Chapter III: Part 3

“Can’t you read it, Barb’ra?” pleaded Jimmy anxiously, standing on tip-toe to peep at the letter. “Peg said he was ’fraid you couldn’t; but he said maybe you’d know who it was from, an’ if it was ’portant.”

Barbara did not answer. The rain-soaked paper in her trembling fingers faced her like a mute accusing ghost out of the past. The lines of writing folded close upon each other and soaked with rain and the stain of the wet brown earth had been completely obliterated; but two words of the many had escaped; her own name at the beginning of the letter, and another at its close.

“He is not dead!” she murmured. “He is not dead!”

Jimmy clutched her sleeve, dancing up and down in his impatience.

“Is it ’portant, Barb’ra—is it? Can you read it?” he persisted.

She faced the child, her eyes clouded with despair and anger.

“No, I can’t read it!” she cried. “Oh! if you had only brought it to me!”

She turned swiftly and hurried toward the house, leaving the child lagging forlornly in the rear, his blue eyes brimmed with tears.

Peg Morrison, digging a patch of garden in the rear of the house, his battered straw hat drawn low over his eyes, his teeth firmly closed on a twig of apple-tree wood, became presently aware of a small dejected figure lurking in the shadow of the blossoming tree.

“Hello, Cap’n!” he called out cheerfully, relinquishing the twig in favor of a spent dandelion stalk. “Did ye find Barb’ry—heh? An’ did ye give her the letter?”

“I gave it to her; but she—can’t read it. An’—’n’ I’m ’fraid it was ’portant. She’s mad wiv me, Barb’ra is; ’n’ I haven’t had any dinner, either.”

The child manfully swallowed the sob that rose in his throat. Then he selected a tall dandelion with a plumy top which he put in his mouth in imitation of Peg, who watched him with a dubious smile.

“Wall, now, that’s too bad, Cap’n,” sympathized the old man. “But ef Barb’ry can’t read the letter it mus’ be ’cause ’tain’t best she should. Things don’t happen b’ chance, Cap’n. You want t’ remember that. There’s Somebody a-lookin’ out fer things as don’t make no mistakes.”

Jimmy pondered this dark saying while the dandelion stem slowly uncurled itself into a dangling spiral.

“Then it was all right for me to lose that letter, ‘N’ you said——”

Peg frowned thoughtfully at the antics of a pair of barn-swallows swooping in and out from under the eaves.

“No; it wa’n’t right fer you to be careless an’ lose the letter, Cap’n,” he said decidedly. “But the Lord—wall, you see, the Lord is consid’able smarter’n what we be, an’ He c’n fix things up that go wrong. Kind o’ arranges it so’t the universe won’t fly the track, no matter what we do. We ain’t p’mitted t’ disturb the gen’ral peace t’ any great extent. You’ll understan’ these things better when you’re growed up, Cap’n.”

“Will I?” said Jimmy hopefully.

Peg thrust his spade into the ground.

“Guess I’d better walk over t’ the house with you, an’ see if the’s anythin’ I c’n do,” he said briefly.

Barbara was setting the table with quick darting movements of her lithe figure when the two came in range of the kitchen door. She paused abruptly at sight of them.

“You must come in and eat your dinner quick, Jimmy,” she called, “or you’ll be late to school.”

“You g’wan in, Cap’n,” Peg urged in a diplomatic whisper. “I guess she’s pretty nigh all right. But I wouldn’t pester her none ’bout that letter ef I was you. Mebbe she’d ruther not talk ’bout it yet.”

The child stole into the kitchen with hanging head and sat down at the table spread for two. He was very much ashamed of himself in the stormy light of Barbara’s gray eyes; but Mr. Morrison’s remarks concerning the Maker of the universe appeared worthy of passing on. He fortified himself with a large slice of brown bread and butter, thickly overlaid with apple-sauce.

“It couldn’t have been _very_ ’portant, Barb’ra,” he said blandly.

The girl faced about in the act of taking two boiled potatoes out of a saucepan.

“But it was, Jimmy. I know that much, and I can’t read it.”

“Peg says there’s Somebody a-lookin’ out for things, an’ He made that letter fall out o’ my pocket.”

“Peg,” interrupted Barbara wrathfully, “knows nothing about it.”

“‘N’ He let it rain, too,” pursued Jimmy determinedly. “‘N’ He let the ink run, ’n’ the mud get on it. Do you want me to tell you who it was? Do you, Barb’ra?”

“Well, who do you suppose it was?”

“God!” exploded the child dramatically. “Peg said——”

“I don’t want to hear what Peg said. He doesn’t know.”

“I shall put it,” said the child, “in red ink, in my Vallable Inf’mation book. It’s a vallable inf’mation.”

“It would be, if it was true.”

“An’ if it isn’t true, it’s a vallable inf’mation. I’ll put it down that way.”

“I would,” advised Barbara gloomily. Then she repented herself and stooped to kiss the child’s quivering lips. “Anyway,” she said, “I love you; and you didn’t mean to lose the letter.”

After Jimmy’s inquisitive blue eyes were tight shut that night, Barbara examined the blurred sheet once more, holding it between her eyes and the bright light of the lamp. A word here and there appeared to emerge from the chaos, where the sharp penpoint had bitten the paper.

“... never forgotten,” was tolerably distinct. Then followed a hopeless blur of brown earth stains and purple ink. But further down the page she read,

“Write—if you——”

That was all, except his name, “David Whitcomb,” at the foot of the page.

The postmark had resisted the spoiling of both rain and mould, and read distinctly, as Al Hewett had declared, “Tombstone, Arizona,” in a blurred circle, with the date “April 2” and the hour of stamping “2-P.M.”

With a sudden glad impulse Barbara pulled a sheet of paper toward her.

