II
McCloud spent the afternoon lolling on the grass under the lilacs, listlessly watching the woodpeckers on the dead pines. Chewing a sprig of mint, he lay there sprawling, hands clasping the back of his well-shaped head, soothed by the cadence of the chirring locusts. When at length he had drifted pleasantly close to the verge of slumber a voice from the road below aroused him.
He listened lazily; again came the timid call; he arose, brushing his shabby coat mechanically.
Down the bramble-choked path he slouched, shouldering his wood-axe as a precaution. Passing around the rear of his house, he peered over the messed tangle of sweetbrier which supported the remains of a rotting fence, and he saw, down in the road below, a young girl and a collie dog, both regarding him intently.
“Were you calling me?” he asked.
“It’s only about your road-tax,” began the girl, looking up at him with pleasant gray eyes.
“What about my road-tax?”
“It’s due, isn’t it?” replied the girl, with a faint smile.
“Is it?” he retorted, staring at her insolently. “Well, don’t let it worry you, young woman.”
The smile died out in her eyes.
“It does worry me,” she said; “you owe the path-master two dollars, or a day’s work on the roads.”
“Let the path-master come and get it,” he replied.
“I am the path-master,” she said.
He looked down at her curiously. She had outgrown her faded pink skirts; her sleeves were too short, and so tight that the plump, white arm threatened to split them to the shoulder. Her shoes were quite as ragged as his; he noticed, however, that her hands were slender and soft under their creamy coat of tan, and that her fingers were as carefully kept as his own.
“You must be Ellice Elton,” he said, remembering the miserable end of old man Elton, who also had been a gentleman until a duel with drink left him dangling by the neck under the new moon some three years since.
“Yes,” she said, with a slight drawl, “and I think you must be Dan McCloud.”
“Why do you think so?” he asked.
“From your rudeness.”
He gave her an ugly look; his face slowly reddened.
“So you’re the path-master?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you expect to get money out of me?”
She flushed painfully.
“You can’t get it,” he said, harshly; “I’m dog poor; I haven’t enough to buy two loads for my rifle. So I’ll buy one,” he added, with a sneer.
She was silent. He chewed the mint-leaf between his teeth and stared at her dog.
“If you are so poor—” she began.
“Poor!” he cut in, with a mirthless laugh; “it’s only a word to you, I suppose.”
He had forgotten her ragged and outgrown clothing, her shabby shoes, in the fresh beauty of her face. In every pulse-beat that stirred her white throat, in every calm breath that faintly swelled the faded pink calico over her breast, he felt that he had proved his own vulgarity in the presence of his betters. A sullen resentment arose in his soul against her.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said; “I also am terribly poor. If you mean that I am not sorry for you, you are mistaken. Only the poor can understand each other.”
“I can’t understand you,” he sneered. “Why do you come and ask me to pay money to your road-master when I have no money?”
“Because I am path-master. I must do my duty. I won’t ask you for any money, but I must ask you to work out your tax. I can’t help it, can I?”
He looked at her in moody, suspicious silence.
Idle, vicious, without talent, without ambition, he had drifted part way through college, a weak parody on those wealthy young men who idle through the great universities, leaving unsavory records. His father had managed to pay his debts, then very selfishly died, and there was nobody to support the son and heir, just emerging from a drunken junior year.
Creditors made a clean sweep in Albany; the rough shooting-lodge in the Fox Hills was left. Young McCloud took it.
The pine timber he sold as it stood; this kept him in drink and a little food. Then, when starvation looked in at his dirty window, he took his rifle and shot partridges.
Now, for years he had been known as a dealer in game out of season; the great hotels at Saratoga paid him well for his dirty work; the game-wardens watched to catch him. But his ice-house was a cave somewhere out in the woods, and as yet no warden had been quick enough to snare McCloud red-handed.
Musing over these things, the young fellow leaned on the rotting fence, staring vacantly at the collie dog, who, in turn stared gravely at him.
The path-master, running her tanned fingers through her curls, laid one hand on her dog’s silky head and looked up at him.
“I do wish you would work out your tax,” she said.
Before McCloud could find voice to answer, the alder thicket across the road parted and an old man shambled forth on a pair of unsteady bowed legs.
“The kid’s right,” he said, with a hoarse laugh; “git yewr pick an’ hoe, young man, an’ save them two dollars tew pay yewr pa’s bad debts!”
It was old Tansey, McCloud’s nearest neighbor, loaded down with a bundle of alder staves, wood-axe in one hand, rope in the other, supporting the heavy weight of wood on his bent back.
“Get out of that alder-patch!” said McCloud, sharply.
“Ain’t I a-gittin’?” replied Tansey, winking at the little path-master.
“And keep out after this,” added McCloud. “Those alders belong to me!”
“To yew and the blue-jays,” assented Tansey, stopping to wipe the sweat from his heavy face.
