ROCKPORT AND "ROCKPORT"
Glitters the dew, and shines the river,
Up comes the lily and dries her bell;
But two are walking apart forever,
And wave their hands in a mute farewell.
--JEAN INGELOW.
The Melrose family was of old time on terms of intimacy with the house
of Baronet. It was a family with a proud lineage, wealth, and culture to
its credit. Rachel had an inherited sense of superiority. Too much
staying between the White Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean is narrowing
to the mental scope. The West to her was but a wilderness whereto the
best things of life never found their way. She took everything in
Massachusetts as hers by due right, much more did it seem that Kansas
should give its best to her; and withal she was a woman who delighted in
conquest.
Her arrival in Springvale made a topic that was soon on everybody's
tongue. In the afternoon of the day following her coming, when I went to
my father's office before starting out to the stone cabin, I found
Marjie there. I had not seen her since the party, and I went straight to
her chair.
"Well, little girl, it's ten thousand years since I saw you last," I
spoke in a low voice. My father was searching for some papers in his
cabinet, and his back was toward us. "Why didn't I get a letter,
dearie?"
She looked up with eyes whose brown depths were full of pain and sorrow,
but with an expression I had never seen on her face before, a kind of
impenetrable coldness. It cut me like a sword-thrust, and I bent over
her.
"Oh, Marjie, my Marjie, what is wrong?"
"Here is that paper at last," my father said before he turned around.
Even as he spoke, Rachel Melrose swept into the room.
"Why, Philip, I missed you after all. I didn't mean to keep you waiting,
but I can never get accustomed to your Western hurry."
She was very handsome and graceful, and always at ease with me, save in
our interviews alone.
"I didn't know you were coming," I said frankly; "but I want you to meet
Miss Whately. This is the young lady I have told you about."
I took Marjie's hand as I spoke. It was cold, and I gave it the gentle
pressure a lover understands as I presented her. She gave me a momentary
glance. Oh, God be thanked for the love-light in those brown eyes! The
memory of it warmed my heart a thousand times when long weary miles were
between us, and a desolate sky shut down around the far desolate plains
of a silent, featureless land.
"And this is Miss Melrose, the young lady I told you of in my letter," I
said to Marjie. A quick change came into her eyes, a look of surprise
and incredulity and scorn. What could have happened to bring all this
about?
Rachel Melrose had made the fatal mistake of thinking that no girl
reared west of the Alleghenies could be very refined or at ease or
appear well dressed in the company of Eastern people. She was not
prepared for the quiet courtesy and self-possession with which the
Kansas girl greeted her; nor had she expected, as she told me
afterward, to find in a town like Springvale such good taste and
exquisite neatness in dress. True, she had many little accessories of an
up-to-date fashion that had not gotten across the Mississippi River to
our girls as yet, but Marjie had the grace of always choosing the right
thing to wear. I was very proud of my loved one at that moment. There
was a show of cordiality between the two; then Rachel turned to me.
"I'm going with you this afternoon. Excuse me, Miss Whately, Mr. Baronet
promised me up at Topeka to take me out to see a wonderful cottonwood
tree that he said just dwarfed the little locust there, that we went out
one glorious moonlight night to see. It was a lovely stroll though,
wasn't it, Philip?"
This time it was my father's eyes that were fixed upon me in surprise
and stern inquiry.
"He will believe I am a flirt after all. It isn't possible to make any
man understand how that miserable girl can control things, unless he is
on the ground all the time." So ran my thoughts.
"Father, must that trip be made to-day? Because I'd rather get up a
party and go out when Miss Melrose goes."
But my father was in no mood to help me then. He had asked me to go
alone. Evidently he thought I had forgotten business and constancy of
purpose in the presence of this pretty girl.
"It must be done to-day. Miss Melrose will wait, I'm sure. It is a
serious business matter--"
"Oh, but I won't, Mr. Baronet. Your son promised me to do everything for
me if I would only come to Springvale; that was away last Spring, and my
stay will be short at best. I must go back to-morrow afternoon. Don't
rob us of a minute."
She spoke with such a pretty grace, and yet her words were so trifling
that my father must have felt as I did. He could have helped me then had
he thought that I deserved help, for he was a tactful man. But he merely
assented and sent us away. When we were gone Marjie turned to him
bravely.
