Kitabı oku: «The Reclaimers», sayfa 10
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THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER
The big dramas of life are enacted in the big centers of human population. Great cities foster great commercial institutions; they father great constructive enterprises; they endow great educational systems; they build up great welfare centers; and they reach out and touch and shape great national and international conditions. In them the big tragedies and comedies of life – political, religious, social, domestic – have their settings. And under the power of their combined units empires appear and disappear. But, set in smaller font, all the great dramas of life are printed, without a missing part, in the humbler communities of the commonwealth. All the types appear; all conditions, aspirations, cunning seditions, and crowning successes have their scenery and persona so true to form that sometimes the act itself takes on the dignity of the big world drama. And the actor who produces it becomes a star, for villainy or virtue, as powerful in his sphere as the great star-courted suns of larger systems. Booth Tarkington makes one of his fiction characters say, "There are as many different kinds of folks in Kokomo as there are in Pekin."
New Eden in the Sage Brush Valley, on the far side of Kansas, might never inspire the pen of a world genius, and yet in the small-town chronicle runs the same drama of life that is enacted on the great stage with all its brilliant settings. Only these smaller actors play with the simplicity of innocence, never dreaming that what they play so well are really world-sized parts fitted down to the compass of their settings.
Something like this philosophy was in York Macpherson's mind the next morning as he listened to his sister and her guest loitering comfortably over their breakfast. A cool wind was playing through the south windows that might mean hot, sand-filled air later on. Just now life was worth all the cost to York, who was enjoying it to the limit as he sat studying the two women before him.
"For a frivolous, spoiled girl, Jerry can surely be companionable," he thought, as he noted how congenial the two women were and how easily at home Jerry was even on matters of national interest. "I never saw a type of mind like hers before – such a potentiality for doing things coupled with such dwarfed results."
York's mind was so absorbed, as he sat unconsciously staring at the fair-faced girl opposite him, that he did not heed his sister's voice until she had spoken a second time.
"York, oh York! wake up. It's daylight!"
York gave a start and he felt his face flush with embarrassment.
"As I was saying half an hour ago, brother, have you seen my little silk purse anywhere? There was too much of my scant income in it to have it disappear entirely."
"Yes, I took it. I 'specially needed the money for a purpose of my own. I meant to tell you, but I forgot it. I'll bring back the purse later," York replied.
Of course Laura understood that this was York's return for catching him at a disadvantage, but she meant to pursue the quest in spite of her brother's teasing, for she was really concerned.
Only a few days before, the New Eden leak had opened again and some really valuable things, far scattered and hardly enough to be considered separately, had disappeared. Laura by chance had heard that week of two instances on the town side of the river, and on the evening previous of one across the river.
Before she spoke again she saw that Jerry's eyes were fixed on the buffet, where two silver cups, exactly alike, sat side by side. There was a queer expression about the girl's mouth as she caught her hostess's eye.
"Is there any more silver of that pattern in this part of the country?" she asked, with seeming carelessness, wrestling the while with a little problem of her own.
"Not a pennyweight this side of old 'Castle Cluny' in Scotland, so far as I know," York replied. "There's your other cup, after all, Laura. By the way, Miss Jerry, how would you like to take a horseback ride over 'Kingussie'? I must go to the far side of the ranch this morning, and I would like a companion – even yourself."
"Do go, Jerry. I don't ride any more," Laura urged, with that cheerful smile that told how heroically she bore her affliction. "I used to ride miles with York back in the Winnowoc country."
"And York always misses you whenever he rides," her brother replied, beaming affectionately upon his brave, sweet sister. "Maybe, though, Jerry doesn't ride on horseback," he added.
At Laura's words Jerry's mind was flooded with memories of the Winnowoc country where from childhood she had taken long, exhilarating rides with her father and her cousin Gene Wellington.
"I've always ridden on horseback," she said, dreamily, without looking up.
"She's going to ride with me, not with ghosts of Eastern lovers, if she rides to-day," York resolved, a sudden tenseness catching at his throat.
"What kind of mounts are you afraid of? I can have Ponk send up something easy," he said, in a quiet, fatherly way.
