But hard on the news that Grant City was not to get the county seat, came the news that neither was it to get the railroad.
“It's a lie! They can't afford to ignore us!” cried Gibbs when he heard this. “It's a trick to depress real estate! Any one who's fooled by it deserves to get skinned out of his last dollar.”
But the rumour was verified, and even Gibbs was forced to own that for the present at least they had lost the railroad.
“You ain't involved, Landray,” he told Stephen. “You stood to share only in the profits; and I can't lose much, for I hadn't five hundred dollars when I came here, and I got seventy or eighty lots that are worth something, and fifteen or twenty houses.”
Here Stephen recalled to his mind the fact that these houses were in the main unpaid for, and that his creditors might swoop down upon him at any moment.
“My creditors? Oh, hell—let 'em sweat!” and the general snapped his fingers almost gaily, and said in the same breath, “I expect you're cussing me, Steve, for fetching you here.”
“Nothing of the kind, general!” said Stephen stoutly.
“If I fooled you, I fooled myself, Steve; I knew there was some foxy gentlemen in this part of Kansas, but I thought I was the foxiest thing on two legs. I have had my ambitions too, Steve, and they ain't dead yet, a man of my calibre don't give up readily; but I'm adaptable. I don't sit down to weep over an unpropitious occasion, in some fashion I dominate it. For the present I suppose there is nothing for us to do but wait and see how things turn out.”
And through one long hot summer they watched things turn out. They saw the departure of the town-site speculators; they saw the settlement of tents and prairie schooners disappear from the waste beyond the town, until at last there was only the rolling plain, with its thousands of pegs that marked the lots of the various subdivisions, or the streets by which they were to be reached; and with this swift panoramic change came a leaden depression which ate into the very soul. There was no more poker at the Metropolitan, once a feature of the nightly gatherings there; the wilderness of signs creaked idly in the breeze; half the houses stood tenantless; the stages ceased to rumble in and out of town; the remnant of a population loafed in heavy lethargetic idleness.
Gibbs and Stephen sat through that long summer, idly for the most part, in their shirt-sleeves in the shade of their office; the only business they had was to see Gibbs's creditors, and in the end these ceased to trouble them.
At first Stephen had been somewhat sustained by Gibbs's confidence; for Gibbs had been sure things would come right, that the depression was only temporary; but in the end even his fine courage failed him. He spent less and less time in the shade of his office, and more and more time at Mr. Youtsey's bar; but at last Mr. Yout-sey announced that he was about to leave to seek fortune elsewhere.
“I've sat up with the corpse,” he told Gibbs jocosely, “and now I'm going to pull out. I leave the last words to you, for you seem to be chief mourner; I reckon you'll stay to the finish.”
“I don't know about that,” retorted Gibbs briskly. “You can't keep a squirrel on the ground; but I'm free to say I don't want to make any mistakes next time. I'm getting along to a time in life when I don't expect to make more than two or three more fortunes before I quit.”
“Well, you don't squeal none, general, that's what I admire about you; win or lose, there's a kind word still coming,” said Mr. Youtsey admiringly.
In private to Stephen, Gibbs deplored the conditions which he semed to think were largely responsible for their present situation; he was seeing deeper than the mere surface of things.
“The war was a mistake, Steve; patriotism and sentiment aside, it was a big mistake. It's knocked half the country into a cocked hat. The South is dead, and in my opinion we won't live long enough to see it come to life. If it had been just left alone, it would have been mighty interesting to have seen how it would have settled the nigger question. And what's been the result to the nation at large; we've lost over half a million of men—young men who'd a pushed out into the West here, and made this country a wonder. We wouldn't be waiting for population if they'd lived. But it wasn't to be! The country's filling up with all sorts of riff-raff from Europe, a class that never used to come; not the good English and Scotch and Irish, who came because they wanted elbow room; but greasy serfs, who ain't caring a damn for anything but wages. I tell you in twenty years an American will be a curiosity. And to think the way they were wasted, just thrown at each other by the thousands, in the greatest and crudest war of modern times.”