"Judge Baronet, I think I will go home. I came in from Red Range this
noon with the Meads. It was very warm, coming east, and I am not very
well." She was as white as marble. "I will see you again; may I?"
John Baronet was a man of deep sympathy as well as insight. He knew why
the bloom had left her cheeks.
"All right, Marjie. You will be better soon."
He had risen and taken her cold hand. There was a world of cheer and
strength in that rich resonant voice of his. "Little girl, you must not
worry over anything. All the tangles will straighten for you. Be
patient, the sunshine is back of all shadows. I promised your father,
Marjory, that no harm should come to you. I will keep my promise. 'Let
not your heart be troubled.'" His words were to her what the good
minister's had been to me.
In the months that came after that my father was her one strong defence.
Poor Marjie! her days as well as mine were full of creeping shadows. I
had no notion of the stories being poured into her ears, nor did I dream
of the mischief and sorrow that can be wrought by a jealous-hearted
girl, a grasping money lover, and a man whose business dealings will not
bear the light of day.
It has ever been the stage-driver's province to make the town acquainted
with the business of each passenger whom he imports or exports. Our man,
Dever, was no exception. Judson's store had become the centre of all the
gossip in Springvale. Judson himself was the prince of scandalmongers,
who with a pretence of refusing to hear gossip, peddled it out most
industriously. He had hurried to Mrs. Whately with the story of our
guest, and here I found him when I went to see Marjie, before I myself
knew what passenger the stage had carried up to Cliff Street.
After the party at Anderson's, Tillhurst had not lost the opportunity of
giving his version of all he had seen and heard in Topeka. Marjie
listened in amazement but sure in her trustful heart that I would make
it all clear to her in my letter. And yet she wondered why I had never
mentioned that name to her, nor given her any hint of any one with claim
enough on me to keep me for two days in Topeka. After all, she did
recall the name--something forgotten in the joy and peace of that sweet
afternoon out by the river in the draw where the haunted house was. Had
I tried to tell her and lost my courage, she wondered. Oh, no, it could
not be so.
The next day Marjie spent at Red Range. It was noon of the day following
Rachel's arrival before she reached home. The ride in the midday heat,
sympathy for Dave Mead, and the sad funeral rites in the morning,
together with the memory of Tillhurst's gossip and the long time since
we had talked with each other alone, had been enough to check even her
sunny spirit. Gentle Mrs. Whately, willing to believe everybody, met her
daughter with a sad face.
"My dear, I have some unwelcome news for you," she said when Marjie was
resting in the cool sitting-room after the hot ride. "There's an old
sweetheart of Phil's came here last evening to visit him. Mr. Dever, the
stage-driver, says she is the handsomest girl he ever saw. They say she
and Phil were engaged and had a falling out back East. They met again in
Topeka, and Phil stayed a day or two to visit with her after the
political meeting was over. And now she has come down here at his
request to meet his folks. Marjie, daughter, you need not care. There
are more worthy men who would be proud to marry you."
Marjie made no reply.
"Oh, daughter, he isn't worth your grief. Be strong. Your life will get
into better channels now. There are those who care for you more than you
dream of. And you cannot care for Phil when I tell you all I must tell."
"I will be strong, mother. What else?" Marjie said quietly. In the
shadows of the room darkened to keep out the noonday heat, Mrs. Whately
did not note the white face and the big brown eyes burning with pain.
"It's too bad, but you ought to know it. Judge Baronet's got some kind
of a land case on hand. There's a fine half-section he's trying to get
away from a young man who is poor. The Judge is a clever lawyer and he
is a rich man. Mr. Judson says Tell Mapleson is this young man's
counsel, and he's fighting to keep the land for its real owner. Well,
Phil was strolling around until nearly morning with Lettie Conlow, and
they met this young man somewhere. He doesn't live about here. And,
Marjie, right before Lettie, Phil gave him an awful beating and made him
promise never to show himself in Springvale again. You know Judge
Baronet could do anything in that court-room he wants to. He is a fine
man. How your father loved him! But Phil goes out and does the dirty
work to help him win. So Amos Judson says."
"Did Amos Judson tell you all this, Mother?" Marjie asked faintly.
"Most of it. And he is so interested in your welfare, daughter."
Marjie rose to her feet. "Mother, I don't know how much truth there may
be in the circumstances, but I'll wait until somebody besides Amos
Judson tells me before I accept these stories."
"Well, Marjie, you are young. You must lean on older counsel. There is
no man living as good and true as your father was to me. Remember that."
