"I don't give a snap for your opinion. Come on, Bob Mitchell, if you're goin' with me." She bustled out of the room, leaving the Professor with his finger-tips pressed together and his head erect. "As odd a fish as was ever hooked," said he. "She must be afraid that she is going to die."
"It's on her mind all the time," said Milford. "She wants to believe something, she doesn't know exactly what."
"The pitiable case of one beyond the reach of philosophy. But in her struggling to land herself somewhere she keeps her interest in herself keenly alive. There is always some sort of hope as long as we are interested in ourselves. Trite, I admit that it is trite, but it is a fact that we should always bear in mind, endeavoring constantly to keep alive an interest in self so that we may not fail in the obligations which we owe to others. But well may the old woman ask what is to become of us all. I wash my hands of the spiritual part," he said, going throughthe motion of washing; "I can shift the responsibilities here, or at least feel that I can, but—bodily, bodily, what's to become of us bodily?"
"When such riddles are asked of me, I'm always ready to give them up," said Milford. "I'm not asking myself any questions."
"Ha! you don't need to," the Professor declared. "You bristle yourself against the world, and in the fight that ensues you are not always beaten. I am. Your nerve is sound. Mine has been broken many a time, tied together again, and is therefore weak. Leaving age out of the question, there is scarcely any comparison between our equipments for the fight. You have a habit of silence that enforces respect for your talk. I am talkative, and a talkative man utters many an unheeded truth. At times you are almost grim, and this makes your good humor the brighter. I am always pleasant, and as a consequence fail to hold the interest of the company. In overalls you can assert a sort of dignity, or rather what the thoughtless would take for dignity, but which I know to be a gruffism—permit the expression—a gruffism toned down. But I—even in a dress-suit I could not keep my dignity from cutting a prejudicial caper. The trouble is that my acquaintances will not take me seriously. I once heard a man say, 'Yes, as light as one of Dolihide's worries.' It angers me to feel that outwardly I am a caricature of my inner self. Not even my wife knows how serious I am, or what a tragedy life is to me. But, my dear fellow, my oddities are crystal, and I will not thread them off in spun glass.I came over for a different purpose. The money with which you so generously deceived me—I have raised it; it was a fearful scuffle, but I seized the obstacles that danced about me and threw them down, one by one. Here is the money."
He took out a number of bank notes with a scattering of silver, and slowly spread them on the table, carefully placing one upon the other. "I said that I would pay you, and here's the money,—down to the forty cents."
"I am much abliged to you, Professor. No hurry, though, you understand."
"There has been no hurry, my dear friend. No one can ever know what a struggle it was to—to raise it at this time, this needful time." He leaned back, and with lips tightly sealed together, and with head slowly nodding, gazed at the pile of dirty paper. "This needful time, thou filth," he said.
"Now, if you need it," Milford spoke up quickly, "take it. I'm not pressed. You can pay it some other time."
"My life insurance will be due again within three days."
"Then go ahead and pay it."
The Professor continued to gaze at the bank notes. "Must I again crease you into uncleanly folds—I am a thousand times your debtor, my dear boy. I could spin fine, but I won't. I could pronounce a curse upon these pieces of motley paper, but I won't. I cannot afford to. In their mire they lie between me and my family's future misery. I don't know what your ultimate aim is in this life, but I know that youare a Christian. I don't know what you have done, but it is what a man does now that makes him a Christian. Well, solemn under the weight of a renewed obligation, I will return to my own fireside. Before touching this money again, let me shake your hand."
At no time during the lagging winter did the Professor mention his renewed obligation, but one night in April he came over with a tune in his voice, a laugh in his eye, and paid the debt. The bank notes were not ragged and soiled as if they had been snatched in the dust of a fierce scuffle; they were new, and as bright as if they had come as a gracious legacy. And, indeed, they had. A dead "lot," lying in the neighborhood of a punctured "boom" in Kansas, fluttered with the returning life of speculative resurrection. A new railway needed the site for a station. An agent found the Professor, reluctantly offered him half as much as the property was worth, and he gladly accepted it. For a day his household was happy in the possession of a set of new chairs, a rug and a center table, but soon fell to brooding over the lonesome absence of dining-room linen and new paper on the walls. The Professor had hoped that he might be able to buy a bookcase for his room upstairs, but realizing that it was impossible to fill up the rat hole of want in the floor below, did not dare to speak of his longing. But he was sharper than his family had suspected. With a wink he told Milford that he had, in the stealthy hour of midnight, put by enough to enable him to do a little speculating. Milford had set him anexample of thrift. There was money to be made in buying and selling and he was going to buy and sell. All that he had needed was an example. A mind that could weigh a heavy problem could turn a trifle to account. The ancient philosophers, counseling contentment of the mind, had money loaned out at interest. It was no wonder that they could be contented. And, after all, they held the right idea of life, money first and philosophy afterward. He would go back to first principles; would deal in cattle, the origin of money. The bicycle might hurt the horse, but it could not hurt the steer. There was no invention to take the place of a beefsteak. Some men might argue that it was difficult if not impossible for a failure to become a success, but all astonishing success had come out of previous failure. Without failure the world could never have realized one of its most precious virtues—perseverance. Society placed a premium upon rascality. He could be a rascal. At one time he had thought it wise to lie down with his friend, death; but now he felt it expedient to stand up with his enemy, life.
Milford did not take issue with his newly adopted creed. He brought up a jug of cider and they drank to it. The Professor had an option on four bullocks, and they drunk to them. And then filling his cup, the reformed scholar said:
"To our dear enemies, the ladies."
"No," Milford replied. He had that day received a letter. "I won't drink to them as our enemies."
"Well, then, as our endeared mistakes."
"No, they are not mistakes."
"Ha! you put me to for a term. What shall we call them?"
"The honest helpers of dishonest men," said Milford.
