by Zane Grey
“Ginia, isn’t it dreadful? Oh, your father was black as a thundercloud. . . . But I’m glad you didn’t give in. It just wouldn’t have been decent.”
“Ethel, my father always hated the Forrests. I remember that all my life.”
“But, Ginia, forgive me if I say it’s not fair—at least the hate isn’t. You have all the Forrests ever had.”
“Dear, I know it’s not fair. Ever since dad took over this property it has been a thorn in my flesh. . . . But I didn’t say I hated the Forrests.”
“I’m glad. Poor boy! . . . He’s very handsome, Ginia. . . . What will come of it?” And her blue eyes quickened and dilated with all a young girl’s mystic sense of romance.
“He’s not a boy, Ethel. He’s twenty-eight. . . . Even when I was a girl of ten and twelve he seemed a grown-up man.”
At the turn below the knoll the chauffeur halted the car where the brook ran clear and swift over gravel bars.
“Wet my handkerchief,” said Virginia, handing it to the driver, who leaped out of the car and, complying with her request, hurriedly returned. “Ethel, you bathe his face. . . . Now, driver, take the left-hand road at the forks and go slowly.”
Virginia watched Ethel as gently, with trembling hand, she applied the wet handkerchief. She was very serious and grew almost solemn as her efforts of resuscitation appeared fruitless.
“Ginia, when people faint they don’t usually stay under so—so terribly long, do they?” she queried, anxiously.
“I don’t know a lot about it, Ethel. But I’d think not. You remember on the train, when he was unconscious so long. That was bad . . . but this is worse.”
“Ginia, he—he might be—be dead!” faltered Ethel. “His face is so—so cold.”
“Oh, that would be too awful!” cried Virginia, shuddering. Then with right hand, which shook like a leaf, she unbuttoned his vest and felt for his heart. As she found no beat, a slow horror, cold and sickening, consumed her.
“Put your hand up higher,” whispered Ethel, equally clamped in dread.
Complying, Virignia felt slow weak heartbeats. “There!—Yes, he’s alive, Ethel. . . . Thank Heaven! If he had died—at my feet—I’d never, never have gotten over it.”
“Neither would I,” murmured Ethel, resuming her task more vigorously.
Virginia leaned her head back and shut her eyes, seeking to free herself from that inward clutch.
“His eyelids fluttered,” whispered Ethel, excitedly. “Ginia—he’s coming to.”
Virginia could not discern any manifestation of this, except through Ethel, who suddenly ceased her task and drew back, with startled eyes riveted upon Forrest.
“Oh, Mr. Forrest, you’re all right again!” she said, eager like a pleased and relieved child.
“What happened?” asked Forrest, in a voice which seemed far away, yet pierced through Virginia.
“You fainted. And it took longer to revive you than that time on the train.”
“I see. . . . I’m back in the car. . . . Where are you taking me?”
“To your mother. It’s not far. We’ll be there soon.”
“My mother! . . . I thought—I was afraid—when that girl said she knew nothing of . . . where is she?”
“I just told you. Your mother lives down the road a ways.”
“I mean that Lundeen girl.”
“Oh! She’s not very far,” replied Ethel, shyly.
Then probably Forrest became aware of the position of his head, and the arm that encircled him.
“Yes,” said Ethel, as if answering a mute interrogation. The thing so dear to a woman’s heart—the romance inseparable from this situation—shone tenderly and subtly in Ethel’s eyes. “It is Virginia who is holding you. She insisted that she should be the one to take you to your mother.”
In his slight movement Virginia divined that his position in her arms was vastly distasteful to him, but he had not the strength even to lift his head from her breast. Whatever vague and dreamy sensations of pleasure and pathos had stirred within her were suddenly dispelled. He knew her now as a Lundeen.
At this juncture the driver brought his car to a stop at the vine-covered gateway of a red adobe wall, a wall pregnant with memory for Virginia. She recalled the time when she had sat on that wall, a roguish little girl of twelve, dangling her bare legs, to watch with worshipful eyes Clifton Forrest riding by, calling out: “Hello, little red-head!”—And now, how strange and terrible, after what seemed a changing span of a lifetime, to be bringing him there to his mother, ruined, broken, dying.