“He’s only cutting alders for bean-poles,” observed the path-master, resting her slender fingers on her hips.
“Well, he can cut his bean-poles on his own land hereafter,” said McCloud.
“Gosh!” observed Tansey, in pretended admiration. “Ain’t he neighborly? Cut ’em on my own land, hey? Don’t git passionate,” he added, moving off through the dust; “passionate folks is liable to pyralyze their in’ards, young man!”
“Don’t answer!” said the path-master, watching the sullen rage in McCloud’s eyes.
“Pay yewr debts!” called out Tansey at the turn of the road. “Pay yewr debts, an’ the Lord will pay yewr taxes!”
“The Lord can pay mine, then,” said McCloud to the path-master, “for I’ll never pay a cent of taxes in Foxville. Now what do you say to that?”
The path-master had nothing to say. She went away through the golden dust, one slim hand on the head of her collie dog, who trotted beside her waving his plumy tail.
That evening at the store where McCloud had gone to buy cartridges, Tansey taunted him, and he replied contemptuously. Then young Byram flung a half-veiled threat at him, and McCloud replied with a threat that angered the loungers around the stove.
“What you want is a rawhide,” said McCloud, eying young Byram.
“I guess I do,” said Byram, “an’ I’m a-goin’ to buy one, too—unless you pay that there road-tax.”
“I’ll be at home when you call,” replied McCloud, quietly, picking up his rifle, and pocketing his cartridges.
Somebody near the stove said, “Go fur him!” to Byram, and the young road-master glared at McCloud.
“He was a-sparkin’ Ellie Elton,” added Tansey, grinning; “yew owe him a few for that, too, Byram.”
Byram turned white, but made no movement. McCloud laughed.
“Wait,” said the game-warden, sitting behind the stove; “jest wait awhile; that’s all. No man can fire me into a ditch full o’ stinging nettles an’ live to larf no pizened larf at me!”
“Dingman,” said McCloud, contemptuously, “you’re like the rest of them here in Foxville—all foxes who run to earth when they smell a Winchester.”
He flung his rifle carelessly into the hollow of his left arm; the muzzle was in line with the game-warden, and that official promptly moved out of range, upsetting his chair in his haste.
“Quit that!” bawled the storekeeper, from behind his counter.
“Quit what—eh?” demanded McCloud. “Here, you old rat, give me the whiskey bottle! Quick! What? Money to pay? Trot out that grog or I’ll shoot your lamps out!”
“He’s been a-drinkin’ again,” whispered the game-warden. “Fur God’s sake, give him that bottle, somebody!”
But as the bottle was pushed across the counter, McCloud swung his rifle-butt and knocked the bottle into slivers. “Drinks for the crowd!” he said, with an ugly laugh. “Get down and lap it up off the floor, you fox cubs!”
Then, pushing the fly-screen door open with one elbow, he sauntered out into the moonlight, careless who might follow him, although now that he had insulted and defied the entire town there were men behind who would have done him a mischief if they had dared believe him off his guard.
He walked moodily on in the moonlight, disdaining to either listen or glance behind him. There was a stoop to his shoulders now, a loose carriage which sometimes marks a man whose last shred of self-respect has gone, leaving him nothing but the naked virtues and vices with which he was born. McCloud’s vices were many, though some of them lay dormant; his virtues, if they were virtues, could be counted in a breath—a natural courage, and a generous heart, paralyzed and inactive under a load of despair and a deep resentment against everybody and everything. He hated the fortunate and the unfortunate alike; he despised his neighbors, he despised himself. His inertia had given place to a fierce restlessness; he felt a sudden and curious desire for a physical struggle with a strong antagonist—like young Byram.
All at once the misery of his poverty arose up before him. It was not unendurable simply because he was obliged to endure it.
The thought of his hopeless poverty stupefied him at first, then rage followed. Poverty was an antagonist—like young Byram—a powerful one. How he hated it! How he hated Byram! Why? And, as he walked there, shuffling up the dust in the moonlight, he thought, for the first time in his life, that if poverty were only a breathing creature he would strangle it with his naked hands. But logic carried him no further; he began to brood again, remembering Tansey’s insults and the white anger of young Byram, and the threats from the dim group around the stove. If they molested him they would remember it. He would neither pay taxes nor work for them.
Then he thought of the path-master, reddening as he remembered Tansey’s accusation. He shrugged his shoulders and straightened up, dismissing her from his mind, but she returned, only to be again dismissed with an effort.
When for the third time the memory of the little path-master returned, he glanced up as though he could see her in the flesh standing in the road before his house. She was there—in the flesh.
The moonlight silvered her hair, and her face was the face of a spirit; it quickened the sluggish blood in his veins to see her so in the moonlight.
She said: “I thought that if you knew I should be obliged to pay your road-tax if you do not, you would pay. Would you?”
A shadow glided across the moonlight; it was the collie dog, and it came and looked up into McCloud’s shadowy eyes.
