THE periods of the scene-shifter, in life as in life's mimicking on any
stage, have fallen into disesteem. In any flight of fancy or plodding
journey of fact these are flat countries to be traversed; interregnums
which, however replete with incident for the actors themselves,
are deemed alike unworthy of the playwright's outworking or the
chronicler's recording. To the audience waiting beyond the footlights
these are mere breathing spaces of music-hastened minutes standing
for whatever lapses of days, weeks or months the story of the play
involves; but for the scene-shifter they are gaps toil-filled, with
fierce strivings and wrestlings and doughty compellings of the animate
and inanimate perversities.
None the less, for the toiler behind the scenes there are
compensations, for the audience, the _entr'acte_ is a solution
of continuity, more or less skillfully bridged, according to the
playwright's gift; but the worker of transformations knows no break in
the action. For him the story of the play is complete, marching evenly
to its climax through spoken line and drop-curtained interregnum.
The curtain has rung down upon an interior in an apartment house.
It is to rise upon a flashlight picture of a summer night scene in
a mountain-girt valley. The walls of the homelike interior vanish,
and in their stead dim reaches of the forest-clad mountains suggest
themselves. A stream tumbles over the boulders in its bed with a hollow
roar hinting at canyoned plungings above; and on the margin of it a
quaking aspen blinks its many-lidded eyes in the light of a camp fire.
Against the pillared background of forest, primeval firs whose sombre
greens become murky black in the firelight, a campers' wagon is drawn
up; and the picket pins of the grazing horses are driven in a grass
grown extension of the glade to the right. There is a silken whisper
abroad in the night, rising and falling upon the sound waves of the
tumbling stream: the voices of the trees as they call to each other in
the night wind pouring softly down from the sky-pitched peaks.
The scene is set and the actors are in their places. They are two men
clad in flannel shirts and brown duck overalls and shooting-coats. One
of them is bearded and bronzed, with the well-knit figure of conscious
strength. The other is of slighter frame, and on his clean-shaven face
the prolonged holiday in the open is but now beginning to impress the
stamp of returning health and vigor. The bearded man is on his back
beside the fire, with his clasped hands for a pillow and an extinct
pipe between his teeth. The clean-shaven one is propped against the
bole of a tree; his eyes are closed, and his pipe has slipped from his
fingers.
A brand falls into the glowing mass of embers, and the sparks fly
upward in a crackling shower. It is the prompter's call-bell. The man
reclining at the tree-foot opens his eyes, and the bearded one sits up
and feels mechanically for the tobacco pouch.
"Here it is," says Lansdale. "I was just about to fill up again when
the realities slipped away. It's astonishing how one can sleep overtime
in these upper levels."
The athletic one rises and stretches till his joints crack. "Been
asleep, have you? So have I. There's no opiate in the world like a
day's tramping in the altitudes. Freshen you up any?"
"As to body, yes. But I've had a curious dream--if it were a dream."
Silence while the sob of the river rises and falls on the night
wind, and then a half-hesitant query. "Jeffard, do you believe in
presentiments?"
The bearded one is on his knees before the fire, pressing a live coal
into the bowl of his pipe, and the answer is delayed.
"I don't know whether I do or not; I have never had one."
"But you have known of others having them, haven't you?"
"Of one other: but in that instance it was foreknowledge rather than a
foreboding. The presentiment should have been mine; and I had none."
"Would you mind telling me about it?"
"No. It was while I was making the survey for a logging railway in
Quebec. I expected to be out all summer, but in the middle of it the
company called a halt and I went home. I hadn't wired or written, but
when I reached Hinsdale my father was at the station to meet me. For
three days my mother had been insisting that I would come, and to quiet
her they had been meeting the trains. She died the next evening."
"And you had no premonition?"
"None whatever. For a month or more I had been beyond the reach of the
mails; and I had left her in her usual health. It was a bolt out of a
clear sky."
Again the brawling stream and the whispering leaves fill the gap of
silence; and as before, Lansdale is the first to speak.
"I have always scouted such things, as sanity seems to demand. Stories
with any element of the supernatural in them have never appealed to
me because, however well authenticated, they were always stories, and
never actual happenings in which I had any part. But for the last day
or two I've had a growing sense of impending calamity, and I can't
shake it off."