“Ethel, you hold him now. Let me go in first.”
“I think I can manage, if you steady me,” said Forrest to Ethel.
Virginia stifled her own emotions, thinking of the mother to whom this event would at best be staggering, and leaving the car she hurried through the gate and down the shady path she remembered as well as if she had trod it only yesterday. But it was an ordeal. The giant cottonwoods seemed to shadow her in reproach. Almost she wished the red-walled house, picturesquely showing through the trees, was home again, and that magnificent Spanish mansion up on the knoll belonged to the Forrests. How would Clifton’s mother receive her? Courteously and kindly as always, she thought, but perhaps with the same fear of Clay Forrest that ever had obstructed friendship. A flower-skirted irrigation ditch, full of murmuring water, further burdened Virginia with poignant associations of childhood and girlhood. The adobe house showed its age, especially in the size of the great vines that climbed its cracked walls, to shade its adobe-tiled roof with spring foliage. The fragrance here was sweet, dry, pregnant with the atmosphere of unhurried time and solitude. Birds sang in the trees and bees hummed in the flowers. Virginia went round to the back of the house from which a trellis, with heavily vined roof, served as a porch. In trepidation Virginia prayed that Clay Forrest would not be in. If she remembered correctly, he was as impossible as her own father. But to her relief it was Clifton’s mother who came out, not by any means as aged or changed as Virginia had anticipated.
“Mrs. Forrest, do you remember me?” asked Virginia, earnestly gazing up into the motherly face.
“For the land’s sake! Virginia come home!” she ejaculated, mildly, without trace of astonishment, and she leaned off the step to kiss Virginia. “Come in, lass. Well, an’ lackaday, it’s a woman you are now. Did you fetch home a husband?”
The big living-room smiled at Virginia and seemed to intimate her place was there. Still there were treasures of color and beauty that had not graced it during the Lundeen occupation. Clay Forrest had saved fine rugs and paintings and furniture from the wreck of his fortunes—family belongings too splendid for this adobe house.
“No, indeed, Mrs. Forrest,” replied Virginia, “not a husband. But I did bring you some good news of Clifton.”
A spasm convulsed the lined face and a quivering hand went to the heart, indications that justified Virginia’s decision to break to Mrs. Forrest the news of her soldier son’s return.
“Clifton! . . . Oh, my dear, you saw him in France!—How good of you!” The darkening, hungry eyes almost made Virginia falter.
“No, hardly France. We were a whole day out,” hurried on Virginia, brightly. “Do you know, Mrs. Forrest, I saw Clifton on the ship several times, and never recognized him. Isn’t that just funny?”
“Ship!—He was on his way home?”
“Surely. Then by the strangest and duckiest chance he was on my train. Still I didn’t know him. I’m so sorry now, because I could have spared him pain.”
Mrs. Forrest sat down shakily, but Virginia’s wise, kind words had checked the shock of surprise, and now joy was fortifying the revelation that was to come.
“Pain. You mean—he never knew——”
“Poor fellow! Naturally, not knowing, he went direct to his old home. I had to tell him it—it was no longer his. How I hated that! . . . Then I came—down with him—to show him where you lived.”
“And he’s out there now?�
� whispered the mother, a glory in her face that struck deep to Virginia’s soul.
“Yes, out in the car. You see, the long journey—he must have come right out of a hospital—it weakened him. He’s not very strong. He looks pretty thin and—and ill. I wanted to see you first—tell you, so you’d not be frightened.”
“Frightened? I am only happy,” replied Mrs. Forrest. “Lass, your heart was never that of a Lundeen. . . . Bring my boy in.”
“You stay—right there,” said Virginia, chokingly. “Else it might be—you’ll frighten Clifton—instead of the other way—round.”
“You needn’t fear. I’m perfectly calm. But hurry, lass.”
Virginia ran out with bursting heart, and at the corner of the house she encountered Clifton, one arm over the chauffeur’s shoulder and the other over Ethel’s.
“Is mother—all right?” he shot at her with a gasp. His eyes seemed to bore into her.
“Yes, she is.”
“You prepared her?”