“Yes—I would,” he said; “but I cannot.”
His heart began to beat faster; a tide of wholesome blood stirred and flowed through his veins. It was the latent decency within him awaking.
“Little path-master,” he said, “I am very poor; I have no money. But I will work out my taxes because you ask me.”
He raised his head and looked at the spectral forest where dead pines towered, ghastly in the moon’s beams. That morning he had cut the last wood on his own land; he had nothing left to sell but a patch of brambles and a hut which no one would buy.
“I guess I’m no good,” he said; “I can’t work.”
“But what will you do?” she asked, with pitiful eyes raised.
“Do? Oh, what I have done. I can shoot partridges.”
“Market-shooting is against the law,” she said, faintly.
“The law!” he repeated; “it seems to me there is nothing but law in this God-forsaken hole!”
“Can’t you live within the law? It is not difficult, is it?” she asked.
“It is difficult for me,” he said, sullenly. The dogged brute in him was awaking in its turn. He was already sorry he had promised her to work out his taxes. Then he remembered the penalty. Clearly he would have to work, or she would be held responsible.
“If anybody would take an unskilled man,” he began, “I—I would try to get something to do.”
“Won’t they?”
“No. I tried it—once.”
“Only once?”
He gave a short laugh and stooped to pat the collie, saying, “Don’t bother me, little path-master.”
“No—I won’t,” she replied, slowly.
She went away in the moonlight, saying good-night and calling her collie, and he walked up the slope to the house, curiously at peace with himself and the dim world hidden in the shadows around.
He was not sleepy. As he had no candles, he sat down in the moonlight, idly balancing his rifle on his knees. From force of habit he loaded it, then rubbed the stock with the palm of his hand, eyes dreaming.
Into the tangled garden a whippoorwill flashed on noiseless wings, rested a moment, unseen, then broke out into husky, breathless calling. A minute later the whispering call came from the forest’s edge, then farther away, almost inaudible in the thickening dusk.
And, as he sat there, thinking of the little path-master, he became aware of a man slinking along the moonlit road below. His heart stopped, then the pulses went bounding, and his fingers closed on his rifle.
There were other men in the moonlight now—he counted five—and he called out to them, demanding their business.
“You’re our business,” shouted back young Byram. “Git up an’ dust out o’ Foxville, you dirty loafer!”
“Better stay where you are,” said McCloud, grimly.
Then old Tansey bawled: “Yew low cuss, git outer this here taown! Yew air meaner ’n pussley an’ meaner ’n quack-root, an’ we air bound tew run yew into them mountings, b’ gosh!”
There was a silence, then the same voice: “Be yew calculatin’ tew mosey, Dan McCloud?”
“You had better stay where you are,” said McCloud; “I’m armed.”
“Ye be?” replied a new voice; “then come aout o’ that or we’ll snake ye aout!”
Byram began moving towards the house, shot-gun raised.
“Stop!” cried McCloud, jumping to his feet.
But Byram came on, gun levelled, and McCloud retreated to his front door.
“Give it to him!” shouted the game-warden; “shoot his windows out!” There was a flash from the road and a load of buckshot crashed through the window overhead.
Before the echoes of the report died away, McCloud’s voice was heard again, calmly warning them back.
Something in his voice arrested the general advance.
“I don’t know why I don’t kill you in your tracks, Byram,” said McCloud; “I’ve wanted the excuse often enough. But now I’ve got it and I don’t want it, somehow. Let me alone, I tell you.”
“He’s no good!” said the warden, distinctly. Byram crept through the picket fence and lay close, hugging his shot-gun.
“I tell you I intend to pay my taxes,” cried McCloud, desperately. “Don’t force me to shoot!”
The sullen rage was rising; he strove to crush it back, to think of the little path-master.
“For God’s sake, go back!” he pleaded, hoarsely.
Suddenly Byram started running towards the house, and McCloud clapped his rifle to his cheek and fired. Four flashes from the road answered his shot, but Byram was down in the grass screaming, and McCloud had vanished into his house.
Charge after charge of buckshot tore through the flimsy clapboards; the moonlight was brightened by pale flashes, and the timbered hills echoed the cracking shots.
After a while no more shots were fired, and presently a voice broke out in the stillness:
“Be yew layin’ low, or be yew dead, Dan McCloud?”
There was no answer.
“Or be yew playin’ foxy possum,” continued the voice, with nasal rising inflection.
Byram began to groan and crawl towards the road.
“Let him alone,” he moaned; “let him alone. He’s got grit, if he hain’t got nothin’ else.”
“Air yew done for?” demanded Tansey, soberly.
“No, no,” groaned Byram, “I’m jest winged. He done it, an’ he was right. Didn’t he say he’d pay his taxes? He’s plumb right. Let him alone, or he’ll come out an’ murder us all!”
Byram’s voice ceased; Tansey mounted the dark slope, peering among the brambles, treading carefully.
