GIBBS, his battered face red and perspiring, tramped the length of the room without speech; then he turned and tramped back again.
“When did you get to town?” asked Stephen, putting down the lamp he carried. He knew that Gibbs had not come on the afternoon stage for he had been in the crowd at the hotel when it arrived.
“Oh, I missed the stage, and got a man to drive me across,” said the general, pausing and moodily mopping his face. “Well, what they did to us up at Topeka ain't a little. We don't get the county seat! I don't know who gets it, but we won't—you can everlastingly make up your mind to that!”
“Is there nothing you can do?”
“Do!” cried the general in a tone of infinite disgust. “I didn't have a chance to do!”
Stephen looked his dismay.
“A little public spirit and we might have landed it, but I was left to give my time and spend my money, as if my personal influence unsupported, was all that was needed! I been made to look foolish! Well, when they ask me where those county buildings are, I'll tell 'em they can search me!” and the general shrugged his shoulders to indicate the indifference he did not feel. “It's news to sleep on, ain't it?” continued Gibbs. “Grant City's given itself county seat airs from the start, now all we got to do is to lose the railroad, and we might just as well shut up shop. Well, we ain't lost the railroad.”
“No,” said Stephen clutching at this hope. “The engineers are in camp here now.”
“It's going to give us a set back,” said the general, who was still thinking of the county seat. “But I reckon we're strong enough to stand it—annoying though, ain't it?” and he paused in his tramping which he had resumed, to stare hard at Stephen. “How do you feel about it anyhow?” he asked.
“It's a calamity,” said Landray gravely.
“It certainly is,” agreed the general. “We thought we had it sure, didn't we? Well, there is such a thing as being too sure. I tell you, Steve, we ain't the only fellows in Kansas with land to sell; there was plenty of others in the same line, and I went up against 'em hard at the capital, and they sat down pat on our little scheme. We got to go slow, things will come steady presently, but until they do we got to slack off on the building. I am sorry I got you up to tell you nothing better than this; don't worry though. How's Mrs. Landray?”
“About the same.”
“Humph! What does Arling say? I wonder if you hadn't better get away from here, Steve?” asked the general with kindly concern.
“And leave you to face the crisis?”
“It won't be the first one I've faced,” and Gibbs expanded his chest. “Maybe the climate just don't agree with her.”
“No, I sha'n'. leave you; and I doubt if Marian could make the change now.”
“Well, you know best, Landray, only don't let any sense of honour hold you here when it's to your interest to leave. I'm willing to split with you to-morrow if you say the word, and I'll think none the less of you. I ain't always been above running away myself. Just remember there's some money to divide now, and there may not be a red cent six months hence.”
“I'll chance it,” said Stephen firmly.
“Just as you like, but I want you to know that I don't consider you in any ways obligated to me. You have earned all you have had out of the business; it wouldn't set well for me to pretend otherwise.”
“Thank you, general,” said the younger man gratefully.
“Well, it's so. You sleep on what I've said.”
Then the general took his leave, and Stephen went back to his bed, but not to sleep. He had thought himself on the high road to fortune, and all at once things began to look black. In the morning he went early to the office where Gibbs soon joined him. He looked into Stephen's grave face and smiled.
“I guess my call didn't give you pleasant dreams, Landray. I've thought it over and I guess we'll just keep quiet and see what happens.”
But before the day was over, it was evident that the information
Gibbs brought from Topeka was not held by him alone. Before night there was a well-developed stampede among the owners of lots. This acted on Gibbs rather differently from what might have been expected.
“We'll show 'em,” he said, “that we got confidence; let 'em get in a panic, let 'em get rid of their lots, let 'em play the damn fool, Grant City's here to stay! It's got a future in the very nature of things. We don't need the county seat; they can locate that wherever they blame please; but we do want to get rid of these speculators, I always been opposed to speculation. I'd rather see things go back to the normal, even if we do lose; I would so, Stephen.”
But hard on the news that Grant City was not to get the county seat, came the news that neither was it to get the railroad.
“It's a lie! They can't afford to ignore us!” cried Gibbs when he heard this. “It's a trick to depress real estate! Any one who's fooled by it deserves to get skinned out of his last dollar.”
But the rumour was verified, and even Gibbs was forced to own that for the present at least they had lost the railroad.
“You ain't involved, Landray,” he told Stephen. “You stood to share only in the profits; and I can't lose much, for I hadn't five hundred dollars when I came here, and I got seventy or eighty lots that are worth something, and fifteen or twenty houses.”
Here Stephen recalled to his mind the fact that these houses were in the main unpaid for, and that his creditors might swoop down upon him at any moment.
“My creditors? Oh, hell—let 'em sweat!” and the general snapped his fingers almost gaily, and said in the same breath, “I expect you're cussing me, Steve, for fetching you here.”
“Nothing of the kind, general!” said Stephen stoutly.
“If I fooled you, I fooled myself, Steve; I knew there was some foxy gentlemen in this part of Kansas, but I thought I was the foxiest thing on two legs. I have had my ambitions too, Steve, and they ain't dead yet, a man of my calibre don't give up readily; but I'm adaptable. I don't sit down to weep over an unpropitious occasion, in some fashion I dominate it. For the present I suppose there is nothing for us to do but wait and see how things turn out.”