“Clifton, she doesn’t dream you—you’re so badly off. I didn’t dare tell her. But she knows you’re sick, weak, all worn out. . . . Now please play up to that. If you do, all will be well. Then, gradually she—it’ll be safe to tell her——”
“Where is she?”
“In the living-room, waiting. . . . Oh, Clifton, try to be natural!”
He lifted his arms from his supporters and stood erect, with a light of eye and face which blazed out the havoc that was there. “Virginia Lundeen, I have this to thank you for. . . . I’ll go in alone.”
Unfaltering, with no hint of his slight stoop and halting step, he went round the house. Virginia kept pace with him, saying she knew not what, while Ethel retained a timid hold on his sleeve, until they crossed the porch. Then he opened the door, as the girls drew back.
“Mother!”
“Cliff! . . . Oh, my son!—my son!”
The door closed on him. Virginia, wiping her blurred eyes, saw that Ethel was crying.
“Wasn’t he wonderful? I could just—love him!” sobbed Ethel.
“I’m afraid it might be hard not to—just now, at any rate,” replied Virginia, trying to smile at her friend.
“Ginia, I’ll wait out in front,” went on Ethel. “If I saw his mother—I’d bawl like a baby.”
“I’m not so sure of myself. But I’d better stay a few moments. . . . Tell the driver to bring his luggage back.”
Virginia was left alone, prey to mingled sorrow and gladness, and a remorse that did not seem as right and natural as the other emotions. She was strong of will, and sternly fought them, as much for Mrs. Forrest’s sake as her own. She waited. The driver brought Clifton’s several bags and left them. Only silence from within the house! The relaxing of a tension left Virginia nervous. She wanted to get home, to hide in her room, to cry without restraint. And the thought of home roused feelings that were enlightening and dismaying. This adobe house was more her home than that palace above. Virginia had been born in Georgia, her father having been a planter when a young man, but she had only dim recollections of her Southern home. Here, under these spreading cottonwoods, she had slept and played for twelve years. Then she had gone to school in Las Vegas, spent a year in Denver, staying with relatives, and later, when she had reached eighteen, had been sent to a fashionable school in New York City. The Spanish mansion on the knoll had known her for only few and short intervals. Now she had come back to stay, only to find the romance and joy of it ruined perhaps forever.
Here, on this very porch, she used to peel potatoes, and bend to other chores she hated, when she longed to run and ride, and paddle in the ditch, and play with the Indian children. So marvelous was memory that instinctively she searched for the place in the lattice-work where she used to stick the paring-knife. Then, as memorable and more poignant, was the later time when Cliff Forrest rode across her trail to become her hero. She had never had another.
Her sad misgivings were interrupted by the opening of the door.
“Come in, Virginia,” called Mrs. Forrest, who stood there with traces of tears on her flushed face.
Virginia slipped in with the weight of other years upon her shoulders. Clifton was lying on the couch under the window.
“Mother wants to thank you,” he said, clearly, with eyes that would haunt her.
“Please don’t,” implored Virginia.
“Lass, you made it easy for me,” said Mrs. Forrest, quaveringly. “Bless you!”
“Mother, not so long ago this tall dignified young woman was a red-headed tomboy with bare legs,” said Clifton.
“Laws—a—me, Cliff, she was indeed,” replied his mother, with a sigh. “She’s changed like everything.”
“My heart hasn’t changed,” returned Virginia, her cheeks hot.
“Virginia Lundeen, come closer,” commanded Clifton, “so I can see in your eyes. . . . Do you know what your father did to my father?”
His query, sharp though it was, had nothing of the confounding quality of his accusing, soul-searching gaze.
“Clifton, I know nothing—nothing at all about what happened between my dad and yours,” she protested, wildly conscious of her inability to maintain composure. “I’ve been away most of the time since it happened.”
Forrest did not answer for several moments. He appeared to be lost in some mood of introspection. Then he said, quietly, almost matter-of-factly, “We’re ruined—penniless—and I’ve come home to die.”
“Oh, don’t say that last—don’t!” cried Virginia, entreatingly. “Say you will live!—You must not—you cannot give up now—and leave them alone, when they most need you. . . . Clifton, you lived to get home!”
