Chapter IX: Part 9

By a supreme effort of the will she brought all her faculties to bear. She would first understand this and then she would know how to meet it. She was a resourceful woman and used to bending others to her will. He was the son of his father. Swiftly her mind climbed the stairs and bent over the invalid. Relentlessly she seized his life and dragged it out of the sick bed, and submitted it to a searching examination. All his life the Earl had been a sentimentalist. All his life he had made mistakes. The woman who loved him had once called them "glorious mistakes." Everybody else called them just mistakes. Out of quixotic love for the Countess Diana he had left England under a cloud, bearing the inevitable implication of another's guilt. Another man would have stayed in London and have been her lover. That was his first mistake. An exile, branded as a thief, he had tried to hide himself away from civilization, became a cattle-man, in a country where white women were a curiosity, was thrown by circumstances into relations with a pretty little Indian woman, had a child by her, and married the woman that he might not be the father of an illegitimate child. That was his second mistake. Any other man would have married her by tribal rites and, when he got ready, made her a present or made it worth while for some one else to marry her. When the death of Diana's husband, the real embezzler, called him back to a title and to the life and the land and the woman he loved, he chose to stay with the little savage who was the mother of his child. Another mistake! And so he continued. Sentimental again with regard to his duty to the child, he had driven the Indian mother to suicide. Free at last to marry the woman for whom he had made such fantastic sacrifices, they were both middle-aged people, the bloom to life, the blush of love was gone. Then, in the first glow of their new-found happiness, Diana died, and he was alone. What had the idealist to show for all his glorious "mistakes"? for his unselfish adhesion to a self-conscious conception of duty? It was ridiculous. We live in a practical world. That world has two standards--a theoretical one, that no one uses, and the practical one, the actual one. To try to live outside the actual is to try to reverse the law of gravitation. We have invented the theoretical standard to fool others into a course we would not take ourselves. It's a trap for the simple-minded. It was madness. Yes, this boy was the mad son of a mad sentimentalist. And these sentimentalists drag other people to ruin with them. But why should she, a practical woman, a woman of the world, the real world, be made the victim of these madmen? Her will, seldom thwarted and never tamed, rose up for battle and said, no, NO!

"I won't be a party to this, Edith," he said, looking into the fire, and the moment he had said it he began to realize what such a decision would involve.

One step forward or backward wasn't enough. One couldn't stand still. One couldn't stop. My God, where would it end? He couldn't take everything away from her and then leave her to herself. Lord Yester would gladly assume the burden and accept the consequences. If he thwarted her, if he stood between her and her desires--what? He became the nurse of an irresponsible sick woman. The love that might have made that possible was gone, never really existed. She had stolen this boy's love and was stealing his life. To make her drop it, he would have to resort to force--then what? Where would it end? Who made him a policeman or a jailer? He wouldn't do it. He couldn't do it. No one would do it. He was a fool to think of it. He wasn't doing this willingly. He was hypnotized, led, driven by some force outside himself.

"But I won't leave you to fight it out alone," he said. His voice sounded strange to himself. What was that he was saying? He would rebel, deny it, take it all back in the next breath.

"I'll give up all my own plans and I'll stand by you."

He recoiled, frightened, appalled at what he had said, but one thing involved another. There it was; it was his decision, his; he had announced it. Could he become a party to this conspiracy against this innocent boy, the son of his friend, and then could he go back and tell Wah-na-gi and John McCloud exactly what he had done, and then be happy? If not, then he must go the other way, and accept the consequences, and meet them. If they were to be met, it must be boldly. Cowardice encouraged the enemy.

"Yes, there is no other way," he said. "I'll give up all my own plans." And for one cruel moment he stopped to think what that meant to him. "I'll stand by you, give you my hand, and we'll beat it out together." Then he pulled himself together, put a torch to his bridges, and went on, his face lit up with the light of their burning.

"Come now," he said with a show of spirit, going to her as she held herself with supreme self-control in the big chair. "Be a sport, old girl! Chuck it all, this rotten, artificial life, and come with me out into the open. We'll leave this man-made world, and go out into God's world, and then when you have mastered this thing, when you are free----"

He was about to add that then she could marry the Duke of Uxminster or whomsoever she pleased, but Edith did not let him finish. What would become of this romantic boy in the meantime? and marriageable dukes were scarce. Besides, she had no intention of postponing indefinitely her happiness or her plans. Like all habit-victims, she refused to acknowledge even to herself her slavery. Even, supposing she had to admit it, she would reform herself! Indeed, she had made up her mind to it already and was about to begin. Her marriage to Lord Yester would help her, furnish her an irresistible motive for reformation. To keep him from eventually finding out, she would have to reform, and she had grown very fond of the boy. His romantic idealization of her was very beautiful. Hal could safely leave all this in her hands. In fact, he would have to leave it in her hands. She began to tear at her lace handkerchief in spasmodic jerks.

"I don't know whether to laugh or to scream," she said with a scared smile, "but you see I am calm, and I am listening to you."

