HOAG rode into the village the next morning, and as his horse bore him along through the balmy air he ruminated over the object he had in view. He had determined to see Sid Trawley and have a straight talk with him about certain private matters. He no longer doubted that the liveryman was persistently avoiding him. Sid had not answered to his name at the last roll-call of the “klan,” and vague rumors were afloat. One of the younger members had jocularly remarked that Sid had simply “got cold feet, an' was tryin' to shirk the entire thing.” At any rate, Hoag was sure that Trawley was not deporting himself as an aide-decamp should, and Hoag was determined to have a distinct understanding about it. It was not Hoag's way to beat about the bush, and Trawley knew too much regarding matters more or less confidential to be allowed to act as he was acting without good and sufficient reasons. As his horse cantered along the street near the livery-stable, Hoag was quite sure that he saw Trawley in the doorway and that he had purposely withdrawn from view.
“Huh, that's cheeky!” Hoag muttered, as he reined in at the stable, dismounted, and threw his bridle-rein to a negro attendant.
“Which way did Sid go?” he asked the man, suddenly.
The negro's eyelashes flickered hesitatingly, and he avoided the white man's stare.
“I dunno, boss, I hain't seed 'im,” the man said. “He was heer dis mawnin', but I don't know whar he is now.”
“You are a liar, you black imp!” Hoag growled. “I saw 'im right here a minute ago.”
The negro made no response; he shrugged his shoulders doggedly, and his bead-like eyes were full of cautious concern as he led the horse to a stall.
Hoag stared after him, a sullen, thwarted expression on his face. “Don't take the saddle off,” he yelled. “I'm goin' back right away.” And with that he suddenly turned into the little office on the right, finding Trawley at his desk, a queer look, half of fear, half of sheepishness, in his shifting eyes. Hoag was now positive that the man was trying to avoid him, and a fierce demand for explanation was on his tongue, but he managed to restrain himself. Indeed, he felt that this was a case that required diplomatic handling, for Trawley had a temper, and at present had the look of a man driven into a corner.
“Hello, Sid,” Hoag said. “How goes it?”
“Oh, so so,” Trawley answered, awkwardly. “How's things out your way?”
“Oh, about as common.” Hoag was wondering over Trawley's sallow complexion, once so ruddy, and the nervousness of a frame which surely had lost weight and poise. The two did not shake hands. Hoag idly tapped the green cloth of the desk, beating little ridges of dust into view, and fixed his purposeful eyes on the dingy, small-paned window which was hung over with cobwebs.
“You hain't answered at roll-call lately,” he suddenly plunged.
“I couldn't find the time.” Trawley was opening a canvas-backed ledger with thin, quivering fingers. “I've been powerful busy, Cap. Lots an' lots o' rigs an' hosses goin' out an' comin' in—can't trust my shebang with these coons. They don't feed an' water my stock—or rub 'em down when they come in tired. They git things all balled up—send out hosses on long trips that hain't had no rest; one o' my best mules dropped dead t'other day an'—”
“I understand all that.” Hoag's eyes bore down on him impatiently. “But you didn'tuseto be so all-fired anxious about this dang stable. It's a new twist altogether. Say, has anything gone crooked with you?”
“What makes you ax that?” Trawley's words crept slowly from his stiff lips, and his glance rose, only to fall precipitately.
“I don't know,” Hoag replied. “Some o' the boys said they didn't know but what you'd took to doctorin' yorese'f—got a fool notion in yore head that you was about to git down sick.”
“Well, Iamsick—if you want to know,” Trawley suddenly declared. “I'm not a sound man, by a long shot.”
“Oh, come off!” Hoag laughed. “You've been eatin' too much or smokin' more'n you ought. Maybe yore liquor ain't o' the right brand. There's a lot o' poison in the truck shoved over bar-counters these days. You oughtn't to touch any but straight moonshine corn. Some o' our boys make the best that ever slid down a gullet.”
“'Tain't nothin' o' that sort,” Trawley sighed, despondently. “Dr. Lynn examined me an' wasn't a bit satisfied. He said my stomach had clean gone back on me. Nothin' I eat won't stay down. I roll an' tumble at night an' shake all over durin' the day. Doc said it was serious.”
“Oh, now I understand.” Hoag seemed slightly relieved. “But you hain't a-goin' to letthatscare the socks off you. Besides, Lynn may be mistaken.”
Trawley's chin dropped despondently. “He knows as much as any doctor, I reckon. Looked to me like he considered my case hopeless. He shook his head all the time he was talkin'. He—he hinted purty strong that I ought to be prepared, that I might—might have to go any day.” Trawley's scant blood had left his face and his lip hung limply.
Hoag shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “So you've let that scare you plumb off from old habits. You set here an' mope instead o' bein' up an' about with the rest of us. We all got to die some time or other.”
