Chapter VI: Part III: Jerry and Eugene--And Joe (6)

"What kind of mounts are you afraid of? I can have Ponk send up something easy," he said, in a quiet, fatherly way.

Jerry's eyes darkened. "I can ride anything your Sage Brush grows that you call a saddle-horse," she declared, with pretty daring. "Why, 'I was the pride of the countryside' back in a country where fine horses grew. Really and seriously, it was Cousin Gene who was afraid of spirited horses, and he looked so splendid on them, too. But he couldn't manage them any more than he could run an automobile over the bluff road above the big cut this side of the third crossing of the Winnowoc. He preferred to crawl through that cut in the slow old local train while I climbed over the bluffs in our big car. You hadn't figured on my boasting qualities, had you?" she added, with a smile at her own vaunting words.

"Oh, go on," Laura urged. "I heard your father telling us once that your cousin, on the Darby side, would ride out with you bravely enough, but that you traded horses when you got off the place and you always came back home on the one they were afraid for you to take out and your cousin was afraid to ride back."

"She _climbed_ while Cousin Gene _crawled_. I believe she said something there, but she doesn't know it yet; and it's not my business to tell her till she asks me." York shut his lips grimly at the unspoken words. "We'll be back, appetite and sundries, for the best meal the scullery-maid can loot from the village," he said, as they rose from the table.

When Jerry came out of the side door, where York was waiting for her, she suggested at once a model for a cover illustration of an outing magazine, an artistic advertisement for well-tailored results, and a type of young American beauty. As they rode back toward the barns and cattle-sheds that belonged to the ranch edging the corporation limits of New Eden, neither one noticed the tall, angular form of Mrs. Stellar Bahrr as she came striding across lots toward the driveway.

Stellar lived in a side street. Her back yard bordered a vacant lot on the next side street above her. Crossing this, she could slip over the lawn of a vacant house and down the alley half a block, and on by the United Brethren minister's parsonage. That let her sidle between a little carpenter-shop and a shoe-shop to the rear gateway into an alley that led out to the open ground at the foot of the Macpherson knoll. Stellar preferred this corkscrew route to the "Castle." It gave her several back and side views, with "listening-posts" at certain points.

"Oh, good morning, Laury! I'm so glad to find you alone. I'm in a little trouble, an' mebby you can help me out. You are everybody's friend, just like your brother, exactly. Only his bein' that way's bound to get him into trouble sooner or before that. Eh! What's that you're lookin' at?"

Laura had gone to the buffet after the riders had started away. She had a singular feeling about that cup appearing so suddenly. She remembered now that Jerry had asked twice about those cups, and had looked at them with such a peculiar expression on each occasion. Laura had not remarked upon it to herself the first time, but the trifling incident at the table just now stayed in her mind. Yet why? The housekeeper often rearranged the dining-room features in her endeavor to keep things free from dust. That would not satisfy the query. That cup and Jerry Swaim were dodging about most singularly in Laura's consciousness, and she could not know that the reason for it lay in the projecting power of the mind of the woman coming across lots at that moment to call on her.

Yet when Mrs. Bahrr thrust herself into the dining-room unannounced, as was her habit, with her insistent greeting, and her query, "What's that you're lookin' at?" the mistress of "Castle Cluny" had a feeling of having been caught holding a guilty suspicion; and when Stellar Bahrr ran her through with steely eyes she felt herself blushing with surprise and chagrin.

"How can I help you, Mrs. Bahrr?" she asked, recovering herself in a moment.

It was, however, the loss of the moment that always gave the woman before her the clue she wanted.

"I'm needin' just a little money--only a few dollars. I'm quittin' hat-trimmin' since them smarties down-town got so busy makin' over, an' trimmin' over, an' everything. I'm goin' to makin' bread. I've got six customers already, an' I'm needin' a gasoliner the worst way. I lack jist five--mebby I could squeeze out with four dollars if I had it right away. You never knowed what it means to be hard up, I reckon; never had no trouble at all; no husband to up an' leave you and not a soul to lean on. You've always had York to lean on. I 'ain't got nobody."

The drooping figure and wrinkled face were pitiful enough to keep Laura Macpherson from reminding her that she was older than her brother and once the leaning had been the other way. Here was a needy, lonely, friendless woman. What matter that her greatest enemy was herself? All of us are in that boat.

"Of course I'll help you, Mrs. Bahrr. I'll get the money right away."

She rose to leave the room, then sat down again hastily.

"I'm afraid I can't help you right now, either. I have mislaid my purse. But when I find it I'll let you have the money. When York comes back maybe I can get it of him. Could you come over this afternoon?"

"Mebby York won't let you have it to loan where there ain't no big interest comin'. I'd ruther he didn't know it if you wasn't sure."

Laura recalled what her brother had said about not becoming entangled with Stellar Bahrr, and she knew he would oppose the loan. She knew, too, that in the end he would consent to it, because he himself was continually befriending the poor, no matter how shiftless they might be.

"I think I can bring York round, all right," Laura assured her caller. "He's not unreasonable."

"I'd ruther he didn't know. Men are so different from women, you know. You say you lost your purse. Ain't that funny? Where?"

"The funny thing is I don't know where," Laura replied.

Mrs. Bahrr had settled down, and, having accomplished her open purpose, began to train her batteries for her hidden motive.

"Things gits lost funny ways, queer ways, and sometimes ornery ways. Ever' now an' then things is simply missin' here in this burg--just missin'. But again there's such queer folks even in what you call the best s'ciety. Now ain't that so?"