The Professor frowned. "I cannot subscribe to a sentiment so ruffled and furbelowed with—shall I say tawdry flounces? Permit me; I have said it. My dear fellow, in this humid air of American sentimentalism, we are not permitted to talk rationally about woman. Some man is always ready to hop up and declare that his mother is a woman. Of course she is. Has any one ever disputed the fact? His mother is a woman, and so in fact we hope is the person whom he expects to marry—I say expects to marry, for it is usually an unmarried man who hops up. I would not abolish marriage, you understand. I would—well, I would insist upon both parties having a little more sense. I would enact a law, compelling a man, before being granted a license, to show a certificate of financial success. I would inquire into the amount of money he had realized on his last lot of bullocks."
"You'd have a fine world."
"Wouldn't I? There would be no scuffling for life insurance, no harassment over wall-paper, no daughters to pity a father's failure. If I could roll up the surface of the sea into a megaphone, I would shout a caution to the unmarried world."
"What would you shout, Professor?"
"Shut your eyes on love. If you have no money, throw your license into the fire and turn the preacher out at the back door. That is what I would shout."
"There are millions of mistakes," said Milford. "But there are many happy hits. Your marriage——"
"Thoroughly happy, my dear fellow—as a marriage, you understand. I wouldn't undo it for the world. My people are everything to me. They are too much to me, hence my everlasting worry over life insurance. But it is not possible for the average woman to understand, and nearly every woman is the average woman. But my worries are over now. I am to start out anew. Don't think ill of me for not having opened my eyes sooner. An eye is like a chestnut bur; it doesn't open till it is ripe, and up to this time mine has been green in ignorance. Don't call me eccentric. I would rather be called a thief than eccentric. What is eccentricity but a loose joint, a flaw in the machinery? I am not so much out of the common. The trouble is that I show effects more plainly perhaps than other men. But I am serious. I am not light. To the plodder, I have been chimerical, but I will shame him by becoming a plodder, by out-plodding him. For the first time in many months, I return to my home as much as half satisfied with myself."
A few days later Milford saw him in the road, popping a whip behind four bullocks. Not long afterward, at a farmyard sale, he was seen haggling for a small flock of sheep. He bought a cow of Mrs. Stuvic. He urged her to come to terms. He was a man of business, and had no time for words.
"Well, now you have woke up," she said. "Who would thought it? They might as well go out to thegraveyard now and tell the rest of 'em it's time to get up. Gracious alive, take the cow. I don't want to stand in the way of a man that's just woke up. Have you quit the mill?"
"No, but since I woke up I do my work in about two-thirds of the time."
"Good for you! Oh, that feller Milford has stirred up the whole country."
"And when he gets through with that farm, madam, I'll take it. I don't think he'll stay a great while longer."
"Why, has he said anythin' about goin' away?"
"No, but with my shrewd eye I can see that he's getting restless. But I have no time to talk to you."
The season for breaking land and planting came, slowly through the stubborn and lingering cold, and Milford bent himself to the putting in of a large crop. His letters from Gunhild were rambling, but affectionate. She was now in Indiana. Her work in Michigan had been but partly successful. "I'm studying so that after awhile I may teach a regular school," she said. "But there is so much to learn and the examination is very hard. I met a man the other day who said that he knew you. He tried to sell you a book. He said that you were very hard to deal with. I told him that you must know what you wanted. Mr. Blakemore was here three days ago, to look at some land. He came to the house where I board, and said that he is making much money. There was a church sociable and he wanted me to go with him, but I refused. He said that I never would succeed as long as I was so particular.And I felt that you would rather I be particular than to succeed. I do not want any success that you would not like. His little boy has been sick, but is well now. They are not coming out to Rollins in the summer. They are going further away to a more fashionable place. Mrs. Goodwin writes to me yet, so she has not forgotten me. She says that her discovery is marvelous. She asked about you. She believes that you will be rich one of these days. I told her in my letter that I did not want to think so, but I know that she cannot understand. She will not know that I do not want you to get so far away from me. But you would not. It is a dream with me to come out there once again. I never have seen a place more beautiful. The woods here are not so full of the sketches that no one can draw, and there are no lakes scattered everywhere. I may come for one week during the vacation."
June was cool, but July was hot, and with the change in the weather came Mrs. Goodwin and her discovery, a pale girl with long hands. The "discoverer" sent for Milford. She was graciously pleased to meet him again. "I am sorry we can't call back the old summer," she said, giving him her hand. "But the old summers never come back." She introduced him to the musical genius, Miss Swartz. Her pale lips parted in a white smile. Milford asked her to play. Mrs. Goodwin shrugged, glanced at the piano and said: "I can't let her touch that thing." If Mrs. Stuvic had heard this remark she would have bundled them off down the road. But she was out in the orchard at scolding heat witha retired policeman, sent by the city to board with her during the summer. Miss Swartz languidly waved herself out of the room, and Mrs. Goodwin, motioning Milford to a seat beside her on the sofa, commanded him to tell her all about himself.
"I haven't anything of interest to tell."
"Ah, the same close mouth. You hear from her quite often, I suppose. A strong woman. Don't you think so? I urged her to stay with me, but she thought it her duty to go away. Do you expect to reside here permanently? Gunhild likes this place so much. She's perfectly charmed with it."
"Which question shall I answer first?"
"Did I ask more than one? I haven't seen you in so long that I must rattle on at a fearful rate."
"I don't expect to live here permanently."
"Not if she should request it?"
"She will not request it. Our arrangements are not yet quite clear enough for such requests."
"Indeed? I fancied that it was all understood."
"It is, in a way, but we must have a very serious talk before there can be—be——"
"Anything definite," she suggested. "Yes, I understand. But this serious talk? How can that change your plans or have any bearing upon them?"
"That is for her to decide. I had a certain object in view before she entered into any of my calculations."
"Dear me, we are as far apart as ever. You must know that I dote upon that girl, and that consequently I am interested in you. But I needn't tell you this. You know it already."
"Yes, and I am grateful."
"But you will give me no hint as to what your object is. Don't you think I ought to know it?"
