Читать книгу The Bail Jumper - Robert J. C. Stead - Страница 6

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“We have heard the cattle lowing in the silent summer nights;We have smelt the smudge-fire fragrance—we have seen the smudge-fire lights—We have heard the wild duck grumbling to his mate along the bank;Heard the thirsty horses snorting in the stream from which they drank;Heard the voice of Youth and Laughter in the long slow-gloaming night;Seen the arched electric splendour of the Great North’s livid light;Read the reason of existence—felt the touch that was divine—And in eyes that glowed responsive saw the end of God’s design.” Prairie Born.

“Why don’t you come out and see us sometime, Burton?”

It was Harry Grant speaking at the door of the store one evening early in June.

“I should like to very much,” was the reply, “but you see I am busy all day.”

“But not all night, surely. Come, you are ready to close up now, and I am just going home. I guess I’ll have to come back later in the night for the vet.; he’s out of town at present. Hustle round now, and lock ’er up, and I’ll be here in a few minutes with the team.”

“But I need a shave, and I’m just in my working garb.”

“Nonsense; we’re farmers at our house.”

“Not all of you,” said Burton, and was suddenly astonished at his own temerity.

“Oh, that’s how the land lies,” said Harry, looking quizzically at the other. “Well, if I had any ambitions in which a young lady figured, which, by the way, doesn’t seem to be in my line, I’d rather let her see me in my working clothes than not at all. Besides, you are taking her at the same disadvantage. Now, hustle; I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

As they drove out along the country road Harry remarked, as though the thought had just occurred to him—

“Ever been out to Crotton’s Crossing?”

“No, I haven’t, though a quiet day there is one of the treats I promise myself. Let’s see; it’s about ten miles from here, isn’t it?”

“Twelve, and as fine a drive on a June Sunday as you could think about. Myrtle has been coaxing me for a month to take her out, but when a fellow pegs along all week on the farm he likes to lay up on Sundays.”

This was rather unlike Harry, for it was well known that twelve hours a day on the land were not enough to keep him off the baseball diamond in the evening.

Burton made some remark about his old opinions of farm-work, and how life in a store had led him to revise them, and was about to dismiss the subject from his mind when Harry, avoiding his eye with a bashfulness usually foreign to his nature, said:

“Well, haven’t you got a thought?”

“Nothing to speak of,” his friend admitted. “What would you like me to think?”

“See here,” said the other, “must I force an idea into your head with these horny hands? You’re bright enough on some subjects but denser than hotel coffee on others. In brief: You want to spend a day at the crossing; so does my cousin. Now do you see light?”

“Do you mean that I should ask her to go with me?” said Burton, almost overwhelmed with the possibility.

“Oh no, not that you should. There’s nothing compulsory about it, and if you don’t take her, no doubt some one else will. It’s my guess that Gardiner wouldn’t need a second hint. But it’s your privilege to invite her. The worst she can do is refuse. And she won’t do the worst, either.”

“But the choir?”

“Oh, fight that out with her; I’m not her guardian.”

They drove in silence for some distance, their thoughts accompanied by the rhythmic cadence of the jangling trace-chains. The sun was an hour from the setting, and the golden glow of its oblique rays across the prairies and over the fast-greening wheatfields shed an amber radiance that danced along the trail. The shouts of men at their evening’s amusement, the lowing of cattle, the occasional bark of a dog, the far off drumming of prairie chicken, came through the quiet stillness of the air. When at last Burton spoke it was in a confidential note he had never used since he had helped lay his mother in the hillside.

“Harry,” he said, “men don’t often talk of these things, but you’ve guessed my great desire. I know I am foolish; it’s unreasonable of me to entertain such ambitions, but our great hopes, like our great sorrows, come to us unbidden. I cannot help what I feel, but I hope I can help what I do. I appreciate beyond expression the words you have said to me, with all that they imply, but would it be fair, if, indeed, it were not presumptuous, for one like me—I mean a boy, for I am nothing more, on a small wage, and with no other means of support—would it be fair that I should meddle in what every one will say are much more appropriate arrangements?”