Laura agreed amiably. In truth, she wanted to get her mind away from its substratum of unpleasant and unusual thought for which she could not account. Nothing could take her farther from it than Mrs. Bahrr's small talk about people and things. She knew better than to accept the gossip for facts, but there was no courteous way of stopping Stellar now, anyhow. One had to meet her on the threshold for that.

"'Tain't always the little, petty thievin' sneak gits the things, even if they do git the blame of it. No, 'tain't." Mrs. Bahrr rambled on, fixing her hook eyes square into her hostess at just the right moment for emphasis. "I knowed the same thing happen twice. Once back in Indiany, where I come from--jist a little town on White River. There was a girl come to that town from"--hesitatingly--"from Californy; said to be rich, an' dressed it all right; had every man there crazy about her, an' her spendin' money like water pours over a mill-wheel in March. Tell you who she looked like--jist a mite like this Miss Swim stayin' at your house now--big eyes an' innocent-lookin' like her, but this Californy girl was a lot the best-lookin' of the two--a lot. An' she was rich--or so everybody thought. This un ain't. I got that out of Ponk 'fore he knowed it. An'--well, to make a story end somewhere this side of eternity, I never could bear them ramblin' kind of folks--first thing folks knowed a rich old bachelor got animated with her, just clear _animated_, an' literally swore by her. An'--well, things got to missin' a little an' a little more, an', sir--well"--slowly and impressively--"it turned out at last that this girl who they said was so rich was a _thief_, takin' whatever she could get, 'cause she was hard up an' too proud to go back to Oregon to tell her folks. An' that rich bachelor jist defended her ever' way--'d say he took things accidental, an' then help her to git 'em back, or git away with them--it was like a real drammy jist like they acted out in the picture show t'other night down-town. There was lots of talk, an' it nearly broke his sister's--I mean his mother's--heart. But, pshaw! that all happened years ago down in Indiany on the White River. It's all forgot long 'go. Guess I'd never thought of it again if this Swim girl hadn't come here with her big eyes, remindin' me of that old forgot eppisode, an' your losin' your purse mysterious. How things happen, year in an' year out, place after place, the same kind of things; good folks everywhere, though--everywhere. I was in York's office late yistyday afternoon, an' this girl comes in. Too bad she's so poor an' so pretty."

There was a venomous twist of the hooks at that word "pretty."

"But she's in trouble some way, all right, I know, an' York 'll help her out. _I_ wouldn't ask him. Men take more int'rist naturally in young an' pretty women. But it's different with older women. I hope York never gits caught sometime like that man I knowed back in Indiany. He's too smart for that. Miss Swim must have told York about her money shortage yistyday. The postmaster said she'd been waitin' for a check considerable. I couldn't get nothin' out of _him_, whether it had come yet or not. But I guess not. But la! la! she's your guest; you wouldn't let her suffer; an' I ain't tellin' a soul what I know about things. I do know what they say, of course. York won't let her suffer. But I'm so much obliged to you. Four dollars will be all I need, an' I'll pay you with the first bakin's. I guess I'll set some folks thinkin' when they see I can make my own way--"

Laura Macpherson was on her feet and it was her eyes now that were holding the woman of the steel hooks.

"Miss Swaim is our guest, the daughter of an old friend of the Macphersons. Of course we--"

Oh what was the use? Laura's anger fell away. It was too ridiculous to engage in a quarrel with the town long-tongue. York was right. The only way to get along with Stellar Bahrr was not to traffic with her. Mrs. Bahrr rose also, gripping at the chance for escape uninjured.

"I'll see you this afternoon if you still feel like helpin' me, an' York is willin'. I clear forgot to put out my ice-card. Good day. Good day."

The woman shuffled away, leaving the mistress of "Cluny Castle" in the grip of many evil spirits. The demon of anger, of doubt, of contempt, of incipient distrust, of self-accusation for even listening--these and others contended with the angel of the sense of humor and the natural courtesy of a well-bred woman.

And then the lost purse came up again.

"I may have left it in Jerry's room when I went to that closet after my wrap last evening. I'll never learn to keep my clothes out of our guest-room, I suppose," Laura said to herself, going at once to Jerry's room.

As she pushed aside some dresses suspended by hoops to a pole in the closet, Jerry's beaded hand-bag fell from a shelf above the hangings, and the fastening, loosened by the fall, let the contents roll out and lay exposed on the floor.

As Laura began to gather them up and put them back in their place, she saw her own silk purse stuffed tightly into the bottom of her guest's hand-bag. And then and there the poison tips of Stellar Bahrr's shafts began a festering sore deep and difficult to reach.

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It was high noon when York Macpherson and his fair companion returned from the far side of the big Macpherson ranch. Jerry's hair was blown in ringlets about her forehead and neck. Her cheeks were blooming and her eyes were like stars. With the fresh morning breeze across the prairie, the exhilarating ride on horseback, and the novel interest in a ranch whose appointments were so unlike "Eden" and the other Winnowoc Valley farms, Jerry had the ecstasy of a new freedom to quicken her pulse-beat. She had solved her problem; now she was free for her romantic nature to expand. It was such a freedom as she had never in her wilful life known before, because it had a purpose in it such as she had never known before, a purpose in which the subconscious knowledge of dependence on somebody else, the subjection to somebody else's ultimate control, played no part.

