Chapter II: Part 2

The morning sun, streaming cheerfully through the clear windows, lay across his paper-strewn desk, bringing into prominence its handsome fittings and the large sinewy hand which reached purposefully for a pen. As he sat there in the revealing light Stephen Jarvis appeared very nearly what he had made of himself in the course of some thirty laborious years. Nature had provided him with a big-boned, powerful body, topped by a head in no wise remarkable for its beauty, yet significant as the compact rounded end of a steel projectile; eyes of no particular color, deep-set beneath penthouse brows; a nose, high in its bony structure, curving at the tip, with a suggestion of scorn; a jaw, heavy but clear-cut, well furnished with strong, even teeth. Jarvis was born a farmer’s son, poor with the poverty of sparse acres, sparsely cultivated through successive generations of uncalculating, simple-hearted men, content to live and die as had their forbears. It was far otherwise with Stephen Jarvis. His initial conclusion, derived from keen-eyed observation and comparison, resulted in an active hatred of the grinding poverty his fathers had accepted with settled stoicism as the common lot. He would not, he resolved, remain poor. He would in some way—in any way—acquire houses, lands, money. This single idea, planted, rooted, and grown mighty, brought forth fruit after its kind. In ten years’ time he had climbed out of the walled pit where he had found himself; in the decade which followed, having learned, experimentally, of the compelling power of the fixed idea doggedly adhered to, he had gone on, adding more houses, more lands, more money to what he already possessed; and this process having by now become somewhat monotonously easy, he had reached for and seized political power of the sort most easily grasped by the large hand of wealth. He still continued almost mechanically to loan money at a high rate of interest, to execute and foreclose mortgages, but there was no longer zest or excitement in the game. And there intervened disquieting moments like the present when he perceived that, after all, he was not successful, as the world counted success; nor rich, as the world counted wealth; moments when he realized his loneliness and the coldness of his hearth-stone, where neither friends nor children gathered.

His wife, dead more than two years, had been a dull, emotionless woman, with a flat, pale, expressionless face and a high-shouldered, angular figure. Jarvis had married her without pretence of passion because she had money, and in his poverty-pinched youth he had thought of little else. He had never been unkind to the woman who bore his name. He had, in fact, paid very little attention to her, and she had trodden the dull round of her existence unprotestingly and died as unobtrusively as she had lived. A portrait of the late Mrs. Jarvis in the cold medium of black and white crayons, hung above the mantel. The man’s eyes rested upon it mechanically as he lifted them from the dull report of a dully rancorous speech delivered on a late public occasion by his political opponent in the county. The portrait failed to arouse memories either sweet or bitter; but Jarvis observed that his housekeeper in her annual spring cleaning had taken the pains to protect the picture in its showy, expensive frame. He frowned as he noticed the barred pink netting from behind which his wife’s plain features looked forth with a suggestion of pained protest. The effect was distinctly unpleasing. He caught himself wondering irritably why the picture should confront him thus; portraits were foolish, unmeaning things, anyway; shrouded with pink tarlatan they became impossible. His gaze still lingered frowningly upon the picture when there came a dubious tap upon the panels of the door.

“What d’you want?” demanded Jarvis sharply, as he recognized the intruder. “I thought I told you not to disturb me this morning.”

“Well, I told her so; but she wouldn’t go away,” the woman apologized. “I guess ’f I let her stan’ there till she’s good an’ tired o’ waitin’, she’ll——”

“Kindly acquaint me with the name of the person who wishes to see me, Mrs. Dumser,” he interrupted, with a quick, choleric lift of the hand.

“It’s that Preston girl,” the woman said sullenly. “I told her you was busy and——”

“Show her in at once,” her employer ordered briefly. On the whole he welcomed the interruption. There was a certain excitement akin to that experienced by the sportsman when he subdues some struggling wild creature to his will. It was a species of weak folly, he told himself, to entertain anything like compassion for borrowers of money who could not pay. And Stephen Jarvis was not a weak man. He was, moreover, thoroughly familiar with all the various excuses, subterfuges and pitiful expedients of such luckless individuals, as well as complete master of the final processes by which he was wont to detach them from their forfeited possessions. His mouth, long, straight, expressionless, and shaded by a closely clipped mustache, tightened as Barbara Preston entered.

He glanced at her sharply as the girl sank into a chair opposite the desk without waiting to be asked.

The light from the long French windows fell full upon the slender young figure in its plain black gown, and her face, seen against the sombre background afforded by rows of leather-bound law-books, appeared vividly alive, defiantly youthful, like a spray of peach blossoms against a leaden sky.

“You wished to see me, I believe,” said Jarvis, perceiving that the girl was struggling with involuntary fear of him, a fear heightened by her surroundings. “What can I do for you?”

She met his gaze unflinchingly.

“I have come,” she said, “to see if you will give me a little more time. It is going to be a good apple year, and—and I’ll work—hard to save the farm.”

Her eyes darkened and widened; a quick color sprang to lips and cheeks, as when a flag is suddenly unfurled to the wind.

“If you’ll only give me a chance!” she cried.

“What sort of a chance are you looking for?” he wanted to know.

Barbara’s eyes fell before his steady gaze.

“I—want——” she began, and stopped, obviously searching for forgotten words and phrases.

He waited imperturbably for her to go on.

“I want you to let me stay—in my home.”

He lifted his eyebrows.

“I thought we discussed that matter pretty thoroughly yesterday afternoon,” he said. “I can think of nothing more to say on the subject.”

“But,” she persisted, “I don’t intend to give it up. I—can’t.”

He was silent. But his look angered her unreasonably.

“You don’t want the farm!” she burst out, with sudden hot indignation. “You’ve got most of the farms about here now, and you’ll have the others in time, I suppose.”

