“You've had enough, Gibbs. We'll go into the library,” he said coldly.
“Oh, come now, Jake—don't we make a night of it?” expostulated Gibbs. But Benson merely pushed back his chair and rose from the table. Stephen followed his example, and the general scrambled uncertainly to his feet. He took Stephen by the arm in an access of affection.
“He screws me down most damnably, Steve—cross him, and you'll find him a tyrant; he knows I wanted to celebrate your return—the return of the native—it's an event! Jake and I here are selfmade men, but you belong to the old aristocracy. You may not think it, but the West's had its first families.”
“I always supposed the Bensons were of their number,” said Stephen.
“The Bensons! Shop-keepers, Steve—mere money getters; isn't that so, Jake?”
“I fear it is, Gibbs,” said Benson laughing, as he led the way from the room.
In the library the general promptly fell asleep in his chair. The lawyer nodded toward him.
“You'll find him better than he looks,” he said.
“He seems devoted to you,” said Stephen, at a loss for anything else to say in his favour.
“Yes, so he is.” Benson was thoughtful for a moment. “I shouldn't have permitted him to get in this condition,” he said with real concern. “It won't please my cousin, and I owed it to him to see that he did not. You must be tired. I'll call Andrew and have him take Gibbs home.”
The next morning Stephen was roused by hearing some one knock at his door. Thinking that it was Andrew, who in his person seemed to combine the functions of coachman and butler, he called to him to enter; but in place of Andrew, Gibbs opened the door. Gibbs, sober, and with a flower in his buttonhole, a sprig of scarlet geranium, and his tall hat held gracefully and jauntily over his forearm.
“Good-morning, Steve!” he cried. “How did you rest, you weren't expecting me, eh?” he chuckled. “I want to see your Uncle Jake. Think he's aged any?”
“No, I can't say that I do, but you know I saw him quite recently.”
“So you did, when he was East during the winter. You are going to see your Aunt Virginia the first thing; ain't you, Steve?”
Stephen looked at him sharply. He could not understand just why Gibbs should be interested in what he did.
“I suppose I'll go there some time to-day,” he said.
“Go there the first thing,” urged Gibbs. “He'll expect you to. If you don't, he'll score it up against you.” He dropped his voice to a confidential whisper.
“He—who?” asked Stephen.
“Your Uncle Jake.”
“He never mentions her.”
“And never will,” said Gibbs. “But that don't mean he don't think about her. You take my advice and go there the first thing. I know Jake Benson better than you do. He's an amiable mass of contradictions, I reckon it's the Yankee in him.”
“I thought; I don't know why, but I thought always that they were not even friendly.”
“She ain't,” said Gibbs significantly, and chuckled again. “I expect if she ever eases her mind about him, you'll hear things; but just let me tell you this, he ain't going to like it if you are anyways remiss in your duty to her. Humph! there's the bell, I'll leave you to dress.”
When Stephen went down-stairs he found Gibbs and Benson at breakfast.
“I thought I'd come round and see if you had any orders, Jake,” Gibbs was saying briskly. “I didn't know that you'd want to go to the office to-day, there's no need of it.”
“I'll go down as usual, unless Stephen—”
“I think I shall go to my aunt's immediately after breakfast,” said Stephen. He had decided to profit by Gibbs's advice and see what came of it, but apparently nothing came of it, the lawyer's face was quite expressionless, he showed neither satisfaction nor displeasure, but it was Gibbs who offered to accompany Stephen to his aunt's.
“No, sir,” said Gibbs, taking the young man's arm as they gained the street. “I never been able to understand Jake's relation to your aunt;” then with an impressive show of confidence, “I rather think, though, that he's been in love with her. That's the only explanation that offers itself to my mind. Years and years ago I thought this, at the time he went West to find your grandfather—no, you never heard about that, I'll tell you when we have more leisure. Little things your father told me confirmed me in that opinion; but bless you, there was a time when the Bensons were not counted much, and the Landrays were everything. Time's rather upset these conditions, but your Aunt Virginia has not forgotten and never will. I reckon Jake Benson's money never impressed her; but whatever his personal feelings for her have been or are, he has the greatest respect for her. He wouldn't think well of you if you failed there either, though I don't know that he'd be above feeling a certain satisfaction that he'd gotten the best of her where you're concerned. You understand, that's merely one of the contradictions of his nature, for at heart Jake's as sound as a dollar, one of the best and truest hearted of men. He's been like an elder brother to me, and I love and revere him; but damn him, I'm not blind to his little faults. It would be no compliment to him if I were; no, nor no kindness either.”
