LARRY KILDENE'S STORY
"Man, but this is none so bad--none so bad."
Larry Kildene sat on a bench before a roaring fire in the room added
on to the fodder shed. The chimney which Harry King had built,
although not quite completed to its full height, was being tried for
the first time, as the night was too cold for comfort in the long, low
shed without fire, and the men had come down early this evening to
talk over their plans before Larry should start down the mountain in
the morning. They had heaped logs on the women's fire and seen that
all was right for them, and with cheerful good-nights had left them to
themselves.
Now, as they sat by their own fire, Harry could see Amalia by hers,
seated on a low bench of stone, close to the blazing torch of pine, so
placed that its smoke would be drawn up the large chimney. It was all
the light they had for their work in the evenings, other than the
firelight. He could see her fingers moving rapidly and mechanically at
some pretty open-work pattern, and now and then grasping deftly at the
ball of fine white thread that seemed to be ever taking little leaps,
and trying to roll into the fire, or out over the cabin floor. She
used a fine, slender needle and seemed to be performing some delicate
magic with her fingers. Was she one of the three fates continually
drawing out the thread of his life and weaving therewith a charmed
web? And if so--when would she cease?
"It's a good job and draws well."
"The chimney? Yes, it seems to." Harry roused himself and tried to
close his mind against the warm, glowing picture. "Yes--yes. It draws
well. I'm inclined to be a bit proud, although I never could have done
it if you had not given me the lessons."
"It's art, my boy. To build a good fireplace is just that. Did you
ever think that the whole world--and the welfare of it--centers just
around that;--the fireplace and the hearth--or what stands for it in
these days--maybe a little hole in the wall with a smudge of coal in
it, as they have in the towns--but it's the hearth and the cradle
beside it--and--the mother."
Larry's voice died almost to a whisper, and his chin dropped on his
breast, and his eyes gazed on the burning logs; and Harry, sitting
beside him, gazed also at the same logs, but the pictures wrought in
the alchemy of their souls were very different.
To Harry it was a sweet, oval face--a flush from the heat of the fire
more on the smooth cheek that was toward it than on the other, and
warm flame flashes in the large eyes that looked up at him from time
to time, while the slender figure bent a little forward to see the
better, as the wonderful hands kept up the never ceasing motion. A
white linen cloth spread over her lap cast a clearer, more rosy light
under her chin and brought out the strength of it and the delicate
curves of it, which Harry longed even to dare to look upon in the
rarest stolen intervals, without the clamor and outcry in his heart.
It was always the same--the cry of Cain in the wilderness. Would God
it might some day cease! What to him might be the hearth fire and the
cradle, and the mother, that the big man should dwell on them thus?
What had they meant in Larry Kildene's life, he who had lived for
twenty years the life of a hermit, and had forsworn women forever, as
he said?
"I tell ye, lad, there's a thing I would say to you--before I leave,
but it's sore to touch upon." Harry made a deprecating gesture. "No,
it's best I tell you. I--I'll come back--never fear--it's my plan to
come back, but in this life you may count on nothing for a surety.
I've learned that, and to prove it, look at me. I made sure, never
would I open my heart again to think on my fellow beings, but as
aliens to my life, and I've lived it out for twenty years, and thought
to hold out to the end. I held the Indians at bay through their
superstitions, and they would no more dare to cross my path with
hostile intent than they would dare take their chances over that fall
above there. Where did I put my pipe? I can't seem to find things as I
did in the cabin."
"Here it is, sir. I placed that stone further out at the end of the
chimney on purpose for it, and in this side I've left a hole for your
tobacco. I thought I was very clever doing that."
"And we'd be fine and cozy here in the winter--if it wer'n't for the
women--a--a--now I'm blundering. I'd never turn them out if they lived
there the rest of their days. But to have a lad beside me as I might
have had--if you'd said, 'Here it is, father,' but now, it would have
have been music to me. You see, Harry, I forswore the women harder
than I did the men, and it's the longing for the son I held in my
arms an hour and then gave up, that has lived in me all these years.