"I used to be a drunkard," he said. "Look at me now. You shall choose. We'll go wherever you like. We'll hunt big game in Africa, or fish for tarpon in Florida, or go after the musk-ox in the Barren Grounds. You don't know what it means to sleep under the sky, to bathe your soul in the solitude, to rest in the friendly silences, and live face to face with the Infinite."

He spoke with the enthusiasm of the devotee, of what he knew and had felt. He had in his soul to be the priest, the Poet of the Open, and now, in the white heat of this tense moment, he found expression.

"Don't hang hack," he urged. "Don't despair, and don't discourage me."

The last was almost plaintive. He knew that he needed help.

She rose and looked at him through the slits of her eyes.

"You have never influenced one act of my life. What makes you think you can do so now?"

"Sir George says it's your only chance."

She backed away, on guard. She began to laugh, a little hollow, false laugh. She would admit nothing.

"My only chance? Sir George says that?"

She laughed again, the laugh of derision, of defiance. They have an expression in the courts, "the _burden_ of proof," and sometimes it's a heavy load to carry. Flagrant sin cries out: Prove it! The habitual criminal, caught, the stolen goods taken from his pocket, says: "I never saw it before. Some one put it there." Prove it, her laugh cried.

"Now, don't try that," he said gently. He did not love her, but it was piteous to see this gorgeous creature, with the world at her feet and destiny in her hand, with possibilities unlimited; it was piteous to see her throw it all away in her lust for something--God knows what--something she called "pleasure!" "life," in the mad race for sensation, for excitement, in the fatuous ambition for place in the shallow mob that called itself Society, sacrificing herself on the Altar of Self, pouring out her own blood before her own image. It was piteous! One can't stand idly by and see a maddened horse rush back into a burning stable. It was impossible not to feel sorry for her, not to want to help her.

"Sir George felt it was his duty to you, his duty to me," he added. She straightened up and her eyes blazed.

"It isn't true. I don't do it. It's a lie--a wicked, devilish lie! Who will believe him? Who will believe a man sworn not to betray his patient's secrets? He has no professional honor. Who will believe him? I don't do it. I don't do it!"

He hadn't mentioned it. She had forgotten that she was admitting that she knew what he had in mind, and that the admission was fatal.

"I've suffered, suffered horribly from headaches and insomnia, and sometimes I've taken it, sometimes for that, but I call God to witness----"

She was screaming in a fierce whisper.

"Hush," he said, trying to quiet her. "The doctor says you must get away from here. It's your only chance. Sir George says, if you will help me, if you will help yourself, you can win out. Come, you must let me help you. Let me try. Won't you let me try?"

What was the matter with the man?

"Can't you grasp it?" she said, regaining some poise by a great effort. "Don't you see that what you call silence and solitude would put me in a madhouse? Leave London? Why, London is my heaven!" And she sat down on the sofa, or rather crouched down, as if the statement was an argument and the argument unanswerable.

"London, Heaven, eh?"

Her words broke through the wall of his prejudices and the stored-up waters of bitterness gushed forth.

"London that is growing sterile in Mayfair and breeding monsters in Whitechapel! London, with one man in every four a pauper; with its thousands of starving school children! With its multitudes who have nothing trying to sell it to those who have everything! With its terrible women and its hopeless men; hollow-eyed vice cheek by jowl with hollow-eyed want; luxury, overdressed, sweeping past wretches who are dying standing up, without the decency of a bed on which to throw the rotten remnants of their tortured lives! London, Heaven, eh? My God!"

He had forgotten her, himself, in his indictment of the city, not London alone, but the city everywhere, the city that reversed the order and the law of nature!

How far removed they were! She had relaxed, and the curl and sag of her body, the sensuous somnolent droop of the eye-lid, the voluptuous lips apart, she might have posed for a statue of lazy luxury. "London is my soul," she said softly, dreamily. "I'd rather be a stray cat crawling among its chimneys than live in splendor anywhere else. The crowds, the excitement, the strife, I love it! People amuse me, their passions, their cruelty, even their meanness, yes, even their dulness, their satiety! It all fascinates me. I'm drunk with it. I wouldn't give it up, and I couldn't if I would." She rose and came to him, and scrutinized him narrowly with soft cunning.

"Don't be foolish! What's your object? Why do you want to play the hypocrite with me? You don't care for me any more than I care for you. And when I am Duchess of Uxminster----"

"I think you'd better give that up," he said coldly.

"Why give it up?" she said with fierce challenge.

"You and I must answer for our own mistakes and sins," he said. "We mustn't unload them onto others. Lord Yester doesn't know."

"Who will tell him? Who will tell him?" she cried with bravado.

"You will," he said.

"Never! Never! I wouldn't; I couldn't!"

Her voice rose to a hysterical scream, then she stopped, struggled for control of herself, and shook like one in a chill, reaching out her hands toward him in mute appeal, unable to speak, to form coherent words. Finally she said in a hoarse whisper:

"Wait a moment. Wait! Let us be calm. Let us be calm. You haven't spared me. I'm not going to spare you."