To Laura Macpherson she seemed to have burst from the bud to the full-blown flower in one short forenoon.

York's face, however, was wearing that impenetrable mask that even his sister's keen and loving eyes could never pierce. He had been impenetrable often in the last few weeks. But of the York back of that unreadable face Laura was sure. Even in their mutual teasings the deep, brotherly affection was unwavering. As far as it lay in York's power he would never fail to make up to his companionable sister for what circumstances had taken from her. And yet--the substratum of her disturbed consciousness would send an upheaval to the surface now and then. All normal minds are made alike and played upon by the same influences. The difference lies in the intensity of control to subdue or yield to the force of these influences. Things had happened in that morning ride that York had planned merely for the beneficence of the prairie breezes upon the bewildered purposes of the guest of the house.

On the far side of the "Kingussie" ranch the two riders had halted in the shade of a clump of wild plum-trees beside the trail that follows the course of the Sage Brush. Below them a little creek wound through a shelving outcrop of shale, bordered by soft, steep earth banks wherever the shale disappeared. This Kingussie Creek was sometimes a swift, dangerous stream, but oftener it was a mere runlet with deep water-holes carved here and there in the yielding shale. Just now, at the approach of July heat, there was only a tiny thread of water trickling clear over yellow rock, or deep pools lying in muddy thickness in the stagnant places.

"Not much like the Winnowoc," York suggested, as his companion sat staring down at the stream-bed below.

"Everything is different here," Jerry said, meditatively. "I've traveled quite a little before; been as far as the White Mountains and the beautiful woodsy country up in York State. There's a lot of upness and downness to the scenery, but the people--except, of course--" Jerry smiled bewitchingly.

"Except Ponk, of course," York supplied, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"How well you comprehend!" Jerry assured him. "But, seriously, the world is so different out here--the--the people and their ways and all."

"No, Jerry, it isn't that. The climate is different. The shapes of things differ. Instead of the churned-up ridged and rugged timber-decked lands of Pennsylvania and York State, the Creator of scenery chose to pour out this land mainly a smooth and level and treeless prairie--like chocolate on the top of a layer cake."

"Chocolate is good, with sand instead of sugar," Jerry interrupted.

"But as to the people--the real heart of the real folks of the Sage Brush--there's no difference. They all have 'eyes, hands, organs, senses, affections, passions.' They are all 'fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed with the same means, warmed and cooled with the same summer and winter' as the cultured and uncultured folk of the Winnowoc Valley and the city of Philadelphia. The trouble with us is we don't take time to read them--nor even first of all to read ourselves. Of course I might except old Fishing Teddy, that fellow you see away down there where the shade is deepest," York added, to relieve the preachment he didn't want to seem to be giving, yet really wanted this girl to understand. "He's a hermit-crab and seldom comes among us. Every community has its characters, you know."

"He was among us last night, and went home with Joe Thomson," Jerry replied, looking with curious interest at the motionless brown figure up-stream in the shadow of a tall earth bank.

York gave a start and stared at the girl in surprise. "How do you know? Did the Big Dipper come calling on you? That sort of information is in the Great Bear's line."

Jerry flushed hotly as she remembered her promise not to tell of Mrs. Bahrr's call. In a dim sort of way she felt herself entangled for the moment. Then she looked full at York, with deep, honest eyes, saying, simply:

"Joe Thomson was calling on me last night, and I saw this old fellow, Hans Theodore, Joe named him, waiting on the driveway, and the two went away together, a pair of aces."

"How do you know, fair lady, that this is the same creature? And how do you happen to know Joe Thomson?" York inquired, blandly, veiling his curious interest with indifference.

"I happened to meet both of these country gentlemen on a certain day. In fact, I dined _al fresco_ with one when I was riding in my chariot, incognito, alone, unattended by gallant outriders, about my blank blank rural estate in the heart of the Sage Brush country of Kansas. The 'blank blank' stands for a term not profane at all, but one I never want to hear again--that awful word '_blowout_.'"

Jerry's humor was mixed with sarcasm and confusion, both of which troubled the mind of her companion. This girl had so many sides. She was so unused to the Western ways and he was trying to teach her a deeper understanding of human needs, and the human values regardless of geography, when she suddenly revealed a self-possession telling of scraps of her experience in a matter-of-fact way; and yet a confusion for some deeper reason possessed her at certain angles. Why? That mention of Joe Thomson was annoying to York. Why? Jerry's assumed familiarity with such a hermit outcast as the old fisherman was puzzling. Why? York must get back to solid ground at once. This girl was throwing him off his feet. Clearly she was not going to chatter idly of all her experiences. She could know things and not tell them.

"Seriously, Jerry, there are no geographical limits for culture and strength of character. If you stay here long enough you will appreciate that," he began again where he had thrown himself off the trail to avoid a preachment.

"Yes," Jerry agreed, with the same degree of seriousness.

"See, coming yonder." York pointed up the trail to where a much-worn automobile came chuffing down the shaly road toward the ford of Kingussie Creek. "That is Thelma Ekblad and her crippled brother Paul. If you look right you will see the same lines of courage and sweetness in his face that are in my sister's. And yet, although their lives have been cast in widely different planes, their crosses are the same and they have lifted them in the same way."