Trawley glared fiercely out from his labyrinth of fears. “You wait till it gitsyoudown!” he blurted out. “Youkin talk, standin' thar with that solid pouch on you—an' a meal in it that you can hold down. Don't talk to me; I know when I'm in trouble!”
“I know when you will be, shore enough, if you don't mark my words.” Hoag was now employing his favorite browbeating method, and his eyes flashed threateningly. “You have been shootin' off your mouth to outsiders. You are like a scared old hag with fits. I heard that hobgoblin tale you told about seein' the ghost o' Pete Watson. The tale's goin' the rounds, gittin' bigger an' bigger, like a cake o' beeswax that everybody adds a chunk to, an' thar wasn't a thing in it but your fool jim-jams.”
“I know what Iknow!” Trawley said, a shadow of superstition in his eyes. “I was in my right senses—I was seein' as plain as I am now. The fust time he appeared I was wide awake, settin' up in a chair in the kitchen. The next time I was in my corn-crib a little after dark. Pete put his hand to his neck; I heard 'im groan an' gurgle. He comes to my bed sometimes when I'm asleepin' an' pulls the covers off an' then darts right through the wall. The last time he told me that me nor none o' the klan would ever have peace—that black folks was the same as white whar he was at, an' that accordin' to the book o' judgment to kill the innocent was the unpardonable sin alluded to in Scripture.”
“Poof, Sid, you are gone clean daffy!” Hoag sneered, though a serious expression had captured his features, for he was wondering how far this indiscreet babbler could be trusted to recount such imaginings.
“He gotyouin it all right,” Trawley said, vindictively. “I ain't the only one. The last time he come to me I was drivin' the cow home from the pasture after dark. At fust I thought it was a calf or a stray hog; but he come on till he was close by my side, limpin' along like he used to do, with his old flipflap feet. He talked as plain as ever he did in this life. He said I was to die a slow death an' a terrible one—that my folks would think I was dead an' put me in the ground, but that I'd lie thar an' wait till him an' some more come an' twisted my sperit out an' tuck it on to torment. Then he fetched you in.”
“Me?” Hoag sniffed. “Well, I'm glad he hain't forgot me. I hope he remembers the time I lambasted 'im for breakin' that new plow o' mine.”
“Yes; he said yore time was comin', too; he said you was the prime mover an' power in the organization—that you was a rank coward at heart, an' that you jest loved the fun o' scarin' niggers because you was afraid o' brave white men. I dunno, I'm jest tellin' you what he told me. He said your luck was goin' to turn flat ag'in' you—that your present support would sluff away, an' you'd find yourself alone with nothin' 'twixt you an' the Almighty but the niggers you'd sent on ahead, an' that you'd git on your knees to 'em an' beg 'em to speak a kind word for you, but that they'd turn a deef ear. He may have missed it in yore case, but was right aboutme. Jim Hoag, I'm a dyin' man, an' I'm in hell already.” Hoag was becoming angry. Had he dared he would have spoken more sharply. He told himself that Trawley had lost his reason, and that he was a very unsafe man in his present condition, holding the knowledge he held.
“You'll have to git out o' this,” he said, sternly. “You need a change.”
“I need more'n that,” Trawley groaned, and he beat the top of his desk with a limp, splaying hand. “I need medicine that ain't in no bottle or doctor's saddle-bags. I know what I need, but I don't know whar to git it. I need what my good old mammy had when she died, shoutin' an' talkin' about her folks that had gone on, who she declared was right thar over the bed holdin' out their hands to her.”
“Take it from me, Sid,” Hoag said, carelessly, “all that stuff is pure poppycock. When a man's time comes the jig is up—that's all; he's done for; he's put in the ground an' rots. As for me, that's all I want or expect.”
“I know you've always said that,” Trawley answered, “an' I used to think maybe you was right, bein' sech a big man in your way; but I know different now. Say, Jim Hoag, what do you make o' Paul Rundel?”
“Make o' 'im—what do you mean?”
“I want to know what could 'a' fetched 'imback here to give up to the halter like he did unless—unless he was led by some'n in 'im bigger, wider, an' higher than jest his mortal body?”
Hoag smiled significantly, and idly tapped the leg of his trousers with his whip. “Just betwixt us two, Sid, I never have knowed justwhatPaul's game was. I saw he was a good man for the job I had open, an' I tuck 'im in. I never have bothered about the tale he told. That was his lookout. He's got a clear head for business. He understands human nature, an' he was sharp enough, I reckon, to know that nine juries out o' ten would be lenient in a case like his'n. He was homesick for these old mountains, an' was willin' to serve a year or two an' be done with it.”