"She doesn't know it yet."
"But you must have told her something."
"A little, and she didn't urge me to tell her more."
"Do I deserve that reproach? I hope not. Really, she and you present a singular romance."
"It is not a romance; it's only a sort of understanding."
"But you say there is no perfect understanding. Oh, a sort of romance. I see. Well, you will make her a good husband and consequently a good living."
A vision of the Professor as he had sat amid his shifting toasts to woman arose before Milford. "Good husband, I hope; and a good living, I am determined," he said.
"You couldn't have made a better reply, Mr. Milford, if you had pondered a week. You are quite happy at times. It was voted last summer that you had good blood, and you must have it still," she added with a smile. "Although you call yourself a Westerner, you are really from the East, I believe."
"Yes, but to live in the West soon rubs out the marks of all sections."
"True enough, I suppose. But do you expect to go back there?"
"Yes, but I don't know how long I'll stay. I may run out and come straight back. I can't tell. It all depends."
"Upon Gunhild's decision?"
"Not wholly. The fact is I can't explain myself.Oh, I could," he added, observing her wondering eye, "but I serve my purpose best by——"
"By showing that you have no confidence in me," she suggested. "No," she hastened to continue, "you have none. You have shown it all along. But why should I ask you to have confidence? We met by accident at a farm-house, during a holiday, at a time when real friendships are rarely formed. Impressed by the ephemeral season, we recognize that we too are but fleeting, with changing likes and dislikes, the prejudices and predilections of an hour. Of course, my affection for Gunhild is lasting. Her interests and mine walk far down the road together, hand in hand. I could not expect you to see this; you saw her and all else stood about her in a dim radius. I was a shadow, dim or dark, as the day was light or heavy, the same as Mrs. Blakemore. My station entitled me to respect, and you gave it. But you did not feel that my love for the young woman entitled me to something closer than respect. You are no common man, Mr. Milford. Your face is a Vandyke conception of a spirit of adventure. You are a strength repenting a weakness; there are flaws in you, and yet I could wish that I were the mother of such a son."
"Don't," said Milford, touching her hand; "please don't. I honor you; I could get down on my knees to you. You're not a shadow. There is nothing in a shadow that makes a man bow his head in reverence. But I can't tell you."
"Is it so very bad, Mr. Milford?"
"Yes, it is worse than very bad."
He moved further from her, and looked at her as if he expected her to move also, but she did not. "There is redemption," she said; "moral redemption."
"There must be a material redemption," he replied.
"God demands that it must be spiritual," she said.
"But man insists that it must be earthly," he persisted.
"The gospel was tenderest coming from the mouth of one who had been infamous."
"Yes," he replied, "but then the blood of the Virgin's Son was still red upon the earth, and in the heart of the changing world that blood atoned for everything. It is different now. Man may forgive, but he wants the dollar."
"And he's goin' to get it unless you tie his hands behind him," said Mrs. Stuvic, stepping into the room. "Yes, you bet! Why don't you have that girl play the pian, Mrs.—I can't recollect your name to save my life."
"She didn't bring her music," Mrs. Goodwin replied, and the old woman "whiffed." "Music the cat's foot! Don't she know a tune? Tell her to give me a jig and I'll dance it."
"She won't play, Mrs. Stuvic. It's of no use to ask her."
"She won't? Well, then, she needn't. Mebbe she don't like my pian. But I want to tell you that it's as good as anybody's. I give a hundred and fifty dollars and a colt for it, and the carpenterpainted it fresh this spring. But if she don't want to play, she needn't. What's become of that woman—out here last year? Can't think of her name, but her husband moped about and ended up by callin' your young woman a peach. What's become of her?"
"She's gone to the seashore, I understand," Mrs. Goodwin answered, looking slyly at Milford.
"Oh, she has? Well, let her go, there wan't no string tied to her. Bill, I want you to drive over to Antioch for me if you've got the time, and you never appear to be busy when there's women around. They've got the pony hitched up."
Mrs. Goodwin drove with him. Near the old brick house they met the Professor, leading a calf.
He snatched off his hat, and the calf snatched him off his feet, but he scrambled up, tied the rope to a fence-post, and was then ready to do the polite thing, bowing and brushing himself. He had been on the keen jump, he said, catching drift-wood in the commercial whirlpool, but he had often thought of Mrs. Goodwin, one of the noblest of her honored sex. "I have turned from the sylvan paths where wild roses nod," said he, "turned into the dusty highway of trade, but I have not forgotten the roses, madam," he declared with a bow. "They come as a sweet reminiscence of my brighter but less useful days. Permit me to extend to you——"
The calf broke loose and went scampering down the road, a twinkling of white hoofs in the black dust; and with a shout the Professor took to his heels in pursuit.
"Something always happens to that man'sdignity," said Mrs. Goodwin, laughing as they drove on. "Is he ever serious?"
"He may not appear so, but he's serious now," Milford answered, looking back at him, galloping down the road.
"Couldn't we have helped him in some way?" she asked, now that it was too late even to think about it.
"We might have shouted advice after him, but that was about all we could have done," said Milford. "He'll catch him down there. Somebody'll head him off."
As they drove through the village street, Milford pointed out the place wherein he had trained himself to meet the man Dorsey. He had worked during weeks that one minute might be a victory. She told him that it was the appearance of having a dauntless spirit that at first aroused in her an interest in him. She detested a quarrel, but she liked a man who would fight. Her father had been a captain in the navy, and he had taught her to believe that a courageous knave was more to be admired than an honest man without nerve. Of course this was an extreme view, the exaggerated policy of a fighting man, and though she did not accept it in full, yet it had strongly impressed her. She did not see how a man could be an American and not be brave. And frankness was a part of bravery. At least it ought to be. Milford was brave, but not frank enough, with her. On the way home she returned to the subject. There was a charm in the confidence of a brave man. It was strange that he had not toldGunhild more about himself. He surely loved her. She was capable of inspiring the deepest love. Of course she had seen him in the West, but had merely seen him, and his life was still a sealed book to her. Oh, no, she had not complained. That was not her nature.
