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Most of all he reveled in Amalia’s music. Certain melodies that she said her father had made he loved especially, and sometimes she would accompany them with a plaintive chant, half singing and half recitation, of the sonnet which had inspired them, and which had been woven through them. It was at these times that Larry listened with his elbows on his knees and his eyes fixed on the fire, and Harry with his eyes on Amalia’s face, while the cabin became to him glorified with a light, no longer from the flames, but with a radiance like that which surrounded Dante’s Beatrice in Paradise.
Amalia loved to please Larry Kildene. For this reason, knowing the joy he would take in it, and also because she loved color and light and joy, and the giving of joy, she took the gorgeous silk he had brought her, and made it up in a fashion of her own. Down in the cities, she knew, women were wearing their gowns spread out over wide hoops, but she made the dress as she knew they were worn at the time Larry had lived among women and had seen them most.
The bodice she fitted closely and shaped into a long point in front, and the skirt she gathered and allowed to fall in long folds to her feet. The sleeves she fitted only to her elbows, and gathered in them deep lace of her own making––lace to dream about, and the creation of which was one of those choice things she had learned of the good sisters at the convent. About her neck she put a bertha, kerchiefwise, and pinned it with a brooch of curiously wrought gold. Larry, “the discreet and circumspect liar,” thought of the emerald brooch she had brought him to sell for her, and knowing how it would glow and blend309among the changing tints of the silk, he fetched it to her, explaining that he could not sell it, and that the bracelet had covered all she had asked him to purchase for her, and some to spare.
She thanked him, and fastened it in her bodice, and handed the other to her mother. “There, mamma, when we have make you the dress Sir Kildene have brought you, you must wear this, for it is beautiful with the black. Then we will have a fête. And for the fête, Sir Kildene, you must wear the very fine new clothes you have buy, and Mr. ’Arry will carry on him the fine new clothing, and so will we be all attire most splendid. I will make for you all the music you like the best, and mamma will speak then the great poems she have learned by head, and Sir Kildene will tell the story he can relate so well of strange happenings. Oh, it will be a fine, good concert we will make here––and you, Mr. ’Arry, what will you do?”
“I’ll do the refreshments. I’ll roast corn and make coffee. I’ll be audience and call for more.”
“Ah, yes! Encore! Encore! The artists must always be very much praised––very much––so have I heard, to make them content. It is Sir Kildene who will be the great artist, and you must cry ‘Encore,’ and honor him greatly with such calls. Then will we have the pleasure to hear many stories from him. Ah, I like to hear them.”
It was a strange life for Harry King, this odd mixture of finest culture and high-bred delicacy of manner, with what appeared to be a total absence of self-seeking and a simple enjoyment of everyday work. He found Amalia one morning on her knees scrubbing the cabin floor, and for the moment it shocked him. When they were out on the plains310camping and living as best they could, he felt it to be the natural consequence of their necessities when he saw her washing their clothes and making the best of their difficulties by doing hard things with her own hands, but now that they were living in a civilized way, he could not bear to see her, or her mother, doing the rough work. Amalia only laughed at him. “See how fine we make all things. If I will not serve for making clean the house, why am I? Is not?”
“It doesn’t make any difference what you do, you are always beautiful.”
“Ah, Mr. ’Arry, you must say those compliments only in the French. It is no language, the English, for those fine eloquences.”
“No, I don’t seem to be able to say anything I mean, in French. It’s always a sort of make-believe talk with me. Our whole life here seems a sort of dream,––as if we were living in some wonderful bubble that will suddenly burst one day, and leave us floating alone in space, with nothing anywhere to rest on.”
“No, no, you are mistake. Here is this floor, very real, and dirt on it to be washed away,––from your boots, also very real, is not? Go away, Mr. ’Arry, but come to-night in your fine clothing, for we have our fête. Mamma has finish her beautiful new dress, and we will be gay. Is good to be sometimes joyful, is not? We have here no care, only to make happy together, and if we cannot do that, all is somber.”
And that evening indeed, Amalia had her “fête.” Larry told his best stories, and Harry was persuaded to tell them a little of his life as a soldier, and to sing a camp song. More than this he would not do, but he brought out something311he had been reserving with pride, a few little nuggets of gold. During the weeks he had worked he had found little, until the last few days, but happening to strike a vein of ore, richer than any Larry had ever found, the two men were greatly elated, and had determined to interest the women by melting some of it out of the quartz in which it was bedded, and turning out for each a golden bullet in Larry’s mold.
They heaped hard wood in the fireplace and the cabin was lighted most gloriously. While they waited for the red coals to melt the gold, Amalia took her violin and played and sang. It was nearly time for the rigor of the winter to abate, but still a high wind was blowing, and the fine snow was piling and drifting about the cabin, and even sifting through the chinks around the window and door, but the storm only made the brightness and warmth within more delightful.
When Larry drew his crucible from the coals and poured the tiny glowing stream into his molds, Amalia cried out with joy. “How that is beautiful! How wonderful to dig such beauty from the dark ground down in the black earth! Ah, mamma, look!”
Then Larry pounded each one flat like a coin, and drilled through a small hole, making thus, for each, a souvenir of the shining metal. “This is from Harry’s first mining,” he said, “and it represents good, hard labor. He’s picked out a lot of worthless dirt and stone to find this.”