“My son, prayer and hope and will are mighty,” added his mother, fervently.
“Oh, Clifton, that is the spirit!” went on Virginia, eloquently. “You stood it all to get home. Now stand it all and more—to get well. . . . And let me help you. I—I have more money than I know what to do with. If you will only let me make it easy for you—till you’re strong again!”
“Do you imagine I could take money from a girl whose father robbed mine?” demanded Forrest.
“Robbed!—Oh, that’s not true,” she returned, hotly. “You are unstrung. You speak wildly. My father might have been hard, unforgiving to your father, who was hard, too. But dishonest—no. I couldn’t believe it—and—and you must apologize.”
Heavy footfalls on the porch outside stopped Virginia’s lips. The door jarred—opened wide to disclose a tall man with upstanding, grizzled hair like the mane of a lion. Virginia knew him, though four years had passed since her last glimpse of this rugged face, gray like a stone, with eyes of burning jet that transfixed her.
“Mr. Forrest,” said Virginia, brave at the sight of him, “I’m Virginia Lundeen. . . . Clifton came up to my—to Cottonwoods by mistake. And as he needed assistance, I—I brought him down.”
Forrest inclined his head, as if in forced acknowledgment, and his hand swept toward the open door, dismissing her from a roof that could not harbor a Lundeen.
Virginia fled. And as she reached the porch she heard his booming voice:
“Howdy, prodigal son! So the war drove you home to dad?”
Chapter Four
PERHAPS some of Virginia’s breathlessness, when she reached the car, was due to haste; however, a little hurry could hardly have been responsible for her scarlet face.
“Ginia, what’d the old devil do?” demanded Ethel, bridling.
“He deigned me—a grand gesture of dismissal,” panted Virginia as she flounced into the car. “Take us back, driver.”
“Didn’t he say anything?”
“Not a word. I was dirt—in his house—and his hand swept me out.”
“After all your kindness? Mean of him!—Ginia, he was as nice as pie at first. Regular old beau. Not so old, either, and he’s sure handsome. I didn’t know what to say. But I jollied him along till he asked who was calling. Then I got fussed. I was afraid you’d co
me out. I spilled the beans all right. He turned as white as a sheet. It was good I wasn’t the one to tell Clifton’s mother. I felt sorry for him. Then when I got to Clifton’s mistake, going to your house, and your bringing him down here—whew! Oh, my! . . . Come to think it over, I don’t really believe he meant to curse us. Probably it was the rotten luck of it.”
“I wouldn’t put him above it.”
“But if he loves Clifton? . . . Pretty tough on Clifton, don’t you think?”
“Sickening to me. What must it have been to him? . . . But, oh, Ethel, he’s game! You should have seen him!”
“Tell me.”
“There’s not much to tell, really. But what there was of it will do this little lady for a spell. . . . I must have been some time waiting. Ethel, I used to peel potatoes on that very porch. Hated it. And there I stood—and inside there he. . . . Well, his mother asked me in presently. She looked beautiful. And Clifton lay on the couch. His face was wet with tears. I had an insane desire to kiss them away.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Ethel! . . . Well, Clifton said they were ruined, penniless, and he’d come home to die. That broke me all up. I—I don’t know just what I said, Ethel, but I told him that he had to live. And his mother spoke the same way. And by the expression in his face, I guessed the idea was taking hold. . . . I wish I had come away then. But I didn’t, and he asked me to come close and he looked through me as if I’d been an inch of crystal water. And he asked me if I knew my father had robbed his. That upset me more, in a different way. I was raving when his father came in. Then my courage went to my boots. He left the door open, bowed to me as if I were a rich duchess and he a poor peasant, with the pride all on his side. And you bet I beat it.”
Ethel laid her head on Virginia’s shoulder in an eloquent silence. The car was now rolling down into the valley, which spread out fan-shaped, a green, triangularly cut gem in a bold bronze setting. The silver sunlight glanced dazzlingly off the stream. The freshness and beauty of spring took hold of Virginia’s senses, but she was conscious of a stultifying change in her reception of them. Something, like a black cloud spreading over a blue sky, had come between her and the joy of her return, the pride in her beautiful home.