Carnac went slowly towards his father's house on the hill. Fixed, as his mind was, upon all that had just happened, his eye took fondly from the gathering dusk pictures which the artist's mind cherishes—the long roadway, with the maples and pines, the stump fences; behind which lay the garnered fields, where the plough had made ready the way for the Fall wheat; the robins twittering in the scattered trees; the cooing of the wood-pigeon; over all, the sky in its perfect purpling blue, and far down the horizon the evening-star slowly climbing. He noted the lizards slipping through the stones; he saw where the wheel of a wagon had crushed some wild flower-growth; he heard the far call of a milkmaid to the cattle; he caught the sweet breath of decaying verdure, and through all, the fresh, biting air of the new-land autumn, pleasantly stinging his face.
Something kept saying to his mind: "It's all good. It's life and light, and all good." But his nerves were being tried; his whole nature was stirred.
He took the letter from his pocket again, and read it in the fading light. It was native, naive, brutal, and unconsciously clever—and the girl who had written it was beautiful. It had only a few lines. It asked him why he had deserted her, his wife. It said that he would find American law protected the deluded stranger. It asked if he had so soon forgotten the kisses he had given her, and did he not realize they were married? He felt that, with her, beneath all, there was more than malice; there was a passion which would run risks to secure its end.
A few moments later he was in the room where his mother, with her strong, fine, lonely face, sat sewing by the window. The door opened squarely on her, and he saw how refined and sad, yet self-contained, was the woman who had given him birth. The look in her eyes warmly welcomed him. Her own sorrows made her sensitive to those of others, and as Carnac entered she saw something was vexing him.
"Dear lad!" she said.
He was beside her now, and he kissed her cheek. "Best of all the world," he said; and he did not see that she shrank a little.
"Are you in trouble?" she asked, and her hand touched his shoulder.
The wrong she had done him long ago vexed her. It was not possible this boy could fit in with a life where, in one sense, he did not belong. It was not part of her sorrow that he had given himself to painting and sculpture. In her soul she believed this might be best for him in the end. She had a surreptitious, an almost anguished, joy in the thought that he and John Grier could not hit it off. It seemed natural that both men, ignorant of their own tragedy, believing themselves to be father and son, should feel for each other the torture of distance, a misunderstanding, which only she and one other human being understood.
John Grier was not the boy's father. Carnac was the son of BarodeBarouche.
After a moment he said: "Mother, I know why I've come to you. It's because I feel when I'm in trouble, I get helped by being with you."
"How do I help, my boy?" she asked with a sad smile, for he had said the thing dearest to her heart.
"When I'm with you, I seem to get a hold on myself. I've always had a strange feeling about you. I felt when I was a child that you're two people; one that lives on some distant, lonely prairie, silent, shadowy and terribly loving; and the other, a vocal person, affectionate, alert, good and generous."
He paused, but she only shook her head. After a moment he continued:"I know you aren't happy, mother, but maybe you once were—at the start."
She got to her feet, and drew herself up.
"I'm happy in your love, but all the rest—is all the rest. It isn't your father's fault wholly. He was busy; he forgot me. Dear, dear boy, never give up your soul to things only, keep it for people."
She was naturally straight and composed; yet as she stood there, she had a certain lonely splendour like some soft metal burning. Among her fellow-citizens she had place and position, but she took no lead; she was always an isolated attachment of local enterprises. It was in her own house where her skill and adaptability had success. She had brought into her soul misery and martyrdom, and all martyrs are lonely and apart.
Sharp visions of what she was really flashed through Carnac's mind, and he said:
"Mother, there must be something wrong with you and me. You were naturally a great woman, and sometimes I have a feeling I might be a great man, but I don't get started for it. I suppose, you once had an idea you'd play a big part in the world?"
"Girls have dreams," she answered with moist eyes, "and at times I thought great things might come to me; but I married and got lost."
"You got lost?" asked Carnac anxiously, for there was a curious note in her voice.
She tried to change the effect of her words.
"Yes, I lost myself in somebody else's ambitions I lost myself in the storm."
Carnac laughed. "Father was always a blizzard, wasn't he? Now here, now there, he rushed about making money, humping up his business, and yet why shouldn't you have ranged beside him. I don't understand."