There is the brusquerie of heartening in Jeffard's rejoinder.
"Nonsense! It's only the imaginative part of you kicking against the
pricks of a longish holiday."
"That is ingenious, but I can't quite accept it. I've eaten and slept
with the imaginative fiend long enough to be pretty well acquainted
with his vagaries. This is altogether different. It is precisely the
feeling you have had just before a storm; a sense of depression as
intangible as darkness, but quite as real. It was with me a few minutes
ago when I fell asleep, and the dream seemed to be a part of it."
"Oh, dreams," says the scoffer; "I thought they had been accounted
for by the dietists. I told you that last batch of panbread held
possibilities. But go on and unload your dream. I'm shudder-proof."
Lansdale tells it circumstantially, keeping his pipe alight in the
periods.
"It didn't seem like a dream; at least, not in the beginning of it.
I was sitting here just as I am now, and you were on your back over
there, with the pipe in your mouth. The surroundings were the same,
except that the fire was burning low. I remember thinking that you must
have fallen asleep, and wondering why the pipe didn't fall and wake
you. After a time the roar of the stream seemed to quiet down, and I
heard the clink of horseshoes upon stone. The sound came from across
the stream, and as I looked I saw a trail and a horseman coming down
it. It was all so real that I wondered why I hadn't noticed the trail
before. The man rode down to the water's edge and made as if he would
cross. I saw him quite distinctly, and thought it curious, because the
fire was too low to give much light. He merely glanced at the stream,
and then turned his horse's head and rode down the opposite bank. He
passed out of sight among the trees, and a moment later I heard the
horse's hoofs again, this time as if he were on a bridge of poles."
Jeffard has been listening with attention no more than decently alert,
but at this point he breaks in to say: "You've been walking in your
sleep. Go on."
"It was just here that the supernatural came in. I told you that the
man had passed out of sight, but all at once I seemed to see him again.
He was on a corduroy bridge crossing the stream, and I saw plainly what
he did not,--that the bridge was unsafe, and that a step or two would
plunge him into the torrent. I don't remember what followed, save that
I tried to call out, first to him and then to you; but my voice seemed
to be swallowed up in the thunder of the water. There was a little gap
filled with fierce strugglings, and then I seemed to be here again,
lying by the wagon with a blanket over me; and you were walking up and
down with another man,--a stranger. That is all; except that I tried
to tell you that you were wet through and would take cold,--tried and
couldn't, and awoke."
Jeffard has risen to put another log on the fire.
"It's the panbread," he says, with the air of one who sweeps the
board for a resetting of the pieces. But after a little he adds: "I
was wondering how you came to know about the bridge. That is the only
unaccountable twist in it."
"Is there a bridge?"
"Yes; it's just below that farther clump of aspens. But there is
nothing the matter with it that I could see. I noticed it while I was
picketing the horses."
"And is there a trail on the other side of the stream?"
"There is. There used to be a ford just here, but it was dangerous, and
we built the bridge."
"Then you have been here before?"
"Yes, many times. I spent the better half of a summer and all of
one winter in this valley. The Midas is just below here. I meant to
surprise you to-morrow morning."
Lansdale's gaze is in the heart of the fire and his voice is low. "Do
you know, Henry, I'm rather glad you didn't wait? Don't ask me why,
because I can't tell you in terms divisible by the realities. But
somehow the to-morrows don't seem to be assured."
"Oh, pshaw! that's your dream--and the panbread its father. If you had
talked that way a month ago, when you were really living from hand to
mouth"--
Lansdale spreads his hands palms down and looks at them.
"You promised me a new lease of life, Henry, and you've given it
me,--or the key to it. I didn't believe it could be done, and my chief
trouble in those first days was the thought that you'd have to bury
me alone. And when we camped in a particularly rocky spot, I used to
wonder how you would manage it."
Jeffard's smile is of grimness. "If you had mentioned it, I could have
helped you off with that burden. These mountains are full of graves,
ready-made; prospect holes, where the better part of many a man lies
buried. Do you see that heap of earth and stone over yonder?"
Lansdale shades his eyes from the firelight and looks and sees.
"That is one of them. Just behind that heap there is a shaft with a
windlass across it, and for six weeks two men worked early and late
digging a hole,--which turned out to be an excellent well when the
water came in and stopped them."
