THE SECOND PLAN
Brent's room was across the hall from Dale's. These two, engineer and
mountaineer, were the only occupants of the third floor, known since
their arrival as Bachelors' Belfry. This floor, however, was far from
resembling a belfry. Its high ceilings and spacious rooms were of the
type which architects drew in the early nineteenth century, when labor
cost but its feed and materials were everywhere at hand. Just as the
bricks in the outside walls were laid "every other one a header," so the
interior spoke of a style which went out of existence three generations
ago. More recently, however, the Colonel had added a furnace and baths,
converting for the latter several entire bed-rooms with which Arden was
over supplied. Thus Bachelors' Belfry might have been considered the
most agreeable, even as the most isolated, portion of the house; and, as
its occupants passed a law forbidding women servants to ascend above the
second floor between five in the afternoon and nine in the morning,
conventions of attire were not by your leave, but as you please.
Tonight Brent had gone up early. At dinner he had been distrait; nor
even his poise could quite disguise it. The Colonel had suggested a
smoke and chat out on the porch where the air was soft and still and
cool, but Brent could not find it in his heart to stay.
During a portion of the morning, during those few passion-riven seconds
while Jane had been held like a carved image by the unfathomable timbre
of his voice, a struggle had taken place in the engineer's soul. And
when she had again started toward the house she little dreamed how
savagely it was raging. So he wanted to be alone tonight; not to face
that fight anew, because for once and all it had been settled, but to
plan for the fulfillment of its issue. The Colonel, therefore, was
smoking alone; just as Miss Liz was reading her Bible alone, and as Dale
was poring alone over a book in the silent library.
Brent, his chair back-tilted, his pumps resting on the window sill, his
coat off, had been surrounded for an hour by darkness. Only out across
the limited space of world framed by his window, and now barely visible
in the starlight, was there anywhere to rest his eyes.
He had watched the afterglow fading, fading; he had heard the last
sleepy twitter of the birds; he had seen one star, two and three, come
out; before his steadfast, brooding stare the trees had slowly lost
their green for the somber shade of night. And now it was indeed night;
that hushed and awe-inspiring span of gloom when worlds most sin; when
men and women do their sobbing; do their yielding; count their cost.
All of this had had a most oppressing effect on him whose thoughts
matched the compass, if not the penetration, of his vision. Another
hour he sat. Then he heard the great front door close with a jar. It was
the Colonel locking up the house. Shortly afterwards he heard Dale's
step, as the mountaineer went to his room. A sigh trembled between the
lonely watcher's lips, but he promptly arose and crossed the hall.
"How'd you get along today?" he asked, closing the door softly after
him. Not infrequently did they chat together at night.
"Fine," Dale cried, still excited by the labors he adored. "I'm readin'
about as fast as I can talk. It seems easy, now that I've got the
knack!"
Brent watched the light of ambition, of achievement, flicker across his
neighbor's face; he saw the purposeful chin, the knotted muscles in the
jaws, the fist, which in emphasis had just come down upon a table,
remain clenched as though it might never be off high tension.
"I'm glad to hear it," he said quietly. "But what have you in mind for
the future?"
"In mind? Everything! I'm getting my learning (I used to say larnin')
like a hungry old sow turned out on corn. Miss Jane says I'm doin'
better'n anyone she ever dreamed of; and when I finish, we're going back
in the mountains to bring our people out to light!"
"Yes, I've gathered something of that," Brent drily replied. "But, what
I mean is, what is your idea about Tusk?"
Dale started: "Good Lord," he slowly exclaimed, "I'd forgot about him!"
"It might be worth while remembering," the other suggested, "I've come
in to talk over plans for saving you."
"Savin' me! Me?" the mountaineer sprang to his feet in a burst of rage.
"Only you an' the Cunnel know I've done it, an' if you'll keep yoh
mouths shut there won't be any reason to save me, as you call it!"
"This isn't your country," Brent held his temper. "Men aren't shot
around here and carted off and buried without some sort of legal
investigation. If Tusk's body is found, and it will be found if he's
dead, someone's got to pay; someone must either stand trial or turn
fugitive."
"Great Gawd," Dale cried, slowly rocking his body from side to side.
"Great Gawd! Great Gawd!" he repeated over and over. There was a
flickering look about the eyes that made Brent catch his breath. It
seemed for just a passing second that they had been converted into
little balls of trembling red quicksilver; that was the only thing to
which he could liken those eyes just then--red quicksilver. But this
passed so quickly that it might have been a reflection from the lamp. At
any rate, Dale was continuing: "Why, Brent, I can't go to jail! Nor I
can't run away! Miss Jane says I'll be chuck full of education by next
winter--how can I go to jail? She says every hope she has is in me!"
Brent winced. "She says she trusts me more'n any feller she ever saw!"
Brent winced again. "How can I go to jail?"
So it was true. The engineer laughed, but it sounded more like the
stirring of ice.
"Don't divulge any more of her confidences. You've said enough--too
much. I assure you. The thing to talk about now is how to save you. Are
you sure you killed him?"
"'Course I did. Do you reckon I miss a man at three rod?"
"Then someone found his body, for it wasn't there when the Colonel went.
Sooner or later the trail will lead here. I've thought, perhaps, you
might slip away and go home with me. You can study there. Later, when
things blow over, you can come back."
"An' Miss Jane'll go?" he asked, hopefully.
"Certainly not," Brent flushed.
"I'll see what she says," Dale dubiously suggested.
"You'll do nothing of the sort! Would you have her know about this
mess?"
"It seems like she's pretty apt to know," he answered.
