Chapter 13

In wondering surprise Andy studied the bare-headed, ragged, dirty figure standing in the moonlight; and as crimson looks a muddy brown in such a light, he mistook the smears on the other's face and the dark splotches on his clothing. What could the creature want of him at this time of night and with that extraordinary appearance? Likely Ray had been set upon and was seeking any refuge. It would be joyous to complete the work that the others had begun. Andy soon emerged from the house.

"Come this way," said his mysterious visitant, and perplexed Andy followed him to the rear of the fowl-house, where the light was clear. The flame and smoke of the old grass fire were strong in the air.

Ray halted, and faced him.

"Take off your coat," he quietly said, removing his own tattered garment.

"What for?" with a slight quaver composed of anger--and something else; for there was a touch of the uncanny here.

"We are going to fight."

"Fight, eh! What put that into your fool head?" Under the initial impulse from the challenge, Andy was all heat and eagerness, and he bristled and swelled; but though, in some vital ways, human sense is less acute than brute sense, Andy did feel something of what the buckskin had felt, something of what had slain the dog, and his heart thumped with a strange heaviness. "What do you want to fight for? I'd beat the life out of you."

It failed of the effect intended, and Andy found his head suddenly twisted to one side by a slap on the cheek. He stepped back, white with fury, tossed his coat aside, and hurled himself upon the slender figure waiting with such unearthly composure.

* * * * *

Dawn was flooding the east, and still the boy lurched and floundered on and on, keeping to the road that led into the wilderness. Occasionally he would stop for a minute's rest and to listen for the baying of Frazier's bloodhound; and he wondered, in a purely detached and scientific way, whether he had sufficient strength and acuteness left for another such grapple. It was merely an engaging speculation, and was complicated with his determination to perform another task before his work was done. It would nearly break his heart to be stopped now. Likely the dog would not attack him, but merely hold him at bay until the pursuers came to his summons; but if the dog would not attack, then the boy must. Would strength or even life be left for the last and most important of all the tasks to which the Hand was leading him?--for there was a good distance yet to be covered, and work to be done at the end of it. He was thankful that the ache had entirely left his throat and that a strange warmth had kindled in his breast.

Perhaps they had not really meant what they said about setting Frazier's bloodhound to run him down. The remark had come from the yardman, not Mr. Carmichael himself, who had appeared too stunned to think of anything but his son. If they had wished to kill the outlaw, or take him and send him to jail, why had they not seized and bound him instead of staring at him so queerly, and then the yardman foolishly saying, as Ray staggered away and they picked up the limp figure, that they would get Frazier's bloodhound and set him on the trail? They were two strong men against a mere boy, who was so exhausted that only with a mighty effort could he stand. It was Andy's final despairing cry that had waked them.

Without either triumph or regret the boy struggled on. The broadening of day made him partly aware of the savage presence that he made and of the likelihood that traffic might open on the road at any time. Some of his clothing was gone, and he had bound the remaining strips and rags about him as best he could. He did not know about the aspect of his face and hair, but he realized that should any one encounter him in the road he might be forced to do something distasteful, and that the urgent task ahead might be interrupted.

A horseman and two market wagons passed at intervals, but the boy was hidden at the roadside. So he reeled on and on, and so he came at last to the great pine. There he turned out and crawled as much as walked through the trees and undergrowth to the summit of a low ridge, where he felt the sunshine fall on his half-naked back. It was so luxurious that he paused in the full glare of it, and slowly turned, as one very cold before a warming fire, and reveled in it. With every moment he felt it pouring into him, tingling softly as it ran. It was odd with what cheerful industry it hunted out the coldest places in him and kindled snug little fires under them. Most of all, it gave attention to the warm place that had already started in the center, and that one woke to a wonderful glow. Thus refreshed, he descended the slope on the farther side and came to a morass threaded by a friendly stream. At the edge of the bog he halted and looked keenly about. It had been two years since his last visit to this spot, and, though his memory of the woods was excellent, he now found himself dull and his vision bad. Ordinarily he would have found at once what he was seeking. Up and down along the margin he stumbled, straining his dim eyes, crawling sometimes and using groping hands in the search. Surely no one else could have come upon this remote spot, found the treasure, and taken it away!