"She'll know enough one of these days," said Milford. "Perhaps too much," he added.
"Well, I suppose we must wait," she replied. "And I hope you'll not think my curiosity idle. All interest is curiosity, more or less, but all interest is not idle. So you don't know how long you'll remain here?"
"I haven't staked off the time."
She sighed. She said that the summer had been a disappointment. She had not been happy since Gunhild left her. Her going away must have been a wild notion, caught from Milford. There was no necessity for teaching, till at least she had studied longer herself. She had not been disappointed in her development, not wholly. Her outcome as a woman had more than offset her failure as an artist. And she found that it was the woman whom she had liked, rather than the artist. With her new care it was different. She was all musician, a genius with whims and caprices, a moody companion, not capable of inspiring friendship. She had taken her as a duty, a duty which she felt that she owed to the musical world.
"I am going home to-morrow," she said, when Milford helped her down at Mrs. Stuvic's gate. "I don't like these new people. They are coarse."
"To-morrow I have business across the country," said Milford. "I may not see you again."
"I am sorry. Will you do me a favor? When you write to Gunhild tell her that she must come back to me. I need her."
"I will tell her that you have said so."
"That won't be much of a favor, but tell her. And I want you to promise one thing—that you will come to see me, when you are married."
"I'll promise that gladly, and keep it. I am very fond of you."
"Are you?"
"Yes. You said you would like to be the mother of such a son. That was the kindest thing ever said to me. It makes you my mother."
"Oh," she said, falteringly, as he took her hand. "You will understand me better in the time to come. Good-bye."
Gunhild wrote that she could not spare the money to come out, and to Milford the summer fell flat and lay spiritless on the ground. He begged her to let him bear the expense, and for this she scolded him. But she enlivened him with a suggestion. Near the first of October she would visit her uncle in the city. "It will make me glad to have you come to see me then," she said. "And I shall feel that you have held the summer and brought it with you. Mrs. Goodwin wrote to me as soon as she came home. She said much about you, and I really think she likes you deeply. I have been astonished at her. I did not think that she would care for me more when her house I left, but she does. She is a good woman. Oh, you remember the Miss Swartz who was with her. Well, she wanted to keep company with a fiddler in a variety show, and Mrs. Goodwin objected, and that was not the end of it. The girl went out at night late and married the fiddler, and Mrs. Goodwin has seen her no more."
There was a lament for the swift flight of the sunny days, by the woman on the bicycle and the man casting his line into the lake, but to Milford the time was slow. He remembered having seen a lame cow limping down the road, with the sluggish hours dragging at her feet, and he told the hiredman that she had come back again to vex him. But time was never so slow that it did not pass, and one evening the sun went down beyond the fading edge of September. Milford waited two days longer and then went to the city; and just out of the fields, how confusing was the noise and the sight of scattering crowds that were never scattered! But his sense of the world soon came back to him. He had been moneyless in many a town, hanging about the gambler's table, feeding upon the chip tossed by the exultant winner. The woods, the cattle, the green and purple pictures, musings with his head in the grass, had taken the gamester's wild leap out of his blood, but he knew that he dared not go near the vice. He found the Norwegian's cottage, in the western part of town, and he stood at the door listening before he rang the bell. A little girl came out with a tin pail, the gripman's dinner. As she opened the door he saw Gunhild. She dropped a boy's jacket, which she had evidently been mending, and came bounding to meet him, with her welcome bursting out in a laugh. Her hands were warm, and her eyes full of happiness. There was no put-on and no disguises in their meeting. It was two destinies touching again, destinies that were to become as one. She led him into the neat little parlor, gave him a rocking-chair, and talked of her gladness at his coming, standing for a moment in front of a glass to put back into place a wayward wisp of hair. Their meeting had not been cool. She drew up a chair beside him and they talked about the country, of the haunted house, and thetree that had hoisted a vine like an umbrella. He told her that he had come through the fields to the station, and had stood in the ditch among the wild sunflowers. He had plucked some for her, but they were dead and had fallen to pieces.
They went out into the park, not far away, and sat amid the scenes of a changing season, the leaves falling about them. It was an odd courtship, an indefinite engagement. There was no attempt at sentiment, no time when either one felt that something tender must be said, but between them there was a wholesome understanding of the heart. They were not living a love story. She was not clothed in the glamour-raiment of love's ethereal fancy, not sigh-fanned by the breath of reverential melancholy. Her hand did not feel like the velvet paw of a kitten; it was a hand that had toiled; and though easier days may come, the mark of labor can never be erased from the palm.
She left him on the rustic seat, and hastened across the sward to pluck a bloom that had been sheltered from the early frost, and he looked at her, a gladness tingling in his nerves. How trim she was in her dark gown! She looked back at him, pointed at a policeman standing off among the trees, and imitated the walk of a sneak-thief. She returned laughing, and pinning the flower on his coat, stood to gaze upon him as if he were in bloom, and said in an accent that always reminded him of a banjo's lower tones, "See, the frost has not killed you." Simple, playful, loving, strong, were the words to express an estimate of her—the healthy refinementof an honest heart, and modest because she had seen immodesty. She possessed a knowledge that was a better safeguard than mere innocence, and her passion illumined her virtue.
They strolled among the trees, society's forest; they listened co the ducks and the geese, the city's barnyard.
"Would you rather live in the country?" he asked.
"I would not rather teach art there," she laughed.
"It must be very hard."
"It is very stupid."
"I don't suppose the farmers take to it any too kindly."
"No, they often ask me why I do not draw comic as they see in the newspapers."
"They must like to see themselves buying gold bricks."
She did not understand him, and he explained that the honest farmer believing that a fortune was coming down the road to meet him, was the prey of sharp swindlers who prowled about through the country. Steve Hardy, one of the shrewdest men in the community, once had bought an express package filled with worthless paper. It was a case of "honesty" trying to beat the three-shell man at his own game. Ignorance always credits itself with shrewdness. Industry is no sure sign of honesty. "Worked like a thief" has become a saying. Smiling at his philosophy, she said that he never could have learned it in a school.
