The willows had thrown out their tiny light-green flags, though their roots were under the ice, and some of the hardwood twigs were tinged with red. There was a faint but magical odor of uncovered earth in the air, and the touch of the wind was like a caress from a moist, magnetic hand.
The boy absorbed the light and heat of the sun as some wild thing might. With his hat over his face, his hands folded on his breast, he lay as still as a statue. He did not listen at first, he only felt; but at length he rose on his elbow and listened. The ice cracked and fell along the bank with a long, hollow, booming crash; a crow cawed, and a jay answered it from the willows below. A flight of sparrows passed, twittering innumerably. The boy shuddered with a strange, wistful longing, and a realization of the flight of time.
He could have wept, he could have sung, but he only shuddered and lay silent under the stress of that strange, sweet passion which quickened his heart, deepened his eyes, and made his breath come and go with a quivering sound. Across the dazzling blue arch of the sky the crow flapped, sending down his prophetic, jubilant note; the breeze, as soft and sweet as April, stirred in his hair; the hills, deep in their dusky blue, seemed miles away; and the voices of the care-free skaters on the melting ice of the river below came to the ear subdued to a unity with the scene.
Suddenly a fear seized upon the boy—a horror! Life, life was passing! Life that can be lived only once, and lost, is lost forever! Life, that fatal gift of the Invisible Powers to man—a path, with youth and joy and hope at its eastern gate, and despair, regret, and death at its low western portal!
The boy caught a momentary glimpse of his real significance. "I am only a gnat, a speck in the sun, a youth facing the millions of great and wise and wealthy!" He leaped up in a frenzy. "Oh, I mustn't stay here! I must get back to my studies. Life is slipping by me, and I am doing nothing, being nothing!"
His face, as pale as death, shone with passionate resolution, and his hands were clinched in silent vow.
But on his way back he met the jocund party of skaters going home from the river, and with the easy shift and change of youth joined in their ringing laughter. The weird power of the wind's voice was gone, and he sank to the level of the unthinking boy again. However, the problem was only put off, not solved.
That night Hartley said: "Well, pardner, we're getting 'most ready to pull out. Someways I always get restless when these warm days begin." This was as sentimental as Hartley ever got; or, if he ever felt more sentiment, he concealed it carefully.
"I s'pose it must 'a' been in spring that those old chaps, on their steeds and in their steel shirts, started out for to rescue some damsel, hey?" he ended, with a grin. "Now, that's the way I feel—just like striking out for, say, Oshkosh. That little piece of lofty tumbling of yours was a big boom, and no mistake. Why, your share o' this campaign will be a hundred and twenty dollars sure."
"More'n I've earned," replied Bert.
"No, it ain't. You've done your duty like a man. Done as much in your way as I have. Now, if you want to try another county with me, say so. I'll make a thousand dollars this year out o' this thing."
"I guess I'll go back to school."
"All right; I don't blame you for wanting to do that."
"I guess, with what I can earn for father, I can pull through the year. I must get back. I'm awfully obliged to you, Jim."
"That'll do on that," said Hartley, shortly; "you don't owe me anything. We'll finish delivery to-morrow, and be ready to pull out on Friday or Sat."
There was an acute pain in Albert's breast somewhere; he had not analyzed his case at all, and did not now, but the idea of going affected him strongly. It had been so pleasant, that daily return to a lovely girlish presence.
"Yes, sir," Hartley was going on, "I'm going to just quietly leave a book on her centre-table. I don't know as it'll interest her much, but it'll show we appreciate the grub, and so on. By jinks! you don't seem to realize what a worker that woman is! Up five o'clock in the morning—By-the-way, you've been going around with the girl a good deal, and she's introduced you to some first-rate sales; now, if you want to leave her a little something, make it a morocco copy, and charge it to the firm."
