“Why, I'm Harriet,” she said simply, and looked up.
“Just so. 'Received, 1877.' How old were you then?”
“Why, I was eight.”
“Just so. Don't tell lies, Harriet. You've been freezing a long while.”
She drew her cloak closer over the thin white linen of her gown with
shaking hand.
“I don't understand. I'm very cold. Why didn't you come before? It has
been so long waiting.”
III.
The draft began to roar and the dampers to glow. She crept in front of
the glow. He drew a chair and sat down close behind her.
“Why didn't you come before?”
The question was startling, for Sebastian was only conscious of a lack
of reason for coming. If David Sebastian had left him the farm he would
have heard from it, and being prosperous, he had not cared. But the
question seemed to imply some strong assumption and further knowledge.
“You'd better tell me about it.”
“About what? At the beginning?”
“Aren't you anything except 'Received, Harriet'?”
“Oh, I hadn't any father or mother when Mr. Sebastian brought me here.
Is that what you mean? But he taught me to say 'Harriet Sebastian,' and
a great many things he taught me. Didn't you know? And about his life
and what he wanted you to do? Because, of course, we talked about you
nearly always in the time just before he died. He said you would be sure
to come, but he died, don't you see? only a few years after, and that
disappointed him. He gave me the picture and said, 'He'll come, and
you'll know him by this,' and he said, 'He will come poor and miserable.
My only son, so I leave him to you; and so, as I did, you will pray for
him twice each day.' It was just like that, 'Tell Charles there is no
happiness but in duty. Tell him I found it so.' It was a night like this
when he died, and Kezzy was asleep in her chair out here, and I sat by
the bed. Then he told me I would pay him all in that way by doing what
he meant to do for you. I was so little, but I seemed to understand that
I was to live for it, as he had lived to help free the slaves. Don't you
see? Then he began calling, 'Charles! Charles!' as if you were somewhere
near, and I fell asleep, and woke and lay still and listened to the
wind; and when I tried to get up I couldn't, because he held my hair,
and he was dead. But why didn't you come?”
“It looks odd enough now,” Sebastian admitted, and wondered at the
change from still impassiveness, pale and cool silence, to eager speech,
swift question, lifted and flushed face.
“Then you remember the letters? But you didn't come then. But I began
to fancy how it would be when you came, and then somehow it seemed as
if you were here. Out in the orchard sometimes, don't you see? And more
often when Kezzy was cross. And when she went to sleep by the fire
at night--she was so old--we were quite alone and talked. Don't you
remember?--I mean--But Kezzy didn't like to hear me talking to myself.
'Mutter, mutter!' like that. 'Never was such a child!' And then she
died, too, seven--seven years ago, and it was quite different. I--I grew
older. You seemed to be here quite and quite close to me always. There
was no one else, except--But, I don't know why, I had an aching from
having to wait, and it has been a long time, hasn't it?”
“Rather long. Go on. There was no one else?”
“No. We lived here--I mean--it grew that way, and you changed from the
picture, too, and became like Mr. Sebastian, only younger, and just as
you are now, only--not quite.”
She looked at him with sudden fear, then dropped her eyes, drew her long
hair around under her cloak and leaned closer to the fire.
“But there is so much to tell you it comes out all mixed.”
Sebastian sat silently looking down at her, and felt the burden of his
thinking grow heavier; the pondering how David Sebastian had left him an
inheritance of advice, declaring his own life full and brimming, and to
Harriet the inheritance of a curious duty that had grown to people her
nights and days with intense sheltered dreams, and made her life,
too, seem to her full and brimming, multitudinous with events and
interchanges, himself so close and cherished an actor in it that his own
parallel unconsciousness of it had almost dropped out of conception.
And the burden grew heavier still with the weight of memories, and
the record between the Old and New Testaments; with the sense of the
isolation and covert of the midnight, and the storm; with the sight of
Harriet crouching by the fire, her story, how David Sebastian left this
world and went out into the wild night crying, “Charles! Charles!” It
was something not logical, but compelling. It forced him to remark that
his own cup appeared partially empty from this point of view. Harriet
seemed to feel that her hour had come and he was given to her hands..
Success even in methods of living is a convincing thing over unsuccess.
