Chapter 3

Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued, sweetly poignant evensong on every other night. Other nights, her mind filled with books and its other business, the music had scarcely reached her. To-night her soul was alive. Her every sense was like a nerve laid bare, ready to be thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures.

She did not think of the sisters. She saw the deep rose flush of the windows in the dimly lighted chapel across the court, and knew vaguely, perhaps, that the music came from there. But it carried her beyond all thought.

She did not hear the words of the hymn. Would not have understood them if she had heard. But the lifting of hearts to _Our Life, our Sweetness and our Hope_ caught her heart up into a world where words were never needed.

She heard the cry of the _Banished children of Eve_. The _Mourning and weeping in this vale of tears_ swept into her soul like the flood-tide of all the sorrow of all the world.

On and upwards the music carried her, until she could hear the triumph, until her soul rang with the glory and the victory of _The Promises of Christ_.

The music ceased. She saw the light fade from the chapel windows, leaving only the one little blood-red spot of light before the altar. She lay there trembling, not daring to move, while the echo of that unseen choir caught her heartstrings and set them ringing to the measure of the heart of the world.

It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and helplessness but the undying hope of the world that she had heard. It was the cry of the little blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of martyrs on their pyres. It was the cry of strong men and valiant women crushed under the forces of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic Church, which knows what the soul of the world is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this. She realised it as she lay there trembling.

Always, as long as life was in her; always, whether she worked or laughed, cried or played; always that voice would grip her heart and play upon it and lead her whether she would or no.

It would lead her. It would carry her. It would send her.

Through all the long night she fought it. She would not! She would not give up her life, her will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she?

It would take her spirit out of the freedom of the hills and make it follow a trodden way. It would take her life out of her hands and maybe ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and the wind, in a darkened convent. It would take her will, the will of a soldier's daughter, and break it into little pieces to make a path for her to walk upon!

No! No! No! Through all the endless night she moaned her protest. She would not! She would not give in to it.

It would never let her rest. Through all her life that voice of the Choir Unseen would strike the strings of her heart. She knew it.

But she would not. Never would she give in to it.

In the morning, even before the coming of the dawn, the music came again; and it beat upon her worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenched at her heart until she could stand it no longer.

The sisters were taking up again the burden and the way of the day.

She could not stand it! She could not stay here! She must go back to her hills, where there was peace for her.

She heard the sister going down to unlock the street door so that Father Tenney could walk in when it was time and go up to the chapel for the sisters' early mass.

That was her chance! The sisters would be in chapel. The girls would be still in their rooms.

She dressed hastily and threw her books into a bag. She would take only these and her money. She had enough to get home on. The rest did not matter.

When she heard the priest's step pass in the hall, she slipped out and down the dim, broad stairs.

The great, heavy door of the convent stood like the gate of the world. It swung slowly, deliberately, on its well-oiled, silent hinges.

She stood in the portal a moment, drinking hungrily the fresh, free air of the morning that had come down from her hills. Then she fled away into the dawn.

The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain as Jeffrey Whiting came out of his mother's house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. His uncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn with the team and sled. Jeffrey threw his trunk upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe. It was twenty-five miles of half broken road and snowdrifts to Lowville and the railroad.

Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical American farm boy has been doing for the last hundred years and what he will probably continue to do as long as we Americans are what we are. He is not always a dreamer, your farm boy, when he starts down from his hills or his cross-roads farm to see the big world and conquer it. More often than you would think, he knows that he is not going to conquer it at all. And he is not, on the other hand, merely running away from the drudgery of the farm. He knows that he will probably have to work harder than he would ever have worked on the farm. But he knows that he has things to sell. And he is going down into the markets of men. He has a good head and a strong body. He has a power of work in him. He has grit and energy.

He is going down into the markets where men pay the price for these things that he has. He is going to fight men for that price which he knows his things are worth.

Jeffrey's mother came out carrying a canvas satchel which she put on the sled under Cassius Bascom's feet.

"Don't kick that, Catty," she warned, "Jeff's lunch is in it. And, Jeff, don't you go and check it with the trunk." There was just a little catch in the laugh with which she said this. She was remembering a day more than twenty years before when she had started, a bride, with big, lumbering, slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting, Jeffrey's father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with their lunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting checked the satchel through from Lowville to Buffalo, and they had nearly starved on the way. It was easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity. But she never quite forgave him for telling it on himself when they got back. It had been a standing joke in the hills all these years.

