Kitabı oku: «The Reclaimers», sayfa 12
It was the first time that York had caught the note of anything outside of self in Jerry's views of life.
He involuntarily pressed his hand against the specially delivered letter he himself had received that afternoon, and his lips were set grimly. The plea of the old woman, and the soul of the young woman, which called loudest now?
"Will this young Ekblad go up to his sweetheart's grave every Sunday, like Mr. Ponk comes here?" Jerry asked, after a pause.
"No, he will probably never go near it," York replied.
"Why not? I thought that was the customary way of doing here," Jerry declared.
"Because it isn't his grave. It belongs to Bill Belkap, who doesn't care for it. Paul Ekblad will find his solace in caring for Nell Poser's child and in knowing it was her wish that he is fulfilling. That is the real solace for the loss of loved ones."
Jerry remembered Uncle Cornie and his withered yellow hand under her plump white one as he told her of Jim Swaim's wish for his child.
"If I carry out that wish I will be true to my father – and – he will be happier," she thought, and a great load seemed lifting itself from her soul.
"Oh, father, father! You are not in the 'Eden' burial-plot. You are here with me. I shall never lose you." The girl's face was tenderly sweet with silent emotion as she turned to the man beside her.
"I'm glad you told me that story. May I come down to your office in the morning for a little conference? I can come at ten."
"Certainly. Come any time," York assured her, wishing the while that the plea of Jerusha Darby's that lay in his pocket was in the bottom of Fishing Teddy's deep hole down the Sage Brush.
The next morning Jerry Swaim came into the office of the Macpherson Mortgage Company promptly at the stroke of ten by the town clock.
"If I were only a younger man," York Macpherson thought, feeling how the presence of this girl transformed the room she entered – "if I were only younger I would fall at her shrine, without a question. Now I keep asking myself how a woman can be so charming, on the one hand, and so characterless maybe, shallow anyhow, on the other. But the test is on for sure now."
No hint of this thought, however, was in his face as he laid aside his pen and asked, in his kindly, stereotyped way:
"What can I do for you?"
"You can be my father-confessor for a minute or two, and then make out my last will and testament for me," Jerry replied, with a demure smile.
"So serious as all that?" York inquired, gravely, picking up a blank lease form as if to write.
"So, and worse," Jerry assured him. But in an instant her face was grave. "You know my present situation," she began, "and that I must decide at once what to do, and then do it. I'm so grateful that you understand and do not try to offer me friendship for service."
York looked at her earnest face and glowing dark-blue eyes wonderingly. This girl was forever surprising him, either by flippant indifference or by unexpected insight.
"You know a lot about my affairs, of course," Jerry went on, hurriedly. "Aunt Darby offered both of us – me, I mean, a home with her, a life of independent dependence on her – charity – for that, at bottom, was all that it was. And when I refused her offer she simply cut me until such time as I shall repent and go back. Then the same thing would be waiting for me. I know now that it was really wilfulness and love of adventure that most influenced me to break away from Philadelphia and – and its flesh-pots. But, York, I don't want to go back – not yet awhile, anyhow."
It was the first time she had ever called him by that name, and it sent a thrill through her listener.
"Is it wilfulness and love of adventure still, or something else, that holds you here 'yet awhile'?" York asked, with kindly seriousness.
"Oh, wait and see!" Jerry returned.
"She is not going to be led, whichever way she goes. I told Laura so," was York's mental comment.
"Does this finish your 'confession'?" he asked.
"I may as well tell you the other side of the story." Jerry's voice trembled a little. "Cousin Gene Wellington was in the same boat with me, a dependent like myself. But now that he has given up to Aunt Jerry's wishes, I suppose he will be her heir some day, unless I go back and get forgiven."
"This artist's father was in business with your father once, wasn't he?" York asked.
"Yes, and there was something I never could understand, and Aunt Jerry never mentioned, about that; but she did say often that Cousin Gene would make up for what John Wellington lacked, if things went her way. They haven't all gone her way – only half of them, so far."
"Do you fully understand what you are giving up, Jerry?" York asked, earnestly. "That life might be a much pleasanter story back East, even if it were a bit less romantic than the story on the Sage Brush. Might not your good judgment take you back, in spite of a little pride and the newness of a different life here?"