Jerry hadn't really seen the lines in Laura Macpherson's face, because she had been too full of her own troubles. With York's words she felt a sense of remorse. Finding fault with herself was new to her and it made her very uncomfortable. Also this girl coming, this Thelma Ekblad, was the one whom Mrs. Bahrr had said York had pretended to be interested in once. Jerry had remembered every word of Stellar Bahrr's gossipy tongue, because her mind had been in that high-strung, tense condition last night to receive and hold impressions unconsciously, like a sensitized plate. The thought now made her peculiarly unhappy.

"Joe Thomson's farm is next to hers. Some day I'll tell you her story. It is a story--a real-life drama--and his."

York's words added another degree to Jerry's disturbed mental frame.

"How do you do, Thelma? Hello, Paul! Fine weather for cutting alfalfa. My machines are at it this morning." York greeted the occupants of the car cordially.

"Good morning, York. We are rushing a piece of the mower up to the shop. Had a breakdown an hour ago."

Thelma was tanned brown, but her fair braids gleamed about her uncovered head, and when she smiled a greeting her fine white teeth were worth seeing. Paul Ekblad waved a thin white hand as the car passed the two on horseback, and the delicate lines of his pale, studious face justified York's comparison of it with Laura Macpherson's. Jerry saw her hostess at that moment in a new light. Burdened for the moment as she was under the discomfort of what seemed half-consciously to rebuke the frivolous girl that she dimly knew herself to be, the sudden memory of her resolve declared to Joe Thomson in the shadow-flecked porch the night before came as a balm and a stimulant in one, to give her purpose, self-respect, and peace.

Thus it was that Jerry came in to "Castle Cluny" at high noon the picture of health and high spirits, shaming Laura Macpherson's doubt and sorrow which her morning had brought her. Laura was thoroughly well-bred, and she had, beyond that, a strong and virtuous heritage of Scotch blood that made for uprightness and sincerity. With one effort she swept out of her mind all that had harassed it since the cup episode at the breakfast-table, establishing anew within her understanding the force of her brother's admonition concerning any affiliation with the Big Dipper, the town meddler and trouble-maker.

Late that afternoon, as Laura sat sewing in the shade of the honeysuckle-vines, Stellar Bahrr hurried across lots again and hitched cautiously up to the side door. Listening a moment, she heard the sound of Laura's scissors falling on the cement floor of the porch, and Laura's impatient exclamation, "There you go again!" as she reached to pick them up and examine the points of their blades.

Stellar hitched cautiously a little further along the wall, and stood in the shade of the house, outside the porch vines.

"Laury," she called, in a sibilant voice, "I jis' run in to say I won't need that money at all. I'm goin' to go out sewin', an' I can git all I can do, now the wheat harves' promises so well. Ever'body's spending money on clo'es an' a lot of summer an' fall sewin' goin' to rot, you might say. I'll be jis' blind busy, an' I can sew better than I can bake or trim. But I'm same obliged."

"Won't you come in?" Laura must not be rude, at any cost.

"No, I can't. I must run back. My light bread's raisin' and it'll raise the ruff if I don't work the meanness out of it."

Just then Jerry Swaim came bounding through the hall doorway. "Look here, Laura! See what I have found." She held up her beaded hand-bag and pulled the stuffed silken purse out of it. "Now how did it ever get in there? I'm a good many things, but I never knew I was a shoplifter," Jerry declared, laughingly, a bit of confused blush making her prettier than usual.

"Why--why--" Laura was embarrassed, not for Jerry's sake, but on account of those steel hooks thrusting themselves into her back through the honeysuckle-vines.

"Say, Laury, I jis' wanted to say I'm goin' to Mis' Lenwell's first. Good-by." Stellar Bahrr's voice, sharp and thin, cut through the vines.

As Laura turned to reply Jerry saw her fair face redden, and her voice was almost harsh as she spoke clearly, to be well heard.

"I remember now. I must have put it in there by mistake when you were down-town yesterday afternoon. I guess I thought it was my bag."

Mrs. Bahrr, turning to go, had caught sight of Jerry's hand-bag through the leaves, and remembered perfectly that Jerry had carried it with her down-town the day before, and how well it matched the beaded trimming of her parasol, her wide-brimmed chiffon hat, and the sequins of her sash trimmings against her silk walking-skirt.

Jerry recalled taking the bag with her, too, and she recalled just then what Mrs. Stellar Bahrr had hinted about Laura not wanting York to admire other women. Why did that thought come to the girl's mind just now? Was the wish of the evil mind of the woman hitching away across lots and corkscrewing down alleyways projecting itself so far as this?

XI

AN INTERLUDE IN "EDEN"

An interlude should be brief. This one ran through a few midsummer days with amazing rapidity, considering that in its duration the current of a life was changed from one channel, whither it had been tending for almost a quarter of a century, to another and widely different course that ran away from the very goal-mark of all its years of inspiring ambition.

It was late afternoon of a July day. Jerusha Darby sat in the rose-arbor, fanning and rocking in rhythmic motion. The rose-vines had ceased to bloom. Their thinning foliage was augmented now by the heavier shade of thrifty moon-vines.

Midsummer found "Eden" no less restful and luxuriant in its July setting than it was in the freshness of June.

The afternoon train had crawled lazily up the Winnowoc Valley on schedule time, permitting Eugene Wellington, in white flannels, white oxfords, and pink-pin-striped white silk shirt, fresh from shave and shower-bath, to come on schedule time to the rose-arbor for a conference with Mrs. Darby.

