Brent, who for some days had not been gracious to the sight of Jane, went out to meet her in a state of mind so dazed that it bordered on the humorous. At heart most things were jests with this devil-may-care young man (it may have been a trait cultivated through sheer necessity) and whether Dale killed or were killed might some weeks ago have passed into his continuous performance of human comedies and tragedies. But there was a new element about this which shocked him to the foundation of his nature, and the revulsion became more acute as he looked up into her face smiling politely down at him.
He had watched her interest in Dale, and now guessed her depth of disappointment when she were told how the mountaineer's career had gone dashing into the black wall of ruin. But he had watched with a twinge of jealousy which, as jealousy has the knack of doing, exaggerated both the extent and kind of interest she may have felt.
Many opportunities had come to Brent, and it was not all his fault that most of them had been neglected. His capacity for achievement was as an arm perpetually carried in a sling; no one's fingers had untied the knot andmassaged the cramped muscles, nor had anyone's lips bidden him strike the right sort of blow. His mother breathed his name when a trained nurse had laid him down beside her on the bed; and that was the only time he might have heard her voice. His father was a man so threaded in the loom of finance that the rearing of a baby boy seemed wasted energy for one of his activities. The governess whom he employed to assume this duty came with recommendations; that was all—came with recommendations. And the boy's days were without intelligent direction of any kind.
The only trait in his character which this governess strongly developed, was a desire to hide from every one his deepest and best impulses. Since one day, when his four-year-old arms had clasped a homeless puppy hurt by a passing wagon, and she had poked her finger and laughed at his tears in order to keep his clothes from becoming worse soiled, his generous side shrank back into itself and froze. Then he began to clasp this newly bruised thing—a little boy's wounded nobility; so jealously guarding it from the cruelty of other laughs, from other curled lips and fingers of scorn, that few might have suspected it lived in him at all.
Later in life there appeared an object he might have cherished—the girl of whom he had told Jane; but this did not leave the regret he tried to make himself believe. He had never been able to rise above a lingering disappointment because her fingers made no effort to untie the knot;—rather, had she drawn it tighter by applauding those things which inherently he realized needed rebuking. For in his soul lived a voice comparing her to an ideal known only to his dreams—a being, somewhere, who would tear off the sling with brave and loving hands, and not be content to see him drift. His closely guarded better nature was persistently pleading with him to face about, while her pouting lips imperiously demanded his mornings and afternoons for her entertainment. Then, very softly, a consciousness began to dawn upon this little romance, showing its glitter to be the veriest tinsel; and, so it was, in a make-believe fervor of self-righteousness, he pressed the pseudo crown of martyrdom upon his brow and "stepped aside."
If the truth were known, his soul had many times craved self-sacrifice—a hunger from which true men and women do not long escape. So he hugged the imitation, knowing it to be an imitation, but pretending it was real; before this false altar he "stepped aside," crying within himself that he had done a noble act, and knowing it was counterfeit. The knowledge, not the sacrifice, was bitter; nevertheless, this false altar sweetly fed his innate hunger—and, to keep the false in an attitude of real, he dreamed more, drank more. In the three years which had passed since then he retained only the love of drifting.
As he now looked seriously up into Jane's face he was swept by one thought: tragedy, cruelty, disappointment were entitled to no place in the atmosphere of her dwelling. With a pang he realized that Dale was bringing them all to her. With a bound, something that was veryfar from being false, awoke in his heart, whispering how she might be spared. Then he perceived her still smiling down at him.
"Dreaming?" she asked.
"Fascinated," he murmured.
Without assistance she slipped from the saddle, exclaiming:
"My, but it's a lovely day!"
"Isn't it! Oh, you can't interrupt the Colonel and Dale just now," he warned, seeing her intention. "They're hard at it. Come with me while I tie your horse, and then let's go to your charmed circle and talk. Have you forgiven my—er—shortcomings?"
"I'd forgotten you were so afflicted," she laughed, knowing he had no reference to the dinner—that absolutely closed subject.
"I didn't know I was either, till you told me one day. In fact, you're always enlightening me. How wonderful you must be to discover so many things in a chap!"
"My insight is very clear," she observed, without enthusiasm.
"A vision filtered through such wonderful eyes should transform everything to beauty," he smiled. "In a negative way I might feel complimented."
