Outside, it seemed very dark after the brightness within, and they stopped on the porch an instant to guide themselves by sound, if there was any movement.
There was—the least ominous of sounds—a laugh. The warlike attitude of all relaxed somewhat, for it was so high and clear that it reached even those within doors; and then, outlined against the background of snow, Stuart and Hardy could see two forms near the gate—a tall and a short one, and the shorter one was holding to the sleeve of the other and laughing.
"You and Aunty Luce are a fine pair of soldiers," she was saying; "both beat a retreat at the first glimpse of each other. And you can't leave after upsetting everyone like this; you must come in the house and reassure them. Come on!"
Some remonstrance was heard, and at the sound of the voice Hardy stepped out.
"Hello, Genesee!" he said, with a good deal of relief in his manner; "were you the scarecrow? Come in to the light, till we make sure we're not to be scalped."
After a few words with the girl that the others could not hear, he walked beside her to the porch.
"I'm mighty sorry, Hardy," he said as they met. "I was a little shaky about Mowitza to-day, and reckoned I'd better make an extra trip over; but I didn't count on kicking up a racket like this—didn't even spot the woman till she screeched and run."
"That's all right," said Hardy reassuringly. "I'm glad you came, whether intentionally or by accident. You know I told you the other day—"
"Yes—I know."
Rachel and Stuart had entered the house ahead of them, and all had dropped back into their chosen points of vantage for the evening when assurance was given that the Indians belonged to Aunty's imagination; but for those short seconds of indecision Tillie had realized, as never before, that they were really within the lines of the Indian country.
Aunty Luce settled herself sulkily in the corner, a grotesque figure, with an injured air, eyeing Genesee with a suspicion not a whit allayed when she recognized the man who had brought the first customs of war to them—taking nocturnal possession of the best room.
"No need tell me he's a friend o' you all!" she grunted. "Nice sort o' friend you's comin' to, I say—lives with Injuns; reckon I heard—umph!"
This was an aside to Tillie, who was trying to keep her quiet, and not succeeding very well, much to the amusement of the others within hearing, especially Fred.
Genesee had stopped in the outer room, speaking with Hardy; and, standing together on the hearth, in the light of the fire, it occurred to the group in the other room what a fine pair they made—each a piece of physical perfection in his way.
"A pair of typical frontiersmen," said Murray, and Miss Fred was pleased to agree, and add some praise on her own account.
"Why, that man Genesee is really handsome," she whispered; "he isn't scowling like sin, as he was when I saw him before. Ask him in here, Mrs. Tillie; I like to look at him."
Mrs. Tillie had already made a movement toward him. Perhaps the steady, questioning gaze of Rachel had impelled her to follow what was really her desire, only—why need the man be so flagrantly improper? Tillie had a great deal of charity for black sheep, but she believed in their having a corral to themselves, and not allowing them the chance of smutching the spotless flocks that have had good luck and escaped the mire. She was a good little woman, a warm-hearted one; and despite her cool condemnation of his wickedness when he was absent, she always found herself, in his presence, forgetting all but their comradeship of that autumn, and greeting him with the cordiality that belonged to it.
"I shall pinch myself for this in the morning," she prophesied, even while she held out her hand and reminded him that he had been a long time deciding about making them a visit.
Her greeting was much warmer than her farewell had been the morning he left—possibly because of the relief in finding it was not a "hostile" at their gate. And he seemed more at ease, less as if he need to put himself on the defensive—an attitude that had grown habitual to him, as it does to many who live against the rulings of the world.
She walked ahead of him into the other room, thus giving him no chance to object had he wanted to; and after a moment's hesitation he followed her, and noticed, without seeming to look at any of them, that Rachel stood back of Stuart's chair, and that Stuart was looking at him intently, as if for recognition. On the other side, he saw the Lieutenant quietly lay his hand on Miss Fred's wrist that was in shadow, just as she arose impulsively to offer her hand to the man whom she found was handsome when he had the aid of a razor. A beard of several weeks' growth had covered his face at their first meeting; now there was only a heavy mustache left. But she heeded that silent pressure of the wrist more than she would a spoken word, and instead of the proffered hand there was a little constrained smile of recognition, and a hope given that Aunty Luce had not upset his nerves with her war-cries.
He saw it all the moment he was inside the door—the refined face of Stuart, with the graciousness of manner so evidently acceptable to all, the sheets of manuscript still in his fingers, looking as he stood there like the ruling spirit of the cheery circle; and just outside that circle, though inside the door, he—Genesee—stood alone, the fact sharply accented by Miss Fred's significant movement; and with the remembrance of the fact came the quick, ever-ready spirit of bravado, and his head was held a trifle higher as he smiled down at her in apparent unconcern.
"If it is going to make Aunty Luce feel more comfortable to have company, I'm ready to own up that my hair raised the hat off my head at first sight of her—isn't quite settled into place yet;" and he ran his fingers through the mass of thick, dark hair. "How's that, Aunty?"
"Umph!" she grunted, crouching closer to the wall, and watching him distrustfully from the extreme corner of her eye.
