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He had meant to say something quite different, but anything would do so long as he controlled the situation.
“I wonder why?” Mary-Clare kept her face turned away.
“Well, you are so phenomenally keen. You know such a lot.”
“I used to snap up everything like a hungry puppy, Uncle Peter often said. I suppose I do now, Mr. Northrup, but I only know life as a blind person does: I feel.”
“That’s just it. Youfeellife. It isn’t coloured for you by others. You get its form, its hardness or softness, its fragrance or the reverse, but you fix your own colour. That’s why you’d be such a ripping critic. Will you let me read some of my book to you?”
“Oh! of course. I’d be so glad and proud.”
“Come, now, you’re not joking?”
The large golden eyes turned slowly and rested upon Northrup.
“I do not think I ever joke”––Mary-Clare’s words fell softly––“about such things. Why, it would seem like seeing a soul get into a body. You do not joke about that.”
“You make me horribly afraid about my book. People do not usually take the writing of a book in just that way.”
“I wish they did. You see, my doctor often said that books would live if they only held truth. He loved these words, ‘And above all else––Truth taketh away the victory!’ I can see him now waving his arms and singing that defiantly, as if he were challenging the whole world. He said that truth was the soul of things.”
“But who knows Truth?”
“There is something in us that knows it. Don’t you think so?”
“But we see it so differently.”
“That does not matter, if we know it! Truth is fixed and sure. Isn’t that so?”
“I do not know. Sometimes I think so: then––good Lord! that is what I’m trying to find out.”
Northrup’s face grew tense.
“And so am I.”
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“All right, then, let’s go on the quest together!” Northrup stood up and offered his hand to Mary-Clare as if actually they were to start on the pilgrimage. “Where and when may I begin to read to you?”
The children were coming nearer.
“While this weather lasts, I’d love the open. Wouldn’t you? Logs, like this, are such perfect places.”
“I thought perhaps”––Northrup looked what he dared not voice––“I thought perhaps in that cabin of yours we might be more comfortable, more undisturbed.”
Mary-Clare smiled and shook her head.
“No, I think it would be impossible. That cabin is too full––well, I’m sure I could not listen as I should, to you, in that cabin.”
And so it was that the book became the medium of expression to Northrup and Mary-Clare. It justified that which might otherwise have been impossible. It drugged them both to any sense of actual danger. It was like a shield behind which they might advance and retreat unseen and unharmed. And if the shield ever fell for an unguarded moment, Northrup believed that he alone was vouchsafed clear vision.
He grew to marvel at the simplicity and purity of Mary-Clare’s point of view. He knew that she must have gone through some gross experiences with a man like Rivers, but they had left her singularly untouched.
But, while Northrup, believing himself shielded from the woman near him, permitted his imagination full play, Mary-Clare drew her own conclusions. She accepted Northrup without question as far as he personally was concerned. He was making her life rich and full, but he would soon pass; become a memory to brighten the cold, dark years ahead, just as the memory of the old doctor had done: would always do.
Desperately Mary-Clare clung to this thought, and reinforced by it referred constantly to her own position as if to convince Northrup of perfect understanding of their relations.
But the book! That was another matter. In that she felt145she dared contemplate the real nature of Northrup. She believed he was unconsciously revealing himself, and with that keenness of perception that Northrup had detected, she threshed the false notes from the true and, while hesitating to express herself––for she was timid and naturally distrustful of herself––she was being prepared for an hour when her best would be demanded of her.
Silently Mary-Clare would sit and listen while Northrup read. Without explanation, the children had been eliminated and, if the day was too cool to sit by the trail side, they would walk side by side, the crushed leaves making a soft carpet for their feet; the falling leaves touching them gently as they were brushed from their slight holdings.
Mary-Clare had suddenly abandoned her rough boyish garb. She was sweet and womanly in her plain little gown––and a long coat whose high collar rose around her grave face. She wore no hat and the light and shade did marvellous things to her hair. There were times when Northrup could not take his eyes from that shining head.
“Why are you stopping?” Mary-Clare would ask at such lapses.
“My writing is diabolical!” Northrup lied.
“Oh! I’m sorry. The stops give me a jog. Go on.”
And Northrup would go on!
Without fully being aware of it, until the thing was done, Mary-Clare got vividly into the story.