“You appear to know a good deal about my business,” he said ironically. “But you’re right. I don’t want the Preston farm. I don’t want any of ’em. Why should I? Most of them are like yours, worn out, worthless. But the owners want my money—your father did. And I let him have what he asked for. I might have refused. But I let him have a thousand dollars, and he took it, did as he liked with it—drank it up, for all I know. And now you come here begging——”

The girl sprang to her feet; her gray eyes blazed angrily upon him.

“I’m not begging!” she cried. “All I want is the chance to pay you—every cent, and I could do it—I will do it.”

“Perhaps you will tell me how you are going about it,” he said coldly.

She sank back into her chair.

“Yes!” she said slowly. “I am—begging. I am begging for time. Give me another year—give me this summer, and let me—try!”

He was studying the girl’s passionate face with a curious interest. A singular idea had presented itself to him, and he was considering it half mockingly. Nevertheless it lent a human sound to his voice as he answered her.

“See here, Miss Preston,” he said. “I admire your pluck and energy. But let me tell you that you don’t want to hold on to that farm. The orchards are too old to be productive; the land needs fertilizers, rotation, all sorts of things that require brains and money. That old fool, Morrison, hasn’t managed the place properly, and can’t. It’s a losing fight, and you’d better give it up—peaceably.”

“But I want it,” she urged, “for Jimmy. I want to hold the place for him. He’ll soon grow up now, and—he’s the last of the Prestons.”

She stopped short and sprang to her feet, with a little gasp of angry protest.

“You are laughing at me!” she cried indignantly. “You have no right——”

She was mistaken; Stephen Jarvis seldom indulged in laughter; but his hard-set mouth had relaxed somewhat under his clipped mustache. His greenish brown eyes shone with an unaccustomed light. He was thinking his own thoughts, and for once, at least, he found a singular pleasure in them.

“Don’t get excited,” he advised her coolly. “Sit down and we’ll talk this over. You want to keep the farm for that half-brother of yours, you say. Well, I’m disposed to give it to you to do as you like with, if you——”

She gazed at him almost incredulously.

“You’ll give me time to try?” she asked breathlessly. “Oh, thank you!”

He answered her impetuous question with another. “Did you notice the person who showed you in? Yes; I see you did, particularly. Well, she’s my housekeeper. She’s been here since my—since I buried the late Mrs. Jarvis. But I—well; I’m tired of seeing the woman about. I shall need somebody to take her place, and—Stop! I want you to hear me out.”

The girl had not resumed her seat at Jarvis’s bidding. She retreated swiftly toward the door. The man’s imperious voice followed her.

“Come back! I’m not done with what I had to say!”

But Barbara had already closed the door definitely behind her. The woman in black silk stood just outside. She had, in fact, been listening.

“Well!” she breathed explosively, staring at Barbara. Then she rustled toward the front door, her ample draperies filling the narrow twilight passage with a harsh, swishing sound.

“You better not show your face here again!” she said in a low, fierce voice, as she held the door wide for Barbara to pass out.

IV

JIMMY PRESTON sat curled up on one foot by the table in Peg Morrison’s loft. His yellow hair was damp and towsled, for he had run bare-headed through the rain, bearing his precious book of “Vallable Information” tucked under his blouse.

“I didn’t bring my red ink,” he explained breathlessly to Peg, “‘cause I was ’fraid I’d spill it. I fought I could borrow some of yours.”

“You can, an’ welcome, son,” agreed Peg, “but remember that’ll give me an option on yours. Them that borrows ought to be willin’ to lend. They ain’t though, as a gen’ral thing. Borrowers is spenders, and lenders is savers, as a rule.”

“I’ll lend you my whole bottle of red ink an’ I’ll lend you my pen, too,” said Jimmy magnificently.

The little boy spread his book open on the table for Mr. Morrison’s inspection. “You see I’ve begun it already,” he said with pride.

“Le’ me see; what you got here?” and Peg traced the first wavering line with a horny forefinger.

“That’s how not to lose a letter,” said Jimmy proudly. “Barb’ra says sometimes letters are ’portant, an’ you don’t want to lose ’em.”

“‘Lev letters in the posoffis. They wil be saf ther,’” read Peg slowly. He paused and screwed his mouth in a noiseless whistle.

“Don’t you think that’s a vallable inf’mation?” demanded Jimmy anxiously. “If I hadn’t taken that letter and put it in my pocket, I shouldn’t have lost it. Barb’ra could have got it herself, and maybe it was ’portant. You can’t tell ’thout you read a letter whether it’s ’portant or not; an’ you can’t read a letter when it’s lost.”

“So you lost a letter ’dressed to Barb’ry, did you? H’m! Where’d you lose it?”

“If I knew, I’d go an’ find it,” said Jimmy soberly. “I put it in my pocket, an’ it was blue, an’ it was f’om out west. Barb’ra doesn’t know who it was f’om. But she’d like to know.”

“H’m!” repeated Peg. “You’d ought to carried it all the way right in your han’, where you c’d see it. Pockets are kind o’ dangerous when it comes to letters. I know a whole row o’ little boys ’at ain’t alive at all, ’count o’ a letter bein’ lost. They never was born,” he added by way of explanation.

Jimmy drew a deep sigh of sustained interest.

“You see it was this way,” continued Peg circumstantially. “The’ was a young feller ’at I used to know, an’ he was workin’ in a lumber-camp one winter where the’ wasn’t any pos’offis; one o’ the men used to carry the letters in an’ out, a matter o’ fifteen miles. One time he lost a letter this young feller wrote to his girl, an’ didn’t think to say nothin’ ’bout it; an’ she got all worked up ’cause she didn’t hear f’om him, an’ after a spell she up an’ married another man; an’ so the young man I was speakin’ of never got married, an’ never had any little boys o’ his own. He felt awful bad ’bout it fer a long time, but he ain’t never los’ a letter ’at b’longed to anybody else.”

The pattering sound of the rain on the barn roof increased to a steady roar as Peg related this short but instructive tale.