Albeit knew that he meant well, but he couldn't, somehow, help saying, ironically:
"Thanks, but I guess one copy of Blaine's Twenty Years will be enough in the house, especially—"
"Well, give her anything you please, and charge it up to the firm. I don't insist on Blaine; only suggested that because—"
"I guess I can stand the expense of a present."
"I didn't say you couldn't, man! But I want a hand in this thing. Don't be so turrible keen t' snap a feller up," complained Hartley, turning on him. "What the thunder is the matter of you, anyway? I like the girl, and she's been good to us all round; she tended you like an angel—"
"There, there! That's enough o' that," put in Albert, hastily. "For God's sake, don't whang away on that string forever, as if I didn't know it!"
Hartley stared at him as he turned away.
"Well, by jinks! What is the matter o' you?"
He was too busy to dwell upon it much, but concluded his partner was homesick.
Albert was beginning to have a vague underconsciousness of his real feeling toward the girl, but he fought off the acknowledgment of it as long as possible. His mind moved in a circle, coming back to the one point ceaselessly—a dreary prospect, in which that slender girl-figure had no place—and each time the prospect grew more intolerably blank, and the pain in his heart more acute and throbbing.
When he faced her that night, after they had returned from a final walk down by the river, he was as far from a solution as ever. He had avoided all reference to their separation, and now he stood as a man might at the parting of the ways, saying: "I will not choose; I cannot choose. I will wait for some sign, some chance thing, to direct me."
They stood opposite each other, each feeling that there was more to be said: the girl tender, her eyes cast down, holding her hands to the fire; he shivering, but not with cold. He had a vague knowledge of the vast importance of the moment, and he hesitated to speak.
"It's almost spring again, isn't it? And you've been here"—she paused and looked up with a daring smile—"seems as if you'd been here always."
It was about half-past eight. Mrs. Welsh was setting her bread in the kitchen; they could hear her moving about. Hartley was down-town finishing up his business. They were almost alone in the house. Albert's throat grew dry and his limbs trembled. His pause was ominous. The girl's smile died away as he took a seat without looking at her.
"Well, Maud, I suppose you know—we're going away to-morrow."
"Oh, must you? But you'll come back?"
"I don't expect to—I don't see how I can. I may never see you again."
"Oh, don't say that!" cried the girl, her face as white as silver, her clasped hands straining.
"I must go—I must!" he muttered, not daring to look upon her face.
"Oh, what can I do—we do—without you! I can't bear it!"
She stopped, and sank back into a chair, her breath coming heavily from her twitching lips, the unnoticed tears falling from her staring, pitiful, wild, appealing eyes, her hands nervously twisting her gloves.
There was a long silence. Each was undergoing a self-revelation; each was trying to face a future without the other.
"I must go!" he repeated, aimlessly, mechanically. "What can I do here?"
The girl's heavy breathing deepened into a wild little moaning sound, inexpressibly pitiful, her hungry eyes fixed on his face. She gave way first, and flung herself down upon her knees at his side, her hands seeking his neck.
"Albert, I can't live without you now! Take me with you! Don't leave me!"
He stooped suddenly and took her in his arms, raised her, and kissed her hair.
"I didn't mean it, Maud; I'll never leave you—never! Don't cry!"
She drew his head down and kissed his lips, then tur
ned her face to his breast—then joy and confidence came back to her.
"I know now what you meant," she cried, gayly, raising herself and looking into his face; "you were trying to scare me; trying to make me show how much I—cared for you—first!" There was a soft smile on her lips and a tender light in her eyes. "But I don't mind it."
"I guess I didn't know myself what I meant," he answered, with a grave smile.
When Mrs. Welsh came in, they were sitting on the sofa, talking in low voices of their future. He was grave and subdued, while she was radiant with love and hope. The future had no terrors for her, but the boy unconsciously felt the gravity of life somehow deepened by the revelation of her love.
"Why, Maud!" Mrs. Welsh exclaimed, "what are you doing?"
"Oh, mother, I'm so happy—just as happy as a bird!" she cried, rushing into her mother's arms.
