THE PAYMENT
Doctor Jamieson did not at once return to his other duties. He
knew that in this case care and skill would for a time continue in
demand. Little sleep was accorded him during his first night.
Ammonia--whisky--what he had, he used to keep his patient alive;
but morning came, and Dunwody still was living. Morphine now
seemed proper to the backwoods physician; after this had done its
work, so that his patient slept, he left the room and wandered
discontentedly about in the great house, too tired to wake, too
strained to sleep.
"Old--old--it's an old, tumble-down ruin, that's what it is," he
grumbled. "Everything in sixes and sevens--a man like that--and an
ending like this to it all."
He had called several times before he could get any attendance from
the shiftless blacks. These, quick to catch any slackening in the
reins of the governing power which controlled their lives, dropped
back into unreadiness and pretense more and more each hour.
"What it needs here is a woman," grumbled Jamieson to himself.
"All the time, for that matter. But this one's got to stay now, I
don't care who she is. There must be some one here to run things
for a month or two. Besides, she's got his life in her two hands,
some way. If she left now, might as well shoot him at once. Oh,
hell! when I die, I want to go to a womanless world. No I don't,
either!"
His decision he at last announced to Josephine herself when finally
the latter appeared to make inquiry regarding the sick master of
Tallwoods.
"My dear girl," said he, "I am a blunt man, not a very good doctor
maybe, and perhaps not much of a gentleman, I don't know--never
stopped to ask myself about it. But now, anyhow, I don't know how
you happened to be here, or who you are, or when you are going
away, and I'm not going to ask you about any of those things. What
I want to say is this: Mr. Dunwody is going to be a very sick man.
He hasn't got any sort of proper care here, there's no one to run
this place, and I can't stay here all the time myself. Even if I
did stay, all I could do would be to give him a dose of quinine or
calomel once in a while, and that isn't what he needs. He needs
some one to be around and watch after things--this whole place is
sick, as much as the owner of it. I reckon you've got to help me,
my dear."
She looked at him, her large, dark eyes slightly contracting,
making neither protest nor assent. He drew a long breath of
satisfaction.
"Of course you'll stay," he said; "it's the right thing to do, and
we both know it. You don't want to kill a man, no matter how much
he desires or deserves it. Doctors and women--they sometimes are
fatal, but they don't consciously mean to be, now do they? We
don't ask many questions out here in these hills, and I will never
bother you, I feel entirely free to ask you to remain at least for
a few days--or maybe weeks."
[Illustration: Doctors and women--they sometimes are fatal.]
Her eyes still were on his face. It was a face fit for trust.
"Very well," said she at length, quietly. "If you think it is
necessary."
It was thus that Josephine St. Auban became the head of Tallwoods
household. Not that week did she leave, nor the next, nor the one
thereafter. The winter advanced, it was about to wane, and still
she remained. Slowly, the master advanced toward recovery.
Meantime, under charge of the mistress, the household machine fell
once more into proper ways. The servants learned obedience. The
plans for the work of the spring somehow went on much as formerly.
Everywhere there became manifest the presence of a quiet, strong,
restraining and self-restrained influence.
In time the doctor became lighter in his speech, less frequent in
his visits. "You're not going to lose that musical leg, Dunwody,"
said he. "Old Ma Nature beats all us surgeons. In time she'll
fill you in a nice new bone along there maybe, and if you're
careful you'll have two feet for quite a while yet to come. You've
ruined old Eleazar's fiddle, though, taking that E string! Did I
ever tell you all about that coon dog of mine I had, once?"
Dunwody at last reached the point of his recovery where he could
grin at these remarks; but if anything, he had grown more grim and
silent than before. Once in a while his eyes would linger on the
face of Josephine. Little speech of any kind passed between them.
There were no callers at Tallwoods, no news came, and apparently
none went out from that place. It might have been a fortress, an
island, a hospital, a prison, all in one.
At length Dunwody was able safely to leave his room and to take up
a resting place occasionally in the large library across the hall.