Arriving at the cottage, Gibbs parted from Stephen at the gate.
“You'll be making her very happy, Steve,” he said, as he left the young man.
A maid answered Stephen's ring, and he was shown into Virginia's small parlour. He had scarcely time to glance about him when Virginia came swiftly into the room.
“Dear Stephen, it was so good of you to come at once,” she said, as she advanced with outstretched hands, and he realized that for some reason which he did not understand, he was much to her, and that he had made her very happy, as Gibbs had said he would. He kissed her and led her to a chair.
“It wasn't good of me, for I wanted to see you.”
“You hadn't forgotten your old aunt? I was almost afraid.”
“Old!” he scoffed. “Have you no one to pay you compliments, Aunt Virginia?”
He had been genuinely surprised. In her way Virginia was as far removed from the commonplace as was Benson himself; only, he could not have analysed it, her distinction was the finer, rarer thing. She was younger, too, than he had expected to find her; for while Benson's appearance added years to his actual age, she still retained her youth in an unusual degree.
She searched Stephen's face with tender concern.
“Am I at all satisfactory?” he laughed.
“Yes, you are wholly a Landray, Stephen,” she said. “You look, dear, as your father did at your age. You are older than he was when he went to the war; yes, you look as he did. All the Landray men have the same look, and you could never be mistaken for any one but a Landray.”
“Some day you must tell me about my father,” he said gently, entering into her mood.
“I shall, for you must be interested in your family, it's a duty, you're the last Landray. I shall have a great deal to tell you. You are through college?”
“Yes, I am home for good.”
“What are your plans, Stephen?” said Virginia a little anxiously. She wished he might understand how uncertain a prop Benson could be; she did not want him to rely on the lawyer, but she forebore to tell him this. There might come a time when she could, but clearly now was not that time.
“I haven't any,” and Stephen laughed easily.
“But you have selected a profession.”
Stephen looked at her with dark puzzled eyes.
“No, my one idea has been to get through with what I had in hand and come home.”
“Then you do regard this as home, Stephen?”
“Most certainly. Uncle Jake has kept that idea before me—I am to make my start here.”
“He is quite right in that; you belong in Benson, it is the home of your family.”
“I am trying to cultivate an intense local pride,” he assured her smiling, but he was not altogether pleased at the turn the conversation had taken. His future was not causing him any special anxiety, and he was not grateful for being reminded of it, it seemed unnecessary..
He was relieved when the conversation was interrupted as it now was by the entrance of Mrs. Walsh's small sombre figure, for she had never laid aside the mourning she had put on when Benson brought them the news of her husband's death. She was not alone, there followed her into the room a tall girl with rich masses of dark brown hair and dark hazel eyes, which Stephen was aware lighted up charmingly with shy recognition the moment they rested on him; they were instantly veiled by long dark lashes. Instinct told him that this was Harriett's pink-faced baby.
“I fear you will have to put me right, or I shall blunder terribly. It's Aunt Jane, of course;” but he looked beyond Mrs. Walsh to the slight graceful figure of the girl.
“This is my Harriett's Elinor,” said Mrs. Walsh.
“We may be a little confusing at first, but there is only papa and mama, and my sister Clara,” said Elinor as they shook hands.
“You were the baby when I was here before,” Stephen said. “And where is Clara?”
“My sister is away from home, but there is some one here you will want to see, we were just speaking of you—Ben!” she called.
“Yes, Elinor,” said a masculine voice from the hall, and a tall young fellow, rather shabbily dressed, but carrying himself with smiling self-confidence, entered the room. He was clean-shaven, and the outline of his shapely head was accented by his closely cropped black hair; his nose was long and prominent, his eyes black like his hair, when he smiled, and he was smiling now, he disclosed two rows of white even teeth. His attitude toward Stephen from the first moment of their meeting was that of an old friend.