And Northrup was doing some good, some daring work. His man, born from his own doubts, aspirations, and cravings, was a live and often a blundering creature who could not be disregarded. He was safe enough, but it was the woman who now gave trouble.
Northrup saw, with fear and trembling, that he had drawn her, so he devoutly believed, so close to reality that he felt that Mary-Clare would discover her at once and resent the impertinence. But he need not have held any such thought. Mary-Clare was far too impersonal; far too absorbed a nature to be largely concerned with herself, and Northrup had failed absolutely in his deductions, as he was soon to learn.
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What Mary-Clare did see in Northrup’s heroine was a maddening possibility that he was letting slip through his fingers. At first this puzzled her; pained her. She was still timid about expressing her feeling. But so strong was Northrup’s touch in most of his work that at last he drove his quiet, silent critic from her moorings. She asked that she might have a copy of a certain part of the book.
“I want to think it out with my woman-brain,” she laughingly explained. “When you read right at this spot––well, you see, it doesn’t seem clear. When I have thought it out alone, then I will tell you and be––oh! very bold.”
And Northrup had complied.
He had blazed for himself, some time before, a roundabout trail through the briery underbrush from the inn to within a few hundred feet of the cabin. Often he watched from this hidden limit. He saw the smoke rise from the chimney; once or twice he caught a glimpse of Mary-Clare sitting at the rough table, and, after she had taken those chapters away, he knew they were being read there.
Alone, waiting, expecting he knew not what, Northrup became alarmingly aware that Mary-Clare had got a tremendous hold upon him. The knowledge was almost staggering. He had felt so sure; had risked so much.
He could not deceive himself any longer. Like other men, he had played with fire and had been burnt. “But,” he devoutly thought, “thank God, I have started no conflagration.”
147CHAPTER XI
There had been five days in which to face a rather ugly and bald fact before Northrup again saw Mary-Clare. He had employed the time, he tried to make himself believe, wisely, sanely.
He had spent a good portion of it at the Point. He had irritated Larry beyond endurance by friendly overtures. In an effort to be just, he tried to include Rivers in his reconstruction. The truth, he sternly believed, would never be known, but if it were, certainly Rivers might have something to say for himself, and with humiliation Northrup regarded himself “as other men.” He had never, thank heaven! looked upon himself as better than other men, but he had thought his struggle, early in life, his unhappy parenthood, and later devotion to his work, had set him apart from the general temptations of many young men and had given him a distaste for follies that could hold no suggestion of mystery for him.
Well, Fate had merely bided its time.
With every reason for escaping a pitfall, he had floundered in. “Like other men?” Northrup sneered at himself. No other man could be such a consummate fool, knowing what he knew.
Viewed from this position, Larry was not as contemptible as he had once appeared.
But Rivers resented Northrup’s advances, putting the lowest interpretation upon them. In this he was upheld by Maclin, who was growing restive under the tension that did not break, but stretched endlessly on.
Northrup resolved to see Mary-Clare once more and then go home. He would make sure that the fire he himself was scorched by had not touched her. After that he would turn148his back upon the golden selah in his life and return to his niche in the wall.
This brought his mother and Kathryn into the line of vision. How utterly he had betrayed their confidence! His whole life, from now on, should be devoted to their service. Doubtless to other men, like himself, there were women who were never forgotten, but that must not blot out reality.
And then Northrup considered the task of unearthing Maclin’s secrets, and ridding the Forest of that subtle fear and distrust that the man created. That was, however, too big an undertaking now. He must get Twombley to watch and report. Northrup had a great respect for Twombley’s powers of observation.
And so the time on the Point had been put to some purpose, and it had occupied Northrup. Noreen and Jan-an had helped, too. It was rather tragic the way Northrup had grown to feel about Noreen. The child had developed his latent love for children––they had never figured in his life before. So much had been left out, now that he came to think of it!
And Jan-an. Poor groping creature! To have gained her affection and trust meant a great deal.
Then the Heathcotes! Polly and Peter! During those five distraught days they developed halos in Northrup’s imagination.
They had taken him in, a stranger. They had fathered and mothered him; staunchly and silently stood by him. What if they knew?
They must never know! He would make sure of that.