“I sh’d think those little boys would feel bad,” said Jimmy sympathetically. “I’d hate not to be alive.”

“Mebbe they do; an’ ag’in, mebbe they don’t,” observed Peg cautiously. “Anyhow, some of ’em would be growed up by this time; farmin’ it, mebbe, or keepin’ store.” His eyes wore a far-away look.

Jimmy dipped Peg’s pen in the red ink bottle.

“How do you spell not, Peg?” he inquired.

“K-n-o-t,” replied the old man, with a sigh.

Jimmy was silent for a long minute, his pen travelling slowly along the blue line and leaving a trail of wabbly red letters behind.

“‘Hough knot to los a letter,’” he read aloud, with honest pride in his achievement. “What’ll I say next, Peg?”

“Keep yer mind an’ yer eyes onto it till you get it t’ the person it’s meant for,” the old man said, with some sternness. “You’ve got to do that with ev’rythin’ you do,” he went on. “You can’t go moseyin’ ’long thinkin’ ’bout ev’rythin’ under the sun ’cept what you’re doin’. If you’re ploughin’, plough, an’ put all the grit an’ gumption you’ve got onto ploughin’. Most folks ain’t so smart ’at they c’n afford to run a d’partment store in their minds. Hold on! Don’t try to write all that. Jus’ say, pay attention to that letter. You know, Cap’n,” he went on impressively, “you come of awful fine stock. The Prestons was always smart; your great-gran’father, he was smarter ’an all possess, an’ your gran’father, he was jes’ the same.”

“An’ my father was, too,” interrupted Jimmy, eying the old man with a pucker between his brown eyes. “Wasn’t he smarter’n all possess, Peg?”

“‘Course he was, Cap’n,” agreed the old man hastily. “Up to the time he was took sick, he was A number one. An’ Barb’ry—I mean Miss Barb’ry, she’s awful smart an’ ambitious, too, fer a female. Oh, you’ll get along in the world, Cap’n, ’course you’ll get along! But losin’ letters is like losin’ other things, such as money an’—an’ health, an’ reputation an’—farms. It all comes o’ lettin’ yer mind kind o’ wander. You won’t do that, will you, Cap’n?”

The man’s voice trembled; he seemed anxiously intent on the little boy’s answer.

“I won’t, if I can help it, Peg,” Jimmy answered honestly. “But,” he added candidly, “I like to think ’bout things in school—all kind o’ things. When I look out the windows an’ see the trees wavin’ an’ hear the birds I like t’ p’tend I’m outdoors playin’.”

“Don’t you do it, Cap’n,” Peg spoke almost solemnly. “You keep a stiddy holt on them thoughts o’ yourn’ an’ nail ’em down to readin’, writin’, an’ ’rithmetic. If you ketch ’em a-wanderin’ out the window, you fetch ’em back an’ make ’em work. You c’n do it, every trip.”

“But if I don’t want to——”

“There you got it! Struck the nail square on the head, Cap’n. You’ve got to make yourself want to. You ain’t too young to learn, neither. Gracious! I wisht somebody’d told me what I’m tellin’ you, when I was ’bout your age. I’ve kind o’ reasoned it out, watchin’ folks an’ their doin’s, an’ noticin’ how I try an’ squirm out o’ doin’ things. The’s two folks in ev’rybody, Cap’n; a lazy, good-fer-nothin’ sort o’ a chap, that won’t do nothin’ in school, nor anywheres else if he c’n help it, an’ there’s a smart, good, up-an’-a-goin’ feller ’at’s anxious to git along in the world. I know ’em both inside o’ me. An’ ol’ lazybones come nigh onto ruinin’ me when I was a boy. Lord! I jes’ wouldn’ work! Ust t’ lie half th’ day in the sun an’ think o’ nothin’, when I’d ought t’ been hoein’ corn. Then I’d come in an’—say I had the backache, or th’ headache or—mos’ anythin’ I could think of. Ol’ lazybones is an awful liar, Cap’n. You don’t want t’ listen to anythin’ he says. You want to shet him up an’ keep him shet. He’ll lead a man t’ drink an’ to steal other folks’ time an’ money; he’s meaner’n pusley an’ slyer’n—well, he’s s’ durned sly, Cap’n, that you gotta be on his track all the endurin’ while.”

“Do you think I’ve got two folks in me, Peg?” asked Jimmy, laying his hand over the pit of his stomach with a worried look.

“I’m reelly ’fraid ye have, Cap’n,” said Peg firmly. “I never see anybody ’at hadn’t. But ef you git th’ upper han’ o’ ol’ lazybones now’t you’re small, you won’t have much trouble with him.”

“I’m not small, Peg,” Jimmy corrected him. “You said I was large an’—an’ hefty fer my age.”

“Sure you be, Cap’n, but you ain’t reelly a man growed. That’s what I mean, an’ I want you should grow up into an A number one man, full o’ grit an’ gumption. An’ you can’t do it unless you start right. You see, Cap’n, I’m gittin’ ’long in life an’ I’ve figgered it out ’at ’bout six folks out o’ every ten kind o’ see-saws back an’ forth betwixt bein’ lazy an’ lyin’ an’ no ’count, an’ bein’ industrious an’ truthful. Folks like that gits ’long so-so; they don’t hev no partickler good luck—ol’ lazybones keeps ’em f’om that; but they don’t git nowheres neither, ’cause they don’t stick to biz. Then the’s ’bout three out o’ ev’y ten thet gives right up to ol’ lazybones f’om the start; an’ he runs ’em right into th’ ground ’s fas’ ’s possible. The tenth man, he stomps on ol’ lazybones ev’ry time he opens his head t’ speak, an’ bimeby he gits on the right track s’ stiddy an’ constant ’at nobody c’n stop ’im. An’ he’s the one thet gits thar! I want you should be that kind o’ a man, Cap’n. An’ that’s one reason I give you that book o’ Vallable Info’mation. It’ll help you to kind o’ think over differ’nt things that happens. Now I’ll bet you won’t lose another letter in a hurry.”

