GIBBS settled Stephen's affairs, and there was left in his hands a small sum of money, which, by dint of borrowing, he increased to a figure that enabled him to take the boy to Benson. The occasion was like a tonic to him, the buoyancy of a dauntless spirit spoke in his very air and manner; he forgot Grant City, the Golden West Saloon, his shabbiness; and his travelling companions learned early who he was, and to most ears, General Gibbs of Kansas, had a large sound. He reached Benson just at nightfall. The place had an unfamiliar aspect. A village had become a town, the town almost a city. He had expected changes, but he would have said that he could have found his way to what he had known years before as the Leonard farm in spite of any changes; yet again and again he was forced to pause and ask his way. Even when he reached the house itself he would not have known it. He paused at the gate and glanced about. Below him was the level valley of the Little Wolf River. It was dotted with rows of lights; they diverged or ran in parallel lines and marked streets, streets in what in his day had been the best corn-land in all the county.
Gibbs entered the yard and followed up the path to the front door. Virginia, herself, answered his summons, and seeing her there in the door, in the light that streamed out and about her, he owned that the years had been kind to her.
What Virginia saw, was a red-faced man who smelt strongly of whisky and stale tobacco; a man with his hat off, which exposed a shiny bald head, and a thin fringe of grey hair, bleary eyes, and bulbulous nose; but who in spite of his dissipated look and his shabbiness, the shabbiness of well-worn clothes and soiled linen that had been slept and travelled in, still maintained a jaunty and a gallant air even. She saw further that he was holding by the hand a small boy, a very small boy indeed, who looked absurdly little for short trousers and roundabouts, and as if he had been suddenly advanced from skirts and had not yet grown accustomed to the change.
“Mrs. Landray,” Gibbs spoke in a husky throaty voice, “I see you don't recall me; but it ain't to be wondered at. Gibbs is my name, General Gibbs of Kansas;” he threw out his chest. “I am delighted to see you again after all these years; it's an honour, a pleasure,” he placed his hand on his heart, and bowed low with old-fashioned courtesy. The sight of her had taken him back full twenty years. “An honour, a pleasure,” he repeated.
The look of surprise on Virginia's face vanished. She understood. It was Gibbs and Stephen's baby—this other Stephen Mason Landray whom she had never seen, but who stood there in the light, blinking at her sleepily with Landray eyes; the small upturned face had the Landray features. Stooping quickly she raised the child in her arms. The general followed her into the house.
“I had written you, general, for in your letter to me you made no mention of the child,” she said, and now she gave him her hand.
“My oversight, my neglect,” said Gibbs blandly. “Fact is, I wasn't thinking much about him just then—it was poor Steve.” His voice broke, and she saw his eyes glisten and fill.
“But he had you to the last,” she said gently, gratefully. “You were with him during all his sickness.”
“I did what I could for him, and so did my Julia. Everybody loved him, he was a real Landray in that.”
Virginia had motioned him to a chair; then she seated herself with the child still in her arms.
“I feel better now he is with you,” said Gibbs beaming on them benevolently.
“He's very like—very like his father, don't you think?” said Virginia, her face pressed against the child's soft cheek.
“I reckon he's good and tired.” Gibbs rose from his chair. “I'll come in the morning to see how he gets on.”
“But won't you stay? I'm alone just now; Mrs. Walsh who makes her home with me, it at her daughter's, Mrs. Norton's; but I'm expecting her back any minute.”
“I want to find Jake Benson,” said Gibbs. “I reckon I'll pass the night with him. Good-night, son;” he gave the boy his fat forefinger. Then from his pocket he took the letter which Stephen had written Virginia, so largely at his instigation. “It's from Steve,” he said simply, as he handed it to her.
“I've said nothing of my gratitude to you for all your kindness;” and Virginia drew the child closer to her breast.
“It was little enough I was able to do, Mrs. Landray. God knows I wanted Steve to live, but it wasn't to be.” He mopped his face with his handkerchief. “It wasn't to be,” he repeated sadly, then he bade her an abrupt good-night and hurried from the house.
As the general had intimated, he proposed being entertained by Benson. The trip East had involved such nice calculation that this would be necessary unless he expected to practice extraordinary selfdenial on the way home; and freed of the care of the child he proposed permitting himself a certain latitude on the return journey.
The lawyer no longer lived in the house on the square; he had moved to a more remote part of the town where he had built a home which stood in the midst of extensive grounds. It was altogether the most costly and imposing place in Benson.
Gibbs found his way thither. From the servant who answered his ring, he learned that his friend was not in, but was expected home shortly.
“Then I'll wait for him here,” said Gibbs.
This the servant seemed reluctant to allow, but Gibbs pushed resolutely past him.
“Tell Jake—” he corrected himself artfully. “Tell Mr. Benson that it's General Gibbs of Kansas;” and he was shown into the library; he had hardly seated himself when the street door opened again, and a moment later Benson hurried into the room.
“Why, Gibbs, what has brought you back?” he cried.
The general took him warmly by the hand.
“Jake, how are you!” he said. “I've fetched Stephen's boy home to Mrs. Landray,” he added, answering Benson's question.
“That was very sad about Landray,” observed the lawyer gravely.