"No, that's the bane of life," she replied. "We don't understand each other. I can't understand why you don't marry Junia. You love her. You don't understand why I couldn't play as big a part as your father— I couldn't. He was always odd—masterful and odd, and I never could do just as he liked."
There was yearning sadness in her eyes. "Dear Carnac, John Grier is a whirlwind, but he's also a still pool in which currents are secretly twisting, turning. His imagination, his power is enormous; but he's Oriental, a barbarian."
"You mean he might have had twenty wives?"
"He might have had twenty, and he'd have been the same to all of them, because they play no part, except to make his home a place where his body can live. That's the kind of thing, when a wife finds it out, that either kills her slowly, or drives her mad."
"It didn't kill you, mother," remarked Carnac with a little laugh.
"No, it didn't kill me."
"And it didn't drive you mad," he continued.
She looked at him with burning intensity. "Oh, yes, it did—but I became sane again." She gazed out of the window, down the hillside. "Your father will soon be home. Is there anything you want to say before that?"
Carnac wanted to tell his tragic story, but it was difficult. He caught his mother's hand.
"What's the matter, Carnac? You are in trouble. I can see it in your eyes—I feel it. Is it money?" she asked. She knew it was not, yet she could not help but ask. He shook his head in negation.
"Is it business?"
She knew his answer, yet she must make these steps before she said to him: "Is it a woman?"
He nodded now. She caught his eyes and held them with her own. All the silence and sorrow, all the remorse and regret of the past twenty-six years gathered in her face.
"Yes and no," he answered with emotion. "You've quarrelled with Junia?"
"No," he replied.
"Why don't you marry her?" she urged. "We all would like it, even your father."
"I can't."
"Why?" She leant forward with a slight burning of the cheek. "Why,Carnac?"
He had determined to keep his own secret, to hide the thing which had vexed his life, but a sudden feeling overcame his purpose. With impulse he drew out the letter he had received in John Grier's office and handed it to her.
"Read that, and then I'll tell you all about it—all I can."
With whitening face, she took the letter and read its few lines. It was written in French, with savage little flourishes and twists, and the name signed at the end was "Luzanne." At last she handed it back, her fingers trembling.
"Who is Luzanne, and what does it mean?" What she had read was startling.
He slowly seated himself beside her. "I will tell you."
When Carnac had ended his painful story, she said to him: "It's terrible —oh, terrible. But there was divorce."
"Yes, but they told me I couldn't get a divorce. Yet I wish now I'd tried for it. I've never heard a word from the girl till I got that letter. It isn't strange she hasn't moved in the thing till now. It was I that should have acted; and she knew that. She means business, that's clear, and it'll be hard to prove I didn't marry her with eyes wide open. It gets between me and my work and my plans for the future; between—"
"Between you and Junia," she said mournfully. "Don't you think you ought to get a divorce for Junia's sake, if nothing else?"
"Yes, of course. But I'm not sure I could get a divorce—evidence is so strong against me, and it was a year ago! If I can see Luzanne again perhaps I can get her to tear up the marriage-lines—that's what I want. She isn't all bad. I must go again to New York; and Junia can wait. I'm not much, I know—not worth waiting for, maybe, but I'm in earnest where Junia's concerned. I could make a little home for her at once, and a better one as time went on, if she would marry me."
After a moment of silence, Carnac added: "I'm going to New York. Don't you think I ought to go?"
The gaunt, handsome face of the woman darkened, and then she answered:"Yes."
There was silence again for a moment, deep and painful, and then Carnac spoke.
"Mother, I don't think father is well. I see a great change in him. He hasn't long to travel, and some day you'll have everything. He might make you run the business, with Tarboe as manager."
She shuddered slightly. "With Tarboe—I never thought of that—with Tarboe! . . . Are you going to wait for—your father? He'll be here presently."
"No, I'm off. I'll go down the garden, through the bushes," he said…."Mother, I've got nearer you to-night than in all the rest of my life."
She kissed him fondly. "You're going away, but I hope you'll come back in time."
He knew she meant Junia.
"Yes, I hope I'll come back in time."
A moment later he was gone, out of the sidedoor, through the bushes, and down the hill, running like a boy. He had for the first time talked to his mother about the life of their home; the facts she told him stripped away the curtain that hid the secret things of life from his eyes.