“Dear David [she wrote], Your letter has just reached me, but I can only read a part of it, because——”

She paused and hesitated; then went on firmly:

“Jimmy lost it, and it lay out under a bush in the rain for more than a week. I can make out only a few words here and there, but those few tell me that you have not forgotten, and that you want me to write to you.”

The girl paused to draw a deep, wondering breath.

“I can’t tell you how strange it seems to be writing to you, because I have been thinking of you, David, for nearly three years as dead. They said you were lost on a trail in Alaska. And I thought it must be true. But your letter—even though I can’t read it—has brought me the assurance that you are not in some far-away heaven, where I have tried to picture you, David, but on earth.

“This letter may never reach you, for I can only be sure that your letter to me was mailed in Tombstone; but I want to tell you that only Jimmy and I are left. Father died a year ago, and since then I have been trying to hold the farm for Jimmy. We are the last of the Prestons, you know, and I do want——”

She stopped short, laid down her pen and listened breathlessly. She fancied she had heard the child’s voice calling her from the room above. She glided noiselessly to the foot of the stair, and listened, her slight figure seeming to melt, spirit-like, into the shadows. It was very lonely in the old house. The tall clock on the stair-landing ticked loud and solemnly in the stillness, and the wind in the budding trees without swept past the house with a long sighing breath. The girl shivered as she listened, then she went quickly back to the sitting-room with its cheerful circle of light and its drawn curtains, and paused to read the words she had written to David Whitcomb. They sounded stiff and trite after her brief absence in the shadowy hall. After all, was she not taking too much for granted? Perhaps he was merely asking for information, which he felt sure he could obtain from her on the score of old friendship. He had left some books in the bare little room he had occupied in the village for a year. The minister had them, she had been told. Her cheeks crimsoned slowly as she crumpled the half-written page and tossed it into the waste basket.

Then she chose a fresh sheet and wrote slowly, with frequent pauses: “Dear David: I was very much surprised to receive a letter from you after all these years. I must explain that though I received your letter to-day I have not been able to read it. It had been quite spoiled with rain and mildew. If this reaches you—and I cannot be sure of it, because I have only the postmark to go by—please write to me again, and I will answer at once.”

She signed the letter quite formally and simply with her full name, Barbara Allen Preston.

She mailed the letter the next morning, passing the great Jarvis mansion on her way to the post-office with averted looks. On the sixteenth morning thereafter she received back her letter written to David Whitcomb, with the words printed across the envelope, “Not called for.” She scarcely knew how much she had been expecting from David till her own unopened letter reached her with the effect of a door hard shut in the face of entreaty.

It was on that same day, as she walked slowly toward home, leaving her fruitless letter in a trail of tiny white fragments behind her, that the high-stepping bay horse and the red-wheeled buggy again passed her. She looked up involuntarily, her face white and sad, to receive a cold stare and curt nod from the man on the high seat. His whip-lash curled cruelly around the slender flank of his horse as he passed, and the sensitive creature sprang forward with a lunge and a quiver, only to receive a second and third stinging cut from the lash.

Barbara straightened herself as she watched the light vehicle disappear around a turn in the road.

She was thinking with a vague terror that so he would have tortured and driven her, cruelly, with no hope of escape. She was not prepared to see him return almost immediately at the same furious speed, and still less for his words as he pulled up his foaming horse.

“Get in,” he ordered her roughly. “I must speak to you.”

She looked up at him, her gray eyes sparkling defiance from under their long curling lashes.

“No,” she said loudly, “I will not.”

“Will not?” he repeated. “But I say you shall listen to me.”

She walked on quietly. He stared after her with a muttered oath, as if half-minded to go on. Then he leaped down, jerked his horse roughly to the fence-rail, tied him fast, and strode after the slim figure in the shabby black gown.

He overtook her in a few long strides. She turned to face him in the middle of the muddy road.

“I told you I would leave you to yourself. I meant to. I intended to let you be frightened, harassed, driven to the wall; but I can’t,” he said in a low, choked voice. “I—love you! I love you! Do you hear me?”

She shrank back trembling before the man’s white face and blazing eyes.

“I never knew before what it was like to—to love,” he stammered. “But I do now. What did you mean by saying that you would not—sell yourself for a worn-out farm? Sell yourself—to me? Why, girl, I’d give you all that I have—and my soul to the devil for—— I’ll do anything you say, if you’ll only marry me! I’ll give you a dozen farms. I’ll——”

“Stop!” cried Barbara, her face slowly whitening. “I—I am sorry I said that. I didn’t mean——”

“Do you mean that you’ll marry me, Barbara—Barbara!”

His eyes devoured her.

“Listen,” he went on. “I’ve put in ten such days and nights as I never expected to spend in this or any other world.”

He gripped her by the arm.

“You—must love me,” he stormed. “I—I can’t give you up!”

His shaken voice dropped into a low, pleading tone.

“You’ll not believe it, Barbara. But I—didn’t know what it was like to love anyone. Why should I? I married for money—I’m not ashamed to tell you. But Barbara! Barbara!”

The words rang out in a stifled cry, as he read the fear—the aversion in hers.

She writhed out of his grasp, her breath coming and going in little gasps.

“Stop!” she cried. “I—can’t listen!”

She clutched at the fence-rail as if she feared his violence.

He folded his arms quietly, his face grown suddenly rigid.

“Something has happened since the other day,” he said. “What is it?”

She was silent.

He took two long steps and stood over her, big, powerful, threatening.

“You shall answer me. Who or what is it that has come between us?”

Again he waited for her to speak; but she stood mute with bent head.

His clenched hands dropped at his side.

“You’ll not answer me,” he said, in a cold, hard voice. “Well, be it so; go your way, and I’ll go mine. But—I shall not give you up. You’re killing yourself with hard work; it is I who force you to it. I am your master. You can’t escape me!”