In this frame of mind, chastened and determined, Northrup on the fifth day took his place behind the laurel clump back of Mary-Clare’s cabin, and to his relief saw her coming out of the door. His manuscript was not in her hands, but her face had an uplifted and luminous look that set his heart to a quicker pulsing.
After a decent length of time, Northrup, whistling carelessly, scruffing the dead leaves noiselessly, followed on and149overtook Mary-Clare near the log upon which they had sat at their last meeting.
The quaint poise and dignity of the girl was the first impression Northrup always got. He had never quite grown accustomed to it; it was like a challenge––his impulse was to test it. It threatened his exalted state now.
“It’s quite mysterious, isn’t it?”
Mary-Clare sat down on her end of the log and looked up, her eyes twinkling.
“What is mysterious?” Northrup took his place. The log was not a long one.
“The way we manage to meet.”
She was setting him at a safe distance in that old way of hers that somehow made her seem so young.
It irritated Northrup now as it never had before.
He had prepared himself for an ordeal, was keyed to a high note, and the quiet, smiling girl near him made it all seem a farce.
This was dangerous. Northrup relaxed.
“It’s been nearly a week since I saw you,” he said, and let his eyes rest upon Mary-Clare’s face.
“Yes, nearly a week,” she said softly, “but it took me all that time to make up my mind.”
“About what?”
“Your book.”
Northrup had forgotten, for the moment, his book, and he resented its introduction.
“Damn the book!” he thought. Aloud he said: “Of course! You were going to tell me where I have fallen down.”
“I hope you are not making a joke of it”––Mary-Clare’s face flushed––“but even if you are, I am going to tell you what I think. I must, you know.”
“That’s awfully good of you”––Northrup became earnest––“but it doesn’t matter now, I am going away. Let us talk of something else.”
Mary-Clare took this in silence. The only evidence of her surprise showed in the higher touch of colour that rose, then died out, leaving her almost pale.
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“Then, there is all the more reason why I must tell you what I think,” she said at last.
The words came like sharp detached particles; they hurt.
“We must talk about the book!”
And Northrup suddenly caught the truth. The book was their common language. Only through that could they reach each other, understandingly.
“All right!” he murmured, and turned his face away.
“It’s your woman,” Mary-Clare began with a sharp catching of her breath as if she had been running. “Your woman is not real.”
Northrup flushed. He was foolishly and suddenly angry. If the book must be brought in, he would defend it. It was all that was left to him of this detached interlude of his life. He meant to keep it. It was one thing to live along in his story and daringly see how close he could come to revealment with the keen-witted girl who had inspired him, but quite another, now that he was going, beaten from the field, to have the book,asa book, assailed. As to books, he knew his business!
“You putyourwords in your woman’s mouth,” Mary-Clare was saying.
“And whose words, pray, should I put there?” Northrup asked huskily.
“You must let her speak for herself.”
“Good Lord!”
Mary-Clare did not notice the interruption. She was doing battle for more than Northrup guessed. She hoped he would never know the truth, but the battle must be fought if all the beautiful weeks of joy were to be saved for the future. The idealism that the old doctor had desperately hoped might save, not destroy, Mary-Clare was to prove itself now.
“There are so many endings in life, that it is hard, in a book, to choose just one. Why should there be an end to a book?” she asked.
The question came falteringly and Northrup almost laughed.
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“Go on, please,” he said quietly. “You think I’ve ended my woman by letting her do what any woman in real life would do?”
“All women would not do what your woman does. Such women end men!”
This was audacious, but it caught Northrup’s imagination.
“Go on,” he muttered lamely.
“Do you think love is everything to a woman?” Mary-Clare demanded ferociously.
“It is the biggest thing!” Northrup was up in arms to defend his code and his work.
“You think it could wipe out honour, all the things that meant honour to her?”
“Love conquers everything for a woman.”
“Does it for a man?”
Northrup tried to fling out the affirmative, but he hedged.
“Largely, yes.”
“I do not think that. There are some things bigger to him. Maybe not bigger, but things that he would choose instead of love, if he had to. It is what youdoto love that matters. If you come and take it when you haven’t a right to it; when you’d be stealing it; letting other sacred things go for it––then you would be killing love. But if you honour it, even if it is lonely and often sad, it lives and lives and–––”
The universe, at that momentous instant, seemed to rock and tremble. Everything was swept aside as by a Force that but bided its hour and had taken absolute control.