“I don't know when I felt a death as I felt his,” rejoined Gibbs huskily, and his under lip quivered.
There was a brief silence in which the lawyer gave himself up to a critical scrutiny of his guest.
“What are you doing, Gibbs?” he asked abruptly.
“I? Oh, I'm trying to rub the creases out of a cocked hat,” answered the general lightly. “I am sort of resting on my laurels, Jake, waiting for the tide to turn.”
“It's good to have laurels to rest on,” said Benson. “Come into the dining-room and we will have something to eat and drink.”
Gibbs quitted his chair with alacrity.
“You were speaking of Landray a moment ago,” said Benson when they had seated themselves. “He was not very successful, was he?”
“At first he was, he made a good deal of money; and I reckon if he'd lived he'd soon been on his feet again; but we struck a wave of temporary depression; you know how those things go,” said Gibbs stoutly. He was not blind, but it was not in his nature to admit an unqualified defeat; beside Benson was the last man to whom he would have told the truth where it touched Landray's pathetic struggle.
“Too bad!” and again Benson's shrewd glance comprehended his guest. His lips curled cynically; in that moment he was quite without pity for Gibbs, who looked the shabby adventurer all too plainly; whose flame-coloured face and shaking uncertain hands told their own story. How could Landray have been deceived by Gibbs! He felt only intolerance and contempt for what he conceived to have been Stephen's utter lack of judgment. It was his determined wrongheadedness that had wrecked his life; no one could have saved him.
“It's not necessary for me to ask if Landray left anything. I suppose his little son is quite unprovided for?”
In spite of himself, something of his feeling had crept into the lawyer's tone. This was not lost on Gibbs, and resentment showed in his battered face, but he contented himself with merely saying:
“If he'd lived he'd won out, but he died at the wrong moment. No, he didn't leave anything.”
“Humph!” said the lawyer, and fell silent.
The general poured himself a drink of whisky, emptied his glass, and poured himself another; the immediate effect of this was that he was somewhat mollified. He looked about him with undisguised approval in his eyes.
“You have housed yourself rather handsomely, Jake; I wonder what the old man would say if he could come back and see how the money he made out of pelts and whisky had been spent; appearances never bothered him,” he said, disrespectfully. “And you have changed, Jake; you've sort of taken on additions, too. I'd never have thought you had a taste for luxury; but here I find you living like a prince.”
“How have I changed?” asked Benson curiously.
“Well, I should say you were less frank for one thing, Jake; and you have accumulated dignity along with your dollars; but it's a combination that's hard to beat; I wonder you ain't ever married.”
There was another silence, in which Gibbs applied himself to his glass.
In a quiet easy going way, without haste and with an economy of effort that seemed to argue entire indifference to worldly success, Benson had yet thriven exceedingly in his various enterprises. He stood at the head of his profession; men much older than himself, and of much wider actual experience, yielded him precedence. Hardly any venture was embarked upon in the town but his advice or help was asked; for it was known that he could always command money. In part this had fallen to his character and ability, in part it was because of the thousands Southerland had paid him for that wild land in Belmont County. It was because of the good use he had made of those thousands, that people were now able to speak of him as a millionaire. His riches seemed to have detached him from those traditional intimacies that belong to life in a small town; only a very few of the older men in the place ventured to call him Jake; this while it amused him, yet had a certain subtle influence on his character. He was fundamentally much too frank and simple for any external show; but he was also too sensible to despise the solid advantages that flowed to him from this attitude of his townsmen, and in a way he was remotely flattered by it. It was only Virginia whose manner conceded nothing, and who paid no deference to his worldly success and growing position as the great man of the town. It was nothing to her that he was adding house to house and farm to farm; these things did not impress her; and he saw that to her at least, his position had remained exactly what it had been in her husband's lifetime. If anything, her manner toward him had grown more formal, more as if she were defining his place for him, since he was in danger of forgetting it.
There were times, days of depression and suffering, when his loathing of himself was the more bitter because of the very respect men so readily gave him. What if they could know, what if he were suddenly and relentlessly held up for the scorn and contempt he merited, his hypocrisy made known! The hypocrisy of his charities, the hypocrisy of every decent untterance that fell from his lips, placed side by side with the black record of his hidden act. Gibbs had spoken of a change; and the change was there deeper than he knew; a rotten spot in his conscience that was spreading—spreading.
A moment before and he had hardly been able to hide his contempt for Gibbs; now he was ready to abase himself before him; for at his worst, Gibbs was a blatant easy-going scamp with a kindly generous streak in him that had probably held him back from much rascality.
“I expect you were a good friend to Landray, Gibbs; and doubtless helped him through the worst of his troubles,” he was moved to say.
“Who told you that, Jake?” asked the general quickly.
“I don't have to be told it, I know you,” said Benson.
“I don't deserve any praise; we were poor together at the last, and as long as you ain't got anything you can afford to be generous.” He took from his pocket a letter and handed it to Benson.
The envelope was unsealed and there was no superscription. Benson drew forth the letter it contained and read it. Gibbs watched him narrowly the while. But the lawyer's face was expressionless, and told nothing of what was passing in his mind. Having read the letter, Benson returned it to its envelope, then he caught Gibbs's eye. It held a question.
