|SEVEN years passed. It was early summer.
Externally James Hoag had changed. He was a heavier man; his movements were more sluggish, his hair was turning white, his face was wrinkled and had the brown splotches indicative of a disordered liver. There was on him, at times, a decided nervousness which he more or less frankly, according to mood, attributed to his smoking too much at night and the habit of tippling. He had grown more irritable and domineering. Beneath the surface, at least, he had strongly objected to his mother-in-law's continuing to look to him for support after her daughter's death. But Mrs. Tilton had told him quite firmly that she now had only one duty in life, and that was the care of her grandchild, Jack; and Hoag, quick, harsh, and decided in his dealings with others, knew no way of refusing.
He had really thought of marrying again; but the intimate presence of the mother-in-law and his inability to quite make up his mind as to which particular woman of his acquaintance could be trusted not to have motives other than a genuine appreciation of himself had delayed the step. Indeed, he had given the subject much thought, but objections more or less real had always arisen. The girl was too young, pretty, and spoiled by the attention of younger and poorer men, or the woman was too old, too plain, too settled, or too wise in the ways of the world. So Hoag had all but relinquished the thought, and if he had any heart he gave it to Jack, for whom he still had a remarkable paternal passion, as for his son Henry he still had little love or sympathy. For the last three or four years he had regarded Henry as an idle fellow who would never succeed in anything.
The “klan” of which Hoag was still the leader continued to hold its secret meetings, framed crude laws under his dictation, and inflicted grim and terrible punishment. And these men honestly believed their method to be more efficacious than the too tardy legal courts of the land.
Hoag had been to one of these meetings in a remote retreat in the mountains one moonlit night, and about twelve o'clock was returning. He was just entering the gate of his stable-yard when his attention was attracted to the approach along the road of a man walking toward Grayson, a traveler's bag in his hand. It was an unusual thing at that hour, and, turning his horse loose in the yard, Hoag went back to the gate and leaned on it, curiously and even officiously eying the approaching pedestrian. As the man drew nearer, lightly swinging his bag, Hoag remarked the easy spring in his stride, and noted that he was singing softly and contentedly. He was sure the man was a stranger, for he saw nothing familiar in the figure as to dress, shape, or movement.
“Must be a peddler in some line or other,” he said to himself; “but a funny time o' night to be out on a lonely road like this.”
It would have been unlike Hoag to have let the pedestrian pass without some sort of greeting, and, closing the gate, he stepped toward the center of the road and stood waiting.
“Good evening,” he said, when the man was quite close to him.
“Good evening.” The stranger looked up suddenly, checking his song, and stared at Hoag steadily in apparent surprise. Then he stopped and lowered his bag to the ground. “I wonder,” he said, “if this is—can this possibly be Mr. Jim Hoag?”
“That's who it is,” was the calm reply; “but I don't know as I've ever laid eyes on you before.”
“Oh yes, you have.” The stranger laughed almost immoderately. “You look closely, Mr. Hoag, and you'll recognize a chap you haven't seen in many a long, long year.”
Hoag took the tall, well-built young man in from head to foot. He was well and stylishly dressed, wore a short, silky beard, and had brown eyes and brown hair. Hoag dubiously shook his head.
“You've got the best o' me,” he said, slowly. “I'm good at recollectin' faces, as a rule, too; but my sight ain't what it used to be, an' then bein' night-time—”
“It was after dark the last time you saw me, Mr. Hoag.” The stranger was extending his hand and smiling. “Surely you haven't forgotten Ralph Rundel's son Paul?”
“Paul Rundel—good Lord!” Hoag took the extended hand clumsily, his eyes dilating. “It can't be—why, why, I thought you was dead an' done for long ago. I've thought many a time that I'd try to locate you. You see, after advisin' you—after tellin' you, as I did that night, that I thought you ought to run away, why, I sort o' felt—”
Hoag seemed unable to voice his train of thought and slowed up to an awkward pause.