The swift flow of events had not outwardly affected the handsome young man. The time of the early June roses had found him poor in worldly goods, but rich in a trained mind, a developed genius, a yearning after all things beautiful, a faith in divine Providence, abounding confidence in his own power to win to the mastery in his beloved art, and glorying in his freedom to do the thing he chose to do. It found him in love, and the almost accepted lover of a beautiful, wilful, magnetic girl--a girl with a sturdy courage in things wherein he was lacking; a frivolous, untrained girl, yet with surprising dependableness in any crisis. It found him the favorite nephew of a quiet, uninteresting, rich old money-grubbing uncle and his dominant, but highly approving wife, whose elegant home was always open to him the while he felt himself a pensioner on its hospitality.

Mid-July found him, in effect, the master where he had been the poor relation; the rich uncle gone forever from earthly affairs; a dominant aunt still ruling--so she fancied--as she had always ruled, but with the consciousness of her first defeated purpose rankling bitterly within her. It found Eugene still in love with the same beautiful, wilful girl, but far from any assurance of being a really accepted lover. It found him insensibly forgetting the aspirations of a lifetime and beginning, little by little, to grasp after the Egyptian flesh-pots. Life was fast becoming a round of easy days, whose routine duties were more than compensated by its charming domestic settings. The one unsatisfied desire was for the presence of the bright, inspiring girl who had left a void when she went away, for whose return all "Eden" was waiting.

The swift course of events had created other changes. Some growths are slow, and some amazingly swift, depending upon the nature of the life-germ in the seed and the soil of the planting. In Eugene Wellington the love of beauty found its comfort in his present planting. It was easier to stay where beauty was ready-made than to go out and create it in some less lovely surroundings. Combine with this artistic temperament an inherent lack of initiative and courage, a less resistant force, and the product is sure. Moreover, this very falling away from the incentive to artistic endeavor exacted its penalty in a dulled spirituality. Whoever denies the allegiance due, in however small a measure, to the call of art within him pays always the same price--a pound of tender bleeding flesh nearest his heart. For Eugene Wellington the Shylock knife was sharpening itself.

This July afternoon there were no misgivings in his soul, however--no black shadows of failure ahead. All the serpents of "Eden" were very good little snakes indeed. After a while he would paint again, leisurely, exquisitely; especially would he paint when Jerry came home.

As he lighted a cigarette, a recent custom of his, and strolled down the shady way to the rose-arbor to meet Mrs. Darby, he drew deep draughts of satisfaction. It had been an unusually good day for him. Unusually good. Business had made it necessary to open some closed records in the late Cornelius Darby's affairs, records that Mrs. Jerusha Darby herself had not yet examined. They put a new light on the whole Darby situation. They went further and threw some side-lights on the late Jim Swaim's transactions. Altogether they were worth knowing. And Eugene, wielding a high hand with himself, had, once for all, stilled his finer sense of fitness in his right to know these things. He had also made rapid strides in this brief time toward comprehending business ethics as differing from church ethics and artistic ethics. Face to face in a conflict with Jerry Swaim, with Aunt Jerry Darby, with his conscience, his God, he was never sure of himself. But as to managing things, once he had shut his doors and barred them, he was confident. It was a truly confident Gene who stepped promptly into the rose-arbor on the moment expected. To the old woman waiting for him there he was good to look upon.

"I'm glad you are on time, Gene," Mrs. Darby began, rocking and fanning more deliberately. "I'm ready now to settle matters once for all."

"Yes, Aunt Jerry," Eugene responded, fitting himself gracefully into the settings of this summer retreat, with a look of steady penetration coming into his eyes as he took in the face before him.

"Any news from the Argonaut to-day?" he asked, at length, as Mrs. Darby sat silently rocking.

"Not a line. I guess Jerry is waiting for me to ask her to come back. She must be through with her romantic fling by this time, and about out of money, too. So now's the time to act and settle matters, as I say, once for all. Jerry _must come home_."

"Amen, and amen," Eugene agreed, fervently.

"And if she won't come home herself, she must be brought--to see things as we do. _Must_, I say, Eugene."

"I'm glad she didn't say 'brought home' if she's going to send me after her," the young man thought. The memory of having been sent after Jerry in years gone by, and of coming back empty-handed, but full-hearted and sore-headed, were still strong within him. "How shall we make her see?" he inquired.

Mrs. Darby rocked vigorously for a few minutes. Then she brought her chair to a dead stop and laid down the law without further shifting of anchors.

"All my property, my real estate, country and city, my bank stocks, my government bonds, my business investments--everything--is mine to keep for my lifetime, and to pass by will to whomsoever I choose. Of course it's only natural I should choose the only member of my family now living to succeed to my possessions."

How the "my" sounded out as the woman talked of her god, to whose service she was bound, but of whose blessings she understood so little!

Eugene sat waiting and thinking.

"Of course, whoever marries Jerry with my approval will come into a fortune worth having."

"He certainly will," Eugene declared, fervently.

A clear vision of Jerry and June roses swept his soul with refreshing sweetness, followed by the no less clear imagery of Uncle Cornie stepping slowly but persistently at the wrong moment after his wabbling discus. He looked away down the lilac-walk, unconsciously expecting the familiar, silent, uninteresting face and figure to come again to view. To the artist spirit in him the old man was there as real to vision as he had been on that last--lost--June day.

"You are thinking of Jerry herself. I am thinking of her inheritance, which is a deal more sensible, although Jerry is an unusually interesting and surprising girl," the old woman was saying.

"Unusually," Eugene echoed. "And in case you do not make a will?"