"It would be so negative. How long will the Colonel and Dale be closeted?"
"Lord knows. They've lots to talk about. Dale has reached a place where the Colonel finds him exciting."
"Isn't he a marvel!" she exclaimed.
"Oh, he's a marvel, all right," Brent grumbled. "But his vanity will surpass his great achievements;—don't delude yourself about that!"
"Well; you're an authority on that condition of life. Do you enjoy it?"
"If you'll give me more reason to be vain, I'll tell you."
She ignored this, and when they were among the cedars he began again; not caring what he talked about as much as to be talking. He felt that if he stopped, she might read through his depression.
"Do you remember the last time we were here? You lectured me for loafing, and shooting woodpeckers. There were other things, but you couldn't recall them at the moment. I've been doing some right stiff thinking since then!"
"Retrospection is good for the soul," she smiled at him.
"On the contrary, retrospection makes for hollow eyes, and introspection is tinged with bitterness. Keep your face to the future if you would have your soul contented."
"And what is your future?" she archly inquired.
"These coming minutes while you are here with me."
"Really," she flashed him a rather bewildering look, "I did think for once you were going to be serious!"
"I am serious," he dug the heel of his boot thoughtfully into the tanbark. "I wish I weren't—or didn't have to be."
"Has something gone wrong—with the road?" There was a slight tinge of irony in the suggestion.
"No, but something's gone wrong with the world.I wish," he suddenly looked up at her, "that I could be as sure of laying a smooth grade for—for my friends as I am for trains of coal!"
"Your friends might have to wait a long time before traveling about," she laughed, but there was a note of apprehension in her voice which again put him on his guard;—and yet he could not help feeling that a partial preparation was only fair to her.
"It wouldn't be a bad thing if some people never traveled about," he smiled. "I might then succeed in keeping you here, and those hot-headed mountaineers would stay back in their holes and rot forever, as they ought."
"Oh, Brent," she exclaimed, in a hurt voice, "there is such a wealth of splendid human material up there if we can only get hold of it! They're all ambitious—if stirred!"
He waited, asking: "And what else?"
"Nothing else."
"But you didn't say anything nice about Dale!"
She laughed. "I thought you knew about Dale—and me; for I'm of the mountains!"
"You didn't belong to those people," he murmured. "You're a spirit who lived in a deep spring, and you just floated down with the brook. I know, because I've dreamed about you. And I know, too," he shook off the spell, "a little something about stirring the ambition ofrealpeople up there. I've seen it tried in a mining camp where a railroad has been running for years! I've seen a fair and square company build model cottages, and in every way try to improve conditions. It put in baths, and the tubs were used for vegetable bins. It built a reading room, and the walls were covered with charcoal pictures. Two men used their little front porches for firewood, rather than pick up all they wanted a hundred yards away. One winter coal took a jump. The mine had a bonanza chance, and the men who had been making their two and a half dollars a day, or thereabouts, could with the same hours' work pull down twice that much. Did they? I'll tell you what they did: they laughed at the superintendent and worked half time; they sat about the store and whittled, saying that two and a half was all they needed. But they forgot this quick enough when the union afterwards went in and told them they ought to get twenty cents more! You'd have thought then that they'd been on the verge of starvation for years, and the harrowing tales which went forth about their 'wretched conditions' would have made you laugh—had you known the facts. The union had photographs taken of the two cottages without front porches, and sent them broadcast so the world could see how capital trod upon its hire. Ambition? They don't know the word deeper than its two first letters! And you've got to be ready for many a disappointment here, too—let me tell you that!"
She was looking at him earnestly, and in a few moments said: "I agree with everything you say. I grant it all, every bit. But, Brent, consider! A mother tells her little boy to wash his face, to read his primer, and he doesn't. And the next day she tells him, and he doesn't.And so on, for days and days, she tells and tells. It seems utterly hopeless, but all the time she is persisting, and gradually bringing him nearer to a sense of obligation. After ten or twelve years you will find him stepping briskly on to admirable manhood; but it is because she has never turned her back on him—she never faltered. See what Dale's sister has done with patient perseverance! Surely, you would not get in a pout and hold back the road simply because a few mountaineers are sometimes obstinate little children!"
He felt the double reproach of this and began to smile, saying:
"I hadn't intended to tell you, but now you force me to it: the line is twice as far along as when you were over here last!"
