Читать книгу The Tyranny of the Dark - Garland Hamlin - Страница 19

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It must have been about eleven o'clock next morning when Serviss rode up and dismounted at the Lambert gate, and in the flaming light of mid-day the sense of mystification, the feeling that the girl was in the coils of some invisible menace, had entirely vanished. The preacher had sunk to the rôle of a conceited clerical ass who regarded science as an enemy to his especial theories and the visible universe as an outlying province of Calvinism; while Viola, who came to the door, was again most humanly charming, delighting his eyes like the morning.

She smiled blithely and spoke collectedly, in response to his greeting; but when he asked her to be his guide to the wonders of the region her face clouded in dismay.

"Oh, I'm sorry; I wish I could; but I must carry a message up to my father at the mine."

"Very well, why not take me? I infer you go on horseback?"

She hesitated. "Yes, but it's a long, hard ride—and you said you were tired of the saddle."

"I was yesterday; but I feel quite rested now. By all means let me accompany you. I should particularly enjoy mounting high to-day. I should also like to meet your father."

"Very well, I will speak to mother," she replied, with shining face, and disappeared within.

The mother, mindful of Serviss's connection with a great university, made no objection to the plan. On the contrary, she was pleased and flattered by his interest in her daughter, and a few moments later the young people rode off up the mountain road side by side and in high spirits.

Serviss winced at times at the childish flatness of Viola's comment, but her voice was musical and her face flower-like—therefore he forgave her. With all his knowledge of the constitution of matter, he was still young and in the mating mood.

They talked of the flowers, of the trails, of the birds to be found on the heights for a time; but soon, inevitably, they came to talk of themselves. Under his questioning she outlined her plans for a musical education, and this led at last to a consideration of the Reverend Mr. Clarke.

At the first mention of his name the girl's face distinctly darkened and her answers became curiously studied, almost evasive—or so it seemed to Serviss.

"Yes, I play in his church," she said, "and he teaches me. He is a splendid musician—don't you think so? I owe a great deal to him. He has helped me so much—especially in my phrasing. He is a wonderful man. We are fortunate in having him with us."

"He struck me as a little morbid, not to say morose. Has he had trouble in his church?"

Her answer was deep-toned and affectedly solemn in one so young. "No, but his wife passed out last year."

"Passed out? What do you mean by that?"

"I mean she died."

"Oh, I see!" His inflection checked her confidence, and they rode for a little way in silence.

Serviss was thinking. The situation is now clear. Clarke is working upon this sweet and charming girl in order to have her take the place of his dead wife. A sorrowful thing to think of, but not so bad as I have been imagining. At length he asked: "What else can you tell me about this Mr. Clarke? Is he a native of the West?"

"Oh no, he is from the East. He had a big church in Brooklyn; but his health gave out and he was forced to leave it. He came here for the baths and the air. He is much better now."

"He retains all his intellectual diseases, however. What medicine will he find for those?" Meeting the girl's startled glance, he hastened to add: "I beg your pardon, I was just wondering if he were as morbid when he came as he now seems."

"Oh no! He was quite cheerful till his wife went away. That changed him greatly. For months he hardly left his study. He reads too much even now. That is why he looks so pale. His house is packed with books."

"He seems in need of fresh air. How does your father get on with him?"

"Not at all well."

"I inferred that. Your father is a man of deeds—of open air—I take it."

"Mr. Lambert isn't my own father," she took this opportunity to explain. "My own father passed to the other side when I was eleven."

"Pardon my curiosity, Miss Lambert, but you've used a phrase once or twice which I've heard the people of a certain faith use. Is your mother a spiritualist?"

She looked at him with timid eyes, then turned quickly away. "She—she used to be; she's studying theosophy now."

"And the minister is trying to convert you all to his especial theory! I can imagine his discourses. No wonder you want to flee."

The girl's whole face, voice, and manner changed—became bitter, passionate. "Oh, I hate it! I hate it! I want to be free of it all!"

The intensity of her utterance amazed Serviss, and he studied her profile in silence before he answered. "I think I know what you mean, and I sympathize with you. You're too young to be troubled by the doubts and dismays of men like Clarke. He is preposterous in the face of a landscape like this. Let us forget him and his 'isms.'" With these words he straightened in his saddle and lifted his eyes towards the height before them. "Isn't that superb!"

They were drawing near the great gray boundary-wall of the valley, and the sound of roaring water grew tumultuous as they rounded the curve in the road and came into the little triangular nook which had been anciently formed by the Colorow as it descended in power from its source in the high parks. On the left the ledges rose almost sheer for a thousand feet, and from the edge of this cliff ore-buckets, a-slide on invisible cables, appeared in the sky, swooping like eagles, silently dropping one by one, to disappear, tamely as doves, in the gable end of a huge, drab-colored mill which stood upon the flat beside the stream. Beyond the mill Mount Ignacio rose darkly purple, hooded in white clouds.