And through one long hot summer they watched things turn out. They saw the departure of the town-site speculators; they saw the settlement of tents and prairie schooners disappear from the waste beyond the town, until at last there was only the rolling plain, with its thousands of pegs that marked the lots of the various subdivisions, or the streets by which they were to be reached; and with this swift panoramic change came a leaden depression which ate into the very soul. There was no more poker at the Metropolitan, once a feature of the nightly gatherings there; the wilderness of signs creaked idly in the breeze; half the houses stood tenantless; the stages ceased to rumble in and out of town; the remnant of a population loafed in heavy lethargetic idleness.
Gibbs and Stephen sat through that long summer, idly for the most part, in their shirt-sleeves in the shade of their office; the only business they had was to see Gibbs's creditors, and in the end these ceased to trouble them.
At first Stephen had been somewhat sustained by Gibbs's confidence; for Gibbs had been sure things would come right, that the depression was only temporary; but in the end even his fine courage failed him. He spent less and less time in the shade of his office, and more and more time at Mr. Youtsey's bar; but at last Mr. Yout-sey announced that he was about to leave to seek fortune elsewhere.
“I've sat up with the corpse,” he told Gibbs jocosely, “and now I'm going to pull out. I leave the last words to you, for you seem to be chief mourner; I reckon you'll stay to the finish.”
“I don't know about that,” retorted Gibbs briskly. “You can't keep a squirrel on the ground; but I'm free to say I don't want to make any mistakes next time. I'm getting along to a time in life when I don't expect to make more than two or three more fortunes before I quit.”
“Well, you don't squeal none, general, that's what I admire about you; win or lose, there's a kind word still coming,” said Mr. Youtsey admiringly.
In private to Stephen, Gibbs deplored the conditions which he semed to think were largely responsible for their present situation; he was seeing deeper than the mere surface of things.
“The war was a mistake, Steve; patriotism and sentiment aside, it was a big mistake. It's knocked half the country into a cocked hat. The South is dead, and in my opinion we won't live long enough to see it come to life. If it had been just left alone, it would have been mighty interesting to have seen how it would have settled the nigger question. And what's been the result to the nation at large; we've lost over half a million of men—young men who'd a pushed out into the West here, and made this country a wonder. We wouldn't be waiting for population if they'd lived. But it wasn't to be! The country's filling up with all sorts of riff-raff from Europe, a class that never used to come; not the good English and Scotch and Irish, who came because they wanted elbow room; but greasy serfs, who ain't caring a damn for anything but wages. I tell you in twenty years an American will be a curiosity. And to think the way they were wasted, just thrown at each other by the thousands, in the greatest and crudest war of modern times.”
But Stephen could not sit there gossiping with Gibbs while Grant City sank into the prairie, or its shabbily built houses collapsed about his ears; he must do something, yet what was he to do? Gibbs came to his rescue with a suggestion.
“I been thinking of your luck, Steve,” he said one day with kindly concern. “I can hold up this building quite a while by myself just by leaning against it; I reckon it will be about a hundred years before anybody sells a lot again in Grant City, and you can't wait on that, on the chance that you will be the lucky fellow.”
“If I could go!” cried Stephen, with savage earnestness.
“But you can't! Now look here, the farmers have had a pretty good season; you can always sell a farmer improved machinery, and I understand you can secure an agency without any capital to speak of.”
“Why don't you try something of the sort?” asked Landray.
Gibbs shook his head.
“I'm too old a man, Steve, to knock about the country the way I'd have to; besides, I'm getting ready to start up in business.”
“Start up in what?” cried Stephen.
“In a small way in the licker business,” said the general with dignity.
“You mean a saloon?”
The general averted his eyes.
“Well, yes—it will have to be retail—I suppose you might almost call it a saloon,” he admitted reluctantly.
“We are coming down between us, general,” said Landray with a scornful laugh.
“Not at all, Steve, not at all. I've never claimed more than that I was up to the occasion, and Youtsey's quit here; fact is, before he left I made a dicker for what was left of his stock. His going makes an opening for a commercial enterprise of this sort—in a small way, of course.”
“Very small, I should say.”
“No, Steve, you must own there are a few people left; not many, but a few; and they are not going to be any less thirsty in the future than they have been in the past. I'm not counting on riches, but merely enough to tide me over until I see an opening. Maybe the venture might justify a partnership; if you think it will, I'm ready to whack up,” concluded Gibbs generously.
“Excuse me, general,” said the young man haughtily, “but we'll reserve that until the last.” He saw that Gibbs was hurt by his words and manner, and hastened to add, “I think your first suggestion was the best, do you know where I should write?”
“There are all sorts of catalogues in the office. I'd write to half a dozen different firms. I merely suggested this as a temporary makeshift; you might add insurance and lightning-rods.”
“We'll stop with the farm implements, more than that would only be funny; and I'm in desperate need.”
“I really shouldn't wonder if you didn't do quite well, Landray, after you get started,” Gibbs said, with ready faith in this new enterprise. “The farmers farm the land, you'll farm the farmers;” and Stephen's letters not appearing sufficiently hopeful in tone to his critical mind, he ended by drafting them for him. “Now I reckon they'll get you consideration,” said he, when their labours came to an end. “What! You ain't got any stamps? Why didn't you tell me you were that hard put? I ain't got much myself, but I always put down a little nest-egg. I hoped you'd done the same—why didn't you tell me?”