Ah, well! too late to remodel to David Sebastian's notion. It was
singular, though, a woman silent, restrained, scrupulous, moving
probably to the dictates of village opinion--suddenly the key was
turned, and she threw back the gates of her prison; threw open doors,
windows, intimate curtains; asked him to look in and explore everywhere
and know all the history and the forecasts; became simple, primitive,
unrestrained, willing to sit there at his feet and as innocent as her
white linen gown. How smooth and pale her hair was and gentle cheek, and
there were little sleepy smiles in the corners of the lips. He thought
he would like most of all to put out his hand and touch her cheek and
sleepy smiles, and draw her hair, long and soft and pale, from under the
cloak. On the whole, it seemed probable that he might.
“Harriet,” he said slowly, “I'm going to play this hand.”
“Why, I don't know what you mean.”
“Take it, I'm not over and above a choice selection. I don't mention
details, but take it as a general fact. Would you want to marry that
kind of a selection, meaning me?”
“Oh, yes! Didn't you come for that? I thought you would.”
“And I thought you needed revelry! You must have had a lot of it.”
“I don't know what you mean. Listen! It keeps knocking at the door!”
“Oh, that's all right. Let it knock. Do you expect any more vagrants?”
“Vagrants?”
“Like me.”
“Like you? You only came home. Listen! It was like this when he died.
But he wouldn't come to-night and stand outside and knock, would he? Not
to-night, when you've come at last. But he used to. Of course, I fancied
things. It's the storm. There's no one else now.”
A thousand spectres go whirling across Edom Hill such winter nights and
come with importunate messages, but if the door is close and the fire
courageous, it matters little. They are but wind and drift and out in
the dark, and if one is in the light, it is a great point to keep the
door fast against them and all forebodings, and let the coming days be
what they will.
Men are not born in a night, or a year.
But if David Sebastian were a spectre there at the door, and thought
differently on any question, or had more to say, he was not articulate.
There is no occupation for ghosts in a stirring world, nor efficiency in
their repentance.
Has any one more than a measure of hope, and a door against the storm?
There was that much, at least, on Edom Hill.
SONS OF R. RAND
SOME years ago, of a summer afternoon, a perspiring organ-grinder and
a leathery ape plodded along the road that goes between thin-soiled
hillsides and the lake which is known as Elbow Lake and lies to the
northeast of the village of Salem. In those days it was a well-travelled
highway, as could be seen from its breadth and' dustiness. At about half
the length of its bordering on the lake there was a spring set in the
hillside, and a little pool continually rippled by its inflow. Some
settler or later owner of the thin-soiled hillsides had left a clump of
trees about it, making as sightly and refreshing an Institute of
Charity as could be found. Another philanthropist had added half a
cocoanut-shell to the foundation.
The organ-grinder turned in under the trees with a smile, in which his
front teeth played a large part, and suddenly drew back with a guttural
exclamation; the leathery ape bumped against his legs, and both assumed
attitudes expressing respectively, in an Italian and tropical manner,
great surprise and abandonment of ideas. A tall man lay stretched on
his back beside the spring, with a felt hat over his face. Pietro, the
grinder, hesitated. The American, if disturbed and irascible, takes by
the collar and kicks with the foot: it has sometimes so happened. The
tall man pushed back his hat and sat up, showing a large-boned and
sun-browned face, shaven except for a black mustache, clipped close. He
looked not irascible, though grave perhaps, at least unsmiling. He said:
“It's free quarters, Dago. Come in. Entrez. Have a drink.”
Pietro bowed and gesticulated with amiable violence. “Dry!” he said.
“Oh, hot!”
“Just so. That a friend of yours?”--pointing to the ape. “He ain't got a
withering sorrow, has he? Take a seat.”
Elbow Lake is shaped as its name implies. If one were to imagine the arm
to which the elbow belonged, it would be the arm of a muscular person in
the act of smiting a peaceable-looking farmhouse a quarter of a mile to
the east. Considering the bouldered front of the hill behind the house,
the imaginary blow would be bad for the imaginary knuckles. It is
a large house, with brown, unlikely looking hillsides around it,
huckleberry knobs and ice-grooved boulders here and there. The land
between it and the lake is low, and was swampy forty years ago, before
the Rand boys began to drain it, about the time when R. Rand entered the
third quarter century of his unpleasant existence.
