Part 6

He put it aside and looked around, whistling in meditation. Then he went back again to wondering who the pale-haired woman was. Probably the farm had changed hands. A man whose father had been dead going on twenty years couldn't have that kind of widowed stepmother. He was disqualified.

A cold, unchanging place, Edom Hill, lifted out of the warm, sapping currents of life. It might be a woman could keep indefinitely there, looking much the same. If her pulse beat once to an ordinary twice, she ought to last twice as long. The house seemed unchanged. The old things were in their old familiar places, David Sebastian's books on their shelves in the room below, on the side table there his great Bible, in which he used to write all family records, with those of his reforming activity. Sebastian wondered what record stood of his own flight.

He sat a few moments longer, then took his lamp and crept softly out of the room and down the stairs. The sitting-room was icily cold now; the white curtains stirred noiselessly. He sat down before the little side table and opened the great book.

There were some thirty leaves between the Old and New Testaments, most of them stitched in. A few at the end were blank. Some of the records were obscure.

“March 5th, 1840. Saw light on this subject.”

Others ran:

“Sept. 1 st, 1843. Rec. Peter Cavendish, fugitive.”

“Dec. 3d, ditto. Rec. Robert Henry.”

“April 15th, ditto. Rec. one, Æsop,” and so on.

“Dec. 14th, 1848. Have had consolation from prayer for public evil.”

“April 20th, 1858. My son, Charles Sebastian, born.”

“April 7th, 1862. My wife, Jane Sebastian, died.”

“July 5th, 1862. Rec. Keziah Andrews to keep my house.”

The dates of the entries from that point grew further apart, random and obscure; here and there a fact.

“Nov. 4th, 1876. Charles Sebastian departed.”

“June 9th, 1877. Rec. Harriet.”

“Jan. 19th, 1880. Have wrestled in prayer without consolation for Charles Sebastian.”

This was the last entry. A faint line ran down across the page connecting the end of “Harriet” with the beginning of “Charles.” Between the two blank leaves at the end was a photograph of himself at seventeen. He remembered suddenly how it was taken by a travelling photographer, who had stirred his soul with curiosity and given him the picture; and David Sebastian had taken it and silently put it away among blank leaves of the Bible.

Sebastian shivered. The written leaves, the look of himself of twenty years before, the cold, the wail of the wind, the clicking flakes on the window panes, these seemed now to be the dominant facts of life. Narrow was it, poor and meagre, to live and labor with a barren farm? The old abolitionist had cut deeper into existence than he had. If to deal with the fate of races, and wrestle alone with God on Edom Hill, were not knowledge and experience, what was knowledge or experience, or what should a man call worth the trial of his brain and nerve?

“He passed me. He won hands down,” he muttered, bending over the page again. “'Rec. Harriet.' That's too much for me.” And he heard a quick noise behind him and turned.

She stood in the door, wide-eyed, smooth, pale hair falling over one shoulder, long cloak half slipped from the other, holding a shotgun, threatening and stem.

“What are you doing here?”

“Out gunning for me?” asked Sebastian gravely.

She stared wildly, put the gun down, cried:

“You're Charlie Sebastian!” and fell on her knees beside the stove, choking, sobbing and shaking, crouching against the cold sheet iron in a kind of blind memory of its warmth and protection.

“You still have the drop on me,” said Sebastian.

She shivered and crouched still and whispered:

“I'm cold.”

“How long have you been here freezing?”

Sebastian thrust anything inflammable at hand into the stove, lit it and piled in the wood.

“Not long. Only--only a few moments.”

“You still have the advantage of me. Who are you?”

“Why, I'm Harriet,” she said simply, and looked up.

“Just so. 'Received, 1877.' How old were you then?”

“Why, I was eight.”

“Just so. Don't tell lies, Harriet. You've been freezing a long while.”

She drew her cloak closer over the thin white linen of her gown with shaking hand.

“I don't understand. I'm very cold. Why didn't you come before? It has been so long waiting.”

III.

The draft began to roar and the dampers to glow. She crept in front of the glow. He drew a chair and sat down close behind her.

“Why didn't you come before?”