"Have you ever been scared so badly you couldn't yell, Aunty?" he asked, with a bland disregard of the fact that she was just then in danger of roasting herself on the hearth for the purpose of evading him. "No? That's the way you fixed me a little while back, sure enough. I was scared too badly to run, or they never would have caught me."
The only intelligible answer heard from her was: "Go 'long, you!"
He did not "go 'long." On the contrary, he wheeled about in Tillie's chair, and settled himself as if that corner was especially attractive, and he intended spending the evening in it—a suggestion that was a decided surprise to all, even to Rachel, remembering his late conservatism.
Stuart was the only one who realized that it was perhaps a method of proving by practical demonstration the truth of his statement that he was a Pariah among the class who received the more refined character with every welcome. It was a queer thing for a man to court slights, but once inside the door, his total unconcern of that which had been a galling mortification to him was a pretty fair proof of Stuart's theory. He talked Indian wars to Hardy, and Indian love-songs to Hardy's wife. He coolly turned his attention to Lieutenant Murray, with whom his acquaintance was the slightest, and from the Lieutenant to Miss Fred, who was amused and interested in what was, to her, a new phase of a "squaw man;" and her delight was none the less keen because of the ineffectual attempts in any way to suppress this very irregular specimen, whose easy familiarity was as silencing as his gruff curtness had been the day they met him first.
Beyond an occasional remark, his notice was in no way directed to Rachel—in fact, he seemed to avoid looking at her. He was much more interested in the other two ladies, who by degrees dropped into a cordiality on a par with that of Aunty Luce; and he promptly took advantage of it by inviting Miss Fred to go riding with him in the morning.
The man's impudence and really handsome face gave Fred a wicked desire to accept, and horrify the Lieutenant and Tillie; but one glance at that little matron told her it would not do.
"I have an engagement to ride to-morrow," she said rather hurriedly, "else—"
"Else I should be your cavalier," he laughed. "Ah, well, there are more days coming. I can wait."
"You have totally forgotten the story you were to tell us," she said, pointing to the sheets of manuscript in Stuart's hand; "if we are to have it to-night, why not begin?"
"Certainly; the story, by all means," echoed Fred. "We had it scared out of our heads, I guess, but our nerves are equal to it now. Are you fond of stories, Mr.—Mr. Genesee?"
"Uncommonly."
"Well, Mr. Stuart was about to read us one just as you came in: one he wrote since he came up in these wilds—at the Fort, didn't you say, Mr. Stuart? You know," she added, turning again to Genesee—"you know Mr. Stuart is a writer—a romancer."
"Yes," he answered slowly, looking at the subject of their discourse as if examining something rare and curious; "I should reckon—he—might be."
The contempt in the tone sent the hot blood to Stuart's face, his eyes glittering as ominously as Genesee's own would in anger. An instant their gaze met in challenge and retort, and then the sheets of paper were laid deliberately aside.
"I believe, after all, I will read you something else," he said, reaching for one of the rolls of manuscript on the table; "that is, with your permission. It is not a finished story, only the prologue. I wrote it in the South, and thought I might find material for the completion of it up here; perhaps I may."
"Let us have that, by all means," urged Tillie.
"What do you call it?"
"I had not thought of a title, as the story was scarcely written with the idea of publication. The theme, however, which is pretty fairly expressed in the quotation at the beginning, may suggest a title. I will leave that to my audience."
"And we will all put on our thinking-caps and study up a title while you tell the story, and when it is ended, see which has the best one to offer. It will be a new sort of game with which to test our imaginations. Go on. What is the quotation, to begin with?"
To the surprise of the listeners, he read that old command from Deuteronomy, written of brother to brother:
"Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray; thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother.
"And with all lost things of thy brother's, which he hath lost and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise.
"In any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down."
Stuart ceased after those lines, and looked for comment. He saw enough in the man's face opposite him.
"Oh, go on," said Rachel. "Never mind about the suggestions in that heading—it is full of them; give us the story."
"It is only the prologue to a story," he reminded her; and with no further comment began the manuscript.
Its opening was that saddest of all things to the living—a death-bed—and that most binding of all vows—a promise given to the dying.
There was drawn the picture of a fragile, fair little lady, holding in her chilling fingers the destiny of the lives she was about to leave behind—young lives—one a sobbing, wondering girl of ten, and two boys; the older perhaps eighteen, an uncouth, strong-faced youth, who clasped hands with another boy several years younger, but so fair that few would think them brothers, and only the more youthful would ever have been credited as the child of the little woman who looked so like a white lily.
The other was the elder son—an Esau, however, who was favorite with neither father nor mother; with no one, in fact, who had ever known the sunny face and nature of the more youthful—an impulsive, loving disposition that only shone the brighter by contrast with the darker-faced, undemonstrative one whom even his mother never understood.
And the shadow of that misunderstanding was with them even at the death-bed, where the Jacob sobbed out his grief in passionate protests against the power that would rob him, and the Esau stood like a statue to receive her commands. Back of them was the father, smothering his own grief and consoling his favorite, when he could, and the one witness to the seal that was set on the three young lives.