“You are referring to Gardiner,” said Harry. “And in the first place, I want you to know that every one will not say that that would be a more appropriate arrangement. It may be true that you are young, that you have your own way to make in the world, but all that is in your favour. You are well educated; better than most town boys, for you have learned to spend your idle hours to advantage, which they, as a rule, do not; you have a good constitution and a clear conscience, and the girl who isn’t willing to face the battle of life with a companion so equipped isn’t worthy to be his wife. In this country women do not marry men who have achieved distinction; in almost every case where wealth or honour come, they come after marriage. If you think my cousin isn’t wise enough to know that in the battle of life as it must be waged in this great new country a man’s mental and physical equipment count for more than any cash capital, you do her intelligence a grave injustice. But I want to warn you that I am not speaking for her; I have not been given, and I have not asked, her confidence in these matters. But I know Gardiner well, and I know you a little, and I have my cousin’s happiness sufficiently at heart to say what I have said.”

This was a remarkable speech for the young farmer, who usually disposed of a subject in a sentence, and Burton felt that it was, indeed, a great compliment to him. He knew that Harry had spoken in all sincerity; had opened a corner of his heart to one who was little more than a stranger, and he resolved to follow the cue he had been given.

Mrs. Grant, Susy Grant, and Miss Vane were in the garden as the young men drove up. They greeted Burton cordially, and as Harry went to look after his team entertained their visitor with a walk through the garden and a discussion of the various flowers in which Mrs. Grant so much delighted. Presently, however, the elder lady felt the night air becoming chill, and, reminding Susy that the separator would be ready to wash, entered the house, accompanied by her daughter.

“Oh, you haven’t seen my pony, have you, Mr. Burton?” said Miss Vane. “He’s the dearest little fellow. Uncle gave him to me because he said he couldn’t have me walking to town and getting home at midnight, although when he knew I had your protection he admitted that altered the circumstances. I keep him in the pasture—the pony, you know. Shall we walk over and see him? Then you can lead him home, and I will ride.”

Nothing pleased the young man better, and in a few minutes they were tripping along the well-beaten cowpath that led into the pasture. Night was setting in, and when they reached the stream, girded with dense willows, it was quite dark. The pony was not easily found, and several times they approached cattle in mistake; but at length Miss Vane’s call brought his answering whinny, as he came running to her, through the bushes.

“Now sir, I shall ride you home,” she said, rubbing her pet’s nose, “and Mr. Burton will lead you. This is Mr. Burton, Frisky.”

“But you have no saddle,” said Burton.

“Surely I am westernised enough to ride without a saddle by this time,” said the young woman, “especially as the gait is not to exceed a walk. But I am afraid I shall have to have some assistance before we can start.”

She stood with her right arm over the pony’s back. In the darkness he seemed unusually tall.

For a lady in an ordinary habit to mount a horse, especially without the assistance of a saddle, is a feat of some difficulty, as Burton discovered before it was accomplished. As they journeyed slowly back to the farmhouse the young man inquired if Miss Vane had ever been to Crotton’s Crossing.

“No, indeed, and they say it is one of the most delightful drives. I have been at Harry a dozen times to take me, but he always has some excuse, and George—well, I must admit that George seems to be more interested in our friend Miss Green than in his little orphan cousin.”

“I was wondering,” said Burton, mustering all his resolution for the task, “if you would accept an invitation to drive there with me next Sunday?”

“One can never tell,” said the young woman demurely.

“Tell what?” asked Burton, a little piqued at the irrelevance of the remark.

“What one will do under certain circumstances, until the circumstances occur.”

“By which you mean?”

“Well, if I must be blunt, Mr. Burton, I cannot tell you whether I would accept such an invitation until I receive it.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Raymond, and both laughed. “Miss Vane, will you honour me with your company to Crotton’s Crossing on Sunday?”