The question was startling, for Sebastian was only conscious of a lack of reason for coming. If David Sebastian had left him the farm he would have heard from it, and being prosperous, he had not cared. But the question seemed to imply some strong assumption and further knowledge.

“You'd better tell me about it.”

“About what? At the beginning?”

“Aren't you anything except 'Received, Harriet'?”

“Oh, I hadn't any father or mother when Mr. Sebastian brought me here. Is that what you mean? But he taught me to say 'Harriet Sebastian,' and a great many things he taught me. Didn't you know? And about his life and what he wanted you to do? Because, of course, we talked about you nearly always in the time just before he died. He said you would be sure to come, but he died, don't you see? only a few years after, and that disappointed him. He gave me the picture and said, 'He'll come, and you'll know him by this,' and he said, 'He will come poor and miserable. My only son, so I leave him to you; and so, as I did, you will pray for him twice each day.' It was just like that, 'Tell Charles there is no happiness but in duty. Tell him I found it so.' It was a night like this when he died, and Kezzy was asleep in her chair out here, and I sat by the bed. Then he told me I would pay him all in that way by doing what he meant to do for you. I was so little, but I seemed to understand that I was to live for it, as he had lived to help free the slaves. Don't you see? Then he began calling, 'Charles! Charles!' as if you were somewhere near, and I fell asleep, and woke and lay still and listened to the wind; and when I tried to get up I couldn't, because he held my hair, and he was dead. But why didn't you come?”

“It looks odd enough now,” Sebastian admitted, and wondered at the change from still impassiveness, pale and cool silence, to eager speech, swift question, lifted and flushed face.

“Then you remember the letters? But you didn't come then. But I began to fancy how it would be when you came, and then somehow it seemed as if you were here. Out in the orchard sometimes, don't you see? And more often when Kezzy was cross. And when she went to sleep by the fire at night--she was so old--we were quite alone and talked. Don't you remember?--I mean--But Kezzy didn't like to hear me talking to myself. 'Mutter, mutter!' like that. 'Never was such a child!' And then she died, too, seven--seven years ago, and it was quite different. I--I grew older. You seemed to be here quite and quite close to me always. There was no one else, except--But, I don't know why, I had an aching from having to wait, and it has been a long time, hasn't it?”

“Rather long. Go on. There was no one else?”

“No. We lived here--I mean--it grew that way, and you changed from the picture, too, and became like Mr. Sebastian, only younger, and just as you are now, only--not quite.”

She looked at him with sudden fear, then dropped her eyes, drew her long hair around under her cloak and leaned closer to the fire.

“But there is so much to tell you it comes out all mixed.”

Sebastian sat silently looking down at her, and felt the burden of his thinking grow heavier; the pondering how David Sebastian had left him an inheritance of advice, declaring his own life full and brimming, and to Harriet the inheritance of a curious duty that had grown to people her nights and days with intense sheltered dreams, and made her life, too, seem to her full and brimming, multitudinous with events and interchanges, himself so close and cherished an actor in it that his own parallel unconsciousness of it had almost dropped out of conception. And the burden grew heavier still with the weight of memories, and the record between the Old and New Testaments; with the sense of the isolation and covert of the midnight, and the storm; with the sight of Harriet crouching by the fire, her story, how David Sebastian left this world and went out into the wild night crying, “Charles! Charles!” It was something not logical, but compelling. It forced him to remark that his own cup appeared partially empty from this point of view. Harriet seemed to feel that her hour had come and he was given to her hands.. Success even in methods of living is a convincing thing over unsuccess. Ah, well! too late to remodel to David Sebastian's notion. It was singular, though, a woman silent, restrained, scrupulous, moving probably to the dictates of village opinion--suddenly the key was turned, and she threw back the gates of her prison; threw open doors, windows, intimate curtains; asked him to look in and explore everywhere and know all the history and the forecasts; became simple, primitive, unrestrained, willing to sit there at his feet and as innocent as her white linen gown. How smooth and pale her hair was and gentle cheek, and there were little sleepy smiles in the corners of the lips. He thought he would like most of all to put out his hand and touch her cheek and sleepy smiles, and draw her hair, long and soft and pale, from under the cloak. On the whole, it seemed probable that he might.