She was just a typical mother of the hills. She loved her boy. She needed him. She knew that she would never have him again. The boys do not come back from the market place. She knew that she would cry for him through many a lonely night, as she had cried all last night. But she was not crying now.

Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his as she stretched her arms up around the neck of her tall boy and drew his head down to kiss her.

He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart. He knew his mother very well. So he began with the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried to tell when we were leaving.

"It'll only be a little while, Mother. You won't find the time slipping by, and I'll be back."

She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys always knew it was a lie. But she backed him up sturdily:

"Why, of course, Jeff. Don't worry about me. You'll be back in no time."

Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the house with a dark, oblong object in her hands.

"There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just tried to forget this on purpose. It's too late to put it in the trunk now; so you'll just have to put it in your overcoat pocket."

Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown brick covered with felt, a foot warmer. Aunt Letty had made him take one with him when he went down to the Academy at Lowville last winter, and he and his brick had furnished much of the winter's amusement there. The memory of his humiliations on account of that brick would last a lifetime. He wondered why maiden aunts could not understand. His mother, now, would have known better. But he dutifully put the thing into the pocket of his big coat--he could drop it into the first snowback--and turned to kiss his aunt.

"I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany," she lectured. "Make your landlady heat it for you every night."

A noise in the road made them all turn.

Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were driving into the yard.

It was evident from the signs that the men had been having a hard time on the road. They must have been out all night, for they could not have started from anywhere early enough to be here now at sunrise.

Their harness had been broken and mended in several places. The cutter had a runner broken. The horses were cut and bloody, where they had kicked themselves and each other in the drifts.

As they drove up beside the group in the yard, one of the men shouted:

"Say, is there any place we can put in here? We've been on that road all night."

"Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and warm yourselves," said Mrs. Whiting.

"Rogers," said the man who had spoken, addressing the other, "if I ever get into a place that's warm, I'll stay there till spring."

Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of the cutter and stepped stiffly out into the snow. He swept the group with a sharp, a praising eye, and asked:

"Who's the one to talk to here?"

Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and replied with another question.

"What do you want?"

Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby grey moustache and cold grey eyes, looked the youth over carefully as he spoke.

"I want a man that knows this country and can get around in it in this season. I was brought up in the country, but I never saw anything like this. I wouldn't take a trip like this again for any money. I can't do this sort of thing. I want a man that knows the country and the people and can do it."

"Well, I'm going away now," said Jeffrey slowly, "but Uncle Catty here knows the people and the country better than most and he can go anywhere."

The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish man on the sled. Then he turned away decisively. Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly old face all withered and puckered to one side, where a splinter of shell from Fort Fisher had taken away his right eye, was evidently not the kind of man that the big man wanted.

"Where are you going?" he asked Jeffrey sharply.

"Albany Law School," said Jeffrey promptly.

"Unstrap the trunk, young man. You're not going. I've got something for you right here at home that'll teach you more than ten law schools. Put both teams into the barn," the big man commanded loudly.

Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would oppose the will of this brusque stranger. But he knew that he would not do so. In that moment something told him that he would not go to law school; would never go there; that his life was about to take a twist away from everything that he had ever intended.

Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply:

"Come into the house."

In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom poured boiling tea for the two men, Rogers, cup in hand, stood squarely on the hearth and explained himself. The other man, whose name does not matter, sank into a great wooden chair at the side of the fire and seemed to be ready to make good his threat of staying until spring.

"I represent the U. & M. railroad. We are coming up through here in the spring. All these farms have to be given up. We have eminent domain for this whole section," said Rogers.

"What do you mean?" asked Jeffrey. "The railroad can't run _all over_ the country."

"No. But the road will need the whole strip of hills for timber. They'll cut off what is standing and then they'll stock the whole country with cedar, for ties. That's all the land's good for, anyway."

Jeffrey Whiting's mouth opened for an answer to this, but his mother's sharp, warning glance stopped him. He understood that it was his place to listen and learn. There would be time enough for questions and arguments afterward.

"Now these people here won't understand what eminent domain means," the big man went on. "I'm going to make it clear to you, young man. I know who you are and I know more about you than you think. I'm going to make it clear to you and then I'm going to send you out among them to make them see it. They wouldn't understand me and they wouldn't believe me. You can make them see it."