"Why, why!—what is it? You're crying, dear!"
"No, I'm not; I'm laughing—see!"
Mrs. Welsh turned her dim eyes on the girl, who shook the tears from her lashes with the action of a bird shaking water from its wings. She seemed to shake off her trouble at the same moment.
Mrs. Welsh understood perfectly. "I'm very glad, too, dearie," she said, simply, looking at the young man with motherly love irradiating her worn face. Albert went to her, and she kissed him, while the happy girl put her arms about them both in an ecstatic hug.
"Now you've got a son, mother."
"But I've lost a daughter—my first-born."
"Oh, wait till you hear our plans! He's going to settle down here—aren't you, Albert?"
Then she went away and left the young people alone. They had a sweet, intimate talk of an hour, full of plans and hopes and confidences, and then he kissed his radiant love good-night, and, going into his own room, sat down by the stove and there pondered on the change that had come into his life.
Already he sighed with the stress of care, the press of thought, which came upon him. The longing uneasiness of the boy had given place to another unrest—the unrest of the man who must face the world in earnest now, planning for food and shelter. To go back to school was out of the question. To expect help from his father, overworked and burdened with debt, was impossible. He must go to work, and go to work to aid her. A living must be wrung from this town. All the home and all the property Mrs. Welsh had were here, and wherever Maud went the mother must follow.
He was in the midst of his mental turmoil when Hartley came in, humming the Mulligan Guards.
"In the dark, hey?"
"Completely in the dark."
"Well, light up, light up!"
"I'm trying to."
"What the deuce do you mean by that tone? What's been going on here since my absence?"
Albert did not reply, and Hartley shuffled about after a match, lighted the lamp, threw his coat and hat in the corner, and then said:
"Well, I've got everything straightened up. Been freezing out old Daggett; the old skeesix has been promisin' f'r a week, and I just said, 'Old man, I'll camp right down with you here till you fork over,' and he did. By-the-way, everybody I talked with to-day about leaving said, 'What's Lohr going to do with that girl?' I told 'em I didn't know; do you? It seems you've been thicker'n I supposed."
"I'm going to marry her," said Albert, calmly, but his voice sounded strained and hoarse.
"What's that?" yelled Hartley.
"Sh! don't raise the neighbors. I'm going to marry her."
"Well, by jinks! When? Say, looky here! Well, I swanny!" exclaimed Hartley, helplessly. "When?"
"Right away; some time this summer—June, maybe."
Hartley thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, stretched out his legs, and stared at his friend in vast amaze.
"You're givin' me guff!"
"I'm in dead earnest."
"I thought you was going through college all so fast?"
"Well, I've made up my mind it isn't any use to try," replied Albert, listlessly.
"What y' goin' t' do here, or are y' goin' t' take the girl away with yeh?"
"She can't leave her mother. We'll run this boarding-house for the present. I'll try for the principalship of the school here. Raff is going to resign, they say. If I can't get that, I'll go into a law office. Don't worry about me."
"But why go into this so quick? Why not put it off fifteen or twenty years?" asked Hartley, trying to get back to cheerful voice.
"What would be the use? At the end of a year I'd be just about as poor as I am now."
"Can't y'r father step in and help you?"
"No. There are three boys and two girls, all younger than I, to be looked out for, and he has all he can carry. Besides, she needs me right here and right now, and if I can do anything to make life easier for her I'm going t' do it. Besides," he ended, in a peculiar tone, "we don't feel as if we could live apart much longer."
"But, great Scott! man, you can't—"
"Now, hold on, Jim! I've thought this thing all over, and I've made up my mind. It ain't any use to go on talking about it. What good would it do me to go to school another year? I'd come out without a dollar, and no more fitted for earning a living for her than I am now! And, besides all that, I couldn't draw a free breath thinking of her workin' away here to keep things moving, liable at any minute to break down."
Hartley gazed at him in despair, and with something like awe. It was a tremendous transformation in the young, ambitious student.