“You know what Landray has written here?” he said.
“Yes, Steve had me read it and the other letter he mentions, which I gave Mrs. Landray.”
“What was in the letter you gave her?” asked Benson.
“He wanted her to have the boy, if you would do nothing for him. You see he was sure of her, Jake.”
“Yes, he could be sure of her; one can always be sure of her,” said Benson enigmatically.
Gibbs shot him a quick glance.
“I reckon so,” he said quietly.
“But not of me,” and Benson laughed a little bitterly.
“Well, I gathered, not so much from what he said as from what he didn't say, that you and he weren't friends;” and with a stubby forefinger Gibbs made a pattern on the polished table with some whisky and water he had inadvertently spilled from his glass. “I find it's a good thing to let death square all grudges,” he ventured. “I think at heart he counted on you, Jake, because of Marian.”
“I don't consider that any one has any claim of that sort on me,” said Benson sharply. “Few men stand more alone than I do; and when Marian died it was about the last of the connection—except your wife, Gibbs.”
“And the boy,” interjected Gibbs hastily. “You're forgetting him, Jake.”
“And the boy,” repeated Benson. “But his is a rather remote claim; and I all but ruined myself on account of Marian's father, I suppose Landray told you that.”
Gibbs nodded slightly. The lawyer went on.
“Julia is nearer, but you don't seem to be looking to me because of that, Gibbs.”
The general's red face grew very red indeed at this.
“I'm not asking anything for myself, Jake Benson, or for my Julia. I've stood on my own feet too long to want to go poking them into any one's else shoes, when I do you can tramp on my toes.”
“Oh, come, Gibbs!”
“Well, don't take up with the idea that I'm here to ask favours for myself, for I ain't! I've fetched you a relative,” said Gibbs.
The lawyer regarded him curiously. Gibbs disinterestedness was something he found exceedingly hard to credit.
“I don't know what I shall do about the boy,” he said at length. “But he will not suffer in the present; Mrs. Landray will care for him. He could not be in better hands.”
“It was the future Steve was thinking about when he wrote to you, Jake; and it will be pretty hard on Mrs. Landray if you leave the child with her until she becomes attached to him, and then take him away.”
“Mrs. Landray's attachments are all traditional. She is probably quite as fond of him this very minute as she will be ten years hence.”
“I'd almost say you were tricky, Jake; one gets damn little satisfaction out of you,” said Gibbs. He made one or two futile efforts after this to bring the lawyer back to the matter he had most at heart, but Benson baffled him, and in the end Gibbs retired to his room considerately helped thither by his host, and quite nonplussed by the other's perverseness.
Gibbs lingered in Benson two days as the lawyer's guest, and on the morning of the third started home to his Julia and the Golden West Saloon. He was satisfied that he had acted rather handsomely in a crisis; and he was cheered and sustained by the conviction that both Benson and Virginia appeared fully sensible of this.
“She's the reason Jake never married; well, in spite of his luck he's wanted one thing he couldn't have;” and the thought gave him no little satisfaction, his feeling toward Benson being then rather one of censure. “He owed it to me to say what he'd do for Steve's boy; it was distinctly my right to know, I wish I'd told him that.”
It might have been an added comfort to Gibbs had he known that his departure left the lawyer rather depressed, and wondering moodily why he should have the feeling he knew he had for Stephen and Stephen's boy. It seemed a long way back to the directness of those motives that had once influenced him for good. He rancorously lived over the past and the days slipped forward while he nursed his grudge. He did not see Virginia, and he made no effort to see the child.
Virginia's feeling of hurt and injury grew as the months passed and he made no sign; then quite unexpectedly he surprised her by calling.
“I suppose you have counted me rather remiss in the matter of Stephen's boy, Virginia,” he began smoothly.
“I don't know why you should think that. Perhaps there was no reason why you should feel any interest in him,” answered Virginia.
“You don't think that, Virginia. You know that Stephen wrote me just before his death? I understood Gibbs to say that he had told you of this letter—of its purport.”
“Yes,” but she glanced at him in some alarm.
“Stephen wished me to assume the burden of the boy's education. He knew that I could do more for him in a worldly way than you, Virginia, and he had tasted the bitterness of a struggle to make a place for himself. To write me, to feel that he must turn to me in his extremity, must have been a blow to his pride. In his letter the awkwardness of his constraint shows itself. The feeling he had for me remained with him to the end.”
She knew what he meant, but did not answer him. He went on.
“Years ago, Virginia, when Stark took the Landray farm, I made up my mind that some day you should return there. I have had to wait, but recently the farm was sold to me. It's a whim—a fancy, if you will—but I want you to go there and live.”
Virginia shook her head.
“I shall never go there,” she said.
“Wait!” he interposed quickly. “I want to sell you the place. Remember it was your home all those years; you went there when you first came to Benson.”
“I know—I remember,” said Virginia softly, and the shadow deepened in her eyes.
“You will reconsider? You will take the place off my hands?” he urged impatiently.
“No; I seem to have lost all desire to go back,” said Virginia almost sadly.
