CHAPTER XVI.
That gaunt phantom of doubt gradually closed in upon me. I resolved to fight it, but its very intangibility baffled my efforts to throw it off. When I struck, it was not there. When I gripped it, my fingers closed on space. When I challenged Jean's whole-heartedness she burst into tears and asked what proof she could give that she had not given. And it was because she burst into tears that the phantom stalked me all the closer. Had she laughed and called me a silly boy I would have believed her.
Nothing came of it, however, and the days wore on until one forenoon we saw Spoof's tall figure looming up across the snow-waste that lay between Fourteen and Two. As he came up he threw off a miniature cloud of steam in the cold air, reminding me strikingly of Thomson's speech about the steam engine.
"A steam engine," Thomson had declared, "is the most human of all inventions. In fact, it's a mechanical man, or, if you put it the other way, man is a human steam engine. Each of them consumes food and converts it into energy. You feed a man beef, and he gives you power. You feed this engine straw, and it gives you power; the same thing, by a slightly different process."
"Slightly!" exclaimed the farmer for whom we were working at the time. "Slightly! Do you know the difference between the price of beef and the price of straw?"
"Then the engine wins," said Thomson, who would never grant a point in his defense of steam.
For some reason this flitted through my mind as Spoof drew up, trailing behind him a cloud of steam like a comet's tail. Spoof was healthy and strong and his engines were functioning properly.
We made him welcome, but he would not sit down. "Sorry, but I can't stay," he explained. "Jake is in a bit of a mess. Just came over to Two to tell me about it. It seems the cogitation nut on his base burner—you know the big coal stove Jake puts on so many airs about—bless me if I know what a cogitation nut is; rummy old name, don't you think?—but at any rate it has come loose so Jake posted over to borrow a left-hand monkey wrench with which to tighten it. It seems he can't get at it with an ordinary monkey wrench; must have a left-hand one. I hadn't such a thing about the place, and of course I told him so.
"'Danged unfortunate,' says Jake—excuse the adjective, ladies—and he stuck out his chin and massaged it in a way that showed he was worried more than he admitted.
"'It will be all right, won't it?' said I, trying to buck him up, and really knowing nothing about it.
"'Well, it may be, and it may not be,' said he. 'If we're lucky nothing will come of it.'
"'And in case you're unlucky?' I queried.
"'Then the bottom will fall out of the stove and the shack will burn down—maybe before I get back. We can't leave it without a fire in this weather, you know.'
"So seeing that old Jake was in a bit of a mess I volunteered to come over and borrow the necessary tools from you. It took quite a weight off his mind, I assure you, for he started off whistling, and shouted to me to give his regards to Sitting Crow."
Jack and Jean, as usual, were with us at the time and from a corner where he was out of the range of Spoof's vision Jack was semaphoring me an improvised hush signal.
"Too bad the day is so dull," Jack said, looking out of our window in the direction of Jake's homestead. "Can't see a thing. His shack may be burned by this time. Perhaps Jake and Bella Donna are already on their way here for shelter."
"Oh, surely not!" exclaimed Jean. "Surely that would not happen!"
"Quite possible," her brother insisted, with the firmness of one who is prepared for the worst. "When the cogitation nut works loose you never know what may happen. And the worst of it is we haven't a left-hand wrench on the place."
"You haven't!" said Spoof, plainly concerned, "I say, that's rather rotten."
"Isn't it? Your best chance is Burke. Burke has quite a lay-out of tools, and, besides, he's an ingenious beggar. No doubt he will be able to fix you up."
Marjorie had already drawn a cup of hot tea, and Spoof drank it while he stood.
"Ah, that's better," said he, as she took the empty cup from his hand. "Wonderful how a cup of tea bucks a fellow up, isn't it? Now I must get along. Fancy old Jake on his back under the stove holding that nut in place with his fingers!"
"Or with Bella Donna's curling tongs," Jack suggested. "Burke will fix you all right," and we waved him away.
