THERE is that which works secretly (call it what you will), everywhere
transmuting the ugly into the beautiful, the seeming evil into
acknowledged good, the mean and worthless into the rare and precious;
moving upon the face of vasty deeps, upon inchoate planets; toiling
in unknowable abysses, whirling in star-dust and nebulæ, and no less
in the veiled darkness of the holiest place—the soul of man. And
here, indeed, this pervasive life principle, this informing Mind,
this toiling servant of universes and men (call it what you will),
seeks chiefly to manifest its supernal powers. Give it entrance in any
fashion; open to it the smallest crevice; entertain its mysterious
presence ever so briefly, and in that lodgment it begins at once its
wonder-working transmutations. For observe: this unseen, and often
unsuspected, worker takes of the common things of life, of its base
and ignoble things and turns them into shapes of imperishable beauty.
And observe, also: this is accomplished without tumult of manufacture;
neither smoke of his burning furnace, nor clang of hammer, nor noise
of breaking stone is heard, though one listen with the fine ear of
the magician in the fable. And observe for a third time (for all of
this has to do with the tale that is told): that the blind desire of
the one who is thus wrought upon in some mysterious fashion relates
itself to the will of Him who works, so that they are in a way one and
indissoluble. For such is the law of growth in all the universe, and
such will it ever be.
To Stephen Jarvis, pursuing to all outward appearance the even tenor
of a way long trodden, came slight intimation of the changes in
himself—the self deep submerged beneath the surface of everyday life.
He still loaned money on bond and mortgage, exacting, as was his
custom, the highest legal rate of interest. As in the past, he looked
sharply after his investments, foreclosing when foreclosure had become
due and inevitable, and manipulating such conservative purchases of
stocks and bonds as his accumulating capital appeared to require. He
was conscious of but one thing, and that was that these procedures
no longer afforded him pleasure. They were, on the contrary, in the
nature of labor. After a little, the labor became grinding in its
demands upon him. Gradually, too, he found that the heavy looks and
sad faces of certain of his debtors had the power to hurt him. One day
he actually yielded to the importunities of a poor widow, not openly,
indeed, but through a trusted agent of his, restoring to her the home
she had lost. Once indulged, this folly (as he called it), grew upon
him stealthily. More and more frequently he found himself giving; still
secretly, because in his mind giving still appeared to him a despicable
weakness. Yet he continued to impart (where he must) with that keen
discrimination and sound judgment which had always distinguished his
operations in finance. As yet no one suspected him. To have incurred
a suspicion of benevolence would have shamed him little less than a
well-founded conjecture of crime on the part of those who had always
known him.
Nevertheless, he who runs may read the legible handwriting of God
on the faces of men. The cold, immobile features of the grasping
money-getter changed subtly, as was indeed inevitable, into something
more human; his eyes looked out from beneath his sternly modelled brows
as keenly as ever, yet in their very penetration there was a veiled
light not visible before.
Perhaps the creature who might have told the most unbelievable story
of the change in Stephen Jarvis was his horse. He no longer drove
under the lash and with the cowardly curb-bit. He simply did not care
any longer for the sensation afforded by beating down an inferior
intelligence with his own brute force. No other reason for this
particular change in his habits had as yet occurred to him. He still
used fast horses; but he ceased to abuse them.
Nearly two months had elapsed since his last visit to the Preston farm.
On that occasion he had entreated Barbara not to shame him before the
crowd assembled for the auction; and she had refused to listen. Then he
had gone away. Something of what followed had been repeated to him. And
since he had learned of the return of David Whitcomb from the West; of
his spectacular part in the bidding, and of his subsequent visits to
the farm.
It was of David he was thinking as he drove along the country roads on
a day in early August. The fields were yellowing to the harvest and a
great peace lay upon the face of Nature, veiled lightly with the long
continued heat. When, therefore, he overtook the object of his thoughts
walking along the dusty road with every appearance of discomfort, he
drew up his horse and spoke to him.
“I haven’t seen you to speak with you, since your return, Mr.
Whitcomb,” he said civilly. “Won’t you get in and ride with me? I shall
be glad to—talk with you.”
David stared with undisguised astonishment; then a derisive gleam shone
in his blue eyes.
“Why—er—certainly, Mr. Jarvis,” he said, and sprang in and seated
himself with cool assurance. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask
you for a ride,” he went on, “but I’m not sorry you offered to give me
a lift. It’s deucedly unpleasant walking.”