“Then I am too late,” he said bitterly. “It should belong to Stephen,” he urged, making his final appeal. “And it should come to him from you; it was his father's home, and his grandfather's, each generation has lived there since the Landrays came to Ohio; it should remain in the family.”
But Virginia only shook her head.
Benson, too, was silent, but he was more deeply hurt than he would allow even to himself. He had set his heart on her going back. It would be something accomplished in the way of reparation for the wrong he had done her; it would have made it the easier for him to endure the consciousness of that wrong, since he lived in its presence always; more than this, he had conceived it possible that amidst the old surroundings the old relationship might be re-established. He was haunted by his memories; he wished to know again the sentiment of days long past but unforgotten and unforgettable. And now, as always, he encountered her opposition, and realized that her will was stronger than his own; surely love had written failure large at each crisis of his life. It had made of him, an honest man, a trickster and a cheat. What was he living for; he was verging on fifty; there were moments when he felt his age in all its tragic incompleteness. He had been defrauded of what was best in life; unfruitful endeavour had embittered him, and shame was in his heart. After all, the wrong he had done her was insignificant when compared with the wrong she had done him, for he might at any time by a simple act well within his power make restitution; but nothing could give him back the years he had wasted in her service, and at every turn he had found her unyielding and determined, willing to profit by his devotion, but returning nothing.
“You were speaking of Stephen a moment ago,” said Virginia.
He did not answer her at once, his anger toward her had not left him.
“About the boy,” wheeling suddenly, and allowing his glance, moody and resentful, to rest upon her. “Perhaps you will think what I have to propose, unreasonable; but what little I have done for you has been done as you would have it, never as I wanted it, and we have both suffered unnecessarily in consequence; but with the boy, if I am to do for him it must be in my own way, otherwise I can do nothing.”
Virginia did not speak, but at his words the look of alarm came into her face again.
“It was Stephen's wish that I should assume the care of his son. He probably felt that I could do for him in ways you never can, Virginia. I will take the boy,” he said abruptly.
“You will do nothing of the kind,” answered Virginia quietly, but her eyes flashed.
He did not seem to hear her, for he continued:
“I have at last decided that I can do this. Perhaps it is my duty; after all, he is no more a Landray than he is a Benson.”
By a gesture Virginia seemed to put aside this idea. The boy had the Landray look.
“He is the image of his father,” she said tenderly.
Benson smiled.
“It has taken me a good while to decide what I can do, Virginia. I hope you have not given your heart wholly to the child.”
Still she did not fully comprehend the drift of what he was saying.
“If you will surrender him to me, I will make myself responsible for his future. I shall, of course, be willing that you should see him.”
“Willing I should see him!” exclaimed Virginia. “Mr. Benson, have you quite taken leave of your senses?”
“I mean that I do not care to share my responsibility with anyone, not even with you, Virginia; for I cannot believe in a divided authority in so serious a matter. The mistakes made in Stephen's case must not be made in his.”
“What were the mistakes?” cried Virginia. “Was there ever a better, braver boy—did he ever fail in affection? That he was unfortunate, that he too early in life took to himself burdens he should not have assumed is true enough, but his faults were the faults of a generous youth!”
“They were disastrous enough,” retorted Benson coldly. “And I wish to spare his son similar error, similar hardship. I don't expect you to decide to-day—”
“I have already decided,” answered Virginia. “I would not trust him to you.”
“When have I been unkind, Virginia?” he asked.
“I no longer feel that I know you,” she replied.
“There is one answer for that, one explanation; you Know what it is, Virginia,” he said still coldly.
“You blame me after all these years.”
“They have been lonely ones,” he said.
“Because I could not give you what was not mine to give.”
He ran his fingers through his thin grey hair, and smiled almost whimsically.
“I am not grateful for failure; I find that day by day I am taking more account of success, no matter what its kind; and but for you, Virginia, I might have been a happy man just as I have been a successful man; though after all success is easier won than happiness. You will want to know what I will promise on behalf of the boy, and it's quite right you should—”
“I have heard enough,” she said, but he went on unheeding her.
“You must remember that aside from Gibbs's wife, the boy is nearer me than any one else, and that I am a rich man; yet you are to understand that what I may do for him will be much or little as he proves himself worthy or unworthy. But he shall have every advantage that money will give. You are ambitious for him; he shall have a profession and a free and unhampered start in life. Can you do as much for him?”
“You know I cannot,” she said. “Why do you tempt me? Of course I am ambitious for him.”
“Then let me gratify you; I do not mean that you are to be entirely separated from him; but until he goes away to school I wish him to be an inmate of my house. This is not an unfair demand; you could hardly expect that I would ask less.”
“But how do I know how you will treat him?” asked Virginia.
“You can learn from the boy himself,” answered Benson smiling. “I did not suppose that you think me capable of unkindness or brutality,” he added with quiet sarcasm.
“He will be lonely.”
“Most likely,” said Benson composedly. “Understand, Virginia, if you prefer to be alone responsible for his future, I have no desire to interfere in your plans, though Stephen's letter gives me a definite claim; but I shall never urge this claim, it is simply that I do not believe in a divided authority; and I beg you to remember what Stephen's life was.”
