217CHAPTER IVCOMPREHENSION
It was three o’clock in the afternoon of a sultry July Sunday when a big red roadster drew up all but noiselessly and, with an instinct common to all motorists, a heritage from an equine age past, stopped at the nose of the hitching-post in front of the Gleason cottage. In it the single occupant throttled down the engine until it barely throbbed. Alighting, goggles on forehead, he passed up the walk toward the house. Not until he was fairly at the steps did he apparently notice his surroundings. Then, unexpectedly, he bared his head.
“Be not surprised, it is I,” he said. “Not in the spirit alone but in the flesh.” Equally without warning he smiled. “Needless to say I’m glad to see you again, Elice,” as he took the girl’s offered hand. Then deliberately releasing it: “and you too, Armstrong,” extending his own.218
Precisely as, with his companion of the shady porch, he had risen upon the newcomer’s advent, the other man stood there. If possible his face, already unnaturally pale for a torrid afternoon, shaded whiter as an instant passed without his making a motion in response.
“And you too, Armstrong,” Roberts repeated, the smile still on his face, the hand still extended; then, when there still came no response, the voice lowered until it was just audible, but nevertheless significant in its curt brevity: “Shake whether you want to or not. There are seven pairs of eyes watching from behind that trellis across the street.”
Armstrong obeyed as though moved by a wire.
“Speak loud, so they can all hear. They’re listening too,” directed the low-voiced mentor.
Armstrong, red in the face now, formulated the conventional.
“Thanks.” Roberts sat down on the top step, his big-boned body at ease, his great bushy head, in which the gray was beginning to sprinkle thick, a contrast to the dark pillar of the porch. “I just returned an hour ago,” he added as casually as though food for gossip had not been avoided by a hair’s breadth and219was not still imminent. “It’s good, unqualifiedly, to be back.”
Armstrong returned to his seat, a bit uncertainly. His hands were trembling uncontrollably; in self-defence he thrust them deep into his pockets.
“Have you been out of town?” he asked.
“Yes, for over a month.” No affectation in that even friendliness. He laughed suddenly in tolerant, all but impersonal, self-analysis. “And I’m tired—tired until the marrow of my bones aches.” He laughed again. “It seems as though I never was so tired in my life.”
Armstrong looked at him, in a sudden flash of the old confidence and admiration.
“I beg your pardon, then,” he said hurriedly. “I didn’t know that you had been away, of course, and rather fancied, from your coming so unexpected—And that again after two years almost—You can understand how it was possible, can’t you? I’m ashamed.”
“Certainly I can understand,” easily. “Let’s all forget it. I have already.” He smiled an instant comprehensively fair into the blue eyes, then characteristically abruptly he digressed. “By the way, Elice,” he said, “can’t we have220some of those cookies of yours? I’ve dreamed of them, along with other things, until—Do, please, if they’re in stock. I mean it. Still down at Phelps’s are you?” he asked the other directly when the girl had gone.
“No.” A long pause wherein Armstrong did not look up. “I—left there a couple of weeks ago. I’m not doing anything in particular just now.”
The cookies, far-famed and seemingly always available, were on hand, and Roberts relapsed into silence. From her own seat behind them Elice Gleason sat looking at the two men, precisely as she had looked that first evening they had called in company.
“That’s a new motor out there, isn’t it?” she asked at last.
“Yes.” Roberts roused and shook the scattered crumbs off his khaki coat. “It came while I was away. This is the first try-out.”
Miss Gleason was examining the big machine with a critical eye. “This is a six-cylinder, I judge. What’s become of the old four, Old—”
“Reliable?”
“Yes.”
“Disgraced its name.” Roberts smiled peculiarly. “I took it along with me when I went221West. It’s scrapped out there on the Nevada desert, God knows where, thirty miles from nowhere. I fancy the vultures are wondering right now what in the world it is.”
“You had an accident?”
“Rather.” Roberts got to his feet deliberately. “Some other time I’ll tell you the story, if you wish. It would take too long now, and it’s entirely too hot here.” He looked at his two listeners impartially. “Besides, there’s other business more urgent. I have a curiosity to see how quickly the six-eighty out there will eat up thirty miles. It’s guaranteed to do it in twenty-five minutes. Won’t you come along?
“I’ll take the rumble and you two sit forward,” he added as they hesitated. “You can drive as well as I can, Elice.”
“Not to-day; some other time,” declined Armstrong, hurriedly. He started up to avoid a change of purpose, and to cover any seeming precipitancy lit a cigarette with deliberation. “I was going, really, anyway.”
Roberts did not insist, nor did he dissimulate.
“As you wish. I meant it or I shouldn’t have made the suggestion. Better glue on your hair if you accept, Elice. I have a presentiment222that I’ll let her out to-day.” He started down the walk. “I’m ready when you are.”
Behind him the man and the girl exchanged one look.
“Come, Steve,” said the girl in a low voice. “I ask it.”
“No,” Armstrong’s thin face formed a smile, a forced, crooked smile; “I meant what I said, too, or I wouldn’t have refused. Likewise I also have a presentiment—of a different kind. Good-bye.”
“Steve!”
“No.”
And that was all.
Out in the long street, University Row, glided the big red roadster; slowly through the city limits, more rapidly through the suburbs, then, as the open country beyond came to view, it began gradually to find itself.
“Want to see her go, do you, Elice?” asked Roberts, as the town behind them grew indistinct in a fog of dust.
“Yes, if you wish.”
“If I wish.” Roberts brought the goggles down from his forehead significantly. “If I wish,” he repeated, the inflection peculiar. He looked ahead. The broad prairie road, dust223white in its July whiteness, stretched straight out before them, without a turn or a curve, direct as the crow flies for forty miles, and on through two counties, as he knew. A light wind, begot of their motion alone, played on their faces, mingled with the throbbing purr of the engine in their ears. “If I wish,” for the third time; and notch by notch the throttle began to open.