“No, I won’t,” Jimmy said earnestly. “An’ I’m goin’ to try an’ stomp on ol’ lazybones.”

“That’s right, Cap’n,” cried Peg. “You jes’ stomp on him hard an’ proper. You git th’ upper han’ o’ him b’fore he grows too big and hefty, an’ bimeby he won’t bother you.”

“Peg,” said Jimmy, after a period devoted to reflection, “the Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis is in our house.”

“Dear me! You don’t say so!” ejaculated Peg, with a frightened start.

“He makes Barb’ra cry,” said Jimmy, scowling fiercely. “I wanted to stay an’ keep him f’om doin’ it; but Barb’ra said for me to come out here and see you. I’d like to stomp on him—hard!”

The subject of these dubious comments and conjectures, more ill at ease than his worst enemy had ever hoped to see him, sat in the dull light of the rainy afternoon, looking at Barbara Preston with new eyes: to wit, the eyes of a man.

“I suppose,” the girl said steadily, “you have come to tell me that you will foreclose the mortgage.” She gripped her hands close in her lap.

“No,” said Stephen Jarvis, “that was not my intention. As I have already informed you, the mortgage will foreclose itself, when the time comes.”

He stopped short and narrowed his lids frowningly.

“I have been thinking about you,” he said harshly, “since you left me so abruptly yesterday. Why did you do it? And yet, I am glad, on the whole, that you did. I want to tell you that I stood in my library door and witnessed my housekeeper’s dismissal of you from my house. Her own followed without delay.”

“I am sorry,” Barbara told him mechanically. She was noticing dazedly that Jarvis was dressed as she had occasionally seen him in church, and that his gloves and linen were quite fresh and immaculate.

“Why should you be sorry?” he demanded with a straight look at her.

“I—why, I think I should be sorry for any woman who had lost what she wanted to keep,” Barbara answered. “If you discharged her because I——”

“You were not primarily the cause of her dismissal,” he said coolly. “I had already told you that I was tired of seeing the woman about.”

He was silent for a long time, gazing frowningly at the floor.

Suddenly he looked up and, meeting Barbara’s astonished and somewhat indignant eyes, held them steadily with his own.

“You are wondering why I came here to-day. You are afraid of me, and you doubtless fancy with the rest of the world that you—dislike me exceedingly.”

Barbara opened her lips to reply.

“Don’t take the trouble to deny it,” he went on, with a faint sneer. “I know what most people think of me, perhaps with reason. But I am myself, not another; and so far, fear—dislike have seemed to me unavoidable.” Again his rigid lips relaxed into something like a smile, and he looked questioningly at the girl.

“It ought to be easy,” she said uncertainly, “to make people like you. You might——”

“I know what you are thinking of,” he interrupted rudely. “But it wouldn’t do. People fear and hate a hard man; they despise a fool. I refuse to be despised.”

He rose and walked up and down the room impatiently as if his thoughts irked him. Finally he paused before the window where a scarlet geranium blossomed on the sill, and turned a singularly flushed face upon the girl. For a dazed instant she wondered with a thrill of painfully remembered fear if he had been drinking.

“You will be startled at what I am about to say to you,” he said, in a changed voice. “I should have laughed at the idea if anyone had suggested it to me a week ago. But—I want you to marry me. I want you to be my wife. No! don’t answer; don’t refuse! You haven’t thought what it means. You cannot consider the matter so suddenly. But this much you can understand, I will give you this place on our wedding-day—to do with as you like, and I will attach no conditions to the gift.”

Barbara had not removed her fascinated gaze from his face. She felt like one dreaming fantastically and struggling unavailingly to awake.

“Perhaps you do not realize what you have asked of me,” she said at last. “But—I will not sell myself for this farm. That is what you have asked me to do.”

Her eyes sparkled blue fire; her lips curled disdainfully.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said roughly. “I want nothing of the sort. I want you—you! I need you. I am more sure of it now than ever.”

He took three steps toward her, his rugged face alive with determination—the grim determination which had wrested all that he possessed from the grip of a hostile world.

“When I want anything,” he said doggedly, “I always get it. Didn’t you know that? I want you.”

“You’ll not get me—ever!” cried Barbara.

She knew it must be war to the bitter end between them, and she flung the gage of battle full in his face with fine recklessness.

“You may take everything I have, if you can. But you’ll not get me!”

He stood up and buttoned his frock coat over his white waistcoat.

“I’ll not take your answer to-day,” he said, quite unmoved by her anger. “I had no intention of doing so.”

He strode to the door without another look at her, signalled his coachman, stepped into his closed carriage, shut the door hard behind him and rolled away, with a smooth whir of shining wheels.

V

“I’LL give her time to think before I see her again,” Jarvis decided, as his swift-stepping bays carried him along through the April rain. He dropped the window of his brougham and drew in deep satisfying breaths of the moist air. He was glad that she had not yielded supinely, as a weaker woman might have done. There was to his mind something heroic, splendid in her attitude as she defied him. For the first time in his life, Stephen Jarvis felt the stir of half-awakened passion; and the savage within his breast, never wholly eliminated or even tamed by an imperfect civilization, exulted at the thought of the imminent conflict of wills, the flight, the pursuit, the inevitable capture.

“I’ll give her time to think—to be afraid!” he repeated; “then——”

The blood hammered in his temples and involuntarily he clenched his strong hands, as if already crushing that weaker woman’s will and subduing it to his own.