“You must not speak of that to me, I could have saved him had I known!”
“It was the hardness of conditions that killed him. He only knew failure; and I have something better than that to offer his son. You love the boy, Virginia, how do you know I may not love him, too? Few men are more alone in the world than I, why should I not love him just as you love him?”
“My plans for him as I have thought them out, would be to send him away to school as soon as he is old enough. This I regard as necessary, for if he remains here, he will inevitably get a wrong idea, perhaps an injurious idea, as to his relation to me, and his expectations.”
“You have not even seen him,” said Virginia.
“But you tell me he is like his father. I was fond of his father once.”
“Yet you would do nothing for him,” she said bitterly.
“He did not want me to; he would have accepted nothing from me had I offered it. I don't reproach myself with anything there. It was only that his love for his son was a stronger passion than his pride, that made it possible for him to appeal to me.”
“But I am to see Stephen.”
“As often as you like, but he is to live with me, Virginia; this is to be clearly understood between us; my house will be his home. You can trust him to me quite safely, and I shall end by caring for him; perhaps not as you love him; but still I may feel deeply and sincerely toward him.”
“I will give you my answer in a few days,” said Virginia rising hastily.
“As you like,” said Benson, following her example, and a gleam of triumph flashed in his eyes. He knew what her answer would be.
STEPHEN was a lonely little figure in Benson's great house; he was vastly depressed by the formal manner of life to which the lawyer had adjusted himself, and for which Mrs. Pope his housekeeper was primarily responsible, for Benson was a silent man in his home, and admirable lady that she was, Mrs. Pope was neither a gay nor cheerful person, nor was she gifted in ways to inspire others with gaiety or cheerfulness.
By day the house was his to wander through; there were also the grounds, into which he was thrust at stated intervals by Mrs. Pope, all of whose acts were depressingly regular and ordered. In the gardens, working diligently among the plants or vines, or cutting the acre or two devoted to lawns, Stephen found a taciturn German whose name was Peter, and who limited his remarks to brief requests for the boy to let the flowers alone; nor was he to touch the small fruits; for these, like the flowers, Stephen was given to understand, were grown expressly for Mr. Benson's use and profit.
He gathered that the world had been created for this austere gentleman, whom he knew as his Uncle Jacob. He was indebted to Mrs. Pope for this idea, since she served the lawyer with an eye single to his comforts. His Uncle Jacob objected to dirt, consequently he must keep clean; his Uncle Jacob objected to noise, he was restricted to silence; his Uncle Jacob liked flowers, and Peter laboured that they might bloom for him. Things were only of two sorts; what his Uncle Jacob liked and what his Uncle Jacob did not like, and as one heeded his likes and dislikes one touched hands with morality and righteousness.
As Benson had promised, Stephen was not entirely separated from his aunt; at least twice each week he was dressed in his best, and by Mrs. Pope taken to pay Virginia a visit. But these visits were functions attended by such formality that he derived small comfort from them, and in time he came to rather dread the preliminary ordeals, of which he was the victim. There was always a bath, and he donned the freshest of fresh linen, stiff and miserably unsympathetic; an unfamiliar suit of clothes to which he never grew accustomed, and in which his small limbs were cheerlessly draped, completed his toilet. Thus attired, Mrs. Pope would lead him to the front steps, and Peter would drive around from the stables with a closed carriage. Then there invariably ensued certain lively and apprehensive inquiries on the part of Mrs. Pope as to whether or not the team had shown any undue levity while being harnessed, for the good lady was timorous of all horse-flesh as well as the prey of an abiding and illy-concealed doubt of the German's skill as a driver; however, being satisfied on the one point if not on the other, she would embark her small charge, and then herself; driving to the cottage with the carriage door held slightly ajar, a precaution favouring instant escape in case of danger. Arrived there she would leave Stephen with Virginia and be driven away in painful state to take the air.
Then came a period of freedom and relief for the boy; he had Virginia, and there was his Aunt Jane, who occupied an almost equal place in his affections with Virginia herself; and sometimes there was Harriett Norton, too, with a very pink-faced baby, named Elinor, and a husband who Stephen discovered early in their acquaintance could be persuaded into the most delightful extravagance in the matter of candy; and for perhaps an hour he would be quite happy, so happy he could almost forget that he had an Uncle Jacob; and at this period of his life, his Uncle Jacob seemed responsible for all the misery in the world.
Then Mrs. Pope would return, and Virginia with a strange hardening of the heart would restore him to that august lady. Benson could not have divined how well he was hated.
The lawyer had contented himself with seeing that Stephen wanted for nothing, that he was well dressed and well nourished; but he was such a little fellow, and so palpably depressed by the authority which Mrs. Pope administered, that Benson almost regretted he had forced Virginia to the step he had. His triumph left an aftermath of selfreproach and disgust. He had stooped to petty persecution, and clearly the boy himself was far from happy as a result. It was his wish to mitigate the wrong he felt he had done the child, which in the end provoked him to a display of something approaching personal interest. He was conscious that Stephen met his advances with childish mistrust, but this wore away; the lawyer's gentleness and kindness had their effect just as he intended they should, and Stephen put aside his doubt of his Uncle Jacob, and concluded that he was ever so much better than Mrs. Pope's account of him.
