"Betty, what have you done? Tell me--tell me quick."
Then she turned her face toward him, wet with tears. "Have pity on me, Richard. Have pity on me, Richard, for my heart is broken, and the thing that hurts me most is that it will hurt you."
"But it wasn"t yesterday when I came to you out there in the woods. I heard you laughing, and you ran to meet me as happy as ever--"
"You did not hear me laugh once again after you came and looked in my eyes there in the grove. It was in that instant that my heart began to break, and now I know why. Go back to Cheyenne. Go far away and never think of me any more. I am not worthy of you, anyway. I have let you hold me in your arms and kiss me when I ought not. Oh, I have been so bad--so bad! Let me hide my face. I can"t look in your eyes any more."
But he was cruel. He made her look in his eyes and tell him all the sorrowful truth. Then at last he grew pitiful again and tried brokenly to comfort her, to make her feel that something would intervene to help them, but in his heart he knew that his cause was lost, and his hopes burned within him, a heap of smoldering coals dying in their own ashes.
He had always loved Peter Junior too well to blame him especially as Peter could not have known what havoc he was making of his cousin"s hopes. It had all been a terrible mischance, and now they must make the best of it and be brave. Yet a feeling of resentment would creep into his heart in spite of his manful resolve to be fair to his cousin, and let nothing interfere with their lifelong friendship. In vain he told himself that Peter had the same right as he to seek Betty"s love. Why not? Why should he think himself the only one to be considered? But there was Betty! And when he thought of her, his soul seemed to go out of him. Too late! Too late! And so he rose and walked sorrowfully away.
When Mary Ballard came home from church, she found her little daughter up in her room on her knees beside her bed, her arms stretched out over the white counterpane, asleep. She had suffered until nature had taken her into her own soothing arms and put her to sleep through sheer weakness. Her cheeks were still burning and her eyelids red from weeping. Mary thought her in a fever, and gently helped her to remove the pretty muslin dress and got her to bed.
Betty drew a long sigh as her head sank back into the pillow. "My head aches; don"t worry, mother, dear." She thought her heart was closed forever on her terrible secret.
"Mother"ll bring you something for it, dear. You must have eaten something at the picnic that didn"t agree with you." She kissed Betty"s cheek, and at the door paused to look back on her, and a strange misgiving smote her.
"I can"t think what ails her," she said to Martha. "She seems to be in a high fever. Did she sleep well last night?"
"Perfectly, but we talked a good while before we went to sleep.
Perhaps she got too tired yesterday. I thought she seemed excited, too. Mrs. Walters always makes her coffee so strong."
Peter Junior came in to dinner, buoyant and happy. He was disappointed not to see Betty, and frankly avowed it. He followed Mary into the kitchen and begged to be allowed to go up and speak to Betty for only a minute, but Mary thought sleep would be the best remedy and he would better leave her alone. He had been to church with his father, and all through the morning service as he sat at his father"s side he had meditated how he could persuade the Elder to look on his plans with some degree of favor--enough at least to warrant him in going on with them and trust to his father"s coming around in time.
Neither he nor Richard were at the Elder"s at dinner, and the meal pa.s.sed in silence, except for a word now and then in regard to the sermon. Hester thought continually of her son and his hopes, but as she glanced from time to time in her husband"s face she realized that silence on her part was still best. Whenever the Elder cleared his throat and looked off out of the window, as was his wont when about to speak of any matter of importance, her heart leaped and her eyes gazed intently at her plate, to hide the emotion she could not restrain. Her hands grew cold and her lips tremulous, but still she waited.
It was the Elder"s custom to sleep after the Sunday"s dinner, which was always a hearty one, lying down on the sofa in the large parlor, where the closed blinds made a pleasant somberness. Hester pa.s.sed the door and looked in on him, as he lay apparently asleep, his long, bony frame stretched out and the muscles of his strong face relaxing to a softness they sometimes a.s.sumed when sleeping. Her heart went out to him. Oh, if he only knew! If she only dared! His boy ought to love him, and understand him. If they would only understand!
Then she went up into Peter Junior"s room and sat there where she had sat seven years before--where she had often sat since--gazing across at the red-coated old ancestor, her hands in her lap, her thoughts busy with her son"s future even as then. If all the others had lived, would the quandary and the struggle between opposing wills have been as great for each one as for this sole survivor?
