Her fingers seemingly all thumbs, her heart swelling with misery and
loneliness, wanting to go to him but fearing she would be misunderstood,
Kitty scooped up the dazzling stones and poured them hastily into the
tobacco pouch, which she thrust into Cutty's hands. What she had heard
was not the cry of a disordered brain. There was some clear reason for
the horror in Hawksley's tones. What tragedy lay behind these wonderful
prisms of colour that the legitimate owner could not look upon them
without being stirred in this manner?
“Take them into the study,” urged Kitty.
“Wait!” interposed Hawksley. “I give one of the emeralds to you, Cutty.
They came out of hell--if you want to risk it! The other is for Miss
Conover, with Mister Hawksley's compliments.” He was looking at Kitty
now, his face drawn, his eyes bloodshot. “Don't be apprehensive. They
bring evil only to men. With one in your possession you will be happy
ever after, as the saying goes. Oh, they are mine to give; mine by right
of inheritance. God knows I paid for them!”
“If I said Mister--” began Kitty, her brain confused, her tongue clumsy.
“You haven't forgiven!” he interrupted. “A thoroughbred like you,
to hold last night against me! Mister--after what we two have shared
together! Why didn't you leave me there to die?”
Cutty observed that the drama had resolved itself into two characters;
he had been relegated to the scenes. He tiptoed toward his study door,
and as he slipped inside he knew that Gethsemane was not an orchard
but a condition of the mind. He tossed the pouch on his desk, eyed it
ironically, and sat down. His, one of them--one of those marvellous
emeralds was his! He interlaced his fingers and rested his brow upon
them. He was very tired.
Kitty missed him only when she heard the latch snap.
She was alone with Hawksley; and all her terror returned. Not to touch
him, not to console him; to stand staring at him like a dumb thing!
“I do forgive--Johnny! But your world and my world--”
“Those stains! The wretches hurt you!”
“What? Where?”--bewildered.
“The blood on your waist!”
Kitty looked down. “That is not my blood, Johnny. It is yours.”
“Mine?” Johnny. Something in the way she said it. “Mine?”--trying to
solve the riddle.
“Yes. It is where your cheek rested when--I thought you were dead.”
The sense of misery, of oppression, of terror, all fell away
miraculously, leaving only the flower of glory. She would be his
plaything if he wanted her.
Silence.
“Kitty, I came out of a dark world--to find you. I loved you the moment
I entered your kitchen that night. But I did not know it. I loved you
the night you brought the wallet. Still I did not understand. It
was when I heard the lift door and knew you had gone forever that I
understood. Loved you with all my heart, with all that poor old Stefani
had fashioned out of muck and clay. If you held my head to your heart,
if that is my blood there--Do you, can you care a little?”
“I can and do care very much, Johnny.”
Her voice to his ears was like the G string of the Amati. “Will you go
with me?”
“Anywhere. But you are a prince of some great Russian house, Johnny, and
I am nobody.”
“What am I, Kitty? Less than nobody--a homeless outcast, with only you
and Cutty. An American! Well, when I'm that it will be different; I'll
be somebody. God forgive me if I do not give it absolute loyalty, this
new country!... Never call me anything but Johnny.”
“Johnny.” Anywhere, whatever he willed her to be.
“I'm a child, Kitty. I want to grow up--if I can--to be an American,
something like that ripping old thoroughbred yonder.”
Cutty! Johnny wanted to be something like Cutty. Johnny would have to
grow up to be his own true self; for nobody could ever be like Cutty. He
was as high and far away from the average man as this apartment was from
hers. Would he understand her attitude? Could she say anything until it
would be too late for him to interfere? She was this man's woman. She
would have her span of happiness, come ill, come good, even if it
hurt Cutty, whom she loved in another fashion. But for Johnny dropping
through that trap she might never have really known, married Cutty, and
been happy. Happy until one or the other died; never gloriously, never
furiously, but mildly happy; perhaps understanding each other far better
than Johnny and she would understand each other. The average woman's
lot. But to give her heart, her mind, her body in a whirlwind of
emotions, absolute surrender, to know for once the highest state of
exaltation--to love!
All this tender exchange with half a dozen feet between them. Kitty had
not stirred from the far side of the tea cart, and he had not opened his
arms. She had given herself with magnificent abandon; for the present
that satisfied her instincts. As for him, he was not quite sure this
miracle might not be a dream, and one false move might cause her to
vanish.
“Johnny, who is Olga?” The question was irrepressible. Perhaps it was
the last shred of caution binding her. All of him or none of him. There
must be no other woman intervening.
Hawksley stiffened in his chair. His hands closed convulsively and his
eyes lost their brightness. “Johnny?” Kitty ran round the tea cart.
“What is it?” She knelt beside the chair, alarmed, for the horror had
returned to his face. “What did they do to you back there?” She clasped
one of his hands tensely in hers.