Here one day by accident she met him. He did not at first note her
coming, and she had opportunity now carefully to regard him, as he
stood moodily looking out over the lawn. Always a tall man, and
large, his figure had fined down in the confinement of the last few
weeks. It seemed to her that she saw the tinge of gray crawling a
little higher on his temples. His face was not yet thin, yet in
some way the lines of the mouth and jaw seemed stronger, more
deeply out. It was a face not sullen, yet absorbed, and above all
full, now, of a settled melancholy.
"Good morning," said he, smiling, as he saw her. "Come in. I want
to talk to you. But please don't resume our old argument about the
compromise, and about slavery and the rights of man. You've been
trying--all these weeks when I've been down and helpless and
couldn't either fight or run away--to make me be a Bentonite, or
worse, an abolitionist--trying, haven't you? to make me an
apostate, faithless to my state, my beliefs, my traditions--and I
suppose you'd be shrewd enough to add, faithless to my material
interests. Please don't, this morning. I don't want subjective
thought. I don't want algebra. I don't want history or law, or
medicine. I want--"
She stood near the window, at some distance removed from him, even
as she passed stopping to tidy Up a disarranged article on the
tables here or there. He smiled again at this. "Where is Sally?"
he asked. "And how about your maid?"
"Some one must do these things," she answered. "Your servants need
watching. Sally is never where I can find her. Jeanne I can
always find--but it is with her young man, Hector!"
He shook his head impatiently. "It all comes on you--work like
this. What could I have done without you? But yourself, how are
you coming on? That arm of yours has pained me--"
"It ceased to trouble me some time since. The doctor says, too,
that you'll be quite well, soon. That's fine."
He nodded. "It's wonderful, isn't it?" said he. "You did it.
Without you I'd be out there." He nodded toward the window, beyond
which the grass-grown stones of the little family graveyard might
be seen. "You're wonderful."
He wheeled painfully toward her presently, "Listen. We two are
alone here, in spite of ourselves. Face to face again, in spite of
all, and well enough, now, both of us, to go back to our firing
lines before long. We have come closer together than many men and
women get to be in a good many years; but we're enemies, and apart,
now. At least you have seen me pretty much as I am--a savage--not
much more. I've seen you for what you are--one woman out of
hundreds, of thousands. There isn't going to be any woman in my
life, after you.--Would you mind handing me that paper, please?"
He passed the document to her opened. "Here's what I meant to do
if I didn't come through. It wasn't much. But I am to pay; and if
I had died, that was all I could pay. That's my last will and
testament, my dear girl. I have left you all I have. It is a
legal will. There'll never be any codicil."
She looked at him straight. "It is not valid," she said. "Surely
you are not of sound mind!"
He looked about him at the room, for the first time in his memory
immaculately neat. From a distance there came the sound of a
contented servant's voice. An air of rest and peace seemed in some
way to be all about him. He sighed. "I never will be of sound
mind again, I fear.
"Make this paper valid!" he suddenly demanded. "Give me my sound
mind too. You've given me back my body sound."
Her lips parted in a smile sufficient to show the row of her white
and even teeth, "You are getting well. It is time for me to go.
As to this--" She handed him back the paper folded.
"You think it's only an attempt to heal the soreness of my
conscience, don't you?" he said after a time, shaking his head.
"It was; but it was more. Well, you can't put your image out of my
heart, anyhow. I've got that. So you're going to leave me now?
Soon? Let it be soon. I suppose it has to come."
"My own affairs require me. There is no possible tenure on which I
could stay here much longer. Not even Jeanne--"
"No," said he, at length, again in conviction, shaking his head.
"There isn't any way."
"You make it so hard," said she. "Why are you so stubborn?"
"Listen!" He turned, and again there came back to his face the old
fighting flush. "I faced the loss of a limb and said I couldn't
stand that and live. Now you are going to cut the heart out of me.
You ask me to live in spite of that. How can I? Were you ever
married, Madam?" This last suddenly.
"You may regard it as true," said she slowly, after long
hesitation. "Were you?"
"You may regard that also as true!" He set his jaw, and looked at
her straight. Their eyes met, steadily, seeking, searching. They
now again, opposed, stood on the firing lines as he had said.
"But you told me,--" she began.