The mother--gone--The son I might have had."
"I can't say that--to you. I have a curse on me, and it will stay
until I have paid for my crime. But I'll be more to you than sons are
to their fathers. I'll be faithful to you as a dog to his master, and
love you more. I'll live for you even with the curse on me, and if
need be, I'll die for you."
"It's enough. I'll ask you no more. Have you no curiosity to hear what
I have to tell you?"
"I have, indeed I have. But it seems I can't ask it--unless I'm able
to return your confidence. To talk of my sorrow only deepens it. It
drives me wild."
"You'll have it yet to learn, that nothing helps a sorrow that can't
be helped like bearing it. I don't mean to lie down under it like a
dumb beast--but just take it up and bear it. That's what you're doing
now, and sometime you'll be able to carry it, and still laugh now and
again, when it's right to laugh--and even jest, on occasion. It's been
done and done well. It's good for a man to do it. The lass down there
at the cabin is doing it--and the mother is not. She's living in the
past. Maybe she can't help it."
"When I first came on them out there in the desert, she seemed brave
and strong. He was a poor, crippled man, with enormous vitality and a
leonine head. The two women adored him and lived only for him, and he
never knew it. He lived for an ideal and would have died for it. He
did not speak English as well as they. I used to wish I could
understand him, for he had a poet's soul, and eyes like his
daughter's. He seemed to carry some secret with him, and no doubt was
followed about the world as he thought he was. Fleeing myself, I could
not know, but from things the mother has dropped, they must have seen
terrible times together, she and her husband."
"A wonderful deal of poetry and romance always clung to the names of
Poland and Hungary for me. When I was young, our part of the world
thrilled at the name of Kosciuszko and Kossuth. I'd give a good deal
to know what this man's secret was. All those old tales of mystery,
like 'The Man with the Iron Mask,' and stories of noblemen spirited
away to Siberia, of men locked for many years in dungeons, like the
'Prisoner of Chillon,' which fired the fancy and genius of Byron
and sent him to fight for the oppressed, used to fill my dreams."
Larry talked on as if to himself. It seemed as if it were a habit
formed when he had only himself with whom to visit, and Harry was
interested.
"Now, to almost come upon a man of real ideals and a secret,--and just
miss it. I ought to have been out in the world doing some work worth
while--with my miserable, broken life--Boy! I knew that man McBride! I
knew him for sure. We were in college together. He left Oxford to go
to Russia, wild with the spirit of adventure and something more. He
was a dreamer--with a practical turn, too. There, no doubt, he met
these people. I judge this Manovska must have been in the diplomatic
service of Poland, from what Amalia told us. Have you any idea whether
that woman sitting there all day long rapt in her own thoughts knows
her husband's secret? Is it a thing any one now living would care to
know?"
"Indeed, yes. They lived in terror of the prince who hounded him over
the world. The mother trusted no one, but Amalia told me--enough--all
she knows herself. I don't know if the mother has the secret or not,
but at least she guesses it. The poor man was trying to live until he
could impart his knowledge to the right ones to bring about an
upheaval that would astonish the world. It meant revolution, whatever
it was. Amalia imagines it was to place a Polish king on the throne of
Russia, but she does not know. She told me of stolen records of a
Polish descendant of Catherine II of Russia. She thinks they were
brought to her father after he came to this country."
"If he had such knowledge or even thought he had, it was enough to set
them on his track all his life; the wonder is that he was let to live
at all."
"The mother never mentioned it, but Amalia told me. We talked more
freely out in the desert. That remarkable woman walked at her
husband's side over all the terrible miles to Siberia, and through her
he escaped,--and of the horrors of those years she never would speak,
even to her daughter. It's not to be wondered at that her mind is
astray. It's only a wonder that she is for the most part so calm."
