From the very day of his decision, to which he had been so unexpectedly helped by Judy, Brian Kent was another man. The gloomy, despondent, undecided spirit that was the successor of the wretched creature that Judy had helped to Auntie Sue's that morning was now succeeded by a cheerful, hopeful, contented man, who went to his daily task with a song, did his work with a smile and a merry jest, and returned, when the day was done, with peace in his heart and laughter on his lips.
As the days of the glorious Ozark autumn passed, Brian's healthful, outdoor work on the timbered mountain-side brought to the man of the cities a physical grace and beauty he had lacked,—the grace of physical strength and the beauty of clean and rugged health. The bright autumn sun and the winds that swept over the many miles of tree-clad hills browned his skin; while his work with the ax developed his muscles and enforced deep breathing of the bracing mountain air, thus bringing a more generous supply of richer blood, which touched his now firmly rounded cheeks with color.
The gift of humor and the faculty of quaint and witty conversational twists, with the genius of storytelling that was his from his Irish mother, made quick friends for him of the mountain neighbors who welcomed this new pupil of their old school-teacher with whole-hearted pleasure, and quoted his jests and sayings throughout the country with never-failing delight. And Judy,—it is not too much to say that Judy became his most ardent admirer and devoted slave.
But the dear old mistress of the little log house by the river alone recognized that these outward changes in the human wreck that the river had brought to her were but manifestations of a more potent transformation that was taking place in the man's inner life; and it was this inner change that filled the teacher's loving heart with joy, and which she watched with keen and delighted interest.
It was not, after all, a new life that was coming to this man, Auntie Sue told herself; it was his own old and more real life that was reassuring itself. It was the real Brian Kent that had been sojourning in a far country that was now coming home to his own. It was the wealth of his heart and mind and soul which had been deep-buried under an accumulation of circumstances and environment that was now being brought to the surface.
Might it not be that Auntie Sue's genius for absorbing beauty and making truth her own had, in her many years of searching for truth and beauty in whatever humanity she encountered, developed in her a peculiar sensitiveness? And was it not this that had made her feel instinctively the real nature of the man in whom a less discerning observer would have recognized nothing worthy of admiration or regard? Without question, it was the true,—the essential,—the underlying,—elements in the character of the absconding bank clerk that had aroused in this remarkable old gentlewoman the peculiar sense of kinship—of possession—that had determined her attitude toward the stranger. The law that like calls to like is not less applicable to things spiritual than to things material. The birds of a feather that always flock together are not of necessity material birds of material feathers.
Nor was Brian Kent himself unconscious of his Re-Creation. The man knew what he was, as every man knows deep within himself the real self that is. And that was the horror of the situation which had set him adrift on the river that night when, in his last drunken despairing frenzy, he had left the world with a curse in his heart and had faced the black unknown with reckless laughter and a profane toast. It is to be doubted if there can be a hell of greater torment than that experienced by one who, endowed by nature with a capacity for great living, is betrayed by the very strength of his genius into a situation that is intolerable of his real self, and is forced, thus, to a continuous self-crucifixion and death.
In his new environment the man felt the awakening of this self which he had mourned as dead. Thoughts, emotions, dreams, aspirations, which had, as he believed, been killed, he found were not dead, but only sleeping; and in the quickening of their vitality and strength he knew a joy as great as had been his despair.
The beauty of nature, that had lost its power of appeal to his sodden soul, now stirred him to the very depth of his being. The crisp, sun-sweet air of the autumn mornings, when he went forth with his ax to the day's clean labor, was a draught of potent magic that set every nerve of him tingling with delight. The woodland hillside, where he worked, was a wonderland of beautiful creations that inspired a thousand glowing fancies. Sometimes, at his heavy task, he would pause for a moment's rest, and so would look out and away over the vast expanse of country that from his feet stretched in all its charm of winding river and wooded slopes, and tree-fringed ridges to the far, blue sky-line; and the very soul of him would answer to the call as he had thought he never could answer again. The very clouds that drifted past on their courses to unseen ports beyond the hills were freighted with meaning for him now. The winds that came laden with the subtly blended perfume of ten thousand varieties of trees and grasses and shrubs and flowers whispered words of life which he now could hear. The loveliness of the glowing morning skies, as he saw them when he rose for the day's work, and the glories of the sunsets, as he watched them with Auntie Sue from the porch when the day's task was accomplished, filled him with an exquisite gladness which he had never hoped to know again.