As York spoke, Jerry Swaim sat looking earnestly into his face, but when he had finished she said, lightly:
"I thought before I saw you that you were an old man. You seem more like a brother now. I never had a brother, nor a sister – nothing but myself, which makes too big a houseful anywhere." She grew serious again as she continued: "I do understand what I'm giving up. It was tabulated in a letter to me yesterday, and I do not give up lightly nor for a girl's whim now. I have my time extended. There seems to be indefinite patience at the other end of the line, if I'll only be sure to agree at last."
"Pardon me, Jerry, if I ask you if it is a question of mere funds." York spoke carefully. "I know that Mrs. Darby may be drawn on at any time for that purpose."
"Did she tell you so?" Jerry asked, bluntly.
"She did – when you first came here," York replied, as bluntly.
Jerry did not dream of the struggle that was on in the mind of the man before her, but her own strife had made her more thoughtful.
For a little while neither spoke. Then York Macpherson's face cleared, as one who has reached the top of a difficult height and sees all the open country on the other side. Jerusha Darby's plea had won.
"Jerry, you do not understand what is before you. Whoever takes up the business of self-support, depending solely on the earnings that must be won, has a sure battle with uncertainty, failure, sacrifice, and slow-wearing labor. Of course it is a glorious old warfare – but it has that other side. In the face of the fact that I am your fortunate host, and that my sister is happier now than she has ever been before in New Eden, and hopes to keep you here, I urge you, Jerry, to consider well before you refuse to go back to your father's sister and your artist cousin."
The "father's sister" was a master-stroke. It caught Jerry at an angle she had not expected. But that "artist cousin"! If Gene had been truly the artist, Jerry Swaim had yielded then. The failure to be true to oneself has long tentacles that reach far and grip back many things that else had come in blessing to him who lies to his own soul.
"I won't go back. That is settled. Now as to my last will and testament, please," Jerry said, prettily.
"Imprimis," York began, with his pen on the lease form before him.
"Oh, drop the Latin," Jerry urged. "Say, 'I, Geraldine Darby Swaim, being of sound mind and in full possession of all my faculties, and of nothing else worth mentioning, being about to pass into the final estate and existence of an old-maid school-teacher, a high-school teacher of mathematics' – Please set that down."
"So you are going to teach. I congratulate you." York rose and took the girl's hand.
"Thank you. Yes, I just 'soared' over to the hotel and signed my contract with Mr. Ponk and the other two members in good standing, or whatever they are." Jerry would not be serious now. "And the remainder of my will: 'I hereby give and bequeath all my worldly goods, excepting my gear, to wit: one claim of twelve hundred acres, containing three cottonwood-trees, three times three acres of oak timber, and three times three times three million billion grains of golden sand, to the Macpherson Mortgage Company to have and to hold, free of all expense to me, and to lease or give away to any lunatic, or lunatics, at the company's good-will and pleasure, for a term not to exceed three million years. All of which duly signed and sworn to.'"
As Jerry ran on, York wrote busily on the lease form before him.
"Please sign here," he said, gravely pointing to a blank space when he had finished. "It is a three years' lease to your property herein legally described. The Macpherson Mortgage Company will pay you twenty-five cents per acre, per year, with the exclusive right to all the profits accruing on the land, and to sublease the same at will."
"That is about half of what Aunt Jerry spent on my wardrobe just before I came West," Jerry exclaimed. "But I couldn't take twenty-five cents a year. I've seen the property, you know, and I don't want charity here any more than I did in Philadelphia."
"Then sign up the lease. This is business. Our company is organized on a strictly financial basis for strictly financial transactions. It is a matter of 'value received' both ways with us."
York Macpherson never trifled in business matters, even in the smallest details, and there was always something commanding about him. It pleased him now to note that Jerry read every word of the document before accepting it, and he wondered how much a girl of such inherent business qualities in the small details of affairs would waver in steadfastness of purpose in the larger interests of life.
"Will you let me give a receipt for the cash instead of taking a check?" Jerry asked, as York reached for his check-book.
"Why do you prefer that?" York asked, with business frankness.
"Because I do not care to have the transaction known to any one besides your company," Jerry replied.
