The Chalice Of Courage.
by Cyrus Townsend Brady.
PREFACE
Prefaces, like much study, are a weariness to the flesh; to some people, not to me. I can conceive of no literary proposition more attractive than the opportunity to write unlimited prefaces. Let me write the preface and I care not who writes the book. Unfortunately for my desires, I can only be prefatory in the case of my own. Happily my own are sufficiently numerous to afford me some scope in the indulgence of this pa.s.sion for forewords.
I suppose no one ever sat down to write a preface until after he had written the book. It is like the final pat that the fond parent gives to the child before it is allowed to depart in its best clothes. I have seen the said parent accompany the child quite a distance on the way, keeping up a continual process of adjustment of raiment which it was evidently loath to discontinue.
And that is my case exactly. Here is the novel with which I have done my best, which I have written and rewritten after long and earnest thought, and yet I cannot let it go forth without some final, shall I say caress?
And as it is, I really have nothing of importance to say! The final pats and pulls and tugs and smoothings do not materially add to the child"s appearance or increase its fascination, and I am at a loss to find a reason for the preface except it be the converse of the statement about the famous and much disliked Dr. Fell!
Perhaps, if I admit to you that I have been in the canon, that I have followed the course of the brook, that I have seen that lake, that I have tramped those trails, it will serve to make you understand, dear reader, how real and actual it all is to me. Yes, I have even looked over the precipice down which the woman fell. I have talked with old Kirkby; Robert Maitland is an intimate friend of mine; I have even met his brother in Philadelphia and as for that glorious girl Enid--well, being a married man, I will refrain from any personal apprais.e.m.e.nt of her qualities. But I can with propriety dilate upon Newbold, and even Armstrong, bad as he was, has some place in my regard.
If these people shall by any chance seem real to you and become your friends as they are mine, another of those pleasant ties that bind the author and his public together will have been woven, knotted, forged.
Never mind the method so long as there is a tie. And with this hope, looking out up the winter snows that might have covered the range, as I have often seen them there, I bid you a happy good morning.
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY
_St. George"s Rectory, Kansas City, Missouri._
_Thanksgiving Day, 1911._
THE CHALICE OF COURAGE
(Courtesy of _The Outlook_)
Drink of the Chalice of Courage!
Pressed to the trembling lip, The dark-veiled fears From the pa.s.sing years, Like a dusty garment slip.
Drink of the Chalice of Courage!
Poured for the Hero"s feast, When the strength divine Of its subtle wine Is shared with the last and least.
Drink of the Chalice of Courage!
The mead of mothers and men, And the sinewed might Of the Victor"s might, Be yours, again and again.
Marie Hemstreet
BOOK I
THE HIGHER LAW
CHAPTER I
THE CUP THAT WOULD NOT Pa.s.s
The huge concave of the rocky wall towering above them threw the woman"s scream far into the vast profound of the canon. It came sharp to the man"s ear, yet terminated abruptly; as when two rapidly moving trains pa.s.s, the whistle of one is heard shrill for one moment only to be cut short on the instant. Brief as it was, however, the sound was sufficiently appalling; its suddenness, its unexpectedness, the awful terror in its single note, as well as its instantaneity, almost stopped his heart.
With the indifference of experience and long usage he had been riding carelessly along an old pre-historic trail through the canon, probably made and forgotten long before the Spaniards spied out the land.
Engrossed in his thoughts, he had been heedless alike of the wall above and of the wall below. Prior to that moment neither the over-hanging rock that curved above his head nor the almost sheer fall to the river a thousand feet beneath the narrow ledge of the trail had influenced him at all. He might have been riding a country road so indifferent had been his progress. That momentary shriek dying thinly away into a strange silence changed everything.
The man was riding a sure-footed mule, which perhaps somewhat accounted for his lack of care, and it seemed as if the animal must also have heard and understood the meaning of the woman"s scream, for with no bridle signal and no spoken word the mule stopped suddenly as if petrified. Rider and ridden stood as if carved from stone.
The man"s comprehending, realizing fear almost paralyzed him. At first he could scarcely force himself to do that toward which his whole being tended--look around. Divining instantly the full meaning of that sudden cry, it seemed hours before he could turn his head; really her cry and his movement were practically simultaneous. He threw an agonized glance backward on the narrow trail and saw--nothing! Where there had been life, companionship, comradeship, a woman, there was now vacancy.
The trail made a little bend behind him, he could see its surface for some distance, but not what lay beneath. He did not need the testimony of his eyes for that. He knew what was down there.
It seemed to his distorted perceptions that he moved slowly, his limbs were like lead, every joint was as stiff as a rusty hinge. Actually he dropped from the mule"s back with reckless and life-defying haste and fairly leaped backward on his path. Had there been any to note his progress, they would have said he risked his own life over every foot of the way. He ran down the narrow shelf, rock strewn and rough, swaying upon the unfathomable brink until he reached the place where she had been a moment since. There he dropped on one knee and looked downward.
She was there! A few hundred feet below the trail edge the canon wall, generally a sheer precipice, broadened out into a great b.u.t.te, or b.u.t.tress, which sloped somewhat more gently to the foaming, roaring river far beneath. About a hundred and fifty feet under him a stubby spur with a pocket on it jutted out from the face of the cliff; she had evidently struck on that spur and bounded off and fallen, half rolling, to the broad top of the b.u.t.te two hundred or more feet below the pocket.