Most of all, did the river speak to him; not, indeed, as it had spoken that dreadful night, when, from the window of his darkened room, he had listened to its call: the river spoke, now, in the full day as his eye followed its winding length through the hills in all its varied beauty of sunshine and shadow;—of gleaming silver and living green and russet-brown. It talked to him in the evening when the waters gave back the glories of the sky and the deepening twilight wrapped the world in its dusky veil of mystery. It spoke to him in the soft darkness of the night, as it swept on its way under the stars, or in the light of the golden moon. And, in time, some of these things which the river said to him, he, in turn, told to Auntie Sue.
And Auntie Sue, delighted with the man's awakening self, and charmed with his power of thought and his gift of expression, led him on. With artful suggestion and skilful question and subtle argument, she stimulated his mind and fancy to lay hold of the truths and beauties that life and nature offered. But ever the rare old gentlewoman was his teacher, revealing himself to himself; guiding him to a fuller discovery and knowledge of his own life and its meaning, which, indeed, is the true aim and end of all right teaching.
So the days of the autumn passed. The hills changed their robes of varied green for costumes of brown and gold, with touches here and there of flaming scarlet and brilliant yellow. And then winter was at hand, and that momentous evening came when Auntie Sue said to her pupil, after an hour of most interesting talk, “Brian, why in the world don't you write a book?”
“'A book'!” exclaimed Brian, in a startled tone.
Judy laughed. “He sure ought ter. Lord knows he talks like one.”
“I am in earnest, Brian,” said Auntie Sue, her lovely old eyes shining with enthusiasm and her gentle voice trembling with excitement. “I have been thinking about it for a long time, now, and, to-night, I just can't keep it to myself any longer. Why don't you give to the world some of the thoughts you have been wasting on Judy and me?”
“Hit's sure been a-wastin' of 'em on me,” agreed Judy. “'Fore God, I don't sense what he's a-talkin' 'bout, more'n half the time.”
Brian laughed. “Judy is prophetic, Auntie Sue. She voices perfectly the sentiment of the world toward any book I might write.”
Auntie Sue detected a note of bitterness underlying the laughing comment, and wondered.
Judy spoke again as she arose to retire to her room for the night: “I reckon as how there's a right smart of things youuns talk that'd be mighty fine if a body only had the learnin' ter sense 'em. An' there must be heaps of folks where youuns come from what would know Mr. Burns's meaning if he was to write hit all out plain. Everybody ain't like me. Hit's sure a God's-blessin' they ain't, too.”
“And there, Brian, dear, is your answer,” said Auntie Sue, as Judy left the room. “Any book has meaning only for those who have the peculiar sympathy and understanding needed to interpret it. A book that means nothing to one may be rich in meaning for another. Every writer writes for his own peculiar readers, just as every individual has his own peculiar friends.”
“Or enemies,” said Brian.
“Or enemies,” agreed Auntie Sue.
Brian went to the window, and stood for some time, looking out into the night. Then turning, with a nervous gesture, he paced uneasily up and down the room; while Auntie Sue watched him in silence with an expression of loving concern on her dear old face.
At last, she spoke: “Why, Brian, what is the matter? What have I said? I did not mean to upset you like this. Come, sit down here, and tell me about it. What is it troubles you so?”
With a short laugh, Brian came and stood before her. “I suppose it had to come sooner or later, Auntie Sue. I have been trying for days to muster up courage enough to tell you about it. You have touched the one biggest thing in my life.”
“Why, what do you mean, Brian?”
“I mean just what we have been talking about,—writing,” answered Brian.
“Oh!” she cried, with quick and delighted triumph. “Then I AM right. You have been thinking about it, too.”
“Thinking about it!” he echoed, and in his voice she felt the nervous intensity of his mood. “I have thought of nothing else. All day long when I am at work, I am writing, writing, writing. It is the last thing on my mind when I go to sleep. I dream about it all night. And, it is the first thing I think about in the morning.”
Auntie Sue clasped her hands to her heart with an exclamation of joyous interest.
Brian, with a quiet smile at her enthusiasm, went on: “I know exactly what I want to say, and why I want to say it. There is a world of people, Auntie Sue, whose lives have been broken and spoiled by one thing or another, and who have more or less cut themselves loose from everything, and are just drifting, they don't care a hang where, because they think they have failed so completely that there is nothing more in life for them. People like me,—I don't mean thieves and criminals necessarily,—who have had that which they know to be the best and biggest and truest part of themselves tortured and warped and twisted and denied and smashed and beaten and betrayed and killed; and who, because they feel that their real selves are dead within them, don't care what happens to that part which is left.”
He was walking the floor again now, and speaking with a depth of feeling which he had never before revealed to his gentle companion.
