THE CALL THAT MEANS SURRENDER
Three days later an airedale terrier was driven to Flat Rock by Uncle
Zack. When, with an air of mystery, he presented the leash to Jane,
grinned and politely bowed himself away, she had stared at him in utter
surprise; then down at the dog which seemed to be gazing up with greater
understanding.
"Well, what is the answer?" she kneeled before him, fondly taking him by
the ears. The honest, fearless brown eyes spoke, but she slowly shook
her head: "I'm not civilized enough to understand!"
But her fingers, now turning his collar about, came upon a little note
addressed in Brent's writing. Untying it in some haste she sat upon the
grass and read:
"I, and my life, are yours, Mistress Jane. Please take me, and let
me guard you faithfully.
An unnamed dog."
"An unnamed dog!" she cried in delight, giving him a quick, impulsive
hug. "Oh, you wonderful creature!" Then held him off at arms' length,
his head between her palms in a way that wrinkled the tawny forehead
into an expression of profound wisdom. "How would you like to be
named--Mac?" she whispered.
He was wagging his stumpy tail, anyway; but one can always give a dog
the benefit of a doubt, and she believed that it began to wag more
happily. Thus it was settled between them. All the affection which his
nature held, which his rearing in a large kennel of other dogs had not
permitted him to bestow upon any one master, now sprang to its most
perfect development and centered upon this girl. Wherever she was, he
was; watchful, ready for a lark, or equally content to lie quietly at
her feet.
That afternoon, in trim boots and riding habit, she crossed the porch to
her horse which had just been brought around. Mac, in great pretended
fury, was grasping the leash end of her crop and tugging at it with
savage growls.
"Drop it," she gave his nose a tap. He licked her glove then, and looked
up with his head tilted in roguish inquiry. "We must ride over and thank
the other Mister Mac," she explained; and a few minutes later they were
going at a spirited pace across the meadows to Arden.
With still no news of Tusk Potter, the Colonel had spent a restless day.
Earlier, the doughty son of Shadeland Wildon brought the little boy over
to see him, followed by Aunt Timmie in her precarious buggy; but it was
now afternoon and they had left. Shadows were lengthening, and the cows
were mooing at the pasture gate.
Dale, as usual, had spent the day in study. His absorption had made him
unconscious of intruders who came into the room. Timmie and the little
boy had stopped to say good-bye, and she called his name; even
emboldened by his silence to murmur: "Don' you know you'se gwine pop yoh
brains a-wu'kin' 'em so hard?"
Bip, who regarded Dale with mysterious interest, made farther advances.
He went up close, and looked wonderingly into his face; but at last both
he and the old woman left unseen and unheard.
All unconscious of his surroundings, this student was living in other
days with the dauntless Pompey. By the aid of the huge dictionary, now
seldom opened, he laboriously followed this daring friend of the great
Cicero. Since morning he had witnessed the capture of a thousand cities,
the slaying or subjugation of a million human beings--and more of this
was to come. Had lightning snapped about his head he would not have
known it for the wilder sounds of battlefields, scattered between Rome
and the Euphrates, possessing his brain.
When Jane arrived, Mac was properly introduced to the old gentleman, who
made a great fuss over him and directed her attention to his points of
unusual excellence. But Brent, he told her, was not about.
"Dale would like to see him," she said enthusiastically.
"Oh, yes," his face clouded, "I suppose so!"
"What's the matter?" she quickly asked.
"Matter?" he looked up. "Why, nothing, my dear! Nothing, of course!"
But it did not satisfy, and she asked again:
"Has anything happened?--Dale, or anything?"
He must have found some difficulty in evading this direct question, and
his hesitation, brief though it was, alarmed her.
"No, my dear. I cannot say that anything has happened. I may be growing
a little uncertain of him--that is, I may be afraid--oh, bother! It is
nothing but an old man's fancy!"
Nevertheless, when later, calling the mountaineer's name, she stepped
through the library window, an element of uncertainty, quite a different
sort from that which the Colonel was congratulating himself upon having
so deftly hid, filled her heart with a vague foreboding.
Dale was mumbling aloud as he read, and did not hear her; but a slight
pressure on his shoulder brought him slowly back from scenes of carnage,
and he looked up into her face, smiling down at him.
"Stop awhile, and speak to Mac! Your eyes seem tired!"
"They're not. That was a great man--that Pompey!"
"Great," she agreed, a trifle piqued that he ignored her dog.
"Those fights," he said tensely, "were the biggest things a feller ever
did!"
"He did something bigger than conquering men," she told him.
"What?" he challenged.
