THE day train from the south ran into the early winter twilight at
Acequia, and into the night at Littleton; and the arc stars of the
city, resplendent with frosty aureoles, were brightly scintillant when
Jeffard gave his hand-bag to the porter and passed out through the gate
at the Union Depot. By telegraphic prearrangement, he was to meet Denby
in Denver to make his report upon the Chihuahuan silver mine; but when
he made inquiry at the hotel he was not sorry to find that the promoter
had not yet arrived. It is a far cry from Santa Rosalia to Denver; as
far as from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the end of the
nineteenth; and he was grateful for a little breathing space in which
to synchronize himself.
But after dinner, and a cigar burned frugally in the great rotunda,
where the faces of all the comers and goers were unfamiliar, the
homesickness of the returned exile came upon him, and he went out
to grapple with it in the open air. Faring absently from street to
street, with his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets and memory
plowing its furrow deep in a field which had lain fallow through many
toil-filled weeks, he presently found himself drifting by squares and
street-crossings toward Capitol Hill, and out and beyond to a broad
avenue and past a house with a veranda in front and a deep-bayed window
at the side. There were lights in the house, and an air of owner's
occupancy about the place; and on the veranda a big man was tramping
solidly up and down, with the red spark at the end of his cigar
appearing and disappearing as he passed and repassed the windows.
Jeffard saw the man and saw him not. The memory-plow had gone deeper,
and the winter night changed places with a June morning, with the sun
shining aslant on the wide veranda, and a young woman in a belted
house-gown with loose sleeves tiptoeing on the arm of a clumsy chair
while she caught up the new growth of a climbing rose. Just here the
plow began to tear up rootlets well-buried but still sensitive; and
Jeffard turned about abruptly and set his face cityward.
But once again in the region of tall buildings and peopled sidewalks,
the thought of the crowded lobby and the loneliness of it assailed him
afresh, and he changed his course again, being careful to go at right
angles to the broad avenue with its house of recollection. A little way
beyond the peopled walks the church bells began to ring out clear and
melodious on the frosty air, and he remembered what the uncalendared
journey had made him forget; that it was Sunday. Pacing thoughtfully,
with the transit-hum of the city behind him and the quiet house-streets
ahead, and the plow still shearing the sod of the fallow field, he
wondered if Constance Elliott would be among the churchgoers. It was
an upflash of the old cynicism which prompted the retort that it was
improbable; that the Christianity for which she stood was not found in
the churches. But the Puritan blood in him rose up in protest at that,
and in the rebound the open doors of a church on the opposite side of
the way beckoned him.
He crossed the street and entered. The organist was playing the
voluntary, and a smart young man with a tuberose in his buttonhole held
up the finger of invitation.
"Not too far forward," Jeffard whispered; but the young man seemed not
to have heard, since he led the way up the broad centre aisle to a pew
far beyond the strangers' precinct.
The pew was unoccupied, and Jeffard went deep into it, meaning to
be well out of the way of later comers. But when the finale of the
voluntary merged by harmonious transpositions into the key of the
opening hymn, the other sittings in the pew were still untaken, and
Jeffard congratulated himself. There be times when partial isolation,
even in a sparsely filled church, is grateful; and the furrows in the
fallow field were still smoking from their recent upturning.
Jeffard stood in the hymn-singing, and bowed his head at the prayer,
not so much in reverence as in deference to time, place, and
encompassments. Since the shearing of the plowshare filled his ears,
the words of the beseeching were lost to him, but he was sufficiently
alive to his surroundings to know that the pew filled quietly at the
beginning of the prayer; and sufficiently reserved afterward to deny
himself so much as a glance aside at his nearest neighbor.
How long he would have sat staring abstractedly at the pictured window
beyond the choir must remain a matter for conjecture. The minister had
given out the psalm, and Jeffard stood up with the others. Whereupon
he saw of necessity that his neighbor was a woman, so small that the
trimmings on her modest walking hat came barely to his shoulder; saw
this, and a moment later was looking down into a pair of steadfast gray
eyes, deep-welled and eloquent, as she handed him an open book with the
leaf turned down.