“You are not my master!” she said wildly. “I’m free—free!”

He turned without another look at her, his savage heel grinding an innocent clover blossom into the mud of the road.

VIII

BARBARA stole softly down the creaking stair in the gray obscurity of dawn, her shoes in one hand, a smoking candle in the other. There was much to be done, much to be thought of, and Jimmy must not wake up to hinder for two full hours yet.

It was cold in the kitchen, and the faint pink light streaming from the east shone in uncertainty through misted panes. Barbara sat down, her red lips sternly compressed, her dark brows drawn in a frowning line above her eyes, and applied herself briskly to lacing up her shoes. It was a relief to be accomplishing something real, tangible, after the whirling mist of dreams from which she had emerged shaken and breathless. Dreams of any description seldom visited Barbara’s healthily tired brain, but the vanished darkness of the past night had been haunted with confused visions. Now Stephen Jarvis was pursuing her through trackless forests, where long branches reached down like crooked, grasping hands. Always she managed to elude her pursuer and always he followed, his panting breath in her ears, till suddenly stumbling and falling through a vast crevasse in the darkness she found herself on a wide plain, starred with narcissus, swaying spirit-like in the bright air; high overhead white clouds floated and the winds of May blew cool fragrance into her face. At first she was alone, seeking for something, she knew not what; then David Whitcomb stood at her side.

“Come!” he cried imperiously, and his blue eyes pleaded with hers. “We must make haste to escape before the child overtakes us!”

She turned to follow his pointing finger and saw Jimmy running toward them, his arms outstretched, his bare, rosy feet stumbling amid the folds of his long white gown. Then, with the wild irrelevancy of dreams she heard the raucous voice of Thomas Bellows, the auctioneer from Greenfield Centre, shouting something indistinguishable in the far distance. Instantly the wide plain, the impassioned lover, and the running, stumbling little figure vanished. She was at home now, hurrying in anxious haste from room to room to find everything empty and desolate and the sun shining in through dimmed window-panes on the bare floors. Outside on the lawn a confused pile of household furniture, books, and carpets, looking sadly worn and old in the pitiless light of day, were being rapidly sold under the hammer.

“Here you are, ladies an’ gents,” shouted the auctioneer, “lot number twenty-four, a strong, healthy young woman, kind an’ willin’! A good cook an’ housekeeper. How much am I offered? Come, ladies, let me hear your bids!”

The faint light of morning touching her closed eyelids like a cool finger-tip suddenly aroused the girl to a consciousness of reality (if indeed the experiences of this mortal life be more real than dreams). She rose at once, dressed hastily, and having by now finished the lacing up of her shoes stood gazing out at the familiar door-yard with gathered brows.

“I ought,” said Barbara half-aloud in the silence of the kitchen, “to be good for something.” She looked down at her young strong hands; hands skilled in many uses, her forehead still puckered with unaccustomed thoughts.

Then she opened the back door quietly, for she was still mindful of the sleeping child above, and went out into the frosty dawn. A robin was singing loudly in the top of the budding elm down by the gate.

“Cheer up! Cheer up!” the jubilant bird voice seemed to be saying. Then the song ceased and the strong brown wings spread and carried the voice toward the dawn, which now flung long streamers of rose and gold athwart the frigid blue of the sky. A bright, cold moon swung low in the west and the distant houses of the village, huddled close among dark folds of the hills, began to send up delicate spirals of smoke which ascended and hung motionless in mid-heaven, like unshriven ghosts.

Peg Morrison was washing the mud off the wheels of the old buggy to the tune of Denis, lugubriously wafted to the winds of morning through his nose.

“Blest be-hee th’ tie-hi which bi-inds,
Aour ha-ur-uts in Chris-his-chun lo-ove;
Th’ fe-hell-o-shi-hip of ki-hin-dred mi-hinds,
Is li-hike to tha-hat above!”

“Peg!” cried Barbara, in her imperious young voice.

The old man stopped short in his rendition of Fawcett’s immortal stanzas, an apologetic smile over-spreading his features.

“Good-mornin’, Miss Barb’ry,” he said. “A nice, pleasant mornin’, ain’t it? Thinks I, I’ll wash up this ’ere buggy an’ make it look’s well’s I kin. Then, mebbe, ’long towards arternoon I’ll git ’round t’ call on th’ Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis. I reckon I——”

“No,” interrupted Barbara decidedly, “you mustn’t do that. It wouldn’t do any good,” she added, in anticipation of protest.

“It’s th’ matter o’ th’ onions I was thinkin’ o’ bringin’ to his attention,” said Peg, raising his voice. “‘F I c’n prove to th’ Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis that onions’ll raise that goll-durned mortgage within one year f’om date, I——”

“Peg,” protested Barbara indignantly, “how do you suppose I’m ever going to train Jimmy to speak properly if you persist in using such language?”

“Meanin’ th’ expression goll-durned, o’ course, Miss Barb’ry,” acquiesced the old man meekly. “You’re right, I ain’t no manner o’ business to use swear words b’fore ladies. But that consarned, measly——”

The girl stamped her foot impatiently.

“There’s no use talking to you,” she said sharply. “I’ll just have to keep Jimmy away from you.”

“Don’t do that, Miss Barb’ry; please don’t!” pleaded Peg. “I won’t do him no real harm. I ain’t no-ways vicious, ner—ner low-down; an’ that little chap—— Why, Miss Barb’ry, me an’ th’ Cap’n ’s been a chumin’ it sence he could crawl out t’ th’ barn on ’is han’s an’ knees. Ef he don’t fall int’ no worse comp’ny ’n Peleg Morrison’s, I guess the Cap’n ’ll come out all right. An’ you kin bet your bottom dollar onto it.”

Peg swashed the remaining water in his pail over the hind wheel of the buggy with an air of stern finality.