"Yes, there is," Marjie declared.
"Who is he, daughter?"
"Philip Baronet," Marjie answered proudly.
That afternoon Richard Tillhurst called and detained Marjie until she
was late in keeping her appointment with Judge Baronet. Tillhurst's tale
of woe was in the main a repetition of Mrs. Whately's, but he knew
better how to make it convincing, for he had hopes of winning the prize
if I were out of the way. He was too keen to think Judson a dangerous
rival with a girl of Marjie's good sense and independence. It was with
these things in mind that Marjie had met me. Rachel Melrose had swept in
on us, and I who had declared to my dear one that I should never care to
take another girl out to that sunny draw full of hallowed memories for
us two, I was going again with this beautiful woman, my sweetheart from
the East. And yet Marjie was quick enough to note that I had tried to
evade the company of Miss Melrose, and she had seen in my eyes the same
look that they had had for her all these years. Could I be deceiving her
by putting Rachel off in her presence? She did not want to think so. Had
Judge Baronet not been my father, he could have taken her into his
confidence. She could not speak to him of me, nor could he discuss his
son's actions with her.
But love is strong and patient, and Marjie determined not to give up at
the first onslaught against it.
"I'll write to him now," she said. "There will be sure to be a letter
for me up under 'Rockport.' He said something about a letter this
afternoon, the letter he promised to write after the party at
Anderson's. He couldn't be deceiving me, I'm sure. I'll tell him
everything, and if he really doesn't care for me,"--the blank of life
lay sullen and dull before her,--"I'll know it any how. But if he does
care, he'll have a letter for me all right."
And so she wrote, a loving, womanly letter, telling in her own sweet way
all her faith and the ugly uncertainty that was growing up against it.
"But I know you, Phil, and I know you are all my own." So she ended the
letter, and in the purple twilight she hastened up to the cliff and
found her way down to our old shaded corner under the rock. There was no
letter awaiting her. She held her own a minute and then she thrust it
in.
"I'll do anything for Phil," she murmured softly. "I cannot help it. He
was my own--he must be mine still."
A light laugh sounded on the rock above her.
"Are you waiting for me here?" a musical voice cried out. It was
Rachel's voice. "Your aunt said you were gone out and would be back
soon. I knew you would like me to meet you half way. It is beautiful
here, you must love the place, but"--she added so softly that the
unwilling listener did not catch her words--"it isn't so fine as our old
Rockport!"
Quickly came the reply in a voice Marjie knew too well, although the
tone was unlike any she had ever heard before.
"I hate Rockport; I did not tell you so when I left last Spring, but I
hated it then."
Swiftly across the listener's mind swept the memory of my words. "If you
ever hear me say I don't like 'Rockport' you will know I don't care for
you."
She had heard me say these words, had heard them spoken in a tone of
vehement feeling. There was no mistaking the speaker's sincerity, and
then the quick step and swing of the bushes told her I had gone. The
Neosho Valley turned black before her eyes, and she sank down on the
stone shelving of the ledge.
My ride that afternoon had been a miserable one. Rachel was coy and
sweet, yet cunningly bold. I felt indignant at my father for forcing her
company on me, and I resented the circumstance that made me a victim to
injustice. I detested the beautiful creature beside me for her
assumption of authority over my actions, and above all, I longed with an
aching, starved heart for Marjie. I knew she had only to read my letter
to understand. She might not have gone after it yet, but I could see her
that evening and all would be well.
I did not go near the old stone cabin. My father had failed to know his
son if he thought I would obey under these hard conditions. We merely
drove about beyond the draw. Then we rested briefly under the old
cottonwood before we started home.
In the twilight I hurried out to our "Rockport" to wait for Marjie. I
was a little late and so I did not know that Marjie was then under the
point of rock. My rudeness to Rachel was unpardonable, but she had
intruded one step too far into the sacred precincts of my life. I would
not endure her in the place made dear to me from childhood, by
association with Marjie. So I rashly blurted out my feelings and left
her, never dreaming who had heard me nor what meaning my words would
carry.
Down at the Whately home Richard Tillhurst sat, bland and smiling,
waiting for Miss Whately's return. I sat down to wait also.