“That won't do at all—not at all,” Trawley protested, with firmness. “I've never seed an eye like his'n in a human head. He heard I was ailin', an' come in here last week friendly like to talk to me. Well”—Trawley averted his face and sat linking his fingers like wooden prongs—“I just don't know how to tell you about it, Cap. He said—Paul said some o' the quarest, most comfortin' things that ever a sick man heard. I want to see 'im ag'in—I justmust. I've been to preachers, an' to old Christian men like Tye over thar, an' they all gave me the same stale song-and-dance; but this young fellow, with his shinin' face an' happy way, had some'n fresh. Why, he said that the Lord just couldn't be hard on any repentant soul He'd ever created. I wish I could tell you how Paul fixed it, but I can't remember. He said the ugly sights I'd seed was just inme—just in my own mind—an' that as soon as I seed that I was part an' parcel of God Hisse'f all them gloomy shadows would pass away an' I'd see visions o' true light. He cited the thief on the cross—you remember about that feller? He was dyin' thar by the Saviour, you know, an' the Lord said to him, 'This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.' As Paul fixed it up nothin' the thief had done in days gone by was to be helt ag'in' 'im—nothin'!He says it is all a matter of wrong thought or right thought. He told a purty tale that was sorter like a new-fashioned parable. He said, take two brothers, for instance. A lawyer comes away across the ocean from the old country an' tells 'em, on his word an' honor, that a kinsman has died over thar an' left 'em a million apiece, but that they will have to be patient an' wait a year before the money will be paid into the'r hands. Now, Paul said one of 'em, for example, would believe the lawyer an' spend his year full o' happy expectations, but t'other wouldn't trust the lawyer's statement, an' in his doubt an' uncertainty his year would be the most miserable he ever spent. Both come in at the end on the same actual level, you see, Cap, but the trustin' fellow got in twelve months quicker—that's all. Paul says that illustrates what is called havin' the kingdom of heaven within you—it's our'n if we'll just believe it's our'n an' move in an' take possession.”
Hoag's countenance was full of shadow. For a moment he seemed undecided as to what to say. He whipped his leg steadily and cleared his throat. One of the negro attendants leaned in at the door and asked Trawley a question, and the liveryman replied sharply:
“Give 'im any pair he wants, an' don't disturb me ag'in while I'm talkin'.” He uttered a low groan as the negro withdrew and looked up at his frowning companion. “I tell you, Jim Hoag, when a man gits in trouble like I am in, a puny thing like whether he rents a turnout, or a hub is split, or a tire off, amounts to so little that it makes 'im mad to think about it.”
“Looky' here, Sid!” Hoag's beetling brows ran together, and his tone was fierce and direct. “I want to git at this thing right now, so as to know what to depend on. Like the rest of us, you are under oath of secrecy to the klan. Did you say anything to Paul Rundel to lead him to suspect that—”
“No, I didn't,” Trawley groaned. “I kept it all back, an' thar's right whar I think my chief trouble lies. I've taken an oath that binds me to the devil an' his imps. Paul says, to git the real thing you've got to go at it with a clean breast, an' I can't be that way with you fellows tellin' me to come to your secret meetin's an' layin' claim to me. I hain't give you all away, an' I ain't goin' to, but I'm in a bad fix. I want to clean up an' git right, but I don't know how. It seems wrong to break my oath, an' wuss to keep it.”
“I can say to you right here, Sid”—Hoag moved toward the door, a dark, red flush on his face—“if you do betray our body you'll regret it, an' you know well enough why.”
So speaking, and without another glance at the man he was leaving, Hoag strode away. Aflame with fury, he mounted his horse and rode homeward.
THE following night was dark and sultry. A slight, brief rain had pattered upon the hot and dusty earth, leaving a warm, thick moisture in the air. The clouds, shifting, dissolving, and massing overhead, alternately revealed and hid the stars. The moon's white disk hung behind a filmy veil above the mountain-top. Hoag had retired to his room in anything but a pleasant mood. He could count on browbeating the average man under him, the man who was afraid of the good or ill opinion of his fellows; but the man who was afraid of the Infinite, as in Trawley's case, was different.
Hoag had removed his coat and his shirt was open in front. He sat in a chair at a window overlooking his tannery. He was smoking, as usual. In fact, the habit had grown upon him to such an extent that he was afraid of what he called “a tobacco-heart.” There were occasional warnings, in certain muscular flutterings and lapses into drowsiness that had not belonged to his more buoyant period. He told himself that he was taking on flesh too rapidly. He was sure he was eating more than he should; that his toddies were acting as an unnatural stimulant to an appetite which had always been too vigorous.