He brought from an inner pocket an old leathern wallet; it was limp enough, but it contained two twenty dollar bills, one of which he forced Stephen to accept.
“I never give up quite all; and if I'd known about the county seat a week earlier, there'd a been a few more gone broke here, but it wouldn't been you or me, Steve?”
A week later Stephen was present at the formal opening of the Golden West Saloon in their former office, Gibbs presiding with typical versatility.
There still lingered in Grant City those who either could not get away or were too indifferent to try, whose imagination had utterly failed them; and occasionally, though rarely, the wagons of emigrants paused for repairs at the blacksmith's; thus there was still the semblance of life, though half the houses in the town stood vacant; these seemed to fade away, to disappear in the rank grass that had come back to flourish in the small trampled lots, and in the midst of this universal decay, this final phase of the small tragedy of settlement, Stephen waited and organized the business Gibbs had suggested, but with no large measure of faith in it.
If Marian's condition would only improve sufficiently so that they might quit Grant City, he was almost certain that by some tremendous effort the money he would then require would be forthcoming.
However when he finally got to work the effect on him was that of a tonic; and through that fall, and the ensuing winter, over desperately bad roads, he travelled far and wide; and by spring when he began to reap the benefits of his winter's work, he saw that he was not only clear of debt but that he had actually made some money.
And while he toiled for her, Marian was left alone with a slatternly unattached female, who was both housekeeper and nurse; and for medical attendant there was Dr. Arling, who found Grant City entirely congenial. Drunk and sodden, he was not unskillful; and when he was needed he could always be found at the Golden West Saloon, where he loafed tirelessly, and where he played countless games of checkers with Gibbs.
It never occurred to Stephen that Marian might not recover. To him it seemed only a question of time until her strength would return; but he was the only one who was really ignorant of her condition. Arling had no doubts as to what the end would be, nor had Mrs. Bassett, the sick woman's attendant.
The end, when it came, came when he was least prepared to meet it. It was fall again, and he had driven in from the country to be with Marian over Sunday. He had stabled his horse, and had come up from the barn, lantern in hand, cold and stiff from his drive home from a farm far out on the plains.
Mrs. Bassett was in the little kitchen fussing over his supper when he entered the house by the back door. She had seen his light in the stable.
“I'll have your supper ready for you in just a minute, Mr. Landray,” she said. “You've got time to run up and see Mis' Landray. She knows you're back, I called up and told her you'd come.”
“How is she?” asked Stephen.
“Well, she seems to be about the same, I don't see no difference,” answered Mrs. Bassett guardedly. She turned and followed him with her eyes as he went through the sitting-room and entered the narrow front hall from which the stairs led to the floor above.
He was gone but a moment, then he came quickly into the kitchen, his face very white.
“She is worse!” he said in a husky whisper. “Why didn't you tell me so?” but he did not wait for an answer. “Where is the child?” he demanded.
“I carried him across the back lots to Mis' Gibbs a spell ago. I couldn't tend him and her, too, he was real fretful.”
“I must go for the doctor,” said Stephen.
“You needn't, Mr. Landray, Mis' Gibbs said she'd go to the saloon for him; I seen her lantern just a moment ago. You'd best have something to eat,” she urged.
He turned away impatiently.
“I'm not hungry. Have the doctor come up-stairs as soon as he gets here.”
But when Arling arrived a few moments later, accompanied by Gibbs, and joined Stephen in the chamber above where he sat holding his wife's hand in both his own, he merely shook his head. It was as he had expected, only the end had been longer deferred than he had thought possible. He stole from the room and rejoined Gibbs in the kitchen.
“You tell him, Gibbs—I can't,” he said.
Gibbs rubbed his straggling unkempt beard with a tremulous hand.
“Maybe he don't need to be told,” he suggested. “But if you think he should be, I'll do it;” and he stood erect, with something of his old air.
He mounted the creaking stairs. Stephen must have heard him coming, for he opened the door and stepped out into the narrow hall, that was barely large enough to hold the two men and the small stand, where Mrs. Bassett had placed a smoky lamp with a dirty chimney.
“Where's the doctor—why don't he come back?” Landray demanded in a fierce whisper. “Is the drunken fool going to do nothing?”
“Steve,” began the general, with white shaking lips, “Steve, bear up, Arling says there ain't anything he can do.”
Stephen looked at him, scarce comprehending what it was he said.
“He don't know what he's talking about—the fool's drunk!” he said roughly.
“I reckon he is,” lamented Gibbs weakly. “I'd'a had him under the pump if there'd been time, but my Julia said for him to hurry, and I closed up and brought him along just as he was, he wasn't fit to come by himself.”
“Send him up here again,” said Stephen with stern insistence. “There is something he can do—my God—” and he broke off abruptly and re-entered his wife's room.
“Come!” said Gibbs, when he had returned to the kitchen. “Come, stir around!” he ordered, laying a hand on Arling's shoulder. “Come, there's something you can do, and you've got to do it.” He was in a panic of haste. He snatched up his dingy medicine case and thrust it into Arling's shaking hands. “He's waiting for you, go up and do what you can.”
“Haven't you told him, Gibbs? She is dying, all he's got to do is to look at her to see that.”
“You're the one to tell him then—poor Steve—you go to him. I must go fetch my Julia and the baby;” and he stumbled out into the darkness with neither hat nor lantern, and fled across the back lots toward the light that burned in his own window.
