Chapter 4

She saw her husband go forth into the heat again, and blamed herself, according to her wont of a morning after the night's mistakes, for robbing him of his rest and heaping her self-imposed burdens upon him. He laughed at the remorse tenderly, and brushed away the burdens, and faced the day's actualities with the not too fine remark, "I must go and see what's loose outside."

Everything was "loose" apparently. Something about a "hoist" had broken in the night, and the men were still at work without breakfast, an eighteen-hour shift. The order came for Ito to send out coffee and bread and fruit to the famished gang. Ito was in the lowest of spirits; had just given his mistress warning that he could not stay. The affair of the letter had wounded his susceptibilities; he must go where he would be better understood. All this in a soft, respectful undertone, his mistress trying to comfort him, and incidentally hasten his response to the requisition from outside. At eleven o'clock Mr. Thorne sent in a pencil message on a card: "I shall not be home to lunch. Does she want to get the 12:30 train?" Mrs. Thorne replied in the same manner, by bearer: "She did, but she is asleep. I don't like to wake her."

The darkened house preserved its silence, a restless endurance of the growing heat. Mrs. Thorne, in the thinnest of morning gowns, her damp hair brushed back from her powdered temples, sat alone at luncheon. Ito had put a melancholy perfection into his last salad. It was his valedictory.

She was about to rise when Miss Benedet came silently into the room with her long, even step. Her dark eyes were full of sleep. Mrs. Thorne rang, and began to fuss a little over her guest to cover the shyness each felt at the beginning of a new day. They had parted at too high a pitch of expression to meet again in the same emotional key.

Miss Benedet looked at the clock, lifting her eyebrows wearily. "I have lost my train," she remarked, but added no reproaches. "Is there an evening train to the city?"

"Not from here," Mrs. Thorne replied; "but we could send you over to Colfax to catch the night train from there. I hoped we could have you another day."

"That would be impossible," said Miss Benedet; "but I shall be giving you a great deal of trouble."

"Oh, no; it is only ten miles. Mr. Thorne will take you; we will both take you. It is a beautiful drive by moonlight through the woods. Was I wrong not to call you?"

"If you were, you will be punished by having me on your hands this long, hot afternoon. I ought to have gone last night. When one has parted with the very last bit of one's self, one should make haste to remove the shell."

"Then you would have left me with something remaining on my mind, something I must get rid of at once. Come, let us go where we cannot see each other's faces. I am deeply in the wrong concerning you."

Mrs. Thorne went on incriminating herself so darkly in her preface that when she came to the actual offense her confessor smiled. "I am so relieved!" she exclaimed. "This is much more like real life. I felt you must be keeping something back, or, if not, I could never live up to such a pitch of generosity. I am glad you did not reach it all at once."

"But what becomes of the truth--the story as it should have been told to Willy? Oh, I have sinned, for want of patience, of faith--not against you, dear, but my son!"

After a silence Miss Benedet said, "Now for the heart of my own weakness. Suppose that I did have a hope. Suppose that I had laid the responsibility upon you, the parents, hoping that you would decide for happiness, mere happiness, without question of desert or blame. And suppose you had defended me to him. Would that have been best? Where then would be his cure? Now let us put away all cowardice, for him as well as for ourselves. Happiness for him could have but one foundation. You have told him the facts; if he cannot bear them as all the world knows them, that is his cure. I thank you. You knew where to put the knife."

"Oh, but this is cruel!" said the mother. "I don't want to be your judge. You have had your punishment, and you took it like a queen. Now let us think of Willy!"

"Please!" said the girl. "I cannot talk of this any more. We must stop sometime."

The time of twilight came; the gasping house flung open doors and windows to the night. Mr. Thorne pursued his evening walk alone among the fruits and vegetables, counting his egg-plants, and marking the track of gophers in his rows of artichokes. The women were strolling toward the hill. Miss Benedet had put on a cloth skirt and stiff shirt-waist for her journey, and suffered from the change, but did not show it. Her beauty was not of the florid or melting order. Mrs. Thorne regarded her inconsolably, noting with distinct and separate pangs each item of her loveliness, as she moved serene and pale against the dark, resonant green of the pines. They followed a foot-path back among the trees to a small gate or door in the high boundary fence. Mrs. Thorne tried it to see if it were locked.