R. Rand was, I suppose, a miser, if the term does not imply too definite
a type. The New England miser is seldom grotesque. He seems more like
congealed than distorted humanity. He does not pinch a penny so hard as
some of other races are said to do, but he pinches a dollar harder, and
is quite as unlovely as any. R. Rand's methods of obtaining dollars
to pinch were not altogether known, or not, at least, recorded--which
accounts perhaps for the tradition that they were of doubtful
uprightness. He held various mortgages about the county, and his
farm represented little to him except a means of keeping his two sons
inexpensively employed in rooting out stones.
At the respective ages of sixteen and seventeen the two sons, Bob and
Tom Rand, discovered the rooting out of stones to be unproductive labor,
if nothing grew, or was expected to grow, in their place, except more
stones; and the nature of the counsels they took may be accurately
imagined. In the autumn of '56 they began ditching the swamp in the
direction of the lake, and in the summer of '57 raised a crop of tobacco
in the northeast corner, R. Rand, the father, making no comment the
while. At the proper time he sold the tobacco to Packard & Co., cigar
makers, of the city of Hamilton, still making no comment, probably
enjoying some mental titillation. Tom Rand then flung a rock of the size
of his fist through one of the front windows, and ran away, also
making no comment further than that. The broken window remained broken
twenty-five years, Tom returning neither to mend it nor to break
another. Bob Rand, by some bargain with his father, continued the
ditching and planting of the swamp with some profit to himself.
He evidently classed at least a portion of his father's manner of life
among the things that are to be avoided. He acquired a family, and was
in the way to bring it up in a reputable way. He further cultivated and
bulwarked his reputation. Society, manifesting itself politically, made
him sheriff; society, manifesting itself ecclesiastically, made him
deacon. Society seldom fails to smile on systematic courtship.
The old man continued to go his way here and there, giving account of
himself to no one, contented enough no doubt to have one reputable son
who looked after his own children and paid steady rent for, or bought
piece by piece, the land he used; and another floating between the
Rockies and the Mississippi, whose doings were of no importance in the
village of Salem. But I doubt, on the whole, whether he was softened
in heart by the deacon's manner or the ordering of the deacon's life to
reflect unfilially on his own. Without claiming any great knowledge of
the proprieties, he may have thought the conduct of his younger son the
more filial of the two. Such was the history of the farmhouse between
the years '56 and '82.
One wet April day, the sixth of the month, in the year '82, R. Rand went
grimly elsewhere--where, his neighbors had little doubt. With true New
England caution we will say that he went to the cemetery, the little
grass-grown cemetery of Salem, with its meagre memorials and absurd,
pathetic epitaphs. The minister preached a funeral sermon, out of
deference to his deacon, in which he said nothing whatever about R.
Rand, deceased; and R. Rand, sheriff and deacon, reigned in his stead.
Follow certain documents and one statement of fact:
_Document 1._
_Codicil to the Will of R. Rand._
The Will shall stand as above, to wit, my son, Robert Rand, sole
legatee, failing the following condition: namely, I bequeath all my
property as above mentioned, with the exception of this house and
farm, to my son, Thomas Rand, provided, that within three months of the
present date he returns and mends with his own hands the front window,
third from the north, previously broken by him.
(Signed) R. Rand.
_Statement of fact._ On the morning of the day following the funeral
the “condition” appeared in singularly problematical shape, the broken
window, third from the north, having been in fact promptly replaced _by
the hands of Deacon Rand himself_. The new pane stared defiantly across
the lake, westward.
_Document 2_.
Leadville, Cal., May 15.
Dear Bob: I hear the old man is gone. Saw it in a paper. I reckon maybe
I didn't treat him any squarer than he did me. I'll go halves on a
bang-up good monument, anyhow. Can we settle affairs without my coming
East? How are you, Bob?
Tom.
_Document 3._
Salem, May 29.
Dear Brother: The conditions of our father's will are such, I am
compelled to inform you, as to result in leaving the property wholly
to me. My duty to a large and growing family gives me no choice but
to accept it as it stands, and I trust and have no doubt that you will
regard that result with fortitude. I remain yours,
Robert Rand.
_Document 4._
Leadville, June 9.
A. L. Moore.
Dear Sir: I have your name as a lawyer in Wimberton. Think likely there
isn't any other. If you did not draw up the will of R. Rand, Salem, can
you forward this letter to the man who did? If you did, will you tell me
what in thunder it was?
Yours, Thomas Rand.
_Document 5._
Wimberton, June 18.
Thomas Rand.