But Stephen could not sit there gossiping with Gibbs while Grant City sank into the prairie, or its shabbily built houses collapsed about his ears; he must do something, yet what was he to do? Gibbs came to his rescue with a suggestion.
“I been thinking of your luck, Steve,” he said one day with kindly concern. “I can hold up this building quite a while by myself just by leaning against it; I reckon it will be about a hundred years before anybody sells a lot again in Grant City, and you can't wait on that, on the chance that you will be the lucky fellow.”
“If I could go!” cried Stephen, with savage earnestness.
“But you can't! Now look here, the farmers have had a pretty good season; you can always sell a farmer improved machinery, and I understand you can secure an agency without any capital to speak of.”
“Why don't you try something of the sort?” asked Landray.
Gibbs shook his head.
“I'm too old a man, Steve, to knock about the country the way I'd have to; besides, I'm getting ready to start up in business.”
“Start up in what?” cried Stephen.
“In a small way in the licker business,” said the general with dignity.
“You mean a saloon?”
The general averted his eyes.
“Well, yes—it will have to be retail—I suppose you might almost call it a saloon,” he admitted reluctantly.
“We are coming down between us, general,” said Landray with a scornful laugh.
“Not at all, Steve, not at all. I've never claimed more than that I was up to the occasion, and Youtsey's quit here; fact is, before he left I made a dicker for what was left of his stock. His going makes an opening for a commercial enterprise of this sort—in a small way, of course.”
“Very small, I should say.”
“No, Steve, you must own there are a few people left; not many, but a few; and they are not going to be any less thirsty in the future than they have been in the past. I'm not counting on riches, but merely enough to tide me over until I see an opening. Maybe the venture might justify a partnership; if you think it will, I'm ready to whack up,” concluded Gibbs generously.
“Excuse me, general,” said the young man haughtily, “but we'll reserve that until the last.” He saw that Gibbs was hurt by his words and manner, and hastened to add, “I think your first suggestion was the best, do you know where I should write?”
“There are all sorts of catalogues in the office. I'd write to half a dozen different firms. I merely suggested this as a temporary makeshift; you might add insurance and lightning-rods.”
“We'll stop with the farm implements, more than that would only be funny; and I'm in desperate need.”
“I really shouldn't wonder if you didn't do quite well, Landray, after you get started,” Gibbs said, with ready faith in this new enterprise. “The farmers farm the land, you'll farm the farmers;” and Stephen's letters not appearing sufficiently hopeful in tone to his critical mind, he ended by drafting them for him. “Now I reckon they'll get you consideration,” said he, when their labours came to an end. “What! You ain't got any stamps? Why didn't you tell me you were that hard put? I ain't got much myself, but I always put down a little nest-egg. I hoped you'd done the same—why didn't you tell me?”
He brought from an inner pocket an old leathern wallet; it was limp enough, but it contained two twenty dollar bills, one of which he forced Stephen to accept.
“I never give up quite all; and if I'd known about the county seat a week earlier, there'd a been a few more gone broke here, but it wouldn't been you or me, Steve?”
A week later Stephen was present at the formal opening of the Golden West Saloon in their former office, Gibbs presiding with typical versatility.
There still lingered in Grant City those who either could not get away or were too indifferent to try, whose imagination had utterly failed them; and occasionally, though rarely, the wagons of emigrants paused for repairs at the blacksmith's; thus there was still the semblance of life, though half the houses in the town stood vacant; these seemed to fade away, to disappear in the rank grass that had come back to flourish in the small trampled lots, and in the midst of this universal decay, this final phase of the small tragedy of settlement, Stephen waited and organized the business Gibbs had suggested, but with no large measure of faith in it.
If Marian's condition would only improve sufficiently so that they might quit Grant City, he was almost certain that by some tremendous effort the money he would then require would be forthcoming.
However when he finally got to work the effect on him was that of a tonic; and through that fall, and the ensuing winter, over desperately bad roads, he travelled far and wide; and by spring when he began to reap the benefits of his winter's work, he saw that he was not only clear of debt but that he had actually made some money.