"Oh, you good-for-nothing—splendid!" she impulsively cried; but more wistfully added: "Why wouldn't you have told me? Why do you try to keep people from seeing when you do good things, and only show the—the not so good?" He did not answer, and she spoke again with a new and delicate caress in her voice: "You haven't deceived me utterly—there are times when I've been tremendously proud of you."
"Jane," he said, and stopped. His eyes were looking deep into her own, and while she gave him back look for look he seemed incapable of continuing. But she turned away, somewhat confused, and slowly he continued: "One time I discovered that in us all there is a secret temple, with a very small but highly prized altar lighted by a tiny taper flame, where we keep just ourown little treasures—our wonderful selves." She glanced up in some surprise, but this time he was staring at the ground. "In some, its door is studiously, carefully locked; in others, its paths of approach are overgrown with weeds and almost lost; in others still, it is hard to find because it has been starved, or hurt, or laughed at—but always when a certain current of thought or sound sweeps by, that wonderful part of our souls upon this little altar is set a-quivering. Old soldiers feel its pulsing at the booming of a cannon; old women feel it at the laughter of a child; others know it is there while beneath the spell of an orchestra, a breeze in the pines, a bird's note, the fragrance of certain flowers, the caress of a voice. You will forgive this unintentional preamble," he looked slowly up at her, "when I say that your voice just now has been all of these things to me—and more!"
"Oh, Brent," she cried, with a brave pretense at lightness, "if only you weren't such a trifler! The dangerous thing about you is that you mean this now—almost; enough, anyway, to give it a ring of sincerity. Were I less sophisticated, I might go home believing it, and thinking what a wonderful man you are starting out to be; but in the morning find my ideals shattered, and on the ash heap!"
"You are so worldly, then?" he smiled.
But she had arisen and now stood at the entrance of the path, looking slightly over her shoulder and ignoring his question with another:
"You say things are really hurrying?"
"Dulany is buying the necessary land in record time," he answered.
"But," she hesitated, pouting just a little, "that implies no work of your own! Still, I suppose I should be thankful for whatever we receive. And, oh, Brent," she now turned and looked seriously up at him, "if you would only stop this wretched drinking! Tell me, why do you? What call, or what cause, makes you? Is it to drug the mind into some sort of mock rest, or the body into sleep, or the soul—ah, Brent, what does the soul do when it is stupefied? The pity of it flares up in me like a great scorching flame!"
He opened his lips, but could not speak. The words, their sincerity, sympathy, and wonderfully strange appeal, came like an unfelt air; for a second time setting a-tremble the tiny taper flame in that reliquary of which he had told her. Another moment she looked appealingly up at him, then turned toward the house.
"Jane!" His voice, hoarse and vibrating, held her where she stood. She dared not see the face which her senses said had been driven white by some tremendous feeling. So she waited, listening.
The smell of cedar buds was in the air about them; and wafted out on this, as though it might have been just now brought up from the musty depths of some old cedar chest, they heard the thin voice of Miss Liz scolding one of the servants. Otherwise, the morning seemed to have no life except the lazy drone of insects.
Again she started slowly to the house; but this time he did not speak, and only watched until she disappeared.
When Colonel May returned he was tired. He paused at the library door, for a moment watching the bent head of the indomitable student, now oblivious to everything except the page before him, hesitated, and then passed on in search of Brent. He seemed to appreciate the uselessness of calling the mountaineer who was in a realm too remote for human interference. The Colonel was not the first that day to look in, pause, and then pass on.
He found the young engineer out under the trees, deep in the contemplation of the sky. Jerkily pulling off his gloves, he said:
"I want a drink!"
"You must have caught his eye," Brent smiled, as the tactful Zack was seen following from the house with two frosted, green-tipped goblets of silver hugged close to his stomach. It was obviously an effort to shield them from the windows of Miss Liz's room and her inquisitorial lorgnette. Colonel May noticed this shameless evidence of stealth, and colored.
"I wish I could drink in my own house like a gentleman, sir," he raged, "without hurting the sensibilities of super-sensitive ladies! This schoolboy tomfooleryis sickening, and I'm going to put a stop to it right now, sir!" So when the servant drew near, with a sly smile that did anything but assuage the Colonel's humor, he raged anew: "Zack, you rascal, hereafter when you bring me a julep I want you first to ask Miss Liz if she thinks it looks well enough to be served!"