"How do you know that I'll believe you?" asked Jeffrey.

"You've got brains. You don't have to _believe_. I can _show_ it to you."

Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed to taking responsibilities upon himself. He had never been afraid of anything and this perhaps had given him more than the average boy's good opinion of himself. Nothing could have appealed to him more subtly than this man's bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to man by a man of the world. No boy is proof against the compliment that he is a man, to be dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced men. Jeffrey was ready to listen.

"Do you know what an option is?" the man began again.

"Of course I do."

"I thought so," said Rogers, in a manner that seemed to confirm his previous judgment of Jeffrey's brains. "Now then, the railroad has got to have all these farms from Beaver River right up to the head of Little Tupper Lake. I say these people won't know what eminent domain means. You're going to tell them. It means that they can sell at the railroad's price or they can hold off and a referee will be appointed to name a price. The railroad will have a big say in appointing those referees. Do you understand me?"

"Yes. I see," said Jeffrey. "But--"

"No buts at all about it, young man," said Rogers, waving his hand. "The people have got to sell. If they give options at once--within thirty days--they'll get more than a fair price for their land. If they don't--if they hold off--their farms will be condemned as forest land. And you know how much that brings.

"You people will be the first. You can ask almost anything for your land. You'll get it. And, what is more, I am able to offer you, Whiting, a very liberal commission on every option you can get me within the time I have said. This is the thing that I can't do. It's the thing that I want you to do.

"You'll do it. I know you will, when you get time to think it over. Here are the options," said the big man, pulling a packet of folded papers out of his pocket. "They cover every farm in the section. All you have to do is to get the people to write their names once. Then your work is done. We'll do the rest and your commissions will be waiting for you. Some better than law school, eh?"

"But say," Jeffrey stammered, "say, that means, why, that means my mother and the folks here, why, they'd have to get out; they'd have to leave their home!"

"Of course," said Rogers easily. "A man like you isn't going to keep his family up on top of this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you'll have the best home in Lowville for them, where they can live in style, in less than six months. Do you think your mother wants to stay here after you're gone. You were going away. Did you think," he said shrewdly, "what life up here would be worth to your mother while you were away. No, you're just like all boys. You wanted to get away yourself. But you never thought what a life this is for her.

"Why, boy, she's a young woman yet. You can take her out and give her a chance to live. Do you hear, a chance to live.

"Think it over."

Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than he had ever tried to think in his life. But he could make nothing of it.

He thought of the people, old and young, on the hills, suddenly set adrift from their homes. He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassius and Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back to. And he thought of money--illimitable money: money that could do everything.

He did not want to look at his mother for counsel. The man's talk had gone to his head. But, slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to his mother's, and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look which told him to wait, wait. He caught the meaning and spoke it brusquely:

"All right. Leave the options here. I'll see what we'll do. And I'll write to you next week."

No. That would not do. The big man must have his answer at once. He stormed at Jeffrey. He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished Miss Letitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius, but that guileless man led him off into such a discussion of cross grafting and reforestation that he was glad to drop him.

In the end, he saw that, having committed himself, he could do no better than leave the matter to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time for thought, the boy could not refuse his offer.

So the two men, having breakfasted and rested their horses, set out on the down trip to Lowville.

Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother came to a decision.

"It is too big for us, Jeff," she said. "We do not know what it means. Nobody up here can tell us. The man was lying. But we do not know why, or what about.

"There is one man that could tell us. The White Horse Chaplain, do you remember him, Jeffrey?"

"I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me."

"Only to give her her chance, my son. Do not forget that. He could tell us what this means. I don't care anything about his religion. Your Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day at Fort Fisher. I don't. He is the Catholic Bishop of Alden. You'll go to him to-morrow. He'll tell you what it means."

* * * * *

Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very much worried. For the third time he picked up and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of the Sacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him that Ruth Lansing had left the convent that morning. But the third perusal of the message did not give him any more light on the matter than the two previous readings had done.

Why should the girl have gone away? What could have happened? Only the other day he had received a letter from her telling of her studies and her progress and of every new thing that was interesting her.