On a table behind him a lamp was dimly burning, and the bed in its billowy warmth looked uninviting. The old clock in the hall below had struck eleven when he rose to disrobe. Suddenly he heard Rover, the watch-dog, bark loudly and scamper down the lawn toward the tannery. Then there was silence, broken by a subdued muttering under the dark sheds. Hoag was sure that the dog had been silenced by some one, and the circumstance was suspicious, to say the least, and must be looked into. So, taking his revolver from the table, and in order that he might not wake Jack or Mrs. Tilton in the next room, he opened his door softly, then crept noiselessly out at the side-entrance and went across the damp lawn down the slope, avoiding this or that obstacle in his progress—a beehive, a lawn-mower, or a dismantled cider-press left at the mercy of the weather. He was soon under the sheds groping his way, most cautiously now, for it was quite dark, between the open vats, and stumbling over heaps of used and unused tan-bark, his eyes and ears alert. He asked himself, in growing wonder, what had become of Rover, for surely the dog was somewhere near. At this juncture he heard a dull, thumping sound in the warehouse a hundred yards to the left, and cocking his revolver he strode quickly in that direction. Reaching the warehouse, and turning the corner, he saw at the door of the building a horse and open road-wagon, at the side of which Rover sat on his haunches idly beating the ground with his tail. Wholly nonplussed, Hoag stepped noiselessly on to the long platform, and peered in at the sliding door. At the farthest end of the room, in the dim light of a lantern, he saw a man half pushing, half rolling a heavy bale of leather toward the door. Crouched down, as the intruder was over his work, Hoag could not see his face, but presently it appeared quite clearly in the light. It was Henry. It was his son. He was a thief caught in the act. Volcanic fury swept over Hoag. The would-be thief was of his own blood, of his own loins. Revolver in hand, and indignantly quivering in every inch of his fat body, Hoag glided from the dark into the light.
“What the hell does this mean?” he demanded, in a loud and yet guttural tone.
The young man at the bale of leather, without hat or coat, his brow red and streaming with perspiration, started and, looking up, faced his father. For an instant his glance wavered, but as Hoag thundered out a repetition of his question, Henry drew himself up defiantly and glared straight at him.
“You see well enough,” he answered, doggedly.
“So you are a thief—a low, sneaking, prowling night-robber?” Hoag gasped, taken aback by his son's unexpected attitude. “You—you!”
“Call it what you like!” Henry hurled at him. “I don't care. You are rollin' in money, makin' it hand over fist—goin' to your grave rich, and I haven't any way of living. Other fellows' daddies help them along, but you never give me a cent. I used to ask you, and you'd curse me and threaten to kick me out. I'm your son, and you are stinkin' rich. You can't bluff me. I'm reckless. I don't care a tinker's damn what I do. I need money—that's all—I need it.”
Hoag stood puffing. He was conscious of a fluttering about his heart, and he had the sudden fear that an outburst might mean his undoing on the spot, but he was too angry to control himself.
“So you are a thief!” he panted. “You eat at my table, sleep under my roof, an' come here with a wagon to steal my stuff. Do you know what I'm goin' to do with you?”
“Not knowing, I can't say,” Henry answered, with colloquial quotation. “I've known you to get weak-kneed, as you did the day Jeff Warren called you to taw at the Court House. Jeff saw through it and told how you ate the crow he shoved at you on the point of his gun.”
This angry taunt was the worst missile the desperate young man could have thrown. It drove splotches of pallor into the crimson of his father's face.
“You mean you think I'm a coward?” Hoag cried. “You—you dare—”
“I don't mean nothing about it; Iknowit,” Henry retorted, still with the furious smile on his lips, a reckless flare in his eyes.
“Well, I'll show you what I'm goin' to do toyou, anyway,” Hoag said, fiercely. “I'm goin' to give you the best lickin' you ever had in all your bom days.”
“You say you are!” Henry laughed, almost with actual spontaneity.
“Yes, I am, an' right here an' now.”
“'Right here an' now,'” Henry repeated, grimly. “Well, that is a good joke; 'right here an' now'—poof! You'd better set in. It will be breakfast time before long.”
“You wait a minute,” Hoag growled, as he took up the lantern and placed it on a bale of cotton; then he turned back to the door, closed the shutter and fastened the metal latch with fingers that fumbled and evoked an audible clatter in the silent room. Then, with his revolver in his hip-pocket, he stalked back to his son, who sat on the bale of leather sullenly picking his teeth with a splinter. Their eyes met like those of two infuriated beasts driven into contact by the goads of spectators. Beyond the lantern's flare the darkness hung like a curtain. Hoag picked up a piece of hard-twisted hemp rope about a yard in length, and with furious jerks proceeded to tie a knot in one end of it.
“You not only try to rob me, but you dare to insult me!” he cried, frothy saliva trickling from the corners of his big, weak mouth. “I'm goin' to give you a lickin' that you won't forget till you die.”
Henry stood up. A smile dawned on his face and died; he locked his hands behind him; his lips were as firm as if cut in granite; his eyelids drew close together, and the balls gleamed with the fire of invincible purpose.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “You are an older man than I am, an' you are my daddy, but if you lay the weight of your hand on me I'll kill you as sure as you've got a live hair on your head.”