The entire scene was typical of the West, of its energy, its greed, and its faith. Here was life—life and buoyant health—and the blood of the young scientist quickened as he comprehended the daring, the originality of the miner's plan.

"Is this your father's enterprise?" he asked, in the hope of an affirmative answer. A man of this quality would hang the minister if necessary.

"Oh no. We've got to climb the hill and cross the upper Basin before we reach our mine. This is the ore from the San Luis tunnel."

She was, happily, of the sunny world now, and, with a gay smile, turned her horse into a narrow trail and called back to him: "We climb here." He followed, admiring the strength and grace of her rounded figure as her horse zigzagged up the steep acclivity. She was troubled by no problems at this moment. She was rather a daughter of the mountains, a sister to the eagles.

She stopped once or twice to permit him to locate the far-famed peaks rising one by one to the south of them, and the third time she drew rein he was a-foot, and she said, "We're almost to the top of this grade; it's easier in the Basin."

"I am thinking only of my horse," he answered. "You see, he is carrying a forty-pound saddle, and is not so fresh as yours. I'm sorry to delay you."

The Basin was a most glorious valley, bowl-shaped, green with grass and groves of aspen and fir, and flooded with a cataract of sunshine. All about it ran a rim of lofty summits, purple in shadow, garnet and gold and green in the sun. Here and there a prospect-hole showed like a scar, or a gray, dismantled stamp-mill stood like a disintegrating bowlder beside its yellow-gray dump of useless ore. Serviss, familiar with the rise and fall of the silver-miner, looked over the lovely valley with a certain sense of satisfaction, for he was able to reconstruct its beauty before that flood of devastating humankind swept up from the eastern plain. "Nature is reasserting her dominion," he said, aloud. "Mining is a wounding business—like murder."

The girl glanced away to the south. "We'll have to hurry if we reach camp by one o'clock," she called, and he waved his hand as a sign of surrender to her leadership.

They overtook a long train of burros bearing a most miscellaneous cargo of odds and ends of machinery, nail-kegs, iron-rods, bundles of bolts, lumber, oil, and boxes of groceries.

"This is all father's—all for the new mill," said the girl, nodding and smiling at the Mexicans in charge of the donkeys. "Hello, Clint!" she called, cheerily, to another muleteer, a little farther up the trail, a brown, good-looking young fellow, who saluted her joyfully, his eyes aglow with adoration.

"Every man is her suitor," thought Serviss, with a twinge of disapproval. "Think what she must seem to that leather-colored Arab urging forward those donkeys!" And a knowledge of her danger—he put it that way—began to oppress him. "She is too fine and sweet to marry among these rough miners."

She, it seemed, was not afraid of mountaineers, for she had a gay nod and a bright word for every one she met, though some of them were brutal-mouthed and grimy and sullen. Serviss derived no comfort from the fact that the most sinister of them brightened for an instant in the light of her adorable smile.

At last, far ahead, they came in sight of the mill on a bare peak. The white clouds which had been silently gathering round the great domes swiftly overspread the whole sky. The air grew chill as November. The wind began to roar in the firs with a stern mournfulness which went to the heart of the man; but the girl, without once stopping her horse, unrolled her raincoat and put it on, calling back at her cavalier as she did so with a fine, challenging, gleeful shout.

They were very high now. Perennial ice lay in the gullies and on the north side of the cliffs, and the air was light and keen. Suddenly the wind died away. A gray hush came over the valley. The water in the streams lost its vivid green and became lead-color streaked with white foam. One by one the mountains were blotted out by the storm. The world of sky and rocks grew mysterious, menacing; but the girl pushed fearlessly forward, singing like a robin, while the rain slashed over her, and the thunder boomed and re-echoed from crag to crag like warning guns in magnificent alarums. "I love this!" she cried, her clear voice piercing the veil of water like a flute note. "Don't you?"

Serviss was not without imagination, and the contrast of this jocund, fearless, free young maid with the silent, constrained girl of the night before moved him to wonder. "Here she is herself—nature's own child," he thought. "Last night she was a 'subject'—a plaything of the preacher's. Strange the mother does not realize her daughter's danger."

The storm passed as quickly as it came, and when they drew rein at the mine the sun was shining. The mill, standing on a smooth, steep slope, and sheltered on the north by a group of low firs, seemed half a ruin, but was, in fact, being rebuilt and enlarged. All about it were dumps of clay, slippery with water, and rough bunk-houses and ore-sheds. All the structures were rude, masculine, utilitarian, and the girl grew each moment in delicacy and refinement by contrast.

