"Well, how do you get on toward being in a position to pay him?"
But I regretted my thrust. Silverthorn's face fell, and he could make
no reply.
"Is there no prospect of success with those machines you were talking
of last year?" I asked more kindly.
"No," said he, sadly. "I'm afraid not. I shall never succeed. It all
depends on Vibbard, now. I cannot even marry, unless he gets enough to
give me a start."
I left him with a dreary misgiving in my heart. What an unhappy
outcome of their compact was this!
Meanwhile, Vibbard was thriving. After a brief sojourn with his
father, who was a well-to-do hardware merchant in his own small inland
city, he went to Virginia and began sheep-farming. In two years he had
gained enough to find it feasible to return to New York, where he took
up the business of a note-broker. People who knew him prophesied that
he would prove too slow to be a successful man in early life; and, in
fact, as he did not look like a quick man, he was a long time in
gaining the reputation of one. But his sagacious instincts moved all
the more effectively for being masked, and he made some astonishing
strokes. It began to seem as if other men around him who lost, were
controlled by some deadly attraction which forced them to throw their
success under Vibbard's feet. His car rolled on over them. Everything
yielded him a pecuniary return.
As he was approaching his thirtieth birthday, he found himself worth a
little over thirty thousand dollars--after deducting expenses, bad
claims, and a large sum repaid to his father for the cost of his
college course. He had been only six years in accumulating it. But how
endlessly prolonged had those six years been for Silverthorn! When
three of them had passed, he declared his love to Ida Winwood, though
in such a way that she need neither refuse nor accept him at once;
and a _quasi_ engagement was made between them, having in view a
probable share in Vibbard's fortunes. Once,--perhaps more than
once,--Silverthorn bitterly reproached himself, in her presence, for
trusting so entirely to another man's energies. But Ida put up her
hands beseechingly, looking at him with a devoted faith.
"No, John!" she cried. "There is nothing wrong about it. If you were
other than you are, I might not wish it to be so. But you,--you are
different from other men; there is something finer about you, and you
are not meant for battling your way. But, when once you get this
money, you will give all your time to inventing, or writing, and then
people will find out what you are!"
There was something strange and pathetic in their relation to each
other, now. Silverthorn seemed nervous and weary; he looked as if he
were growing old, even with that soft yellow beard and his pale brown
hair still unchanged (for he was only twenty-eight). His spirits were
capricious; sometimes bounding high with hope, and, at others, utterly
despondent. Ida, meantime, had reached a full development; she was
twenty-two, fresh, strong, and self-reliant. When they were together,
she had the air of caring for him as for an invalid.
Suddenly, one day, at the close of Vibbard's six years' absence,
Silverthorn came running from the mill during working-hours, and burst
into the superintendent's cottage with an open letter in his hand,
calling aloud for Ida.
"He is coming! He is coming!" cried he, breathless, but with a harsh
excitement, as if he had been flying from an angry pursuer.
"Who? What has happened?" returned Ida, in alarm.
"Vibbard."
But he looked so wild and distraught, that Ida could not understand.
"Vibbard?" she repeated. Then,--with an amazed apprehension which came
swiftly upon her,--shutting both hands tight as if to strengthen
herself, and bringing them close together over her bosom: "Have you
quarreled with him?"
"Quarreled?" echoed Silverthorn, looking back her amazement. "Why, do
you suppose the world has come to an end? Don't you know we would
sooner die than quarrel?"
"Vibbard--coming!" repeated Ida, as she caught sight of the letter.
"Yes; now, I see."
"But, doesn't it make you happy?" asked her lover, suddenly annoyed at
her cool reception of the news.
"I don't know," she answered, pensively. "You have startled me so.
Besides,--why should it make me happy?" A singular confusion seemed to
have come over her mind. "Of course," she added, after a moment, "I am
happy, because he's your friend."
"But,--the money, Ida!" He took her hand, but received no answering
pressure. "The money,--think of it! We shall be able--" Then catching
sight of an expression on her features that was almost cruel in its
chill absence of sympathy, Silverthorn dropped her hand in a pet, and
walked quickly out of the house back to the mill.
She did not follow him. It was their first misunderstanding.