The August evening was dry and the day's hot air was rippling now into a
slight breeze. The shadows deepened and the twilight had caught its last
faint glow, when Marjie, white and cold, came slowly up the walk. Her
brown hair lay in little curls about her temples and her big dark eyes
were full of an utterable sorrow. I hurried out to the gate to meet her,
but she would have passed by me with stately step.
"Marjie," I called softly, holding the gate.
"Good-evening, Philip. Please don't speak to me one word." Her voice was
low and sweet as of yore save that it was cold and cutting.
She stood beside me for a moment. "I cannot be detained now. You will
find your mother's ring in a package of letters I shall send you
to-morrow. For my sake as well as for your own, please let this matter
end here without any questions."
"But I will ask you questions," I declared.
"Then they will not be answered. You have deceived me and been untrue to
me. I will not listen to one word. You may be very clever, but I
understand you now. This is the end of everything for you and me." And
so she left me.
I stood at the gate only long enough to hear her cordial greeting of
Tillhurst. My Marjie, my own, had turned against me. The shadows of the
deepening twilight turned to horrid shapes, and all the purple richness
with that deep crimson fold low in the western sky became a chill gloom
bordered on the horizon by the flame of hate. So the glory of a world
gone wrong slips away, and the creeping shadows are typical only of
pain and heartache.
I turned aimlessly away. I had told Marjie she was the light of my life:
I did not understand the truth of the words until the light went out.
Heavily, as I had staggered toward her mother's house on the night when
I was sure Jean Pahusca had stolen her, I took my way now into the
gathering shadows, slowly, to where I could hear the Neosho whispering
and muttering in the deep gloom.
It comes sometimes to most of us, the wild notion that life, the gift of
God alone, is a cheap thing not worth the keeping, and the impulse to
fling it away uprears its ugly suggestion. Out in a square of light by
the ford I saw Dave Mead standing, looking straight before him. The
sorrows of the day were not all mine. I went to him, and we stood there
silent together. At length we turned about in a purposeless way toward
the open West Prairie. How many a summer evening we had wandered here!
How often had our ponies come tramping home side by side, in the days
when we brought the cows in late from the farthest draw! It seemed like
another world now.
"Phil, you are very good to me. Don't pity me! I can't stand that." We
never had a tenor in our choir with a voice so clear and rich as his.
"I don't pity you, Dave, I envy you." I spoke with an effort. "You have
not lost, you have only begun a long journey. There is joy at the end of
it."
"Oh, that is easy for you to say, who have everything to make you
happy."
"I? Oh, Dave! I have not even a grave." The sudden sense of loss, driven
back by the thought of another's sorrow, swept over me again. It was
his turn now to forget himself.
"What is it, Phil? Have you and Marjie quarrelled? You never were meant
for that, either of you. It can't be."
"No, Dave. I don't know what is wrong. I only wish--no, I don't. It is
hard to be a man with the heart of a boy still, a foolish boy with
foolish ideals of love and constancy. I can't talk to-night, Dave, only
I envy you the sure possession, the eternal faith that will never be
lost."
He pressed my hand in his left hand. His right arm had had only a
limited usefulness since the night he tried to stop Jean Pahusca down by
the mad floods of the Neosho. I have never seen him since we parted on
the prairie that August evening. The next day he went to Red Range to
stay for a short time. By the end of a week I had left Springvale, and
we are to each other only boyhood memories now.
Out on the open prairie, where there was room to think and be alone, I
went to fight my battle. There was only a sweep of silver sky above me
and a sweep of moonlit plain about me. Dim to the southwest crept the
dark shadow of the wooded Fingal's Creek Valley, while against the
horizon the big cottonwood tree was only a gray blur. The mind can act
swiftly. By the time the moon had swung over the midnight line I had
mapped out my course. And while I seemed to have died, and another being
had my personality, with only memory the same in both, I rose up armed
in spirit to do a man's work in the world. But it cost me a price. I
have been on a battle field with a thousand against fifty, and I was one
of the fifty. Such a strife as I pray Heaven may never be in our land
again. I have looked Death in the face day after day creeping slowly,
surely toward me while I must march forward to meet it. Did the struggle
this night out on the prairie strengthen my soul to bear it all, I
wonder.
The next morning a package addressed in Marjie's round girlish hand was
put before me. Forgetful of resolve, I sent back by its bearer an
imploring appeal for a chance to meet her and clear up the terrible
misunderstanding. The note came back unopened. I gave it with the bundle
to Aunt Candace.