"I told you nothing, if you will remember. I only said that, if
you could feel as I did, I'd let the heavens fold as a scroll
before I'd ask a word about your past. I'd begin all the world all
over again, right here. So far as I am concerned, I wouldn't even
care about the law. But you're not so lawless as I am. And
somehow, I've got to thinking--a little--of your side of things."
"The law does not prevent me from doing as I like," she replied.
It was agony that showed on his face at this.
"That demands as much from me, if I play fair with you," he said
slowly. "Suppose there was some sort of law that held me back?"
"I have not observed any vast restraint in you!"
"Not at first. Haven't you gained any better opinion?"
She was one of those able to meet a question with silence. He was
obliged to continue.
"Suppose I should tell you that, all the time I was talking to you
about what I felt, there was a wall, a great wall, for ever between
us?"
"In that case, I should regret God had made a man so forgetful of
honor. I should be glad Heaven had left me untouched by anything
such a man could say. Suppose that?--Why, suppose I had cared, and
that I had found after all that there was no hope? There comes in
conscience, Sir, there comes in honor."
"Then, in such case--"
"In such case any woman would hate a man. Stress may win some
women, but deceit never did."
"I have not deceived you."
"Do you wish to do so now?"
"No. It's just the contrary. Haven't I said you must go? But
since you must go, and since I must pay, I'm willing, if you wish,
to bare my life to the very bone, to the heart before you,
now--right now."
She pondered for a moment. "Of course, I knew there was something.
There, in that room--in that wardrobe--those were her garments--of
another--another woman. Who?"
"Wait, now. Go slow, because I'm suffering. Listen. I'll not
hear a word about your own life--I want no secret of you. I'm
content. But I'm willing now, I say, to tell you all about
that--about those things.
"I didn't do that at first, but how could I? There wasn't any
chance. Besides, when I saw you, the rest of the world, the rest
of my life, it was all, all wiped out of my mind, as though some
drug had done it. You came, you were so sweet, my lack was so
horrible, that I took you into my soul, a drug, a balm, an
influence, a wonderful thing.
"Oh, I'm awake now! But I reckon maybe that doesn't mean that I'm
getting out of my dream, but only into it, deeper yet. I was mad
for you then. I could feel the blood sting in my veins, for you.
Life is life after all, and we're made as we are. But later, now,
beside that, on top of that, something else--do you think it's--do
you suppose I'm capable of it, selfish as I am? Do you reckon it's
love, just big, worthy, _decent_ love, better than anything in the
world? Is that--do you reckon, dear girl, that that's why I'm able
now to say good-by? I loved you once so much I could not let you
go. Now I love so much I can not let you stay! I reckon this is
love. I'm not ashamed to tell it. I'm not afraid to justify it.
And I can't help it."
It was any sort of time, a moment, an hour, before there was spoken
speech between them after that. At last they both heard her voice.
"Now, you begin to pay. I am glad. I am glad."
"Then it is your revenge? Very well. You have it."
"No, no! You must not say that. Believe me, I want you to feel
how--how much I admire--no, wait,--how much I admire any man who
could show your courage. It's not revenge, it's not vanity--"
He waited, his soul in his eyes, hoping for more than this; but she
fell silent again.
"Then it is the end," he said.
He held up his fingers, scarred to the bone.
"That's where I bruised my hands when I clenched on the table,
yonder. You wouldn't think it, maybe, but I love pictures. I've
spent a lot of time looking for them and at them. I remember one
collection--many pictures of the martyrs, horrors in art,
nightmares. Here was a man disemboweled--they wound his very
bowels about a windlass, before his eyes, and at each turn--I could
see it written in the picture--they asked him, did he yield at
last, did he agree, did he consent. . . . Then they wound again.
Here another man was on an iron chair, flames under him. Now and
then they asked him. Should they put out the flames and hear him
say he had foresworn his cause? Again, there was a man whom they
had shot full of arrows, one by one, little by little, and they
asked him, now and then, if he foreswore his faith. . . . But I
knew he would not--I knew these had not. . . .
"That's the way it is," he said slowly. "That's what you're seeing
now. These scars on my fingers came cheap. I reckon they've got
to run deeper, clean down into my heart. Yet you're saying that
now I begin to pay. Yes. When I pay, I'm going to _pay_. And I'm
not going to take my martyrdom for immediate sake of any crown,
either. There is none for me. I reckon I sinned too far against
one of God's angels. I reckon it's maybe just lasting hell for me,
and not a martyrdom with an end to it some time. That's how _I've_
got to pay.