There was cruel truth in this; she was pretty apt to know beyond a
doubt; and Brent pictured what it would mean to a girl who believed and
had such implicit trust in one to find him a willful murderer. He
thought a moment of the blind sister, the helpless one of patient
waiting, of prayerful days; all dark, all dark, except for the hopeful
coming of that day when her brother should stand irreproachable before
the world and hear the applause of men. Slowly he spoke; it was of the
second plan, formed in a white hot crucible of passion as Jane had
walked away from him that morning.
"Several times Tusk has threatened to kill me if I persisted in building
the road across his patch of land. He stopped me one night on the pike
and laid hold of my bridle rein, and I had to get down and punch his
head. Why shouldn't he have tried to fix me early this morning when I
might have been up in that country?--and why shouldn't I have shot him
in self-defense?"
"I reckon you could," the mountaineer doggedly answered.
"Well, prod up your brains, man, or I'll begin to doubt if you're as
scintillating us everybody says! Don't you see what has to be done if
the sheriff gets wind of the thing and comes here? If I can probably get
off, and you'll probably be hanged--what's the answer?"
"You don't mean--" Dale swung about, resurrected hope lighting his face;
but Brent held up a warning hand.
"You're on, and that's enough; so don't open your mouth even in here. If
you do, I'll back out. You get that, too, don't you? Now listen: if Jess
comes, just tell him you don't know anything about anything; that you've
never left the library. I'll fix the Colonel and Zack."
But Dale was scarcely listening. He had begun to cavort about the room
in a semi-barbarous dance, clapping his hands and making a purring sort
of growl in his throat. A chair fell over; then another.
"Chop that crazy stuff," Brent commanded. "Want to wake the house?"
The big mountaineer looked rather sheepish as he picked up one of the
chairs and sat down in it.
"I reckon I was so tickled to get off from the law," he mildly
explained.
"I thought you might be mourning over the fate of whoever takes your
place," the engineer murmured, with a sarcasm entirely lost on his
listener. "Hell, Dale," he now let his feeling explode. "I've seen lots
of fellows from the mountains, but any one of 'em would lose a hand
before letting another man take his medicine! You've got to let me do
it, you understand!--but I do reserve this opportunity of saying you're
damned unappreciative."
"Do you reckon I'm lettin' you do it for me?" he turned savagely. "Do
you think it's me--jest me? Then you're a-_way_ off!"
"Well, I supposed it had some little to do with you," Brent suggested,
"and--and Miss Jane."
"It hain't!" He was in a fury again, and dropped back into the old
dialect "I hain't thinkin' of Miss Jane, nor nuthin'--'cept jest the
place Ruth said I'd git ter fill, the man I'll make 'mongst the big men
of the world! I'm the only one on airth as kin be as big as that, hain't
I? Yeou hain't amountin' ter nuthin', air ye? Why shouldn't ye take my
place afore the law? Hain't hit Natur's way fer the puny ter go down
afore the strong?"
The engineer's eyes opened at the curious sensation this gave him; at
the utter astonishment of listening. Then he softly began to laugh.
"My friend," he said, "I have raised my hat to one or two colossal
freaks in the past, but henceforth I shall come into your exalted
presence with bare-headed humilitude. However, my boy, don't think that
I'm flirting with the penitentiary for the sake of your dazzling future,
or for any of your pipe dreams. I'm doing it," he arose, and added
softly, "I'm doing it for the fun of the damn thing. Good night, Mr.
Genius!"
Long, long afterwards, Brent continued to sit in the back-tilted chair,
gloomily staring through the window which framed his dim vision of the
world. Later, somewhere on the other side of the house, the moon came
up; and far out across the country a dog howled. Yet, by another hour,
when that disk of lifeless white had floated higher in the sky, the
trees framed by his window dropped their robe of mourning for a more
soothing green and silver.
"I don't reckon it's such a somber old world, after all," he stood up,
stretching;--then went to bed, and slept.
But, across the hall, Dale had not slept. Excited, boyishly happy to
have escaped the consequences of his madness, he had tossed throughout
the night; building up castles of greatness equal to those of his
beloved Clay and Lincoln.
Now a robin piped its three first waking notes, and the mountaineer's
eyes opened wide. The interior of the room was beginning to be touched
with gray, and he sprang up, throwing back the eastern shutters and
gazing on that first faint flush of dawn which stirs within man's breast
a feeling of the Omnipotent. With lips apart, he watched the coming of
delicate layers of salmon, and saw them merge to a soft and satiny rose.
Vermillion now touched the highlights, as though some unseen brush, wet
from a palette below the horizon, had reached up and made a bold stroke
across this varying canvas. More slowly followed blue--and then a bluer
blue.
His thoughts, coloring with the sky, were whimsically curious. A day was
coming! It would come and go, and never in all eternity come
again--would this day! It was coming: to some, bringing ungrudging
pleasure, sweet happiness; to others, unsparing misery, bitter despair!
Before days were, it had been arranged that this one should appear--it
had been nicely calculated that this very dawn should glorify the sky at
this precise moment; and that e'er the sun of this day set, thousands
upon thousands of human beings should raise their smiling lips in
rapture, or their bloodshot eyes in pain! How many now, out across this
big, beautiful, blushingly awakening world, were undreaming of their
approaching joy--or unconscious of their creeping doom? Over and over in
his mind Dale weighed these thoughts. The universe was becoming a
fascinating, tremendous force to him. This day, just now coming over the
hill, so weighted with its black and white bounties--what was it
bringing to him?
"I know!" he cried, snatching up his clothes. "I get freedom, an' he,"
here his clenched fist shook toward Brent's room, "gets jail!"
Feverishly dressing, he stamped down to the library--his paradise;
regardless of whom he might be disturbing at this hour.