Northrup was never able to connect the two edges of conscious thought that were riven apart by the blinding stroke that left him and Mary-Clare in that space where their souls met. But, thank God, the Force was not evil; it was but revealing.
Northrup drew Mary-Clare to her feet and held her little work-worn hands close.
“You are crying––suffering,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
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“And–––”
“Oh! please wait”––the deep sobs shook the girl––“you must wait. I’ll try to––to make you see. I was awake that night at the inn––that is why I––trust you now! Why I want you to––to understand.”
She seemed pleading with him––it made him wince; she was calling forth his best to help her weakest.
“Your book”––Mary-Clare gripped that again––“your book is a beautiful, live thing––we must keep it so! Your man has grown and grown through every page until he quite naturally believed he was able to––to do more than any man can ever do! Why, this is your chance to be different, stronger.” The quick, panting words ran into each other and then Mary-Clare controlled them while, unheeded, the tears rolled down her cheeks. “You must let your womanactfor herself! She, too, must learn and know. She made a horrible mistake fromnotknowing and seeing the first man; no love can help her by taking the solution from her. She must be free––free and begin again. If it is right–––”
“Yes, Mary-Clare. If it is right, what then?”
Everything seemed to wait upon the answer. The scurrying wood creatures and the dropping of dead leaves alone broke the silence. Slowly, like one coming into consciousness, Mary-Clare drew one hand from Northrup’s, wiped her eyes, and then––let it fall again into his!
“I can see clearer now,” she faltered. “Please, please try to understand. It is because love means so much to some women, that when they think it out with their women-minds they will be very careful of it. They will feel about it as men do about their honour. There must be times when love must stand aside if they want to keep it! I know how queer and crooked all this must sound, but men do not stop loving if their honour makes them turn from it. We are all, men and women, too,parts––we cannot act as if––oh! you do understand, I know you do, and some day you will go on with your beautiful book.”
“And the end of my book, Mary-Clare? There must be an end.”
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“I do not know. I do not think a great big book ever ends any more than life ends.”
Northrup was swept from his hard-wrought position at this. The next wave of emotion might carry him higher, but for the moment he was drifting, drifting.
“You do not know life, nor men, nor women,” he said huskily and clutched her hands in his. “If life cheats and injures you, you have a right to snatch what joy you can. It’s not only what you do to love, but what you do to yourself, that counts. For real love can stand anything.”
“No, it cannot!” Mary-Clare tried to draw away, but she felt the hold tighten on her hands; “it cannot stand dishonour. That’s what kills it.”
“Dishonour! Whatisdishonour?” Northrup asked bitterly. “I’m going to prove as far as I can, in my book, that the right kind of man and woman with a big enough love can throttle life; cheat the cheater.” This came defiantly.
But the book no longer served its purpose; it seemed to fall at the feet of the man and woman, standing with clasped hands and hungry, desperate eyes.
The words that might have changed their lives were never spoken, for, down the trail gaily, joyously, came the sound of Noreen’s voice, shrilly singing one of the songs Northrup had taught her.
“That’s what I mean by honour,” Mary-Clare whispered. “Noreen and all that she is! You, youdounderstand about some women, don’t you? You will help, not hurt, such women, won’t you?”
“For God’s sake, Mary-Clare, don’t!”
Northrup bent and touched his lips to the small work-stained hands. The song down the trail rose joyously.
“I have thought of you”––Mary-Clare was catching her breath sharply––“as Noreen has––a man brought by the haunted wind. It has all been like a wonderful play. I have not thought of the place where you belong, but I know there are those in that place who are like Noreen.”
“Yes!” Northrup shivered and flinched as a cold, wet leaf fell upon his hands and Mary-Clare’s.
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“The wind is changing,” said the woman. “The lovely autumn has been kind and has stayed long.”
“My dear, my dear––don’t!” Northrup pleaded.
“Oh! but I must. You see I want you to think back, as I shall––at all this as great happiness. Come, let us go down the trail. I want you to tell me about your city, the place where you belong! I must picture you there now.”
Northrup kept the small right hand in his as they turned. It was a cold hand and it trembled in his grasp, but there was a steel-like quality in it, too.