That black worthy put the juleps quickly down and exploded with uncontrollable laughter. Such a suggestion, he thought, was about the most irresistible bit of humor the Colonel had ever achieved; and now, holding his sides, between guffaws he gasped:
"Marse John, you'se gittin' funnier an' funnier eve'y day you lives!"
But at this moment his eyes wandered to the Colonel's face. The laughter stopped with a dry croak. He saw that his old master and friend was serious, and reaching for one of the goblets he anxiously exclaimed:
"Great day in de mawnin', Marse John! You suttenly don' mean dat! Drink dis heah, quick! Ridin' in de sun's done tetched yoh haid!"
"Touched the devil," the old gentleman thundered. "Take it back this instant and ask Miss Liz if she thinks it's pretty enough to serve!"
Uncle Zack was indeed troubled. His hand shook with more than its usual wont, as he looked down at the offending beverage and then pleadingly up.
"She done tol' me twict dis week dat I'se gwine buhn in hell for dis heah julep makin'. De fu'st thing you-alls'll know ole Zack'll bust out in flames—an'denwhar'll you git yoh comfo't from?"
But the Colonel's glowering brows said very distinctly that the alternative was an immediate little hell right there beneath the trees and, choosing the more remote, Zack turned slowly to the house. The old gentleman's eyes followed him, and now he turned irritably to Brent:
"I will not drink my juleps in gulps behind trees and shrubs, sir! I like to have them sit before me, and contemplate their merits. I like to Fletcherize them with my mind, and with those senses which my mind can set astir. And so with my cigars, and with my food! Why, sir, much of the pleasure of drinking and smoking and eating—as a gentleman understands these pleasures—is in their peaceful contemplation before the act! Otherwise, we are swine, and degrade our nutriment by coarse handling! What respect can we have for self, sir, if we choke and gurgle, and contemptuously treat those things we put into our bodies! I shall have no more of it, sir!"
Brent waited until this wave of impatience had spent itself upon the chairs, the grass, and everything within reach of the Colonel's wrathful eye; then asked:
"What did you do with him?"
"Potter?" he nervously answered. "Wasn't there. Blood on the ground, but he'd gone. Either wasn't killed, or someone found him. I don't know which, of course, but probably the latter."
"What shall you do?"
"I don't know; I don't know. Telephone to Jess, doubtless."
For a moment they sat looking soberly into each other's faces.
"May I suggest," Brent said, "that you abandon the idea of telephoning the sheriff? Jess isn't wanted quite yet awhile. If Potter is only wounded—maybe just scratched—he's all right. If someone found his body, there are others besides Dale who might have killed him."
"But, sir," sputtered the Colonel, "I can't harbor a murderer!"
"There's a difference between a murderer and one who righteously avenges a wrong. That's worth considering. Besides, it's a serious matter for a gentleman to give over his guest."
This, he knew, was a powerful argument and, feeling content to let it plead its own cause, quietly added: "We don't want to see him go to jail—"
"He wouldn't go to jail, sir," the Colonel quickly interrupted. "I would ask Jess to leave him here until Court convenes. He would be glad to do that for me."
"I know he would," Brent replied with all sincerity. "But we don't need a sheriff yet. Let's wait, and see what turns up!"
An expression of infinite relief came into the old gentleman's face, but his conscience was still aroused and emphatically he declared: "I'll deliver him to the law, sir, the very minute I know to a certainty that Potter is dead!" Then his eyes turned toward the house, fromwhere by this time he thought his julep should be emerging.
That faithful institution, Uncle Zack, had come perilously near fulfilling his mission. He had walked bravely through the rooms, goblet in hand, at each turn earnestly and fervently praying to his gods that Miss Liz might not be found. Coming into the front hall, and passing "de long room"—that long room which used to ring with the merry laughs of dancers, but was now guarded as a sort of chapel for shrouded portraits—he saw its forbidding doors slightly ajar, and peered in.
Uncle Zack always avoided this room. Its subdued light; its oppressive atmosphere, invariably suggesting the image of "Ole Miss" lying there amidst banks of flowers which matched in purity her calm face; the uniform arrangement of high-backed chairs, suggesting in their white coverings a line of tombstones; the two massive crystal chandeliers, hanging like weights of an old clock which would never again be wound;—were all too much for Zack's heart and imagination. Yet the door was open, and he peered in.