“It's awfully good to see you, Landray,” he said.
“And it's good to see you, Benjamin Wade,” said Stephen laughing. There was something about the young fellow which made his surname oddly unsuited to him.
“I haven't been called that in years, not since I outgrew corporal punishment, how many years ago it seems! I've seen Reddy, he hunted me up first thing this morning, and he told me you were home. I suppose you are going to stay with us?”
“Oh, yes. They tell me you are a lawyer, Ben.”
Wade waved a hand deprecatingly at this.
“A weak limb of the law, Landray, and only just beginning to make trouble for my neighbours. Your aunt here was one of my first clients; and for a longer time than I care to tell, she enjoyed the proud distinction of being my only client.”
“When you're famous, Ben, just think—that will be something for Aunt Virginia to boast of,” said Elinor.
Ben turned toward her, and Stephen thought he detected a careworn look in his eyes. He smiled, but only with his lips, as he answered:
“Pray heaven, it won't be too long a time in coming, my dear girl!”
Somehow Stephen instantly resented their intimacy.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
REDDY took his mother West. It was a journey that he ===conducted with much ostentatious display, but the opportunities in this respect were far less extended than he could have wished. It was only when they were West of Chicago, however, that he felt perfectly at home; for out of Chicago the sleeper was crowded with men who talked tirelessly of cattle and mines, and who told how much they were worth, or any other little personal matter that might be accounted of general public interest, with simple candour and without shame. In their presence Reddy parted with the last vestige of suspicion that the conservative East had bred in him.
“These are the people!” he thought.
Mrs. Crittendon, a mild little woman who had not yet recovered from the shock of Reddy's reformation, and who regarded that redeemed young man with wordless awe, since it was all really too good to be true, bore him company with much inward trepidation. She was small and placid, with smooth grey hair neatly parted and plainly drawn back of her ears; she was not only small and slight, she was trim and graceful as well, with a youthful walk and sprightly carriage. The top of the small tight-fitting black bonnet that framed her face came just on a level with Reddy's broad shoulders. All her life had been spent in Benson, she had never been fifty miles away from there before; and she was the victim of a depressing fear that Reddy had made some fatal mistake in the train, and that they were speeding recklessly in the wrong direction; a circumstance it was impossible for her to conceive could end otherwise than tragically. Indeed the flippancy with which her son bought tickets and changed cars impressed her as bordering on a suicidal folly. Afterward she always said it was a mercy they reached the ranch; but Reddy never understood what she meant by this, and she never enlightened him. But reach the ranch they did—a trifling matter of forty miles from Carson, the nearest point on the railway—and in a cloud of dust, and behind a span of half-broken colts that were the apple of Reddy's eye. Here she began to adjust herself to the wide horizon, to the barrenness of the grey rolling plains, the distant fringe of mountain peaks.
Strangely enough she was not lonely; she hardly missed the gossiping friends she had parted from at Benson; she had Reddy, and there was the ranch foreman and the ranch foreman's wife who cooked for the boys, and the boys themselves, who spent their days either in idleness or on horseback. They had neighbours, too, whose ranches dotted a strip of territory that stretched away to the south a hundred miles, and to the north another hundred. With these, she discovered, Reddy maintained a sparse but cordial intimacy; many of them he saw as often as two or three times a year, but this was not true of all; there was Colonel Rogers, whose comfortable ranch house was distant a hard day's ride, and whose powerful patronage gave Reddy a position in that region he could not otherwise have had.
In due time the colonel and his wife drove over in a light buck-board for a stay of several days with Reddy and his mother, and while the ladies sat in the ranch parlour, which Reddy had furnished in hot and stuffy red plush, and exchanged confidences or gossiped; the two men, in their shirt-sleeves, sat on the top rail of the corral fence for the most part, smoked pipes, and talked cattle.
The colonel was a tall grizzled man, with a gentle kindly manner; no one would have supposed him a millionaire and a man of determined but quiet force of character, while Mrs. Rogers was a motherly woman, whose faith in the colonel—she always gave him this military title—had never experienced any shocks; and her reminiscences of the early days when as a young bride he had brought her into the country, impressed Mrs. Crittendon with a profound sense of that mild-mannered gentleman's capabilities. She was glad Reddy had such a friend.