She crouched and advanced toward him like a tiger.

"I'll never leave London! That's as fixed as death. _You_ can't remain in London, and you know that too. You were forced out of the Army; that's enough. You're impossible! You always were impossible. You always will be. You're not a gentleman; you're a misfit, an outcast, a _half-breed_!"

His bronze sinewy hands looked very dark against the white, the dazzling white of her throat, as he lifted her in the air for one terrible instant, an instant when she was near to death and he to murder.

"Edith," he whispered, "if you were a man I'd kill you!"

Then he took his hands away, caught her when she would have fallen, and stammered out brokenly, almost in tears:

"No, no, I mustn't say that. You're not responsible. You're not responsible."

And he dragged himself away as though he might be tempted to put hands on her again, went over to the sofa, threw himself down in terror and abasement, and held his hands as though _they_ were the offenders, not his will. On her part the leash was slipped. There was no longer any effort or desire to control herself. She quivered in an infuriate passion of hate. All other considerations were swept away. She followed him like a wild animal that has tasted blood. She wanted to hurt, to tear and rend, and she had a vague insane idea that if she could induce him to violence, that if she could goad him to maim her, his will, his inflexible purpose would break down under pity and remorse. She crouched over him while she screamed:

"You're a half-breed, and everything you do, everything you don't do, shows it. My God, what I've had to endure as the wife of a half-caste who had to leave the Army. You, too. It hasn't been easy for you. You've suffered. This is our chance: our chance to escape from each other. You want your freedom. You want it--you want it--you want it. I've seen it in your face. That's why you've come back. You don't want to go through life chained to a woman who hates you, because if you drive me to desperation I'll make you wish you'd never been born. You'll buy your freedom."

It was to be war. He rose, white with passion. She moved away as if it were settled, as if the victory were already hers, repeating hysterically:

"You'll buy it. You'll buy it."

It was a mistake. It made him inflexible.

"But not at that price," he said fiercely. "You will tell Lord Yester or I must."

The noise of the colloquy had penetrated to the drawing-room.

Lord Yester, unseen to either of them, had quietly entered the library.

"Will you or shall I?" was Hal's relentless demand.

She turned and saw him--Lord Yester. The fierce mounting flames of her fury died down into ashes. She seemed to shrink and draw within herself, grow smaller and whiter. Hal followed her intense fixed look to its object. Yester, too, looked older and smaller and paler. It seemed a long time ago when they were agreed and each saw Happiness standing by an open door. Now the door was shut and hung with crape. Lord Yester knew that he had entered a death chamber. He gazed at her in silence. He saw the proud queenly woman cowed, looking haggard and wan with fear and despair. Love and tenderness shone from his eyes and begged her to tell him all, to trust to him--that years of devotion would make amends for all her suffering. He saw that it was not in her thought that he could help her. She looked to the other--to the man she had turned to stone. Her eyes swept him with a plea for mercy. She crept to him, kneeled to him, took his hand, abased herself, drew herself up to a level with his face, searched it for one ray of hope, one sign of relenting pity, then, with a low heart-rending moan such as neither man would ever forget, she crept like a piteous wounded thing out of the room.

Lord Yester did not attempt to help her or to follow her. He knew in some instinctive way that she was past help. He looked at Hal. He saw him stricken, spent, seared by suffering. It wasn't the same man he had talked to a few moments ago. Then he had been a splendid animal, lithe, vibrant, instinct with life and the joy of living. Here was a sad, disillusioned, heart-broken, middle-aged man without hope in the world. It had been a drawn battle--a duel in which both combatants had been wounded unto death.

Lord Yester came down slowly.

What was it this terrible man had said to her as he came in?--"Will you tell him or shall I?"

What was there to tell? What could he tell? Women, and men too, with a past generally tell it before any one else has the chance--their version of it. Edith had her history and she had been the first to tell him _her version_ in which she was always the injured and suffering heroine.

"If it is anything discreditable to her, to Lady Effington, I would not believe you," he said with quivering intensity.

"That is for you to decide," said Hal. What a game little chap it was! he thought, as he looked at his sensitive, delicate face, made for suffering. And he'll hate me to his dying day.

"Perhaps it won't make any difference," he added, and at the thought a gleam of hope came into his own life. Suppose it didn't make any difference? Suppose this reckless little Knight-errant threw all caution, all considerations to the winds; suppose that, knowing the truth, all the truth, he still held out his arms to Edith and demanded the right to assume her burdens? Ah, then Hal's hands were clean and would be free to--He glanced up to see Sir George Rundall. Oh, if Rundall hadn't known or had kept silent. It was too late for regret now.

"Sir George," he said to the doctor, "Edith has refused to leave London, to go with me. If Lord Yester would help us--perhaps----"

"Lord Effington," said the physician sternly, interrupting Hal, "I am not in the habit of discussing my patients before strangers."