Jerry's eyes darkened. "I can ride anything your Sage Brush grows that you call a saddle-horse," she declared, with pretty daring. "Why, 'I was the pride of the countryside' back in a country where fine horses grew. Really and seriously, it was Cousin Gene who was afraid of spirited horses, and he looked so splendid on them, too. But he couldn't manage them any more than he could run an automobile over the bluff road above the big cut this side of the third crossing of the Winnowoc. He preferred to crawl through that cut in the slow old local train while I climbed over the bluffs in our big car. You hadn't figured on my boasting qualities, had you?" she added, with a smile at her own vaunting words.
"Oh, go on," Laura urged. "I heard your father telling us once that your cousin, on the Darby side, would ride out with you bravely enough, but that you traded horses when you got off the place and you always came back home on the one they were afraid for you to take out and your cousin was afraid to ride back."
"She climbed while Cousin Gene crawled. I believe she said something there, but she doesn't know it yet; and it's not my business to tell her till she asks me." York shut his lips grimly at the unspoken words. "We'll be back, appetite and sundries, for the best meal the scullery-maid can loot from the village," he said, as they rose from the table.
When Jerry came out of the side door, where York was waiting for her, she suggested at once a model for a cover illustration of an outing magazine, an artistic advertisement for well-tailored results, and a type of young American beauty. As they rode back toward the barns and cattle-sheds that belonged to the ranch edging the corporation limits of New Eden, neither one noticed the tall, angular form of Mrs. Stellar Bahrr as she came striding across lots toward the driveway.
Stellar lived in a side street. Her back yard bordered a vacant lot on the next side street above her. Crossing this, she could slip over the lawn of a vacant house and down the alley half a block, and on by the United Brethren minister's parsonage. That let her sidle between a little carpenter-shop and a shoe-shop to the rear gateway into an alley that led out to the open ground at the foot of the Macpherson knoll. Stellar preferred this corkscrew route to the "Castle." It gave her several back and side views, with "listening-posts" at certain points.
"Oh, good morning, Laury! I'm so glad to find you alone. I'm in a little trouble, an' mebby you can help me out. You are everybody's friend, just like your brother, exactly. Only his bein' that way's bound to get him into trouble sooner or before that. Eh! What's that you're lookin' at?"
Laura had gone to the buffet after the riders had started away. She had a singular feeling about that cup appearing so suddenly. She remembered now that Jerry had asked twice about those cups, and had looked at them with such a peculiar expression on each occasion. Laura had not remarked upon it to herself the first time, but the trifling incident at the table just now stayed in her mind. Yet why? The housekeeper often rearranged the dining-room features in her endeavor to keep things free from dust. That would not satisfy the query. That cup and Jerry Swaim were dodging about most singularly in Laura's consciousness, and she could not know that the reason for it lay in the projecting power of the mind of the woman coming across lots at that moment to call on her.
Yet when Mrs. Bahrr thrust herself into the dining-room unannounced, as was her habit, with her insistent greeting, and her query, "What's that you're lookin' at?" the mistress of "Castle Cluny" had a feeling of having been caught holding a guilty suspicion; and when Stellar Bahrr ran her through with steely eyes she felt herself blushing with surprise and chagrin.
"How can I help you, Mrs. Bahrr?" she asked, recovering herself in a moment.
It was, however, the loss of the moment that always gave the woman before her the clue she wanted.
"I'm needin' just a little money – only a few dollars. I'm quittin' hat-trimmin' since them smarties down-town got so busy makin' over, an' trimmin' over, an' everything. I'm goin' to makin' bread. I've got six customers already, an' I'm needin' a gasoliner the worst way. I lack jist five – mebby I could squeeze out with four dollars if I had it right away. You never knowed what it means to be hard up, I reckon; never had no trouble at all; no husband to up an' leave you and not a soul to lean on. You've always had York to lean on. I 'ain't got nobody."
The drooping figure and wrinkled face were pitiful enough to keep Laura Macpherson from reminding her that she was older than her brother and once the leaning had been the other way. Here was a needy, lonely, friendless woman. What matter that her greatest enemy was herself? All of us are in that boat.