"Well, the grave holds many a mystery, and what a fascination a
mystery has for humanity, savage or civilized! I've kept the Indians
at bay all this time by that means. They fear--they know not what, and
the mystery holds them. Now, for ourselves, I leave you for a little
while in charge of--the women--and of all my possessions." Larry,
gazing into the blazing logs, smiled. "You may not think so much of
them, but it's not so little now. Talk about lunacy--man, I
understand it. I've been a lunatic--for--ever since I made a find here
in this mountain."
He paused and mused a while, and Harry's thoughts dwelt for the time
on his own find in the wing of the cabin, where the firewood was
stored. The ring and the chest--he had not forgotten them, but by no
means would he mention them.
"You may wonder why I should tell you this, but when I'm through,
you'll know. It all came about because of a woman." Larry Kildene cast a
sidelong glance at Harry, and the glance was keen and saw more than the
younger man dreamed. "It's more often so than any other way--almost always
because of a woman. Her name may be anything--Mary--Elizabeth,--but, a
woman. This one's name was Katherine. Not like the Katherine of
Shakespeare, but the sweetest--the tenderest mother-woman the Lord ever
gave to man. I see her there in the fire. I've seen her there these many
years. Well, she was twin sister to the man who hated me. He hated
me--for why, I don't know--perhaps because he never could influence
me. He would make all who cared for him bow before his will.
"When I first saw her, she lived in his home. He was a banker of
means,--not wholly of his own getting, but partly so. His father was a
man of thrift and saving--anyway, he came to set too much store by
money. Sometimes I think he might have been jealous of me because I
had the Oxford training, and wished me to feel that wealth was a
greater thing to have. Scotchmen think more of education than we of
Ireland. It's a good thing, of course, but I'd never have looked down
on him because he went lacking it. But for some indiscretion maybe I
would have had money, too. It was spent too lavishly on me in my
youth. But no. I had none--only the experience and the knowledge of
what it might bring.
"Well, it came about that I came to America to gain the money I
lacked, and having learned a bit, in spite of Oxford and the schools,
of a practical nature, I took a position in his bank. All was very
well until I met her. Now there were the rosy cheeks and the dark hair
for you! She looked more like an Irish lass than a Scotch one. But
they're not so different, only that the Irish are for the most part
comelier.
"Now this banker had a very sweet wife, and she was kind to the Irish
lad and welcomed him to her house. I'm thinking she liked me a bit--I
liked her at all events. She welcomed me to her house until she was
forbid. It was after they forbid me the house that I took to walking
with Katherine, when all thought she was at Sunday School or visiting
a neighbor, or even--at the last--when no other time could be
stolen--when they thought her in bed. We walked there by the river
that flows by the town of Leauvite."
Again Larry Kildene paused and shot a swift glance at the young man
at his side, and noted the drawn lids and blanched face, but he kept
on. "In the moonlight we walked--lad--the ground there is holy now,
because she walked upon it. We used to go to a high bluff that
made a sheer fall to the river below--and there we used to stand and
tell each other--things we dreamed--of the life we should live
together--Ah, that life! She has spent it in heaven. I--I--have
spent the most of it here." He did not look at Harry King again. His
voice shook, but he continued. "After a time her brother got to
know about it, and he turned me from the bank, and sent her to live
with his father's sisters in Scotland.
"Kind old ladies, but unmarried, and too old for such a lass. How
could they know the heart of a girl who loved a man? It was I who knew
that. What did her brother know--her own twin brother? Nothing,
because he could see only his own thoughts, never hers, and thought
his thoughts were enough for wife or girl. I tell you, lad, men err
greatly in that, and right there many of the troubles of life step in.
The old man, her father, had left all his money to his son, but with
the injunction that she was to be provided for, all her days, of his
bounty. It's a mean way to treat a woman--because--see? She has no
right to her thoughts, and her heart is his to dispose of where he
wills--not as she wills--and then comes the trouble.
"I ask you, lad, if you loved a girl as fine as silk and as tender as
a flower you could crush in your hand with a touch ungentle, and you
saw one holding her with that sort of a touch,--even if it was meant
in love,--I'll not be unjust, he loved her as few love their
sisters--but he could not grasp her thus; I ask you what would you
do?"