He took the book mechanically, with mute thanks, but afterward he saw
and heard nothing for which the evensong in St. Cyril's-in-the-Desert
could justly be held responsible, being lifted to a seventh heaven of
ecstasy far more real than that depicted in the glowing periods of
the preacher. He made the most of it, knowing that it would presently
vanish, and that he should have to come to earth again. And not by
whispered word or sign of recognition would he mar the beatitude of it.
Only once, when he put aside the book she had given him and looked on
with her, did he suffer himself to do more than to enjoy silently and
to the full the sweet pleasure of her nearness.
Under the circumstances it was not singular that his by-glancings
did not go beyond her; and that Dick Bartrow's hearty handclasp and
stage-whisper greeting at the close of the service should take him
by surprise. This he endured as one in a dream; also the introduction
to a radiant young woman with whom Bartrow presently led the way into
the stream of decorously jostling outgoers pouring down the great
aisle. That left Jeffard to follow with the small one; and he was still
groping his way through the speechless ravishment of it when they
overtook the Bartrows on the sidewalk. Dick promptly broke the spell.
"Well, well!" he began. "Nothing surprises me any more; otherwise I
should say you are about the last man on top of earth that I'd expect
to run up against in church. Don't say 'same here,' because I do go
when I'm made to. Where in the forty-five states and odd territories
did you drop from?"
"Not from any one of them," laughed Jeffard; and Myra remarked that
Connie's hand was still on his arm. "I am just up from Old Mexico."
"And you made a straight shoot for a church--for our church and our
pew. Good boy! You knew right where to find us on a Sunday evening,
didn't you?"
Jeffard laughed again. Since a time unremembered of him it had not been
so easy to laugh and be glad.
"Don't believe him, Mrs. Bartrow," he protested. "My motive was a
little mixed, I'll confess, but it was altogether better than that. I
was passing, and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen the inside of an
American church for a long time."
"Or of any other kind, I'll be bound," Bartrow amended; and then, in
a spirit of sheer ruthlessness: "Why don't you say something, Connie?
Call him down and make him tell the truth about it."
"You don't give any one a chance to say anything," retorts the quiet
one, with a summer-lightning flash of the old mock-antagonism. And then
to Jeffard: "We are all very glad to see you again, Mr. Jeffard. Will
you be in town long?"
Bartrow took the words out of his mouth and made answer for him.
"Of course he will; he is going to settle down and be
home-folks--aren't you, Jeffard? Fall in and let's walk to where we
can wrestle it out without freezing. It's colder than ordinary charity
standing here."
Now the way to his hotel lay behind him and Jeffard hesitated.
Whereupon Bartrow turned with a laugh derisive.
"Come on, you two. Have you forgotten the formula, Jeffard? I'll prompt
you, and you can say it over after me. 'Miss Elliott, may I have the
pleasure of seeing you'--"
Myra pounced upon the mocker and dragged him away; and Constance cut in
swiftly.
"You mustn't mind what Dick says. He calls going to church
'dissipation,' and he is never quite responsible afterward. Won't you
go home with us, Mr. Jeffard?"
Jeffard murmured something about a hotel and an appointment, but he
had been waiting only for an intimation that he was forgiven. So they
went on together, walking briskly, as the frosty night demanded, but
they were not able to overtake the twain in advance. For a time they
were both tongue-tied, and for a wonder it was the man who first rose
superior to the entanglements of memory. But he was careful to choose
the safest of commonplaces for a topic. They were ascending Capitol
Hill, and by way of a beginning he said, "Are you living in this part
of the city now?"
"Yes; in the old place on Colfax. Dick ran across the owner in
California last autumn and bought it."
"It is a very pleasant place," Jeffard ventured, still determined to
keep on ground of the safest.
"Do you know it?" she said, quickly.
"Oh, yes;--er--that is, I know where it is. I passed it one morning a
long time ago."
"While we were living there?"
"Yes."
Silence again for one entire square and part of another. Then she said,
"How did you know it was our house?"
He laid hold of his courage and told the truth. "I met your father a
block or two down the avenue and I was hoping I might come upon the
place where you lived. I found it. You were on the veranda, tying up
the new shoots of a climbing rose."