And while he toiled for her, Marian was left alone with a slatternly unattached female, who was both housekeeper and nurse; and for medical attendant there was Dr. Arling, who found Grant City entirely congenial. Drunk and sodden, he was not unskillful; and when he was needed he could always be found at the Golden West Saloon, where he loafed tirelessly, and where he played countless games of checkers with Gibbs.
It never occurred to Stephen that Marian might not recover. To him it seemed only a question of time until her strength would return; but he was the only one who was really ignorant of her condition. Arling had no doubts as to what the end would be, nor had Mrs. Bassett, the sick woman's attendant.
The end, when it came, came when he was least prepared to meet it. It was fall again, and he had driven in from the country to be with Marian over Sunday. He had stabled his horse, and had come up from the barn, lantern in hand, cold and stiff from his drive home from a farm far out on the plains.
Mrs. Bassett was in the little kitchen fussing over his supper when he entered the house by the back door. She had seen his light in the stable.
“I'll have your supper ready for you in just a minute, Mr. Landray,” she said. “You've got time to run up and see Mis' Landray. She knows you're back, I called up and told her you'd come.”
“How is she?” asked Stephen.
“Well, she seems to be about the same, I don't see no difference,” answered Mrs. Bassett guardedly. She turned and followed him with her eyes as he went through the sitting-room and entered the narrow front hall from which the stairs led to the floor above.
He was gone but a moment, then he came quickly into the kitchen, his face very white.
“She is worse!” he said in a husky whisper. “Why didn't you tell me so?” but he did not wait for an answer. “Where is the child?” he demanded.
“I carried him across the back lots to Mis' Gibbs a spell ago. I couldn't tend him and her, too, he was real fretful.”
“I must go for the doctor,” said Stephen.
“You needn't, Mr. Landray, Mis' Gibbs said she'd go to the saloon for him; I seen her lantern just a moment ago. You'd best have something to eat,” she urged.
He turned away impatiently.
“I'm not hungry. Have the doctor come up-stairs as soon as he gets here.”
But when Arling arrived a few moments later, accompanied by Gibbs, and joined Stephen in the chamber above where he sat holding his wife's hand in both his own, he merely shook his head. It was as he had expected, only the end had been longer deferred than he had thought possible. He stole from the room and rejoined Gibbs in the kitchen.
“You tell him, Gibbs—I can't,” he said.
Gibbs rubbed his straggling unkempt beard with a tremulous hand.
“Maybe he don't need to be told,” he suggested. “But if you think he should be, I'll do it;” and he stood erect, with something of his old air.
He mounted the creaking stairs. Stephen must have heard him coming, for he opened the door and stepped out into the narrow hall, that was barely large enough to hold the two men and the small stand, where Mrs. Bassett had placed a smoky lamp with a dirty chimney.
“Where's the doctor—why don't he come back?” Landray demanded in a fierce whisper. “Is the drunken fool going to do nothing?”
“Steve,” began the general, with white shaking lips, “Steve, bear up, Arling says there ain't anything he can do.”
Stephen looked at him, scarce comprehending what it was he said.
“He don't know what he's talking about—the fool's drunk!” he said roughly.
“I reckon he is,” lamented Gibbs weakly. “I'd'a had him under the pump if there'd been time, but my Julia said for him to hurry, and I closed up and brought him along just as he was, he wasn't fit to come by himself.”
“Send him up here again,” said Stephen with stern insistence. “There is something he can do—my God—” and he broke off abruptly and re-entered his wife's room.
“Come!” said Gibbs, when he had returned to the kitchen. “Come, stir around!” he ordered, laying a hand on Arling's shoulder. “Come, there's something you can do, and you've got to do it.” He was in a panic of haste. He snatched up his dingy medicine case and thrust it into Arling's shaking hands. “He's waiting for you, go up and do what you can.”
“Haven't you told him, Gibbs? She is dying, all he's got to do is to look at her to see that.”
“You're the one to tell him then—poor Steve—you go to him. I must go fetch my Julia and the baby;” and he stumbled out into the darkness with neither hat nor lantern, and fled across the back lots toward the light that burned in his own window.
