From the point of romance this young man was impossible to Lesa Swaim's
child. Yet truly nobody before, not even York Macpherson, had ever
seemed like such a real friend to her, and the chance acquaintance was
reaching by leaps and bounds toward a genuine comradeship.
"Why do you stay here? You weren't born here, were you? Tell me about
yourself," Jerry demanded.
"There's a big difference between our cases," Joe replied, wondering how
this girl could care anything for his life-story. "I was the oldest
child of our family. My father came out here on account of his health,
but he came too late, and died, leaving me the claim on the Sage Brush
and my pledge on his death-bed never to leave the West, for fear I, too,
would become an invalid as he had been. There seems to be little danger
of that, and I like the West too well to leave it now. And then,
besides, I'm like a lot of other fellows who claim to love the Sage
Brush. I haven't the means to get away and start life anywhere else,
anyhow. You see, we are as frank out here about our conditions as you
Philadelphians are."
He smiled and looked down at his strong hands and sturdy arms. It would
be difficult to think of Joe Thomson as an invalid.
"I inherited, besides my claim and my promise, the provision for two
younger sisters, housed with relatives in the East, but supported by
contributions from this same Sage Brush claim on which I have had to
wrestle with the heat and drought that sear the prairies. And now, when
both my sisters, who married young, are provided for and settled in
homes of their own, and I can begin to live my own life a little, comes
my enemy, the blowout--"
"Oh, I never want to think of that awful thing!" Jerry cried. "I shall
give the Macpherson Mortgage Company control of the entire sand-pile.
I'll never play there again, never!"
In the silence that followed something in the beauty of the midsummer
night seemed to fall like a benediction on this man and this woman, each
facing big realities. And, however different their equipment for their
struggles had been in previous years, they were not so far apart now as
their differing circumstances of life would indicate.
"I must be going now. I did not mean to take so much of your time. I
came only to assure you that I am not always so rude as the mood you
found me in the other day would indicate." Joe rose to go with the
words.
Jerry's mind had run back again, dreamily, to Gene Wellington, of
Philadelphia, the Gene as she knew and remembered him. It was not until
afterward that she recalled her surprise that this ranchman of the
Western prairies should have such a simple and easy manner whose home
life had evidently been so unlike her own.
"You haven't stayed too long," she said, frankly. "And you haven't yet
suggested what an undertrained Philadelphia girl can do to keep the
coyote from her dugout portal."
If only she had been a little less bewitchingly pretty, a little less
sure that the distance of planet from planet lay between them, a strange
sense of sorrow, and a strange new purpose would not have found a place
in Joe Thomson's heart then. With a perception much keener than her own,
he read Jerry's mind that night as she had never tried to read it
herself.
"I'm better up on soils and farm products than on civic problems and
social economy and such. Dry farming, clerking, sewing, household
economics in somebody's cook-shack, teaching school, giving music
lessons, canvassing for magazines--the Sage Brush girls do things like
these. I wish I could name a calling more suitable for you, but this is
the only line I can offer," Joe said, thinking how impossible it would
be for the girl beside him to fit into the workaday world of the Sage
Brush Valley. On the next ranch to his own up the river a fair-haired,
sun-browned girl was working in the harvest-field this season to save
the price of a hired hand, toward going to college that fall. Jolly,
strong-handed, strong-hearted Thelma Ekblad, whose name was yet to
adorn an alumni record of the big university proud to call her its
product. Jerry Swaim would never thrive in the same soil with this stout
Norwegian.
They were standing on the porch steps now, and the white moonbeams
glorified Jerry's beauty, for the young ranchman, as she looked up at
him with a smile on her lips and eyes full of light, a sudden decision
giving new character to her countenance. The suddenness of it, that was
her mother's child. The purpose, that was the reflection of Jim Swaim's
mind.
"I'm on the other side of my Rubicon. I'm going to teach mathematics in
the New Eden high-school. Will you help me to keep across the river?
There's an inspiration for me in the things that you can do?"
"You! Teach mathematics! They always have a man to teach that!" Joe
exclaimed, wondering behind his words if he only dreamed that she had
asked him to help to keep her across her Rubicon, or if she had really
said such a beautiful thing to him, Joe Thomson, sand-fighter and
general loser, who wouldn't be downed.
"Oh, I don't wonder you are surprised! I always jump quickly when I do
move. You think I couldn't teach A, B, C, the known quantities, let
alone x, y, z, the unknown quantities, don't you?" Jerry said, gaily.
"When I went to school I was a flunker in languages and sciences. I was
weak in boarding-school embroidery, too, because I never cared for those
things, nor was I ever made to study anything unless I chose to do it.
But I was sure in trigonometry and calculus, which I might have dodged
and didn't. I reveled in them. My mother was scandalized, and Gene
Wellington, an artist, who, by the way, has just given up his career for
a good bank clerkship in Philadelphia, a sort of cousin of mine, was
positively shocked. It seemed so unrefined and strong-minded. But my
father said I was just his own flesh and blood in that line. Yes, I'll
teach school. Mr. Ponk is going to offer me the position, and it's a
whole lot better than the poor-house, or madness, or the East, maybe,"
she added, softly, with a luminous glow in her beautiful eyes.
The old Sage Brush world seemed to slip out from under Joe Thomson's
feet just then.
"Is your friend related to John Wellington, who once lived in
Philadelphia?" he asked, after a pause, his mind far away from his
query.
"Why, he's John Wellington's son! John Wellington was a sort of partner
of my father's once," Jerry said. Even in the soft light Joe saw the
pink flush deepen on the girl's cheek. "Good night." She offered him her
hand. "I hope I may see you often. Oh, I hate that blowout, and you
ought to hate me on account of it."
"It is a brainless, hateful thing," Joe Thomson declared, as he took her
proffered hand. "All my streams seem to be Rubicons, even to the crooked
old Sage Brush. I can't be an inspiration to anybody. It is you who can
give me courage. If you can teach mathematics in New Eden, _I believe I
can kill that blowout_."
The strength of a new-born purpose was in the man's voice.
"Oh, no, you can't, for it's mostly on my land yet!" Jerry replied.
"Well, what of it? You say you won't play in that old sand-pile any
more. What do you care who else plays there? Good night."
"Good night, Mr. Thomson. Why, what is that?" Jerry's eyes were on a
short, squat figure standing in the middle of the gateway to the
Macpherson grounds.
"That's 'Fishing Teddy,' an old character who lives a hermit kind of
life down the Sage Brush. He comes to town about four times a year;
usually walks both ways; but I promised to take him out with me
to-night. He's harmless and gentle. Everybody likes him--I mean of our
sort. You wouldn't be interested in him. His real name is Hans Theodore,
but, of course, nobody calls him Mr. Theodore. Everybody calls him
'Fishing Teddy.' Good night, Miss Swaim."
Joe Thomson lifted his hat and walked away.
Jerry saw the old man shuffle out and join him, and the two went down
the street together, one, big and muscular, with head erect and an easy,
fearless stride; the other, humped down, frowsy, shambling, a sort of
half-product of humanity, whose companion was the river, whose days were
solitary, who had no part in the moonlight, the perfume of honeysuckle
blossoms, the pleasure of companionship, the easy comfort that wealth
can bring. His to bear the heat and the cinders on the rear platforms of
jerky freight-trains, his to serve his best food to imperious young city
girls lost in an impetuous passion of disappointment in a new and
bewildering land. And yet his mind was serene. Knowing the river would
bring him his food in the morning and his commodity of commerce for his
needs, he was vastly more contented with his lot to-night than was the
stalwart young man who stalked beside him, grimly resolving to go out
and do things.
Jerry watched the two until they turned into a side-street and
disappeared. The moonlight was wondrously bright and the air was like
crystal. A faint, sweet odor from hay-fields came up the valley now and
then, and all the world was serenely silent under the spell of night.
The net seemed torn away from about the girl's feet, the cloud lifted
from her brain, the blinding, blurring mists from before her eyes.
"I have crossed my Rubicon," she murmured, standing still in the
doorway of the porch trellis, breathing deeply of the pure evening air.
"I'm glad he came. I am free again, and I'm really happy. I suppose I am
queer. If anybody should put me in a novel, the critics would say 'such
a girl never came to Kansas.' But then if Gene should paint that
blowout, the critics would say 'there never was such a landscape in
Kansas.' These critics know so much. Only Gene will never paint any more
pictures--not masterpieces, anyhow. But I'm going to live my life my own
way. I won't go back to idleness and a life of sand at 'Eden.' I'll win
out here--I will, I will! 'If a woman goes right with herself.' Oh,
Uncle Cornie, I am starting. Whether I hold out depends on the way--and
myself."
When Laura Macpherson peeped into Jerry's room late that night she saw
her guest sleeping as serenely as if her mind had never a puzzling
question, her sunny day never a storm-cloud. So far Jerry had gone right
with herself.
X
THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER
The big dramas of life are enacted in the big centers of human
population. Great cities foster great commercial institutions; they
father great constructive enterprises; they endow great educational
systems; they build up great welfare centers; and they reach out and
touch and shape great national and international conditions. In them the
big tragedies and comedies of life--political, religious, social,
domestic--have their settings. And under the power of their combined
units empires appear and disappear. But, set in smaller font, all the
great dramas of life are printed, without a missing part, in the humbler
communities of the commonwealth. All the types appear; all conditions,
aspirations, cunning seditions, and crowning successes have their
scenery and _persona_ so true to form that sometimes the act itself
takes on the dignity of the big world drama. And the actor who produces
it becomes a star, for villainy or virtue, as powerful in his sphere as
the great star-courted suns of larger systems. Booth Tarkington makes
one of his fiction characters say, "There are as many different kinds of
folks in Kokomo as there are in Pekin."
New Eden in the Sage Brush Valley, on the far side of Kansas, might
never inspire the pen of a world genius, and yet in the small-town
chronicle runs the same drama of life that is enacted on the great stage
with all its brilliant settings. Only these smaller actors play with the
simplicity of innocence, never dreaming that what they play so well are
really world-sized parts fitted down to the compass of their settings.
Something like this philosophy was in York Macpherson's mind the next
morning as he listened to his sister and her guest loitering comfortably
over their breakfast. A cool wind was playing through the south windows
that might mean hot, sand-filled air later on. Just now life was worth
all the cost to York, who was enjoying it to the limit as he sat
studying the two women before him.
"For a frivolous, spoiled girl, Jerry can surely be companionable," he
thought, as he noted how congenial the two women were and how easily at
home Jerry was even on matters of national interest. "I never saw a type
of mind like hers before--such a potentiality for doing things coupled
with such dwarfed results."
York's mind was so absorbed, as he sat unconsciously staring at the
fair-faced girl opposite him, that he did not heed his sister's voice
until she had spoken a second time.
"York, oh York! wake up. It's daylight!"
York gave a start and he felt his face flush with embarrassment.
"As I was saying half an hour ago, brother, have you seen my little silk
purse anywhere? There was too much of my scant income in it to have it
disappear entirely."
"Yes, I took it. I 'specially needed the money for a purpose of my own.
I meant to tell you, but I forgot it. I'll bring back the purse later,"
York replied.
Of course Laura understood that this was York's return for catching him
at a disadvantage, but she meant to pursue the quest in spite of her
brother's teasing, for she was really concerned.
Only a few days before, the New Eden leak had opened again and some
really valuable things, far scattered and hardly enough to be considered
separately, had disappeared. Laura by chance had heard that week of two
instances on the town side of the river, and on the evening previous of
one across the river.
Before she spoke again she saw that Jerry's eyes were fixed on the
buffet, where two silver cups, exactly alike, sat side by side. There
was a queer expression about the girl's mouth as she caught her
hostess's eye.
"Is there any more silver of that pattern in this part of the country?"
she asked, with seeming carelessness, wrestling the while with a little
problem of her own.
"Not a pennyweight this side of old 'Castle Cluny' in Scotland, so far
as I know," York replied. "There's your other cup, after all, Laura. By
the way, Miss Jerry, how would you like to take a horseback ride over
'Kingussie'? I must go to the far side of the ranch this morning, and I
would like a companion--even yourself."
"Do go, Jerry. I don't ride any more," Laura urged, with that cheerful
smile that told how heroically she bore her affliction. "I used to ride
miles with York back in the Winnowoc country."
