FOR what reason Constance, left alone in the house of the dead, went
softly from the lighted room to kneel at the bedside of the sleeping
children in the lean-to beyond--to kneel with her face in her hands and
her heart swelling with emotions too great for any outlet save that
of sorrowful beseechings,--let those adjudge who have passed in some
crucial moment from loss to gain, and back to loss again. There was
a pitiful heart cry in the prayer for help because she knew now that
love, mighty and unreasoning, must be reckoned with in every future
thought of this man; love heedless of consequences, clinging first to
an imagined ideal, and now to the sorrowful wreck of that ideal; love
lashed into being, it may be, by the very whip of shame, acknowledged
only to be chained and dungeoned in the Castle of Despair, but alive
and pleading, and promising yet to live and plead though hope were dead.
It was thus that Margaret found her an hour later; and in the darkness
of the little room the true-hearted Irish girl knelt beside her saint,
with her strong arms around the weeping one, and a sob of precious
sympathy in the outpouring of words.
"There now--there now, Miss Constance! is it kneeling here and crying
for these poor left ones that you are? Sure it's the Holy Virgin
herself that'll be mothering them, and the likes of them. And Owen'll
be doing his part, too. It's a changed man he is."
Constance shook her head. She was too sincere to let the lesser reason
stand for the greater, even with Margaret.
"I do grieve for them, Margaret; but--but it isn't that."
"It isn't that, do you say? Then I know full well what it is, and it's
the truth I'm going to tell you, Miss Constance, for all the promisings
he made me give him. 'Tis Mr. Jeffard's money that's to go for the
funeral, and it was him left it with me to give to Owen. He told me
you'd not take it from him, and 'twas his own free gift. Ever since he
came back he's been giving me money for the poor ones, and making me
swear never to tell you; but it was for your sweet sake, Miss Connie,
and not for mine. I'd want to die if you didn't believe that."
"Oh, Margaret! are you telling me the truth? I do so want to believe
it!"
Margaret rose and drew her confessor to the half-open door; to the
bedside of the sheeted one.
"A little while ago she was alive and talking to you, Miss Constance,
and you believed her because you knew she was going fast. If I'd be
like that, I'd tell you the same."
"I believe you, Margaret--I do believe you; and, oh, I'm _so_ thankful!
It would break my heart to have you go back now!"
"Don't you be worrying for me. Didn't I say once that the devil might
fly away with me, but I'd not live to leave him have the good of it?
When that time comes, Miss Constance, it's another dead woman you'll be
crying over. And now you'll go home and take your rest; the good old
father is waiting on the doorstep for you."
Even with his daughter, Stephen Elliott was the most reticent of men;
and on the little journey up the river front and across the viaduct he
plodded along in silence beside her, waiting for her to speak if she
had anything to say. Constance had a heart full to overflowing, but not
of the things which lend themselves to speech with any father; and when
she broke the silence it was in self-defense, and on the side of the
commonplace.
"Have you decided yet where you will go?" she asked, knowing that the
arrangements for the prospecting trip were all but completed.
"N--no, not exactly. Except that I never have gone with the rush, and I
don't mean to this time. There's some pretty promising country around
up back of Dick's mountain, and I've been thinking of that."
"I wish you would go into the Bonanza district," she said. "If I'm to
stay with Dick and Myra, it will be a comfort to know that you are not
very far away."
The old man plodded another square before he succeeded in casting his
thought into words.
"I was wondering if that wasn't the reason why I want to go there. I'm
not letting on to anybody about it, but I'm getting sort of old and
trembly, Connie; and you're about all I have left."
She slipped her arm an inch or two farther through his. "Must it be,
poppa? Can't we get along without it? I'll be glad to live like the
poorest of them, if we can only be together."
"I know; you're a good daughter to me, Connie, and you'd go into the
hospital on Dr. Gordon's offer to-morrow, if I'd say the word. But I
think the last strike I made rather spoiled me. I got sort of used to
the flesh-pots, and I haven't got over feeling for my check-book yet. I
guess I'll have to try it once more before we go on the county."
She would have said more had there been more to say. But her arguments
had all been exhausted when the prospecting fever had set in, and
she could only send him forth with words of heartening and a brave
God-speed.
"I'm not going to put things in the way," she said; "but I'd go with
you and help dig, if you'd let me. The next best thing will be to have
you somewhere within reach, and I shall be comforted if you can manage
to keep Topeka Mountain in sight. But you won't."
"Yes, I will, daughter; the string pulls about as hard at my end as
it does at yours, and I'll tell you what I'll do. The gulches that I
had in mind are all up at the head of Myriad Creek, and I'll ship the
'stake' to Dick, and make the Myriad a sort of outfitting camp. How
will that strike you?"
"That will be fine," she said; adding, in an upflash of the old gayety:
"and when you've located your claim, Myra and I will come and turn the
windlass for you."
They were climbing the stairs to the darkened suite on the third floor,
and at the door Constance found a telegraph messenger trying to pin
a non-delivery notice to the panel. She signed his blank by the hall
light, and read the message while her father was unlocking the door and
lighting the lamp.
"It is from Myra," she explained; "and it's good news and bad. Do you
remember what Dick was telling us the other evening about his drunken
blacksmith?"
"The fellow that went into the blast-choke after the dead man?"
"Yes. He is down with mountain fever, and Myra says nothing but good
nursing will save him. Dick has got his story out of him at last; he is
Margaret Gannon's father."
"Humph! what a little world this is! I suppose you will send Margaret
right away?"
"I shall go with her to-morrow morning. I'll tell Dick what you are
going to do, and you can come when you are ready."
The old man nodded acquiescence. "It'll be better for you to go along;
she'll be all broke up. Want me to go and wire Dick?"
"If you will. I should have asked the boy to wait, but he was gone
before I had opened the envelope. Tell Dick to keep him alive at any
cost, and that we'll be there to-morrow evening."
When her father was gone, Constance sat down to piece out the
discoveries, comforting and harrowing, of the foregone hour, and to
set them over against each other in a field which was as yet too near
to be retrospective. She tried to stand aside for herself, and to see
and consider only those to whom her heart went out in loving compassion
and sympathy; but it was inevitable that she should finally come to a
re-reading of the letter taken from its hiding-place in the photograph
frame. She dwelt upon it with a soft flush spreading slowly from neck
to cheek, reading it twice and yet once again before she laid it in the
little wall-pocket of a grate and touched a match to it.
"For his sake and for mine," she said softly, as she watched it shrivel
and blacken in the flame. "That is what I must do--burn my ships so
that I can't go back."
The charred wraith of the letter went up the chimney in the expiring
gasp of the flame, and there was the sound of a familiar step in the
corridor. She went quickly to open the door for the late visitor. It
was Lansdale, come to say what must be said on the eve of parting, and
to ask for his answer to a conditional plea made in a moment when the
consumptive's optimism had carried him off his feet.