonation
had risen higher.
"Why, certainly, Caroline can show you--she knows all the trails.
Yes, indeed, she'd be delighted, I'm sure.... Oh, any time you
prefer. Don't let her dawdle along, though; she's such a strange
child--sometimes it will take her ten minutes to get across the
road, and then another time she will be as quick as a flash. I'll
see where she is."
But even as the boards squeaked above her head, Caroline had fled,
and Henry D. Thoreau, smarting from the indignity of her brown,
berry-stained hand circling his muzzle, was expressing his feelings
to the yellow birches and ground pine.
"Oh shut up, won't you, Henry D.?" she urged him indignantly, "do
you want to take that fat old tiresome lady around our nice
mountain? I don't b'lieve you do. You can be called 'girlie' if you
want to--I don't. She is so hot and she creaks so when she walks! I
_had_ to hold your nose."
Henry D., who had only wanted an explanation, subsided, and they
trudged on in silence, Indian file, along the narrow trail.
The early afternoon sun filtered down through the birch and beech
leaves on Caroline's brown head and Henry D.'s brindled back, pine
needles crunched under their feet, thick glossy moss twinkled with
last night's rain. They sniffed the damp, wholesome mold
delightedly; from time to time Caroline kicked the rotten stump of
some pithy, crumbling trunk or marked patterns with her finger nail
in the thin new moss of some smooth slab. Indian pipes and glowing
juniper berries embroidered the way; pale, late anemones, deceived
by the cold mountain weather, sprang up between the giant mushrooms.
It was as still as eternity.
The wood grew steadily thicker, the light pierced down in golden
arrows only, the silence was almost oppressive. Caroline stepped
suddenly out of the tiny path, pushed aside a clump of fern, buried
her arm up to the elbow in a hollow stump and produced a large
crumbling molasses cooky.
"Just where I left it, Henry D., just exactly!" she whispered
delightedly. "I wish now I'd left 'em both, but I didn't feel able
to spare 'em at the time."
They ate the cooky pleasantly, Henry D. receiving every third bite
with scrupulous accuracy.
"I used to think maybe that huckleberry-boy followed us up and
discovered our places, but this proves he don't," she announced, as
the last crumb disappeared; "he's not so smart as he thinks he is,
is he, Henry D.?"
They trotted on, moving more quickly as the faint, regular crash of
an axe on wood came nearer and nearer. A barbed-wire fence had
sprung up unaccountably in the wood, following a devious course
among the thick trees, and as they scrambled carefully under it,
Henry D. pausing with accustomed gallantry while his mistress
disentangled two petticoats and an unfortunate stocking, a little
gray-shingled cottage jumped out suddenly from the gray beeches, and
they emerged into its front yard.
It was a ridiculously operatic little cottage, composed chiefly of
bulging balconies, scarlet and yellow with geraniums and
nasturtiums, casement windows with tiny leaded panes, and double
Dutch doors, evidently practicable. It had all the air of having
retired from the other scenery to practice for its own act, and it
seemed highly probable that a chorus of happy short-skirted
peasantry would skip out from behind it and tunefully relate the
fortunes of the heroine within.
But the only person in sight was obviously impossible of such
classification. Though she was chopping wood, and chopping it very
well, though she wore what is sometimes called a Mother Hubbard
wrapper and a stiff, clean blue-checked apron, she was not in the
least a peasant. Her figure was tall and spare, her hair gray and
drawn into an uncompromising knot, her face wrinkled and shrewd, her
eyes soft, and full of the experience that middle-age brings to the
native American woman who has lived all her life in the
sparsely-settled country districts.
Her face relaxed at sight of her visitors. "How d'ye do?" she called
cheerfully, "ma want anything?"
"I don't believe so," Caroline returned sociably, "I've just come
up, that's all."
"I thought maybe your ma was worried about them shirt-waists, but
she needn't be: I'll have 'em back by Friday, sure. It'll be all I
can do, though--he's on the rampage these days, and I've got my
hands full, I tell you."
"Is Old Grumpy bad to-day?" Caroline inquired.
"Bad? Child, that old fellow is just about the worst I ever saw, and
I've seen plenty. What's on his mind the Lord knows, but it's a
lesson to us all to keep our tempers and not have secret thoughts
preying on us night and day! Just now he told me the truth for once.
'I'm so worried I can't digest, Luella,' he says to me, 'and I
digest so damnably that it's enough to worry an archangel!' There--I
shouldn't 'a' said that before you, but--"
"Oh, I know 'damn,' Luella," Caroline assured her, "and it isn't as
if you said it purposely, anyway; you just repeated it. It makes all
the difference."
"I guess it does," Luella assented, "s'long's you understand it. But
then, you understand everything, more or less, 'seems to me. Where
you picked it all up at your age--"
"What's that, Luella? Who is talking out there? What's going on
_now_ behind my back?"
A petulant and gray-haired gentleman rushed out at them, very much
like a wiry Scotch terrier, and glared fiercely at Caroline and
Henry D. Thoreau.