But Barbara Preston was not thinking of the fact that Stephen Jarvis had asked her to be his wife. Being a woman, and, moreover, hard driven by cruel necessity, she might have been pardoned, if for a moment she had allowed her thoughts to linger upon the interview which had just ended. She might even have recalled with a certain speculative interest the luxurious interior of the carriage into which he had stepped and the smooth roll of the wheels which had borne him away, safe shut from the wind and the weather. So might she be lifted and sheltered from the bleak peltings of poverty, and life become a smooth progression instead of a painful pilgrimage. The girl sat quite still by the window looking out through misty panes into a mistier world, and only vaguely aware of dripping lilac sprays, ruddy with swelling buds, and of the flash of wet brown wings athwart the gray sky.

Stephen Jarvis, master of fate, and thrilling with the clash of his will upon hers, could hardly have known that the ghost of another man stood between him and the object of this new, urgent desire of his. He would have laughed the shadowy presence to scorn had he known it.

Yet it was this mere shadow of a man which chained Barbara’s thoughts while the April rain softened the landscape to a soft green blur. After all it was but natural that her one pitiful little love story should come back to her now, even to a vision of David Whitcomb’s eager face, his dark impatient eyes, and tossed hair, and the strong clasp of his hand upon hers in the dusk of the summer twilight.

It was Jimmy who had come between them; little motherless Jimmy, then a baby a year old, with big appealing eyes under a fluff of soft yellow hair, and a voice sweeter than any bird’s. All the woman’s heart in her had gone out to the helpless little creature who nestled in her arms at night, and whose eyes and voice followed her as she went about her work by day. This in the days when her father, grown suddenly old and apathetic, had begun to shut himself up in his library, for what purpose Barbara did not guess, at first. When she did know it was too late. The leaves of the book had been long closed and sealed, but the heart within her shivered at the remembrance of what was written there.

“If you really loved me,” David had said hotly, “you would not let anyone or anything come between us.”

She told him that she could not go to him over the bodies of a sick father and a helpless child. And since he had asked this of her, she did not, indeed, love him.

After this stormy scene—the last between them, since David Whitcomb had gone away, no one knew whither, nor indeed cared, since he was young and friendless and poor—Barbara had cried herself to sleep for many successive nights, quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping child. But one does not weep overlong at night whose brain and hands and feet are employed in the daytime. Only the beggared rich may give themselves to the indolent luxury of grief. After many nights of weeping followed by days of anxiety and uncounted labors, the pain of that parting subsided to a dull aching memory, which wakened once to cry out bitterly when she heard that he had been seen on a ship bound to the Yukon region in the early days of the gold fever. Many perished along the trail that year. It was rumored that David Whitcomb was among the number. No word ever came back to contradict the rumor, which after the lapse of months was accepted as a fact, and so—forgotten.

It was a long time—as youth measures time—since she had thought of David Whitcomb. Now she deliberately travelled back over the years between, and stood looking at her anguished young self, torn between love and duty, and at her one lover, who was not noble enough—she saw this with mournful certainty now—to help her lift and carry her heavy burden. Nevertheless she forgave him—as she had done hundreds of times in the past, excusing him tenderly, as a mother might have done, for his hot young selfishness, which refused to share her heart with a dying man and a helpless little child.

“I am glad,” she said aloud to the shadowy presence of her one lover, “glad that I did not yield.”

But her face was grave and sorrowful as she rose to answer a gentle knock at the kitchen door.

Peg Morrison stood there under the shelter of an ancient green umbrella, his puckered face smiling and healthily pink against the pale green of the outside world.

“I lef’ the Cap’n a-studyin’ over his book,” he chuckled, as he stepped into the kitchen, carefully wiping his feet on the braided rug inside. “He takes to vallable info’mation as the sparks fly upwards, an’ I’m glad to see it. Thinks I, as I looked at him settin’ down improvin’ maxims in red ink, this is a good time to talk over the situation with Miss Barb’ry.”

Barbara drew a deep breath.

“Come in,” she said briefly.

Then, as Peg seated himself in a wooden chair, ceremoniously arranging his coat-tails on either side, she added, “There isn’t much to say.”

“Wall, I’ve been thinkin’ fer quite a spell back that mebbe you’d like t’ lease th’ farm to me, ’stid o’ my workin’ it on shares, as heretofore. I’m——”

“But you haven’t had any share, Peg,” Barbara said, with a shade of impatience. “And that is why I have felt so—so unwilling to have you stay here and work, when I couldn’t possibly pay you what I knew you were earning.”

Peg struck one heavy palm upon his knee before he answered, his kindly face drawn into myriad comical puckers.

“Now, look-a-here, Miss Barb’ry,” he began. “You an’ me’s argued this ’ere question over more’n once. If I don’t get my share I’d like to know who does? I git m’ livin’, don’t I? An’ I git free house-rent, don’t I? An’ them two items, livin’ an’ house-rent, ’s ’bout all mos’ folks git. W’y, Miss Barb’ry, I live luxurious to what lots o’ folks do. And then ag’in you mus’ remember that I ain’t a reelly d’sirable farm laborer. I’m gittin’ ’long in life, an’ I can’t put in the kind and description o’ a day’s work folks’ll pay good wages fer. I’ll bet you——”

And the old man raised his voice to the argumentative pitch commonly employed in heated controversies around the stove in Hewett’s grocery.

“I’ll bet you a dollar an’ a half ’at I couldn’t git a place on a farm ’round here to save my neck! I’ll bet I’d git turned down quicker’n scat ev’ry place I’d try. ‘What!’ they’d say, ’ol’ Peg Morrison wants a place? That ol’ coot? Why, he ain’t wo’th his victuals!’ ’Tain’t reelly fur f’om charity, Miss Barb’ry, fer you to keep me here, givin’ me all the veg’tables an’ po’k I want, with now an’ then a fresh egg, er a—chicken. Sakes alive! I tell ye I’m grateful of a winter night when I creep under that nice patchwork quilt you give me ’at I’m workin’ fer a lady—on shares.”

Barbara laughed, an irrepressible girlish laugh, even while she shook her head.