"And York always misses you whenever he rides," her brother replied,
beaming affectionately upon his brave, sweet sister. "Maybe, though,
Jerry doesn't ride on horseback," he added.
At Laura's words Jerry's mind was flooded with memories of the Winnowoc
country where from childhood she had taken long, exhilarating rides with
her father and her cousin Gene Wellington.
"I've always ridden on horseback," she said, dreamily, without looking
up.
"She's going to ride with me, not with ghosts of Eastern lovers, if she
rides to-day," York resolved, a sudden tenseness catching at his throat.
"What kind of mounts are you afraid of? I can have Ponk send up
something easy," he said, in a quiet, fatherly way.
Jerry's eyes darkened. "I can ride anything your Sage Brush grows that
you call a saddle-horse," she declared, with pretty daring. "Why, 'I was
the pride of the countryside' back in a country where fine horses grew.
Really and seriously, it was Cousin Gene who was afraid of spirited
horses, and he looked so splendid on them, too. But he couldn't manage
them any more than he could run an automobile over the bluff road above
the big cut this side of the third crossing of the Winnowoc. He
preferred to crawl through that cut in the slow old local train while I
climbed over the bluffs in our big car. You hadn't figured on my
boasting qualities, had you?" she added, with a smile at her own
vaunting words.
"Oh, go on," Laura urged. "I heard your father telling us once that your
cousin, on the Darby side, would ride out with you bravely enough, but
that you traded horses when you got off the place and you always came
back home on the one they were afraid for you to take out and your
cousin was afraid to ride back."
"She _climbed_ while Cousin Gene _crawled_. I believe she said something
there, but she doesn't know it yet; and it's not my business to tell her
till she asks me." York shut his lips grimly at the unspoken words.
"We'll be back, appetite and sundries, for the best meal the
scullery-maid can loot from the village," he said, as they rose from the
table.
When Jerry came out of the side door, where York was waiting for her,
she suggested at once a model for a cover illustration of an outing
magazine, an artistic advertisement for well-tailored results, and a
type of young American beauty. As they rode back toward the barns and
cattle-sheds that belonged to the ranch edging the corporation limits of
New Eden, neither one noticed the tall, angular form of Mrs. Stellar
Bahrr as she came striding across lots toward the driveway.
Stellar lived in a side street. Her back yard bordered a vacant lot on
the next side street above her. Crossing this, she could slip over the
lawn of a vacant house and down the alley half a block, and on by the
United Brethren minister's parsonage. That let her sidle between a
little carpenter-shop and a shoe-shop to the rear gateway into an alley
that led out to the open ground at the foot of the Macpherson knoll.
Stellar preferred this corkscrew route to the "Castle." It gave her
several back and side views, with "listening-posts" at certain points.
"Oh, good morning, Laury! I'm so glad to find you alone. I'm in a little
trouble, an' mebby you can help me out. You are everybody's friend, just
like your brother, exactly. Only his bein' that way's bound to get him
into trouble sooner or before that. Eh! What's that you're lookin' at?"
Laura had gone to the buffet after the riders had started away. She had
a singular feeling about that cup appearing so suddenly. She remembered
now that Jerry had asked twice about those cups, and had looked at them
with such a peculiar expression on each occasion. Laura had not remarked
upon it to herself the first time, but the trifling incident at the
table just now stayed in her mind. Yet why? The housekeeper often
rearranged the dining-room features in her endeavor to keep things free
from dust. That would not satisfy the query. That cup and Jerry Swaim
were dodging about most singularly in Laura's consciousness, and she
could not know that the reason for it lay in the projecting power of the
mind of the woman coming across lots at that moment to call on her.
Yet when Mrs. Bahrr thrust herself into the dining-room unannounced, as
was her habit, with her insistent greeting, and her query, "What's that
you're lookin' at?" the mistress of "Castle Cluny" had a feeling of
having been caught holding a guilty suspicion; and when Stellar Bahrr
ran her through with steely eyes she felt herself blushing with surprise
and chagrin.
"How can I help you, Mrs. Bahrr?" she asked, recovering herself in a
moment.
It was, however, the loss of the moment that always gave the woman
before her the clue she wanted.
"I'm needin' just a little money--only a few dollars. I'm quittin'
hat-trimmin' since them smarties down-town got so busy makin' over, an'
trimmin' over, an' everything. I'm goin' to makin' bread. I've got six
customers already, an' I'm needin' a gasoliner the worst way. I lack
jist five--mebby I could squeeze out with four dollars if I had it right
away. You never knowed what it means to be hard up, I reckon; never had
no trouble at all; no husband to up an' leave you and not a soul to
lean on. You've always had York to lean on. I 'ain't got nobody."
The drooping figure and wrinkled face were pitiful enough to keep Laura
Macpherson from reminding her that she was older than her brother and
once the leaning had been the other way. Here was a needy, lonely,
friendless woman. What matter that her greatest enemy was herself? All
of us are in that boat.
"Of course I'll help you, Mrs. Bahrr. I'll get the money right away."
She rose to leave the room, then sat down again hastily.
"I'm afraid I can't help you right now, either. I have mislaid my purse.
But when I find it I'll let you have the money. When York comes back
maybe I can get it of him. Could you come over this afternoon?"
"Mebby York won't let you have it to loan where there ain't no big
interest comin'. I'd ruther he didn't know it if you wasn't sure."
Laura recalled what her brother had said about not becoming entangled
with Stellar Bahrr, and she knew he would oppose the loan. She knew,
too, that in the end he would consent to it, because he himself was
continually befriending the poor, no matter how shiftless they might be.
"I think I can bring York round, all right," Laura assured her caller.
"He's not unreasonable."
"I'd ruther he didn't know. Men are so different from women, you know.
You say you lost your purse. Ain't that funny? Where?"
"The funny thing is I don't know where," Laura replied.
Mrs. Bahrr had settled down, and, having accomplished her open purpose,
began to train her batteries for her hidden motive.
"Things gits lost funny ways, queer ways, and sometimes ornery ways.
Ever' now an' then things is simply missin' here in this burg--just
missin'. But again there's such queer folks even in what you call the
best s'ciety. Now ain't that so?"
Laura agreed amiably. In truth, she wanted to get her mind away from its
substratum of unpleasant and unusual thought for which she could not
account. Nothing could take her farther from it than Mrs. Bahrr's small
talk about people and things. She knew better than to accept the gossip
for facts, but there was no courteous way of stopping Stellar now,
anyhow. One had to meet her on the threshold for that.
"'Tain't always the little, petty thievin' sneak gits the things, even
if they do git the blame of it. No, 'tain't." Mrs. Bahrr rambled on,
fixing her hook eyes square into her hostess at just the right moment
for emphasis. "I knowed the same thing happen twice. Once back in
Indiany, where I come from--jist a little town on White River. There was
a girl come to that town from"--hesitatingly--"from Californy; said to
be rich, an' dressed it all right; had every man there crazy about her,
an' her spendin' money like water pours over a mill-wheel in March. Tell
you who she looked like--jist a mite like this Miss Swim stayin' at your
house now--big eyes an' innocent-lookin' like her, but this Californy
girl was a lot the best-lookin' of the two--a lot. An' she was rich--or
so everybody thought. This un ain't. I got that out of Ponk 'fore he
knowed it. An'--well, to make a story end somewhere this side of
eternity, I never could bear them ramblin' kind of folks--first thing
folks knowed a rich old bachelor got animated with her, just clear
_animated_, an' literally swore by her. An'--well, things got to missin'
a little an' a little more, an', sir--well"--slowly and
impressively--"it turned out at last that this girl who they said was so
rich was a _thief_, takin' whatever she could get, 'cause she was hard
up an' too proud to go back to Oregon to tell her folks. An' that rich
bachelor jist defended her ever' way--'d say he took things accidental,
an' then help her to git 'em back, or git away with them--it was like a
real drammy jist like they acted out in the picture show t'other night
down-town. There was lots of talk, an' it nearly broke his sister's--I
mean his mother's--heart. But, pshaw! that all happened years ago down
in Indiany on the White River. It's all forgot long 'go. Guess I'd
never thought of it again if this Swim girl hadn't come here with her
big eyes, remindin' me of that old forgot eppisode, an' your losin'
your purse mysterious. How things happen, year in an' year out,
place after place, the same kind of things; good folks everywhere,
though--everywhere. I was in York's office late yistyday afternoon, an'
this girl comes in. Too bad she's so poor an' so pretty."
There was a venomous twist of the hooks at that word "pretty."
"But she's in trouble some way, all right, I know, an' York 'll help her
out. _I_ wouldn't ask him. Men take more int'rist naturally in young an'
pretty women. But it's different with older women. I hope York never
gits caught sometime like that man I knowed back in Indiany. He's too
smart for that. Miss Swim must have told York about her money shortage
yistyday. The postmaster said she'd been waitin' for a check
considerable. I couldn't get nothin' out of _him_, whether it had come
yet or not. But I guess not. But la! la! she's your guest; you wouldn't
let her suffer; an' I ain't tellin' a soul what I know about things. I
do know what they say, of course. York won't let her suffer. But I'm so
much obliged to you. Four dollars will be all I need, an' I'll pay you
with the first bakin's. I guess I'll set some folks thinkin' when they
see I can make my own way--"
Laura Macpherson was on her feet and it was her eyes now that were
holding the woman of the steel hooks.
"Miss Swaim is our guest, the daughter of an old friend of the
Macphersons. Of course we--"
Oh what was the use? Laura's anger fell away. It was too ridiculous to
engage in a quarrel with the town long-tongue. York was right. The only
way to get along with Stellar Bahrr was not to traffic with her. Mrs.
Bahrr rose also, gripping at the chance for escape uninjured.
"I'll see you this afternoon if you still feel like helpin' me, an' York
is willin'. I clear forgot to put out my ice-card. Good day. Good day."
The woman shuffled away, leaving the mistress of "Cluny Castle" in the
grip of many evil spirits. The demon of anger, of doubt, of contempt, of
incipient distrust, of self-accusation for even listening--these and
others contended with the angel of the sense of humor and the natural
courtesy of a well-bred woman.
And then the lost purse came up again.
"I may have left it in Jerry's room when I went to that closet after my
wrap last evening. I'll never learn to keep my clothes out of our
guest-room, I suppose," Laura said to herself, going at once to Jerry's
room.
As she pushed aside some dresses suspended by hoops to a pole in the
closet, Jerry's beaded hand-bag fell from a shelf above the hangings,
and the fastening, loosened by the fall, let the contents roll out and
lay exposed on the floor.
As Laura began to gather them up and put them back in their place, she
saw her own silk purse stuffed tightly into the bottom of her guest's
hand-bag. And then and there the poison tips of Stellar Bahrr's shafts
began a festering sore deep and difficult to reach.
<tb>
It was high noon when York Macpherson and his fair companion returned
from the far side of the big Macpherson ranch. Jerry's hair was blown in
ringlets about her forehead and neck. Her cheeks were blooming and her
eyes were like stars. With the fresh morning breeze across the prairie,
the exhilarating ride on horseback, and the novel interest in a ranch
whose appointments were so unlike "Eden" and the other Winnowoc Valley
farms, Jerry had the ecstasy of a new freedom to quicken her pulse-beat.
She had solved her problem; now she was free for her romantic nature to
expand. It was such a freedom as she had never in her wilful life known
before, because it had a purpose in it such as she had never known
before, a purpose in which the subconscious knowledge of dependence on
somebody else, the subjection to somebody else's ultimate control,
played no part.
To Laura Macpherson she seemed to have burst from the bud to the
full-blown flower in one short forenoon.
York's face, however, was wearing that impenetrable mask that even his
sister's keen and loving eyes could never pierce. He had been
impenetrable often in the last few weeks. But of the York back of that
unreadable face Laura was sure. Even in their mutual teasings the deep,
brotherly affection was unwavering. As far as it lay in York's power he
would never fail to make up to his companionable sister for what
circumstances had taken from her. And yet--the substratum of her
disturbed consciousness would send an upheaval to the surface now and
then. All normal minds are made alike and played upon by the same
influences. The difference lies in the intensity of control to subdue or
yield to the force of these influences. Things had happened in that
morning ride that York had planned merely for the beneficence of the
prairie breezes upon the bewildered purposes of the guest of the house.