At last! It had seemed to him a very long time; but all else was submerged in the joy of the first triumph, the first elation, that the lad had felt in many, many a day. Every shadow that had lain on his conscience vanished, every shame that had cursed his years was swept away, all bitterness took flight, and something fine and sweet raced through him deliciously.

There was no waste of precious time in hunting for something with which to dig. Then, too, the glorious sun had mounted, and was pouring its flood of light and warmth on his work and him. Like the tines of a digging-fork, his fingers sank into the ground.

The precious treasure, hugged gently, reverently, with a fierce sense of protection, was balm to every hurt. With it thus clasped, the boy laboriously made the ascent of the ridge on his return, and paused on the summit. There was something strange in the distance with which the descending slope to the road stretched so far, so bewilderingly far. He contemplated it, and wondered if he could compass it in a lifetime. The impulse to go on--for this last task was only half done--overcame the check from the illusion, and he started down. His knees developed a foolish way of suddenly flexing and seating him hard on the ground. At first it was annoying, but when it happened the second time the absurdity of it, and the ridiculous suddenness of the surprise that it caused, made the boy laugh aloud. It astonished him to hear himself laugh, for that was very unusual, and he wondered. But he rose, staggered on, and found himself chuckling inside,--a most astonishing thing! He could not imagine why he was doing it. When he dropped the third time his voice rang in so loud and merry a laugh that two blue jays came and scolded him terrifically, and he laughed at them till his tears ran. He was so absurdly happy that he feared he would hug his treasure too hard.

If only his mother were with him, that she might see how funny it all was, and laugh and be happy with him, and then walk with him hand in hand through the beautiful woods, while he showed her all the wonderful things that he knew! But no; his sisters and his father must be with them,--and Grace, and Andy, too, and the teacher and dear old grandmother. What a glorious time they would have!

The boy started, for a sweet, coaxing smother had suddenly fallen on him. He fought it away and rose with great difficulty and in some alarm lest he should not reach the road. On he lurched, clinging to the bushes as he swayed, trying not to laugh, for he had an idea that he was very crass and silly. He saw the road, only a rod away, and suddenly reflected that he was not presentable. Though staying till night would delay the completion of his task, there was no help for it, and he was content, and laughed because he was. And he knew that he really needed rest; for suppose his legs should practise those grotesque eccentricities in the road, and somebody should see! He sat down, carefully guarding his treasure, to wait in happy patience. He would not sleep, and so lose something of his conscious peace, something of thinking about what was going to happen at the end. No, he _must_ not sleep.

The frantically joyous barking of a dog standing over him--not at all like the deep baying of Frazier's bloodhound,--woke the boy, and he tried to raise his head, but it fell back like lead. He laughed drowsily in quiet happiness, as he feebly patted the devoted head.

"Dear old Cap," he said. "You came, didn't you?"

Messengers from Elderby's and Carmichael's had brought strange news to the boy's parents. In alarm they had started out in the surrey, taking Cap, in the sure faith that he would find their son. They had seen that Andy was recovering,--he had been much more frightened than hurt. It was they whose crashing through the bushes the boy heard after Cap had announced his find. They halted and paled when they saw the torn, bruised, helpless figure smiling at them from the ground, and so full of loving gladness merely to see them that there was no room for surprise at their being there. The mother was quicker than the father; she ran forward and fell on her knees beside her son.

"My boy!" she cried in a choke.

He took her hand and smiled into her face. In all her life she had never seen a smile so sweet, so happy. With his free hand he lifted his treasure.

"Mother," radiantly, "here it is!"

"What, my poor dear?"