Amalia held the little disk in her hand and smiled upon it. “I love so this little precious thing. Now, Mr. ’Arry, what shall I play for you? It is yours to ask––for me, to play; it is all I have.”
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“That sonnet you played me yesterday. The last line is, ‘“Quelle est donc cette femme?” et ne comprenda pas.’”
“The music of that is not my father’s best––but you ask it, yes.” Then she began, first playing after her own heart little dancing airs, gay and fantastic, and at last slid into a plaintive strain, and recited the accompaniment of rhythmic words.
“Mon âme a son secret, ma vie a son mystère:Un amour eternel en un moment concu.Le mal est sans espoir, aussi j’ai du le taireEt celle qui l’a fait n’en a jamais rien su.”
One minor note came and went and came again, through the melody, until the last tones fell on that note and were held suspended in a tremulous plaint.
“Elle dira, lisant ces vers tout remplis d’elle:‘Quelle est donc cette femme?’ et ne comprendra pas.”
Without pause she passed into a quick staccato and then descended to long-drawn tones, deep and full. “This is better, but I have never played it for you because that it is Polish, and to make it in English and so sing it is hard. You have heard of our great and good general Kosciuszko, yes? My father loved well to speak of him and also of one very high officer under him,––I speak his name for you, Julian Niemcewicz. This high officer, I do not know how to say in English his rank, but that is no matter. He was writer, and poet, and soldier––all. At last he was exiled and sorrowful, like my father,––sorrowful most of all because he might no more serve his country. It is to this poet’s own words which he wrote for his grave that my father have put in music the cry of his sorrow. In Polish313is it more beautiful, but I sing it for you in English for your comprehending.”
“O, ye exiles, who so long wander over the world,Where will ye find a resting place for your weary steps?The wild dove has its nest, and the worm a clod of earth,Each man a country, but the Pole a grave!”
It was indeed a cry of sorrow, the wail of a dying nation, and as Amalia played and sang she became oblivious of all else a being inspired by lofty emotion, while the two men sat in silence, wondering and fascinated. The mother’s eyes glowed upon her out of the obscurity of her corner, and her voice alone broke the silence.
“I have heard my Paul in the night of the desert where he made that music, I have heard him so play and sing it, that it would seem the stars must fall down out of the heavens with sorrow for it.”
Amalia smiled and caught up her violin again. “We will have no more of this sad music this night. I will sing the wild song of the Ukraine, most beautiful of all our country, alas, ours no more––Like that other, the music is my father’s, but the poem is written by a son of the Ukraine––Zaliski.”
A melody clear and sweet dominated, mounting to a note of triumph. Slender and tall she stood in the middle of the room. The firelight played on the folds of her gown, bringing out its color in brilliant flashes. She seemed to Harry, with her rich complexion and glowing eyes, absorbed thus in her music, a type of human splendor, vigorous, vivid, adorable. Mostly in Polish, but sometimes in English, she again half sang, half chanted, now playing with the voice, and again dropping to accompaniment only, while they314listened, the mother in the shadows, Larry gazing in the fire, and Harry upon her.
“Me also has my mother, the Ukraine,Me her sonCradled on her bosom,The enchantress.”
She ceased, and with a sigh dropped at her mother’s feet and rested her head on her mother’s knee.
“Tell us now, mamma, a poem. It is time we finish now our fête with one good, long poem from you.”
“You will understand me?” Madam Manovska turned to Harry. “You do well understand what once you have heard––” She always spoke slowly and with difficulty when she undertook English, and now she continued speaking rapidly to Amalia in her own tongue, and her daughter explained.
“Mamma says she will tell you a poem composed by a great poet, French, who is now, for patriotism to his country, in exile. His name is Victor Hugo. You have surely heard of him? Yes. She says she will repeat this which she have by head, and because that it is not familiar to you she asks will I tell it in English––if you so desire?”
Again Madam Manovska addressed her daughter, and Amalia said: “She thinks this high mountain and the plain below, and that we are exile from our own land, makes her think of this; only that the conscience has never for her brought terror, like for Cain, but only to those who have so long persecuted my father with imprisonment, and drive him so far to terrible places. She thinks they must always, with never stopping, see the ‘Eye’ that regards forever. This also must Victor Hugo know well, since for his country315he also is driven in exile––and can see the terrible ‘Eye’ go to punish his enemies.”
Then Madam Manovska began repeating in her strong, deep tones the lines:––
“Lorsque avec ses enfants vetus de peaux de bêtes,Echevele, livide au milieu des tempètes,Cain se fut enfui de devant Jehovah,“Comme le soir tombait, l’homme sombre arrivaAu bas d’une montagne en une grande plaine;Sa femme fatiguée et ses fils hors d’haleine;Lui dire: ‘Couchons-nous sur la terre et dormons.’”
“Oh, mamma, that is so sad, that poem,––but continue––I will make it in English so well as I can, and for the mistakes––errors––of my telling you will forgive?