“It is not so much the love of wrong-doing that makes people turn bad,”—he continued,—“it is having their real selves misunderstood and doubted and smothered and their realest loves and dreams and aspirations never recognized, or else distorted and twisted and made to appear as something they hate. I want to make the people—and there are many thousands of them—who are suffering in the living hell that tormented me, feel that I know and understand. And then, Auntie Sue, then I want to tell them about you and your river.
“I would teach them the things you have taught me. I would say to every one that I could persuade to listen: 'It doesn't in the least matter what your experience is, the old river is still going on to the sea. No matter if every woman you ever knew has proved untrue, virtuous womanhood still IS. No matter if every man you ever knew has proved false, true manhood still IS. If every friend you ever had has betrayed your friendship, loyal friendship still IS. If you have found nothing in your experience but dishonesty and falsehood and infidelity and hypocrisy, it is only because you have been unfortunate in your experience; because honesty and fidelity and sincerity are existing FACTS. They are the very foundation facts of life, and can no more fail life than the river can fail to reach the sea.
“'Your little individual experience, my little individual experience,—what are they? They are nothing more than the tiny bubbles, swirls, ripples, and breaks on the surface of the great volume of water that flows so inevitably onward. The bit of foam, the tiny wave caused by twig or branch or blade of water-grass, or the great rocks and cliffs that make the roaring whirlpools and rapids,—do they stay the waters, or turn the river back on its course, or in any way prevent its onward flow? No more can the twigs of circumstances, or the boughs of environment, or the grasses of accident that make the tiny waves of our individual experiences,—or even the great rocks and cliffs of national or racial import,—such as wars, and pestilence, and famine,—finally check or stay the river of life in its onward flow toward the sea of its final and infinite meaning.'”
He went again to the window, and stood looking out into the night as though listening to the voices.
“Why, Auntie Sue,” he said, turning back to the old gentlewoman,—and his face was radiant with the earnestness of this thought,—“Auntie Sue, there are as many currents in our river out there as there are human lives. A comparatively few great main or dominant currents in the river flow—a comparatively few great dominant currents in the river flow of life. But if you look closer, you will see that in each one of those established principal currents there are countless thousands—millions—of tiny currents all turning and twisting across, and back, and up, and down in every direction,—weaving themselves together,—pulling themselves apart,—criss-crossing, clashing,—interlacing,—tangled and confused,—and these are the individual lives. And no matter what the conflict or confusion; no matter what direction they take for the moment, they all, ALL, go to make up the river;—they, all together, ARE the river,—and they all together move onward,—ceaselessly, inevitably, irresistibly.”
He paused to stand smiling down at her, as she sat there in her low chair beside the table with the lamplight on her silvery hair,—there in the little log house by the river.
“That is what you have made your river mean to me, Auntie Sue; and that is what I would give to the world.”
With trembling hands, the gentle old teacher reached for her handkerchief, which lay in the sewing-basket on the table beside her. Smilingly, she wiped away the tears that filled her eyes. Lovingly, she looked up at him,—standing so tall and strong before her, with his reddish hair tumbled and tossed, and his Irish blue eyes lighted with the fire of his inspiration.
“Well,” she said, at last, “why don't you do it, Brian?”
As a breath of air puts out the light of a candle, so the light went from Brian Kent's face. Dropping into his chair, he answered hopelessly, “Because I am afraid.”
“Afraid?” echoed Auntie Sue, troubled and amazed. “What in the world are you afraid of, Brian?”
And the bitter, bitter answer came, “I am afraid of another failure.”
Auntie Sue's quick mind caught the significance of his words. “ANOTHER failure, Brian? Then you,—then you have written before?”
“Yes,” he returned. And not since his decision to remain with her had she seen him so despondent. “To write was the dream and the passion of my life. I tried and tried. God, how I worked and slaved at it! The only result from my efforts was the hell from which you dragged me.”
Alter a little silence, Auntie Sue said gently: “I don't think I understand, Brian. You have never told me about your trouble, you know.”
“It is an old, old story,” he returned. “I am only one of thousands. My wretched experience is not at all uncommon.”
“I know,” she answered. “But don't you think that perhaps you had better tell me? Perhaps, in the mere telling of it to me, now that it is all over, you may find the real reason for—for what happened to you.”
Wise Auntie Sue!—wise in that rarest of all wisdom,—the sympathetic understanding of human hearts and souls.
“You know about my earlier life,” he began; “how, in my boyhood, after mother's death, I worked at anything I could do to keep myself alive, and how I managed to gain a little schooling. I was always dreaming of writing, even then. I took the business course in a night-school, not because I liked it, but because I thought it would help me to earn a living in a way that would give me more time for what I really wanted to do. And after I finished school, and had finally worked up to a good position in that bank, I did have more time for my writing. But,”—he hesitated—“I—well,—other interests had come into my life,—and—”
Auntie Sue said, softly, “She did not understand, Brian.”