"Willy used to live, almost, on this hill when he came out for his vacations." She spoke dreamily, as if thinking aloud. "He slept in that tent. It looks like a little ghost to me these nights in the moonlight, the curtains flap in such a lonely way. That gate was his back door through the woods to town. His wheel used to lean against this tree. I miss his fair head in the sun, and his white trousers springing up the hill. But one cannot keep one's boy forever. You have made him a man, my dear."

The mother put out her hand timidly. She had ventured on forbidden ground once more. But she was not rebuffed. The girl's hand clasped hers and drew it around a slender waist, and they walked like two school friends together.

"I cannot support the idea that you will never come again," mourned the elder. "It is years since I have known a girl like you--a girl who can say things. I can make no headway with girls in general. They are so big and silent and athletic. They wear pins and badges, and belong to more _things_ than I have ever heard of!"

Miss Benedet laughed. "I am silent, too, sometimes," she said.

"But you are not dense!"

"I'm afraid you go very much to extremes in your likes and dislikes, dear lady, and you are much younger than I, you know."

"I am quite aware of that," said Mrs. Thorne. "You have had seven years of Europe to my twenty of Cathay."

"Dear Cathay!" the girl murmured, with moist eyes; "I could live in this place forever."

"Where have you lived? Tell me in how many cities of the world."

"Oh, we never lived. We stayed in places for one reason or another. We were two years in Vienna. I worked there. I was a pupil of Leschetizky."

"What!"

"Did I not tell you? I can play a little."

"A little! What does that exactly mean?"

"It means too much for drawing-room music, and not enough for the stage."

"You are not thinking of that, are you?"

"Why that voice of scorn? Have I hit upon one of your prejudices?"

"I am dreadfully old-fashioned about some things--publicity, for instance."

"It depends upon the kind, doesn't it? But you will never hear of me on the concert stage. Leschetizky says I have not the poise I might have had. He is very clever. There was a shock, he says, to the nerve centres. They will never again be quite under control. It is true. At this moment I am shivering within me because I must say good-by to one I might have had all my life for a friend. Is it so?"

"My dear, if you mean me, I love you!"

"Call me Helen, then. You said 'my dear' before you knew me."

"Before I meant it."

* * * * *

"I wonder who can be arriving. That is the carriage I came out in last night."

A light surrey with two seats passed below the hill, and was visible an instant against a belt of sky.

"It is going to stop," said Mrs. Thorne. "Suppose we step back a little. I shall not see visitors to-night. Very likely it is only some one for Mr. Thorne."

A tall young man in traveling clothes stepped out upon the horse-block, left his luggage there, and made ten strides up the walk. They heard his step exploring the empty piazzas.

"It is Willy!" said Mrs. Thorne in a staccato whisper.

"Then good-by!" said Miss Benedet. "I will find Mr. Thorne in the garden. Dearest Mrs. Thorne, you must let me go!"

"You will not see him? Not see Willy!"

"Not for worlds. He must not know that I am here. I trust you." She tore herself away.

Mrs. Thorne stood paralyzed between the two--her advancing son, and her fleeing guest.

"Willy!" she cried.

Her tall boy was bending over her--once more the high, fair head, the smooth arch of the neck, which she could barely reach to put her arms about it.

"Mother!" The word in his grave man's voice thrilled her as once had the touch of his baby hands.

"I am afraid to look at you, my son. How is it with you?"

"I am all right, mother. How are things here?"

"Oh, don't speak of us! Did you get my letter?"

"This morning."

"And you read it, Willy?"

"Of course."

There was a silence. Mrs. Thorne clasped her son's arm and leaned her head against it.

"I am sorry you worried so, mother."

"What does it matter about me?"

"I am sorry you took it so hard--because--I knew it all the time."