“Of course I know you’re good, Peg,” murmured Barbara contritely. “I didn’t mean——”

“Don’t mention it, Miss Barb’ry,” interrupted Mr. Morrison, with generous politeness. “Your tongue gits the start o’ your jedgment occasionally, same’s your pa’s ust to, but I shan’t lay it up ’gainst you. Any more”—and he raised his voice in anticipation of a possible interruption—“any more’n I done in the past.” His eyes twinkled kindly at the girl.

“I want you to harness the buggy for me after breakfast, Peg,” Barbara said soberly. “I’m going—somewhere on business, and I want to start early.”

“Blest be he th’ tie-hi which bi-inds.”

warbled Peg unmelodiously, as he stooped to apply his wet sponge to the rear springs.

“Did you hear me, Peg?” demanded Barbara.

The old man gazed reproachfully at the girl through the spokes of the wheel.

“W’y, I’m goin’ to use the horses fer ploughin’ this mornin’, Miss Barb’ry,” he said soothingly. “An’ they’ll be all tuckered out b’ night.”

“But there’s no use of doing any more ploughing. I told you that last week. Unless I can manage somehow to—to raise the money, the farm——”

“Don’t say it!” interrupted Peg. “I don’t b’lieve in namin’ troubles. It helps ’em to ketch a body, someway, to notice ’em too much. I b’lieve in actin’ ’s if the’ wa’nt anythin’ th’ matter ’s long ’s ye kin.”

“Yes, and while you’re doing it the mortgage will foreclose itself,” Barbara said, recalling Stephen Jarvis’ curt phrase with a thrill of anger. “You hitch up Billy for me and bring him around at seven o’clock. Will you do it, please, Peg?”

“The fe-hell-o-shi-hip of k-hin-dred mi-hinds!”

chanted Mr. Morrison, with entire irrelevance.

“Very well, if you won’t, I’ll walk. It’s ten miles there and back, but you won’t care, as long as you have your own way.”

“Where was you thinkin’ of goin’, Miss Barb’ry?” demanded Peg cautiously. “Ye know I ain’t set on anythin’ that ain’t fer your good—yours an’ the Cap’n’s.”

But Barbara had already disappeared in a flutter of angry haste.

“Now, I s’pose,” soliloquized Mr. Morrison, “that I’ll actually hev to give up ploughin’ the hill lot this mornin’, an’ all ’long o’ that young female.” He shook his head solemnly.

“O Lord!” he burst out, “you know Miss Barb’ry, prob’bly’s well’s I do. She’s a mighty nice girl an’ always hes been; but she’s turrible set in her ways, an’ I declar’ I can’t see what in creation she’s a-goin’ to do; what with everythin’—you know now—I’ve spoke ’bout it frequent enough. Then the’s the Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis—him that holds th’ mortgage—he wants t’ marry her. But I don’ trust that man, Lord. I don’t know how he looks to you. But to me he ’pears hard-fisted, an’ closer’n the bark to a tree, an’ I c’n tell you he licks the hide off’n his horses right along. But the’ may be some good in him. Ef the’ is, bring it out, O Lord, so ’t folks kin see it. An’ fix things up with Miss Barb’ry, somehow. Kind o’ overrule Jarvis an’ the mortgage an’ all the rest, the way you know how. Amen!”

Peleg Morrison was on intimate terms with his Creator, and on this occasion, as in the past, he derived such satisfaction from his converse with the Almighty that he was enabled presently to go on with his vocal exercises. The washing of the buggy was thus happily completed, the worn cushions dusted, and the horses fed and watered by the time the sun peeped over the fringes of dark woods. At seven o’clock, as he was tying the wall-eyed bay to the hitching-post in the side yard, Barbara appeared in the open door, a brown loaf in her hand.

“Here’s some fresh bread for your breakfast, Peg,” she said. She glanced at the horse. “I shan’t be gone very long. You can plough when I come back, if you want to. It won’t hurt the ground to plough it.”

“The mare’s kind o’ skittish this mornin’,” replied Peg, accepting the addition to his meagre bill of fare with an appreciative grin. “Mebbe I’d better go ’long an’ drive.” He glanced anxiously at the girl. “I wouldn’t do nothin’ rash ef I was you, Miss Barb’ry; like—like gittin’ engaged to be married, or anythin’ like that.”

“Don’t worry, Peg,” Barbara said soberly, “that’s precisely what I don’t mean to do.”

She felt entirely sure of herself now, even while her cheeks burned hotly at the remembrance of Jarvis’ look when he said, “I am your master.”

“I’ll scrub floors for a living,” she promised herself, “before I yield to him.”

All the pride of a strong nature shone in her eyes as she stooped over Jimmy, sitting at the table, his short legs dangling, his slate pencil squeakily setting down queer crooked figures in straggling rows.

“I’m ahead in my ’rithmetic,” the little boy announced triumphantly. “I’m doin’ reg’lar zamples. I like zamples. An’ bimeby I’ll be all growed up, an’ nen I’ll take care of you, Barb’ra.”

She kissed him underneath the short yellow curls in the back of his neck.

“Oh, Jimmy,” she sighed, “I wish you were grown up now!”

The child straightened himself anxiously.

“My head’s way above your belt when I stand up,” he said, “‘n’ I ate lots of brown bread an’ milk for breakfast. I’m growing jus’ as fast’s I can.”

Barbara hugged him remorsefully.

“You’re just big enough—for six,” she assured him. “And—and we’ll come out all right, somehow. We just will, precious!”

“‘Course we will,” echoed the child. He slipped from his chair and eyed his sister with a searching gaze.

“If you’re scared of anybody, Barb’ra,” he said valiantly, “I’ll take a big stick, ’n’—’n’—I’ll—I’ll—I won’t let anybody hurt you, Barb’ra!”