“I couldn’t pay you for what you’ve done for Jimmy and me since—since father died, and—before, too. And I can’t thank you, either. I couldn’t find words to do it if I tried.”

“Thank me!” echoed the old man exuberantly. “Say, excuse me fer appearin’ to smile, Miss Barb’ry.” His voice grew suddenly grave. “I guess ther’ ain’t any pertickler use in quarrellin’ ’bout it, after all. I’ll do what I can fer you an’ the boy—bein’ a poor shakes of a laborer—jes’ ’s long ’s I live, an’ you c’n d’pend upon it. But now what do you think ’bout leasin’ th’ farm—say, fer a thousand dollars?”

Peg’s eyes grew round, and he gasped a little at the magnitude of the proposition.

“I’ve got a dollar or two laid by fer a rainy day, an’ I’ll put that down in advance,” he went on, with a chuckle, “an’ the way I’ve figgered it I’ll make big money on the deal. W’y, look-a-here,” and he drew a soiled newspaper from his pocket, “I come ’cross this ’ere article th’ other day. I’d like t’ read t’ you what it says on the subjec’ o’ onions. ‘Thirty-three acres o’ land in onions netted John Closner of Hidalgo, Texas, ’leven thousan’ dollars!’ Hear that, will ye? He says he perduced thirty-six carloads off’n his farm—more’n a carload t’ an acre!’ Hold on! that ain’t all—’course that’s in Texas. But listen t’ this, Miss Barb’ry——”

“But, Peg, there isn’t any use of talking,” interrupted the girl, “the mortgage is going to be foreclosed the first of June, unless I——”

“Foreclosed—eh? Foreclosed!” echoed the old man. “Wall, I was ’fraid of it when I seen his buggy here yist’day an’ ag’in t’-day. Farmers ’round here say they hate th’ sight o’ that red-wheeled buggy worse’n pison snakes. It gene’ally means business o’ th’ kind they ain’t lookin’ fer. Say! I wisht I’d got a-holt o’ this ’ere article on onion-growin’ before. I reelly do. Jes’ listen t’ this: ‘Onions are profitably grown in th’ north, also. Ebenezer N. Foote of Northampton, Mass., has perduced av’rage crops ’s high es nine hunderd an’ ten bushels t’ th’ acre! He says he expects to raise that to twelve hunderd! The annual value of his crop ranges f’om five hunderd to six hunderd dollars per acre!’”

Peg’s voice swelled into a veritable pæan in a high key; his face glowed with the ecstasies of his imaginings. He carefully folded the newspaper and stuffed it into a capacious pocket.

“Now, y’ see,” he went on oratorically, “exclusive o’ the orchards, which had ought to net us at least five hunderd dollars this year, we could put in, say, twenty acres o’ onions, at five hunderd dollars per acre, that would net us—l’me see, five hunderd dollars times twenty acres ’ud make. Here, lemme figger that out.”

The old man fumbled in his vest pocket for a stubbed pencil.

“I ain’t th’ lightnin’ calculator you’d expect fer such a schemin’ ol’ cuss,” he murmured apologetically, as he wet the lead preparatory to computation.

Barbara smiled. “It would be ten thousand dollars,” she said. “But, Peg, don’t you see——”

“Ten thousand dollars! Whew! I guess that ’ud make a mortgage look kind o’ sick, wouldn’t it? We’d ought to hold on a spell longer an’ give onions a try.”

“But we can’t, Peg. It’s only six weeks before the first of June, and I’ve only twenty dollars in the world.”

Barbara leaned back in her chair, her face relaxed and weary and unutterably sad.

“You must look for another place right away, Peg,” she went on, “I’ll try and find one for you. Then, if I can get a school, or—some sort of work. I don’t care much what it is, if it will keep Jimmy and me.”

“The’s a whole lot o’ money in p’tatoes, too,” grumbled Peg, his anxious blue eyes on her face. “I’d ought to ’ave sowed peas an’ oats on that hill lot las’ fall an’ ploughed ’em in this spring. It says in this ’ere article on big crops that’ll grow p’tatoes like all possessed. I wisht I’d come acrost th’ inf’mation b’fore.”

“Mr. Jarvis says the farm is worn out,” Barbara said, a growing despondency in her voice. “He says the orchards are worthless, too; they are old.”

“Shucks!” exploded Peg. “‘Course Jarvis’d talk like that when he’s gittin’ it away f’om you fer nothin’ like its value. I’ll bet he’d have another story to tell ef anybody was to try ’n buy it of him. Values has a way o’ risin’ over night like bread dough once Stephen Jarvis gits a-holt o’ a piece o’ prop’ty.”

“He asked me to marry him,” said Barbara abruptly. Then bit her lip angrily at the old man’s look of amazed incredulity. “I’m sure I don’t know why I told you, only I—haven’t anyone to speak to, and—no one to advise me.”

Peg’s face grew suddenly grave.

“Don’t you be afraid I’ll mention it, Miss Barb’ry,” he said gently. “‘Course I was kind o’ s’prised—at first. But I don’t know’s I be, come t’ think o’ it. He asked you to be Mis’ Jarvis? Wall! You goin’ to do it, Miss Barb’ry?”

“He said he would give me the farm,” Barbara went on slowly, “to do as I liked with. I could—give it to Jimmy.”

She looked at him with a child’s unconscious appeal.

“Do you think I ought to—to marry him, Peg?”

The old man was still eyeing her soberly, even wistfully.

