IN THE CRUCIBLE
In his room at the hotel, Justin re-read that little memorandum book
many times that night, and tried to accommodate his mind to its new
environment. It was a difficult task. But at last the harshness he had
felt toward Philip Davison went out of his soul. By degrees the
submerged longing for a father’s love began to make itself felt.
Philip Davison was his father; he did not doubt it now, though it
seemed so strange. He had known from Ben and Lucy that Philip Davison
had married twice. Ben was the child of the first marriage, and he the
child of the second; and Ben was his half brother!
He saw resemblances now that he had never thought of. Looking at his
reflection in the mirror, he beheld blue eyes like those of Philip
Davison. The forehead, the nose, the length of body and limb, were
all, when thus studied, reminders of Philip Davison. Davison was
florid of face, and Justin would probably be florid of face when he
grew older, for his complexion was now of that type. Davison’s face
was seamed with the marks of petulance and many outbursts of bad
temper. Justin did not see any of those marks in his own smooth
youthful countenance, but he knew that if he gave way to the fits of
rage that swept over him at times with almost uncontrollable force,
similar marks might set there the seal of their disapproval.
He was sure, however, that in many ways he was not like Philip
Davison, even though he had as a boy so admired Davison; and he was
glad to believe that these better traits he inherited from his mother.
Though he did not know it, from his mother he had inherited the iron
will which was manifesting itself. It had manifested itself in her
when she refused to turn back to the home from which she had fled, but
traveled on, weak and faint, until death claimed her. Her body had
broken, but her will had stood firm to the last; and it had shown
itself up to the end in her resolute manner of putting down in that
little book her story for the benefit of the child she hoped would
live after she had failed and passed on. To Ben, the child of the
first marriage, had descended Philip Davison’s weaknesses and from his
mother had come the slight stature and the pale face. Except in his
mental characteristics Ben resembled his father less than Justin did.
Justin did not sleep that night. He knew that Philip Davison was in
town, and he began to long to see him. This desire rose by and by as a
swelling tide, bearing with it the years’ suppressed longing for a
father’s love. As a child Justin had felt that inexpressible longing.
It had moved within him when Clayton came first to the preacher’s
house and he had pressed closely against Clayton’s unresponsive knees
while exhibiting the little Bible in which his mother had written.
Clayton had afterward satisfied that longing in a measure; but only
the knowledge that the touch of the hand laid on him was really the
touch of the hand of his own father could ever satisfy it fully.
So, through the years, that desire had yearned. Justin felt it again
now, deeper than hunger, more anguishing than thirst. And it was not
lessened by the feeling that Philip Davison might not wish to satisfy
it, and perhaps could not. For circumstances stood now like a wall
between this father and son; circumstances which were not the choice
of either, any more than were the intuitions and the motives, selfish
or otherwise, which led them. They had traveled by different paths,
and they stood apart. Nevertheless, the yearning was there, deep,
pathetic, and it seemed that it would never be appeased. Justin forgot
that white indignation that at first had burned with furnace heat
against Philip Davison. Love took its place. Philip Davison was his
father!
As this desire gained in strength Justin made an effort to see his
father. He decided that he would put that little diary into his
father’s hands and be guided by the result. He surely could trust the
better impulses of his own father! But he failed to find Davison. Fogg
was absent, probably in attendance upon some all-night caucus, and
Fogg was the only man likely to know where Davison could be found.
In the morning Justin discovered that Davison was temporarily absent,
possibly out of town, but was expected at any moment. Fogg told him
this, and observed that Justin showed a flushed, anxious face and had
passed a sleepless night. Thereupon, remembering the promise of Sibyl
Dudley, Fogg’s courage rose. He dared not question Justin, and Justin
was non-committal. This new knowledge Justin wished to share first of
all with his father.
In his room a brief note was brought to him. Lucy Davison was in the
ladies’ parlor, and he went down to see her. She was seated by one of
the windows that overlooked the noisy street. When she arose to meet
him he saw that Sibyl had told her everything. There was sympathy and
glad happiness, mingled with anxiety, in her manner. Her emotions
tinted her cheeks and shadowed her brown eyes. Being a man, Justin did
not note how she was dressed, except that it was very becomingly.
Being a woman, she not only knew that she was entirely presentable
herself, but saw every detail of his garb, from his well-polished
shoes to the set of his collar. And she knew that he was clean and
handsome. He had never questioned that she was the most beautiful
woman, as to him she had been the most beautiful girl, in the world.
Mary Jasper’s rose-leaf complexion and midnight hair were juvenile and
inane beside the glory of Lucy Davison’s maturing womanhood.
