Читать книгу The Shepherd of the North - Richard Aumerle Maher - Страница 9

THE CHOIR UNSEEN

Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms of the Sacred Heart convent in Athens thrumming out a finger exercise that a child of six would have been able to do as well as she.

It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world, this, into which she had been suddenly transplanted. It was as different from the great world that she had come out to see as it was from the wild, sweet life of the hills where she had ruled and managed everything within reach. Mainly it was full of girls of her own age whose talk and thoughts were of a range entirely new to her.

She compared herself with them and knew that they were really children in the comparison. Their talk was of dress and manners and society and the thousand little and big things that growing girls look forward to. She knew that in any real test, anything that demanded common sense and action, she was years older than they. But they had things that she did not have.

They talked of things that she knew nothing about. They could walk across waxed floors as though waxed floors were meant to be walked on. 36 They could rise to recite lessons without stammering or choking as she did. They could take reproof jauntily, where she, who had never in her life received a scolding, would have been driven into hysterics. They could wear new dresses just as though all dresses were supposed to be new. She knew that these were not things that they had learned by studying. They just grew up to them, just as she knew how to throw a fishing line and hold a rifle.

But she wanted all those things that they had; wanted them all passionately. She had the sense to know that those were not great things. But they were the things that would make her like these other girls. And she wanted to be like them.

Because she had not grown up with other girls, because she had never even had a girl playmate, she wanted not to miss any of the things that they had and were.

They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick, eager mind sprang at books and fairly tore the lessons from them. She ran away from the girls in anything that could be learned in that way. But when she found herself with two or three of them they talked a language that she did not know. She could not keep up with them. And she was stupid and awkward, and felt it. It was not easy to break into their world and be one of them.

Then there was that other world, touching the world of the girls but infinitely removed from it––the world of the sisters.

That mysterious cloister from which the sisters came and gave their hours of teaching or duty and to which they retreated back again was a world all by itself.

What was there in there behind those doors that never banged? What was there in there that made the sisters all so very much alike? They must once have been as different as every girl is different from every other girl.

How was it that they could carry with them all day long that air of never being tired or fretted or worried? What wonderful presence was there behind the doors of that cloistered house that seemed to come out with them and stay with them all the time? What was the light that shone in their faces?

Was it just because they were always contented and happy? What did they have to be happy about?

Ruth had tried to question the other girls about this. They were Catholics. They ought to know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her question aside with a stare:

“Sisters always look like that.”

So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind kept prying at that world of the sisters behind 38 those walls. What did they do in there? Did they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people? Or did they just pray all the time? Or did they see wonderful, starry visions of God and Heaven that they were always talking about? They seemed so familiar with God. They knew just when He was pleased and especially when He was displeased.

She had come down out of her hills where everything was so open, where there were no mysteries, where everything from the bark on the trees to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away, was as clear as a printed book. Everything up there told its plain lesson. She could read the storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had been hidden. Nothing in nature or life up there had ever shut itself away from her.

Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of them closing its door in the face of her sharp, hungry mind.

And there was that other world, enveloping all the other lesser worlds about her––the world of the Catholic Church.

Three weeks ago those two words had meant to her a little green building in French Village where the “Canucks” went to church.

Now her day began and ended with it. It was on all sides of her. The pictures and the images on every wall, the signs on every classroom door. The books she read, the talk she heard was all 39 filled with it. It came and went through every door of life.

All the inherited prejudices of her line of New England fathers were alive and stirring in her against this religion that demanded so much. The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given her fought against it. It was so absolute. It was so sure of everything. She wanted to argue with it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must be wrong sometimes.

But just when she was sure that she had found something false, something that she knew was not right in the things they taught her, she was always told that she had not understood. Some one was always ready to tell her, in an easy, patient, amused way, that she had gotten the thing wrong. How could they always be so sure? And what was wrong with her that she could not understand? She could learn everything else faster and more easily than the other girls could.

Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her hands fell nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were blinded with great, burning tears. A wave of intolerable longing and loneliness swept over her.

The wonderful, enchanting world that she had come out of her hills to conquer was cut down to the four little grey walls that enclosed her. Everything was shut away from her. She did not understand these strange women about her. Would never understand them.

Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where Daddy Tom was near her, where there was love for her, where the people and even the snow and the wild winds were her friends?