“I’ve knowed you sence you was a little girl no higher’n my knee, Miss Barb’ry,” he began. “I’ve seed you grow up. An’ I’ve seed you go through some pretty hard experiences. Now, I ain’t the kind to talk very much ’bout my religion, an’ the’s times when I don’t ’pear to have a nawful lot of it; but the’s a God that hears an’—an’ takes notice. That much I’ve found out, an’ ef I was you I’d go to headquarters an’ git th’ best advice. But I’ll say this, ef the farm is wore out,—es he says,—it ’pears t’ me he’s askin’ a pretty high price fer th’ prop’ty. He wants your youth, Miss Barb’ry, an’ your pretty looks, an’ your life. An’ es fer the Cap’n—Wall, I’d ruther not d’pend too much on th’ Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis, when it comes t’ th’ Cap’n. That’s the way it looks to me. ’Course I don’t p’tend to be a good jedge o’ what’s best in th’ world. I don’t look like it, do I?”

He glanced down at his patched and faded clothes with a cheerfully acquiescent smile.

“I’ve a notion,” he went on, “that the Lord’ll advise ye ’long th’ same lines ’s I hev. But don’t take my word fer it.”

“None of my prayers have been answered,” Barbara said, her red lips setting themselves in obstinate lines. “I’ve given up expecting anything so foolish. I prayed to have father get well, and he—died.”

“But he got well,” put in Peg quietly. “You c’n bet he did. Mebbe the Lord couldn’t fetch it ’round any other way. The’ was so many things ag’in him.”

Barbara’s delicate brows went up scornfully.

“I don’t call dying getting well,” she said.

“H’m!” murmured the old man gently. “Mebbe we don’t always call things by their right names.”

He got to his feet slowly.

“Wall, I mus’ be gittin’ out t’ the barn.”

He fixed his friendly, anxious eyes on the girl.

“I guess I’d figger a spell on that marryin’ proposition, ef I was you,” he said softly, and shook his head.

He turned, with his hand on the latch, to cast a dubious look back at the girl.

“It ’pears t’ me you ain’t cut out right for the second Mis’ Jarvis,” he said. “She’d ought b’ rights t’ be a big, upstandin’ female, with—with red hair.”

He shut the door hastily behind him.

VI

IT is a well-worn, yet none the less true saying that every human life is a chain of causes and effects; each effect a cause, and each cause an effect, stretching back to an unimagined and unimaginable First Cause; and on and on into endless, undreamed of vistas of the future. Yet the realization of this vague, yet tremendous fact comes but seldom even to the thoughtful mind, so busy are we forging link on link of the chain which binds us alike to past and future.

Barbara Preston, stopping aimlessly to read the notice of an auction of farm stock and household furniture advertised to take place in a neighboring township, could not guess that the trivial impulse that stayed her feet by the big chestnut at the roadside linked itself with events already slowly shaping in her future. The notice was printed in bold red letters on a buff background, calculated to seize and hold the eye of the passerby, and set forth the fact that one Thomas Bellows, Auctioneer, would, on the twenty-fifth day of April, sell to the highest bidder, on the premises of the owner, four milch cows, three farm horses, and sixty-four sheep. Also one young carriage horse, well broken, sound, kind, and willing. Other items relating to household gear and poultry followed, set down in due order of their relative importance.

The red letters on the buff ground passed into Barbara’s eyes—as indeed they were purposefully intended—and impressed themselves on her memory. She considered them half angrily as she pursued her way to the post-office, picturing to herself the day when Thomas Bellows or another, would noisily exploit the contents of her own well-loved home. There was little there to bring money, and the mortgage covered stock and furniture as well as the land itself. She had learned this from a curt letter addressed to her by Stephen Jarvis in reply to questions of her own as concisely put.

Apart from her half-dazed recollection of the rainy afternoon a week since, their relations as ruthless creditor and hopeless debtor appeared to be unchanged. During the interval she had gone doggedly about her self-imposed labors, rising in the faint light of dawn to set strawberry and lettuce plants, wintered carefully on the south side of the big barns, with the vague unreasoning hope that somehow or other she might be permitted to reap the fruit of her toil. Between times she was casting about for another home and other modes of livelihood for herself and Jimmy. It would be difficult, if not impossible, she was told, to secure a position to teach. Only normal-school graduates stood any chance of preferment, and there appeared to be no prospect of a vacancy of any kind before fall. To become a dressmaker’s apprentice was possible; but the woman who provided the opportunity offered instruction for the first six months in lieu of wages. And obviously one could not live on information alone, however valuable. Household servants were always in brisk demand, she had been reminded; but pride of race wrestled with the untold humiliation of such a lot. Besides, there was Jimmy. Her heart grew faint at the thought of the loving, carefully-shielded child in the cold shelter of an “asylum” or the bound property of some shrewd farmer, an investment involving a grudging expenditure of coarse food and scanty, insufficient clothing and forced to yield an ever-increasing increment of labor. Oh, life was cruel at its best. Her flesh and her soul cried out at the thought of what its worst might be. If there was a way of escape, why not accept it?

She was turning these things wearily over in her mind when the quick whir of wheels sounded at her back. She stepped aside to allow the vehicle to pass, without raising her eyes.

A harsh, domineering voice, the sort of voice to be slavishly obeyed, ordered the horse to stand still.

She looked up quickly to meet the eager gaze of the man who was in her thoughts. A vivid color, of which she was angrily conscious, rose to her forehead. She stammered some sort of greeting, her eyes drooping before the dominant insistence in his.

“I was just on my way to your house,” he said.

His voice, as well as his eyes, was eager, insistent.

“Get in, won’t you, and ride with me? I have something to say to you.”

The girl hesitated, her cheeks paling. He sprang to the ground, speaking sharply to his young, restive horse.

“Allow me to assist you,” he said, with a politeness wholly unfamiliar to Barbara.

She gave him an astonished look, which he interpreted correctly, with the acumen of a trained politician.

“You have been thinking that I was exceedingly abrupt—even rude, in the way I spoke to you the other day,” he said, as he took her firmly by the hand and lifted her to a seat in the vehicle which was “dreaded more’n pison snakes” by the delinquent debtors in the countryside, according to Peg Morrison.

He bent to look keenly into her face, as he seated himself at her side. “Isn’t that so,—Barbara?”