“This is the story of the terrible man, Cain, how he go with his children all in the skins of animals dressed. His hairs so wild, his face pale,––he runs in the midst of the storms to hide himself from God,––and, at last, in the night to the foot of a mountain on a great plain he arrive, and his wife and sons, with no breath and very tired, say to him, let us here on the earth lie down and sleep.” Thus, as Madam Manovska recited, Amalia told the story in her own words, and Harry King listened rapt and tense to the very end, while the fire burned low and the shadows closed around them.
“But Cain did not sleep, lying there by the mountain, for he saw always in the far shadows the fearful Eye of the condemning power fixed with great sorrow upon him. Then he cried, ‘I am too near!’ and with trembling he awoke his children and his wife, and began to run furiously into space. So for thirty days and thirty nights he walked, always pale316and silent, trembling, and never to see behind him, without rest or sleeping, until they came to the shore of a far country, named Assur.
“‘Now rest we here, for we are come to the end of the world and are safe,’ but, as he seated himself and looked, there in the same place on the far horizon he saw, in the sorrowful heavens, the Eye. Then Cain called on the darkness to hide him, and Jabal, his son, parent of those who live in tents, extended about him on that side the cloth of his tent, and Tsilla, the little daughter of his son, asked him, ‘You see now nothing?’ and Cain replied, ‘I see the Eye, encore!’
“Then Jubal, his son, father of those who live in towns and blow upon clarions and strike upon tambours, cried, ‘I will make one barrier, I will make one wall of bronze and put Cain behind it.’ But even still, Cain said, ‘The Eye regards me always!’
“Then Henoch said: ‘I will make a place of towers so terrible that no one dare approach to him. Build we a city of citadels. Build we a city and there fasten––shut––close.’
“Then Tubal Cain, father of men who make of iron, constructed one city––enormous––superhuman; and while that he labored, his brothers in the plain drove far away the sons of Enos and the children of Seth, and put out the eyes of all who passed that way, and the night came when the walls of covering of tents were not, and in their place were walls of granite, every block immense, fastened with great nails of iron, and the city seemed a city of iron, and the shadow of its towers made night upon the plain, and about the city were walls more high than mountains, and317when all was done, they graved upon the door, ‘Defense a Dieu d’entrer,’ and they put the old father Cain in a tower of stone in the midst of this city, and he sat there somber and haggard.
“‘Oh, my father, the Eye has now disappeared?’ asked the child, Tsilla, and Cain replied: ‘No, it is always there! I will go and live under the earth, as in his sepulcher, a man alone. There nothing can see me more, and I no more can see anything.’
“Then made they for him one––cavern. And Cain said, ‘This is well,’ and he descended alone under this somber vault and sat upon a seat in the shadows, and when they had shut down the door of the cave, the Eye was there in the tombs regarding him.”
Thus, seated at her mother’s feet, Amalia rendered the poem as her mother recited, while the firelight played over her face and flashed in the silken folds of her dress. When she had finished, the fire was low and the cabin almost in darkness. No one spoke. Larry still gazed in the dying embers, and Harry still sat with his eyes fixed on Amalia’s face.
“Victor Hugo, he is a very great man, as my ’usband have say,” said the mother at last.
“Ah, mamma. For Cain,––maybe,––yes, the Eye never closed, but now have man hope or why was the Christ and the Holy Virgin? It is the forgiving of God they bring––for––for love of the poor human,––and who is sorrowful for his wrong––he is forgive with peace in his heart, is not?”
318CHAPTER XXVHARRY KING LEAVES THE MOUNTAIN
When the two men bade Amalia and her mother good night and took their way to the fodder shed, the snow was whirling and drifting around the cabin, and the pathway was obliterated.
“This’ll be the last storm of the year, I’m thinking,” said Larry. But the younger man strode on without making a reply. He bent forward, leaning against the wind, and in silence trod a path for his friend through the drifted heaps. At the door of the shed he stood back to let Larry pass.
“I’ll not go in yet. I’ll tramp about in the snow a bit until––Don’t sit up for me––” He turned swiftly away into the night, but Larry caught him by the arm and brought him back.
“Come in with me, lad; I’m lonely. We’ll smoke together, then we’ll sleep well enough.”
Then Harry went in and built up the fire, throwing on logs until the shed was flooded with light and the bare rock wall seemed to leap forward in the brilliance, but he did not smoke; he paced restlessly about and at last crept into his bunk and lay with his face to the wall. Larry sat long before the fire. “It’s the music that’s got in my blood,” he said. “Katherine could sing and lilt the Scotch airs like a bird. She had a touch for the instrument, too.”
But Harry could not respond to his friend’s attempted319confidence in the rare mention of his wife’s name. He lay staring at the rough stone wall close to his face, and it seemed to him that his future was bounded by a barrier as implacable and terrible as that. All through the night he heard the deep tones of Madam Manovska’s voice, and the visions of the poem passed through his mind. He saw the strange old man, the murderer, Cain, seated in the tomb, bowed and remorseful, and in the darkness still the Eye. But side by side with this somber vision he saw the interior of the cabin, and Amalia, glowing and warm and splendid in her rich gown, with the red firelight playing over her, leaning toward him, her wonderful eyes fixed on his with a regard at once inscrutable and sympathetic. It was as if she were looking into his heart, but did not wish him to know that she saw so deeply.