"Now, do you want me to tell you all the rest?"
She would not answer, and he resumed.
"Do you want me to tell what you've maybe heard, about this house?
Do you want me to tell whose garments those were that you saw? Do
you want my past? Do you want to see my bowels dragged out before
your eyes? Do you want to turn the wheel with your own hands? Do
you want me to pay, that way?"
She went to him swiftly, put a hand on his arm.
"No!" said she. "What I want you to believe is that it's _life_
makes us pay, that it's _God_ makes us pay.
"I want you to believe, too," she went on after a time, "that we
need neither of us be cheap. I'm not going to ask you one thing,
I'm not going to listen to one word. You must not speak. I must
go. It's just because I must go that I shall not allow you to
speak."
"Is my debt to you paid, then?" His voice trembled.
"So far as it runs to me, it is paid."
"What remains?"
"Nothing but the debt of yourself to yourself. I'm going to look
back to a strange chapter in my life--a life which has had some
strange ones. I'm not going to be able to forget, of course, what
you've said to me. A woman loves to be loved. When I go, I go;
but I want to look back, now and then, and see you still paying,
and getting richer with each act of courage, when you pay, to
yourself, not me."
"Ah! fanatic. Ah! visionary. Ah! dreamer, dreamer. And you!"
"That is the rest of the debt. Let the wheel turn if need be.
Each of us has suffering. Mine own is for the faith, for the
cause."
"For what faith? What cause do you mean?"
"The cause of the world," she answered vaguely. "The cause of
humanity. Oh, the world's so big, and we're so very little. Life
runs away so fast. So many suffer, in the world, so many want! Is
it right for us, more fortunate, to take all, to eat in greed, to
sleep in sloth, to be free from care, when there are thousands, all
over the world, needing food, aid, sympathy, opportunity, the
chance to grow?
"Why," she went on, "I put out little plants, and I love them,
always, because they're going to grow, they're going to live. I
love it--that thought of life, of growth. Well, can I make you
understand, that was what I felt over yonder, in that revolution,
in mid-Europe. I felt it was just like seeing little plants set
out, to grow. Those poor people! Those poor people! They're
coming over here, to grow, here in America, in this great country
out here, in this West. They'll grow, like plants extending, like
grass multiplying, going out, edging westward, all the time. Ah,
thousands of them, millions yet to come, plants, little human
plants, with the right to live born with them. I don't so much
mind about their creed. I don't so much mind about race--their
color, even. But to see them grow--why, I suppose God up in His
Heaven looks down and smiles when He sees that. And we--we who are
here for a little time--we who sometimes are given minds and means
to fall in tune with God's smile--why, when we grow little and
selfish, instead of getting in tune with the wish of God--why, we
fail. Then, indeed, we do not pay--we repudiate our debt to
ourselves."
"You are shaming me," he said slowly. "But I see why they put you
out of Washington."
"But they can not put God out of Heaven! They can not turn back
the stars! They can not stop the rush of those westbound feet, the
spread of the millions, millions of blades of grass edging out, on.
That is what will make you see this 'higher law,' some time. That
is big politics, higher than what you call your traditions. That
will shame little men. Many traditions are only egotism and
selfishness. There is a compromise which will be final--not one
done in a mutual cowardice. It's one done in a mutual largeness
and courage.
"Oh,"--she beat her hands together, as was sometimes her
way--"America, this great West, this splendid country where the
feet are hurrying on so fast, fast--and the steam now carries men
faster, faster, so that it may be done--it may be done--without
delay--why, all this America must one day give over war and
selfishness--just as we two have tried to give over war and
selfishness, right here, right now. Do you suppose this world was
made just to hold selfishness and unhappiness? Do you think
that's all there ever was to the plan of life? Ah, no! There's
something in living beyond eating and drinking and sleeping and
begetting. Faith--a great faith in something, some plan ahead,
some _purpose_ under you--ah, _that's_ living!"
"But they banished you for that?"