The girl laughed rather unsteadily as she hurried him into his coat and cap. “Learn a lot at school, dear,” she murmured, “and you’ll have the best kind of a big stick.”

The remembrance of his warm little arms about her neck comforted her as she drove the wall-eyed mare along the road. She was going to do a very strange thing. Something she had never heard of any woman doing before. Just how the idea had taken form and substance in her mind she did not know. She appeared to herself to have awakened with the resolve fully formed, distinctly outlined, even to the small details, which she busily reviewed while she was tying the horse before the house of Thomas Bellows, auctioneer. There was a shop in the lower front story of the house, which had once been a piazza, but now protruded with two bulging front windows to the edge of the sidewalk. The windows disclosed a variety of objects in the line of household appurtenances, clocks, flatirons, a pile of tin-ware, likewise a yellow placard reading, “Auction to-day,” surmounted by a professional flag of a faded red color.

Mr. Bellows himself, in blue overalls and a pink shirt, was occupied in wiping off an exceedingly dusty and ancient sewing machine with an oily rag. He looked up sharply as the discordant jangle of the bell announced the opening of his shop door.

“Good-mornin’, miss,” he said as Barbara entered. “If you don’t mind shuttin’ that door behind you. It beats all how cold the wind stays, don’t it? You want to look over some o’ these goods, heh? Household effects of the widow Small down to the Corners. Died las’ week, an’ her daughter don’t want to keep none o’ her things. They’ll be sold at two sharp. It ain’t a bad idea to cast yer eye around a little b’fore the biddin’ begins. Things show off better. Now this ’ere machine——”

“I don’t want to buy anything,” stammered Barbara. “I—want you to sell something for me.”

“Yas,” assented Mr. Bellows explosively, standing up and resting a grimy hand on either hip, the while he surveyed Barbara’s slim figure attentively. “Jus’ so! Well?” he added tentatively. “Sellin’ things fer folks is my business. What d’ye offer: goods, stock, or real estate? It’s all the same to me.”

“It—it isn’t—— Could you sell my work for me? I mean——”

The man stared hard at the girl, his squinting eyes puckered, his mouth drawn close at the corners.

“I’m a gen’ral auctioneer,” he announced conclusively. “It’s m’ business to sell household effects, stock, or real estate, on commission.”

“I want some money—a good deal of money,” Barbara went on, “and I want it right away.”

“I’ve seen folks in your fix before,” commented the auctioneer dryly, as he again applied himself to the sewing machine. “I gen’rally make out t’ sell what’s offered. But I can’t guarantee prices.”

“You sell horses, don’t you?” demanded Barbara.

“Horses? Sure!”

“And—and oxen. They’re meant to work, and people buy them to work. That’s what I want to do. I want to work for three—or four years, if I must; and I want the money all at once—in advance.”

“I don’t know as I ketch your idee,” said Mr. Bellows. “You want money, an’ you want it right away, an’ you want me to sell——”

“I want you to sell my work—honest work, housework, any kind of work that I can do, for—for a term of years.”

Mr. Bellows abandoned further efforts at bettering the condition of the late Widow Small’s sewing machine. He stood up and scowled meditatively at Barbara.

“Seems t’ me I’ve seen you b’fore, somewheres; haven’t I?”

“My name is Barbara Preston,” the girl said haughtily.

“An’ you want I should——”

“When people buy a horse they really buy and pay for the labor of that horse in advance,” Barbara said composedly. “I am more valuable than a horse. I have skill, intelligence; I wish to sell—my skill, my intelligence to the highest bidder.”

“Well, I swan!” exclaimed Mr. Bellows. Then he fell to laughing noisily, his wizened countenance drawn into curious folds and puckers of mirth.

Barbara waited unsmilingly.

“Say! d’you know I’ve been asked to sell mos’ everythin’ you ever heard of,” said Mr. Bellows, getting the better of his hilarity, “but I never was asked to sell—a girl. A good-lookin’, smart, likely girl. I guess you’re jokin’, miss. It wouldn’t do, you know.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” urged Barbara.

“Well, it wouldn’t; that’s all. I’ve got m’ reputation as an auctioneer to think about; an’—lemme see, your folks is all dead, ain’t they?”

“No,” said Barbara. “I have a brother six years old.”

Her dry tongue refused to add to this statement. She was conscious of an inward tremor of fear lest he should refuse.

“Whatever put such a curious notion into your head?” Mr. Bellows wanted to know.

“I may as well tell you,” the girl said bitterly. “You’ll be asked to sell me out soon. We’re going to lose everything we’ve got—Jimmy and I; the farm, the—furniture—everything.”

“You don’t say!” Mr. Bellows commented doubtfully. “Well, that had ought to net you something—eh?”

“We shan’t have anything; everything will be gone,” the girl said coldly.

“Sho! that’s too bad,” Mr. Bellows said good-naturedly. He stuck his thumbs into the arm-holes of his vest, and scowled absent-mindedly into space. Then he looked at Barbara again. “Mortgage—eh?” he suggested. “Coverin’ pretty much everythin’—eh?”

“Everything,” repeated Barbara, in a dull tone.

“Everythin’—save an’ exceptin’ one smart, willin’ young woman—eh? You’d ought to bring a purty good figger—in the right market.”

Mr. Bellows paused to give way to mirth once more.

“The matrimonial market’s the one partic’lar field I ain’t had much ’xperience in,” he concluded. “An’ auctionin’ off goods of the sort you mention ain’t ’xactly in my line, an’ that’s a fac’, miss. So I guess——”

“You don’t understand,” Barbara interrupted quickly. “Let me explain. When I found that everything was lost”—her voice trembled in spite of herself—“I thought at first I would teach school—let the farm go and teach——”

“Well, why don’t you do that?” Mr. Bellows inquired. He was a kind-hearted man, with sympathies somewhat blunted by his professional zeal in a calling which for the most part concerned itself with clearing away the wreckage of human hopes. “You’d make a right smart school-ma’am, I should say.”