She threw herself forward on her arms and gave way utterly, crying in great, heart-breaking, breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for her home, for her hills.

At five o’clock Sister Rose, coming to see that the music rooms were aired for the evening use, found Ruth an inert, shapeless little bundle of broken nerves lying across the piano.

She took the girl to her room and sent for the sister infirmarian.

But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only to leave her alone.

The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness that every new pupil in a boarding school is liable to, sent some of the other girls in during the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she drove them away. She was not cross nor pettish. But her soul was sick for the sweeping freedom of her hills and for people who could understand her.

She rose and dragged her little couch over to the window, where she could look out and up to the friendly stars, the same ones that peeped down upon her in the hills.

She did not know the names that they had in books, but she had framed little pet names for 41 them all out of her baby fancies and the names had clung to them all the years.

She recognised them, although they did not stand in the places where they belonged when she looked at them from the hills.

Out among them somewhere was Heaven. Daddy Tom was there, and her mother whom she had never seen.

Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it seemed, there came stealing into her sense a sound. Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, so illusive. It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear as other sounds must do. It seemed, rather, to steal past the clumsy senses directly into the spirit and the heart.

It was music. Yes. But it was as though the Soul of Music had freed itself of the bondage and the body of sound and notes and came carrying its unutterable message straight to the soul of the world.

It was only the sisters in their chapel gently hymning the Salve of the Compline to their Queen in Heaven.

Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued, sweetly poignant evensong on every other night. Other nights, her mind filled with books and its other business, the music had scarcely reached her. To-night her soul was alive. Her every sense was like a nerve laid bare, ready to be thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures.

She did not think of the sisters. She saw the deep rose flush of the windows in the dimly lighted chapel across the court, and knew vaguely, perhaps, that the music came from there. But it carried her beyond all thought.

She did not hear the words of the hymn. Would not have understood them if she had heard. But the lifting of hearts to Our Life, our Sweetness and our Hope caught her heart up into a world where words were never needed.

She heard the cry of the Banished children of Eve. The Mourning and weeping in this vale of tears swept into her soul like the flood-tide of all the sorrow of all the world.

On and upwards the music carried her, until she could hear the triumph, until her soul rang with the glory and the victory of The Promises of Christ.

The music ceased. She saw the light fade from the chapel windows, leaving only the one little blood-red spot of light before the altar. She lay there trembling, not daring to move, while the echo of that unseen choir caught her heartstrings and set them ringing to the measure of the heart of the world.

It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and helplessness but the undying hope of the world that she had heard. It was the cry of the little blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of martyrs on their pyres. It was the cry of strong 43 men and valiant women crushed under the forces of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic Church, which knows what the soul of the world is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this. She realised it as she lay there trembling.

Always, as long as life was in her; always, whether she worked or laughed, cried or played; always that voice would grip her heart and play upon it and lead her whether she would or no.

It would lead her. It would carry her. It would send her.

Through all the long night she fought it. She would not! She would not give up her life, her will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she?

It would take her spirit out of the freedom of the hills and make it follow a trodden way. It would take her life out of her hands and maybe ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and the wind, in a darkened convent. It would take her will, the will of a soldier’s daughter, and break it into little pieces to make a path for her to walk upon!

No! No! No! Through all the endless night she moaned her protest. She would not! She would not give in to it.

It would never let her rest. Through all her life that voice of the Choir Unseen would strike the strings of her heart. She knew it.

But she would not. Never would she give in to it.

In the morning, even before the coming of the dawn, the music came again; and it beat upon her worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenched at her heart until she could stand it no longer.

The sisters were taking up again the burden and the way of the day.

She could not stand it! She could not stay here! She must go back to her hills, where there was peace for her.

She heard the sister going down to unlock the street door so that Father Tenney could walk in when it was time and go up to the chapel for the sisters’ early mass.

That was her chance! The sisters would be in chapel. The girls would be still in their rooms.

She dressed hastily and threw her books into a bag. She would take only these and her money. She had enough to get home on. The rest did not matter.

When she heard the priest’s step pass in the hall, she slipped out and down the dim, broad stairs.

The great, heavy door of the convent stood like the gate of the world. It swung slowly, deliberately, on its well-oiled, silent hinges.