Like most men in America, and especially Western men, he still clung to the idea that a man was entirely responsible for his success or failure in life. He had not admitted that conditions of society might be so adverse that only men of most exceptional endowments, and willing and able to master many of the best and deepest and most sacred of their inspirations and impulses, could succeed.
Of the score of specially promising young fellows who had been with him at school, seventeen had dropped out and down. Most of them had married and gone back to farming, or to earn a precarious living in the small, dull towns where farmers trade and traders farm. Conditions were too adverse; they simply weakened and slipped slowly back into dulness and an ox-like or else a fretful patience. Thinking of these men, and thinking their failure due to themselves alone, Hartley could not endure the idea of his friend adding one more to the list of failures. He sprang up at last.
"Say, Bert, you might just as well hang y'rself, and done with it! Why, it's suicide! I can't allow it. I started in at college bravely, and failed because I'd let it go too long. I couldn't study—couldn't get down to it; but you—why, old man, I'd bet on you!" He had a tremor in his voice. "I hate like thunder to see you give up your plans. Say, you can't afford to do this; it's too much to pay."
"No, it isn't."
"I say it is—and, besides, you'd get over this in a week—"
"Jim!" called Albert, warningly, sharply.
"All right," said Jim, in the tone of a man who knows it's all wrong—"all right; but the time 'll come when you'll wish I'd—You ain't doin' the girl enough good to make up for the harm you're doin' yourself." He broke off again, and said in a tone of finality: "I'm done. I'm all through, and I c'n see you're through with Jim Hartley. All right!"
"Darn curious," he muttered to himself, "that boy should get caught just at this time, and not with some o' those girls in Marion. Well, it's none o' my funeral," he ended, with a sigh; for it had stirred him to the bottom of his sunny nature, after all. A dozen times, as he lay there beside his equally sleepless companion, he started to say something more in deprecation of the step, but each time stifled the opening word into a groan.
It would not be true to say that love had come to Albert Lohr as a relaxing influence, but it had changed the direction of his energies so radically as to make his whole life seem weaker and lower. As long as his love-dreams went out toward a vague and ideal woman, supposedly higher and grander than himself, he was spurred on to face the terrible sheer escarpment of social eminence; but when he met, by
accident, the actual woman who was to inspire his future efforts, the difficulties he faced took on solid reality. His aspirations fell to the earth, their wings clipped, and became, perforce, submissive beasts at the plough. The force that moved so much of his thought was transformed into other energy.
The table was very gay at dinner next day. Maud was standing at the highest point of her girlhood dreams. Her flushed cheeks and shining eyes made her seem almost a child, and Hartley wondered at her, and relented a little in the face of such happiness.
"They're gay as larks now," thought Hartley to himself, as he joined in the laughter; "but that won't help 'em any ten years from now."
He could hardly speak next day as he shook hands at the station with his friend.
"Good-by, ol' man; I hope it'll come out all right, but I'm afraid—But there! I promised not to say anything about it. Good-by till we meet in Congress," he ended, in a resolute attempt to conceal his dismay.
"Can't you come to the wedding, Jim? We've decided on June. You see, they need a man around the house, so we—You'll come, won't you, old fellow? And don't mind my being a little crusty last night."
"Oh yes; I'll come," Jim said, in a tone which concealed a desire to utter one more protest, but to himself he said:
"That ends him! He's jumped into a hole and pulled the hole in after him. A man can't marry a family like that at his age, and pull out of it. He may, but I doubt it. Well, as I remarked before, it's none o' my funeral so long as he's satisfied."
But he said it with a painful lump in his throat, and he could not bring himself to feel that Albert's course was right, and felt himself to be somehow culpable in the case.
* * *
A DIVISION IN THE COOLLY
A funeral is a depressing affair under the best circumstances, but a funeral in a lonely farm-house in March, the roads full of slush, the ragged gray clouds leaping the sullen hills like eagles, is tragic.
Other Main-Travelled Roads Page 14