But while they talked of these matters, his glance drifted on past Virginia to the pretty silent girl.
When at last Norton took his leave, he was hospitably urged to call again, an invitation he professed himself as fully determined to make the most of.
He was the first young man who had ever called there, though this was not because there was any dearth of young men in the town; but Harriett was aware that Virginia's point of view regarding strangers was conservative to say the least; here, however, was a young man whose grandfather had been a prominent man in the county when a Landray had been the prominent man of all that region.
So Norton was welcomed graciously whenever he chose to call. Yet somehow after that first call they avoided all mention of him; even repeated visits did not provoke them to discussion; and at this, Harriett wondered not a little.
At last Virginia astonished her small household by announcing that she had invited Norton to tea. They dined in the middle of the day, but on this particular evening tea became a very elaborate affair indeed, for it was the first time in twenty years, or since Stephen Landray's death, that Virginia had bidden a guest to her home. Even Harriett, who thought she knew all the resources of the household, was astonished at the old silver and glass and china that was brought out for the occasion; nor had she ever before seen Virginia dressed with such richness; and she did not wonder that Norton whispered to her as Virginia quitted the room on some errand:
“What a beautiful woman Mrs. Landray is, I wonder she never married again.”
“She will never marry, she is devoted to her husband,” said Harriett.
“Odd, isn't it, that one should always be thinking of that?” he said.
“You mean her devotion to his memory?”
“No, not that—I mean that one should always wonder why a pretty woman doesn't marry.”
“But when you have lost some one you love.”
“Of course—I suppose love only seems so important in our own lives because we know what it has meant to some, and so hope it may mean the same to us.”
“Does it seem so important?” she asked, the colour coming into her cheeks.
“Doesn't it?” he asked quietly.
“Really I don't know, I had never thought of it—in that way.”
“It's a part of what we call success in life; it may be the better part—it should be, Harriett.” His voice dwelt lingeringly and caressingly on her name.
She gave him a frightened, embarrassed glance. It was the first time he had ever called her anything else than Miss Walsh. She hoped all at once that her mother or Virginia would come into the room; but she knew they were busy elsewhere and would not appear until tea was served.
“Don't you think that?” he asked.
“I don't know. I have never thought of it,” she said faintly.
“I wish you'd think of it now,” he insisted.
“Why?” she faltered.
“Can't you guess?” he asked. “As something that might affect you, as something that might affect—us.” He leaned forward in his chair until his face was very close to hers. “Don't you understand what I mean, Harriett?” he went on, and his voice had become suddenly tender. “I wonder if you could think it worth while to care for a fellow like me; don't you know why I've been coming here?”
“To see my Aunt Virginia,” she faltered.
“Well, no—hardly, Harriett; but I fear you are not quite honest with me. You know that you have brought me here. I wanted to come long enough before I did; but there seemed no way. What are you going to tell me about caring for a fellow like me; caring in a particular way—I mean?”
The colour came and went in the girl's face.
“Of course I can wait—after all you don't know me so very well yet; but I'd like to think that my case is not entirely hopeless. Won't you tell me what I want to know, Harriett,”—he heard the swish of heavy silks in the hall, it was Virginia returning. “I'm going to come to-morrow for your answer,” he said quickly.
The next day, after the young man had taken his leave of her, Harriett fled up-stairs to her mother's room with a burning face; while Norton drove away from the house apparently in the best of spirits, for he had the unmistakable air of a man who has just heard something that was unqualifiedly pleasant to hear. The girl hesitated nervously.
“Mr. Norton has just left,” she said.
“I thought I heard him, or some one, drive up to the gate.”
“It was he,” said Harriett.
Her mother went placidly on with her sewing.
“He wants me to tell you that he wishes to come and see you very soon, mama,” said Harriett at last, with a little gasp.
“Wants to see me, dear?” in mild surprise.
“Yes.”
“But what about?”
“About—about me—he wants to tell you something.”
“He seems to have told you already,” said Mrs. Walsh.
The girl dropped on her knees before her mother, burying her face in her lap. There was a little silence between them, and then Mrs. Walsh said.
“We must tell Virginia. I hope, dear, that she will approve.”
Harriett glanced up quickly at this. She was very white of face.