"You knew it! What do you mean?"

"A nice old lady told me. She was staying in the house. She cornered me and told me a long story--the day after I met Miss Benedet."

"What an infamous old woman!"

"She called herself a friend of yours--warned me for your sake, she said, and because she has sons of her own."

"Oh! Has she daughters?"

"Two--staying in the house."

"I see. She told it brutally, I suppose?"

"Quite so."

"Worse than I did, Willy?"

William the Silent held his peace.

"You did not believe it? How much of it did you believe?"

"Mother," he said, "do you think a man can't see what a girl is?"

"But what do you know about girls?"

"Where is she?"

"What!"

"Where is Helen? The man from Lord's said he brought her out here last night."

"Did you not get her letter?" Mrs. Thorne evaded.

"Where shall I find her?"

"Willy, I am a perjured woman! I have been making mischief steadily for two days."

"You might as well go on, mater." Willy beamed gravely upon his mother's career of dissimulation.

"Don't, for pity's sake, be hopeful! She said she would not see you for worlds."

"Then she hasn't gone."

Willy took a quick survey of the premises. He had long gray eyes and a set mouth. He saw most things that he looked at, and when he aimed for a thing he usually got somewhere near the mark.

"She is not in the house," he decided; "she is not on the hill--remains the garden."

* * * * *

Mrs. Thorne stood alone, meditating on Miss Benedet's trust in her. She saw her husband, her stool of repentance and her mercy-seat in one, plodding toward her contentedly across the soft garden ground, stepping between the lettuces and avoiding the parsley bed. He knocked off a huge fat kitchen weed with his cane.

"Where is that girl?" he said. "It's time you got your things on. We ought to be starting in ten minutes."

"If you can find Willy you'll probably find 'that girl'!" Mrs. Thorne explained, and then proceeded to explain further, as she walked with her husband back to the house.

"Well," he summed up, "what is your opinion of the universe up to date? Got any faith in anything left?"

THE MAID'S PROGRESS

From the great plateau of the Snake River, at a point that is far from any main station, the stage-road sinks into a hollow which the winds might have scooped, so constantly do they pounce and delve and circle round the spot. Down in this pothole, where sand has drifted into the infrequent wheel tracks, there is a dead stillness while the perpetual land gale is roaring and troubling above.

One noon at the latter end of summer a wagon carrying four persons, with camp gear and provision for a self-subsisting trip, jolted down into this hollow, the horses sweating at a walk as they beat through the heavy sand. The teamster drew them up and looked hard at the singular, lonely place.

"I don't see any signs of that old corral, do you?" objected the man beside him. He spoke low, as if to keep his doubts from their neighbors on the back seat. These, an old, delicate, reverend looking gentleman, and a veiled woman sitting very erect, were silent, awaiting some decision of their fellow travelers.

"There wouldn't be much of anything left of it," the teamster urged on the point in question; "only a few rails and wattles, maybe. Campers would have made a clean-up of them."

"You think this is the place, do you not, Mr. Thane? This is Pilgrim Station?" The old gentleman spoke to the younger of the two men in front, who, turning, showed the three-quarter view of a tanned, immobile face and the keen side glance of a pair of dense black eyes,--eyes that saw everything and told nothing.

"One of our landmarks seems to be missing. I was just asking Kinney about it," he said.

Mr. Kinney was not, it appeared, as familiar as a guide should be with the road, which had fallen from use before he came to that part of the country; but his knowledge of roads in general inclined him to take with allowance the testimony of any one man of merely local information.

"That fool Mormon at the ferry hain't been past here, he said himself, since the stage was pulled off. What was here then wouldn't be here now--not if it could be eat up or burnt up."

"So you think this is the place?" the old gentleman repeated. His face was quite pale; he looked about him shrinkingly, with a latent, apprehensive excitement strangely out of keeping with the void stillness of the hollow,--a spot which seemed to claim as little on the score of human interest or association as any they had passed on their long road hither.

