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diff --git a/old/gp11510.txt b/old/gp11510.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..32b066a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/gp11510.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7259 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook You Never Know Your Luck, Parker, Complete +#115 in our series by Gilbert Parker + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers***** + + +Title: You Never Know Your Luck, Complete + [BEING THE STORY OF A MATRIMONIAL DESERTER] + +Author: Gilbert Parker + +Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6288] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on December 5, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + + + + + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK, ENTIRE*** + + + +This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK + +[BEING THE STORY OF A MATRIMONIAL DESERTER] + +By Gilbert Parker + + + + +CONTENTS: + +Volume 1. +PROEM +I. "PIONEERS, O PIONEERS" +II. CLOSING THE DOORS +III. THE LOGAN TRIAL AND WHAT CAME OF IT +IV. "STRENGTH SHALL BE GIVEN THEE" +V. A STORY TO BE TOLD + +Volume 2. +VI. "HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON" +VII. A WOMAN'S WAY TO KNOWLEDGE +VIII. ALL ABOUT AN UNOPENED LETTER +IX. NIGHT SHADE AND MORNING GLORY +X. "S. O. S." +XI. IN THE CAMP OF THE DESERTER + +Volume 3. +XII. AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM +XIII. KITTY SPEAKS HER MIND AGAIN +XIV. AWAITING THE VERDICT +XV. "MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM" +XVI. "'TWAS FOR YOUR PLEASURE YOU CAME HERE, YOU GO BACK FOR MINE" +XVII. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT? +EPILOGUE + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +This volume contains two novels dealing with the life of prairie people +in the town of Askatoon in the far West. 'The World for Sale' and the +latter portion of 'The Money Master' deal with the same life, and 'The +Money Master' contained some of the characters to be found in 'Wild +Youth'. 'The World for Sale' also was a picture of prairie country with +strife between a modern Anglo-Canadian town and a French-Canadian town in +the West. These books are of the same people; but 'You Never Know Your +Luck' and 'Wild Youth' have several characters which move prominently +through both. + +In the introduction to 'The World for Sale' in this series, I drew a +description of prairie life, and I need not repeat what was said there. +'In You Never Know Your Luck' there is a Proem which describes briefly +the look of the prairie and suggests characteristics of the life of the +people. The basis of the book has a letter written by a wife to her +husband at a critical time in his career when he had broken his promise +to her. One or two critics said the situation is impossible, because no +man would carry a letter unopened for a long number of years. My reply +is: that it is exactly what I myself did. I have still a letter written +to me which was delivered at my door sixteen years ago. I have never +read it, and my reason for not reading it was that I realised, as I +think, what its contents were. I knew that the letter would annoy, and +there it lies. The writer of the letter who was then my enemy is now my +friend. The chief character in the book, Crozier, was an Irishman, with +all the Irishman's cleverness, sensitiveness, audacity, and timidity; for +both those latter qualities are characteristic of the Irish race, and as +I am half Irish I can understand why I suppressed a letter and why +Crozier did. Crozier is the type of man that comes occasionally to the +Dominion of Canada; and Kitty Tynan is the sort of girl that the great +West breeds. She did an immoral thing in opening the letter that Crozier +had suppressed, but she did it in a good cause--for Crozier's sake; she +made his wife write another letter, and she placed it again in the +envelope for Crozier to open and see. Whatever lack of morality there +was in her act was balanced by the good end to the story, though it meant +the sacrifice of Kitty's love for Crozier, and the making of his wife +happy once more. + +As for 'Wild Youth' I make no apology for it. It is still fresh in the +minds of the American public, and it is true to the life. Some critics +frankly called it melodramatic. I do not object to the term. I know +nothing more melodramatic than certain of the plots of Shakespeare's +plays. Thomas Hardy is melodramatic; Joseph Conrad is melodramatic; +Balzac was melodramatic, and so were Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, and +Sir Walter Scott. The charge of melodrama is not one that should +disturb a writer of fiction. The question is, are the characters +melodramatic. Will anyone suggest to me the marriage of a girl of +seventeen with a man over sixty is melodramatic. It may be, but I think +it tragical, and so it was in this case. As for Orlando Guise, I +describe the man as I knew him, and he is still alive. Some comments +upon the story suggested that it was impossible for a man to spend the +night on the prairie with a woman whom he loved without causing her to +forget her marriage vows. It is not sentimental to say that is nonsense. +It is a prurient mind that only sees evil in a situation of the sort. +Why it should be desirable to make a young man and woman commit a +misdemeanor to secure the praise of a critic is beyond imagination. It +would be easy enough to do. I did it in The Right of Way. I did it in +others of my books. What happens to one man and one woman does not +necessarily happen to another. There are men who, for love of a woman, +would not take advantage of her insecurity. There are others who would. +In my books I have made both classes do their will, and both are true to +life. It does not matter what one book is or is not, but it does matter +that an author writes his book with a sense of the fitting and the true. + +Both these books were written to present that side of life in Canada +which is not wintry and forbidding. There is warmth of summer in both +tales, and thrilling air and the beauty of the wild countryside. As for +the cold, it is severe in most parts of Canada, but the air is dry, and +the sharpness is not felt as it is in this damper climate of England. +Canadians feel the cold of a March or November day in London far more +than the cold of a day in Winnipeg, with the thermometer many degrees +below zero. Both these books present the summer side of Canada, which is +as delightful as that of any climate in the world; both show the modern +western life which is greatly changed since the days when Pierre roamed +the very fields where these tales take place. It should never be +forgotten that British Columbia has a climate like that of England, +where, on the Coast, it is never colder than here, and where there is +rain instead of snow in winter. + +There is much humour and good nature in the West, and this also I tried +to bring out in these two books; and Askatoon is as cosmopolitan as +London. Canada in the West has all races, and it was consistent of me to +give a Chinaman of noble birth a part to play in the tragicomedy. I have +a great respect for the Chinaman, and he is a good servant and a faithful +friend. Such a Chinaman as Li Choo I knew in British Columbia, and all I +did was to throw him on the Eastern side of the Rockies, a few miles from +the border of the farthest Western province. The Chinaman's death was +faithful in its detail, and it was true to his nature. He had to die, +and with the old pagan philosophy, still practised in China and Japan, he +chose the better way, to his mind. Princes still destroy themselves in +old Japan, as recent history proves. + + + +YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK + +Volume 1. + +PROEM +I. "PIONEERS, O PIONEERS" +II. CLOSING THE DOORS +III. THE LOGAN TRIAL AND WHAT CAME OF IT +IV. "STRENGTH SHALL BE GIVEN THEE" +V. A STORY TO BE TOLD + + + +PROEM + +Have you ever seen it in reaping-time? A sea of gold it is, with gentle +billows telling of sleep and not of storm, which, like regiments afoot, +salute the reaper and say, "All is fulfilled in the light of the sun and +the way of the earth; let the sharp knife fall." The countless million +heads are heavy with fruition, and sun glorifies and breeze cradles them +to the hour of harvest. The air-like the tingle of water from a +mountain-spring in the throat of the worn wayfarer, bringing a sense of +the dust of the world flushed away. + +Arcady? Look closely. Like islands in the shining yellow sea, are +houses--sometimes in a clump of trees, sometimes only like bare-backed +domesticity or naked industry in the workfield. Also rising here and +there in the expanse, clouds that wind skyward, spreading out in a +powdery mist. They look like the rolling smoke of incense, of sacrifice. +Sacrifice it is. The vast steam-threshers are mightily devouring what +their servants, the monster steam-reapers, have gleaned for them. Soon, +when September comes, all that waving sea will be still. What was gold +will still be a rusted gold, but near to the earth-the stubble of the +corn now lying in vast garners by the railway lines, awaiting transport +east and west and south and across the seas. + +Not Arcady this, but a land of industry in the grip of industrialists, +whose determination to achieve riches is, in spite of themselves, +chastened by the magnitude and orderly process of nature's travail which +is not pain. Here Nature hides her internal striving under a smother of +white for many months in every year, when what is now gold in the sun +will be a soft--sometimes, too, a hard-shining coverlet like impacted +wool. Then, instead of the majestic clouds of incense from the +threshers, will rise blue spiral wreaths of smoke from the lonely home. +There the farmer rests till spring, comforting himself in the thought +that while he waits, far under the snow the wheat is slowly expanding; +and as in April, the white frost flies out of the soil into the sun, it +will push upward and outward, green and vigorous, greeting his eye with +the "What cheer, partner!" of a mate in the scheme of nature. + +Not Arcady; and yet many of the joys of Arcady are here--bright, singing +birds, wide adventurous rivers, innumerable streams, the squirrel in the +wood and the bracken, the wildcat stealing through the undergrowth, the +lizard glittering by the stone, the fish leaping in the stream, the +plaint of the whippoorwill, the call of the bluebird, the golden flash of +the oriole, the honk of the wild geese overhead, the whirr of the mallard +from the sedge. And, more than all, a human voice declaring by its joy +in song that not only God looks upon the world and finds it very good. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +"PIONEERS, O PIONEERS" + +If you had stood on the borders of Askatoon, a prairie town, on the +pathway to the Rockies one late August day not many years ago, you would +have heard a fresh young human voice singing into the morning, as its +possessor looked, from a coat she was brushing, out over the "field of +the cloth of gold," which your eye has already been invited to see. With +the gift of singing for joy at all, you should be able to sing very +joyously at twenty-two. This morning singer was just that age; and if +you had looked at the golden carpet of wheat stretching for scores of +miles, before you looked at her, you would have thought her curiously in +tone with the scene. She was a symphony in gold--nothing less. Her +hair, her cheeks, her eyes, her skin, her laugh, her voice they were all +gold. Everything about her was so demonstratively golden that you might +have had a suspicion it was made and not born; as though it was unreal, +and the girl herself a proper subject of suspicion. The eyelashes were +so long and so black, the eyes were so topaz, the hair was so like such a +cloud of gold as would be found on Joan of Are as seen by a mediaeval +painter, that an air of faint artificiality surrounded what was in every +other way a remarkable effort of nature to give this region, where she +was so very busy, a keynote. + +Poseurs have said that nature is garish or exaggerated more often than +not; but it is a libel. She is aristocratic to the nth degree, and is +never over done; courage she has, but no ostentation. There was, +however, just a slight touch of over-emphasis in this singing-girl's +presentation--that you were bound to say, if you considered her quite +apart from her place in this nature-scheme. She was not wholly +aristocratic; she was lacking in that high, social refinement which would +have made her gold not so golden, her black eyelashes not so black. +Being unaristocratic is not always a matter of birth, though it may be a +matter of parentage. + +Her parentage was honest and respectable and not exalted. Her father had +been an engineer, who had lost his life on a new railway of the West. +His widow had received a pension from the company insufficient to +maintain her, and so she kept boarders, the coat of one of whom her +daughter was now brushing as she sang. The widow herself was the origin +of the girl's slight disqualification for being of that higher circle of +selection which nature arranges long before society makes its judicial +decision. The father had been a man of high intelligence, which his +daughter to a real degree inherited; but the mother, as kind a soul as +ever lived, was a product of southern English rural life--a little +sumptuous, but wholesome, and for her daughter's sake at least, keeping +herself well and safely within the moral pale in the midst of marked +temptations. She was forty-five, and it said a good deal for her ample +but proper graces that at forty-five she had numerous admirers. The girl +was English in appearance, with a touch perhaps of Spanish--why, who can +say? Was it because of those Spanish hidalgoes wrecked on the Irish +coast long since? Her mind and her tongue, however, were Irish like her +father's. You would have liked her, everybody did,--yet you would have +thought that nature had failed in self-confidence for once, she was so +pointedly designed to express the ancient dame's colour-scheme, even to +the delicate auriferous down on her youthful cheek and the purse-proud +look of her faintly retrousse nose; though in fact she never had had a +purse and scarcely needed one. In any case she had an ample pocket in +her dress. + +This fairly full description of her is given not because she is the most +important person in the story, but because the end of the story would +have been entirely different had it not been for her; and because she +herself was one of those who are so much the sport of circumstances or +chance that they express the full meaning of the title of this story. +As a line beneath the title explains, the tale concerns a matrimonial +deserter. Certainly this girl had never deserted matrimony, though she +had on more than one occasion avoided it; and there had been men mean and +low enough to imagine they might allure her to the conditions of +matrimony without its status. + +As with her mother the advertisement of her appearance was wholly +misleading. A man had once said to her that "she looked too gay to be +good," but in all essentials she was as good as she was gay, and indeed +rather better. Her mother had not kept boarders for seven years without +getting some useful knowledge of the world, or without imparting useful +knowledge; and there were men who, having paid their bills on demand, +turned from her wiser if not better men. Because they had pursued the +old but inglorious profession of hunting tame things, Mrs. Tyndall Tynan +had exacted compensation in one way or another--by extras, by occasional +and deliberate omission of table luxuries, and by making them pay for +their own mending, which she herself only did when her boarders behaved +themselves well. She scored in any contest--in spite of her rather small +brain, large heart, and ardent appearance. A very clever, shiftless +Irish husband had made her develop shrewdness, and she was so busy +watching and fending her daughter that she did not need to watch and fend +herself to the same extent as she would have done had she been free and +childless and thirty. The widow Tynan was practical, and she saw none of +those things which made her daughter stand for minutes at a time and look +into the distance over the prairie towards the sunset light or the grey- +blue foothills. She never sang--she had never sung a note in her life; +but this girl of hers, with a man's coat in her hand, and eyes on the +joyous scene before her, was for ever humming or singing. She had even +sung in the church choir till she declined to do so any longer, because +strangers stared at her so; which goes to show that she was not so vain +as people of her colouring sometimes are. It was just as bad, however, +when she sat in the congregation; for then, too, if she sang, people +stared at her. So it was that she seldom went to church at all; but it +was not because of this that her ideas of right and wrong were quite +individual and not conventional, as the tale of the matrimonial deserter +will