His fading eyes followed the line of chairs, upon one of which stood Miss Liz. She had drawn the musty covering from an overhanging portrait—her dead sister—and to this she was murmuring. Her black silk dress and lace kerchief seemed to make her a part of the gallery; and her thin hand resting on the frame, with its forefinger unconsciously pointing upward, was as frail and wax-like as that other hand into which the old negro had, one twilit evening, long ago, laid a rose—when, unobserved and shaken by convulsive sobs, he tiptoed in to pray at the side of "Ole Miss'" bier.
Carefully now he stepped back, drawing the door softly to, and leaving the room to its undisturbed communion of whispering spirits.
"What are you crying for?" the Colonel asked, as he finally came up with the julep.
"I isn't cryin', Marse John. Dat bad eye of mine hu'ts me some, dat's all."
"I'll have you see the doctor. Did you find Miss Liz?"
"Yas, sah, I foun' her."
"And what did she say?"
"She never say nuthin' tome," Zack answered in his low, musical voice. "An' I never axed her nuthin', neither. She wuz standin' on a cheer in de long room, whisperin' to Ole Miss' pictur, Marse John; an' I couldn' poke no julep up at her den!"
The Colonel bowed his head. After a prolonged silence he drew a deep breath, then drained the goblet thirstily to the very end, taking a piece of ice into his mouth and moodily crunching it. But his eyes were not raised; his thoughts had not been diverted.
Zack tiptoed away and disappeared behind the house. Brent respectfully waited for the spell to pass; and when, at last, the old gentleman did look up, his eyes, like Zack's, were moist.
"The tobacco ought to be good this year," he said.
"Yes," Brent smiled at his courageous nonchalance, "if we don't have the riders."
"Riders, pooh," he ridiculed. "You mean, if we don't have any more play of fancy imaginations, and thunderings of overwrought editors, sir!"
For Colonel May was one of those many, many thousands whose love of State stands just above his love of Nation. Any word, or whisper, which scandalized the sweet name of Kentucky spurred him instantly to action. The same unwavering Southern Law whose right hand commands man to strike in defense of a woman's honor, placed its left upon the Colonel's shoulder whenever the old Commonwealth happened to be slandered by some impetuous act of a misguided son. Nor would Brent have been any less slow with his defense;—but, among themselves, pretenses were unnecessary. So he laughed at the old gentleman's fervor, saying:
"That's all right for the outsiders, Colonel; but I was in the State cavalry, and know. We chased 'em for weeks!"
"And how many were caught, sir?"
"Oh, I don't remember. My own troop rounded up three or four."
"Well, sir," the Colonel said, with a finality intended to close the subject, "that's a mighty small number to have given us all so bad a name! The injustice of Kentucky being exploited in the press of the United States merely for the misdeeds of three or four rascals! All kinds of deviltry may be perpetrated in other sections of the Union, sir, and the press treats it with indifference; but let just one gentleman in Kentucky shoot anothergentleman, and the papers make it into a dish for the gods, garnished with their blackest type and seasoned with the spiciest titbits of their fertile imaginations! It's disgusting, sir!"
"There may have been a few of those fellows we didn't catch," Brent suggested, wanting very much to laugh.
"Impossible! I tell you it's impossible, sir! When a troop of cavalry, made up of such material as yourself, sir, goes after offenders, I am pretty well satisfied that you bring them every one in!"
"You put it most convincingly," the engineer bowed to him. "By the way," he added, rightly judging where the Colonel's thoughts were dwelling, "I hope you will tell me the day before you decide on telephoning Jess—I mean, of course, if the worst comes to the worst!"
"Certainly," he looked up. "But why do you want to know?"
"Perhaps you don't want to know why I want to know," Brent laughed.
"But I do, sir!"
"That isn't a sufficient reason, Colonel, for it may not be ethical for me to tell you. However, I've two plans. One is to give Dale a twenty-four-hour start, and in that event I'll go along to see him settled."
"I shall forget what you say," the old gentleman, immeasurably pleased, frowned sternly to ease his conscience. "But you can be of no service to him! He knows his country like a book!"
"It isn't to his country I'd advise him to go. No onewould think, for instance, of looking for him in our house at home. He could keep on studying, too; and after awhile this thing would blow over."