On they went, the self-evolved breeze a gale now, the throb of the big motor a continuous moan, the cloud of dust behind them a dull brown bank against the sky. On they went over convex grades that tilted gently first to the right, then to the left, over culverts that spoke one single note of protest, over tiny bridges that echoed hollow at the impact; past dazzling green cornfields and yellow blocks of ripening grain, through great shadows of homestead groves and clumps of willows that marked the lowest point of swales, on—on—
Roberts leaned over close, but his eyes did not leave the road for the fraction of a second.
“Afraid, girl?” he asked.
“No.”
Again the man looked ahead. They were fair in the open now, already far from the city. It was the heat of a blistering Sunday and not a224team or a pedestrian was astir. Ahead, for a mile, for miles perhaps, as far as they could see, not an animate dot marred the surface of the taut, stretched, yellow-white ribbon.
“Shall I let her out, Elice?”
“Yes.”
“Sure you’re not afraid—in the least?”
“Certain.”
Again the throttle lever and its companion spark began to move around the tiny sextant, approaching nearer and nearer. Simultaneously, sympathetic, as though actuated by the same power, the hand of the speedometer on the dash began to crawl up and up. They had been all but racing before; but now—
Behind them the cloud of dust rose higher and higher, and darker and darker as the suction increased. To either side was no longer yellow and green distinct, but a mingling, indistinct, mottled unreality. Ahead the ribbon of yellow and white seemed to rise up and throw itself into their faces; again and again endlessly. The engine no longer moaned. It roared as a fire under draft. The wind was a wall that held them back like a vise in their places. In the flash of a glance the man looked at the face of the dial. The single arm was225pasted black over the numeral sixty. Once more the throttle advanced a notch, the spark lever two—and the hand halted at sixty-five. The wind gripped them afresh, and like human fingers grappled with them. Up, fairly level with their eyes, lifted the advancing yellow-white ribbon. By his side, though he did not look, the man knew that the girl had covered her face with her hands, was struggling against the gale to breathe. He was struggling himself, through wide-opened nostrils, his lips locked tight. On his bare hands the sweat gushed forth and, despite the suction, glistened bright. Yet once more, the last time the throttle moved, the spark—and met on the sextant. With its last ounce of power the great car responded, thrilled; one could feel it, a vital thing. Once again the speed-hand on the indicator stirred; but this time the man did not see it, dared not look even for the fraction of a second. Like grim death, grim life, he clung to the wheel; his eyes not on the road beneath but a quarter of a mile ahead. About him the scuttling earth shaded from motley to gray; but he did not see. A solitary tree loomed ahead beside the ribbon, and seemed to crack like a rifle report as they flashed past. At the radiator vent a226tiny cloud of steam arose, caught the gale, and stung damp on his cheeks. Far ahead, then nearer and nearer miraculously, a blot of green that he knew was the tree fringe of a river, took form, swept forward to meet them, came nearer and nearer, arose like a wall—
Back into neutral, separating until they were once more opposite, went the two companions of the sextant. Simultaneously again the speed indicator followed the backward trail. Incredibly swift the gale dwindled, until it barely fanned their cheeks. The roar of the great engine subsided, until once more it was a gentle murmur. The vivid green and the dull yellow of summer took their respective places; and like a live thing, beaten and cowed, the big car drew up at the very edge of the grove, left the yellow road-ribbon, rustled a moment amid the half-parched grass and halted in the shadow blot of a big water maple—thirty miles almost to a rod from the city limits they had left.
A moment the two humans in the seat remained in their places, breathing hard. Deliberately, almost methodically, Roberts wiped the sweat from his face.
“Thirty-two minutes, the clock says,” he commented. “We dawdled though at first. At227the finish—” He looked at the indicator peculiarly. “I’d really like to have known, for sure.”
The girl stood up. She trembled a little.
“Would you really? Perhaps—”
“You looked, Elice? I fancied you shut your eyes.”
“I did—only for a second. It read seventy-two.”
Roberts turned a switch and the last faint purr ceased.
“I imagined, almost, you’d be afraid,” he said evenly.
“I was—horribly,” simply.
“You were; and still—I won’t do it again, Elice.”
Without a word the girl stepped to the ground. In equal silence the man followed. Taking off the long khaki coat he spread it on the ground amid the shadow and indicated his handiwork with a nod. For a half-minute perhaps he himself remained standing, however, his great shoulders squared, his big fingers twitching unconsciously. Recollecting, he dropped on the grass beside her.
“Pardon me, Elice,” he apologized bluntly, “for frightening you.” He smiled, the infrequent,228tolerant, self-analytic smile. “I somehow couldn’t help doing what I did. I knew it would break out sometime soon. I couldn’t help it.”
For a moment the girl inspected him, her head, just lifted, resting on her locked arms, her eyelids half closed.
“You knew—what? Something’s happened I know; something unusual, very. I never saw you before as you are to-day. I’d almost say you had nerves. Do you care to tell me?”
Roberts was still smiling.
“Do you care to have me tell you?” he countered.
“Yes, if you wish.”
“If I wish—if I wish—you told me that once before, you recall.”
“Yes.”
“And I proceeded to frighten you—horribly. You said so.”
“Yes,” again.
“Does that mean you wish to be frightened again? Do you enjoy it?”
“Enjoy it? I don’t know. I’m curious to listen, if you care to tell me.”
Roberts had stretched himself luxuriously on229the cool sod. He looked up steadily, through the tangled leaves, at the dotted blue beyond.
“There’s nothing to frighten you this time,” he said. “Nothing to tell much, just—money.”
“I gathered as much.”
“And why, Elice?”
“Several reasons. First of all, a practical man doesn’t carry an automobile half across the continent by express without a definite stake involved. Later he doesn’t ‘scrap,’ as you say, that same machine without regret unless the stake was big—and won.”
“You think I won, then?”
“I know.”