“Rather formal, but strictly correct,” commented Miss Vane. “But there is the choir——”

“Ah, yes, I had thought of that.”

“And what solution had you discovered?”

“Not any, I fear.”

“Under those circumstances it seems I will not be able——”

“Of course,” Burton admitted, “they can’t get along without you in the choir.”

“Do you think so? Well, that is too bad, because next Sunday—they’ll have to.”

Sunday dawned, cloudless and warm. The rainy season had not set in in earnest, and, although farmers complained, the liverymen were well pleased that the roads were conducive to pleasure drives. A light wind blew from the south-east, just fresh enough to keep the air in motion, as at 9 a.m. Burton drove out of town with as good an equipage as the place afforded. The fields wore a heavy coat of dark green grain, waving in the breeze like ripples on a pond; the mirthsome gophers frolicked on the road, and clear-voiced barnyard fowl rent the air with their morning dissertations. As Burton drove up to the Grant farmhouse he was met by Harry and George; the former in his working clothes, but his brother dressed in his Sunday best.

“Wish I could get the fever too,” lamented Harry. “Here’s George with a special engagement at church, and Susy tidying up for a caller, and pretty cousin Myrtle putting the final tiffics on her fascination, while I come down to the prosaic business of running milk through the separator. But mind you, Burton, a word of warning. They say the road to a popular resort is paved with good intentions. There’s many in this district will aver the road to Crotton’s Crossing is paved with broken hearts.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Ray,” called Susy Grant from the verandah. Susy never troubled to “mister” her male acquaintances after the second meeting. “Harry’d be only too glad to take your drive himself if Myrtle was somebody else’s cousin.”

“And he’d be no man if he wouldn’t,” declared George. “Hang it, I’m kind o’ sorry I’m barred, myself.”

“Don’t say that,” said Harry. “Many a good wife has graduated from pedagogy.”

This allusion to Miss Green had the effect of silencing the younger brother, and in a moment Miss Vane appeared. She wore a dress of creamy white, such as on the night Raymond had first seen her. From the toes of her little kid shoes to the tip of her modest hat she was white, absolutely white, save where one large red rose nestled in the hat’s protecting shelter, and an historic brooch gleamed at her half-exposed throat. Her dark, waving hair, the wonderfully deep, lustrous eyes, the electrically sensitive mouth, the superb lines of her chin and neck, the whole supported by a figure chaste, symmetrical and beautiful, asked no grander setting than the emblem of purity she wore. Burton had thought her beautiful on the night he first met her, but he told himself it was her mentality that had so irresistibly attracted his, and as their acquaintance had ripened his delight had been in her alert intellect, her glorious voice, her easy grace of manner, gesture, and speech; but this morning he saw in her a ravishment of personal, physical beauty such as he thought had never before been vested in woman. The joy he felt in her mere presence, which had been to him a delightful and inexplicable mystery, was revealed in an instant as though a great cloud had been swept away. He recognised the magnet and the steel, wedded in an affinity defying every analysis of man, but everlasting and indissoluble as the eternal hills. In one brief glance the great light and the great responsibility had burst upon him, and his heart swelled and throbbed in a panic of prayer that he might be able to keep his secret.

“I bet you have forgotten something,” cried Mrs. Grant, to her niece, as Burton tightened the reins.

“I never bet,” laughed Miss Vane, “but Mr. Burton will defend my memory.”

“In that case, I bet she didn’t,” declared Burton, gallantly.

“Well, here is the proof,” said Mrs. Grant, advancing with a well laden basket.

“It isn’t mine,” said Miss Vane. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“But it’s yours, just the same. It’s well you have an aunty to think about you, dearie. You are so excited over your drive with Mr. Burton that you would let the poor boy starve for his trouble.”

For a moment the young woman looked aghast. “Oh, Aunty, you darling,” she cried, as the basket was tucked in the back of the buggy, “and you with so much other work. You should have told me to do it.”