"Don't you remember? I told you two years ago that I'd found it, and you said you'd be very glad if I'd bring it to you when I came this way again."

She opened the parcel, wrapped with so fond care in leaves and damp moss.

"Why, it's the rare and beautiful fern, and you were taking it to me! Bless your dear heart!" and, much to his surprise, she began to cry.

A LOST STORY

BY

FRANK NORRIS

Reprinted from _The Century Magazine_ of July, 1903 by permission

AT NINE o'clock that morning Rosella arrived in her little office on the third floor of the great publishing house of Conant & Company, and putting up her veil without removing her hat, addressed herself to her day's work.

She went through her meager and unimportant mail, wrote a few replies, and then turned to the pile of volunteer manuscripts which it was her duty to read and report upon.

For Rosella was Conant's "reader," and so well was she acquainted with the needs of the house, so thorough was she in her work, and so great was the reliance upon her judgment, that she was the only one employed. Manuscripts that she "passed up" went direct to Conant himself, while the great army of the "declined" had no second chance. For the "unavailables" her word was final.

From the first--which was when her initial literary venture, a little book of short tales of Sicily and the Sicilians, was published by the house--her relations with the Conants had been intimate. Conant believed in her, and for the sake of the time when her books could be considered safe investments, was willing to lose a few dollars during the time of her apprenticeship. For the tales had enjoyed only a fleeting _succès d'estime_. Her style was, like her temperament, delicately constructed and of extreme refinement, not the style to appeal to the masses. It was "searched," a little _précieuse_, and the tales themselves were diaphanous enough, polished little _contes_, the points subtle, the action turning upon minute psychological distinctions.

Yet she had worked desperately hard upon their composition. She was of those very few who sincerely cannot write unless the mood be propitious; and her state of mind, the condition of her emotions, was very apt to influence her work for good or ill, as the case might be.

But a _succès d'estime_ fills no purses, and favorable reviews in the literary periodicals are not "negotiable paper." Rosella could not yet live wholly by her pen, and thought herself fortunate when the house offered her the position of reader.

This arrival of hers was no doubt to be hastened, if not actually assured, by the publication of her first novel, "Patroclus," upon which she was at this time at work. The evening before, she had read the draft of the story to Trevor, and even now, as she cut the string of the first manuscript of the pile, she was thinking over what Trevor had said of it, and smiling as she thought.

It was through Conant that Rosella had met the great novelist and critic, and it was because of Conant that Trevor had read Rosella's first little book. He had taken an interest at once, and had found occasion to say to her that she had it in her to make a niche for herself in American letters.

He was a man old enough to be her grandfather, and Rosella often came to see him in his study, to advise with him as to doubtful points in her stories or as to ideas for those as yet unwritten. To her his opinion was absolutely final. This old gentleman, this elderly man of letters, who had seen the rise and fall of a dozen schools, was above the influence of fads, and he whose books were among the classics even before his death was infallible in his judgments of the work of the younger writers. All the stages of their evolution were known to him--all their mistakes, all their successes. He understood; and a story by one of them, a poem, a novel, that bore the stamp of his approval, was "sterling." Work that he declared a failure was such in very earnest, and might as well be consigned as speedily as possible to the grate or the waste-basket.

When, therefore, he had permitted himself to be even enthusiastic over "Patroclus," Rosella had been elated beyond the power of expression, and had returned home with blazing cheeks and shining eyes, to lie awake half the night thinking of her story, planning, perfecting, considering and reconsidering.

Like her short stories, the tale was of extreme delicacy in both sentiment and design. It was a little fanciful, a little elaborate, but of an ephemeral poetry. It was all "atmosphere," and its success depended upon the minutest precision of phrasing and the nicest harmony between idea and word. There was much in mere effect of words; and more important than mere plot was the feeling produced by the balancing of phrases and the cadence of sentence and paragraph.