It was tragic, this strength of the girl who had drawn her understanding of life from hidden sources. Northrup knew that she was seeking to smooth his way on ahead; to take the bitterness from a memory that, without her sacrifice, might hold him back from what had been, was, and must always be, inevitable. She was ignoring the weak, tempted moment and linking the past with all that the future must hold for them both.
There was only the crude, simple course for him to follow––to accept the commonplace, turn and face life as one turns from a grave that hides a beautiful thing.
“You have never been to the city?”
There was nothing to do but resort to words. Superficial, foolish words.
“Yes, once. On my wedding trip.”
This was unfortunate, but words without thought are wild things.
Mary-Clare hurried along while visions of Larry’s city rose like smiting rebukes to her heedlessness. Cheap theatres, noisy restaurants, gaudy lights.
“My dear doctor and I always planned going together,” she said brokenly. “I believe there are many cities in the city. One has to find his city for himself.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what one does.” Northrup closed his hand closer over the dead-cold one in his grasp.
“Your city, it must be wonderful.”
“It will be a haunted city, Mary-Clare.”
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“Tell me about it. And tell me a little, if you don’t mind, about your people.”
The bravery was almost heart-breaking, it caused Northrup’s lips to set grimly.
“There is my mother,” he replied.
“I’m glad. You love her very much?”
“Very much. She’s wonderful. My father died long ago.”
Mary-Clare did not ask whether he loved his father or not, and she hurried on:
“And now, when I try to think of you in your city, at your work, just how shall I think of you? Make it like a picture.”
Northrup struggled with himself. The girl beside him, in pushing him from her life, was so unutterably sweet and brave.
“My dear, my dear!” he whispered, and remorse, pity, yearning rang in the words.
“Make it like a picture!” Relentlessly the words were repeated. They demanded that he give his best.
“Think of a high little room in a tall tower overlooking all cities,” he began slowly, “the cheap, the beautiful, the glad, and the sad. The steam and smoke roll up and seem to make a gauzy path upon which all that really matters comes and goes as one sits and watches.”
Mary-Clare’s eyes were wide and vision-filled.
“Oh! thank you,” she whispered. “I shall always see it and you so. And sometimes, maybe when the sun is going down, as it is now, you will see me on that trail that is just yours, in your city coming to––to wish you well!”
“Good God!” Northrup shook himself. “What’s got us two? We’ve worked ourselves into a pretty state. Talking as, as if––Mary-Clare, I’m not going away. There will be other days. It’s that book of mine. Hang it! We’ve got snarled in the book.”
The weak efforts to ignore everything failed pitifully.
“No, it is life.” Mary-Clare grew grim as Northrup relaxed. “But I want you always to remember my old156doctor’s rule. If a thing is going to kill you, die bravely; if it isn’t, get over it at once and live the best you can.”
“God bless and keep you, Mary-Clare.” Absolute surrender marked the tone.
“He will!”
“But this is not good-bye!”
“No, it is not good-bye.”
157CHAPTER XII
While the days were passing and Mary-Clare and Northrup, with the book between them as a shield, fought their battle and won their victory, they had taken small heed of the undercurrent that was not merely carrying them on, but bearing others, also.
Northrup was comfortably conscious of Aunt Polly and old Peter, at the days’ ends. The sense of going home to them was distinctly a joy, a fitting and safe interlude.
Noreen and Jan-an supplied the light-comedy touch, for the two were capable of supplying no end of fun when there were hours that could not be utilized in work or devoted to that thrilling occupation of walking the trails with Mary-Clare.
The real, sordid tragedy element played small part in the autumn idyl, but it was developing none the less.
Larry on the Point was showing more patient persistence than one could have expected. He went about Maclin’s business with his usual reticence and devotion; occasionally he was away for a few days; when he was at home in Peneluna’s shack he was a quiet, rather pathetic figure of a man at loose ends, but casting no slurs. It was that pacific attitude of his that got on the nerves of his doubters and those who believed they understood him.
Peneluna, torn between her loyalty to Mary-Clare and the decency she felt called upon to show the old doctor’s son, was becoming irritable and jerky. Jan-an shrank from her and whimpered:
“What have I done? Ain’t I fetching and carrying for him?”––she nodded heavily toward Larry’s abiding place. “Ain’t I watching and telling yer all that he does? Writing and tearing up what he writes! Ain’t I showing you his scraps what don’t get burned? Ain’t I acting square?”