In answer to her halloo a plainly clad man came to the door, his face set in amazement.

"Why—see here—daughter! I wasn't looking for you to-day."

"I'm here just the same," she laughingly replied. "Here are some telegrams. Professor Serviss, this is my father."

Joseph Lambert was a small man, with shy, blue eyes and a low and gentle utterance. He carried his head leaning a little to the left and seemed a shade discouraged, almost melancholy. He was, however, a brave, silent, tireless little man, who had made one great fortune in silver-mines only to lose it in the panic. He was now cannily working a vein which had a streak of gold in it, and, like all miners, was just on the point of making a "strike." He was distracted with work, and, though cordial, could not at the moment give much time to his visitor.

"Well, now, Viola, you take Professor Serviss into the cook-house and feed him. I guess you'll find something left over. If not, you will have to scratch up something."

Viola thereupon led the way into the kitchen, greeting each man she met, cooks and waiters alike, with impartial, clear-eyed joyousness and trust, and when the food came on she ate without grimace or hesitation. The cook, a big, self-contained Chinaman, came in with a china cup.

"Use this klup—tin klup no good for lady." His voice was gruff and his manner that of one who compels a child to use a napkin; but it was plain he adored her. As she thanked him he shuffled away with an irrepressible grin.

All this produced in Serviss an uneasiness. To him she was a lamb venturing among wolves. "She should not expose herself to the coarse comment, the seeking eyes of these fellows," he indignantly commented, blaming the acquiescent mother and the absent-minded step-father. "This childlike trust is charming, but it is not war."

Her essential weakness of defence, her innocence, began to move him deeply, dangerously. He began to understand how she had turned to Clarke for companionship, not merely because he was a clergyman, but because he was a young man of more than usual culture and attainment, whose sympathy and counsel promised aid and comfort in her loneliness. "She does not love him; she merely admires certain sides of his character; she fears to marry him, and quite properly. His morbid faith would destroy her."

As they were returning to the office they met the young driver of the mule-train, and Viola introduced him as "Mr. Ward, of Boston."

He was tall and spare, with a fine, sensitive, boyish face—a face of refinement which his rough, gray shirt, faded leggings, and badly battered hat belied.

"Mr. Ward is out here for his health, also," Viola explained. "All the really nice people are 'one-lungers.'"

"Isn't it sad?" said Ward, gravely. "However, Miss Lambert is only partly right. I made my health an excuse. I'm here because I like it."

Serviss bent a keen look upon him. "You don't look as if you had ever been sick."

"I'm not. I came out here to escape college—and my father's business." He laughed. "But don't betray me. I'm supposed to be 'slowly improving.'"

There was something fine and hawklike in the young fellow's profile as he stood negligently leaning on the door-frame, his eyes on the flushed face of the girl; and Serviss experienced another pang of jealous pain—they were so young, so comely, so full of the fire and imagination of youth. At the moment his own fame and special tasks were of small account.

Upon their return to the office Lambert met them in the same absent-minded, apologetic way. "I'm just getting some new machinery into place and haven't a minute, but you must make yourself as much at home as you can. Viola will show you around."

Serviss protested that he needed no entertainment, that he was not tired, and that he was well content to sit in the door and smoke and watch the changing glory of the peaks, and this he did while Viola moved about among the workmen in earnest conversation with her step-father.

"She is explaining me," Serviss reasoned. "I wish I could hear what she says. It would be amusing to know myself as she sees me. I hope she doesn't think me middle-aged as well as wise."

Lambert listened to his daughter's words with attention, for a professor in a college was an exalted person in his eyes, and one of his chief regrets at the moment was that he was unable to say to Serviss, "I am a college man myself"; but this he could not do for the reason that the death of his father had taken him out of his class at the beginning of his third year, and put him at the head of a large family as its breadwinner.

"He looks like a very young man, almost a boy—too young to be a professor; but then"—here his eyes twinkled—"when I was at Jefferson all professors seemed old to me. What's he doing here?"

"Just riding through the mountains on his vacation."

"What does your mother think of him?"

"She likes him very much."

"Well, I won't make any objection, then."

Viola stared—then blushed furiously. "What do you mean?"

"Why, didn't you bring him up here to see how I liked him?"

She pounded him with her little brown fist while tears of mortification filled her eyes. "Now, you stop that! You're teasing me. Why, I've only known him three days."

He laughed silently, shaking his head. "Well, these things move quickly sometimes—and how was I to know but you'd known him in the East—you seemed so chummy-like—"

"You've spoiled everything," she wailed, deeply disturbed and painfully self-conscious. "You're mean to me."

He became instantly contrite. "There, now, don't you mind my joking. Of course I was fooling. It's all safe between us, anyway."