"My 'Marechal Niel,'" she said. "It is dead now; they let it freeze
last winter."
He held his peace for a time, but the rejoinder strove for speech, and
had it, finally.
"The memory of it lives," he said. "I shall always see you as I saw you
that morning, whatever comes between. You had on some sort of a dress
that reminded me of the old Greek draperies, and you were standing on
the arm of a big chair."
They were at the gate, and she let him open it for her. Bartrow and
Myra were waiting for them at the veranda step. He realized that the
ground was no longer safe, and would have taken his leave at the door.
But Dick protested vigorously.
"No, you don't--drop out again like a ship in a fog. We've been laying
for you, Uncle Steve and I, ever since you absconded last summer, and
you don't get away this time without taking your medicine. Run him in
there, Connie, and hang on to him while I go get my slippers and a
cigar."
"There" was the cozy library, with a soft-coal fire burning cheerily
in the grate, and the book-lined walls inviting enough to beckon
any homeless one. But Jeffard was far beyond any outreaching of
encompassments inviting or repellent. Constance drew up a chair for him
before the fire, but he stood at the back of it and looked down upon
her.
"Miss Elliott, there is something that I should like to tell you
about--if it is far enough in the past," he said, when they were alone.
She was sitting with clasped hands, and there was a look in her eyes in
the swift upglancing that he could not fathom. So he waited for her to
give him leave.
"Is it about Mr. Lansdale?" she asked.
"Yes. I was with him up to the last, and I thought that--that you might
like to know what I can tell you."
She gave him liberty, and he told the story of the jaunt afield,
dwelling chiefly on the day-to-day improvement in Lansdale's health,
and stumbling a little when he came to speak of their last evening
together.
"It was a hard blow for me," he said, at the end of it, and his voice
was low and unsteady with emotion. "You know what had gone before--what
I had lost and couldn't regain; and having failed at all points I had
hoped to succeed in this: to bring him back to you sound and well. And
when the possibility was fairly within reach it was taken out of my
hands forever."
She was silent for a little time, fighting a sharp battle with
reticence new-born and masterful. When she spoke it was as one who is
constrained to walk with bare feet in a thorny path of frankness.
"To bring him back to me, you say; and in your letter to Dick you said
that your sorrow was second only to mine. Was he not your friend, as
well as mine?"
"I loved him," said Jeffard, simply; "but not as you did."
Again the struggle was upon her, and for a moment she thought that the
sound of Dick's returning footsteps would be the signal of a blessed
release. But the heart of sincerity would not be denied.
"Let there be no more misunderstandings," she said, bravely. "We have
all wronged you so deeply that you have a right to know the truth. Mr.
Lansdale was my friend--as he was yours."
"But he meant to be more," Jeffard persisted--"and if he had come back
with the courage of health to help him say it, you would not have
denied him."
She made a little gesture of dissent.
"His health had nothing to do with it. And--and he said it before he
went away."
Jeffard smiled. "You have halved the bitterness of it for me--as you
would have lessened my reward if I had succeeded in bringing him back
alive and well. My motive was mixed, as most human promptings are,--I
can see that now,--but the better part of it was a desire to prove to
you that I could do it for your sake. My debt to you is so large that
nothing short of self-effacement can ever discharge it."
"How can you say that!" she burst out. "Wasn't I one of the three who
ought to have believed in you?--the one who promised and failed and
made it harder for you at every turn? You owe me nothing but scorn."
He contradicted her gravely. "I owe you everything that has been saved
out of the wreck of the man who once sat beside you in the theatre and
found fault with the world for his own shortcomings. You are remorseful
now because you think you misjudged me; but you must believe me when I
tell you that it was my love for you that saved me, at the end of the
ends,--that kept me from doing precisely what you thought I had done.
It was a fearful temptation. Garvin had fairly tossed the thing into
the abyss."
"I know; but it was only a temptation, and you did not yield to it."
"No; I was able to put it aside in the strength born of four words of
yours. At a time when I had forgotten God and so was willing to think
that He had forgotten me, you said 'I believe in you.' You remember it?"
