Forrest paused when his explorations had brought him to the edge of the beechwood, all dappled with golden lights and umber shadows, and stood for a time brooding upon those intimate lawns and flowery gardens that seemed, as it were, but roofless extensions of the wide, open house.
It is probable that his brooding had in it an estimate of the cost of these things. It was thus that he had looked upon the blooded horses in the river-fields and the belted cattle in the meadows. It was thus that his grave eyes passed beyond the gardens and moved from corner to corner of the house, from sill to cornice, relating the porticos and interminable row of French windows to dollars and cents. He had, of course, been of one mind, and now he was of two; but that octagonal slug of California minting, by which he resolved his doubts, fell heads, and he stepped with an acquiescent reluctance from the dappled shadows into the full sunlight of the gardens and moved slowly, with a kind of awkward and cadaverous grandeur, toward the house. He paused by the sundial to break a yellow rose from the vine out of which its fluted supporting column emerged. So standing, and regarding the rose slowly twirled in his fingers, he made a dark contrast to the brightly-colored gardens. His black cape hung in unbroken lines from his gaunt shoulders to his knees, and his face had the modeling and the gentle gloom of Dante's.
The rose fell from his hand, and he moved onward through the garden and entered the house as nonchalantly as if it had been his own. He found himself in a cool dining-room, with a great chimney-piece and beaded white paneling. The table was laid for seven, and Forrest's intuitive good taste caused his eyes to rest with more than passing interest upon the stately loving-cup, full of roses, that served for a centre-piece. But from its rosy garlands caught up in the mouths of demon-heads he turned suddenly to the portrait over the chimney-piece. It was darker and more sedate than the pictures to which Forrest was accustomed, but in effect no darker or more sedate than himself. The gentleman of the portrait, a somewhat pouchy-cheeked, hook-nosed Revolutionary, in whose wooden and chalky hand was a rolled document, seemed to return Forrest's glance with a kind of bored courtesy.
"That is probably the Signer," thought Forrest, and he went closer. "A great buck in your time," he approved.
The butler entered the dining-room from the pantry, and, though a man accustomed to emergencies, was considerably nonplussed at the sight of the stranger. That the stranger was a bona fide stranger, James, who had served the Ballins for thirty years, knew; but what manner of stranger, and whether a rogue or a man upon legitimate business, James could not so much as guess.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "were you looking for some one?"
"Yes," said Forrest, perfectly at his ease, "and no."
"Shall I tell Mr. Ballin that you are here, sir?"
"I shall find him for myself, thank you," said Forrest, and he moved toward an open door that seemed to lead into the hall.
"By the way," he said, "there will be an extra at luncheon."
Very stately in his long, black cape, and with his pensive Dantesque face, Forrest continued on his slow progress to the open door and went out of the dining-room. He crossed the hall with half an eye to its quiet tones and bowls of roses, and entered a room of bright chintz with a pattern of cornflowers, and full of sunlight. It was a very spacious room, and lively—a proper link between the gardens and the house; and here were many photographs in silver frames of smart men and women; and the Sunday papers with their colored supplements were strewn in disorder upon the floor. And it seemed to Forrest, so comfortable and intimate did it look, as if that room had been a part of his own life. Upon the blotter of a writing-table sprawled a check-book bound in yellow leather. And when Forrest saw that, he smiled. It came as a surprise that the teeth in that careworn face should be white and even. And in those rare and charming moments of his smiling he looked like a young man who has made many engagements with life which he proposes to fulfil, instead of like a man for whom the curious years reserve but one sensation more.
But Forrest did not remain any appreciable time in the cheerful living-room. A desire to explain and have it all over with was upon him; and he passed, rapidly now, from room to room, until in a far corner of the house he entered a writing-room furnished in severe simplicity with dark and dully-shining rosewood. This room was of an older fashion than any he had yet entered, and he guessed that it had been the Signer's workshop and had been preserved by his descendants without change. A pair of flintlock pistols, glinting silver, lay upon the desk; quill pens stood in a silver cup full of shot; a cramped map, drawn and colored by hand and yellow with age, hung above the mantel and purported, in bold printing with flourishes, to be The Proposed Route for the Erie Canal. Portraits of General Greene and Thomas Jefferson, by Stuart, also hung upon the walls. And there stood upon an octagonal table a bowl of roses.
There was a gentleman in the embrasure of a window, smoking a cigar and looking out. But at the sound of Forrest's step he turned an alert, close-cropped, gray head and stepped out of the embrasure.
"Mr. Ballin?" said Forrest.
"I am Mr. Ballin." His eyes perused the stranger with astonishing speed and deftness, without seeming to do so.
"It was the toss of a coin that decided me to come," said Forrest. "I have asked your butler to lay a place for me at luncheon."
So much assumption on the part of a stranger has a cheeky look in the printing. Yet Forrest's tone and manner far more resembled those of old friendship and intimacy than impertinence.
"Have I," said Ballin, smiling a little doubtfully, "ever had the pleasure of meeting you before? I have a poor memory for faces. But it seems to me that I should not have forgotten yours."
"You never saw me but the one time," said Forrest. "That was many years ago, and you would not remember. You were a—little wild that night. You sat against me at a game of faro. But even if you had been yourself—I have changed very much. I was at that time, as you were, little more than a boy."
"Good Lord!" said Ballin, "were you a part of that hectic flush that to myself I only refer to as 'Sacramento'?"
"You do not look as if it had turned you into a drinking man," saidForrest.
"It didn't," said Ballin, and without seeing any reason for confiding in the stranger he proceeded to do so. "It was nip and tuck for a time," he said, "and then money came to me, and this old place and responsibilities, and I became, more from force of circumstances than from any inner impulse, a decentish citizen."
"The money made everything smooth, did it?" said Forrest. "I wonder."
"You wonder—what?" said Ballin.
"If it could—money alone. I have had it at times—not as you have had it—but in large, ready sums. Yet I think it made very little difference."
"What have you been doing since—Sacramento?" asked Ballin.
"Up to a month ago," said Forrest, "I kept on dealing—in different parts of the world—in San Francisco, in London—Cairo—Calcutta. And then the matter which brings me here was brought to my attention."
