It surely was of bitter sort.’”
Stead withdrew his gaze from the river and turned it on the face of his companion.
“I know it all, doctor, and much more than you can say. I know you’ve clung to me when no one else would trouble, and that you drive all those forty miles from home every autumn, rain or shine, to tramp the woods with me, to sit beside my fire and give me comfort, and yet—— Do you remember the old adage, that ‘Life without work is water in a sieve’? but in the antiphon lies the sting, ‘Work without motive cannot live.’ It is motive that is dead in me. I think I have forgiven, I delude myself if I say I have forgotten, but, good God, doctor, can you imagine sitting and feeling yourself as useless as water in a sieve and not caring? That is my misery. If I could only really care, heart and soul, for anything for one short month, I would give the rest of my life for it.
“I have not even the primal motive of hunger that sets the wolf a-prowling. The few yearly thousands my father left me have put that chance away, and my contempt for that form of cowardice precludes suicide. So I have actually come to be what passes current for content, with every one but you. Here I am, located for life on the hillside, with only half-breed José left of what was, with my books, which can neither dissemble nor betray, for company, and so long as I have food I shall have dog friends to follow me by day and sleep by me at night. Then, as long as eyesight lasts, there is my River Kingdom,” and Stead stretched his arms, half to relax their tension, toward the silver fillet shimmering in the valley below, in which at that moment some white gulls, with black-tipped wings, hanging in the skylike clouds, were mirrored.
Then, giving a nervous, mirthless laugh, he whistled to the dogs, and as if led to speak of himself too much, he turned to action, and vaulting over the bars with but a hand touch, trailed his feet through rifts of glowing leaves, and reaching backward for his gun, said lightly, “Who was it, by the way, that christened this region The River Kingdom? Was it your daughter?”
“No, it was not Barbara,” said the doctor, crossing the bars, but more sedately, his cheery temper relieved at the change of theme. “It was Brooke Lawton, a cousin or niece or some such kin of Miss Keith West—a lovable child, full of both romance and common sense. Her father, Adam Lawton, whom you must have met in your capacity as a civil engineer, for he has floated many railway schemes, was born here in Gilead in the West homestead, his mother being of that family. Though he never comes here, and all the kin but Keith, a first cousin, are dead, some slight sentiment binds him to the past, and he has kept the little farm abreast of all improvements and leaves Keith in charge. A few years ago Brooke, his elder child and only daughter, recovering from an illness, came up and spent the autumn; and I, being here for the shooting and knowing Keith well, for she and my sister Lot were schoolmates at Mt. Holyoke long ago, was called to see her several times.
“But there was little that I could do for her,—indomitable pluck and dauntless spirits were her best medicine. Well I remember one gray, cold day, the last of her stay, I found Miss Keith in some alarm about her, as the child had gone out on foot over two hours before.
“As we stood consulting in the porch, a slim, gray-coated figure, with soft brown hair flying like a gypsy’s, arms full of autumn leaves and berries, came swiftly down the lane between house and wood, and throwing her load on the steps, gazed at it in a sort of ecstasy, from which she waked only at Miss Keith’s words of chiding.
“‘I—lost?’ she queried, straightening her thick eyebrows into an expression of incredulity, ‘why, Cousin Keith, I’ve only been to my River Kingdom collecting tribute, but when I’m grown up and do as I please, I’m coming back here to reign and have the wild flowers bow to me when I pass and the little wood beasts follow me in procession.’
“I must have told you of it at the time, for I was stopping with you. Yes, it was Brooke Lawton who christened the River Kingdom,—but she never returned, and I heard indirectly that she had gone abroad to study art. Come to think of it, she must be a grown woman now, at the rate time goes. All of which reminds me that I sent word that I would go to Miss Keith’s to-day; she wants counsel of some sort, about what I could not even surmise from her letter. As she is one of the good middle-aged women who always wish excuses made for every act, I will take her these grouse as an apology and tangible explanation as to my clothes and gun, and as she always insists that I should take a meal with her, you will not see me until supper-time. If you will tell José to dress and split the quail, I myself will broil them over the wood coals in your den, spitted on hickory forks. Metal should never touch wild fowl, but you of the younger generation do so grudge trouble and seem to have no capacity for detail,” and, half chiding, half laughing, Dr. Russell shouldered his beloved gun, picked up the grouse, smoothed the rumpled ruff of the cock bird, and started on the mile walk downhill to the West homestead, whistling.