"Lord Yester is not a stranger," said Hal without irony. "He enjoys my wife's confidence and friendship and if----"

"I am proud to believe that that is true," said Yester with equal sincerity. "And if it concerns the health or happiness of Lady Effington, you may rely on me, Sir George Rundall."

The polished man of the world restrained his irritation, his exasperation, with obvious difficulty.

"Lord Effington has placed me in a most embarrassing position," he said with increasing resentment. "I have expressed the opinion that Lady Effington,--that she should--that it was in fact her only chance----"

"Her only chance?" echoed Lord Yester. "What do you mean?"

"Perhaps that is too strong," said the doctor, floundering, sensitive, over-sensitive as to his professional _amour propre_.

"Perhaps that is too strong. Let me say her best chance. Other scenes, other countries, an out-door life? Unfortunately in cases like this, the will-force is enslaved. Unfortunately most victims of--let me say--" he broke off impatiently. "I cannot see what right Lord Yester----"

"I will relieve you of all doubt on that point, Sir George. I have quite as much right to hear what you have to say as Lord Effington, and I insist on your speaking plainly."

The physician looked to Hal, whose refusal to contradict this was an affirmation of it, and then, with undisguised amazement and under protest, he said: "Well, so be it. What I had in mind was that most victims of the morphine habit--"

Lord Yester leaned forward slightly as if he did not think he heard aright, then he half repeated the dread word, swayed slightly, put his hand across his forehead, like a man bewildered, and groped with his other hand until he found the back of a chair. Then very quietly he found his way into it. The expression on his face was tragic. If the boy had been his son or a brother Hal could not have felt more for him or suffered more with him.

"It's a great shock to Lord Yester, as it was to me," he said after a moment's pause. "My wife trusts him, and I am sure he will join us in our efforts to save her."

Lord Yester did not reply. He raised his head as if he had some difficulty in breathing.

Then there was a painful pause. Not one of the three men spoke.

Finally Yester said: "Sir George, if you are going home----"

"Certainly," said the physician, seeing his distress and anticipating his wish. "I will set you down at your door if you like."

"Thank you," the boy said, struggling to his feet. "This room suffocates me."

"The fresh air will put you quite all right," said the doctor, walking beside him but not offering him physical help. "Quite all right."

And they went out and Hal was alone.

"Poor boy," he said. "Poor boy!"

He put his two hands to his head, and pressed the temples. Was it real or was it a dream? He drifted into the chair at the writing-table, and put his elbows on the desk and rested his chin in his hands, looking into space, trying to understand. Some one had left a current magazine open on the table. His vacant gaze wandered across a dull level of meaningless words to a hill which stood up alone and seemed to call to him, to have a message for him:

"These are my people, and this my land,
I hear the pulse of her secret soul;
This is the life that I understand,
Savage and simple, and sane and whole."[1]

[1] Lawrence Hope.

Yes, that was a long time ago. And they were a long way off--his people and his land. Why had he allowed John McCloud to drive him away from his people and his land? Could he have foreseen this never would he have come, never would he have had the courage to put aside that which was within his grasp. It was a dark, desperate moment. He regretted his lost happiness; he regretted that he had not sinned. What were these abstract things which people called "good" and "right"? Where did they lead one? Malicious shadows! What was his reward? For the rest of his life he was to be the custodian of a rancorous mad woman. His only release was death, his death or hers, and these neurasthenics live forever. His own? The only thing to his credit at this moment was that he pushed aside the thought of self-destruction. He was down in the ring, only semi-conscious, and he heard the referee counting the fatal seconds, but he had the instinct of the fighter and he knew that before ten was called he would try to get up. His land and his people! They were calling to him, in many voices, many ways. Never had they called to him as now. And it was too late. All that was past. Wah-na-gi called to him. Oh, she called to him. Again he saw her as he looked back to get a last glimpse of the Red Butte Ranch, standing outlined against the eternal sky, standing on the eternal rock that marked the lonely grave. How simple and elemental she seemed to him sitting in the roar and smash of this huge factory where they were turning out lives by machinery! She called to him, to all that was best in him. Her soul, how clear and clean it was, like a mountain stream. Yes, he was glad he had not soiled it. Yes, he must live up to her faith in him. Perhaps there was another life, another world, where all these crooked things were made straight. He took paper and pen and wrote briefly and simply:

WAH-NA-GI:

I cannot come back. Don't wait for me. Don't expect me. I can't ask you to forget me, because I love you, never so much as now when I am saying good-by. HAL.

He could only see dimly the address as he wrote it. Then he held it before him and whispered: "'I hear the pulse of her secret soul!'"

"I beg your lordship's pardon----"

"Lordship? Lordship?" Who was that? And who was speaking? He was out in the shadow of the Moquitch. Ah, no, he was in London, in his father's house.

"Come in, Andrews; what is it?"

It was his father's butler, a slender little old man, with a deferential face and a refined cultivated voice like the gentle-folk with whom he had always lived. Even Andrews felt that there was something unusual in the air.

"I hope I'm not intruding on your lordship."

"Not at all, Andrews."

"Is there anything I can do for you before you retire?"