"Keep this for me, auntie, dear," I said, and my voice trembled. She
took it from my hand.
"All right, Phil, I'll keep it. You are not at the end of things,
dearie. You are only at the beginning. I'll keep this. It is only
keeping, remember." She pointed to a stain on the unopened note, the
round little blot only a tear can make. "It isn't yours, I know."
It was the first touch of comfort I had felt. However slender the
thread, Hope will find it strong to cling to. Rachel's visit ended that
day. Self-centred always, she treated me as one who had been foolish,
but whom she considered her admirer still. It was not in her nature to
be rejected. She shaped things to fit her vanity, and forgot what could
not be controlled. I refused to allow myself to be alone with her again.
Nobody was ever so tied to a woman's presence as I kept myself by Aunt
Candace so long as I remained in the house.
My father, I knew, was grieved and indignant. With all my fair promises
and pretended loyalty I seemed to be an idle trifler. How could my
relation to Lettie Conlow be explained away in the light of this visit
from a handsome cultured young lady, who had had an assurance of welcome
or she would not have come. He loved Marjie as the daughter of his
dearest friend. He had longed to call her, "daughter," and I had
foolishly thrown away a precious prize.
Serious, too, was my reckless neglect of business. I had disregarded his
request to manage a grave matter. Instead of going alone to the cabin, I
had gone off with a pretty girl and reported that I had found nothing.
"Did you go near the cabin?" He drove the question square at me, and I
had sullenly answered, "No, sir." Clearly I needed more discipline than
the easy life in Springvale was giving me. I went down to the office in
the afternoon, hoping for something, I hardly knew what. He was alone,
and I asked for a few words with him. Somehow I seemed more of a man to
myself than I had ever felt before in his presence.
"Father," I began. "When the sea did its worst for you--fifteen years
ago--you came to the frontier here, and somehow you found peace. You
have done your part in the making of the lawless Territory into a
law-abiding State, this portion of it at least. The frontier moves
westward rapidly now."
"Well?" he queried.
"I have lost--not by the sea--but, well, I've lost. I want to go to the
frontier too. I must get away from here. The Plains--somewhere--may help
me."
"But why leave here?" he asked. After all, the father-heart was
yearning to keep his son.
"Why did you leave Massachusetts?" I could not say Rockport. I hated the
sound of the name.
"Where will you go, my boy?" He spoke with deepest sorrow, and love
mingled in his tones.
"Out to the Saline Country. They need strong men out there. I must have
been made to defend the weak." It was not a boast, but the frank
expression of my young manhood's ideal. "Your friend Mr. Morton urged me
to come. May I go to him? It may be I can find my place out in that
treeless open land; that there will come to me, as it came to you, the
help that comes from helping others."
Oh, I had fought my battle well. I was come into a man's estate now and
had put away childish things.
My father sitting before me took both my hands in his.
"My son, you are all I have. You cannot long deceive me. I have trusted
you always. I love you even unto the depths of disgrace. Tell me truly,
have you done wrong? I will soon know it. Tell me now."
"Father," I held his hands and looked steadily into his eyes. "I have no
act to conceal from you, nor any other living soul. I must leave here
because I cannot stay and see--Father, Marjie is lost to me. I do not
know why."
"Well, find out." He spoke cheerily.
"It is no use. She has changed, and you know her father's firmness. She
is his mental image."
"There is no stain somewhere, no folly of idle flirtation, no weakness?
I hear much of you and Lettie."
"Father, I have done nothing to make me ashamed. Last night when I
fought my battle to the finish, for the first time in my life I knew my
mother was with me. Somehow it was her will guiding me. I know my place.
I cannot stay here. I will go where the unprotected need a strength like
mine."
The stage had stopped at the courthouse door, and Rachel Melrose ran up
the steps and entered the outer office. My father went out to meet her.
"Are you leaving us?" he asked kindly.
"Yes, I had only a day or two that I could spend here. But where is
Philip?"
John Baronet had closed his door behind him. I thanked him fervently in
my heart for his protection. How could I meet this woman now? And yet
she had seemed only selfishly mischievous, and I must not be a coward,
so I came out of the inner room at once. A change swept over her face
when I appeared. The haughty careless spirit gave place to gentleness,
and, as always, she was very pretty. Nothing of the look or manner was
lost on John Baronet, and his pity for her only strengthened his opinion
of my insincerity.