Dear Sir: I did draw your father's will and enclose copy of the same,
with its codicil, which may truly be called remarkable. I think it right
to add, that the window in question has been mended by your brother,
with evident purpose. Your letter comes opportunely, my efforts to find
you having been heretofore unsuccessful. I will add further, that I
think the case actionable, to say the least. In case you should see fit
to contest, your immediate return is of course necessary. Very truly
yours,
A. L. Moore,
Attorney-at-Law.
_Document 6. Despatch._
New York, July 5.
To Robert Rand, Salem.
Will be at Valley Station to-morrow. Meet me or not.
T. Rand.
The deacon was a tall meagre man with a goatee that seemed to accentuate
him, to hint by its mere straightness at sharp decision, an unwavering
line of rectitude.
He drove westward in his buckboard that hot summer afternoon, the 6th of
July. The yellow road was empty before him all the length of the lake,
except for the butterflies bobbing around in the sunshine. His lips
looked even more secretive than usual: a discouraging man to see, if one
were to come to him in a companionable mood desiring comments.
Opposite the spring he drew up, hearing the sound of a hand-organ under
the trees. The tall man with a clipped mustache sat up deliberately
and looked at him. The leathery ape ceased his funereal capers and also
looked at him; then retreated behind the spring. Pietro gazed back and
forth between the deacon and the ape, dismissed his professional smile,
and followed the ape. The tall man pulled his legs under him and got up.
“I reckon it's Bob,” he said. “It's free quarters, Bob. Entrez. Come in.
Have a drink.”
The deacon's embarrassment, if he had any, only showed itself in an
extra stiffening of the back.
“The train--I did not suppose--I was going to meet you.”
“Just so. I came by way of Wimberton.”
The younger brother stretched himself again beside the spring and drew
his hat over his eyes. The elder stood up straight and not altogether
unimpressive in front of it. Pietro in the rear of the spring reflected
at this point that he and the ape could conduct a livelier conversation
if it were left to them. Pietro could not imagine a conversation in
which it was not desirable to be lively. The silence was long and,
Pietro thought, not pleasant.
“Bob,” said the apparent sleeper at last, “ever hear of the prodigal
son?”
The deacon frowned sharply, but said nothing. The other lifted the edge
of his hat brim.
“Never heard of him? Oh--have I Then I won't tell about him. Too long.
That elder brother, now, he had good points;--no doubt of it, eh?”
“I confess I don't see your object--”
“Don't? Well, I was just saying he had good points. I suppose he and the
prodigal had an average good time together, knockin' around, stubbin'
their toes, fishin' maybe, gettin' licked at inconvenient times, hookin'
apples most anytime. That sort of thing. Just so. He had something of
an argument. Now, the prodigal had no end of fun, and the elder brother
stayed at home and chopped wood; understood himself to be cultivating
the old man. I take it he didn't have a very soft job of it?”--lifting
his hat brim once more.
The deacon said nothing, but observed the hat brim.
“Now I think of it, maybe strenuous sobriety wasn't a thing he naturally
liked any more than the prodigal did. I've a notion there was more
family likeness between 'em than other folks thought. What might be your
idea?”
The deacon still stood rigidly with his hands clasped behind him.
“I would rather,” he said, “you would explain yourself without parable.
You received my letter. It referred to our father's will. I have
received a telegram which I take to be threatening.”
The other sat up and pulled a large satchel around from behind him.
“You're a man of business, Bob,” he said cheerfully. “I like you, Bob.
That's so. That will--I've got it in my pocket. Now, Bob, I take it
you've got some cards, else you're putting up a creditable bluff. I play
this here Will, Codicil attached. You play,--window already mended; time
expired at twelve o'clock to-night. Good cards, Bob--first-rate. I play
here”--opening the satchel--“two panes of glass--allowin' for
accidents--putty, et cetera, proposing to bust that window again. Good
cards, Bob. How are you coming on?”
The deacon's sallow cheeks flushed and his eyes glittered. Something
came into his face which suggested the family likeness. He drew a paper
from his inner coat pocket, bent forward stiffly and laid it on the
grass.
“Sheriff's warrant,” he said, “for--hem--covering possible trespassing
on my premises; good for twenty-four hours' detention--hem.”
“Good,” said his brother briskly. “I admire you, Bob. I'll be blessed if
I don't. I play again.” He drew a revolver and placed it on top of the
glass. “Six-shooter. Good for two hours' stand-off.”