“You mean to threaten me—you damned midnight prowler!” And Hoag, brandishing his rope, sprang at his son like a tiger on its prey. But Henry quickly and deftly caught the descending rope, jerked it from the fat fingers, and threw it against the wall. Then, while Hoag stood for an instant bewildered, Henry clutched him round his big, bare neck and began to push him backward over the bale of leather. From side to side the two swung, grunting, panting, swearing. A mist was before Hoag's eyes; ten prongs of steel were piercing and separating the bones and muscles of his neck. He was gasping for breath when, by an extra effort, he tore his son's hands away. For a second they stood warily shifting from side to side, and then they locked in the embrace of madmen, and the struggle for supremacy was renewed. Over the rough floor, here and there among boxes, bundles, and bales, they slid and pounded. Suddenly Henry became conscious that his father was trying to get his hand into his hip-pocket.
“Oh, that's your game, eh?” he said, between his teeth. “Two can work at it.” And the younger suddenly slid his hand over the back of the older man and grasped the hilt of the revolver. Then he ducked downward suddenly and stood aside, the weapon in his hand.
“Stand back!” he ordered, calmly, and Hoag, with eyes of despair on the revolver, fell away. Visions of death flashed and flared before him—visions of the monster Trawley was fearing. He held up his hands; their shadows on the wall quivered like the moving branches of a tree in a storm.
“Don't, for God's sake, don't!” he pleaded. “I'm—I'm your father.”
Henry stared for a moment, and then an expression of sheer horror crept over his face. Suddenly he threw the revolver against the wall and bowed his head to a cotton bale.
“My God, oh, my God!” he cried, his hands pressed into the sockets of his eyes, his breast heaving.
Slowly Hoag lowered his uplifted hands. Silence ensued—silence broken only by the audible panting of the two men. Presently Hoag spoke.
“You started to kill me,” he gasped. “Why didn't you do it? You had the chance.”
“Oh, my God—oh, my God!” Henry exclaimed, in muffled tones. “Yes, yes, I came near it. I didn't know what I was about. You got me in a corner. You started at me. You made me mad. But I am not a murderer—bad as I am, I am not that. I saw you trying to pull the gun and forgot what I was doing.”
“Huh, you say you did?” Hoag seemed unable to formulate anything else. “You say you did?” Suddenly stepping aside, Henry picked up the rope his father had held a moment before. Hoag stared helplessly as he came toward him with it extended in his hands.
“Take it!” Henry gulped.
“What for?” Hoag asked, wonderingly.
“I want you to whip me,” Henry replied, huskily. “I'll stand here and let you lay it on till you are tired. You'll never give me enough to satisfy me. I need it and I want it. You have every right to give it to me, and I want it done.”
Unconscious of what he was doing, Hoag accepted the rope, allowing it to hang loosely from his inert fingers. There was another silence. Henry had turned his back and bent his shoulders over the cotton bale.
Hoag twisted the rope awkwardly in his hands for a moment, then threw it down.
“What did you need money for?” he suddenly inquired. “Tell me; you might as well.”
“I borrowed a hundred dollars from Sam Pitman last year,” came from Henry's averted lips. “He's in hard luck. They are about to sell his farm for debt. His family is suffering. He told me that my hundred would tide him over.”
“I see, I see,” Hoag muttered.
“I didn't know how else to get it,” Henry went on. “I tried a number of ways, but failed. I want you to know that I've never stole before. Somehow I made myself believe it wouldn't be wrong in such a case to take from my own father. Of course I was wrong, but I tried to see it that way. I knew where I could raise the money on the leather, and—well, that's all. I want you to whip me. Nothing else will satisfy me. After that I'll go away for good and all.”
“Thar ain't no use to talk that way,” Hoag said, falteringly. “I didn't know you needed money as bad as that. Pitmanisin a hard fix, an' I'll tell you what I'll do. It's plumb foolish for you to—to talk about goin' off an' all that. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll pay that debt off in the momin'. I reckon you think I'm purty hard on you. Well, I suppose I am. I was fetched up hard, an' I've got hard. Now, go put up the hoss an' wagon. I feel bad about this. I don't know why, but I feel bad.”
“Father, I can't—”
“Now, go on an' do as I tell you. I know when I want to do a thing, an' I want to pay Pitman that money, an'—an' I want you to stay on here at home. Now, go put up the hoss an' wagon. If I'm satisfied you ought to be, an' me'n you will have to rub out an' begin over ag'in in some sort o' fashion. You was mad an' I was mad. You've got my temper an' I can't blame you. Now, go on. I'll lock the door.”
“Very well,” Henry said, and he picked up his coat and hat and moved away into the darkness, leaving his father with the lighted lantern in his hand.
Hoag stood still for a moment. He heard his son clucking to the horse, then came the sound of the wagon-wheels scraping against the edge of the platform, and the grinding of the horse's hoofs on the stony road, as it was driven toward the stables. Hoag extinguished the lantern by lowering it suddenly, and, going out, he closed the sliding door and locked it with fingers which quivered as with palsy.
He sat down on the platform, his heavy feet and legs hanging limply, and stared out into space.