But the mischief was done. She forgave him, but never again would she be the same to him, to her mother, or to the imperturbable young man smoking his pipe beneath the firs. He was young—that was only too plain to her now; not so young as Clinton, but not the middle-aged person she had been fancying him to be.

As they were about to start on their homeward trail, Serviss sought opportunity to say: "Mr. Lambert, I met this man Clarke at your house last night, and I want to say that I don't think his influence on your family is particularly wholesome. He's morbid and given to fads."

Lambert replied: "I know what you mean, professor, and I believe you're right. I don't believe in him myself, and I don't take any stock in any of his notions, but my wife does. She thinks he's of the Covenant, somehow. I wish you'd talk with her and try to have her let up on Viola. I don't think they're doin' right by her. If she was my own girl I'd stop it—I would so." Then he added, in a curious tone, this vague defence: "As for Viola, she would be all right if they would leave her alone. She's gifted in a way I don't understand; but if she isn't twisted by Clarke's foolishness she's going to make some man a good wife. She's a good girl, and, as I say, if she was my own child I'd serve notice that this circle business should stop. I wish you'd talk to 'em. I don't count—but they'll listen to you. I'm glad to have met you. I hope you'll come up again. I'd like to mill that business over with you; it's all very curious, but I'm just plumb distracted with work now."

"I beg you not to apologize—it's time to start back, anyhow."

As they rode away down the valley, the girl silent and constrained, Serviss pondered Lambert's words, which were plainly directed against Clarke. His sense of responsibility was increased by Lambert's trust in him. "This won't do," he decided; "I must pull out or I will find myself laden with the woes of the entire family, and Clarke's distresses besides."

The girl was invested now with compelling pathos. Each mile they descended seemed to deepen the returning shadow on her face. The gayety, the buoyancy of the upward trail was gone. She was silent, constrained, and sad; and he set to work to restore her to the simple and girlish candor of the morning. He called attention to the wonders of the western sky. He shouted to induce echoes, and challenged her to a race, and at the last descent dared her to ride down in one of the ore-buckets, seeking to bring the smiles back to her lips.

She responded to his cheer, but not as before. Something clouded her clear glance—her smiles died quickly, and the poise of her head was less alert.

When they had reached the wagon-road and he could ride by her side, he, too, became serious. "I hope I haven't given offence in any way, Miss Lambert? If I have, I assure you it was entirely unintentional, and I beg your pardon."

She looked away. "You have done nothing," she said, slowly.

"But you seem distinctly less friendly to me. I hope you didn't take anything I said concerning your mother's faith to heart. I had no intention of attacking her beliefs, but I must be honest with you—I don't like Mr. Clarke. There's something unwholesome about him, and what you've told me to-day is not reassuring. Evidently he took the death of his wife very hard, and it has added to his natural tendency towards a sort of spiritual monomania. As a matter of fact, he's more Spiritualist than Calvinist at present. Isn't that so?"

The girl's face grew sullen and weary. "Oh, I don't know, I'm tired of it all."

"He endlessly talks his grind, I suppose. How foolish, how sickly it all seems—here in the presence of uncontaminated nature! In such sunlight as this it seems insanity to sit in a book-walled room and grow bloodless with dreaming over insoluble problems. And yet a friend of mine told me that these towns, and especially California towns, were filled with seers and prophets. The occult flourishes in the high, dry atmosphere, those of the faith say. Don't you permit Clarke to destroy your love of nature, Miss Lambert; you belong to the sane and sunny world, and he has no right to bring his gloomy conceptions home to you. You are too young and too naturally joyous to be concerned with the problems of disease and death. You were made to be happy."

He ended with greater earnestness than he had intended to use, and the effect of his words on the girl was very great. She could not speak; tears were in her eyes, and her bosom heaved most piteously. His sense of her helplessness deepened, and he added, "Will you permit me to talk to Mr. Clarke about you and your plans?"

This seemed to alarm her. "No, no!" she cried out, distressfully. "Please don't say anything to him about me. It will do no good. You don't understand, and I can't tell you," she added, breathlessly.

"Very well," he said, soothingly; "but, remember, your case interests me exceedingly, and you may call on me at any time and I will gladly help."

She turned a pale and tearful face towards him and extended her hand.

"I thank you very, very much. You have helped me more than I can say."

During the remainder of the ride he discussed the springs, the source of the streams, the caverns, and other natural features of the scene, and had the satisfaction of seeing her face in a smile before he left her.

He went back to his hotel with a feeling of having spent six days in her company rather than six hours. She absorbed his entire thought, and so keen was his sense of her beleaguerment that he resolved to call upon Clarke in order to define his character and to understand his motives. "His passions or his doubt overshadow the girl's sky, and I'm going to find out whether his designs are those of friend or fiend." At the moment he had a feeling that they were those of a devouring fiend.