THE LONG ROAD
Night had fallen, the lights of the city flared under a calm clear sky
that was studded with stars. A soft wind from the south had worked its
will, the night was warmer than had been the day. The air was fragrant
with the mystic scent of Indian summer, of green things in fields and
forests, the land over, that were changing to rose and gold ere the
pitiful withering to shriveled gray.
Through a quiet street leading toward Mulberry Avenue walked a man,
haggard of face, misty of eye. He was a small man, almost a youth, of
meagre frame and rather pronounced garb. He carried a rusty satchel,
grimy and battered, like the scarred veteran of a long and strenuous
campaign.
Now he was passing a dusky corner; one he had good cause to remember,
but his thoughts were far away. So he failed to associate the low,
two-story building with the significant words of the scared woman,
frowsy and unkempt, who clattered down the stairs and across the walk,
halting and startling him.
"Mercy o' God, sir, what'll I do?" she cried. "He's dead, sir, a-sittin'
in his chair. Sure, I do his work for him an' I went over to see when
he'd want me agin an' the door was open--I lit a light to see what was
the matter--Ah! the dead, white, grinnin' face of him!--an' what'll I
do?" She wrung her hands.
He had listened impatiently--what concern was it of his? "Policeman on
the corner," he told her, with a backward jerk of his thumb. The
charwoman ran toward the approaching officer. O'Byrn passed on,
dismissing the incident instantly from his pre-occupied mind. He was
done forever with the affairs of his unknown father.
A little later he paused at a corner intersecting Mulberry Avenue and
set his satchel upon the curb. He gazed down the street toward the dim
outlines of an humble frame house, a solitary light shining from a lower
window. Long he stood silently regarding the little dwelling.
Then slowly from his pocket he drew three letters which he had written
at a hotel hours before. In the wavering radiance of an adjacent
electric light he scanned the addresses upon the envelopes. He stepped
to a nearby letter box and consigned to it the notes prepared for
Harkins and Glenwood. The third he held hesitantly for a moment,
regarding it through a briny mist. So this was the end--the miserable,
heart-breaking end. It was now for him the long road--alone.
"Micky!"
Swiftly he wheeled, his face alight with a trembling incredulity of joy.
His startled eyes looked straight into hers that were mystically dark in
the night shadows intruding upon the shimmering arc from the street lamp
nearby. Dressed simply in coat and gown of the brown hue he liked so
well, with a hat of the same shade, she made a picture to rest his
wearied eyes.
"It's good to see you, girlie," he exclaimed, a break in his voice.
"But it isn't wise, is it, when you're just over being so ill? Where
have you been?"
"Only walking about, Micky. You know I grew stronger real fast. Don't
you know, you were surprised to find me so much better? I've been about
the house for a week, even helped mother a little the last two or three
days. And tonight I couldn't rest indoors, somehow, I had to be out in
this glorious air. You needn't scowl that way, I had the doctor's
permission this afternoon to go out if I wanted to. Today I've heard of
nothing but your story. It was grand work, Micky."
"Don't, girlie!" His tone was as if she had struck him.
One little white hand touched his arm. With quick divination her
searching look read the tale told in his drawn face, in the sight of the
satchel upon the curb, the letter in his hand. She gently took it from
him.
"For me?"
He nodded, he could not have spoken just then. He swallowed hard while
his eyes hungrily devoured the rare, fair sight of her, the slightly
sharpened outlines of her lovely face, the pallor that was the heritage
of illness, the sweetness of her eyes.
His letter in her hand, she moved a little away from him, then turned
and walked to the curb. She rent the envelope straight across, and
tearing the residue into tiny fragments, tossed the pieces like
snowflakes upon the pavement. Retracing her steps, she confronted
O'Byrn.
"Tell me all about it," she suggested, very gently.
With a low, bitter cry he clasped her little hand in both his own,
stammering that he was unfit, that there was another blot, a repetition
of the old, wretched story. She understood, and there was only a low
exclamation of sympathy as she looked into his tortured face with eyes
that were wonderful with forgiveness and love. For she had known
instinctively long since that it must always be so, and with her woman's
devotion, had resolved to help him, notwithstanding, to the end.
"What did I tell you once, dear?" she asked him low. "It's for you to
always try, Micky, and what credit's for those who don't have to try?
You have tried, my boy, and you must keep on trying--for my sake.
Remember, dear, you can never fail while you try--and it's trying--it's
trying that brings us--where dreams--where dreams--come--true."
The low voice was lost in a stifled sob. Her little hands, her poor,
thin hands, sought her face. The tears trickled from between her clasped
fingers.
Miserably he sought gently to draw her hands from her wet eyes. "Don't
cry, Maisie," he begged, fighting with his constricted throat, winking
blurred eyes. "Why do you? It--it kills me!"
A solitary pedestrian, passing upon the opposite side of the quiet
street, gazed at them curiously, without pausing. Neither of them
noticed him and he disappeared around a corner. Meanwhile, eyes searched
eyes; presently O'Byrn's turned away. They held so much of the
desolation and shame of his soul, hers only love.
"Why do I cry?" she questioned sadly. "Do you remember a night--it seems
so long ago!--when you asked me that? Do you need to ask me again? Only
now it is so different, so--so horrible. God help me! then it was the
beginning, now you mean it for the end. You are going away?"
"Yes." She could scarcely hear the word.
"Why?"
He turned upon her a face she scarcely knew, in which warred fiercely
the stormy elements of his strangely complex nature. Mingling oddly with
a numb, gray misery, there was something else, a troubled light like a
clouded dawn. Full in the radiance from the street lamp, his eyes burned
with the fire lighted from the dying, crimson embers of an autumn sunset
upon a hearth of gray, and behind the flame brooded the deep shadows of
despair. His voice was bitterly harsh, dissonant; a challenge to tearing
winds and thunderous seas of life, like the wild note of the winging
gulls.