“Oh, you don't think she won't—you don't think that?”
“Then you want her to approve?”
And Harriett nodded; a single little emphatic inclination of the head.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
BEYOND the windows of the Golden West Saloon, a cold rain deluged Grant City. Gibbs, in his shirt-sleeves, sat on the edge of his bar and dangled his fat legs. Arling, disreputable and evil to the eye, nodded in a warm corner by the stove. Gibbs was speaking, and he addressed himself to Stephen Landray, who was striding back and forth across the room.
“Better shut up the house, Steve, and let Mrs. Bassett go; and you and the boy come over and camp with my Julia and me. It will give Julia something to think of,” he urged hospitably.
“Thank you, general, but I must remain just where I am. In the spring I shall go further West—that is if I can stay until then.”
“I understand just how you feel,” said Gibbs, with ready sympathy. “And wherever you go I want you to remember that I don't consider myself permanently located here. I wish we might get into something together again.”
He tucked his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. He, at least, was perennially hopeful. If there was a Gibbs of the Golden West Saloon, there was also a General Gibbs of Kansas. He might be purple-faced, and his dress might be shabby and neglected, but dissipation could never do for him all that it had done for Arling, his pride and his ideals measurably sustained him in his evil fortune.
“Nothing's final, you know,” he went on. “I reckon there's still the last word to be spoken on most topics; and while I own I'm winded, it ain't going to be for long. I've had ups and downs before, and with half a chance it's in me to finish a winner. This place has got on my nerves, and it's not suiting my Julia either—it's on her nerves, too. Well, I never believe in evading the plain facts in a case, and I know I'm not just acting in a way to satisfy an ambitious woman, and my Julia's got her ambitions. You know what's wrong, I don't need to go into that; but I will say this much for myself; a dead and alive existence is mighty depressing to an active man such as I've always been, who's had his nose in large affairs. I can't stay here and go to seed; what's to hinder us from pulling out together in the spring? You can't leave before that, and it ain't long to wait.”
“No, I can't go before spring,” Landray reluctantly agreed, “unless I can find some one who will pay me a lump sum down on my contracts.”
Virginia had written him, begging him to return to Benson, but he was determined never to go back no matter what happened. Later, Virginia had asked him to send the child to her; but neither would he do this. His little son must remain with him wherever he went. Without the boy he felt his own life would be quite worthless; he felt, too, that Marian would have wished him to decide as he had decided.
The winter was of unexpected severity, but to Stephen this was one of its lesser hardships. He travelled far in all weathers, not sparing himself. Night after night he came back cold and weary to his little son and his comfortless home. He saw the huddle of houses under a thousand different aspects—against the red of the winter sky; when the swift twilight had fallen; by the cold moon, which sent long black shadows streaming out across the white untrodden snow; and he learned to hate it all, as something animate and personal that had made a wreck of his life.
There was no welcome now for him in the ragged rows of lights in those uncurtained windows that overlooked the streets Gibbs had named in the very prodigality of his patriotism—Sherman Street, Farragut Street, Porter Avenue, Lincoln Boulevard; he only had his boy, his memory of Marian, and his terrible loneliness for companions. Would the spring never come, would the winter never lose its hold on that frozen land! Sometimes in sheer desperation he went down to Gibbs and Arling at the Golden West Saloon, where the man of science, when not too drunk, played strategic games of checkers with the ex-editor; and where the ex-editor mixed hot whiskies for the man of science; and the frost bound loafers who still called Grant City home, congregated sparsely.
But at last the snows melted from the crests of the ridges, patches of prairie sod became visible and spread down the slopes, as the sun crept back day by day toward its summer solstice.
One raw spring day just at evening, Stephen drove into Grant City. It had been raining and he was wet to the skin, but cold and chilled as he was, his bronzed cheeks burnt with an unwonted colour, while his dark eyes were brilliant with an unusual light. He drove not to his home, but straight to Gibbs's saloon. Hearing him, the general came to the door.
“Hullo, Steve, want me?” he said cheerfully.
“Can I get you to go to the house with me, and put out my horse?” asked Landray. He spokely stiffly over the turned-up collar of his coat, and he was conscious that the words that issued from his lips had an unfamiliar sound; he scarcely recognized his own voice.