Benson felt that he should have associates of his own age, that Mrs. Pope and Peter were not exactly the most engaging companions he could have, but there were no boys in the neighbourhood whose manners or morals fitted them to be his playfellows. True, there was a region of back streets and alleys in the rear of his ample grounds, overlooked by small frame dwellings; here there were children of all ages, and in course of time Stephen came to know certain of these youthful neighbours of his, for while he had seemed cut off from them by barriers whose nature he did not comprehend, he had long been aware that the world held the possibility of a more desirable companionship than that he was knowing.
There were also strange small boys whom he occasionally saw scurrying through the garden or dodging among the grape arbours. They had appeared with the first half-ripe strawberry; they came again when the big Lorton blackberries were hard as bullets; then their visits languished for a little space; but when the early harvest apples on the two big trees back of the barn were the size of turkey eggs, they reappeared, this time armed with clubs, and there was a fine rattling among the branches.
The effect of these depredations on Peter was not wholly pleasant; indeed at first Stephen had regarded him with wide-eyed terror; for the German would explode in guttural mutterings and strange oaths, as he rushed in pursuit of the thieves, who as they fled before his advance on nimble legs, hurled back taunts and insults.
“Dutchy! Who's afraid of Dutchy! Dutchy can't run! Dutchy's got a belly full of beer—belly full of beer!”
In possession of the field, Peter would retire to the stables where he would supply himself with nails and hatchet, then he would make an examination of the high picket-fence back of the garden, and here he was almost certain to find a spot where a board had been removed to favour a hasty retreat; this he would restore to utility with many unnecessary nails.
One day as Stephen was wandering aimlessly through the garden and among the ripening grapes, he came suddenly upon a boy somewhat older and larger than himself, but brown and barefoot, who was eating Peter's grapes. Earlier in the season Stephen had seen this boy, but always at a distance and always in full flight, routed red-handed from among the strawberries or fleeing from among the blackberries. It was this same boy who had led in the assaults upon the early apples, and here he was back again with the first ripening colour that touched the grapes.
Stephen's first idea was to withdraw; he felt keenly the embarrassment of the situation, since the boy was clearly most immorally engaged in theft, but while he still paused irresolutely, hardly knowing what to do, the barefoot stranger suddenly suspended his attack on the grapes to glance warily and shrewdly about, and saw Stephen in his turn.
It was apparent that his first uncontrollable impulse was flight, for he expected Peter to be somewhere close at hand; but the gardener was working the lawn-mower remote on the front lawn, and the rattle of his machine came reassuringly to his ears. His mind relieved on this score he instantly resumed operations, now and again casting a glance over his shoulder in Stephen's direction. Evidently he had expected the latter to rush off to warn Peter, but Stephen did nothing of the sort, he merely stared at the intruder.
“Hullo, poppy eyes!” said the boy. “What are you doing here? Ain't you afraid old Dutchy will come swarming out here and light into you?”
Stephen answered him by a shy, wistful smile; he felt that he had at last made a comforting acquaintance.
“I got enough,” said the stranger. “Green grapes are great for the cramps.”
Stephen did not know this, but he was politely interested; there was one thing he wanted to ask the stranger, and now he said:
“Ain't you afraid of Peter?”
“Afraid of Dutchy?” with infinite scorn. “If he comes around here, him and me will see times! Say, what's your name?”
“Stephen Landray.”
“Mine's Benjamin Wade; but you can call me Ben for short if you want to.”
Stephen looked his gratitude for the privilege.
“Where did you get in?” asked Stephen.
“Over the back fence and up through the orchard. I manage to keep a board off the fence most of the time, but old Dutchy's pretty patient about nailing it up. Them Germans ain't easily discouraged; seems like he is always hoping he can get it to stick.”
Then he showed Stephen the inner economy of his ragged jacket; he had removed the linings of each pocket and the result was a sacklike receptacle which he told Stephen, after calling upon him to admire the ingenuity of the arrangement, would hold by actual measurement, a peck of apples.
“I'm fond of fruit,” he explained. “Once, old Jake Benson caught me here—I was in his strawberries. Say, I was stiff! He most scared the life out of me, he come on me so sudden, but he only asked me what I was doing; he's all right! What did you say your name was?”
“Stephen Landray,” repeated Stephen.
The boy considered.
“There's Landray's hill, Landray's woods, Landray's race, and Landray's mill—but it ain't running any more—and Landray's fork; ever been to any of 'em?”
Stephen was forced to own that he had not.
“Well, I'll show 'em to you some day. I go to all them places often.”
Benjamin Wade was preparing to take his departure, and the smaller boy was sorry enough to see him go.
“I'll tell you, I'm coming back—maybe about this time to-morrow; and I may bring a feller or two with me. I'll show you where you be back of the arbours so as we can find you.” And he led the way to a snug hiding-place, well screened from observation. “You be here just about now to-morrow and we may happen along.”
Benjamin Wade seemed a person of perfect freedom, but one whose social obligations were numerous and pleasantly diversified. Stephen followed him to the back fence, and stood with his small wistful face pressed between the pickets, watching him from sight down the alley. The lonely little fellow was in a fever of impatience for the morrow. He wondered whom the fellers would be that Benjamin Wade would bring, and he hoped that he would not forget to come as he had promised.