"Of course I'll help you, Mrs. Bahrr. I'll get the money right away."
She rose to leave the room, then sat down again hastily.
"I'm afraid I can't help you right now, either. I have mislaid my purse. But when I find it I'll let you have the money. When York comes back maybe I can get it of him. Could you come over this afternoon?"
"Mebby York won't let you have it to loan where there ain't no big interest comin'. I'd ruther he didn't know it if you wasn't sure."
Laura recalled what her brother had said about not becoming entangled with Stellar Bahrr, and she knew he would oppose the loan. She knew, too, that in the end he would consent to it, because he himself was continually befriending the poor, no matter how shiftless they might be.
"I think I can bring York round, all right," Laura assured her caller. "He's not unreasonable."
"I'd ruther he didn't know. Men are so different from women, you know. You say you lost your purse. Ain't that funny? Where?"
"The funny thing is I don't know where," Laura replied.
Mrs. Bahrr had settled down, and, having accomplished her open purpose, began to train her batteries for her hidden motive.
"Things gits lost funny ways, queer ways, and sometimes ornery ways. Ever' now an' then things is simply missin' here in this burg – just missin'. But again there's such queer folks even in what you call the best s'ciety. Now ain't that so?"
Laura agreed amiably. In truth, she wanted to get her mind away from its substratum of unpleasant and unusual thought for which she could not account. Nothing could take her farther from it than Mrs. Bahrr's small talk about people and things. She knew better than to accept the gossip for facts, but there was no courteous way of stopping Stellar now, anyhow. One had to meet her on the threshold for that.
"'Tain't always the little, petty thievin' sneak gits the things, even if they do git the blame of it. No, 'tain't." Mrs. Bahrr rambled on, fixing her hook eyes square into her hostess at just the right moment for emphasis. "I knowed the same thing happen twice. Once back in Indiany, where I come from – jist a little town on White River. There was a girl come to that town from" – hesitatingly – "from Californy; said to be rich, an' dressed it all right; had every man there crazy about her, an' her spendin' money like water pours over a mill-wheel in March. Tell you who she looked like – jist a mite like this Miss Swim stayin' at your house now – big eyes an' innocent-lookin' like her, but this Californy girl was a lot the best-lookin' of the two – a lot. An' she was rich – or so everybody thought. This un ain't. I got that out of Ponk 'fore he knowed it. An' – well, to make a story end somewhere this side of eternity, I never could bear them ramblin' kind of folks – first thing folks knowed a rich old bachelor got animated with her, just clear animated, an' literally swore by her. An' – well, things got to missin' a little an' a little more, an', sir – well" – slowly and impressively – "it turned out at last that this girl who they said was so rich was a thief, takin' whatever she could get, 'cause she was hard up an' too proud to go back to Oregon to tell her folks. An' that rich bachelor jist defended her ever' way – 'd say he took things accidental, an' then help her to git 'em back, or git away with them – it was like a real drammy jist like they acted out in the picture show t'other night down-town. There was lots of talk, an' it nearly broke his sister's – I mean his mother's – heart. But, pshaw! that all happened years ago down in Indiany on the White River. It's all forgot long 'go. Guess I'd never thought of it again if this Swim girl hadn't come here with her big eyes, remindin' me of that old forgot eppisode, an' your losin' your purse mysterious. How things happen, year in an' year out, place after place, the same kind of things; good folks everywhere, though – everywhere. I was in York's office late yistyday afternoon, an' this girl comes in. Too bad she's so poor an' so pretty."
There was a venomous twist of the hooks at that word "pretty."
"But she's in trouble some way, all right, I know, an' York 'll help her out. I wouldn't ask him. Men take more int'rist naturally in young an' pretty women. But it's different with older women. I hope York never gits caught sometime like that man I knowed back in Indiany. He's too smart for that. Miss Swim must have told York about her money shortage yistyday. The postmaster said she'd been waitin' for a check considerable. I couldn't get nothin' out of him, whether it had come yet or not. But I guess not. But la! la! she's your guest; you wouldn't let her suffer; an' I ain't tellin' a soul what I know about things. I do know what they say, of course. York won't let her suffer. But I'm so much obliged to you. Four dollars will be all I need, an' I'll pay you with the first bakin's. I guess I'll set some folks thinkin' when they see I can make my own way – "
Laura Macpherson was on her feet and it was her eyes now that were holding the woman of the steel hooks.