Where were those little ones now? Playing in happy fields and waiting for her and the stern old man who also suffered, but knew not how to reveal his heart? Again and again the words repeated themselves in her heart mechanically: "Wait on the Lord--Wait on the Lord," and then, again, "Oh, Lord, how long?"
Peter Junior returned early from the Ballards", since he could not see Betty, leaving the field open for Martha and her guest, much to the guest"s satisfaction. He went straight to the room occupied by Richard whenever he was with them, but no Richard was there. His valise was all packed ready for his start on the morrow, but there was no line pinned to the frame of the mirror telling Peter Junior where to find him, as was Richard"s way in the past. With a fleeting glance around to see if any bit of paper had been blown away, he went to his own room and there he found his mother, waiting. In an instant that long ago morning came to his mind, and as then he went swiftly to her, and, kneeling, clasped her in his arms.
"Are you worried, mother mine? It"s all right. I will be careful and restrained. Don"t be troubled."
Hester clasped her boy"s head to her bosom and rested her face against his soft hair. For a while the silence was deep and the moments burned themselves into the young man"s soul with a purifying fire never to be forgotten. Presently she began speaking to him in low, murmuring tones: "Your father is getting to be an old man, Peter, dear, and I--I am no longer young. Our boy is dear to us--the dearest. In our different ways we long only for what is best for you. If only it might be revealed to you and us alike! Many paths are good paths to walk in, and the way may be happy in any one of them, for happiness is of the spirit. It is in you--not made for you by circ.u.mstances. We have been so happy here, since you came home wounded, and to be wounded is not a happy thing, as you well know; but it seemed to bring you and me happiness, nevertheless. Did it not, dear?"
"Indeed yes, mother. Yes. It gave me a chance to have you to myself a lot, and that ought to make any man happy, with a mother like you. And now--a new happiness came to me, the other day, that I meant to speak of yesterday and couldn"t after getting so angry with father. It seemed like sacrilege to speak of it then, and, besides, there was another feeling that made me hesitate."
"So you are in love with some one, Peter?"
"Yes, mother. How did you guess it?"
"Because only love is a feeling that would make you say you could not speak of it when your heart is full of anger. Is it Betty, dear?"
"Yes, mother. You are uncanny to read me so."
She laughed softly and held him closer. "I love Betty, too, Peter. You will always be gentle and kind? You will never be hard and stern with her?"
"Mother! Have I ever been so? Can"t you tell by the way I have always acted toward you that I would be tender and kind? She will be myself--my very own. How could I be otherwise?"
Again Hester smiled her slow, wise smile. "You have always been tender, Peter, but you have always gone right along and done your own way, absolutely. The only reason there has not been more friction between you and your father has been that you have been tactful; also you have never seemed to desire unworthy things. You have been a good son, dear: I am not complaining. And the only reason why I have never--or seldom--felt hurt by your taking your own way has been that my likings have usually responded to yours, and the thing I most desired was that you should be allowed to take your own way. It is good for a man to be decided and to have a way of his own: I have liked it in you. But the matter still stands that it has always been your way and never any one"s else that you have taken. I can see you being stern even with a wife you thought you wholly loved if her will once crossed yours."
Peter Junior was silent and a little hurt. He rose and paced the room.
"I can"t think I could ever cross Betty, or be unkind. It seems preposterous," he said at last.
"Perhaps it might never seem to you necessary. Peter, boy, listen. You say: "She will be myself--my very own." Now what does that mean? Does it mean that when you are married, her personality will be merged in yours, and so you two will be one? If so, you will not be completed and rounded out, and she will be lost in you. A man does not reach his full manhood to completion until he has loved greatly and truly, and has found the one who is to complete him. At best, by ourselves, we are never wholly man or wholly woman until this great soul completion has taken place in us. Then children come to us, and our very souls are knit in one, and still the mystery goes on and on; never are we completed by being lost--either one--in the will or nature of the other; but to make the whole and perfect creature, each must retain the individuality belonging to himself or herself, each to each the perfect and equal other half."