"If I were a true man, and had a right to my manhood, I would take
her. I'd follow her to the ends of the earth."
"Right, my son--I did that. I took the little money I had from my
labor at the bank--all I had saved, and I went bravely to those two
old women--her aunts, and they turned me from their door. It was what
they had been enjoined to do. They said I was after the money and
without conscience or thrift. With the Scotch, often, the confusion is
natural between thrift and conscience. Ah, don't I know! If a man is
prosperous, he may hold out his hand to a maid and say 'Come,' and all
her relatives will cry 'Go,' and the marriage bells will ring. If he
is a happy Irishman with a shrunken purse, let his heart be loving and
true and open as the day, they will spurn him forth. For food and
raiment will they sell a soul, and for household gear will they clip
the wings of the little god, and set him out in the cold.
"But the arrow had entered Katherine's heart, and I knew and bided my
time. They saw no more of me, but I knew all her goings and comings. I
found her one day on the moor, with her collie, and her cheeks had
lost their color, and her gray eyes looked in my face with their tears
held back, like twin lakes under a cloud before a storm falls. I took
her in my arms, and we kissed. The collie looked on and wagged his
tail. It was all the approval we ever got from the family, but he was
a knowing dog.
"Well, then we walked hand in hand to a village, and it was near
nightfall, and we went straight to a magistrate and were married. I
had a little coin with me, and we stayed all night at an inn. There
was a great hurrying and scurrying all night over the moors for her,
but we knew naught of it, for we lay sleeping in each other's arms as
care free and happy as birds. If she wept a little, I comforted her.
In the morning we went to the great house where the aunts lived in the
town, and there, with her hand in mine, I told them, and the storm
broke. It was the disgrace of having been married clandestinely by a
magistrate that cut them most to the heart; and yet, what did they
think a man would do? And they cried upon her: 'We trusted you. We
trusted you.' And all the reply she made was: 'You thought I'd never
dare, but I love him.' Yes, love makes a woman's heart strong.
"Well, then, nothing would do, but they must have in the minister and
see us properly married. After that we stayed never a night in their
house, but I took her to Ireland to my grandfather's home. It was a
terrible year in Ireland, for the poverty was great, and while my
grandfather was well-to-do, as far as that means in Ireland, it was
very little they had that year for helping the poor." Larry Kildene
glanced no more at Harry King, but looked only in the fire, where the
logs had fallen in a glowing heap. His pipe was out, but he still held
it in his hand.
"It was little I could do. I had my education, and could repeat poems
and read Latin, but that would not feed hungry peasant children. I
went out on the land and labored with the men, and gave of my little
patrimony to keep the old folks, but it was too small for them all, so
at last I yielded to Katherine's importunities, and she wrote to her
brother for help--not for her and me, mind you.
"It was for the poor in Ireland she wrote, and she let me read it. It
was a sweet letter, asking forgiveness for her willfulness, yet saying
she must even do the same thing again if it were to do over again. She
pleaded only for the starving in the name of Christ. She asked only if
a little of that portion which should be hers might be sent her, and
that because he was her only brother and twin, and like part of her
very self--she turned it so lovingly--I never could tell you with what
skill--but she had the way--yes. But what did it bring?
"He was a canny, canny Scot, although brought up in America. Only for
the times when his mother would take him back to Aberdeen with my
Katherine for long visits, he never saw Scotland, but what's in the
blood holds fast through life. He was a canny Scot. It takes a time
for letters to go and come, and in those days longer than now, when in
two weeks one may reach the other side. The reply came as speedily as
those days would admit, and it was carefully considered. Ah, Peter was
a clever man to bring about his own way. Never a word did he say about
forgiveness. It was as if no breach had ever been, but one thing I
noticed that she thought must be only an omission, because of the more
important things that crowded it out. It was that never once did he
mention me any more than if I had never existed. He said he would send
her a certain sum of money--and it was a generous one, that is but
just to admit--if when she received it she would take another sum,
which he would also send, and return to them. He said his home was
hers forever if she wished, and that he loved her, and had never had
other feeling for her than love. Upon this letter came a long time of
pleading with me--and I was ever soft--with her. She won her way.
