Coffee,--is there any tea beside that you have?"
"No, but no need. I name it not."
"Tea is light and easily brought. What else?"
"And paper. I ask for that but for me to write my little romance of all this--forgive--it is for occupation in the long winter. You also must write of your experiences--perhaps--of your history of--of--You like it not? Why, Mr. "Arry! It is to make work for the mind. The mind must work--work--or die. The hands--well. I make lace with the hands--but for the mind is music--or the books--but here are no books--good--we make them. So, paper I ask, and of crayon--Alas! It is in the box! What to do?"
"Listen. We"ll have that box, and bring it here on the mountain. I"ll get it."
"Ah, no! No. Will you break my heart?" She seized his arm and looked in his eyes, her own br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. Then she flung up her arms in her dramatic way, and covered her eyes. "I can see it all so terrible. If you should go there and the Indian strike you dead--or the snow come too soon and kill you with the cold--in the great drift lying white--all the terrible hours never to see you again--Ah, no!"
In that instant his heart leaped toward her and the blood roared in his ears. He would have clasped her to him, but he only stood rigidly still. "Hands off, murderer!" The words seemed shouted at him by his own conscience. "I would rather die--than that you should not have your box," was all he said, and left the cabin. He, too, had need to think things out alone.
CHAPTER XVIII
LARRY KILDENE"S STORY
"Man, but this is none so bad--none so bad."
Larry Kildene sat on a bench before a roaring fire in the room added on to the fodder shed. The chimney which Harry King had built, although not quite completed to its full height, was being tried for the first time, as the night was too cold for comfort in the long, low shed without fire, and the men had come down early this evening to talk over their plans before Larry should start down the mountain in the morning. They had heaped logs on the women"s fire and seen that all was right for them, and with cheerful good-nights had left them to themselves.
Now, as they sat by their own fire, Harry could see Amalia by hers, seated on a low bench of stone, close to the blazing torch of pine, so placed that its smoke would be drawn up the large chimney. It was all the light they had for their work in the evenings, other than the firelight. He could see her fingers moving rapidly and mechanically at some pretty open-work pattern, and now and then grasping deftly at the ball of fine white thread that seemed to be ever taking little leaps, and trying to roll into the fire, or out over the cabin floor. She used a fine, slender needle and seemed to be performing some delicate magic with her fingers. Was she one of the three fates continually drawing out the thread of his life and weaving therewith a charmed web? And if so--when would she cease?
"It"s a good job and draws well."
"The chimney? Yes, it seems to." Harry roused himself and tried to close his mind against the warm, glowing picture. "Yes--yes. It draws well. I"m inclined to be a bit proud, although I never could have done it if you had not given me the lessons."
"It"s art, my boy. To build a good fireplace is just that. Did you ever think that the whole world--and the welfare of it--centers just around that;--the fireplace and the hearth--or what stands for it in these days--maybe a little hole in the wall with a smudge of coal in it, as they have in the towns--but it"s the hearth and the cradle beside it--and--the mother."
Larry"s voice died almost to a whisper, and his chin dropped on his breast, and his eyes gazed on the burning logs; and Harry, sitting beside him, gazed also at the same logs, but the pictures wrought in the alchemy of their souls were very different.
To Harry it was a sweet, oval face--a flush from the heat of the fire more on the smooth cheek that was toward it than on the other, and warm flame flashes in the large eyes that looked up at him from time to time, while the slender figure bent a little forward to see the better, as the wonderful hands kept up the never ceasing motion. A white linen cloth spread over her lap cast a clearer, more rosy light under her chin and brought out the strength of it and the delicate curves of it, which Harry longed even to dare to look upon in the rarest stolen intervals, without the clamor and outcry in his heart.
It was always the same--the cry of Cain in the wilderness. Would G.o.d it might some day cease! What to him might be the hearth fire and the cradle, and the mother, that the big man should dwell on them thus?