“Yes, I know—I understand,” Paul Rundel said, his face falling into seriousness, his voice full and earnest. “I know I'm late about it; but it is better to be late than never when you intend to do the right thing. I committed a crime, Mr. Hoag, and the kind of a crime that can't be brushed out of a man's conscience by any sort of process. I've fought the hardest battle that any man of my age ever waged. For years I tried to follow your advice, and live my life in my own way, but I failed utterly. I started out fair, but it finally got me down. I saw I had to do the right thing, and I am here for that purpose.”
“You don't mean—you can't mean,” Hoag stammered, “that you think—that you actually believe—”
“I mean exactly what I say.” The young, bearded face was all seriousness. “I stood it, I tell you, as long as I could in my own way, and finally made up my mind that I'd let God Almighty take me in hand. It was like sweating blood, but I got to it. In my mind, sleeping and waking, I've stood on the scaffold a thousand times, anyway, and now, somehow, I don't dread it a bit—not a bit. It would take a long time to explain it, Mr. Hoag, but I mean what I say. There is only one thing I dread, and that is a long trial. I'm going to plead guilty and let them finish me as soon as possible. I want to meet the man I killed face to face in the Great Beyond and beg his pardon in the presence of God. Then I will have done as much of my duty as is possible at such a late day.”
“Oh, I see!” Hoag fancied he understood. One of his old shrewd looks stoic into his visage. If Paul Rundel thought he was as easily taken in as that, he had mistaken his man, that was certain. Hoag put his big hand to his mouth and crushed out an expanding smile, the edge of which showed itself' in his twinkling eyes. “Oh, I see,” he said, with the sort of seduction he used in his financial dealings; “you hain't heard nothin' from here since you went off—nothin' at all?”
“Not a word, Mr. Hoag, since I left you down there seven years ago,” was the reply. “I must have walked thirty miles that night through the worst up-and-down country in these mountains before day broke. I struck a band of horse-trading gipsies at sun-up in the edge of North Carolina, and they gave me breakfast. They were moving toward the railroad faster than I could walk. I was completely fagged out, and they took pity on me and let me lie down on some straw and quilts in one of their vans. I slept soundly nearly all day. I wasn't afraid of being caught; in fact, I didn't care much one way or the other. I was sick at heart, blue and morbid. I suppose conscience was even then getting in its work.”
“I see.” Hoag was studying the young man's face, voice, and manner in growing perplexity. There was something so penetratingly sincere about the fellow. Hoag had heard of men being haunted by conscience till they would, of their own volition, give themselves up for punishment, but he had never regarded such things as possible, and he refused to be misled now. “Then you took a train?” he said, like a close cross-questioner. “You took the train?”
“Yes, I left the gipsies at Randal's Station, on the B: A. & L., and slipped into an unlocked boxcar bound for the West. It was an awful trip; but after many ups and downs I reached Portland in about as sad a plight as a boy of my age could well be in. I found work as a printer's devil on a newspaper. From that I began to set type. I studied hard at night, and finally got to be an editorial writer. You see, I kept myself out of view as much as possible—stayed at my boardinghouse from dark till morning, and, having access to a fine library, I read to—to kill time and keep my mind off my crime.”
“Your crime? Oh, you mean that you thought—”
“I couldn't possibly get away from it, Mr. Hoag.” Paul's voice quivered, and he drew his slender hand across his eyes. “Night or day, dark or light, Jeff Warren was always before me. I've seen him reel, stagger, and fall, and heard him groan millions and millions of times. It would take all night to tell you about those awful years of sin and remorse—that soul-racking struggle to defy God, which simply had to end, and did end, only a few days ago. When I left here I believed as you did about spiritual things, Mr. Hoag, and I thought I could live my life out as I wished, but I know better now. My experience during those seven years would convince any infidel on earth that God is in every atom of matter in the universe. The human being does not live who will not, sooner or later, bow down under this truth—if not here, he will in the Great Beyond.”
“Bosh!” Hoag growled, his heavy brows meeting in a fierce frown of displeasure.
“Oh, I see you still think as you used to think,”
Paul went on, regretfully; “but you'll come to it some day—you'll come to it in God's own good time. It is a satisfaction to me to know that I am giving you a proof of my reformation, anyway. You know, if you will stop to think about it, Mr. Hoag, that I am giving vital proof that I, at least, am convinced or I would not be willing to give my life up like this. It isn't hard to die when you know you are dying to fulfil a wonderful divine law; in fact, to mend a law which you yourself have broken!”