"No; put out the lights and go to bed. Oh, and mail this letter for me, please."

He and the letter were a long time in parting. He looked at it, passed it from one hand to the other, held it out in view for a moment, then entrusted it to Andrews, his eye following it in the butler's hand and his body straining across the table as if he would go after it and bring it back. As the old man got over to the electric switch he turned and, with old-world deference, said: "Will your lordship permit me to say how glad your father's old servants are to see you at home once more, and we hope you are _home to stay_."

Hal caught his breath. The judge was putting on the black cap.

"Home to stay?--Yes, thank you, Andrews; thank you. Good night."

"Good night, my lord."

And the representative of that which was and would be turned out the lights, and left him to himself, left him in the shadows of the big room.

As soon as the door closed behind the form of Andrews, Hal clutched at his collar, tore it open, threw off his coat, rushed to the windows that formed one side of the room, threw them open, and stood for a moment with his breast and face bared to the sluggish, clammy breeze that was struggling with the burden of the fog. It was the act of a man used to the open.

The light from the street lamp outside struggled feebly through the precious stones that glowed in the windows on the stair. The fire light crept out timidly into the room with a sinister glint. Hal found his way back to the chair before the library table, and fell into it. The light from the jewelled lamp on the table threw a white nimbus about his face that made him look eerie and spectral, like a ghost that had stolen out of the night and the fog.

"Home to stay!" he gasped. "To stay!"

Unknown to him, another apparition evolved from the gloom of the stairs, floated in soft lacy clouds down into the room, stood for a moment looking off into the hall where Lord Yester had disappeared, then drifted noiselessly down and stood beside him. It was Edith.

"Well, he has gone," she said softly. "You have sent him away. You have locked the door and thrown away the key, and now we have the rest of our awful lives to spend with each other."

He did not move or seem to hear, and she slid serpent-like onto the table, and brought her mocking face close to his.

"We shall have many, many glorious years to look forward to, each day of each year a crucifixion. We shall hate each other over our coffee; we shall loathe each other over the luncheon; we shall despise each other through the long, long dinner. With murder in our thoughts and the itch to strangle each other in our fingers, we'll have to be polite and even affectionate," and she chuckled softly as she crossed to the fire, in whose red glow she looked like a satanic Lamia.

"From now on I shall take an active interest in what interests you and I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I poison every minute of your life. It's a glorious prospect, isn't it? When I think that for a cheap bit of sentimental rubbish you ruined our lives, your own as well as mine, it seems like a joke--a huge, ghastly, ferocious joke. Why don't you laugh? Why don't you laugh? Why don't you laugh?" and she gave way to a burst of demoniac cachinnation as she threw herself into the big chair before the fire.

He did not reply or look at her or turn toward her, but kept his gaze fixed on that solemn rock so many thousand miles away. When she had exhausted herself, he said softly to himself: "Wah-na-gi! John McCloud! I've kept my promise. My heart is empty, but my hands are clean!"

And so they sat as far apart as two worlds in space until the morning of another day.

*CHAPTER XXI*

Before leaving New York Hal had arranged for a bank account upon which Big Bill was at liberty to call, but otherwise the folks at Red Butte were left to themselves. With the boy had gone the life of the ranch. After him a cold torpor settled down and took possession. Routine ruled supreme. Twice a week Curley rode over to the Agency, the nearest post-office. His return was an event, not on account of anything that ever happened or followed from it, but because of what might happen. Some one might get a letter. Occasionally this unique experience happened to John McCloud who had a married sister living in Washington with whom he corresponded. Except the preacher, no one at the ranch was much of a correspondent. Hal was not a letter-writer. In fact, the writing of a letter assumed huge, formidable, and forbidding proportions. Outside the necessary business matters, the letters he had written in his life could have been counted on two hands. The newspapers were always old. By the time they knew any event at the ranch the world without had forgotten it or was preparing to forget it. In winter the world without at times disappeared altogether. One day something happened. Curley rode in with a letter for Wah-na-gi. Every one on the ranch knew that an important thing had happened, that Wah-na-gi had received a letter, that it was from London, and consequently from Hal. No one said a word about it; no one asked her in regard to it. She did not read it until it was night and she was alone in the living-room. Then she went to a chest of drawers up under the window, took from them the tiny pair of moccasins which had now become her "medicine," her "sacred bundle," as the Indians call their treasures, their good-luck symbols, brought them down, and sank on her knees before the blazing logs in the big fireplace.