"'We will both go, Larry, dear,' she said. 'I know he forgot to say
you might come, too. If he loves me as he says, he would not break my
heart by leaving you out.'
"'He sends only enough for one--for you,' I said.
"'Yes, but he thinks you have enough to come by yourself. He thinks
you would not accept it--and would not insult you by sending more.'
"'He insults me by sending enough for you, dear. If I have it for me,
I have it for you--most of all for you, or I'm no true man. If I have
none for you--then we have none.'
"'Larry, for love of me, let me go--for the gulf between my twin
brother and me will never be passed until I go to him.' And this was
true enough. 'I will make them love you. Hester loves you now. She
will help me.' Hester was the sweet wife of her brother. So she clung
to me, and her hands touched me and caressed me--lad, I feel them now.
I put her on the boat, and the money he sent relieved the suffering
around me, and I gave thanks with a sore heart. It was for them, our
own peasantry, and for her, I parted with her then, but as soon as I
could I sold my little holding near my grandfather's house to an
Englishman who had long wanted it, and when it was parted with, I took
the money and delayed not a day to follow her.
"I wrote to her, telling her when and where to meet me in the little
town of Leauvite, and it was on the bluff over the river. I went to a
home I knew there--where they thought well of me--I think. In the
evening I walked up the long path, and there under the oak trees at
the top where we had been used to sit, I waited. She came to me,
walking in the golden light. It was spring. The whip-poor-wills called
and replied to each other from the woods. A mourning dove spoke to its
mate among the thick trees, low and sad, but it is only their way. I
was glad, and so were they.
"I held her in my arms, and the river sang to us. She told me all over
again the love in her heart for me, as she used to tell it. Lad! There
is only one theme in the world that is worth telling. There is only
one song in the universe that is worth singing, and when your heart
has once sung it aright, you will never sing another. The air was soft
and sweet around us, and we stayed until a town clock struck twelve;
then I took her back, and, as she was not strong, part of the way I
carried her in my arms. I left her at her brother's door, and she went
into the shadows there, and I was left outside,--all but my heart. She
had been home so short a time--her brother was not yet reconciled, but
she said she knew he would be. For me, I vowed I would make money
enough to give her a home that would shame him for the poverty of his
own--his, which he thought the finest in the town."
For a long time there was silence, and Larry Kildene sat with his head
drooped on his breast. At last he took up the thread where he had left
it. "Two days later I stood in the heavy parlor of that house,--I
stood there with their old portraits looking down on me, and my heart
was filled with ice--ice and fire. I took what they placed in my arms,
and it was--my--little son, but it might have been a stone. It weighed
like lead in my arms, that ached with its weight. Might I see her? No.
Was she gone? Yes. I laid the weight on the pillow held out to me for
it, and turned away. Then Hester came and laid her hand on my arm, but
my flesh was numb. I could not feel her touch.
"'Give him to me, Larry,' she was saying. 'I will love him like my
own, and he will be a brother to my little son.' And I gave him into
her arms, although I knew even then that he would be brought up to
know nothing of his father, as if I had never lived. I gave him into
her arms because he had no mother and his father's heart had gone out
of him. I gave him into her arms, because I felt it was all I could
do to let his mother have the comfort of knowing that he was not
adrift with me--if they do know where she is. For her sake most of all
and for the lad's sake I left him there.
"Then I knocked about the world a while, and back in Ireland I could
not stay, for the haunting thought of her. I could bide nowhere. Then
the thought took me that I would get money and take my boy back. A
longing for him grew in my heart, and it was all the thought I had,
but until I had money I would not return. I went to find a mine of
gold. Men were flying West to become rich through the finding of mines
of gold, and I joined them. I tried to reach a spot that has since
been named Higgins' Camp, for there it was rumored that gold was to be
found in plenty, and missed it. I came here, and here I stayed."