“Hush, hush, child. You may please the young gentleman’s eyes best, but I’m thinkin’ your old aunty still knows the short cut to a man’s heart.”

In the pioneer days the Poplar river had presented a serious obstacle to traffic in the spring and early summer freshets, until old Simon Crotton had squatted on the bank and constructed a passable ford. Simon had a team of shaganappies whose only virtue seemed to be that they were proof against every form of abuse, and when the settler, with his wagonload of rude implements or household effects, became entangled in the river, old Simon, if not too thoroughly intoxicated, could be depended upon to lend the assistance of himself and team, receiving therefore such dole as the settler could afford or his generosity prompted. A fine steel bridge now spanned the river at the spot, and Simon Crotton had long ago been gathered to his fathers, but the place retained the name of Crotton’s Crossing and will probably so be known until the end of time. In such humble ways do common men leave their indelible impress upon a new country.

The road from Grant’s to the crossing lay through a well-settled farming district where almost every acre except the road allowances had come under the plough. At one time the country had been partly covered with shrub, and willows and poplars still grew along the road, affording cover for prairie chickens and resting roosts for their relentless enemy, the hawk. The air was laden with the smell of wild flowers, of bursting buds, of fragrant red willows and balm-of-Gileads. For a mile or two there was little conversation; Burton knew not what to say, and Miss Vane was so enwrapped in the beauty of the country, so thrilled with its glorious air, so inspired with its immensity, that she seemed to have almost forgotten her companion’s presence. At last, as they crested a hill, and a vista of long, narrow road, of neat, quadrangular farms, of comfortable homes, of pastures fencing sleek, drowsy cattle and horses turned out for their Sunday holiday, with a white church and school-house by the road, opened before them, she turned to Burton with a strange mildness in her eyes, and exclaimed, “And still people with means at their command, who are in a measure the masters of their destiny, live in the cities!”

“Then you prefer the country?”

“Prefer! How is any other choice possible? What great thing has ever been that could not be traced to the land?”

“Yet our great men go to the cities, and these men you see about you, these farmers, every one of them laments his lot. They feel that the hands of all mankind are against them.”

“The same spirit prevails in the city, especially among the labouring classes. They think how fortunate they would be if they were wringing their living from the soil, instead of in the service of what they call capital.”

“But the intellectual advantages of the city?”

“Ah, there you have it. And yet, although you have had no college education, no free lectures, no public night schools, no young men’s clubs, I venture to think you are better prepared for the battle of life than many of those whom, you imagine, are more fortunately situated.”

The words recalled Harry Grant’s statement, and Burton did not pursue the subject.

It was mid-day when they wound down the steep banks of the Poplar river to the broad, elm-studded parkland below. Burton swung the team to the left, and they plunged into the recesses of the forest along an old and little used trail, which presently brought them to the edge of the water. Here they unhitched and Burton tied the horses where they could find a little grass, while Miss Vane spread the contents of the lunch basket on a rug beside the water. The long drive in the bright morning sunshine had whetted their appetites, but no sauce of hunger was necessary to give flavour to Mrs. Grant’s chicken sandwiches and currant jelly, with a thermos bottle of hot coffee. After the luncheon they gathered up the fragments, and climbing gingerly down to the stones which studded the shallow water, washed their hands in the stream that rippled by their feet. Then they picked their way across the river on the stones, for the water was low, and found a path leading through enchanted corridors fenced with great elms, and so they delved into the fastness of the wood. Finally, tired with their explorations, they recrossed the stream, startling a lazy fish that lay, head against the current, in the shelter of a stone, and found a great flat rock that overlooked the water. Here they sat, gazing down into its silvery depths, while the ripple of the running water caricatured their reflections. The faces below them were one moment long and sober, the next broad and merry, and then, by a little freak of the current, suddenly blended into one.

Both laughed. “The water is teasing,” said Miss Vane.

Burton sat in a great happiness of body and soul.

Aloud he repeated in a gentle undertone,

“And here and there a foamy flake,

Upon me as I travel;

With many a silvery waterbreak,

Above the golden gravel.