"But suppose I should sublease this land?" York suggested.
"That would be different, of course, even if the lessee was a lunatic. Otherwise I don't care to have it known to any one that I draw an income from what is not worth an effort," Jerry declared, quoting Joe Thomson's words regarding her possessions.
"If I give my word to exclude every one else from knowing of this transaction it means every one – even my sister Laura." York looked at Jerry questioningly.
"Even your sister Laura," Jerry repeated, conclusively.
York was too well-bred to ask her why, and, while he voluntarily refrained from telling his sister many things, she was his counselor in so many affairs that he wondered not a little at Jerry's request, while he chafed a little under his promise. He was so accustomed to being master of himself in all affairs that it surprised him to find how easily he had put himself where he would rather not have been placed.
Half an hour later Joe Thomson came into the office.
"What can I do for you to-day, Joe?" York inquired.
"Do you control the sections south of mine?" Joe asked. "I want to lease them, but I shouldn't care to have the owner know anything about it."
"That old blowout! What's your idea, Joe?"
"I want to try an experiment," Joe replied.
York Macpherson had the faculty of reading some men like open books.
"You must have been hanging around eavesdropping this morning. I just got a three years' lease on Miss Swaim's land at twenty-five cents an acre, and here you come for it. I took it on a venture, of course, hoping to sell sand to the new cement-works up the river, sand being scarce in these parts." There was a twinkle in York's eyes as he said this. "I can sublease it, of course, and at the same price, but you know, Joe, that the land is worthless."
"I don't know it," Joe said, stubbornly. "You seem to have been willing enough to get the lease secured this morning."
York ignored the thrust. "You know I leased that land merely to help Miss Swaim, but you don't know yet whether or not you can tame your own share of that infernal old sand-pile that you want to put a mortgage on your claim to fight," York reminded him.
"I'll take a part of that loan to pay for the lease, and the rest I'll use on the Swaim land, not on mine. I'm going to go beyond the blowout to begin, and work north the same way it goes," Joe explained.
"All of which sounds pretty crazy to me. You are shouldering a big load, young man – a regular wildcat venture. There's one of you to myriads of sand-heaps. You'll have to take the Lord Almighty into partnership to work a miracle before you win out. I've known the Sage Brush since the first settler stuck in a plow, and I've never known one single miracle yet," York admonished him.
"As to miracles," Joe replied, "they are an every-day occurrence on the Sage Brush, if you can only look far enough above money-loaning to see them, you Shylock."
Calling York Macpherson a Shylock was standard humor on the Sage Brush, he was so notoriously everybody's friend and helper.
"And I've had to take the Lord in for a partner all my life," Joe added, seriously.
York looked at the stern face and stalwart form of the big, sturdy fellow before him, recalling, as he did so, the young ranchman's years of struggle through his boyhood and young manhood.
"Of course you can win," he assured Joe. "Your kind doesn't know what failure means. It isn't the work, it is the stake that makes me uneasy."
Joe looked up quickly and York knew that he understood.
"I read your page clearly enough, my boy," he said, earnestly. "You are taking a hand in a big game, and the other fellow keeps his cards under the table. Blowouts are not as uncertain as women, Joe. Let me tell you something. You will find it out, anyhow. I can ease the thing up now. Back in Philadelphia a rich old widow has given two young lovers the opportunity to earn their living or depend on her bounty – a generous one, too. Being childless and selfish, she secretly wanted to hold them dependent on her, that she may demand their love and esteem. It is an old mistake that childless wealth and selfishness often make. The girl, being temperamentally romantic and inherently stubborn, voted to go alone. These things, rather than any particularly noble motive – I hate to disillusion you, Joe, but I must hold to facts – have landed her practically penniless in our midst; and she is not acquainted yet with either lack of means or the labor of earning. The young man, gifted in himself, which his sweet-heart is not, son of a visionary spendthrift, has chosen the easier way, a small clerkship and a luxurious home seeming softer to his artistic nature than the struggling up-climb with his real gift. This old lady won't last forever. Her disinherited niece won't want to work at teaching forever. The waiting clerk will come after the heir apparent just when she is most tired of the Sage Brush and the things thereof, and – they will live tamely ever after on the aunt's money. Do you see what you are up against, Joe? Don't waste energy on a dream – with nothing to show for your labor at last but debt and possible failure, and the beautiful Sage Brush Valley turned to a Sodom before your eyes."
