He went forth to his duties with a deepened conviction of the essential lawlessness of the State and of America in general; for this spirit of mob law was to be found in some form throughout the land. He was disgusted, but not beaten. His resolution to carry out the terms of his contract with the Government remained unshaken.
He carried with him, also, a final disturbing glimpse of Eliza Wetherford’s girl that did indeed threaten his peace of mind. There was an involuntary appeal, a wistful depth, to her glance which awakened in him an indignant pity, and also blew into flame something not so creditable—something which smoldered beneath his conscious will. He perceived in her a spirit of yielding which was difficult to resist. He understood, much more clearly than at his first meeting with her, how impossible it was for her to remain in this country (where law was a joke and women a ribald jest) without being corrupted. She had not escaped her heritage of passion, and her glances, innocent as they were, roused, even in him, something lawless.
As he climbed the long hill he grappled deeply with this new and inexplicable weakness. He had always been a decent fellow as respects women, and had maintained the same regard for the moral code that he instinctively bore toward the laws of his adopted country. He could not, therefore, regard this girl (low as her parentage seemed) in the light of license; for (he thought) whatever of evil may have been planted deep in her nature by her ill-assorted father and mother, she is at the moment sweet and fine, and the man who would awaken her other self should be accursed.
In this mood, too, he acknowledged the loneliness of his life for the first time, and rode his silent way up the trail like one in a dream. He went over his life story in detail, wondering if he had not made a mistake in leaving England, in taking out his American citizenship. He considered again, very seriously, the question of going back to live on the estate of his mother, and once more decided that its revenue was too small. To return to it meant an acceptance of the restricted life of an English farmer, and, worst of all, an acquiescence in the social despotism which he had come to feel and to hate.
The English empire to him was falling apart. Its supremacy was already threatened by Germany, whereas the future of the States appealed to his imagination. Here the problems of popular government and of industry were to be worked out on the grandest scale. The West inspired him. “Some day each of these great ranges will be a national forest, and each of these canons will contain its lake, its reservoir.” There was something fine in this vision of man’s conquest of nature. “Surely in this development there is a place for me,” he said.
Start at any place he pleased, his mind circled and came back to Lee Virginia. He reproached himself for not having remained one more day to help her. She was in the midst of a most bleak and difficult pass, and whether she came through or not depended on something not derived from either her father or her mother. The test of her character was being made.
“Happily the father is dead, and his exploits fading to a dim legend; but the mother may live for years to dishearten and corrupt. It is foolish of the girl to stay, and yet to have her go would leave me and the whole valley poorer.”
He perceived in her a symbol. “She is the new West just as the mother represents the old, and the law of inheritance holds in her as it holds in the State. She is a mixture of good and evil, of liberty and license. She must still draw forward, for a time, the dead weight of her past, just as the West must bear with and gradually slough off its violent moods.”
His pony plodded slowly, and the afternoon was half-spent before he came in sight of the long, low log-cabin which was the only home he possessed in all America. For the first time since he built it, the station seemed lonely and disheartening. “Would any woman, for love of me, come to such a hearthstone?” he asked himself. “And if she consented to do so, could I be so selfish as to exact such sacrifice? No, the forest ranger in these attitudes must be young and heart-free; otherwise his life would be miserably solitary.”
He unsaddled his horse and went about his duties with a leaden pall over his spirit, a fierce turmoil in his brain. He was no longer single-hearted in his allegiance to the forest. He could not banish that appealing girlish face, that trusting gaze. Lee Virginia needed him as he needed her; and yet—and yet—the people’s lands demanded his care, his social prejudices forbade his marriage.