"Well, I hope you won't live here another moment till you have told me that story," I urged, and we drew again to the fire.
"There was a watchman here before Fahey," he began, "an old plainsman, with a Bible name, Gideon. He looked like the pictures of old Ossawattamie Brown, and he had for the Flemings a most unusual regard. It was as strong as his love for his family. It was because of what Fleming did for his son, young Gid, when they caught him stealing specimens with a gang of old offenders. Gid was nineteen, and a pretty good boy, we thought. Such things happen between men of the right sort every day, I suppose,—Fleming would say so. But it was his opportunity to do it for a man who could feel and remember, and he made a friend for life right there. It is too long a story to tell, but young Gid's all right—working in the city, married and happy,—trusted like any other man. It wasn't in the blood, you see.
"Before his boy got into trouble, Fleming used to call the old man 'Gideon,' talked to him any old way; but after his pride fell down it was always 'Mr. Gideon,' and a few words when he brought the mail, about the weather or the conduct of the trains. The old man appeared to stand taller in those moments at the door, when he brought to the house the very food of its existence. They lived upon their letters, for both the children were away. The army boy in the Philippines; it was during the Mindanao campaign; and Constance (Joshua, I noticed, took a deep breath before the name), the daughter, was at school in the East. Gideon could gauge the spirits of the two, waiting here for what he brought them. He kept tally of the soldier's letters, the thin blue ones that came strolling in by the transport lines. But hers—her letters were his pride.
"'It's there all right,' he would say—'she never misses a Monday mail, the little one!' or, as the winter months wore on—'you'll be counting the weeks now, madam. Six more letters and then the telegram from Ogden, and I hope it's my privilege to bring it, madam.' For as Fleming gave him his title, the old man passed it back with a glow of emphasis, putting devotion into the 'madam' and life service into the 'Mr. Fleming, sir.'
"Then she came home—Constance—she was no longer the little one. Taller than her mother, and rather silent, but her looks were a language, and her motions about the house—I suppose no words could measure their pride in her, or their shrinking when they thought of her in contact with the world. People laughed a little, looking at her, when her mother talked of the years they were going to have together. And she would rebuke the laugh and say, 'We do not marry early in my family, nor the Flemings either.' When the August heat came on, they thought she was too pale—they spared her for a visit to some friends who had a houseboat off Belvedere, or some such place. It was an ambush of fate. She came home, thin, brown, from living on the water,—happy! too happy for safety. She brought her fate with her, the last man you'd suppose could ever cross her path. He was from Hawaii, an Englishman—not all English, some of us thought. Handsome as a snake; a face that kept no marks. Eyes all black—nothing of the pupil showing. They say such eyes are not to be trusted. I never liked him. I'd better not try to describe him.
"It seemed madness to me, but I suppose they were no more helpless than other fathers and mothers. He had plenty to say for himself, and introductions—all sorts of credentials, except a pair of eyes. They had to let it go on; and he took her away from them six months after she saw him first. That's happiness, if you call it so!"
Again I added, "It is life."
"There was not much left of it in this house after she went," Joshua mused. "It was then they asked me to come up and stay with them. A silence of three does not press quite so close as a silence of two. And we talked sometimes. The mine had taken a great jump; it was almost a mockery the way things boomed. The letters, I noticed, were not what the schoolgirl letters had been to her mother. They came all right, they were punctual, but something I felt sure was wrong. Mrs. Fleming would not have missed a mail for anything in the world—every hour's delay wore upon her. She would play her game of solitaire, long after bedtime, at that desk by the drop-light. It seemed she could not read; nothing held her. She was irritable with Fleming, and then she would pet him piteously to make up. He was always gentle. He would watch her over his book as she walked up and down in the back room in the light between the dining-room curtains. If he saw I noticed, he'd look away and begin to talk.
"I have gone a little ahead of my story, for this was after the dark weather came on and the mails were behind; we knew there was some new strain on her spirits. You could see her face grow small and her flesh waste away.
"One night we sat here, Fleming and I, and she was pacing in her soft, weary way in the back of the room. There came a knock. It was Gideon's, yet none of us heard the gate click nor any step outside. She stood back, for she never showed any impatience—she tried to pretend that she expected nothing. Fleming opened the door; he stood there an instant looking out.