"Whenever you are ready I'll sign up the lease," was Joe's only reply.
So the transaction was completed in silence.
III
JERRY AND EUGENE – AND JOE
XIII
HOW A GOOD MOTHER LIVES ON
New Eden never saw a more beautiful autumn, even in this land of exquisite autumn days, than the first one that Jerry Swaim passed in the Middle West. And Jerry reveled in it. For, while she missed the splendid colorings of the Eastern woodlands, she never ceased to marvel at the clear, bright days, the sweet, bracing air, the wondrous sweeps of landscapes overhung by crystal skies, the mist-wreathed horizons holding all the softer hues, from jasper red to purest amethyst, that range the foundation stones of heaven's walls as Saint John saw them in his dream exquisite.
It had never occurred to Jerry that a beauty impossible to a wooded broken country might be found on the October prairies. Her dream of a Kansas "Eden" exactly like the Pennsylvania "Eden," six times enlarged, had been shattered with one glimpse of her possession – a possession henceforth to be a thing forgotten. But life had opened new pages for her and she was learning to read them rapidly and well.
One thought of the past remained, however. The memory of a romance begun in her Eastern home would not die with the telling. And while Jerry Swaim persuaded herself that what Eugene Wellington called success to her was failure, and while every day widened the breach between the two, time and distance softened her harsher judgment, and she remembered her would-be lover with a tender sadness that made her heart cold to the thought of any other love.
This did not make her the less charming, however – this pretty girl without any trace of coquetry, who knew how to win hearts to her. Sure of the wideness that separated her life from the life of the Sage Brush Valley, she took full measure of interest in living, unconsciously postponing for herself the future's need for the solace of love. The small income from her lease to the Macpherson Mortgage Company filled her purse temporarily, and she began at once upon a course of economic estimates worthy of Jim Swaim's child, however seemingly impossible in Lesa Swaim's pretty, dueless daughter. Another trait, undeveloped heretofore, began to be emphasized – namely, that while she could chatter glibly on embroideries and styles, and prettily on art, and seriously and intelligently on affairs of national interest, as any all-round American girl should do – she was discreet and uncommunicative regarding her business affairs. Not that she meant to be secretive; she was simply following the inherited business ability of an upright, well-balanced man, her father. Coupled with this was a pride in her determination to win – to prove to Aunt Jerry Darby and Eugene Wellington that she had made no mistake; and until victory was hers she would be silent about her endeavors.
The Macphersons had insisted that Jerry should remain their guest at least until the opening of the school in September. And if the girl imagined that she found a faint hint of fervor gone from Laura Macpherson's urging, her hostess made up for it in the abundant kindness of little acts of hospitality. Jerry was frankly troubled, and yet she could not say why, for it was all the impressions of a mind sensitized to comprehend unspoken things. Jerry's memory would call up that incident of the lost purse found in her hand-bag, and of Laura's excuse for it, which she, Jerry, knew was impossible. And yet the girl felt that it was a contemptible thing to impute a distrust to Laura that, placed in the same position, she herself would scorn to harbor.
"I see no way but the everlasting run of events. I wish they would run fast and clear it up," Jerry said to herself, dismissing the matter entirely, only to have it bobbing up for consideration again on the first occasion.
At the close of a hot summer day Jerry was in her room, finishing a letter to Jerusha Darby, to whom she wrote faithfully, but from whom she had rarely received a line. York and Laura were on the porch, as usual. The hammock that day had been swung to a shadier position, on account of the slipping southward of the late summer sun; and Laura forgot that Jerry's window opened almost against it now, so that she could hear all that was said at that corner of the porch. As Jerry finished her letter she caught a sentence outside that interested her. She was innocent of any intention of eavesdropping afterward, but what she heard held her motionless.
"The leak has opened again, York," Laura was saying. "Things are beginning to disappear, especially money."
York's face took on a sort of bulldog grimness, but he made no reply.