“And again, why?”
The girl flashed a glance, but he was not looking at her.
“Because you always win,” she said simply.
“Always?” A pause. “Always, Elice?”
“Always in matters of—money.”
The man lay there still, looking up. Barely a leaf in the big maple was astir, not a single sensate thing. Had they been the only two people alive on a desert expanse they could not have been more isolated, more completely alone. Yet he pursued the lead no further, neither by word nor suggestion. Creeping through a tiny gap230a ray of sunlight glared in his eyes, and he shifted enough to avoid it. That was all.
In her place the girl too shifted, just so she could see him more distinctly.
“Tell me about it,” she said. “I’m listening.”
“You’re really interested? I don’t care to bore you.”
“Yes, really. I never pretend with you.”
Slowly Roberts sat up, his head bare, his fingers locked over his knees.
“Very well. I ’phoned, you remember, that I was going West to look at a mining claim.”
“Yes.”
“What I should have said, to be exact, was that I was going to file on one, if it wasn’t too late. I’d already seen it, on paper, and ore from it; had it assayed myself. It ran above two hundred dollars. It was one of those things that happen outside of novels oftener than people imagine. The man who furnished the specimens was named Evans,—a big, raw-boned cowboy I met down in the Southwest, where I’ve got an interest in a silver mine. He’d contracted the fever and worked for our company for a time. When the Nevada craze came on he got restless and wanted to go too.231He hadn’t a second shirt to his back so I grub-staked him. Nothing came of it and I staked him again. This time he came here personally to report. He had some ore with him and a map; just that and nothing more. Whether he’d found anything worth while he didn’t know, didn’t imagine he had, as it was a new section that hadn’t produced as yet. He hadn’t even taken the trouble to secure his claim. What he wanted was more money, grub money; and he had brought the specimen along as a teaser. He swore he hadn’t mentioned the matter to a soul except me. There wasn’t any hurry either, he said, or danger. The prospect was forty miles out on the desert from Tonopah, no railroad nearer, and no one was interested there much as yet. If I’d advance him another thousand, though—I’d been backing him a thousand dollars at a time—he’d go back and file regular, and when I’d had an assay made, if the thing looked good, he’d sell to me outright for five thousand cash.”
For the first time the speaker halted, looked at the listener directly.
“Still interested, are you?” he queried. “It’s all money, money from first to last.”
“Yes, go on. I think I saw this man232Evans, didn’t I, around with you for several days?”
“Possibly. I kept him here while I was getting a report. I’d seen some ore before and the scent looked warm to me. Besides, I knew Evans, and under the circumstances I felt better to keep him in sight. I did for a week, night and day. He never left me for an hour. He’d been eating my bread and salt for a year, had every reason to be under obligation and loyal, was so tentatively, his coming proved that; but, while one has to trust others up to a certain point in this world, beyond that—I’ve found beyond that it’s better not to take chances, even on obligation.... Have you ever known anything of the kind yourself?”
The girl was not looking at him now. “I’ve had little experience with people,” she evaded, “very little. Go on, please. I’m interested.”
“Well, the report came the day I ’phoned you, on the last delivery. Evans was killing time, as usual, about the office and I called him into my private room and locked the door. I read it through to him aloud, every word; and, he didn’t seem to take it all in at first, again. All at once the thing came over him, the full233meaning of that assay of two hundred dollars to the ton—and he went to pieces, like a fly-wheel that’s turned too fast. He simply caved. For ten years he’d been chasing the rainbow of chance, and now all at once, when he’d fairly given up hope, he’d stumbled upon it and the pot of gold together. It was too much for him.
“This was at five o’clock in the afternoon, I say. At six o’clock I unlocked the door and things began to move definitely. What happened in that hour doesn’t matter. It wasn’t pleasant, and under the circumstances no one would believe me if I told; for I had his written promise to show me the ledge he’d found and to sell whatever right he had to the claim himself to me for twenty-five thousand dollars.... I found it, I have an incontestable title to it, and I refused a million dollars flat for it less than three days ago!”
In her place the girl half raised, met the speaker eye to eye.
“And still, knowing in advance it was worth a fortune, Evans sold to you.”
“Yes, voluntarily; begged it of me. I said no one would believe me now, even you—I don’t care for the opinion of any one else.”234
“I don’t doubt you, not for a second.” The brown eyes had dropped now. “But I can’t quite understand.”
“No, I repeat once more, no one can understand who wasn’t there. He was crazy, avariciously crazy. He wanted the money then, then; wanted to see it, to feel it, that minute. It was his and he wanted it; not the five thousand he’d promised, but five times that. He wouldn’t wait. He would have it.
“I tried to reason with him, to argue with him, offered him his own terms if he’d let me develop it; but he wouldn’t listen. If I wouldn’t accept he’d throw me over entirely, notwithstanding the fact that I’d made the find possible, and sell to some one else—sell something he didn’t have; for at last it all came out, why he’d gone crazy and wouldn’t wait. He’d lied to me previously. Before he’d left Tonopah he’d talked, told of his find to a half-dozen of his friends, and left them specimens of the same ore he’d brought me. He’d told them everything, in fact, except the location. It developed that he had retained judgment enough to keep back even a hint of that; and they were waiting for him there,—he knew it and I knew it,—waiting his return, waiting to learn the235location, and to steal his claim before he could stake it himself.”
“And still, feeling certain of that in your own mind, you paid him his price!”
“Every dollar of it—before I took the midnight train West. I raised it after business hours, in a dozen different ways; but I got it. I pooled for security everything I had in the world—except Old Reliable; I kept that free for a purpose,—my house, my library, my stock in the traction company, some real estate I own. I had to give good measure because I had to have the money right then. And I got it. It was a pull but I got it.”
The girl’s head was back on her folded arms once more, the long lashes all but covering her eyes.
“Supposing Evans had been lying to you after all,” she suggested, “in other things besides the one you mentioned.”