He soon returned with Julia, who went at once to the room above. In the narrow hall she encountered Arling, who had just come from Marian's bedside, where he had administered to her some simple restorative. She brushed past him without a word.
“Thank you for coming, it's good to have a woman about,” murmured Stephen, glancing toward the door as she entered.
Marian lay on the bed without speech or movement, but her eyes, now brilliant and filled with a strange light, followed every movement of the two. Julia, with Stephen's help, made her more comfortable; they smoothed her pillows and raised her higher on them, for Mrs. Gibbs had been quick to see that her breath came with difficulty.
She had never liked Marian, and Marian had never liked her—but she had forgotten all this—which, after all, was only that chance which determines who shall love and who shall hate. Now she was all tenderness, this brisk energetic woman, with the lines of a shrewish temper already stamped upon her face; and her glance always softened when she looked at Stephen.
There was little either could do but wait; and Marian, save for the look in her eyes and their restless turning, gave no sign that she knew what was passing about her.
Presently Julia stole down-stairs to the kitchen. She found Mrs. Bassett, the general, and Arling still there; the boy fast asleep in her husband's arms.
“Law!” she cried. “Haven't any of you had sense enough to put that child to bed?” and she whisked him out of Gibbs's arms and carried him into the adjoining room.
After that the four fell to watching the clock as if the slow moving hands would tell them when all was over; and as they watched, the row of ragged lights in the uncurtained windows that looked out upon Grant City's Main Street, disappeared one by one, and it was midnight and very still.
At last Julia rose from her chair and without a word went up-stairs; she seemed to know that all was over. She noiselessly pushed open the door and entered the room.
Stephen's face was buried in the pillow beside his wife's. A glance told her what had happened during her absence from the room. She stepped to the bedside and placed her hand gently on the man's shoulder; she felt him shrink from the sudden touch.
“Come,” she said kindly. “You mustn't stay here any longer, Mr. Landray. You go on down-stairs and ask Mrs. Bassett to come up here to me.”
“Is she—” he gasped chokingly.
He had risen to his feet, and she urged him away from the bedside with gentle but determined force.
“You must go down-stairs, Mr. Landray,” she insisted.
“She never spoke—never once,” he cried, turning his bloodshot eyes on her.
“But she knew you; do go down-stairs, Mr. Landray, indeed, you mustn't stay here any longer.”
She had pushed him from the room as she spoke, and he crossed the hall and went slowly and heavily down the narrow steps.
IF Virginia had been unable to influence Stephen's life as she wished, this was far from being the case with Jane and Harriett, who had wholly abandoned themselves to her care and control, which had to do, unselfishly enough, with their comfort and convenience. They were also indebted to her for their mental outlook. They echoed her opinions and acquired her convictions, by which they endured with unshaken pertinacity, and she had furnished them with such prejudices as had found a home in their gentle unworldly hearts. In sentiment they were quite as much Landray as she was herself; and their pride in the name was quite equal to her own pride in it; while their affection for her was, aside from their affection for each other, quite the deepest emotion in their simple lives.
Under these conditions Harriett had grown into young womanhood, a shy pretty girl, who looked out upon the world with soft, inexperienced eyes. But her father's death, and Stephen Landray's, and perhaps more than all, Virginia's beauty and silent devotion to her dead husband, had supplied a background of romance and mystery of which she was never wholly unconscious. Of society, as it was understood in Benson, she knew nothing; her mother had never made any friends in the town, and Virginia's own circle had narrowed; she went nowhere.
Some day Harriett knew she would teach; this Virginia and Jane had decided for her. It was their conviction that it was the one thing a young lady could do without compromising her position, it was entirely dignified, a polite and unexceptional occupation where one was so unfortunate as to have her own future to consider; and so to teach, Harriett was fitting herself, when something happened which materially changed all her plans.
Mr. Stark, who for many years had been the pioneer banker in Benson, had long since gone to his reward, and now there were several banks in the town; chief of these was the County Bank where the interest on certain loans which Benson had made for Virginia, with the money he had given her for the land in Belmont County, was regularly paid. Here Harriett often went for Virginia, and it was here she first met Mark Norton, whose uncle, Judge Norton, was interested in the fortunes of the bank; indeed, young Norton was supposed to be mastering the intricacies of the banking business under the judge's eye.
He came of an excellent family in the county, and Harriett had frequently observed the young fellow. She had even noted that after business hours, the easy hours of banks, he indulged himself in the pleasure of driving most excellent horses. His father was a rich farmer, which doubtless had much to do with the soundness of the son's judgment in the matter of horse-flesh; it also explained why it was that he was able to keep fast horses, a luxury not within the reach of the ordinary bank clerk. Harriett had seen all this, as he frequently drove past the cottage presumably on his way into the country beyond. It afterward developed that Norton had observed the slight figure of the girl on the lawn in front of the cottage with the two elder ladies, and he had noted that she was very pretty—singularly pretty, he would have said.
But it was Harriett's privilege not only to see him in his hours of recreation, but also when she went to the bank on some errand for Virginia. He never ventured on anything that could be termed conversation, though he occasionally appeared to be anxious to discover Miss Walsh's opinion on such impersonal subjects as the weather; or if it was a warm day he obligingly called her attention to that fact. He always addressed her as Miss Walsh. He had been almost the first person who found such formality necessary, and that he did, had provoked her to a new and gratifying emotion.