"And the water was bitter," says Lansdale. "Did you drink of it, Henry?"
"No; but the other man did, and he went mad."
Once more the stream and the sighing night wind share the silence. For
many days Lansdale has been assuring himself that the golden moment
for speech of the helpful sort must ultimately be made and not waited
for. In the hour when he had consented to Bartrow's urgings he had been
given to see his opportunity and had determined to grasp it,--had made
the determination the excuse for sharing Jeffard's hospitality. He can
look back upon that resolve now and see that it was perfunctory; that
the prompting had been of duty and not at all of love for the man.
But the weeks of close companionship have wrought more miracles than
one, and not the least among them is a great amazement builded upon
the daily renewal of Jeffard's loving-kindnesses. For the man with the
world-quarrel has been a brother indeed; nurse, physician, kinsman, and
succoring friend; with the world-quarrel put aside from the moment of
outsetting, and with apparently no object in life less worthy than that
of fighting a vicarious battle for a sick man. The summary of it is
humanizing, and the last upholdings of the crust of reserve break down
in the warmth of it.
"May I speak as the spirit moves, Henry?"
"If you think I deserve it. Why shouldn't you?"
"It is a question of obligations rather than of deservings,--my
obligations. No brother of my own blood could have done more for me
than you have."
"And you want to even it up?"
"No; but I want to tell you while I may that it has come very near to
me in these last few days. At first I was inclined to make another
query of it, and to speculate as to your probable motive; but latterly
I've come to call it by its right name."
Jeffard shakes his head slowly, and removes his pipe to say: "Don't
make any more mistakes, Lansdale. I'm neither better nor worse than I
was that night when I told you the story of the man and his temptation.
I know what you mean and what you would say; but this experiment and
its results--the twenty odd pounds of flesh you have put on, and the
new lease of life they stand for--mean more to me than they do to you."
"I don't begin to understand the drift of that," says Lansdale.
"No? I wonder if you would understand and believe if I should tell
you the truth; if I should confess that my motive, so far as you are
concerned, is entirely selfish?"
"Since understanding implies belief, I shall have to say no to that.
But you might try,--for your own satisfaction."
"It's altogether unprofitable; but perhaps it's your due. I'll have
to go back a little to make it clear. In the old days we were pretty
good friends, but I think you will admit that there have always been
reservations. You haven't known me and I haven't known you as friends
of the David and Jonathan sort know each other. Isn't that so?"
Lansdale is constrained to say "Yes," wishing it were otherwise.
Jeffard refills his pipe and fishes for another live coal in the
fire-fringe. The _g-r-r-rh_ of the grazing horses comes from the
near-by glade, and again the silence begins to grow. Suddenly he says:
"Let's drop it, Lansdale, and talk about something else."
"No, go on; nothing you can say will efface the brotherly fact."
"Very well,--if you will have it. You said you were inclined to
question my motive. It was more than questionable; it was frankly
selfish."
"Selfish? You'll have to spell it out large for me. From my point of
view it seems rather the other way about. What had you to gain by
saddling yourself with the care of a sick man?"
"I can't put it in words--not without laying myself open to the charge
of playing to the gallery. But let me state a fact and ask a question.
A year ago you thought it was all up with you, and you didn't seem to
care much. A few months later I found you fighting for your life like
a shipwrecked sailor with land in sight. What did it?"
That the lava-crust of reserve is altogether molten is evinced in
Lansdale's straightforward reply.
"Love,--love for a woman. I think you must have known that."
"I did. That was why you were making the desperate fight for life; and
that is why we are here to-night, you and I. I love the woman, too."
Lansdale shakes his head slowly, and an ineffable smile is Jeffard's
reward.
"And yet you call it selfishness, Henry. Man, man! you have
deliberately gone about to save my life when another might have taken
it!"
"I shall reap where I have sown," says Jeffard steadily. "Latterly I
have been living for one day,--the day when I can take you back to her
in the good hope that she will forget what has been for the sake of
what I have tried to make possible."
Once more Lansdale's gaze is in the glowing heart of the fire, and the
light in his eyes is prophetic.
"Verily, you shall reap, Henry; but not in a field where you have sown.
Don't ask me how I know. That's my secret. But out of all this will
come a thing not to be measured by your prefigurings. You shall have
your reward; but I crave mine, too. Will you give it me?"