Only a young woman of Rosella's complexity, of her extreme sensitiveness, could have conceived "Patroclus," nor could she herself hope to complete it successfully at any other period of her life. Any earlier she would have been too immature to adapt herself to its demands; any later she would have lost the spontaneity, the _jeunesse_, and the freshness which were to contribute to its greatest charm.

The tale itself was simple. Instead of a plot, a complication, it built itself around a central idea, and it was the originality of this idea, this motif, that had impressed Trevor so strongly. Indeed, Rosella's draft could convey no more than that. Her treatment was all to follow. But here she was sure of herself. The style would come naturally as she worked.

She was ambitious, and in her craving to succeed, to be recognized and accepted, was all that passionate eagerness that only the artist knows. So far success had been denied her; but now at last she seemed to see light. Her "Patroclus" would make her claims good. Everything depended upon that.

She had thought over this whole situation while she removed the wrappings from the first manuscript of the pile upon her desk. Even then her fingers itched for the pen, and the sentences and phrases of the opening defined themselves clearly in her mind. But that was not to be the immediate work. The unlovely bread-and-butter business pressed upon her. With a long breath she put the vision from her and turned her attention to the task at hand.

After her custom, she went through the pile, glancing at the titles and first lines of each manuscript, and putting it aside in the desk corner to be considered in detail later on.

She almost knew in advance that of the thirty-odd volunteers of that day's batch not one would prove available. The manuscripts were tagged and numbered in the business office before they came to her, and the number of the first she picked up that morning was 1120, and this since the first of the year. Of the eleven hundred she had accepted only three. Of these three, two had failed entirely after publication; the third had barely paid expenses. What a record! How hopeless it seemed! Yet the strugglers persisted. Did it not seem as if No. 1120, Mrs. Allen Bowen of Bentonville, South Dakota--did it not seem as if she could know that the great American public has no interest in, no use for, "Thoughts on the Higher Life," a series of articles written for the county paper--foolish little articles revamped from Ruskin and Matthew Arnold?

And 1121--what was this? The initial lines ran: "'Oh, damn everything!' exclaimed Percival Holcombe, as he dropped languidly into a deep-seated leather chair by the club window which commanded a view of the noisy street crowded with fashion and frivolity, wherein the afternoon's sun, freed from its enthralling mists, which all day long had jealously obscured his beams, was gloating o'er the panels of the carriages of noblemen who were returning from race-track and park, and the towhead of the little sweeper who plied his humble trade which earned his scanty supper that he ate miles away from that gay quarter wherein Percival Holcombe, who----" Rosella paused for sheer breath. This sort did not need to be read. It was declined already. She picked up the next. It was in an underwear-box of green pasteboard.

"The staid old town of Salem," it read, "was all astir one bright and sunny morning in the year 1604." Rosella groaned. "Another!" she said. "Now," she continued, speaking to herself and shutting her eyes--"now about the next page the 'portly burgess' will address the heroine as 'Mistress,' and will say, 'An' whither away so early?'" She turned over to verify. She was wrong. The portly burgess had said: "Good morrow, Mistress Priscilla. An' where away so gaily bedizened?" She sighed as she put the manuscript away. "Why, and, oh, why _will_ they do it!" she murmured.

The next one, 1123, was a story "Compiled from the Memoirs of One Perkin Althorpe, Esq., Sometime Field-Coronet in His Majesty's Troop of Horse," and was sown thick with objurgation--"Ods-wounds!" "Body o' me!" "A murrain on thee!" "By my halidom!" and all the rest of the sweepings and tailings of Scott and the third-rate romanticists.

"Declined," said Rosella, firmly, tossing it aside. She turned to 1124:

"About three o'clock of a roseate day in early spring two fashionables of the softer sex, elegantly arrayed, might have been observed sauntering languidly down Fifth Avenue.

"'Are you going to Mrs. Van Billion's musicale tonight?' inquired the older of the two, a tall and striking demi-brunette, turning to her companion.