John Grier almost burst upon his wife. He opened and shut the door noisily; he stamped into the dusky room.
"Isn't it time for a light?" he said with a quizzical nod towards her.
The short visit of Carnac had straightened her back. "I like the twilight. I don't light up until it's dark, but if you wish—"
"You like the twilight; you don't light up until it's dark, but if I wish—ah, that's it! Have your own way…. I'm the breadwinner; I'm the breadwinner; I'm the fighter; I'm the man that makes the machine go; but I don't like the twilight, and I don't like to wait until it's dark before I light up. So there it is!"
She said nothing at once, but struck a match, and lit the gas.
"It's easy to give you what you want," she answered after a little."I'm used to it now."
There was something animal-like in the thrust forward of his neck, in the anger that mounted to his eyes. When she had drawn down the blinds, he said to her: "Who's been here?"
For an instant she hesitated. Then she said: "Carnac's been here, but that has naught to do with what I said. I've lived with you for over thirty years, and I haven't spoken my mind often, but I'm speaking it now."
"Never too late to mend, eh!" he gruffly interposed. "So Carnac's been here! Putting up his independent clack, eh? He leaves his old father to struggle as best he may, and doesn't care a damn. That's your son Carnac."
How she longed to say to him, "That's not your son Carnac!" but she could not. A greyness crossed over her face.
"Is Carnac staying here?"
She shook her head in negation.
"Well, now I'll tell you about Carnac," he said viciously. "I'm shutting him out of the business of my life. You understand?"
"You mean—" She paused.
"He's taken his course, let him stick to it. I'm taking my course, andI'll stick to it."
She came close and reached out a faltering hand. "John, don't do what you'll be sorry for."
"I never have."
"When Fabian was born, you remember what you said? You said: 'Life's worth living now.'"
"Yes, but what did I say when Carnac was born?"
"I didn't hear, John," she answered, her face turning white.
"Well, I said naught."
Fabian Grier's house was in a fashionable quarter of a fashionable street, the smallest of all built there; but it was happily placed, rather apart from others, at the very end of the distinguished promenade. Behind it, a little way up the hill, was a Roman Catholic chapel.
The surroundings of the house were rural for a city habitation. Behind it were commendable trees, from one of which a swing was hung. In a corner, which seemed to catch the sun, was a bird-cage on a pole, sought by pigeons and doves. In another corner was a target for the bow and arrow-evidence of the vigorous life of the owners of the house.
On the morning after Carnac told his mother he was going away, the doors of the house were all open. Midway between breakfast and lunch, the voices of children sang through the dining-room bright with the morning sun. The children were going to the top of the mountain-the two youngsters who made the life of Fabian and his wife so busy. Fabian was a man of little speech. He was slim and dark and quiet, with a black moustache and smoothly brushed hair, with a body lithe and composed, yet with hands broad, strong, stubborn.
As Junia stood by the dining-room table and looked at the alert, expectant children, she wished she also was going now to the mountain- top. But that could not be—not yet. Carnac had sent a note saying he wished to see her, and she had replied through Denzil that her morning would be spent with her sister. "What is it?" she remarked to herself. "What is it? There's nothing wrong. Yet I feel everything upside down."
Her face turned slowly towards the wide mountain; it caught the light upon the steeple of the Catholic chapel. She shuddered slightly, and an expression came into her shadowed eyes not belonging to her personality, which was always buoyant.
As she stood absorbed, her mind in a maze of perplexity, a sigh broke from her lips. She suddenly had a conviction about Carnac; she felt his coming might bring a crisis; that what he might say must influence her whole life. Carnac—she threw back her head. Suddenly a sweet, appealing, intoxicating look crossed her face. Carnac! Yes, there was a man, a man of men.
Tarboe got his effects by the impetuous rush of a personality; Carnac by something that haunted, that made him more popular absent than present. Carnac compelled thought. When he was away she wanted him; when he was near she liked to quarrel with him. When they were together, one moment she wanted to take his hands in her hands, and in the next she wanted to push him over some great cliff—he was so maddening. He provoked the devil in her; yet he made her sing the song of Eden. What was it?