What had they meant in Larry Kildene"s life, he who had lived for twenty years the life of a hermit, and had forsworn women forever, as he said?
"I tell ye, lad, there"s a thing I would say to you--before I leave, but it"s sore to touch upon." Harry made a deprecating gesture. "No, it"s best I tell you. I--I"ll come back--never fear--it"s my plan to come back, but in this life you may count on nothing for a surety.
I"ve learned that, and to prove it, look at me. I made sure, never would I open my heart again to think on my fellow beings, but as aliens to my life, and I"ve lived it out for twenty years, and thought to hold out to the end. I held the Indians at bay through their superst.i.tions, and they would no more dare to cross my path with hostile intent than they would dare take their chances over that fall above there. Where did I put my pipe? I can"t seem to find things as I did in the cabin."
"Here it is, sir. I placed that stone further out at the end of the chimney on purpose for it, and in this side I"ve left a hole for your tobacco. I thought I was very clever doing that."
"And we"d be fine and cozy here in the winter--if it wer"n"t for the women--a--a--now I"m blundering. I"d never turn them out if they lived there the rest of their days. But to have a lad beside me as I might have had--if you"d said, "Here it is, father," but now, it would have have been music to me. You see, Harry, I forswore the women harder than I did the men, and it"s the longing for the son I held in my arms an hour and then gave up, that has lived in me all these years.
The mother--gone--The son I might have had."
"I can"t say that--to you. I have a curse on me, and it will stay until I have paid for my crime. But I"ll be more to you than sons are to their fathers. I"ll be faithful to you as a dog to his master, and love you more. I"ll live for you even with the curse on me, and if need be, I"ll die for you."
"It"s enough. I"ll ask you no more. Have you no curiosity to hear what I have to tell you?"
"I have, indeed I have. But it seems I can"t ask it--unless I"m able to return your confidence. To talk of my sorrow only deepens it. It drives me wild."
"You"ll have it yet to learn, that nothing helps a sorrow that can"t be helped like bearing it. I don"t mean to lie down under it like a dumb beast--but just take it up and bear it. That"s what you"re doing now, and sometime you"ll be able to carry it, and still laugh now and again, when it"s right to laugh--and even jest, on occasion. It"s been done and done well. It"s good for a man to do it. The la.s.s down there at the cabin is doing it--and the mother is not. She"s living in the past. Maybe she can"t help it."
"When I first came on them out there in the desert, she seemed brave and strong. He was a poor, crippled man, with enormous vitality and a leonine head. The two women adored him and lived only for him, and he never knew it. He lived for an ideal and would have died for it. He did not speak English as well as they. I used to wish I could understand him, for he had a poet"s soul, and eyes like his daughter"s. He seemed to carry some secret with him, and no doubt was followed about the world as he thought he was. Fleeing myself, I could not know, but from things the mother has dropped, they must have seen terrible times together, she and her husband."
"A wonderful deal of poetry and romance always clung to the names of Poland and Hungary for me. When I was young, our part of the world thrilled at the name of Kosciuszko and Kossuth. I"d give a good deal to know what this man"s secret was. All those old tales of mystery, like "The Man with the Iron Mask," and stories of n.o.blemen spirited away to Siberia, of men locked for many years in dungeons, like the "Prisoner of Chillon," which fired the fancy and genius of Byron and sent him to fight for the oppressed, used to fill my dreams."
Larry talked on as if to himself. It seemed as if it were a habit formed when he had only himself with whom to visit, and Harry was interested.
"Now, to almost come upon a man of real ideals and a secret,--and just miss it. I ought to have been out in the world doing some work worth while--with my miserable, broken life--Boy! I knew that man McBride! I knew him for sure. We were in college together. He left Oxford to go to Russia, wild with the spirit of adventure and something more. He was a dreamer--with a practical turn, too. There, no doubt, he met these people. I judge this Manovska must have been in the diplomatic service of Poland, from what Amalia told us. Have you any idea whether that woman sitting there all day long rapt in her own thoughts knows her husband"s secret? Is it a thing any one now living would care to know?"