"Yes, that's why they put me out of Washington, I suppose. I've
been twice banished. That is why I came here to this country.
Maybe, Sir, that is why I came to you, here! Who shall say as to
these things? If only I could feel your faith, your beliefs to be
the same as mine, I'd go away happy, for then I'd know it had been
a plan, somehow, somewhere--for us, maybe."
His throat worked strongly. There was some struggle in the man.
At last he spoke, and quietly. "I see what separates us now. It
is the wall of our convictions. You are specifically an
abolitionist, just as you are in general a revolutionist. I'm on
the other side. That's between us, then? An abstraction!"
"I don't think so. There are _three_ walls between us. The first
you put up when you first met me. The second is what you call your
traditions, your belief in wasting human life. The third--it's
this thing of which you must not speak. Why should I ponder as to
that last wall, when two others, insurmountable, lie between?"
"Visionary, subjective!"
"Then let us be concrete if you like. Take the case of the girl
Lily. She was the actual cause of your getting hurt, of many men
being killed. Why?"
"Because she was a runaway slave. The law has to be enforced,
property must be protected, even if it costs life sometimes.
There'd be no government otherwise. We men have to take our
chances in a time like that. The duty is plain."
"How utterly you fail of the truth! That's not why there was blood
spilled over her. Do you know who she is?"
"No," he said.
"She is the daughter of your _friend_, Judge Clayton, of the bench
of justice in your commonwealth. _That_ is why she wants to run
away! Her father does not know he is her father. God has His own
way of righting such things."
"There are things we must not talk about in this slavery question.
Stop! I did not, of course, know this. And Clayton did not know!"
"There are things which ought not to be; but if you vote for
oppression, if you vote yonder in your legislature for the
protection of this institution, if you must some day vote yonder in
Congress for its extension, for the right to carry it into other
lands--the same lands where now the feet of freedom-seekers are
hurrying from all over the world, so strangely, so wonderfully--then
you vote for a compromise that God never intended to go through or
to endure. Is that your vote? Come now, I will tell you something."
"You are telling me much."
"I will tell you--that night, when Carlisle would have killed you
in your room there, when I afterward put you all on parole--"
"Yes, yes."
"I saved you then; and sent them away. Do you know why?"
"I suppose it was horror of more blood."
"I don't think so. I believe it was just for this--for this very
talk I'm having now with you. I saved you then so that some day I
might demand you as hostage.
"I want you to vote with me," she continued, "for the 'higher law.'
I want you to vote with the west-bound wheels, with God's blades of
grass!"
"God! woman! You have gift of tongues! Now listen to me. Which
shall we train with, among your northern men, John Quincy Adams or
William Lloyd Garrison, with that sane man or the hysterical one?
Is Mr. Beecher a bigger man than Mr. Jefferson was?"
"I know you're honest," she said, frowning, "but let us try to see.
There's Mr. Birney, of Alabama, a Southerner who has gone over,
through all, to the abolitionists as you call them. And would you
call Mr. Clay a fool? Or Mr. Benton, here in your own state, who--"
"Oh, don't mention Benton to me here! He's anathema in this state."
"Yet you might well study Mr. Benton's views. He sees the case of
Lily first, the case of the Constitution afterward. Ah, why can't
_you_? Why, Sir, if I could only get you to think as he does--a
man with your power and influence and faculty for leadership--I'd
call this winter well spent--better spent than if I'd been left in
Washington."
"Suppose I wanted to change my beliefs, how would I go about it?"
He frowned in his intent effort to follow her, even in her
enthusiasm. "Once I asked a preacher how I could find religion,
and he told me by coming to the Saviour. I told him that was
begging the question, and asked him how I could find the Saviour.
All he could say was to answer once more, 'Come to the Saviour!'
That's reasoning in a circle. Now, if a man hasn't _got_ faith,
how's he going to get it--by what process can he reach out into the
dark and find it? What's the use of his saying he has found faith
when he knows he hasn't? There's a resemblance between clean
religion and honest politics. The abolitionists have never given
us Southerners any answer to this."
"No," said she. "I can not give you any answer. For myself, I
have found that faith."
"You would endure much for your convictions?" he demanded suddenly.