As she asked the question she heard a firm step on the path. It was Carnac. She turned and stood waiting, leaning against the table, watching the door through which he presently came. He was dressed in grey. His coat was buttoned. He carried a soft grey hat, and somehow his face gave her a feeling that he had come to say good-bye. It startled her; and yet, though she was tempted to grip her breast, she did not. Presently she spoke.
"I think you're a very idle man. Why aren't you at work?"
"I am at work," Carnac said cheerfully.
"Work is not all paint and canvas of course. There has to be the thinking beforehand. Well, of what are you thinking now?"
"Of the evening train to New York."
His face was turned away from her at the instant, because he did not wish to see the effect of his words. He would have seen that apprehension came to her eyes. Her mouth opened in quick amazement. It was all too startling. He was going—for how long?
"Why are you going?" she asked, when she had recovered her poise.
"Well, you see I haven't quite learned my painting yet, and I must study in great Art centres where one isn't turned down by one's own judgment."
"Ananias!" she said at last. "Ananias!"
"Why do you say I'm a liar?" he asked, flushing a little, though there was intense inquiry in his eyes. "Because I think it. It isn't your work only that's taking you away." Suddenly she laughed. "What a fool you are, Carnac! You're not a good actor. You're not going away for work's sake only."
"Not for work's sake only—that's true."
"Then why do you go?"
"I'm in a mess, Junia. I've made some mistakes in my life, and I'm going to try and put one of them right."
"Is anybody trying to do you harm?" she asked gently.
"Yes, somebody's trying to hurt me."
"Hurt him," she rejoined sharply, and her eyes fastened his.
He was about to say there was no him in the matter, but reason steadied him, and he said:
"I'll do my best, Junia. I wish I could tell you, but I can't. What's to be done must be done by myself alone."
"Then it ought to be done well."
With an instant's impulse he moved towards her. She went to the window, however, and she said: "Here's Fabian. You'll be glad of that. You'll want to say good-bye to him and Sibyl." She ran from him to the front door. "Fabian—Fabian, here's a bad boy who wants to tell you things he won't tell me." With these words she went into the garden.
"I don't think he'll tell me," came Fabian's voice. "Why should he?"
A moment afterwards the two men met.
"Well, what's the trouble, Carnac?" asked Fabian in a somewhat challenging voice.
"I'm going away."
"Oh—for how long?" Fabian asked quizzically. "I don't know—a year, perhaps. I want to make myself a better artist, and also free myself."
Now his eyes were on Junia in her summer-time recreation, and her voice, humming a light-opera air, was floating to him through the autumn morning.
"Has something got you in its grip, then?"
"I'm the victim of a reckless past, like you." Something provocative was in his voice and in his words.
"Was my past reckless?" asked Fabian with sullen eyes.
"Never so reckless as mine. You fought, quarrelled, hit, sold and bought again, and now you're out against your father, fighting him."
"I had to come out or be crushed."
"I'm not so sure you won't be crushed now you're out. He plays boldly, and he knows his game. One or the other of you must prevail, and I think it won't be you, Fabian. John Grier does as much thinking in an hour as most of us do in a month, and with Tarboe he'll beat you dead. Tarboe is young; he's got the vitality of a rhinoceros. He knows the business from the bark on the tree. He's a flyer, is Tarboe, and you might have been in Tarboe's place and succeeded to the business."
Fabian threw out his arms. "But no! Father might live another ten years—though I don't think so—and I couldn't have stood it. He was lapping me in the mud."
"He doesn't lap Tarboe in the mud."
"No, and he wouldn't have lapped you in the mud, because you've got imagination, and you think wide and long when you want to. But I'm middle-class in business. I've got no genius for the game. He didn't see my steady qualities were what was needed. He wanted me to be like himself, an eagle, and I was only a robin red-breast."
Suddenly his eyes flashed and his teeth set. "You couldn't stand him, wouldn't put up with his tyranny. You wanted to live your own life, and you're doing it. When he bought me out, what was there for me to do but go into the only business I knew, with the only big man in the business, besides John Grier. I've as good blood as he's got in his veins. I do business straight.
"He didn't want me to do it straight. That's one of the reasons we fell out. John Grier's a big, ruthless trickster. I wasn't. I was for playing the straight game, and I played it."
