IT is a well-worn, yet none the less true saying that every human life
is a chain of causes and effects; each effect a cause, and each cause
an effect, stretching back to an unimagined and unimaginable First
Cause; and on and on into endless, undreamed of vistas of the future.
Yet the realization of this vague, yet tremendous fact comes but seldom
even to the thoughtful mind, so busy are we forging link on link of the
chain which binds us alike to past and future.
Barbara Preston, stopping aimlessly to read the notice of an auction
of farm stock and household furniture advertised to take place in a
neighboring township, could not guess that the trivial impulse that
stayed her feet by the big chestnut at the roadside linked itself with
events already slowly shaping in her future. The notice was printed in
bold red letters on a buff background, calculated to seize and hold the
eye of the passerby, and set forth the fact that one Thomas Bellows,
Auctioneer, would, on the twenty-fifth day of April, sell to the
highest bidder, on the premises of the owner, four milch cows, three
farm horses, and sixty-four sheep. Also one young carriage horse, well
broken, sound, kind, and willing. Other items relating to household
gear and poultry followed, set down in due order of their relative
importance.
The red letters on the buff ground passed into Barbara’s eyes—as
indeed they were purposefully intended—and impressed themselves on her
memory. She considered them half angrily as she pursued her way to
the post-office, picturing to herself the day when Thomas Bellows or
another, would noisily exploit the contents of her own well-loved home.
There was little there to bring money, and the mortgage covered stock
and furniture as well as the land itself. She had learned this from a
curt letter addressed to her by Stephen Jarvis in reply to questions of
her own as concisely put.
Apart from her half-dazed recollection of the rainy afternoon a week
since, their relations as ruthless creditor and hopeless debtor
appeared to be unchanged. During the interval she had gone doggedly
about her self-imposed labors, rising in the faint light of dawn to set
strawberry and lettuce plants, wintered carefully on the south side of
the big barns, with the vague unreasoning hope that somehow or other
she might be permitted to reap the fruit of her toil. Between times
she was casting about for another home and other modes of livelihood
for herself and Jimmy. It would be difficult, if not impossible, she
was told, to secure a position to teach. Only normal-school graduates
stood any chance of preferment, and there appeared to be no prospect
of a vacancy of any kind before fall. To become a dressmaker’s
apprentice was possible; but the woman who provided the opportunity
offered instruction for the first six months in lieu of wages. And
obviously one could not live on information alone, however valuable.
Household servants were always in brisk demand, she had been reminded;
but pride of race wrestled with the untold humiliation of such a lot.
Besides, there was Jimmy. Her heart grew faint at the thought of the
loving, carefully-shielded child in the cold shelter of an “asylum” or
the bound property of some shrewd farmer, an investment involving a
grudging expenditure of coarse food and scanty, insufficient clothing
and forced to yield an ever-increasing increment of labor. Oh, life was
cruel at its best. Her flesh and her soul cried out at the thought of
what its worst might be. If there was a way of escape, why not accept
it?
She was turning these things wearily over in her mind when the quick
whir of wheels sounded at her back. She stepped aside to allow the
vehicle to pass, without raising her eyes.
A harsh, domineering voice, the sort of voice to be slavishly obeyed,
ordered the horse to stand still.
She looked up quickly to meet the eager gaze of the man who was in her
thoughts. A vivid color, of which she was angrily conscious, rose to
her forehead. She stammered some sort of greeting, her eyes drooping
before the dominant insistence in his.
“I was just on my way to your house,” he said.
His voice, as well as his eyes, was eager, insistent.
“Get in, won’t you, and ride with me? I have something to say to you.”
The girl hesitated, her cheeks paling. He sprang to the ground,
speaking sharply to his young, restive horse.
“Allow me to assist you,” he said, with a politeness wholly unfamiliar
to Barbara.
She gave him an astonished look, which he interpreted correctly, with
the acumen of a trained politician.
“You have been thinking that I was exceedingly abrupt—even rude, in
the way I spoke to you the other day,” he said, as he took her firmly
by the hand and lifted her to a seat in the vehicle which was “dreaded
more’n pison snakes” by the delinquent debtors in the countryside,
according to Peg Morrison.
He bent to look keenly into her face, as he seated himself at her side.
“Isn’t that so,—Barbara?”
At the sound of her name in that new, strange voice of his the girl
started and almost shivered. She was beginning to be afraid of
herself—this no less new and strange self, who was tired of being poor
and hardworked and anxious, and who longed after comfort and ease and
affection of some strong, compelling sort. She lifted her eyes to his.
“I have been thinking many things,” she murmured, “since—since you——”
He laughed under his breath.
“Yes; and you have been doing some things, too,” he said. “I heard
you were looking for a place to teach, and—it didn’t encourage me to
suppose that you were thinking very favorably of what I proposed. Did
you secure a position?”
“N-o, I didn’t,” she acknowledged. She hesitated visibly, then added,
“They told me you were a school commissioner, and that I must apply to
you.”
“Why didn’t you apply to me?” he wanted to know. “Didn’t you think
I would be a good sort of person to help you in your desire for
independence?”