"No," he replied. "In the school we are taught to believe in the true, the beautiful, and the good;but in life we find that the true as we learned it is often false, the beautiful painted, and the good bad."
"I would not have you think that," she said. "The beautiful is not always painted." She stooped and picked up a maple leaf, blushed with the rudeness of the frost. "This is not painted, and it is beautiful. It was the cold that brought out its color. You must not be a—what would you call it?"
"Cynic?"
"Yes. You must not be that. It is an acknowledgment of failure."
He took her hand, and they walked on among the trees. "You talk like a virtue translated from a foreign tongue," he said. He called her a heathen grace. She protested. She was a Christian, so devout that she would have hung her head in the potato field had she heard the ringing of the angelus. They saw a woman on a wheel, and he dropped her hand. The woman waved at them, jumped off and came to meet them, smiling. It was Mrs. Blakemore. "Oh, I am so surprised and delighted," she said, shaking hands. "Why, how unexpected! You must come home with me. I don't live far from here. Bobbie will be delighted to see you. He refuses to go to school, and we won't force him, he is so delicate. How well you look, Gunhild! And you too, Mr. Milford." The man would have yielded against his will; the woman saw this and declined the invitation. She said that they had an engagement to dine. Milford looked at her in surprise. He thought of the frost-tinted leaf. Mrs. Blakemorewas sorry—she said. It would be such a disappointment to Bobbie. George was out of town. She bade them an effusive good-bye, mounted her wheel, pulling at her short skirts, and glided away.
"Engagement to dine?" said Milford, as they turned from watching Mrs. Blakemore.
"Yes, at the little bakery over by the edge of the park."
"Oh, I see. But I thought you wanted to go with her."
"I knew that you did not," she replied.
"But did you?" he asked.
"I would not spoil a beautiful day," she answered.
They dined at the bakery, flattering themselves that the girl who waited on them did not know that they were lovers. They did not see her wink at her fat mother behind the showcase.
"I haven't asked you how long I may stay," said Milford, as they walked out.
"I was afraid to come to that," she replied. "I must leave on the train to-night. I have only waited for you."
"When do you think I can see you again?"
"I do not know. I will write."
"Remember that nothing can keep us apart—nothing but yourself."
"Then we shall not be kept apart. But why do you leave it with me?"
"Because you are to decide when I tell you something."
"Do you put it off because it is so hard to tell?"
"No, because I'm not ready yet. I will be when I close out with the old woman."
"I would like to know now."
"It would be plucking green fruit," he replied.
"You know best," she said, trustfully.
The air grew chilly when the sun had set, and they returned to the cottage to sit alone in the parlor. They heard the kindly tones of the gripman talking to his children. There was a melodeon in the room, and she played a Norwegian hymn. The barefoot youngsters scampered in the passage-way.
"Let them come in," he said.
"No, they are undressed for bed," she replied. It was the evening romp, a tired mother's trial-time before the hour of rest when all are asleep.
He went to the railway station with her; walked that they might be longer on the road, looked at cottages, gazed up at flats, planning for the future. In the deep secrecy of a crowd he kissed her good-bye, and then went forth to stroll about the town. He stood listening to the weird song of a salvation woman; he dropped a nickel into a rich beggar's hat; he saw the grief-stricken newsboy weeping in a doorway, and believing that he was a liar, gave him a penny; he went to sleep in a hotel and dreamed that he saw a woman with bowed head listening to the angelus.
When Milford reached Rollins he found the Professor at the station waiting for him. "I will go home with you," he said. "I have something of grave importance to communicate." Steve Hardy offered them a ride in his milk wagon, but they set out on foot, at the suggestion of the Professor, who said that in this way he could better lead up to his subject. Milford was silent till they had proceeded some distance down the lane, and then he asked if anything had gone wrong. The Professor answered that everything had gone wrong, but as he had not yet led up to his subject, he continued to walk on, brooding, sighing like the wind in the rushes. They turned the corner, went down a slope, and at the bottom, the scholar took Milford by the arm apparently to conduct him to the subject, which presumably was waiting on the top of the hill.
"We are coming to it, my dear Milford. It is elusive, but we are almost to it. Now, here we are," he said, with evident relief, as they reached the top of the hill.
"All right, go ahead," said Milford. "Shoot it off."
"Idiomatic," breathed the Professor. "And, sir, to follow it with idiom, I am up against it."
"Up against what?"
"Failure, grinning and teeth-chattering failure. You have seen me turn defiantly upon my false training, and woo the ways of the world. You have seen me buy; you have seen me snatched off my feet by a yearling calf, in the presence of a dignified woman; you have heard me pop my whip at the crack of day. And what has it all come to? Failure. I know that this sounds funny to you, but it is my way, and I find it useless to attempt another. Now, to the point: On all my speculations I have lost money. My bargains turned out to be disasters. I sold at a sacrifice, and am still in debt. I don't know why I should not have succeeded. My object was as worthy as yours. But I failed."
"That may be, but you're nearly as well off as you were before you made the attempt. You haven't so much to grieve over after all."
"Oh, yes, I have. My life insurance. But for that I could snap my fingers at defeat."
"When's the money due?"
"Day after to-morrow."
"I can let you have it. What are you trying to do?"
"I am grabbing after your hand."
"Let it alone."
"But, my dear fellow, your kindness overwhelms me."
"Then don't take the money."
"Oh, yes, I shall; I am more than willing to be overwhelmed. Ha! I had set my heart on you, and was afraid that you might not be back in time. Thank the Lord for the man who comes in time. All others are a blotch upon the face of the earth.Last night was a torture to me. More than once my wife called out, 'You give me the fidgets with your walking up and down. I want to sleep.' Sleep! There was no sleep for me. I saw the sun rise, and I said to myself, 'If that man don't come you won't shine for me to-day.' But you came, God bless you. Well, I'll turn off here and go by home, to show them that I am not crushed into the earth, and will see you at your house this evening."