"Good-bye, Philip. We shall meet again soon, I hope. Good-bye, Judge
Baronet." Her voice was soft and full of sadness. She smiled upon us
both and turned to go.
My father led her down the courthouse steps and helped her into the
stage. When he came back I did not look up. There was nothing for me to
say. Quietly, as though nothing had occurred, he took up his work, his
face as impenetrable as Jean Pahusca's.
My resemblance to my mother is strong. As I bent over his desk to gather
up some papers for copying, my heavy dark hair almost brushed his cheek.
I did not know then how his love for me was struggling with his sense of
duty.
"I have trusted him too much, and given him too free a rein. He doesn't
know yet how to value a woman's feelings. He must learn his lesson now.
But he shall not go away without my blessing."
So he mused.
"Philip," his voice was as kind as it was firm, "we shall see what the
days will bring. Your mother's spirit may be guiding you, and your
father's love is always with you. Whatever snarls and tangles have
gotten into your threads, time and patience will straighten and
unravel. Whatever wrong you may have done, willingly or unwillingly,
you must make right. There is no other way."
"Father," I replied in a voice as firm as his own. "Father, I have done
no wrong."
Once more he looked steadily into my eyes and through them down into my
very soul. "Phil, I believe you. These things will soon pass away."
In the early twilight I went for the last time to "Rockport." There are
sadder things than funeral rites. The tragedies of life do not always
ring down the curtain leaving the stage strewn with the forms of the
slain. Oftener they find the living actor following his lines and doing
his part of the play as if all life were a comedy. The man of sixty
years may smile at the intensity of feeling in the boy of twenty-one,
but that makes it no easier for the boy. I watched the sun go down that
night, and then I waited through the dark hour till the moon, now past
the full, should once more illumine the Neosho Valley. Although I have
always been a lover of nature, that sunset and the purple twilight
following, the darkness of the early evening hour and the glorious
moonrise are tinged with a sorrow I have never quite lost even in the
happier years since then. I sat alone on the point of rock. At last the
impulse to go down below and search for a letter from Marjie overcame
me, although I laughed bitterly at the folly of such a notion. In the
crevice where her letter had been placed for me the night before, I
found nothing. What a different story I might have to tell had I gone
down at sunset instead of waiting through that hour of darkness before
the moon crept above the eastern horizon line! And yet I believe that in
the final shaping-up the best thing for each one comes to all of us.
Else the universe is without a plan and Love unwavering and eternal is
only a vagary of the dreamer.
Early the next morning I left Springvale, and set my face to the
westward, as John Baronet had done a decade and a half before, to begin
life anew where the wilderness laps the frontier line. My father held my
hand long when I said good-bye, and love and courage and trust were all
in that hand-clasp.
"You'll win out, my boy. Keep your face to the light. The world has no
place for the trifler, the coward, or the liar. It is open to homestead
claims for all the rest. You will not fail." And with his kiss on my
forehead he let me go.
* * * * *
Anything is news in a little town, and especially interesting in the
dull days of late Summer. The word that I had gone away started from
Conlow's shop and swept through the town like a prairie fire through a
grassy draw.
No one man is essential to any community. Springvale didn't need me so
much as I needed it. But when I left it there were many more than I
deserved who not only had a good word for me; they went further, and
demanded that good reason for my going must be shown, or somebody would
be made to suffer. Foremost among these were Cam Gentry, Dr. Hemingway,
and Cris Mead, president of the Springvale Bank, the father of Bill and
Dave. Of course, the boys, the blessed old gang, who had played together
and worked together and been glad and sorry with each other down the
years, the boys were loyal to the last limit.
But we had our share of gossips who had a tale they could unfold--a
dreadful tale! Beginning with my forging my father's name to get money
to spend on Rachel Melrose and other Topeka girls, and to pay debts I
had contracted at Harvard, on and on the tale ran, till, by the time the
Fingal's Creek neighborhood got hold of the "real facts," it developed
that I had all but murdered a man who stood in the way of a rich fee my
father was to get out of a land suit somewhere; and lastly came an
ominous shaking of the head and a keeping back of the "worst truth,"
about my gay escapades with girls of shady reputation whom I had
deceived, and cruelly wronged, trusting to my standing as a rich man's
son to pull me through all right.
Marjie was the last one in Springvale to be told of my sudden
leave-taking. The day had been intolerably long for her, and the evening
brought an irresistible temptation to go up to our old playground.