"Yes?" said Ballin, a little more coolly.
"When you were in Sacramento," Forrest went on quietly and evenly as if stating an acknowledged fact, "you did not expect to come into all this. Then your cousin, Ranger Ballin, and his son went down in the City of Pittsburgh; and all this"—he made a sudden, sweeping gesture with one of his long, well-kept hands—"came to you."
"Yes?" Ballin's voice still interrogated coolly.
Forrest broke into that naïve, boyish smile of his.
"My dear sir," said he, "I saw a play last winter in which the question is asked, 'Do you believe in Fairies?' I ask you, 'Do you believe in Gypsies?'"
"In what way?" Ballin asked, and he, too, smiled.
"Ranger Ballin," said Forrest, "had another son who was spirited away in childhood by the gypsies. That will explain this visit, which on the face of it is an impertinence. It will explain why I have entered this house without knocking, and have invited myself to luncheon. You see, sir, all this"—and again he made the sudden, sweeping gesture—"is mine."
It speaks for Forrest's effect that, although reason told Ballin to doubt this cataclysmic statement, instinct convinced him that it was true. Yet what its truth might mean to him did not so convincingly appear. That he might be ousted from all that he looked on as his own did not yet occur to him, even vaguely.
"Then we are cousins," he said simply, and held out his hand. ButForrest did not take it at once.
"Do you understand what cousinship with me means to you?" he said.
"Why," said Ballin, "if youaremy cousin"—he tried to imply the doubt that he by no means felt—"there is surely enough for us both."
"Enough to make up for the years when there has been nothing?" Forrest smiled.
"It is a matter for lawyers to discuss, then," said Ballin quietly. "Personally, I do not doubt that you believe yourself to be my cousin's son. But there is room, surely, in others for many doubts."
"Not in others," said Forrest, "who have been taught to know that two and two are four."
"Have you documentary proof of this astonishing statement?" said Ballin.
"Surely," said Forrest. And he drew from an inner pocket a bundle of documents bound with a tape. Ballin ran a perturbed but deft eye through them, while Forrest stood motionless, more like a shadow than a man. Then, presently, Ballin looked up with a stanch, honorable look.
"I pick no flaws here cousin," he said. "I—I congratulate you."
"Cousin," said Forrest, "it has been my business in life to see others take their medicine. But I have never seen so great a pill swallowed so calmly. Will you offer me your hand now?"
Ballin offered his hand grimly.
Then he tied the documents back into their tape and offered the bundle to Forrest.
"I am a careless man," said Forrest; "I might lose them. May I ask you to look after them for me?"
"Would you leave me alone with them?" asked Ballin.
"Of course," said Forrest.
Ballin opened an old-fashioned safe in the paneling and locked it upon the despoiling documents. Yet his heart, in spite of its dread and bitterness, was warmed by the trustfulness of the despoiler.
"And now what?" he said.
"And now," said Forrest, "remember for a little while only that I am, let us say, an old friend of your youth. Forget for the present, if you can, who else I am, and what my recrudescence must mean to you. It is not a happiness"—he faltered with his winning smile—"to give pain."
"Your father," said Forrest, "says that I may have his seat at the head of the table. You see, Miss Dorothy, in the world in which I have lived there were no families. And I have the strongest desire to experiment in some of those things which I have missed…. Ballin," he exclaimed, "how lovely your daughters are!"
The young Earl of Moray glanced up mischievously.
"Do you think, sir," he drawled, "that I have made the best selection under the circumstances? Sometimes I think I ought to have made up to Ellen instead of Dorothy."
"What's the matter withus?" said Alice, and she laid her hand uponEvelyn's.
"Oh, you little rotters!" exclaimed the earl, whom they sometimes teased to the point of agony. "No man in his senses would look atyou."
"Right-O!" said young Stephen Ballin, who made the eighth at table. "They're like germs," he explained to Forrest—"very troublesome to deal with."
"It's because we're twins," said Evelyn. "Everybody who isn't twins is down on them."
"It's because they are always beautiful and good," said Alice. "Why don't you stand up for us, father?"
It was noticed that Mr. Ballin was not looking well; that the chickenmousseupon his plate was untouched, and that he fooled with his bread, breaking it, crumbling it, and rolling it into pellets. He pulled himself together and smiled upon his beloved twins.
Forrest had turned to the Earl of Moray.
"Was it your ancestor," he said, "who 'was a bra' gallant, and who raid at the gluve'?"
"I am confident of it," said the young Englishman.
"By all accounts," said Forrest, "he would have been a good hand with a derringer. Have you that gift for games?"
"I'm a very good golfer." said the earl, "but I thought a derringer was a kind of dish that babies ate gruel out of." He blushed becomingly.
"As ever," said Alice, "insular and ignorant."
"You prickly baby!" exclaimed the earl. "What is a derringer, Mr.Forrest?"
Forrest, having succeeded in drawing the attention of his immediate and prospective family from the ill looks of Mr. Ballin, proposed to keep his advantage.
"I will show you," he said. "Are my hands empty?"
"Quite so," said the earl.
"Keep your eyes on them," said Forrest, "so. Now, we will suppose that you have good reason to believe that I have stolen your horse. Call me a horse thief."
"Sir," said the earl, entering into the spirit of the game, "you are a horse thief!"
There appeared in Forrest's right hand, which had seemed empty, which had seemed not to move or to perform in any celeritous and magic manner, a very small, stubby, nickel pistol, with a caliber much too great for it, and down whose rifled muzzle the earl found himself gazing. The earl was startled. But he said, "I was mistaken, sir; you are not a horse thief." As mysteriously as it had come, the wicked little derringer disappeared. Forrest's hands remained innocently in plain view of all.
"Oh," said Alice, "if you had only pulled the trigger!"
Evelyn giggled.
"Frankly, Mr. Forrest," said the earl, "aren't the twins loathsome? But tell me, can you shoot that thing as magically as you play tricks with it?"
"It's not a target gun," said Forrest. "It's for instantaneous work at close range. One could probably hit a tossed coin with it, but one must have more weight and inches to the barrel and less explosion for fine practice."
"What would you call fine practice?" asked Stephen.