Towards morning the snow clouds were swept from the sky, and a late moon shone out clear and cold upon a world carved crisply out of molten silver. Unable longer to bear that waking torture, Harry King rose and went out into the night, leaving his friend quietly sleeping. He stood a moment listening to Larry’s long, calm breathing; then buttoning his coat warmly across his chest, he closed the shed door softly behind him and floundered off into the drifts, without heeding the direction he was taking, until he found himself on the brink of the chasm where the river, sliding smoothly over the rocks high above his head, was forever tumbling.
There he stood, trembling, but not with cold, nor with cowardice, nor with fatigue. Sanity had come upon him. He would do no untoward act to hurt the three people who would grieve for him. He would bear the hurt of forever320loving in silence, and continue to wait for the open road that would lead him to prison and disgrace, or maybe a death of shame. He considered, as often before, all the arguments that continually fretted him and tore his spirit; and, as before, he knew the only course to follow was the hard one which took him back to Amalia, until spring and the melting of the snows released him––to live near her, to see her and hear her voice, even touch her hand, and feel his body grow tense and hard, suffering restraint. If only for one moment he might let himself go! If but once again he might touch her lips with his! Ah, God! If he might say one word of love––only once before leaving her forever!
Standing there looking out upon the world beneath him and above him bathed in the immaculate whiteness of the snow, and the moonlight over all, he perceived how small an atom in the universe is one lone man, yet how overwhelmingly great in his power to love. It seemed to him that his love overtopped the hills and swept to the very throne of God. He was exalted by it, and in this exaltation it was that he trembled. Would it lift him up to triumph over remorse and death?
He turned and plodded back the inevitable way. It was still night––cold and silver-white. He was filled with energy born of great renunciation and despair, and could only calm himself by work. If he could only work until he dropped, or fight with the elements, it would help him. He began clearing the snow from the ground around the cabin and cut the path through to the shed; then he quietly entered and found Larry still calmly sleeping as if but a moment had passed. Finally, he secured one of the torches321and made his way through the tunnel to the place where Larry and he had found the quartz which they had smelted in the evening.
There he fastened the torch securely in a crevice, and began to swing his pick and batter recklessly at the overhanging ledge. Never had he worked so furiously, and the earth and stone lay all about him and heaped at his feet. Deeper and deeper he fought and cut into the solid wall, until, grimed with sweat and dirt, he sank exhausted upon the pile of quartz he had loosened. Then he shoveled it to one side and began again dealing erratic blows with his spent strength, until the ledge hung dangerously over him. As it was, he reeled and swayed and struck again, and staggered back to gather strength for another blow, leaning on his pick, and this saved him from death; for, during the instant’s pause, the whole mass fell crashing in front of him, and he went down with it, stunned and bleeding, but not crushed.
Larry Kildene breakfasted and worked about the cabin and the shed half the day before he began to wonder at the young man’s absence. He fell to grumbling that Harry had not fed and groomed his horse, and did the work himself. Noon came, and Amalia looked in his face anxiously as he entered and Harry not with him.
“How is it that Mr. ’Arry have not arrive all this day?”
“Oh, he’s mooning somewhere. Off on a tramp I suppose.”
“Has he then his gun? No?”
“No, but he’s been about. He cleared away all the snow, and I saw he had been over to the fall.” Amalia turned pale as the shrewd old man’s eyes rested on her.322“He came back early, though, for I saw footprints both ways.”
“I hope he comes soon, for we have the good soup to-day, of the kind Mr. ’Arry so well likes.”
But he did not come soon, and it was with much misgiving that Larry set out to search for him. Finding no trails leading anywhere except the twice trodden one to the fall, he naturally turned into the mine and followed along the path, torch in hand, hallooing jovially as he went, but his voice only returned to him, reverberating hollowly. Then, remembering the ledge where they had last worked, and how he had meant to put in props before cutting away any more, he ran forward, certain of calamity, and found his young friend lying where he had fallen, the blood still oozing from a cut above the temple, where it had clotted.
For a moment Larry stood aghast, thinking him dead, but quickly seeing the fresh blood, he lifted the limp body and bound up the wound, and then Harry opened his eyes and smiled in Larry’s face. The big man in his joy could do nothing but storm and scold.
“Didn’t I tell ye to do no more here until we’d the props in? I’m thinking you’re a fool, and that’s what you are. If I didn’t tell ye we needed them here, you could have seen it for yourself––and here you’ve cut away all underneath. What did you do it for? I say!” Tenderly he gathered Harry in his arms and lifted him from the débris and loosened rock. “Now! Are you hurt anywhere else? Don’t try to stand. Bear on me. I say, bear on me.”
“Oh, put me down and let me walk. I’m not hurt. Just a cut. How long have you been here?”
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“Walk! I say! Yes, walk! Put your arm here, across my shoulder, so. You can walk as well as a week-old baby. You’ve lost blood enough to kill a man.” So Larry carried him in spite of himself, and laid him in his bunk. There he stood, panting, and looking down on him. “You’re heavier by a few pounds than when I toted you down that trail last fall.”
“This is all foolishness. I could have made it myself––on foot,” said Harry, ungratefully, but he smiled up in the older man’s face a compensating smile.
“Oh, yes. You can lie there and grin now. And you’ll continue to lie there until I let you up. It’s no more lessons with Amalia and no more violin and poetry for you, for one while, young man.”