The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home where he had found her "Daddy Tom" dying, and where he had buried him on the hillside. Probably the girl would go back and try to live there. And he thought of the boy who had told him of his love and that he wanted to keep Ruth there in the hills.

As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary came to the door to tell him that the boy, Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room asking to see him and refusing even to indicate the nature of his business to any one but the Bishop himself.

The Bishop was startled. He had understood that the young man was in Albany at school. Now he thought that he would get a very clear light upon Ruth Lansing's disappearance.

"I came to you, sir," said Jeffrey when the Bishop had given him a chair, "because you could tell us what to do."

"You mean you and your--neighbour, Ruth Lansing?"

"Why, no, sir. What about her?" said Jeffrey quickly.

The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching look, and saw his mistake. The boy knew nothing.

"This," the Bishop answered, as he handed Jeffrey the open telegram.

"But where's she gone? Why did she go?" Jeffrey broke out, as he read the message.

"I thought you were coming to tell me that."

"No," said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop's meaning quickly. "She didn't write to me, not at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn't have it. But she wrote to my mother and she didn't say anything about leaving there."

"I suppose not," said the Bishop. "She seems to have gone away suddenly. But, I am forgetting. You came to talk to me."

"Yes." And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly and shortly, of the coming of Rogers and his proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to tell how he had been carried away by the man's offer and his flattery. He made it plain that it was only his mother's insight and caution that had held him back from accepting the offer on the instant.

The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness of the young fellow. It was good to hear. When he had heard all he bowed in his old-fashioned, stiff way and said:

"Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise woman. You will convey to her my deepest respect.

"I do not know what it all means," he went on, in another tone. "But I can soon find out."

He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the door the Bishop said:

"Will you see, please, if General Chandler is in his office across the street. If he is, give him my respects and ask him to step over here a moment."

The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the doorway.

"What is it?" asked the Bishop.

"There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She says she must see you, but she will not give a name. She seems to be in trouble, or frightened."

Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for the door.

"Sit down where you were, young man," said the Bishop sharply. If Ruth Lansing were out there--and the Bishop half believed that she was--well, it _might_ be coincidence. But it was too much for the Bishop's credulity.

"Send the girl in here," he said shortly.

Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went straight to the Bishop. She did not see Jeffrey.

"I came straight here all the way," she said, "to tell you, Bishop, that I couldn't stay in the convent any longer. I am going home. I could not stay there."

"I am very glad to see you, Ruth," said the Bishop easily, "and if you'll just turn around, I think you'll see some one who is even more pleased."

Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at sight of Jeffrey was abundant proof to the Bishop that the coming of these two to his door was indeed a coincidence.

"Now," said the Bishop quickly, "you will both sit down and listen. It concerns both of you deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, General Chandler. You have both heard of him. He is the political power of this part of the State. He can, if he will, tell us just how serious your situation is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just listen."

Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise and perhaps a little resentment. For hours she had been bracing her courage for this ordeal of meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely told to sit down and listen to something, she did not know what.

The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler was ushered into the room and the two veterans saluted each other with the stiffest of military precision.

"These are two young friends of mine from the hills, General," said the Bishop, as he seated his old friend. "They both own farms in the Beaver Run country. They have come to me to find out what the U. & M. Railroad wants with options on all that country. Can you, will you tell them?"

The General plucked for a moment at the empty left sleeve of his coat.

"No, Bishop," he said finally, "I cannot give out what I know of that matter. The interests behind it are too large for me. I would not dare. I do not often have to say that."

"No," said the Bishop slowly, "I never heard you say that before."

"But I can do this, Bishop," said the General, rising. "If you will come over here to the end of the room, I can tell you, privately, what I know. You can then use your own prudence to judge how much you can tell these young people."

The Bishop followed to the window at the other end of the room, where the two men stood and talked in undertones.

"Jeffrey," said Ruth through teeth that gritted with impatience, "if you don't tell me this instant what it's all about, I'll--I'll _bite_ you!"

Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little wild outbreak of hers to convince him that the young lady who had swept into the room and faced the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth, after all.

In quick whispers, he told her all he knew.

The Bishop walked to the door with the General, thanking him. From the door the General saluted gravely and stalked away.

"The answer," said the Bishop quietly, as he came back to them, "is one word--Iron."

To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making a mysterious fuss about nothing. But Jeffrey saw the whole matter instantly.