"Oh," said Forrest, "a given leg of a fly at twenty paces, or to snip a wart from a man's hand at twenty-five."
Mr. Ballin rose.
"I'm not feeling well," he said simply; "when the young people have finished with you, Forrest, you will find me in the Signer's room." He left the table and the room, very pale and shaky, for by this time the full meaning of Forrest's incontestable claim had clarified in his brain. He saw himself as if struck down by sudden poverty—of too long leisure and too advanced Forrest finished as abruptly as he had begun and rose from the piano. But for a few charged moments even the twins were silent.
"He used to sing that song," said Forrest, "so that the cold chills went galloping the length of a man's spine. He was as like you to look at," he turned to the earl, "as one star is like another. I cannot tell you how it has moved me to meet you. We were in a place called Grub Gulch, placer-mining—half a dozen of us. I came down with the scarlet fever. The others bolted, all but Charlie Stuart. He stayed. But by the time I was up, thanks to him, he was down—thanks to me. He died of it." Forrest finished very gravely.
"Good Lord!" said the earl.
"Hemight ha' been a king," said Forrest. And he swallowed the lump that rose in his throat, and turned away so that his face could not be seen by them.
But, presently, he flashed about with his winning smile.
"What, would all you rich young people do if you hadn't a sou in the world?"
"Good Lord!" said Stephen, "everything I know how to do decently costs money."
"I feel sure," said Alice, her arm about Evelyn's waist, "that our beauty and goodness would seeusthrough."
"I," said Ellen, "would quietly curl up and die."
"I," said Dorothy, "would sell my earl to the highest bidder."
"I shouldn't bring tuppence," said the earl.
"But you," said Forrest to the earl, "what would you do if you were stone-broke?"
"I would marry Dorothy to-morrow," said the earl, "instead of waiting until September. Fortunately, I have a certain amount of assets that the law won't allow me to get rid of."
"I wish you could," said Forrest.
"Why?" The earl wrinkled his eyebrows.
"I would like to see what you would do." He laid his hand lightly upon the young Englishman's shoulder. "You don't mind? I am an old man," he said, "but I cannot tell you—what meeting you has meant to me. I want you to come with me now, for a few minutes, to Mr. Ballin. Will you?"
"Mr. Ballin," said Forrest, his hand still on the earl's shoulder, "I want you to tell this young man what only you and I know."
Ballin looked up from his chair with the look of a sick man.
"It's this, Charlie," he said in a voice that came with difficulty. "It's a mistake to suppose that I am a rich man. Everything in this world that I honestly thought belonged to me belongs to Mr. Forrest."
The earl read truth in the ashen, careworn face of his love's father.
"But surely," he said anxiously, "Dorothy is still yours—to give."
Forrest's dark and brooding countenance became as if suddenly brightly lighted.
"My boy—my boy!" he cried, and he folded the wriggling and embarrassedStuart in his long, gaunt arms.
I think an angel bringing glad tidings might have looked as Forrest did when, releasing the Earl of Moray, he turned upon the impulse and began to pour out words to Ballin.
"When I found out who I was," he said, "and realized for how long—oh, my Lord! how long—others had been enjoying what was mine, and that I had rubbed myself bare and bleeding against all the rough places of life, will you understand what a rage and bitterness against you all possessed me? And I came—oh, on wings—to trample, and to dispossess, and to sneer, and to send you packing…. But first the peace of the woods and the meadows, and the beech wood and the gardens, and the quiet hills and the little brooks staggered me. And then you—the way you took it, cousin!—all pale and wretched as you were; you were so calm, and you admitted the claim at once—and bore up…. Then I began to repent of the bitterness in which I had come…. And I left the papers in your keeping…. I thought—for I have known mostly evil—that, perhaps, you would destroy them…. It never entered your head…. Your are clean white—and so are your girls and your boy…. I did not expect to find white people in possession. Why should I?… But I said, 'Surely the Englishman isn't white—he is after the money.' But right away I began to have that feeling, too, smoothed out of me…. And now, when he finds that instead of Dorothy being an heiress she is a pauper, he says, 'But surely, Dorothy is still yours to give!'
"I was a fool to come. Yet I am glad."
Neither Ballin nor the earl spoke.
"Could I have this room to myself for a little while?" asked Forrest.
"Of course," said Ballin; "it is yours."
Forrest bowed; the corners of his mouth turned a little upward.
"Will you come back in an hour—you, alone, cousin?"
Ballin nodded quietly.
"Come along, Charlie," he said, and together they left the room. Butwhen Ballin returned alone, an hour later, the room was empty. Upon theSigner's writing-desk was a package addressed collectively to "TheBallins," and in one corner was written, "Blood will tell."
The package, on being opened, proved to contain nothing more substantial than ashes. And by the donor thereof there was never given any further sign.
A little one-act play, sufficiently dramatic, is revived from time to time among the Latin races for long runs. The play is of simplified, classic construction. But the principal part is variously interpreted by different actors. The minor characters, a priest and an officer, have no great latitude for individuality, while the work of the chorus comes as near mathematics as anything human can. The play is a passion play. No actor has ever played the principal part more than once. And the play differs from other plays in this, also, that there are not even traditional lines for the principal character to speak. He may say whatever comes into his head. He may say nothing. He may play his part with reticence or melodramatically. It does not matter. His is what actors call a fat part; it cannot be spoiled. And at the climax and curtain he may sink slowly to the ground or fall upon his back or upon his face. It does not matter. Once, before falling, a man leaped so violently upward and forward as to break the ropes with which his legs and arms were bound. Those who saw this performance cannot speak of it to this day without a shudder.
Under the management of General Weyler in Cuba this little play enjoyed, perhaps, its longest continuous run. Curiously enough, there were absolutely no profits to be divided at the end. But, then, think of the expense of production! Why, to enable the General to stage that play for so many nights—I mean sunrises—required the employment of several hundred thousand men and actually bankrupted a nation. In this world one must pay like the devil for one's fancies. Think what Weyler paid: all the money that his country could beg or borrow; then his own reputation as a soldier, as a statesman, and as a man; ending with a series of monstrous mortgages on his own soul. For which, when it is finally sold at auction, there will not be bid so much as one breath of garlic.