Over Roberts’ face flashed a momentary smile.
“I told you we were locked in that room together for an hour. He wasn’t lying to me after that time had passed, rest assured. Besides, I wasn’t entirely helpless or surprised. I’d been out in that country myself and Evans wasn’t the only man I had reporting. I’d been waiting236for a chance of this kind from the day the first prospect developed at Goldfield. I knew it would come sometime—if I waited my chance.”
“So you gambled—with every cent you had in the world.”
“Yes. All life is a gamble. If I had lost I was only thirty-five and the earth is big. Besides, to all the world I was still ‘old man’ Roberts, not ‘Darley.’ There was yet plenty of time—if I lost.”
“You went West that same evening, you say.” The long lashes were all but touching now. “What then?”
“Yes, with Evans in the same Pullman section and Old Reliable in the express car forward. I had an idea in my head and followed it out. I felt as certain as I was of my own name that they’d have scouts out to wire ahead when Evans was coming; so it wouldn’t be any use to get off at an obscure place. I also knew that the chances were I couldn’t get a conveyance there at once for love or money; so Old Reliable was already—good and ready. Every tank was full. The tonneau was packed: ten gallons extra gas, five gallons of water, a week’s rations—everything I could think of237that we might need. We’d go through to the end of the line, all right, but if I could help it we shouldn’t wait long after we got there. And we didn’t.”
This time the girl did not interrupt, either with comment or gesture; merely lay there listening.
“Ten minutes after we struck town we were away, under our own power. It was night, but we were away just the same. And that’s where we got the lead,—a half hour’s lead. They knew, all right, that we’d come, fancied they knew everything—but they hadn’t planned on Old Reliable. It took them just that long to come to and make readjustment. Then the real fun began. There was no moon, and out on the desert the night was as dark as a pocket. We simply had to have a light even if it gave us away. Evans thought he knew the road; but, if there ever was one, before we’d gone ten miles we’d lost it. After that I drove by compass entirely—and instinct. But I couldn’t go fast. I didn’t dare to. For an hour and a half—the indicator showed we’d gone twenty-four miles—we had everything to ourselves, seemingly the entire world. We hadn’t heard a sound or seen a live thing. Then, as we came238up on a rise, Evans looked back and saw a light,—just one light, away, away back like a star. A few seconds afterward it disappeared and we made a couple more miles. We mounted a second rise and—this time Evans swore. He was with me by this time, body and soul, game to the finish; for the light wasn’t starlike now by any means. It didn’t even twinkle. It just simply rose up out of the ground, shone steady, vanished for a time, and rose up anew with the lay of the country. They were on our trail at last, they couldn’t miss it. It was plain as a wagon road, and they were making two miles to our one. They must have had a good car; but anyway everything was with them. They could drive to the limit by our trail; but I couldn’t, for I didn’t know what was ahead. I let her out, though, and Evans watched. He didn’t swear now, he just watched; and every time that light showed it was nearer. At last,—we’d made thirty-two miles by that time,—he saw two lights behind instead of one—and saw them red, I judge, for how he swore! It was then or never and I opened the throttle to the last notch and we flew over everything, through everything until—we stopped.”
“You struck something?”239
“Yes. I don’t know what nor didn’t stop to see. The transmission went, I knew that. The engine was still threshing and pounding when we took to our heels. We could hear it and see the two lights coming and we ran—Lord, how we ran! It seems humorous now, but it wasn’t humorous then. There was a fortune at stake and a big one; for a claim belongs to the chap who puts up the monuments. We ran straight ahead into the night, until we couldn’t run another foot; and then we walked, walked, ten miles if an inch, until the two lights of Old Reliable became one, and then went out of sight entirely. Then we lay down and panted and waited for daylight.... That’s about all, I guess.”
“They didn’t follow you, then?” The girl was sitting up now, the brown eyes wide open.
“They couldn’t. A hound might have done so, but a human being couldn’t that night.” Roberts dropped back to the grass, again avoiding the rift of light. “At daylight Evans got his bearings, and that day we found the claim, built our monuments, tacked up the notice and the rest. I learned afterwards there were six men in the machine behind; but I never saw240any of them—until the day I left. They made me an offer then.”
“And Old Reliable?”
Roberts hesitated, then he laughed oddly.
“I paid a parting visit there too. The remains weren’t decent junk when the same six got through expressing their feelings that night.”
241CHAPTER VFULFILMENT
An hour had passed. As the afternoon sun sank lower the shadow blot beneath the big maple had lengthened and deepened. In consequence the annoying light-rift was no more. Overhead the leaves were vibrating, barely vibrating, with the first breath of breeze of evening born. Otherwise there was no change; just the big red roadster and the man and the girl idling beside.
“Poverty, work, subservience,” conversation had drifted where it would, at last had temporarily halted, with the calendar rolled back twenty years; “poverty, work, subservience,” the man had paused there to laugh, the odd, repressed laugh that added an emphasis no mere words could express. “Yes; they’re old friends of mine, very old friends, very. I’m not likely to forget the contrast they’ve made, ever, no matter what the future holds.”
“You’ve not forgotten, then, what’s past,—overlooked242it? Isn’t it better to forget, sometimes,—some things?”
“Forget?” The man was looking straight up into space. “I wish I could forget, wish it from the bottom of my soul. It makes me—hard at times, and I don’t want to be hard. But I can’t ever. Memory is branded in too deeply.”
The girl was picking a blade of grass to pieces, bit by bit.
“I’m disappointed. I fancied you could do anything you wished,” she said low. “That’s what has made me afraid of you sometimes.”
The man did not stir.
“Are you afraid of me sometimes, really?” he asked.
“Yes, horribly—as much afraid as when we were coming out here to-day.”
“I’m sorry, Elice, sorry for several reasons. Most of all because I love you.”