But what impressed her most was that while they were on such intimate terms with her son, and though he was going to marry their daughter, they yet apparently knew nothing of him beyond such limited confidences as he had chosen to indulge in; indeed Reddy's standing in the community seemed to be a strictly personal matter, and it belonged to the present absolutely. He had come into the country, a stranger with a bunch of cattle, he had proven himself an excellent neighbour, and above all he had not shown any desire to put his brand on cattle he had not paid for. She discovered that beyond the fact that Reddy originally came from Ohio, nothing was known of his antecedents. This discovery she made one day at dinner, and she proceeded to enlighten their guests; since to her, Reddy belonged as much to Benson as did the soldiers' monument on the square. She was well into the family history when the colonel, who had been placidly listening, suddenly put aside his knife and fork.
“What was that you said about a town called Benson?” he asked.
Mrs. Crittendon had merely said that Reddy had been born in Benson—she had given the year, the day of the month, and hour of his birth.
“Your home!” cried Rogers, and he gave his wife a glance. “Well, that beats me. Benson—Benson, Ohio—they fit together; you'd hardly believe it, ma'am, that for forty years I been wondering off and on where Benson was. I reckon I could have found out easy enough, but I never did; and I had pretty good reasons for wanting to know, too. Benson, Ohio—that's what he told me,” he mused in silence for a moment, running his fingers through his grizzled beard.
“What do you want to know about Benson?” asked Reddy. “I guess I could have told you.”
“Never heard you mention it, Riley,” said the colonel. “And, well, I reckon you never heard me mention it either, but my folks were Benson folks, too.” He turned to Mrs. Crittendon. “How long did you live in Benson, ma'am?”
“Always, I was born and reared there.”
“Were you though—well, well! I wonder if you ever heard anything of a party that started West from there some time along about '49, as I reckon it?”
“The Landrays went,” said Mrs. Crittendon promptly.
“Landray—that's the name! Landray—I ain't forgotten that. Now, hold on again, there was Landray and his brother, and a man by the name of Walsh, a youngish fellow as I remember him, and an oldish grey-whiskered man named—Bingham.”
“He was my father's cousin,” said Mrs. Crittendon.
“Was he, ma'am? Well, I declare! And there was my father, of course, and myself. I always wished I could meet some one who could tell me something about him.”
“I have always heard it was a Rogers who brought the first news about the finding of gold in California,” said Mrs. Crittendon.
“That must have been my father. I reckon now, you never saw him,” said the colonel with regret.
“Not to remember him if I did.”
“Well, of course not, you were too young. I wish I could recall more about him, for I've always thought that fight left things a sort of blank with me. I only remember what happened back of it by fits and starts. What I'd like to know, though, is how those folks in Ohio learned about the outfit and what come of it—or did they ever learn?”
“Mr. Benson went West to find out. It's too bad I don't know more, but I've only heard the older people talk about it. Mr. Benson was the Landrays lawyer, and people say he was in love with Stephen Landray's wife.”
“Did she marry him?”
“No, she never married again, nor Mrs. Walsh either. She makes her home with Mrs. Landray mostly, though she's got a married daughter, Mrs. Norton.”
“I wish you'd tell me something about the Landrays,” said Rogers.
“Why, there is Mrs. Landray, and Stephen Landray, a young fellow just out of college,” said Reddy.
“Whose son is he, Riley?” asked the colonel.
“Why he's Mrs. Landray's nephew,” said Reddy.
“Her grand-nephew,” corrected his mother. “He is Captain Landray's son.”
“A soldier in the late war?”
“Yes.”
Rogers hit the table sharply with his open hand.
“I swear then he's the man I met at Appomattox! You've seen him, ma'am, of course? What's become of him?”
“He's dead; he died years ago out in Kansas.”
“And only Mrs. Landray and his son's left?”
“Yes, least I never heard of any others.”