It was one of those grey winter days, and he faded out of sight in a few moments. I noticed that Jean's eyes followed Spoof until the mist had engulfed him. Then she turned quickly to Jack and me.
"If there is any danger, don't you think you should go over to Jake's at once?" she said.
"Not a chance," her brother assured her. "But I'd give a dollar to be at Burke's."
"At Burke's? Why?"
"Because, little Miss Innocence, of two facts. First, there is no such thing as a cogitation nut, and second, there is no such thing as a left-hand monkey wrench."
"But Jake came for it—he told Spoof——"
"Exactly. That's why he told him."
For a moment Jean's face was a puzzle as her mind unravelled the mixed threads of Jake's little comedy. But suddenly her eyes blazed with a light such as I had seen in them only once before, and then, as now, it was for Spoof that light had burned.
"So you sent him out on a day like this," she said, speaking slowly and through teeth that were almost closed—"you sent him out on a day like this, across the untracked snow, hunting for something that doesn't exist. He may find something he wasn't sent for."
"Oh, come now, Sister, don't take it too seriously. It is just a joke."
"It will he no joke if Spoof is lost on the prairie," she returned; "no joke for any of us. For example, there will be no marriage in this house, so far as I am concerned, if anything happens to Spoof."
"Isn't that rather mixing the issue?" I said, perhaps a little testily. "Spoof has nothing to do with our marriage."
"No, but I have," she answered, with a pointedness that could not be escaped.
"You make a mountain out of a mole-hill," Jack told her, sharply. "One would think it was Spoof you were in love with, instead of Frank."
"If I discuss that at all I will discuss it with Frank, alone," she retorted, with some heat. The color which had fled her face for a moment had come back in a flood, filling her cheeks and forehead, overflowing down her neck and into her hair. If Jean the placid, Jean the mild-mannered, Jean the amiable was lovely, Jean the aroused, Jean the defiant, was adorable. I made that appraisal even while in her eyes I read something akin to my death warrant.
"I was quite serious in what I said, Frank," she continued, after a moment. "If it makes any difference to you perhaps you will follow Spoof. He hasn't the prairie sense that you have; he may be lost by this time. Fortunately there is no ground-drift, and his tracks will show."
"Of course, if you think there is any danger, I'll go," I agreed, eager for a way out of an awkward position, and lacerated at heart by a sense of the breach that had occurred between us. So Jack and I set out to follow Spoof's tracks. We traced him without difficulty to Burke's.
"Has Spoof been here?" we asked our American neighbour when he came to the door.
"Spoof? I should say he has. By this time he's half way to Andy Smith's. Unfortunately I didn't have a left-hand monkey wrench," said Burke, with a chuckle, "but I reckoned likely Andy Smith would have one, having been a ship builder. Spoof wouldn't stay to eat, but he drank a cup of tea and steamed away."
We explained that we were tracking Spoof in case he became lost, but avoided any reference to the ultimatum that had sent us after him. Declining the invitation of Burke and his wife to stay and eat, we pushed on.
About half way to Andy Smith's we met Spoof coming back. Andy had not seen the joke when it was first presented, and in his analysis of it had revealed it to Spoof as soon as he recognized it himself. This was fortunate for Spoof, as otherwise he would doubtless have been sent to Ole Hansen's in continuation of his quest. As Spoof came up to us his face twisted in a broad grin.
"Did you get a left-hand wrench?" we asked.
"No, but I found out what a cogitation nut is. This is it," and he tapped his head with his knuckles, "only it doesn't cogitate very well."
The three of us linked arms, Spoof in the middle, and trudged back toward Burke's.
"Mighty decent of you to come after me," said Spoof, at length.
"Yes, wasn't it?" we agreed.
Lucy Burke would take no refusal this time, so Spoof and Jack and I stayed for dinner. I had a feeling that this was bad generalship, and that we should be hurrying home, where Jean was doubtless waiting with growing concern. I managed to mention my forebodings to Jack.