He soon returned with Julia, who went at once to the room above. In the narrow hall she encountered Arling, who had just come from Marian's bedside, where he had administered to her some simple restorative. She brushed past him without a word.
“Thank you for coming, it's good to have a woman about,” murmured Stephen, glancing toward the door as she entered.
Marian lay on the bed without speech or movement, but her eyes, now brilliant and filled with a strange light, followed every movement of the two. Julia, with Stephen's help, made her more comfortable; they smoothed her pillows and raised her higher on them, for Mrs. Gibbs had been quick to see that her breath came with difficulty.
She had never liked Marian, and Marian had never liked her—but she had forgotten all this—which, after all, was only that chance which determines who shall love and who shall hate. Now she was all tenderness, this brisk energetic woman, with the lines of a shrewish temper already stamped upon her face; and her glance always softened when she looked at Stephen.
There was little either could do but wait; and Marian, save for the look in her eyes and their restless turning, gave no sign that she knew what was passing about her.
Presently Julia stole down-stairs to the kitchen. She found Mrs. Bassett, the general, and Arling still there; the boy fast asleep in her husband's arms.
“Law!” she cried. “Haven't any of you had sense enough to put that child to bed?” and she whisked him out of Gibbs's arms and carried him into the adjoining room.
After that the four fell to watching the clock as if the slow moving hands would tell them when all was over; and as they watched, the row of ragged lights in the uncurtained windows that looked out upon Grant City's Main Street, disappeared one by one, and it was midnight and very still.
At last Julia rose from her chair and without a word went up-stairs; she seemed to know that all was over. She noiselessly pushed open the door and entered the room.
Stephen's face was buried in the pillow beside his wife's. A glance told her what had happened during her absence from the room. She stepped to the bedside and placed her hand gently on the man's shoulder; she felt him shrink from the sudden touch.
“Come,” she said kindly. “You mustn't stay here any longer, Mr. Landray. You go on down-stairs and ask Mrs. Bassett to come up here to me.”
“Is she—” he gasped chokingly.
He had risen to his feet, and she urged him away from the bedside with gentle but determined force.
“You must go down-stairs, Mr. Landray,” she insisted.
“She never spoke—never once,” he cried, turning his bloodshot eyes on her.
“But she knew you; do go down-stairs, Mr. Landray, indeed, you mustn't stay here any longer.”
She had pushed him from the room as she spoke, and he crossed the hall and went slowly and heavily down the narrow steps.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
IF Virginia had been unable to influence Stephen's life as she wished, this was far from being the case with Jane and Harriett, who had wholly abandoned themselves to her care and control, which had to do, unselfishly enough, with their comfort and convenience. They were also indebted to her for their mental outlook. They echoed her opinions and acquired her convictions, by which they endured with unshaken pertinacity, and she had furnished them with such prejudices as had found a home in their gentle unworldly hearts. In sentiment they were quite as much Landray as she was herself; and their pride in the name was quite equal to her own pride in it; while their affection for her was, aside from their affection for each other, quite the deepest emotion in their simple lives.
Under these conditions Harriett had grown into young womanhood, a shy pretty girl, who looked out upon the world with soft, inexperienced eyes. But her father's death, and Stephen Landray's, and perhaps more than all, Virginia's beauty and silent devotion to her dead husband, had supplied a background of romance and mystery of which she was never wholly unconscious. Of society, as it was understood in Benson, she knew nothing; her mother had never made any friends in the town, and Virginia's own circle had narrowed; she went nowhere.
Some day Harriett knew she would teach; this Virginia and Jane had decided for her. It was their conviction that it was the one thing a young lady could do without compromising her position, it was entirely dignified, a polite and unexceptional occupation where one was so unfortunate as to have her own future to consider; and so to teach, Harriett was fitting herself, when something happened which materially changed all her plans.