“Whar be ye, Byram?” he bawled.
But it was ten minutes before he found the young man, quite dead, in the long grass.
With an oath Tansey flung up his gun and drove a charge of buckshot crashing through the front door. The door quivered; the last echoes of the shot died out; silence followed.
Then the shattered door swung open slowly, and McCloud reeled out, still clutching his rifle. He tried to raise it; he could not, and it fell clattering. Tansey covered him with his shot-gun, cursing him fiercely. “Up with them hands o’ yourn!” he snarled; but McCloud only muttered and began to rock and sway in the doorway.
Tansey came up to him, shot-gun in hand. “Yew hev done fur Byram,” he said; “yew air bound to set in the chair for this.”
McCloud, leaning against the sill, looked at him with heavy eyes.
“It’s well enough for you,” he muttered; “you are only a savage; but Byram went to college—and so did I—and we are nothing but savages like you, after all—nothing but savages—”
He collapsed and slid to the ground, lying hunched up across the threshold.
“I want to see the path-master!” he cried, sharply.
A shadow fell across the shot riddled door snow-white in the moonshine.
“She’s here,” said the game-warden, soberly.
But McCloud had started talking and muttering to himself.
Towards midnight the whippoorwill began a breathless calling from the garden.
McCloud opened his eyes.
“Who is that?” he asked, irritably.
“He’s looney,” whispered Tansey; “he gabbles to hisself.”
The little path-master knelt beside him. He stared at her stonily.
“It is I,” she whispered.
“Is it you, little path-master?” he said, in an altered voice. Then something came into his filmy eyes which she knew was a smile.
“I wanted to tell you,” he began, “I will work out my taxes—somewhere—for you—”
The path-master hid her white face in her hands. Presently the collie dog came and laid his head on her shoulder.
IN NAUVOO
THE long drought ended with a cloud-burst in the western mountains, which tore a new slide down the flank of Lynx Peak and scarred the Gilded Dome from summit to base. Then storm followed storm, bursting through the mountain-notch and sweeping the river into the meadows, where the haycocks were already afloat, and the gaunt mountain cattle floundered bellowing.
The stage from White Lake arrived at noon with the mail, and the driver walked into the post-office and slammed the soaking mail-sack on the floor.
“Gracious!” said the little postmistress.
“Yes’m,” said the stage-driver, irrelevantly; “them letters is wetter an’ I’m madder ’n a swimmin’ shanghai! Upsot? Yes’m—in Snow Brook. Road’s awash, meadders is flooded, an’ the water’s a-swashin’ an’ a-sloshin’ in them there galoshes.” He waved one foot about carelessly, scattering muddy spray, then balanced himself alternately on heels and toes to hear the water wheeze in his drenched boots.
“There must be a hole in the mail-pouch,” said the postmistress, in gentle distress.
There certainly was. The letters were soaked; the wrappers on newspaper and parcel had become detached; the interior of the government’s mail-pouch resembled the preliminary stages of a paper-pulp vat. But the postmistress worked so diligently among the débris that by one o’clock she had sorted and placed in separate numbered boxes every letter, newspaper, and parcel—save one.
That one was a letter directed to
“James Helm, Esq.
“Nauvoo, via White Lake.”
and it was so wet and the gum that sealed it was so nearly dissolved that the postmistress decided to place it between blotters, pile two volumes of government agricultural reports on it, and leave it until dry.
One by one the population of Nauvoo came dripping into the post-office for the mail, then slopped out into the storm again, umbrellas couched in the teeth of the wind. But James Helm did not come for his letter.
The postmistress sat alone in her office and looked out into her garden. It was a very wet garden; the hollyhocks still raised their flowered spikes in the air; the nasturtiums, the verbenas, and the pansies were beaten down and lying prone in muddy puddles. She wondered whether they would ever raise their heads again—those delicate flower faces that she knew so well, her only friends in Nauvoo.
Through the long drought she had tended them, ministering to their thirst, protecting them from their enemies the weeds, and from the great, fuzzy, brown-and-yellow caterpillars that travelled over the fences, guided by instinct and a raging appetite. Now each frail flower had laid its slender length along the earth, and the little postmistress watched them wistfully from her rain-stained window.
She had expected to part with her flowers; she was going away forever in a few days—somewhere—she was not yet quite certain where. But now that her flowers lay prone, bruised and broken, the idea of leaving them behind her distressed her sorely.
She picked up her crutch and walked to the door. It was no use; the rain warned her back. She sat down again by the window to watch her wounded flowers.
There was something else that distressed her too, although the paradox of parting from a person she had never met ought to have appealed to her sense of humor. But she did not think of that; never, since she had been postmistress in Nauvoo, had she spoken one word to James Helm, nor had he ever spoken to her. He had a key to his letter-box; he always came towards evening.