“Harriet,” he said slowly, “I'm going to play this hand.”

“Why, I don't know what you mean.”

“Take it, I'm not over and above a choice selection. I don't mention details, but take it as a general fact. Would you want to marry that kind of a selection, meaning me?”

“Oh, yes! Didn't you come for that? I thought you would.”

“And I thought you needed revelry! You must have had a lot of it.”

“I don't know what you mean. Listen! It keeps knocking at the door!”

“Oh, that's all right. Let it knock. Do you expect any more vagrants?”

“Vagrants?”

“Like me.”

“Like you? You only came home. Listen! It was like this when he died. But he wouldn't come to-night and stand outside and knock, would he? Not to-night, when you've come at last. But he used to. Of course, I fancied things. It's the storm. There's no one else now.”

A thousand spectres go whirling across Edom Hill such winter nights and come with importunate messages, but if the door is close and the fire courageous, it matters little. They are but wind and drift and out in the dark, and if one is in the light, it is a great point to keep the door fast against them and all forebodings, and let the coming days be what they will.

Men are not born in a night, or a year.

But if David Sebastian were a spectre there at the door, and thought differently on any question, or had more to say, he was not articulate. There is no occupation for ghosts in a stirring world, nor efficiency in their repentance.

Has any one more than a measure of hope, and a door against the storm? There was that much, at least, on Edom Hill.

SONS OF R. RAND

SOME years ago, of a summer afternoon, a perspiring organ-grinder and a leathery ape plodded along the road that goes between thin-soiled hillsides and the lake which is known as Elbow Lake and lies to the northeast of the village of Salem. In those days it was a well-travelled highway, as could be seen from its breadth and' dustiness. At about half the length of its bordering on the lake there was a spring set in the hillside, and a little pool continually rippled by its inflow. Some settler or later owner of the thin-soiled hillsides had left a clump of trees about it, making as sightly and refreshing an Institute of Charity as could be found. Another philanthropist had added half a cocoanut-shell to the foundation.

The organ-grinder turned in under the trees with a smile, in which his front teeth played a large part, and suddenly drew back with a guttural exclamation; the leathery ape bumped against his legs, and both assumed attitudes expressing respectively, in an Italian and tropical manner, great surprise and abandonment of ideas. A tall man lay stretched on his back beside the spring, with a felt hat over his face. Pietro, the grinder, hesitated. The American, if disturbed and irascible, takes by the collar and kicks with the foot: it has sometimes so happened. The tall man pushed back his hat and sat up, showing a large-boned and sun-browned face, shaven except for a black mustache, clipped close. He looked not irascible, though grave perhaps, at least unsmiling. He said: “It's free quarters, Dago. Come in. Entrez. Have a drink.”

Pietro bowed and gesticulated with amiable violence. “Dry!” he said. “Oh, hot!”

“Just so. That a friend of yours?”--pointing to the ape. “He ain't got a withering sorrow, has he? Take a seat.”

Elbow Lake is shaped as its name implies. If one were to imagine the arm to which the elbow belonged, it would be the arm of a muscular person in the act of smiting a peaceable-looking farmhouse a quarter of a mile to the east. Considering the bouldered front of the hill behind the house, the imaginary blow would be bad for the imaginary knuckles. It is a large house, with brown, unlikely looking hillsides around it, huckleberry knobs and ice-grooved boulders here and there. The land between it and the lake is low, and was swampy forty years ago, before the Rand boys began to drain it, about the time when R. Rand entered the third quarter century of his unpleasant existence.

R. Rand was, I suppose, a miser, if the term does not imply too definite a type. The New England miser is seldom grotesque. He seems more like congealed than distorted humanity. He does not pinch a penny so hard as some of other races are said to do, but he pinches a dollar harder, and is quite as unlovely as any. R. Rand's methods of obtaining dollars to pinch were not altogether known, or not, at least, recorded--which accounts perhaps for the tradition that they were of doubtful uprightness. He held various mortgages about the county, and his farm represented little to him except a means of keeping his two sons inexpensively employed in rooting out stones.