“Why, what's the matter, Steve?” demanded Gibbs in some surprise.
“I'm not feeling just right, that's all.”
The general vanished from his open door, but reappeared almost immediately with his hat.
“You ain't feeling right?” he repeated as he climbed in beside Landray. “What's wrong with you, Steve?”
“I seem to have taken cold,” said Stephen, still stiffly and thickly over the upturned collar of his coat. “I want to get to bed as quick as possible.”
“I guess that's where you should have been for the past hour,” said the general, surveying him critically. “You ain't got the least notion of taking care of yourself, Steve, you're doing yourself a rank injustice, exposing yourself this way!”
When they drove in at the barn Gibbs had to help him from the buggy or he would have fallen to the ground; he led him to a sheltered spot, then he drove the horse in out of the rain and tied it.
“I'll come back and take out; but first I'm going to get you to bed, Steve,” he said.
“I'm afraid—I think I'm going to be sick,” said Landray, and now his teeth were chattering.
“Why, Steve, you're wringing wet!” cried Gibbs, placing an arm about him to support him as he led him away to the house.
“I've driven in from Hazlets in the rain.” Hazlets was a good ten miles out on the prairie.
“You shouldn't have done it! You take no sort of care of yourself.”
By the time Gibbs had gotten his friend to his room, and undressed and in bed, he was shaking with a violent chill. Gibbs piled the blankets on him, and went down to the kitchen where he told Mrs. Bassett to prepare a hot whisky for the sick man.
“You give it to him, and I'll be back with Arling in a minute or so,” he said, and ran to the saloon, where he arrived panting and out of breath.
The doctor had received his monthly remittance the day before, and the results had been disastrous; but Gibbs was equal to the emergency. He dragged him unceremoniously enough from the chair he was sleeping in back of the stove, and laid him flat on the floor; then he brought a bucket of water from the well in the yard, and splashed it in his face. This produced immediate results. The doctor opened his eyes, groaned, and sat up.
“What the hell you doing to me, Gibbs?” he sputtered angrily, for the deluge continued.
“I'm trying to sober you, Doc, Landray's sick.”
“Want to drown me? I tell you I'm sober enough. What's the matter of Landray?”
“He's sick—is having sort of a chill.”
“He don't take no care of himself, never seen such imprudence,” said Arling crossly.
“Can you walk?” demanded Gibbs.
“Yes,” and the doctor scrambled to his feet. “Course I can walk!”
“Come along then,” cried Gibbs, seizing Arling's hat and thrusting it into his hands.
“Stop a minute, where's Landray now?” asked Arling, reasonably sober.
“Home and in bed. I told Mrs. Bassett to give him hot whisky.”
“Nothing better than that!” said Arling.
As soon as he had left the doctor in charge of his friend, Gibbs hurried off across the back lots. He was going for his Julia.
“This is a hell of a place!” he moaned miserably, as he stumbled along through the darkness. “I wish I'd never got him to come here; but I couldn't foresee how things would pan out!”
His was a simple emotional nature, but he was capable of no little depth of feeling, and he loved Landray as his own son. He wanted him to live, he wanted to vindicate to him his own capacity for a substantial success. It hurt him that he should think, as he sometimes fancied he did think, that he was impractical and erratic; he wanted him to know just the sort of man General Nathan Gibbs really was; for externals bore hard upon his character, and he was aware without his Julia telling him of it, that Gibbs of the Golden West Saloon was but a poor shadow of the epauletted soldier who seven years before had turned his florid face and expanded chest toward the new West. Those had been his great days, but in some form they must return; he never doubted this.
“What a shabby guzzling hound I've become!” he told himself in his abasement and disgust. “I wish he could think well of me, for he's the only gentleman left in Grant City.”
He soon returned with his Julia, who, after bestowing certain little attentions on the sick man, rejoined her husband in the kitchen, where she viewed certain manifestations of Mrs. Bassett's housekeeping with compressed lips and elevated eyebrows. Then she proceeded to clean up, and in Mrs. Bassett's absence from the room, remarked to the general:
“Seems as if nothing short of a death in this family will ever get this house red up! I wonder what that woman finds to slouch over all day long!”