She stood in the portal a moment, drinking hungrily the fresh, free air of the morning that had come down from her hills. Then she fled away into the dawn.

The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain as Jeffrey Whiting came out of his mother’s house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. His uncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn with the team and sled. Jeffrey threw his trunk upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe. It was twenty-five miles of half broken road and snowdrifts to Lowville and the railroad.

Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical American farm boy has been doing for the last hundred years and what he will probably continue to do as long as we Americans are what we are. He is not always a dreamer, your farm boy, when he starts down from his hills or his cross-roads farm to see the big world and conquer it. More often than you would think, he knows that he is not going to conquer it at all. And he is not, on the other hand, merely running away from the drudgery of the farm. He knows that he will probably have to work harder than he would ever have worked on the farm. But he knows that he has things to sell. And he is going down into the markets of men. He has a good head and a strong body. He has a power of work in him. He has grit and energy.

He is going down into the markets where men pay the price for these things that he has. He is going to fight men for that price which he knows his things are worth.

Jeffrey’s mother came out carrying a canvas satchel which she put on the sled under Cassius Bascom’s feet.

“Don’t kick that, Catty,” she warned, “Jeff’s lunch is in it. And, Jeff, don’t you go and check it with the trunk.” There was just a little catch in the laugh with which she said this. She was remembering a day more than twenty years before when she had started, a bride, with big, lumbering, slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting, Jeffrey’s father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with their lunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting checked the satchel through from Lowville to Buffalo, and they had nearly starved on the way. It was easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity. But she never quite forgave him for telling it on himself when they got back. It had been a standing joke in the hills all these years.

She was just a typical mother of the hills. She loved her boy. She needed him. She knew that she would never have him again. The boys do not come back from the market place. She knew that she would cry for him through many a lonely night, as she had cried all last night. But she was not crying now.

Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his as she stretched her arms up around the neck of her tall boy and drew his head down to kiss her.

He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart. He knew his mother very well. So he began with 47 the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried to tell when we were leaving.

“It’ll only be a little while, Mother. You won’t find the time slipping by, and I’ll be back.”

She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys always knew it was a lie. But she backed him up sturdily:

“Why, of course, Jeff. Don’t worry about me. You’ll be back in no time.”

Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the house with a dark, oblong object in her hands.

“There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just tried to forget this on purpose. It’s too late to put it in the trunk now; so you’ll just have to put it in your overcoat pocket.”

Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown brick covered with felt, a foot warmer. Aunt Letty had made him take one with him when he went down to the Academy at Lowville last winter, and he and his brick had furnished much of the winter’s amusement there. The memory of his humiliations on account of that brick would last a lifetime. He wondered why maiden aunts could not understand. His mother, now, would have known better. But he dutifully put the thing into the pocket of his big coat––he could drop it into the first snowback––and turned to kiss his aunt.

“I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany,” she lectured. “Make your landlady heat it for you every night.”

A noise in the road made them all turn.

Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were driving into the yard.

It was evident from the signs that the men had been having a hard time on the road. They must have been out all night, for they could not have started from anywhere early enough to be here now at sunrise.

Their harness had been broken and mended in several places. The cutter had a runner broken. The horses were cut and bloody, where they had kicked themselves and each other in the drifts.

As they drove up beside the group in the yard, one of the men shouted:

“Say, is there any place we can put in here? We’ve been on that road all night.”

“Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and warm yourselves,” said Mrs. Whiting.

“Rogers,” said the man who had spoken, addressing the other, “if I ever get into a place that’s warm, I’ll stay there till spring.”

Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of the cutter and stepped stiffly out into the snow. He swept the group with a sharp, a praising eye, and asked:

“Who’s the one to talk to here?”

Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and replied with another question.

“What do you want?”

Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby 49 grey moustache and cold grey eyes, looked the youth over carefully as he spoke.

“I want a man that knows this country and can get around in it in this season. I was brought up in the country, but I never saw anything like this. I wouldn’t take a trip like this again for any money. I can’t do this sort of thing. I want a man that knows the country and the people and can do it.”

“Well, I’m going away now,” said Jeffrey slowly, “but Uncle Catty here knows the people and the country better than most and he can go anywhere.”

The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish man on the sled. Then he turned away decisively. Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly old face all withered and puckered to one side, where a splinter of shell from Fort Fisher had taken away his right eye, was evidently not the kind of man that the big man wanted.