“I’m not a normal school graduate,” Barbara told him. “Besides, they have no vacancies. Then I tried to get sewing to do. I can sew neatly. But I might easily starve on what I could earn with my needle. A woman told me she knew of someone who wanted—a—servant,” Barbara’s voice shook, but she went on bravely. “She said that people sometimes paid as much as twenty-five dollars a month for such work. And that it wasn’t easy to find women who could do that kind of work well. I said I would not work in another woman’s kitchen. But I—I am willing to do it, if I can sell my work for twelve hundred dollars.”

“Whew!” ejaculated Mr. Bellows.

“It sounds like a lot of money, I know,” Barbara went on; “but it is four years’ service at twenty-five dollars a month. I want it all at once. Then I can pay the mortgage on our farm, and keep it.”

“Huh!” commented Mr. Bellows explosively.

“I could lease the farm while I was working, and it would bring in enough money to take care of Jimmy.”

Her face clouded swiftly at the thought of the possible separation.

“Wall, I don’t know of anybody who’d be willin’ to pay down any twelve hundred dollars spot cash for a _hired girl_,” objected Mr. Bellows. “Y’ couldn’t get nobody to bid on a proposition like that. Y’ might”—the man hesitated, then went on harshly, “y’ might up an’ die, or——”

“A man on the farm next to ours paid three hundred dollars for a horse, and it died the next week,” Barbara said quietly. “Then he bought another. He had to have a horse.”

“Well, he owned it for good an’ all, an’ you——”

“I’ll work four years-or five for the money,” said Barbara steadily. “And I shall be worth far more than an ordinary servant.”

Mr. Bellows wagged his head argumentatively. “I’d hev to charge you five per cent.,” he warned her. “An’ you couldn’t get any bidders, anyhow.”

“That,” said Barbara, “would be my affair. What I want to know is, will you sell me?”

The blood hammered in her temples; her hands and feet were icy cold; but she eyed the man steadily.

Mr. Bellows had been making a rapid mental calculation.

“W’y, I don’ know,” he said, scratching his head reflectively. “I don’t want to go int’ no fool job fer nothin’. M’ time’s valu’ble.”

“I’ll pay you—ten dollars, if—if—no one buys me,” said Barbara faintly.

Mr. Bellows bit his thumb-nail thoughtfully.

“All right!” he burst out at length. “You name the day, git th’ bidders t’gether an’ I’ll auction ye off. Gracious! It don’t sound right, some way.”

He looked at the girl carefully, real human kindness in his eyes and voice.

“Who holds your mortgage, anyhow?” he asked indignantly. “I sh’d think most anybody’d be ashamed o’ themselves t’ drive a nice young woman like you to——”

“If I can realize enough money to pay what I owe I shall be—glad,” the girl said. “I am obliged to work hard anyway. My plan will pay, if it succeeds; don’t you see it will?”

“W’y, yes; I see all right. I don’t b’lieve you c’n work it, though,” was Mr. Bellows’ opinion.

Barbara did not explain her intentions further. She requested Mr. Bellows to say nothing of what had passed between them, and this he readily promised.

“‘Tain’t a matter t’ make common talk of,” he agreed, with a dubious shake of the head. “The’s folks that might not ketch the right idee. Sellin’ a pretty girl at auction ’ud draw a crowd all right; but I’d advise you t’ let me use my jedgment ’bout biddin’ ye in, if it’s necessary.”

IX

AS a man thinketh in his heart, so is that man, was the Nazarene’s succinct announcement of a law as ancient and immutable as the correlated principles which govern gravity and motion. From the beginning of things visible, when the thoughts of the great I Am first began to fashion new and strange creations out of the whirling fire mist, until now, the thoughts of a God—of a man, continually and inevitably mould his appearance and the circumstances of his existence. As there can be no question as to the reality of this fundamental principle at the root of all phenomena, so there can be no evasion of its action and effect.

Stephen Jarvis, having successfully achieved wealth by a constant and unremitting application of his powerful ego to the thoughts of money-getting by any and all means, looked the part. No man can do otherwise. Having chosen his rôle, he proceeds to a make-up more skilful and complete than can be conceived by the bungler in the actor’s dressing-room. Upon the plastic mask of the body his thoughts etch themselves, his habits paint themselves, his character blazons itself, till at middle age, he cannot longer hide himself from the observant eye of the world. He is, in appearance, in reality, what his thoughts have made him.

If it be possible to imagine the havoc which the oft-quoted bull in the china shop would create by a sudden and unpremeditated use of his brute force, one may, perhaps, conceive of the inward tumult, the confusion, the very real loss, and consequent anguish entailed upon a man like Jarvis by the sudden invasion of a genuine passion.

A thousand times he railed at himself, profanely calling himself many varieties of a fool. Once and again he strove to restore to cold, passionless order the seething maelstrom of his thoughts. Why, he demanded fiercely of himself, should he long to possess this girl with every aching fibre of his being? The mere urge and fever of animal passion did not explain the matter; there was something deeper, more elemental still in the fury of the desire which possessed him, which drove him forth out of his comfortable house by night and by day as if pursued by the furies. Because Jarvis was a strong man, his nature hardened by years of stern, unrelaxing self-discipline, the utter rout and confusion of his cold, passionless self was the more complete and disastrous. He hated himself for loving a woman who disdained him, and hating himself, he loved her with a despair akin to torment. That she was poor, helpless, already fast closed in his savage grip, like a bird in a snare, he knew; and yet for the first time he dimly realized the illusive part of her which successfully evaded his grasp, defied his power, despised his threats. He might, if he would, crush her by main force; he could not compel her to love him.