"Don't you believe it," he whispered back. "When a woman reads you the Riot Act go out and have a riot. Nothing makes her so unhappy as to suspect that her husband is having a good time when she thinks he should be doing penance over her displeasure."
I had no opportunity to mention that I wasn't Jean's husband, and that the furthest thing from my wish was to make her unhappy, and that I wondered where Jack got all his information, for Lucy Burke was plying us with fried pork and baked beans and browned potatoes and home-made bread and butter and coffee that would float an egg. After dinner Burke, with the loneliness of a homesteader to whom the visit of a neighbour is something of an event, detained us as long as possible, on one pretext or another, and finally, when we insisted upon going, hitched up the mules and drove us back to Fourteen.
It was dark by this time and the lamps were lighted. I noticed that lamps were set so that their yellow wedges of light thrust out into the darkness from each of our windows. Jean was at the door with the sound of our sleigh bells, and as I passed close by her I scrutinized her face for some hopeful sign. It was a blank wall.
We made Spoof and Burke stay for supper, and no one had more fun over the day's events than had Spoof. Jean kept her indignation well bridled, and we were a happy party, outwardly, at any rate. Spoof and Burke made it up that they would drive to Jake's late that night, when he would be sure to be in bed, and stuff his stove-pipe with a sack as a slight exchange of compliments. During the evening Jean's eyes avoided mine but I had an uncomfortable feeling that three of us were on a precipice which afforded room for only two, and that I was the third.
As the evening wore on Spoof insisted that Jean get out the banjo. I could see that she was in no mood for music, but she played her part well, and as their voices joined in "Old Black Joe" and "Silver Threads Among the Gold" I could not help wondering if she were as unhappy as I was.
After they had sung for a while Spoof took the banjo from Jean and swept his lean, long hand with quick, delicate master-strokes across its strings. Under his spell our little homestead shack faded out in the blur of Spoof's tobacco smoke, and presently I saw a little boy and girl sitting on the bank of a river, digging their toes in the warm sand and watching the spray of misty diamonds from the water-wheel across the stream.
"Spooky old machine, a banjo, isn't it?" I heard Spoof say at length, and of a sudden I was back on Fourteen, and in the midst of a world which had its share of troubles. "Has an uncanny way of ripping up the past; tombstones, skeletons, everything." Then, to an improvised accompaniment, he began reciting Kipling's poem to the banjo.
"It was this poem," he explained, in the midst of his recital, "that caused me to bring a banjo to Canada. Otherwise I should probably have shipped a piano, to the enrichment of the transportation people and my own further financial undoing. I must drop R. K. a line of appreciation."
"Still, the piano case would have come handy," Jack suggested. "You might have put your house in it in bad weather."
"Almost," said Spoof. But he was back to his theme again, and the wooden wall against which I leaned trembled in sympathy with his strings.
". . . I have told the naked stars the Grief of Man. Let the trumpet snare the foeman to the proof— I have known defeat and mocked it as we ran. My bray ye may not alter or mistake When I stand to jeer the fatted Soul of Things, But the song of Lost Endeavor that I make Is it hidden in the twangings of the strings?"
After that silence fell upon us, and before long Spoof and Burke left on their errand of reprisal. Jean elected to go home soon afterwards, and I accompanied her to Twenty-two. She stood a moment with the door latch in her hand, as though debating with herself whether she should send me home.
"You had better come in," she said at length. "There are some things we should talk about."
I closed the door behind me and Jean lighted a lamp and removed her wraps. "Come and sit down," she said, making room for me beside her on a bench.
I sat down beside her, and would have kissed her, but she drew gently away. "Please don't, Frank," she said, and when her eyes met mine I saw a look in them as of some wild thing wounded to the death.
"Jean!" I exclaimed. "Have I hurt you so?"