But on one occasion when she stopped at the bank, he was rather more disposed to talk than was usual with him, but Miss Walsh was in some haste to go, once the business that had brough her there was transacted; indeed, so great was her haste that she did not observe that she had left her check-book.
Later in the afternoon, as she sat on the lawn with Virginia and her mother, Norton appeared, striding briskly up the street. He opened the gate, and crossed the lawn to them, smiling and at ease.
“I didn't give Miss Walsh her check-book,” he said. He addressed himself to Virginia. “I thought she would find it out and come back—but you didn't”—he turned to Harriett as he spoke—“and so I've brought it.”
They were all very grateful to him; that is, Virginia and Jane expressed their gratitude. They thought he had been most kind and had put himself to a great deal of trouble in a really unimportant matter. Harriett said nothing, but she suffered an accusing pang when she recalled that she had shown no interest in the weather.
Virginia asked him to be seated, for though he had given the book into her keeping, he still stood before them hat in hand.
Norton sat down with alacrity.
He was not under ordinary circumstances a garrulous young fellow, but on the present occasion he talked hard and fast, as one will who is trying to gain time; but the burden of what he had to say was directed to Virginia. Instinct warned him that it would be her opinion that would have weight with the others, that if he was ever to return there, as he hoped he might be permitted to do, it would be because she was willing he should come; and though Virginia regarded him a little critically at first perhaps, there was nothing of unkindness in her glance.
At last he quitted his chair; but he was manifestly most reluctant to go; they rose, too; and the four walked slowly across the lawn. Norton lagged more and more as they neared the gate; it involved a positive effort for him to tear himself away. In this extremity he fell to admiring the flowers; he was particularly fond of flowers, it seemed; no doubt because he had always lived in the country and was accustomed to having growing things about; he even ventured the hope that Mrs. Landray would let him come later when the roses were in bloom.
“I hope you may come again, Mr. Norton,” responded Virginia kindly.
“Thank you—if it won't be an intrusion, I'll be only too glad to come;” and he stole a swift glance at Harriett.
It may have been the merest chance, but after this in one way and another, Harriett saw a good deal of Norton, for his love of the country took him past the cottage very often. Harriett knew this because she read much by the window in the small parlour.
One night as the three sat in the parlour, the girl's quick ear caught the sound of wheels, and a horse at a rapid trot drew up at the curb. She hid her face in the book she was reading, and her heart beat rapidly. There was a brisk step on the path, and a brisk knock at the door, which Mrs. Walsh opened, and there stood Norton. To the girl's eyes he seemed wonderfully confident, wonderfully sure of himself, and later she might have added, wonderfully discreet, for he devoted himself almost exclusively to Virginia.
He had, it developed, a lively interest in local history; his own maternal grandfather having been a contemporary in the county with General Landray; during the last war with England he had served as a captain in the company of riflemen which the former had raised; furthermore his father had known Mrs. Landray's husband, a fact of which Mrs. Landray herself was well aware. These were all points that were calculated to make her feel a certain liking for the young fellow himself, which was only intensified by his quite evident respect for the very name of Landray; nothing could have been more commendable or better calculated to show him a person of proper instincts. Virginia recalled that as a girl she had been a guest at his mother's wedding; and that General Harrison—to whom Mrs. Norton was distantly related—had been present.
But while they talked of these matters, his glance drifted on past Virginia to the pretty silent girl.
When at last Norton took his leave, he was hospitably urged to call again, an invitation he professed himself as fully determined to make the most of.
He was the first young man who had ever called there, though this was not because there was any dearth of young men in the town; but Harriett was aware that Virginia's point of view regarding strangers was conservative to say the least; here, however, was a young man whose grandfather had been a prominent man in the county when a Landray had been the prominent man of all that region.
So Norton was welcomed graciously whenever he chose to call. Yet somehow after that first call they avoided all mention of him; even repeated visits did not provoke them to discussion; and at this, Harriett wondered not a little.
At last Virginia astonished her small household by announcing that she had invited Norton to tea. They dined in the middle of the day, but on this particular evening tea became a very elaborate affair indeed, for it was the first time in twenty years, or since Stephen Landray's death, that Virginia had bidden a guest to her home. Even Harriett, who thought she knew all the resources of the household, was astonished at the old silver and glass and china that was brought out for the occasion; nor had she ever before seen Virginia dressed with such richness; and she did not wonder that Norton whispered to her as Virginia quitted the room on some errand:
“What a beautiful woman Mrs. Landray is, I wonder she never married again.”
“She will never marry, she is devoted to her husband,” said Harriett.
“Odd, isn't it, that one should always be thinking of that?” he said.
“You mean her devotion to his memory?”
“No, not that—I mean that one should always wonder why a pretty woman doesn't marry.”
“But when you have lost some one you love.”
“Of course—I suppose love only seems so important in our own lives because we know what it has meant to some, and so hope it may mean the same to us.”
“Does it seem so important?” she asked, the colour coming into her cheeks.
“Doesn't it?” he asked quietly.
“Really I don't know, I had never thought of it—in that way.”
“It's a part of what we call success in life; it may be the better part—it should be, Harriett.” His voice dwelt lingeringly and caressingly on her name.