The light in Colonel May's face was eloquent of a greater affection than he had at any time felt for Brent, but he simply said:
"Then I should lose you both! What is your other plan?"
"The other plan is something I am not at liberty to tell even you," Brent soberly answered.
After several minutes, during which the older man seemed to be thinking deeply, he struck his fist on the arm of his chair, exclaiming:
"I don't see why it's so damned important to tell Jess, anyhow! Why, sir, the fellow may not be dead, at all! And you mustn't lose sight of the fact, sir, that Dale is my guest, entitled by a higher law to my protection!"
"Now that you mention it, I believe you are right," Brent cried, as though this were sparklingly original. "Let's act on the suggestion!"
Sometime later, after they had gone, Zack came out to gather up the goblets. For several minutes he stood with one of these in his hand, staring with a perplexed and troubled frown at a julep which had not been tasted.
"Dar ain' no fly in it, dat's suah," he mumbled, "but I cyarn' see what de trubble is! An' it ain' Marse John's, 'caze he drinked his'n whilst I wuz heah! De onlies' answer is dat Marse Brent done lef it fer de ole nigger!"
With a stealthy look toward Miss Liz's windows hebacked into the shrubbery and transferred the julep to a place where it might receive more consideration; then, after doing a few steps of a double-shuffle, he emerged and walked airily to the house.
Brent's room was across the hall from Dale's. These two, engineer and mountaineer, were the only occupants of the third floor, known since their arrival as Bachelors' Belfry. This floor, however, was far from resembling a belfry. Its high ceilings and spacious rooms were of the type which architects drew in the early nineteenth century, when labor cost but its feed and materials were everywhere at hand. Just as the bricks in the outside walls were laid "every other one a header," so the interior spoke of a style which went out of existence three generations ago. More recently, however, the Colonel had added a furnace and baths, converting for the latter several entire bed-rooms with which Arden was over supplied. Thus Bachelors' Belfry might have been considered the most agreeable, even as the most isolated, portion of the house; and, as its occupants passed a law forbidding women servants to ascend above the second floor between five in the afternoon and nine in the morning, conventions of attire were not by your leave, but as you please.
Tonight Brent had gone up early. At dinner he had been distrait; nor even his poise could quite disguise it.The Colonel had suggested a smoke and chat out on the porch where the air was soft and still and cool, but Brent could not find it in his heart to stay.
During a portion of the morning, during those few passion-riven seconds while Jane had been held like a carved image by the unfathomable timbre of his voice, a struggle had taken place in the engineer's soul. And when she had again started toward the house she little dreamed how savagely it was raging. So he wanted to be alone tonight; not to face that fight anew, because for once and all it had been settled, but to plan for the fulfillment of its issue. The Colonel, therefore, was smoking alone; just as Miss Liz was reading her Bible alone, and as Dale was poring alone over a book in the silent library.
Brent, his chair back-tilted, his pumps resting on the window sill, his coat off, had been surrounded for an hour by darkness. Only out across the limited space of world framed by his window, and now barely visible in the starlight, was there anywhere to rest his eyes.
He had watched the afterglow fading, fading; he had heard the last sleepy twitter of the birds; he had seen one star, two and three, come out; before his steadfast, brooding stare the trees had slowly lost their green for the somber shade of night. And now it was indeed night; that hushed and awe-inspiring span of gloom when worlds most sin; when men and women do their sobbing; do their yielding; count their cost.
All of this had had a most oppressing effect on him whose thoughts matched the compass, if not the penetration, of his vision. Another hour he sat. Then he heard the great front door close with a jar. It was the Colonel locking up the house. Shortly afterwards he heard Dale's step, as the mountaineer went to his room. A sigh trembled between the lonely watcher's lips, but he promptly arose and crossed the hall.
"How'd you get along today?" he asked, closing the door softly after him. Not infrequently did they chat together at night.
"Fine," Dale cried, still excited by the labors he adored. "I'm readin' about as fast as I can talk. It seems easy, now that I've got the knack!"
Brent watched the light of ambition, of achievement, flicker across his neighbor's face; he saw the purposeful chin, the knotted muscles in the jaws, the fist, which in emphasis had just come down upon a table, remain clenched as though it might never be off high tension.