Mrs. Stuvic saw Milford, and came out to the barnyard gate. She wanted to ask him if he had seen any of her boarders, but had forgotten their names. Some one had told her that Milford expected soon to quit the place, and she asked him why he had not told her.
"I've told you as much as I have any one," said he. "I don't expect to go before next spring."
"Well, we may all be dead and buried before then," she replied.
"Yes, all except you."
"You bet! Why, three men have been here lately wantin' to insure my life. Did you see that girl? But I know you did. Why don't you buy the farm and bring her out here? You could soon pay for it."
"I'd rather live in the West."
"The cat's foot! You don't know what you want. Was that the Professor man with you over there on the hill? I couldn't see very well. He's crazy. Yes, he is, as crazy as a loon, and I don't want him round here. He might set the house afire. Don't you think he's crazy?"
"Well, he's one of the peculiar many that go to make up the world."
"He's one of the peculiar many that go to make up an asylum, I'll tell you that. Everybody says he's crazy. Come in and set down a while."
"No, I must go home."
"You're in a mighty hurry now, ain't you? Crazy as a loon, and you ain't fur behind him. Go on with you."
At night the Professor came whistling out of the dark. The sky was moonless, but brighter, he said, than the sunrise contemplated by him in the hour of his dejection. Once more had he proved himself a failure, but consoled himself with the assertion, made over and over again, that it required a peculiar sharpness to deal in cattle. There ought to be other ways by which a man might earn money; there were other ways, and he would find one of them. He believed that he could write a book and sell it himself, by subscription. He knew a man who had done this, and now there were stone gate-posts in front of his house. Talk was the necessary equipment, and he could talk. The agent ought to be the echo of the wisdom in the book, and to echo had been his fault in the practical world. But echo was worthy of its hire.
"Why, let me tell you what I can do," he said, his face beaming. "I can take a book on Babylon, on Jerusalem, Nineveh, Jericho, the Red Sea, home, mother, and make a volume that the farmers will snap at. Easy! Why, slipping on the ice is hard compared with it. What do you think of it?"
"Looks all right," said Milford.
"Well, anything that looks all right is all right in the book business. I thought of it coming over to-night, and instantly the road was carpeted. Yes, sir, it is all right. I have the necessary books, and all I have to do is to begin work at once. No, there is perhaps a preliminary—a certain amount of correspondence with publishers. Chicago is the subscription book center of the country. Oh, it is the plainest sort of sailing."
Milford gave him the life insurance money, and he smiled as he tucked it into his pocket. "This is my last worry," said he. "I have had hopes, mere hopes, you understand, but now I am confident. It is the speculative uncertainty that brings out a hope. But I am too old now to find pleasure in the intoxication of hope. I want assurance, and I have it. Well, I would like to sit longer and talk to you, but I must get to work."
Milford walked a part of the way home with him, congratulating him upon his happy idea. It was an inspiration. They wondered why it had not come sooner. But inspirations have their own time, and we should be thankful for their coming rather than to carp at their lateness.
As Milford was returning to the house, he heard the hired man singing at his work in the barn. He had been away from home, and had come back rather late for one who had stock to look after. When he came into the house Milford asked the cause of his delay.
"Well, I got tangled up in an affair and had tosee it through. I've been up to Antioch, and I see your prize-fighter there. He threw a drink into me because I worked for you, he said. He says you can get along anywhere with your dukes. Find everythin' in town all right?"
"Had a great time, walking about in the park. Shortest day I ever spent."
"Haven't fixed any date or anythin' of the sort, I guess."
"We haven't said anything, but it's understood. We caught each other looking at houses and flats, and had to laugh."
"I guess that's about as good a way as any. But love as a general thing is full of a good deal of talk. Well, my affairs of that sort are over now."
"So the freckled woman has cured you."
"Oh, no, I forgot her in no time. Fact is I never did love but one woman and I married her."
"What's become of her?"
"She's up at Antioch."
"Did you see her?"
"Oh, yes, and we made it up. We're goin' to live together. I understood from what you said t'other day that you wan't goin' to keep this place another year, so I told the old woman that I wanted it. Yes, we are goin' to take a fresh start. You said once that I ought to have cut her throat, but I can't look at it in that light. After all, she's as good as I am."
"A devilish sight better," said Milford.
"I guess you're right. So you wouldn't cut her throat?"
"Well, not if I were you."
"I don't exactly understand the difference, but it's all right. I got to thinkin' this way about it, Bill. Most any woman will take a man back, and I said to myself that it oughtn't to be so one-sided as that. I heard she was at Antioch, at her aunt's house, so I goes up there. She was a-sweepin' when I stepped up. And she dropped the broom. I says, 'Don't be in a hurry,' and she stopped and looked at me. 'And is this you, Bob?' she says. I told her it was, so far as I knowed. She come up close to me and said I'd been workin' too hard. She took hold of my hand and turned it loose quick, lookin' like she wanted to cry. I says, 'Don't turn me loose. I've been thinkin' about you.' 'About such a thing as I am?' she says. Then I told her she was a heap better than me, and she cried. She said she never would have run away, but she drank some wine with one of her aunt's boarders. I told her all that made no difference now if she could promise not to run away again. And then she grabbed me, Bill; she grabbed me round the neck, and that was the way we made up."
"Go and bring her here," said Milford, turning his eyes from the light of the lamp. "It makes no difference what I said last week or the week before, or at any time. You bring her here, and take the best room. I'll take your old bunk in there. Hitch up and go after her now. Wait a minute. Take this and buy some dishes, and curtains for the windows. That isn't enough. Take this twenty," he added, giving him a bank note. "Good as you are! Why, she's worth both of us. Any heart that wantsto be forgiven is one of God's hearts. Drive fast, and the stores won't be shut up. They keep open later Saturday nights. What are you staring at? I can see the poor thing now, clinging to you."