The reading of the letter was a solemn and formal function. She did not tear it open with feverish curiosity. She put it down before her in order to prepare her mind, to calm the beating of her heart. The little moccasins had been a great comfort to her. When she was troubled she went apart and held them next her heart, and had a "long think," and somehow she got the impression that at such times Nat-u-ritch and her son were near. The little shoes had walked into her Holy of Holies, where she dreamed the divine dream of women, and she saw other tiny feet romp about in them, the little feet of him who would call Hal father and call her mother. Then she put down the sacred symbols and in the angry glow of the fire read the bitter message which came to her out of the London fog. There was no mistaking its meaning, its farewell. It slipped from her hands to the floor and in her despair she seized his gift to her and held it to her heart as she had done so often, but this time comfort came slowly; came not at all. It was the end. He had said so; had said good-by. She did not for a moment dispute its inevitableness or question his decision. She remained there a long time, looking into the cruel fire. Then she rose and put the baby shoes away, and this time she knew what the mother feels who gathers up the clothes and playthings her darling will never need again. Then she came back and took up the letter and read it once more. She would never need to read it again. It was burnt into her brain. McCloud came into the room and at a glance saw what had happened. He brought a chair near, sat down in it, and put his hand on her head with a caress.

"Wah-na-gi, my dear little girl," he said after a long pause; "I wish I could bear this for you. You've been a teacher. Try to think of God as a teacher. This life is a plane of consciousness, a kindergarten plane, the primary class, and we may miss no step in the progress to a larger plane, a higher plane, in the search to know God, whom to know is life and peace. This will mean nothing to you now, but perhaps it will when you can see beyond your own tears, and can take up your lesson again. You know what the love of a teacher is; add to that the love of a father, the love of a mother, and know they are only symbols of that love which is divine."

Wah-na-gi did not answer, but she hastily picked up her letter and her life and passed out of the room, and routine resumed its normal sway.

Fortunately for her, she was the busiest person on the ranch, for she had the care of the house and of John McCloud. In the death valley these two found each other. They began to see each other face to face, to know and understand, and a great love took them by the hand and walked with them in holy peace. Each was metaphysical; each had been denied what seemed the one supreme need; each had been through the waters of affliction; each seemed to be God's compensation to the other. The lonely man who had missed the love of children found a child; the lonely child found a father whose love, supreme, benignant, was like the love of God. And so they walked in sad and solemn joy.

"Winter-man" came and went and had come again. "Cold-maker" had ridden down out of the North and a white shroud lay over all the inert desolation.

Even in the busy summer it is a silent land, its wide, vast muteness occasionally relieved by the tumble of a cataract, the sob of a solemn river, the twitter of a lonesome bird, the barking of a dog, the nightly plaint of the coyote, the sound of the voice of some taciturn ranchman or some wandering cowboy. Sometimes the muffled monotony of the untenanted wastes falls over the mind and the soul, and men and women are monotony-mad. When the cowboy goes to town he wants to ride up and down through the streets making a noise, a noise other people can hear, yapping and shooting off his revolver. The summer has activities, the ranch, the crops, the round-up, social amenities, many things to interest and occupy the isolated. In the winter the bear and the snake go to sleep, and man hibernates too, in the solemn hush that broods over the pulseless world.

Winter was upon them before any one realized it, and it came with an angry rush that boded no good. The few books and magazines were soon exhausted. The men looked after the stock, tried to keep in touch with the cattle, made occasional excursions for deer, and played cards, and then cards, and then some more cards. It was a hard winter and its dull level unbroken except for two events. One day McShay came over with a wagon-load of supplies and brought with him a stranger, a man he had picked up on the trail and who was inquiring the way to Red Butte Ranch. It was obvious to the Irishman that the man was a woodsman and used to hardship. He was clean-cut, wiry, seasoned, built for endurance, but evidently an outsider, not of the region. His equipment was too complete, too up-to-date, and yet he wasn't an amateur hunter or a tenderfoot. There was something about him hard to describe unless you call it cosmopolitan, and there was a quiet reserve that covered powers of reflection, contemplation, the dreamer or the student. He didn't fit in to any of the conditions of the Indian country. As he volunteered little information on the way to the ranch, he found McShay equally taciturn. When he reached the ranch, however, the stranger did not leave them long in doubt as to who he was and what he wanted.

"My name is Gifford--Walter Gifford," he volunteered as Mike started to introduce him to McCloud, "This is Doctor McCloud, isn't it? You're a Princeton man--so am I. You studied at Bonn--so did I. You see, I know all about you, and now I'm glad to have the honor of knowing you personally."

He talked now very fast, as if he were in a hurry.

"I've been out to look over the Moquitch Forest Reserve and before I return to Washington I wanted to see Mr. Calthorpe. I hope----"

As he looked from one to the other and divined that his hope was vain, it was manifest that his disappointment was very great.

"Hal has been gone for over a year," said the clergyman.

"Yes," said Gifford; "we knew he went to London about a year ago, but he isn't in London; hasn't been there for some time, and no one knows just where he is. I hoped I might find him here. Too bad--too bad."

Gifford spoke with such earnestness as to almost necessitate further explanation, but every one hesitated to embarrass him with questions. Finally McCloud said:

"Is there anything that we can do?"

Gifford looked from one to the other. McCloud added: "You may speak freely. We are all his friends here."

"Well, we depended on Calthorpe, on his testimony, on his documents--the incriminating documents we supposed he had which came into his possession while he was chief of police on the Agency--and we were led to believe that he would be on hand when he and they were needed. He failed us, signally failed us. It really is too bad."