She gave him a frightened, embarrassed glance. It was the first time he had ever called her anything else than Miss Walsh. She hoped all at once that her mother or Virginia would come into the room; but she knew they were busy elsewhere and would not appear until tea was served.
“Don't you think that?” he asked.
“I don't know. I have never thought of it,” she said faintly.
“I wish you'd think of it now,” he insisted.
“Why?” she faltered.
“Can't you guess?” he asked. “As something that might affect you, as something that might affect—us.” He leaned forward in his chair until his face was very close to hers. “Don't you understand what I mean, Harriett?” he went on, and his voice had become suddenly tender. “I wonder if you could think it worth while to care for a fellow like me; don't you know why I've been coming here?”
“To see my Aunt Virginia,” she faltered.
“Well, no—hardly, Harriett; but I fear you are not quite honest with me. You know that you have brought me here. I wanted to come long enough before I did; but there seemed no way. What are you going to tell me about caring for a fellow like me; caring in a particular way—I mean?”
The colour came and went in the girl's face.
“Of course I can wait—after all you don't know me so very well yet; but I'd like to think that my case is not entirely hopeless. Won't you tell me what I want to know, Harriett,”—he heard the swish of heavy silks in the hall, it was Virginia returning. “I'm going to come to-morrow for your answer,” he said quickly.
The next day, after the young man had taken his leave of her, Harriett fled up-stairs to her mother's room with a burning face; while Norton drove away from the house apparently in the best of spirits, for he had the unmistakable air of a man who has just heard something that was unqualifiedly pleasant to hear. The girl hesitated nervously.
“Mr. Norton has just left,” she said.
“I thought I heard him, or some one, drive up to the gate.”
“It was he,” said Harriett.
Her mother went placidly on with her sewing.
“He wants me to tell you that he wishes to come and see you very soon, mama,” said Harriett at last, with a little gasp.
“Wants to see me, dear?” in mild surprise.
“Yes.”
“But what about?”
“About—about me—he wants to tell you something.”
“He seems to have told you already,” said Mrs. Walsh.
The girl dropped on her knees before her mother, burying her face in her lap. There was a little silence between them, and then Mrs. Walsh said.
“We must tell Virginia. I hope, dear, that she will approve.”
Harriett glanced up quickly at this. She was very white of face.
“Oh, you don't think she won't—you don't think that?”
“Then you want her to approve?”
And Harriett nodded; a single little emphatic inclination of the head.
BEYOND the windows of the Golden West Saloon, a cold rain deluged Grant City. Gibbs, in his shirt-sleeves, sat on the edge of his bar and dangled his fat legs. Arling, disreputable and evil to the eye, nodded in a warm corner by the stove. Gibbs was speaking, and he addressed himself to Stephen Landray, who was striding back and forth across the room.
“Better shut up the house, Steve, and let Mrs. Bassett go; and you and the boy come over and camp with my Julia and me. It will give Julia something to think of,” he urged hospitably.
“Thank you, general, but I must remain just where I am. In the spring I shall go further West—that is if I can stay until then.”
“I understand just how you feel,” said Gibbs, with ready sympathy. “And wherever you go I want you to remember that I don't consider myself permanently located here. I wish we might get into something together again.”
He tucked his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. He, at least, was perennially hopeful. If there was a Gibbs of the Golden West Saloon, there was also a General Gibbs of Kansas. He might be purple-faced, and his dress might be shabby and neglected, but dissipation could never do for him all that it had done for Arling, his pride and his ideals measurably sustained him in his evil fortune.
“Nothing's final, you know,” he went on. “I reckon there's still the last word to be spoken on most topics; and while I own I'm winded, it ain't going to be for long. I've had ups and downs before, and with half a chance it's in me to finish a winner. This place has got on my nerves, and it's not suiting my Julia either—it's on her nerves, too. Well, I never believe in evading the plain facts in a case, and I know I'm not just acting in a way to satisfy an ambitious woman, and my Julia's got her ambitions. You know what's wrong, I don't need to go into that; but I will say this much for myself; a dead and alive existence is mighty depressing to an active man such as I've always been, who's had his nose in large affairs. I can't stay here and go to seed; what's to hinder us from pulling out together in the spring? You can't leave before that, and it ain't long to wait.”
“No, I can't go before spring,” Landray reluctantly agreed, “unless I can find some one who will pay me a lump sum down on my contracts.”
Virginia had written him, begging him to return to Benson, but he was determined never to go back no matter what happened. Later, Virginia had asked him to send the child to her; but neither would he do this. His little son must remain with him wherever he went. Without the boy he felt his own life would be quite worthless; he felt, too, that Marian would have wished him to decide as he had decided.
The winter was of unexpected severity, but to Stephen this was one of its lesser hardships. He travelled far in all weathers, not sparing himself. Night after night he came back cold and weary to his little son and his comfortless home. He saw the huddle of houses under a thousand different aspects—against the red of the winter sky; when the swift twilight had fallen; by the cold moon, which sent long black shadows streaming out across the white untrodden snow; and he learned to hate it all, as something animate and personal that had made a wreck of his life.
There was no welcome now for him in the ragged rows of lights in those uncurtained windows that overlooked the streets Gibbs had named in the very prodigality of his patriotism—Sherman Street, Farragut Street, Porter Avenue, Lincoln Boulevard; he only had his boy, his memory of Marian, and his terrible loneliness for companions. Would the spring never come, would the winter never lose its hold on that frozen land! Sometimes in sheer desperation he went down to Gibbs and Arling at the Golden West Saloon, where the man of science, when not too drunk, played strategic games of checkers with the ex-editor; and where the ex-editor mixed hot whiskies for the man of science; and the frost bound loafers who still called Grant City home, congregated sparsely.
