TO-MORROW--
For two days and two nights the girl fought on alone against the outcry
of her own heart, and as on a former occasion she chose again the open
roads for her battlefield. While she pounded Ragtime mercilessly over
the little-traveled northern highways, she struggled rebelliously with
stubborn arguments which only left her more and more bewildered, the
more conclusive they became. She summoned parallels by the score to
her support, but she lacked the trick of facile finality, somehow,
which had always marked his usage of such argument. Hard moments she
knew when she closed her teeth tight upon her decision and told herself
that it was final, but the next moment, after she had laid whip across
the black horse's flank and faced homeward, she was biting her lips in
shaken, panic contemplation of another thought which would not be
denied.
There were times without number when Barbara hated the one whose very
gentleness toward her was making her position hardest to maintain;
times when she hated the work which, absorbing him by day at least,
must be making his suffering less difficult to endure. For she
understood that there was still much for him to do, although the
hill-country was already ringing with his victory. And throughout
every hour she hated herself most of all for that spirit behind the
doubt which was swinging her, pendulum-like, between brain's reason and
heart's desire.
Barbara needed her mother in those days of wretchedness, for she came
and went as blind to the helpless misery which followed her always from
the eyes of her father as she was heedless of who might read the misery
in her own. She turned a chill, set face to the one attempt to help
made by Miriam Burrell, who, at the first inkling of violence on the
river and possible danger to Garry Devereau, had come rushing overnight
into the hills, purposed never to leave them again unless it was with
him, as the wife of the man she loved. Barbara wanted her mother, and
when that occurred to Miss Sarah, the latter could no longer continue
in passive sympathy. Without compunction or loss of more time, she
reversed a decision at which she had arrived herself only a short time
before. For Miss Sarah had stopped campaigning. Caleb, with fire in
his eye, had brought her the story of how "her boy" Steve had broken
Harrigan with his bare hands. She had had little to say concerning
that episode, but her brother, noting that she did not condemn it as
regrettable, wondered too that he had never noticed before how hard his
sister's eyes could be. The news that Barbara was lost had reached
Miss Sarah hours before Allison's private car brought the girl and her
father and Hardwick Elliott back to Morrison. Thereupon, with her
first glimpse of Barbara's wanly mute and suffering face, she had
pieced the details together; she had told herself, with sorrow and
understanding in her heart, that she must no longer interfere. And
now, though she did summon Barbara to her, the end of the second
endless day, it was with no thought for evasion or finesse. Barbara
obeyed that summons reluctantly. In the face of an almost sullen light
in the girl's eyes when she entered on lagging feet, the older woman
knew that she could not have persisted in such an attempt, even had she
planned to employ it. Additional warning was not needed, but Barbara's
first words told her that the hour was long past for such methods.
At first the girl refused to sit down. She wandered aimlessly around
the room, switching nervously at her booted ankles with her
riding-crop, to stop suddenly and raise a pale and stormy face.
"I know why you sent for me," she exclaimed, "and I know just what you
think of me. But I must tell you, Miss Sarah, that there is nothing
which can alter now, the least little bit, a decision which I know is
wisest and best!"
So she had the first word, never dreaming that Miss Sarah had seen to
that. Nor did the latter smile or seem to proffer argument at first.
Oh, Miss Sarah had the true instincts of a big soul!
"Barbara," she answered quietly, after her formal firmness had
prevailed and the girl had seated herself, "Barbara, when I sent for
you it was not with a belief that I might influence you, for both of us
know that this is your problem alone. I merely hoped to comfort, that
was all. More than once I have been guilty of trying to manage you a
little, but you will forgive me, I know, when I tell you that I have
loved Stephen almost all his life, as though he were my own, and hoped
as long for his great happiness. On more than one occasion I contrived
situations which I thought might make your choice my happiness, too. I
know now that I was no better than any other meddling old woman, whose
efforts are well meant but dangerous for all that. And I will meddle
no more. But--but my heart aches a little, too, to-day, Barbara. May
I just talk to you?"
Barbara blinked in surprise at the subdued sadness in the older woman's
voice. But her lips remained sullen.
"There is nothing more to be said," she reiterated uncompromisingly.
"I tell you I am sure!"