The thought of his own strength, helpless before her weakness, maddened him. Houses, lands, money, had become passively obedient to the power of his will. He controlled these things, did with them as he pleased, in effect an overlord, haughty, unbending, merciless; but this one thing which he had put out his hand to take—carelessly, as one will pluck a ripe apple from the bough at the languid prompting of appetite—this girl, who had for years been no more to him than the birds hopping in the trees outside his window, how and by what means had she suddenly contrived to gain this monstrous ascendency over him? What uncanny power in those clear gray eyes of hers had metamorphosed Stephen Jarvis, cool, middle-aged man of affairs, into the weak creature he had always despised in his saner moments?

During these days of inward tumult he carried on the dull routine of his business, forcing himself to the task with all the powers of a will suddenly turned traitor to its master. In spite of himself he seemed to see her there in his lonely house over against the sombre rows of books, her face vividly alive, defiantly youthful. Despite his resolves she perpetually came between him and the printed page which he strove to read; worst of all, she haunted his restless slumbers by night, now pleading with him; now defying him; mocking him with elfin laughter, as she fled before him, the child in her arms; while he pursued leaden-footed through uncounted miles of shadowy country.

The two did not meet face to face, while the rains and chilling winds of April gradually spent themselves, and the grass, illumined with a thousand cheerful sunbursts of dandelions, grew long under the blossoming trees. The mated birds sang only at dawn now, being too busy with the rapturous labors of nest-building to pause for vocal expression of their gladness. In the fields staid farm-horses indulged in unwonted gambols and nosed their mates with little whinnying cries; grazing cattle lifted their heads from the sweet springing grass to gaze with large wistful eyes at the widespread landscape. Once, long ago, they had roamed the unfenced pastures of the world in May, herded cows and yearlings, and the lordly bulls leading on, while the urge and rapture of the returning sun brooded the earth, compelling it to bring forth after its kind. Though she did not see him, yet none the less Jarvis obtruded his harsh visage into Barbara’s thoughts by day and by night. Nor could a wiser man than Jarvis have guessed that the girl was literally enfolded in cloudy thought forms, projected toward her from his own brain, with all the accuracy and certainty of an electric current traversing the viewless paths of air between wireless stations. That we do not understand these phenomena with any degree of accuracy does not render them the less effective.

It was still early in May when Jarvis drove over to inspect a wood-pulp factory in the neighborhood of Greenfield Centre. Its proprietor had borrowed capital heavily within the past year, and Jarvis had been narrowly watching the gradual ebb of the factory’s output. It was the old story of misapplied energy, paralyzed into inaction by impending failure. Jarvis scored the luckless proprietor mercilessly during their brief interview; later he sought the services of Thomas Bellows, the auctioneer.

“You may sell him out, plant, machinery, and all; reserve nothing,” Jarvis ordered; and, referring to his book of memoranda, added the date.

Another entry that he saw there met his sombre eyes. He stared at it frowningly.

“Anythin’ more in my line in the near future?” Mr. Bellows wanted to know.

He rubbed his hands as he asked the question. The Honorable Stephen Jarvis was, as he put it, “a stiddy customer and a good one,” being constantly in need of Mr. Bellows’ services.

“Yes,” said Jarvis, a dull red flush rising in his sallow face. “The contents of the Preston house, the stock, and implements, must be sold on June first.”

Mr. Bellows struck one hairy fist into the other by way of preface to his words. He was not afraid of Stephen Jarvis, being sufficiently well provided with worldly goods, albeit these were for the most part second-hand, and in the nature of left-overs from many auctions.

“It seems a pity,” quoth Bellows, “to sell her out. Couldn’t you wait till fall, say, and give the little Preston girl a chance? I ain’t what you might call soft m’self; but I’m blamed if I could help feelin’ sorry for the girl when she come in here one day last week t’ engage my professional services.”

“What is Miss Preston proposing to sell?” demanded Jarvis. Something in his voice gave Mr. Bellows a curious sensation. He gave Jarvis a sharp look as he answered.

“Nothing that belongs to you, I reckon.”

“Tell me what it is,” repeated Jarvis. “I’ll be the best judge of that,” His voice shook, and also the hand which held the leather book of fateful dates and occasions.

“I’m sorry; but I guess I can’t ’commodate you,” responded the other. “Perfessional etiquette, you know; in this ’ere case binding.”

“You have no right to refuse,” said Jarvis, and something of the real nature of his secret thoughts flared up in his eyes. “Everything that concerns Miss Preston concerns me.”

Mr. Bellows was puzzled.

“Meanin’, of course, that you hold the lien on her prop’ty,” he hazarded. “But you don’t”—and he paused to chuckle to himself—“hold no lien on what she’s propos in’ to sell to the highest bidder?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Jarvis.

His tone was menacing, and he fixed angry eyes, red from sleeplessness, on the old auctioneer.

“You’ll either explain yourself,” he said, “or—you’ll get no more business from me, to-day or any other day.”

Mr. Bellows expectorated violently in the general direction of the opposite wall.

“I ain’t,” he declared valiantly, “afeard of no threats, nor yet of nobody. But I’m goin’ to tell you, ’cause it’s you that’s drove her to it, an’ you’d ought to know what sort of girl she is. I had three-quarters of a notion to tell you anyhow, an’ I tol’ m’ wife so, when I found it was you that held the lien on her house an’ furniture. Business is business with me as well as any other man; but I’d be ashamed to drive a woman to the point of sellin’ herself.”

“_Selling herself!_” echoed Jarvis.

The observant eyes of Mr. Bellows were upon him, as he fell back a pace or two and strove to steady himself.

“That’s what I said. Yes, sir; she asked me right here in this shop to sell her at public auction. ‘I’ve lost everythin’,’ she says; ‘but I’ve got myself, an’ I’ll sell that, an’ pay what I owe.’”