“No, she did not understand,” he continued, accepting Auntie Sue's interpretation without comment. “And when my writing brought no money, because no publisher would accept my stuff, and the conditions under which I wrote became intolerable because of misunderstanding and opposition and disbelief in my ability and charges of neglect, I—I—stole money from my employers to gain temporary relief until my writing should amount to something. You see, I could not help believing that I would succeed, in time. I suppose all dreamers have more or less confidence in their dreams: they must, you know, or their dreams would never be realized. I always expected to pay back the money I took with the money I would earn by my pen. But I failed to earn anything, you see; and then—then the inevitable happened, and the river brought me to you.”
“But, my dear boy!” cried Auntie Sue, “all this that you have told me is no reason why you should fear to write now. Indeed, it is a very good reason why you should not fear.”
He looked at her questioningly, and she continued: “You have given every reason in the world why you failed. Your whole life was out of tune. How could you expect to produce anything worthy from such a jangling discord? You should have been afraid, indeed, to write THEN. But, NOW,—now, Brian, you are ready. You are a long, long way down the river from the place of your failures. The disturbing, distracting things are past,—just as in the quiet reach of the river below Elbow Rock the turmoil of the rapids is past. You say that you know exactly what you want to write, and why you want to write it—and you do know—and because you know,—because you have suffered,—because you have learned,—because you can do this thing for others,—it is yours to do, and so you must do it. What you really mean when you say you are 'afraid to write' is, that you are AFRAID NOT TO,” she finished with a little laugh of satisfaction.
And Brian Kent, as he watched her glowing face and felt the sincerity and confidence that vibrated in her voice, was thrilled with a new courage. The fires of his inspiration shone again in his eyes, as he answered, with deep conviction, “Auntie Sue, I believe you are right. What a woman you are!”
So Brian wrote his book that winter.
When the days were fair, he worked with his ax on the mountain-side. But his notebook was ever at hand, and many a thought that went down on the pages of his manuscript was born while he wrought with his hands in the wholesome labor which gave strength to his body and clearness to his brain. In the evenings, he wrote in the little log house by the river, with Auntie Sue sitting in her chair beside the table,—the lamp-light on her silvery hair, and her sewing-basket within reach of her hand,—engaged with some bit of needlework, a book, or perhaps with one of her famous letters to some other pupil, far away. The stormy days gave him many hours with his pen, and so the book grew.
And always as the man endeavored to shape his thoughts for the printed pages that would carry his message to the doubting, disconsolate, and fearful world that he knew so well, he heard in his heart the voices of the river. From the hillside where he worked in the timber he could see the stream winding through the snowy hills like a dark line carelessly drawn with many a crook and curve and break on the sheet of white. From the porch he saw the quiet Bend a belt of shining ice and snow, save for a narrow line in the centre, which marked the course of the strongest currents; while the waters of the rapids crashed black and dreadful against the Elbow Rock cliff, which stood gaunt and grim amid the surrounding whiteness; and in the deathlike hush of the winter twilight, the roar of the turmoil sounded with persistent menace. And all that the river said to him he put down,—so far as it was given him to do.
And that which Brian Kent wrote was good. He knew it—in his deepest, truest self he knew. And Auntie Sue knew it; for, of course, he read to her from his manuscript as the book grew under his hand. Even Judy caught much of his story's meaning, and marvelled at herself because she, too, could understand.
So the spring came, and the first writing of the book was nearly finished.
And now the question arose: What would they do about the final preparation of the manuscript for the printers? Brian explained that he should have a typewritten copy of his script, which he would work over, correct, and revise, and from which perfected copy the final manuscript would be typewritten. But neither Auntie Sue nor Brian would consider his finishing the book anywhere but in the little log house by the river; even if there had been no other reason why Brian should not go to the city, if it could be avoided.
“There is only one thing to do,”—said Auntie Sue, at last, when the matter had been discussed several times,—“we must send for Betty Jo. She has been studying stenography in a business college in Cincinnati, and, in her latest letter to me, she wrote that she would finish in April. I'll just write her to come right here, and bring her typewriter along. She will need a vacation, and she can have it and do your work at the same time. Besides, I need to see Betty Jo. She hasn't been to visit me since before Judy came.”