On the far side of the "Kingussie" ranch the two riders had halted in
the shade of a clump of wild plum-trees beside the trail that follows
the course of the Sage Brush. Below them a little creek wound through a
shelving outcrop of shale, bordered by soft, steep earth banks wherever
the shale disappeared. This Kingussie Creek was sometimes a swift,
dangerous stream, but oftener it was a mere runlet with deep water-holes
carved here and there in the yielding shale. Just now, at the approach
of July heat, there was only a tiny thread of water trickling clear
over yellow rock, or deep pools lying in muddy thickness in the stagnant
places.
"Not much like the Winnowoc," York suggested, as his companion sat
staring down at the stream-bed below.
"Everything is different here," Jerry said, meditatively. "I've traveled
quite a little before; been as far as the White Mountains and the
beautiful woodsy country up in York State. There's a lot of upness and
downness to the scenery, but the people--except, of course--" Jerry
smiled bewitchingly.
"Except Ponk, of course," York supplied, with a twinkle in his eyes.
"How well you comprehend!" Jerry assured him. "But, seriously, the world
is so different out here--the--the people and their ways and all."
"No, Jerry, it isn't that. The climate is different. The shapes of
things differ. Instead of the churned-up ridged and rugged timber-decked
lands of Pennsylvania and York State, the Creator of scenery chose to
pour out this land mainly a smooth and level and treeless prairie--like
chocolate on the top of a layer cake."
"Chocolate is good, with sand instead of sugar," Jerry interrupted.
"But as to the people--the real heart of the real folks of the Sage
Brush--there's no difference. They all have 'eyes, hands, organs,
senses, affections, passions.' They are all 'fed with the same food,
hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed with
the same means, warmed and cooled with the same summer and winter' as
the cultured and uncultured folk of the Winnowoc Valley and the city of
Philadelphia. The trouble with us is we don't take time to read
them--nor even first of all to read ourselves. Of course I might except
old Fishing Teddy, that fellow you see away down there where the shade
is deepest," York added, to relieve the preachment he didn't want to
seem to be giving, yet really wanted this girl to understand. "He's a
hermit-crab and seldom comes among us. Every community has its
characters, you know."
"He was among us last night, and went home with Joe Thomson," Jerry
replied, looking with curious interest at the motionless brown figure
up-stream in the shadow of a tall earth bank.
York gave a start and stared at the girl in surprise. "How do you know?
Did the Big Dipper come calling on you? That sort of information is in
the Great Bear's line."
Jerry flushed hotly as she remembered her promise not to tell of Mrs.
Bahrr's call. In a dim sort of way she felt herself entangled for the
moment. Then she looked full at York, with deep, honest eyes, saying,
simply:
"Joe Thomson was calling on me last night, and I saw this old fellow,
Hans Theodore, Joe named him, waiting on the driveway, and the two went
away together, a pair of aces."
"How do you know, fair lady, that this is the same creature? And how do
you happen to know Joe Thomson?" York inquired, blandly, veiling his
curious interest with indifference.
"I happened to meet both of these country gentlemen on a certain day. In
fact, I dined _al fresco_ with one when I was riding in my chariot,
incognito, alone, unattended by gallant outriders, about my blank blank
rural estate in the heart of the Sage Brush country of Kansas. The
'blank blank' stands for a term not profane at all, but one I never want
to hear again--that awful word '_blowout_.'"
Jerry's humor was mixed with sarcasm and confusion, both of which
troubled the mind of her companion. This girl had so many sides. She was
so unused to the Western ways and he was trying to teach her a deeper
understanding of human needs, and the human values regardless of
geography, when she suddenly revealed a self-possession telling of
scraps of her experience in a matter-of-fact way; and yet a confusion
for some deeper reason possessed her at certain angles. Why? That
mention of Joe Thomson was annoying to York. Why? Jerry's assumed
familiarity with such a hermit outcast as the old fisherman was
puzzling. Why? York must get back to solid ground at once. This girl was
throwing him off his feet. Clearly she was not going to chatter idly of
all her experiences. She could know things and not tell them.
"Seriously, Jerry, there are no geographical limits for culture and
strength of character. If you stay here long enough you will appreciate
that," he began again where he had thrown himself off the trail to avoid
a preachment.
"Yes," Jerry agreed, with the same degree of seriousness.
"See, coming yonder." York pointed up the trail to where a much-worn
automobile came chuffing down the shaly road toward the ford of
Kingussie Creek. "That is Thelma Ekblad and her crippled brother Paul.
If you look right you will see the same lines of courage and sweetness
in his face that are in my sister's. And yet, although their lives have
been cast in widely different planes, their crosses are the same and
they have lifted them in the same way."
Jerry hadn't really seen the lines in Laura Macpherson's face, because
she had been too full of her own troubles. With York's words she felt a
sense of remorse. Finding fault with herself was new to her and it made
her very uncomfortable. Also this girl coming, this Thelma Ekblad, was
the one whom Mrs. Bahrr had said York had pretended to be interested in
once. Jerry had remembered every word of Stellar Bahrr's gossipy tongue,
because her mind had been in that high-strung, tense condition last
night to receive and hold impressions unconsciously, like a sensitized
plate. The thought now made her peculiarly unhappy.
"Joe Thomson's farm is next to hers. Some day I'll tell you her story.
It is a story--a real-life drama--and his."
York's words added another degree to Jerry's disturbed mental frame.
"How do you do, Thelma? Hello, Paul! Fine weather for cutting alfalfa.
My machines are at it this morning." York greeted the occupants of the
car cordially.
"Good morning, York. We are rushing a piece of the mower up to the shop.
Had a breakdown an hour ago."
Thelma was tanned brown, but her fair braids gleamed about her uncovered
head, and when she smiled a greeting her fine white teeth were worth
seeing. Paul Ekblad waved a thin white hand as the car passed the two on
horseback, and the delicate lines of his pale, studious face justified
York's comparison of it with Laura Macpherson's. Jerry saw her hostess
at that moment in a new light. Burdened for the moment as she was under
the discomfort of what seemed half-consciously to rebuke the frivolous
girl that she dimly knew herself to be, the sudden memory of her resolve
declared to Joe Thomson in the shadow-flecked porch the night before
came as a balm and a stimulant in one, to give her purpose,
self-respect, and peace.
Thus it was that Jerry came in to "Castle Cluny" at high noon the
picture of health and high spirits, shaming Laura Macpherson's doubt and
sorrow which her morning had brought her. Laura was thoroughly
well-bred, and she had, beyond that, a strong and virtuous heritage of
Scotch blood that made for uprightness and sincerity. With one effort
she swept out of her mind all that had harassed it since the cup episode
at the breakfast-table, establishing anew within her understanding the
force of her brother's admonition concerning any affiliation with the
Big Dipper, the town meddler and trouble-maker.
Late that afternoon, as Laura sat sewing in the shade of the
honeysuckle-vines, Stellar Bahrr hurried across lots again and hitched
cautiously up to the side door. Listening a moment, she heard the sound
of Laura's scissors falling on the cement floor of the porch, and
Laura's impatient exclamation, "There you go again!" as she reached to
pick them up and examine the points of their blades.
Stellar hitched cautiously a little further along the wall, and stood in
the shade of the house, outside the porch vines.
"Laury," she called, in a sibilant voice, "I jis' run in to say I won't
need that money at all. I'm goin' to go out sewin', an' I can git all I
can do, now the wheat harves' promises so well. Ever'body's spending
money on clo'es an' a lot of summer an' fall sewin' goin' to rot, you
might say. I'll be jis' blind busy, an' I can sew better than I can bake
or trim. But I'm same obliged."
"Won't you come in?" Laura must not be rude, at any cost.
"No, I can't. I must run back. My light bread's raisin' and it'll raise
the ruff if I don't work the meanness out of it."
Just then Jerry Swaim came bounding through the hall doorway. "Look
here, Laura! See what I have found." She held up her beaded hand-bag and
pulled the stuffed silken purse out of it. "Now how did it ever get in
there? I'm a good many things, but I never knew I was a shoplifter,"
Jerry declared, laughingly, a bit of confused blush making her prettier
than usual.
"Why--why--" Laura was embarrassed, not for Jerry's sake, but on account
of those steel hooks thrusting themselves into her back through the
honeysuckle-vines.
"Say, Laury, I jis' wanted to say I'm goin' to Mis' Lenwell's first.
Good-by." Stellar Bahrr's voice, sharp and thin, cut through the vines.
As Laura turned to reply Jerry saw her fair face redden, and her voice
was almost harsh as she spoke clearly, to be well heard.
"I remember now. I must have put it in there by mistake when you were
down-town yesterday afternoon. I guess I thought it was my bag."
Mrs. Bahrr, turning to go, had caught sight of Jerry's hand-bag through
the leaves, and remembered perfectly that Jerry had carried it with her
down-town the day before, and how well it matched the beaded trimming of
her parasol, her wide-brimmed chiffon hat, and the sequins of her sash
trimmings against her silk walking-skirt.
Jerry recalled taking the bag with her, too, and she recalled just then
what Mrs. Stellar Bahrr had hinted about Laura not wanting York to
admire other women. Why did that thought come to the girl's mind just
now? Was the wish of the evil mind of the woman hitching away across
lots and corkscrewing down alleyways projecting itself so far as this?
XI
AN INTERLUDE IN "EDEN"
An interlude should be brief. This one ran through a few midsummer days
with amazing rapidity, considering that in its duration the current of a
life was changed from one channel, whither it had been tending for
almost a quarter of a century, to another and widely different course
that ran away from the very goal-mark of all its years of inspiring
ambition.
It was late afternoon of a July day. Jerusha Darby sat in the
rose-arbor, fanning and rocking in rhythmic motion. The rose-vines had
ceased to bloom. Their thinning foliage was augmented now by the heavier
shade of thrifty moon-vines.
Midsummer found "Eden" no less restful and luxuriant in its July setting
than it was in the freshness of June.
The afternoon train had crawled lazily up the Winnowoc Valley on
schedule time, permitting Eugene Wellington, in white flannels, white
oxfords, and pink-pin-striped white silk shirt, fresh from shave and
shower-bath, to come on schedule time to the rose-arbor for a conference
with Mrs. Darby.
The swift flow of events had not outwardly affected the handsome young
man. The time of the early June roses had found him poor in worldly
goods, but rich in a trained mind, a developed genius, a yearning after
all things beautiful, a faith in divine Providence, abounding confidence
in his own power to win to the mastery in his beloved art, and glorying
in his freedom to do the thing he chose to do. It found him in love, and
the almost accepted lover of a beautiful, wilful, magnetic girl--a girl
with a sturdy courage in things wherein he was lacking; a frivolous,
untrained girl, yet with surprising dependableness in any crisis. It
found him the favorite nephew of a quiet, uninteresting, rich old
money-grubbing uncle and his dominant, but highly approving wife, whose
elegant home was always open to him the while he felt himself a
pensioner on its hospitality.
Mid-July found him, in effect, the master where he had been the poor
relation; the rich uncle gone forever from earthly affairs; a dominant
aunt still ruling--so she fancied--as she had always ruled, but with the
consciousness of her first defeated purpose rankling bitterly within
her. It found Eugene still in love with the same beautiful, wilful girl,
but far from any assurance of being a really accepted lover. It found
him insensibly forgetting the aspirations of a lifetime and beginning,
little by little, to grasp after the Egyptian flesh-pots. Life was fast
becoming a round of easy days, whose routine duties were more than
compensated by its charming domestic settings. The one unsatisfied
desire was for the presence of the bright, inspiring girl who had left a
void when she went away, for whose return all "Eden" was waiting.
The swift course of events had created other changes. Some growths are
slow, and some amazingly swift, depending upon the nature of the
life-germ in the seed and the soil of the planting. In Eugene Wellington
the love of beauty found its comfort in his present planting. It was
easier to stay where beauty was ready-made than to go out and create it
in some less lovely surroundings. Combine with this artistic temperament
an inherent lack of initiative and courage, a less resistant force, and
the product is sure. Moreover, this very falling away from the incentive
to artistic endeavor exacted its penalty in a dulled spirituality.
Whoever denies the allegiance due, in however small a measure, to the
call of art within him pays always the same price--a pound of tender
bleeding flesh nearest his heart. For Eugene Wellington the Shylock
knife was sharpening itself.
This July afternoon there were no misgivings in his soul, however--no
black shadows of failure ahead. All the serpents of "Eden" were very
good little snakes indeed. After a while he would paint again,
leisurely, exquisitely; especially would he paint when Jerry came home.
