“Is that anything to blubber about?”
“You bet it is,” gulped old Oliver, smiling through his tears. “You just bet your sweet life it is.”
A word in passing about Jane Sage. She was a slender, graceful girl slightly above medium height, just turning into young womanhood—that alluring, mysterious stage that baffles the imagination and confounds the emotions. Her gray eyes, set widely apart under a broad brow, were clear and soft and wistful, and yet in their untrammeled depths stirred the glow of an intelligence far beyond her slender years. She was an extremely pretty girl. Her mouth was rather large and, like her mother’s, humorous. Her hair, brown, wavy and abundant, grew low upon her forehead. Her teeth were small, even and as white as snow; she showed them when she smiled. There were faint dimples in her cheeks.
She kept house for her father, and, at seventeen, made no secret of her determination never to get married! That was settled. Never! She was going to take care of her daddy as long as he lived, and, as she was serenely confident that he would live to be a very old man—indeed, she could not conjure up the thought of him dying at all as other mortals are bound to do sooner or later—there wasn’t any way in the world for her to avoid being an old maid.
If she possessed any of her mother’s powers of mimicry, they were never revealed by word or deed. She was singularly lacking in histrionic ability and for that her father was thankful though secretly surprised. Friends of the family, remembering Josephine’s propensities watched closely for signs of an undesirable heritage, and were somewhat disappointed when they failed to develop. If she had not borne such a striking resemblance to her mother, everybody in town would have said that she “took after her father”—and that would have explained everything. That far-distant, almost mythical mother, was no more than a dream to Jane. It was hard for her to believe that the famous actress, Josephine Judge, was her mother; she was secretly proud of the distinguished isolation in which it placed her among her less favored companions.
She adored Oliver October. There had been a time when she was his sweetheart, but that was ages ago—when both of them were young! Now he was supposed to be engaged to a girl in the graduating class—and Jane was going to be an old maid—so the childish romance was over. She wished she knew the girl, however, so that she could be sure that Oliver was getting some one who was good enough for him.
Late in the fall of 1911, young Oliver, having passed the age of twenty-one and being a free and independent agent, packed his bag and trunk and shook the dust of Rumley from his feet. Through the influence of an older member of his “frat,” supported by the customary recommendation from the college authorities, he was offered and accepted a position in the construction department of a Chicago engineering and investment concern interested in the financing and developing of water power plants in the northwest. His work took him, in the course of time, to the Rocky Mountain region, where concessions had been obtained and plants were either being installed or projected.
There was grave uneasiness in Rumley when he fared forth in quest of fame and fortune. Many were the predictions that Chicago would be the ruination of him; he was bound to fall in with evil companions in that wicked city, and into evil ways. College had been bad enough—but Chicago!
Yes, he was working inevitably toward the end prophesied by the gypsy. Next thing they would hear of his drinking and carousing and leading the gay, riotous life of the ungodly, and then, sure as anything, he would get mixed up in some disgraceful brawl—well, he might be innocent of the actual murder but that wouldn’t save him if the circumstantial evidence was strong enough—as it would be.
And then, when old Oliver resignedly announced that his son was going up into the wild and lawless northwest, where everybody carried guns and lynchings were common, there was real consternation among the older families in Rumley. One very ancient lady went so far in her senile sympathy as to put into words the question that had been in her thoughts for days. Chancing to meet old Oliver on the way home from church one Sunday, she sadly inquired whether he would bring Oliver October’s body all the way back to Rumley for burial or leave it out there in the wilderness.