Inside, Jerry glanced at her beaded hand-bag lying on the top of the little desk, saying to herself:
"I'll open a bank-account to-morrow. I've been foolish to leave that roll of bills lying around; all I have, too, between me and the last resort in Kansas – 'to go mad or go back East.' I'm certainly a brilliant business woman – I am."
And then, unconscious at first that she was listening, her ear caught what followed outside:
"York, the queer thing is that it's just at 'Castle Cluny' that things are disappearing right now. Mrs. Bahrr was over to-day and told me the Lenwells had even gone to Kansas City and forgot to lock their back door, and not a thing was missing, although Clare Lenwell left five silver dollars stacked up on the dresser in plain view."
"If anybody would know the particulars it would be the Big Dipper," York declared.
"Oh, now don't begin on that tune, York, for I'm really uneasy," Laura began.
"For why?" York inquired.
And then Laura told him the story of her lost purse, omitting Stellar Bahrr's part in the day's events, and adding:
"Of course, I hate myself for even daring to carry a hint of suspicion for a minute, but Jerry knew as well as I did that I hadn't put my purse in her hand-bag by mistake, for she carried it with her up-town that day. But I could forget the whole thing if it had ended there. I know that the dear girl was dreadfully short of money until just recently. Now her purse is full of bills. I couldn't help seeing that when she displays it so indifferently. She says she will have no funds from Philadelphia. Where does she get money when I can't keep a bill around the house?"
"Then I would quit the stocking-toe banking system that mother and all the other women and most of the men back in Winnowoc used to employ. You might try the First National Bank of New Eden. I'm one of the directors, and a comparatively safe man for all that," York advised, gravely.
"The loss of the money is nothing to the possible loss of confidence," Laura went on, ignoring her brother's thrust. "Could such a thing be possible that this dear girl is discouraged and tempted to hide her necessities?" The woman's voice was full of kindly sorrow. "York, couldn't you tell her?"
"I see myself doing that," York fairly exploded. "Laura, there may be a big leak in this house where valuables seep through. I'm not saying otherwise. But as for Jerry Swaim, it's simply preposterous – impossible. Never let such a thing cross your mind, let alone your lips again, you dear best of sisters. You know you don't believe a word of it."
"I know I don't, too, York; of course I don't; but I must have needed you to assure me of it. It all began in circumstance and an ugly suspicion that a story of Stellar Bahrr's suggested. And when I missed my own money and saw that great roll of bills – Oh, I must be crazy or just a plain human creature full of evil – "
"Or both," York added. "We are all more or less human and more than less crazy, especially if we will listen to old wives' tales against the expressed command of our wise brothers. As for Jerry having money" – York suddenly recalled his promise to Jerry not to discuss her affairs – "it's hardly likely she would display carelessly what was acquired by extreme care. Let's call her out here and think of better things."
As Laura looked up she realized for the first time the nearness of the hammock to Jerry's open window. The grief of being overheard by one whom she would not wound for worlds, with the self-rebuke for giving ear to Stellar Bahrr's gossip, almost overcame her.
"You go after Jerry, please," she said, faintly.
York went into the hall, calling at Jerry's open door, but she was not there. He looked in the living-room, but it was empty. Through the dining-room he passed to the side porch, where a dejected, lonely little figure was half hidden by the vines that covered it. At sight of her York stopped to get a grip on himself.
At her host's explosive declaration, "I see myself doing it," Jerry had come to herself. Surprised and wounded, but realizing the justice of the ground for suspicion against her – her – Jerry Swaim, who had always had first concern in those about her – she left her room hastily and passed out of the house by the side door. In the little vine-covered entry she sat down and stared out at the lawn, where the fireflies were beginning to twinkle against the shrubbery bordering the driveway. She had thought the disposition of her estate, and the choice of occupation, and the putting away of Eugene Wellington, had settled things for her future. Here was the fulfilling of a sense of something wrong that had recently possessed her, hardly letting itself be more than a sense till now. What did life mean, anyhow? "To go mad or go back East?" Why should she do either one, who had not offended anybody?
As Jerry gazed out at the shadowy side lawn the sound of a step caught her ear – a shuffling of feet across the grass, and the noise of a hard sole on the cement driveway. Jerry's eyes mechanically followed a short, shambling figure, suggesting a bear almost as much as a human being, as it passed forward a step or two; then, dividing the spirea-bushes on the farther edge, it disappeared into the deeper shadow of the slope toward the town below "Kingussie."