“In my dreams at night!” he said, staring into space. “I could run away
from my pursuers, but I could not run away from my dreams! Torches and
hobnailed boots!... They trampled on her; and I, up there in the gallery
with those damned emeralds in my hands! Ah, if I hadn't gone for them,
if I hadn't thought of the extra comforts their sale would bring! There
would have been time then, Kitty. I had all the other jewels in the
pouch. Horses were ready for us to flee on, loyal servants ready to help
us; but I thought of the drums. A few more worldly comforts--with hell
forcing in the doors!
“I didn't tell her where I was going. When I came back it was to see
her die! They saw me, and yelled. I ran away. I hadn't the courage to
go down there and die with her! She thought I was in that hell pit. She
went down there to die with me and died horribly, alone! Ah, if I could
only shut it out, forget! Olga, my tender young sister, Kitty, the last
one of my race I could love. And I ran away like a yellow dog, like a
yellow dog! I don't know where her grave is, and I could not seek it if
I did! I dared not write Stefani; tell him I had seen Olga go down under
Karlov's heels, and then ran away!... Day by day to feel those stones
against my heart!”
Nothing is more terrible to a woman than the sight of a brave man
weeping. For she knew that he was brave. The sudden recollection of
the emeralds; a little more comfort for himself and sister if they were
permitted to escape. Not a cowardly instinct, not even a greedy one; a
normal desire to fortify them additionally against an unknown future,
and he had surrendered to it impulsively, without explaining to Olga
where he was going.
“Johnny, Johnny, you mustn't!” She sprang up, seizing his head and
wildly kissing him. “You mustn't! God understands, and Olga. Oh, you
mustn't sob like that! You are tearing my heart to pieces!”
“I ran away like a yellow dog! I didn't go down there and die with her!”
“You didn't run away to-night when you offered your life for my liberty.
Johnny, you mustn't!”
Under her tender ministrations the sobs began to die away and soon
resolved into little catching gasps. He was weak and spent from his
injuries; otherwise he would not have given way like this, discovered to
her what she had not known before, that in every man, however strong and
valiant he may be, there is a little child.
“It has been burning me up, Kitty.”
“I know, I know! It is because you have a soul full of beautiful things,
Johnny. God held you back from dying with Olga because He knew I needed
you.”
“You will marry me, knowing that I did this thing?”
Marry him! A door to some blinding radiance opened, and she could not
see for a little while. Marry him! What a miserable wretch she was to
think that he would want her otherwise! Johnny Two-Hawks, fiddling in
front of the Metropolitan Opera House, to fill a poor blind man's cup!
“Yes, Johnny. Now, yesterdays never were. For us there is nothing but
to-morrows. Out there, in the great country--where souls as well as
bodies may stretch themselves--we'll start all over again. You will be
the cowman and I'll be the kitchen wench. As in the beginning, so it
will always be hereafter, I'll cook your bacon and eggs.”
She pulled his chair round and pushed it toward a window, dropped beside
it and laid her cheek against his hand.
“Let us look at the stars, Johnny. They know.” Kuroki, having arrived
with coffee and sandwiches, paused on the threshold, gazed, wheeled
right about face, and returned to the kitchen.
By and by Kitty looked up into Hawksley's face. He was asleep. She got
up carefully, lightly kissed the top of his head--the old wound--and
crossed to Cutty's door. She must tell dear old Cutty of the wonderful
happiness that was going to be hers. She opened the study door, but did
not enter at once. Asleep on his arms. Why, he hadn't even opened that
Ali Baba's bag! Tired out--done in, as Johnny Two-Hawks called it in his
English fashion. She waited; but as he did not stir she approached with
noiseless step. The light poured full upon his head. How gray he was! A
boundless pity surged over her that this tender, valiant knight should
have missed what first her mother had known--now she herself--requited
love. To have everything in the world without that was to have nothing.
She would not wake him; she would let him sleep until Captain Harrison
came. Lightly she touched the gray head with her lips and stole from the
study.
“Oh, Molly, Molly!” Cutty whispered into his rigid fingers.
And so they were married, in the apartment, at the top of the world, on
a May night thick with stars. It was not a wedding; it was a marriage.
The world never knew because it was none of the world's business. Who
was Kitty Conover? A nobody. Who was John Hawksley? Something to be.
Out of the storm into the calm; which is something of a reversal.
Generally in love affairs happiness is found in the approach to the
marriage contract; the disillusions come afterward. It was therefore
logical that Kitty and her lover should be happy, as they had run the
gamut of test and fire beforehand.
The young people were to leave for the West soon after the supper for
three. At midnight Cutty's ship would be boring down the bay. Did Kitty
regret, even a little, the rice and old shoes, the bridesmaids and
cake, so dear to the female of the species? She did not. Did she think
occasionally of the splendour of the title that was hers? She did. To
her mind Mrs. John Hawksley was incomparably above and beyond anything
in that Bible of autocracy--the Almanach de Gotha.