As he lighted a cigarette, a recent custom of his, and strolled down the
shady way to the rose-arbor to meet Mrs. Darby, he drew deep draughts
of satisfaction. It had been an unusually good day for him. Unusually
good. Business had made it necessary to open some closed records in the
late Cornelius Darby's affairs, records that Mrs. Jerusha Darby herself
had not yet examined. They put a new light on the whole Darby situation.
They went further and threw some side-lights on the late Jim Swaim's
transactions. Altogether they were worth knowing. And Eugene, wielding a
high hand with himself, had, once for all, stilled his finer sense of
fitness in his right to know these things. He had also made rapid
strides in this brief time toward comprehending business ethics as
differing from church ethics and artistic ethics. Face to face in a
conflict with Jerry Swaim, with Aunt Jerry Darby, with his conscience,
his God, he was never sure of himself. But as to managing things, once
he had shut his doors and barred them, he was confident. It was a truly
confident Gene who stepped promptly into the rose-arbor on the moment
expected. To the old woman waiting for him there he was good to look
upon.
"I'm glad you are on time, Gene," Mrs. Darby began, rocking and fanning
more deliberately. "I'm ready now to settle matters once for all."
"Yes, Aunt Jerry," Eugene responded, fitting himself gracefully into the
settings of this summer retreat, with a look of steady penetration
coming into his eyes as he took in the face before him.
"Any news from the Argonaut to-day?" he asked, at length, as Mrs. Darby
sat silently rocking.
"Not a line. I guess Jerry is waiting for me to ask her to come back.
She must be through with her romantic fling by this time, and about out
of money, too. So now's the time to act and settle matters, as I say,
once for all. Jerry _must come home_."
"Amen, and amen," Eugene agreed, fervently.
"And if she won't come home herself, she must be brought--to see things
as we do. _Must_, I say, Eugene."
"I'm glad she didn't say 'brought home' if she's going to send me after
her," the young man thought. The memory of having been sent after Jerry
in years gone by, and of coming back empty-handed, but full-hearted and
sore-headed, were still strong within him. "How shall we make her see?"
he inquired.
Mrs. Darby rocked vigorously for a few minutes. Then she brought her
chair to a dead stop and laid down the law without further shifting of
anchors.
"All my property, my real estate, country and city, my bank stocks, my
government bonds, my business investments--everything--is mine to keep
for my lifetime, and to pass by will to whomsoever I choose. Of course
it's only natural I should choose the only member of my family now
living to succeed to my possessions."
How the "my" sounded out as the woman talked of her god, to whose
service she was bound, but of whose blessings she understood so little!
Eugene sat waiting and thinking.
"Of course, whoever marries Jerry with my approval will come into a
fortune worth having."
"He certainly will," Eugene declared, fervently.
A clear vision of Jerry and June roses swept his soul with refreshing
sweetness, followed by the no less clear imagery of Uncle Cornie
stepping slowly but persistently at the wrong moment after his wabbling
discus. He looked away down the lilac-walk, unconsciously expecting the
familiar, silent, uninteresting face and figure to come again to view.
To the artist spirit in him the old man was there as real to vision as
he had been on that last--lost--June day.
"You are thinking of Jerry herself. I am thinking of her inheritance,
which is a deal more sensible, although Jerry is an unusually
interesting and surprising girl," the old woman was saying.
"Unusually," Eugene echoed. "And in case you do not make a will?"
The young man was still looking down the lilac-walk as he asked the
question, seemingly oblivious to the narrow eyes of Mrs. Darby
scrutinizing his face.
"I have already made it. If things do not please me I shall change it. I
may do that half a dozen times if I choose before I'm through with it.
Now listen to me." The woman spoke sharply.
Eugene listened, wondering the while what sort of lightning-rod she
carried, to speak with such assurance of all she meant to do before she
was through with the transactions of this life. Uncle Cornie had not
been so well defended.
"I want you to write to Jerry to come home. You can pay her expenses.
She will take the money quicker from you than from me. She's as proud as
Lucifer in some things, once she's set. But she's in love with you, and
where a girl's in love she listens."
Eugene looked up quickly. "Are you sure?" he asked, eagerly.
"Of course I am! Why shouldn't I know love when I see it?" Mrs. Darby
inquired.
Yes, why?
"But you mustn't give in, nor plead with her. Just tell her how well
fixed you are, and how much she is missing here, and that you will wait
her time, only she must come back, and promise to stay here, or I'll cut
my will to bits, I certainly shall. I'll write myself to York
Macpherson. He's level-headed and honorable as truth. If he was dead in
love with Jerry himself--as he no doubt is by this time--he'd just put
it all away if he found out he was denying me my rights. I'll put it up
to his honor. And so with him at that end of the line, and you here, and
me really moving the chessmen, it can't be a losing game, Eugene. It
simply can't. Jerry may not get tired of her new playthings right away,
but she will after a while. It isn't natural for her to take to a life
so awfully different from her bringing up. When the new wears off she'll
come home, even if necessity didn't drive her, as it's bound to sooner
or later. She's nearly out of money right now, and she can't sponge off
the Macphersons forever and be Jim Swaim's child. Is everything clear to
you now?"
Eugene threw away his cigarette and lighted a fresh one, his face the
while as expressionless as ever the dry, dull face of Cornelius Darby
had been. At last he answered:
"Mrs. Darby has made a will, presumably in favor of her niece, Geraldine
Swaim--a will subject to replacement by any number of wills creating
other beneficiaries. In any event, Mrs. Darby proposes to have a voice
in the final disposition of her property."
Mrs. Darby nodded emphatically. "I certainly do."
Eugene smiled approval of such good judgment. "You are right, Mrs.
Darby. What is your own you should control, always. But, frankly, Aunt
Jerry, it is Geraldine Swaim herself who is my fortune--if I can ever
acquire it."
"You don't object to her prospects, I hope," Mrs. Darby interrupted,
with a twinkle in her eye.
"I couldn't, for her sake. And I am artistic enough to love the charm of
an estate like this; and sensible enough, maybe, to appreciate the
influence and opportunity that are afforded by the other financial
assets of the Darby possessions. I'll do all in my power to bring Jerry
back to a life of ease and absence of all anxiety and responsibility.
Shall I go out to Kansas after her?"
An uncomfortable feeling about that York Macpherson had begun now to
pull hard upon Eugene's complacent assurance, although he had rebelled a
few minutes ago at the thought of going anywhere after Jerry.
"Never," Mrs. Darby responded. "It would just give her another chance
for adventure and seem to acknowledge that we couldn't do without her."
In truth, Mrs. Darby was shrewd enough to know that with Eugene on the
ground she could not count on York Macpherson as her ally. York would
naturally champion Jerry's cause, and she knew that Eugene Wellington
would be no match for the diplomatic man of affairs whom she had known
intimately from his childhood.
"Aunt Jerry, how much do you know of the value of this Swaim estate?"
Eugene asked, suddenly.
"Very little. Cornelius told me that he had a full account of it. That
was on the very day he was--he passed away. The papers, except the one
Jerry found here the day after the funeral, have all been mislaid."
"Then I'd advise you to write to this Macpherson person and find out
exactly what we have to fight against," the young man suggested.
"Meantime I'll write to Jerry. I'm sure she should be ready to listen
now. All I claim to know of that beastly region out West I learned from
my father, but that is enough for me. If there were really a bit of
landscape worth the cost of the canvas I might go out there and paint
it. But who cares to paint in only two colors, blue one half--that's
sky, unclouded, monotonous; and chrome yellow, the other half--that's
land. I could paint the side of the cattle-barn over yonder half yellow,
half blue, and put as much expression into it."
Mrs. Darby listened approvingly. "I'm very thankful that you see things
so sensibly. The sooner you replace what isn't worth while with what is
the sooner you will know you are a success in your business. We will
write those letters to-night. I'm having your favorite dishes for dinner
now, and we'll be served here. It is so pleasant here at this time of
day. I'll go and see to things right away, and we'll have everything
brought out pretty soon."
The owner of all this dainty comfort and restfulness and beauty hurried
away, leaving Eugene Wellington alone in the rose-arbor--alone with
memories of Jerry Swaim, and Uncle Cornie, and life, and love, and hope
and high ambition, and himself--the self that a man must go right with,
if he goes with him at all.
For a long half-hour he sat there in the rose-arbor, the appealing call
of his divine gift filling his artist soul. Then his judgment prevailed.
What he most wanted to have was here, ready to have now--and to hold
later with only a little patient waiting. A few weeks, or months, or
maybe even a year, a run of four swift seasons, and the girl of his
heart's heart would come back into her own, and find him ready for her
coming. That impossible York was not to be considered. Jerry was no
fool, if she was sometimes a bit foolish in her pranks. And he, Eugene
Wellington, had only this day learned of the whole Swaim situation, what
was vastly valuable to know. Meantime, his the task to keep that
precious Jerusha Darby will intact; or, failing in that, came the more
difficult and delicate task of controlling or holding back the pen that
would write another will. And in the end Jerry would love him forever
for what he would save for her--for her--
The memory of what he had learned that day in the business house in the
city came with its testimony that he was shaping his life course well.
Only one little foxy fear dodged about in his mind--the fear that
Jerry--the Jerry he knew, lovable in spite of all her little failings,
beautiful, picturesque, and surprising--that this Jerry, whom he
thought he knew so well, might prove to be an unknowable, unguessable
Jerry whose course would baffle all his plans, his efforts, his heart
longings. It must not be. He would prevent that. But could he?
The coming of dainty viands with exquisite appointments gave nourishment
to his ready appetite, and dulled for a time the thing within him that
sometime must cry out to power or be sleeked down into fat and unfeeling
subjection.
That night two letters were written to New Eden, Kansas, but neither
writer really knew the reader to whom the letter was written, nor
measured life purposes by the same gauge, so setting anew the world-old
stage for a drama in human affairs whose crowning act shapes human
destinies.
XII
THIS SIDE OF THE RUBICON
In the late afternoon of a July Sabbath Jerry Swaim had gone for a
stroll along the quiet outskirts of New Eden. Laura was napping in the
porch swing, and York had gone to his office in answer to a telephone
call. Jerry was rarely lonely with herself and she was a good walker.
She was learning, too, the need for being alone with herself, for there
were many things crowding into her mind that demanded recognition.
Jerry attended church with the Macphersons every Sunday, but it was a
mere perfunctory act on her part. To-day the minister was away. He had
gone to the upper Sage Brush to officiate at the funeral of Mrs. Nell
Belkap that had been Nell Poser, she of the tow hair and big-lunging
baby. She had died of congestion, following over-heating in cooking for
threshing-hands for her mother, her father being the kind of man that
objected to hired help for "wimmin folks." All that was nothing to
Jerry, who found herself wondering, in a vague sort of way, just where
that baby would sprawl itself, unattached to its mother's anchorage.
Babies were not in Jerry's scheme of things at all.
The substitute minister was more interesting to think about. He had a
three-piece country charge over which to spread the Gospel, "Summit
School-House," "Slack Crick Church," and "Locust Grove Grange." He said
"have went" and he called the members of one of Saint Paul's churches
"The Thessalonnykins." And he really didn't know the Lord's Prayer
correctly, for he said "forgive us our trespasses," instead of "our
debts," as dear accurate Saint Matthew has written it.
Jerry's mind was on him as an aside, on him, and that Paul Ekblad whom
she caught sight of in the Ekblad car with Thelma. They had stopped a
minute to speak with York Macpherson as they were on their way to that
up-country Poser funeral. Why should Paul Ekblad go so far to a funeral?
Jerry strolled aimlessly along the smooth road leading out to the New
Eden cemetery, her bead-trimmed parasol shading her bare head, and her
pale-green organdie gown making her appear very summery. Jerry had the
trick of fitting all weather except the heated, sand-filled days of
mid-June on a freight-train, which condition Junius Brutus Ponk declared
"was enough to muss a angel's wings an' make them divine partial-eclipse
angel draperies look dingier than dish-rags."