It was exactly a year ago to-day that Helm came to Nauvoo—a silent, pallid young fellow with unresponsive eyes and the bearing of a gentleman. He was cordially detested in Nauvoo. For a year she had watched him enter the post-office, unlock his letter-box, swing on his heel and walk away, with never a glance at her nor a sign of recognition to any of the village people who might be there. She heard people exchange uncomplimentary opinions concerning him; she heard him sneered at, denounced, slandered.
Naturally, being young and lonely and quite free from malice towards anybody, she had time to construct a romance around Helm—a very innocent romance of well-worn pattern and on most unoriginal lines. Into this romance she sometimes conducted herself, blushing secretly at her mental indiscretion, which indiscretion so worried her that she dared not even look at Helm that evening when he came for his mail. She was a grave, gentle little thing—a child still whose childhood had been a tragedy and whose womanhood promised only that shadow of happiness called contentment which comes from a blameless life and a nature which accepts sorrow without resentment.
Thinking of Helm as she sat there by the window, she heard the office clock striking five. Five was Helm’s usual hour, so she hid her crutch. It was her one vanity—that he should not know that she was lame.
She rose and lifted the two volumes of agricultural reports from the blotters where Helm’s letter lay, then she carefully raised one blotter. To her dismay half of the envelope stuck to the blotting-paper, leaving the contents of the letter open to her view.
On the half-envelope lay an object apparently so peculiarly terrifying that the little postmistress caught her breath and turned quite white at sight of it. And yet it was only a square bit of paper, perfectly blank save for half a dozen thread-like lines scattered through its texture.
For a long while the postmistress stood staring at the half-envelope and the bit of blank paper. Then with trembling fingers she lighted a lamp and held the little piece of paper over the chimney—carefully. When the paper was warm she raised it up to the light and read the scrawl that the sympathetic ink revealed:
“I send you a sample of the latest style fibre. Look out for the new postmaster at Nauvoo. He’s a secret-service spy, and he’s been sent to see what you are doing. This is the last letter I dare send you by mail.”
There was no signature to the message, but a signature was not necessary to tell the postmistress who had written the letter. With set lips and tearless eyes she watched the writing fade slowly on the paper; and when again the paper was blank she sank down by the window, laying her head in her arms.
A few moments later Helm came in wrapped in a shining wet mackintosh. He glanced at his box, saw it was empty, wheeled squarely on his heels, and walked out.
Towards sunset the rain dissolved to mist; a trail of vapor which marked the course of an unseen brook floated high among the hemlocks. There was no wind; the feathery tips of the pines, powdered with rain-spray, rose motionless in the still air. Suddenly the sun’s red search-light played through the forest; long, warm rays fell across wet moss, rain-drenched ferns dripped, the swamp steamed. In the east the thunder still boomed, and faint lightning flashed under the smother of sombre clouds; but the storm had rolled off among the mountains, and already a white-throated sparrow was calling from the edge of the clearing. It promised to be a calm evening in Nauvoo.
Meanwhile, Helm walked on down the muddy road, avoiding the puddles which the sun turned into pools of liquid flame. He heard the catbirds mewing in the alders; he heard the evening carol of the robin—that sweet, sleepy, thrushlike warble which always promises a melody that never follows; he picked a spray of rain-drenched hemlock as he passed, crushing it in his firm, pale fingers to inhale the fragrance. Now in the glowing evening the bull-bats were soaring and tumbling, and the tree-frogs trilled from the darkling pastures.
Around the bend in the road his house stood all alone, a small, single-storied cottage in a tangled garden. He passed in at his gate, but instead of unlocking the front door he began to examine the house as though he had never before seen it; he scrutinized every window, he made a cautious, silent tour of the building, returning to stare again at the front door.
The door was locked; he never left the house without locking it, and he never returned without approaching the house in alert silence, as though it might conceal an enemy.
There was no sound of his footfalls as he mounted the steps; the next instant he was inside the house, his back against the closed door—listening. As usual, he heard nothing except the ticking of a clock somewhere in the house, and as usual he slipped his revolver back into the side pocket of his coat and fitted a key into the door on his left. The room was pitch dark; he lighted a candle and held it up, shading his eyes with a steady hand.
There was a table, a printing-press, and one chair in the room; the table was littered with engraver’s tools, copper plates, bottles of acid, packets of fibre paper, and photographic paraphernalia. A camera, a reading-lamp, and a dark-lantern stood on a shelf beside a nickel-plated clock which ticked sharply.
The two windows in the room had been sealed up with planks, over which sheet iron was nailed. The door also had been reinforced with sheet-iron. From a peg above it a repeating-rifle hung festooned with two cartridge belts.
When he had filled his lamp from a can of kerosene he lighted it and sat down to the task before him with even less interest than usual—and his interest had been waning for weeks. For the excitement that makes crime interesting had subsided and the novelty was gone. There was no longer anything in his crime that appealed to his intellect. The problem of successfully accomplishing crime was no longer a problem to him; he had solved it. The twelve months’ work on the plate before him demonstrated this; the plate was perfect; the counterfeit an absolute fac-simile. The government stood to lose whatever he chose to take from it.