After supper Cutty brought in the old Amati.
“Play,” he said, lighting his pipe.
So Hawksley played--played as he never had played before and perhaps as
he would never play again. We reach zenith sometimes, but we never stay
there. But he was not playing to Cutty. Slate-blue eyes, two books with
endless pages, the soul of this wife of his. He had come through. The
miracle had been accomplished. Love.
Kitty smiled and smiled, the doors of her soul thrown wide to absorb
this magic message. Love.
Cutty smoked on, with his eyes closed. He heard it, too. Love.
“Well,” he said, sighing, “I see innovations out there in Montana. The
round-up will be different. The Pied Fiddler of Bar-K will stand in
the corral and fiddle, and the bossies will come galloping in, two
by two--and a few jackrabbits!” He laughed. “John, the Amati is yours
conditionally. If after one year it is not reclaimed it becomes yours
automatically. My wedding present. Remember, next winter, if God wills,
you'll come and visit me.”
“As if we could forget!” cried Kitty, embracing Cutty, who accepted the
embrace stoically. “I'll be needing clothes, and Johnny will have to
have his hair cut. Oh, Cutty, I'm so foolishly happy!”
“Time we started for the choo-choo. Time-tables have no souls. But,
Lord, what a racket we've had!”
“Well, rather!”--from Hawksley.
“Bo, listen to me. Out there you must remember that 'bally' and
'ripping' and 'rather' are premeditated insults. Gee-whiz! but I'd
like a look-see when you say to your rough-and-readies: 'Bally rotten
weather. What?' They'll shoot you up.”
More banter; which fooled none of the three, as each understood the
other perfectly. The hour of separation was at hand, and they were
fortifying their courage.
“Funny old top,” was Hawksley's comment as they stood before the train
gate. “Three months gone we were strangers.”
“And now--” began Cutty.
“With hoops of steel!” interrupted Kitty. “You must write, Cutty, and
Johnny and I will be prompt.”
“You'll get one from the Azores.”
“Train going west!”
“Good luck, children!” Cutty pressed Hawksley's hand and pecked at
Kitty's cheek. “Shan't go through with you to the car. Kuroki is
waiting. Good-bye!”
The redcaps seized the luggage, and Hawksley and his bride followed them
through the gate. Because he was tall Cutty could see them until they
reached the bumper. Funny old world, for a fact. Next time they met the
wounds would be healed--Hawksley's head and old Cutty's heart. Queer how
he felt his fifty-two. He began to recognize one of the truths that had
passed by: One did not sense age if one ran with the familiar pack.
But for an old-timer to jog along for a few weeks with youth! That was
it--the youth of these two had knocked his conceit into a cocked hat.
“Poor dear old Cutty!” said Kitty.
“Old thoroughbred!” said Hawksley.
And there you were, relegated to the bracket where the family kept the
kaleidoscope, the sea-shell, and the album. His children, though; from
now on he would have that interest in life. The blessed infant--Molly's
girl--taking a sunbonnet when she might have worn a tiara! And that boy,
stepping down from the pomp of palaces to the dusty ranges of Bar-K.
An American citizen. It was more than funny, this old top; it was stark
raving mad.
Well, he had one of the drums. It reposed in his wallet. Another queer
thing, he could not work up a bit of the old enthusiasm. It was only
a green stone. One of the finest examples of the emerald known, and he
could not conjure up the panorama of murder and loot behind it. Possibly
because he was no longer detached; the stone had entered his own life
and touched it with tragedy. For it was tragedy to be fifty-two and
to realize it. Thus whenever he took out the emerald he found his
imagination walled in. Besides, it was a kind of magic mirror; he saw
always his own tentative villainy. He was not quite the honest man he
had once been.
But what was happening down the line there? The passengers were making
way for someone. Kitty, and racing back to the gate! She did not pause
until she stood in front of him, breathless.
“Forget something?” he asked, awkwardly.
“Uh-hm!” Suddenly she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him. “If
only the three of us could be always together! Take care of yourself.
Johnny and I need you.” Then she caught his hand, gave it a pressure,
and was off again. Cutty stood there, staring blindly in her direction.
Old Stefani Gregor; sacrifice. By and by he became conscious of
something warm and hard in his palm. He looked down.
A green stone, green as the turban of a Mecca pilgrim, green as the eye
of a black panther in the thicket. He dropped the emerald into a vest
pocket and fumbled round for his pipe--always his mental crutch. He
lit it and marched out of the station into the night--chuckling
sardonically. For the second time the thought occurred to him: Of all
his earthly possessions he would carry into the Beyond--a chuckle.
Molly, then Kitty; but the drums of jeopardy were his!
End of Project Gutenberg's The Drums Of Jeopardy, by Harold MacGrath