"Indeed, yes. They lived in terror of the prince who hounded him over the world. The mother trusted no one, but Amalia told me--enough--all she knows herself. I don"t know if the mother has the secret or not, but at least she guesses it. The poor man was trying to live until he could impart his knowledge to the right ones to bring about an upheaval that would astonish the world. It meant revolution, whatever it was. Amalia imagines it was to place a Polish king on the throne of Russia, but she does not know. She told me of stolen records of a Polish descendant of Catherine II of Russia. She thinks they were brought to her father after he came to this country."
"If he had such knowledge or even thought he had, it was enough to set them on his track all his life; the wonder is that he was let to live at all."
"The mother never mentioned it, but Amalia told me. We talked more freely out in the desert. That remarkable woman walked at her husband"s side over all the terrible miles to Siberia, and through her he escaped,--and of the horrors of those years she never would speak, even to her daughter. It"s not to be wondered at that her mind is astray. It"s only a wonder that she is for the most part so calm."
"Well, the grave holds many a mystery, and what a fascination a mystery has for humanity, savage or civilized! I"ve kept the Indians at bay all this time by that means. They fear--they know not what, and the mystery holds them. Now, for ourselves, I leave you for a little while in charge of--the women--and of all my possessions." Larry, gazing into the blazing logs, smiled. "You may not think so much of them, but it"s not so little now. Talk about lunacy--man, I understand it. I"ve been a lunatic--for--ever since I made a find here in this mountain."
He paused and mused a while, and Harry"s thoughts dwelt for the time on his own find in the wing of the cabin, where the firewood was stored. The ring and the chest--he had not forgotten them, but by no means would he mention them.
"You may wonder why I should tell you this, but when I"m through, you"ll know. It all came about because of a woman." Larry Kildene cast a sidelong glance at Harry, and the glance was keen and saw more than the younger man dreamed. "It"s more often so than any other way--almost always because of a woman. Her name may be anything--Mary--Elizabeth,--but, a woman. This one"s name was Katherine. Not like the Katherine of Shakespeare, but the sweetest--the tenderest mother-woman the Lord ever gave to man. I see her there in the fire. I"ve seen her there these many years. Well, she was twin sister to the man who hated me. He hated me--for why, I don"t know--perhaps because he never could influence me. He would make all who cared for him bow before his will.
"When I first saw her, she lived in his home. He was a banker of means,--not wholly of his own getting, but partly so. His father was a man of thrift and saving--anyway, he came to set too much store by money. Sometimes I think he might have been jealous of me because I had the Oxford training, and wished me to feel that wealth was a greater thing to have. Scotchmen think more of education than we of Ireland. It"s a good thing, of course, but I"d never have looked down on him because he went lacking it. But for some indiscretion maybe I would have had money, too. It was spent too lavishly on me in my youth. But no. I had none--only the experience and the knowledge of what it might bring.
"Well, it came about that I came to America to gain the money I lacked, and having learned a bit, in spite of Oxford and the schools, of a practical nature, I took a position in his bank. All was very well until I met her. Now there were the rosy cheeks and the dark hair for you! She looked more like an Irish la.s.s than a Scotch one. But they"re not so different, only that the Irish are for the most part comelier.
"Now this banker had a very sweet wife, and she was kind to the Irish lad and welcomed him to her house. I"m thinking she liked me a bit--I liked her at all events. She welcomed me to her house until she was forbid. It was after they forbid me the house that I took to walking with Katherine, when all thought she was at Sunday School or visiting a neighbor, or even--at the last--when no other time could be stolen--when they thought her in bed. We walked there by the river that flows by the town of Leauvite."