ONE evening at the end of that week Paul met
Mrs. Mayfield walking back and forth on the lawn. Her head was enveloped in a light shawl and her eyes were downcast. Presently she turned toward him, and he saw that she had been weeping.
“I was going to inquire of Mrs. Tilton how your daughter is,” he began. “I have not seen her since the morning I walked with her to the spring.”
The lady touched her thin lips with her handkerchief and made an obvious effort to control her voice. She laid her hand on his arm almost with a gesture of despair, and he felt the delicate fingers tremble.
“I've been wanting to see you,” she faltered. “The poor child seldom leaves her bed. The doctor says nothing but time will do her any good. She scarcely eats anything, and has grown thin and white, and oh, so nervous! Jennie's death has simply terrified her—shocked her through and through. She cries constantly. I wake up in the night and hear weeping and moaning. The doctor can't deceive me. I know he is worried, because he comes often and asks so many questions. He admits that grief like Ethel's sometimes results disastrously, and I myself have never seen so serious a case as hers. Paul, she has lost all faith in God and religion. She came up-stairs, after you talked to her that day, in what seemed to be a really more hopeful mood. She put her head in my lap and cried for the first time in a natural way, but she hardened again soon afterward. That afternoon letters came from Jennie's father and mother and the young man Jennie was to marry, and Ethel went into hysterics. She really did not know what she was saying or doing. Oh, it was pitiful! She says she simply can't get away from the memory of the awful details. It was my fault; she should never have been there. Jennie wanted her, though, and there was no time for reflection. We were all excited.”
“Something must be done to take your daughter's mind from it,” Paul advised, gravely. “A mental picture like that should not be held. It is decidedly dangerous.”
“That's why I wanted to see you,” Mrs. Mayfield said. “You can help me if you will. My brother says you are going to drive over the mountain tomorrow on business. I really think Ethel would go along if you would care to take her.”
“I should be delighted,” he answered. “I'd be a poor companion at such a time, but the view from the mountain at this time of the year is wonderful, and the trip might divert her thoughts.”
“Then I'll have her ready,” Mrs. Mayfield promised. “And oh, Paul, I do hope you will impress some of your beautiful thoughts upon her. Religion, faith in God's goodness, and the hope of immortality are absolutely the only sustaining things at such a time. If I had not had them to cling to when my poor husband died I think I should have lost my reason. I doubted at first—I could see no justice in his sufferings and mine; but I have become reconciled. People are more material in their ideas nowadays, and Ethel has come across some injurious books which have influenced her. She is so gentle and sweet—really, it is her pity for Jennie that is causing it all. She is not thinking of herself. That is the state of mind of a mother who has lost a child; she feels, somehow, that her child has been wrongly treated and she resents it.”
“I'll do my best to cheer her up to-morrow,” Paul said, a note of despondency creeping into his voice, “though I am afraid I can't do much.”
“I am sure you can do far more than any one else,” Mrs. Mayfield said, as she glanced at the window of her daughter's room and turned to go in. “I'll have her ready.”
After breakfast the following morning Cato brought the horse and buggy around to the veranda, and Paul went out to see if everything was in readiness for the trip, having received a message at breakfast from Mrs. Mayfield that Ethel was quite willing to go. Presently he heard the two ladies descending the stairs, and a moment later they joined him in the yard. Paul was shocked by Ethel's appearance. She was quite pale and there were despondent shadows under her eyes, but, withal, he had never seen her look so beautiful; it was as if some rare, suppressed radiance were issuing from her hair, skin, and pain-filled eyes, the long lashes of which seemed dipped in the essence of tears.
“I know you will think I'm very troublesome, Paul,” she smiled, sadly, as she gave him her hand to get into the buggy. “I've been so despondent that I have avoided all of you. It is very kind of you to bother with me to-day.”
“It is certainly a great pleasure to me,” he answered, as he tucked the lap-robe about her feet. “You mustn't try to talk unless you care to.”
“It seems to me that I can think of only one subject,” she sighed, as she leaned over the wheel and kissed her mother. “I seem to be floating on a sea of unreality, under clouds of despair. I was looking from the window of my room just now and saw the people going to work at the tannery, and in the fields with their pails and tools, and I wanted to scream. It seemed so queer for them to be moving about as if nothing unusual had happened when”—Her voice failed her. With a sensitive tightening of the lips Mrs. Mayfield signaled Paul to drive on, and he started the horse.
They had gone some distance along the stony road which wound gradually up the mountain-side before either of them spoke. It was Ethel who broke the silence.
“There is no time in the world, Paul,” she said, huskily, “in which one so keenly feels and appreciates the kindness of friends as a time like this. I can see that you are sorry for me, and I want you to know how grateful I am, but I simply can't express it. My very heart and soul seem to have died within me.”
“You mustn't try,” he answered. “You must simply realize that all things are right. Eventhisgreat sorrow, sad as it appears, is for the best, if only you could see it in the right light.”