At the sound of her name in that new, strange voice of his the girl started and almost shivered. She was beginning to be afraid of herself—this no less new and strange self, who was tired of being poor and hardworked and anxious, and who longed after comfort and ease and affection of some strong, compelling sort. She lifted her eyes to his.

“I have been thinking many things,” she murmured, “since—since you——”

He laughed under his breath.

“Yes; and you have been doing some things, too,” he said. “I heard you were looking for a place to teach, and—it didn’t encourage me to suppose that you were thinking very favorably of what I proposed. Did you secure a position?”

“N-o, I didn’t,” she acknowledged. She hesitated visibly, then added, “They told me you were a school commissioner, and that I must apply to you.”

“Why didn’t you apply to me?” he wanted to know. “Didn’t you think I would be a good sort of person to help you in your desire for independence?”

“I didn’t ask you,” she said, “because——”

“Well?” he questioned sharply. “You didn’t ask me for help because——”

“How could I?” she demanded, with a spirited lift of her head. “I asked you for help before and you refused.”

He looked at her with piercing keenness.

“Did I?” he said gravely. “Well, I offered you—a position. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

Barbara’s heart beat suffocatingly fast. His eyes were on her face, compelling her, mastering her.

“Would you—Could I take care of Jimmy just the same?” she asked, in a muffled voice.

He gave his horse a sharp cut with the whip before he answered.

“I can’t see why you should bring the boy into our affairs,” he said coldly. “But he can live with us—for the present, if you like. Then there is the Preston farm; as I’ve already told you, you may do as you like with it.”

Barbara looked mistily away over the fields past which they were driving, the sound of meadow-larks, calling and answering, and the soft jubilant gurgle of a bluebird on a nearer fence-rail reaching her like vaguely reproachful voices out of a dead past. Then as now had the meadow-larks called “Sweet! oh, my sweet!”—in the one spring-time when David Whitcomb loved her.

“I shall have to—to think,” she murmured. “I am afraid——”

“Of what?” he demanded. “Of me?”

She did not answer, and again he cut the horse impatiently with his keen whip-lash, holding the spirited creature with a strong grasp on the reins as he did so.

“Well,” he said, after a long silence, “I’m afraid I can’t make myself over, even for you. But I’ll tell you something, my girl, there are worse men in the world than Stephen Jarvis, and perhaps you’ll fall in with some of ’em, if you turn me down. Look at me, will you?”

Unwillingly she turned her face to his.

“I shall not take a silly _no_ for an answer,” he said under his breath. “I never have, and I shan’t begin with you. I need you, and you need me.”

His eyes held her powerfully.

“Do you love another man?”

“No,” said Barbara faintly. She could not bring herself to uncover her one dead love before those pitiless eyes, while the meadow-larks were calling and answering with such piercing sweetness. David Whitcomb was dead. If she had ever loved him it was as another self in a dim past, growing ever dimmer.

“Then,” said the Honorable Stephen Jarvis quietly, “you will marry me.” He broke into a short laugh. “Do you know I couldn’t bear to think of your loving another man? Is that being in love? Tell me, Barbara.”

He laughed again softly, as he bent to peer into her averted face. She felt herself yielding, her weak hold on past and future loosening.

She did not answer, but her red mouth quivered.

He experienced a sudden thrilling desire to touch the fresh innocent lips with his.

“It would be curious,” he murmured unsteadily, “if I should learn what love is for the first time. Shall I tell you how old I am, Barbara?”

She looked up at him without curiosity.

“Well, I’m thirty-seven; and I’ve never loved any woman—I have never loved anything, except money and success. But now—Barbara!”

He bent toward her, his cold eyes alive with passion.

“No—no!” she cried, shrinking from him in sudden terror.

His face stiffened into its accustomed mask.

“You’re thinking I’ve waited too long,” he said bitterly, and the curling lash stung the bay horse in the flank.

Neither spoke again while the wheels spun dizzily along over the mile of road which brought them to the big stone gate-posts of the Preston farm.

He drew up his foaming horse sharply.

“I won’t come in,” he said, “if you’ll get out here.”

She felt herself vaguely humiliated as she stepped down from the high vehicle without assistance.

“Stop!” he ordered as she passed quickly inside, as if in haste to gain shelter.

She looked up at him uncertainly, her eyes wide with an emotion akin to terror.

“I shall not humiliate myself by coaxing or cajoling you,” he said haughtily. “You are best left alone for the present.”

He lifted his hat with a sweeping bow, and the red-wheeled buggy dashed away.

Barbara drew a long, struggling sigh. She felt curiously light and free, as if she had made a breathless escape from some grasping hand, outstretched to seize her.

The sight of Jimmy running swiftly down the driveway toward her heightened the sensation to almost passionate relief.

“Hello, Barb’ra!” shouted the little boy. “I came home from school, an’ you wasn’t here. An’ you can’t guess what I’ve got for you!”

The child’s face, glowing rosily with health and mischief, was uplifted to hers. She stooped and kissed it tenderly.

“What have you got for me, Jimmy?”

“Guess!”

“I can’t guess,” she answered soberly. “You’ll have to tell me.”

“You ain’t cross wiv me, are you, Barb’ra?”

“No, dear, of course I’m not. Why should I be cross? Why, it—it’s a letter! Where did you get it, Jimmy?”

“It’s the one I lost,” said the child, puckering up his chin disappointedly. “I fought you’d be glad. Peg found it. He said he ’membered the wind was blowin’ that day; so he looked all along the road on bof sides, an’ he found it right under a bush.”

Barbara hastily tore the sodden envelope apart. Her fingers trembled as she unfolded the large stained sheet.

“Is it all spoiled?” asked Jimmy anxiously. “Can’t you read it?”

VII

BARBARA stared at the stained and defaced sheet with wide, frightened eyes. Her hands trembled.