There were half a dozen well-grown cottonwood-trees in the cemetery,
with rows of promising little elms, catalpas, and box-elders all
symmetrically set. The grass was brown, but free from weeds; the walks
were only smooth paths. But the shade of the cottonwood group, and the
quiet of the place, seemed inviting. Every foot of the wind-swept
elevation was visible to the whole town, but the distance was guarantee
for undisturbed meditation. Jerry had no interest in cemeteries. She had
rarely visited the corner of "Eden" where the few elect by family ties
had their last resting-place. She walked down the grassy paths toward
the largest cottonwoods, now, indifferent alike to the humble headstone
and the expensive and sometimes grotesque granite memorial. By the
tallest shaft in the place, designated by Stellar Bahrr as "Granddad
Poser's monniment," she sat down in the shade of the biggest trees, and
looked out at New Eden in its Sabbath-afternoon nap; at the winding Sage
Brush and the green and yellow fields, and black hedgerows, and rolling
prairies, with purple-shadowed draws and pale-brown swells, and groves
about distant farmhouses. She sat still for a long time, and she was so
lost in this view that she did not hear steps approaching until Mr. Ponk
was almost beside her.
"Good afternoon, Miss Swaim. Takin' a constitutional? They ain't no
Swaims laid away out here I reckon."
"Oh no," Jerry replied. "I shouldn't come here for that if there were."
Something about Ponk always made her good-natured. He was so grotesquely
impossible to her--a caricature cut from some comic magazine, rounded
out and animated.
"Say you wouldn't? Now that's real queer." The short man opened his
little eyes wide with surprise. "Now I soar down here regular every
Sunday evenin' of the world, summer and winter."
"What for?" Jerry asked, looking up at the speaker with curiosity.
New Eden was still in that stage when a funeral was a public event. And
the belief was still maintained that the dead out in the cemetery must
be conscious of every attention or lack of it shown to their memory by
visits and flowers, and the price of tombstones. In a word, to the New
Eden living, the New Eden dead were not really in the Great Hereafter,
but here, demanding consideration in the social economy of the
community.
Ponk was more shocked at Jerry's query than she could begin to
comprehend, and his interest in her and pity for her took a still
stronger grip on life.
"Why, Miss Swaim, I come out here to see my mother. I 'ain't never
failed to bring her a flower in summer, or a green leaf in winter, one
single Sunday since she was laid out there on the south slope one Easter
day eight Aprils ago."
"But she isn't there." Jerry spoke gently now, realizing that she had
hurt him unintentionally.
"She is to me, an' I'd ruther think it thataway an' feel like I was
callin' every Sunday, never forgettin'," Ponk said, sadly.
"Where's your dead to you, Miss Swaim?" he asked, after a pause.
Jerry, who was gazing down the Sage Brush Valley, turned slowly at his
words, her big eyes luminous with tears.
"They are not." She waved a hand against viewless air.
"Oh yes, they are, walkin' beside you every day, lovin' you and proud of
you! A good mother just lives on an' keeps doin' good, and so does a
father, if you let 'em." Ponk hesitated, and his moon-round face was
flushed. "I ain't tryin' to preach," he added, hastily. "They's some
things, though, we all got to cling to or else get hustled off our feet
into a big black void where we just sink and die. It ain't just
Sage-Brushers, but it's all Christians--Baptists and Cammylites and High
Church and everybody. It's safer to stand in the light than sink in the
bottomless night. But, say, look who's comin' an' see what's trailin'
him. I guess I'll be soarin' back to the hotel now. Pleased to meet
you--always am pleased." Ponk lifted his hat and bowed uncovered, and
uncovered walked away.
What he had said in the sincerity of his spiritual belief fell on
fertile soil in the mind of his listener. He had preached a sermon to
her that was good for her to hear.
Jerry looked out in the direction he had indicated and saw York
Macpherson, walking a bit briskly for him and the place and the
afternoon.
It was no wonder that Jerusha Darby should expect York to be caught by
the charms of his guest. As she sat there in the shade of the
cottonwoods, where, in all the cemetery, the blue grass grew rankest,
with her pale-green gown, her smooth pink cheeks, and the wavy masses of
golden-brown hair coiled low at the back of her head, York wondered if
the spirit of the wild rose in bloom and the spirit of some Greek nymph
had not combined in the personification before him.
At the gateway he met Ponk.
"Why do you run away? I have a special-delivery letter for Miss Swaim. I
thought I'd better come and find her, but that needn't interfere with
you."
"Oh, you smooth-bore! But I have to go, anyhow. I'm headin' off what's
trailin' you. Don't look back. It's Stellar Bahrr, comin' out to see
who's been to see their folks to-day and who's neglectin' 'em,
'specially late arrivals. She's seen my game, though, now, an' she's
shabbin' off to the side gate, knowin' I'd head her back to town. Say,
York, she's after Miss Swaim now. You watch out. Them that's the
worthlessest and has the least influence in a community can start the
biggest fires burnin'. Everybody in New Eden's been buffaloed by
her--just scared blue--except maybe us two. You ain't, I know, and I'm
right sure I ain't."
"Ponk, you are as good as you are good-looking," York said, heartily.
"The Big Dipper could start a tale of our guest meeting gentlemen
friends in the cemetery. And yet for privacy it's about like meeting
them on the sidewalk before the Commercial Hotel. However, she's started
scandal with less material. I have business with Miss Swaim, so I'll
walk home with her."
Jerry waited for her host under the flickering, murmuring leaves of the
cottonwood. She had seen some woman wandering diagonally from the
cemetery road toward the corner of the inclosure, but she had no
interest in strangers and might never have thought of her again but for
a word of York's that day.
He had seen the girl looking after Stellar as she made a wide flank
movement. A sense of duty coupled with a strange interest in Jerry, for
which he had as yet given no account to himself, was urging him to tell
her, as he had told his sister, to have no traffic with the town's
greatest liability, but with all of Ponk's warning he could not bring
himself to speak now.
"May I sit here with you awhile?" he asked, lifting his hat as he spoke.
"Certainly. It is so quiet and peaceful out here, and, as I have no
associations with this place, I can sit here without being unhappy or
irreverent," Jerry replied.
"I came out to find you. There are callers at home now, so I'll give you
my message here, unless you want to follow Mr. Ponk's example and
'soar' off home."
"That man interests me," Jerry declared. "He said some good things about
his mother just now. And yet he's so--so funny."
"Oh, Ponk's outside is against him. If he could be husked out of himself
and let the community get down to the kernel of him he is really fine
wheat," York said, conscious the while that he had not meant, for some
reason, to praise the strutting fellow. Yet he had never felt so toward
the little man before.
"I have a special-delivery letter for you which came this afternoon.
While you read it I'll go out to the gate and speak to the Ekblads,
coming yonder."
Jerry read her letter--the one Eugene had written after his conference
with Jerusha Darby in the rose-arbor. In it he had been faithful to the
old woman's smallest demands, but the message itself was a masterpiece.
It was gracefully written, for Eugene Wellington's penmanship was art
itself; and gracefully worded, and it breathed the perfumes of that
lovely "Eden" on every page.
Jerry closed her eyes for a moment in the midst of the reading, and the
wind-swept cemetery and all the summer-seared valley of the Sage Brush
vanished. The Macphersons; Ponk; Thelma Ekblad in the automobile by the
cemetery gate, holding something in her arms, and her fair-haired
brother, Paul; Joe Thomson (why Joe?)--all were nothing. Before her eyes
all was Eugene--Eugene and "Eden." Then she read on to the end. One
reading was enough. When York came back she was sitting with the letter
neatly folded into its envelope again, lying in her lap.
York had a shrewd notion of what that letter contained, but there was
nothing in Jerry's face by which to judge of its effect on her. Two
things he was learning about her--one, that she didn't tell all she
knew, after the manner of most frivolous-minded girls; the other, that
she didn't tell anything until she was fully ready to do so. He admired
both traits, even though they baffled him. In his own pocket was Jerusha
Darby's letter, also specially delivered. He sat down by Jerry and
waited for her to speak.
"Were those the people we saw on the south border of 'Kingussie'?" she
asked.
"Yes," York replied.
"Do they interest you?" she questioned.
"Very much."
"Why?" Jerry was killing something--time, or thought.
"Because, as I told you the other day, the same life problems come to
all grades. And life problems are always interesting," York declared.
"Has Thelma Ekblad a blowout farm, too?" Jerry's face was serious, but
her eyes betrayed her mood.
"Better a blowout farm than a blowout soul," York thought. "No. I wonder
what she would do with it if she had," he said, aloud.
"Just what I am doing, no doubt, since all of us, 'Colonel's lady and
Judy O'Grady,' are alike. Tell me more about her," Jerry demanded.
"She's talking against time now, I know, but I'll tell her a few
things," York concluded.
"Jerry, there are not many women like this Norwegian farmer girl who is
working her way through the State University down at Lawrence. A few
years ago her brother Paul was in love with a girl up the Sage Brush,
the daughter of a prosperous, stupid, stingy old ranchman. Paul was
chewed up in a mowing-machine one day when the horses got scared and ran
away, but his girl was true to him in spite of her father's objections
to him. Then came a woman--a sharp-tongued gossip (she's over yonder now
by the side gate)--who managed to stir up trouble purely for the
infernal joy of gossip, I suppose, between this girl and Thelma. I
needn't go into detail; you probably do not care much for the general
outline."
"Go on," Jerry commanded.
"Well, it was the rough course of true love over again. Between the
father and the sister the match was broken off, and before things could
be reconciled the girl's father forced the marriage of his daughter to a
worthless scamp who posed as a rich man, or an heir expectant to riches.
The Ekblads are hard-working farmer folk. When it was too late the
misunderstanding was cleared up. The rich fellow soon proved a fraud
and a rascal and a wife-deserter. And the girl came home with her baby.
Her father, as I said, was too stingy to hire help. So this girl-mother
overworked in threshing-time, and--was buried this afternoon up the Sage
Brush--old man Poser's daughter, Nell Belkap. The Ekblads have just come
from the funeral. Old Poser has refused to care for Nell's baby and
intended to put it in an orphan asylum. Thelma Ekblad brought it home
with her. It was in her arms just now, and she's going to keep it and
adopt it. When she's away at school--she has a year yet before she
graduates--that crippled brother, Paul, will take care of it. All of
which is out of your line, Jerry, but interesting to us in the valley
here."
As York paused and looked at Jerry, all that Stellar Bahrr had said of
him and the Poser girl swept through her mind. Not the least meanness of
a lie is in its infectious poisoning power.
"It is very interesting. I wonder how she can take care of that baby.
Babies are so impossible," Jerry said, musingly.
"We were all impossibles once. Some of us are still improbables," York
replied.
Jerry looked up at him quickly. "Not altogether hopeless, maybe. Thelma
is doing this for her brother's sake, I can see that. And the story has
a sweeter side than if she were doing it just for herself. It makes it
more worth while."
It was the first time that York had caught the note of anything outside
of self in Jerry's views of life.
He involuntarily pressed his hand against the specially delivered letter
he himself had received that afternoon, and his lips were set grimly.
The plea of the old woman, and the soul of the young woman, which called
loudest now?
"Will this young Ekblad go up to his sweetheart's grave every Sunday,
like Mr. Ponk comes here?" Jerry asked, after a pause.
"No, he will probably never go near it," York replied.
"Why not? I thought that was the customary way of doing here," Jerry
declared.
"Because it isn't his grave. It belongs to Bill Belkap, who doesn't care
for it. Paul Ekblad will find his solace in caring for Nell Poser's
child and in knowing it was her wish that he is fulfilling. That is the
real solace for the loss of loved ones."
Jerry remembered Uncle Cornie and his withered yellow hand under her
plump white one as he told her of Jim Swaim's wish for his child.
"If I carry out that wish I will be true to my father--and--he will be
happier," she thought, and a great load seemed lifting itself from her
soul.
"Oh, father, father! You are not in the 'Eden' burial-plot. You are here
with me. I shall never lose you." The girl's face was tenderly sweet
with silent emotion as she turned to the man beside her.
"I'm glad you told me that story. May I come down to your office in the
morning for a little conference? I can come at ten."
"Certainly. Come any time," York assured her, wishing the while that the
plea of Jerusha Darby's that lay in his pocket was in the bottom of
Fishing Teddy's deep hole down the Sage Brush.
The next morning Jerry Swaim came into the office of the Macpherson
Mortgage Company promptly at the stroke of ten by the town clock.
"If I were only a younger man," York Macpherson thought, feeling how the
presence of this girl transformed the room she entered--"if I were only
younger I would fall at her shrine, without a question. Now I keep
asking myself how a woman can be so charming, on the one hand, and so
characterless maybe, shallow anyhow, on the other. But the test is on
for sure now."
