LARRY KILDENE’S STORY
“Man, but this is none so bad––none so bad.”
Larry Kildene sat on a bench before a roaring fire in the room added on to the fodder shed. The chimney which Harry King had built, although not quite completed to its full height, was being tried for the first time, as the night was too cold for comfort in the long, low shed without fire, and the men had come down early this evening to talk over their plans before Larry should start down the mountain in the morning. They had heaped logs on the women’s fire and seen that all was right for them, and with cheerful good-nights had left them to themselves.
Now, as they sat by their own fire, Harry could see Amalia by hers, seated on a low bench of stone, close to the blazing torch of pine, so placed that its smoke would be drawn up the large chimney. It was all the light they had for their work in the evenings, other than the firelight. He could see her fingers moving rapidly and mechanically at some pretty open-work pattern, and now and then grasping deftly at the ball of fine white thread that seemed to be ever taking little leaps, and trying to roll into the fire, or out over the cabin floor. She used a fine, slender needle and seemed to be performing some delicate magic with her fingers. Was she one of the three fates continually drawing out the thread of his life and weaving 220 therewith a charmed web? And if so––when would she cease?
“It’s a good job and draws well.”
“The chimney? Yes, it seems to.” Harry roused himself and tried to close his mind against the warm, glowing picture. “Yes––yes. It draws well. I’m inclined to be a bit proud, although I never could have done it if you had not given me the lessons.”
“It’s art, my boy. To build a good fireplace is just that. Did you ever think that the whole world––and the welfare of it––centers just around that;––the fireplace and the hearth––or what stands for it in these days––maybe a little hole in the wall with a smudge of coal in it, as they have in the towns––but it’s the hearth and the cradle beside it––and––the mother.”
Larry’s voice died almost to a whisper, and his chin dropped on his breast, and his eyes gazed on the burning logs; and Harry, sitting beside him, gazed also at the same logs, but the pictures wrought in the alchemy of their souls were very different.
To Harry it was a sweet, oval face––a flush from the heat of the fire more on the smooth cheek that was toward it than on the other, and warm flame flashes in the large eyes that looked up at him from time to time, while the slender figure bent a little forward to see the better, as the wonderful hands kept up the never ceasing motion. A white linen cloth spread over her lap cast a clearer, more rosy light under her chin and brought out the strength of it and the delicate curves of it, which Harry longed even to dare to look upon in the rarest stolen intervals, without the clamor and outcry in his heart. It was always the 221 same––the cry of Cain in the wilderness. Would God it might some day cease! What to him might be the hearth fire and the cradle, and the mother, that the big man should dwell on them thus? What had they meant in Larry Kildene’s life, he who had lived for twenty years the life of a hermit, and had forsworn women forever, as he said?
“I tell ye, lad, there’s a thing I would say to you––before I leave, but it’s sore to touch upon.” Harry made a deprecating gesture. “No, it’s best I tell you. I––I’ll come back––never fear––it’s my plan to come back, but in this life you may count on nothing for a surety. I’ve learned that, and to prove it, look at me. I made sure, never would I open my heart again to think on my fellow beings, but as aliens to my life, and I’ve lived it out for twenty years, and thought to hold out to the end. I held the Indians at bay through their superstitions, and they would no more dare to cross my path with hostile intent than they would dare take their chances over that fall above there. Where did I put my pipe? I can’t seem to find things as I did in the cabin.”