"If it be mine to give."
"It is. Do justice and love mercy, Henry. That is the thing I've been
trying to find words to say to you all these weeks."
Jeffard lays the pipe aside and does not pretend to misunderstand.
"Tell me what you would like to have me do."
"I think you must know: find the man who drank of the bitter waters and
went mad, and give him back that which you have taken from him."
"Isn't there a possibility that I can do neither?"
"I can help you to do the first,--and for the other I can only plead. I
know what you would say: that the man had forfeited his right; that he
tried to kill you; that by all the laws of man's inventing this money
is yours. But God's right and your debt to your own manhood are above
all these. As your poor debtor, I'm privileged to ask large things of
you; can't you break the teeth of it and shake yourself free of the
money-dragon?"
Jeffard is afoot, tramping a monotonous sentry beat between the wagon
and the fire. His rejoinder is a question.
"Do you know where James Garvin is to be found?"
"I don't, but Bartrow does."
"Why didn't he tell me?"
"Because Dick is merciful. The man is a criminal, and you could send
him to the penitentiary."
"And Dick thought--and you have thought--that I would prosecute him.
It was the natural inference, I suppose,--from your point of view. The
man who would rob his partner wouldn't stumble over a little thing like
that. Will it help you to sleep the sounder if I say that vengeance
isn't in me?--wasn't in me even in the white heat of it?"
Lansdale nods assent. "I'm on the asking hand, and any concession
is grateful. If you were vindictive about it, I'm afraid the major
contention would be hopeless."
"But as it is you do not despair?"
"I am very far from despairing, Henry. You spoke lightly of our
friendship a little while ago, and one time I should have agreed with
you. But I know you better now, and the incredibility of this thing
that you have done has been growing upon me. It's the one misshapen
column in a fair temple. Won't you pull it down and set up another in
its place,--a clean-cut pillar of uprightness, which will harmonize
with the others?"
Jeffard stops short at the tree-bole, with his hand on Lansdale's
shoulder.
"It has taken me five weeks to find out why you consented to come
afield with me," he says. "It was to say this, wasn't it?"
"Just that," says Lansdale, and his voice is the voice of one pleading
as a mother pleads. "Say you will do it, Henry; if not for your own
sake or mine, for the sake of that which has brought us together here."
Jeffard has turned away again, but he comes back at that to stand
before Garvin's advocate.
"It is a small thing you have asked, Lansdale," he says, after a time;
"much smaller than you think. The pillar isn't altogether as crooked as
it looks; there is something in the perspective. You know how the old
Greek builders used to set the corner column out of the perpendicular
to make it appear plumb. We don't always do that; sometimes we can't
do it without bringing the whole structure down about our ears. But in
this case your critical eye shall be satisfied. We'll go down to the
mine in the morning and use Denby's wire. If Bartrow can find Garvin,
you shall see how easily the dragon's teeth may be broken. Is that what
you wanted me to say?"
Lansdale's answer is a quotation.
"'And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking ... that
the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan
loved him as his own soul.' I've seen my reward and felt of it; and
yours will come a little later,--in a way you little dream of. Pass the
tobacco, and let's have another whiff or two before we turn in. I'm too
acutely thankful to be sleepy."
For a peaceful half-hour they sit before the glowing embers, smoking
placidly while their talk drifts hither and yon over the spent sea of
boyhood and youth. It is a heartening half-hour, and at the end of it
Jeffard rises to get the blankets from the wagon. Lansdale elects to
sleep at his tree-root, and he is rolling himself in his blanket when
Jeffard says:
"How about the presentiment? Have we tired it out?"
Lansdale laughs softly. "It's gone," he says. "Perhaps it was nothing
more than an upheaval of conscience. I'm subject to that when I've
anything on my mind. Good-night, and God bless you, Henry."
And so the curtain goes down upon the summer night scene in the
mountain-girt valley, with the two men sleeping peacefully before
the fire, and the stars shining softly in the patch of velvety sky
overhead. The midnight ebb of the snow-fed stream has set in, and the
throbbing roll of the water drum is muffled. The fire burns low. The
whispering leaves are stilled, and the wind slipping down from the
snow coifs, sinks to a sigh. The pinions of the night are folded, and
darkness and murmurous silence wrap the mantle of invisibility around
the camp in the glade.