“Hem,” said the deacon. “Warrant will be enlarged to cover the carrying
of concealed weapons. Being myself the sheriff of this town, it
is--hem--permissible for me.” He placed a revolver on top of the
warrant.
“Bob,” said his brother, in huge delight, “I'm proud of you. But--I
judge you ain't on to the practical drop. _Stand back there!_” The
deacon looked into the muzzle of the steady revolver covering him, and
retreated a step, breathing hard. Tom Rand sprang to his feet, and
the two faced each other, the deacon looking as dangerous a man as the
Westerner.
Suddenly, the wheezy hand-organ beyond the spring began, seemingly
trying to play two tunes at once, with Pietro turning the crank as
desperately as if the muzzle of the revolver were pointed at him.
“Hi, you monk! Dance!” cried Pietro; and the leathery ape footed it
solemnly. The perspiration poured down Pietro's face. Over the faces of
the two stern men fronting each other a smile came and broadened slowly,
first over the younger's, then over the deacon's.
The deacon's smile died out first. He sat down on a rock, hid his face
and groaned.
“I'm an evil-minded man,” he said; “I'm beaten.”
The other cocked his head on one side and listened. “Know what that tune
is, Bob? I don't.”
He sat down in the old place again, took up the panes of glass and the
copy of the will, hesitated, and put them down.
“I don't reckon you're beaten, Bob. You ain't got to the end of your
hand yet. Got any children, Bob? Yes; said you had.”
“Five.”
“Call it a draw, Bob; I'll go you halves, counting in the monument.”
But the deacon only muttered to himself: “I'm an evil-minded man.”
Tom Rand meditatively wrapped the two documents around the revolvers.
“Here, Dago, you drop 'em in the spring!” which Pietro did, perspiring
freely. “Shake all that. Come along.”
The two walked slowly toward the yellow road. Pietro raised his voice
despairingly. “No cent! Not a nicka!”
“That's so,” said Tom, pausing. “Five, by thunder! Come along, Dago.
It's free quarters. Entrez. Take a seat.”
The breeze was blowing up over Elbow Lake, and the butterflies bobbed
about in the sunshine, as they drove along the yellow road. Pietro sat
at the back of the buck-board, the leathery ape on his knee and a smile
on his face, broad, non-professional, and consisting largely of front
teeth.
CONLON
CONLON, the strong, lay sick unto death with fever. The Water
Commissioners sent champagne to express their sympathy. It was an
unforced impulse of feeling.
But Conlon knew nothing of it. His lips were white, his cheeks sunken;
his eyes glared and wandered; he muttered, and clutched with his big
fingers at nothing visible.
The doctor worked all day to force a perspiration. At six o'clock he
said: “I'm done. Send for the priest.”
When Kelly and Simon Harding came, Father Ryan and the doctor were going
down the steps.
“'Tis a solemn duty ye have, Kelly,” said the priest, “to watch the last
moments of a dying man, now made ready for his end.”
“Ah, not Conlon! He'll not give up, not him,” cried Kelly, “the shtrong
man wid the will in him!”
“An' what's the sthrength of man in the hands of his Creathor?” said the
priest, turning to Harding, oratorically.
“I don' know,” said Harding, calmly. “Do you?”
“'Tis naught!”
Kelly murmured submissively.
“Kind of monarchical institution, ain't it, what Conlon's run up
against?” Harding remarked. “Give him a fair show in a caucus, an' he'd
win, sure.”
“He'll die if he don't sweat,” said the doctor, wiping his forehead.
“It's hot enough.” Conlon lay muttering and glaring at the ceiling. The
big knuckles of his hands stood out like rope-knots. His wife nodded to
Kelly and Harding, and went out. She was a good-looking woman, large,
massive, muscular. Kelly looked after her, rubbing his short nose
and blinking his watery eyes. He was small, with stooping shoulders,
affectionate eyes, wavering knees. He had followed Conlon, the strong,
and served him many years. Admiration of Conlon was a strenuous business
in which to be engaged.
“Ah!” he said, “his wife ten year, an' me his inchimate friend.”
It was ten by the clock. The subsiding noise of the city came up over
housetops and vacant lots. The windows of the sickroom looked off the
verge of a bluff; one saw the lights of the little city below, the
lights of the stars above, and the hot black night between.