show. + +This was not church, however, and briskly applying a light whisk-broom to +the coat, she hummed one of the songs her father taught her when he was +in his buoyant or in his sentimental moods, and that was a fair +proportion of the time. It used to perplex her the thrilling buoyancy +and the creepy melancholy which alternately mastered her father; but as a +child she had become so inured to it that she was not surprised at the +alternate pensive gaiety and the blazing exhilaration of the particular +man whose coat she now dusted long after there remained a speck of dust +upon it. This was the song she sang: + + "Whereaway, whereaway goes the lad that once was mine? + Hereaway I waited him, hereaway and oft; + When I sang my song to him, bright his eyes began to shine-- + Hereaway I loved him well, for my heart was soft. + + "Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes, + Held my hand, and pressed his cheek warm against my brow, + Home I saw upon the earth, heaven stood there in the skies-- + 'Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?'" + + "Whereaway goes my lad--tell me, has he gone alone? + Never harsh word did I speak, never hurt I gave; + Strong he was and beautiful; like a heron he has flown-- + Hereaway, hereaway will I make my grave. + + "When once more the lad I loved hereaway, hereaway, + Comes to lay his hand in mine, kiss me on the brow, + I will whisper down the wind, he will weep to hear me say-- + 'Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?'" + + +There was a plaintive quality in the voice of this russet maiden in +perfect keeping with the music and the words; and though her lips smiled, +there was a deep, wistful look in her eyes more in harmony with the +coming autumn than with this gorgeous harvest-time. + +For a moment after she had finished singing she stood motionless, +absorbed by the far horizon; then suddenly she gave a little shake +of the body and said in a brisk, playfully chiding way: + +"Kitty Tynan, Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" There was no one near, +so far as eye could see, so it was clear that the words were addressed +to herself. She was expressing that wonder which so many people feel +at discovering in themselves long-concealed characteristics, or find +themselves doing things out of their natural orbit, as they think. If +any one had told Kitty Tynan that she had rare imagination, she would +have wondered what was meant. If anyone had said to her, "What are you +dreaming about, Kitty?" she would have understood, however, for she had +had fits of dreaming ever since she was a child, and they had increased +during the past few years--since the man came to live with them whose +coat she was brushing. Perhaps this was only imitation, because the man +had a habit of standing or sitting still and looking into space for +minutes--and on Sundays for hours--at a time; and often she had watched +him as he lay on his back in the long grass, head on a hillock, hat down +over his eyes, while the smoke from his pipe came curling up from beneath +the rim. Also she had seen him more than once sitting with a letter +before him and gazing at it for many minutes together. She had also +noted that it was the same letter on each occasion; that it was a closed +letter, and also that it was unstamped. She knew that, because she had +seen it in his desk--the desk once belonging to her father, a sloping +thing with a green-baize top. Sometimes he kept it locked, but very +often he did not; and more than once, when he had asked her to get him +something from the desk, not out of meanness, but chiefly because her +moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios, she had +examined the envelope curiously. The envelope bore a woman's +handwriting, and the name on it was not that of the man who owned the +coat--and the letter. The name on the envelope was Shiel Crozier, but +the name of the man who owned the coat was J. G. Kerry--James Gathorne +Kerry, so he said. + +Kitty Tynan had certainly enough imagination to make her cherish a +mystery. She wondered greatly what it all meant. Never in anything else +had she been inquisitive or prying where the man was concerned; but she +felt that this letter had the heart of a story, and she had made up fifty +stories which she thought would fit the case of J. G. Kerry, who for over +four years had lived in her mother's house. He had become part of her +life, perhaps just because he was a man,--and what home is a real home +without a man?--perhaps because he always had a kind, quiet, confidential +word for her, or a word of stimulating cheerfulness; indeed, he showed in +his manner occasionally almost a boisterous hilarity. He undoubtedly was +what her mother called "a queer dick," but also "a pippin with a perfect +core," which was her way of saying that he was a man to be trusted with +herself and with her daughter; one who would stand loyally by a friend or +a woman. He had stood by them both when Augustus Burlingame, the lawyer, +who had boarded with them when J. G. Kerry first came, coarsely exceeded +the bounds of liberal friendliness which marked the household, and by +furtive attempts at intimacy began to make life impossible for both +mother and daughter. Burlingame took it into his head, when he received +notice that his rooms were needed for another boarder, that J. G. Kerry +was the cause of it. Perhaps this was not without reason, since Kerry +had seen Kitty Tynan angrily unclasping Burlingame's arm from around her +waist, and had used cutting and decisive words to the sensualist +afterwards. + +There had taken the place of Augustus Burlingame a land-agent--Jesse +Bulrush--who came and went like a catapult, now in domicile for three +days together, now gone for three weeks; a voluble, gaseous, humorous +fellow, who covered up a well of commercial evasiveness, honesty and +adroitness by a perspiring gaiety natural in its origin and convenient +for harmless deceit. He was fifty, and no gallant save in words; and, +as a wary bachelor of many years' standing, it was a long time before he +showed a tendency to blandish a good-looking middle-aged nurse named Egan +who also lodged with Mrs. Tynan; though even a plain-faced nurse in +uniform has an advantage over a handsome unprofessional woman. Jesse +Bulrush and J. G. Kerry were friends--became indeed such confidential +friends to all appearance, though their social origin was evidently so +different, that Kitty Tynan, when she wished to have a pleasant +conversation which gave her a glow for hours afterwards, talked to the +fat man of his lean and aristocratic-looking friend. + +"Got his head where it ought to be--on his shoulders; and it ain't for +playing football with," was the frequent remark of Mr. Bulrush concerning +Mr. Kerry. This always made Kitty Tynan want to sing, she could not have +told why, save that it seemed to her the equivalent of a long history of +the man whose past lay in mists that never lifted, and whom even the +inquisitive Burlingame had been unable to "discover" when he lived in +the same house. But then Kitty Tynan was as fond of singing as a canary, +and relieved her feelings constantly by this virtuous and becoming means, +with her good contralto voice. She was indeed a creature of +contradictions; for if ever any one should have had a soprano voice +it was she. She looked a soprano. + +What she was thinking of as she sang with Kerry's coat in her hand it +would be hard to discover by the process of elimination, as the +detectives say when tracking down a criminal. It is, however, of no +consequence; but it was clear that the song she sang had moved her, for +there was the glint of a tear in her eye as she turned towards the house, +the words of the lyric singing themselves over in her brain: + + "Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes, + Held my hand, and pressed his cheek warm against my brow, + Home I saw upon the hearth, heaven stood there in the skies' + Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?"' + +She knew that no lover had left her; that none was in the habit of laying +his warm cheek against her brow; and perhaps that was why she had said +aloud to herself, "Kitty Tynan, Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" +Perhaps--and perhaps not. + +As she stepped forward towards the door she heard a voice within the +house, and she quickened her footsteps. The blood in her face, the look +in her eye quickened also. And now a figure appeared in the doorway--a +figure in shirt-sleeves, which shook a fist at the hurrying girl. + +"Villain'!" he said gaily, for he was in one of his absurd, ebullient +moods--after a long talk with Jesse Bulrush. "Hither with my coat; my +spotless coat in a spotted world,--the unbelievable anomaly-- + + "'For the earth of a dusty to-day + Is the dust of an earthy to-morrow.'" + +When he talked like this she did not understand him, but she thought it +was clever beyond thinking--a heavenly jumble. "If it wasn't for me +you'd be carted for rubbish," she replied joyously as she helped him on +with his coat, though he had made a motion to take it from her. + +"I heard you singing--what was it?" he asked cheerily, while it could +be seen that his mind was preoccupied. The song she had sung, floating +through the air, had seemed familiar to him, while he had been greatly +engaged with a big business thing he had been planning for a long time, +with Jesse Bulrush in the background or foreground, as scout or rear- +guard or what you will: + + "'Whereaway, whereaway goes the lad that once was mine? + Hereaway, I waited him, hereaway and oft--'" + +she hummed with an exaggerated gaiety in her voice, for the song had +saddened her, she knew not why. At the words the flaming exhilaration of +the man's face vanished and his eyes took on a poignant, distant look. + +"That--oh, that!" he said, and with a little jerk of the head and a +clenching of the hand he moved towards the street. + +"Your hat!" she called after him, and ran inside the house. An instant +later she gave it to him. Now his face was clear and his eyes smiled +kindly at her. + +"'Whereaway, hereaway' is a wonderful song," he said. "We used to sing +it when I was a boy--and after, and after. It's an old song--old as the +hills. Well, thanks, Kitty Tynan. What a girl you are--to be so kind +to a fellow like--me!" + +"Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!"--these were the very words she had +used about herself a little while before. The song--why did it make Mr. +Kerry take on such a queer look all at once when he heard it? Kitty +watched him striding down the street into the town. + +Now a voice--a rich, quizzical, kindly voice-called out to her: + +"Come, come, Miss Tynan, I want to be helped on with my coat," it said. + +Inside the house a fat, awkward man was struggling, or pretending to +struggle, into his coat. + +"Roll into it, Mr. Rolypoly," she answered cheerily as she entered. + +"Of course I'm not the star boarder--nothing for me!" he said in +affected protest. + +"A little more to starboard and you'll get it on," she retorted with a +glint of her late father's raillery, and she gave the coat a twitch which +put it right on the ample shoulders. + +"Bully! bully!" he cried. "I'll give you the tip for the Askatoon cup." + +"I'm a Christian. I hate horse-racers and gamblers," she returned +mockingly. + +"I'll turn Christian--I want to be loved," he bleated from the doorway. + +"Roll on, proud porpoise!" she rejoined, which shows that her +conversation was not quite aristocratic at all times. + +"Golly, but she's a gold dollar in a gold bank," remarked Jesse Bulrush +warmly as he lurched into the street. + +The girl stood still in the middle of the room looking dreamily down the +way the two men had gone. + +The quiet of the late summer day surrounded her. She heard the dizzy din +of the bees, the sleepy grinding of the grass hoppers, the sough of the +solitary pine at the door, and then behind them all a whizzing, machine- +like sound. This particular sound went on and on. + +She opened the door of the next room. Her mother sat at a sewing-machine +intent upon some work, the needle eating up a spreading piece of cloth. + +"What are you making, mother?" Kitty asked. "New blinds for Mr. Kerry's +bedroom-he likes this green colour," the widow added with a slight flush, +due to leaning over the sewing-machine, no doubt. + +"Everybody does everything for him," remarked the girl almost pettishly. + +"That's a nice spirit, I must say!" replied her mother reprovingly, the +machine almost stopping. + +"If I said it in a different way it would be all right," the other +returned with a smile, and she repeated the words with a winning soft +inflection, like a born actress. + +"Kitty-Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" declared her mother, and she +bent smiling over the machine, which presently buzzed on its devouring +way. Three people had said the same thing within a few minutes. A look +of pleasure stole over the girl's face, and her bosom rose and fell with +a happy sigh. Somehow it was quite a wonderful day for her. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +CLOSING THE DOORS + +There are many people who, in some subtle psychological way, are very +like their names; as though some one had whispered to "the parents of +this child" the name designed for it from the beginning of time. So it +was with Shiel Crozier. Does not the name suggest a man lean and flat, +sinewy, angular and isolated like a figure in one of El Greco's pictures +in the Prado at Madrid? Does not the name suggest a figure of elongated +humanity with a touch of ancient mysticism and yet also of the +fantastical humour of Don Quixote? + +In outward appearance Shiel Crozier, otherwise J. G. Kerry, of Askatoon, +was like his name for the greater part of the time. Take him in repose, +and he looked a lank ascetic who dreamed of a happy land where +flagellation was a joy and pain a panacea. In action, however, as when +Kitty Tynan helped him on with his coat, he was a pure improvisation of +nature. He had a face with a Cromwellian mole, which broke out in +emotion like an April day, with eyes changing from a blue-grey to the +deepest ultramarine that ever delighted the soul and made the reputation +of an Old Master. Even in the prairie town of Askatoon, where every man +is so busy that he scarcely knows his own children when he meets them, +and almost requires an introduction to his wife when the door closes on +them at bedtime, people took a second look at him when he passed. Many +who came in much direct contact with him, as Augustus Burlingame the +lawyer had done, tried to draw from him all there was to tell about +himself; which is a friendly custom of the far West. The native-born +greatly desire to tell about themselves. They wear their hearts on their +sleeves, and are childlike in the frank recitals of all they were and are +and hope to be. This covers up also a good deal of business acumen, +shrewdness, and secretiveness which is not so childlike and bland. + +In this they are in sharp contrast to those not native-born. These +come from many places on the earth, and they are seldom garrulously +historical. Some of them go to the prairie country to forget they ever +lived before, and to begin the world again, having been hurt in life +undeservingly; some go to bury their mistakes or worse in pioneer work +and adventure; some flee from a wrath that would devour them--the law, +society, or a woman. + +This much must be said at once for Crozier, that he had no crime to +hide. It was not because of crime that "He buckles up his talk like the +bellyband on a broncho," as Malachi Deely, the exile from Tralee, said +of him; and Deely was a man of "horse-sense," no doubt because he was a +horse-doctor--"a veterenny surgeon," as his friends called him when they +wished to flatter him. Deely supplemented this chaste remark about the +broncho with the observation that, "Same as the broncho, you buckle him +tightest when you know the divil is stirring in his underbrush." And he +added further, "'Tis a woman that's put the mumplaster on his tongue, +Sibley, and I bet you a hundred it's another man's wife." + +Like many a speculator, Malachi Deely would have made no profit out of +his bet in the end, for Shiel Crozier had had no trouble with the law, +or with another man's wife, nor yet with any single maid--not yet; though +there was now Kitty Tynan in his path. Yet he had had trouble. There +was hint of it in his occasional profound abstraction; but more than all +else in the fact that here he was, a gentleman, having lived his life for +over four years past as a sort of horse-expert, overseer, and stud- +manager for Terry Brennan, the absentee millionaire. In the opinion of +the West, "big-bugs" did not come down to this kind of occupation unless +they had been roughly handled by fate or fortune. + +"Talk? Watch me now, he talks like a testimonial in a frame," said +Malachi Deely on the day this tale opens, to John Sibley, the gambling +young farmer who, strange to say, did well out of both gambling and +farming. + +"Words to him are like nuts to a monkey. He's an artist, that man is. +Been in the circles where the band plays good and soft, where the music +smells--fairly smells like parfumery," responded Sibley. "I'd like to +get at the bottom of him. There's a real good story under his asbestos +vest--something that'd make a man call for the oh-be-joyful, same as I do +now." + +After they had seen the world through the bottom of a tumbler Deely +continued the gossip. "Watch me now, been a friend of dukes in England-- +and Ireland, that Mr. James Gathorne Kerry, as any one can see; and there +he is feelin' the hocks of a filly or openin' the jaws of a stud horse, +age-hunting! Why, you needn't tell me--I've had my mind made up ever +since the day he broke the temper of Terry Brennan's Inniskillen +chestnut, and won the gold cup with her afterwards. He just sort of +appeared out of the mist of the marnin', there bein' a divil's lot of +excursions and conferences and holy gatherin's in Askatoon that time +back, ostensible for the business which their names denote, like the +Dioceesan Conference and the Pure White Water Society. That was their +bluff; but they'd come herealong for one good pure white dioceesan thing +before all, and that was to see the dandiest horse-racing which ever +infested the West. Come--he come like that!"