She nodded assent, looking up with shining eyes to say, "Don't make me
ashamed that I hadn't the strength to go on believing in you."
"Don't say that. You have nothing to regret. My silence was the price
of Garvin's safety, at first, and I knew what the cost would be when
I determined to pay it. Later on the fault was mine; but then I found
that I had unconsciously been counting upon blind loyalty; yours, and
Dick's, and Lansdale's;--counting upon it after I had done everything
to make it impossible. I had told Dick in the beginning, and I tried to
tell Lansdale. Dick wanted to believe in me,--has wanted to all along,
I think,--but Lansdale had drawn his own conclusions, and he made my
explanation fit them. It hurt, and I gave place to bitterness."
"And yet you would have saved him for--for--"
"For that which I couldn't have myself. Yes; but you know the motive."
She met his gaze with a new light shining in the steadfast eyes. "I am
not worthy," she said, softly; and he went quickly to stand beside her.
"You are worthy; worthy of the best that any man can give you,
Constance. How little I have to offer you, beyond a love that was
strong enough to stand aside for the sake of your happiness, you know.
Ever since that afternoon when you strove with me for my own soul I've
been living on your compassion, and it is very sweet--but I want more.
May I hope to win more--in time?"
She shook her head, and his heart stopped beating. But it came alive
again with a tumultuous bound at the words of the soft-spoken reply.
"You won it long ago, so long that I've forgotten when and how. And
it's strong, too, like yours. I've tried hard enough to starve it, but
it has lived--lived on nothing."
She was sitting in a low willow rocker, and the distance between them
was altogether impossible. So he went down on one knee and put his arms
about her; and but for his manhood would have put his face in her bosom
and wept.
"Do you really mean that, Constance?" he said, when he had drunk his
fill from the deep wells in the loving eyes.
"I do."
"In spite of what you believed I had done to Garvin, and of what you
believed I was capable of doing with Margaret?"
"In spite of everything. Wasn't it dreadful?"
"It was--" There was no superlative strong enough, though he sought
for it painfully and with tears. "God help me, sweetheart, I believe I
shall go mad with the joy of it." And having said that, speech forsook
him, and the silence that is golden came between. After a while she
broke it to say:
"Dick is good, isn't he?--to be so long finding his slippers and the
cigar."
"Dick is a man and a brother. I wonder if we can persuade him to give
me a place on the Myriad."
"You wouldn't take it."
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Because you own an undivided third of a richer mine than the Little
Myriad, and--and you are going to marry another third," she said, with
sweet audacity.
There was a hassock convenient, and he drew it up to sit at her feet.
"Break it as gently as you can," he entreated. "My cup is too full to
hold much more. Besides, I've been in Mexico for the last three months,
and nothing happens there."
"It's the Midas," she explained, beginning in the midst. "You saved it
for Garvin, but he was only a half-owner."
"And the other?"
"Was my father. When it came to the apportionment they both said
'thirds,' and that is what poppa and Dick are waiting to say to you
now."
He found his feet rather unsteadily.
"I can't take it," he said; "you know I can't. It would be too much
like taking a reward for an act of simple justice. Moreover, I have my
reward, and it isn't to be spoken of in the same day with any Midas of
them all. I'll go and tell them so."
She rose and stood beside him, lifting the loving eyes to his. The soft
glow of the firelight made a golden aureole of the red-brown hair, and
the sweet lips were tremulous.
"If you must, Henry. But loving-kindness isn't always in giving and
serving and relinquishing. My father has his ideal of justice, too,
and so has James Garvin. But for you, they say, the Midas would never
have been found, or, having been found, would straightway have been
lost again. I know the money is nothing to you,--to us two, who have
so much; but won't you make a little concession, a little sacrifice of
pride,--for their sakes, Henry?"
He took her face between his hands and bent to kiss the lips of
pleading.
"Not for their sakes, nor for all the world beside, my beloved; but
always and always for yours. Come; let us go together."
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Varied hyphenation was retained.
Page 234, comma changed to a period. (fair enough. It's accepted)
Page 266, "Connie" changed to "Connie's" (Connie's eyes danced)