“My God!” breathed Jarvis. “I—drove her to it!”

“You’re right, you did,” agreed Mr. Bellows.

“You can’t do it, man. I forbid it!”

“Oh, y’ do; do ye? Wall, I don’t see how you’re going to make out to prevent it. The girl’s got a right to herself, and I’ve got a right to——”

“I shall prevent it,” Jarvis interrupted fiercely. “It’s inhuman—uncivilized, monstrous!”

“Well, that’s the way it struck me—at first,” acquiesced Mr. Bellows; “but the way she put it up t’ me kind of won me over. She’s a takin’ sort of girl, kind o’ good-lookin’, an’ innercent. W’y, Lord bless you, she’s no more idee of the way a man—like you, for instance—might look at it than a child. She wants to work out—for a matter o’ four or five years, she says; an’ she thinks she c’n get some fool woman to bid twelve hunderd dollars spot cash fer bein’ sure of a hired girl all that time—‘W’y,’ I says to her, ‘you might up an’ die,’ ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘so might a horse; but folks hes to hev horses!’ I tell you she’s cute an’ bright, an’ I’m goin’ to sell her to the highest bidder, same’s I agreed to.”

Jarvis was silent for a long minute, his eyes fixed unseeingly on the miscellaneous collection of shabby and broken furniture in the rear of the shop.

“Is it to be a public sale?” he asked coolly.

“Well, as t’ that, I can’t rightly tell you. I left the advertisin’ o’ the goods, an’ the date o’ sale to the young lady. I reelly hope you will call it off. I s’pose you c’n easy fix things up so ’t she——”

“Did she ask you to tell me this?” demanded Jarvis suddenly. “Tell me the facts.”

“Did she ask me—to tell you?” echoed Mr. Bellows wonderingly. “You bet she didn’t! You wasn’t named betwixt us. I asked her who held the lien on her prop’ty, an’ she didn’t answer. Thought it was none o’ my business, likely. I suspicioned it was you, though. You get most of ’em around these parts.”

Jarvis made no reply. He closed the red leather book, slipped it into an inside pocket, then deliberately drew on his driving gloves.

“Can you tell me the date of this—this sale?” he asked.

“What you want t’ know for? Thinkin’ of puttin’ in a bid?” chuckled Mr. Bellows.

Jarvis gave him a terrible look.

“I’d advise you to keep still about this. Don’t attempt to interest anyone else in Miss Preston’s affairs. Do you hear?”

“I ain’t deef,” responded Mr. Bellows in an aggrieved voice. “‘N’ I don’t know’s I see what business ’tis of yours, anyhow. Mebbe she’ll get the money an’ pay you. ’Twouldn’t surprise me if she did. She’s bound she will, an’ where there’s a will there’s a way, I’ve heard tell.”

“The date, man; give me the date!”

“Seein’ I’ve told you so much, I s’pose you might as well know; the sale’s set for the eighteenth.”

“Where?”

“At her house.”

“And you’re actually going to—— No; she’ll never do it. She won’t be able to bring herself to it.”

“Wall, I’ll bet you ten dollars she will; d’ye take me?”

Jarvis turned without another word and left the place. He suddenly felt the need of the outdoor air. Barbara’s desperate expedient convinced him as no words of hers could have done of the hopelessness of his case. “She hates me,” he told himself; and for the first time he looked within for a reason for her aversion.

He drove slowly, his thoughts a mad whirl of fury and despair. For the first time he saw himself as he fancied he must look to her, a man past his first youth, cold, forbidding, harsh, unlovely. He perceived with a flash of prescience that she cared nothing for money, save as it signified the thing she held most dear; nothing for the position, power, and luxury for which he had sold his honor and his manhood. Stripped of these things, what must he appear in her eyes? A monster of selfishness and greed, no less; to be feared, detested, escaped by any means even to the sacrifice of brain and body. He groaned aloud in the scorching flame of his humiliation.

He told himself that he would go to her, beg her forgiveness, offer her all that she had asked for, and more. He would give her the farm free of all indebtedness. Then he realized, with sickening certainty, that she would not accept anything from him. He had told her that he was her master. To escape this slavery she was about to sell herself to another. The thought was insupportable. Even while he perceived her perfect ingenuousness and the practical realization of her own worth which lay beneath this fantastic and seemingly impossible plan of hers, he sensed its frightful danger. In order to attract bidders she would be forced to advertise her plans. Who would respond? Who would buy, and for what purpose?

He whipped his horse to a furious speed and soon reached his house. The newspapers, unread for days, were piled on a table near his desk. He seized one, turned to its advertising columns and rapidly reviewed their contents, then another, and another in rapid succession. At last his devouring eyes lighted and fastened upon a single paragraph, hidden among the miscellaneous advertisements where a puzzled proofreader had doubtless placed it:

“For Sale at Auction [he read]: A young woman in good health, able and willing to do housework and plain sewing; or could teach a little child and care for it, would like to secure a position with a respectable family for a term of years. Her services will be disposed of at private auction to the highest bidder, for a term of three, four, or five years. Please communicate with B., _Telegram_.”

Jarvis crushed the paper in his hands savagely, as though he would destroy the strange little appeal to an unfriendly world. Then he sought for and read it again, his eyes fixed and frowning.

X

THERE are times when to the unintelligent observer the affairs of this world appear a hopeless tangle, a web without a pattern, a heap of unclassified material without an architect, a wild, unmeaning chaos of things animate and inanimate, all grinding, groaning, clashing together, sport of the gods or of demons, tending towards nothing, useless, hideous. But to one who views the world from another and higher level there sometimes appear illumining hints of harmony and completeness, tokens of a Master Mind working continually among the affairs of men and universes, setting all in divine order, either with or without the understanding and co-operation of the lesser intelligences.