The young man was still looking down the lilac-walk as he asked the question, seemingly oblivious to the narrow eyes of Mrs. Darby scrutinizing his face.

"I have already made it. If things do not please me I shall change it. I may do that half a dozen times if I choose before I'm through with it. Now listen to me." The woman spoke sharply.

Eugene listened, wondering the while what sort of lightning-rod she carried, to speak with such assurance of all she meant to do before she was through with the transactions of this life. Uncle Cornie had not been so well defended.

"I want you to write to Jerry to come home. You can pay her expenses. She will take the money quicker from you than from me. She's as proud as Lucifer in some things, once she's set. But she's in love with you, and where a girl's in love she listens."

Eugene looked up quickly. "Are you sure?" he asked, eagerly.

"Of course I am! Why shouldn't I know love when I see it?" Mrs. Darby inquired.

Yes, why?

"But you mustn't give in, nor plead with her. Just tell her how well fixed you are, and how much she is missing here, and that you will wait her time, only she must come back, and promise to stay here, or I'll cut my will to bits, I certainly shall. I'll write myself to York Macpherson. He's level-headed and honorable as truth. If he was dead in love with Jerry himself--as he no doubt is by this time--he'd just put it all away if he found out he was denying me my rights. I'll put it up to his honor. And so with him at that end of the line, and you here, and me really moving the chessmen, it can't be a losing game, Eugene. It simply can't. Jerry may not get tired of her new playthings right away, but she will after a while. It isn't natural for her to take to a life so awfully different from her bringing up. When the new wears off she'll come home, even if necessity didn't drive her, as it's bound to sooner or later. She's nearly out of money right now, and she can't sponge off the Macphersons forever and be Jim Swaim's child. Is everything clear to you now?"

Eugene threw away his cigarette and lighted a fresh one, his face the while as expressionless as ever the dry, dull face of Cornelius Darby had been. At last he answered:

"Mrs. Darby has made a will, presumably in favor of her niece, Geraldine Swaim--a will subject to replacement by any number of wills creating other beneficiaries. In any event, Mrs. Darby proposes to have a voice in the final disposition of her property."

Mrs. Darby nodded emphatically. "I certainly do."

Eugene smiled approval of such good judgment. "You are right, Mrs. Darby. What is your own you should control, always. But, frankly, Aunt Jerry, it is Geraldine Swaim herself who is my fortune--if I can ever acquire it."

"You don't object to her prospects, I hope," Mrs. Darby interrupted, with a twinkle in her eye.

"I couldn't, for her sake. And I am artistic enough to love the charm of an estate like this; and sensible enough, maybe, to appreciate the influence and opportunity that are afforded by the other financial assets of the Darby possessions. I'll do all in my power to bring Jerry back to a life of ease and absence of all anxiety and responsibility. Shall I go out to Kansas after her?"

An uncomfortable feeling about that York Macpherson had begun now to pull hard upon Eugene's complacent assurance, although he had rebelled a few minutes ago at the thought of going anywhere after Jerry.

"Never," Mrs. Darby responded. "It would just give her another chance for adventure and seem to acknowledge that we couldn't do without her."

In truth, Mrs. Darby was shrewd enough to know that with Eugene on the ground she could not count on York Macpherson as her ally. York would naturally champion Jerry's cause, and she knew that Eugene Wellington would be no match for the diplomatic man of affairs whom she had known intimately from his childhood.

"Aunt Jerry, how much do you know of the value of this Swaim estate?" Eugene asked, suddenly.

"Very little. Cornelius told me that he had a full account of it. That was on the very day he was--he passed away. The papers, except the one Jerry found here the day after the funeral, have all been mislaid."

"Then I'd advise you to write to this Macpherson person and find out exactly what we have to fight against," the young man suggested. "Meantime I'll write to Jerry. I'm sure she should be ready to listen now. All I claim to know of that beastly region out West I learned from my father, but that is enough for me. If there were really a bit of landscape worth the cost of the canvas I might go out there and paint it. But who cares to paint in only two colors, blue one half--that's sky, unclouded, monotonous; and chrome yellow, the other half--that's land. I could paint the side of the cattle-barn over yonder half yellow, half blue, and put as much expression into it."

Mrs. Darby listened approvingly. "I'm very thankful that you see things so sensibly. The sooner you replace what isn't worth while with what is the sooner you will know you are a success in your business. We will write those letters to-night. I'm having your favorite dishes for dinner now, and we'll be served here. It is so pleasant here at this time of day. I'll go and see to things right away, and we'll have everything brought out pretty soon."

The owner of all this dainty comfort and restfulness and beauty hurried away, leaving Eugene Wellington alone in the rose-arbor--alone with memories of Jerry Swaim, and Uncle Cornie, and life, and love, and hope and high ambition, and himself--the self that a man must go right with, if he goes with him at all.

For a long half-hour he sat there in the rose-arbor, the appealing call of his divine gift filling his artist soul. Then his judgment prevailed. What he most wanted to have was here, ready to have now--and to hold later with only a little patient waiting. A few weeks, or months, or maybe even a year, a run of four swift seasons, and the girl of his heart's heart would come back into her own, and find him ready for her coming. That impossible York was not to be considered. Jerry was no fool, if she was sometimes a bit foolish in her pranks. And he, Eugene Wellington, had only this day learned of the whole Swaim situation, what was vastly valuable to know. Meantime, his the task to keep that precious Jerusha Darby will intact; or, failing in that, came the more difficult and delicate task of controlling or holding back the pen that would write another will. And in the end Jerry would love him forever for what he would save for her--for her--

The memory of what he had learned that day in the business house in the city came with its testimony that he was shaping his life course well. Only one little foxy fear dodged about in his mind--the fear that Jerry--the Jerry he knew, lovable in spite of all her little failings, beautiful, picturesque, and surprising--that this Jerry, whom he thought he knew so well, might prove to be an unknowable, unguessable Jerry whose course would baffle all his plans, his efforts, his heart longings. It must not be. He would prevent that. But could he?