Silverthorn remained at his desk, went to his own boarding-house for
dinner, and returned to the mill, but always with a sense of unbroken
suffering. What had happened? Why had Ida been so unresponsive? Why
had he felt angry with her? These questions repeated themselves
incessantly, and were lost again in a chaotic humming that seemed to
fill his ears and to shut out the usual sounds of the day, making him
feel as if thrust away into a cell by himself, at the same time that
he was moving about among other people.
Vibbard was to arrive that afternoon. Silverthorn wished he had told
Ida, before leaving her, how soon his friend was coming. As no
particular hour had been named in the letter, he grew intolerably
restless, and finally told Winwood that he was going to the depot, to
wait.
All this time Ida had been nearly as wretched as he; and, unable to
make out why this cloud had come over them just when they ought to
have been happiest, she, too, went out into the air for relief, and
wandered along the hill-side by the river.
It was early summer again. The lilacs were in bloom. All along the
fence in front of Winwood's house were vigorous bushes in full flower.
Ida, as she passed out, broke off a spray and put it in her hair,
wishing that its faint perfume might be a spell to bring Silverthorn
back.
On the edge of the wood where she had been idly pacing for a few
minutes, all at once she heard a crackling of twigs and dry leaves
under somebody's active tread, just behind her. It did not sound like
her lover's step. She looked around. The man, a stranger with strong
features and thick beard, halted at once and looked at her--silently,
as if he had forgotten to speak, but with a degree of homage that
dispelled everything like alarm.
She stood still, looking at him as earnestly as he at her. Then, she
hardly knew how, a conviction came to her.
"Mr. Vibbard?" she said, in a low inquiring tone. To herself she
whispered, "Six years!"
Somehow, although she expected it, there was something terrible in
having this silent, strange man respond:
"Yes."
He spoke very gently, and put out his hand to her.
She laid her own in his strong grasp, and then instantly felt as if
she had done something wrong. But he would not let it go again.
Drawing her a little toward him, he turned so that they could walk
together back to the mills.
"Did John send you this way? Have you seen him?" she asked,
falteringly.
"No," said Vibbard. "From where I happened to be, I thought I could
get here sooner by walking over through Bartlett. Besides, it was
pleasanter to come my own way instead of by railroad."
"But how did you know me?"
"I have never forgotten how you looked. And besides, that lilac."
With a troubled impulse, Ida drew her hand away from his, and snatched
the blossoms out of her hair, meaning to throw them away. Then she
hesitated, seeing her rudeness. Vibbard, who had not understood the
movement, said with a tone of delight:
"Won't you give them to me? Do you remember how you wore them in your
hair one day, years ago?"
"I have reasons for not forgetting it," she answered with a laugh,
feeling more at her ease. "Well, I have spoiled this bunch now, but of
course you may have them."
He took the flowers, and they walked on, talking more like old
friends. At the moment when this happened, Silverthorn, who, while
waiting for another train to arrive, had come back to the house in
search of Ida, passed on into a little orchard on a slope, just
beyond, which overlooked a bend in the road: from there he saw Ida
give Vibbard the lilac spray. At first he scarcely knew his old
friend, and the sight struck him with a jealous pang he had never felt
before. Then suddenly he saw that it was Vibbard, and would have
rushed down the slope to welcome him. But like a detaining hand upon
him, the remembrance of his foolish quarrel with Ida held him back. He
slunk away secretly through the orchard, into the woods, and hurried
to meet Vibbard at a point below the house, where Ida would have left
him.
He was not disappointed. He gained the spot in time, and appeared to
be walking up from the mill, when he encountered his old comrade going
sturdily toward it. Nevertheless, he felt uncomfortable at the
deception he was using. They greeted each other warmly, yet each felt
a constraint that surprised him.
Vibbard explained how he had come.
"And I have seen Ida," he exclaimed impetuously, with a glow of
pleasure. Then he stopped in embarrassment. "Are you going back that
way?" he asked.
"No," said the other, gloomily. "We'll go over the river to where I
live."
They took the path in that direction, and on the way Vibbard began
explaining how he had arranged his property.
"It's just as well not to go up to the Winwoods' until we've finished
this," he said, parenthetically. "And to tell you the truth, Thorny,
it's a queer business for me to be about, after I've been hard at work
for so long, scraping together what I've got. I shouldn't much like
people to know about it, I can tell you; and I never would do it for
any man but you."
Formerly, Silverthorn had been used to this sort of bluntness, but now
it irritated him.
"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that you would break your bargain, if
it had been made with any one besides me?"