"Well, he's got his own way now. He's got a man who wouldn't blink at throttling his own brother, if it'd do him any good. Tarboe is iron and steel; he's the kind that succeeds. He likes to rule, and he's going to get what he wants mostly."
"Is that why you're going away?" asked Fabian. "Don't you think it'll be just as well not to go, if Tarboe is going to get all he wants?"
"Does Tarboe come here?"
"He's been here twice."
"Visiting?"
"No. He came on urgent business. There was trouble between our two river-driving camps. He wanted my help to straighten things out, and he got it. He's pretty quick on the move."
"He wanted you to let him settle it?"
"He settled it, and I agreed. He knows how to handle men; I'll say that for him. He can run reckless on the logs like a river-driver; he can break a jam like an expert. He's not afraid of man, or log, or devil. That's his training. He got that training from John Grier's firm under another name. I used to know him by reputation long before he took my place in the business—my place and yours. You got loose from the business only to get tied up in knots of your own tying," he added. "What it is I don't know, but you say you're in trouble and I believe you." Suddenly a sharp look came to his face. "Is it a woman?"
"It's not a man."
"Well, you ought to know how to handle a woman. You're popular with women. My wife'll never hear a word against you. I don't know how you do it. We're so little alike, it makes me feel sometimes we're not brothers. I don't know where you get your temperament from."
"It doesn't matter where I got it, it's mine. I want to earn my own living, and I'm doing it." Admiration came into Fabian's face. "Yes," he said, "and you don't borrow—"
"And don't beg or steal. Mother has given me money, and I'm spending my own little legacy, all but five thousand dollars of it."
Fabian came up to his brother slowly. "If you know what's good for you, you'll stay where you are. You're not the only man that ought to be married. Tarboe's a strong man, and he'll be father's partner. He's handsome in his rough way too, is Tarboe. He knows what he wants, and means to have it, and this is a free country. Our girls, they have their own way. Why don't you settle it now? Why don't you marry Junia, and take her away with you—if she'll have you?"
"I can't—even if she'll have me."
"Why can't you?"
"I'm afraid of the law."
An uneasy smile hung at Carnac's lips. He suddenly caught Fabian's shoulder in a strong grip. "We've never been close friends, Fabian. We've always been at sixes and sevens, and yet I feel you'd rather do me a good turn than a bad one. Let me ask you this—that you'll not believe anything bad of me till you've heard what I've got to say. Will you do that?"
Fabian nodded. "Of course. But if I were you, I wouldn't bet on myself, Carnac. Junia's worth running risks for. She's got more brains than my wife and me together, and she bosses us; but with you, it's different. I think you'd boss her. You're unexpected; you're daring; and you're reckless."
"Yes, I certainly am reckless."
"Then why aren't you reckless now? You're going away. Why, you haven't even told her you love her. The other man—is here, and—I've seen him look at her? I know by the way she speaks of him how she feels. Besides, he's a great masterful creature. Don't be a fool! Have a try . . . Junia—Junia," he called.
The figure in the garden with the flowers turned. There was a flicker of understanding in the rare eyes. The girl held up a bunch of flowers high like a torch.
"I'm coming, my children," she called, and, with a laugh, she ran forward through the doorway.
"What is it you want, Fabian?" she asked, conscious that in Carnac's face was consternation. "What can I do for you?" she added, with a slight flush.
"Nothing for me, but for Carnac—" Fabian stretched out a hand.
She laughed brusquely. "Oh, Carnac! Carnac! Well, I've been making him this bouquet." She held it out towards him. "It's a farewell bouquet for his little journey in the world. Take it, Carnac, with everybody's love—with Fabian's love, with Sibyl's love, with my love. Take it, and good-bye."
With a laugh she caught up her hat from the table, and a moment later she was in the street making for the mountain-side up which the children had gone.
Carnac placed the bouquet upon the table. Then he turned to his brother.
"What a damn mess you make of things, Fabian!"
All genius is at once a blessing or a curseDo what you feel you've got to do, and never mind what happensHad got unreasonably oldHow many sons have ever added to their father's fame?Never give up your soul to things only, keep it for peopleWe do what we forbid ourselves to doWe suffer the shames we damn in others