Again Larry Kildene paused and shot a swift glance at the young man at his side, and noted the drawn lids and blanched face, but he kept on. "In the moonlight we walked--lad--the ground there is holy now, because she walked upon it. We used to go to a high bluff that made a sheer fall to the river below--and there we used to stand and tell each other--things we dreamed--of the life we should live together--Ah, that life! She has spent it in heaven. I--I--have spent the most of it here." He did not look at Harry King again. His voice shook, but he continued. "After a time her brother got to know about it, and he turned me from the bank, and sent her to live with his father"s sisters in Scotland.
"Kind old ladies, but unmarried, and too old for such a la.s.s. How could they know the heart of a girl who loved a man? It was I who knew that. What did her brother know--her own twin brother? Nothing, because he could see only his own thoughts, never hers, and thought his thoughts were enough for wife or girl. I tell you, lad, men err greatly in that, and right there many of the troubles of life step in.
The old man, her father, had left all his money to his son, but with the injunction that she was to be provided for, all her days, of his bounty. It"s a mean way to treat a woman--because--see? She has no right to her thoughts, and her heart is his to dispose of where he wills--not as she wills--and then comes the trouble.
"I ask you, lad, if you loved a girl as fine as silk and as tender as a flower you could crush in your hand with a touch ungentle, and you saw one holding her with that sort of a touch,--even if it was meant in love,--I"ll not be unjust, he loved her as few love their sisters--but he could not grasp her thus; I ask you what would you do?"
"If I were a true man, and had a right to my manhood, I would take her. I"d follow her to the ends of the earth."
"Right, my son--I did that. I took the little money I had from my labor at the bank--all I had saved, and I went bravely to those two old women--her aunts, and they turned me from their door. It was what they had been enjoined to do. They said I was after the money and without conscience or thrift. With the Scotch, often, the confusion is natural between thrift and conscience. Ah, don"t I know! If a man is prosperous, he may hold out his hand to a maid and say "Come," and all her relatives will cry "Go," and the marriage bells will ring. If he is a happy Irishman with a shrunken purse, let his heart be loving and true and open as the day, they will spurn him forth. For food and raiment will they sell a soul, and for household gear will they clip the wings of the little G.o.d, and set him out in the cold.
"But the arrow had entered Katherine"s heart, and I knew and bided my time. They saw no more of me, but I knew all her goings and comings. I found her one day on the moor, with her collie, and her cheeks had lost their color, and her gray eyes looked in my face with their tears held back, like twin lakes under a cloud before a storm falls. I took her in my arms, and we kissed. The collie looked on and wagged his tail. It was all the approval we ever got from the family, but he was a knowing dog.
"Well, then we walked hand in hand to a village, and it was near nightfall, and we went straight to a magistrate and were married. I had a little coin with me, and we stayed all night at an inn. There was a great hurrying and scurrying all night over the moors for her, but we knew naught of it, for we lay sleeping in each other"s arms as care free and happy as birds. If she wept a little, I comforted her.
In the morning we went to the great house where the aunts lived in the town, and there, with her hand in mine, I told them, and the storm broke. It was the disgrace of having been married clandestinely by a magistrate that cut them most to the heart; and yet, what did they think a man would do? And they cried upon her: "We trusted you. We trusted you." And all the reply she made was: "You thought I"d never dare, but I love him." Yes, love makes a woman"s heart strong.
"Well, then, nothing would do, but they must have in the minister and see us properly married. After that we stayed never a night in their house, but I took her to Ireland to my grandfather"s home. It was a terrible year in Ireland, for the poverty was great, and while my grandfather was well-to-do, as far as that means in Ireland, it was very little they had that year for helping the poor." Larry Kildene glanced no more at Harry King, but looked only in the fire, where the logs had fallen in a glowing heap. His pipe was out, but he still held it in his hand.
"It was little I could do. I had my education, and could repeat poems and read Latin, but that would not feed hungry peasant children. I went out on the land and labored with the men, and gave of my little patrimony to keep the old folks, but it was too small for them all, so at last I yielded to Katherine"s importunities, and she wrote to her brother for help--not for her and me, mind you.