Brian thought that Auntie Sue seemed a little nervous and excited as she spoke, but he attributed it to her combined interest in the book and in the proposed typist. The man could not know the real cause of his gentle old companion's agitation, nor with what anxiety she had considered the matter for many days before she announced her plan. The fact was that Auntie Sue was taking a big chance, and she realized it fully. But she could find no other way to secure the services of a competent stenographer for Brian, and, as Brian must have a competent stenographer in order to finish his book properly, she had decided to accept the risk.
“That sounds all right, Auntie Sue,” returned Brian. “But who, pray tell, is Betty Jo?”
“Betty Jo is,”—Auntie Sue paused and laughed with a suggestion of embarrassed confusion,—“Betty Jo is—just Betty Jo, Brian,” she finished.
Brian laughed now. “Fine, Auntie Sue! That describes her exactly,—tells me her life's history and gives me a detailed account of her family,—ancestors and all.”
“It describes her with more accuracy than you think,” retorted Auntie Sue, smiling in return at his teasing manner.
“I reckon as how she's got more of er name than that, ain't she?” said Judy, who was a silent, but intensely interested, listener. “I've allus took notice that folks with funny names'll stand a right smart of watchin'.”
Brian and Auntie Sue laughed together at this, but the old lady said, with a show of spirit: “Judy! You know nothing about it! You never even saw Betty Jo! You shouldn't say such things, child.”
“Might as well say 'em as ter think 'em, I reckon,” Judy returned, her beady-black eyes stealthily watching Brian.
“What is your Betty Jo's real name, Auntie Sue?” asked Brian, curiously.
Again Auntie Sue seemed to hesitate; then—“Her name is Miss Betty Jo Williams,” and as she spoke the old teacher looked straight at Brian.
“A perfectly good name,” Brian returned; “but I never heard of her before.”
Judy's black eyes, with their stealthy, oblique look, were now watchfully fixed on Auntie Sue.
“She is the orphan-niece of one of my old pupils,” Auntie Sue continued. “I have known her since she was a baby. When she finished her education in the seminary, and had travelled abroad for a few months, she decided all at once that she wanted a course in a business college, which was just what any one knowing her would expect her to do.”
“Sounds steady and reliable,” commented Brian. “But will she come?”
“Yes, indeed, she will, and be tickled to death over the job,” returned Auntie Sue. “I'll write her at once.”
While Auntie Sue was preparing to write her letter, Judy muttered, in a tone which only Brian heard: “Just the same, 'tain't no name for a common gal ter have; hit sure ain't. There's somethin' dad burned queer 'bout hit somewhere.”
“Nonsense! Judy,” said Brian in a low voice; “don't worry Auntie Sue.”
“I ain't aimin' ter worry her none,” returned the mountain girl; “but I'll bet you-all a pretty that this here gal'll worry both of youuns 'fore you are through with her;—me, too, I reckon.”
For some reason, Auntie Sue's letter to Betty Jo seemed to be rather long. In fact, she spent the entire evening at it; which led Judy to remark that “hit sure looked like Auntie Sue was aimin' ter write a book herself.”
A neighbor who went to Thompsonville the following day with a load of hogs for shipment, posted the letter. And, in due time, another neighbor brought the answer. Betty Jo would come.
It was the day following the evening when Brian wrote the last page of his book that another letter came to Auntie Sue,—a letter which, for the second time, very nearly wrecked Brian Kent's world.
Brian was working in the garden. It was early in the afternoon, and the man, as he worked in the freshly ploughed ground, was rejoicing at the completion of his book.
Straightening up from his labor, he drew a deep breath of the fragrant air. About him on every side, and far away into the blue distance, the world was dressed in the gala dress of the season. The river, which at the breaking of the winter had been a yellow flood that washed the top of the bank in front of the house and covered the bottom-lands on the opposite side, was again its normal self, and its voice to him, now, was a singing voice of triumphal gladness.
For Brian, too, the world was new, and fresh, and beautiful. The world of his winter was gone. He had found himself in his work, and in the glorious consciousness of the fact he felt like shouting with sheer joy of living.
“And Auntie Sue, dear Auntie Sue,” he thought, looking with love in his eyes toward the house, how wonderful she had been in her helpful understanding and never-failing faith in him. After all, it was Auntie Sue's triumph more than it was his.
His happy musing was interrupted by a neighbor who, on his way home from Thompsonville, stopped at the garden fence with the letter for Auntie Sue.
Brian took the letter with a jest which brought a roar of laughter from the mountaineer, and, when the latter had gone on his way up the hill, started toward the house to find Auntie Sue.