At the respective ages of sixteen and seventeen the two sons, Bob and Tom Rand, discovered the rooting out of stones to be unproductive labor, if nothing grew, or was expected to grow, in their place, except more stones; and the nature of the counsels they took may be accurately imagined. In the autumn of '56 they began ditching the swamp in the direction of the lake, and in the summer of '57 raised a crop of tobacco in the northeast corner, R. Rand, the father, making no comment the while. At the proper time he sold the tobacco to Packard & Co., cigar makers, of the city of Hamilton, still making no comment, probably enjoying some mental titillation. Tom Rand then flung a rock of the size of his fist through one of the front windows, and ran away, also making no comment further than that. The broken window remained broken twenty-five years, Tom returning neither to mend it nor to break another. Bob Rand, by some bargain with his father, continued the ditching and planting of the swamp with some profit to himself.

He evidently classed at least a portion of his father's manner of life among the things that are to be avoided. He acquired a family, and was in the way to bring it up in a reputable way. He further cultivated and bulwarked his reputation. Society, manifesting itself politically, made him sheriff; society, manifesting itself ecclesiastically, made him deacon. Society seldom fails to smile on systematic courtship.

The old man continued to go his way here and there, giving account of himself to no one, contented enough no doubt to have one reputable son who looked after his own children and paid steady rent for, or bought piece by piece, the land he used; and another floating between the Rockies and the Mississippi, whose doings were of no importance in the village of Salem. But I doubt, on the whole, whether he was softened in heart by the deacon's manner or the ordering of the deacon's life to reflect unfilially on his own. Without claiming any great knowledge of the proprieties, he may have thought the conduct of his younger son the more filial of the two. Such was the history of the farmhouse between the years '56 and '82.

One wet April day, the sixth of the month, in the year '82, R. Rand went grimly elsewhere--where, his neighbors had little doubt. With true New England caution we will say that he went to the cemetery, the little grass-grown cemetery of Salem, with its meagre memorials and absurd, pathetic epitaphs. The minister preached a funeral sermon, out of deference to his deacon, in which he said nothing whatever about R. Rand, deceased; and R. Rand, sheriff and deacon, reigned in his stead.

Follow certain documents and one statement of fact:

_Document 1._

_Codicil to the Will of R. Rand._

The Will shall stand as above, to wit, my son, Robert Rand, sole legatee, failing the following condition: namely, I bequeath all my property as above mentioned, with the exception of this house and farm, to my son, Thomas Rand, provided, that within three months of the present date he returns and mends with his own hands the front window, third from the north, previously broken by him.

(Signed) R. Rand.

_Statement of fact._ On the morning of the day following the funeral the “condition” appeared in singularly problematical shape, the broken window, third from the north, having been in fact promptly replaced _by the hands of Deacon Rand himself_. The new pane stared defiantly across the lake, westward.

_Document 2_.

Leadville, Cal., May 15.

Dear Bob: I hear the old man is gone. Saw it in a paper. I reckon maybe I didn't treat him any squarer than he did me. I'll go halves on a bang-up good monument, anyhow. Can we settle affairs without my coming East? How are you, Bob?

Tom.

_Document 3._

Salem, May 29.

Dear Brother: The conditions of our father's will are such, I am compelled to inform you, as to result in leaving the property wholly to me. My duty to a large and growing family gives me no choice but to accept it as it stands, and I trust and have no doubt that you will regard that result with fortitude. I remain yours,

Robert Rand.

_Document 4._

Leadville, June 9.

A. L. Moore.

Dear Sir: I have your name as a lawyer in Wimberton. Think likely there isn't any other. If you did not draw up the will of R. Rand, Salem, can you forward this letter to the man who did? If you did, will you tell me what in thunder it was?

Yours, Thomas Rand.

_Document 5._

Wimberton, June 18.

Thomas Rand.

Dear Sir: I did draw your father's will and enclose copy of the same, with its codicil, which may truly be called remarkable. I think it right to add, that the window in question has been mended by your brother, with evident purpose. Your letter comes opportunely, my efforts to find you having been heretofore unsuccessful. I will add further, that I think the case actionable, to say the least. In case you should see fit to contest, your immediate return is of course necessary. Very truly yours,

A. L. Moore,

Attorney-at-Law.