As an artist in engraving and as an intelligent man, Helm was, or had been, proud of his work. But for that very reason, because he was an artist, he had tired of his masterpiece, and was already fingering a new plate, vaguely meditating better and more ambitious work. Why not? Why should he not employ his splendid skill and superb accuracy in something original? That is where the artist and the artisan part company—the artisan is always content to copy; the artist, once master of his tools, creates.
In Helm the artist was now in the ascendant; he dreamed of engraving living things direct from nature—the depths of forests shot with sunshine, scrubby uplands against a sky crowded with clouds, and perhaps cattle nosing for herbage among the rank fern and tangled briers of a scanty pasture—perhaps even the shy, wild country children, bareheaded and naked of knee and shoulder, half-tamed, staring from the road-side brambles.
It is, of course, possible that Helm was a natural-born criminal, yet his motive for trying his skill at counterfeiting was revenge and not personal gain.
He had served his apprenticeship in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. He had served the government for twelve years, through three administrations. Being a high salaried employé, the civil service gave him no protection when the quadrennial double-shuffle changed the politics of the administration. He was thrown aside like a shabby garment which has served its purpose, and although for years he had known what ultimate reward was reserved for those whom the republic hires, he could never bring himself to believe that years of faithful labor and a skill which increased with every new task set could meet the common fate. So when his resignation was requested, and when, refusing indignantly, he was turned out, neck and heels, after his twelve years of faultless service, it changed the man terribly.
He went away with revenge in his mind and the skill and intelligence to accomplish it. But now that he had accomplished it, and the plate was finished, and the government at his mercy, the incentive to consummate his revenge lagged. After all, what could he revenge himself on? The government?—that huge, stupid, abstract bulk! Had it a shape, a form concrete, nerves, that it could suffer in its turn? Even if it could suffer, after all, he was tired of suffering. There was no novelty in it.
Perhaps his recent life alone in the sweet, wholesome woods had soothed a bitter and rebellious heart. There is a balm for deepest wounds in the wind, and in the stillness of a wilderness there is salve for souls.
As he sat there brooding, or dreaming of the work he might yet do, there stole into his senses that impalpable consciousness of another presence, near, and coming nearer. Alert, silent, he rose, and as he turned he heard the front gate click. In an instant he had extinguished lamp and candle, and, stepping back into the hallway, he laid his ear to the door.
In the silence he heard steps along the gravel, then on the porch. There was a pause; leaning closer to the door he could hear the rapid, irregular breathing of his visitor. Knocking began at last, a very gentle rapping; silence, another uncertain rap, then the sound of retreating steps from the gravel, and the click of the gate-latch. With one hand covering the weapon in his coat-pocket, he opened the door without a sound and stepped out.
A young girl stood just outside his gate.
“Who are you and what is your business with this house?” he inquired, grimly. The criminal in him was now in the ascendant; he was alert, cool, suspicious, and insolent. He saw in anybody who approached his house the menace of discovery, perhaps an intentional and cunning attempt to entrap and destroy him. All that was evil in him came to the surface; the fear that anybody might forcibly frustrate his revenge—if he chose to revenge himself—raised a demon in him that blanched his naturally pallid face and started his lip muscles into that curious recession which, in animals, is the first symptom of the snarl.
“What do you want?” he repeated. “Why do you knock and then slink away?”
“I did not know you were at home,” said the girl, faintly.
“Then why do you come knocking? Who are you, anyway?” he demanded, harshly, knowing perfectly well who she was.
“I am the postmistress at Nauvoo,” she faltered—“that is, I was—”
“Really,” he said, angrily; “your intelligence might teach you to go where you are more welcome.”
His brutality seemed to paralyze the girl. She looked at him as though attempting to comprehend his meaning. “Are you not Mr. Helm?” she asked, in a sweet, bewildered voice.
“Yes, I am,” he replied, shortly.
“I thought you were a gentleman,” she continued, in the same stunned voice.
“I’m not,” said Helm, bitterly. “I fancy you will agree with me, too. Good-night.”
He deliberately turned his back on her and sat down on the wooden steps of the porch; but his finely modelled ears were alert and listening, and when to his amazement he heard her open his gate again and re-enter, he swung around with eyes contracting wickedly.
She met his evil glance quite bravely, wincing when he invited her to leave the yard. But she came nearer, crossing the rank, soaking grass, and stood beside him where he was sitting.
“May I tell you something?” she asked, timidly.
“Will you be good enough to pass your way?” he answered, rising.
“Not yet,” she replied, and seated herself on the steps. The next moment she was crying, silently, but that only lasted until she could touch her eyes with her handkerchief.