“I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.”

He stopped short, half ashamed; the poet had tricked him into a word he had not meant to use.

The hours fled faster than they knew, and it was not until the setting sun burst in great golden bars between the trunks of the stately elms that they realized it was growing late.

“We must go,” said Miss Vane. “ ’Twill be dark before we can reach home. And yet I am loath to leave a scene of so much happiness.”

“The day will be a mile-post in my memory,” said Raymond. “It has been to me a season of delight. But how could it be otherwise with such companionship?”

It was his first attempt at a compliment.

“Please do not speak to me in that way,” said Miss Vane, and there was a ring, not so much of anger as of pain, in her voice.

Burton was crushed. He had understood that compliments were always acceptable to a woman.

“Listen,” she continued, with a sudden deep kindliness in her voice, “I would not have you misunderstand me. My environment has, all my life, been very different from yours. I was brought up in the city, in an atmosphere of refinement and, if not luxury, at least moderate wealth. My associations were among what were called the best circles in the city. I met many men, handsome, wealthy, clever men, and I will not pretend that I did not know their attitude toward me. But I found that these men, although they could discuss affairs of government, of finance, of literature and art, in the frankest manner among themselves, could not address to me the commonest remark without wrapping it in a compliment. To a man they would speak as an equal, a rational being, but a woman must be flattered and cajoled. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, which I do not believe; but still more foolish is the idea, held by most men, that the way to a woman’s heart is through her vanity. Whoever adopts such an attitude toward a woman, every compliment from his lips is an insult. We women may be frail, and foolish, and unreasonable, but surely, surely we deserve the truth. And this morning, when I said I loved the country, it was, most of all, for its sincerity. I have sometimes thought I could, perhaps, love a man, if I found one who was not a liar.”

The hard word came out with a crash; the wonderful, electric mouth closed in a firmness that might have led men to battle, the deep eyes lit up with a blaze that was not from the setting sun.

Burton mumbled an apology. “But I meant what I said, Miss Vane!”

She looked fairly in his eyes.

“I believe you,” she said, simply.

It was late when Burton reached town. It was Sunday night, and the business section was in darkness. Miss Vane had given him some letters to post and, as he passed the store, it occurred to him to go in and get the necessary stamps, which would save him a special trip to the post-office in the morning. The firm’s supply of stamps was kept in the cash drawer in the safe, and Burton, having his keys with him, entered. Striking a match he groped his way to the little office at the back of the store where, by the light of more matches, he opened the combination, known to only himself and Gardiner, and took out the necessary stamps, which he would replace from his own in the morning. Then he locked the safe and, seeing an unfinished book lying above it, slipped it under his arm and left the store. The door fastened with a spring lock, although a key was necessary to open it; he drew it to, and as he did so he fancied he heard a footstep. The thought gave him no uneasiness and he started blithely down the street, still revelling in the delights of the happiest day his life had known. The little lecture he had received from Miss Vane had only the effect of deepening his attachment for her, and he was beginning to think, or at least to hope, that she returned some measure of his regard. He properly concluded that she would not have spoken so frankly to one in whom she felt no interest.

Suddenly a dark object flew by his face, and a moment later a beer bottle crashed in a thousand pieces on the brick wall at his side.

Burton turned quickly, but the streets were in darkness; he could see nothing. He ran in the direction from which the missile appeared to have been thrown, but his search was fruitless. As he continued his walk home he turned the strange occurrence over in his mind; it seemed unreal, like a bad dream. He began to doubt whether it had actually occurred, or was it some insane freak of imagination? He resolved to say nothing of the incident; it might have been accidental, which seemed incredible, or the attack might have been meant for someone else, which was much more likely. But if it were possible that he had secret enemies, he would prepare himself to deal with future emergencies. If his assailant were a man he would meet him as a man, with the weapons his Creator gave him; but if a sneak and an assassin he must take other measures. He would buy a revolver in the morning.