“Thank God. It will help me over the time until the trail is open.” Larry stood staring foolishly on the drawn face and quivering, sensitive lips.
“You’re hungry, that’s what you are,” he said conclusively.
“Guess I am. I’m wretchedly sorry to make you all this trouble, but––she mustn’t come in here––you’ll bring me a bite to eat––yes, I’m hungry. That’s what ails me.” He drew a grimy hand across his eyes and felt the bandage. “Why––you’ve done me up! I must have had quite a cut.”
“I’ll wash your face and get your coat off, and your boots, and make you fit to look at, and then––”
“I don’t want to see her––or her mother––either. I’m just––I’m a bit faint––I’ll eat if––you’ll fetch me a bite.”
Quickly Larry removed his outer clothing and mended the fire and then left him carefully wrapped in blankets324and settled in his bunk. When he returned, he found him light-headed and moaning and talking incoherently. Only a few words could he understand, and these remained in his memory.
“When I’m dead––when I’m dead, I say.” And then, “Not yet. I can’t tell him yet.––I can’t tell him the truth. It’s too cruel.” And again the refrain: “When I’m dead––when I’m dead.” But when Larry bent over him and spoke, Harry looked sanely in his eyes and smiled again.
“Ah, that’s good,” he said, sipping the soup. “I’ll be myself again to-morrow, and save you all this trouble. You know I must have accomplished a good deal, to break off that ledge, and the gold fairly leaped out on me as I worked.”
“Did you see it?”
“No, but I knew it––I felt it. Shake my clothes and see if they aren’t full of it.”
“Was that what put you in such a frenzy and made a fool of you?”
“Yes––no––no. It––it––wasn’t that.”
“You know you were a fool, don’t you?”
“If telling me of it makes me know it––yes.”
“Eat a little more. Here are beans and venison. You must eat to make up the loss. Why, man, I found you in a pool of blood.”
“Oh, I’ll make it up. I’ll make it up all too soon. I’m not to die so easily.”
“You’ll not make it up as soon as you think, young man. You may lose a quart of blood in a minute, but it takes weeks to get it again,” and Harry King found his friend was right.
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That was the last snow of winter, as Larry had predicted, and when Harry crawled out in the sun, the earth smelled of spring, and the waterfall thundered in its downward plunge, augmented by the melting snows of the still higher mountains. The noise of it was ever in their ears, and the sound seemed fraught with a buoyant impulse and inspiration––the whirl and rush of a tremendous force, giving a sense of superhuman power. Even after he was really able to walk about and help himself, Harry would not allow himself to see Amalia. He forbade Larry to tell them how much he was improved, and still taxed his friend to bring him up his meals, and sit by him, telling him the tales of his life.
“I’ll wait on you here no longer, boy,” said Larry, at last. “What in life are you hiding in this shed for? The women think it strange of you––the mother does, anyway,––you may never quite know what her daughter thinks unless she wishes you to know, but I’m sure she thinks strange of you. She ought to.”
“I know. I’m perfectly well and strong. The trail’s open now, and I’ll go––I’ll go back––where I came from. You’ve been good to me––I can’t say any more––now.”
“Smoke a pipe, lad, smoke a pipe.”
Harry took a pipe and laughed. “You’re better than any pipe, but I’ll smoke it, and I’ll go down, yes, I must, and bid them good-by.”
“And will you have nothing to tell me, lad, before you go?”
“Not yet. After I’ve made my peace with the world––with the law––I’ll have a letter sent you––telling all I know. You’ll forgive me. You see, when I look back––I326wish to see your face––as I see it now––not––not changed towards me.”
“My face is not one to change toward you––you who have repented whatever you’ve done that’s wrong.”
That evening Harry King went down to the cabin and sat with his three friends and ate with them, and told them he was to depart on the morrow. They chatted and laughed and put restraint away from them, and all walked together to watch the sunset from a crag above the cabin. As they returned Madam Manovska walked at Harry’s side, and as she bade him good night she said in her broken English:––
“You think not to return––no? But I say to you––in my soul I know it––yet will you return––we no more to be here––perhaps––but you––yes. You will return.”
They stood a moment before the cabin, and the firelight streamed through the open door and fell on Amalia’s face. Harry took the mother’s hand as he parted from them, but he looked in Amalia’s eyes.
In the morning he appeared with his kit strapped on his back equipped for walking. The women protested that he should not go thus, but he said he could not take Goldbug and leave him below. “He is yours, Amalia. Don’t beat him. He’s a good horse––he saved my life––or tried to.”
“You know well it is my custom to beat animals. It is better you take him, or I beat him severely.”
“I know it. But you see, I can’t take him. Ride him for me, and––don’t let him forget me. Good-by!”
He waved his hand and walked lightly away, and all stood in the doorway watching him. At the top of a slight327rise he turned again and waved his hand, and was lost to their sight. Then Larry went back to the shed and sat by the fire and smoked a lonely pipe, and the mother began busily to weave at her lace in the cabin, closing the door, for the morning air was chilly, and Amalia––for a moment she stood at the cabin door, her hand pressed to her heart, her head bowed as if in despair. Then she entered the cabin, caught up her silken shawl, and went out.