And from that statement, minutes before she had thought to hear it,
Miss Sarah learned, thankfully, just how deep was the girl's
uncertainty.
"Then I need not fear that I may sway you one inch from your own way of
reasoning." Her gentle voice might have held relief. "For you will
not consider it argument when I agree with you that hard and fast
reasoning is not always a dependable guide for a woman."
The girl was switching her ankles again.
"Why isn't it?" she demanded abruptly, hungry for it now that the
other, ostensibly, did not want to argue. "If reason is no guide, what
else is there left?"
"My dear, I do not know," acknowledged Miss Sarah. "Intuition is a
much over-worked word. And yet, had hard and fast reason been your
guide, you would not have refused Stephen, I am sure. For it would be
difficult to name one particular in which he is not entirely a man."
The violet eyes grew quickly hostile. The girl was keen enough to
argue, but she was in no mood for refutation.
"I am afraid that I do not follow you?" came coldly from her.
"There comes a day in every woman's life, of course," Miss Sarah
ignored sweetly the interruption, "when she has to leave girlhood
behind. And lest that sound bromidic and trite, I will add that I do
not mean the trivial material things of immaturity, but rather the
happy irresponsibility which has no place in a woman's life."
That statement offered a plain enough opening.
"Am I responsible for his unhappiness?" Barbara flashed out. "Is the
fault entirely mine because----" She faltered, ashamed of her
abruptness which had brought a hurt bit of color to Miss Sarah's
cheeks. "I never gave him to understand--I told him always I could not
care!"
"Please bear with me a little to-day." Miss Sarah's sweetness had
become humble. "I seem vagarious, I know. And we are not considering
Stephen, Barbara. If you had been doing so, all these hours while you
have been wasting your nervous energy in tearing around the
country-side, it would be different. But women never consider the man
in such a situation, do they? Aren't they too entirely heedless for
that? I was merely trying to tell you that the day has come when you
must consider well your own happiness."
Instantly Barbara condemned such a doctrine.
"If that is true of others," she retorted, "they are even more
despicable than I know myself to be."
Until that moment Caleb Hunter's tiny sister had kept her brave eyes
clear. They clouded now. They went beyond that pale and sullen and
stormily pretty visage.
"I was a woman like that," she said, with her quaint simplicity of
accent. "Do you look upon me with any such degree of scorn? I was
face to face with such a decision; and yet not the same either, for
mine was far simpler than yours. But I considered neither his
happiness nor my own, simply because I lost sight of the years and
years to come, in the momentary joy I found in his--his importunity.
He was very big and strong and cheerful, like Stephen, Barbara, and I
was sure he would not grudge me my last moment of girl-vanity, when I
did surrender--to-morrow."
There the quaint voice caught and broke. The girl's eyes flew wider
and hotter shame for her sulkiness stained her cheeks. For suddenly
Miss Sarah was fighting against tears.
"I did not know," Barbara breathed her contrition. "I never
dreamed----"
"No one ever does," faltered Miss Sarah. "I--I am an old, faded,
hopelessly unmarried woman to you, my dear--oh, child, you need not
protest a kinder opinion! I am just 'Caleb Hunter's spinster sister'
to the people of this village. But to--to myself, Barbara, I am at
times the same girl who waited, roses in her hair and roses in her
cheeks, for him to come, so that I might tell him that I was his, body
and soul. And he never came! Oh, my dear, I do not mean to break down
like this, for you have your own heart-ache. But I trusted to reason.
I told myself that to-morrow would be soon enough. And when to-morrow
came--they let me--go to him. He died very bravely, Barbara, to save
the life of another.
"Since you are so sure, I can tell you this without seeming to warn
you--without being accused of attempting to influence you. But now you
know why I say that every woman, if heedlessness for which she is
perhaps not to blame will not let her consider the happiness of the man
she loves, should still take care that she does not barter for an hour
of quickened pulses the happiness of her whole life. I was innocent
enough. It was harmless play to me. But I have paid--and paid--and
paid! I would not have you, whom I cherish, rise each morning and
wonder why you had to be the only one to suffer out of thousands who
played the same way. And now will you please forgive me this
uncontrolled moment? I usually inflict them upon no one; I hide them
in my room. But, Barbara, I was so proud of him--so sure--so positive
that he was the only man in the world! And I lost my chance to tell
him how much I cared."