It was the first word of the kind that had ever passed between them. Yet neither showed surprise, nor did either change position. It was as though he had said that gravitation makes the apple fall, or that the earth was round, a thing they had both known for long, had become instinctively adjusted to.243
“I knew that,” said the girl gently, “and know too that you’re sorry I am afraid. You can’t help it. If it weren’t true, though, you wouldn’t be you.”
The man looked at her gravely.
“You think it will always be that way?” he asked. “You’ll always be afraid at times, I mean?”
“Yes. You’re bigger than I am. I can’t understand you, I never can wholly. I’ve given up hope. We’re all afraid of things we can’t completely understand.”
Silently the man passed his hand across his face, unconsciously; his arm fell lax at his side. As the girl had known, he did not follow the lead, would not follow it unless she directed the way.
“You said you fancied I could forget what’s past,” he said at last. “Did you honestly believe that?”
“Yes, or ignore it.”
“Ignore it—or forget!” The fingers of the great hands twitched. “Some things one can’t ignore or forget, girl. To do so would be superhuman. You don’t understand.”
“No; you’ve never told me. You’ve suggested at times, merely suggested; nothing more.”244
“You’d like to know why—the reason? It would help you to understand?”
“Yes; I think it would help.”
“It might even lead to making you—unafraid?”
A halt this time, then, “Yes, it might possibly do even that.”
Again the man looked at her for long in silence, and again very gravely.
“I’ll tell you, then,” he said. “It isn’t pleasant for me to tell nor for you to hear; but I’d like you to know why—if you can. They’re all back, back, the things I’d like to forget and can’t, a very long way. They date from the time I first knew anything.”
The girl settled deeper into the soft coat, her eyes half closed.
“You told me once you couldn’t remember your mother even,” she suggested.
“No, nor my father, nor any other relatives, if I ever had any. I was simply stranded in Kansas City when it was new. I wasn’t born there, though, but out West on a prairie ranch somewhere. The tradition is that my parents were hand-to-mouth theatrical people, who’d got the free home craze and tried to live out on the west Kansas desert, who were dried out and245starved out until they went back on the road; and who then, of course, didn’t want me. I don’t know. Anyway, when my brain awoke I was there in Kansas City. As a youngster I had a dozen homes—and none. I was any one’s property—and no one’s. I did anything, accepted whatever Providence offered, to eat. Animals must live and I was no exception. The hand seemingly of every man and woman in the world was against me, and I conformed to the inevitable. Any one weaker than I was my prey, any one stronger my enemy. I learned to fight for my own, to run when it was wisest, to take hard knocks when I couldn’t avoid them—and say nothing. It was all in the game. I know this isn’t pleasant to hear,” he digressed.
“I’m listening. Go on, please.”
“That was the first stage. Then, together with a hundred other similar little beasts, a charitable organization got hold of me and transplanted me out into the country, as they do old footsore hack horses when they get to cluttering the pavement. Chance ordained that I should draw an old Norwegian farmer, the first generation over, and that he should draw me. I fancy we were equally pleased. His contract was to feed me and clothe me and,—I246was twelve at the time, by the way,—to get out of me in return what work he could. There was no written contract, of course; but nevertheless it was understood just the same.
“He fulfilled his obligation—in his way. He was the first generation over, I repeat, and had no more sense of humor than a turtle. He saw that I had all I could eat—after I’d done precisely so much work, his own arbitrary stint, and not a minute before. If I was one iota short I went hungry as an object-lesson. He gave me clothes to wear, after every other member of the family had discarded them, in supreme disregard for suitability or fit. He sent me to school—during the months of January and February, when there was absolutely nothing else to do, and when I should have been in the way at home. At times of controversy he was mighty with the rod. He was, particularly at the beginning of our intimacy, several sizes larger than I. It was all a very pleasant arrangement, and lasted four years. It ended abruptly one Thanksgiving Day.
“I remember that day distinctly, as much so as yesterday. Notwithstanding it was a holiday, I’d been husking corn all day steady, from dark until dark. There was snow on the ground,247and I came in wet through, chattering cold, hungry, and dog-tired—to find the entire family had left to celebrate the evening with a neighbor. They did that often of a holiday, but usually they left word. This time they’d forgotten, or didn’t care. Anyway, it didn’t matter, for that day had been the last straw. So far as I was concerned the clock had struck twelve and a new circuit had begun.
“I looked about the kitchen for supper, but there was none, so I proceeded to prepare one suitable to the occasion. Among other things, the farmer raised turkeys for the market and, although the season was late, there were a few birds left for seed. I went out to the barn with a lantern and picked the plumpest gobbler I could find off the roost, and an hour later had him in the oven. This was at eight o’clock in the evening. While he was baking I canvassed the old farmer’s wardrobe. I’d grown like a mushroom those last years and, though I was only sixteen, a suit of his ready-made clothes was a fair fit. I got into it grimly. I also found a dog-skin fur coat and, while it smelled a good deal like its original owner, it would be warm, and I laid it aside carefully for future reference.248
“Then came supper. I didn’t hurry in the least, but I had a campaign in mind, so I went to work. When that bird was done I ate it, and everything else I could find. I had the appetite of an ostrich, and when I was through there wasn’t enough left for a hungry cat. I even considered taking the family cat in to the feast,—they had one, of course, and it always looked hungry, too; but I had a sort of pride in my achievement and I wanted to leave the remains as evidence.
“It was ten o’clock by this time and no one had shown up. I was positively sorry. I’d hoped the old farmer would return and find me. I had a few last words to say to him, some that had been lying heavy on my mind for a long time. But he didn’t come, and I couldn’t wait any longer; so I wrote them instead. I put on the dog-skin coat and started away on foot into the night. If I’d had money I would have left the value of the clothes; but he’d never given me a dollar in all those four years, so I took them on account. It was two miles to town and I made it in time to catch the ten-forty-five freight out.