Contrary to his daily habit my father had passed the Whately house on
his way home, and Marjie had seen him climb the hill. I was as like him
in form as Jean Pahusca was like Father Le Claire. Six feet and two
inches he stood, and so perfectly proportioned that he never looked
corpulent. I matched him in height and weight, but I had not his fine
bearing, for I had seen no military service then. I do not marvel that
Springvale was proud of him, for his character matched the graces Nature
had given him.
As Marjie watched him going the way I had so often taken, her resolve to
forget what we had been to each other suddenly fell to pieces. Her
feelings could not change at once. Mental habits are harder to break up
than physical appetites. For fourteen years my loved one had known me,
first as her stanch defender in our plays, then as her boy sweetheart
and lastly as her lover and betrothed husband. Could twenty-four hours
of distrust and misunderstanding displace these fourteen years of happy
thinking? And so after sunset Marjie went up the slope, hardly knowing
why she should do so or what she would say to me if she should meet me
there. It was a poor beginning for the new life she had carefully mapped
out, but impulse was stronger than resolve in her just then. Just at the
steep bend in the street she came face to face with Lettie Conlow. The
latter wore a grin of triumph as the two met.
"Good-evening, Marjie. I s'pose you've heard the news?"
"What news?" asked Marjie. "I haven't heard anything new to-day."
"Oh, yes, you have, too. You know all about it; but I'd not care if I
was you."
Marjie was on her guard in a moment.
"I don't care for what I don't know, Lettie," she replied.
"Nor what you do, neither. I wouldn't if I was you. He ain't worth it;
and it gives better folks a chance for what they want, anyhow."
Lettie's low brows and cunning black eyes were unendurable to the girl
she was tormenting.
"Well, I don't know what you are talking about," and Marjie would have
passed on, but Lettie intercepted her.
"You know that rich Melrose girl's gone back to Topeka?"
"Oh, yes," Marjie spoke indifferently; "she went last evening, I was
told."
"Well, this morning Phil Baronet went after her, left Springvale for
good and all. O'mie says so, and he knows all Phil knows. Marjie, she's
rich; and Phil won't marry nobody but a rich girl. You know you ain't
got what you had when your pa was alive."
Yes, Marjie knew that.
"Well he's gone anyhow, and I don't care."
"Why should you care?" Marjie could not help the retort. She was stung
to the quick in every nerve. Lettie's face blazed with anger.
"Or you?" she stormed. "He was with me last. I can prove it, and a lot
more things you'd never want to hear. But you'll never be his girl
again."
Marjie turned toward the cliff just as O'mie appeared through the bushes
and stepped behind Lettie.
"Oh, good-evening, lovely ladies; delighted to meet you," he hailed
them.
Marjie smiled at him, but Lettie gave a sudden start.
"Oh, O'mie, what are you forever tagging me for?" She spoke angrily and
without another word to Marjie she hurried down the hill.
"I tag!" O'mie grinned. "I'd as soon tag Satan, only I've just got to do
it." But his face changed when he turned to Marjie. "Little girl, I
overheard the lady. Lovely spirit that! I just can't help dancin'
attendance on it. But, Marjie, I've come up here, knowin' Phil had gone
and wasn't in my way, 'cause I wanted to show you somethin'. Yes, he's
gone. Left early this mornin'. Never mind that, right now."
He led the way through the bushes and they sat down together. I cannot
say what Marjie thought as she looked out on the landscape I had watched
in loneliness the night before. It was O'mie, and not his companion, who
told me long afterwards of this evening.
"I thought you were away on a ten days' vacation, O'mie. Dever said you
were." She could not bear the silence.
"I'm on a tin days' vacation, but I'm not away, Marjie, darlin'," O'mie
replied.
"Oh, O'mie, don't joke. I can't stand it to-night." Her face was white
and her eyes were full of pain.
"Indade, I'm not jokin'. I came up here to show you somethin' and to
tell you somethin'."
He took an old note book from his pocket and opened it to where a few
brown blossoms lay flatly pressed between the leaves.
"Thim's not pretty now, Marjie, but the day I got 'em they was dainty
an' pink as the dainty pink-cheeked girl whose brown curls they was
wreathed about. These are the flowers Phil Baronet put on your hair out
in the West Draw by the big cottonwood one April evenin' durin' the war;
the flowers Jean Pahusca kissed an' throwed away. But I saved 'em
because I love you, Marjie."