"Nothin's goin' on behind your back that I know of, Mr. Wortley,"
Luella returned composedly. "This little girl comes up to see me
every once 'n a while--I do washing for her mother at one of the
cottages--and we were just talkin' back and forth, that's all."
"You fried that liver!" the gentleman burst forth abruptly, "you
know you fried it, Luella! I might as well have eaten a shingle off
the cottage--it's killing me! Ugh! As if I hadn't enough to bear
without being murdered with fried liver!"
"I do' know what you've got to bear, Mr. Wortley," and Luella
gathered her apron full of kindlings, "but you needn't add fried
liver to it, 'cause it was broiled."
"Never!" exploded the fiery gentleman.
"I'd ought to know," said Luella firmly, "I had the grid-iron to
wash."
"As for children," he veered off again, "you couldn't have poorer
company. Think what they'll grow into--think!"
"Some don't turn out so bad," she reminded him, starting toward the
house.
"Ah, but when are you going to decide that they _have_ 'turned
out'?" he demanded, trotting angrily beside her, "tell me that, will
you? Perhaps you imagine that when they're of age, legally men and
women, and you've managed to keep 'em out of the State Reform School
up to then, you're justified in thinking they've 'turned out'? Hey?"
"Oh, now, I wouldn't go on so about the State Reform School, Mr.
Wortley," Luella urged pacifically, "that's awful. I always say the
young ones mean well, mostly; there ain't many that set out to be
bad a-purpose. Only, accordin' to their judgment--"
"Their judgment! _Their_ judgment! For God's sake!" he thundered,
and darted into the house, slamming the door so that the casements
rattled.
"I guess you'd better run on, dear," Luella suggested, "he's bad
to-day. Some days I just have my hands full with him, and then again
he'll be real pleasant and amusin'--he'll say the cutest things. But
he's perturbed to-day, and that's a fact. You stop in 'long in the
afternoon, when he takes his nap and I'm at my ironing, and we'll
have a good visit."
Caroline nodded soberly and took up her journey again, not a little
depressed; he had been such a whirlwind of a gentleman.
Unconsciously she followed a tiny, all-but-overgrown trail that led
straight up the hill against which the cottage was built and lost
itself, apparently, in the thick wood at the top. A belt of tall
beeches half way up blotted out everything behind it, and the dozens
of chipmunks and red squirrels that scurried hither and yon, the fat
hen-partridge schooling her brood under Caroline's very nose, the
flame-colored, translucent lizards slipping under mossy roots at her
feet, showed the neglect into which the trail had fallen. She pushed
on, hardly certain now that she had not lost it, or that it had ever
led anywhere, when she stumbled suddenly over a handsome meerschaum
pipe, still warm, and colored to a nicety. She picked it up, poked
experimentally at the ashes with a twig, smelled it distastefully
and stared about her. No one was in sight, and she had walked at
least a quarter of a mile before she encountered a young man sitting
in a dejected attitude on the stump of a yellow birch.
He was peering gloomily into the hemlocks opposite him, his hands
were deep in his pockets, his feet crossed at an uncomfortable
angle. He was a pale young man with dark circles under darker eyes,
and an expression of such settled melancholy that Caroline lost no
time in assuaging it as far as she could.
"Here it is," she remarked, holding out the pipe, "how do you do?"
The young man started violently.
"Holy Bridget, who are you?" he demanded. "How did you get here?
This is private property--didn't you see the sign?"
"There wasn't any sign the way we came," she returned placidly, "we
came over the mountain. Don't you want your pipe?"
The young man blushed and scowled. "Thank you very much," he said,
extending a thin, brown hand, "I'm afraid I was rather rude. Where
did you find it?"
"Oh, down there," she answered vaguely.
He handled the pipe lovingly, knocked it against the birch stump and
cleared it further with a curl of the polished, champagne-tinted
bark.
"Nice dog," he suggested, "what's his name?"
"Henry D. Thoreau," she replied, studying the green scarab in his
necktie and the heavy seal-ring on his left hand.
"For heaven's sake! Who named him?"
"My Uncle Joe," she returned simply, "because he takes to the woods
whenever he gets the chance. Was that pin a bug once?"
"Not since I ran across it," said the young man, "before that, I
can't say. Has your uncle any other animals?"
"Oh, yes," she assured him. "There's the donkey, his name is
Rose-Marie; and the baby's cat, his name is Pharaoh Meneptah, but
the baby calls him Coo-coo; and there's Miss Honey's rabbits,
they're all named Eleanor, because you can't tell them apart, and
one name does just as well; and the canary, his name is Jean and
Edouard de Reszke."
The young man burst into laughter and fell off the stump abruptly.
"Those are fine names, all of them," he declared, picking himself up
with great solicitude for the pipe, "but why did the canary get
two?"