“I forgot one thing, though. I went back after I’d got started a quarter of a mile to say249good-bye to the horses. I always liked horses, and old Bill and Jerry and I had been good friends. I rode the pilot of that engine and got into Kansas City the next morning. That was the second stage.... Still interested, are you, Elice?”
“Yes.”
“Next, I landed in the hardwood region of Missouri, the north edge of the Ozarks. It was the old story of one having to live, and I’d seen an ad in the papers for ‘loggers wanted.’ I had answered it, and the man in charge dropped on me like a hawk and gave me transportation by the first train. Evidently men for the job were not in excess, and when I’d been there a day I knew why. It was the most God-forsaken country I’d ever known, away back in the mountains, where civilization had ceased advancing fifty years before. The job was a contract to deliver so many thousand feet of lumber in the log daily at the mill on the nearest railway. There was a five-mile haul, and we worked under a boss in crews of four. Each crew had to deliver eight big logs a day, seven days in the week, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. How it was done, when they were cut, when hauled, was not the boss’s affair—just250so the logs came. When we of the crews ate or slept was no one’s affair—just so we kept on the job. No single man could handle one of those big cuts, no single mule team haul it in places over those cursed mountain roads. That’s why we worked in crews. On the average we worked eighteen hours a day. In summer this was long, in winter it seemed perpetual; but I was in it and I was going to stick—or thought I was. The other three in my gang were middle-aged men,—hard drinkers, good swearers, tough as oak themselves. The boss was a little tobacco-eating, bow-legged Irishman. I never, before or since, knew a man who could swear as he could, or drink so when he struck town. It seems to go with the logging business; but he was a master.
“I struck this place in the winter. It was in the winter following, again by chance on a holiday, but Christmas this time, that I quit. They don’t have much cold down in that country and usually but little snow; but this year there had been a lot,—soft, wet snow, half rain, that melted on the ground and made the roads almost impassable. For that reason we’d been getting behind in our contract. We simply could not make two trips a day; and Murphy,251the boss, grew black and blacker. He swore that if we couldn’t make but one trip a day on that one haul we’d have to carry two logs each instead of one. The thing was barely possible on good roads, wholly impossible with the ground softened; but he was the boss, his word law, and before daylight on this Christmas morning we were loaded and on the road.
“I was on the head wagon with Murphy behind me, the other three following. The first half-mile was down grade and we got along all right. Then came the inevitable up grade following and the team began to flounder. They were mules, of course,—horses could never have stood for a day the grief of that mountain hauling,—great big-framed, willing fellows that in condition would pull anything any team could pull; but now they were weak and tired, and so thin that their bones almost stuck through their hides from the endless grind. They did their best, though, and struggled along for a few rods. The wheels struck a rock in the road and they stopped. I urged them on and they tried again, but the load wouldn’t budge. There was but one thing to do,—to double with the team behind, and I slid off to make the coupling.252
“Murphy had been watching it all in silence,—a bad sign with him. When he saw what I was going to do he held up his hand to the rear team, which meant:‘Stay where you are.’ ‘Give over the lines,’ he said to me.
“I knew what that meant. I’d seen him cripple animals before; but that was when I first came. Since then I’d had another year to grow and to get hard and tough. I was going on eighteen and as big as I am now almost; and I wasn’t afraid of him then or of any human being alive.
“‘It’s no use,’ I answered. ‘We may as well double and save time.’
“He said something then, no matter what; I was used to being sworn at.
“‘No,’ I said.
“He jumped off the load at that. I thought it was between us, so I jerked off my big mittens to be ready; but the mules’ turn was to come first, it seems. He didn’t wait for anything, just simply went at them, like a maniac, like a demon. I won’t tell you about it—it was too horribly brutal—or about what followed. I simply saw red. For the first time and the last time in my life, I hope, I fought a man—fought like a beast, tooth and nail.253When it was over he was lying there in the mud we’d made, unconscious; and I was looking down at him and gasping for breath. I was bleeding in a dozen places, for he had a knife; but I never noticed. I suppose I stood there so for a minute looking at him, the other three men who had come up looking at me, and not one of us saying a word. I reached over and felt of him from head to foot. There were no bones broken and he was breathing steadily. So I did what I suppose was a cruel thing, but one I’ve never regretted to this day, though I’ve never seen him since. I simply rolled him over and over in the mud and slush out of the road—and left him to come to. After that we pulled off the second log from each of the four wagons and left them there beside the track. Then we drove on to town, leaving him there; sitting up by that time, still dazed, by the side of the road. There was just one logging train a day on that stub, and when we pulled into town it was waiting. Without a word of understanding, or our pay for the month, the four of us took that train and went our four separate ways. That’s the third stage.... Begin to understand a little, do you, Elice?”254
“Yes; I begin, just begin, to understand—many things.”
Roberts shifted position silently, his arms crossed under his head for a pillow. But he was still looking straight up, through the gently rocking leaves at the infinite beyond.
“The next stage found me in a southern Iowa soft-coal mine. The explanation is simple. I had saved a few dollars; while they lasted I drifted, and to the north. When they were gone I had to work or starve. I had no education whatever, no special training even. I was merely a big, healthy animal, fit only for hard, physical work. I happened to be in a farming and mining community. It was Winter and there was nothing to do on a farm, so by the law of necessity I went to work heaving coal.
“I stayed there a little over seven months and during that time I scarcely saw the sun. I’d go into the tunnel at seven in the morning, take my lunch with me, and never come out until quitting time. I worked seven days in the week here too. There wasn’t any union and, anyway, no one seemed to think of doing differently. At first it used to worry me, that being always in the dark. My imagination kept working, picturing sunlight and green things;255after a bit that stage passed and I used to dread to come out of the tunnel. The glare hurt my eyes and made me blink like an owl in the daytime. I felt chilly, too, and shivered so my teeth chattered. But I stuck to it, and after a few months the thing seemed natural and almost as though I’d been there always. I began to cease to think and to work unconsciously, like a piece of machinery. I even quit counting the days. They were all the same, so what was the use? I just worked, worked, and the coal dust ground into me and sweated into me until I looked more like a negro than a white man.