"Wait a moment, Bill. I guess she'll be afraid to come. I told her what you said."
"You did? Then go and tell her that I'm the biggest liar on earth. Wait! I'll go with you."
A black-eyed little woman was installed in the house. Accepting her husband's story and her own statement, her life had not been wholly respectable, but she brought refinement into the animal cage. A new carpet lay soft and bright upon the floor. The windows, now curtained, no longer looked like browless eyes staring into cold vacancy. The dinner table lost the air and the appearance of a feed trough. Not in words nor in sighs, but in a hundred ways, she proved the sincerity of her repentance.
The autumn lasted a long time, and wise men said that it would end in a snarl, and it did, for winter came in a night, like a pack of howling wolves. But their cold teeth did not bite through the walls of Milford's sitting-room. Black eyes had looked after the work of a carpenter and a paper-hanger.
The Professor, thin-clad as he was, welcomed the change in the weather. The cold that made a dog scamper forced a new energy upon the mind. He had found that his book required the aid of rain and snow and every trick that the air could turn. One day he could write better because a tree in front of his window had been stripped of its leaves. One night the rattle of sleet graced a period that he had bungled under the energy-lacking influence of a full moon. This was but a prideful conceit, for the factwas that, like nearly every impractical man, he wrote with great ease at all times. Milford had faith in the outcome of his work, and often visited him at night. And the indorsement of so shrewd a man had encouraged Mrs. Dolihide and Miss Katherine. Sometimes the young woman would read a chapter. Once she said: "Ma, this is really good." It was not much for a daughter to say, but the Professor had been so repeated a failure that even a cool compliment was warm to him. His wife accepted the daughter's judgment. It is possible that she saw a vision of new gowns and a better house.
One evening, after welcoming Milford into his workshop, the scholar declared himself on the verge of a great success. He was arrayed in an old dressing-gown, with a rope tied monkishly about his loins. His fingers were stained with ink, "the waste juice of thought," he said. "I should now be the happiest of men, and I am, but, my dear boy, it is not nearly so easy as I expected. I find that I cannot cut, slash, and piece; I must absorb and write, and what I thought could be done in a few weeks, will take months to perform. At first I thought it would be well to enter into correspondence with the publishers, but I put it off till now I have decided to surprise them with the work itself. Ah, work, work, true balm to the restless soul! I was never really happy until I took up this brightening task; I was never so serious; I was never before able to understand the necessity of my previous training, my struggles and disappointments. But now all is clear. How is everything with you?"
"All right. Everything over my way is as neat as——"
"A new gold dollar," suggested the Professor.
"Yes, and my house is as comfortable as a fur-lined nest."
"And at a time, too, when you are thinking about giving it up."
"That's so. But I've got to go out West to see a man, and then I may return to this neighborhood."
"Are you going to take any one with you on your trip?"
"No, I'm going alone."
"On important business, I presume?"
"Very; so important that all my work here has been toward that end. How long before you'll have this thing done?"
"I am working toward an end," the Professor said, smiling, "but I cannot work toward a date. But, to approximate, I should think about the middle of March."
"Don't know but I bother you, coming over so often."
"My dear boy, you help me. You are a constant encouragement. Ah, you are a double encouragement, for you encourage them." He pointed downward. "And that is the greatest good you could do me."
They talked a long time about the book, the sure winner, and as Milford was taking his leave, the Professor followed him to the head of the stairway. "My dear boy," he said, putting his handon his visitor's shoulder, "you must at last perceive that I am earnest."
"I know it."
"I hope you believe so, for I am. I may be odd—I may be amusing to the thoughtless, but to the wise I am serious."
And it was thus, during all the cold months of his work, pleading to his friends to construe him seriously. Sometimes he would check his enthusiasm, fearful that his dancing spirits might make him appear grotesque. But the neighbors, among their rattling milk-cans, laughed at him, his walk, his gestures, the tones of his voice. One morning near the end of March, he got on the train, a precious bundle hugged under his arm. He had spent half the night with Milford, and had come away strengthened by the strong man. Now he flew toward the journey-end of hope. A brakeman on the milk train had heard the farmers laugh at him, and felt at liberty to poke fun at him.
"Got your crop under your arm?" he asked.
The Professor bristled. "If it were the straw of wild oats three times threshed, it would still hold more value than the chaff that blows about in your empty skull. Keep your place, which means—distance."
He was serious; he felt it and gloated over it with a solemn pride. But before the train reached the city he begged the fellow's pardon. "I am worn out with hard work," he said, "and I hope you will forget my harshness."
Cabmen bellowed at him as he passed out ofthe station, and ragged boys guyed him as he walked along the street. He had a list of the subscription book publishers, and decided to submit his favor to the nearest one. The elevator boy put him off on the wrong floor. A scrub-woman looked up and leered at him. "Poverty, like anger, hath a privilege," he mused. He found the publisher's quarters, but waited a long time before he was admitted to the presence of the manager. The great man was closeted with a book agent. In the subscription book house the author is nothing; the agent everything. The manager has been an agent, or perhaps a "fake" advertising man. He hates an author; he hated the Professor at sight, and flouted when he learned that the scholar had brought a book. What an insult! The idea of bringing a book to a publishing house! The Professor attempted to explain the scope of his work. The manager drew back. "No need to unwrap it," he said. "We've got more books now than we can sell. Say," he bawled, to some one outside his den, "tell Ritson I want to see him before he goes."
"I thought," began the Professor, bowing;—but the manager shut him off. "We do our own thinking," he said.
"Well, sir, I shall bid you good-morning."
"Yes. Say," he shouted, "tell Bruck I want to see him, too."
The list was followed, and a night of sorrow fell at the end of a heart-breaking day. Not in all instances had the publishers been gruff; some had spoken kindly, one had looked at the manuscript,and then had shown the Professor a bank of books written on the same line. At last, worn out with serving as pall-bearer to his own dead spirit, he offered the book for enough money to pay his life insurance. The publisher shook his head. Old, old story, gathering mold.