--Deely made a motion like a +swoop of an aeroplane to earth--"and here he is buckin' about like a +rough-neck same as you and me; but yet a gent, a swell, a cream della +cream, that's turned his back on a lady--a lady not his own wife, +that's my sure and sacred belief." + +"You certainly have got women on the brain," retorted Sibley. "I ain't +ever seen such a man as you. There never was a woman crossing the street +on a muddy day that you didn't sprint to get a look at her ankles. +Behind everything you see a woman. Horses is your profession, but woman +is your practice." + +"There ain't but one thing worth livin' for, and that's a woman," +remarked Deely. + +"Do you tell Mrs. Deely that?" asked Sibley. + +"Watch me now, she knows. What woman is there don't know when her +husband is what he is! And it's how I know that the trouble with James +Gathorne Kerry is a woman. I know the signs. Divils me own, he's got +'em in his face." + +"He's got in his face what don't belong here and what you don't know much +about--never having kept company with that sort," rejoined Sibley. + +"The way he lives and talks--'No, thank you, I don't care for anny +thing,' says he, when you're standin' at the door of a friendly saloon, +which is established by law to bespeak peace and goodwill towards men, +and you ask him pleasant to step inside. He don't seem to have a single +vice. Haven't we tried him? There was Belle Bingley, all frizzy hair +and a kicker; we put her on to him. But he give her ten dollars to buy +a hat on condition she behaved like a lady in the future--smilin' at her, +the divil! And Belle, with temper like dinnemite, took it kneelin' as it +were, and smiled back at him--her! Drink, women--nothin' seems to have a +hold on him. What's his vice? Sure, then, that's what I say, what's his +vice? He's got to have one; anny man as is a man has to have one vice." + +"Bosh! Look at me," rejoined Sibley. "Drink women--nit! Not for me! +I've got no vice. I don't even smoke." + +"No vice? Begobs, yours has got you like a tire on a wheel! Vice--what +do you call gamblin'? It's the biggest vice ever tuk grip of a man. +It's like a fever, and it's got you, John, like the nail on your finger." + +"Well, p'r'aps, he's got that vice too. P'r'aps J. G. Kerry's got that +vice same as me." + +"Annyhow, we'll get to know all we want when he goes into the witness +box at the Logan murder trial next week. That's what I'm waitin' for, +"Deely returned, with a grin of anticipation. "That drug-eating Gus +Burlingame's got a grudge against him somehow, and when a lawyer's got +a grudge against you it's just as well to look where y' are goin'. +Burlingame don't care what he does to get his way in court. What set him +against Kerry I ain't sure, but, bedad, I think it's looks. Burlingame +goes in for lookin' like a picture in a frame--gold seals hangin' beyant +his vestpocket, broad silk cord to his eye-glass, loose flowin' tie, and +long hair-makes him look pretentuous and showy. But your 'Mr. Kerry, +sir,' he don't have anny tricks to make him look like a doge from Veenis +and all the eyes of the females battin' where'er he goes. Jealousy, John +Sibley, me boy, is a cruil thing." + +"Why is it you ain't jealous of him? There's plenty of women that watch +you go down-town--you got a name for it, anyway," remarked Sibley +maliciously. + +Deely nodded sagely. "Watch me now, that's right, me boy. I got a name +for it, but I want the game without the name, and that's why I ain't +puttin' on anny airs--none at all. I depend on me tongue, not on me +looks, which goes against me. I like Mr. J. G. Kerry. I've plenty +dealin's with him, naturally, both of us being in the horse business, +and I say he's right as a minted dollar as he goes now. Also, and +behold, I'd take my oath he never done annything to blush for. His +touble's been a woman--wayward woman what stoops to folly! I give up +tryin' to pump him just as soon as I made up my mind it was a woman. +That shuts a man's mouth like a poor-box. + +"Next week's fixed for the Logan killin' case, is it?" + +"Monday comin', for sure. I wouldn't like to be in Mr. Kerry's shoes. +Watch me now, if he gives the, evidence they say he can give--the +prasecution say it--that M'Mahon Gang behind Logan 'll get him sure as +guns, one way or another." + +"Some one ought to give Mr. Kerry the tip to get out and not give +evidence," remarked Sibley sagely. Deely shook his head vigorously. +"Begobs, he's had the tip all right, but he's not goin'. He's got as +much fear as a canary has whiskers. He doesn't want to give evidence, +he says, but he wants to see the "law do its work. Burlingame 'll try to +make it out manslaughter; but there's a widow with children to suffer for +the manslaughter, just as much as though it was murder, and there isn't a +man that doesn't think murder was the game, and the grand joory had that +idea too. + +"Between Gus Burlingame and that M'Mahon bunch of horse-thieves, the +stranger in a strange land 'll have to keep his eyes open, I'm thinkin'." + +"Divils me darlin', his eyes are open all right," returned Deely. + +"Still, I'd like to jog his elbow," Sibley answered reflectively. +"It couldn't do any harm, and it might do good." + +Deely nodded good-naturedly. "If you want to so bad as that, John, +you've got the chance, for he's up at the Sovereign Bank now. I seen him +leave the Great Overland Railway Bureau ten minutes ago and get away +quick to the bank." + +"What's he got on at the bank and the railway?" + +"Some big deal, I guess. I've seen him with Studd Bradley." + +"The Great North Trust Company boss?" + +"On it, my boy, on it--the other day as thick as thieves. Studd Bradley +doesn't knit up with an outsider from the old country unless there's +reason for it--good gold-currency reasons." + +"A land deal, eh?" ventured Sibley. "What did I say--speculation, +that's his vice, same as mine! P'r'aps that's what ruined him. Cards, +speculation, what's the difference? And he's got a quiet look, same as +me." + +Deely laughed loudly. "And bursts out same as you! Quiet one hour like +a mill-pond or a well, and then--swhish, he's blazin'! He's a volcano in +harness, that spalpeen." + +"He's a volcano that doesn't erupt when there's danger," responded +Sibley. "It's when there's just fun on that his volcano gets loose. +I'll go wait for him at the bank. I got a fellow-feeling for Mr. Kerry. +I'd like to whisper in his ear that he'd better be lookin' sharp for the +M'Mahon Gang, and that if he's a man of peace he'd best take a holiday +till after next week, or get smallpox or something." + +The two friends lounged slowly up the street, and presently parted near +the door of the bank. As Sibley waited, his attention was drawn to a +window on the opposite side of the street at an angle from themselves. +The light was such that the room was revealed to its farthest corners, +and Sibley noted that three men were evidently carefully watching the +bank, and that one of the men was Studd Bradley, the so-called boss. The +others were local men of some position commercially and financially in +the town. Sibley did not give any sign that he noticed the three men, +but he watched carefully from under the rim of his hat. His imagination, +however, read a story of consequence in the secretive vigilance of the +three, who evidently thought that, standing far back in the room, they +could not be seen. + +Presently the door of the bank opened, and Sibley saw Studd Bradley lean +forward eagerly, then draw back and speak hurriedly to his companions, +using a gesture of satisfaction. + +"Something damn funny there!" Sibley said to himself, and stepped +forward to Crozier with a friendly exclamation. Crozier turned rather +impatiently, for his face was aflame with some exciting reflection. At +this moment his eyes were the deepest blue that could be imagined--an +almost impossible colour, like that of the Mediterranean when it reflects +the perfect sapphire of the sky. There was something almost wonderful +in their expression. A woman once said as she looked at a picture of +Herschel, whose eyes had the unworldly gaze of the great dreamer looking +beyond this sphere, "The stars startled him." Such a look was in +Crozier's eyes now, as though he was seeing the bright end of a +long road, the desire of his soul. + +That, indeed, was what he saw. After two years of secret negotiation he +had (inspired by information dropped by Jesse Bulrush, his fellow- +boarder) made definite arrangements for a big land-deal in connection +with the route of a new railway and a town-site, which would mean more +to him than any one could know. If it went through, he would, for an +investment of ten thousand dollars, have a hundred and fifty thousand +dollars; and that would solve an everlasting problem for him. + +He had reached a critical point in his enterprise. All that was wanted +now was ten thousand dollars in cash to enable him to close the great +bargain and make his hundred and fifty thousand. But to want ten +thousand dollars and to get it in a given space of time, when you have +neither securities, cash, nor real estate, is enough to keep you awake at +night. Crozier had been so busy with the delicate and difficult +negotiations that he had not deeply concerned himself with the absence of +the necessary ten thousand dollars. He thought he could get the money at +any time, so good was the proposition; and it was best to defer +raising it to the last moment lest some one learning the secret should +forestall him. He must first have the stake to be played for before he +moved to get the cash with which to make the throw. This is not +generally thought a good way, but it was his way, and it had yet to be +tested. + +There was no cloud of apprehension, however, in Crozier's eyes as they +met those of Sibley. He liked Sibley. At this point it is not necessary +to say why. The reason will appear in due time. Sibley's face had +always something of that immobility and gravity which Crozier's face had +part of the time-paler, less intelligent, with dark lines and secret +shadows absent from Crozier's face; but still with some of the El Greco +characteristics which marked so powerfully that of the man who passed as +J. G. Kerry. + +"Ah, Sibley," he said, "glad to see you! Anything I can do for you?" + +"It's the other way if there's any doing at all," was the quick response. + +"Well, let's walk along together," remarked Crozier a little +abstractedly, for he was thinking hard about his great enterprise. + +"We might be seen," said Sibley, with an obvious undermeaning meant to +provoke a question. + +Crozier caught the undertone of suggestion. "Being about to burgle the +bank, it's well not to be seen together--eh?" + +"No, I'm not in on that business, Mr. Kerry. I'm for breaking banks, +not burgling 'em," was the cheerful reply. + +They laughed, but Crozier knew that the observant gambling farmer was not +talking at haphazard. They had met on the highway, as it were, many +times since Crozier had come to Askatoon, and Crozier knew his man. + +"Well, what are we going to do, and who will see us if we do it?" +Crozier asked briskly. + +"Studd Bradley and his secret-service corps have got their eyes on this +street--and on you," returned Sibley dryly. + +Crozier's face sobered and his eyes became less emotional. "I don't see +them anywhere," he answered, but looking nowhere. + +"They're in Gus Burlingame's office. They had you under observation +while you were in the bank." + +"I couldn't run off with the land, could I?" Crozier remarked dryly, yet +suggestively, in his desire to see how much Sibley knew. + +"Well, you said it was a bank. I've no more idea what it is you're +tryin' to run off with than I know what an ace is goin' to do when +there's a joker in the pack," remarked Sibley; "but I thought I'd tell +you that Bradley and his lot are watchin' you gettin' ready to run." +Then he hastily told what he had seen. + +Crozier was reassured. It was natural that Bradley & Co. should take an +interest in his movements. They would make a pile of money if he pulled +off the deal-far more than he would. It was not strange that they should +watch his invasion of the bank. They knew he wanted money, and a bank +was the place to get it. That was the way he viewed the matter on the +instant. He replied to Sibley cheerfully. "A hundred to one is a lot +when you win it," he said enigmatically. + +"It depends on how much you have on," was Sibley's quiet reply--"a dollar +or a thousand dollars. + +"If you've got a big thing on, and you've got an outsider that you think +is goin' to win and beat the favourite, it's just as well to run no +risks. Believe me, Mr. Kerry, if you've got anything on that asks for +your attention, it'd be sense and saving if you didn't give evidence at +the Logan Trial next week. It's pretty well-guessed what you're goin' +to say and what you know, and you take it from me, the M'Mahon mob that's +behind Logan 'll have it in for you. They're terrors when they get +goin', and if your evidence puts one of that lot away, ther'll be trouble +for you. I wouldn't do it--honest, I wouldn't. I've been out West here +a good many years, and I know the place and the people. It's a good +place, and there's lots of first-class people here, but there's a few +offscourings that hang like wolves on the edge of the sheepfold, ready to +murder and git." + +"That was what you wanted to see me about, wasn't it?" Crozier asked +quietly. + +"Yes; the other was just a shot on the chance. I don't like to see men +sneakin' about and watching. If they do, you can bet there's something +wrong. But the other thing, the Logan Trial business, is a dead +certainty. You're only a new-comer, in a kind of way, and you don't need +to have the same responsibility as the rest. The Law'll get what it +wants whether you chip in or not. Let it alone. What's the Law ever +done for you that you should run risks for it? It's straight talk, Mr. +Kerry. Have a cancer in the bowels next week or go off to see a dyin' +brother, but don't give evidence at the Logan Trial--don't do it. I got +a feeling--I'm superstitious--all sportsmen are. By following my +instincts I've saved myself a whole lot in my time." + +"Yes; all men that run chances have their superstitions, and they're not +to be sneered at," replied Crozier thoughtfully. "If you see black, +don't play white; if you see a chestnut crumpled up, put your money on +the bay even when the chestnut is a favourite. Of course you're +superstitious, Sibley. The tan and the green baize are covered with +ghosts that want to help you, if you'll let them." + +Sibley's mouth opened in amazement. Crozier was speaking with the look +of the man who hypnotises himself, who "sees things," who dreams as only +the gambler and the plunger on the turf do dream, not even excepting the +latter-day Irish poets. + +"Say, I was right what I said to Deely--I was right," remarked Sibley +almost huskily, for it seemed to him as though he had found a long-lost +brother. No man except one who had staked all he had again and again +could have looked or spoken like that. + +Crozier looked at the other thoughtfully for a moment, then he said: + +"I don't know what you said to Deely, but I do know that I'm going to +the Logan Trial in spite of the M'Mahon mob. I don't feel about it as +you do. I've got a different feeling, Sibley. I'll play the game out. +I shall not hedge. I shall not play for safety. It's everything on the +favourite this time." + +"You'll excuse me, but Gus Burlingame is for the defence, and he's got +his knife into you," returned Sibley. + +"Not yet." Crozier smiled sardonically. + +"Well, I apologise, but what I've said, Mr. Kerry, is said as man to man. +You're ridin' game in a tough place, as any man has to do who starts with +only his pants and his head on. That's the way you begun here, I guess; +and I don't want to see your horse tumble because some one throws a +fence-rail at its legs. Your class has enemies always in a new country +--jealousy, envy." + +The lean, aristocratic, angular Crozier, with a musing look on his long +face, grown ascetic again, as he held out his hand and gripped that of +the other, said warmly: "I'm just as much obliged to you as though I took +your advice, Sibley. I am not taking it, but I am taking a pledge to +return the compliment to you if ever I get the chance." + +"Well, most men get chances of that kind," was the gratified reply of the +gambling farmer, and then Crozier turned quickly and entered the doorway +of the British Bank, the rival of that from which he had turned in brave +disappointment a little while before. + +Left alone in the street, Sibley looked back with the instinct of the +hunter. As he expected, he saw a head thrust out from the window where +Studd Bradley and his friends had been. There was an hotel opposite the +British Bank. He entered and waited. Bradley and one of his companions +presently came in and seated themselves far back in the shadow, where +they could watch the doorway of the bank. + +It was quite a half-hour before Shiel Crozier emerged from the bank. His +face was set and pale. For an instant he stood as though wondering which +way to go, then he moved up the street the way he had come. + +Sibley heard a low, poisonous laugh of triumph rankle through the hotel +office. He turned round. Bradley, the over-fed, over-confident, over- +estimated financier, laid a hand on the shoulder of his companion as they +moved towards the door. + +"That's another gate shut," he said. "I guess we can close 'em all with +a little care. It's working all right. He's got no chance of raising +the cash," he added, as the two passed the chair where Sibley sat--with +his hat over his eyes, chewing an unlighted cigar. + +"I don't know what it is, but it's dirt--and muck at that," John Sibley +remarked as he rose from his chair and followed the two into the street. + +Bradley and his friends were trying steadily to close up the avenues of +credit to the man to whom the success of his enterprise meant so much. +To crowd him out would mean an extra hundred and fifty thousand dollars +for themselves. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE LOGAN TRIAL AND WHAT CAME OF IT + +What the case was in which Shiel Crozier was to give evidence is not +important; what came from the giving of his testimony is all that +matters; and this story would never have been written if he had not +entered the witness-box. + +A court-room at any time seems a little warmer than any other spot to all +except the prisoner; but on a July day it is likely to be a punishment +for both innocent and guilty. A man had been killed by one of the group +of toughs called locally the M'Mahon Gang, and against the charge of +murder that of manslaughter had been set up in defence; and manslaughter +might mean jail for a year or two or no jail at all. Any evidence which +justified the charge of murder would mean not jail, but the rope in due +course; for this was not Montana or Idaho, where the law's delays +outlasted even the memory of the crime committed. + +The court-room of Askatoon was crowded to suffocation, for the +M'Mahons were detested, and the murdered man had a good reputation in +the district. Besides, a widow and three children mourned their loss, +and the widow was in court. Also Crozier's evidence was expected to be +sensational, and to prove the swivel on which the fate of the accused man +would hang. Among those on the inside it was also known that the clever +but dissipated Augustus Burlingame, the counsel for the prisoner, had a +grudge against Crozier,--no one quite knew why except Kitty Tynan and her +mother, and that cross-examination would be pressed mercilessly when +Crozier entered the witness-box. As Burlingame came into the court-room +he said to the Young Doctor--he was always spoken of as the Young Doctor +in Askatoon, though he had been there a good many years and he was no +longer as young as he looked--who was also called as a witness, "We'll +know more about Mr. J. G. Kerry when this trial is over than will suit +his book." It did not occur to Augustus Burlingame that in Crozier, who +knew why he had fled the house of the showy but virtuous Mrs. Tynan, he +might find a witness of a mental and moral calibre with baffling +qualities and some gift of riposte. + +Crozier entered the witness-box at a stage when excitement was at fever +height; for the M'Mahon Gang had given evidence which every one believed +to be perjured; and the widow of the slain man was weeping bitterly in +her seat because of noxious falsehoods sworn against her honest husband. + +There was certainly someting credible and prepossessing in the look of +Crozier. He might be this or that, but he carried no evil or vice of +character in his face. He was in his grave mood this summer afternoon. +There he stood with his long face and the very heavy eyebrows, clean- +shaven, hard-bitten, as though by wind and weather, composed and +forceful, the mole on his chin a kind of challenge to the vertical dimple +in his cheek, his high forehead more benevolent than intellectual, his +brown hair faintly sprinkled with grey and a bit unmanageable, his +fathomless eyes shining. "No man ought to have such eyes," remarked a +woman present to the Young Doctor, who abstractedly nodded assent, for, +like Malachi Deely and John Sibley, he himself had a theory about +Crozier; and he had a fear of what the savage enmity of the morally +diseased Burlingame might do. He had made up his mind that so intense a +scrupulousness as Crozier had shown since coming to Askatoon had behind +it not only character, but the rigidity of a set purpose; and that view +was supported by the stern economy of Crozier's daily life, broken only +by sudden bursts of generosity for those in need. + +In the box Crozier kept his eye on the crown attorney, who prosecuted, +and on the judge. He appeared not to see any one in the court-room, +though Kitty Tynan had so placed herself that he must see her if he +looked at the audience at all. Kitty thought him magnificent as he told +his story with a simple parsimony but a careful choice of words which +made every syllable poignant with effect. She liked him in his grave +mood even better than when he was aflame with an internal fire of his +own creation, when he was almost wildly vivid with life. + +"He's two men," she had often said to herself; and she said it now as she +looked at him in the witness-box, measuring out his words and measuring +off at the same time the span of a murderer's life; for when the crown +attorney said to the judge that he had concluded his examination there +was no one in the room--not even the graceless Burlingame--who did not +think the prisoner guilty. + +"That is all," the crown attorney said to Crozier as he sank into his +chair, greatly pleased with one of the best witnesses who had ever been +through his hands--lucid, concentrated, exact, knowing just where +he was going and reaching his goal without meandering. Crozier was about +to step down when Burlingame rose. + +"I wish to ask a few questions," he said. + +Crozier bowed and turned, again grasping the rail of the witness-box with +one hand, while with an air of cogitation and suspense he stroked his +chin with the long fingers of the other hand. + +"What is your name?" asked Burlingame in a tone a little louder than he +had used hitherto in the trial, indeed even louder than lawyers generally +use when they want to bully a witness. In this case it was as though he +wished to summon the attention of the court. + +For a second Crozier's fingers caught his chin almost spasmodically. The +real meaning of the question, what lay behind it, flashed to his mind. +He saw in lightning illumination the course Burlingame meant to pursue. +For a moment his heart seemed to stand still, and he turned slightly +pale, but the blue of his eyes took on a new steely look--a look also +of striking watchfulness, as of an animal conscious of its danger, yet +conscious too of its power when at bay. + +"What is your name?" Burlingame asked again in a somewhat louder tone, +and turned to look at the jury, as if bidding them note the hesitation of +the witness; though, indeed, the waiting was so slight that none but a +trickster like Burlingame would have taken advantage of it, and only then +when there was much behind. + +For a moment longer Crozier remained silent, getting strength, as it +were, and saying to himself, "What does he know?" and then, with a +composed look of inquiry at the judge, who appeared to take no notice, +he said: "I have already, in evidence, given my name to the court." + +"Witness, what is your name?" again almost shouted the lawyer, with a +note of indignation in his voice, as though here was a dangerous fellow +committing a misdemeanour in their very presence. He spread out his +hands to the jury, as though bidding them observe, if they would, this +witness hesitating in answer to a simple, primary question--a witness who +had just sworn a man's life away! + +"What is your name?" + +"James Gathorne Kerry, as I have already given it to the court," was the +calm reply. + +"Where do you live?" + +"In Askatoon, as I have already said in evidence; and if it is necessary +to give my domicile, I live at the house of Mrs. Tyndall Tynan, Pearl +Street--as you know so well." + +The tone in which he uttered the last few words was such that even the +judge pricked up his ears. + +A look of hatred came into the decadent but able lawyer's face. + +"Where do you live when you are at home?" + +"Mrs. Tynan's house is the only home I have at present." + +He was outwitting the pursuer so far, but it only gained him time, as he +knew; and he knew also that no suggestive hint concerning the episode at +Mrs. Tynan's, when Burlingame was asked to leave her house, would be of +any avail now. + +"Where were you born?" + +"In Ireland." + +"What part of Ireland?" + +"County Kerry." + +"What place--what town or city or village in County Kerry?" + +"In neither." + +"What house, then--what estate?" Burlingame was more than nettled; and +he sharpened his sword. + +"The estate of Castlegarry." + +"What was your name in Ireland?" + +In the short silence that followed, the quick-drawn breath of many +excited and some agitated people could be heard. Among the latter were +Mrs. Tynan and her daughter and Malachi Deely; among those who held their +breath in suspence were John Sibley, Studd Bradley the financier, and the +Young Doctor. The swish of a skirt seemed ridiculously loud in the hush, +and the scratching of the judge's quill pen was noisily irritating. + +"My name in Ireland was James Shiel Gathorne Crozier, commonly called +Shiel Crozier," came the even reply from the witness-box. + +"James Shiel Gathorne Crozier in Ireland, but James Gathorne Kerry here!" +Burlingame turned to the jury significantly. "What other name have you +been known by in or out of Ireland?" he added sharply to Crozier. "No +other name so far as I know." + +"No other name so far as you know," repeated the lawyer in a sarcastic +tone intended to impress the court. + +"Who was your father?" + +"John Gathorne Crozier." + +"Any title?" + +"He was a baronet." + +"What was his business?" + +"He had no profession, though he had business, of course." + +"Ah, he lived by his wits?" + +"No, he was not a lawyer! I have said he had no profession. He lived on +his money on his estate." + +The judge waved down the laughter at Burlingame's expense. + +"In official documents what was his description?" snarled Burlingame. + +"'Gentleman' was his designation in official documents." + +"You, then, were the son of a gentleman?" There was a hateful suggestion +in the tone. + +"I was." + +"A legitimate son?" + +Nothing in Crozier's face showed what he felt, except his eyes, and they +had a look in them which might well have made his questioner shrink. He +turned calmly to the judge. + +"Your honour, does this bear upon the case? Must I answer this legal +libertine?" + +At the word libertine, the judge, the whole court, and the audience +started; but it was presently clear the witness meant that the questioner +was abusing his legal privileges, though the people present interpreted +it another way, and quite rightly. + +The reply of the judge was in favour of the lawyer. "I do not quite see +the full significance of the line of defence, but I think I must allow +the question," was the judge's gentle and reluctant reply, for he was +greatly impressed by this witness, by his transparent honesty and +straightforwardness. + +"Were you a legitimate son of John Gathorne Crozier and his wife?" asked +Burlingame. + +"Yes, a legitimate son," answered Crozier in an even voice. + +"Is John Gathorne Crozier still living?" + +"I said that gentleman was his designation in official documents. I +supposed that would convey the fact that he was not living, but I see you +do not quickly grasp a point." + +Burlingame was stung by the laughter in the court and ventured a riposte. + +"But is once a gentleman always a gentleman an infallible rule?" + +"I suppose not; I did not mean to convey that; but once a rogue always a +bad lawyer holds good in every country," was Crozier's comment in a low, +quiet voice which stirred and amused the audience again. + +"I must ask counsel to put questions which have some relevance even to +his own line of defence," remarked the judge sternly. "This is not a +corner grocery." + +Burlingame bowed. He had had a facer, but he had also shown the witness +to have been living under an assumed name. That was a good start. He +hoped to add to the discredit. He had absolutely no knowledge of +Crozier's origin and past; but he was in a position to find it out if +Crozier told the truth on oath, and he was sure he would. + +"Where was your domicile in the old country?" Burlingame asked. + +"In County Kerry--with a flat in London." + +"An estate in County Kerry?" + +"A house and two thousand acres." + +"Is it your property still?" + +"It is not." + +"You sold it?" + +"No." + +"If you did not sell, how is it that you do not own it?" + +"It was sold for me--in spite of me." + +The judge smiled, the people smiled, the jury smiled. Truly, though a +life-history was being exposed with incredible slowness--"like pulling +teeth," as the Young Doctor said--it was being touched off with laughter. + +"You were in debt?" + +"Quite." + +"How did you get into debt?" + +"By spending more than my income." + +If Askatoon had been proud of its legal talent in the past it had now +reason for revising its opinion. Burlingame was frittering away the +effect of his inquiry by elaboration of details. What he gained by the +main startling fact he lost in the details by which the witness scored. +He asked another main question. + +"Why did you leave Ireland?" + +"To make money." + +"You couldn't do it there?" + +"They were too many for me over there, so I thought I'd come here," slyly +answered Crozier, and with a grave face; at which the solemn scene of a +prisoner being tried for his life was shaken by a broad smiling, which in +some cases became laughter haughtily suppressed by the court attendant. + +"Have you made money here?" + +"A little--with expectations." + +"What was your income in Ireland?" + +"It began with three thousand pounds--" + +"Fifteen thousand dollars about?" + +"About that--about a lawyer's fee for one whisper to a client less than +that. It began with that and ended with nothing." + +"Then you escaped?" + +"From creditors, lawyers, and other such? No, I found you here." + +The judge intervened again almost harshly on the laughter of the court, +with the remark that a man was being tried for his life; that ribaldry +was out of place; and that, unless the course pursued by the counsel was +to discredit the reliability of the character of the witness, the +examination was in excess of the privilege of counsel. + +"Your honour has rightly apprehended what my purpose is," Burlingame said +deprecatingly. He then turned to Crozier again, and his voice rose as it +did when he began the examination. It was as though he was starting all +over again. + +"What was it compelled" (he was boldly venturing) "you to leave Ireland +at last? What was the incident which drove you out from the land where +you were born--from being the owner of two thousand acres"-- + +"Partly bog," interposed Crozier. + +"--From being the owner of two thousand acres to becoming a kind of head- +groom on a ranch? What was the cause of your flight?" + +"Flight! I came in one of the steamers of the Company for which your +firm are the agents. Eleven days it took to come from Glasgow to +Quebec." + +Again the court rippled, again the attendant intervened. + +Burlingame was nonplussed this time, but he gathered himself together. + +"What was the process of law which forced you to leave your own land?" + +"None at all." + +"What were your debts when you left?" + +"None at all." + +"How much was the last debt you paid?" + +"Two thousand five hundred pounds." + +"What was its nature?" + +"It was a debt of honour--do you understand?" The subtle challenge of +the voice, the sarcasm, was not lost. Again there was