But at last the snows melted from the crests of the ridges, patches of prairie sod became visible and spread down the slopes, as the sun crept back day by day toward its summer solstice.
One raw spring day just at evening, Stephen drove into Grant City. It had been raining and he was wet to the skin, but cold and chilled as he was, his bronzed cheeks burnt with an unwonted colour, while his dark eyes were brilliant with an unusual light. He drove not to his home, but straight to Gibbs's saloon. Hearing him, the general came to the door.
“Hullo, Steve, want me?” he said cheerfully.
“Can I get you to go to the house with me, and put out my horse?” asked Landray. He spokely stiffly over the turned-up collar of his coat, and he was conscious that the words that issued from his lips had an unfamiliar sound; he scarcely recognized his own voice.
“Why, what's the matter, Steve?” demanded Gibbs in some surprise.
“I'm not feeling just right, that's all.”
The general vanished from his open door, but reappeared almost immediately with his hat.
“You ain't feeling right?” he repeated as he climbed in beside Landray. “What's wrong with you, Steve?”
“I seem to have taken cold,” said Stephen, still stiffly and thickly over the upturned collar of his coat. “I want to get to bed as quick as possible.”
“I guess that's where you should have been for the past hour,” said the general, surveying him critically. “You ain't got the least notion of taking care of yourself, Steve, you're doing yourself a rank injustice, exposing yourself this way!”
When they drove in at the barn Gibbs had to help him from the buggy or he would have fallen to the ground; he led him to a sheltered spot, then he drove the horse in out of the rain and tied it.
“I'll come back and take out; but first I'm going to get you to bed, Steve,” he said.
“I'm afraid—I think I'm going to be sick,” said Landray, and now his teeth were chattering.
“Why, Steve, you're wringing wet!” cried Gibbs, placing an arm about him to support him as he led him away to the house.
“I've driven in from Hazlets in the rain.” Hazlets was a good ten miles out on the prairie.
“You shouldn't have done it! You take no sort of care of yourself.”
By the time Gibbs had gotten his friend to his room, and undressed and in bed, he was shaking with a violent chill. Gibbs piled the blankets on him, and went down to the kitchen where he told Mrs. Bassett to prepare a hot whisky for the sick man.
“You give it to him, and I'll be back with Arling in a minute or so,” he said, and ran to the saloon, where he arrived panting and out of breath.
The doctor had received his monthly remittance the day before, and the results had been disastrous; but Gibbs was equal to the emergency. He dragged him unceremoniously enough from the chair he was sleeping in back of the stove, and laid him flat on the floor; then he brought a bucket of water from the well in the yard, and splashed it in his face. This produced immediate results. The doctor opened his eyes, groaned, and sat up.
“What the hell you doing to me, Gibbs?” he sputtered angrily, for the deluge continued.
“I'm trying to sober you, Doc, Landray's sick.”
“Want to drown me? I tell you I'm sober enough. What's the matter of Landray?”
“He's sick—is having sort of a chill.”
“He don't take no care of himself, never seen such imprudence,” said Arling crossly.
“Can you walk?” demanded Gibbs.
“Yes,” and the doctor scrambled to his feet. “Course I can walk!”
“Come along then,” cried Gibbs, seizing Arling's hat and thrusting it into his hands.
“Stop a minute, where's Landray now?” asked Arling, reasonably sober.
“Home and in bed. I told Mrs. Bassett to give him hot whisky.”
“Nothing better than that!” said Arling.
As soon as he had left the doctor in charge of his friend, Gibbs hurried off across the back lots. He was going for his Julia.
“This is a hell of a place!” he moaned miserably, as he stumbled along through the darkness. “I wish I'd never got him to come here; but I couldn't foresee how things would pan out!”
His was a simple emotional nature, but he was capable of no little depth of feeling, and he loved Landray as his own son. He wanted him to live, he wanted to vindicate to him his own capacity for a substantial success. It hurt him that he should think, as he sometimes fancied he did think, that he was impractical and erratic; he wanted him to know just the sort of man General Nathan Gibbs really was; for externals bore hard upon his character, and he was aware without his Julia telling him of it, that Gibbs of the Golden West Saloon was but a poor shadow of the epauletted soldier who seven years before had turned his florid face and expanded chest toward the new West. Those had been his great days, but in some form they must return; he never doubted this.
“What a shabby guzzling hound I've become!” he told himself in his abasement and disgust. “I wish he could think well of me, for he's the only gentleman left in Grant City.”
He soon returned with his Julia, who, after bestowing certain little attentions on the sick man, rejoined her husband in the kitchen, where she viewed certain manifestations of Mrs. Bassett's housekeeping with compressed lips and elevated eyebrows. Then she proceeded to clean up, and in Mrs. Bassett's absence from the room, remarked to the general:
“Seems as if nothing short of a death in this family will ever get this house red up! I wonder what that woman finds to slouch over all day long!”
Stephen was delirious for the greater part of the night, a fever following quick upon the chill; but toward morning Arling came from the room and joining Gibbs, told him that Landray's condition was much less serious than it had been.