Now the big man rose to his feet, and looked down on the younger one.
He looked kindly. Then, as if seized and shaken by a torrent of
impulses which he was trying to hold in check, he spoke tremulously
and in suppressed tones.
"I longed for my son, but I tell you this, because there is a strange
thing which grasps a man's soul when he finds gold--as I found it. I
came to love it for its own sake. I lived here and stored it up--until
I am rich--you may not find many men so rich. I could go back and buy
that bank that was Peter Craigmile's pride--" His voice rose, but he
again suppressed it. "I could buy that pitiful little bank a hundred
times over. And she--is--gone. I tried to keep her and the remembrance
of her in my mind above the gold, but it was like a lunacy upon me. At
the last--until I found you there on the verge of death--the gold was
always first in my mind, and the triumph of having it. I came to
glory in it, and I worked day after day, and often in the night by
torches, and all I gathered I hid, and when I was too weary to work, I
sat and handled it and felt it fall through my fingers.
"A woman in England--Miss Evans, by name, only she writes under the
name of a man, George Eliot--has written a tale of a poor weaver who
came to love his little horde of gold as if it were alive and human.
It's a strong tale, that. A good one. Well, I came to understand what
the poor little weaver felt. Summer and winter, day and night, week
days and Sundays--and I was brought up to keep the Sunday like a
Christian should--all were the same to me, just one long period for
the getting together of gold. After a time I even forgot what I wanted
the gold for in the first place, and thought only of getting it, more
and more and more.
"This is a confession, lad. I tremble to think what would have been on
my soul had I done what I first thought of doing when that horse of
yours called me. He was calling for you--no doubt, but the call came
from heaven itself for me, and the temptation came. It was, to stay
where I was and know nothing. I might have done that, too, if it were
not for the selfish reasons that flashed through my mind, even as the
temptation seized it. It was that there might be those below who were
climbing to my home--to find me out and take from me my gold. I knew
there were prospectors all over, seeking for what I had found, and how
could I dare stay in my cabin and be traced by a stray horse wandering
to my door? Three coldblooded, selfish murders would now be resting on
my soul. It's no use for a man to shut his eyes and say 'I didn't
know.' It's his business to know. When you speak of the 'Curse of
Cain,' think what I might be bearing now, and remember, if a man
repents of his act, there's mercy for him. So I was taught, and so I
believe.
"When I looked in your face, lying there in my bunk, then I knew that
mercy had been shown me, and for this, here is the thing I mean to do.
It is to show my gold and the mine from which it came to you--"
"No, no! I can't bear it. I must not know." Harry King threw up his
hands as if in fright and rose, trembling in every limb.
"Man, what ails you?"
"Don't. Don't put temptation in my way that I may not be strong enough
to resist."
"I say, what ails you? It's a good thing, rightly used. It may help
you to a way out of your trouble. If I never return--I will, mind
you,--but we never know--if not, my life will surely not have been
spent for naught. You, now, are all I have on earth besides the gold.
It was to have been my son's, and it is yours. It might as well have
been left in the heart of the mountain, else."
"Better. The longer I think on it, the more I see that there is no
hope for me, no true repentance,--" Again that expression on Harry
King's face filled Larry's heart with deep pity. An inward terror
seemed to convulse his features and throw a pallor as of age and years
of sorrow into his visage. Then he continued, after a moment of
self-mastery: "No true repentance for me but to go back and take the
punishment. For this winter I will live here in peace, and do for
Madam Manovska and her daughter what I can, and anything I can do for
you,--then I must return and give myself up. The gold only holds out
a worldly hope to me, and makes what I must do seem harder. I am
afraid of it."
"I'll make you a promise that if I return I'll not let you have it,
but that it shall be turned to some good work. If I do not return, it
will rest on your conscience that before you make your confession, you
shall see it well placed for a charity. You'll have to find the
charity, I can't say what it should be offhand now, but come with me.
I must tell some man living my secret, and you're the only one.
Besides--I trust you. Surely I do."