Benjamin Wade was as good as his word. He appeared promptly the next day at the appointed place and hour, and with him was a small boy whom he introduced as Spike. He invited Stephen to accompany him and Spike to a swimming-hole in Landray's fork, and when Stephen declined the invitation, as he felt constrained to do, the two boys promptly left him, after making certain insulting comments on his lack of independence.
He feared that he had lost them forever, and was reduced to tears in consequence. But the very next day Benjamin Wade reappeared at the same hour and at the appointed trysting place, accompanied by Spike and a second small boy called Reddy.
The four squatted on the grass back of the arbours and proceeded to assiduously cultivate an acquaintance. Reddy was of an inquiring mind beyond what was natural even to a small boy meeting a strange small boy for the first time. Stephen's occupation seemed to rest heavy on him. He wanted to know what his pursuits were; and the nature of his responsibilities in life; and particularly where the authority of his elders limited his freedom.
Stephen dutifully told him of Mr. Benson and of Mrs. Pope; that it was she who sent him out into the yard to play; that he had the choice of either the front lawn or the garden, but that the barn was under a ban as being dangerous.
“You hear that, you fellows? I'd be gosh darned if I'd let her dictate to me!” said Reddy who was of a violent nature. “Does she give you anything to play with, that's what I want to know.”
Stephen was forced to confess that she did not.
“That's just like a woman! I wonder how she thinks you're going to play! I just wouldn't play, I'd learn her she couldn't boss me!”
He seemed quite incensed at the unreasonableness of the situation, and Stephen was not free from an uneasy suspicion that he regarded him as mean spirited in consequence of his quiet acceptance of it.
Then it appeared that Reddy, his name was Riley Crittendon, was the only child and despair of a widow whose straitened circumstances were sufficiently advertised by his clothes, which in no way fitted his lean active figure. Benjamin Wade explained that Reddy, like the barn, was under a ban; and that he consorted with him only at great personal risk, since his father had repeatedly threatened him with corporal chastisement if he so much as recognized his iniquitous existence.
Stephen's innocent eyes grew wide at this.
The same was true in the case of Spike. All that Benjamin Wade's father had promised Benjamin Wade, Spike's father had promised him, and Spike intimated that he was singularly capable of fulfilling each promise he had made; yet in spite of this, they both associated with Reddy indefatigably, but in the unostentatious manner favoured by back alleys.
Reddy's career of crime seemed to have embraced a long category of evil and wrong-doing. He had once run away from home with a circus; he had twice narrowly escaped drowning, by venturing on the thin ice he had been forbidden to venture on in the early winter; his crowning achievement, however, was having been blown up in a Fourth of July celebration which he had arranged with stolen powder; but the complete list of his crimes would have filled a long summer afternoon.
It was Benjamin Wade who constituted himself Reddy's historian, though he received occasional promptings from Spike, who seemed most anxious that he should overlook no act that had gone to make up the sum and substance of Reddy's iniquity; and while Benjamin Wade was thus busy, Reddy himself was seen to visibly swell with pride.
Stephen, piously reared and with certain maxims of Mrs. Pope's New England morality fresh in his mind, and rejoicing in the recently acquired knowledge that there was such a place as hell, apparently especially designed for little boys who were a trouble to their elders, or who told lies or stole, or otherwise misconducted themselves, was in momentary fear that the hardened sinner before him would be forcibly dragged from their midst by a legion of devils; but nothing of the sort happened. Reddy chuckled and gurgled as Ben and Spike proceeded with the story of his crimes; no Voice issued from the wide blue arch above them, and the earth at their feet did not rend itself; evidently Mrs. Pope's facts were not designed to fit the peculiar case of Riley Crittendon.
“But you are almost as bad; ain't you?” he said to Benjamin Wade. “You steal;” but he spoke with some trepidation, at its worst this was evidently a venial error.
“I ain't a patch on him, am I Reddy?”
“Naw,” said Reddy disdainfully.
“There ain't a feller in this part of town, maybe not in the whole town that can touch Reddy!” said Spike generously; and Reddy chuckled and gurgled again at this.
When they had sufficiently glorified Reddy, they imparted to Stephen facts that he had not known before; amongst others, that old Jake Benson was the richest man in town, and that he, Stephen, was reputed to be the lawyer's heir, this was very pleasant, but Stephen was profoundly shocked when the abandoned Reddy said:
“I should think you would be mighty anxious to have him die quick so as you could get your hand on his money and spend it—I bet I would!”
After this Stephen saw much of the boys, and they helped him through the long summer days; but he only saw them in the safe retreat back of the grape arbours; they dared not venture further into the grounds with him where they would fall under Peter's eye, and he dared not quit the grounds with them, though once or twice he mustered courage to go into the back alley with Benjamin Wade, and was promptly returned to his own domain by the sinful Reddy, who seemed to have established himself his mentor in all nice questions of morality. It was also Reddy who advanced the theory that when they came to see Stephen, they must let old Dutchy's fruit alone, and when Spike took it upon himself to violate this rule of conduct it was the capable Reddy who blacked his eye.
In the end Stephen came to see more of Reddy than he did of either of the other boys, and he finally asked Benson's permission to have him in to play—and would he please tell Peter not to chase him out of the yard.
Benson seemed to think it well that he should have a playfellow of his own age, that is, if this playfellow were a good boy; and Stephen answered diplomatically, that Reddy was always a very good boy when he was in the yard.
“Oh, then you have had him in, Stephen?” and Benson laughed.
“Yes, but only near the fence; he's afraid of Dutch—of Peter.”
“Well, if he behaves himself as well as you say he does, I guess Peter won't interfere with him. I'll tell him not to. What's his name?”
“Reddy,” said Stephen, for beyond this he did not know that his friend had a name.
Fortunately this meant nothing to Benson who had never heard of any such boy.
When Reddy was informed that he was free to play in the grounds, he inspected the entire premises with wary caution, and could not on the first visit be induced to go within several hundred yards of the gardener. Yet on a subsequent visit Peter coming upon the small sinner quite unexpectedly, presented him with a red apple, and thus peace and good-will was established between them.
“After that I'll never yell belly full of beer at him any more,” said Reddy contritely.
Stephen would have liked to introduce him to the splendours of the house itself, but he never succeeded in this; nothing would induce Reddy to enter it; and he fled instantly at sight of Mrs. Pope; which, after all, was perhaps just as well, as she saw him but vaguely through glasses which she was never quite able to bring to bear upon him in season, and so he escaped identification which could only have resulted disastrously. She said he seemed a shy child.
But Benson was preparing for Stephen's future in accordance with certain theories of his own. Business had taken him East during the summer, and while there he had visited several boys' schools. At last he found just such an institution as he was looking for. It was both a school and a home. Here Stephen would have the care he could not himself give him, he would have proper associates of his own age, and there would be no danger of his acquiring false and harmful ideas as he grew older as to his expectations in life. It was no part of the lawyer's plan that the boy should be brought back to Benson, at least, not until his habits and judgments were formed. As to his promise to Virginia that she should not be wholly separated from Stephen, it had already become irksome to him. Stephen was his care, his responsibility; no part of it would he share with her; the boy must learn to look to him for everything.
His farewells were a bitter, grievous thing to Stephen. They came quick upon Benson's return home, and the parting with his Aunt Virginia, and his Aunt Jane, and Harriett, and the baby, tore his small heart as no grief that had yet entered into his life had torn it. The very stability of things seemed to shake under him; he was stunned and stupefied. He was to go so far away, he could not see his Aunt Virginia, his Aunt Jane, Harriett, or the baby—and the boys! He would probably never see Spike, or Reddy, or Benjamin Wade again!
The promise of a return to Benson the next summer, which the lawyer had not been able to deny him, was no comfort to him. If the intervening months had been years they could not have been more terrible to him.
This knowledge that he was to go away, and his farewells at the cottage, all fell on one sad afternoon that he remembered long afterward with a dreadful sinking of the heart. Then Mrs. Pope appeared with Peter and the carriage, and as Virginia led him down the path to the gate, she said:
“You will not forget to love us, Stephen dear; and it will not be for so very long, for you will come back next summer;” and so she surrendered him with a final kiss to Mrs. Pope.
Stephen shrank into his seat as they were driven away; he did not trust himself to look back at the little group they were leaving, for he was aware that Mrs. Pope was not sympathetic when small boys were moved to tears, since grief was quite as objectionable to her as any crude or noisy expression of joy.
When they reached home, he walked disconsolately in the garden. He hoped Reddy, or Spike, or Benjamin Wade, would visit him in his misery and sickness of spirit, for they had not heard the tragic news, and he would have greatly valued an expression of opinion from one of them. And as he was hoping that one of them might come, he heard a shrill familiar whistle, and Reddy appeared from the back alley.
Stephen told the sorrowful news, and as he told it, strange things happened to Reddy's face. Then all at once he burst into loud wailings, and turning from Stephen, fled across the green lawn, down the shaded rows between the grape arbours, through the apple orchard, through a hole in the fence, and disappeared in the alley beyond. It was in vain that Stephen called after him, shakingly, chokingly:
“Reddy! Reddy, come back! That ain't near all! Oh, please, Reddy, come back!”
With the last flutter of Reddy's ragged jacket in the distance, Stephen's heart seemed to break. He threw himself face down on the ground, and wept bitterly.
The next day he was led resolutely to the 'bus by Mrs. Pope, where his Uncle Jacob had preceded him, and whither his small trunk had already been conveyed; and as he slowly took his seat beside the lawyer, he glanced from the window and saw across the lawn three small bare-legged figures in the street.
It was Reddy, with Spike, and Benjamin Wade; they had assembled to see him off, and now, as he left the grounds, they cheered him lustily. At least, Ben and Spike did, for Reddy, in the gutter was turning handsprings—his most valued accomplishment—with bewildering rapidity, to hide his emotions; while descending upon the three, Stephen caught sight of Peter armed with a garden rake. This was the last he saw of them; for though he looked again and again, his eyes were blinded with tears.