He stood above her on the steps. Perhaps it was astonishment that sealed his lips, perhaps decency. He had noticed that she was slightly lame, although her slender figure appeared almost faultless. He waited for a moment.
Far on the clearing’s dusky edge a white-throated sparrow called persistently to a mate that did not answer.
If Helm felt alarm or feared treachery his voice did not betray it. “What is the trouble?” he demanded, less roughly.
She said, without looking at him: “I have deceived you. There was a letter for you to-day. It came apart and—I found—this—”
She held out a bit of paper. He took it mechanically. His face had suddenly turned gray.
The paper was fibre paper. He stood there breathless, his face a ghastly, bloodless mask; and when he found his voice it was only the ghost of a voice.
“What is all this about?” he asked.
“About fibre paper,” she answered, looking up at him.
“Fibre paper!” he repeated, confounded by her candor.
“Yes—government fibre. Do you think I don’t know what it is?”
For the first time there was bitterness in her voice. She turned partly around, supporting her body on one arm. “Fibre paper? Ah, yes—I know what it is,” she said again.
He looked her squarely in the eyes and he saw in her face that she knew what he was and what he had been doing in Nauvoo. The blood slowly stained his pallid cheeks.
“Well,” he said, coolly, “what are you going to do about it?”
His eyes began to grow narrow and the lines about his mouth deepened. The criminal in him, brought to bay, watched every movement of the young girl before him. Tranquil and optimistic, he quietly seated himself on the wooden steps beside her. Little he cared for her and her discovery. It would take more than a pretty, lame girl to turn him from his destiny; and his destiny was what he chose to make it. He almost smiled at her.
“So,” he said, in smooth, even tones, “you think the game is up?”
“Yes; but nothing need harm you,” she answered, eagerly.
“Harm me!” he repeated, with an ugly sneer; then a sudden, wholesome curiosity seized him, and he blurted out, “But what do you care?”
Looking up at him, she started to reply, and the words failed her. She bent her head in silence.
“Why?” he demanded again.
“I have often seen you,” she faltered; “I sometimes thought you were unhappy.”
“But why do you come to warn me? People hate me in Nauvoo.”
“I do not hate you,” she replied, faintly.
“I don’t know.”
A star suddenly gleamed low over the forest’s level crest. Night had fallen in Nauvoo. After a silence he said, in an altered voice, “Am I to understand that you came to warn a common criminal?”
She did not answer.
“Do you know what I am doing?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“You are counterfeiting.”
“How do you know,” he said, with a touch of menace in his sullen voice.
“Because—because—my father did it—”
“Did what?”
“Counterfeited—what you are doing now!” she gasped. “That is how I know about the fibre. I knew it the moment I saw it—government fibre—and I knew what was on it; the flame justified me. And oh, I could not let them take you as they took father—to prison for all those years!”
“Your father!” he blurted out.
“Yes,” she cried, revolted; “and his handwriting is on that piece of paper in your hand!”
Through the stillness of the evening the rushing of a distant brook among the hemlocks grew louder, increasing on the night wind like the sound of a distant train on a trestle. Then the wind died out; a night bird whistled in the starlight; a white moth hummed up and down the vines over the porch.
“I know who you are now,” the girl continued; “you knew my father in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”
“Yes.”
“And your name is not Helm.”
“No.”
“Do you not know that the government watches discharged employés of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing?”
“I know it.”
“So you changed your name?”
“Yes.”
She leaned nearer, looking earnestly into his shadowy eyes.
“Do you know that an officer of the secret service is coming to Nauvoo?”
“I could take the plate and go. There is time,” he answered, sullenly.
“Yes—there is time.” A dry sob choked her. He heard the catch in her voice, but he did not move his eyes from the ground. His heart seemed to have grown curiously heavy; a strange inertia weighted his limbs. Fear, anger, bitterness, nay, revenge itself, had died out, leaving not a tranquil mind but a tired one. The pulse scarcely beat in his body. After a while the apathy of mind and body appeared to rest him. He was so tired of hate.
“Give me the keys,” she whispered. “Is it in there? Where is the plate? In that room? Give me the keys.”
As in a dream he handed her his keys. Through a lethargy which was almost a stupor he saw her enter his house; he heard her unlock the door of the room where his plates lay. After a moment she found a match and lighted the candles. Helm sat heavily on the steps, his head on his breast, dimly aware that she was passing and repassing, carrying bottles and armfuls of tools and paper and plates out into the darkness somewhere.
It may have been a few minutes; it may have been an hour before she returned to him on the steps, breathing rapidly, her limp gown clinging to her limbs, her dark hair falling to her shoulders.
“The plates and acids will never be found,” she said, breathlessly; “I put everything into the swamp. It is quicksand.”
For a long time neither spoke. At length she slowly turned away towards the gate, and he rose and followed, scarcely aware of what he was doing.
At the gate she stooped and pushed a dark object out of sight under the bushes by the fence.
“Let me help you,” he said, bending beside her.