"'No, indeed,' replied the person thus addressed, a blonde of exquisite coloring. 'No, indeed. The only music one hears there is the chink of silver dollars. Ha! ha! ha! ha!'"

Rosella winced as if in actual physical anguish. "And the author calls it a 'social satire'!" she exclaimed. "How can she! How can she!"

She turned to the next. It was written in script that was a model of neatness, margined, correctly punctuated, and addressed, "Harold Vickers," with the town and State. Its title was "The Last Dryad," and the poetry of the phrase stuck in her mind. She read the first lines, then the first page, then two.

"Come," said Rosella, "there is something in this." At once she was in a little valley in Boeotia in the Arcadian day. It was evening. There was no wind. Somewhere a temple, opalescent in the sunset, suggested rather than defined itself. A landscape developed such as Turner in a quiet mood might have evolved, and with it a feeling of fantasy, of remoteness, of pure, true classicism. A note of pipes was in the air, sheep bleated, and Daphne, knee-deep in the grass, surging an answer to the pipes, went down to meet her shepherd.

Rosella breathed a great sigh of relief. Here at last was a possibility--a new writer with a new, sane view of his world and his work. A new poet, in fine. She consulted the name and address given--Harold Vickers, Ash Fork, Arizona. There was something in that Harold; perhaps education and good people. But the Vickers told her nothing. And where was Ash Fork, Arizona; and why and how had "The Last Dryad" been written there, of all places the green world round? How came the inspiration for that classic _paysage_, such as Ingres would have loved, from the sage-brush, and cactus? "Well," she told herself, "Moore wrote 'Lalla Rookh' in a back room in London, among the chimney-pots and soot. Maybe the proportion is inverse. But, Mr. Harold Vickers of Ash Fork, Arizona, your little book is, to say the least, well worth its ink."

She went through the other manuscripts as quickly as was consistent with fairness, and declined them all. Then settling herself comfortably in her chair, she plunged, with the delight of an explorer venturing upon new ground, into the pages of "The Last Dryad."

* * * * *

Four hours later she came, as it were, to herself, to find that she sat lax in her place, with open, upturned palms, and eyes vacantly fixed upon the opposite wall. "The Last Dryad," read to the final word, was tumbled in a heap upon the floor. It was past her luncheon hour. Her cheeks flamed; her hands were cold and moist; and her heart beat thick and slow, clogged, as it were, by its own heaviness.

But the lapse of time was naught to her, nor the fever that throbbed in her head. Her world, like a temple of glass, had come down dashing about her. The future, which had beckoned her onward,--a fairy in the path wherein her feet were set,--was gone, and at the goal of her ambition and striving she saw suddenly a stranger stand, plucking down the golden apples that she so long and passionately had desired.

For "The Last Dryad" was her own, her very, very own and cherished "Patroclus."

That the other author had taken the story from a different view-point, that his treatment varied, that the approach was his own, that the wording was his own, produced not the least change upon the final result. The idea, the motif, was identical in each; identical in every particular, identical in effect, in suggestion. The two tales were one. That was the fact, the unshakable fact, the block of granite that a malicious fortune had flung athwart her little pavilion of glass.

At first she jumped to the conclusion of chicanery. At first there seemed no other explanation. "He stole it," she cried, rousing vehemently from her inertia--"mine--mine. He stole my story."

But common sense prevailed in the end. No, there was no possible chance for theft. She had not spoken of "Patroclus" to any one but Trevor. Her manuscript draft had not once left her hands. No; it was a coincidence, nothing more--one of those fateful coincidences with which the scientific and literary worlds are crowded. And he, this unknown Vickers, this haphazard genius of Ash Fork, Arizona, had the prior claim. Her "Patroclus" must remain unwritten. The sob caught and clutched at her throat at last.

"Oh," she cried in a half-whisper--"oh, my chance, my hopes, my foolish little hopes! And now _this_! To have it all come to nothing--when I was so proud, so buoyant--and Mr. Trevor and all! Oh, could anything be more cruel!"