“Well, if that's so,” said Gibbs, quitting his chair, “I guess I'll slip up and see him, and then go home and get an hour or two of sleep, and then go down and open up the saloon. If you want anything, send for me. Julia will be over right after breakfast.”
“Mighty capable lady!” remarked the doctor.
Gibbs found Landray very white and weak, but sitting up in bed.
“Well, how goes it, Steve?” he asked cheerfully.
“I don't know,” said Landray wearily. “It's my head.”
“Well, you keep still for a few days, and your head will be all right,” said Gibbs, drawing up a chair to his bedside and settling his untidy person in it.
“I don't know what I'd do without you and Mrs. Gibbs,” said Stephen gratefully, as he sank back on his pillows.
“As soon as you can, you must get out of this, Steve,” said Gibbs. “Why can't you write to your aunt, or Jake Benson? He owes it to you to do something; it's not much to ask.”
But Stephen shook his head.
“Oh, come now, that's merely your pride. Just make up your mind to let things drop here; you shouldn't risk your health racing about the country; at best you'll only clear up a few hundreds, even your aunt could do that much for you and not feel it.”
“You don't understand, Gibbs; I cannot ask anything of her; her means are small enough, and my obligations to her are already greater than I can ever hope to discharge.”
“Well, of course, you know best; but I want to see you get away from here, Steve, you are using yourself up to no purpose. It's a dog's life; I feel it, and things don't grind into me the way they do into you.”
Later in the day the fever which had left him returned; and a feeling of despair laid hold of Stephen. Suppose he did not get well—suppose he should die! It would be so much more easy to die than to live; why should he wish to pass again beyond the four white walls of that room! Then he thought of his little son, and begged Gibbs who was watching at his side to find him pen and paper. These were brought him, the general propped him up in bed with pillows, and the sick man took the pen with feeble fingers. After all, in his poverty and sickness, his misery of body and spirit, in what he now believed was the final dire extremity, he turned to Virginia. She had been his first friend and she was his last. With infinite difficulty, for his eyes seemed ready to leap from their sockets, and the pen would slip from his weak fingers, he wrote two letters. The first was to Virginia; the other to Benson. This labour, for it was a real labour, he finished at intervals during the afternoon. The result was two rambling incoherent letters which bore entirely upon his son's future; of himself he said nothing. What was in these letters Gibbs did not know then; but when they were written, he said:
“Now I suppose you want me to post 'em for you, Steve?” Landray shook his head.
“No, we'll wait until to-morrow.”
“But why wait?” urged Gibbs impatiently. “You'll be changing your mind the first thing I know, Steve.”
“Perhaps I shall—I may not send them at all,” and he lay back wearily among his pillows. “I don't want to alarm my aunt needlessly,” he added.
“The sooner she knows of the situation here the better satisfied I shall be,” said Gibbs.
“I believe you want to see the last of me, general,” said Landray, smiling whimsically at his friend.
“No, I don't, Steve, but I do want to see you get out of this. I figure on joining you wherever you go; you need me; you're too much of a gentleman to get money easy, and you need me.”
“But how about you, general?”
“Being a gentleman?” a wide grin overspread the general's battered face. “Well, I ain't any illusions left on that score. I about manage to hit the prevailing level. Put me down as good company; I'll keep up my end anywhere. I'm versatile; but I reckon you know the best and the worst of me, Steve—it's the common human average. That's why you need me; you're just a peg above the average, so was your father and uncle; and everybody loved 'em for it; but it didn't stand in the way of their taking advantage of 'em. Now nobody's ever got into me very deep; I've always been able to take handsome care of my own skin; and when Providence settles with the meek in spirit, the name of Gibbs won't be mentioned; there'll be nothing coming to me that I ain't got!”
Stephen passed a restless night, while Gibbs, shabby and dissipated, watched tenderly at his side; but in the morning he felt so much better that in spite of Gibbs's protests he insisted upon dressing, and went down-stairs. The following day he was able to leave the house, but he paid dearly for his imprudence. The fever returned and he went back to bed, he was again delirious, and the second day he passed in a semi-conscious state from which he only aroused at long intervals.
Gibbs and Mrs. Gibbs and Arling watched him constantly. The doors of the Golden West Saloon were closed and locked, and the thirsty of Grant City going there, tried the door in vain, looked in at the window, and went sadly away.
“He ain't showing any nerve, nor any wish to live!” wailed Gibbs. “He's sinking because he ain't trying to keep up! Unless he helps himself we can't do anything for him!”
And it was as Gibbs said. Stephen now lacked both the inclination and the power to help himself; he faced the thought of death with indifference. This continued for a week.
It was Gibbs who was with him when the end came. All at once Stephen roused himself from his lethargy and sat erect in his bed.
“Gibbs!” he called hoarsely.
“What is it, Steve—I'm here; don't you see me?” asked the general from his seat at his side, and he rested a shaking hand on the younger man's arm.
“Take him to his aunt,” muttered Landray, “to his aunt, do you understand? I mean the boy—take him to his aunt, take him there first.”
“Yes, yes, Steve, don't worry; I'll do just as you say,” cried Gibbs in a choking voice.
“Do you hear me—he's to go back to Ohio,” gasped the dying man with painful effort. “She's all he has left. You'll take him there—as soon as you can;” and with that Landray fell back on his bed and spoke no more.