No hint of this thought, however, was in his face as he laid aside his
pen and asked, in his kindly, stereotyped way:
"What can I do for you?"
"You can be my father-confessor for a minute or two, and then make out
my last will and testament for me," Jerry replied, with a demure smile.
"So serious as all that?" York inquired, gravely, picking up a blank
lease form as if to write.
"So, and worse," Jerry assured him. But in an instant her face was
grave. "You know my present situation," she began, "and that I must
decide at once what to do, and then _do_ it. I'm so grateful that you
understand and do not try to offer me friendship for service."
York looked at her earnest face and glowing dark-blue eyes wonderingly.
This girl was forever surprising him, either by flippant indifference or
by unexpected insight.
"You know a lot about my affairs, of course," Jerry went on, hurriedly.
"Aunt Darby offered both of us--me, I mean, a home with her, a life of
independent dependence on her--charity--for that, at bottom, was all
that it was. And when I refused her offer she simply cut me until such
time as I shall repent and go back. Then the same thing would be waiting
for me. I know now that it was really wilfulness and love of adventure
that most influenced me to break away from Philadelphia and--and its
flesh-pots. But, York, I don't want to go back--not yet awhile, anyhow."
It was the first time she had ever called him by that name, and it sent
a thrill through her listener.
"Is it wilfulness and love of adventure still, or something else, that
holds you here 'yet awhile'?" York asked, with kindly seriousness.
"Oh, wait and see!" Jerry returned.
"She is not going to be _led_, whichever way she goes. I told Laura
so," was York's mental comment.
"Does this finish your 'confession'?" he asked.
"I may as well tell you the other side of the story." Jerry's voice
trembled a little. "Cousin Gene Wellington was in the same boat with me,
a dependent like myself. But now that he has given up to Aunt Jerry's
wishes, I suppose he will be her heir some day, unless I go back and get
forgiven."
"This artist's father was in business with your father once, wasn't he?"
York asked.
"Yes, and there was something I never could understand, and Aunt Jerry
never mentioned, about that; but she did say often that Cousin Gene
would make up for what John Wellington lacked, if things went her way.
They haven't all gone her way--only half of them, so far."
"Do you fully understand what you are giving up, Jerry?" York asked,
earnestly. "That life might be a much pleasanter story back East, even
if it were a bit less romantic than the story on the Sage Brush. Might
not your good judgment take you back, in spite of a little pride and the
newness of a different life here?"
As York spoke, Jerry Swaim sat looking earnestly into his face, but when
he had finished she said, lightly:
"I thought before I saw you that you were an old man. You seem more like
a brother now. I never had a brother, nor a sister--nothing but myself,
which makes too big a houseful anywhere." She grew serious again as she
continued: "I do understand what I'm giving up. It was tabulated in a
letter to me yesterday, and I do not give up lightly nor for a girl's
whim now. I have my time extended. There seems to be indefinite patience
at the other end of the line, if I'll only be sure to agree at last."
"Pardon me, Jerry, if I ask you if it is a question of mere funds." York
spoke carefully. "I know that Mrs. Darby may be drawn on at any time for
that purpose."
"Did she tell you so?" Jerry asked, bluntly.
"She did--when you first came here," York replied, as bluntly.
Jerry did not dream of the struggle that was on in the mind of the man
before her, but her own strife had made her more thoughtful.
For a little while neither spoke. Then York Macpherson's face cleared,
as one who has reached the top of a difficult height and sees all the
open country on the other side. Jerusha Darby's plea had won.
"Jerry, you do not understand what is before you. Whoever takes up the
business of self-support, depending solely on the earnings that must be
won, has a sure battle with uncertainty, failure, sacrifice, and
slow-wearing labor. Of course it is a glorious old warfare--but it has
that other side. In the face of the fact that I am your fortunate host,
and that my sister is happier now than she has ever been before in New
Eden, and hopes to keep you here, I urge you, Jerry, to consider well
before you refuse to go back to your father's sister and your artist
cousin."
The "father's sister" was a master-stroke. It caught Jerry at an angle
she had not expected. But that "artist cousin"! If Gene had been truly
the artist, Jerry Swaim had yielded then. The failure to be true to
oneself has long tentacles that reach far and grip back many things that
else had come in blessing to him who lies to his own soul.
"I won't go back. That is settled. Now as to my last will and testament,
please," Jerry said, prettily.
"Imprimis," York began, with his pen on the lease form before him.
"Oh, drop the Latin," Jerry urged. "Say, 'I, Geraldine Darby Swaim,
being of sound mind and in full possession of all my faculties, and of
nothing else worth mentioning, being about to pass into the final estate
and existence of an old-maid school-teacher, a high-school teacher of
mathematics'--Please set that down."
"So you are going to teach. I congratulate you." York rose and took the
girl's hand.
"Thank you. Yes, I just 'soared' over to the hotel and signed my
contract with Mr. Ponk and the other two members in good standing, or
whatever they are." Jerry would not be serious now. "And the remainder
of my will: 'I hereby give and bequeath all my worldly goods, excepting
my gear, to wit: one claim of twelve hundred acres, containing three
cottonwood-trees, three times three acres of oak timber, and three times
three times three million billion grains of golden sand, to the
Macpherson Mortgage Company to have and to hold, free of all expense to
me, and to lease or give away to any lunatic, or lunatics, at the
company's good-will and pleasure, for a term not to exceed three million
years. All of which duly signed and sworn to.'"
As Jerry ran on, York wrote busily on the lease form before him.
"Please sign here," he said, gravely pointing to a blank space when he
had finished. "It is a three years' lease to your property herein
legally described. The Macpherson Mortgage Company will pay you
twenty-five cents per acre, per year, with the exclusive right to all
the profits accruing on the land, and to sublease the same at will."
"That is about half of what Aunt Jerry spent on my wardrobe just before
I came West," Jerry exclaimed. "But I couldn't take twenty-five cents a
year. I've seen the property, you know, and I don't want charity here
any more than I did in Philadelphia."
"Then sign up the lease. This is business. Our company is organized on a
strictly financial basis for strictly financial transactions. It is a
matter of 'value received' both ways with us."
York Macpherson never trifled in business matters, even in the smallest
details, and there was always something commanding about him. It pleased
him now to note that Jerry read every word of the document before
accepting it, and he wondered how much a girl of such inherent business
qualities in the small details of affairs would waver in steadfastness
of purpose in the larger interests of life.
"Will you let me give a receipt for the cash instead of taking a check?"
Jerry asked, as York reached for his check-book.
"Why do you prefer that?" York asked, with business frankness.
"Because I do not care to have the transaction known to any one besides
your company," Jerry replied.
"But suppose I should sublease this land?" York suggested.
"That would be different, of course, even if the lessee was a lunatic.
Otherwise I don't care to have it known to any one that I draw an income
from what is not worth an effort," Jerry declared, quoting Joe Thomson's
words regarding her possessions.
"If I give my word to exclude every one else from knowing of this
transaction it means every one--even my sister Laura." York looked at
Jerry questioningly.
"Even your sister Laura," Jerry repeated, conclusively.
York was too well-bred to ask her why, and, while he voluntarily
refrained from telling his sister many things, she was his counselor in
so many affairs that he wondered not a little at Jerry's request, while
he chafed a little under his promise. He was so accustomed to being
master of himself in all affairs that it surprised him to find how
easily he had put himself where he would rather not have been placed.
Half an hour later Joe Thomson came into the office.
"What can I do for you to-day, Joe?" York inquired.
"Do you control the sections south of mine?" Joe asked. "I want to lease
them, but I shouldn't care to have the owner know anything about it."
"That old blowout! What's your idea, Joe?"
"I want to try an experiment," Joe replied.
York Macpherson had the faculty of reading some men like open books.
"You must have been hanging around eavesdropping this morning. I just
got a three years' lease on Miss Swaim's land at twenty-five cents an
acre, and here you come for it. I took it on a venture, of course,
hoping to sell sand to the new cement-works up the river, sand being
scarce in these parts." There was a twinkle in York's eyes as he said
this. "I can sublease it, of course, and at the same price, but you
know, Joe, that the land is worthless."
"I don't know it," Joe said, stubbornly. "You seem to have been willing
enough to get the lease secured this morning."
York ignored the thrust. "You know I leased that land merely to help
Miss Swaim, but you don't know yet whether or not you can tame your own
share of that infernal old sand-pile that you want to put a mortgage on
your claim to fight," York reminded him.
"I'll take a part of that loan to pay for the lease, and the rest I'll
use on the Swaim land, not on mine. I'm going to go beyond the blowout
to begin, and work north the same way it goes," Joe explained.
"All of which sounds pretty crazy to me. You are shouldering a big load,
young man--a regular wildcat venture. There's one of you to myriads of
sand-heaps. You'll have to take the Lord Almighty into partnership to
work a miracle before you win out. I've known the Sage Brush since the
first settler stuck in a plow, and I've never known one single miracle
yet," York admonished him.
"As to miracles," Joe replied, "they are an every-day occurrence on the
Sage Brush, if you can only look far enough above money-loaning to see
them, you Shylock."
Calling York Macpherson a Shylock was standard humor on the Sage Brush,
he was so notoriously everybody's friend and helper.
"And I've had to take the Lord in for a partner all my life," Joe added,
seriously.
York looked at the stern face and stalwart form of the big, sturdy
fellow before him, recalling, as he did so, the young ranchman's years
of struggle through his boyhood and young manhood.
"Of course you can win," he assured Joe. "Your kind doesn't know what
failure means. It isn't the _work_, it is the stake that makes me
uneasy."
Joe looked up quickly and York knew that he understood.
"I read your page clearly enough, my boy," he said, earnestly. "You are
taking a hand in a big game, and the other fellow keeps his cards under
the table. Blowouts are not as uncertain as women, Joe. Let me tell you
something. You will find it out, anyhow. I can ease the thing up now.
Back in Philadelphia a rich old widow has given two young lovers the
opportunity to earn their living or depend on her bounty--a generous
one, too. Being childless and selfish, she secretly wanted to hold them
dependent on her, that she may demand their love and esteem. It is an
old mistake that childless wealth and selfishness often make. The girl,
being temperamentally romantic and inherently stubborn, voted to go
alone. These things, rather than any particularly noble motive--I hate
to disillusion you, Joe, but I must hold to facts--have landed her
practically penniless in our midst; and she is not acquainted yet with
either lack of means or the labor of earning. The young man, gifted in
himself, which his sweet-heart is not, son of a visionary spendthrift,
has chosen the easier way, a small clerkship and a luxurious home
seeming softer to his artistic nature than the struggling up-climb with
his real gift. This old lady won't last forever. Her disinherited niece
won't want to work at teaching forever. The waiting clerk will come
after the heir apparent just when she is most tired of the Sage Brush
and the things thereof, and--they will live tamely ever after on the
aunt's money. Do you see what you are up against, Joe? Don't waste
energy on a dream--with nothing to show for your labor at last but debt
and possible failure, and the beautiful Sage Brush Valley turned to a
Sodom before your eyes."
"Whenever you are ready I'll sign up the lease," was Joe's only reply.
So the transaction was completed in silence.
III
JERRY AND EUGENE--AND JOE
XIII
HOW A GOOD MOTHER LIVES ON
New Eden never saw a more beautiful autumn, even in this land of
exquisite autumn days, than the first one that Jerry Swaim passed in the
Middle West. And Jerry reveled in it. For, while she missed the splendid
colorings of the Eastern woodlands, she never ceased to marvel at the
clear, bright days, the sweet, bracing air, the wondrous sweeps of
landscapes overhung by crystal skies, the mist-wreathed horizons holding
all the softer hues, from jasper red to purest amethyst, that range the
foundation stones of heaven's walls as Saint John saw them in his dream
exquisite.
It had never occurred to Jerry that a beauty impossible to a wooded
broken country might be found on the October prairies. Her dream of a
Kansas "Eden" exactly like the Pennsylvania "Eden," six times enlarged,
had been shattered with one glimpse of her possession--a possession
henceforth to be a thing forgotten. But life had opened new pages for
her and she was learning to read them rapidly and well.