a struggle on the +part of the audience not to laugh outright, and so be driven from the +court as had been threatened. + +The judge interposed again with the remark, not very severe in tone, +that the witness was not in the box to ask questions, but to answer them. +At the same time he must remind counsel that the examination must +discontinue unless something more relevant immediately appeared in the +evidence. + +There was silence again for a moment, and even Crozier himself seemed to +steel himself for a question he felt was coming. + +"Are you married or single?" asked Burlingame, and he did not need to +raise his voice to summon the interest of the court. + +"I was married." + +One person in the audience nearly cried out. It was Kitty Tynan. She +had never allowed herself to think of that, but even if she had, what +difference could it make whether he was married or single, since he was +out of her star? + +"Are you not married now?" + +"I do not know." + +"You mean you do not know if you have been divorced?" + +"No." + +"You mean your wife is dead?" + +"No." + +"What do you mean? That you do not know whether your wife is living or +dead?" + +"Quite so." + +"Have you heard from her since you saw her last?" + +"I had one letter." + +Kitty Tynan thought of the unopened letter in a woman's handwriting in +the green baize desk in her mother's house. + +"No more?" + +"No more." + +"Are we to understand that you do not know whether your wife is living or +dead?" + +"I have no information that she is dead." + +"Why did you leave her?" + +"I have not said that I left her. Primarily I left Ireland." + +"Assuming that she is alive, your wife will not live with you?" + +"Ah, what information have you to that effect?" The judge informed +Crozier that he must not ask questions of counsel. + +"Why is she not with you here?" + +"As you said, I am only picking up a living here, and even the passage +by your own second-class steamship line is expensive." + +The judge suppressed a smile. He greatly liked the witness. + +"Do you deny that you parted from your wife in anger?" + +"When I am asked that question I will try to answer it. Meanwhile, I do +not deny what has not been put before me in the usual way." + +Here the judge sternly rebuked the counsel, who ventured upon one last +question. + +"Have you any children?" + +"None." + +"Has your brother, who inherited, any children?" + +"None that I know of." + +"Are you the heir-presumptive to the baronetcy?" + +"I am." + +"Yet your wife will not live with you?" + +"Call Mrs. Crozier as a witness and see. Meanwhile, I am not upon my +trial." + +He turned to the judge, who promptly called upon Burlingame to conclude +his examination. + +Burlingame asked two questions more. + +"Why did you change your name when you came here?" + +"I wanted to obliterate myself." + +"I put it to you, that what you want is to avoid the outraged law of your +own country." + +"No--I want to avoid the outrageous lawyers of yours." + +Again there was a pause in the proceedings, and on a protest from the +crown attorney the judge put an end to the cross-examination with the +solemn reminder that a man was being tried for his life, and that the +present proceedings were a lamentable reflection on the levity of human +nature--in Askatoon. Turning with friendly scrutiny to Crozier, he said: + +"In the early stage of his examination the witness informed the court +that he had made a heavy loss through a debt of honour immediately before +leaving England. Will he say in what way he incurred the obligation? +Are we to assume that it was through gambling-card-playing, or other +games of chance?" + +"Through backing the wrong horse," was Crozier's instant reply. + +"That phrase is often applied to mining or other unreal flights for +fortune," said the judge, with a dry smile. + +"This was a real horse on a real flight to the winning-post," added +Crozier, with a quirk at the corner of his mouth. + +"Honest contest with man or horse is no crime, but it is tragedy to +stake all on the contest and lose," was the judge's grave and pedagogic +comment. "We shall now hear from the counsel for defence his reason for +conducting his cross-examination on such unusual lines. Latitude of this +kind is only permissible if it opens up any weakness in the case against +the prisoner." + +The judge thus did Burlingame a good turn as well as Crozier, by creating +an atmosphere of gravity, even of tragedy, in which Burlingame could make +his speech in defence of the prisoner. + +Burlingame started hesitatingly, got into his stride, assembled the +points of his defence with the skill of which he really was capable. He +made a strong appeal for acquittal, but if not acquittal, then a verdict +of manslaughter. He showed that the only real evidence which could +convict his man of murder was that of the witness Crozier. If he had +been content to discredit evidence of the witness by an adroit but +guarded misuse of the facts he had brought out regarding Crozier's past, +to emphasise the fact that he was living under an assumed name and that +his bona fides was doubtful, he might have impressed the jury to some +slight degree. He could not, however, control the malice he felt, and he +was smarting from Crozier's retorts. He had a vanity easily lacerated, +and he was now too savage to abate the ferocity of his forensic attack. +He sat down, however, with a sure sense of failure. Every orator knows +when he is beating the air, even when his audience is quiet and +apparently attentive. + +The crown attorney was a man of the serenest method and of cold, +unforensic logic. He had a deadly precision of speech, a very remarkable +memory, and a great power of organising and assembling his facts. There +was little left of Burlingame's appeal when he sat down. He declared +that to discredit Crozier's evidence because he chose to use another +name than his own, because he was parted from his wife, because he left +England practically penniless to earn an honest living--no one had shown +it was not--was the last resort of legal desperation. It was an +indefensible thing to endeavour to create prejudice against a man because +of his own evidence given with great frankness. Not one single word of +evidence had the defence brought to discredit Crozier, save by Crozier's +own word of mouth; and if Crozier had cared to commit perjury, the +defence could not have proved him guilty of it. Even if Crozier had not +told the truth as it was, counsel for the defence would have found it +impossible to convict him of falsehood. But even if Crozier was a +perjurer, justice demanded that his evidence should be weighed as truth +from its own inherent probability and supported by surrounding facts. +In a long experience he had never seen animus against a witness so +recklessly exhibited as by counsel in this case. + +The judge was not quite so severe in his summing up, but he did say of +Crozier that his direct replies to Burlingame's questions, intended to +prejudice him in the eyes of the community into which he had come a +stranger, bore undoubted evidence of truth; for if he had chosen to say +what might have saved him from the suspicions, ill or well founded, of +his present fellow-citizens, he might have done so with impunity, save +for the reproach of his own conscience. On the whole, the judge summed +up powerfully against the prisoner Logan, with the result that the jury +were not out for more than a half-hour. Their verdict was, guilty of +murder. + +In the scene which followed, Crozier dropped his head into his hand and +sat immovable as the judge put on the black cap and delivered sentence. +When the prisoner left the dock, and the crowd began to disperse, +satisfied that justice had been done--save in that small circle where the +M'Mahons were supreme--Crozier rose with other witnesses to leave. As he +looked ahead of him the first face he saw was that of Kitty Tynan, and +something in it startled him. Where had he seen that look before? Yes, +he remembered. It was when he was twenty-one and had been sent away to +Algiers because he was falling in love with a farmer's daughter. As he +drove down a lane with his father towards the railway station, those long +years ago, he had seen the girl's face looking at him from the window of +a labourer's cottage at the crossroads; and its stupefied desolation +haunted him for many years, even after the girl had married and gone to +live in Scotland--that place of torment for an Irish soul. + +The look in Kitty Tynan's face reminded him of that farmer's lass in his +boyhood's history. He was to blame then--was he to blame now? Certainly +not consciously, not by any intended word or act. Now he met her eyes +and smiled at her, not gaily, not gravely, but with a kind of whimsical +helplessness; for she was the first to remind him that he was leaving the +court-room in a different position (if not a different man) from that in +which he entered it. He had entered the court-room as James Gathorne +Kerry, and he was leaving it as Shiel Crozier; and somehow James Gathorne +Kerry had always been to himself a different man from Shiel Crozier, with +different views, different feelings, if not different characteristics. + +He saw faces turned to him, a few with intense curiosity, fewer +still with a little furtiveness, some with amusement, and many with +unmistakable approval; for one thing was clear, if his own evidence was +correct: he was the son of a baronet, he was heir-presumptive to a +baronetcy, and he had scored off Augustus Burlingame in a way which +delighted a naturally humorous people. He noted, however, that the nod +which Studd Bradley, the financier, gave him had in it an enigmatic +something which puzzled him. Surely Bradley could not be prejudiced +against him because of the evidence he had given. There was nothing +criminal in living under an assumed name, which, anyhow, was his own name +in three-fourths of it, and in the other part was the name of the county +where he was born. + +"Divils me own, I told you he was up among the dukes," said Malachi Deely +to John Sibley as they came out. "And he's from me own county, and I +know the name well enough; an' a damn good name it is. The bulls of +Castlegarry was famous in the south of Ireland." + +"I've a warm spot for him. I was right, you see. Backing horses ruined +him," said Sibley in reply; and he looked at Crozier admiringly. + +There is the communion of saints, but nearer and dearer is the communion +of sinners; for a common danger is their bond, and that is even more than +a common hope. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +"STRENGTH SHALL BE GIVEN THEE" + +On the evening of the day of the trial, Mrs. Tynan, having fixed the new +blind to the window of Shiel Crozier's room, which was on the ground- +floor front, was lowering and raising it to see if it worked properly, +when out in the moonlit street she saw a wagon approaching her house +surrounded and followed by obviously excited men. Once before she had +seen just such a group nearing her door. That was when her husband was +brought home to die in her arms. She had a sudden conviction, as, +holding the blind in her hand, she looked out into the night, that again +tragedy was to cross her threshold. Standing for an instant under the +fascination of terror, she recovered herself with a shiver, and, stepping +down from the chair where she had been fixing the blind, with the +instinct of real woman, she ran to the bed of the room where she was, and +made it ready. Why did she feel that it was Shiel Crozier's bed which +should be made ready? Or did she not feel it? Was it only a dazed, +automatic act, not connected with the person who was to lie in the bed? +Was she then a fatalist? Were trouble and sorrow so much her portion +that to her mind this tragedy, whatever it was, must touch the man +nearest to her--and certainly Shiel Crozier was far nearer than Jesse +Bulrush. Quite apart from wealth or position, personality plays a part +more powerful than all else in the eyes of every woman who has a soul +which has substance enough to exist at all. Such men as Crozier have +compensations for "whate'er they lack." It never occurred to Mrs. Tynan +to go to Jesse Bulrush's room or the room of middle-aged, comely Nurse +Egan. She did the instinctive thing, as did the woman who sent a man a +rope as a gift, on the ground that the fortune in his hand said that he +was born not to be drowned. + +Mrs. Tynan's instinct was right. By the time she had put the bed into +shape, got a bowl of water ready, lighted a lamp, and drawn the bed out +from the wall, there was a knocking at the door. In a moment she had +opened it, and was faced by John Sibley, whose hat was off as though he +were in the presence of death. This gave her a shock, and her eyes +strove painfully to see the figure which was being borne feet foremost +over her threshold. + +"It's Mr. Crozier?" she asked. + +"He was shot coming home here--by the M'Mahon mob, I guess," returned +Sibley huskily. + +"Is--is he dead?" she asked tremblingly. "No. Hurt bad." + +"The kindest man--it'd break Kitty's heart--and mine," she added hastily, +for she might be misunderstood; and John Sibley had shown signs of +interest in her daughter. + +"Where's the Young Doctor?" she asked, catching sight of Crozier's face +as they laid him on the bed. "He's done the first aid, and he's off +getting what's needed for the operation. He'll be here in a minute or +so," said a banker who, a few days before, had refused Crozier credit. + +"Gently, gently--don't do it that way," said Mrs. Tynan in sharp reproof +as they began to take off Crozier's clothes. + +"Are you going to stay while we do it?" asked a maker of mineral waters, +who whined at the prayer meetings of a soul saved and roared at his +employees like a soul damned. + +"Oh, don't be a fool!" was the impatient reply. "I've a grown-up girl +and I've had a husband. Don't pull at his vest like that. Go away. You +don't know how. I've had experience--my husband . . . There, wait +till I cut it away with the scissors. Cover him with the quilt. Now, +then, catch hold of his trousers under the quilt, and draw them off +slowly. . . . There you are--and nothing to shock the modesty of a +grown-up woman or any other when a life's at stake. What does the Young +Doctor say?" + +"Hush! He's coming to," interposed the banker. It was as though the +quiet that followed the removal of his clothes and the touch of Mrs. +Tynan's hand on his head had called Crozier back from unconsciousness. + +The first face he saw was that of the banker. In spite of the loss of +blood and his pitiable condition, a whimsical expression came to his +eyes. "Lucky for you you didn't lend me the money," he said feebly. + +The banker shook his head. "I'm not thinking of that, Mr. Crozier. God +knows, I'm not!" + +Crozier caught sight of Mrs. Tynan. "It's hard on you to have me brought +here," he murmured as she took his hand. + +"Not so hard as if they hadn't," she replied. "That's what a home's for +--not just a place for eating and drinking and sleeping." + +"It wasn't part of the bargain," he said weakly. + +"It was my part of the bargain." + +"Here's Kitty," said the maker of mineral waters, as there was the swish +of a skirt at the door. + +"Who are you calling 'Kitty'?" asked the girl indignantly, as they +motioned her back from the bedside. "There's too many people here," she +added abruptly to her mother. "We can take care of him"--she nodded +towards the bed. "We don't want any help except--except from John +Sibley, if he will stay, and you too," she added to the banker. + +She had not yet looked at the figure on the bed. She felt she could not +do so while all these people were in the room. She needed time to adjust +herself to the situation. It was as though she was the authority in the +household and took control even of her mother. Mrs. Tynan understood. +She had a great belief in her daughter and admired her cleverness, and +she was always ready to be ruled by her; it was like being "bossed" by +the man she had lost. + +"Yes, you'd all better go," Mrs. Tynan said. "He wants all the air +he can get, and I can't make things ready with all of you in the room. +Go outdoors for a while, anyway. It's summer and you'll not take cold! +The Young Doctor has work to do, and my girl and I and these two will +help him plenty." She motioned towards the banker and the gambling +farmer. + +In a moment the room was cleared of all save the four and Crozier, who +knew that upon the coming operation depended his life. He had been +conscious when the Young Doctor said this was so, and he was thinking, as +he lay there watching these two women out of his nearly closed eyes, that +he would like to be back in Ireland at Castlegarry with the girl he had +married and had left without a good-bye near five years gone. If he had +to die he would like to die at home; and that could not be. + +Kitty had the courage to turn towards him now. As she caught sight of +his face for the first time--she had so far kept her head turned away-- +she became very pale. Then, suddenly, she gathered herself together. +Going over to the bed, she took the limp hand lying on the coverlet. + +"Courage, soldier," she said in the colloquialism her father often used, +and she smiled at Crozier a great-hearted, helpful smile. + +"You are a brick of bricks, Kitty Tynan," he whispered, and smiled. + +"Here comes the Young Doctor," said Mrs. Tynan as the door opened +unceremoniously. + +"Well, I have to make an excursion," Crozier said, "and I mayn't come +back. If I don't, au revoir, Kitty." + +"You are coming back all right," she answered firmly. "It'll take more +than a horse-thief's bullet to kill you. You've got to come back. +You're as tough as nails. And I'll hold your hand all through it--yes, +I will!" she added to the Young Doctor, who had patted her shoulder and +told her to go to another room. + +"I'm going to help you, doctor-man, if you please," she said, as he +turned to the box of instruments which his assistant held. + +"There's another--one of my colleagues--coming I hope," the Young Doctor +replied. + +"That's all right, but I am staying to see Mr. Crozier through. I said +I'd hold his hand, and I'm going to do it," she added firmly. + +"Very well; put on a big apron, and see that you go through with us if +you start. No nonsense." + +"There'll be no nonsense from me," she answered quietly. + +"I want the bed in the middle of the room," the Young Doctor said, and +the others gently moved it. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +A STORY TO BE TOLD + +A great surgeon said a few years ago that he was never nervous when +performing an operation, though there was sometimes a moment when every +resource of character, skill, and brain came into play. That was when, +having diagnosed correctly and operated, a new and unexpected seat of +trouble and peril was exposed, and instant action had to be taken. The +great man naturally rose to the situation and dealt with it coolly; but +he paid the price afterwards in his sleep when, night after night, he +performed the operation over and over again with the same strain on his +subconscious self. + +So it was with Kitty Tynan in her small way. She had insisted on being +allowed to help at the operation, and the Young Doctor, who had a good +knowledge of life and knew the stuff in her, consented; and so far as the +operation was concerned she justified his faith in her. When the banker +had to leave the room at the sight of the carnage, she remained, and she +and John Sibley were as cool as the Young Doctor and his fellow- +anatomist, till it was all over, and Shiel Crozier was started again on a +safe journey back to health. Then a thing, which would have been amusing +if it had not been so deeply human, happened. She and John Sibley went +out of the house together into the moonlit night, and the reaction seized +them both at the same moment. She gave a gulp and burst into tears, and +he, though as tall as Crozier, also broke down, and they sat on the stump +of a tree together, her hand in his, and cried like two children. + +"Never since I was a little runt--did I--never cried in thirty years-- +and here I am-leaking like a pail!" Thus spoke John Sibley in gasps and +squeezing Kitty's hand all the time unconsciously, but spontaneously, and +as part of what he felt. He would not, however, have dared to hold her +hand on any other occasion, while always wanting to hold it, and wanting +her also to share his not wholly reputed, though far from precarious, +existence. He had never got so far as to tell her that; but if she had +understanding she would realise after to-night what he had in his mind. +She, feeling her arm thrill with the magnetism of his very vital palm, +had her turn at explanation. "I wouldn't have broke down myself--it was +all your fault," she said. "I saw it--yes--in your face as we left the +house. I'm so glad it's over safe--no one belonging to him here, and not +knowing if he'd wake up alive or not--I just was swamped." + +He took up the misty excuse and explanation. "I had a feeling for him +from the start; and then that Logan Trial to-day, and the way he talked +out straight, and told the truth to shame the devil--it's what does a man +good! And going bung over a horserace--that's what got me too, where I +was young and tender. Swatted that Burlingame every time--one eye, two +eyes all black, teeth out, nose flattened--called him an 'outrageous +lawyer'--my, that last clip was a good one! You bet he's a sport-- +Crozier." + +Kitty nodded eagerly while still wiping her red eyes. "He made the judge +smile--I saw it, not ten minutes before his honour put on the black cap. +You couldn't have believed it, if you hadn't seen it-- + +"Here, let go my hand," she added, suddenly conscious of the enormity +John Sibley was committing by squeezing it now. + +It is perfectly true that she did not quite realise that he had taken +her hand--that he had taken her hand. She was conscious in a nice, +sympathetic way that her hand had been taken, but it was lost in the +abstraction of her emotion. + +"Oh, here, let it go quick!" she added--"and not because mother's +coming, either," she added as the door opened and her mother came out-- +not to spy, not to reproach her daughter for sitting with a man in the +moonlight at ten o'clock at night, but--good, practical soul--to bring +them each a cup of beef-tea. + +"Here, you two," she said as she hurried to them. "You need something +after that business in there, and there isn't time to get supper ready. +It's as good for you as supper, anyway. I don't believe in underfeeding. +Nothing's too good to swallow." + +She watched them sip the tea slowly like two schoolchildren. + +"And when you've drunk it you must go right to bed, Kitty," she added +presently. "You've had your own way, and you saw the thing through; but +there's always a reaction, and you'll pay for it. It wasn't fit work for +a girl of your age; but I'm proud of your nerve, and I'm glad you showed +the Young Doctor what you can do. You've got your father's brains and my +grit," she added with a sigh of satisfaction. "Come along--bed now, +Kitty. If you get too tired you'll have bad dreams." + +Perhaps she was too tired. In any case she had dreams. Just as the +great surgeon performed his operation over and over in his sleep, so +Kitty Tynan, through long hours that night, and for many nights +afterwards, saw the swift knives, helped to staunch the blood, held the +basin, disinfected the instruments which had made an attack on the man +of men in her eyes, and saw the wound stitched up--the last act of the +business before the Young Doctor turned to her and said, "You'll do +wherever you're put in life, Miss Kitty Tynan. You're a great girl. +And now get some fresh air and forget all about it." + +Forget all about it! So, the Young Doctor knew what happened after a +terrific experience like that! In truth, he knew only too well. Great +surgeons do surgery only and have innumerable operations to give them +skill; but a country physician and surgeon must be a sane being to keep +his nerve when called on to use the knife, and he must have a more than +usual gift for such business. That is what the Young Doctor had; but he +knew it was not easy to forget those scenes in which man carved the body +of fellow-man, laying bare the very vitals of existence, seeing "the +wheels go round." + +It haunted Kitty Tynan in the night-time, and perhaps it was that which +toned down a little the colour of her face--the kind of difference of +colouring there is between natural gold and 14-carat. But in the daytime +she was quite happy, and though there was haunting, it was Shiel Crozier +who, first helpless, then convalescent, was haunted by her presence. It +gave him pleasure, but it was a pleasure which brought pain. He was not +so blind that he had not caught at her romance, in which he was the +central figure--a romance which had not vanished since the day he +declared in the court-room that he was married, or had been married. +Kitty's eyes told their own story, and it made him uneasy and remorseful. +Yet he could not remember when, even for an instant, he had played with +her. She had always seemed part of a simple family life for which he and +Jesse Bulrush and her mother and the nurse-Nurse Egan-were responsible. +What a blessing Nurse Egan had been! Otherwise, all the nursing would +have been performed by Kitty and her mother, and it might well have +broken them down, for they were determined to nurse him themselves. + +When, however, Nurse Egan came back, two days after the operation was +performed, they included her in the responsibility, as one of the family; +and as she had no other important case on at the time, fortunately she +could give Crozier almost undivided attention. She had been at first +disposed to keep Kitty out of the sick-chamber, as no place for a girl, +but she soon abandoned that position, for Kitty was not the girl ever to +think of impropriety. She was primitive and she had rather a before-the- +flood nature, but she had not the faintest vulgar strain in her. Her +mind was essentially pure; nothing material in her had been awakened. +Her greatest joy was to do the many things for the patient which a nurse +must do--prepare his food, give him drink, adjust his pillows, bathe his +face and hands, take his temperature; and on his part he tried hard to +disguise from her the apprehension he felt, and to avoid any hint by word +or look that he saw anything save the actions of a kind heart. True, her +views as to what was proper and improper might possibly be on a different +plane from his own. For instance, he had seen girls of her station in +the West kiss young men freely--men whom they had no thought of marrying; +and that was not the custom of his own class in his home-country. + +As he got well slowly, and life opened out before him again, he felt he +had to pursue a new course, and in that course he must take account of +Kitty Tynan, though he could not decide how. He had a deep confidence in +the Young Doctor, in his judgment and his character; and it was almost +inevitable that he should tell his life-story to the man whose skill had +saved him from death in a strange land, with all undone he wanted to do +ere he returned to a land which was not strange. + +The thing happened, as such things do happen, in a quite natural way one +day when he and the Young Doctor were discussing the probable verdict +against the man who had shot him--the trial was to come on soon, and once +again Augustus Burlingame was to be counsel for the defence, and once +again Crozier would have to appear in a witness-box. + +"I think you ought to know, Crozier, that, in view of the trial, +Burlingame has written to a firm of lawyers in Kerry to get full +information about your past," the Young Doctor said. + +Crozier gave one of those little jerks of the head characteristic of +him and said: "Why, of course; I knew he would do that after I gave my +evidence in the Logan Trial." He raised himself on his elbow. "I owe +you a great deal," he added feelingly, "and I can't repay you in cash or +kindness for what you have done; but it is due you to tell you my whole +story, and that is what I propose to do now." + +"If you think--" + +"I do think; and also I want both Mrs. Tynan and her daughter to hear my +story. Better, truer friends a man could not have; and I want them to +know the worst and the best there is, if there is any best. They and you +have trusted me, been too good to me, and what I said at the trial is not +enough. I want to do what I've never done before. I want to tell +everything. It will do me good; and perhaps as I tell it I'll see myself +and everything else in a truer light than I've yet seen it all." + +"You are sure you want Mrs. Tynan and her daughter to hear?" + +"Absolutely sure." + +"They are not in your rank in life, you know." + +"They are my friends, and I owe them more than I can say. There is +nothing they cannot or should not hear. I can say that at least." + +"Shall I ask them to come?" + +"Yes. Give me a swig of water first. It won't be easy, but--" + +He held out his hand, and the Young Doctor grasped it. + +Suddenly the latter said: "You are sure you will not be sorry? That it +is not a mood of the moment due to physical weakness?" + +"Quite sure. I determined on it the day I was shot--and before I was +shot." + +"All right." The Young Doctor disappeared. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Anny man as is a man has to have one vice +Her moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios +Law's delays outlasted even the memory of the crime committed +She looked too gay to be good +They had seen the world through the bottom of a tumbler + + + + + + +YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK + +[BEING THE STORY OF A MATRIMONIAL DESERTER] + +By Gilbert Parker + +Volume 2. + + +VI. "HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON" +VII. A WOMAN'S WAY TO KNOWLEDGE +VIII. ALL ABOUT AN UNOPENED LETTER +IX. NIGHT SHADE AND MORNING GLORY +X. "S. O. S." +XI. IN THE CAMP OF THE DESERTER + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +"HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON" + +The stillness of a summer's day in Prairie Land has all the +characteristics of music. That is not so paradoxical as it seems. +The effect of some music is to produce a divine quiescence of the senses, +a suspension of motion and aggressive life; to reduce existence to mere +pulsation. It was this kind of feeling which pervaded that region of +sentient being when Shiel Crozier told his story. The sounds that +sprinkled the general stillness were in themselves sleepy notes of the +pervasive music of somnolent nature--the sough of the pine at the door, +the murmur of insect life, the low, thudding beat of the steam-thresher +out of sight hard by, the purring of the cat in the arms of Kitty Tynan +as, with fascinated eyes, she listened to a man tell the tale of a life +as distant from that which she lived as she was from Eve. + +She felt more awed than curious as the tale went on; it even seemed to +her she was listening to a theme beyond her sphere, like some shameless +eavesdropper at the curtains of a secret ceremonial. Once or twice she +looked at her mother and at the Young Doctor, as though to reassure +herself that she was not a vulgar intruder. It was far more impressive +to her, and to the Young Doctor too, than the scene at the Logan Trial +when a man was sentenced to death. It was strangely magnetic, this +tale of a man's existence; and the clock which sounded so loud on the +mantelpiece, as it mechanically ticked off the time, seemed only part of +some mysterious machinery of life. Once a dove swept down upon the +window-sill, and, peering in, filled one of the pauses in the recital +with its deep contralto note, and then fled like a small blue cloud +into the wide and--as it seemed--everlasting peace beyond the doorway. + +There was nothing at all between themselves and the far sky-line save +little clumps of trees here and there, little clusters of buildings and +houses--no visible animal life. Everything conspired to give a dignity +in keeping with the drama of failure being unfolded in the commonplace +home of the widow Tynan. Yet the home too had its dignity. The engineer +father had had tastes, and he had insisted on plain, unfigured curtains +and wallpaper and carpets, when carpets were used; and though his wife +had at first protested against the unfigured carpets as more difficult to +keep clean and as showing the dirt too easily, she had come to like the +one-colour scheme, and in that respect her home had an individuality rare +in her surroundings. + +That was why Kitty Tynan had always a good background; for what her +bright colouring would have been in the midst of gaudy, cheap chintzes +and "Axminsters," such as abounded in Askatoon, is better left to the +imagination. It was not, therefore, in sordid, mean, or incongruous +surroundings that Crozier told his tale; as would no doubt have been +arranged by a dramatist, if he had had the making and the setting of the +story; and if it were not a true tale told just as it happened. + + +Perhaps the tale was the more impressive because of Crozier's deep +baritone voice, capable, as it was, of much modulation, yet, except when. +he was excited, having a slight monotone like the note of a violin with +the mute upon the strings. + +This was his tale: + +"Well, to begin with, I was born at Castlegarry, in Kerry--you know the +main facts from what I said in court. As a boy I wasn't so bad a sort. +I had one peculiarity. I always wanted 'to have something on,' as John +Sibley would say. No matter what it was, I must have something on it. +And I was very lucky--worse luck!" + +They all laughed at the bull. "I feel at home at once," murmured the +Young Doctor, for he had come from near Enniskillen years agone, and +there is not so much difference between Enniskillen and Kerry when it +comes to Irish bulls. + +"Worse luck, it was," continued Crozier, "because it made me confident +of always winning. It's hard to say how early I began to believe I could +see things that were going to happen. By the hour I used to shake the +dice on the billiard-table at Castlegarry, trying to see with my eyes +shut the numbers about to come