The riding-crop lay neglected on the floor. It had slipped and
clattered down while Barbara sat and stared at the tiny woman who was
dabbing at her eyes with a very girlish square of linen. And then
slowly Barbara rose and took an uncertain step or two. She sank to her
knees and pillowed her head upon Miss Sarah's lap. Momentarily she had
forgotten the struggle which was going on in her own heart. Now even
pity for the other could not keep her from turning hack to it.
"But I do not know," she gasped. "I--sometimes I think I must care,
and then I am afraid----" She lifted a face dry-eyed and tense. "I
ought to be proud of him, too. If I loved him I would be, wouldn't I?
If I cared I wouldn't ask anything more than just what he is. Don't
you see I'm only petty and rotten with snobbishness?"
Miss Sarah sniffed, ever so delicately.
"What a sentimental old woman I am!" she exclaimed. "And, my dear, you
talk as though you had just discovered a new and terribly perplexing
complication. Don't you know that it is as old as the feminine mind
itself?" Her handkerchief came down, then, disclosing eyes that were
very bright and very tender. "Why, a woman never loves a man merely
for what he is! She always reserves a few little things, at least,
which she means--well, to rearrange. She loves him just a bit more for
what she secretly promises herself he shall be."
Barbara's sullenness was gone.
"I know," she whispered. "I thought of that, too, long ago. But it
isn't just a--little thing. A few days ago, Miss Sarah, when we took
the train to go up north, I could scarcely wait for the engine to draw
us there. I think I counted every click of the rails, I know I sang
his name in my heart with every click. And then, when I wanted to walk
straight off the steps of the car into his arms--when I . . . Why do
you sit there and listen and not say that you loathe me as I do myself?
I know that he is all man, but his work and my world--oh, when that
terrible thing happened, and he came lurching toward me, instead of
helping him, do you know what I did? I was sick at the sight of
him--sick at the reck and grime and blood of him! I just wanted to get
away, and--and shudder at the thought of----"
Miss Sarah's composure had returned, but her face grew more sober
still. This was a different, a graver thing, even than she had
expected.
"Your world?" Deliberately now she dared to argue. "Barbara, didn't
you know, from the beginning, that his world would have to be yours?
Did you ever think that you could change him--that way?"
Barbara moved her head.
"I wanted both," she said. "I wanted all I have--and him, too. I
learned that night he took care of me how much I cared; I know he'd be
as careful of me, all his life. But I had thought that he might be
able to do as father has done and let other men handle the---- But he
knows now! He understands me! I tell you I'm no good. I've no
backbone. I'm just pink and white flesh without any spirit!"
The other woman sat and smoothed the bright head and wished she knew
what to say. "It would please me to know just what stuff she is made
of, too," Miss Sarah had once admitted to her brother. She wondered if
at last she knew.
"I do not know what to tell you," she murmured slowly. "I thought if I
talked with you I might be able to help you, but I am afraid now that I
cannot. He is a better man than you are woman, Barbara; because he has
builded with his hands, he has reared him a soul as well. He knows the
depths, and the heights are far more wonderful for such knowledge. Oh,
dear me, I wish I knew----"
She paused there, shaken by her own impotence. Doubt and aching regret
were overwhelming her.
"I have told Mr. Wickersham that I will not marry him." The brown head
burrowed lower and muffled the words. "I know that I could let no
other man so--so much as touch me now. Is that--caring enough?"
But Miss Sarah only half heard the question. She was expecting no
surrender now.
"----Nor how to advise you," she struggled on. "For you have lived as
all girls like you live. You've lived for yourself; hoped for
yourself; prayed for yourself--as all women pray, I suppose, directly
or indirectly. And yet is merely a question of whether you could live
with him in his world, day for day and night for night? Is it as
simple as that? I have told you what difference one day made with me.
Have you thought what it might mean to wake and realize that you must
live _without_ him, all the rest of your life?"
Miss Sarah had stopped hoping. And so there was sheer amazement in the
triumph which rose and drove the regret from her faded pink-and-white
face when the girl's dark-fringed eyes lifted.