“Sort of makes me feel like the last leaf on the bough,” the colonel stroked his grey beard reflectively. “This all fits into what I can call up. You know after the Indian fight, I was taken in and brought up by old man Raymond—Tom's father, Riley—you ain't forgot Tom?”
Reddy shook his head. Rogers chuckled.
“It takes all my influence to keep 'em from running Tom out of the country; Tom'll happen along here some day, ma'am, and you'll wonder why any one's prejudiced against Tom.” The colonel's lady made as if to interrupt the conversation, but the colonel restrained her by a gesture. “I don't indorse Tom, but his father was a mighty good friend to me when friends were scarce, and that gives Tom a sort of hold; I've kind of made myself responsible for him. There never was a better man than old Ephriam Raymond, Mormon or no Mormon! He brought me up, and gave me my start in life; I ain't forgot that, and I reckon I'll put up with considerable of Tom's cussedness yet for his sake.”
He was thoughtful for a moment. Ephriam Raymond had done all that he had said and more. That he had died while Rogers was still in the army, had always been a matter of keen regret to the latter; for Raymond's daughter had married years before, and had gone to the coast with her husband, an apostate Mormon, and there had only been Tom with him in his last sickness; Tom, who was always on the verge of trouble more or less serious. The colonel thought of all this, and regretted those vicissitudes which had left him with a vague and uncertain memory of his own father, and had separated him from his best friend at a time when he might have been of some comfort to him.
He turned with more questions to Mrs. Crittendon, but the Lan-drays and the Benson and California Mining and Trading Company, had long since taken their place among the traditions of the Ohio town. She had the sentiment of the tragedy rather than the details.
“Mr. Benson could tell you all you want to know; he must have known your father. He came West and brought back the news of the massacre; he could tell you all about the company, just who was in it, and everything.”
“Well, maybe some day I'll write him.”
“Why don't you do it to-night?” suggested Reddy.
“There's no such hurry,” said the colonel hastily. “Guess I'll wait until Margaret gets home. I'll have her write the letter for me.”
“You know you'll never write at all if you wait; do it now,” said Mrs. Rogers.
The colonel gave her a pleasant smile as he pushed back his chair and reached for his pipe.
“Just think of the jobs I've saved myself, mother, by putting them off. Half the things I make up my mind to do, I find by waiting ain't so urgent as I supposed; but I'm going to write that letter the first thing when Margaret gets back.”
The next day the colonel and Mrs. Rogers departed for home.
“Now bring your mother over soon,” urged Mrs. Rogers, as they prepared to drive away. “Don't wait for Margaret to finish her visit in Cheyenne.” Reddy blushed guiltily. This was exactly what he intended doing. “But just come whenever you can.”
The colonel added his voice to hers as they drove off, then he lapsed into silence at her side, and the silence endured for many miles. He was thinking of the conversation of the day before, and he was still groping vaguely among memories of the past. At last he turned to his wife, and began telling her of the trip across the plains, with the Landrays and his father. It was a confused narrative, for there seemed to be mingled with it incidents that belonged to another journey that had been made under different circumstances.
“Do you know, I'd like mightily to write to Mrs. Landray,” he said at last.
“Well, why don't you, colonel?”
“Well, maybe I will when Margaret gets back.”
It was dusk when they reached home, and as they drove up to the ranch house door, two men came out, hearing the sound of wheels, and to one of these the colonel surrendered his team. The other, a weazened swarthy man, touched him on the arm as he was about to enter the house.
“What is it?” he asked, turning back.
“Tom Raymond's here.”
The colonel groaned aloud. The speaker grinned. He was the ranch foreman, he had been with the colonel many years and he knew almost as much of Roger's affairs as Rogers did himself. He understood the nature of Raymond's hold on the colonel, and he regarded it as a conspicuous weakness on the part of an otherwise sane and rational man.
“What's the matter?” demanded Rogers.
“He's in trouble again, I reckon,” said the foreman.
“Well, was there ever a time when he wasn't?” asked Rogers with some show of temper.
“He wouldn't come up to the house, I happened on him out back of the corrals. He's hid in the old bunk-house he wants to see you the worst kind of a way.”
“Go tell my wife I've had to go down to the corrals. Tell her not to wait for me, but to eat,” said the colonel.