"Well, it's just this way, Mr. Withers: here's the holler, and here's the stomped place where the sheep have camped, and the cattle trails getherin' from everywheres to the water, and the young rabbit brush that's sprung up since the plains was burnt over. If this ain't Pilgrim Station, we're lost pilgrims ourselves, I guess. We hain't passed it; it's time we come to it, and there ain't no road but this. As I put it up, this here has got to be the place."

"I believe you, Mr. Kinney," the old man solemnly confirmed him. "Something tells me that this is the spot. I might almost say," he added in a lower tone to his companion, while a slight shiver passed over him in the hot sunlight, "that a voice cries to us from the ground!"

Those in front had not heard him. After a pause Mr. Thane looked round again, smiled tentatively, and said, "Well?"

"Well, Daphne, my dear, hadn't we better get out?" Mr. Withers conjoined.

She who answered to this pretty pagan name did so mutely by rising in her place. The wind had moulded her light-colored veil close to her half-defined features, to the outline of her cheeks and low-knotted hair; her form, which was youthful and slender, was swathed in a clinging raw-silk dust-cloak. As she stood, hesitating before summoning her cramped limbs to her service, she might have suggested some half-evolved conception of doubting young womanhood emerging from the sculptor's clay. Personality, as yet, she had none; but all that could be seen of her was pure feminine.

Thane reached the side of the wagon before the veiled young woman could attempt to jump. She freed her skirts, stepped on the brake bar, and stooping, with his support made a successful spring to the ground. Mr. Withers climbed out more cautiously, keeping his hand on Thane's arm for a few steps through the heavy sand. Thane left his fellow pilgrims to themselves apart, and returned to help the teamster take out the horses.

"It looks queer to me," Mr. Kinney remarked, "that folks should want to come so far on purpose to harrer up their feelin's all over again. It ain't as if the young man was buried here, nor as if they was goin' to mark the spot with one of them Catholic crosses like you see down in Mexico, where blood's been spilt by the roadside. But just to set here and think about it, and chaw on a mis'able thing that happened two years and more ago! Lord! I wouldn't want to, and I ain't his father nor yet his girl. Would you?"

"Hardly," said Thane. "Still, if you felt about it as Mr. Withers does, you'd put yourself in the place of the dead, not the living; and he has a reason for coming, besides. I haven't spoken of it, because I doubt if the thing is feasible. He wants to see whether the water, of the spring can be brought into the hollow here--piped, to feed a permanent drinking trough and fountain. Good for evil, you see--the soft answer."

"Well, that's business! That gits down where a man lives. His cattle kin come in on that, too. There's more in that, to my mind, than in a bare wooden cross. Pity there won't be more teamin' on this road. Now the stage has hauled off, I don't expect as many as three outfits a year will water at that fountain, excusin' the sheep, and they'll walk over it and into it, and gorm up the whole place."

"Well, the idea has been a great comfort to Mr. Withers, but it's not likely anything more will ever come of it. From all we hear, the spring would have to run up hill to reach this hollow; but you won't speak of it, will you, till we know?"

"Gosh, no! But water might be struck higher up the gulch--might sink a trench and cut off the spring."

"That would depend on the source," said Thane, "and on how much the old gentleman is willing to stand; the fountain alone, by the time you haul the stone here, will foot up pretty well into the thousands. But we'll see."

"Hadn't you better stay round here with them till I git back?" Kinney suggested; for Thane had taken the empty canteens from the wagon, and was preparing to go with him to the spring. "You kin do your prospectin' later."

"They would rather be by themselves, I think," said Thane. But seeing Mr. Withers coming towards him, as if to speak, he turned back to meet him.

"You are going now to look for the spring, are you not?" the old gentleman asked, in his courteous, dependent manner.

"Yes, Mr. Withers. Is there anything I can do for you first?"

"Nothing, I thank you." The old gentleman looked at him half expectantly, but Thane was not equal, in words, to the occasion. "This is the place, Mr. Thane," he cadenced, in his measured, clerical tones. "This is the spot that last saw my dear boy alive,--that witnessed his agony and death." He extended a white, thin, and now shaking hand, which Thane grasped, uncovering his head. Mr. Withers raised his left hand; his pale eyes blinked in the sunlight; they were dim with tears.