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Peneluna softened.
“Yes, you are!” she admitted. “But I declare, after finding nothing agin him, one gets to wondering if thereisanything agin him. I don’t like suspecting my feller creatures.”
“Suspectin’ ain’t like murdering!” Jan-an blurted out.
“If you don’t stop talking like that, Jan-an–––” But Peneluna paused, for she saw the frightened look creeping into Jan-an’s dull eyes.
It was while the Point was agitated about Larry that Twombley brought forth his gun and took to cleaning it and fondling it by his doorway. This action of Twombley’s fascinated Jan-an.
“What yer going to shoot?” she asked.
“Ducks, maybe.” Twombley leered pleasantly.
“I wish yer wouldn’t.”
“Why, Jan-an?”
“Ducks ain’t so used to it as chickens. I hate to see flying things ascanfly popped over.”
At this Twombley laughed aloud.
“All right, girl, I’ll hunt up something else to aim at––something that’s used to it. I ain’t saying I’ll hit anything, but aimin’ and finding out how steady yer hand is ain’t lacking in sport.”
So Twombley erected a target and enlivened and startled the Point by his practise. Maclin, after a few weeks of absence from the Point, called occasionally on his private agent and he was displeased by Twombley’s new amusement.
“What in thunder are you up to?” he asked.
“Not much––yet!” Twombley admitted. “Don’t hit the hole more than once out of four.”
“But the noise is bad for folks, Twombley.”
“They like it,” Twombley broke in. “Makes ’em jump and know they’re alive. It’s like fleas on dogs.”
“When I’m talking business with Rivers,” Twombley insisted, “I hate the racket.”
“All right, when I see you there, I’ll hold off.”
But Maclin did not want always to be seen at the shack.159It was one thing to stroll down to the Point, now and again, with that air of having made mistakes in the past and greeting the Pointers pleasantly, and quite another to find out, secretly, just what progress Larry was making in his interests and knowing what Larry was doing with his long days and nights.
So, after a fortnight of consideration, Maclin walked with Rivers from the mines one night determined to spend several hours in the shack and “use his eyes.” Larry did not seem particularly pleased with this intention and paused several times on the rough, dusky road, giving Maclin an opportunity to bid him good-night. But Maclin stuck like the little brown devil-pitchforks that decorated the trousers of both men as they strode on the woodside of the road.
“I’m like a rat in a hole,” Larry confided, despairing of shaking Maclin off. “I wish to God you’d send me away somewhere––overseas, if you can. You once promised that.”
Maclin’s eyes contracted, but it was too dark for Rivers to notice.
“Too late, just now, Rivers. That hell of a time they’re having over there keeps peaceful folks to their own waters.”
“Sometimes”––Larry grew moody––“I’ve thought I’d like to tumble into that mess and either–––”
“What?” Abruptly Maclin caught Rivers up.
“Oh! go under or––come to the top.” This was to laugh––so both men laughed.
Laughing and talking in undertones, they came to the dark shack and Larry, irritated at his inability to drop Maclin, unlocked the door and went in, followed by his unwelcome guest.
“What in thunder do you lock this old rookery up for?” Maclin asked, stumbling over a chair.
“I’ve got a notion lately that folks peep and pry. I’ve seen footprints around the house.”
“Well, why shouldn’t they pry and tramp about? The Point’s getting dippy. And that blasted gun of Twombley’s! See here, Rivers!”
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By this time Larry had lighted the smelly lamp and closed the door and locked it.
“You’re getting nervous and twisted, Rivers.”
The two sat down by the paper-strewn table.
“Well, who wouldn’t?” snapped Rivers. “Hiding in this junk, knowing that your wife–––” he paused abruptly, but Maclin nodded sympathetically. “It’s hell, Maclin.”
“Sure! Got anything to drink?”
Larry went to the closet and brought out a bottle and glasses.
“This helps!” Maclin said, pouring out the best brand from the Cosey.
The men drained their glasses and became, after a few minutes, more cheerful. Maclin stretched out his legs––he had to do this in order to adjust his fat and put his hands in his pockets.
“Larry, I want to tell you that you won’t have to hide in your hole much longer. I’m one too many for that fellow Northrup. I hold the cards now.”
“The devil you do!” Rivers’s eyes brightened.