Since Stephen O'Mara had brought her back to her father, Barbara had
wondered why she did not cry. Great tears were sliding noiselessly
down her cheeks when she raised her head.
"I've tried to think--I haven't dared," Barbara sobbed. "But he
doesn't want me now. He doesn't want the kind of a girl I am any more!"
Thus in her moment of capitulation did the girl's heart cry aloud the
one thought which, unknown to her, had been her unbearable pain. And
straightway Miss Sarah's illuminated countenance became a glorification
of her spirit. Silently she leaned over and folded the kneeling one
round.
Later she found it possible to speak.
"You have convinced me forever of the futility of all snap judgments,"
said she, and she marveled at the shyness in her own voice, "but you
could never convince me of that. You may go home now, Barbara, for you
have worn yourself out. But to-morrow I would suggest that you--ask
him for corroboration, if you still hold to such an opinion."
Instantly Barbara rose and bobbed her head. She had always been a slim
creature of moods mercurial; she would always be that. And now her
violet eyes radiated anticipation, perverse and impish and far, far
different from the sullen dullness which had filled them an hour
before. Miss Sarah had spoken with well-seasoned wisdom, as was her
wont: there are sometimes big moments which are the bigger for lack of
analysis. The girl did not know why, all in one breath, she no longer
feared nor doubted--but she _knew_! And that was a world and all of
joy. She bobbed her head.
"Ask him?" she echoed, demurely confused. "Ask--_him_! To-morrow I am
going to dare him to ask _me_--again!"
But she did not obey Miss Sarah's suggestion that she return home and
rest. On winged feet she flew back through the hedge-gap and ordered
Ragtime saddled once more; yet when she touched that splendid beast
with the crop and sent him at a gallop down the drive, there was no
longer any sting in the lash. Even the groom, with critical eye,
noticed the difference in the girl's seat that afternoon; for days and
days to come he was the better contented with the companionship of
horses, which was his lot, in dwelling upon the crazy moods of women.
And Miriam Burrell, sighting Barbara's face as the latter wheeled
toward the hills, flew from her window to scratch off a note to
Garry--her third note that day, for she seemed always omitting most
important things which needed saying.
"It's come," she scrawled in delighted haste, "and Miss Sarah is a
visiting angel from Heaven! . . . When are we going to be married?"
Others knew of it almost as soon as she did herself, but knowledge of
that did not mar Barbara's rosy contemplation of this new-found,
totally unbelievable happiness. Once before she had ridden that road
with him alone in her thoughts; now she realized that she had loved him
then as she must have loved him always, and marveled at such blindness.
Once, on that other day, she had told herself that all ignoble and
unworthy comparisons of herself and him were done and gone. Now she
did not need such reassurance, when her lips were tremulous.
Rest? Pressing steadily into the north that afternoon, first at a
gallop, then more and more slowly until Ragtime was picking his own
gait, the girl smiled in pity for Miss Sarah and her day which had
never dawned. But there was scant room for sadness in her present
mood. Tomorrow? She let herself be afraid for an instant, to tremble
in delicious mock-terror, because there was nothing for her to fear now
in the whole wide world.
She grew pensive at times; at times in an abandon of gaiety she
chattered back at a quarrelsome squirrel in the thicket. She could
rest later; and if she could not go to him immediately, at least every
step the horse took was bringing them, for a little while, closer
together. And her to-morrow was only one twilight and one dawn away;
her to-morrow would be his, as utterly as was she herself. Dusk came,
and regretfully she told herself that she must be turning back home.
Two rifle shots, sharp and startlingly close, whipped through the quiet
of that lazy afternoon, but they meant nothing to her. She had reached
the height of land, where he had found her the day her roan mare
strayed off while she sat mooning on a log; she was holding out both
arms toward the spot where the valley of Thirty-Mile must lie, when a
team of heavy horses broke around a turn in the road, slowed to a trot
at the sight of her, and came to an abrupt standstill. When the girl
rode nearer to them, merely surprised and curious at first, they
snorted and showed the whites of their eyes and shied back nervously.