Stephen was delirious for the greater part of the night, a fever following quick upon the chill; but toward morning Arling came from the room and joining Gibbs, told him that Landray's condition was much less serious than it had been.
“Well, if that's so,” said Gibbs, quitting his chair, “I guess I'll slip up and see him, and then go home and get an hour or two of sleep, and then go down and open up the saloon. If you want anything, send for me. Julia will be over right after breakfast.”
“Mighty capable lady!” remarked the doctor.
Gibbs found Landray very white and weak, but sitting up in bed.
“Well, how goes it, Steve?” he asked cheerfully.
“I don't know,” said Landray wearily. “It's my head.”
“Well, you keep still for a few days, and your head will be all right,” said Gibbs, drawing up a chair to his bedside and settling his untidy person in it.
“I don't know what I'd do without you and Mrs. Gibbs,” said Stephen gratefully, as he sank back on his pillows.
“As soon as you can, you must get out of this, Steve,” said Gibbs. “Why can't you write to your aunt, or Jake Benson? He owes it to you to do something; it's not much to ask.”
But Stephen shook his head.
“Oh, come now, that's merely your pride. Just make up your mind to let things drop here; you shouldn't risk your health racing about the country; at best you'll only clear up a few hundreds, even your aunt could do that much for you and not feel it.”
“You don't understand, Gibbs; I cannot ask anything of her; her means are small enough, and my obligations to her are already greater than I can ever hope to discharge.”
“Well, of course, you know best; but I want to see you get away from here, Steve, you are using yourself up to no purpose. It's a dog's life; I feel it, and things don't grind into me the way they do into you.”
Later in the day the fever which had left him returned; and a feeling of despair laid hold of Stephen. Suppose he did not get well—suppose he should die! It would be so much more easy to die than to live; why should he wish to pass again beyond the four white walls of that room! Then he thought of his little son, and begged Gibbs who was watching at his side to find him pen and paper. These were brought him, the general propped him up in bed with pillows, and the sick man took the pen with feeble fingers. After all, in his poverty and sickness, his misery of body and spirit, in what he now believed was the final dire extremity, he turned to Virginia. She had been his first friend and she was his last. With infinite difficulty, for his eyes seemed ready to leap from their sockets, and the pen would slip from his weak fingers, he wrote two letters. The first was to Virginia; the other to Benson. This labour, for it was a real labour, he finished at intervals during the afternoon. The result was two rambling incoherent letters which bore entirely upon his son's future; of himself he said nothing. What was in these letters Gibbs did not know then; but when they were written, he said:
“Now I suppose you want me to post 'em for you, Steve?” Landray shook his head.
“No, we'll wait until to-morrow.”
“But why wait?” urged Gibbs impatiently. “You'll be changing your mind the first thing I know, Steve.”
“Perhaps I shall—I may not send them at all,” and he lay back wearily among his pillows. “I don't want to alarm my aunt needlessly,” he added.
“The sooner she knows of the situation here the better satisfied I shall be,” said Gibbs.
“I believe you want to see the last of me, general,” said Landray, smiling whimsically at his friend.
“No, I don't, Steve, but I do want to see you get out of this. I figure on joining you wherever you go; you need me; you're too much of a gentleman to get money easy, and you need me.”
“But how about you, general?”
“Being a gentleman?” a wide grin overspread the general's battered face. “Well, I ain't any illusions left on that score. I about manage to hit the prevailing level. Put me down as good company; I'll keep up my end anywhere. I'm versatile; but I reckon you know the best and the worst of me, Steve—it's the common human average. That's why you need me; you're just a peg above the average, so was your father and uncle; and everybody loved 'em for it; but it didn't stand in the way of their taking advantage of 'em. Now nobody's ever got into me very deep; I've always been able to take handsome care of my own skin; and when Providence settles with the meek in spirit, the name of Gibbs won't be mentioned; there'll be nothing coming to me that I ain't got!”
Stephen passed a restless night, while Gibbs, shabby and dissipated, watched tenderly at his side; but in the morning he felt so much better that in spite of Gibbs's protests he insisted upon dressing, and went down-stairs. The following day he was able to leave the house, but he paid dearly for his imprudence. The fever returned and he went back to bed, he was again delirious, and the second day he passed in a semi-conscious state from which he only aroused at long intervals.