"Miss Swaim is our guest, the daughter of an old friend of the Macphersons. Of course we – "
Oh what was the use? Laura's anger fell away. It was too ridiculous to engage in a quarrel with the town long-tongue. York was right. The only way to get along with Stellar Bahrr was not to traffic with her. Mrs. Bahrr rose also, gripping at the chance for escape uninjured.
"I'll see you this afternoon if you still feel like helpin' me, an' York is willin'. I clear forgot to put out my ice-card. Good day. Good day."
The woman shuffled away, leaving the mistress of "Cluny Castle" in the grip of many evil spirits. The demon of anger, of doubt, of contempt, of incipient distrust, of self-accusation for even listening – these and others contended with the angel of the sense of humor and the natural courtesy of a well-bred woman.
And then the lost purse came up again.
"I may have left it in Jerry's room when I went to that closet after my wrap last evening. I'll never learn to keep my clothes out of our guest-room, I suppose," Laura said to herself, going at once to Jerry's room.
As she pushed aside some dresses suspended by hoops to a pole in the closet, Jerry's beaded hand-bag fell from a shelf above the hangings, and the fastening, loosened by the fall, let the contents roll out and lay exposed on the floor.
As Laura began to gather them up and put them back in their place, she saw her own silk purse stuffed tightly into the bottom of her guest's hand-bag. And then and there the poison tips of Stellar Bahrr's shafts began a festering sore deep and difficult to reach.
It was high noon when York Macpherson and his fair companion returned from the far side of the big Macpherson ranch. Jerry's hair was blown in ringlets about her forehead and neck. Her cheeks were blooming and her eyes were like stars. With the fresh morning breeze across the prairie, the exhilarating ride on horseback, and the novel interest in a ranch whose appointments were so unlike "Eden" and the other Winnowoc Valley farms, Jerry had the ecstasy of a new freedom to quicken her pulse-beat. She had solved her problem; now she was free for her romantic nature to expand. It was such a freedom as she had never in her wilful life known before, because it had a purpose in it such as she had never known before, a purpose in which the subconscious knowledge of dependence on somebody else, the subjection to somebody else's ultimate control, played no part.
To Laura Macpherson she seemed to have burst from the bud to the full-blown flower in one short forenoon.
York's face, however, was wearing that impenetrable mask that even his sister's keen and loving eyes could never pierce. He had been impenetrable often in the last few weeks. But of the York back of that unreadable face Laura was sure. Even in their mutual teasings the deep, brotherly affection was unwavering. As far as it lay in York's power he would never fail to make up to his companionable sister for what circumstances had taken from her. And yet – the substratum of her disturbed consciousness would send an upheaval to the surface now and then. All normal minds are made alike and played upon by the same influences. The difference lies in the intensity of control to subdue or yield to the force of these influences. Things had happened in that morning ride that York had planned merely for the beneficence of the prairie breezes upon the bewildered purposes of the guest of the house.
On the far side of the "Kingussie" ranch the two riders had halted in the shade of a clump of wild plum-trees beside the trail that follows the course of the Sage Brush. Below them a little creek wound through a shelving outcrop of shale, bordered by soft, steep earth banks wherever the shale disappeared. This Kingussie Creek was sometimes a swift, dangerous stream, but oftener it was a mere runlet with deep water-holes carved here and there in the yielding shale. Just now, at the approach of July heat, there was only a tiny thread of water trickling clear over yellow rock, or deep pools lying in muddy thickness in the stagnant places.
"Not much like the Winnowoc," York suggested, as his companion sat staring down at the stream-bed below.
"Everything is different here," Jerry said, meditatively. "I've traveled quite a little before; been as far as the White Mountains and the beautiful woodsy country up in York State. There's a lot of upness and downness to the scenery, but the people – except, of course – " Jerry smiled bewitchingly.