Vibbard drew himself up proudly.
"No, sir!" he declared, in a cold tone. "I keep my word whenever I
have given it."
Silverthorn uttered an oath under his breath.
"If you mean to keep your word, why don't you do it without
blustering? Suppose I _have_ been unfortunate enough to come out
behind in the race, and to need this money of yours? Is that any
reason why you should grind into me like a file the sense of my
obligation to you?"
"Come, Thorny," said his friend, "you are treating me like a stranger.
How long is it since you got these high-strung notions?"
"I suppose I've been growing sensitive since I first perceived that I
was dependent on your fortune. It has unmanned me. I believe I might
have done something, but for this."
"Gad, so might I be doing something, now, if I had my whole capital,"
muttered Vibbard.
He did not see how his remark renewed the wound he had just been
trying to heal. For several years he had felt that the compact with
his friend was a useless clog on himself, and this had probably caused
him to dwell too much on his own generosity in making it.
Both felt pained and dissatisfied with their meeting. It was full of
sordidness and discomfort; it seemed in one hour to have stripped from
their lives the romance of youth. But after their little tiff they
tried to recover their spirits and succeeded in keeping up a sham kind
of gayety. Arrived at Silverthorn's lodging, they completed their
business; Vibbard handing over a check, and receiving in exchange
Silverthorn's copy of the agreement with a receipt in due form.
"How long can you stay, Bill?" asked Silverthorn, more cheerfully,
when this was over. A suppressed elation at his good luck made him
tingle from top to toe; and, to tell the truth, he did not feel much
interest in Vibbard's remaining.
"I must be off to-morrow," said his friend. "I suppose I can stay here
to-night?"
"Of course."
"I must call on Ida, before I go."
Silverthorn's brow darkened.
"Ah, Thorny," continued Vibbard, unconsciously, "it's queer to look
back to that time when we were trying to persuade each other to make
love to her! Do you know that since I've been away, she's never once
gone out of my mind?"
"Is that so?" returned his comrade, with a strained and cloudy effort
to appear lightly interested.
"Yes," said the other, warming to his theme. "It may seem strange in a
rough business man like me,--and I guess it would have played the Old
Harry with anybody whose head wasn't perfectly level,--but that
strong, pure, sweet face of hers has come between me and many a sharp
fellow I've had to deal with. But it never distracted my thoughts; it
helped me. The memory of her was with me night and day, Thorny, and it
made me a hard, successful worker, and kept me a pure-hearted, happy
man. You'll see that I don't need much persuasion to speak to her
now!"
While Vibbard was talking, Silverthorn had risen, as if interested,
and now stood with his arm stretched on the cheap, painted wooden
mantelpiece above the empty grate of his meagre room. Vibbard noticed
that he looked pale; and it suddenly struck him that his friend might
have suffered from poverty, and that his health was perhaps weakening.
A gush of the old-time love suddenly came up from his heart, though he
said nothing.
"You know I always told you," Silverthorn began,--he paused and waited
an instant,--"I always told you she was the woman for you."
"Indeed I know it, old boy," said Vibbard, heartily.
He rose, came to his old college-mate and took hold of his disengaged
arm with both hands, affectionately.
"Look here," he added; "there's been something queer and dismal about
seeing each other, after such a long interval,--something awkward
about this settlement between us. If I've done anything to hurt your
feelings, Thorny, I'm sorry. Let's make an end of the trouble here and
now, and be to each other just as we used to be. What do you say?"
"I say you're a good, true-hearted fellow, as you always were, and I
want you to promise that we shall keep up our old feeling forever."
"There's no need of any promise but this," said Vibbard, as they
clasped hands.
"Now, tell me one thing," resumed Silverthorn; "did it never occur to
you, in all these six years, that I, who have been living in the
daily company of the girl you love, might cross your prospect?"
For a second or two Vibbard's eyelids, which fell powerless while he
listened, remained shut, and a shock of pain seemed to strike downward
from the brain, across his face and through his whole stalwart frame.
"It's your turn to hurt me," he said, slowly, as he looked at his
friend again. "Have you any idea how that bare suggestion cut into
me?"