McShay said: "Mr. Gifford tells me that Ladd is back on his job with a coat of whitewash that would make the driven snow look dissolute. You know I think they ought to call that place Whitewashington."

"Agent Ladd? Back? Is it possible?" ejaculated the clergyman in dismay.

"Maybe they cooked it up," said McShay, "to pull off the investigation when the kid couldn't be present. It's a disappointment to me in a way. I thought when the boy put his hand to the plow he'd stay with it until the plow fell apart. He promised to have Ladd's scalp, and he's Injin. Something's wrong. The boy ain't a quitter. You can stake your life on that. Did you notify him?"

"We wrote to him again and again, first to his London address, then here."

"We have always forwarded all mail that came here for him," said the preacher.

"Then we found that he was not in London, that he and his wife had gone away, without leaving an address, to South America or Africa, no one knew where, but supposedly on a hunting expedition. We expected him in Washington on his way to London; but he didn't turn up."

"Anyway," groaned McShay, "Ladd got away with it and is back with the bells."

"Ladd personally is a small matter. Individually he doesn't count," said Gifford earnestly; "but it was a chance, a fine chance, to drag these big malefactors into the light, make them come into the open, make them show their rapacious hands. Ladd's just a common or garden criminal, but we thought we had the chance to show his connection with the big fellows, and their backers in the cabinet and in congress. The trial of Ladd was a farce. Secretary Walker is discredited. He will be forced out of the cabinet. Whittaker of the Land Office will go in, and the game will go on behind closed doors. Something is at stake, bigger than Ladd and his honesty; bigger than even Walker and his reputation, and his honor and his career; bigger than these asphalt lands; bigger than the coal lands behind them, enormous as they are; bigger than you and me or our immediate interests--the right of the people to preserve the resources God has given them from spoliation, to keep them for the public good instead of for private gain."

It was evident that Mr. Gifford was a man with a purpose, an idea, and that he could glow with it.

"Say," said McShay, "you ain't the Gifford of the Forest Service?"

"Yes; I am."

"Well, gosh-all-hemlocks, you're the most unpopular man in the world in these here parts."

"Of course we're unpopular. It'll be a sad day for this country when no one is willing to be unpopular."

"Mr. Gifford," said the cowman rising, "I'd follow your lead if I thought you'd arrive anywhere, but you can't pull it off. I'm a practical man. These fellers are practical men. They'll beat you to it every time. You appeal to love of country, posterity; they appeal to each man's self-interest, his immediate self-interest. It's me first and then the country. That's human nature. Look at my people. You'll get no support from them. We discovered this asphalt. We located it. You have it withdrawn from entry and the Asphalt Trust helps you do it. When we're frozen out and have surrendered, they'll have it restored again. You hope to prevent that, but you won't do it. They control power in congress and in the cabinet. Whittaker belongs to 'em. We won't get the lands, but we'll force them to buy us out. When the gold mines in the Black Hills were thrown open to entry, the Supreme Court held that the original locators had priority rights, and that's a precedent that will cover our case. You have a noble idea, Mr. Gifford, but what the plain American citizen wants to know is: 'Where do I come in?' He'd rather have two dollars and a half in cash than one thousand dollars for posterity."

"Mike is right," said the preacher, "as to his constituency. Your splendid purpose, Mr. Gifford, would get Wah-na-gi's vote and mine, and Hal's, if he were here."

"If he were here," repeated the forester wistfully. "If he were here," but he let the subject drop and shortly after McShay said good-night and took himself to Big Bill's quarters.

When he was gone Gifford said, drawing in to the comfort of the fire:

"Doctor McCloud, I'm glad we are alone; McShay is not for us."

"You mustn't get a false impression of Mike, Mr. Gifford. He's not a man of imagination or a large horizon, but within his limitations, which are the limitations of most men, he is true and big. You know where he stands. I'd trust him with everything but my soul." The other bowed to this and did not contest it.

"I'm going to be very frank with you, Doctor; and I hope you will be as frank with me. At the superficial investigation of Mr. Ladd certain expressions came out that indicated that his backers were in possession of certain of our letters directed to Calthorpe. You know him intimately. Would Mr. Calthorpe ignore these appeals completely, if he received them?"

"I think not. I can conceive of no reason why he should not answer your letters and either promise to come or say why he could not come. Do you think any of your appeals reached him before he left London?"

"I am sure of it. You say he would not ignore these appeals if he received them. If he did not receive them, who that was near him would have a motive for tampering with his mail or his correspondence? Who in his household would be approachable? Who would want to injure him or us? Or would act from motives of hate or revenge?

"I need not tell you that our opponents would stop at nothing to side-track Calthorpe or get possession of his papers. You know the old saying--find the woman. Well, in this case it leads nowhere. There are only two women in his life apparently--this Indian girl here----"

"She knows no more of him at this moment than you do."

"And his wife."