Throwing the shawl over her head she ran along the trail Harry had taken, until she was out of breath, then she paused, and looked back, hesitating, quivering. Should she go on? Should she return?
“I will go but a little––little way. Maybe he stops a moment, if only to––to––think a little,” and she went on, hurrying, then moving more slowly. She thought she might at least catch one more fleeting glimpse of him as he turned the bend in the trail, but she did not. “Ah, he is so quickly gone!” she sighed, but still walked on.
Yes, so quickly gone, but he had stopped as she thought, to think a little, beyond the bend, there where he had waited the long night in the snow for Larry Kildene, there where he had sat like Elijah of old, despairing, under the juniper tree. He felt weary and old and worn. He thought his youth had gone from him forever, but what matter? What was youth without hope? Youth, love, life, all were to be relinquished. He closed his eyes to the wonder of the hills and the beauty before him, yet he knew they were there with their marvelous appeal, and he sat with bowed head.
“’Arry! ’Arry King!” He raised his head, and there before him were all that he had relinquished––youth, love, life.
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He ran and caught her to him, as one who is drowning catches at life.
“You have leave me so coldly, ’Arry King.” He pressed her cheek to his. “You did not even speak to me a little.” He kissed her lips. “You have break my heart.” He held her closer to his own. “Why have you been so cold––like––like the ice––to leave me so hard––like––like––”
“To save you from just this, Amalia. To save you from the touch of my hand––this is the crime I have fought against.”
“No. To love is not crime.”
“To dare to love––with the curse on my head that I feel as Cain felt it––is crime. In the Eye he saw it always––as I––I––see it. To touch you––it is like bringing the crime and curse on you, and through your beautiful love making you suffer for it. See, Amalia? It was all I could do to go out of your life and say nothing.” His voice trembled and his hand quivered as it rested on her hair. “I sat here to fight it. My heart––my heart that I have not yet learned to conquer––was pulling me back to you. I was faint and old. I could walk no farther until the fight was won. Oh, Amalia––Amalia! Leave me alone, with the curse on my head! It is not yours.”
“No, and it is not yours. You have repent. I do not believe that poem my mother is thinking so great. It is the terror of the ancient ones, but to-day, no more. Take this. It is for you I bring it. I have wear it always on my bosom, wear it now on yours.”
She quickly unclasped from her neck a threadlike chain of gold, and drew from her bosom a small ivory crucifix, to which it was attached. Reaching up, she clasped it329around his neck, and thrust the cross in his bosom. Then, thinking he meant to protest, she seized his hands and held them, and her words came with the impetuous rush of her thoughts.
“No charm will help, Amalia. I killed my friend.”
“Ah, no, ’Arry King! Take this of me. It is not as you think for one charm I give it. No. It is for the love of Christ––that you remember and think of it. For that I wear it. For that I give it to you. If you have repent, and have the Christ in your heart, so are you high––lifted above the sin, and if they take you––if they put the iron on your hands––Ah, I know, it is there you go to give yourself up,––if they keep you forever in the prison, still forever are you free. If they put you to the death to be satisfied of the law, then quickly are you alive in Paradise with Christ. Listen, it is for the love that you give yourself up––for the sorrowfulness in your heart that you have killed your friend? Is not? Yes. So is good. See. Look to the hills, the high mountains, all far around us? They are beautiful. They are yours. God gives you. And the sky––so clear––and the bright sun and the spring life and the singing of the birds? All are yours––God gives. And the love in your heart––for me? God gives, yes, and for the one you have hurt? Yes. God gives it. And for the Christ who so loves you? Yes. So is the love the great life of God in you. It is yours. Listen. Go with the love in your heart––for me,––it will not hurt. It will be sweet to me. I carry no curse for you, as you say. It is gone. If I see you again in this world––as may be––is joy––great joy. If I see you no more here, yet in Paradise I will see you, and there also it will be joy,330for it is the love that is all of life, and all of eternity, and lives––lives!”
Again he held her to his heart in a long embrace, and, when at last he walked down the trail into the desert, he still felt her tears on his cheek, her kisses on his lips, and her heart against his own.
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CHAPTER XXVITHE LITTLE SCHOOL-TEACHER
On a warm day in May, a day which opens the crab-apple blossoms and sets the bees humming, and the children longing for a chance to pull off shoes and stockings and go wading in the brook; on such a day the door of the little schoolhouse stood open and the sunlight lay in a long patch across the floor toward the “teacher’s desk,” and the breeze came in and tossed a stray curl about her forehead, and the children turned their heads often to look at the round clock on the wall, watching for the slowly moving hands to point to the hour of four.
It was a mixed school. Children of all ages were there, from naughty little Johnnie Cole of five to Mary Burt and Hilton Le Moyne of seventeen and nineteen, who were in algebra and the sixth reader. It was well known by the rest of the children why Hilton Le Moyne lingered in the school this year all through May and June, instead of leaving in April, as usual, to help his uncle on the farm. It was “Teacher.” He was in love with her, and always waited after school, hoping for a chance to walk home with her.
Poor boy! Black haired, red cheeked, and big hearted, he knew his love was hopeless, for he was younger than332she––not so much; but there was Tom Howard who was also in love with her, and he had a span of sorrel horses which he had raised and broken himself, and they were his own, and he could come at any time––when she would let him––and take her out riding.