"I think I have," said Silverthorn, mechanically. He remained very
pale. "But I see, from the way it struck you, that you had never
thought of it before. That relieves me. Give me your hand once more,
Bill." Then he explained, hurriedly, that he must go to the mill for a
few moments. "If I'm not back to tea, don't wait. The girl will come
up and give it to you. And mind you don't go over to the Winwoods'"
(this with a laugh); "I wish to give them a little warning of your
visit."
In a moment he was gone. Vibbard amused himself as well as he could
with the books and drawings in the room; then he sat down, looked all
about the place, and sighed:
"Poor fellow! he can be more comfortable now."
Before long the tea hour came. Thorny had not returned, and he took
the meal alone, watching the sunset out of the window. But by and by
he grew restless, and finally, taking his hat and his cane, which had
an odd-shaped handle made of two carved snakes at once embracing and
wounding one another, he went out and strolled across the bridge
toward the Winwoods'. By the time he reached there dusk had closed in,
though the horizon afar off was overhung by a faint, stirring light
from the rising moon. He remembered Silverthorn's injunction, however,
and would not go into the cottage.
He passed the lilac-hedge, with its half-pathetic exhalations of
delicious odor recalling the past, and was prompted to step through a
break in the stone wall and ascend the orchard slope.
He stood there a few minutes enjoying the hush of nightfall and
exulting in the full tide of happiness and sweet anticipation that
streamed silently through his veins. All about him stole up the soft
and secret perfumes of the summer's dusk,--perfumes that feel their
way through the air like the monitions of early love, going out from
one soul to another.
Suddenly, a side-door in the house below was opened, and two figures
came forth as if borne upon the flood of genial light that poured
itself over the greensward.
They were Silverthorn and Ida.
How graceful they looked, moving together,--the buoyant, beautiful
maiden and the slender-shaped young man, who even at a distance
impressed one with something ideal in his pose and motion! Vibbard
looked at them with a bewildered, shadowy sort of pleasure; but all at
once he saw that Silverthorn held Ida's hand in his and had laid his
other hand on her shoulder. A frightful tumult of feeling assailed
him. The small, carved serpents on his stick seemed suddenly to drive
their fangs into his own palm, as he clutched the handle tighter.
For an instant he hesitated and hoped. Then the pair, passing along
below the broken wall, came within ear-shot, and he heard his old boon
comrade saying, in a pleading voice:
"But you have never quite promised me, Ida! You have never fully
engaged yourself to me."
Partly from a feeling of strangulation, partly with a blind impulse to
do something violent, Vibbard clutched himself about the throat, tore
furiously at his collar till it gave way, and, in a paroxysm little
short of madness, he turned and fled--he did not know where nor
how--through the darkness.
It seemed to him for a long time as if he was marching and reeling on
through the woods, stumbling over roots and fallen trunks, breaking
out into open fields upon the full run, then pursuing a road, or
rambling hopelessly down by the ebon-hued river,--and as if he was
doing all this with some great and urgent purpose of rescuing somebody
from a terrible fate. He must go on foot,--there was no other
way,--and everything depended on his getting to a certain point by a
certain time. The worst of it was, he did not know where it was that
he must go to! Then, all at once, he became aware that he had made a
mistake. It was not some one else who was to be saved. It was
_himself_. He must rescue himself--
From what?
At this, he came to a pause and tried to think. He stood on a
commanding spot, somewhere not far from Stansby, though he could not
identify it. The moon was up, and the wide, leafy landscape was spread
out in utter silence for miles around him. For a brief space, while
collecting his thoughts, he saw everything as it was. Then, as if
at the stroke of a wand, horrible deformity appeared to fall upon
the whole scene; the thousand trees below him writhed as if in
multitudinous agony; and, where the thick moonlight touched house or
road, or left patches of white on river and pool, there the earth
seemed smitten as with leprosy. Silverthorn, reaching his room in an
hour after Vibbard had left it, was not at first surprised at his
absence. Afterward he grew anxious; he went out, ran all the way to
Winwood's house, and came back, hoping to find that his friend had
returned while he was searching for him. He sat down and waited; he
kept awake very late; his head grew heavy, and he fell asleep in his
chair, dreaming with a dull sense of pain, and also of excitement,
about his new access of comparative wealth.
A heavy step and the turning of the door-knob awoke him. Moonlight
came in at the window--pale, for the dawn was breaking--and his lamp
still flickered on the table. Streaked with these conflicting
glimmers, Vibbard stood before him,--his clothes torn, his hat gone,
his face pale and fierce.