Something chill clutched at Barbara's heart while she spoke
pre-emptorily to Ragtime, who was dancing in sympathetic panic. There
was nothing to tell her, but she knew that these were Big Louie's
horses. And Big Louie was a dreamy incompetent--he had left them for a
moment, that was all, and they had become frightened and bolted. But
Big Louie never neglected his team . . . they were not wet . . . they
had not been running far. And their fright became less when she
dismounted and approached them, soothing them with her voice until they
let her touch their sleek sides, without rearing away.
Dusk had come and gone, for it was growing dark. Uncertain, more and
more unnerved as she stood and gazed at the forbidding, black-shadowed
ridges beyond her, the girl had to fight suddenly against an impulse to
turn and race back to the lower country and Morrison and home. Even
then the rifle shots meant nothing to her--and pride would not let her
run. She remounted and rode on a rod or two, and stopped to look back
at the team which was watching her; she pressed on and rounded the
curve. Ragtime reared and snorted there, and she barely stifled the
cry which his strange behavior brought to her lips. Because of her
senseless panic she punished him the more severely, and sent him on.
And then she saw what the horse had already seen.
A blue-shirted figure lay half in the road, half in the undergrowth
that fringed it, one arm crooked under him and his face prone in the
dust; a bulkier mass was stretched wholly within the trail--and she
recognized him, too. Big Louie's face was upturned, and the
explanation of the two rifle reports and the driverless team was here.
For Big Louie's hand still clutched the handle of a canvas pail. They
had stopped to water the horses; they had been shot down from behind.
And first of all, unable to move, while horror parched her lips, the
girl remembered words which the limp one, half in the road and half in
the underbrush, had spoken to her in a moment of sternness.
"He has fired upon me from cover," the man who loved her had said. "He
has been taking money from a man who was bent on beating me at any
price!"
Giddiness rose and swayed her, and she beat Ragtime mercilessly for his
fear. Instinct clamored flight, and she forced herself to wait,
panting for that other shot which might leave her, too, lying in the
road. But even in that first frozen moment she began to reason
clearly. Back with the sleek team which welcomed her with questioning
eyes she left Ragtime, for he would stand there, and retraced her way
on foot. She could not do it, she sobbed drily--but she raced to him
and knelt and searched with swift fingers before the words were past
her lips. Her hand found moisture beneath his right shoulder; it was
stained red when she held it up and stared at it. And then she was
closest to fainting.
"Blood sickens me!" she whimpered aloud. "Blood sickens me!" But she
managed to turn him over upon his back. With brown head against his
heart, she listened--listened and would not believe that her to-morrow
might come too late. And then she caught the slack pound of his pulse.
From there on she was less panic-stricken; she gained control of
faculties shocked for a time into uselessness. Method marked her
acts--deliberation mechanical but sure. She was horribly afraid of Big
Louie, but she finally disentangled the handle of the pail from those
loose fingers, and ran to the brook which babbled near at hand.
Returning, she drenched Steve's face with icy water; she lifted his
head and propped it, as comfortably as she might, upon one thigh, and
opened his flannel shirt. The ball had passed through, for back and
front the shirt became immediately wetter with fresh blood. Blood
sickened her, but she whipped off the coat of her boyish riding-habit
and wrenched the sleeves from her linen blouse. They were desperately
scant, yet they provided pads with which to check that dreadful oozing.
And when they were in place she turned again to bathing his forehead.
A folded sheet of paper came to view when she tried once to ease his
heavy body from the position which was numbing her leg, and she seized
upon it fiercely. It was only a brief line, bidding him come to her,
but it bore her name. With instant, bodiless clarity which had marked
all her mental processes so far, its purport was hers. She had not
written--the hand that had traced her signature had been unstrung for
once. She understood, though such knowledge seemed of little moment
now.
She kept the pads cold and wet; she went for fresh water and stumbled
and fell more than once, because of the treacherous footing in the
deepening shadows. But she was no longer afraid of the dark; she had
grown to fear Big Louie less, even though there was no help for Big
Louie any more. It was the first time that Barbara had looked upon the
face of a man who had died in violence. Big Louie's face was growing
indistinct now, but she knew that he was smiling--knew that his eyes
were dreamy and mild. Death, like Life, had been a quite
incomprehensible puzzle to that slow-witted one who had no name. But
he had smiled seldom in life. In death his smile was almost childish,
almost sweet, and questioning beyond all else.