Ah, that was something to aspire to! Such a team as that, and “Teacher” to sit by his side and drive out with him, all in her pretty flat hat with a pink rose on it and green ribbons flying, and her green parasol over her head––sitting so easily––just leaning forward a bit and turning and laughing at what he was saying, and all the town seeing her with him, and his harness shining and new, making the team look as splendid as the best livery in town, and his buggy all painted so bright and new––well! The time would come when he too would have such an outfit. It would. And Teacher would see that Tom Howard was not the only one who could drive up after her in such style.
Little Teacher was tired to-day. The children had been restless and noisy, and her heart had been heavy with a great disappointment. She had been carefully saving her small salary that she might go when school closed and take a course at the “Art Institute” in “Technique.” For a long time she had clung to the idea that she would become an illustrator, and a great man had told her father that “with a little instruction in technique” his daughter had “a fortune at the tips of her fingers.” Only technique! Yes, if she could get it!
Father could help her, of course, only father was a painter in oils and not an illustrator––and then––he was so driven, always, and father and mother both thought it would be best for her to take the course of study recommended333by the great man. So it was decided, for there was Martha married and settled in her home not far away from the Institute, and Teacher could live with her and study. Ah, the long-coveted chance almost within her reach! Then––one difficulty after another intervened, beginning with a great fire in the fall which swept away Martha’s home and all they had accumulated, together with her husband’s school, rendering it necessary for the young couple to go back to Leauvite for the winter.
“Never mind, Betty, dear,” Martha had encouraged her. “We’ll return in the spring and start again, and you can take the course just the same.”
But now a general financial stringency prevailed all over the country. “It always seems, when there’s a ‘financial stringency,’ that portraits and paintings are the things people economize on first of all,” said Betty.
“Naturally,” said Mary Ballard. “When people need food and clothing––they want them, and not pictures. We’ll just have to wait, dear.”
“Yes, we’ll have to wait, Mary.” Saucy Betty had a way of calling her mother “Mary.” “Your dress is shabby, and you need a new bonnet; I noticed it in church,––you’d never speak of that, though. You’d wear your winter’s bonnet all summer.”
Yes, Betty must see to it, even if it took every bit of the fund, that mother and Janey were suitably dressed. “Never mind, Mary, I’ll catch up some day. You needn’t look sorry. I’m all right about my own clothes, for Martha gave me a rose for my hat, and the new ribbons make it so pretty,––and my green parasol is as good as new for all I’ve had it three years, and––”
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Betty stopped abruptly. Three years!––was it so long since that parasol was new––and she was so happy––and Richard came home––? The family were seated on the piazza as they were wont to be in the evening, and Betty walked quietly into the house, and up to her room.
Bertrand Ballard sighed, and his wife reached out and took his hand in hers. “She’s never been the same since,” he said.
“Her character has deepened and she’s fine and sweet––”
“Yes, yes. I have three hundred dollars owing me for the Delong portrait. If I had it, she should have her course. I’ll make another effort to collect it.”
“I would, Bertrand.”
Julien Thurbyfil and his wife walked down the flower-bordered path side by side to the gate and stood leaning over it in silence. Practical Martha was the first to break it.
“There will be just as much need for preparatory schools now as there was before the fire, Julien.”
“Yes, dear, yes.”
“And, meanwhile, we are glad of this sweet haven to come to, aren’t we? And it won’t be long before things are so you can begin again.”
“Yes, dear, and then we’ll make it up to Betty, won’t we?”
But Julien was distraught and somber, in spite of brave words. He had not inherited Mary Ballard’s way of looking at things, nor his father-in-law’s buoyancy.
All that night Betty lay wakeful and thinking––thinking as she had many, many a time during the last three years, trying to make plans whereby she might adjust her335thoughts to a life of loneliness, as she had decided in her romantic heart was all she would take. How could there be anything else for her since that terrible night when Richard had come to her and confessed his guilt––his love and his renunciation! Was she not sharing it all with him wherever he might be, and whatever he was doing? Oh, where was he? Did he ever think of her and know she was always thinking of him? Did he know she prayed for him, and was the thought a comfort to him? Surely Peter was the happier of the two, for he was not a sorrowing criminal, wandering the earth, hiding and repenting. So all her thoughts went out to Richard, and no wonder she was a weary little wight at the end of the school day.
Four o’clock, and the children went hurrying away, all but Hilton Le Moyne, who lingered awhile at his desk, and then reluctantly departed, seeing Teacher did not look up from her papers except to give him a nod and a fugitive little smile of absent-minded courtesy. Left thus alone, Betty lifted the lid of her desk and put away the school register and the carefully marked papers to be given out the next day, and took from a small portfolio a packet of closely written sheets. These she untied and looked over, tossing them rapidly aside one after another until she found the one for which she searched.
It was a short poem, hastily written with lead pencil, and much crumpled and worn, as if it had been carried about. Now she straightened the torn edges and smoothed it out and began scanning the lines, counting off on her fingers the rhythmic beats; she copied the verses carefully on a fresh white sheet of paper and laid them aside; then, shoving the whole heap of written papers from her, she selected336another fresh sheet and began anew, writing and scanning and writing again.