Peter Junior paused in his walk and stood for a moment looking down on his mother, awed by what she revealed to him of her inner nature. "I believe you have done this, mother. You have kept your own individuality complete, and father doesn"t know it."
"Not yet, but my hand will always be in his, and some day he will know. You are very like him, and yet you understand me as he never has, so you see how our oneness is wrought out in you. That which you have in you of your father is good and strong: never lose it. The day may come when you will be glad to have had such a father. Out in the world men need such traits; but you must not forget that sometimes it takes more strength to yield than to hold your own way. Yes, it takes strength and courage sometimes to give up--and tremendous faith in G.o.d. There! I hear him walking about. Go down and have your talk with him. Remember what I say, dear, and don"t get angry with your father.
He loves you, too."
"Have you said anything to him yet about--me--mother?"
"No. I have decided that it will be better for you to deal with him yourself--courageously. You"ll remember?"
Peter Junior took her again in his arms as she rose and stood beside him, and kissed her tenderly. "Yes, mother. Dear, good, wise mother!
I"ll try to remember all. It would have been easier for you, maybe, if ever father"s mother had said to him the things you have just said to me."
"Life teaches us these things. If we keep an open mind, so G.o.d fills it."
She stood still in the middle of the room, listening to his rapid steps in the direction of the parlor. Then Hester did a thing very unusual for her to do of a Sunday. She put on her shawl and bonnet and walked out to see Mary Ballard.
No one ever knew what pa.s.sed between Peter Junior and his father in that parlor. The Elder did not open his lips about it either at home or at the bank.
That Sunday evening some one saw Peter Junior and his cousin walking together up the bluff where the old camp had stood, toward the sunset.
The path had many windings, and the bluff was dark and brown, and the two figures stood out clear and strong against the sky of gold. That was the last seen of either of the young men in the village. The one who saw them told later that he knew they were "the twins" because one of them walked with a stick and limped a little, and that the other was talking as if he were very much in earnest about something, for he was moving his arm up and down and gesticulating.
CHAPTER XII
MYSTERIOUS FINDINGS
Monday morning Elder Craigmile walked to the bank with the stubborn straightening of the knees at each step that always betokened irritation with him. Neither of the young men had appeared at breakfast, a matter peculiarly annoying to him. Peter Junior he had not expected to see, as, owing to his long period of recovery, he had naturally been excused from rigorous rules, but his nephew surely might have done that much out of courtesy, where he had always been treated as a son, to promote the orderliness of the household. It was unpardonable in the young man to lie abed in the morning thus when a guest in that home. It was a mistake of his wife to allow Peter Junior a night key. It induced late hours. He would take it from him. And as for Richard--there was no telling what habits he had fallen into during these years of wandering. What if he had come home to them with a clear skin and laughing eye! Was not the "heart of man deceitful above all things and desperately wicked"? And was not Satan abroad in the world laying snares for the feet of wandering youths?
It was still early enough for many of the workmen to be on their way to their day of labor with their tin dinner pails, and among them Mr.
Walters pa.s.sed him, swinging his pail with the rest, although he was master of his own foundry and employed fifty men. He had always gone early to work, and carried his tin pail when he was one of the workmen, and he still did it from choice. He, too, was a Scotchman of a slightly different cla.s.s from the Elder, it is true, but he was a trustee of the church, and a man well respected in the community.
He touched his hat to the Elder, and the Elder nodded in return, but neither spoke a word. Mr. Walters smiled after he was well past. "The man has a touch of the indigestion," he said.
When the Elder entered his front door at noon, his first glance was at the rack in the corner of the hall, where, on the left-hand hook, Peter Junior"s coat and hat had hung when he was at home, ever since he was a boy. They were not there. The Elder lifted his bushy brows one higher than the other, then drew them down to their usual straight line, and walked on into the dining room. His wife was not there, but in a moment she entered, looking white and perturbed.
"Peter!" she said, going up to her husband instead of taking her place opposite him, "Peter!" She laid a trembling hand on his arm. "I haven"t seen the boys this morning. Their beds have not been slept in."
"Quiet yourself, la.s.s, quiet yourself. Sit and eat in peace. "Evil communications corrupt good manners," but when doom strikes him, he"ll maybe experience a change of heart." The Elder spoke in a tone not unkindly. He seated himself heavily.