When Juan D'Acosta's mother heard that her younger son Manual had been taken prisoner by the Spaniards and was to be shot the following morning at sunrise she sat for an hour motionless, staring at the floor. Juan, as is, or was, well known, had died gloriously, a cigarette between his lips, after inestimable, if secret, services to Cuba. Nor had his execution been entirely a martyrdom. He was shot for a spy. He was a spy, and a very daring, clever, and self-effacing one. He had been caught within the Spanish lines with incriminating papers upon his person. And before they could secure him he had had the eternal satisfaction of ripping open two Spaniards with his knife so that they died. He was executed without a trial. His mother went out with others of his relatives to see him die. The memory of his dying had remained with her to comfort her for the fact of it. She had seen him, calm, and in her eyes very beautiful, standing in strong relief with his back to a white wall, a cigarette between his lips. There had not been the slightest bravado in his perfect self-possession. It had been that of a gentleman, which he was not by birth, and a man of the world; quiet, retiring and attentive. He had looked so courteous, so kind-hearted, so pure! He had spoken—on either side of his cigarette—for some moments to the priest, apologizing through him to God for whatever spots there may have been upon his soul. Then his eyes had sought his mother's among the spectators and remained steadfastly upon them, smiling, until the exactions of his part demanded that he face more to the front and look into the muzzles of the Mausers. The fire of his cigarette having burned too close to his lips for comfort, and his hands being tied, he spat the butt out of his mouth and allowed the last taste of smoke which he was to enjoy on earth to curl slowly off through his nostrils. Then, for it was evident that the edge of the sun would show presently above the rim of the world, he had drawn a breath or two of the fresh morning air and had spoken his last words in a clear, controlled voice.
"Whenever one of us dies," he had said, "it strengthens the cause of liberty instead of weakening it. I am so sure of this that I would like to come to life after being shot, so that I might be taken and shot again and again and again. You, my friends, are about to fireforCuba, not against her. Therefore, I thank you. I think that is all. Christ receive me."
The impact of the volley had flattened him backward against the wall with shocking violence, but he had remained on his feet for an appreciable interval of time and had then sunk slowly to his knees and had fallen quietly forward upon his face.
So her older boy had died, honoring himself and his country, after serving his country only. The memory of his life, deeds and dying was a comfort to her. And when she learned that Manuel, too, was to be shot, and sat staring at the floor, it was not entirely of Manuel that she was thinking. She did not love Manuel as she had loved Juan. He had not been a comfort to her in any way. He had been a sneaking, cowardly child; he had grown into a vicious and cowardly young man. He was a patriot because he was afraid not to be; he had enlisted in the Cuban army because he was afraid not to. He had even participated in skirmishes, sweating with fear and discharging his rifle with his eyes closed. But he had been clever enough to conceal his white feathers, and he could talk in a modest, purposeful way, just like a genuine hero. He was to be shot, not because he was himself, but because he was Juan's brother. The Spaniards feared the whole family as a man fears a hornet's nest in the eaves and, because one hornet has stung him, wages exterminating war upon all hornets. In Manuel's case, however, there was a trial, short and unpleasant. The man was on his knees half the time, blubbering, abjuring, perspiring, and begging for mercy; swearing on his honor to betray his country wherever and whenever possible; to fight against her, to spy within her defenses and plans—anything, everything!
His judges were not impressed. They believed him to be acting. He was one of the D'Acostas; Juan's brother, Ferdinand's son—a hornet. Not the same type of hornet, but for that very reason, perhaps, the more to be feared. "When he finds," said the colonel who presided, "that he is to be shot beyond peradventure he will turn stoic like the others, you'll see. Even now he is probably laughing at us for being moved by his blubberings and entreaties. He wants to get away from us at any price. That's all. He wants a chance to sting us again. And that chance he will not get."
Oddly enough, the coward did turn stoic the moment he was formally condemned. But it was physical exhaustion as much as anything else; a sudden numbing of the senses, a kind of hideous hypnotism upon him by the idea of death. It lasted the better part of an hour. Then, alone in his cell, he hurled himself against the walls, screaming, or cowered upon the stone floor, pooling it with tears, sobbing horribly with his whole body, going now and again into convulsions of nausea. These actions were attributed by his guard to demoniacal rage, but not to fear. He thus fought blindly against the unfightable until about four in the afternoon, when exhaustion once more put a quietus upon him. It was then that his mother, having taken counsel at last with her patriot soul, visited him.
She had succeeded, not without difficulty, in gaining permission. It was not every mother who could manage a last interview with a condemned son. But she had bribed the colonel. She had given him in silver the savings of a lifetime.
The old woman sat down by her son and took his hand in hers. Then the door of the cell was closed upon them and locked. Manuel turned and collapsed against his mother's breast.
"It's all right, Manuel," she said in her quiet, cheerful voice. "I've seen the colonel."
Manuel looked up quickly, a glint of hope in his rodent eyes.
"What do you mean?" he said. His voice was hoarse. His mother bit her lips, for the hoarseness told her that her son had been screaming with fear. In that moment she almost hated him. But she controlled herself. She looked at him sidewise.
"The colonel tells me that you have offered to serve Spain if he will give you your life?"
This was a shrewd guess. She waited for Manuel's answer, not even hoping that it would be in the negative. She knew him through and through.
"Well," he choked, "it wouldn't do."
"That's where you are wrong, my son," she said. "The colonel, on the contrary, believes he can make use of you. He is going to let you go free."
Manuel could not believe his ears, it seemed. He kept croaking "What?" in his hoarse voice, his face brightening with each reiteration.
"But," she went on, "he does not wish this to be known to the Cubans. You see, if they knew that you had been allowed to go free it would counteract your usefulness, wouldn't it?"
"Yes—but—"
"Listen to me. Everything is to proceed as ordered and according to army regulations except one thing. The rifles which are to be fired at you will be loaded with blank cartridges. When the squad fires you must fall as if—as if you were dead. Then you will be put in a coffin and brought to me for burial. Then you will come to life. That is all."
She smiled into her son's face with a great gladness and patted his hands.