"Except Ponk, of course," York supplied, with a twinkle in his eyes.
"How well you comprehend!" Jerry assured him. "But, seriously, the world is so different out here – the – the people and their ways and all."
"No, Jerry, it isn't that. The climate is different. The shapes of things differ. Instead of the churned-up ridged and rugged timber-decked lands of Pennsylvania and York State, the Creator of scenery chose to pour out this land mainly a smooth and level and treeless prairie – like chocolate on the top of a layer cake."
"Chocolate is good, with sand instead of sugar," Jerry interrupted.
"But as to the people – the real heart of the real folks of the Sage Brush – there's no difference. They all have 'eyes, hands, organs, senses, affections, passions.' They are all 'fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed with the same means, warmed and cooled with the same summer and winter' as the cultured and uncultured folk of the Winnowoc Valley and the city of Philadelphia. The trouble with us is we don't take time to read them – nor even first of all to read ourselves. Of course I might except old Fishing Teddy, that fellow you see away down there where the shade is deepest," York added, to relieve the preachment he didn't want to seem to be giving, yet really wanted this girl to understand. "He's a hermit-crab and seldom comes among us. Every community has its characters, you know."
"He was among us last night, and went home with Joe Thomson," Jerry replied, looking with curious interest at the motionless brown figure up-stream in the shadow of a tall earth bank.
York gave a start and stared at the girl in surprise. "How do you know? Did the Big Dipper come calling on you? That sort of information is in the Great Bear's line."
Jerry flushed hotly as she remembered her promise not to tell of Mrs. Bahrr's call. In a dim sort of way she felt herself entangled for the moment. Then she looked full at York, with deep, honest eyes, saying, simply:
"Joe Thomson was calling on me last night, and I saw this old fellow, Hans Theodore, Joe named him, waiting on the driveway, and the two went away together, a pair of aces."
"How do you know, fair lady, that this is the same creature? And how do you happen to know Joe Thomson?" York inquired, blandly, veiling his curious interest with indifference.
"I happened to meet both of these country gentlemen on a certain day. In fact, I dined al fresco with one when I was riding in my chariot, incognito, alone, unattended by gallant outriders, about my blank blank rural estate in the heart of the Sage Brush country of Kansas. The 'blank blank' stands for a term not profane at all, but one I never want to hear again – that awful word 'blowout.'"
Jerry's humor was mixed with sarcasm and confusion, both of which troubled the mind of her companion. This girl had so many sides. She was so unused to the Western ways and he was trying to teach her a deeper understanding of human needs, and the human values regardless of geography, when she suddenly revealed a self-possession telling of scraps of her experience in a matter-of-fact way; and yet a confusion for some deeper reason possessed her at certain angles. Why? That mention of Joe Thomson was annoying to York. Why? Jerry's assumed familiarity with such a hermit outcast as the old fisherman was puzzling. Why? York must get back to solid ground at once. This girl was throwing him off his feet. Clearly she was not going to chatter idly of all her experiences. She could know things and not tell them.
"Seriously, Jerry, there are no geographical limits for culture and strength of character. If you stay here long enough you will appreciate that," he began again where he had thrown himself off the trail to avoid a preachment.
"Yes," Jerry agreed, with the same degree of seriousness.
"See, coming yonder." York pointed up the trail to where a much-worn automobile came chuffing down the shaly road toward the ford of Kingussie Creek. "That is Thelma Ekblad and her crippled brother Paul. If you look right you will see the same lines of courage and sweetness in his face that are in my sister's. And yet, although their lives have been cast in widely different planes, their crosses are the same and they have lifted them in the same way."
Jerry hadn't really seen the lines in Laura Macpherson's face, because she had been too full of her own troubles. With York's words she felt a sense of remorse. Finding fault with herself was new to her and it made her very uncomfortable. Also this girl coming, this Thelma Ekblad, was the one whom Mrs. Bahrr had said York had pretended to be interested in once. Jerry had remembered every word of Stellar Bahrr's gossipy tongue, because her mind had been in that high-strung, tense condition last night to receive and hold impressions unconsciously, like a sensitized plate. The thought now made her peculiarly unhappy.