Jarvis met his inquiring look gravely.
“You are making quite a stay in the East,” he said. “Do you mean to
settle here?”
The quick blood rose in David’s face.
“I haven’t made up my mind,” he said. “I’m—er—just looking around a
bit.”
Jarvis was silent, casting about in his mind for a suitable opening for
what he wished to say.
David spared him the trouble. With his usual sensitiveness to the moods
of his companions—a sensitiveness which at times amounted almost to
divination—he looked sidewise at Jarvis, a smile wrinkling the corners
of his eyes.
“I’ve been to see Miss Preston,” he said confidentially, “at the farm.”
“Yes?” Jarvis observed non-committally.
“You know Miss Preston, I believe?” said David.
Jarvis hesitated.
“I have had business relations with Miss Preston,” he said coolly. He
was beginning to feel an exceeding dislike of the well-dressed, smiling
young man at his side.
“Yes,” agreed David, shrugging his shoulders. “she’s mentioned the fact
to me.”
Jarvis tightened his grasp on the reins after his old choleric fashion,
and the mare leaped forward as if expecting the cut of the ready lash.
“I understand Miss Preston has been relieved of—her anxieties
somewhat,” he said evenly. “I—was glad to know it.”
David’s lip curled.
“Indeed!” he syllabled with a touch of insolence. “Well, I’ve no doubt
Barbara—Miss Preston—will be duly grateful, when—er—I mention the fact
of your interest in her affairs.”
“You’ll not mention it, I hope,” Jarvis said. After a brief silence he
added, “You understand me, of course.”
“Well, no,” drawled David. “I don’t believe I do.”
He looked whimsically at Jarvis, as if expecting further elucidation.
But the older man was paying strict attention to his horse, his lips
set in forbidding lines.
David yielded to one of his sudden impulses.
“Of course,” he burst out; “you won’t care; you’ve got your money out
of it; but Barbara is deucedly unhappy.”
“Ah?”
Jarvis’s note of interrogation was barely audible.
“You know, I suppose, for it’s become town-talk long ago, that somebody
bid her in—a thundering shame I call it—and then failed to show up.
She considers herself bound, since she used the money—or part of it.
I’d like mighty well to get hold of the person, male or female, who’s
skulking behind the contract—as she persists in regarding it.”
“Why? What’s wrong with the transaction?”
Jarvis’s tone asked for information merely, but David flashed a
suspicious look at him.
“Do you know anything about it?” he demanded.
“Do I—know anything about Miss Preston’s affairs?” echoed Jarvis.
“Isn’t that a singular question for you to put to me?”
“It would be, if I hadn’t run every possible scent to earth already. I
want to find the fellow.”
“For what purpose?” queried Jarvis, leaning forward to watch the even
play of his mare’s hoofs.
“I want to pay him back and free the girl. It’s a damned outrage to
hold a woman bound in this sneaking, secret fashion. It doesn’t give
either of us any show.”
Jarvis appeared to ponder this statement in silence for a while.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, at last.
“There’s no ‘perhaps’ about it,” said David excitedly. “Of course
I’m right! Here I’ve been hanging about for months, waiting for the
person—whoever it is—to show up. I’m ready to settle the business by
paying back the money.”
He met the other’s sharply inquiring look with a boastful grimace.
“I can do it; don’t make any mistake on that score!”
“And after you’ve made the transfer; what then?”
Jarvis’s tone was icy; his eyes searched the handsome, flushed face at
his side mercilessly.
David met his gaze readily enough.
“Why,” he blustered, “you may as well know: I intend to marry Barbara.
I’d do it, anyway; contract or no contract, and let that damned dog
in the manger gnaw his bone till he’s tired of it; only Barbara—Miss
Preston—objects. She’s like all women—sticks at a trifle, and yet is
ready to swallow the earth, if you give ’em a chance.”
“Miss Preston doubtless supposes that her honor is involved. I can
conceive that she might do so. A trifle, I believe you called it. And
if you——”
“Oh, come; what’s the use of talking like that!” David interrupted
impatiently. “I’m sick of all that sort of nonsense.” He pulled his hat
over his eyes and stared morosely at the landscape. “If I didn’t care
as much about the girl as I do, I’d cut the whole thing and go west
again. This is no place for a man like me.”
“I’m disposed to agree with you,” observed Jarvis calmly. “Shall I set
you down here?”