Glancing at the envelope in his hand, Brian noticed the postmark “Buenos Aires.” He stopped suddenly, staring dumbly at the words in the circular mark and at the name written on the envelope. Over and over, he read “Buenos Aires,—Miss Susan Wakefield; Buenos Aires,—Miss Susan Wakefield.” Something—His brain seemed to be numb. His hands trembled. He looked about at the familiar surroundings, and everything seemed suddenly strange and unreal to him. He looked again at the letter in his hand, turning it curiously. A strange feeling of oppression and ominous foreboding possessed him as though the bright spring sky were all at once overcast with heavy and menacing storm-clouds. What was it? “Buenos Aires,—Susan Wakefield?” Where had he seen that combination before? What was it that made the name of the Argentine city in connection with Auntie Sue's name seem so familiar? Slowly, he went on to the house, and, finding Auntie Sue, gave her the letter.
“Oh!” cried the old lady, as she saw the postmark on the envelope. “It must be from brother John. It is not John's writing, though,” she added, as she opened the envelope.
And at her words the feeling of impending disaster so oppressed Brian Kent that only by an effort could he control himself. He was possessed of the strange sensation of having at some time in the past lived the identical experience through which he was at that moment passing. “Susan Wakefield;—a brother John in Buenos Aires, Argentine;—the letter!” It was all so familiar that the allusion was startling in its force. But that ominous cloud,—that sense of some great trouble near that filled him with such unaccountable dread—what could it mean?
An exclamation from Auntie Sue drew his attention. She looked at him with tear-filled eyes, and her sweet voice broke as she said: “Brian! Brian! John is dead! This—this letter is from the doctor who attended him.”
Tenderly, as he would have helped his own mother, Brian assisted Auntie Sue to her room. For a little while he sat with her, trying to comfort her with such poor words as he could find.
Briefly, she told him of the brother who had lived in Argentine for many years. He had married a South-American woman whom Auntie Sue had never seen, and while not wealthy had been moderately prosperous. But he had never forgotten his sister who was so alone in the world. “Several times, when he could, he sent me money for my savings-bank account,” she finished simply, her sweet old voice low and tender with the memories of the years that were gone. “John and I were always very fond of each other. He was a good man, Brian.”
Brian Kent sat like a man stricken dumb. Auntie Sue's words, “he sent me money for my savings-bank account,” had made the connection between the names “Buenos Aires, Argentine; John Wakefield; Susan Wakefield,” and the thing for which his mind had been groping with such a sense of impending disaster.
In her grief over the death of her brother, and in her memories of their home years so long past, dear old Auntie Sue had forgotten the peculiar meaning her words might have for the former clerk of the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank who sat beside her, and to whom she turned in her sorrow as a mother to a dearly beloved son.
“But it is all right, Brian, dear,” she said with brave cheerfulness. “When one has watched the sunsets for seventy years, one ceases to fear the coming of the night, for always there is the morning. Just let me rest here alone for a little while, and I will be myself again.”
She looked up at him with a smile, and Brian Kent, kneeling beside the bed, bowed his head and caught the dear old hands to his lips. Without trusting himself to speak again, the man left the room,—closing the door.
He moved about the apartment as one in a dream. With a vividness that was torture, he lived again that hour in the bank when, opening the afternoon mail, he had found the letter from Susan Wakefield with the Argentine notes, which her letter said she had received from her brother John in Buenos Aires, and which she was sending to the bank for deposit to her little account. It had been a very unbusinesslike letter and a very unbusinesslike way to transmit money. It was, indeed, this nature of the transaction that had tempted the hard-pressed clerk.
Mechanically, Brian stopped at his writing-table to finger the manuscript which he had finished the evening before. Was it only the evening before? Taking up the volume of closely written sheets which were bound together by a shoestring that Auntie Sue had laughingly found for him, when he had so joyously announced the completion of the last page of his book, he turned the leaves idly,—reading here and there a sentence with curious interest. The terrific mental strain of his situation completely divorced him, as it were, from the life which he had lived during those happy months just past, and which was so fully represented by his work.
Again the river, swinging around a sudden turn in its course, had come upon a passage where its peaceful flow was broken by the wild turmoil of the troubled waters.
“And Auntie Sue,”—something within the man's self was saying,—“dear Auntie Sue, who had saved him, not only from death, but from the hell of the life that he had formerly lived, as well; and whose loving companionship and sympathetic understanding had so inspired and strengthened him in the work which had been the passionate desire of his heart;—the gentle old teacher whose life had been so completely given to others, and who, in the helplessness of her last years, was so alone,—Auntie Sue was depending upon that money which her brother had sent her as the only support of the closing days of her life. Auntie Sue believed that her money was safe in the bank. That belief was to her a daily comfort. Auntie Sue did not know that she was almost penniless;—that the man whom she had saved with such a wondrous salvation had robbed her, and left her so shamefully without means for the necessities of life. Auntie Sue did not know. But she would know,”—that inner voice went on. “The time would come when she would learn the truth. It was certain to come. It might come any day. Then—then—”
As one moving without conscious purpose, Brian Kent went from the house,—the manuscript in his hand.