"Afterward," she said, "you will grow a beard and generally disguise yourself. It is thus that the colonel thinks he can best make use of your knowledge and cleverness. And, of course, at the first opportunity you will give the colonel the slip and once more take your place in the patriot army."
"Of course," said Manuel; "I never meant to do what I pretended I would."
"Of course not!" said his mother.
"But—"
"But what?"
"I don't see the necessity of having a mock execution. It's not nice to have a lot of blank cartridges go off in your face."
"Nice!" The old woman sprang to her feet. She shook her finger in his face. "Nice! Haven't you any shred of courage in your great, hulking body? I don't believe you'll even face blank cartridges like a man—I believe you'll scream and blubber and be a shame to us all. You disgust me!" She spat on the floor. "Here I come to tell you that you are to be spared, and you're afraid to death of the means by which you are to go free. Why, I'd stand up to blank cartridges all day without turning a hair—or to bullets, for that matter—at two hundred metres, where I knew none of those Spanish idiots could hit me except by accident. I wouldn't expect you to play the man at a real execution or at anything real, but surely you can pull yourself together enough to play the man at a mock execution. What a chance! You can leave a reputation as great as your brother's—greater, even; you could crack jokes and burst out laughing just when they go to fire—"
Then, as suddenly as she had flown into a passion, she burst into tears and flung her arms about her boy and clung to him and mothered him until in the depths of his surly, craven heart he was touched and strengthened.
"Don't be afraid for me, mother," he said. "I do not like even the blank cartridges, God forgive me; but I shall not shame you."
She kissed him again and again and laughed and cried. And when the guard opened the door and said that the time was up she patted her boy upon the cheeks and shoulders and smiled bravely into his face. Then she left him.
The execution of Manuel D'Acosta was not less inspiring to the patriotic heart than that of his brother Juan. And who knows but that it may have been as difficult an act of control for the former to face the blank cartridges as for the latter to stand up to those loaded with ball? Like Juan, Manuel stood against the wall with a cigarette between his lips. Like Juan, he sought out his mother's face among the spectators and smiled at her bravely. He did not stand so modestly, so gentlemanly as Juan had done, but with a touch of bravado, an occasional half-swaggering swing from the hips, an upward tilt of the chin.
"I told you he would turn stoic," the colonel whispered to one of the officers who had taken part in the trial. "I know these Cubans."
It was all very edifying. Like Juan, Manuel spat out his cigarette when it had burned too short. But, unlike Juan, he made no dying speech. He felt that he was still too hoarse to be effective. Instead, at the command, "Aim!" he burst out laughing, as if in derision of the well-known lack of markmanship which prevailed among the Spaniards.
He was nearly torn in two.
Those who lifted him into his coffin noticed that the expression upon his face was one of blank astonishment, as if the beyond had contained an immeasurable surprise for him.
His mother took a certain comfort from the manner of his dying, but it was the memory of her other boy that really enabled her to live out her life without going mad.
In most affairs, except those which related to his matrimonial ventures, Marcus Antonius Saterlee was a patient man. On three occasions "an ardent temperament and the heart of a dove," as he himself had expressed it, had corralled a wife in worship and tenderness within his house. The first had been the love of his childhood; the wooing of the second had lasted but six weeks; that of the third but three. He rejoiced in the fact that he had been a good husband to three good women. He lamented that all were dead. Now and then he squirmed his bull head around on his bull body, and glanced across the aisle at the showy woman who was daintily picking a chicken wing. He himself was not toying with beefsteak, boiled eggs, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, lima, and string beans. He was eating them. Each time he looked at the lady he muttered something to his heart of a dove:
"Flighty. Too slight. Stuck on herself. Pin-head," etc.
With his food Saterlee was not patient. He dispensed with mastication. Neither was he patient of other people's matrimonial ventures. And, in particular, that contemplated and threatened by his son and heir was moving him across three hundred miles of inundated country as fast as a train could carry him. His son had written:
"DEAREST DAD—I've found Dorothy again. She's at Carcasonne. They thought her lungs were bad, but they aren't. We're going to be married a week from to-day—next Friday—at nine A.M. This marriage is going to take place, Daddy dear. You can't prevent it. I write this so's to be on the square. I'm inviting you to the wedding. I'll be hurt if you don't show up. What if Dorothy's motherisan actress and has been divorced twice? You've been a marrying man yourself, Dad. Dorothy is all darling from head to foot. But I love you, too, Daddy, and if you can't see it my way, why, God bless and keep you just the same."
I can't deny that Marcus Antonius Saterlee was touched by his son's epistle. But he was not moved out of reason.
"The girl's mother," he said to himself, "is a painted, divorced jade." And he thought with pleasure of the faith, patience, and rectitude of the three gentle companions whom he had successively married and buried. "There was never any divorce in the Saterlee blood," he had prided himself. "Man or woman, we stick by our choice till he or she" (he was usually precise) "turns up his or her toes. Not till then do we think of anybody else. But then we do, because it is not good to live alone, especially in a small community in Southern California."
He glanced once more at the showy lady across the aisle. She had finished her chicken wing, and was dipping her fingers in a finger-bowl, thus displaying to sparkling advantage a number of handsome rings.
"My boy's girl's mother a painted actress," he muttered as he looked. "Not if I know it." And then he muttered: "You'dlook like an actress if you was painted."
Though the words can not have been distinguished, the sounds were audible.
"Sir?" said the lady, stiffly but courteously.
"Nothing, Ma'am," muttered Mark Anthony, much abashed. "I'm surprised to see so much water in this arid corner of the world, where I have often suffered for want of it. I must have been talking to myself to that effect. I hope you will excuse me."
The lady looked out of the window—not hers, but Saterlee's.
"It does look," she said, "as if the waters had divorced themselves from the bed of ocean."
She delivered this in a quick but telling voice. Saterlee was shocked at the comparison.
"I suppose," she continued, "we may attribute those constant and tedious delays to which we have been subjected all day to the premature melting of snow in the fastnesses of the Sierras?"
This phrase did not shock Saterlee. He was amazed by the power of memory which it proved. For three hours earlier he had read a close paraphrase of it in a copy of the Tomb CityPicayunewhich he had bought at that city.