"Joe Thomson's farm is next to hers. Some day I'll tell you her story. It is a story – a real-life drama – and his."
York's words added another degree to Jerry's disturbed mental frame.
"How do you do, Thelma? Hello, Paul! Fine weather for cutting alfalfa. My machines are at it this morning." York greeted the occupants of the car cordially.
"Good morning, York. We are rushing a piece of the mower up to the shop. Had a breakdown an hour ago."
Thelma was tanned brown, but her fair braids gleamed about her uncovered head, and when she smiled a greeting her fine white teeth were worth seeing. Paul Ekblad waved a thin white hand as the car passed the two on horseback, and the delicate lines of his pale, studious face justified York's comparison of it with Laura Macpherson's. Jerry saw her hostess at that moment in a new light. Burdened for the moment as she was under the discomfort of what seemed half-consciously to rebuke the frivolous girl that she dimly knew herself to be, the sudden memory of her resolve declared to Joe Thomson in the shadow-flecked porch the night before came as a balm and a stimulant in one, to give her purpose, self-respect, and peace.
Thus it was that Jerry came in to "Castle Cluny" at high noon the picture of health and high spirits, shaming Laura Macpherson's doubt and sorrow which her morning had brought her. Laura was thoroughly well-bred, and she had, beyond that, a strong and virtuous heritage of Scotch blood that made for uprightness and sincerity. With one effort she swept out of her mind all that had harassed it since the cup episode at the breakfast-table, establishing anew within her understanding the force of her brother's admonition concerning any affiliation with the Big Dipper, the town meddler and trouble-maker.
Late that afternoon, as Laura sat sewing in the shade of the honeysuckle-vines, Stellar Bahrr hurried across lots again and hitched cautiously up to the side door. Listening a moment, she heard the sound of Laura's scissors falling on the cement floor of the porch, and Laura's impatient exclamation, "There you go again!" as she reached to pick them up and examine the points of their blades.
Stellar hitched cautiously a little further along the wall, and stood in the shade of the house, outside the porch vines.
"Laury," she called, in a sibilant voice, "I jis' run in to say I won't need that money at all. I'm goin' to go out sewin', an' I can git all I can do, now the wheat harves' promises so well. Ever'body's spending money on clo'es an' a lot of summer an' fall sewin' goin' to rot, you might say. I'll be jis' blind busy, an' I can sew better than I can bake or trim. But I'm same obliged."
"Won't you come in?" Laura must not be rude, at any cost.
"No, I can't. I must run back. My light bread's raisin' and it'll raise the ruff if I don't work the meanness out of it."
Just then Jerry Swaim came bounding through the hall doorway. "Look here, Laura! See what I have found." She held up her beaded hand-bag and pulled the stuffed silken purse out of it. "Now how did it ever get in there? I'm a good many things, but I never knew I was a shoplifter," Jerry declared, laughingly, a bit of confused blush making her prettier than usual.
"Why – why – " Laura was embarrassed, not for Jerry's sake, but on account of those steel hooks thrusting themselves into her back through the honeysuckle-vines.
"Say, Laury, I jis' wanted to say I'm goin' to Mis' Lenwell's first. Good-by." Stellar Bahrr's voice, sharp and thin, cut through the vines.
As Laura turned to reply Jerry saw her fair face redden, and her voice was almost harsh as she spoke clearly, to be well heard.
"I remember now. I must have put it in there by mistake when you were down-town yesterday afternoon. I guess I thought it was my bag."
Mrs. Bahrr, turning to go, had caught sight of Jerry's hand-bag through the leaves, and remembered perfectly that Jerry had carried it with her down-town the day before, and how well it matched the beaded trimming of her parasol, her wide-brimmed chiffon hat, and the sequins of her sash trimmings against her silk walking-skirt.
Jerry recalled taking the bag with her, too, and she recalled just then what Mrs. Stellar Bahrr had hinted about Laura not wanting York to admire other women. Why did that thought come to the girl's mind just now? Was the wish of the evil mind of the woman hitching away across lots and corkscrewing down alleyways projecting itself so far as this?