“Where are you going?” he asked Jeffrey sharply.

“Albany Law School,” said Jeffrey promptly.

“Unstrap the trunk, young man. You’re not going. I’ve got something for you right here at home that’ll teach you more than ten law schools. Put both teams into the barn,” the big man commanded loudly.

Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would oppose the will of this brusque stranger. But he 50 knew that he would not do so. In that moment something told him that he would not go to law school; would never go there; that his life was about to take a twist away from everything that he had ever intended.

Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply:

“Come into the house.”

In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom poured boiling tea for the two men, Rogers, cup in hand, stood squarely on the hearth and explained himself. The other man, whose name does not matter, sank into a great wooden chair at the side of the fire and seemed to be ready to make good his threat of staying until spring.

“I represent the U. & M. railroad. We are coming up through here in the spring. All these farms have to be given up. We have eminent domain for this whole section,” said Rogers.

“What do you mean?” asked Jeffrey. “The railroad can’t run all over the country.”

“No. But the road will need the whole strip of hills for timber. They’ll cut off what is standing and then they’ll stock the whole country with cedar, for ties. That’s all the land’s good for, anyway.”

Jeffrey Whiting’s mouth opened for an answer to this, but his mother’s sharp, warning glance stopped him. He understood that it was his place to listen and learn. There would be time enough for questions and arguments afterward.

“Now these people here won’t understand what eminent domain means,” the big man went on. “I’m going to make it clear to you, young man. I know who you are and I know more about you than you think. I’m going to make it clear to you and then I’m going to send you out among them to make them see it. They wouldn’t understand me and they wouldn’t believe me. You can make them see it.”

“How do you know that I’ll believe you?” asked Jeffrey.

“You’ve got brains. You don’t have to believe. I can show it to you.”

Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed to taking responsibilities upon himself. He had never been afraid of anything and this perhaps had given him more than the average boy’s good opinion of himself. Nothing could have appealed to him more subtly than this man’s bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to man by a man of the world. No boy is proof against the compliment that he is a man, to be dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced men. Jeffrey was ready to listen.

“Do you know what an option is?” the man began again.

“Of course I do.”

“I thought so,” said Rogers, in a manner that seemed to confirm his previous judgment of Jeffrey’s brains. “Now then, the railroad has got 52 to have all these farms from Beaver River right up to the head of Little Tupper Lake. I say these people won’t know what eminent domain means. You’re going to tell them. It means that they can sell at the railroad’s price or they can hold off and a referee will be appointed to name a price. The railroad will have a big say in appointing those referees. Do you understand me?”

“Yes. I see,” said Jeffrey. “But––”

“No buts at all about it, young man,” said Rogers, waving his hand. “The people have got to sell. If they give options at once––within thirty days––they’ll get more than a fair price for their land. If they don’t––if they hold off––their farms will be condemned as forest land. And you know how much that brings.

“You people will be the first. You can ask almost anything for your land. You’ll get it. And, what is more, I am able to offer you, Whiting, a very liberal commission on every option you can get me within the time I have said. This is the thing that I can’t do. It’s the thing that I want you to do.

“You’ll do it. I know you will, when you get time to think it over. Here are the options,” said the big man, pulling a packet of folded papers out of his pocket. “They cover every farm in the section. All you have to do is to get the people to write their names once. Then your 53 work is done. We’ll do the rest and your commissions will be waiting for you. Some better than law school, eh?”

“But say,” Jeffrey stammered, “say, that means, why, that means my mother and the folks here, why, they’d have to get out; they’d have to leave their home!”

“Of course,” said Rogers easily. “A man like you isn’t going to keep his family up on top of this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you’ll have the best home in Lowville for them, where they can live in style, in less than six months. Do you think your mother wants to stay here after you’re gone. You were going away. Did you think,” he said shrewdly, “what life up here would be worth to your mother while you were away. No, you’re just like all boys. You wanted to get away yourself. But you never thought what a life this is for her.

“Why, boy, she’s a young woman yet. You can take her out and give her a chance to live. Do you hear, a chance to live.

“Think it over.”

Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than he had ever tried to think in his life. But he could make nothing of it.

He thought of the people, old and young, on the hills, suddenly set adrift from their homes. He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassius and 54 Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back to. And he thought of money––illimitable money: money that could do everything.