“Time drifted on this way, from Winter until Spring, from Spring until Summer; at last the something unusual that always comes about sooner or later happened, and I awoke. It was just after dinner one day and I’d gone back to the job. I had a lot of loose coal knocked down in the drift and was shovelling steadily into a car when, away down the main tunnel, I saw a bunch of lights bobbing in the darkness. It wasn’t the time of day for an inspection, and anyway there were several people approaching, so I waited to see what it meant.256
“They came on slowly, stopping to look at everything by the way. At last they got near enough so I could make them out; there were three men and a woman. I recognized one of the men by this time,—our foreman, Sharp. He was guiding the others and I knew then they were visitors, owners probably, because no stranger had ever come before while I was there. The woman, I saw that she was a girl now, called one of the men ‘father’; and from the way she spoke I guessed why she was along too. She’d come anyway, whether they approved or not. The drift I was working in was a new one, just opened; and when they got there the whole group stopped a little way off, and Sharp began explaining, talking fast and giving figures. If any of the men saw me they didn’t pay any attention; they just listened, and now and then one of them asked a question. But the girl wasn’t interested or listening. She was all eyes, looking about here and there, taking in everything; and after a bit she noticed the light in my cap and came peering over to see what it meant. I just stood there watching her and she came quite close, all curiosity, until finally she could see my face. She stopped.257
“‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I thought it was just a light. It’s a man.’
“‘Yes, it’s a man,’ I said.
“She was looking at me steadily by this time, wholly curious.
“‘A—a white man?’ she asked.
“I thought a moment, then I understood.
“‘Yes, a white man,’ I answered.
“She came up to the car at that and looked in. She glanced back at me. Evidently she wasn’t entirely satisfied.
“‘How old are you?’ she asked. ‘You look awfully old.’
“I leaned over on the car too; I’d begun to think. I remembered that to me she seemed so very, very young; and all at once it flashed over me that probably I wasn’t a day older.
“‘Eighteen,’ I said.
“‘Eighteen!’ She stared. ‘Why, I’m eighteen. And you—have you been here long?’
“I suppose I smiled. Anyway I know I scared her. She drew back.
“‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve forgotten. If you’ll tell me the date maybe I can answer. I don’t know.’
“‘You don’t know! You can’t mean that.’
“‘Yes, I’ve forgotten.’258
“She didn’t say a word after that, just looked at me—as a youngster looks when it goes to the circus for the first time. I fancy we stood there half a minute so; then at last, interrupting, the man she’d called ‘father’ looked over and saw us. He frowned, I could see that, and said something to the foreman. He spoke her name.”
Just for a moment Roberts shifted his head, looking at his silent listener steadily. “What do you fancy was that name he called, Elice?”
Elice Gleason started involuntarily, and settled back in her place.
“I haven’t the slightest idea, of course.”
“It wasn’t an ordinary name. At that time I’d never heard it before.”
“I’m not good at guessing.”
Roberts shifted back to his old position.
“It was ‘Elice.’ ‘Elice, come,’ he said.
“The daughter hesitated. I imagine she wanted to ask me several things yet,—whether I had cloven feet, for instance, and lived on spiders; but she didn’t. She went back to the other three and they moved on. That was the last I saw of them.
“I worked the rest of that day, did about three men’s work, I remember. That night I259drew my pay and went to bed; but I didn’t go to sleep. I did a lot of thinking and made up my mind to something. I decided I’d been the under dog long enough. I haven’t changed the opinion since. Next day I saw the sun when it was straight overhead and soaked the coal dust out of my skin—as much as possible.... That’s all of the fourth stage.... Hadn’t I better stop?”
The girl shook her head, but still without looking at him.
“No; I want to learn what you did after that, after you woke up.”
“I went West. I hadn’t seen the sun or the sky for so long that I was hungry for it. In Omaha I fell in with a bunch of cattlemen and, as I always liked to handle stock, that settled it. I accepted an offer as herder; they didn’t call it that, but it amounted to the same. I had a half-dozen ponies, rations for six months, and something under a thousand head of stock to look after. By comparison it wasn’t work at all; only I was all alone and it took all the time, day and night. I didn’t sleep under a roof half a dozen nights from July to October. When the cattle bunched at night I simply rolled up in a blanket where they were and260watched the stars until I forgot them; the next thing I knew it was morning. I had hours to read in though, hours and hours; and that was another thing I was after. For I could read, I wasn’t quite illiterate, and I was dead in earnest at last. When the Fall round-up came I quit and went to Denver, and portered in a big hotel and went to night school.
“There isn’t much to tell after this. I drifted all over the West and the Southwest during the next few years. I got the mining fever and prospected in Colorado and California and Arizona; but I never struck anything. I learned something though; and that was that it isn’t the fellow who makes a find who wins, but the chap who buys the prospect, almost invariably. That was useful. Every Winter I landed in a big city and went to school,—night school or mining school or commercial school. Finally it dawned upon me that I was taking the long road to an end, that the short cut was to be really ready to do a thing before making the attempt. I decided to go to a university. That would take years, and meantime I had to live. I could make a living in a little city easier than a big one, so I came here.... You know the rest.”261
Elice Gleason sat up, her fingers locked over her knees.
“Yes, I know the rest; but—” She was silent.
“But you don’t wholly understand,” completed the other. “You don’t, even yet, do you, Elice?”
“No, not entirely, even yet.”
“Why I can’t forget when I wish or help being hard?”
“Yes, when you have such infinite possibilities now.”
“Now,” supplemented the man evenly, “when society at large couldn’t pound me down any longer or prevent my getting out of their power.”
The girl did not answer.
Deliberately Roberts sat up; no longer listless or tolerantly self-analytic, but very wide awake, very direct.