"What have you been doing?" asked Silverthorn wearily, and without
surprise, for he was too much dazed.
"You--_you_!" said Vibbard, hoarsely, pointing sharply at him, as if
his livid gaze was not enough. "You have been taking her from me!"
"Ida?" queried Silverthorn, with what seemed to the other to be a
laughing sneer.
"Are you shameless?" demanded Vibbard. "Why don't you lie down there
and ask me to forgive you for demanding so little? I've no doubt you
are sorry that you couldn't get the whole of my money! But I suppose
you were afraid you wouldn't receive even the half, if you told me
beforehand what you meant to do."
Silverthorn was numb from sleeping in a cramped posture and without
covering; but a deeper chill shook him at these words. He tried to get
up, but felt too weak, and had to abandon it. He shivered heavily.
Then he put his hand carefully into the breast of his coat, and after
a moment drew out his pocket-book.
"Here it is," said he, very quietly. "I came home intending to give
you back your money, but you were not here."
"You expect me to believe that?" retorted Vibbard, scornfully, "when
I know that you went from here after receiving the check, and--ah! I
couldn't have believed it, if I hadn't heard--"
"You overheard us, then? You came, though I warned you not to? And
what did you hear?" Silverthorn's lips certainly curled with contempt
now.
Vibbard answered: "I heard you pleading with Ida to promise herself to
you."
"That's a lie," said Silverthorn, calmly.
"Didn't you say to her, 'You have never yet fully engaged yourself to
me?' Weren't you pleading?"
"Yes. I was begging that she would forget all the words of love I had
ever spoken, and listen to you when you should come to tell her your
story."
Vibbard's head bowed itself in humiliation and wonder. He came forward
two or three steps, and sank into a chair.
"Is this possible?" he inquired, at last.
"And you, too, had loved her!"
Silverthorn vouchsafed no reply.
Vibbard, struggling with remorse, uncertainty, and a dimly returning
hope, brought himself to speak once more, hesitatingly.
"What did she say?"
"At first she would not tolerate my proposal. I saw there was a
conflict in her mind. Something warned me what it was, yet I could not
help fancying that she might really be unwilling to give me up. So
then I said I had made up my mind any way, as things stood, to return
you your money. I--forgive me, Bill, but it was not treachery to
you--only justice to all--I asked her if she would wish to marry me as
I was, poor and without a future."
"And she--" asked Vibbard, trembling. "What did she say?"
Silverthorn let the pocket-book fall, and buried his face in his
hands. It was answer enough for his friend.
Vibbard came over and knelt beside him, and tried to rouse him. He
stroked his pale brown hair, and called him repeatedly "Dear old boy."
"Poor Thorny, I wish I could do something for you," he said, gently.
"Are you sure you understood her?"
The other suddenly looked up.
"Don't blame her, Bill," he said, beseechingly. "Don't let it hurt
your love for her. There was nothing mercenary. She hesitated a
moment--and then I saw that it had all been a dream of the impossible.
I had always associated this money with myself. It turned back the
whole current of her ideas, and upset everything, when I separated
myself from it. All the plans of going away--all that life I had
talked of--had to be scattered to the winds in a moment. She did not
love me enough, for myself alone!"
"Poor Thorny!" again murmured his friend.
* * * * *
Love, amid all its other resemblances, is like the spirit of battle.
It fires men to press on toward the goal, even though a brother by
their side, pushing in the same direction, should fall with a mortal
wound. And the fighter goes on, to wed with victory, while his brother
lies dead far behind cheated of his bride.
Vibbard offered himself to Ida the next day. It was a strange and
distressful wooing; but she could not deny that, in a way unknown to
herself till now, she had loved Vibbard from the beginning, more than
his friend. In her semi-engagement with Silverthorn, she had probably
been loving Vibbard through his friend. But when the strong man, who
had gained a place in the world for her sake, returned and placed his
heart before her, she could no longer make a mistake.
Silverthorn would not keep the money, neither could his friend
persuade him to come and take a share in his business. He would not
leave Stansby. Where he had first seen Ida, there he resolved to
dwell, with the memory of her.
When I saw him again, and he told me of this crisis, he said:
"I am not 'poor Thorny,' as Vibbard called me; for now I have a
friendship that will last me through life. It has stood the test of
money, and hate, and love, and it is stronger than them all."