Her words were not many—she was so weak—but she motioned to the girl beside the bed. "I leave her to you," she said, looking at them both, but the eyes, true to the feeling back of them, wandered to the fairer face and rested there. "The old place will belong to you two ere many years—your father will perhaps come after me;" and she glanced lovingly toward the man whom all the world but herself had found cold and hard in nature. "I promised long ago—when her mother died—that she should always have a home, and now I have to leave the trust to you, my sons."
"We will keep it," said the steady voice of Esau, as he sat like an automaton watching her slowly drifting from them; while Jacob, on his knees, with his arms about her, was murmuring tenderly, as to a child, that all should be as she wished—her trust was to be theirs always.
"And if either of you should fail or forget, the other must take the care on his own shoulders. Promise me that too, because—"
The words died away in a whisper, but her eyes turned toward the Esau. He knew too bitterly what it meant. Though only a boy, he was a wild one—people said a bad one. His father had pronounced him the only one of their name who was not a gentleman. He gambled and he drank; his home seemed the stables, his companions, fast horses and their fast masters; and in the eyes of his mother he read, as never before, the effect that life had produced. His own mother did not dare trust the black sheep of the family, even though he promised at her death-bed.
A wild, half-murderous hate arose in him at the knowledge—a hate against his elegant, correctly mannered father, whose cold condemnation had long ago barred him out from his mother's sympathy, until even at her death-bed he felt himself a stranger—his little mother—and he had worshiped her as the faithful do their saints, and like them, afar off.
But even the hate for his father was driven back at the sight of the wistful face, and the look that comes to eyes but once.
"We promise—I promise that, so help me God!" he said earnestly, and then bent forward for the first time, his voice breaking as he spoke. "Mother! mother! say just once that you trust—that you believe in me!"
Her gaze was still on his face; it was growing difficult to move the eyes at will, and the very intensity of his own feelings may have held her there. Her eyes widened ever so little, as if at some revelation born to her by that magnetism, and then—"My boy, I trust—"
The words again died in a whisper; and raising his head with a long breath of relief, he saw his father drop on his knees by the younger son. Their arms were about each other and about her. A few broken, disjointed whispers; a last smile upward, beyond them, a soft, sighing little breath, after which there was no other, and then the voice of the boy, irrepressible in his grief, as his love, broke forth in passionate despair, and was soothed by his father, who led him sobbing and rebellious from the bedside—both in their sorrow forgetting that third member of the family who sat so stoically through it all, until the little girl, their joint trust, half-blind with her own tears, saw him there so still and as pathetically alone as the chilling clay beside him. Trying to say some comforting words, she spoke to him, but received no answer. She had always been rather afraid of this black sheep—he was so morose about the house, and made no one love him except the horses; but the scene just past drew her to him for once without dread.
"Brother," she whispered, calling him by the name his mother had left her; "dear brother, don't you sit there like that;" and a vague terror came to her as he made no sign. "You—you frighten me."
She slipped her hand about his neck with a child's caressing sympathy, and then a wild scream brought the people hurrying into the room.
"He is dead!" she cried, as she dropped beside him; "sitting there cold as stone, and w
e thought he didn't care! And he is dead—dead!"
But he was not dead—the physician soon assured them of that. It was only a cataleptic fit. The emotion that had melted the one brother to tears had frozen the other into the closest semblance to stone that life can reach, and still be life.
The silence was thrilling as Stuart's voice ceased, and he stooped for the other pages laid by his chair.
A feeling that the story on paper could never convey was brought to every listener by the something in his voice that was not tears, but suggested the emotion back of tears. They had always acknowledged the magnetism of the man, but felt that he was excelling himself in this instance. Tillie and Fred were silently crying. Rachel was staring very steadily ahead of her, too steadily to notice that the hand laid on Genesee's revolver at the commencement of the story had gradually relaxed and dropped listless beside him. All the strength in his body seemed to creep into his eyes as he watched Stuart, trusting as much to his eyes as his ears for the complete comprehension of the object in or back of that story. In the short pause the author, with one sweeping glance, read his advantage—that he was holding in the bonds of sympathy this man whom he could never conquer through an impersonal influence. The knowledge was a ten-fold inspiration—the point to be gained was so great to him; and with his voice thrilling them all with its intensity, he read on and on.
The story? Its finish was the beginning of this one; but it was told with a spirit that can not be transmitted by ink and paper, for the teller depended little on his written copy. He knew it by heart—knew all the tenderness of a love-story in it that was careless of the future as the butterflies that coquette on a summer's day, passing and repassing with a mere touch of wings, a challenge to a kiss, and then darting hither and yon in the chase that grows laughing and eager, until each flash of white wings in the sun bears them high above the heads of their comrades, as the divine passion raises all its votaries above the commonplace. Close and closer they are drawn by the spirit that lifts them into a new life; high and higher, until against the blue sky there is a final flash of white wings. It is the wedding by a kiss, and the coquettings are over—the sky closes in. They are a world of their own.
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