“I am so glad, Justin, for you!” she said, and gave him her hands
without reserve.
“And I am glad!” His voice choked, as he led her back to the window,
where the rumble of the street noises stilled other sounds. “I am
glad; though at first I couldn’t believe it, for it seemed so
improbable. But I’m sure now it is true.”
She looked at him with fond admiration; at the straight firm features,
at the handsome head with its crown of dark hair, at the tall muscular
form, and into the clear blue eyes. And the blue eyes looked into the
brown with love in their glance.
“And you’re almost related to me,” she said, sympathetically, “for
you’re Ben’s half-brother!”
He smiled at her, and tried to assume a cheerful, even a jovial tone.
“I had thought of that, and of what a good thing it is that we’re not
wholly related!”
“Let me see! What is our relationship now?”
“You are my sweetheart now, and will be my wife some day!”
She flushed attractively.
“I didn’t mean that. Let me see—Ben’s mother and my mother were
sisters. So Ben and I are cousins.”
“And I am Ben’s half-brother, so you and I are half-cousins.”
He tried to speak in playful jest.
“No, we’re not related at all!”
“Then we shall have to become related, at an early day.”
“Uncle Philip is my uncle by marriage, but not my blood uncle. I am a
cousin to Ben through my mother and his mother, who were sisters. So
if I have no blood relationship with Uncle Philip, your father, I have
none with you, for your mother was not related to me in any way.”
“And I say again I am glad of it.” He retained his jesting tone,
though his mood was serious. “But if you marry me you are going to
marry bad luck, for it seems that my name is Davison. You know the
rhyme:
“‘To change the name and not the letter,
Is to change for worse and not for better.’”
“You insist on joking about it. You know that Davison was not my
father’s name, but only the name I took when Uncle Philip adopted me.”
“And that will break the bad luck spell!”
“Don’t you think it will?”
“I think it will; I know it will!” he declared.
“I came to see you about something, as well as to congratulate you and
sympathize with you.”
“I tried to see you last night and failed.”
“Yes, I know. I heard about it this morning. I wish I could have seen
you last night, but it is as well this morning. What I want to ask you
is if you intend to vote against the cattlemen to-day?”
The cheery light died out of his eyes.
“I have thought it over, and have talked with Mrs. Dudley, and it
seems to me it is your duty to consider the matter very carefully now
that you know your relationship to Uncle Philip.”
A conservative by nature, and unconsciously influenced by the
atmosphere of the Davison home, Lucy Davison had begun to fear that
Justin was in the wrong. From that there was but a step to the
conclusion that it was her duty to tell him so. She did not dream that
she was but a pawn in the game which was being played by Sibyl Dudley.
Justin looked into the earnest brown eyes, and his voice was grave.
“If any one in the world could make me vote against my opinion it
would be you. I’m not going to argue with you, but let me say just
this. If I vote with the cattlemen, or refuse to vote at all, it will
place me in the position of sustaining them in a rebellious defiance
of the national government, in addition to upholding the unsheltered
range, a question on which perhaps we could not agree. But the fences
which they maintain on government lands are so clearly illegal that
the government has in some instances ordered them down. The cattlemen
hope by sending a senator to Washington to have that order rescinded
and the entire matter dropped. They have fenced untaken public lands,
and lands which settlers occupy, or wish to occupy, and they want to
continue this without interruption from Washington.”
“You said you didn’t intend to argue!”
“I do not intend to argue. I’m simply going to ask if you think I
would be justified in using my vote, or withholding it, to continue a
practice that is in defiance of the orders of the land department,
even to please my own father?”
“That order is not, as I understand, a legal enactment, and it might
be changed,” she urged.
“It will be changed, no doubt, if the cattlemen win; but should it be
changed, or withdrawn?”
“It seems to me that the settlers are doing well enough, and those
fences aren’t injuring anybody.”
He was silent a moment, thinking.
“I want to please your Uncle Philip—my father—and I want to please
you. I’ll admit that I have myself had some doubts on this question
lately, serious doubts. Yet I cannot make myself think that I have not
been in the right from the first. If I thought I was wrong I would
change in a minute without regard to the consequences.”
“It wouldn’t be right for me to urge you to vote against your
conscience,” she admitted, touched by his fine sense of honor. “Only,
as I’ve tried to think it over and get at the right of it, it has
seemed to me that there are, must be, two sides to the question. Every
question has two sides, you know.”
“Yes; that is so.”
She went on, not sure of her ground, nor altogether certain of
herself; yet feeling that this was a crucial moment and that every
argument ought to be duly weighed and considered.