One thought of the past remained, however. The memory of a romance begun
in her Eastern home would not die with the telling. And while Jerry
Swaim persuaded herself that what Eugene Wellington called success to
her was failure, and while every day widened the breach between the two,
time and distance softened her harsher judgment, and she remembered her
would-be lover with a tender sadness that made her heart cold to the
thought of any other love.
This did not make her the less charming, however--this pretty girl
without any trace of coquetry, who knew how to win hearts to her. Sure
of the wideness that separated her life from the life of the Sage Brush
Valley, she took full measure of interest in living, unconsciously
postponing for herself the future's need for the solace of love. The
small income from her lease to the Macpherson Mortgage Company filled
her purse temporarily, and she began at once upon a course of economic
estimates worthy of Jim Swaim's child, however seemingly impossible in
Lesa Swaim's pretty, dueless daughter. Another trait, undeveloped
heretofore, began to be emphasized--namely, that while she could chatter
glibly on embroideries and styles, and prettily on art, and seriously
and intelligently on affairs of national interest, as any all-round
American girl should do--she was discreet and uncommunicative regarding
her business affairs. Not that she meant to be secretive; she was simply
following the inherited business ability of an upright, well-balanced
man, her father. Coupled with this was a pride in her determination to
win--to prove to Aunt Jerry Darby and Eugene Wellington that she had
made no mistake; and until victory was hers she would be silent about
her endeavors.
The Macphersons had insisted that Jerry should remain their guest at
least until the opening of the school in September. And if the girl
imagined that she found a faint hint of fervor gone from Laura
Macpherson's urging, her hostess made up for it in the abundant kindness
of little acts of hospitality. Jerry was frankly troubled, and yet she
could not say why, for it was all the impressions of a mind sensitized
to comprehend unspoken things. Jerry's memory would call up that
incident of the lost purse found in her hand-bag, and of Laura's excuse
for it, which she, Jerry, knew was impossible. And yet the girl felt
that it was a contemptible thing to impute a distrust to Laura that,
placed in the same position, she herself would scorn to harbor.
"I see no way but the everlasting run of events. I wish they would run
fast and clear it up," Jerry said to herself, dismissing the matter
entirely, only to have it bobbing up for consideration again on the
first occasion.
At the close of a hot summer day Jerry was in her room, finishing a
letter to Jerusha Darby, to whom she wrote faithfully, but from whom she
had rarely received a line. York and Laura were on the porch, as usual.
The hammock that day had been swung to a shadier position, on account of
the slipping southward of the late summer sun; and Laura forgot that
Jerry's window opened almost against it now, so that she could hear all
that was said at that corner of the porch. As Jerry finished her letter
she caught a sentence outside that interested her. She was innocent of
any intention of eavesdropping afterward, but what she heard held her
motionless.
"The leak has opened again, York," Laura was saying. "Things are
beginning to disappear, especially money."
York's face took on a sort of bulldog grimness, but he made no reply.
Inside, Jerry glanced at her beaded hand-bag lying on the top of the
little desk, saying to herself:
"I'll open a bank-account to-morrow. I've been foolish to leave that
roll of bills lying around; all I have, too, between me and the last
resort in Kansas--'to go mad or go back East.' I'm certainly a brilliant
business woman--I am."
And then, unconscious at first that she was listening, her ear caught
what followed outside:
"York, the queer thing is that it's just at 'Castle Cluny' that things
are disappearing right now. Mrs. Bahrr was over to-day and told me the
Lenwells had even gone to Kansas City and forgot to lock their back
door, and not a thing was missing, although Clare Lenwell left five
silver dollars stacked up on the dresser in plain view."
"If anybody would know the particulars it would be the Big Dipper," York
declared.
"Oh, now don't begin on that tune, York, for I'm really uneasy," Laura
began.
"For why?" York inquired.
And then Laura told him the story of her lost purse, omitting Stellar
Bahrr's part in the day's events, and adding:
"Of course, I hate myself for even daring to carry a hint of suspicion
for a minute, but Jerry knew as well as I did that I hadn't put my purse
in her hand-bag by mistake, for she carried it with her up-town that
day. But I could forget the whole thing if it had ended there. I know
that the dear girl was dreadfully short of money until just recently.
Now her purse is full of bills. I couldn't help seeing that when she
displays it so indifferently. She says she will have no funds from
Philadelphia. Where does she get money when I can't keep a bill around
the house?"
"Then I would quit the stocking-toe banking system that mother and all
the other women and most of the men back in Winnowoc used to employ. You
might try the First National Bank of New Eden. I'm one of the directors,
and a comparatively safe man for all that," York advised, gravely.
"The loss of the money is nothing to the possible loss of confidence,"
Laura went on, ignoring her brother's thrust. "Could such a thing be
possible that this dear girl is discouraged and tempted to hide her
necessities?" The woman's voice was full of kindly sorrow. "York,
couldn't you tell her?"
"I see myself doing that," York fairly exploded. "Laura, there may be a
big leak in this house where valuables seep through. I'm not saying
otherwise. But as for Jerry Swaim, it's simply preposterous--impossible.
Never let such a thing cross your mind, let alone your lips again, you
dear best of sisters. You know you don't believe a word of it."
"I know I don't, too, York; of course I don't; but I must have needed
you to assure me of it. It all began in circumstance and an ugly
suspicion that a story of Stellar Bahrr's suggested. And when I missed
my own money and saw that great roll of bills--Oh, I must be crazy or
just a plain human creature full of evil--"
"Or both," York added. "We are all more or less human and more than less
crazy, especially if we will listen to old wives' tales against the
expressed command of our wise brothers. As for Jerry having money"--York
suddenly recalled his promise to Jerry not to discuss her affairs--"it's
hardly likely she would display carelessly what was acquired by extreme
care. Let's call her out here and think of better things."
As Laura looked up she realized for the first time the nearness of the
hammock to Jerry's open window. The grief of being overheard by one whom
she would not wound for worlds, with the self-rebuke for giving ear to
Stellar Bahrr's gossip, almost overcame her.
"You go after Jerry, please," she said, faintly.
York went into the hall, calling at Jerry's open door, but she was not
there. He looked in the living-room, but it was empty. Through the
dining-room he passed to the side porch, where a dejected, lonely little
figure was half hidden by the vines that covered it. At sight of her
York stopped to get a grip on himself.
At her host's explosive declaration, "I see myself doing it," Jerry had
come to herself. Surprised and wounded, but realizing the justice of the
ground for suspicion against her--her--Jerry Swaim, who had always had
first concern in those about her--she left her room hastily and passed
out of the house by the side door. In the little vine-covered entry she
sat down and stared out at the lawn, where the fireflies were beginning
to twinkle against the shrubbery bordering the driveway. She had thought
the disposition of her estate, and the choice of occupation, and the
putting away of Eugene Wellington, had settled things for her future.
Here was the fulfilling of a sense of something wrong that had recently
possessed her, hardly letting itself be more than a sense till now. What
did life mean, anyhow? "To go mad or go back East?" Why should she do
either one, who had not offended anybody?
As Jerry gazed out at the shadowy side lawn the sound of a step caught
her ear--a shuffling of feet across the grass, and the noise of a hard
sole on the cement driveway. Jerry's eyes mechanically followed a
short, shambling figure, suggesting a bear almost as much as a human
being, as it passed forward a step or two; then, dividing the
spirea-bushes on the farther edge, it disappeared into the deeper shadow
of the slope toward the town below "Kingussie."
It was Fishing Teddy--old Hans Theodore; Jerry recognized him at a
glance, and in the midst of her confused struggle to find herself she
paused to wonder about him. Intense mental states often experience such
pauses, when the mind grappling in an internal combat rests for a moment
on an impression coming through the senses.
"What's the old Teddy Bear doing here?" Jerry asked herself, and then
she remembered his coming once before almost to this very spot. That was
the night Joe Thomson had called--the big farmer whose property her own
was helping to destroy. There was something strong and unbreakable about
this Joe. A million leagues from her his lot was cast, of course, and
yet she hoped somehow that Joe might be near and that the Teddy Bear was
waiting for him.
"Jerry! Jerry!" York called through the hall, and then he came out to
where she sat on the side porch.
"I was hunting for you. You have a caller, my lady, a gentleman who
wants to take you for a ride up the river. It will be gloriously cool
on the ridges up-stream. He will give you a splendid hour before the
curfew rings--the lucky dog!"
Jerry looked up expectantly. "It must be Joe Thomson," she thought, and
she was glad to have him come again.
On the front porch little Junius Brutus Ponk was strutting back and
forth, chatting with Laura.
"Good evening, Miss Swaim. I just soared down to invite you to take a
little drive in my gadabout. I hope it will suit you to go."
"Nothing would please me more," Jerry said, lightly. "Let me get my
wrap." As she returned to her room her eye fell on her hand-bag, lying
on her desk. A sense of grief swept over her, for one moment, followed
by a strange lightness of heart as if her latest problem had solved
itself suddenly.
As they passed down the walk to the little gray car York Macpherson
looked after them, conscious of the impossible thing in Ponk's mind, and
wondering wherein lay the charm of this pink-and-white inefficient girl
to grip with so strong a hold on the heart of a sensible man like Ponk.
"It is her power to be what she has never been, but what she will
become," he said to himself. "She's the biggest contradiction to all
rules that I ever knew, but she's a dead-sure proposition."
The coming of callers found York in his best mood, and when his sister
bade him good night he put his arms around her, saying, gently:
"You are the best woman in the world, Laura, and you mustn't carry a
single hidden worry."
"Neither must you, York," Laura replied, and each knew that the other
understood.
Meantime, out on the upper Sage Brush road Jerry was letting the beauty
of the evening lift the weight from her mind. She was just beginning to
understand that, while she had imagined herself to be doing her own
thinking heretofore, she had been merely willing that her thinking
should be done for her. She was now at the place where her will meant
little and her judgment everything in shaping her acts. The recognition
brought a sense of freedom she had never known before. What she had
overheard from the porch seemed far away, and her wounded spirit grew
whole again as she began to find herself standing on her own feet, not
commanding that somebody else should hold her up. Jerry's mind worked
rapidly, and before the gray car had been turned at the northern end of
the evening's ride it was not the Jerry Swaim of an hour ago, but a
young warrior, clad in armor, with shining weapons in her hand, who sat
beside the adoring little hotel-keeper of the faulty grammar and the
kindly heart.
Ponk halted the car at the far end of the drive up-stream, to take in a
moonlight view of the Sage Brush Valley.
"Them three lights down yonder's the court-house an' the school-house
an' the station. The other town glims are all hid by trees an' bushes
and sundry in the wrinkles of the praira." Ponk always said "praira."
"But it's a beautiful country when you douse the sunshine and turn on
the starlight, or a half-size moon like that young pullet in the west
sky yonder. Ever see the blowout by moonlight? Sorta reclaims its cussed
ugliness, you might say, an' the dimmer glow softens down an' subdues
the infernal old beast considerable."
Jerry turned quickly toward her companion. "Blowout is a word taboo in
my presence," she said, gravely. "Anybody who wants to be listed as a
friend of mine will never mention it to me, for to me there is no such
thing. I have no real estate in Kansas, nor anywhere else, for that
matter. I'm just a poor orphan child." The girl smiled brightly. "All
the world is mine, even though none of it really belongs to me. If you
want my good-will, even my speaking acquaintance, you'll remember the
road to it is _never_ to _mention_ that _horrid thing_ to me again."
"I never won't," Ponk declared, seriously. "If that's the only
restriction, I'm in the middle of your good-will so far I'll never find
the outside gate again."
"I hope you won't," Jerry said, lightly.
"I'm seriouser than you are, Miss Swaim, and I asked you to take this
ride for three reasons," Ponk returned.
"Name them," Jerry demanded, in the dim light noting the flush on his
round cheeks.
"Firstly, and mainly, just selfish pleasure. Secondly, because I wanted
to do you a favor if I might presume, and thirdly, to tell you why I
wanted to do it."
"You are very kind," Jerry said, sincerely.
"What I want to say in that favor business is the same I told York to
say that Sunday we met you in the cemetery, where I'd been callin' on
mother, and you come to get away from New Eden and all that in it is,
for a little while. You remember York came trailing after you with some
excuse or other, an' right behind him comes another trailer, a
womankind?"
"I remember York, that's all," Jerry replied, trying to recall the
woman, whom she had forgotten.
"Well, she didn't forget you. It's that Stellar Bahrr, and she made
capital, principal, and compound interest out of the innocent event, as
she does out of every move everybody in that burg makes. But don't let
it disturb you a mite."