She shivered and bent her head.
"Oh, not like thim two ornery tramps who had these blossoms 'fore I got
'em, but like I'd love a sister, if I had one; like Father Le Claire
loves me. D'ye see?"
"You are a dear, good brother, O'mie," Marjie murmured, without lifting
her head.
"Oh, yis, I'm all av that an' more. Marjie, I'm goin' to kape these
flowers till--well, now, Marjie, shall I tell you whin?"
"Yes, O'mie," Marjie said faintly.
"Well, till I see the pretty white veil lifted fur friends to kiss the
bride an' I catch the scent av orange blossoms in thim soft little
waves." He put his hand gently on her bowed head. "I'll get to do it,
too," he went on, "not right away, but not fur off, nather; an' it won't
be a little man, ner a rid-headed Irishman, ner a sharp-nosed
school-teacher; but--Heaven bless an' kape him to-night!--it'll be a
big, broad-shouldered, handsome rascal, whose heart has niver changed
an' niver can change toward you, little sister, 'cause he's his
father's own son--lovin', constant, white an' clane through an' through.
Be patient. It's goin' to be all right for you two." He closed the book
and put it back in its place. "But I mustn't stay here. I've got to tag
Lettie some more. Her an' some others. That's what my tin days'
vacation's fur, mostly." And O'mie leaped through the bushes and was
gone.
The twilight was deepening when Marjie at last roused herself.
"I'll go down and see if he did get my letter," she murmured, taking her
way down the rough stair. There was no letter in the crevice where she
had placed it securely two nights before. Lifting her face upward she
clasped her hands in sorrow.
"He took it away, but he did not come to me. He knows I love him." Then
remembering herself, "I would not let him speak. But he said he hated
'Rockport.' Oh, what can it all mean? How could he be so good to me and
then deceive me so? Shall I believe Lettie, or O'mie?"
Kneeling there in the deep shadows of the cliff-side with the Neosho
gurgling darkly below her, and the long shafts of pink radiance from the
hidden sunset illumining the sky above her, Marjie prayed for strength
to bear her burden, for courage to meet whatever must come to her, and
for the assurance of divine Love although now her lover, as well as her
father, was lost to her. The simple pleading cry of a grief-stricken
heart it was. Heaven heard that prayer, and Marjie went down the hill
with womanly grace and courage and faith to face whatever must befall
her in the new life opening before her.
In the days that followed my little girl was more than ever the idol of
Springvale. Her sweet, sunny nature now had a new beauty. Her sorrow she
hid away so completely there were few who guessed what her thoughts
were. Lettie Conlow was not deceived, for jealousy has sharp eyes. O'mie
understood, for O'mie had carried a sad, hungry heart underneath his
happy-go-lucky carelessness all the years of his life. Aunt Candace was
a woman who had overcome a grief of her own, and had been cheery and
bright down the years. She knew the mark of conquest in the face. And
lastly, my father, through his innate power to read human nature,
watched Marjie as if she were his own child. Quietly, too, so quietly
that nobody noticed it, he became a guardian over her. Where she went
and what she did he knew as well as Jean Pahusca, watching in the lilac
clump, long ago. For fourteen years he had come and gone to our house on
Cliff Street up and down the gentler slope two blocks to the west of
Whately's. Nobody knew, until it had become habitual, when he changed
his daily walk homeward up the steeper climb that led him by Marjie's
house farther down the street. Nobody realized, until it was too common
for comment, how much a part of all the social life of Springvale my
father had become. He had come to Kansas a widower, but gossip long ago
gave up trying to do anything with him. And now, as always, he was a
welcome factor everywhere, a genial, courteous gentleman, whose dignity
of character matched his stern uprightness and courage in civic matters.
Among all the things for which I bless his memory, not the least of them
was this strong, unostentatious guardianship of a girl when her need for
protection was greatest, as that Winter that followed proved.
I knew nothing of all this then. I only knew my loved one had turned
against me. Of course I knew that Rachel was the cause, but I could not
understand why Marjie would listen to no explanation, why she should
turn completely from me when I had told her everything in the letter I
wrote the night of the party at Anderson's. And now I was many miles
from Springvale, and the very thought of the past was like a
knife-thrust. All my future now looked to the Westward. I longed for
action, for the opportunity to do something, and they came swiftly, the
opportunity and the action.