David recognized his surroundings with a start. They had reached the
outskirts of the village, and Jarvis had stopped his horse in front of
his own house.
“Oh, I may as well get out here, I suppose,” he said sullenly.
He turned and lifted his hat to Jarvis, with a sweeping bow.
“Much obliged for the delightful ride,” he said, with a sneering upward
quirk of the mouth.
Jarvis sat motionless in his carriage watching the easy swing of the
arrogantly youthful figure, as it passed down the street. He saw David
go in at the front entrance of the Barford Eagle, yet still he sat
silent, his brows drawn over brooding eyes.
His man, lounging in front of the stables, caught sight of the waiting
equipage, and hurried down the driveway.
“Any orders, sir?” he asked. “Shall I take the horse, sir?”
Jarvis glanced at the man, something of his old irritability flaring up
in his look.
“No,” he said shortly. “I’m not coming in now.”
He spoke sharply to his horse, turned abruptly, and drove rapidly away,
past the pollarded willows, over the echoing bridge, and on into the
country road beyond, muffled with the accumulated dust of a rainless
midsummer. Presently he reached and passed the stone gateway of the
Preston farm, and its orchards laden with unripe fruit. He looked at
both with the sombre, unseeing intentness of a man who is at war with
his deeper instincts.
He had been prepared, he supposed, to judge Whitcomb fairly; but
his late brief interview with his successful rival had left him
bitterly antagonistic to the younger man. David’s very physical beauty
infuriated him. He recalled the level glances of his blue eyes,
the curve of his lips, the carriage of his handsome head upon his
broad shoulders, with a sense of blind, barbaric anger. His frequent
references to Barbara, his cool assumption of triumph, his braggart
self-assertion, his open disdain of concealment—all were abhorrent,
intolerable to Jarvis. But none the less, he fought with and subdued
himself.
“I am unjust,” he told himself flatly, “because I am jealous.”
And he despised himself the more, because recognizing the patent fact
he still hated David; still longed to fling him out of his path as
he had flung many a stronger man in the past. For the first time in
all the years of his life he had become dimly aware of the beauty of
self-sacrifice, and of its relations to a pure and true affection. Even
while the primal man within foamed under his iron grip, he compelled
himself to think tenderly of Barbara, of her loveless youth, of her
loneliness, of her heroism. Then he remembered with shame his own
persecutions of her woman’s weakness; for so it had come to look to him
now. He recalled his brutal insistence, his threats, his unrelenting
hardness, sparing himself in nothing, compelling his memory to flash
before him every picture which contained them both.
He had travelled many miles before he roused to a realization of the
lateness of the hour. The long summer twilight had fallen, like a
roseate veil, over the rich landscape; the shadows had disappeared with
the sun, and the great disk of a silver moon swam in the rosy light
reflected from the sunset, which by now burned in crimson and amber
splendors behind the misty purple of the hills.
His horse appeared jaded and weary, and Jarvis recalled vaguely that
he had been driving at his old furious rate of speed. He leaned back
against the cushions with a sigh, conscious of his own exceeding
weariness, and allowed the mare to take her own gait. Out of the
seething alembic of his thoughts had crystallized a single definite
resolution. He would deal with Whitcomb as that son of God who was
called Satan was permitted to deal with Job, and later with the
recalcitrant apostle. He would sift David as wheat in the close-meshed
sieve of his own love for Barbara. He would scrutinize his past, he
would examine his present; he would hold him under the lens of purity,
of probity, of honor. If Whitcomb stood the test, Jarvis swore by all
that he held holy that he would stand back and allow him to marry the
woman both loved. If not,—his strong fingers unconsciously tightened on
the reins, and the obedient mare quickened her pace.
There was a light twinkling among the dark trees when at last Jarvis
again passed the big apple-farm. He got down from his buggy, fastened
the horse to a tree, and walked quietly toward the house. The long
French windows stood open to the breeze, and within the lamp-lighted
room Jarvis caught sight of Barbara. She was sitting close to the table
reading aloud; at her side, leaning his yellow head against her knee,
sat Jimmy, serious and intent. Barbara’s pleasant voice rang out in the
stillness:
“Through all the pleasant meadow-side
The grass grew shoulder high,
Till the shining scythes went far and wide
And cut it down to dry.”
“That’s haying,” observed Jimmy, with satisfaction. “Ours is all in the
barn now.”