“I’ll have to tell you a few more reasons, then; read between the lines a bit. I never did this before to any one; never will again—to any one. But I must make you understand what made me as I am. I must; you know why. Tell me to stop when you wish, I’ll obey gladly; but don’t tell me you don’t understand.262
“To begin again at the beginning. My parents abandoned me. Why? They were starved to it, forced to it. Self-preservation is the first law. I don’t clear them, but I understand. They were starving and irresponsible. I merely paid the price of relief, the price society at large demanded.
“At the first home I had afterward the man drank,—drank to forget that he, too, was an under dog. Some one again must pay the price, and I paid it. Now and then I’d succeed in selling a few papers, or do an errand, and earn a few pennies. After the manner of all lesser animals I’d try to hide with them; but he’d find me every time. He seemed to have a genius for it. He’d whip me with whatever was handy; at first for trying to hide, later, when I wouldn’t cry, because I was stubborn. Finally, after he’d got tired or satisfied, he’d steal my coppers and head for the nearest bar. Once in January I remember a lady I met on the street took me into a store and bought me a new pair of shoes. I hid them successfully for a week. One day he caught me with them on—and pawned them.
“The old farmer the charity folks traded me to was a Lutheran. Every morning after breakfast263he read prayers. He never missed a day. Then he’d send me out with one of his sons,—a grown-up man of twenty-two,—and if I didn’t do exactly as much work as the son I went hungry until I got it done if it took half the night. He also had a willow sapling he relied upon when hunger didn’t prove effective. He’d pray before he used that too,—pray with one hand gripping my neckband so I couldn’t get away. I earned a dollar a day—one single solitary dollar—when I was logging oak in the Ozarks. Day after day when we were on the haul I used to strap myself fast to the load to keep from going to sleep and rolling off under the wheels. I got so dead tired that I fell asleep walking, when I did that to keep awake. You won’t believe it, but it’s true. I’ve done it more than once.
“I was sick one day in the coal mine, deathly sick. The air at times was awful. I laid down just outside the car track. I thought I was going to die and felt distinctly pleased at the prospect. Some one reported me to the superintendent. He evidently knew the symptoms, for he came with a pail of water and soaked me where I lay, marked time, and went away. I laid there for three hours in a puddle of water264and soft coal grime; then I went back to work. I know it was three hours because my time check was docked exactly that much.
“When I was going to night school in Denver the day clerk, who’d got me the place, took half my tips, the only pay I received, to permit me to hold the place. It was the rule, I discovered, the under-dog penalty.
“I said I never struck anything prospecting. I did. I struck a silver lead down in Arizona. While I was proving it a couple of other prospectors came along, dead broke—and out of provisions. I divided food with them, of course—it’s the unwritten law—and they camped for the night. We had supper together. That was the last I knew. When I came to it was thirty-six hours later and I was a hundred miles away in a cheap hotel—without even my bill paid in advance. The record showed that claim was filed on the day I disappeared. The mine is paying a hundred dollars a day now. I never saw those two prospectors again. The present owner bought of them square. I don’t hold it up against him.
“I went to night school all one winter in San Francisco with a fellow named Stuart, another under dog like myself. We roomed together in265a hall-bedroom to save expense and ate fifteen-cent dinners together at the same soup-house. He clerked in a little tobacco store daytimes. I was running an express elevator. We both saved a little money above what it cost to live. Things went on in this way for four months, until the end of the winter term. One morning when I woke up I found he’d gone. I also found that the little money I’d saved was gone. They went together. I never saw either again.
“I had another friend once, I thought. It was after I’d decided to come here to the university. I was harvesting on a wheat ranch in Nebraska, making money to pay for my matriculation. He was a student too, he said, from New York State, and working for the same purpose. We worked there together all through harvest, boiled side by side in the same sun. One day he announced a telegram from home. His mother was dying. He was crazy almost because he hadn’t nearly enough money to take him back at once. And there his mother was in New York State dying! I lent him all I had saved,—seventy odd dollars; and he gave me his note, insisted on doing so—though he hoped the Lord would strike him dead if he failed to return the loan within four days. I266have that note yet. Perhaps the Lord did strike him dead. I don’t know.
“It was nearly September by this time and harvest was over, my job with it, of course; so I started on east afoot, tramping it. I wasn’t a particularly handsome specimen, but still I was clean, and I never asked for a meal without offering to work for it. Yet in the three hundred miles I covered before school opened I had four farmers’ wives call the dog,—I recorded the number; and I only slept under a roof two nights.
“Even after I came here, after—Elice, don’t! I’m a brute to have done this! From the bottom of my soul I beg your pardon.”
The girl was weeping repressedly, her face buried in her hands, her whole body tense.
“Elice, please don’t! I’m ashamed. I only wanted you to understand; and now—I’m simply ashamed.”
“You needn’t be at all.” As suddenly as it had come the storm abated, under compulsion. “I wanted to know several things very much; and now I think I do know them. At least I don’t wonder any more—why.” She stood up decisively, disdaining to dry her eyes.
“But we mustn’t stop to chatter any more267now,” she digressed preventingly. “You made me forget all about time, and cooks should never forget that. It’s nearly sundown and father—he’ll have been hungry for two hours.”
Roberts got to his feet slowly. If in the new light of understanding there was more he had intended saying that day, or if at the sudden barring of opportunity he felt disappointment, his face gave no indication of the fact. He merely smiled in tolerant appreciation of the suggestion last made.
“Doesn’t your father know the remedy for hunger yet, at his age?” he queried whimsically.
“Knows it, yes,” with an odd laugh; “but it would never occur to him unless some one else suggested it.”
A pause, then she looked her companion full in the face, significantly so. “He’s dependent and irresponsible as a child or—as Steve Armstrong. They’re helpless both, absolutely, left to themselves; and speaking of that, they’re both by themselves now.” She started for the motor hastily, again significantly so.
“Come, please,” she requested.