"I'm glad to hear it," he said quietly. "But what have you in mind for the future?"
"In mind? Everything! I'm getting my learning (I used to say larnin') like a hungry old sow turned out on corn. Miss Jane says I'm doin' better'n anyone she ever dreamed of; and when I finish, we're going back in the mountains to bring our people out to light!"
"Yes, I've gathered something of that," Brent drily replied. "But, what I mean is, what is your idea about Tusk?"
Dale started: "Good Lord," he slowly exclaimed, "I'd forgot about him!"
"It might be worth while remembering," the other suggested, "I've come in to talk over plans for saving you."
"Savin' me! Me?" the mountaineer sprang to his feet in a burst of rage. "Only you an' the Cunnel know I've done it, an' if you'll keep yoh mouths shut there won't be any reason to save me, as you call it!"
"This isn't your country," Brent held his temper. "Men aren't shot around here and carted off and buried without some sort of legal investigation. If Tusk's body is found, and it will be found if he's dead, someone's got to pay; someone must either stand trial or turn fugitive."
"Great Gawd," Dale cried, slowly rocking his body from side to side. "Great Gawd! Great Gawd!" he repeated over and over. There was a flickering look about the eyes that made Brent catch his breath. It seemed for just a passing second that they had been converted into little balls of trembling red quicksilver; that was the only thing to which he could liken those eyes just then—red quicksilver. But this passed so quickly that it might have been a reflection from the lamp. At any rate, Dale was continuing: "Why, Brent, I can't go to jail! Nor I can't run away! Miss Jane says I'll be chuck full of education by next winter—how can I go to jail? She says every hope she has is in me!" Brent winced. "She says she trusts me more'n any feller she ever saw!" Brent winced again. "How can I go to jail?"
So it was true. The engineer laughed, but it sounded more like the stirring of ice.
"Don't divulge any more of her confidences. You've said enough—too much. I assure you. The thing to talk about now is how to save you. Are you sure you killed him?"
"'Course I did. Do you reckon I miss a man at three rod?"
"Then someone found his body, for it wasn't there when the Colonel went. Sooner or later the trail will lead here. I've thought, perhaps, you might slip away and go home with me. You can study there. Later, when things blow over, you can come back."
"An' Miss Jane'll go?" he asked, hopefully.
"Certainly not," Brent flushed.
"I'll see what she says," Dale dubiously suggested.
"You'll do nothing of the sort! Would you have her know about this mess?"
"It seems like she's pretty apt to know," he answered.
There was cruel truth in this; she was pretty apt to know beyond a doubt; and Brent pictured what it would mean to a girl who believed and had such implicit trust in one to find him a willful murderer. He thought a moment of the blind sister, the helpless one of patient waiting, of prayerful days; all dark, all dark, except for the hopeful coming of that day when her brother should stand irreproachable before the world and hear the applause of men. Slowly he spoke; it was of the second plan, formed in a white hot crucible of passion as Jane had walked away from him that morning.
"Several times Tusk has threatened to kill me if I persisted in building the road across his patch of land.He stopped me one night on the pike and laid hold of my bridle rein, and I had to get down and punch his head. Why shouldn't he have tried to fix me early this morning when I might have been up in that country?—and why shouldn't I have shot him in self-defense?"
"I reckon you could," the mountaineer doggedly answered.
"Well, prod up your brains, man, or I'll begin to doubt if you're as scintillating us everybody says! Don't you see what has to be done if the sheriff gets wind of the thing and comes here? If I can probably get off, and you'll probably be hanged—what's the answer?"
"You don't mean—" Dale swung about, resurrected hope lighting his face; but Brent held up a warning hand.
"You're on, and that's enough; so don't open your mouth even in here. If you do, I'll back out. You get that, too, don't you? Now listen: if Jess comes, just tell him you don't know anything about anything; that you've never left the library. I'll fix the Colonel and Zack."
But Dale was scarcely listening. He had begun to cavort about the room in a semi-barbarous dance, clapping his hands and making a purring sort of growl in his throat. A chair fell over; then another.
"Chop that crazy stuff," Brent commanded. "Want to wake the house?"
The big mountaineer looked rather sheepish as he picked up one of the chairs and sat down in it.
"I reckon I was so tickled to get off from the law," he mildly explained.