up. Of course now and then I saw the +right numbers; and it deepened the conviction that if I cultivated the +gift I'd be able to be right nearly every time. When I went to a horse- +race I used to fasten my mind on the signal, and tried to see beforehand +the number of the winner. Again sometimes I was very right indeed, and +that deepened my confidence in myself. I was always at it. I'd try and +guess--try and see--the number of the hymn which was on the paper in the +vicar's hand before he gave it out, and I would bet with myself on it. +I would bet with myself or with anybody available on any conceivable +thing--the minutes late a train would be; the pints of milk a cow would +give; the people who would be at a hunt breakfast; the babies that would +be christened on a Sunday; the number of eyes in a peck of raw potatoes. +I was out against the universe. But it wasn't serious at all--just a +boy's mania--till one day my father met me in London when I came down +from Oxford, and took me to Thwaite's Club in St. James's Street. There +was the thing that finished me. I was twenty-one, and restless-minded, +and with eyes wide open. + +"Well, he took me to Thwaite's where I was to become a member, and +after a little while he left me to go and have a long pow-wow with the +committee--he was a member of it. He told me to make myself at home, +and I did so as soon as his back was turned. Almost the first thing with +which I became sociable was a book which, at my first sight of it, had a +fascination for me. The binding was very old, and the leather was worn, +as you will see the leather of a pocketbook, till it looks and feels like +a nice soap. That book brought me here." + +He paused, and in the silence the Young Doctor pushed a glass of milk and +brandy towards him. He sipped the contents. The others were in a state +of tension. Kitty Tynan's eyes were fixed on him as though hypnotised, +and the Young Doctor was scarcely less interested; while the widow +knitted harder and faster than she had ever done, and she could knit very +fast indeed. + +"It was the betting-book of Thwaite's, and it dated back almost to the +time of the conquest of Quebec. Great men dead and gone long ago--near +a hundred and fifty years ago-had put down their bets in the book, for +Thwaite's was then what it is now, the highest and best sporting club in +the world." + +Kitty Tynan's face had a curious look, for there was a club in Askatoon, +and it was said that all the "sports" assembled there. She had no idea +what Thwaite's Club in St. James's Street would look like; but that did +not matter. She supposed it must be as big as the Askatoon Court House +at least. + +"Bets--bets--bets by men whose names were in every history, and the names +of their sons and grandsons and great-grandsons; and all betting on the +oddest things as well as the most natural things in the world. Some of +the bets made were as mad as the bets I made myself. Oh! ridiculous, +some of them were; and then again bets on things that stirred the world +to the centre, from the loss of America to the beheading of Louis XVI. + +"It was strange enough to see the half-dozen lines of a bet by a marquis +whose great-grandson bet on the Franco-German War; that the Government +which imposed the tea-tax in America would be out of power within six +months; or that the French Canadians would join the colonists in what is +now the United States if they revolted. This would be cheek-by-jowl with +a bet that an heir would be born to one new-married pair before another +pair. The very last bet made on the day I opened the book was that Queen +Victoria would make Lord Salisbury a duke, that a certain gentleman known +as S. S. could find his own door in St. James's Square, blindfold, from +the club, and that Corsair would win the Derby. + +"For two long hours I sat forgetful of everything around me, while I read +that record--to me the most interesting the world could show. Every line +was part of the history of the country, a part of the history of many +lives, and it was all part of the ritual of the temple of the great god +Chance. I was fascinated, lost in a land of wonders. Men came and went, +but silently. At last there entered a gentleman whose picture I had so +often seen in the papers--a man as well known in the sporting world as +was Chamberlain in the political world. He was dressed spectacularly, +but his face oozed good-nature, though his eyes were like bright bits of +coal. He bred horses, he raced this, he backed that, he laid against the +other; he was one of the greatest plungers, one of the biggest figures on +the turf. He had been a kind of god to me--a god in a grey frock-coat, +with a grey top-hat and field-glasses slung over his shoulder; or in a +hunting-suit of the most picturesque kind--great pockets in a well- +fitting coat, splendid striped waistcoat. Well, there, I only mention +this because it played so big a part in bringing me to Askatoon. + +"He came up to the table where I sat in the room with the beautiful +Adam's fireplace and the ceiling like an architrave of Valhalla, and +said, 'Do you mind--for one minute?' and he reached out a hand for the +book. + +"I made way for him, and I suppose admiration showed in my eyes, because +as he hastily wrote--what a generous scrawl it was!--he said to me, +'Haven't we met somewhere before? I seem to remember your face. + +"Great gentleman, I thought, because it was certain he knew he had never +seen me before, and I was overcome by the reflection that he wished to be +civil in that way to me. 'It's my father's face you remember, I should +think,' I answered. 'He is a member here. I am only a visitor. I +haven't been elected yet.' 'Ah, we must see to that!' he said with a +smile, and laid a hand on my shoulder as though he'd known me many a +year--and I only twenty-one. 'Who is your father?' he asked. When I +told him he nodded. 'Yes, yes, I know him--Crozier of Castlegarry; but +I knew his father far better, though he was so much older than me, and +indeed your grandfather also. Look--in this book is the first bet I ever +made here after my election to the club, and it was made with your +grandfather. There's no age in the kingdom of sport, dear lad,' he +added, laughing--'neither age nor sex nor position nor place. It's the +one democratic thing in the modern world. It's a republic inside this +old monarchy of ours. Look, here it is, my first bet with your +grandfather--and I'm only sixty now!' He smoothed the page with his hand +in a manner such as I have seen a dean do with his sermon-paper in a +cathedral puplit. 'Here it is, thirty-six years ago.' He read the bet +aloud. It was on the Derby, he himself having bet that the Prince of +Wale's horse would win. 'Your grandfather, dear lad,' he repeated, 'but +you'll find no bets of mine with your father. He didn't inherit that +strain, but your grandfather and your great-grandfather had it--sportsmen +both, afraid of nothing, with big minds, great eyes for seeing, and a +sense for a winner almost uncanny. Have you got it by any chance? Yes, +yes, by George and by John, I see you have; you are your grandfather to a +hair! His portrait is here in the club--in the next room. Have a look +at it. He was only forty when it was done, and you're very like him; the +cut of the jib is there.' He took my hand. 'Good-bye, dear lad,' he +said; 'we'll meet-yes, we'll meet often enough if you are like your +grandfather. And I'll always like to see you,' he added generously. + +"'I always wanted to meet you,' I answered. 'I've cut your pictures out +of the papers to keep them--at Eton and Oxford.' He laughed in great +good-humour and pride. 'So so, so so, and I am a hero then, with one +follower! Well, well, dear lad, I don't often go wrong, or anyhow I'm +oftener right than wrong, and you might do worse than follow me--but no, +I don't want that responsibility. Go on your own--go on your own.' + +"A minute more and he was gone with a wave of the hand, and in excitement +I picked up the betting-book. It almost took my breath away. He had +staked a thousand pounds that the favourite of the Derby would not win +the race, and that one of three outsiders would. As I sat overpowered by +the magnitude of the bet the door opened, and he appeared with another +man, not one with whose face I was then familiar, though as a duke and +owner of great possessions, he was familiar to society. 'I've put it +down,' he said. 'Sign it, if it's all in order.' This the duke did, +after apologizing for disturbing me. He looked at me keenly as he turned +away. 'Not the most elevating literature in the library,' he said, +smiling ironically. 'If you haven't got a taste for it beyond control, +don't cultivate it.' He nodded kindly, and left; and again, till my +father came and found me, I buried myself in that book of fate--to me. +I found many entries in my grandfather's name, but not one in my father's +name. I have an idea that when a vice or virtue skips one generation, it +appears with increased violence or persistence in the next, for, passing +over my father into my defenceless breast, the spirit of sport went mad +in me--or almost so. No miser ever had a more cheerful and happy hour +than I had as I read the betting-book at Thwaites'. + +"I became a member of Thwaite's soon after I left Oxford. As some men go +to the Temple, some to the Stock Exchange, some to Parliament, I went to +Thwaite's. It was the centre of my interest, and I took chambers in Park +Place, St. James's Street, a few steps away. Here I met again constantly +the great sportsman who had noticed me so kindly, and I became his +follower, his disciple. I had started with him on a wave of prejudice in +his favour; because that day when I read in the betting-book what he had +staked against the favourite, I laid all the cash and credit I could get +with his outsiders and against the favourite, and I won five hundred +pounds. What he won--to my youthful eyes-was fabulous. There's no use +saying what you think--you kind friends, who've always done something in +life--that I was a good-for-nothing creature to give myself up to the +turf, to horses and jockeys, and the janissaries of sport. You must +remember that for generations my family had run on a very narrow margin +of succession, there seldom, if ever, being more than two born in any +generation of the family, so that there was always enough for the younger +son or daughter; and to take up a profession was not necessary for +livelihood. If my mother, who was an intellectual and able woman, had +lived, it's hard to tell what I should have become; for steered aright, +given true ideas of what life should mean to a man, I might have become +ambitious and forged ahead in one direction or another. But there it +was, she died when I was ten, and there was no one to mould me. At Eton, +at Oxford-well, they are not preparatory schools to the business of life. +And when at twenty-four I inherited the fortune my mother left me, I had +only one idea: to live the life of a sporting gentleman. I had a name as +a cricketer--" + +"Ah--I remember, Crozier of Lammis !" interjected the Young Doctor +involuntarily. "I'm a north of Ireland man, but I remember--" + +"Yes, Lammis," the sick man went on. "Castlegarry was my father's place, +but my mother left me Lammis. When I got control of it, and of the +securities she left, I felt my oats, as they say; and I wasn't long in +making a show of courage, not to say rashness, in following my leader. +He gave me luck for a time, indeed so great that I could even breed +horses of my own. But the luck went against him at last, and then, of +course, against me; and I began to feel that suction which, as it draws +the cash out of your pocket, the credit out of your bank, seems to draw +also the whole internal economy out of your body--a ghastly, empty, +collapsing thing." + +Mrs. Tynan gave a great sigh. She had once put two hundred dollars in +a mine--on paper--and it ended in a lawsuit; and on the verdict in the +lawsuit depended the two hundred dollars and more. When she read a fatal +telegram to her saying that all was lost, she had had that empty, +collapsing feeling. + +Pausing for a moment, in which he sipped some milk, Crozier then +continued: "At last my leader died, and the see-saw of fortune began for +me; and a good deal of my sound timber was sawed into logs and made into +lumber to build some one else's fortune. When things were balancing +pretty easily, I married. It wasn't a sordid business to restore my +fortunes--I'll say that for myself; but it wasn't the thing to do, +for I wasn't secure in my position. I might go on the rocks; but was +there ever a gambler who didn't believe that he'd pull it off in a big +way next time, and that the turn of the wheel against him was only to +tame his spirit? Was there ever a gambler or sportsman of my class who +didn't talk about the 'law of chances,' on the basis that if red, as it +were, came up three times, black stood a fair chance of coming up the +fourth time? A silly enough conclusion; for on the law of chances +there's no reason why red shouldn't come up three hundred times; and so I +found that your run of bad luck may be so long that you cannot have a +chance to recover, and are out of it before the wheel turns in your +favour. I oughn't to have married." + +His voice had changed in tone, his look become most grave, there was +something very like reverence in his face, and deprecating submission in +his eyes. His fingers fussed with the rug that covered his knees. + +"God help the man that's afraid of his own wife!" remarked the Young +Doctor to himself, not erroneously reading the expression of Crozier's +face and the tone of his voice. "There's nothing so unnerving." + +"No, I oughtn't to have done it," Crozier went on. "But I will say again +it wasn't a sordid marriage, though she had great expectations, but not +immediate; and she was a girl of great character. She was able and +brilliant and splendid and far-seeing, and she knew her own mind, +and was radiantly handsome." + +Kitty Tynan almost sniffed. Through a whole fortnight she had, with a +courage and a right-mindedness quite remarkable, fought her infatuation +for this man, and as she fought she had imagined a hundred times what his +wife was like. She had pictured to herself a gossamer kind of woman, +delicate, and in contour like one of the fashion-plate figures she saw in +the picture-papers. She had imagined her with a wide, drooping hat, with +a soft, clinging gown, and a bodice like a great white handkerchief +crossed on her breast, holding a basket of flowers, while a King +Charles spaniel gambolled at her feet. + +This was what she had imagined with a kind of awe; but the few words +Crozier had said of her gave the impression of a Juno, commanding, +exacting, bullying, sailing on with this man of men in her wake, who was +afraid of stepping on her train. Was it strange she should think that? +She was only a simple prairie girl who drew her own comparisons according +to her kind and from what she knew of life. So she imagined Crozier's +wife to have been a sort of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who swept up the +dust of the universe with her skirts, and gave no chance at all to the +children of nature like Kitty, who wore skirts scarcely lower than their +ankles. She almost sniffed, and she became angry, too, that a man like +Crozier, who had faced the offensive Augustus Burlingame in the witness- +box as he did; who took the bullet of the assassin with such courage; who +broke a horse like a Mexican; who could ride like a leech on a filly's +flank, should crumple up at the thought of a woman who, anyhow, couldn't +be taller than Crozier himself was, and hadn't a hand like a piece of +steel and the skin of an antelope. It was enough to make a cat laugh, +or a woman cry with rage. + +"Able and brilliant and splendid and far-seeing, and radiantly handsome!" +There the picture was of a high, haughty, and overbearing woman, in +velvet, or brocade, or poplin-yes, something stiff and overbearing, like +grey poplin. Kitty looked at herself suddenly in the mirror-the half- +length mirror on the opposite wall--and she felt her hands clench and her +bosom beat hard under her pretty and inexpensive calico frock, a thing +for Chloe, not for Juno. + +She was very angry with Crozier, for it was absurd, that look of +deprecating homage, that "Hush-she-is-coming" in his eyes. What a fool a +man was where a woman was concerned! Here she had been fighting herself +for a fortnight to conquer a useless passion for her man of all the +world, fit to command an array of giants; and she saw him now almost +breathless as he spoke of a great wild-cat of a woman who ought to be by +his side now. What sort of a woman was she anyhow, who could let him go +into exile as he had done and live apart from her all these years, while +he "slogged away"--that was the Western phrase which came to her mind--to +pull himself level with things again? Her feet shuffled unevenly on the +floor, and it would have been a joy to shake the in valid there with +the rapt look in his face. Unable to bear the situation without some +demonstration, she got to her feet