“No, no; don’t,” she stammered; “it is nothing.”
He found it and handed it to her. It was her crutch; and she turned crimson to the roots of her hair.
“Lean on me,” he said, very gently.
The girl bit her trembling lip till the blood came. “Thank you,” she said, crushing back her tears; “my crutch is enough—but you need not have known it. Kindness is comparative; one can be too kind.”
He misunderstood her and drew back. “I forgot,” he said, quietly, “what privileges are denied to criminals.”
“Privilege!” she faltered. After a moment she laid one hand on his arm.
“I shall be very glad of your help,” she said; “I am more lame than I wish the world to know. It was only the vanity of a cripple that refused you.”
But he thought her very beautiful as she passed with him out into the starlight.
MARLITT’S SHOES
I
Through the open window the spring sunshine fell on Calvert’s broad back. Tennant faced the window, smoking reflectively.
“I should like to ask a favor,” he said; “may I?”
“Certainly you may,” replied Calvert; “everybody else asks favors three hundred and sixty-five times a year.”
Tennant, smoking peacefully, gazed at an open window across the narrow court-yard, where, in the sunshine, a young girl sat sewing.
“The favor,” he said, “is this: there is a vacancy on the staff, and I wish you’d give Marlitt another chance.”
“Marlitt!” exclaimed Calvert. “Why Marlitt?”
“Because,” said Tennant, “I understand that I am wearing Marlitt’s shoes—and the shoes pinch.”
“Marlitt’s shoes would certainly pinch you if you were wearing them,” said Calvert, grimly. “But you are not. Suppose you were? Better wear even Marlitt’s shoes than hop about the world barefoot. You are a singularly sensitive young man. I come up-town to offer you Warrington’s place, and your reply is a homily on Marlitt’s shoes!”
Calvert’s black eyes began to snap and his fat, pink face turned pinker.
“Mr. Tennant,” he said, “I am useful to those who are useful to me. I am a business man. I know of no man or syndicate of men wealthy enough to conduct a business for the sake of giving employment to the unsuccessful!”
Tennant smoked thoughtfully.
“Some incompetent,” continued Calvert, “is trying to make you uncomfortable. You asked us for a chance; we gave you the chance. You proved valuable to us, and we gave you Marlitt’s job. You need not worry: Marlitt was useless, and had to go anyway. Warrington left us to-day, and you’ve got to do his work.”
Tennant regarded him in silence; Calvert laid one pudgy hand on the door-knob. “You know what we think of your work. There is not a man in New York who has your chance. All I say is, we gave you the chance and you took it. Keep it; that’s what we ask!”
“That is what I ask,” said Tennant, with a troubled laugh. “I am sentimentalist enough to feel something like gratitude towards those who gave me my first opportunity.”
“Obligation’s mutual,” snapped Calvert. The hardness in his eyes, however, had died out. “You’d better finish that double page,” he added; “they want to start the color-work by Monday. You’ll hear from us if there’s any delay. Good-bye.”
“‘I WISH YOU’D GIVE MARLITT ANOTHER CHANCE’”
Tennant opened the door for him; Calvert, buttoning his gloves, stepped out into the hallway and rang for the elevator. Then he turned:
“Don’t let envy make things unpleasant for you, Mr. Tennant.”
“Nobody has shown me any envy,” said Tennant.
“I thought you said something about your friend Marlitt—”
“I never saw Marlitt; I only know his work.”
“Oh,” said Calvert, with a peculiar smile, “you only know his work!”
“That is all. Who is Marlitt?”
“The last of an old New York family; reduced circumstances, proud, incompetent, unsuccessful. Why does the artist who signs ‘Marlitt’ interest you?”
“This is why,” said Tennant, and drew a letter from his pocket. “Do you mind listening?”
“Go on,” said Calvert, with a wry face. And Tennant began:
“‘Dear Mr. Tennant,—Just a few words to express my keenest interest and delight in the work you are doing—not only the color work, but the pen-and-ink. You know that the public has made you their idol, but I thought you might care to know what the unsuccessful in your own profession think. You have already taught us so much; you are, week by week, raising the standard so high; and you are doing so much for me, that I venture to thank you and wish you still greater happiness and success. Marlitt.’”
Calvert looked up. “Is that all?”
“That is all. There is neither date nor address on the note. I wrote to Marlitt care of your office. Your office forwarded it, I see, but the post-office returned it to me to-day.… What has become of Marlitt?”
Calvert touched the elevator-bell again. “If I knew,” he said, “I’d find a place for—Marlitt.”
Tennant’s face lighted. Calvert, scowling, avoided his eyes.
“I want you to understand,” he said, peevishly, “that there is no sentiment in this matter.”
“I understand,” said Tennant.
“You think you do,” sneered Calvert, stepping into the elevator. The door slammed; the cage descended; the fat, pink countenance of Calvert, distorted into a furious sneer, slowly sank out of sight.