“You won’t feel hurt if I remind you that you are inexperienced? New
light may come to you, so that the opinions you now hold you may not
hold a year from now.”
“That is true; but so long as I do hold them I must be honest about
it.”
“It is the opinion of Uncle Philip that this annoyance of the settlers
cannot last. He says there are only a few places where they can farm
successfully. But in the meantime, while they are trying every place,
they are making a vast amount of trouble, by thus spreading all over
the country. You know, yourself, that some of them are taking land
where water can never be got to it. The immediate result will be,
Uncle Philip says, that the ranchmen will be almost ruined, by being
forced to surrender land to them that can never be fit for anything
but a cattle range. The settlers will find out by and by that the land
cannot be farmed; but while they are finding it out, and bringing loss
to themselves, they will bring the downfall of the cattlemen.”
“I have thought of all these things,” he said.
He looked at her earnestly. He was troubled.
“Lucy, I wish I only knew what I ought to do in this crisis! I must
face it and do something. I have looked for your Uncle Philip, and
intend to look for him again, and shall try to have a talk with him.
He is my father, and when he knows that he is, and I ask him to advise
me as a father would advise a son——.” He stopped, in hesitation.
“Anyway, whatever I do—whatever I do—remember that I love you!”
As soon as she was gone, he began another search for his father,
driven by the feeling that he must explain fully to Davison his views
and motives, as well as hear Davison’s arguments and opinions, and so
perhaps be able to stand erect in Philip Davison’s estimation, as well
as in his own. This was an anxious, even a wild desire, and it pressed
him hard.
Fogg, scenting a reconciliation, sent a messenger in hurried search of
Davison. At the hotel, and at the state house, the lobbies were
overflowing. Men began to come to. Justin not singly but in platoons.
Somehow the word had gone round that he was weakening. But he was not
ready to talk. To friends and enemies alike he was non-committal. He
wanted to see his father; he wanted to place in his hands that
memorandum book, and get an acknowledgment of their relationship. The
interminable buzz of the anxious and excited politicians struck
against deaf ears.
Philip Davison was out of town.
Fogg, with telegraph and telephone, was wildly trying to reach him.
Sibyl Dudley had come to the state house in shivering expectancy. The
jarring hum of the political machine rose ever higher and higher, yet
Justin gave no indication of a changed or changing purpose.
The ordeal through which he had passed since coming to Denver had
taught him how to keep silent amid the maddest tumult. At first he had
sought to justify whatever course he intended to pursue, only to find
his statements snapped up, distorted, spread abroad with amendments he
had never thought of, and so mutilated that often even he could not
recognize the mangled fragments. So, having learned his lesson well,
he kept still. Other men could do the talking. To the men who besieged
him he had “nothing to say.” Until he saw Philip Davison and placed
that diary in his hands he felt that he could have nothing to say.
Even then he might act without saying anything. From time to time he
observed Fogg watching him covertly.
While he waited, senate and house convened and began to vote for the
senatorial candidates. Fogg went into the senate chamber, after
speaking to a member of the lower house. Justin, whose name was far
down on the rolls, remained in the lobby until a sergeant-at-arms came
summoning members of the house to vote. Then he entered. When he
dropped heavily into his seat he was greeted by suppressed cheering
and a buzz of anxious and excited comment. These things did not move
him; what moved him was a mental view of his father’s face, and that
inner tide of feeling demanding the satisfaction of a father’s love.
Suddenly he recalled Fogg’s covert and anxious looks, and like a flash
came the question: Could this whole thing be but a plot to bewilder
him and cause him to vote with the ranchmen, or not at all? He knew
that Lucy would not deceive him, but she might herself be deceived. He
could not doubt that record in the handwriting of his mother, but
after all the reference might be to another Philip Davison. His nerves
tingled and his brain reeled under the influence of this startling
suggestion.
While thus bewildered, his name was called. He half rose, staggering
to his feet, hardly knowing what his physical actions were. But his
mind began to clear. Clayton’s face, the dream of Peter Wingate, and
that picture of the unsheltered range, rose before him; again he saw
the illegal fences; again starving cattle looked at him with hungry
eyes, and their piteous moans were borne to him on the breath of the
freezing wind. Once more he was the thrall of the past. His courage
stiffened, the firm will was firm again. He felt that there was but
one rock on which he could set his trembling feet, and that was the
rock of righteousness. If in this crucial moment he failed to stand
for that which in his innermost soul he knew to be right, the
self-respect which had nurtured his sturdy young manhood would be
gone. His face whitened and his hand shook; but his voice was firm,
when he announced his vote. It rang with clear decision through the
silence that had fallen on the house.
Sibyl Dudley had lost.