Mr. Stark, who for many years had been the pioneer banker in Benson, had long since gone to his reward, and now there were several banks in the town; chief of these was the County Bank where the interest on certain loans which Benson had made for Virginia, with the money he had given her for the land in Belmont County, was regularly paid. Here Harriett often went for Virginia, and it was here she first met Mark Norton, whose uncle, Judge Norton, was interested in the fortunes of the bank; indeed, young Norton was supposed to be mastering the intricacies of the banking business under the judge's eye.
He came of an excellent family in the county, and Harriett had frequently observed the young fellow. She had even noted that after business hours, the easy hours of banks, he indulged himself in the pleasure of driving most excellent horses. His father was a rich farmer, which doubtless had much to do with the soundness of the son's judgment in the matter of horse-flesh; it also explained why it was that he was able to keep fast horses, a luxury not within the reach of the ordinary bank clerk. Harriett had seen all this, as he frequently drove past the cottage presumably on his way into the country beyond. It afterward developed that Norton had observed the slight figure of the girl on the lawn in front of the cottage with the two elder ladies, and he had noted that she was very pretty—singularly pretty, he would have said.
But it was Harriett's privilege not only to see him in his hours of recreation, but also when she went to the bank on some errand for Virginia. He never ventured on anything that could be termed conversation, though he occasionally appeared to be anxious to discover Miss Walsh's opinion on such impersonal subjects as the weather; or if it was a warm day he obligingly called her attention to that fact. He always addressed her as Miss Walsh. He had been almost the first person who found such formality necessary, and that he did, had provoked her to a new and gratifying emotion.
But on one occasion when she stopped at the bank, he was rather more disposed to talk than was usual with him, but Miss Walsh was in some haste to go, once the business that had brough her there was transacted; indeed, so great was her haste that she did not observe that she had left her check-book.
Later in the afternoon, as she sat on the lawn with Virginia and her mother, Norton appeared, striding briskly up the street. He opened the gate, and crossed the lawn to them, smiling and at ease.
“I didn't give Miss Walsh her check-book,” he said. He addressed himself to Virginia. “I thought she would find it out and come back—but you didn't”—he turned to Harriett as he spoke—“and so I've brought it.”
They were all very grateful to him; that is, Virginia and Jane expressed their gratitude. They thought he had been most kind and had put himself to a great deal of trouble in a really unimportant matter. Harriett said nothing, but she suffered an accusing pang when she recalled that she had shown no interest in the weather.
Virginia asked him to be seated, for though he had given the book into her keeping, he still stood before them hat in hand.
Norton sat down with alacrity.
He was not under ordinary circumstances a garrulous young fellow, but on the present occasion he talked hard and fast, as one will who is trying to gain time; but the burden of what he had to say was directed to Virginia. Instinct warned him that it would be her opinion that would have weight with the others, that if he was ever to return there, as he hoped he might be permitted to do, it would be because she was willing he should come; and though Virginia regarded him a little critically at first perhaps, there was nothing of unkindness in her glance.
At last he quitted his chair; but he was manifestly most reluctant to go; they rose, too; and the four walked slowly across the lawn. Norton lagged more and more as they neared the gate; it involved a positive effort for him to tear himself away. In this extremity he fell to admiring the flowers; he was particularly fond of flowers, it seemed; no doubt because he had always lived in the country and was accustomed to having growing things about; he even ventured the hope that Mrs. Landray would let him come later when the roses were in bloom.
“I hope you may come again, Mr. Norton,” responded Virginia kindly.
“Thank you—if it won't be an intrusion, I'll be only too glad to come;” and he stole a swift glance at Harriett.
It may have been the merest chance, but after this in one way and another, Harriett saw a good deal of Norton, for his love of the country took him past the cottage very often. Harriett knew this because she read much by the window in the small parlour.
One night as the three sat in the parlour, the girl's quick ear caught the sound of wheels, and a horse at a rapid trot drew up at the curb. She hid her face in the book she was reading, and her heart beat rapidly. There was a brisk step on the path, and a brisk knock at the door, which Mrs. Walsh opened, and there stood Norton. To the girl's eyes he seemed wonderfully confident, wonderfully sure of himself, and later she might have added, wonderfully discreet, for he devoted himself almost exclusively to Virginia.