"The battles won over himself," she answered slowly. "His upright life,
his unsullied honor toward all those women whom he made captive. In
battles of that kind there are great generals today. In that respect
everyone can be a Pompey. I wish I could feel," she thought again of the
Colonel's troubled face, "that you, without any doubt at all, were going
to be one!"
"I see what you mean," at last he said, turning back to the book; but
instantly pushed it away with a gesture of impatience and gazed moodily
into the high polish of the mahogany table, as though somewhere down in
its ancient graining an answer might be found to his troubled thoughts.
She watched him, with a curious look of interest.
"I don't understand it," he finally murmured. "By that very teachin',
we're branded worse than any kind of beasts. There's somethin' wrong,
Miss Jane; there's somethin' wrong!" A soft and peculiar light, which
she had often seen when his pupils began to dilate and contract,
fitfully crossed and recrossed them.
"I don't think I understand _you_," she replied.
"Then look!" he turned quickly. Again the curious light. She felt
herself being charmed by it, and wondered if a quail might feel so while
crouching before the point of a bird-dog. In a whisper-haunted voice he
began to speak; "It's a summer night. A lazy mist hangs in the valley. I
can see it--I've seen it most a thousand times! It hangs from the
mountain's waist like a skirt on a half dressed woman, and above is all
naked in the starlight. The air is still and clear, up thar," he slipped
unconsciously into the familiar dialect as he grew more intense, "'n'
the mist below is smooth 'n' white. Ye'd think ye could walk acrost on
hit. No sign or sound of the world kin touch this place, 'n' one might
as well be standin' on some crag that overlooks eternity. Back in a cave
a wild-cat wakes, 'n' sniffs the air; 'n' then he yawns, 'n' purrs, 'n'
gits up 'n' walks with soft, padded feet ter look out on this silence.
He sniffs the air, 'n' purrs agin, then lays his ears down flat 'n'
sends a cry a-tearin' 'crost the space. I've seen 'im; I've heerd 'im;
I've laid back outen the wind 'n' watched 'im. He crouches 'n' waits.
Soft, but nervous-like, his claws dig in 'n' out the airth. Then an
answer comes, floatin' like a far-off cry of a child in pain. With ears
still tight ag'inst his head, he freezes closter ter the ground, lashin'
his stumpy tail from side ter side, 'n' purrin' deeper. Then he cries
agin, 'n' waits. Purty soon, from out that mist, the answer comes agin,
'n' like a flash he's gone. Has he done wrong?"
He paused, still looking at her; and she, too strangely fascinated to
turn away her eyes, stared back with parted lips.
"When the fu'st red bars of dawn flash up the sky," he went on, in the
same mysterious voice, "showin' folks down in the valley that a day has
come, a bird pulls his head out from his wing, 'n' blinks. I've seen
'em; I've laid 'n' watched 'em 'most a thousand times. He blinks agin,
'n' finds hisse'f a-lookin' squar in ter a pair of twinklin' eyes that
seems ter've been awake all night, jest a-watchin', with sly longin',
from 'tween two leaves. Maybe he'd seen those eyes afore, but not jest
like this. Maybe only yestidday he passed 'em by--or even drove 'em away
from food;--but somethin' strange is in 'em now, somethin' strange that
happened in the night. So he gives a jump at 'em, jest like a spring he
didn't know was in his legs had been let loose; 'n' she laughs 'n' flies
away, I've seen it happen 'most a thousand times. From tree ter tree,
from bush ter bush, he follers. He stops; she stops. But when he tries
agin, she flies. The next day they're buildin' a nest. Have they done
wrong?"
He paused, but she did not take her eyes from his face. She might not
have known his voice had ceased by the way she looked deep into his
pupils--deep into the realm of his fancies. When he did speak again his
words were scarcely audible:
"Whether I'm in this misty valley, or up in those scarred rocks 'n'
crags--wherever I happen ter be--'n' send my call out ter space, I
reckon I've got ter go when the answer comes floatin' back ter
me:--whenever a dawn brings two eyes that have been watchin' fer no one
else but me, I reckon I've got ter follow in jest that very way! We
weren't made ter put up a fight when that call comes--fer that call
don't mean fight, Miss Jane; it means surrender!"
"Oh, my mountain poet," she murmured, leaning gracefully nearer, "how
can you wear a modern harness with such a soul! But we cannot live
simply, as the animals and birds! Do you not see that a higher
civilization has taught us the greater meaning of these things?"
"No," he answered bluntly. "That call is the greatest meaning. Nothin'
don't stand one, two, three to it! If civilization chokes it, then
civilization is wrong!"