The train ran slower and slower, and out on to a shallow embankment.
"Do you think we shall ever get anywhere?" queried the lady.
"Not when we expect to, Ma'am," said Saterlee. He began to scrub his strong mouth with his napkin, lest he should return to the smoker with stains of boiled eggs upon him.
The train gave a jolt. And then, very quietly, the dining-car rolled over on its side down the embankment. There was a subdued smashing of china and glass. A clergyman at one of the rear tables quietly remarked, "Washout," and Saterlee, who had not forgotten the days when he had learned to fall from a bucking bronco, relaxed his great muscles and swore roundly, sonorously, and at great length. The car came to rest at the bottom of the embankment, less on its side than on its top. For a moment—or so it seemed—all was perfectly quiet. Then (at one and the same moment) a lady in the extreme front of the diner was heard exclaiming faintly: "You're pinching me," and out of the tail of his eye Saterlee saw the showy lady across the aisle descending upon him through the air. She was accompanied by the hook and leg table upon which she had made her delicate meal, and all its appurtenances, including ice-water and a wide open jar of very thin mustard.
"Thank you," she murmured, as her impact drove most of the breath out ofSaterlee's bull body. "How strong you are!"
"When you are rested, Ma'am," said he, with extreme punctiliousness, "I think we may leave the car by climbing over the sides of the seats on this side. Perhaps you can manage to let me pass you in case the door is jammed. I could open it."
He preceded her over and over the sides of the seats, opened the car door, which was not jammed, and helped her to the ground. And then, his heart of a parent having wakened to the situation, he forgot her and forsook her. He pulled a time-table from his pocket; he consulted a mile-post, which had had the good sense to stop opposite the end of the car from which he had alighted. It was forty miles to Carcasonne—and only two to Grub City—a lovely city of the plain, consisting of one corrugated-iron saloon. He remembered to have seen it—with its great misleading sign, upon which were emblazoned the noble words: "Life-Saving Station."
"Grub City—hire buggy—drive Carcasonne," he muttered, and without a glance at the train which had betrayed him, or at the lady who had fallen upon him, so to speak, out of the skies, he moved forward with great strides, leaped a puddle, regained the embankment, and hastened along the ties, skipping every other one.
Progress is wonderful in the Far West. Since he had last seen it only a year had passed, and yet the lovely city of Grub had doubled its size. It now consisted of two saloons: the old "Life-Saving Station" and the new "Like Father Used to Take." The proprietor of the new saloon was the old saloon-keeper's son-in-law, and these, with their flourishing and, no doubt, amiable families, were socially gathered on the shady side of the Life-Saving Station. The shade was much the same sort that is furnished by trees in more favored localities, and the population of Grub City was enjoying itself. The rival wives, mother and daughter, ample, rosy women, were busy stitching baby clothes. Children already arrived were playing with a soap-box and choice pebbles and a tin mug at keeping saloon. A sunburned-haired, flaming maiden of sixteen was at work upon a dress of white muslin, and a young man of eighteen, brother by his looks to the younger saloon-keeper, heartily feasted a pair of honest blue eyes upon her plump hands as they came and went with the needle. It looked as if another year might see a third saloon in Grub City.
Saterlee approached the group, some of whose elders had been watching and discussing his approach.
"Do any of you own a boat?" he asked.
"Train D-railed?" queried the proprietor of the Life-Saving Station, "or was you just out for a walk?"
The family and family-in-law laughed appreciatively.
"The train put to sea in a washout," said Saterlee, "and all the passengers were drowned."
"Where you want to git?" asked the proprietor.
"Carcasonne," said Saterlee. "Not the junction—the resort."
"Well," said the proprietor, "there's just one horse and just one trap in Grub City, and they ain't for hire."
Again the united families laughed appreciatively. It was evident that a prophet is not always without honor in his own land.
"We've no use for them," said the great man, with the noble abandoning gesture of a Spanish grandee about to present a horse to a man travelling by canoe. And he added: "So they're for sale. Now what do you think they'd be worth to you?"
All the honest blue eyes, and there were no other colors, widened uponSaterlee.
"Fifty dollars," he said, as one accustomed to business.
It was then that a panting, female voice was raised behind him. "Sixty dollars!"
His showy acquaintance of the dining-car had followed him along the ties as fast as she could, and was just come up.
"I thought you two was a trust," commented the proprietor's wife, pausing with her needle in the air. "But it seems you ain't even a community of interests."
"Seventy dollars," said Saterlee quietly.
The lady advanced to his side, counting the change in her purse.
"Seventy-six dollars and eighty-five cents," she said.
"Eighty dollars," said Saterlee.
"Oh!" cried the lady, "seventy-six eighty-five is every cent I've got with me—and you're no gentleman to bid higher."
"Eighty," repeated Saterlee.
"Eighty dollars," said the son-in-law, "for a horse and buggy that a man's never seen is too good to be true."
"They are yours, sir," said the father-in-law, and he turned to his daughter's husband. "Is that horse in your cellar or in mine?" he asked. "I ain't set eyes on her since February."
The son-in-law, sent to fetch the horse, first paused at the cellar door of the Life-Saving Station, then, with a shake of the head and an "I remembernow" expression, he approached and entered the subterrene of his own house and business, and disappeared, saying: "Whoa, there! Steady you!"
Saterlee turned quietly to the angry and tearful vision whom he had so callously outbid.
"Ma'am," he said, "if we come to my stop first or thereabouts, the buggy is yours to go on with. If we reach yours first, it's mine."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, her face brightening, "how good you are. But you'll let me go halves on the purchase money."
"If I appeared rude just now," he said, "it was to save a lady's pocket. Now then, you've wet them high-heeled shoes. Wherever you're going, it's a long drive. Let's go inside and dry our feet while they're hitching up. Which is your house?"
The proprietor of the Life-Saving Station indicated that building with his thumb, and told his daughter of the white muslin dress to kindle a fire in the stove. She slid her future wedding finery into a large paper bag, and entered the saloon by the "Family Entrance," ardently followed by her future husband.
The proprietor, Saterlee, and the showy lady followed more slowly, discussing roads.