He did not want to look at his mother for counsel. The man’s talk had gone to his head. But, slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to his mother’s, and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look which told him to wait, wait. He caught the meaning and spoke it brusquely:

“All right. Leave the options here. I’ll see what we’ll do. And I’ll write to you next week.”

No. That would not do. The big man must have his answer at once. He stormed at Jeffrey. He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished Miss Letitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius, but that guileless man led him off into such a discussion of cross grafting and reforestation that he was glad to drop him.

In the end, he saw that, having committed himself, he could do no better than leave the matter to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time for thought, the boy could not refuse his offer.

So the two men, having breakfasted and rested their horses, set out on the down trip to Lowville.

Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother came to a decision.

“It is too big for us, Jeff,” she said. “We do not know what it means. Nobody up here can tell us. The man was lying. But we do not know why, or what about.

“There is one man that could tell us. The White Horse Chaplain, do you remember him, Jeffrey?”

“I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me.”

“Only to give her her chance, my son. Do not forget that. He could tell us what this means. I don’t care anything about his religion. Your Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day at Fort Fisher. I don’t. He is the Catholic Bishop of Alden. You’ll go to him to-morrow. He’ll tell you what it means.”

Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very much worried. For the third time he picked up and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of the Sacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him that Ruth Lansing had left the convent that morning. But the third perusal of the message did not give him any more light on the matter than the two previous readings had done.

Why should the girl have gone away? What could have happened? Only the other day he had received a letter from her telling of her studies and her progress and of every new thing that was interesting her.

The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home where he had found her “Daddy Tom” dying, and where he had buried him on the hillside. Probably the girl would go back and try to live there. And he thought of the boy who had told 56 him of his love and that he wanted to keep Ruth there in the hills.

As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary came to the door to tell him that the boy, Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room asking to see him and refusing even to indicate the nature of his business to any one but the Bishop himself.

The Bishop was startled. He had understood that the young man was in Albany at school. Now he thought that he would get a very clear light upon Ruth Lansing’s disappearance.

“I came to you, sir,” said Jeffrey when the Bishop had given him a chair, “because you could tell us what to do.”

“You mean you and your––neighbour, Ruth Lansing?”

“Why, no, sir. What about her?” said Jeffrey quickly.

The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching look, and saw his mistake. The boy knew nothing.

“This,” the Bishop answered, as he handed Jeffrey the open telegram.

“But where’s she gone? Why did she go?” Jeffrey broke out, as he read the message.

“I thought you were coming to tell me that.”

“No,” said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop’s meaning quickly. “She didn’t write to me, not at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn’t have it. 57 But she wrote to my mother and she didn’t say anything about leaving there.”

“I suppose not,” said the Bishop. “She seems to have gone away suddenly. But, I am forgetting. You came to talk to me.”

“Yes.” And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly and shortly, of the coming of Rogers and his proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to tell how he had been carried away by the man’s offer and his flattery. He made it plain that it was only his mother’s insight and caution that had held him back from accepting the offer on the instant.

The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness of the young fellow. It was good to hear. When he had heard all he bowed in his old-fashioned, stiff way and said:

“Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise woman. You will convey to her my deepest respect.

“I do not know what it all means,” he went on, in another tone. “But I can soon find out.”

He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the door the Bishop said:

“Will you see, please, if General Chandler is in his office across the street. If he is, give him my respects and ask him to step over here a moment.”

The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the doorway.

“What is it?” asked the Bishop.

“There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She says she must see you, but she will not give a name. She seems to be in trouble, or frightened.”

Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for the door.

“Sit down where you were, young man,” said the Bishop sharply. If Ruth Lansing were out there––and the Bishop half believed that she was––well, it might be coincidence. But it was too much for the Bishop’s credulity.

“Send the girl in here,” he said shortly.

Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went straight to the Bishop. She did not see Jeffrey.

“I came straight here all the way,” she said, “to tell you, Bishop, that I couldn’t stay in the convent any longer. I am going home. I could not stay there.”

“I am very glad to see you, Ruth,” said the Bishop easily, “and if you’ll just turn around, I think you’ll see some one who is even more pleased.”

Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at sight of Jeffrey was abundant proof to the Bishop that the coming of these two to his door was indeed a coincidence.