Judy was sitting idly on the porch steps. At sight of the mountain girl the man knew all at once that there was one thing he must do. He must make sure that there was no mistake. He was already sure, of course; but still, as a condemned man at the scaffold hopes against hope for a stay of sentence, so he caught at the shadowy suggestion of a possibility.
“Come with me, Judy,” he said, forcing himself to speak coolly; “I want to talk with you.”
Judy arose, and, looking at him in her stealthy, oblique way, said, in her drawling monotone: “What's happened ter Auntie Sue? Was there somethin' in that there letter Bud Jackson give you-all for her what's upset her?”
“Auntie Sue's brother is dead, Judy,” Brian answered. “She wishes to be alone, and we must not disturb her. She will be all right in a little while. Come, let us walk down toward the bluff.”
When they had reached a spot on the river-bank a short distance above the Elbow Rock cliff, Brian said to his companion: “Judy, I want you to tell me something. Did Auntie Sue ever send money in a letter to the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank, in Chicago?”
“The black, beady eyes shifted evasively, and the mountain girl turned her sallow, old-young face away from Brian's direct gaze.
“Look at me, Judy.”
She sent a stealthy, oblique glance in his direction.
“You must tell me.”
“I done started ter tell you-all onct,—that time pap ketched me,—an' you-all 'lowed as how I oughten ter tell nothin' 'bout Auntie Sue to nobody.”
“But it is different now, Judy,” returned Brian. “Something has happened that makes it necessary for me to know.”
“Meanin' that there letter 'bout her brother bein' dead?” asked Judy, shrewdly.
“Yes.”
“What you-all got ter know for?”
“Because—” Brian could not finish.
Judy's beady eyes were watching him intently, now. “Hit looks like you-all ain't a-needin' me ter tell you-all anythin',” she observed dryly.
“Then Auntie Sue did send money?”
“She sure did. I seed her fix hit in the letter, myself,” came the answer.
“What kind of money?”
“I dunno,—some funny kind hit was,—what her brother done sent her from some funny place, I dunno just where.”
“When did she send it?”
“'Bout a month 'fore you come.”
“And—and did any letter ever come from the bank to tell her that the money was received by them all right?”
The mountain girl did not answer, but again turned her face away.
“Tell me,” Brian insisted. “I—I—must know, Judy,” and his voice was harsh and broken with emotion.
The answer came reluctantly: “I reckon you-all knows where that there money went ter.”
The girl's answer sent a new thought like a hot iron into Brian Kent's tortured brain. He caught Judy's arm in quick and fearful excitement. “Judy!” he gasped, imploringly, “Judy, do you—? does Auntie Sue know—? does she know that I—?”
“How could she help knowin'? She ain't no fool. An' I done heard that there Sheriff an' the deteckertive man tellin' her 'bout you an' the bank. An' the Sheriff, he done give her a paper what he said told all 'bout what you-all done, an' she must er burned the paper, or done somethin' with hit, 'cause I couldn't never find hit after that night. An' what would she do that for? And what for did she make me promise not ter ever say nothin' ter you-all 'bout that there money letter? An' why ain't she said nothin' to you 'bout the letter from the bank not comin', if she didn't know hit was you 'stead of them what done got the money?”
The girl paused for a moment, and then went on in a tone of reverent wonder: “An' to think that all the time she could a-turned you-all over to that there Sheriff an' got the money-reward to pay her back what you-all done tuck.”
Brian Kent was as one who had received a mortal hurt. His features were distorted with suffering. With eyes that could not see, he looked down at the manuscript to which he still unconsciously clung; and, again, he fingered the pages of his work as though some blind instinct were sending his tormented soul to seek relief in the message which, during the happy months just past, he had written for others.
And the deformed mountain girl, who stood before him with twisted body and old-young face, grew fearful as she watched the suffering of this man whom she had come to look upon as a superior being from some world which she, in her ignorance, could never know.
“Mr. Burns,” she said at last, putting out her hand and plucking at his sleeve, “Mr. Burns, you-all ain't got no call ter be like this. You-all ain't plumb bad. I knows you ain't, 'count of the way you-all have been ter me an' 'cause you kept pap from hurtin' me, an' 'cause you are takin' care of Auntie Sue like you're doin'. Hit ain't no matter 'bout the money, now, 'cause you-all kin take care of her allus.”
Brian looked up from the manuscript in his hand, and stared dumbly at the girl, as if he failed to hear her clearly.