“Yes, sir. He wants the Point, old man, and the Heathcotes gave him the knowledge that your wife owns it. He’s getting her where he can handle her. Damn shame, I say––using a woman and taking advantage of her weak side. If we don’t act spry he’ll get what he wants.”
Larry’s face flushed a purple-red.
“What do you mean, Maclin? Talk out straight and clear.”
“Well, I weigh it this way and that. Northrup might––I hate to use brutal terms––he might compromise your wife and get her to sell and shut him up, or he might get her so bedazzled that she’d feel real set up to negotiate with him. A man like Northrup is pretty flattering to a woman like your wife, Rivers. You see, she’s carrying such a big cargo of learning and fancy rot that she can’t properly sail. That kind gets strandedalways, Larry. They just naturallymakefor rocks.”
Larry had a sensation of choking and loosened his collar,161then he surprised Maclin by turning and lighting a fire in the stove before he further surprised him by asking, with dangerous calmness:
“What in all that’s holy do you––this Northrup––any one, want this damned Point for?”
Maclin was rarely in a position to fence with Rivers, but he was now.
“Larry, old man, did you ever have in your life an ideal, or what stands for it, that you would work for, and suffer for?”
“No!” Rivers could not stand delay.
“Well, I have, Larry. I’m an old sentimentalist, when you know me proper. I took a fancy to you, and while I can’t show my feelings as many can, I have stood by you and you’ve been a proposition, off and on. I bought those mines because I saw the chance they offered, and I shared with you. I’ve got big men interested. I’ve let you carry results to them––but the results are slow, Rivers, and they’re getting restive. I’m afraid some one of them has blabbed and this Northrup is the result. Why, man, I’ve got inventions over at the mines that will revolutionize this rotten, lazy Forest. I wanted to win the folks––but they wouldn’t be won. I wanted to save them in spite of themselves, but damn ’em, they won’t be saved. In a year I could make Heathcote a rich man, if he’d wake up andkeepan inn instead of a kennel. But I’ve got to have this Point. I want to build a bridge from here to the railroad property on the other shore––this is the narrowest part of the lake; I want to build cottages here, instead of––of rat holes. I’ve got to get this Point by hook or crook––and I can’t shilly-shally with this Northrup on to the game.”
Suddenly, while he was talking, Maclin’s eyes fell upon the untidy mass of papers on the table. He pulled his fat hands out of his tight pockets and let them fall like paperweights on the envelopes and sheets.
“What are these?” he asked.
Larry started guiltily.
“Old letters,” he said.
“What you doing with them?” As he spoke Maclin was162sorting and arranging the papers––the old he put to one side; the newer ones on the other. Some of the new ones were astonishingly good copies of the old!
“Playing the old game, eh?” Maclin scowled. “I thought you’d had enough of that, after–––”
“For God’s sake, Maclin, shut up.”
“Been carrying these mementos around with you all these years?”
Maclin was reading a letter of Larry’s father––an old one.
“No, I brought them with me from the old house. Mary-Clare had them, but they were mine.” Larry’s face was white and set into hard lines.
“Sure, so I see.” And Maclin was seeing a great deal.
He saw that Rivers had torn off, where it was possible, half pages from the old and yellowed letters; these were carefully banded together, while on fresh sheets of paper, the old letters in part, or in whole, were cleverly copied.
There was one yellowed half sheet in the old doctor’s handwriting bearing a new form of expression––there was no original of this. Maclin made sure of that. He read this new form once, twice, three times.
“If the time should ever come, my girl, when you and Larry could not agree, he’ll give you this letter. It is all I could do for him; it will prove that I trust you, at every turn, to do the right and just thing. Stand by Larry, as I have done.”
Maclin puffed out his cheeks. They looked like a child’s red balloon. “What in hell!” he ejaculated.
Larry’s face was gray. Guilt is always quick to hold up its hands when it thinks the enemy has the drop on it.
“Can’t you understand?” he whispered through dry lips. “I want to outwit them. I’m as keen as you, Maclin, and I’m working for you, old man, working for you! I was going to take this to her––she’ll do anything when she reads that––and I was going to tell her why the old man stood by me. That would shut her mouth and make her pay.”
There is in the shield of every man a weak spot. There was one in the shield of Maclin’s brutal villainy. For a moment163he felt positively virtuous; perhaps the sensation proved the embryo virtue in all.