"Why? Why not? Girl, I'm down again, I'm not fit to touch you. I've just
told you. This thing was born with me, it'll die with me--I hope. If
I've got to carry it--beyond--I pray God will snuff out my soul--like a
candle! Can't you see it's the only way? To go--alone,--to bear
it--alone,--to fight--alone,--to lie down--alone,--at the end of the
long road!"
"You leave tonight?"
"Yes, dear."
"Where are you going?"
"Oh, I'm not tramping, not this time," he answered wearily. "The letters
I've just mailed are for Harkins and Glenwood. I've told them I'm sorry,
and God knows I mean it. But the old fever is burning my brain, girl.
I've stayed my stay here. I've gone down twice and it's too much. I've
lost the right to inflict myself further on the town. If I stayed it
would mean better things for me on the paper, but I can't stay. It's
queer--you can't understand it--I can't myself,--but the time has come
and I must be moving. It's the old voice calling. This afternoon I was
looking out over the harbor--that old something came rushing out of
nowhere and took me by the neck--sometimes I think I'm crazy. I put my
hand in my pocket, there was a message I hadn't opened. I'm called to
Denver--an old associate--something bigger than I've ever had. They're
in a hurry. I wired them I'd leave tonight. I'll be with them for a
while, then the trail once more."
He told it wholly without animation, the fruits of success as ashes upon
his lips, only a dull hopelessness in his haggard face as he looked full
in renunciation of her.
She moved a little nearer him, eyes holding his own in solemn
questioning.
"What did it say--the letter--out there?" She waved her hand toward the
pavement.
"What I have just told you--that I loved you too much to drag you
through--what I will have to bear. I begged you to forgive--and
forget--a cur."
"Micky,--do you want--to go--alone?"
He had to bend his head to catch the whispered words, though the
beautiful eyes gazed in divine fearlessness straight into his own,
searching his shadowed, storm-swept soul. A breathless moment his brain
groped for her meaning, grasped it with incredulous joy. The hot blood
pounded in his veins, his eyes implored while fearing her.
"Oh, girl, you don't mean--Ah, you don't know what you're saying. No!
I'm a dog--a dog--I'm not fit--"
Their hands entwined, her clasp tightened upon his trembling fingers.
His halting words died in his throat, he only watched her mutely, his
face a queer mixture of misery and joy. Her wet eyes, twin load-stars
lighting the path to Eden, smiled into his own.
"Listen!" she said. "Where you go--I'll go--whatever comes--I'm with
you--clear to the white stone and the cross--and beyond--for _I love
you--I love you_!"
He reeled where he stood. Ah, this love of woman, this grace of the gray
world that makes for the glory of God!
For wistful thought of her he sought still to put her from him, weakly
tried while every fibre of his being called for her who was always to
rule his warm heart, whatever the vagaries of his foolish head.
"It's a long road--a road rainy with tears--you must travel with me."
"I love you."
There grew in her low tone an odd, wondering exaltation, as if through
the domination of his vagabond personality, something heretofore
sleeping in her soul woke and stretched its wings, longing for freedom,
for the riot of mad winds and tumbling seas.
"There's not a soul near to you that won't grieve for you--with me. Not
because I want it so, but because it was meant to be, it'll be gray
skies, it'll be often an aching heart; it'll be from pillar to post, now
here, now yonder; sometimes it will be--in hell--with me."
"I love you."
Now her tone held in its full the divine finality of choice, for weal or
woe. Gravely sweet, solemn with the sublimity of unselfish consecration,
it told many things to the man who stood finally silenced and
overwhelmed, clasping her in reverent arms close to his lonely heart. It
told of gardens flowering in deserts, of splendid heights beyond that
pierced the blue. It told him of the white grace of self sacrifice, of
God-sent, sustaining hands. And finally it told of calm after storm, of
the haven under the hill, of ultimate and abiding peace at the end of
the long road, where dreams come true.
Transcriber's Note:
Punctuation has been standardised. Alternatives have been retained for
debris/debris near-by/nearby. Spelling and punctuation has been retained
as it appears in the original publication except as follows:
Page 11
no bettter judged _changed to_
no better judged
Page 32
stunt or it 'll _changed to_
stunt or it'll
Page 63
heavy-lided eyes _changed to_
heavy-lidded eyes
Page 79
you think Shaugnessy 'll get _changed to_
you think Shaughnessy'll get
Page 99
CHAPTR X _changed to_
CHAPTER X
Page 107
wearied of such an excresence _changed to_
wearied of such an excrescence
Page 119
sh'an't whine or excuse _changed to_
sha'n't whine or excuse
Page 131
Judge Boynton 'll win _changed to_
Judge Boynton'll win
Page 139
Tain't good for you _changed to_
'Tain't good for you
Page 140
leisurely away O'Byrn hailed _changed to_
leisurely away. O'Byrn hailed
Page 153
Is is Consolidated Gas _changed to_
Is it Consolidated Gas
Page 153
'T won't be safe _changed to_
'Twon't be safe
Page 155
posibilities; it remained _changed to_
possibilities; it remained
Page 171
whispered Slade, "and proceeded _changed to_
whispered Slade, and proceeded
Page 182
period of quiesence _changed to_
period of quiescence
Page 195
said a gruff voice, we're there _changed to_
said a gruff voice, "we're there
Page 210
he was a chip of the old block _changed to_
he was a chip off the old block
Page 216
solution of strychinine _changed to_
solution of strychnine