“An' just think 'bout your book,” Judy continued pleadingly. “Think 'bout all them fine things you-all have done wrote down for everybody ter read,—'bout the river allus a-goin' on just the same, no matter what happens, an' 'bout Auntie Sue an'—”
She stopped, and drew away from him, frightened at the look that came into the man's face.
“Don't, Mr. Burns! Don't!” she half-screamed. “'Fore God, you-all oughten ter look like that!”
The man threw up his head, and laughed,—laughed as the wild, reckless and lost Brian Kent had laughed that black night when, in the drifting boat, he had cursed the life he was leaving and had drunk his profane toast to the darkness into which he was being carried.
Raising the manuscript, which represented all that the past months of his re-created life had meant to him, and grasping it in both hands, he shook it contemptuously, as he said, with indescribable bitterness and the reckless surrendering of every hope: “'All them fine things that I have wrote down for everybody ter read.'” He mimicked her voice with a sneer, and laughed again. Then: “It's all a lie, Judy, dear;—a damned lie. Auntie Sue is a saint, and believes it. She made me believe it for a little while,—her beautiful, impossible dream-philosophy of the river. The river,—hell!—the river is as treacherous and cruel and false and tricky and crooked as life itself! And I am as warped and twisted in mind and soul as you are in body, Judy, dear. Neither of us can help it. We were made that way by the river. To hell with the whole impossible mess of things!” With a gesture of violent rage, he turned toward the river, and, taking a step forward, lifted the manuscript high above his head.
Judy screamed, “Mr. Burns, don't!”
He paused an instant, and, turning his head, looked at her with another laugh.
“'Fore God, you dassn't do that!” she implored.
And then, as the man turned his face from her, and his arms went back above his head for the swing that would send the manuscript far out into the tumbling waters of the rapids, she leaped toward him, and, catching his arm, hampered his movement so that the book fell a few feet from the shore, where the water, checked a little in its onward rush to the cliff by the irregular bank, boiled and eddied among the rocky ledges and huge boulders that retarded its force. Another leap carried the mountain girl to the edge of the bank, where she crouched like a runner ready for the report of the starter's pistol, her black, beady eyes searching the stream for the volume of manuscript, which had disappeared from sight, drawn down by the troubled swirling currents.
The man, watching her, laughed in derision; but, while his mocking laughter was still on his lips, the boiling currents brought the book, again, to the surface, and Brian saw the girl leave the bank as if thrown by a powerful spring. Straight and true she dived for the book, and even as she disappeared beneath the surface her hands clutched the manuscript.
For a second, Brian Kent held his place as if paralyzed with horror. Then, as Judy's head appeared farther down the stream, he ran with all his strength along the bank to gain a point a little ahead of the swimming girl before he should leap to her rescue.
But Judy, trained from her birth on that mountain river, knew better than Brian what to do. A short distance below the point where she had plunged into the stream, a huge boulder, some two or three feet from the shore, caused a split in the current, one fork of which set in toward the bank. Swimming desperately, the girl gained the advantage of this current, and, just as Brian reached the spot, she was swept against the bank, where, with her free hand, she caught and held fast to a projecting root. Had she been carried past that point, nothing could have saved her from being swept on into the wild turmoil of the waters at Elbow Rock.
It was the work of a moment for Brian to throw himself flat on the ground at the edge of the bank and, reaching down, to grasp the girl's wrist. Another moment, and she was safe beside him, his manuscript still tightly held under one arm.
Not realizing, in his excitement, what he was doing, Brian shook the girl, saying angrily: “What in the world do you mean, taking such a crazy-fool chance as that!”
She broke away from him with: “Well, what'd you-all go an' do such a dad burned fool thing for? Hit's you-all what's crazy yourself—plumb crazy!”
Brian held out his hand: “Give me that manuscript!”
Judy clutched the book tighter, and drew back defiantly. “I won't. You-all done throwed hit away onct. 'Tain't your'n no more, nohow.”
“Well, what do you purpose to do with it?” said the puzzled man, in a gentler tone.
“I aims ter give hit ter Auntie Sue,” came the startling reply. “I reckon she'll know what ter do. Hit allus was more her'n than your'n, anyhow. You done said so yourself. I heard you only last night when you-all was so dad burned tickled at gittin' hit done. You-all ain't got no right ter sling hit inter the river, an', anyway, I ain't a-goin' ter let you.”
“Which sounds very sensible to me,” came a clear voice from a few feet distant.
Judy and Brian turned quickly, to face a young woman who stood regarding them thoughtfully, with a suggestion of a smile on her very attractive face.