“Now,” said the Bishop quickly, “you will both sit down and listen. It concerns both of you deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, General Chandler. You have both heard of him. 59 He is the political power of this part of the State. He can, if he will, tell us just how serious your situation is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just listen.”

Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise and perhaps a little resentment. For hours she had been bracing her courage for this ordeal of meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely told to sit down and listen to something, she did not know what.

The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler was ushered into the room and the two veterans saluted each other with the stiffest of military precision.

“These are two young friends of mine from the hills, General,” said the Bishop, as he seated his old friend. “They both own farms in the Beaver Run country. They have come to me to find out what the U. & M. Railroad wants with options on all that country. Can you, will you tell them?”

The General plucked for a moment at the empty left sleeve of his coat.

“No, Bishop,” he said finally, “I cannot give out what I know of that matter. The interests behind it are too large for me. I would not dare. I do not often have to say that.”

“No,” said the Bishop slowly, “I never heard you say that before.”

“But I can do this, Bishop,” said the General, 60 rising. “If you will come over here to the end of the room, I can tell you, privately, what I know. You can then use your own prudence to judge how much you can tell these young people.”

The Bishop followed to the window at the other end of the room, where the two men stood and talked in undertones.

“Jeffrey,” said Ruth through teeth that gritted with impatience, “if you don’t tell me this instant what it’s all about, I’ll––I’ll bite you!”

Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little wild outbreak of hers to convince him that the young lady who had swept into the room and faced the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth, after all.

In quick whispers, he told her all he knew.

The Bishop walked to the door with the General, thanking him. From the door the General saluted gravely and stalked away.

“The answer,” said the Bishop quietly, as he came back to them, “is one word––Iron.”

To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making a mysterious fuss about nothing. But Jeffrey saw the whole matter instantly.

“No one knows how much there is, or how little there is,” said the Bishop. “The man lied to you, Jeffrey. The road has no eminent domain. But they can get it if they get the options on a large part of the farms. Then, when they have the 61 right of eminent domain, they will let the options lapse and buy the properties at their own prices.”

“I’ll start back to warn the people to-night,” said Jeffrey, jumping up. “Maybe they made that offer to other people besides me!”

“Wait,” said the Bishop, “there is more to think of. The railroad, if you serve it well, will, no doubt, buy your farm for much more than it is worth to you. There is your mother to be considered first. And they will, very likely, give you a chance to make a small fortune in your commissions, if you are faithful to them. If you go to fight them, they will probably crush you all in the end, and you will be left with little or nothing. Better go slowly, young man.”

“What?” cried Jeffrey. “Take their bribe! Take their money, for fooling and cheating the other people out of their homes! Why, before I’d do that, I’d leave that farm and everything that’s there and go up into the big woods with only my axe, as my grandfather did. And my mother would follow me! You know that! My mother would be glad to go with me, with nothing, nothing in her hands!”

“And so would I!” said Ruth, springing to her feet. “I would! I would!” she chanted defiantly.

“Well, well, well!” said the Bishop, smiling.

“But you are not going up into the big woods, 62 Jeffrey,” Ruth said demurely. “You are going back home to fight them. If I could help you I would go back with you. I would not be of any use. So, I’m going back, to the convent, to face my fight.”

“But, but,” said Jeffrey, “I thought you were running away.”

“I did. I was,” said Ruth. “Last night I heard the voice of something calling to me. It was such a big thing,” she went on, turning to the Bishop; “it seemed such a pitiless, strong thing that I thought it would crush me. It would take my life and make me do what it wanted, not what I wanted. I was afraid of it. I ran away. It was like a Choir Unseen singing to me to follow, and I didn’t dare follow.

“But I heard it again, just now when Jeffrey spoke that way. Now I know what it was. It was the call of life to everybody to face life, to take our souls in our hands and go forward. I thought I could turn back. I can’t. God, or life won’t let us turn back.”

“I know what you mean, child. Fear nothing,” said the Bishop. “I’m glad you came away, to have it out with yourself. And you will be very glad now to go back.”

“As for you, young man,” he turned to Jeffrey, “I should say that your mother would be proud to go anywhere, empty-handed with you. Remember that, when you are in the worst of this 63 fight that is before you. When you are tempted, as you will be tempted, remember it. When you are hard pressed, as you will be hard pressed, remember it.”

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