_Document 6. Despatch._

New York, July 5.

To Robert Rand, Salem.

Will be at Valley Station to-morrow. Meet me or not.

T. Rand.

The deacon was a tall meagre man with a goatee that seemed to accentuate him, to hint by its mere straightness at sharp decision, an unwavering line of rectitude.

He drove westward in his buckboard that hot summer afternoon, the 6th of July. The yellow road was empty before him all the length of the lake, except for the butterflies bobbing around in the sunshine. His lips looked even more secretive than usual: a discouraging man to see, if one were to come to him in a companionable mood desiring comments.

Opposite the spring he drew up, hearing the sound of a hand-organ under the trees. The tall man with a clipped mustache sat up deliberately and looked at him. The leathery ape ceased his funereal capers and also looked at him; then retreated behind the spring. Pietro gazed back and forth between the deacon and the ape, dismissed his professional smile, and followed the ape. The tall man pulled his legs under him and got up.

“I reckon it's Bob,” he said. “It's free quarters, Bob. Entrez. Come in. Have a drink.”

The deacon's embarrassment, if he had any, only showed itself in an extra stiffening of the back.

“The train--I did not suppose--I was going to meet you.”

“Just so. I came by way of Wimberton.”

The younger brother stretched himself again beside the spring and drew his hat over his eyes. The elder stood up straight and not altogether unimpressive in front of it. Pietro in the rear of the spring reflected at this point that he and the ape could conduct a livelier conversation if it were left to them. Pietro could not imagine a conversation in which it was not desirable to be lively. The silence was long and, Pietro thought, not pleasant.

“Bob,” said the apparent sleeper at last, “ever hear of the prodigal son?”

The deacon frowned sharply, but said nothing. The other lifted the edge of his hat brim.

“Never heard of him? Oh--have I Then I won't tell about him. Too long. That elder brother, now, he had good points;--no doubt of it, eh?”

“I confess I don't see your object--”

“Don't? Well, I was just saying he had good points. I suppose he and the prodigal had an average good time together, knockin' around, stubbin' their toes, fishin' maybe, gettin' licked at inconvenient times, hookin' apples most anytime. That sort of thing. Just so. He had something of an argument. Now, the prodigal had no end of fun, and the elder brother stayed at home and chopped wood; understood himself to be cultivating the old man. I take it he didn't have a very soft job of it?”--lifting his hat brim once more.

The deacon said nothing, but observed the hat brim.

“Now I think of it, maybe strenuous sobriety wasn't a thing he naturally liked any more than the prodigal did. I've a notion there was more family likeness between 'em than other folks thought. What might be your idea?”

The deacon still stood rigidly with his hands clasped behind him.

“I would rather,” he said, “you would explain yourself without parable. You received my letter. It referred to our father's will. I have received a telegram which I take to be threatening.”

The other sat up and pulled a large satchel around from behind him.

“You're a man of business, Bob,” he said cheerfully. “I like you, Bob. That's so. That will--I've got it in my pocket. Now, Bob, I take it you've got some cards, else you're putting up a creditable bluff. I play this here Will, Codicil attached. You play,--window already mended; time expired at twelve o'clock to-night. Good cards, Bob--first-rate. I play here”--opening the satchel--“two panes of glass--allowin' for accidents--putty, et cetera, proposing to bust that window again. Good cards, Bob. How are you coming on?”

The deacon's sallow cheeks flushed and his eyes glittered. Something came into his face which suggested the family likeness. He drew a paper from his inner coat pocket, bent forward stiffly and laid it on the grass.

“Sheriff's warrant,” he said, “for--hem--covering possible trespassing on my premises; good for twenty-four hours' detention--hem.”

“Good,” said his brother briskly. “I admire you, Bob. I'll be blessed if I don't. I play again.” He drew a revolver and placed it on top of the glass. “Six-shooter. Good for two hours' stand-off.”

“Hem,” said the deacon. “Warrant will be enlarged to cover the carrying of concealed weapons. Being myself the sheriff of this town, it is--hem--permissible for me.” He placed a revolver on top of the warrant.