"Now," said Saterlee, "if you're going further than Carcasonne Junction, I'll get off there. And either I'll walk to the hotel or hire another trap."
"Why!" exclaimed the lady, "are you bound for Carcasonne House? So amI."
"In that case," said Saterlee elegantly, "we'll go the whole hog together."
"Quite so," said the lady primly.
"You'd ought to make Carcasonne House by midnight," said the proprietor."Put your feet up on that there stove."
"Heavens!" exclaimed the lady. "And if we don't make it by midnight?"
"We will by one or two o'clock."
The lady became very grave.
"Of course," she said, "it can't be helped. But it would be ever so much nicer if we could get in before midnight."
"I take your point, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "Before midnight is just a buggy ride—after midnight means being out all night together. I feel for you, Ma'am, but I'm dinged if I see how we can help ourselves. It's five now." He counted on his fingers: "six—seven—eight—nine—ten—'leven—twelve—seven hours—seven into forty—five and five-sevenths…. Ma'am," he said, "I can promise nothing. It's all up to the horse."
"Of course," said the lady, "it doesn't really matter. But," and she spoke a little bitterly, "several times in my life my actions and my motives have been open to misconstruction, and they have been misconstrued. I have suffered, sir, much."
"Well, Ma'am," said Saterlee, "my reputation as a married man and a father of many children is mixed up in this, too. If we are in late—or out late rather—and there's any talk—I guess I can quiet some of it. I rather guess I can."
He rose to his feet, a vast, round, deep man, glowing with health and energy.
"I once quieted a bull, Ma'am," said he, "by the horns. I would a held him till help came if one of the horns hadn't come off, and he ran away."
The proprietor entered the conversation with an insinuating wedge of a voice.
"I don't like to mind other folks' business," he said, "but if the lady is fretting about bein' out all night with a total stranger, I feel it my dooty to remark that in Grub City there is a justice of the peace." He bowed and made a gesture which either indicated his whole person, or that smug and bulging portion of it to which the gesture was more directly applied.
Saterlee and the lady did not look at each other and laugh. They were painfully embarrassed.
"Nothing like a sound splice," suggested the Justice, still hopeful of being helpful. "Failing that, you've a long row to hoe, and I suggest a life saver for the gent and a nip o' the same for the lady. I'd like you to see the bar," he added. "Mine is the show place of this here city—mirrors—peacock feathers—Ariadne in the nood—cash register—and everything hunky-dunk."
"We'll go you," said Saterlee. "At any rate, I will."
"Oh, I must see, too," said the lady, and both were relieved at the turn which the conversation had taken.
The proprietor removed the cheese-cloth fly protector from the two-by-three mirror over the bar, slipped a white jacket over his blue shirt, and rubbed his hands together invitingly, as if washing them.
"What's your pleasure, gents?" said he.
As the lady approached the bar she stumbled. Saterlee caught her by the elbow.
"That rail down there," he said, "ain't to trip over. It's to rest your foot on. So." He showed her. With the first sign of humor that she had shown, the lady suddenly and very capitally mimicked his attitude. And in a tough voice (really an excellent piece of acting): "What's yours, kid?" she said. And then blushed to the eyes, and was very much ashamed of herself. But Saterlee and the bartender were delighted. They roared with laughter.
"Next thing," said the bartender, "she'll pull a gun and shoot up the place."
Saterlee said: "Rye."
"I want to be in it," said the lady. "Can you make me something that looks like a drink, and isn't?"
"Scotch," said the proprietor without hesitation.
"No—no," she said, "Water and coloring matter."
She was fitted finally with a pony of water containing a few drops ofSpanish Red and an olive.
The three touched glasses and wished each other luck all around. Saterlee paid eighty dollars and some change across the bar. But the proprietor pushed back the change.
"The drinks," he said grandly, "was on the house."
The united families bade them farewell, and Saterlee brought down the whip sharply upon the bony flank of the old horse which he had bought. But not for a whole minute did the sensation caused by the whip appear to travel to the ancient mare's brain. Not till reaching a deep puddle did she seem suddenly aware of the fact that she had been whipped. Then, however, she rushed through the puddle, covering Saterlee and the lady with mud, and having reached the other side, fell once more into a halting walk.
The lady was tightly wedged between Saterlee and the side of the buggy. Every now and then Saterlee made a tremendous effort to make himself narrower, but it was no use.
"If you begin to get numb," he said, "tell me, and I'll get out and walk a spell…. How clear the air is! Seems as if you could stretch out your hand and touch the mountains. Do you see that shadow half way up—on the left—about three feet off? Carcasonne House is somewhere in that shadow. And it's forty miles away."
Once more the road ran under a shallow of water. And once more the old mare remembered that she had been whipped, and made a rush for it. Fresh mud was added to that which had already dried upon them by the dry miracle of the air.
"She'd ought to have been a motor-boat," said Saterlee, the mud which had entered his mouth gritting unpleasantly between his teeth. "Last year there wasonespring holesomewherein these parts—this year it's all lakes and rivers—never was such rains before in the memory of man. Wonder what Gila River's doing?"
"What is Gila River?" she asked.
"It's a sand gully," he said, "that winds down from the mountains, and out across the plain, like a sure enough river. Only there's no water in it, only a damp spot here and there. But I was thinking that maybe it'll be going some now. We ought to strike it before dark."
The mare rushed through another puddle.
The lady laughed. "Please don't bother to hold her," she said; "I don't mind—now."
"I guess your dress ain't really hurt," commented Saterlee. "I remember my old woman—Anna—had a brown silk that got a mud bath, and came through all right."
"This is an old rag, anyway," said the showy lady, who was still showy in spite of a wart-like knot of dried mud on the end of her nose. And she glanced at her spattered but graceful and expensive white linen and hand-embroidered dress.
"Well, I can see one thing," said Saterlee, "that you've made up your mind to go through this experience like a good sport. I wish I didn't have to take up so much room."
"Never mind," she said, "I like to think that I could go to sleep without danger of falling out."
"That's so—that's so," said Saterlee. "Maybe it's just as well we're something of a tight fit."