Alone with him who still lived, the pallid girl sat and waited and
wondered how long--or how soon--it would be. But she wasn't afraid
now. They were his hills; it was his wilderness. And could any harm
come out of them equal to separation from him? This was only the
beginning of one night of darkness, and Miss Sarah had endured with
patience and bravery through a whole lifetime of days and nights as
black. "Your face was the first . . . it will be the last thing I'll
see, as long as there is sight in my eyes!" had been his words to her.
She waited and she prayed shamelessly for herself--for one more
chance--as Miss Sarah had said women always prayed. But he was looking
at her, when she opened her eyes after a long and incoherent appeal; at
her first word he tried to rise and she had trouble in persuading him
to lie back again. She heard herself scolding, while she rearranged
the bandages so that they would cover both wounds, and he listened,
hot-eyed, without recognizing her. Yet when she bade him wait, until
she could bring the team, he nodded his comprehension; he was watching
for her return. And he came to his feet with a readiness that made her
heart leap with hope; but he fell twice before she lifted him, half
with her hands, half with her voice, to the seat.
She crawled in beside him, and the next moment she had to struggle
madly to prevent his returning to Big Louie.
"He will wait quiet until we come for him," she protested. "There
isn't room for Big Louie--and he won't mind----"
Her logic made an impression upon him, for he smiled. There was no
sequence in his acquiescence, however.
"I have always been afraid for him," he told her in reply, as
studiously grave as though he had been conscious of what he was saying.
"The others--they can take care of themselves. They are wrong ones
together. But Big Louie is only a child--but he won't mind--he'll
understand----"
She thought then that he had recognized her; she dared to hope that his
brain was clearing. But when the team went forward, nervously
unmanageable at first, then more decorous as they drew away from him
who would never feed them brown sugar again, the man beside her only
persisted vacantly with his topic.
"Big Louie never could find his way alone," he mused, "and that is
strange, too, for he was born in these hills. He was always getting
lost----" And with that he must not desert Louie! She had even more
trouble with him this time. "He will lose his head," he expostulated
mildly--his old, unfailing attitude of gentleness toward her. "He will
lose his head and waste his strength in running from things which do
not exist."
"Big Louie will find his way this time." She was whimpering again in
her helplessness. "He is--already home."
There she learned that her voice could control him when her arms
availed not at all against even his dead weight. And so she talked as
steadily as she was able while she drove. Once he lurched against her;
when he pulled himself together he was so sanely apologetic of a sudden
that she searched his face with hungry eyes. But he was talking now to
himself.
"I must not touch her!" he stated firmly. And then, drearily: "I am
sick. . . . I have never been so sick--before."
With that he subsided, but his silence was far more dreadful than his
wanderings had been; and as fast as she dared she pushed the heavy team
on, with Ragtime following behind like a dog. He slipped back against
her almost immediately, and this time he had not the strength with
which to apologize nor lift himself erect. With his head heavy in the
hollow of her arm, they came at length to the open pasture hills; they
topped the rise and faced the loops on loops of highway that ran down
to Morrison at the river-edge. And so she brought him home. At the
sight of his "city" she sobbed aloud, but he, sunken and slack, was
conscious neither of distance covered nor change of country. He
climbed down from the seat, however, in response to her urgings, when
the team halted before Caleb Hunter's white-columned house--he turned
and started stubbornly back the way they had come.
She ran after him and clung to his arm.
"You promised that you would come back to me," she cried up at him.
"Oh, you cannot leave me now!"
That halted him, momentarily.
"I must go back to my bridge," he explained, plainly nonplussed. "But
then I'll surely come back to you."
She pleaded with him--raged at him.
"I must go back to my bridge," he reiterated gruffly now.
Her arms went around him in desperation, and then, with one swing, he
had swept her yards away, reeling before his blazing wrath.
"Take your fingers from my eyes, Harrigan," he gasped in sudden agony.
"I am going to kill you now--and _she_ is looking on!"
The girl was afraid of him; she dared not try to hold him. She
screamed wildly for help, and screamed again. And he had gone on, and
wavered and crashed over upon his face, when Caleb Hunter and her
father came running heavily across the lawn in answer to her shrieks.
Between them they lifted him and carried him into the house.