Three hundred and fifty feet down to where she lay he could distinguish little except a motionless huddled ma.s.s. The bright blue of her dress made a splotch of unwonted color against the reddish brown monotones of the mountain side and canon wall. She was dead, of course; she must be dead, the man felt. From that distance he could see no breathing, if such there were; indeed as he stared she grew less and less distinct to him, his eyes did not fill with tears, but to his vision the very earth itself, the vast depths of the canon, the towering wall on the other side, seemed to quiver and heave before him. For the first time in his life the elevation made him dizzy, sick. He put his hands to his face to shut out the sight, he tore them away to look again. He lifted his eyes toward the other side across the great gulf to the opposing wall which matched the one upon which he stood, where the blue sky cloudless overhung.
"G.o.d!" he whispered in futile pet.i.tion or mayhap expostulation.
He was as near the absolute breaking point as a man may go and yet not utterly give way, for he loved this woman as he loved that light of heaven above him, and in the twinkling of an eye she was no more. And so he stared and stared dumbly agonizing, wondering, helpless, misty-eyed, blind.
He sank back from the brink at last and tried to collect his thoughts.
What was he to do? There was but one answer to that question. He must go down to her. There was one quick and easy way; over the brink, the way she had gone. That thought came to him for a moment, but he put it away. He was not a coward, life was not his own to give or to take, besides she might be alive, she might need him. There must be some other way.
Determining upon action, his resolution rose dominant, his vision cleared. Once again he forced himself to look over the edge and see other things than she. He was a daring, skillful and experienced mountaineer; in a way mountaineering was his trade. He searched the side of the canon to the right and the left with eager scrutiny and found no way within the compa.s.s of his vision to the depths below. He shut his eyes and concentrated his thoughts to remember what they had pa.s.sed over that morning. There came to him the recollection of a place which as he had viewed it he had idly thought might afford a practicable descent to the river"s rim.
Forgetful of the patient animal beside him, he rose to his feet and with one last look at the poor object below started on his wild plunge down the trail over which some men might scarcely have crept on hands and knees. Sweat bedewed his forehead, his limbs trembled, his pulses throbbed, his heart beat almost to bursting. Remorse sharpened by love, pa.s.sion quickened by despair, scourged him, desperate, on the way. And G.o.d protected him also, or he had fallen at every uncertain, hurried, headlong step.
And as he ran, thoughts, reproaches, scourged him on. Why had he brought her, why had he allowed her to take that trail which but for him and for her had probably not been traversed by man or woman or beast, save the mountain sheep, the gray wolves, or the grizzly bear, for five hundred years. She had protested that she was as good a mountaineer as he--and it was true--and she had insisted on accompanying him; he recollected that there had been a sort of terror in her urgency,--he must take her, he must not leave her alone, she had pleaded; he had objected, but he had yielded, the joy of her companionship had meant so much to him in his lonely journeying, and now--he accused himself bitterly as he surged onward.
After a time the man forced himself to observe the road, he discovered that in an incredibly short period, perhaps an hour, he had traversed what it had taken them four times as long to pa.s.s over that very day. He must be near his goal. Ah, there it was at last, and in all the turmoil and torture of his brain he found room for a throb of satisfaction when he came upon the broken declivity. Yes, it did afford a practicable descent; some landslide centuries back had made there a sort of rude, rough, broken, megalithic stairway in the wall of the canon. The man threw himself upon it and with bleeding hands, bruised limbs and torn clothing descended to the level of the river.
Two atoms to the eye of the Divine, in that vast rift in the gigantic mountains. One unconscious, motionless, save for faint gasping breaths; the other toiling blindly along the river bank, fortunately here affording practicable going, to the foot of the great b.u.t.te upon whose huge shoulder the other lay. The living and the dead in the waste and the wilderness of the everlasting hills.
Unconsciously but unerringly the man had fixed the landmarks in his mind before he started on that terrific journey. Without a moment of incert.i.tude, or hesitation, he proceeded directly to the base of the b.u.t.te and as rapidly as if he had been fresh for the journey and the endeavor. Up he climbed without a pause for rest. It was a desperate going, almost sheer at times, but his pa.s.sion found the way. He clawed and tore at the rocks like an animal, he performed feats of strength and skill and determination and reckless courage marvelous and impossible under less exacting demands. Somehow or other he got to the top at last; perhaps no man in all the ages since the world"s first morning when G.o.d Himself upheaved the range had so achieved that goal.
The last ascent was up a little stretch of straight rock over which he had to draw himself by main strength and determination. He fell panting on the brink, but not for a moment did he remain p.r.o.ne; he got to his feet at once and staggered across the plateau which made the head of the b.u.t.te toward the blue object on the further side beneath the wall of the cliff above, and in a moment he bent over what had been--nay, as he saw the slow choking uprise of her breast, what was--his wife.
He knelt down beside her and looked at her for a moment, scarce daring to touch her. Then he lifted his head and flung a glance around the canon as if seeking help from man. As he did so he became aware, below him on the slope, of the dead body of the poor animal she had been riding, whose misstep, from whatever cause he would never know, had brought this catastrophe upon them.