“I didn’t ask you,” she said, “because——”
“Well?” he questioned sharply. “You didn’t ask me for help because——”
“How could I?” she demanded, with a spirited lift of her head. “I asked
you for help before and you refused.”
He looked at her with piercing keenness.
“Did I?” he said gravely. “Well, I offered you—a position. You haven’t
forgotten, have you?”
Barbara’s heart beat suffocatingly fast. His eyes were on her face,
compelling her, mastering her.
“Would you—Could I take care of Jimmy just the same?” she asked, in a
muffled voice.
He gave his horse a sharp cut with the whip before he answered.
“I can’t see why you should bring the boy into our affairs,” he said
coldly. “But he can live with us—for the present, if you like. Then
there is the Preston farm; as I’ve already told you, you may do as you
like with it.”
Barbara looked mistily away over the fields past which they were
driving, the sound of meadow-larks, calling and answering, and the soft
jubilant gurgle of a bluebird on a nearer fence-rail reaching her like
vaguely reproachful voices out of a dead past. Then as now had the
meadow-larks called “Sweet! oh, my sweet!”—in the one spring-time when
David Whitcomb loved her.
“I shall have to—to think,” she murmured. “I am afraid——”
“Of what?” he demanded. “Of me?”
She did not answer, and again he cut the horse impatiently with his
keen whip-lash, holding the spirited creature with a strong grasp on
the reins as he did so.
“Well,” he said, after a long silence, “I’m afraid I can’t make myself
over, even for you. But I’ll tell you something, my girl, there are
worse men in the world than Stephen Jarvis, and perhaps you’ll fall in
with some of ’em, if you turn me down. Look at me, will you?”
Unwillingly she turned her face to his.
“I shall not take a silly _no_ for an answer,” he said under his
breath. “I never have, and I shan’t begin with you. I need you, and you
need me.”
His eyes held her powerfully.
“Do you love another man?”
“No,” said Barbara faintly. She could not bring herself to uncover her
one dead love before those pitiless eyes, while the meadow-larks were
calling and answering with such piercing sweetness. David Whitcomb was
dead. If she had ever loved him it was as another self in a dim past,
growing ever dimmer.
“Then,” said the Honorable Stephen Jarvis quietly, “you will marry me.”
He broke into a short laugh. “Do you know I couldn’t bear to think of
your loving another man? Is that being in love? Tell me, Barbara.”
He laughed again softly, as he bent to peer into her averted face. She
felt herself yielding, her weak hold on past and future loosening.
She did not answer, but her red mouth quivered.
He experienced a sudden thrilling desire to touch the fresh innocent
lips with his.
“It would be curious,” he murmured unsteadily, “if I should learn what
love is for the first time. Shall I tell you how old I am, Barbara?”
She looked up at him without curiosity.
“Well, I’m thirty-seven; and I’ve never loved any woman—I have never
loved anything, except money and success. But now—Barbara!”
He bent toward her, his cold eyes alive with passion.
“No—no!” she cried, shrinking from him in sudden terror.
His face stiffened into its accustomed mask.
“You’re thinking I’ve waited too long,” he said bitterly, and the
curling lash stung the bay horse in the flank.
Neither spoke again while the wheels spun dizzily along over the mile
of road which brought them to the big stone gate-posts of the Preston
farm.
He drew up his foaming horse sharply.
“I won’t come in,” he said, “if you’ll get out here.”
She felt herself vaguely humiliated as she stepped down from the high
vehicle without assistance.
“Stop!” he ordered as she passed quickly inside, as if in haste to gain
shelter.
She looked up at him uncertainly, her eyes wide with an emotion akin to
terror.
“I shall not humiliate myself by coaxing or cajoling you,” he said
haughtily. “You are best left alone for the present.”
He lifted his hat with a sweeping bow, and the red-wheeled buggy dashed
away.
Barbara drew a long, struggling sigh. She felt curiously light and
free, as if she had made a breathless escape from some grasping hand,
outstretched to seize her.
The sight of Jimmy running swiftly down the driveway toward her
heightened the sensation to almost passionate relief.
“Hello, Barb’ra!” shouted the little boy. “I came home from school, an’
you wasn’t here. An’ you can’t guess what I’ve got for you!”
The child’s face, glowing rosily with health and mischief, was uplifted
to hers. She stooped and kissed it tenderly.
“What have you got for me, Jimmy?”
“Guess!”
“I can’t guess,” she answered soberly. “You’ll have to tell me.”
“You ain’t cross wiv me, are you, Barb’ra?”
“No, dear, of course I’m not. Why should I be cross? Why, it—it’s a
letter! Where did you get it, Jimmy?”
“It’s the one I lost,” said the child, puckering up his chin
disappointedly. “I fought you’d be glad. Peg found it. He said he
’membered the wind was blowin’ that day; so he looked all along the
road on bof sides, an’ he found it right under a bush.”
Barbara hastily tore the sodden envelope apart. Her fingers trembled as
she unfolded the large stained sheet.
“Is it all spoiled?” asked Jimmy anxiously. “Can’t you read it?”