Steadily she worked while an hour slipped by. A great bumblebee flew in at one window and boomed past her head and out at the other window, and a bluebird perched for an instant on the window ledge and was off again. She saw the bee and the bird and paused awhile, gazing with dreamy eyes through the high, uncurtained window at drifting clouds already taking on the tint of the declining sun; then she stretched her arms across her wide desk, and putting her head down on them, was soon fast asleep. Tired little Teacher!
The breeze freshened and tumbled her hair and fanned her flushed cheek, and it did more than that; for, as the drifting clouds betokened, the weather was changing, and now a gust of wind caught at her papers and took some of them out of the window, tossing and whirling them hither and thither. Some were carried along the wayside and lost utterly. One fluttered high over the tree tops and out across the meadow, and then suddenly ceased its flight and drifted slowly down like a dried leaf, past the face of a young man who sat on a stone, moodily gazing in the meadow brook. He reached out a long arm and caught it as it fluttered by, just in time to save it from annihilation in the water.
For a moment he held the scrap of paper absently between his fingers, then glancing down at it he spied faintly written, half-obliterated verses and read them; then, with awakened interest, he read them again, smoothing the torn bit of paper out on his knee. The place where he sat was well screened from the road by a huge basswood tree, which337spread great limbs quite across the stream, and swept both its banks with drooping branches and broad leaves. Now he held the scrap on his open palm and studied it closely and thoughtfully. It was the worn piece from which Betty had copied the verses.
“Oh, send me a thought on the winds that blow.On the wing of a bird send a thought to me;For the way is so long that I may not know,And there are no paths on the troubled sea.“Out of the darkness I saw you go,––Into the shadows where sorrows be,––Wounded and bleeding, and sad and slow,––Into the darkness away from me.“Out of my life and into the night,But never out of my heart, my own.Into the darkness out of the light,Bleeding and wounded, and walking alone.”
Here the words were quite erased and scratched over, and the pathetic bit of paper looked as if it had been tear-stained. Carefully and smoothly he laid it in his long bill book. The book was large and plethoric with bank notes, and there beside them lay the little scrap of paper, worn and soiled, yet tear washed, and as the young man touched it tenderly he smiled and thought that in it was a wealth of something no bank note could buy. With a touch of sentiment unsuspected by himself, he felt it too sacred a thing to be touched by them, and he smoothed it again and laid it in a compartment by itself.
Then he rose, and sauntered across the meadow to the country road, and down it past the schoolhouse standing on its own small rise of ground with the door still wide open, and its shadow, cast by the rays of the now setting sun338stretched long across the playground. The young man passed it, paused, turned back, and entered. There at her desk Betty still slept, and as he stepped softly forward and looked down on her she stirred slightly and drew a long breath, but slept on.
For a moment his heart ceased to beat, then it throbbed suffocatingly and his hand went to his breast and clutched the bill book where lay the tender little poem. There at her elbow lay the copy she had so carefully made. The air of the room was warm and drowsy, and the stillness was only broken by the low buzzing of two great bluebottle flies that struggled futilely against the high window panes. Dear little tired Betty! Dreaming,––of whom? The breath came through her parted lips, softly and evenly, and the last ray of the sun fell on her flushed cheek and brought out the touch of gold in her hair.
The young man turned away and crossed the bare floor with light steps and drew the door softly shut after him as he went out. No one might look upon her as she slept, with less reverent eyes. Some distance away, where the road began to ascend toward the river bluff, he seated himself on a stone overlooking the little schoolhouse and the road beyond. There he took up his lonely watch, until he saw Betty come out and walk hurriedly toward the village, carrying a book and swinging her hat by the long ribbon ties; then he went on climbing the winding path to the top of the bluff overlooking the river.
Moodily he paced up and down along the edge of the bluff, and finally followed a zigzag path to the great rocks below, that at this point seemed to have hurled themselves down there to do battle with the eager, dominating flood.339For a while he stood gazing into the rushing water, not as though he were fascinated by it, but rather as if he were held to the spot by some inward vision. Presently he seemed to wake with a start and looked back along the narrow, steep path, and up to the overhanging edge of the bluff, scanning it closely.
“Yes, yes. There is the notch where it lay, and this may be the very stone on which I am standing. What an easy thing to fall over there and meet death halfway!” He muttered the words under his breath and began slowly to climb the difficult ascent.
The sun was gone, and down by the water a cold, damp current of air seemed to sweep around the curve of the bluff along with the rush of the river. As he climbed he came to a warmer wave of air, and the dusk closed softly around him, as if nature were casting a friendly curtain over the drowsing earth; and the roar of the river came up to him, no longer angrily, but in a ceaseless, subdued complaint.
Again he paced the top of the bluff, and at last seated himself with his feet hanging over the edge, at the spot from which the stone had fallen. The trees on this wind-swept place were mostly gnarled oaks, old and strong and rugged, standing like a band of weather-beaten life guardsmen overlooking the miles of country around. Not twenty paces from where the young man sat, half reclining on his elbow, stood one of these oaks, and close to its great trunk on its shadowed side a man bent forward intently watching him. Whenever the young man shifted his position restlessly, the figure made a darting movement forward as if to snatch him from the dangerous brink, then recoiled and continued to watch.