"It is preposterous," said McCloud, "to think of his wife in connection with a criminal act, and one in which she could have no conceivable interest. As a matter of fact, I have reason to believe that though they once had an estrangement----"

"Ah, there had been trouble between them?"

"A temporary drawing apart apparently, but, as I was saying, I have reason to believe, to know in fact, that they have become reconciled, and been reunited. Their going away together is proof positive of that."

"It's very mysterious, isn't it?" said Gifford. "His papers? Did he take them with him or leave them here?"

"He went away very hurriedly, taking with him nothing, so far as I know, except some of his clothes. He left some papers and documents, not many, which I put carefully in a marked envelope, to await his instructions."

"And of course you know nothing of the contents of those documents?"

"Absolutely nothing. I know he offered to return the certificates of stock to the asphalt company, but they ignored his letter."

"I needn't warn you, Doctor, to take good care of those papers."

"No one here would think of disturbing them any more than I would. If I should die before they are called for by Hal, I have written instructions on the outside of the envelope to have them sent to my sister in Washington, who will hold them until she can put them in possession of the owner."

"Doctor McCloud, we must find Calthorpe and he must come to America and get into this fight. He owes it to himself. He owes it to Secretary Walker who took up his fight in reliance upon him. and whose future is at stake. We have reserved the right to reopen the Ladd case and we have six months in which to do it. Back of all this, back of Walker and Calthorpe, is a big cause which will be set back twenty-five years if we fail. Possibly we can't prove anything against Whittaker, anything illegal, but we can drag these interests into the open and save the resources of the people for the people. If you will write him a personal letter, telling him the facts, asking for instructions, and have it signed also by this Indian woman, I will take it away with me in the morning and eventually put it into the care of a messenger who will have instructions to find Calthorpe, wherever he is in the world, and put that letter into his individual hand. Will you do it?"

*CHAPTER XXII*

All London knew that the "affair" between Viscountess Effington and Lord Yester was at an end. People in Society are very busy; they work very hard, but they always have time to devote to each other's interests, and they bring to bear on these matters their best abilities, frequently of a high order. If the ingenuity, the penetration, the powers of analysis and deduction focussed upon why Mrs. Smith is not now speaking to Mrs. Jones, or the exact thermometric relations of Mr. White to Mr. Black and Mr. Black's interesting wife, could be concentrated upon, say the subject of unemployment, the world would go forward by leaps and bounds.

The interesting and accomplished thief is frequently told that if he would keep his splendid gifts within legal bounds he would be the same ornament to Society that we are, but this artist has no taste for our dull levels. The noble river refuses to flow in straight lines and at an average depth. It loves the rapids, and the falls, and the crooked way. So probably Society will go on with its minute microscopic study of itself.

Edith, Viscountess Effington, began to think socially at a very early age, and ever since she had come to years of indiscretion the one aim and object of all life, all hope and endeavor, had been the Court Set. Many people pass through life almost ignorant that there is such a thing, but it is of no use to say to one who cannot breathe at an elevation of ten thousand feet: "I am breathing very comfortably."

While we are pleasantly exhilarated the other is bleeding to death. Edith had seen the ambition of her life possible of realization as the Duchess of Uxminster. Every phase of her struggle to this end was familiar to her friends, and every one knew that it now rested in a fashionable London cemetery, where "Here Lies," etc., could be read by any one in the street who would stop long enough to give it a curious glance. This made London somewhat difficult. It furnished her heaven with some of the characteristics of a warmer place. To know that your grief and despair have furnished amusement to your friends, that your thwarted ambition has given them a keen sense of enjoyment; to hear some one throw the switch when you enter a drawing-room, to feel the embarrassed silence, and to know that a damask curtain has been hastily thrown over the remains of your inmost soul under the knives of skilful surgeons who have left no organ unexamined, is an ordeal for the bravest man or woman. Edith tried it. She went everywhere, just as she had done before. She tried to act and look as if nothing had happened. She made a brave show, but she had climbed in a ruthless way and she was finding out that those who live by the sword shall perish by it. She came to know that she had not only not gained ground, but had lost it. Her world had seen her play her cards, knew what she had in her hand, and had already decided that she was inevitable as the Duchess, and it adjusted its deportment accordingly. When they found that she had played and lost, they did not know exactly how or why, they felt the resentment of those who have been cruelly deceived, who have paid something for nothing, or kowtowed to the wrong person, and the gratification of social resentments is a fine art. To a woman of her pride, pertinacity, and ambition this was maddening. She came back from teas, at-homes, week-ends quivering, lacerated, and of course her habits did not improve. Every nerve screamed for rest, for quiet, for forgetfulness, and she drank more and more and more, and then sought relief in the oblivion of the master drug. She had always been an accomplished gambler in the usual social sense, but now it became a passion, an obsession, and she played for stakes that increased rapidly and dangerously, stakes she could not afford to lose. It was the one social diversion that helped her to forget. Her passion for play was leading her into questionable associations, into intimacy with shady people, people she would not have wiped her dainty boots on before. She had used people as steps. They were now using her to walk on, and it was likely to be a muddy process.