“I remember you said so the other day. And, Paul, I did try hard. A beautiful faith in personal immortality, like yours, really does keep away the horror of death, and I tried, with all my mind and body, to grasp it. I prayed and prayed for your faith, and it seemed to me, at certain moments, that I came so close to it that I could almost sense it as a wonderful reality. It would flash before me like a beautiful dream, and then vanish, leaving nothing but that awful scene in its place. For half an hour yesterday I was almost happy. It seemed to me that Jennie was really not dead. I fancied she was there with me, telling me—not in words, but in some subtle way—not to grieve, that she was in a new life full of joy and freedom.”
“That is the thought you ought to endeavor to hold,” Paul fervently declared, “because it is simple truth. In fact, you deny the ultimate aim of life in looking at it in any other way.”
“You will say it was a small thing, perhaps,” Ethel went on, “which threw me back into despair. It was this: Shortly after our talk at the spring, I picked up a newspaper, and the first thing I saw was a long article concerning a statement made by Edison, to the effect that the result of all his careful and lifelong investigations was the conclusion that the immortality of the soul was an utter impossibility. Paul, I dropped from hope to despair in an instant. I tried to think you might be right and he wrong, but I failed. I asked myself this question: If God is good enough to grant us another and a better life, why will He allow one of the greatest men of our age to deny it, and let me—me, suffering and praying for light as I am—come across his denial in grim, black letters on white paper?”
“That raises a little scientific point.” Paul looked at her wistful face and half smiled. “You allowed yourself to be influenced, almost self-hypnotized, by one single mental picture.”
“How so?” Ethel inquired.
Paul smiled again. “Why, you let Mr. Edison—with all due respect to his knowledge of merely material things—you let him loom too large before your sight. One may hold a little ugly insect so close to the eye that it will shut out the light of billions of suns and stars. When it is a question of opinion alone it would be better to go to specialists in the particular field we are investigating. Mr. Edison is a specialist inmaterialthings, not spiritual things. We would not go to a coal-miner who had spent his life underground to render an opinion on the effects of sunlight on flowers; nor to a boilermaker for an opinion on music played to the vanishing-point of delicate expression. We have one great historical authority on spiritual matters. Christ told us that there is a life beyond this, and he died asserting it. There was another—Socrates—who realized it so strongly that he laughed in the face of death. Ethel, I cannot believe that God would create men like those, allow them to suffer for others as they did, and then prove them to be liars outright or self-deceived simpletons.”
“Oh, I'm so glad I came this morning!” Ethel cried, looking up at him gratefully. “You have given me so much hope. Your faith is wonderful, and you seem to inspire me with it.”
“No, we really must not go to our material scientists for hope in such things,” Paul resumed, “but rather to our great imaginative poets, artists, and idealistic philosophers, all of whom knew there could be no continuity of progress without eternal life. Evolution of matter is only a visible symbol of the evolution of the unseen. I can fancy Jesus meeting one of our great self-satisfied materialists and hear Him say: 'Verily, verily, thou hast thy reward; sooner shalt thou see through a mountain of adamant than look into the kingdom of heaven.'”
Ethel laughed softly. “You are making me ashamed of myself, Paul. I am going to try harder than ever to do my duty. I know what it is, but I am simply stunned. My uncle and aunt write me that the young man Jennie was to have married has gone to drinking again. He simply could not stand his great grief. That is another thing that seems so unfair and unreasonable. For Jennie's sake he gave up the habit, and promised her and her parents never to drink again. Now he is going to ruin, when if Jennie had lived—” Ethel's voice broke, and she did not finish what she had started to say.
“But can't you see what your cousin may have escaped?” Paul reasoned. “A young man who is weak enough to allow a sorrow—even a sorrow like that—to throw him into dissipation would not be likely to make a worthy husband. After marriage some other disappointment might have upset him, and a woman married to such a man would have led a miserable life.”
“Oh, that's true,” Ethel admitted, “and Jennie never could have borne it; she was so frail and sensitive.”
“There's surely a good reason for all that happens,” Paul said. “But we can't be expected to understand what is withheld from us.”
They were both silent for a while. They had reached the highest point of the road, and the lower mountains and hills fell away on all sides like the green billows of a mighty ocean. Above it all shone the sun. The blue, cloud-flecked sky arched over them like a vast dome. The breeze which fanned their faces was refreshing and laden with the fragrance of wild flowers. Paul called her attention to the mill at the foot of the mountain to which they were going, and started the horse down the incline.
“I am to have a visitor Sunday,” Ethel remarked, her glance on the horse. “My friend, Mr. Peterson, is coming up to spend the day.”
“Oh!” Paul unconsciously ejaculated, and then the color rose to his face. “I have not met him. I saw him at the bank one day when I went to Atlanta with your uncle, but we were not introduced. He was very busy looking over Mr. Hoag's papers.”