It was Fishing Teddy – old Hans Theodore; Jerry recognized him at a glance, and in the midst of her confused struggle to find herself she paused to wonder about him. Intense mental states often experience such pauses, when the mind grappling in an internal combat rests for a moment on an impression coming through the senses.
"What's the old Teddy Bear doing here?" Jerry asked herself, and then she remembered his coming once before almost to this very spot. That was the night Joe Thomson had called – the big farmer whose property her own was helping to destroy. There was something strong and unbreakable about this Joe. A million leagues from her his lot was cast, of course, and yet she hoped somehow that Joe might be near and that the Teddy Bear was waiting for him.
"Jerry! Jerry!" York called through the hall, and then he came out to where she sat on the side porch.
"I was hunting for you. You have a caller, my lady, a gentleman who wants to take you for a ride up the river. It will be gloriously cool on the ridges up-stream. He will give you a splendid hour before the curfew rings – the lucky dog!"
Jerry looked up expectantly. "It must be Joe Thomson," she thought, and she was glad to have him come again.
On the front porch little Junius Brutus Ponk was strutting back and forth, chatting with Laura.
"Good evening, Miss Swaim. I just soared down to invite you to take a little drive in my gadabout. I hope it will suit you to go."
"Nothing would please me more," Jerry said, lightly. "Let me get my wrap." As she returned to her room her eye fell on her hand-bag, lying on her desk. A sense of grief swept over her, for one moment, followed by a strange lightness of heart as if her latest problem had solved itself suddenly.
As they passed down the walk to the little gray car York Macpherson looked after them, conscious of the impossible thing in Ponk's mind, and wondering wherein lay the charm of this pink-and-white inefficient girl to grip with so strong a hold on the heart of a sensible man like Ponk.
"It is her power to be what she has never been, but what she will become," he said to himself. "She's the biggest contradiction to all rules that I ever knew, but she's a dead-sure proposition."
The coming of callers found York in his best mood, and when his sister bade him good night he put his arms around her, saying, gently:
"You are the best woman in the world, Laura, and you mustn't carry a single hidden worry."
"Neither must you, York," Laura replied, and each knew that the other understood.
Meantime, out on the upper Sage Brush road Jerry was letting the beauty of the evening lift the weight from her mind. She was just beginning to understand that, while she had imagined herself to be doing her own thinking heretofore, she had been merely willing that her thinking should be done for her. She was now at the place where her will meant little and her judgment everything in shaping her acts. The recognition brought a sense of freedom she had never known before. What she had overheard from the porch seemed far away, and her wounded spirit grew whole again as she began to find herself standing on her own feet, not commanding that somebody else should hold her up. Jerry's mind worked rapidly, and before the gray car had been turned at the northern end of the evening's ride it was not the Jerry Swaim of an hour ago, but a young warrior, clad in armor, with shining weapons in her hand, who sat beside the adoring little hotel-keeper of the faulty grammar and the kindly heart.
Ponk halted the car at the far end of the drive up-stream, to take in a moonlight view of the Sage Brush Valley.
"Them three lights down yonder's the court-house an' the school-house an' the station. The other town glims are all hid by trees an' bushes and sundry in the wrinkles of the praira." Ponk always said "praira." "But it's a beautiful country when you douse the sunshine and turn on the starlight, or a half-size moon like that young pullet in the west sky yonder. Ever see the blowout by moonlight? Sorta reclaims its cussed ugliness, you might say, an' the dimmer glow softens down an' subdues the infernal old beast considerable."
Jerry turned quickly toward her companion. "Blowout is a word taboo in my presence," she said, gravely. "Anybody who wants to be listed as a friend of mine will never mention it to me, for to me there is no such thing. I have no real estate in Kansas, nor anywhere else, for that matter. I'm just a poor orphan child." The girl smiled brightly. "All the world is mine, even though none of it really belongs to me. If you want my good-will, even my speaking acquaintance, you'll remember the road to it is never to mention that horrid thing to me again."
"I never won't," Ponk declared, seriously. "If that's the only restriction, I'm in the middle of your good-will so far I'll never find the outside gate again."