The coming of dainty viands with exquisite appointments gave nourishment to his ready appetite, and dulled for a time the thing within him that sometime must cry out to power or be sleeked down into fat and unfeeling subjection.

That night two letters were written to New Eden, Kansas, but neither writer really knew the reader to whom the letter was written, nor measured life purposes by the same gauge, so setting anew the world-old stage for a drama in human affairs whose crowning act shapes human destinies.

XII

THIS SIDE OF THE RUBICON

In the late afternoon of a July Sabbath Jerry Swaim had gone for a stroll along the quiet outskirts of New Eden. Laura was napping in the porch swing, and York had gone to his office in answer to a telephone call. Jerry was rarely lonely with herself and she was a good walker. She was learning, too, the need for being alone with herself, for there were many things crowding into her mind that demanded recognition.

Jerry attended church with the Macphersons every Sunday, but it was a mere perfunctory act on her part. To-day the minister was away. He had gone to the upper Sage Brush to officiate at the funeral of Mrs. Nell Belkap that had been Nell Poser, she of the tow hair and big-lunging baby. She had died of congestion, following over-heating in cooking for threshing-hands for her mother, her father being the kind of man that objected to hired help for "wimmin folks." All that was nothing to Jerry, who found herself wondering, in a vague sort of way, just where that baby would sprawl itself, unattached to its mother's anchorage. Babies were not in Jerry's scheme of things at all.

The substitute minister was more interesting to think about. He had a three-piece country charge over which to spread the Gospel, "Summit School-House," "Slack Crick Church," and "Locust Grove Grange." He said "have went" and he called the members of one of Saint Paul's churches "The Thessalonnykins." And he really didn't know the Lord's Prayer correctly, for he said "forgive us our trespasses," instead of "our debts," as dear accurate Saint Matthew has written it.

Jerry's mind was on him as an aside, on him, and that Paul Ekblad whom she caught sight of in the Ekblad car with Thelma. They had stopped a minute to speak with York Macpherson as they were on their way to that up-country Poser funeral. Why should Paul Ekblad go so far to a funeral?

Jerry strolled aimlessly along the smooth road leading out to the New Eden cemetery, her bead-trimmed parasol shading her bare head, and her pale-green organdie gown making her appear very summery. Jerry had the trick of fitting all weather except the heated, sand-filled days of mid-June on a freight-train, which condition Junius Brutus Ponk declared "was enough to muss a angel's wings an' make them divine partial-eclipse angel draperies look dingier than dish-rags."

There were half a dozen well-grown cottonwood-trees in the cemetery, with rows of promising little elms, catalpas, and box-elders all symmetrically set. The grass was brown, but free from weeds; the walks were only smooth paths. But the shade of the cottonwood group, and the quiet of the place, seemed inviting. Every foot of the wind-swept elevation was visible to the whole town, but the distance was guarantee for undisturbed meditation. Jerry had no interest in cemeteries. She had rarely visited the corner of "Eden" where the few elect by family ties had their last resting-place. She walked down the grassy paths toward the largest cottonwoods, now, indifferent alike to the humble headstone and the expensive and sometimes grotesque granite memorial. By the tallest shaft in the place, designated by Stellar Bahrr as "Granddad Poser's monniment," she sat down in the shade of the biggest trees, and looked out at New Eden in its Sabbath-afternoon nap; at the winding Sage Brush and the green and yellow fields, and black hedgerows, and rolling prairies, with purple-shadowed draws and pale-brown swells, and groves about distant farmhouses. She sat still for a long time, and she was so lost in this view that she did not hear steps approaching until Mr. Ponk was almost beside her.

"Good afternoon, Miss Swaim. Takin' a constitutional? They ain't no Swaims laid away out here I reckon."

"Oh no," Jerry replied. "I shouldn't come here for that if there were."

Something about Ponk always made her good-natured. He was so grotesquely impossible to her--a caricature cut from some comic magazine, rounded out and animated.

"Say you wouldn't? Now that's real queer." The short man opened his little eyes wide with surprise. "Now I soar down here regular every Sunday evenin' of the world, summer and winter."

"What for?" Jerry asked, looking up at the speaker with curiosity.

New Eden was still in that stage when a funeral was a public event. And the belief was still maintained that the dead out in the cemetery must be conscious of every attention or lack of it shown to their memory by visits and flowers, and the price of tombstones. In a word, to the New Eden living, the New Eden dead were not really in the Great Hereafter, but here, demanding consideration in the social economy of the community.

Ponk was more shocked at Jerry's query than she could begin to comprehend, and his interest in her and pity for her took a still stronger grip on life.

"Why, Miss Swaim, I come out here to see my mother. I 'ain't never failed to bring her a flower in summer, or a green leaf in winter, one single Sunday since she was laid out there on the south slope one Easter day eight Aprils ago."

"But she isn't there." Jerry spoke gently now, realizing that she had hurt him unintentionally.