“I don't know what you are trying to git at, an' I don't care,” Hoag blustered. “I don't know what your present object is, what sort of an ax you got to grind; but I'll tell you what I think, Paul, an' you kin smoke it in your pipe if you want to. Somebody round here has kept you posted. You know how the land lays, an' have made up your mind to turn preacher, I reckon—if you ain't already one—an' you think it will be a fine card to make these damn fools here in the backwoods think you really was ready to go to the scaffold, an' the like o' that. But the truth will leak out. Sooner or later folks—even the silliest of 'em—will git onto your game. You can't look me square in the eye, young man, an' tell me that you don't know Jeff Warren didn't die, an' that when he married your mammy an' moved away the case ag'in' you was dismissed. Huh, I ain't as green as a gourd!”
Paul started, stared incredulously at the speaker, his mouth falling open till his white teeth gleamed in the moonlight. He leaned forward, his breath coming and going audibly, his broad chest swelling. He laid his hand on Hoag's shoulder and bore down on it heavily. Hoag felt it quivering as if it were charged with an electric current. Paul was trying to speak, trying to be calm. He swallowed; his lips moved automatically; he put his disengaged hand on Hoag's other shoulder and forced him to look at him. He shook him. In his face was the light of a great nascent joy.
“Don't say he's alive unless—my God, unless it's true!” he cried, shaking Hoag again. “That would be the act of a fiend in human shape. I couldn't stand it. Speak, speak, speak, man! Don't you understand? Speak! Is it true—is it possible that—” Paul's voice broke in a great welling sob of excitement and his quivering head began to sink.
Hoag was quite taken aback. This was genuine; of that he was convinced. “Thar's no use gittin' so worked up,” he said. “Jeff is sound an' well. I'm sorry I talked like I did, for I see you must 'a' been in the dark, an'—”
He went no further. Paul had removed his hands. A light was on his face that seemed superhuman. He raised his eyes to the sky. He swerved toward the side of the road like a man entranced till he reached the fence, and there he rested his head on his arms and stood bowed, still, and silent.
“Huh, this is a purty pickle!” Hoag said to himself. He stood nonplussed for several minutes, and then advanced to Paul, treading the ground noiselessly till he was close to him. And then he heard the young man muttering an impassioned prayer.
“I thank thee, O God, I thank thee! O, blessed Father! O, merciful Creator, this—this is thy reward!”
Hoag touched him on the shoulder, and Paul turned his eyes upon him, which were full of exultant tears. “Say,” Hoag proposed, kindly enough, “thar ain't no need o' you goin' on to Grayson to-night. The hotel ain't runnin' this summer, nohow. Pete Kerr an' his wife closed it for a month to go off on a trip. I've got a big, cool room in my house that ain't occupied. Stay with me as long as you like. We are sort o' old friends, an' you are entirely welcome. I'd love the best in the world to have you.”
“It is very good of you.” Paul was calmer now, though his countenance was still aglow with its supernal light. “I really am very tired. I've walked ten miles—all the way from Darby Crossroads. The hack broke down there a little after dark, and as I wanted to give myself up before morning—before meeting anybody—I came on afoot. The driver was a new man, and so he had no idea of who I was or what my intentions were. Oh, Mr. Hoag, you can't imagine how I feel. You have given me such a great joy. I know I am acting like a crazy man, but I can't help it. It is so new, so fresh—so glorious!”
“The whole thing seems crazy to me,” said Hoag, with a return of his old bluntness; “but that's neither here nor thar. You seem to be in earnest. Pick up yore valise an' let's go in the house.”
“Are you sure you have room for me?” Paul asked, as he went for his bag.
“Plenty, plenty. My sister, Mrs. Mayfield, an' Ethel, from Atlanta—you remember them—they are spending the summer here, as they always do now. They went to Atlanta yesterday—some o' their kin is sick—Jennie Buford. They will be back tomorrow by dinner-time. But when they come you needn't stir. We've got plenty o' room. You are welcome to stay as long as you like. I want to talk to you about the West.”