"In memory of John Withers," he pronounced, "foully robbed of life in this lonely spot, we three are gathered here,--his friend, his father, and his bride that should have been." Thane's eyes were on the ground, but he silently renewed his grasp of the old man's hand. "May God be our Guide as we go hence to finish our separate journeys! May He help us to forgive as we hope to be forgiven! May He teach us submission! But, O Lord! Thou knowest it is hard."

"Mr. Withers is a parson, ain't he?" Kinney inquired, as he and Thane, each leading one of the team horses, and with an empty canteen swinging by its strap from his shoulder, filed down the little stony gulch that puckers the first rising ground to riverward of the hollow. "Thought he seemed to be makin' a prayer or askin' a blessin' or somethin', when he had holt of you there by the flipper; kind of embarrassin', wa'n't it?"

"That's as one looks at it," said Thane. "Mr. Withers is a clergyman; his manner may be partly professional, but he strikes one as always sincere. And he hasn't a particle of self-consciousness where his grief for his son is concerned. I don't know that he has about anything. He calls on his Maker just as naturally as you and I, perhaps, might take his name in vain."

"No, sir! I've quit that," Mr. Kinney objected. "I drawed the line there some years ago, on account of my wife, the way she felt about it, and the children growin' up. I quit when I was workin' round home, and now I don't seem to miss it none. I git along jest as well. Course I have to cuss a little sometimes. But I liked the way you listened to the old man's warblin'. Because talkin' is a man's trade, it ain't to say he hasn't got his feelin's."

As the hill cut off sounds of retreating voices and horseshoes clinking on the stones, a stillness that was a distinct sensation brooded upon the hollow. Daphne sighed as if she were in pain. She had taken off her veil, and now she was peeling the gloves from her white wrists and warm, unsteady hands. Her face, exposed, hardly sustained the promise of the veiled suggestion; but no man was ever known to find fault with it so long as he had hopes; afterwards--but even then it was a matter of temperament. There were those who remembered it all the more keenly for its daring deviations and provoking shortcomings.

It could not have been said of Daphne that her grief was without self-consciousness. Still, much of her constraint and unevenness of manner might have been set down to the circumstances of her present position. Why she should have placed herself, or have allowed her friends to place her, in an attitude of such unhappy publicity Thane had asked himself many times, and the question angered him as often as it came up. He could only refer it to the singularly unprogressive ideas of the Far West peculiar to Far Eastern people. Apparently they had thought that, barring a friend or two of Jack's, they would be as much alone with their tragic memories in the capital city of Idaho as at this abandoned stage-station in the desert where their pilgrimage had ended. They had not found it quite the same. Daphne could, and probably did, read of herself in the "Silver Standard," Sunday edition, which treats of social events, heralded among the prominent arrivals as "Jack Withers's maiden widow." This was a poetical flight of the city reporter. Thane had smiled at the phrase, but that was before he had seen Daphne; since then, whenever he thought of it, he pined for a suitable occasion for punching the reporter's head. There had been more of his language; the paper had given liberally of its space to celebrate this interesting advent of the maiden widow with her uncle, "the Rev. Withers," as the reporter styled him, "father of the lamented young man whose shocking murder, two years ago, at Pilgrim Station, on the eve of his return to home and happiness, cast such a gloom over our community, in which the victim of the barbarous deed had none but devoted friends and admirers. It is to be hoped that the reverend gentleman and the bereaved young lady, his companion on this sad journey, will meet with every mark of attention and respect which it is in the power of our citizens to bestow, during their stay among us."

Now, in the dead, hot stillness, they two alone at last, Daphne sat beside her uncle in the place of their solemn tryst; and more than ever her excitement and unrest were manifest, in contrast to his mild and chastened melancholy. She started violently as his voice broke the silence in a measured, musing monotone:

"'Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and pray For the poor soul of Sibyl Grey, Who built this cross and well.'