"She is to me, an' I'd ruther think it thataway an' feel like I was callin' every Sunday, never forgettin'," Ponk said, sadly.

"Where's your dead to you, Miss Swaim?" he asked, after a pause.

Jerry, who was gazing down the Sage Brush Valley, turned slowly at his words, her big eyes luminous with tears.

"They are not." She waved a hand against viewless air.

"Oh yes, they are, walkin' beside you every day, lovin' you and proud of you! A good mother just lives on an' keeps doin' good, and so does a father, if you let 'em." Ponk hesitated, and his moon-round face was flushed. "I ain't tryin' to preach," he added, hastily. "They's some things, though, we all got to cling to or else get hustled off our feet into a big black void where we just sink and die. It ain't just Sage-Brushers, but it's all Christians--Baptists and Cammylites and High Church and everybody. It's safer to stand in the light than sink in the bottomless night. But, say, look who's comin' an' see what's trailin' him. I guess I'll be soarin' back to the hotel now. Pleased to meet you--always am pleased." Ponk lifted his hat and bowed uncovered, and uncovered walked away.

What he had said in the sincerity of his spiritual belief fell on fertile soil in the mind of his listener. He had preached a sermon to her that was good for her to hear.

Jerry looked out in the direction he had indicated and saw York Macpherson, walking a bit briskly for him and the place and the afternoon.

It was no wonder that Jerusha Darby should expect York to be caught by the charms of his guest. As she sat there in the shade of the cottonwoods, where, in all the cemetery, the blue grass grew rankest, with her pale-green gown, her smooth pink cheeks, and the wavy masses of golden-brown hair coiled low at the back of her head, York wondered if the spirit of the wild rose in bloom and the spirit of some Greek nymph had not combined in the personification before him.

At the gateway he met Ponk.

"Why do you run away? I have a special-delivery letter for Miss Swaim. I thought I'd better come and find her, but that needn't interfere with you."

"Oh, you smooth-bore! But I have to go, anyhow. I'm headin' off what's trailin' you. Don't look back. It's Stellar Bahrr, comin' out to see who's been to see their folks to-day and who's neglectin' 'em, 'specially late arrivals. She's seen my game, though, now, an' she's shabbin' off to the side gate, knowin' I'd head her back to town. Say, York, she's after Miss Swaim now. You watch out. Them that's the worthlessest and has the least influence in a community can start the biggest fires burnin'. Everybody in New Eden's been buffaloed by her--just scared blue--except maybe us two. You ain't, I know, and I'm right sure I ain't."

"Ponk, you are as good as you are good-looking," York said, heartily. "The Big Dipper could start a tale of our guest meeting gentlemen friends in the cemetery. And yet for privacy it's about like meeting them on the sidewalk before the Commercial Hotel. However, she's started scandal with less material. I have business with Miss Swaim, so I'll walk home with her."

Jerry waited for her host under the flickering, murmuring leaves of the cottonwood. She had seen some woman wandering diagonally from the cemetery road toward the corner of the inclosure, but she had no interest in strangers and might never have thought of her again but for a word of York's that day.

He had seen the girl looking after Stellar as she made a wide flank movement. A sense of duty coupled with a strange interest in Jerry, for which he had as yet given no account to himself, was urging him to tell her, as he had told his sister, to have no traffic with the town's greatest liability, but with all of Ponk's warning he could not bring himself to speak now.

"May I sit here with you awhile?" he asked, lifting his hat as he spoke.

"Certainly. It is so quiet and peaceful out here, and, as I have no associations with this place, I can sit here without being unhappy or irreverent," Jerry replied.

"I came out to find you. There are callers at home now, so I'll give you my message here, unless you want to follow Mr. Ponk's example and 'soar' off home."

"That man interests me," Jerry declared. "He said some good things about his mother just now. And yet he's so--so funny."

"Oh, Ponk's outside is against him. If he could be husked out of himself and let the community get down to the kernel of him he is really fine wheat," York said, conscious the while that he had not meant, for some reason, to praise the strutting fellow. Yet he had never felt so toward the little man before.

"I have a special-delivery letter for you which came this afternoon. While you read it I'll go out to the gate and speak to the Ekblads, coming yonder."

Jerry read her letter--the one Eugene had written after his conference with Jerusha Darby in the rose-arbor. In it he had been faithful to the old woman's smallest demands, but the message itself was a masterpiece. It was gracefully written, for Eugene Wellington's penmanship was art itself; and gracefully worded, and it breathed the perfumes of that lovely "Eden" on every page.

Jerry closed her eyes for a moment in the midst of the reading, and the wind-swept cemetery and all the summer-seared valley of the Sage Brush vanished. The Macphersons; Ponk; Thelma Ekblad in the automobile by the cemetery gate, holding something in her arms, and her fair-haired brother, Paul; Joe Thomson (why Joe?)--all were nothing. Before her eyes all was Eugene--Eugene and "Eden." Then she read on to the end. One reading was enough. When York came back she was sitting with the letter neatly folded into its envelope again, lying in her lap.

York had a shrewd notion of what that letter contained, but there was nothing in Jerry's face by which to judge of its effect on her. Two things he was learning about her--one, that she didn't tell all she knew, after the manner of most frivolous-minded girls; the other, that she didn't tell anything until she was fully ready to do so. He admired both traits, even though they baffled him. In his own pocket was Jerusha Darby's letter, also specially delivered. He sat down by Jerry and waited for her to speak.