“Yes,” said Barbara, “listen:
“Those green and sweetly smelling crops
They led in wagons home;
And they piled them here in mountain tops
For mountaineers to roam.
O, what a joy to clamber there,
O, what a place for play,
With the sweet, the dim, the dusty air,
The happy hills of hay!”
Jarvis stepped boldly to the piazza, and tapped on the open sash.
“I guess it’s David!” he heard the child say joyously. And saw the
quick blush that rose to Barbara’s cheek.
The blood sprang to his own temples and hammered furiously there for
an instant as he looked at her in her diaphanous white dress. Then he
entered at her quiet bidding.
“I was passing, and it occurred to me to stop, and—see you,” he said
awkwardly.
Jimmy had retreated behind his sister’s chair and was gazing at him
with frowning intentness. Manifestly the child was disappointed.
Whitcomb would fit into the scene far better than himself, Jarvis was
forced to acknowledge. He saw the wonderment in Barbara’s eyes, and
mingled with it he fancied he could detect cold dislike and fear.
“You were reading,” he said, his eyes lingering on the hands which held
the thin blue volume. “Won’t you——” He hesitated; then went on boldly:
“Don’t stop because I am here.”
She would have turned over the leaves and read other pretty trifles if
it had been David instead of himself, he thought bitterly. He waited
for a cold refusal.
“You wouldn’t like ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses,’” Jimmy said
unexpectedly. He had not removed his inquiring brown eyes from Jarvis’s
face. Something that he saw there emboldened him. “It’s for little
boys, littler than I am; but I like it.”
Jarvis smiled, the singular smile new to his lips and of which he was
not at all aware, any more than of the elemental changes in himself.
“Perhaps I’d like it, too,” he said. “Nobody ever reads out loud to me.”
“Read the one about the wind, Barb’ra,” urged Jimmy. “The wind and the
kites. I like that.”
Barbara turned over the pages slowly.
“Shall I?” she asked Jarvis.
Her eyes lingered irresolutely on his face for an instant. It was
evident that she was wondering at the sight of him there, pale and
grave, but with an unfamiliar gentleness in his eyes and about his
unsmiling lips.
“If you will,” he said.
Read Barbara:
“I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies’ skirts across the grass—
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid,
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all—
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!”
Her voice, flowing on like a brook over pebbles, fell to a sudden
silence, as the wind of which she had been reading entered with a
sudden rush, veering the yellow flame of the lamp to one side.
Jimmy laughed joyously.
“It’s come in here,” he said, turning a sleepily roguish face upon
Jarvis, “to hear what you’re saying, Barb’ra.”
She closed the book and laid it quietly upon the table.
“You must go to bed now, Jimmy,” she said.
The little boy whispered in her ear, his hands clasped about her
neck. Her arm stole about his small body as she bent her head to
listen. Jarvis watched the two hungrily—the child and the woman, and
the eternal, unfading beauty of the picture smote him with almost
intolerable poignancy. All that was best in life he had missed,
blunderingly, blindly, and for what?
“I go to bed all by myself now,” the little boy said proudly.
He walked toward the door; then turned, hesitated, and flung himself
upon Barbara.
“I guess I’d better kiss you good-night, Barb’ra,” he cried. “Just
think, I pretty near forgot!”
He beamed shyly upon Jarvis.
“Shall I shake hands with you?” he inquired, with a friendly little
smile. “I b’lieve I’d like to.”
Jarvis held out his hand and Jimmy laid his own in it gravely. Barbara
stirred uneasily in her chair.
“Jimmy, dear!” she murmured softly, deprecatingly.
“I never s’posed I’d be shakin’ hands wiv you,” the child went on
calmly. “Did you drive that short-tailed horse?”
“Yes,” said Jarvis, something swelling strangely within him as he
looked down into the upturned face of the child, with its candid brown
eyes.
“What made you cut his tail off?” demanded Jimmy. “Peg says it’s a mean
trick to cut off horses’ tails, ’cause they need their tails to brush
off the flies.”
“Jimmy!” called Barbara again, her face crimsoning.
“I didn’t cut it off,” Jarvis replied, with every evidence of
sincerity. “I bought the horse just that way. I don’t like it myself.”
He glanced at Barbara with a quiet smile.
“I’m afraid I’m very much in the way,” he said. “But I wanted to talk
with you—on a matter of some importance.”