"No, Frank, not you. But I am hurt—hurt," and she pressed her hands about her bosom as though in physical pain. "It is so hard to know—to be sure—what is right!"
"How what is right?"
"In books—you will understand, Frank—it is always so clear. One is a hero; the other is a villain; it is so easy to know. But in life—I don't suppose there are so many villains after all. That doesn't make it any easier to decide."
"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you, Jean."
"I suppose you don't, and I shrink from making it more clear to you. Do you know what "The Song of Lost Endeavor" means? Have you sung it—in your heart?"
Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper, and her arm, apparently of its own volition, had found its way to my neck.
"I don't know that I do," I admitted, "except in a vague way. I suppose it has to do with failure, with knowing one's self to be a failure——"
"That's it—and I know. . . . I have tried, and failed."
"Jean!"
"I thought our promise—my promise—would bind me. . . . It didn't. It won't. It can't." She withdrew her arm, then quickly seized both my hands in hers.
"Oh, my boy, my friend, my chum!" she exclaimed, and little crystal wells gathered between her eyelids as she spoke. "How can I hurt you so! But nothing else would be honest. I have tried and failed. I lost my temper with you to-day, and once before, over Spoof. You were playing jokes on him—making him the butt of your humor—your idea of humor——"
"I promise you nothing of that kind will ever happen again, dear; I promise it, I swear it!"
"But that doesn't help, any. Don't you see, it's not that I care—so much—about the joke—on anybody—but because I love Spoof."
I hope I took the blow like a gentleman. I had the advantage of being somewhat prepared for it.
"I suspected that," I said at length. "I don't want to stand in the way of your happiness."
Then I fell from the heroic with a thud. "Oh, Jean, Jean," I pleaded, "why do you turn to Spoof, whom you hardly know, and away from me? Have I fallen so far short—an I so little to be desired—that you should love a stranger in preference?"
She pressed her hand against my lips. "Don't, please. . . . I can't explain. Ask me why the wind blows—why the flowers turn to the sunlight—I can't explain. I would ever so much rather it had been you."
"Then make it me! It is in your hands——"
"No, it is not. I can't change it. I have tried—and failed. Of course, I could marry you still, but you would not want me with a reservation in my heart. You would despise me if I married you like that."
Beneath the numbing shock of the fact that Jean was slipping—had slipped—out of my life, I was conscious that her words were true. I should not have wanted her—with a reservation. And so we sat in silence and in suffering, with no sound about us except the ticking of the clock and the thumping of our own hearts, until at length Jean arose to rebuild the fire. I took it as my cue to leave.
"Well, what is to be done about it?" I said, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact way, although I could not keep the tremble out of my voice. "We must clear up the situation some way."
"Yes. We will explain, so far as it can be explained, to Jack and Marjorie. We must not interfere with their marriage or their happiness. And Spoof must not know."
"Spoof not know! How shall we prevent——"
"I mean he must not know why—why our marriage is post—is off. Don't you see, Frank; Spoof must not know—I love him." She whispered the last words and turned her head away, as though ashamed of her confession.
"Not know you love him! Do you mean that Spoof doesn't know you love him?"
"No, he doesn't, Frank."
"And he has not made love to you?"
"Not a word."
I stood pondering that fact. If Spoof, without trying, could win Jean in competition with me, who had been trying my hardest, and who had the advantage of all the intimacies of childhood, what would happen when he set himself to the business of wooing? That he would do so as soon as he knew the coast was clear I did not doubt for a moment.
"I think I understand, Jean," I said, as I turned toward the door. "This happiness is not for me—it was too much to be expected. I had dreams—dreams that are not going to be realized, ever. I had pictures, but they must be torn out of my life. . . I hope you will be happy. Goodbye."
"Oh, Frank, don't go like that!" she cried, her arms outstretched toward me. But I had no heart to prolong my torture in her presence. I closed the door behind me and went stumbling through the drifts toward Fourteen.