"I won't," Jerry replied, indifferently. "But tell me why she should
make capital out of me?"
"'Cause she hates you," Ponk said, calmly.
"Me? Why?" Jerry's eyes were black now, and the faintly gleaming ripples
above her white forehead and her faintly pink cheeks in the light of the
moon made a delicious picture.
"Just because you are you, young, admired. I don't dare to say no more,
no matter what I feel. It's a snaky jealousy, and she'll trail you
constant. It's got to be the habit of her life, and it's ruined her as
it will any person."
"Well, let her trail." Jerry's voice had a clear defiance now. "I'm here
to earn an honest living by my own efforts. I shall pay my bills and
take care of my own business. I have not intentionally injured anybody."
She paused and remembered Laura Macpherson, her shapely hands gripped
together, emphasizing her unbreakable determination.
"And you are goin' to win. Don't never be afraid of the end and finis.
But, knowin' Sage Brush, an' how scared it is of Mrs. Bahrr, yet
listenin' constant to every word she says, I felt it my duty to warn you
of breakers ahead. I've known more 'n one, bein' innocent, to fall for
her tricks. And I'm telling you out of pure kindness. There's only two
ways to handle her--keep still and try to live above her, or stand
straight up an' tell her to go to the devil. Excuse me, Miss Swaim, I'm
not really a profane man, but I mean well by you, and I'm not just
settin' here to gossip about a fellow-citizenness."
"I know you mean well, Mr. Ponk. You have been more than kind to me ever
since the night I reached New Eden, and I do appreciate your friendship
and good-will," Jerry said, earnestly. "Now as to Mrs. Bahrr, which
course do you advise me to follow?"
Junius Brutus Ponk was hanging on every word of Jerry's, and his face
was a full moon of pleasure, for he was frankly and madly in love with
her, and he knew it.
"I can't advise at all; it just ain't for me to do that. You are
honorin' us by stoppin' in our midst. What I want you to do is to be on
the lookout, an' if things start wrong, anywhere--school or church or
with your friends, the Macphersons, for instance, as they might--just
run down old Stellar before you go to guessin', or misunderstandin', and
if you can't do it alone"--Ponk smote his broad bosom dramatically--"I'm
here to help. That leads me to the thirdly of my triplet purpose in
askin' the pleasure of your company."
Jerry looked up with a smile. The little man was so thoroughly good, and
yet so impossible. York Macpherson seemed head and shoulders above any
other man she had ever known in her life--except her father. In fact, he
seemed like a sort of father to her--and Joe Thomson. That was just a
shadow across her consciousness, for all these men belonged here and at
heart were not of her world.
"Miss Swaim, will you let me, without no recompense, be a friend at
court whenever you need my help? You seem to me like a sort of female
Robinson Crusoe cast away on the desert island of the Sage Brush country
in Kansas. Let me be your Man Friday. I'd like to be your Saturday and
Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. York Macpherson would come
lopin' in to claim Thursday, I reckon."
The sincerity of the fat little man offset the pompous ridiculousness of
his speech.
"If I seem cuttin' into the Macpherson melon-patch it's because I got on
to some of Stellar Bahrr's gossip that set me thinkin'. She's up to
turnin' Miss Laury against you because of York's admiring you so much."
Jerry grasped the situation now. The hotel-keeper was not only wishing
to befriend and shield her--he thought he was in love with her. And he
thought that York Macpherson was also in love. Was he? The girl's mind
worked rapidly. Little as she cared for the opinion of New-Edenites,
outside of these three good friends, she realized that these same
New-Edenites were interested in her and dared to discuss her affairs;
and that if she stayed here, as she meant to do, she must meet them and
be, in a way, of them. How much of this newly discovered admiration
which her companion evidently felt, and which he felt sure York
Macpherson possessed, might be really the outgrowth of pity for her in
the new position in which she found herself? And there was Laura.
Stellar Bahrr had hinted about her being neglected by her brother for
other women. Whatever might be the real motive, Jerry and love had
parted company on the day that Eugene Wellington's letter had come
telling of his renunciation of his art for an easy clerkship. But Laura
didn't know that, and she might have heard the town-meddler--Oh, bother
Stellar and all her works! Jerry Swaim would have none of them. And
Laura was such a sweet, companionable, refined friend. This thing must
be overcome in some way.
"Tell me, Mr. Ponk, why do the New Eden people listen to a sharp-tongued
trouble-maker, since they know her power?" Jerry asked, after a pause.
"Why? 'Cause they enjoy it when 'tain't about them--all of us do that,
bein' human. Are you right sure you wouldn't believe her yourself, much
as you despised any story of hers you'd be forced to listen to? Well as
I know her, I have to keep pinchin' my right arm to see if it's got
nerve enough to strike back if I'm hit, you might say."
On Jerry's cheeks the bloom deepened. She had let a word of Mrs. Bahrr's
set her to wondering about both her host and hostess.
"They's one more thing I want to say, the third reason for askin' you
out this evenin'," Ponk went on, and the pompous manner fell from him
somewhat in his earnestness. "I don't want you to leave Macpherson's
home for anything, right now. They want you and--well, I hope you won't.
Even at the loss of a boarder for myself at the hotel and gurrage I
hope you won't. But if some time--if it was ever possible you'd find a
need for me more 'n what we spoke of--I ain't no show. I'm clear below
your society back East, but, if you ever needed a real, devoted, honest
man who tried to be a Christian--"
Jerry caught his full meaning now. "You are a Christian, Mr. Ponk. I'm
not. You are kind to me in my need, and I shall rely on your sincerity
and your friendship, and if there is any way in which I could return it,
even in a small measure, I would be so happy. We will be the best of
friends."
Jerry's smile was winsome as she frankly put out her hand to seal the
bond in a clasp of good-fellowship. And Junius Brutus Ponk understood.
"It's no use," he said to himself, sadly. "I wish it might have been,
but it ain't. I ain't such a fool I can't see a door when it's shut
right before me. I'm blessed to be her friend, and I'll be it if the
heavens drop. I'm in my Waterloo an' must just wade across an' shake
myself. That's all."
His sunny nature always overcame his disappointments, but from that hour
in an upper niche of his heart's shrine he placed Jerry's image, one of
the beautiful things of life he might do homage to but could never
possess.
"They's just one favor I want to ask of you," he said, aloud, "an' that
is that you'll go with me to call on mother out to the cemetery
sometimes. I'd like her to know you, too. She was good, and a good
mother just lives on."
Jerry's cheek paled a shade, but she said, graciously: "I'll be glad to
do that, Mr. Ponk. Maybe it will make me a little less rebellious, and
you will be doing me the favor."
Ponk's face beamed with pleasure at her words the while a real tear
rolled unnoticed down his cheek. That night marked the beginning of a
new spiritual life for Jerry Swaim.
XIV
JIM SWAIM'S WISH
The next morning, when Jerry Swaim was ready to go to the bank, her
pretty beaded bag seemed light as she lifted it, and when she opened her
purse she found it empty. Then she sat down and stared at herself in the
mirror opposite her.
"Well, what next? Go mad or go back East? This must be the last ditch,"
she murmured. "Joe Thomson said he didn't _go_ mad, but he did _get_
mad. I'm mad clear to my Swaim toes, and I'm not going to take another
bump. It's been nothing but bumps ever since I reached the junction of
the main line with the Sage Brush branch back in June, and I'm tired of
it. Gene Wellington said the West got the better of his father. The East
seems to have gotten the best of his father's son."
Across her mind swept the thought of how easy Gene's way was being made
for him in the East, and how the way of the West for her had to be
fought over inch by inch.
"Neither East nor West shall get me." She tossed her head imperiously,
for Jim Swaim's chin, York Macpherson would have said, was in command,
and the dreamy eyes were flashing fire.
An hour later Ponk's gray runabout was spinning off the miles of the
trail down the Sage Brush, with Jerry Swaim's hands gripping the wheel
firmly, though her cheeks were pink with excitement. Where a road from
the west crossed the trail, the stream cut through a ledge of shale,
leaving a little bluffy bank on either side, with a bridge standing high
above the water.
Joe Thomson, in a big farm wagon, had just met his neighbor, Thelma
Ekblad, in her plain car, at the end of the bridge, when Jerry's horn
called her approach. Before they had time to shift aside the gray car
swept by with graceful curve, missing the edge of the bridge abutment by
an eyelash.
"Great Scott! Thelma, I didn't notice that this big gun of mine was
filling up all the road," Joe exclaimed. "That was the neatest curve I
ever saw. That's Ponk's car from New Eden, but only a civil engineer's
eye could have kept out of the river right there."
"The pretty girl who is visiting the Macphersons was the driver," Thelma
said.
"No! Was it, sure?" Joe queried, looking with keen eyes down the trail,
whither the gray runabout was gliding like a bird on the wing.
"Why, of course it was!" Thelma assured him, feeling suddenly how shabby
her own machine became in comparison. "I must go now. Come over and see
Paul when you can."
"I will. How is the baby?" Joe asked.
"Oh, splendid, and so much company for Paul!" Thelma declared.
"Yes, a baby is the preacher and the whole congregation sometimes. Let
me know if you need any help. Good-by."
So in neighborly good-will they separated, Joe to follow the gray car
down the trail, and Thelma to wonder briefly at the easy life of the
beautiful Eastern girl whose lot was so unlike her own. Only briefly,
however, for Thelma was of too happy a temperament, of too calm and
philosophical a mentality, to grieve vainly. It always put a song in her
day, too, to meet Joe upon the way. Not only on common farm topics were
she and Joe congenial companions, but in politics, the latest books, the
issues of foreign affairs, the new in science, they found a common
ground.
Joe's thoughts were of the Eastern girl, too, as he thundered down the
trail in his noisy wagon.
"I wish I could overtake her before she gets to the forks of the road,"
he said to himself. "I know she's not going to go my way farther than
that. But why is she here at all? There's nobody living down the river
road for miles, except old Fishing Teddy. She did dine at his expense
the day she came out to her sand-pile. He told me all about it the night
when we rode down from town together. Funny old squeak he is. But he
can't interest her. Hello! Yonder we are."
In three minutes he was beside the gray car, that was standing at the
point where the river road branched from the main trail.
"Good morning, Mr. Thomson. I knew you were coming this way, so I waited
for you here. I don't go down that road. You know why."
Jerry pointed toward the way down which her own land lay.
Joe lifted his hat in greeting, his cheeks flushing through the tan, for
his heart would jump furiously whenever he came into this girl's
presence.
"Good morning, Miss Swaim. I am glad you waited," he managed to say.
"You certainly know how to guide a car. I didn't know I was filling the
whole highway up at the bridge."
"Oh, there was plenty of room," Jerry said, indifferently.
"Yes, plenty if you know how to stick to it. That's the secret of a lot
of things, I guess--not finding a wider trail, but knowing how to drive
straight through on the one you have found."
Joe was talking to gain time with himself, for he was inwardly angry at
being upset every time he met this pretty girl.
This morning she seemed prettier than ever to his eyes. She was wearing
a cool gray-green hat above her golden-gleaming hair, and her sheer
gingham gown was stylishly summery. Exquisite taste in dress, as well as
love of romance, was a heritage from Lesa Swaim.
"You are a real philosopher and a poet," Jerry exclaimed, looking up
with wide-open eyes.
"A sort of Homer in homespun," Joe suggested.
"Probably; but I have a prose purpose in detaining you and I am in great
luck to have found you," Jerry replied.
"Thank you. The luck will be mine if I can serve you."
The bronze young farmer's gallantry was as gracious as ever the
well-groomed Philadelphia artist's had been.
"Kansas seems determined to get rid of me, if hard knocks mean anything.
I've had nothing but bumps and knotty problems since I landed on these
sand-shifting prairies. It makes me mad and I'm not going to be run off
by it." Jerry's eyes were darkly defiant and her lifted hand seemed
strong to strike for herself.
"You have the real pioneer spirit," Joe declared. "It was that very
determination not to be gotten rid of by a sturdy bunch of forefathers
and mothers that has subdued a state, sometimes boisterous and
belligerent, and sometimes snarling and catty, and made it willing to
eat out of their hands."
"Oh, it's not all subdued yet. It never will be." Jerry pointed down the
trail toward the far distance where her twelve hundred blowout-cursed
acres lay.