“They are great friends,” Ethel said, somewhat awkwardly, her cheeks slightly tinted. “I don't feel as if I can entertain him very well in my present state of mind, but I knew my uncle would be offended if I wrote him not to come.”
“It will be good for you, no doubt,” Paul said, lamely, and for no obvious reason he tightened the reins and shook them over the animal's back. “He will bring you news from the city and it may divert your thoughts.”
“Perhaps so. My mother thought he ought to come; he has been most kind to us. He is one of my best friends.”
“Your uncle tells me that Mr. Peterson is growing rich,” Paul remarked. “He seems to have a wise head for business.”
“Yes, he is ambitious that way, and socially, too. He belongs to the best clubs and has a great many friends.”
“Your uncle says he is a member of one of the old aristocratic families and has many influential blood connections.”
“Yes, I think so”—Ethel suddenly glanced at her companion's face and noted that it was rigid, as if under the control of some keen emotion—“but such things do not really count,” she added, consolingly; “they don't make a man any the better.”
Paul said nothing, and the horse drew them along for some distance in silence. Then Ethel took up the subject where it had dropped.
“I am sure you will like Mr. Peterson; he has traveled a great deal. He has an interest in one of the Atlanta papers, and I have heard him speak of having influenced some of the political editorials. For so young a man he is looking far ahead and is very, very shrewd. My uncle declares that he is a born politician, and that sooner or later he will become a candidate for some high office, such even as Senator or Governor.”
Suddenly Paul drew the horse to a standstill. She saw him glance up a very rugged steep over an abrupt cliff on the right.
“I see some violets,” he said. “I've been looking for some all along. If you will hold the reins I'll climb up and get them.”
She gave him a puzzled stare for an instant, and her lips tightened significantly as she answered: “I really would like to have them, but it looks steep and dangerous up there; you might slip and fall over the cliff.”
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled bitterly.
The lines of pain she had noticed about his eyes and mouth still remained.
“Oh, it is not dangerous,” he declared. “As a boy I have climbed up worse places than that; but I was barefooted then and a sort of wild animal. You remember how I looked and acted when I first met you? In the eyes of the social world I am still not much better off, for the social world—yourworld—draws a sharp line at birth and fortune, and they are things some of us have to do without.”
He had got out of the buggy and was turning away. She had a startled impulse to deny what he had just said, but suitable words could not be so quickly summoned. In no little chagrin and fear of his opinion of her, she sat watching him as he climbed the steep, clinging to this or that projecting stone crevice or deep-rooted shrub. How strong, handsome, and genuine he looked, with his fine, fearless head bared to the sun and breeze! She saw him pause for seconds at a time, looking for a new foothold in the rocky soil as the one he stood on slowly crumbled, rattled down the incline, and shot over the cliff just beneath him.
She called out to him warningly once, and she was startled at the new quality in her voice. What could it mean? she asked herself. Surely she was not beginning to—She pulled her eyes from him and stared almost angrily at her folded hands, telling herself that she could not deeply care for any man. Just then she heard a small avalanche of disrupted stone sliding down the mountain-side, and, looking up, she saw Paul hanging by a single hand to a shrub, his foothold completely gone. She screamed and stood up in the buggy, only to have him turn his face, while his feet swung free, and smile reassuringly.
“Don't be afraid,” he called out. “I'm all right.” And then she saw him calmly placing his foot on another projection.
From that point he moved upward till the violets were reached, and she saw him gathering them and twisting them together in a tiny bunch with a reverence of touch which was observable even at that distance. Then, the stems of the flowers held between his lips, he began to make his way back, and moments of keen suspense followed in which she looked away from him to avoid the consciousness of his danger. Presently he was by her side, his brow beaded with perspiration, his broad chest rising and falling from his exertion. Without a word he gave her the violets and got into the buggy.
“Why did you take all that risk?” she asked reproachfully. “I want the flowers, it is true; but, oh! if you had lost your hold and fallen—” She went no further.
“It does seem dangerous when you look at it from down here,” he answered, critically glancing up at the cliff. “But that is because we can see the full height of the bluff. Up there, you know, I couldn't look over the edge. If I had, perhaps I might have grown dizzy.”
“Paul,” Ethel said, after they had remained silent for several minutes, “I am very grateful to you. When I am with you I don't suffer so much over poor Jennie's death. Somehow you inspire me with your faith. I am going to ask you a favor—one favor, and then I'm done with it. Will you please tell me positively, in so many words, that you really are convinced that she is still in existence. I know you've already said so, in a way, but I want to remember your exact words, so if I become despondent again I can repeat them over and over to myself.”
Paul laughed and glanced at her tenderly and wistfully. “I believe it as positively as I believe that I am here with you at this moment,” he said, quite gravely.
“Thank you,” she returned, simply. “I am going to believe it because you do. I know that you know the truth. I know it—I know it!” She held the violets to her lips, and it was as if she kissed the purple petals.
A glow as of reviving health seemed to suffuse her wan cheeks.