"All colours are alike," said Battersleigh. "Now, whut is my young Injun savage doin', when he goes out alone, on top of some high hill, an' builds him a little fire, an' talks with his familiar spirits, which he calls here his 'drame'? Isn't he searchin' an' feelin' o' himsilf, same as the haythin in far-away Ingy? Git your nose up, Ned, or you'll be unwittin' classifyin' yersilf with the great slave class which we lift behind not long ago, but which is follyin' us hard and far. Git your nose up, fer it's Batty has been thinkin' ye've Destiny inside your skin. Listen to Batty the Fool, and search your sowl. I'll tell ye this: I've the feelin' that I'll be hearin' of ye, in all the marrches o' the worrld. Don't disappoint me, Ned, for the ould man has belaved in ye—more than ye've belaved in yersilf. As to the gyurl—bah!—go marry her some day, av ye've nothin' more importhant on yer hands.
"But, me dear boy, spakin' o' importhant things, I ralely must be goin' now. I've certain importhant preparations that are essintial before I get dhrunk this avenin'—"
"O Battersleigh, do be sensible," said Franklin, "and do give up this talk of getting drunk. Come over here this evening and talk with me. It's much better than getting drunk."
Battersleigh's hand was on the door knob. "The consate o' you!" he said. "Thrue, ye're a fine boy, Ned, an' I know of no conversayshun more entertainin' than yer own, but I tale that if I didn't get dhrunk like a gintleman this avenin', I'd be violatin' me juty to me own conscience, as well as settin' at naught the thraditions o' the Rile Irish. An' so, if ye'll just excuse me, I'll say good-bye till, say, to-morrow noon."
CHAPTER XXXII
THE CALLING
And now there still fared on the swift, sane empire of the West. The rapid changes, the strivings, the accomplishments, the pretensions and the failures of the new town blended in the product of human progress. Each man fell into his place in the community as though appointed thereto, and the eyes of all were set forward. There was no retrospection, there were no imaginings, no fears, no disbeliefs. The people were as ants, busy building their hill, underletting it with galleries, furnishing it with chambers, storing it with riches, providing it with defences; yet no individual ant looked beyond his own antennae, or dreamed that there might be significance in the tiny footprints which he left. There were no philosophers to tell these busy actors that they were puppets in a great game, ants in a giant hill. They lived, loved, and multiplied; which, after all, is Life.
To Franklin the days and months and years went by unpunctuated, his life settling gradually into the routine of an unhappy calm. He neglected too much the social side of life, and rather held to his old friends than busied himself with the search for new. Battersleigh was gone, swiftly and mysteriously gone, though with the promise to return and with the reiteration of his advice and his well wishes. Curly was gone—gone up the Trail into a far and mysterious country, though he, too, promised to remember Ellisville, and had given hostage for his promise. His friends of the Halfway House were gone, for though he heard of them and knew them to be prosperous, he felt himself, by reason of Mary Ellen's decision, in propriety practically withdrawn from their personal acquaintance. Of the kaleidoscope of the oncoming civilization his eye caught but little. There had again fallen upon his life a season of blight, or self-distrust, of dull dissatisfaction with the world and with living. As in earlier years he had felt unrest and known the lack of settled purpose, so now, after having seen all things apparently set in order before him for progressive accomplishment, he had fallen back once more into that state of disbelief, of that hopeless and desperate awakening properly reserved only for old age, when the individual realizes that what he does is of itself of no consequence, and that what he is or is not stops no single star an atom in its flight, no blade of grass an iota in its growing.
Paralysis of the energies too often follows upon such self-revelations; and indeed it seemed to Franklin that he had suffered some deep and deadly benumbing of his faculties. He could not welcome the new days. His memory was set rather on the old days, so recent and in some way so dear. He loved the forgotten thunder of the buffalo, but in his heart there rose no exultation at the rumble of the wheels. Still conscientious, he plodded, nor did he cease to aspire even in his own restricted avocations. Because of his level common sense, which is the main ingredient in the success-portion, he went easily into the first councils of the community. Joylessly painstaking and exact, he still prospered in what simple practice of the law there offered, acting as counsel for the railway, defending a rare criminal case, collecting accounts, carrying on title contests and "adverse" suits in the many cases before the Register of the Land Office, and performing all the simple humdrum of the busy country lawyer. He made more and more money, since at that time one of his position and opportunities could hardly avoid doing so. His place in the business world was assured. He had no occasion for concern.
For most men this would have been prosperity sufficient; yet never did Edward Franklin lie down with the long breath of the man content; and ever in his dreams there came the vague beckoning of a hand still half unseen. Once this disturbing summons to his life was merely disquieting and unformulated, but gradually now it assumed a shape more urgent and more definite. Haunting him with the sense of the unfulfilled, the face of Mary Ellen was ever in the shadow; of Mary Ellen, who had sent him away forever; of Mary Ellen, who was wasting her life on a prairie ranch, with naught to inspire and none to witness the flowering of her soul. That this rare plant should thus fail and wither seemed to him a crime quite outside his own personal concern. This unreal Mary Ellen, this daily phantom, which hung faces on bare walls and put words between the lines of law books, seemed to have some message for him. Yet had he not had his final message from the actual Mary Ellen? And, after all, did anything really matter any more?