A feeling of conflict stirred in her. Here was this towering young god
whom the Great Chiseller had made so awkward, so uncontrollably selfish,
yet otherwise so fine, and he was deliberately leaving the one path of
all others which she had believed him most sure to follow. Ruth had sent
him to her untarnished, and now, while in her keeping, he was drifting
away! How could she ever answer those blind eyes if they questioned her
with their calm, sightless stare? Her hand left his chair and rested
lightly on his shoulder, and the voice which spoke to him seemed almost
hard:
"You are stumbling into a false reasoning! Civilization does not choke
the cry; it only directs the way men and women shall answer! You are not
forgetting your Sunlight Patch, are you?"
He started to speak, but changed his mind; while, without being noticed,
she bent nearer, intently watching.
"Well?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said with a touch of uncertainty, "I reckon maybe
it's all wrong up at Sunlight Patch, too!"
Tremendously moved, startled, fearful lest he drift entirely from her
reach, she slipped still lower and looked up into his face.
"What does this mean?" she asked. "What has happened to you, boy?"
Mac, feeling that something had gone wrong, came over and pushed his
head beneath her arm; and with this she held him, while her other hand
impulsively caught Dale's sleeve. A feeling of protectorship, a faint
consciousness of motherhood, gave her face an exquisite look of
entreaty. What men's lives might be had never taken a definite place in
her mind, for she had accepted much and passed over more. But she was
not pleading now so much for him, as she was for the trust that had been
imposed in her--the knowledge that her honor was answerable to the giver
of that trust!
"You will not forget your Sunlight Patch, Dale?" she whispered. "You
will promise me this?"
Slowly the answer for which she hoped began to frame itself upon his
lips, and would have been spoken, had not Brent at this moment entered
in search of the mountaineer, and got well within the room before seeing
her.
She arose quietly, entirely free of self-consciousness, and was about to
make a sign for him to wait until the promise should be put in words.
But he was receiving altogether a different impression of the scene.
Yet, whatever his surprise, or the pain it brought, he was too well bred
to be taken unawares, and immediately crossed to the shelves as though
his errand were a book. The room was so large, and so deeply shadowed
near the door, that he might do this; and, indeed, hoped she would
believe herself to have been unobserved.
But the ruse had not deceived her. It had, instead, merely reflected his
own thought; and, as this understanding flashed through her mind, she
started forward, hurt;--but as quickly halted in confusion.
Rather hastily he took out the first book his fingers touched and was
starting back, when again she made as if to follow; but once more
stopped before the humiliation of having considered it even necessary to
explain to him. Yet one of her hands was still held out, a picture of
desperate protest.
Of course he did not see this, for his eyes had not dared to turn in her
direction after their first unforunate glance. Thus he went into the
hall, and an instant later she was staring at the vacant door, now
rapidly becoming blurred.
She gave one backward glance at Dale, but he had forgotten her existence
and was poring over the battles of Pompey. Such indifference did not
hurt her now:--it was the emptiness of that door! Still staring,
silently beating her hands together in impotent rage, her face burning
with mortification, two big tears rolled down her cheeks and fell upon
the rug. Mac whined. He did not understand--he only felt.
"Mac," she sobbed hysterically, "I wish you--could say all--all those
things that go--with damn and hell!" then passionately ran from the
room, and came up plump into the Colonel's ample waistcoat.
"My God!" the old gentleman cried.
"Oh!" she gasped.
"Ah, 'tis you!" he said, his arms still about her. "I thought it was a
wild-cat!"
"I thought it was a bear," she sobbed.
"What? Crying? My dear, how is this?" he asked in alarm.
"I can't tell you," she murmured to his cravat.
"Can't tell me! But I say you shall!" he hotly commanded.
"I'll never do anything--when you say shall," she retorted brokenly.
"God bless my soul," he sputtered. "I want you to understand that you'll
do anything whether I say shall or not, when I find you crying!"
"That sounds funny," she began to laugh, just a little. Then he began to
laugh.
She took his hand after this and led him across the hall into the "long
room," and when they emerged ten minutes later there were no signs of
tears.
"Never fear," he chuckled, "I'll tell him this very night."
"Oh, but you mustn't tell him," she said, aghast. "I only want him to
understand!"
"I see, I see," he pinched her cheek, "You only want him to understand.
Well, he shall understand this very night, then."
"And you'll thank him for sending me Mac?"
"Yes, yes, I'll thank him, never fear. Wait now, till I order my horse;
I'm going to ride home with you."
"It isn't dark yet, and I'm not afraid with Mac," she demurred.
"It is nearly dark, and I'm very much afraid," he bowed gallantly, "that
I'll too soon be forgot for this airedale gentleman if you go alone."