A bluster of warm wind brought a thaw, and the ice in the lake was breaking—a disjointing time, a cracking of winter's old bones, a time when being alone we feel less lonely than in a noisy company. At night Milford sat musing in the kitchen. The outer door stood open, and he heard the cattle tramping about in the mushy barnyard. The hired man and his wife were singing a lonesome song in the sitting-room. There came another tramping, not of cattle, but of one more weary, of a man, the Professor. He trod into the light that fell from the door, and Milford bounded up to meet him, but fell back in reverence of his grief-stricken face. For a time the old man did not speak. He dropped his bundle, once so precious, but now a sapless husk, laid his walking-stick across it, took hold of a chair, and let himself slowly down with a groan.
"We are going to have rain," he said, attempting to smile, and unbuttoning his old coat with a palsied fumble.
"Yes, I think so. The clouds have been tumbling about all day."
"A weird song they are singing in there."
"The love song of the ignorant and the poor," said Milford.
"The poor and the wise would not have written it," the Professor replied.
"Shall I tell them to stop?" Milford asked.
"Oh, no, poor crickets. Bring some cider, my boy. Let us live for a time in recollection only. I will not take too much."
"You may take as much as you like. It is time to drink."
"Yes, to drink or to rave."
Milford brought a jug of cider. "The devil's sympathy," said the old man, drinking. "More, give me more—promises heaven, but slippers the foot that treads its way to hell. But I will not take too much. Did I tell you that I had lost my place at the mill?"
"No, you didn't say anything about it."
"I was discharged the evening before I went to town, but it made no impression on me then."
"Well, don't let it make any now. Everything will come all right."
"Yes, it will. I have walked with many an experiment, but at last there is such a thing as facing a certainty."
"Have you anything in view?"
"Oh, yes. And everything will be all right."
"I hope so."
"I don't hope—I know. But enough of that. It is a philosopher who can say, 'Ha! old Socrates, pass your cup this way.' They have hushed their song. Even the poor and the ignorant grow weary of singing; then who can expect music from the wise? What have you there? Old Whittier? Hedied, and they gave him a stingy column in the newspapers, squeezed by the report of the prize fight at New Orleans. If a poet would look to his fame, let him die when there is no other news. But some have died in a spread of newspaper glory—Eugene Field, the sweetest lisper of a boy's mischief, the tuner of tenderest lyrics, but with a laugh for man that cut like a scythe. And some of the rich whom he had laughed at, scrambled for a place at his coffin to bear it to the grave—tuneless clay, scuffling over tuneful dust! Oh, hypocrisy, stamp thy countenance with a dollar!"
"It's raining now," said Milford, seeking to draw his mind from the darkness of its wandering.
"Yes, the falling of water, rhythmic, poetry—all poets have been as water. I will class them for you. Keats, the rivulet; Shelley, the brook; Byron, the creek; Tennyson, the river; Wordsworth, the lake; Milton, the bay; and Shakespeare, the waters of all the world, the sea. But I will not keep you up. You are a working-man, and must rest."
"Don't go; I'm not tired; I haven't done a thing to-day. Shall I fill the jug?"
"No, enough. Let me take up my gilded trash," he said, reaching for his bundle.
"I wish you'd stay longer. Let me go home with you."
"No, I prefer to walk alone. You remember in the old reader, the dog went out to walk alone."
"It was the cat that walked alone," said Milford. "The dog sat down to gnaw his bone. Don't you recollect?"
The old man touched his forehead, and shook his head. "So it was the cat that walked alone. But we will reverse it. The dog will walk alone to-night."
"I wish you'd let me go with you."
"Plead not your friendship, or I shall yield. But I want to be alone."
"Then you shall be."
"I thank you, and good-night." He strode off, with his bundle and stick; and out in the darkness he cried: "Don't forget my classification of the poets. Wordsworth! Wordsworth! And so, good-night."
The hired man came into the kitchen. "Wan't that the Professor shoutin' out there?" he asked.
"Yes, the poor old man has just come home, crushed."
"Didn't find no market, then, for his book?"
"No. He brought it back with him. And, by the way, his life insurance will soon be due, and I must pay it for him."
"Don't he owe you for one?"
"That makes no difference. I must help him. The world ought to help him, but he is laughed at by you clods."
"Bill, don't call me a clod. I don't own enough dirt to be called a clod."
"That's all right, Bob. I don't mean you. What day of the month is this?"
"Second, ain't it?"
"I asked you."
"Then I guess it's the second."
"His insurance will be due on the ninth. Bob, early in the morning you go over to Antioch and tell old Bryson that he may have those calves at the price he offered."
"Yes, but I don't think it's enough, Bill."
"Can't help it. I've got to raise money enough for that poor old fellow."
Before breakfast the next morning Milford hastened to the Professor's house. Mrs. Dolihide heard him unchaining the gate, and came out upon the veranda. He did not care to go in; he dreaded to look again upon that blasted countenance. "Good morning, madam. I wish you'd tell the Professor not to worry over his insurance. Tell him I'll make it all right."
"I will when he comes home. I expected him last night, but he didn't get back."
"What——" But he checked himself. An alarm had arisen in his breast, but he would not spread it. He muttered something and turned away, leaving her to gaze after him in wonderment. A man came running down the road. Milford stopped him, and he stood panting until he could gather breath enough for his story. It was brief. The Professor's body had been taken from the lake. At daylight he had come down to the shore and had shoved out in a boat. A man warned him against the tumbling ice, for the wind was fresh. He had a rod, and said that he was going to fish. The man told him that the fish would not bite. He said that they would bite for him. Out beyond the dead rushes where the water was deep the boat tippedover. It looked like an accident—the ice. There were no means of rescue, and so he drowned. The man was excited, and could not say for certain, but he thought that the Professor had cried out, "Warmer than the world!"