"Very much, Sir."
"Suffer martyrdom?"
"Perhaps I have done so."
"Would you suffer more? You undertake the conversion of a sinner
like myself?"
The flame of his eye caught hers in spite of herself. A little
flush came into her cheek.
"Tell me," he demanded imperiously, "on what terms?"
"You do not play the game. You would ask me to preach to you--but
you would come to see the revival, not to listen to grace. It
isn't playing the game."
"But you're seeking converts?"
"I would despise no man in the world so much as a hypocrite, a
turn-coat! You can't purchase faith in the market place, not any
more than--"
"Any more than you can purchase love? But I've been wanting not
the sermon, but the preacher. You! You! Yes, it is the truth. I
want nothing else in the world so much as you."
"I'd never care for a man who would admit that."
"There never was a woman in the world loved a man who did not."
"Oh, always I try to analyze these things," she went on
desperately, facing him, her eyes somber, her face aglow, her
attitude tense. "I try to look in my mirror and I demand of what I
see there. 'What are you?" I say. 'What is this that I see?'
Why, I can see that a woman might love her own beauty for itself.
Yes, I love my beauty. But I don't see how a woman could care for
a man who only cared for that,--what she saw in her mirror, don't
you know?"
"Any price, for just that!" he said grimly.
"No, no! You would not. Don't say that! I so much want you to be
bigger than that."
"The woman you see in your mirror would be cheap at any cost."
"But a man even like yourself. Sir, would be very cheap, if his
price was such as you say. No turncoat could win me--I'd love him
more on his own side yonder threefold wall, _with_ his convictions,
than on my side without them. I couldn't be bought cheap as that,
nor by a cheap man. I'd never love a man who held himself cheap.
"But then," she added, casting back at him one of his own earlier
speeches, "if you only thought as I did, what could not we two do
together--for the cause of those human blades of grass--so soon cut
down? Ah, life is so little, so short!"
"No! No! Stop!" he cried out. "Ah, now is the torture--now you
turn the wheel. I can not recant! I can not give up my
convictions, or my love, either one; and yet--I'm not sure I'm
going to have left either one. It's hell, that's what's left for
me. But listen! What for those that grow as flowers, tall,
beautiful, there among the grass that is cut down--should they
perish from the earth? For what were such as they made, tall and
beautiful?--poppies, mystic, drug-like, delirium producing? Is
that it--is that your purpose in life, then, after all? You--what
you see in your mirror there--is it the purpose of _that_ being--so
beautiful, so beautiful--to waste itself, all through life, over
some vague and abstract thing out of which no good can come? Is
that all? My God! Much as I love you, I'd rather see you marry
some other man than think of you never married at all. God never
meant a flower such as you to wither, to die, to be _wasted_. Why,
look at you! Look . . . at . . . you! And you say you are to be
wasted! God never meant it so, you beauty, you wonderful woman!"
Even as she was about to speak, drawn by the passion of him, the
agony of his cry, there came to the ears of both an arresting
sound--one which it seemed to Josephine was not wholly strange to
her ears. It was like the cry of a babe, a child's wail, difficult
to locate, indefinite in distance.
"What was it?" she whispered. "Did you hear?"
He made no answer, except to walk to her straight and take her by
the arms, looking sadly, mournfully into her face.
"Ah, my God! My God! Have I not heard? What else have I heard,
these years? And you're big enough not to ask--
"It can't endure this way," said he, after a time at last. "You
must go. Once in a while I forget. It's got to be good-by between
you and me. We'll set to-morrow morning as the time for you to go.
"As I have a witness," he said at last, "I've paid. Good-by!"
He crushed her to him once, as though she were no more than a
flower, as though he would take the heart of her fragrance. Then,
even as she felt the heave of his great body, panting at the touch
of her, mad at the scent of her hair, he put her back from him with
a sob, a groan. As when the knife had begun its work, his scarred
fingers caught her white arms. He bent over, afraid to look into
her eyes, afraid to ask if her throat panted too, afraid to risk
the red curve of her lips, so close now to his, so sure to ruin
him. He bent and kissed her hands, his lips hot on them; and so
left her trembling.
[Illustration: He bent and kissed her hands.]