Gibbs and Mrs. Gibbs and Arling watched him constantly. The doors of the Golden West Saloon were closed and locked, and the thirsty of Grant City going there, tried the door in vain, looked in at the window, and went sadly away.
“He ain't showing any nerve, nor any wish to live!” wailed Gibbs. “He's sinking because he ain't trying to keep up! Unless he helps himself we can't do anything for him!”
And it was as Gibbs said. Stephen now lacked both the inclination and the power to help himself; he faced the thought of death with indifference. This continued for a week.
It was Gibbs who was with him when the end came. All at once Stephen roused himself from his lethargy and sat erect in his bed.
“Gibbs!” he called hoarsely.
“What is it, Steve—I'm here; don't you see me?” asked the general from his seat at his side, and he rested a shaking hand on the younger man's arm.
“Take him to his aunt,” muttered Landray, “to his aunt, do you understand? I mean the boy—take him to his aunt, take him there first.”
“Yes, yes, Steve, don't worry; I'll do just as you say,” cried Gibbs in a choking voice.
“Do you hear me—he's to go back to Ohio,” gasped the dying man with painful effort. “She's all he has left. You'll take him there—as soon as you can;” and with that Landray fell back on his bed and spoke no more.
CHAPTER FORTY
GIBBS settled Stephen's affairs, and there was left in his hands a small sum of money, which, by dint of borrowing, he increased to a figure that enabled him to take the boy to Benson. The occasion was like a tonic to him, the buoyancy of a dauntless spirit spoke in his very air and manner; he forgot Grant City, the Golden West Saloon, his shabbiness; and his travelling companions learned early who he was, and to most ears, General Gibbs of Kansas, had a large sound. He reached Benson just at nightfall. The place had an unfamiliar aspect. A village had become a town, the town almost a city. He had expected changes, but he would have said that he could have found his way to what he had known years before as the Leonard farm in spite of any changes; yet again and again he was forced to pause and ask his way. Even when he reached the house itself he would not have known it. He paused at the gate and glanced about. Below him was the level valley of the Little Wolf River. It was dotted with rows of lights; they diverged or ran in parallel lines and marked streets, streets in what in his day had been the best corn-land in all the county.
Gibbs entered the yard and followed up the path to the front door. Virginia, herself, answered his summons, and seeing her there in the door, in the light that streamed out and about her, he owned that the years had been kind to her.
What Virginia saw, was a red-faced man who smelt strongly of whisky and stale tobacco; a man with his hat off, which exposed a shiny bald head, and a thin fringe of grey hair, bleary eyes, and bulbulous nose; but who in spite of his dissipated look and his shabbiness, the shabbiness of well-worn clothes and soiled linen that had been slept and travelled in, still maintained a jaunty and a gallant air even. She saw further that he was holding by the hand a small boy, a very small boy indeed, who looked absurdly little for short trousers and roundabouts, and as if he had been suddenly advanced from skirts and had not yet grown accustomed to the change.
“Mrs. Landray,” Gibbs spoke in a husky throaty voice, “I see you don't recall me; but it ain't to be wondered at. Gibbs is my name, General Gibbs of Kansas;” he threw out his chest. “I am delighted to see you again after all these years; it's an honour, a pleasure,” he placed his hand on his heart, and bowed low with old-fashioned courtesy. The sight of her had taken him back full twenty years. “An honour, a pleasure,” he repeated.
The look of surprise on Virginia's face vanished. She understood. It was Gibbs and Stephen's baby—this other Stephen Mason Landray whom she had never seen, but who stood there in the light, blinking at her sleepily with Landray eyes; the small upturned face had the Landray features. Stooping quickly she raised the child in her arms. The general followed her into the house.
“I had written you, general, for in your letter to me you made no mention of the child,” she said, and now she gave him her hand.
“My oversight, my neglect,” said Gibbs blandly. “Fact is, I wasn't thinking much about him just then—it was poor Steve.” His voice broke, and she saw his eyes glisten and fill.
“But he had you to the last,” she said gently, gratefully. “You were with him during all his sickness.”
“I did what I could for him, and so did my Julia. Everybody loved him, he was a real Landray in that.”
Virginia had motioned him to a chair; then she seated herself with the child still in her arms.