"Because Aunt Edith likes Jean the best, but Uncle Joe says there's
more to Edouard," she explained, "so they named him both, because
Uncle Joe said anything was better than a divided family."
"That's right," said the young man, "anything is."
His face, which had looked for a moment merry and boyish, darkened
again, and his big eyes glowered intently at the shadowy hemlocks.
"Anything," he added, in a low voice, "but a sacrifice of principle,
a sacrifice of truth, as it actually is, to the petty conventions of
a rotten society!"
With that he sat his teeth hard and pulling a leather pouch out of
his pocket, began stuffing the pipe decisively. Caroline waited for
him to continue, but as he lit the pipe and puffed at it in
silence, she concluded that the interview was at an end, and started
up the path.
"You'd better not--" he began, but stopped suddenly and appeared to
reconsider. "Oh, I don't know," he added, "it might be better, after
all. Go along."
The trail was little more than a worn line in the grass, now; soon
it turned sharply to the left, skirted the wood, and led to a tiny,
dilapidated cottage. Caroline had more than once passed it by under
the impression that it was abandoned, or used perhaps for storing
ice or wood; but to-day a thin curl of smoke stained the blue above
it and through the open door of the one living-room that formed its
ground-floor she saw a scarlet Navajo blanket, on which reposed a
magnificent snowy Angora cat. A great green bough covered one of the
walls, and a few chairs, a square pine table and a guitar flung
against a pile of bright cushions, completed the furniture. At the
further end of the room, stretched upon the mate to the Angora's
blanket, lay a young woman, sobbing violently.
Caroline hesitated, but Henry D. Thoreau recognized grief, and knew
perfectly well what to do. Stepping quietly over to the prostrate
figure he encircled it once, looking for a point of vantage, then
selecting two little white, pink-tipped fingers, he licked them
caressingly.
The sobbing ceased: the girl drew a longer shaking breath.
"Is that you, Mimi?" she said huskily, "I didn't know you cared as
much as--oh, what is that?"
Her hand had fallen on the little bull-dog's smooth, stiff coat and
she started up in surprise. Caroline smiled shyly into her big,
stained gray eyes.
"It's all right--Henry D. never bites--do you feel bad?" she asked.
The girl pushed back a handful of crinkly, chestnut hair from her
damp face and rose, shaking out her skirts.
"Y--yes," she said, frankly, "yes, I do. Do you know why?"
"No. Why?" Caroline inquired.
"Because I can't make huckleberry bread," the girl assured her
solemnly. "I--I've been trying all the morning. Look in there."
Caroline peered into the little lean-to, filled to over-flowing with
a stove, some tin cooking pans, a table full of soiled dishes and a
case of kitchen sundries, half unpacked.
"You did get it all over, didn't you?" she observed cheerfully,
noting the prints of doughy fingers on oven and chairs and the
burned, odorous wreck, resting in soggy isolation in the middle of
the floor. "You cooked it a little too much, maybe."
"Maybe," the girl assented listlessly. "I was going to have it for
luncheon. The woman promised to be here by ten o'clock, and I got
the breakfast well enough--after a fashion--but she hasn't come, and
I'm s-so hungry!"
Her eyes filled again. "It's simply filthy here," she murmured. "Do
you know anybody we could depend on--oh, how stupid of me, of course
you don't."
"There's Luella," Caroline suggested, "she's right near here, and
she makes lovely huckleberry bread. Shall I go get her? Old
Gr'--the gentleman that she keeps house for takes his nap now, and
I know she could come."
The look of relief on the girl's face was enough, and Caroline
hurried out, leaving Henry D. Thoreau, who seemed to feel
responsible for his hostess's peace of mind, snuggled in her lap.
She burst into Luella's placid afternoon kitchen, big with her news,
bustling about excitedly, while Luella methodically packed a
market-basket with half a cold chicken, an untouched loaf of
huckleberry bread, a pan of tiny biscuits and a glass of currant
jelly.
"Butter I know they've got, and milk, for I see Wilkins stop up
there this mornin' as I come down, and I wondered who on earth had
taken that God-forsaken little cottage. 'Twasn't occupied last
season. Cryin' right out loud, was she? She must 'a been all tired
out to make such a fuss over a tin o' huckleberry bread. I s'pose
she hasn't got many breakfasts in her life. Ten to one 'twas Myra
Tenny that disappointed her: it sounds like her. Always undertakin'
more 'n any one woman c'd possibly attend to, and then goin' back on
you. Pretty cross himself, was he? Well, they'd had words, most
likely. They take it hard at first. They ain't long married, of
course, if they're young as you say. Poor things. There, I guess
that's about all."
Luella closed the kitchen door softly and they hurried along the
trail.
"He's off as sound as a baby," she confided to Caroline, "sometimes
he'll sleep two hours, he's up so much in the night."
As the relief expedition neared the cottage, Henry D. Thoreau
bounded out to greet them, the girl behind him, still flushed and
swollen-eyed, but with her thick, reddish hair newly braided in a
crown around her head.