"I thought you might be mourning over the fate ofwhoever takes your place," the engineer murmured, with a sarcasm entirely lost on his listener. "Hell, Dale," he now let his feeling explode. "I've seen lots of fellows from the mountains, but any one of 'em would lose a hand before letting another man take his medicine! You've got to let me do it, you understand!—but I do reserve this opportunity of saying you're damned unappreciative."
"Do you reckon I'm lettin' you do it for me?" he turned savagely. "Do you think it's me—jest me? Then you're a-wayoff!"
"Well, I supposed it had some little to do with you," Brent suggested, "and—and Miss Jane."
"It hain't!" He was in a fury again, and dropped back into the old dialect "I hain't thinkin' of Miss Jane, nor nuthin'—'cept jest the place Ruth said I'd git ter fill, the man I'll make 'mongst the big men of the world! I'm the only one on airth as kin be as big as that, hain't I? Yeou hain't amountin' ter nuthin', air ye? Why shouldn't ye take my place afore the law? Hain't hit Natur's way fer the puny ter go down afore the strong?"
The engineer's eyes opened at the curious sensation this gave him; at the utter astonishment of listening. Then he softly began to laugh.
"My friend," he said, "I have raised my hat to one or two colossal freaks in the past, but henceforth I shall come into your exalted presence with bare-headed humilitude. However, my boy, don't think that I'm flirting with the penitentiary for the sake of your dazzling future, or for any of your pipe dreams. I'm doing it," he arose,and added softly, "I'm doing it for the fun of the damn thing. Good night, Mr. Genius!"
Long, long afterwards, Brent continued to sit in the back-tilted chair, gloomily staring through the window which framed his dim vision of the world. Later, somewhere on the other side of the house, the moon came up; and far out across the country a dog howled. Yet, by another hour, when that disk of lifeless white had floated higher in the sky, the trees framed by his window dropped their robe of mourning for a more soothing green and silver.
"I don't reckon it's such a somber old world, after all," he stood up, stretching;—then went to bed, and slept.
But, across the hall, Dale had not slept. Excited, boyishly happy to have escaped the consequences of his madness, he had tossed throughout the night; building up castles of greatness equal to those of his beloved Clay and Lincoln.
Now a robin piped its three first waking notes, and the mountaineer's eyes opened wide. The interior of the room was beginning to be touched with gray, and he sprang up, throwing back the eastern shutters and gazing on that first faint flush of dawn which stirs within man's breast a feeling of the Omnipotent. With lips apart, he watched the coming of delicate layers of salmon, and saw them merge to a soft and satiny rose. Vermillion now touched the highlights, as though some unseen brush, wet from a palette below the horizon, had reached up and made a bold stroke across this varying canvas. More slowly followed blue—and then a bluer blue.
His thoughts, coloring with the sky, were whimsically curious. A day was coming! It would come and go, and never in all eternity come again—would this day! It was coming: to some, bringing ungrudging pleasure, sweet happiness; to others, unsparing misery, bitter despair! Before days were, it had been arranged that this one should appear—it had been nicely calculated that this very dawn should glorify the sky at this precise moment; and that e'er the sun of this day set, thousands upon thousands of human beings should raise their smiling lips in rapture, or their bloodshot eyes in pain! How many now, out across this big, beautiful, blushingly awakening world, were undreaming of their approaching joy—or unconscious of their creeping doom? Over and over in his mind Dale weighed these thoughts. The universe was becoming a fascinating, tremendous force to him. This day, just now coming over the hill, so weighted with its black and white bounties—what was it bringing to him?
"I know!" he cried, snatching up his clothes. "I get freedom, an' he," here his clenched fist shook toward Brent's room, "gets jail!"
Feverishly dressing, he stamped down to the library—his paradise; regardless of whom he might be disturbing at this hour.
Three days later an airedale terrier was driven to Flat Rock by Uncle Zack. When, with an air of mystery, he presented the leash to Jane, grinned and politely bowed himself away, she had stared at him in utter surprise; then down at the dog which seemed to be gazing up with greater understanding.
"Well, what is the answer?" she kneeled before him, fondly taking him by the ears. The honest, fearless brown eyes spoke, but she slowly shook her head: "I'm not civilized enough to understand!"
But her fingers, now turning his collar about, came upon a little note addressed in Brent's writing. Untying it in some haste she sat upon the grass and read: