AS night came on the weather changed abruptly, and a cold drizzle set in.
At his red-brick tavern, Levi Tucker, in a splint-bottom chair, dozed in front of his bar. The rain now falling in torrents and driven by a strong wind, splashed loudly against the closely-shuttered windows. The sperm oil in the dingy reeking lamps, burnt noisily, protestingly. There was a steady drip from the eave troughs; and the gutters were roaring rivers of muddy water.
The innkeeper sat with his feet thrust far out, and his fat freckled hands peacefully clasped before him. The rain had served to keep people in doors, and there was a strong counter attraction at the church, just around the corner, where the apostle of a new and preposterous propaganda, known as the Temperance Movement, was lecturing.
The innkeeper was frankly indignant. What made the whole affair seem especially aggravating and personal, was the fact that his wife was a communicant of that church, Mr. Tucker's religion as well as his distillery, was in his wife's name, and her devotion cost him annually the equivalent of many gallons of his famous “Lone Stager Rye,” a whisky which sophisticated travellers had pronounced to be unrivalled west of the Alleghanies.
During the interchange of certain light domestic confidences that had preceded Mrs. Tucker's departure for the lecture, her husband had remarked that he did not believe in mixing liquor and religion; whereupon Mrs. Tucker, who was young and pretty and high-spirited had retorted that he could never be accused of doing that, since he never ventured inside a church door; this had led to more words; and Mr. Tucker with some heat had denounced the lecturer as a meddlesome busybody; he had further informed his wife that he served drinks every hour of the day, and every day of his life, to better men.
“Meaning yourself, I suppose.” said Mrs. Tucker, tartly, but with heightened colour.
Mr. Tucker had ignored this, and had reminded her that even ministers of the Gospel had been known to seek his bar, and had there slacked their clerical thirst, without fear and without shame, “As man to man,” he added feelingly.
“One minister,” corrected Mrs. Tucker, “and he had a very red nose.”
This seemed such an unworthy objection to Mr. Tucker that he had allowed the matter to drop. But the lecture and the rain combined had proven disastrous to business. Colonel Sharp had dropped in for his usual nightcap, a carefully-measured three fingers; he had favoured Mr. Tucker with a Latin quotation, and Mr. Tucker had favoured him with the opinion that they were likely to have a spell of weather. Next, a belated farmer had stopped to have a jug filled with apple brandy; he had ventured a few occult observations on the condition of the crops, and had informed Mr. Tucker that it was the first rainy tenth of June in two years, and that up to four o'clock in the afternoon it had been the hottest tenth of June in five years; then he had gathered his jug of brandy up under his arm, and had departed into the night; and the innkeeper, rotund and grey, with his two sparse wisps of hair carefully plastered back of his ears, and looking not unlike an aged and degenerate cupid, a cupid, who through some secret grief had taken to drink, dozed in solitude before his bar.
Suddenly, he was aroused by hearing a step on the brick pavement outside the door. A man seemed to pause there irresolutely; then a hand was placed upon the latch, the door swung slowly open, and Truman Rogers, with his son at his side, stood revealed upon the threshold.
“Come in, man, come in,” cried Mr. Tucker.
Rogers pulled the door to after him, and moved into the room; his clothes were wet and steaming, the wide brim of his hat drooped, hiding his face, and in the half light of the dingy lamps he looked more like a gaunt shadow than a living man.
The boy at his side kept fast hold of his hand; he, too, was shivering under the drag of his clammy garments, but he seemed to exercise a certain protecting care toward his father, for his glance was full of childish tenderness, not unmixed with concern.
“You'd better have a dish of liquor right now,” said Mr. Tucker; he added hospitably: “It's on the house, man; I knew your father well.”
The innkeeper hurried behind his bar, and the Californian poured himself a full glass from the bottle he pushed toward him. “Here's how,” he said, and he drained it at a single swallow.
Mr. Tucker emptied a dash of spirits into a second glass and added a generous portion of water; this he handed to the child, saying, “Here, sonny, this will warm you up inside.”
The child drank the mixture with a wry face. Mr. Tucker laughed.
“Takes right hold, don't it? Well, it's a good friend, but a poor master,” and he thoughtfully filled a third glass for himself. “Here's to you, and me, and all of us,” he said, smiling genially.
Rogers seated himself in the chair the innkeeper had vacated; the child stole quietly to his side.
“I reckon you didn't find many people you knew here about,” observed Mr. Tucker, as he returned his glass to the bar.
“Not one.” His tone was one of utter hopelessness. It gave a tragic touch to his drooping figure. The boy crept into his father's arms; his movement gave a new direction to the latter's thoughts. “I expect you're plumb tuckered out, son,” he said gently, smiling sadly down on the grave, upturned face. “I expect bed's about the best place for you; what do you say?”
The child nodded wearily.
Rogers turned to the innkeeper. “I suppose you can House us over night?” he said.
“To be sure I can,” answered Mr. Tucker promptly. “That's my business; entertainment for man and beast.”
“I'll put my boy to bed then; show a way with a light, will you?” he rose stiffly with the child in his arms, and preceded by the innkeeper, carrying a lamp, quitted the room. A few minutes later the two men returned to the bar, and Rogers resumed his chair. His attitude was one of profound dejection. His hope was dying a hard death. Perhaps he could not have told if he had tried, just all he had expected from his return to Benson, but for days and weeks and months, it had been the background of his splendid dreams.
Not heeding the presence of his host, he leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees, and his chin sunk in his palms, grim, desperate.
The innkeeper seated himself at the opposite side of the room, and fell to studying him. He had seen men look much as he looked, who had lost their last dollar at cards.
Mrs. Tucker, thrilled and edified, and under escort of the faithful
Jim, carrying a lantern, returned from the lecture and entered the tavern by a rear door. Her husband presently heard her footsteps in the room overhead, where the heels of her shoes tapped the floor aggressively; and he muttered the single word “Tantrums,” under his breath, while his face took on an expression of great resignation.
Here Rogers broke the silence. “Hope I ain't keeping you,” he said.
“You ain't,” answered Mr. Tucker, with what was for him unusual decision.
“I didn't know but you might want to close up,” explained Rogers civilly.
“I don't,” returned Mr. Tucker, with quiet determination. “I want to chew a little more tobacco before I go to bed.”
There was another long pause. Rogers continued to stare into vacancy, and Mr. Tucker, round-eyed and wondering, continued to stare at Rogers. They might have been sitting thus ten minutes, when suddenly the street door swung open, and three men entered the room. The first of these was Captain Nathan Gibbs, editor ofThe True Whig; The captain, whose title had been derived from the militia, was blond and florid, and attired in immaculate broadcloth and spotless linen. He was, perhaps, five and thirty years old, but he had been a man of many and varied activities.
His companions were Bushrod and Stephen Landray. They were men in the prime of life, and much alike in appearance. They were tall and lean and strong, with dark animated eyes, and fine expressive faces. There was something Roman and patrician in their bearing; and when they spoke it was with a perceptibly Southern drawl; for the Landrays were from Virginia, and of good cavalier stock. The fifth of their name in the Royal Colony, a Stephen Mason Landray, had afterward risen to a high rank in the Continental Army. His son, another Stephen Mason Landray, had been the third settler at Benson, and the great man of the community in pioneer days. His fame still survived; he had served with distinction against the Indians and English, when war was abroad in the land, and he had lived in times of peace, with much simple dignity and kindliness, among the ruder and poorer folk of the frontier who were his neighbours.
“Yes sir,” Gibbs was saying as the three men entered the room. “If what we hear is true, it offers the grandest opportunity for youth and energy; of new field for capital; a—”
“Hold on, Gibbs,” interrupted Stephen Landray. “This will never do; in common with the rest of the Whigs you were opposed to the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, and the seizure of California. If your memory fails you on this point, you have only to read some of your own editorials.”
“But this, my dear fellow, puts a new complexion on the whole matter.”
“Oh! no, it don't, Gibbs; you must be consistent,” urged Bushrod.
“Consistency be damned,” retorted Gibbs, as he turned to the innkeeper who had retired behind the bar. “The case bottle, if you please, Tucker. Thanks—She will be admitted to the Union inside of ten years; I wish to go on record as saying so. Gentlemen, metaphorically speaking, we will now proceed to moisten the soil of California.”
Then, as the three men raised their glasses, Truman Rogers rose from his chair; he was all alive now to what was passing before him.
“What's wrong with California, Cap?” inquired Mr. Tucker, with amiable interest. “What's she been a doing anyhow?”
“The Eastern papers say that gold has been discovered there,” replied Gibbs.
Truman Rodgers strode to his side, and took him almost fiercely by the arm. “Is that so?” he demanded, his voice hoarse with emotion.
The four men looked at him in mute surprise.
“Is that so?” he repeated. “Do they say where it was found?” he released his hold on the captain's arm, and rested limply against the bar.
“At Sutter's Fort, on the American River,” said Stephen Landray, slowly.
The effect on the Californian was electrical. He threw out his arms despairingly in a single gesture of tragic renunciation. “I'm too late again, my luck every time—damn them! Damn them! Why couldn't they keep still! the fools!”
“And why should they keep still?” demanded Gibbs toying with his empty glass.
“Why should they?” furiously. “What chance will there be now for the men who went into the country first—what chance will there be for me?” Again he threw out his arms, he seemed to put from him all hope; his mouth was bitter with the very taste of his words.
“You'll have as good a chance as any,” retorted Gibbs, still toying with his glass. “And, pardon me, you're a fool to expect more than that.”
“If what the Eastern papers say is true, there will be gold enough for all who are likely to go in search of it,” interrupted Bushrod Landray, good-naturedly. “You are Truman Rogers?”
Rogers nodded dully.
“And you are direct from California?” continued Landray.
“I left there five months ago, Mister.”
“You don't remember us, perhaps, I am Bushrod Landray, and this is my brother, Stephen,” and he held out his hand. “You have reasons for believing this news of Captain Gibbs to be true?”
“Mighty good reasons, too; that's what brought me here, fetched me all this distance, when I wa'n'. fit to travel.”
“You know the gold to be there?” and Landray regarded the Californian with quickened interest.
Rogers hesitated a moment; concealment had become second nature to him. At last he said, “I reckon I know as much about that as any man alive,” and now his sunken eyes began to flash, and the colour came and went on his waxen cheeks, his long fingers opened and closed convulsively. “I've seen it with my own eyes. I thought I was the only one who knew it was there, but the word must have come around the Horn on the next ship that sailed after the one I took, Sutter's Fort—that's a good hundred miles from where I found it.”
“What I'd like to know,” and Mr. Tucker cleared his throat impressively, “Is how you found it?”
“It's in small nuggets, or like fine dust.”
“The gold is?” said Mr. Tucker.
“Yes.”
“It's agin nature. Blamed if it ain't fishy,” and Mr. Tucker shook his head dubiously. “It may be true; mind, I'm not disputing your word; but I don't believe it. No sir, it's agin nature,” reiterated Mr. Tucker. “I reckon you didn't pick out much now, did you?” he added shrewdly.
“No,” said Rogers regretfully, “I didn't. I ain't fit any more; I got an Indian arrow through my right lung,” here a violent fit of coughing interrupted him.
“No, you ain't fit any more,” agreeed Mr. Tucker commiseratingly.
“I been looking to get even with the game,” said Rogers, with a flash of hope in his deep eyes. “But I reckon this news near about knocks me. I was empty-handed when I left here twenty years ago, thinking to better myself, but I've come back just as poor as I went. I've played it in the hardest kind of luck right along, friends. I fought Indians and Mexicans in Texas, and helped drive them out of the country, but some one else always got the pick of the land. I herded sheep and cattle, only to have them run off; and, last of all, the Indians cleaned me out, and killed my wife. Then I moved over onto the Coast, hoping for a white man's chance; and when I found the gold I thought my fortune was made,” harsh, unhappy laughter issued from his lips. He swept a hand across his eyes, emotion seemed to choke him. “I been like a boy thinking how I'd spend that fortune. I been staying awake nights figuring what I'd buy with it; but I reckon I'll have chilly fingers before it burns a hole in my pockets. I wanted to bring my boy home, and then I was going to go back overland. It's a damnation trip across the plains.”
“Indians?” asked Mr. Tucker, his mouth agape.
“Indians, and no water, and no grub, and no guides, and no nothing. It's a hell of a trip, and it's a hell of a country.”
“I can't see how this news hurts your chances in the least,” said Stephen Landray kindly, he had not spoken until now. “To be candid with you, I think it rather benefits you than otherwise.”
“Why, of course,” said Bushrod. “It will all tend to create an interest in such ventures as the one you have to propose.”
Rogers looked first from the one to the other. “If I could think that, I'd sleep easy to-night,” but he shook his head sadly. “The bloom's off; it ain't a secret any longer.”
“Yes, but don't you see this news is all in proof of what you would want to make people believe?” urged Stephen. “Not that any proof would be necessary, perhaps.”
“I've fetched my own proofs,” said Rogers. “Some of the gold. If it's proof you want, I reckon you can't better that,” and he took from his pocket a small glass vial filled with a dirty yellow substance. “There's over three ounces of gold dust there. It's worth sixteen dollars an ounce. I reckon you can't beat that. Want to hold it?” he added indulgently, and passed the vial to the innkeeper, who took it gingerly, caressingly, in his fat fingers.
At least two of his auditors were rich men, according to the easy standard of the times, while Tucker was well-to-do, and the editor fairly prosperous; but the romance of it all had taken a powerful hold on them. A subtle excitement was in the mind of each. Here, shorn of the vexations and delays of trade, and within reach of the strong arm of the willing digger, was that which was the measure of the world's necessity, that by which men guaged success or failure in life. In the presence of so simple a process, each felt a sudden distaste for his own task.
“I wish I was ten years younger and free-footed,” said Mr. Tucker, at last. “I'd pull out of here to-morrow, blamed if I wouldn't.”
The editor laughed softly. He was like a man rousing from a dream. “Nonsense! Luck won't be for one in a hundred; perhaps not for one in a thousand.”
“I'd run the risk, Cap; and if I found any of that dust, I wouldn't sleep or eat or drink, until I'd fished it out of the soil.”
“What will be my chance at making up a company here?” asked Rogers, and now he addressed himself to the Landrays. He recognized in their silence a deeper interest than that manifested by either Mr. Tucker or Captain Gibbs.
“Are you really in earnest about going back?” asked Bushrod Landray, curiously.
Rogers drew his tall form erect. “I allow there's just about two thousand miles of go left in me, Mister,” he said.
“And you think you could pilot a wagon train across the plains?” asked Stephen.
“You give me the chance to show what I can do—that's all I ask. Of course, I see now, I must have been clean crazy to leave the Coast when it took my last dollar, but I ain't fit for heavy work any more; I go shut like a clasp-knife; and I was near about wild to be with some of my own kin.”
“You may be able to make up a party here,” said Stephen.
“If you are wise, you will take your brother home, Bush!” said Gibbs.
Stephen turned to him: “Don't you see it would not be necessary for me to go to California to share in a speculation of this sort?”
“No, I can't see it Landray.”
“A company could be organized. Whoever wished to, could take shares in the venture; there would be little or no difficulty in finding men to go and do the actual work of digging for the gold.”
“Have you any scheme to propose that would guarantee a fair division of the profits in the event of there being any?” asked the captain.
Landray smiled slightly. “There would be no trouble about that,” he said hastily. “For, of course, we would only send men in whom we had the fullest confidence; and the returns could be made regularly by ship, by way of the Horn—”
“The small end of it,” suggested Gibbs, lightly.
Mr. Tucker laughed boistrously at this sally, but neither of the Landrays smiled.
Gibbs yawned. “I think we had all better go home and sleep on it,” he said.
“You're right, so we should,” said Stephen. He turned to Rogers. “I'd like to see you again, there are some questions I want to ask you. You'll be here for a while, I suppose?”
“There ain't any time to waste if you mean business,” urged Rogers eagerly.
“No, I suppose not; but I don't know that I do mean business. You must not take my interest too seriously, and yet—”
Gibbs slipped his arm through Stephen's. “Oh, come along! you will wake up sane in the morning. Good-night, Tucker. Goodnight, Mr. Rogers. Coming, Bush?”
AYOUNG man in a dusty road-cart drawn by a sedate and comfortable looking horse, turned in between the tall whitewashed posts at the foot of Landray's Lane.
The occupant of the cart had reached that fortunate period where he was knowing the best of both youth and age, for he was, perhaps, six or eight and twenty, but so boyishly slight of figure that he might readily have passed for much younger; his apparent youth being still further accented by his smoothly-shaven face. It was in no sense a striking nor a handsome face, but it was fresh-coloured and pleasant to look at; while the frank glance of the grey eyes that lighted it, inspired confidence;and if there was a suggestion of the commonplace, there was also much good nature and not a little shrewdness.
As he turned in at the lane he permitted his grasp to loosen on the reins, and his horse, an animal of evident worth, which seemed to be instantly aware of a change of mood on the part of its driver, went slowly forward with head down, its hoofs and the wheels of the cart making scarcely any sound at all on the smooth, closely-cropped turf; now and again it paused to snatch at some tuft of tall growing grass, but this provoked its master to only the most indulgent of remonstrances.
On either hand were corn-fields. The long rows rooted in the rich, black loam of the flat bottom land were at right angles with the lane, down which ran the faint print of wheels, for it was little used. Beyond the corn-fields on the east was a low growth of willows, here and there overshadowed by the fantastically twisted top of some old sycamore; and beyond the willows and the sycamores was still another flat reach of bottom land, from which came the faint scent of freshly-cut hay.
The broad green leaves of the corn drooped and curled in the hot noon sun, or rustled softly where a breath of wind stirred them. There was intense, searching heat, and silence—the waiting, expectant silence of an August day when the long rainless skies are about to break their drought. A thin blue mist quivered in the level distance, and on the soft green undulations of the pasture land, which sloped up to the densely wooded heights of Landray's Hill, sun steeped and vivid; where the day first smote with light, and where in early spring the arbutus bloomed among the melting patches of snow. In the valley, in the old Indian fields, as the first settlers had called the open grass-land they found along the creek-bank, short shadows from the sycamores barred the rustling corn with slanting shafts of a richer, darker green. Then in a remote field was heard the first sound that disturbed the silent noon hour; and from the meadow beyond the corn-field, came the keen swish of scythes in the tall grass, and a sharp metallic ring tuned to a certain rhythmic beat and swing where a mower had paused to sharpen his blade.
The lane ended at a pair of bars near a clump of trees which clustered about a spacious brick farm-house. This was the Landray home. Back of the farm-house could be distinguished the queer, high-hipped roof of Landray's mill; and from it now, mingling with the other sounds, came the rush of water and the droning splash of wheels.
The young man in the cart glanced about him with a quick sense of pleasure. He was in the second generation away from the soil himself; his father had been a trader, and he was a lawyer; but the peace of it all, the promised plenty of the great corn-fields, the distant droves of cattle in the shaded pasture lands, the scent of the hay, stirred him to something very like envy.
“And he'll be leaving all this!” he muttered under his breath at last; then he added: “And he'll be leaving her—I cannot understand it!”
A woman emerged from a path that led off across the fields, and came down the lane toward him. He did not see her until she was quite close; but when he became aware of her presence he rose hastily from his seat in the cart, and hat in hand, sprang to the ground at her side.
“Mrs. Landray,” he said, and drew the reins forward from the bit so that he could walk beside her and lead his horse.
She was Stephen Landray's wife, and it was of her he had been thinking but the moment before, for he thought of her more often than he realized. To him she had always seemed a most majestic person, strangely mature, and with a dignity and repose of bearing that was the consequence neither of age nor any large experience.
He was vaguely aware that in actual years he must be older than she; but nevertheless on these not frequent occasions when they met, she made him feel conscious and ill at ease; he was oppressed by a sense of his youth and inexperience; and the fact that his acquaintance with life went no further than Benson, and the three abutting counties, became a thing to regret and realize even with shame. But why she, whose life had been quite as limited as his own, should seem to carry with her this breath as from a larger world, was something he could not explain, reason it out as he would.
Her beauty was of the generous Southern type. The soft waves of her hair gleamed like polished brass in the sunlight; it clustered in soft rings on her low, broad brow; her skin was like creamy satin. He allowed his eyes to rest on the masses of her hair, then on the strong beautiful face, her full round throat, and the lovely lines of her perfect figure.
“You have come to see my husband, Mr. Benson?” she said.
“Yes, Mrs. Landray; he sent for me.” He hesitated an instant, for he did not wish to tell her of the nature of the business that had brought him out from the town. Then he added in a matter of fact tone: “I suppose it's something to do with this California project.”
Mrs. Landray's face flushed, then it grew very white; she paused and her foot tapped the ground nervously.
“They are two very foolish men, Mr. Benson—I mean my husband and his brother.”
“Then he has told you?” he said quickly.
“That he is going with the party—yes.”
She put out her hand and touched the reins Benson loosely held. “You can spare me a moment? I have been waiting for you.”
He bowed a trifle stiffly. To him she had always seemed, if anything, too undemonstrative, too self-reliant; but he saw now that she was shaken out of her dignity and serenity; she was struggling as her mother and her mother's mother before her had struggled, when the wilderness spoke to the men they loved; and she was knowing as they must have known, that this masculine passion which no woman could comprehend, much less share in, but against which she had set her love, was as vital as that love itself.
The lawyer put his hand in the breast pocket of his coat upon a paper there; one sentence in this paper burned in his memory: To my dearly beloved wife, Virginia Randolph Landray, and then the description of the property Stephen Landray owned and wished to pass to her in the event of his death. Benson had drawn up the will only the week before, and he was now taking it to Landray to be signed and witnessed. “I am a childless man, Benson,” Landray had said, “and should anything happen to me, I want every dollar I own on earth to go to her.” And Landray had shown no little emotion, for the moment putting aside the habitual reserve with which he cloaked any special stress of feeling.
“But what do you want with a will?” Benson had asked. “Whom have you but your wife?”
“I've got to worrying about that Californian venture of our's, and before I go I want to put my affairs in some sort of shape.”
“Then you shall go, after all?” Benson had said.
“I must; there's no help for it. What do you think of the scheme, anyhow?”
“Well, I think better of it now that I know you are going to assume the direction of it.”
“That's odd, with the knowledge you have,” said Landray, with a short laugh.
Benson had not been surprised at what Landray had told him of his intentions; indeed, the whole project, the journey overland, with its hardships and possible danger, the search for the gold when California should be reached, would be but episodes in a speculation for which he felt the Landrays were singularly fitted. They were not business men, no one knew this better than he; they had possessed large means, though the fortune which they had inherited from their father was now much impaired by bad management and the luckless ventures in which they had involved themselves.
He had felt, however, that their lack of ordinary business thrift would not be any special hindrance in such an enterprise as this; where, after all, success would come more as the result of chance, than because of shrewdness or capacity. Even when he was most critical of the brothers, not being able to quite free himself of a secret contempt, since they had started life with such exceptional opportunities, and had made such poor use of them, he admitted that under such conditions as he imagined would be found in California, their strength and courage, their physical readiness and vigour would perhaps more than compensate for the lack of those other qualities in which they had proved themselves so deficient.
“Yes, I think well of the scheme now,” said the lawyer slowly. “Much better than I did before.”
Landray laughed again carelessly.
“One would think I had a long career of success to point to, lucky ventures and the like. But, Jake, we are going to come back rich men, and then, by George! no more risks for me! I'll just potter around out at the farm, keep some trotting stock, and breed fancy cattle, and let it go at that.”
“How does Mrs. Landray feel about this?” the lawyer had asked.
“Why, you can fancy, Benson,” and Landray's handsome face wore a look of keen distress. “She does not know yet, she only suspects. Indeed, no one knows but you, and of course, the investors; they have made a point of it that Bush or I go; indeed, a good share of the money comes into the enterprise on condition that one of us takes its direction.”
A humorous twinkle lurked in the tail of the lawyer's grey eyes. He knew it was the Landray honesty rather than the Landray ability, of which the investors wished to assure themselves.
“Rogers is all right,” continued Landray. “But he is not the man to handle such a venture, and then he may give down any day; it's a question in my mind if he lives through the fall and winter here.”
“So Mrs. Landray does not know yet?”
“I don't imagine there is much left to tell her,” said Landray. “It's too bad she's going to feel it as she is. If I could I would willingly make any sacrifice to be relieved of my obligation to go—short of giving up the chance itself to make a fortune. But one of us must go, our own money and money that would not have come into the scheme but for us will be involved. Bush is quite willing to make the trip alone, but I can't let him do that.”
“I cautioned you to avoid committing yourselves,” said Benson, “for I feared this very thing would happen.”
“I know you did,” said Landray ruefully, “but what was I to do? They hung back until we let them think that we were going; it was only then money came in sight.”
And Mr. Benson, who admired a nice sense of honour, considering it the loftiest guide to human action, had concurred in this view of the case; but now, with Virginia Landray's great sad eyes fixed upon him, his ready sympathy all went out to her. He regretted that he had agreed with her husband; he felt, for a brief instant, that the reasonable thing for the latter to do was to abandon the whole project, with credit if he could, without credit if he must; for what did it matter what men said or thought, where her peace of mind was concerned?
“You are Stephen's lawyer,” Mrs. Landray said, “and I suppose he has few secrets from you; perhaps you know more of his plans than he has told me; until now he has had no secrets from me.” She bestowed upon Benson a troubled, questioning glance, then she made an imperious gesture. “You are to tell me quite honestly if he is as hopelessly committed as he thinks to this matter, and to this man, Rogers—I am not to be put off!”
“He has told you that he is going?” asked Benson, who wished to be quite sure on this point.
“Yes,” impatiently.
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. “Very well, then, I suppose I can speak plainly.”
She felt a sudden sense of jealous displeasure; by what right did he assume this attitude of intimacy with her husband; and how dared he even suggest that he might, by any chance, know more of Stephen's intentions than she did herself; but her resentment was only momentary. “You are to tell me if he is committed,” she said.
“I think he is,” said Benson slowly.
She set her lips firmly. “Then I suppose it is useless for me to object.”
“You are very much opposed to his going?” said Benson. She opened her eyes wide in wonder at the question.
“Would any woman wish the man—” she broke off abruptly, and glanced about her. “He will be leaving all this, and me; and for what?” She made a little gesture with her shapely hand and arm.
“It is rather incomprehensible, Mrs. Landray,” said the lawyer.
“But why should he wish to go? What can he gain by going? I wonder if I am to blame.” She regarded Benson with anxious, searching eyes.
“Men are restless,” he said lamely.
“But why should he be? You would not go—”
“I, no—I have wanted to, though. But it's better for me to stay. They are involved,” he went on slowly. “I warned them in the start that they must be careful or this would happen; and now they are stubborn and unwilling to abandon a venture for which they are largely responsible. Nothing would have come of this man Rogers's efforts without their help.”
“Have you taken shares in this absurd company?”
He smiled a little cynically. “No, and I scarcely think I shall.” he hesitated. “Still I admit the speculation has its fascinations. I can't quite explain even to myself what they are; but they exist. Yes, I've even wanted to go,” he went on, smiling at her, “but I've never found I could afford to give way to my impulses.”
“But in going you would leave no one who would suffer as I shall suffer if Stephen goes. I don't mean but that your friends would regret your absence—” she added hastily.
He looked at her curiously. A faint, wistful smile played about the corners of his mouth. “I haven't a wife, if that is what you mean,” he said at last.
She looked up quickly into his face.
“Do you mean—?” she hesitated.
“Mean what?” he asked.
“Do you love some one?” she coloured slightly.
“I'd hardly call it that—if by that you mean a person. Perhaps I'd better call it an idea,” he said, still smiling at her.
A sudden change came to her manner. A shade of reserve crept into it. The man was only her husband's lawyer, he was almost a stranger to her; even her husband, with the fuller democracy of American manhood, hardly counted him his equal; for he was old Jacob Benson's son, and old Jacob Benson had made his money in questionable ways no Landray had ever condescended to employ. More than this, as speculator and land owner, and afterward as member of the State Legislature he had been General Landray's rival and opponent in all matters of private concern and public enterprise. This was something no rightly constituted Landray would ever forgive. They might respect young Jacob Benson for what he had made of himself, handicapped as he was by such a parent, but they were not men to forget whose son he was.
Young Jacob Benson was, happily, wholly unconscious of the reason for her change in manner; if he noticed it at all, he attributed it to a natural feminine modesty—he spoke now with a generous wish that his words might prove of some comfort to her.
“One thing is sure, Mrs. Landray, they cannot go until spring, and who knows what may happen to change their plans.”
“They will go,” she said quietly. “I know Stephen too well not to know that.”
“I dare say, if the investors are of their present mind eight months hence—but they may withdraw.”
“That will make no difference to Stephen and his brother.”
“Even so, I don't think you need worry, Mrs. Landray. They will soon be sick enough of the venture. I fancy we shall soon see them back here. I know at first they had no intention of going; they were simply the largest shareholders in the enterprise. A more active part has been forced upon them by the other shareholders. You know almost five thousand dollars have been subscribed already, and as much more will probably be raised; and while there are any number of men offering themselves who are willing to go and dig for the gold, they are not the kind of men one would care to trust with the control of such a sum. Your husband and his brother have really been coerced into going; they would hardly admit this, but it is true, nevertheless.”
There was a long pause. At last Mrs. Landray said: “I don't speak of this matter to my husband any more.” She set her lips firmly and went on. “We do not agree on this point; but you can tell me how far their plans are made. I am quite out of his confidence; and it is just the same with Ann and Bushrod; he never tells her.” She smiled sadly. “You see this thirst for sudden riches has destroyed the peace and happiness of at least two homes. I wonder how many more are to be affected by it.”
“I suppose I am violating their confidence,” Benson said, “but I believe their present plan is to start down the Ohio in the early spring.”
Mrs. Landray turned from him abruptly; her emotion mastered her; a sob rose in her throat.
“Thank you, Mr. Benson,” she faltered with a poor attempt at self-control; and then she passed swiftly down the lane toward the house.
Benson followed her retreating figure with his glance until she passed from sight among the trees; then he climbed slowly into the cart.
ROGERS had taken up his abode at the tavern. The Land-rays had arranged with Tucker that he should be their guest, and that he should want for nothing.
At first he had shown some interest in the town and in the changes that had taken place during the twenty years covered by his absence; but as the summer merged into fall, and fall into winter, he kept more and more within doors, establishing himself in the cheerful tavern bar, where Mr. Tucker presided with a benignity of bearing that had mellowed with the years and the passing of the human traffic of the stage road, whose straying feet had worn deep hollows in the brick pavement beyond his door.
During those first weeks of his stay in Benson, Rogers might have been a Columbus newly returned, or a Ponce de Leon with discovered fountains of perpetual youth; and in the spell of the wonders in which he dealt, and in which his hearers delighted, Tucker felt his reason reel and totter and all but collapse. As he came and went about the place, his eyes were always turned in the direction of the grim Californian. They sought him out over the rim of his glass, each time it was raised to his lips; and he watched him by the hour as he sat in his chair and sucked at the reed stem of his red-clay pipe, sucked and marvelled, or meditated investment in the company, a transaction of which he invariably thought better, however, before the day was ended. And when Rogers was not there to tell his own story, which sometimes chanced, he did it for him, but always with the nicest regard for accuracy. He had not been ten yards from his own front door in five years, indeed, not since he had courted the third and present Mrs. Tucker, so that such news as he usually had to disseminate was known to all Benson long before he was in possession of it; but the excitement of which Rogers was the centre, and in the reflected glory of which he now dwelt, recalled the days that had followed the knifing of Sheriff Cadwaller by Mr. Johnny Saul in that very room, and, considerately enough, with himself as the only witness.
Rogers had placed Benny in school, and each evening after supper he would steal up to the child's room, where Benny carefully rehearsed for his benefit such portions of the lessons of the day as he remembered, while his father listened, with a look of tender yearning in his dark, sunken eyes. Then, when Benny was safely bestowed in his bed, if custom was slack at the bar, and he alone with Tucker, he would sit silent and absorbed, thinking of the boy and the future he had planned, of the riches he would yet achieve for him in spite of sickness and mortal weariness. It was all so fair a dream, and his hopes so tenderly unselfish, that the harsh lines of his face would soften; and his thin, shaven lips whose hard expression usually indicated nothing beyond a dry reserve, would relax in a slow, wistful smile; and the old innkeeper watching him, would wonder in his vague way that one who had seen so much of violence and bloodshed, who, by his own indifferent telling, had been no better than others of his own reckless class, could look so mild and gentle.
“I tell you, Tucker, he's keen as a briar!” Rogers never wearied of telling his companion. “I reckon he's about the first of us Rogers in many a long year who's done more than make a cross when it came to signing his name.”
“But you got something better than learning,” Tucker would say, with a wise shake of his head. “You got knowledge; wonderful, astonishing knowledge. Personally you've wedged open my mind more than any other man I know, not excepting Colonel Sharp, who's been talking Latin to me, which I never did understand, for near about twenty years; but I can't see that it's ever done me the good you're doing me. What'll you drink?”
From the incipiency of the company on, that enterprise had seemed to Rogers to go forward with a deadly slowness: Those who invested in the shares requiring so much of him before they were convinced that their money would not only be safe, but would increase with the dazzling rapidity he said, and believed it must. Yet, devoured as he was by impatience, he told his story over and over, with an earnestness that never failed to fascinate his hearers, though he had to meet the habitual caution of men whose means had grown slowly in trade or petty speculations.
“It's disencouraging,” agreed Mr. Tucker benevolently. “But you couldn't a done better than get the Landray boys to take hold. Everybody knows them—they got money—they got influence; no one can't ever complain of any sharp practice from them. I've had dealings with them myself; I bought the distillery from them. I traded them land, a thousand acres in Belmont County. They took that at a valuation of twenty-five hundred dollars, and I got as much more to pay; but I'm trying to talk them into taking another thousand acres instead of the cash. My aim is to get shut of all that there land; then my money will be here where I can watch it.”
There were those among Rogers's auditors, however, who appeared quite ready to be convinced of the reasonableness of all he promised, arguing with him against their own doubt even; and when he thought it only remained for them to decide how many shares they could take, their enthusiasm would suddenly wane, they would become cold and hesitating, frankly anxious to make their escape uncommitted from him and from the Landrays, and this would be the last he would see of them for days; he would give them up for lost; and after he had fully made up his mind that nothing would come of it, they would appear and put their names to the paper which Stephen Landray always carried, and it was perhaps another hundred dollars added to the capital stock of the Benson and California Mining and Trading Company.
The necessity for haste was the one thing he urged on Stephen and his brother; but it was December before all of the shares were actually taken, and he was forced to own that to start across the plains in the dead of winter was out of the question, even if it had been feasible to make the first stage of the journey down the Ohio. They must wait until spring. This delay had seemed the last vengeful fling of fate. Whatever was evil to know and endure he had known and endured on that far frontier where his best years had been spent; he had acquired a fortitude and patience that rarely failed him; he had accepted hardship and danger as the natural, expected, things of life; and the ordinary deaths he had seen men die, by knife or bullet, he had himself bravely faced; but the slow approach of an enemy he could not see, but could only feel in his wasted muscles and weakened will, appalled him.
“I can feel it here—here—gnawing at my throat, gnawing like some hungry varment,” he told Stephen Landray. “I reckon if I was a praying man, I'd pray to die a sudden death; this is just wasting away—wasting and remembering, and hoping. God Almighty! Such hope and such remembering.”
But it was only to Stephen that he told his fears; he did not speak of them to the others, and they never guessed that a fever of despair was consuming him.
Stephen Landray was as free from superstitious imaginings as most men, but Rogers's low spirits, coupled with the sorrow and apprehension Virginia vainly strove to conceal, had its effect on his mental vigour. A dozen times he was on the verge of appealing to the other shareholders for his release from the active direction of an enterprise that was going forward under such distressing auspices; but he comforted himself with the thought that his absence would only be for a year or two.
Pride had a good deal to do with keeping him true to his purpose. He could recall the day when the property he and Bushrod had inherited had constituted a great fortune, by far the greatest in Benson, but times were slowly changing, improvements in machinery and methods had closed the carding and fulling mill his father had built during his lifetime; the distillery, which they had sold to Tucker, no longer sent its produce by flat-boat down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. Shrewder men than he and his brother, had taken away their once profitable business as forwarding agents, and the great warerooms at the mill, which had once been piled high with barrels of flour awaiting shipment, were now all but empty. He felt that they were being slowly but surely elbowed into the background by strangers with greater capital or greater ability. This was a sore grief to both brothers, though it was, perhaps, not the loss of money they dreaded so much as the fancied loss of prestige.
While Stephen hoped that Rogers might live to enjoy the wealth he felt would be the fruit of their venture, he cast about him for some man who possessed a similar acquaintance with the West, if not with the gold-fields, and remembered his cousin Basil. This Basil Landray was the son of his father's younger brother, the late Colonel Rupert Landray, of the United States Army. Of Basil he knew little, except that he had been at one time a civilian hanger-on of the army at Detroit; Later he had known of him as an employee of the American Fur Company.
In the early fall he hazarded a letter to this cousin at Council Bluffs, telling him of the undertaking in which they were about to embark, and asking him if he would care to join their party in the spring, at Independence. After many months a reply came; an illy-written, illy-spelt letter, that rather shocked the recipient. From the letter he gathered that Basil was seeking just such an opportunity as that he had offered.
About this time young Jacob Benson had occasion to drive out to the farm to see Landray.
“Tell Mr. Landray I'm here, Sam,” he said to the farm-hand who had taken his horse, and was preparing to lead it away to the stable. “He's at the mill,” said Sam.
“Let him know I'm here, please,” and the lawyer made his way into the house, where he was shown into the library. Ten minutes later Stephen and his brother entered the room.
“I hope we haven't kept you waiting, Benson,” said the former. “I've seen Mr. Stark, and it's all right,” said the lawyer. “I promised you I'd let you know at once.”
“So he'll renew the note?” said Stephen, seating himself before his desk.
“You are both to see him at the bank to-morrow,” answered Benson. There was a brief pause, and then the lawyer asked:
“How's the California scheme coming on?”
“I told you I had heard from our cousin, Basil Landray, did I not?”
“Yes, you had just received his letter the last time I saw you in town. Do you know yet when you shall start?”
“As soon as the Ohio is free of ice.”
“That won't be long now.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Stephen absently. “Look here,” he added abruptly. “We've got an offer for the mill.”
“Paxon?” inquired Benson.
“Yes. We find we shall have to let go of something,” said Stephen; there was a shade of embarrassment in his tone, for the subject was an unpleasant one. “And the mill is about the only piece of property we own that we care to part with.”
The mill, a huge structure of stone, had been erected by General Landray, and was said to occupy the site of a building of logs and bark, where almost half a century before had been ground the first corn and wheat grown in the county. Rude as had been this pioneer mill, it had represented the mechanical skill of the entire community. A sugar trough had served as a meal trough; while the stones had been bound with elm bark for the want of a proper metal.
“Well, Paxon is willing to pay ten thousand dollars for the mill,” Stephen continued. “Two thousand down, and the balance secured by his notes. This includes the water rights, and about ninety acres of land, and the miller's house.”
“It goes rather hard with us to let go,” said Bushrod Landray, who had been standing before one of the windows, his glance fixed on the out-of-doors, now he turned on his heel and faced his two companions.
Stephen moved uneasily in his chair.
“This silly fellow is influenced by all sorts of impracticable sentiment. He doesn't seem to see that we can't eat our cake and have it, too. If we go to California, we shall have to make some sacrifice here; and unless we go fully prepared to make the most of our chances, we would far better stay at home. I tell you, the men who go with a few thousands in hand to be put out in such advantageous speculations as may offer, will have unlimited opportunities for money-making. The mill isn't doing for us what it did for father; there is too much opposition for one thing, but Paxon says he can control a profitable Ohio River trade.”
“Yes,” agreed his brother reluctantly, “I suppose it is better in his hands doing something, than in ours, doing nothing. There's too much opposition, as you say. I can remember when there was not another mill within fifteen miles of here, and now there is twenty run of stone in the township.”
“And we have made a botch of the business!” said Stephen shortly. “Just remember we borrowed that money of Stark to buy wheat with, and the flour was thrown back on us when we shipped it to the lake. Musty and unsalable, the agent said. That cut last year's profits exactly in half: I'm sick of the mill!”
Bushrod sighed. “We have gone along easily enough, thanks to no special cleverness of our own, but we have been drones and spenders rather than anything else. If I oppose the sale of the mill, it is only because I have no mind to see the property dwindle.”
“Do be reasonable, Bush! A year or two in California will remedy all that,” said Stephen quickly. “Even Benson here has faith in our project!”
Thus appealed to, the lawyer said, “There will probably be many bitter disappointments, but there's no reason why cautious men, having some capital, should not do well in California, men of that kind are generally successful in new countries.”
“Why, you can't take up an Eastern newspaper without reading of fabulous strikes.” Stephen's dark eyes sparkled. “They say the country will soon be flooded with diggers from all parts of the world. Already they are crowding in from Texas and Mexico, and the Sandwich Islands. Of course, there will be some luckier than others, but thank God, there promises to be enough for all!”
Benson smiled cynically. The depth of Landray's worldly inexperience tickled his fancy. He knew better than to believe that man ever got something for nothing, or that Nature would suddenly open her heart to the gold-seekers as she had never before opened it to the struggling children of men. He saw that Bushrod shared his brother's enthusiasm where their joint venture was concerned; it was only that he was somewhat less ruthless in paving the way for it. To Stephen, though he was the younger, was left the initiative. The latter went on: “We wish to leave the loose ends of several matters in your hands.”
“What are you going to do with the farm?” asked Benson.
“Oh, Trent's brother Tom is going to take it, stock and all. I keep the house for Virginia, who wishes to remain here. I wanted her to go into town, but she prefers not to.”
“Then there is the distillery,” said Bushrod.
“Yes,” said Stephen, “Tucker still owes us twenty-five hundred dollars on it, but we've about agreed to take a thousand acres more of his Belmont County land in lieu of the money.”
“How about the farm north of town where Leonard lives?”
“Leonard is to stay on. He pays a hundred and fifty a year, and you'll have to keep after him to get it. We have about five thousand dollars on our books at the mill; most of it's good, and I expect we can collect some of it ourselves, what's left we shall place in your hands.”
“Hadn't you better draw up a statement of your affairs?” suggested Benson. “Directing what I am to do during your absence, where such and such money is to be used? Of course, you will have to allow me a certain latitude, and you'd better keep a copy of the memorandum; for if you should be detained in the West longer than you think you shall be, you may need it to refer to.”
“If Bush agrees to the sale of the mill—” began Stephen.
“Oh, I guess I'll come around to that if you'll just wait a while,” interposed his brother rather hopelessly. “There wasn't a dollar against the property in father's time, and we have already sold the distillery; and now we are figuring on the sale of the mill.
“It simply means that while the estate was ample for the support of one family, it is not ample for the support of two; and times have changed; it costs more to live now.”
“I'd be glad to think the fault was not all ours,” said Bushrod.
As they talked, the light had faded in the western sky to a cold radiance. The room was illuminated only by the dancing flames of the blazing hickory logs upon the hearth. The three men had gradually drawn nearer the fire as the shadows deepened about them. Now Benson rose from his chair.
“We'd better get together at my office in the course of a week or so, and we'll fix up these matters.”
“Won't you stay and take supper with us?” said Stephen.
“No, thank you.”
There was a gentle tap at the door, and Virginia entered the room, carrying a lamp. She bowed slightly to Benson, whom she had not seen before, and who, to her, seemed to be taking much too active a part in her husband's concerns. Her dislike, for it already amounted to that, was scarcely reasonable, but then she was not always reasonable.
“I thought you would need a light,” she explained, addressing her husband, “and Martha is busy with the men's supper.”
“Thank you for remembering us,” said Stephen.
He had risen and now took the lamp from her hand; in doing so his fingers closed about her's with a gentle pressure, while his eyes looked smilingly into her's; but there was no answering smile. She turned abruptly and quitted the room.
There was an awkward pause, then Bushrod rose quickly from his chair, with something like a look of dismay on his dark face.
“I declare, Stephen, you shouldn't go! What's the use of every one being made miserable?”
“Nonsense, man!” said Stephen with a shrug.
A little later Bushrod and Benson drove away together, and Stephen, who had followed them to the door, paused on the porch watching them out of sight. A soft step roused him; his wife stood at his side, and placed a hand on his arm.
“I am sorry,” she said simply.
“You're not to blame,” he said kindly. “I know it's not the sort of thing a woman could have much interest in.”
“Oh, don't let us speak of it again! I want you to remember only that you were happy during these, our last days together, and that I loved you, as I have always loved you, Stephen—sometimes I think better than even you comprehend.”
“Why, you speak as if it were the end of it all, when it's only the beginning! Bush and I will make our fortunes—”
“Oh, why can't we be content to be just poor, Stephen? What does it matter what we lack so long as we have each other? Once, not very long ago, we thought that would be sufficient,” she whispered softly, and to him her every word was a reproach; only his fancied needs, defended by his native stubbornness and his inability to look down any path save that he had chosen, was keeping him true to his purpose.
“But we can't be poor,” he said at last doggedly. “I've wished it were possible, but it's not! We can't stand by and see the fortune go to pot!”
“But I thought our love was enough—it is for me,” she said sadly.
“Why, bless your heart, dear, and so it is!” he cried in a tone of sturdy conviction, slipping an arm about her.
“Then why must you go?” But she knew that opposition was useless.
“Nothing but our necessity is taking me from you.”
“Money!” with brave contempt. “We can live without that!”
“I'm afraid not, dear.”
“Why do you so dread the loss of fortune? There are other things I dread more to lose.”
“I swear I don't know; but there is something shameful in it to me,” he said.
“But why?”
“Well, for us it would mean that we had failed, Bush and I, in everything; that we hadn't the ability to even hold on to what father left us. No, no, dear, the family can't go to the dogs quite yet: It's true we have no children, and sometimes I have been almost thankful, but there's Bush's boy to carry on the name; he's got to have his chance in life. I only hope he'll turn out a shrewder hand than either his father or uncle!”
“There will be enough, there has always been enough.”
“That doesn't follow: We have about reached the point now where we'll feel the pinch. You mustn't think that anything short of a real need would take me from you; only that shall separate us, and the separation will be but brief; and then Bush and I will come back with a fortune—”
“Only return safe and well, dear, and never mind about the fortune,” she said tenderly, as they turned back into the house.