“Are any of these things real?” he asked with a rough catch in his voice; “and don’t lie to me––it wouldn’t be healthy.”
“No.”
“You got your wife by letting her think your old father wanted it, wrote about it?”
“Yes. I had to outwit them some way. I was just free and couldn’t choose. They had no right to cut me out.”
“Well, by God, youarea rotter, Rivers.” The lines at which criminals balk are confusing. “And she never guessed?”
“No, she’d never seen Father’s writing in letters.”
Then Maclin’s outraged virtue took a curious turn.
“And you never cared for her after you got her?”
“I might have if she’d been the right sort––but she’s as hard as flint, Maclin. A man can’t stand her sort and keep his own self-respect.”
Maclin indulged in a weak laugh at this and Larry’s face burned.
“I might have gone straight if she’d been square, but she wasn’t. A man can’t put up with her type. And now––well! She ought to pay now.”
Maclin was gripping the loose sheets in his fat, greasy hands.
“Hold on there.” Larry pointed. “You’re getting them creased and dirty!”
Again Maclin laughed.
“I’ll leave enough copy,” he muttered. Then he fixed his little eyes on his prey while his fat neck wrinkled in the back. His emotion of virtue flickered and died, he was the alert man of business once more. “I told you after you got out of prison, Rivers, that I’d never stand for any more of that counterfeiting stuff. It’s too risky, and the talent can be put to better purpose. I’ve stood by you, I like you, and I need you. When we all pony up you’ll get your share––I mean when we build up the Forest, you’ll have a fat berth, but164you’ve got to play a card now for me and play it damn quick. Here, take this gem of yours”––he tossed Larry’s latest production to him––“and go to your wife to-morrow, and tell her why your old man stood by you; shut her mouth with that choice bit and then tell her––you want the Point! You’ve got her cornered, Rivers. She can’t escape. If she tries to, hurl Northrup at her.”
Larry wiped his lips with his hot hand.
“I haven’t quite finished this,” he muttered; “it will take a day or two.”
“Rivers, if you try any funny work on me–––” Maclin looked dangerous. He felt the fear that comes from not trusting those he must use.
“I’m not going to double-cross you, Maclin.”
“Here, take a nifter.” Maclin pushed the bottle toward Rivers. “You look all in,” he ventured.
“I am, just about.”
“Well, after this piece of business, I’ll send you off for as long as you want to stay. You need a change.”
Larry revived after a moment or two and some colour crept into his cheeks.
“I’m going now,” Maclin said, getting up and releasing the tools of Larry’s trade. “Better get a good night’s rest and be fresh for to-morrow. A day or so won’t count, so long as we understand the game. Good-night!”
Outside in the darkness Maclin stood still and listened. His iron nerves were shaken and he had his moment of far vision. If he succeeded––well! at that thought Maclin felt his blood run riotously in his veins. Glory! Glory! His name ringing out into fame.
But!––the cold sweat broke over the fat man standing in the dark. Still, he would not have been the man he was if he permitted doubt to linger. Hemustsucceed. Right was back of him; with him. Unyielding Right. It must succeed.
Maclin strode on, picking his way over the ash heaps and broken bottles. A pale moon was trying to make itself evident, but piles of black clouds defeated it at every attempt.165The wind was changing. From afar the chapel bell struck its warning. It rang wildly, gleefully, then sank into silence only to begin once more. Seeking, seeking a quarter in which it might rest.
Maclin, head down, plunged into the night and reached the road to the mines. He saw to it that the road was so bad that no one would use it except from necessity, but he cursed it now. He all but fell several times, he thanked God––God indeed!––when the lights of the Cosey Bar came in sight.
He did not often drink of his public whiskey, or drink with his foreigners, but he chose to do so to-night. His men welcomed him thickly––they had been wallowing in beer for hours; the man at the bar drew forth a bottle of whiskey––he knew Maclin rarely drank beer.
An hour later, Maclin, master of the place and the men, was talking slowly, encouragingly, in a tongue that they all understood. Their dull eyes brightened; their heavy faces twitched under excitement that amounted to inspiration. Now and again they raised their mugs aloft and muttered something that sounded strangely like prayer.
Dominated by a man and an emotion they were, not the drudging machines of the mines, but a vital force ready for action.