"I have always mistrusted thin men," said the lady, and she hastily added: "Not that you'refat"
"My bones are covered," said Saterlee; "I admit it."
"Yes," she said, "but with big muscles and sinews."
"I am not weak," said Saterlee; "I admit it."
"What air this is," exclaimed the lady; "what delicious air. No wonder it cures people with lung trouble. Still, I'm glad mine are sound."
"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "When you said you were bound for Carcasonne House, I thought to myself, 'Mebbe she's got it,' and I felt mighty sorry."
"Do I look like a consumptive?" she asked.
"Bless me—no," said he. "But you're not stout, and, considering where you said you was going, you mustn't blame me for putting two and two together and getting the wrong answer."
"I don't blame you at all," she said, but a little stiffly. "It was perfectly natural. No," she said, "my daughter is at Carcasonne House. She had a very heavy cold—and other troubles—andtwodoctors agreed that her lungs were threatened. Well, perhaps they were. I sent her to Carcasonne House on the doctors' recommendation. And it seems that she's just as sound as I am."
"What a relief to you, Ma'am," said Saterlee hastily.
"Yes," she said, but without enthusiasm, "a great relief."
He screwed his massive head around on his massive neck, not without difficulty, and looked at her. His voice sounded hurt.
"You don't seem very glad, Ma'am," he said.
Her answer, on a totally different topic, surprised him.
"Do you believe in blood?" she said. "Do you believe that blood will—musttell?"
"Ma'am," he said, "if I can draw my check for twenty-five thousand dollars it's because I was born believing that blood will tell. It's because I've acted on it all my life. And it's the truth, and I've made a fortune out of it…. Cattle," he added in explanation.
"I don't know what you think of women," she said, "who talk of their affairs to strangers. But my heart is so full of mine. I did so hope to reach Carcasonne early this evening. It don't seem to me as if I could stand hours and hours behind that horse without talking to some one. Do you mind if I talk to you?" she appealed. "Somehow you're so big and steady-minded—you don't seem like a stranger."
"Ma'am," said Saterlee, the most chivalrous courtesy in his voice, for hers had sounded truly distressed, "fire away!"
"It's about my daughter," she said. "She has made up her mind to marry a young man whom I scarcely know. But about him and his antecedents I know this: that his father has buried three wives."
The blood rushed into Saterlee's face and nearly strangled him. But the lady, who was leaning forward, elbows on knees and face between hands, did not perceive this convulsion of nature.
"If blood counts for anything," said she, "the son has perhaps the same brutish instincts. A nice prospect for my girl—to suffer—to die—and to be superseded. The man's second wife was in her grave but three weeks when he had taken a third. I am told he is a great, rough, bullying man. No wonder the poor souls died. The son is a tremendous great fellow, too. Oh! blood will tell every time," she exclaimed. "M. A. Saterlee, the cattle man—do you know him?"
"Yep!" Saterlee managed, with an effort that would have moved a ton.
"I am going to appeal to her," said the lady. "I have been a good mother to her. I have suffered for her. And she must—she shall—listen to me."
"If I can help in any way," said Saterlee, somewhat grimly, "you can count on me…. Not," he said a little later, "that I'm in entire sympathy with your views, Ma'am…. Now, if you'd said this man Saterlee haddivorcedthree wives…."
The lady started. And in her turn suffered from a torrential rush of blood to the face. Saterlee perceived it through her spread fingers, and was pleased.
"If you had said that this man," he went on, "had tired of his first wife and had divorced her, or been divorced by her, because his desire was to another woman, then I would go your antipathy for him, Ma'am. But I understand he buried a wife, and took another, and so on. There is a difference. Because God Almighty Himself says in one of His books that man was not meant to live alone. Mebbe, Ma'am, the agony of losing a faithful and tender companion is what sets a man—some men—to looking for a successor. Mebbe the more a man loved his dead wife the quicker is he driven to find a living woman that he can love. But for people who can't cling together until death—and death alone part 'em—for such people, Ma'am, I don't give a ding."
"And you are wrong," said the lady, who, although nettled by the applicability of his remarks to her own case, had recovered her composure. "Let us say that a good woman marries a man, and that he dies—not thedeath—but dies to her. Tires of her, carries his love to another, and all that. Isn't he as dead, even if she loved him, as if he had really died? He is dead to her—buried—men don't come back. Well, maybe the more she loved that man the quicker she is to get the service read over him—that's divorce—and find another whom she can trust and love. Suppose that happens to her twice. The cases would seem identical, sir, I think. Except that I could understand divorcing a man who had become intolerable to me; but I could never, never fancy myself marrying again—if my husband, in the course of nature, had died still loving me, still faithful to me. So you see the cases are not identical. And that only remarriage after divorce is defensible."
"I take your point," said Saterlee. She had spoken warmly and vehemently, with an honest ring in her voice. "I have never thought of it along those lines. See that furrow across the road—that's where a snake has crossed. But I may as well tell you, Ma'am, that I myself have buried more than one wife. And yet when I size myself up to myself I don't seem a regular hell-hound."
"If we are to be on an honest footing," said the lady, "I must tell you that I have divorced more than one husband, and yet when I size myself up, as you call it, I do not seem to myself a lost woman. It's true that I act for my living—"
"I know," he interrupted, "you are Mrs. Kimbal. But I thought I knew more about you than I seem to. I'm Saterlee. And my business at Carcasonne House is the same as yours."
She was silent for a moment. And then:
"Well," she said, "here we are. And that's lucky in a way. We both seem to want the same thing—that is, to keep our children from marrying each other. We can talk the matter over and decide how to do it."
"We can talk it over anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But—" and he fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to her. She read it in the waning light.
"But," he repeated gently, "that don't read like a letter that a brute of a son would write to a brute of a father; now, does it?"
She did not answer. But she opened her purse and took out a carefully and minutely folded sheet of note-paper.
"That's my Dolly's letter to me," she said, "and it doesn't sound like—" her voice broke. He took the letter from her and read it.
"No, it doesn't," he said. And he said it roughly, because nothing brought rough speech out of the man so surely as tears—when they were in his own eyes.
"Well," said Mrs. Kimbal with a sigh, "let's talk."
"No," said Saterlee, "let's think."