and caught up the glass of brandy +and milk with a little exclamation. + +"Here," she said, holding the glass to his lips, "here, courage, soldier. +You don't need to be afraid at a six-thousand-mile range." + +The Young Doctor started, for she had said what was in his own mind, but +what he would not have said for a thousand dollars. It was fortunate +that Crozier was scarcely conscious of what she was saying. His mind was +far away. Yet, when she took the glass from him again, he touched her +arm. + +"Nothing is good enough for your friends, is it?" he said gratefully. + +"That wouldn't be an excuse for not getting them the best there was at +hand," she answered with a little laugh, and at least the Young Doctor +read the meaning of her words. + +Presently Crozier, with a sigh, continued: "If I had done what my wife +wanted from the start, I shouldn't have been here. I'd have saved what +was left of a fortune, and I'd have had a home of my own." + +"Is she earning her living too?" asked Kitty softly, and Crozier did not +notice the irony under the question. + +"She has a home of her own," answered Crozier almost sharply. "Just +before the worst came to the worst she inherited her fortune--plenty of +it, as I got near the end of mine. One thing after another had gone. +I was mortgaged up to the eyes. I knew the money-lenders from Newry to +Jewry and Jewry to Jerusalem. Then it was I promised her I'd bet no +more--never again: I'd give up the turf; I'd try and start again. Down +in my soul I knew I couldn't start again--not just then. But I wanted +to please her. She was remarkable in her way; she had one of the most +imposing intelligences I have ever known. So I promised. I promised +I'd bet no more." + +The Young Doctor caught Kitty Tynan's eyes by accident, and there was the +same look of understanding in both. They both knew that here was the +real tragedy of Crozier's life. If he had had less reverence for his +wife, less of that obvious prostration of soul, he probably would never +have come to Askatoon. + +"I broke my promise," he murmured. "It was a horse--well, never mind. +I was as sure of Flamingo as that the sun would rise by day and set by +night. It was a certainty; and it was a certainty. The horse could win, +it would win; I had it from a sure source. My judgment was right, too. +I bet heavily on Flamingo, intending it for my last fling, and, to save +what I had left, to get back what I had lost. I could get big odds on +him. It was good enough. From what I knew, it was like picking up a +gold-mine. And I was right, right as could be. There was no chance +about it. It was being out where the rain fell to get wet. It was just +being present when they called the roll of the good people that God +wished to be kind to. It meant so much to me. I couldn't bear to have +nothing and my wife to have all. I simply couldn't stand--" + +Again the Young Doctor met the glance of Kitty Tynan, and there was, once +more, a new and sudden look of comprehension in the eyes of both. They +began to see light where their man was concerned. + +After a moment of struggle to control himself, Crozier proceeded: "It +didn't seem like betting. Besides, I had planned it, that when I showed +her what I had won, she would shut her eyes to the broken promise, and +I'd make another, and keep it ever after. I put on all the cash there +was to put on, all I could raise on what was left of my property." + +He paused as though to get strength to continue. Then a look of intense +excitement suddenly possessed him, and there--passed over him a wave of +feeling which transformed him. The naturally grave mediaeval face became +fired, the eyes blazed, the skin shone, the mouth almost trembled with +agitation. He was the dreamer, the enthusiast, the fanatic almost, with +that look which the pioneer, the discoverer, the adventurer has when he +sees the end of his quest. + +His voice rose, vibrated. "It was a day to make you thank Heaven the +world was made. Such days only come once in a while in England, but when +they do come, what price Arcady or Askatoon! Never had there been so big +a Derby. Everybody had the fever of the place at its worst. I was +happy. I meant to pouch my winnings and go straight to my wife and say, +'Peccavi,' and I should hear her say to me, 'Go and sin no more.' Yes, +I was happy. The sky, the green of the fields, the still, home-like, +comforting trees, the mass of glorious colour, the hundreds of horses +that weren't running and the scores that were to run, sleek and long, and +made like shining silk and steel, it all was like heaven on earth to me-- +a horse-race heaven on earth. There you have the state of my mind in +those days, the kind of man I was." + +Sitting up, he gazed straight in front of him as though he saw Epsom +Downs before his eyes; as though he was watching the fateful race that +bore him down. He was terribly, exhaustingly alive. Something possessed +him, and he possessed his hearers. + +"It was just as I said and knew--my horse, Flamingo, stretched away from +the rest at Tattenham Corner and came sailing away home two lengths +ahead. It was a sight to last a lifetime, and that was what I meant it +to be for me. The race was all Flamingo's own, and the mob was going +wild, when all of a sudden a woman--the widow of a racing-man gone +suddenly mad--rushed out in front of the horse, snatched at its bridle +with a shrill cry and down she came, and down Flamingo and the jockey +came, a melee of crushed humanity. And that was how I lost my last two +thousand five hundred pounds, as I said at the Logan Trial." + +"Oh! Oh!" said Kitty Tynan, her face aflame, her eyes like topaz suns, +her hands wringing. "Oh, that was--oh, poor Flamingo!" she added. + +A strange smile shot into Crozier's face, and the dark passion of +reminiscence fled from his eyes. "Yes, you are right, little friend," he +said. "That was the real tragedy after all. There was the horse doing +his best, his most beautiful best, as though he knew so much depended on +him, stretching himself with the last ounce of energy he could summon, +feeling the psalm of success in his heart--yes, he knows, he knows what +he has done, none so well!--and out comes a black, hateful thing against +him, and down he goes, his game over, his course run. I felt exactly as +you do, and I felt that before everything else when it happened. Then I +felt for myself afterwards, and I felt it hard, as you can think." + +The break went from his voice, but it rang with reflective, remembered +misery. "I was ruined. One thing was clear to me. I would not live on +my wife's money. I would not eat and drink what her money bought. No, +I would not live on my wife. Her brother, a good enough, impulsive lad, +with a tongue of his own and too small to thresh, came to me in London +the night of the race. He said his sister had been in the country-down +at Epsom--and that she bitterly resented my having broken my promise and +lost all I had. He said he had never seen her so angry, and he gave me a +letter from her. On her return to town she had been obliged to go away +at once to see her sister taken suddenly ill. He added, with an +unfeeling jibe, that he wouldn't like the reading of the letter himself. +If he hadn't been such a chipmunk of a fellow I'd have wrung his neck. +I put the letter her letter-in my pocket, and next day gave my lawyer +full instructions and a power of attorney. Then I went straight to +Glasgow, took steamer for Canada, and here I am. That was near five +years ago." + +"And the letter from your wife?" asked Kitty Tynan demurely and slyly. + +The Young Doctor looked at Crozier, surprised at her temerity, but +Crozier only smiled gently. "It is in the desk there. Bring it to me, +please," he said. + +In a moment Kitty was beside him with the letter. He took it, turned it +over, examined it carefully as though seeing it for the first time, and +laid it on his knee. + +"I have never opened it," he said. "There it is, just as it was handed +to me." + +"You don't know what is in it?" asked Kitty in a shocked voice. "Why, +it may be that--" + +"Oh, yes, I know what is in it!" he replied. "Her brother's confidences +were enough. I didn't want to read it. I can imagine it all." + +"It's pretty cowardly," remarked Kitty. + +"No, I think not. It would only hurt, and the hurting could do no good. +I can hear what it says, and I don't want to see it." + +He held the letter up to his ear whimsically. Then he handed it back to +her, and she replaced it in the desk. + +"So, there it is, and there it is," he sighed. "You have got my story, +and it's bad enough, but you can see it's not what Burlingame suggested." + +"Burlingame--but Burlingame's beneath notice," rejoined Kitty. "Isn't +he, mother?" + +Mrs. Tynan nodded. Then, as though with sudden impulse, Kitty came +forward to Crozier and leaned over him. The look of a mother was in her +eyes. Somehow she seemed to herself twenty years older than this man +with the heart of a boy, who was afraid of his own wife. + +"It's time for your beef-tea, and when you've had it you must get your +sleep," she said, with a hovering solicitude. + +"I'd like to give him a threshing first, if you don't mind," said the +Young Doctor to her. + +"Please let a little good advice satisfy you," Crozier remarked ruefully. +"It will seem like old times," he added rather bitterly. + +"You are too young to have had 'old times,'" said Kitty with gentle +scorn. "I'll like you better when you are older," she added. + +"Naughty jade," exclaimed the Young Doctor, "you ought to be more +respectful to those older than yourself." + +"Oh, grandpapa!" she retorted. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +A WOMAN'S WAY TO KNOWLEDGE + +The harvest was over. The grain was cut, the prairie no longer waved +like a golden sea, but the smoke of the incense of sacrifice still rose +in innumerable spirals in the circle of the eye. The ground appeared +bare and ill-treated, like a sheep first shorn; but yet nothing could +take away from it the look of plenty, even as the fat sides of the shorn +sheep invite the satisfied eye of the expert. The land now, all stubble, +still looked good for anything. If bare, it did not seem starved. It +was naked and unshaven; it was stripped like a boxer for the rubbing-down +after the fight. Not so refined and suggestive and luxurious as when it +was clothed with the coat of ripe corn in the ear, it still showed the +fibre of its being to no disadvantage. And overhead the joy of the +prairie grew apace. + +September saw the vast prairie spaces around Askatoon shorn and +shrivelled of its glory of ripened grain, but with a new life come into +the air-sweet, stinging, vibrant life, which had the suggestion of nature +recreating her vitality, inflaming herself with Edenic strength, a +battery charging itself, to charge the world in turn with force and +energy. Morning gave pure elation, as though all created being must +strive; noon was the pulse of existence at the top of its activity; +evening was glamorous; and all the lower sky was spread with those +colours which Titian stole from the joyous horizon that filled his eyes. +There was in that evening light, somehow, just a touch of pensiveness-- +the triste delicacy of heliotrope, harbinger of the Indian summer soon to +come, when the air would make all sensitive souls turn to the past and +forget that to-morrow was all in all. + +Sensitive souls, however, are not so many as to crowd each other +unduly in this world, and they were not more numerous in Askatoon than +elsewhere. Not everybody was taking joy of sunrises and losing himself +in the delicate contentment of the sunset. There were many who took it +all without thought, who absorbed it unconsciously, and got something +from it; though there were many others who got nothing out of it at all, +save the health and comfort brought by a precious climate whose +solicitous friend is the sun. These heeded it little, even though a +good number of them came from the damp islands lying between the north +Atlantic and the German Ocean. From Erin and England and the land o' +cakes they came, had a few days of staring bright-eyed happy incredulity +as to the permanency of such conditions, and then settled down to take it +as it was, endless days of sunshine and stirring vivacious air--as though +they had always known it and had it. + +There were exceptions, and these had joy in what they saw and felt +according to the measure of their temperament. Shiel Crozier saw and +felt much of it, and probably the Young Doctor saw more of it than any +one; stray people here and there who take no part in this veracious tale +had it in greater or less degree; fat Jesse Bulrush was so sensitive to +it that he, as he himself said, "almost leaked sentimentality" and Kitty +Tynan possessed it. She was pulsing with life, as a bird drunken with +the air's sweetness sings itself into an abandonment of motion. + +Before Crozier came she had enjoyed existence as existence, wondering +often why it was she wanted to spring up from the ground with the idea +that she could fly, if she chose to try. Once when she was quite a +little girl she had said to her mother, "I'm going to ile away," and her +mother, puzzled, asked her what she meant. Her reply was, "It's in the +hymn." Her mother persisted in asking what hymn; and was told with +something like scorn that it was the hymn she herself had taught her only +child--"I'll away, I'll away to the Promised Land." + +Kitty had thought that "I'll away" meant some delicious motion which was +to ile, and she had visions of something between floating and flying as +being that blessed means of transportation. + +As the years grew, she still wanted to "ile away" whenever the spirit of +elation seized her, and it had increased greatly since Shiel Crozier +came. Out of her star as he was, she still felt near to him, and as +though she understood him and he comprehended her. He had almost at once +become to her an admired mystery, which, however, at first she did not +dare wish to solve. She had been content to be a kind of handmaiden to a +generous and adored master. She knew that where he had been she could in +one sense never go, and yet she wanted to be near him just the same. +This was intensified after the Logan Trial and the shooting of the man +who somehow seemed to have made her live in a new way. + +As long ago as she could recall she had, in a crude, untutored way, been +fond of the things that nature made beautiful; but now she seemed to see +them in a new light, but not because any one had deliberately taught her. +Indeed, it bored her almost to hear books read as Jesse Bulrush and Nurse +Egan, and even her mother, read them to Crozier after his operation, to +help him pass away the time. The only time she ever cared to listen-- +at school, though quick and clever, she had never cared for the printed +page--was when, by chance, poetry or verses were read or recited. Then +she would listen eagerly, not attracted by the words, but by the music of +the lines, by the rhyme and rhythm, by the underlying feeling; and she +got something out of it which had in one sense nothing to do with the +verses themselves or with the conception of the poet. + +Curiously enough, she most liked to hear Jesse Bulrush read. He was a +born sentimentalist, and this became by no means subtly apparent to Kitty +during Crozier's illness. Whenever Nurse Egan was on duty Jesse +contrived to be about, and to make himself useful and ornamental too; +for he was a picturesque figure, with a taste for figured waistcoats and +clean linen--he always washed his own white trousers and waistcoats, and +he had a taste in ties, which he made for himself out of silk bought by +the yard. He was, in fact, a clean, wholesome man, with a flair for +material things, as he had shown in the land proposal on which Shiel +Crozier's fortunes hung, but with no gift for carrying them out, having +neither constructive ability nor continuity of purpose. Yet he was an +agreeable, humorous, sentimental soul, who at fifty years of age found +himself "an old bach," as he called himself, in love at last with a +middle-aged nurse with dark brown hair and set figure, keen, intelligent +eyes, and a most cheerful, orderly, and soothing way with her. + +Before Shiel Crozier was taken ill their romance began; but it grew in +volume and intensity after the trial and the shooting, when they met by +the bedside of the wounded man. Jesse had been away so much in different +parts of the country before then that their individual merits never had +had a real chance to make permanent impression. By accident, however, +his business made it necessary for him to be much in Askatoon at the +moment, and it was a propitious time for the growth of the finer +feelings. + +It had given Jesse Bulrush real satisfaction that Kitty Tynan listened to +his reading of poetry--Longfellow, Byron, Tennyson, Whyte Melville, and +Adam Lindsay Gordon chiefly--with such absorbed interest. His content +was the greater because his lovely nurse--he did think she was lovely, +as Rubens thought his painted ladies beautiful, though their cordial, +ostentatious proportions are not what Raphael regarded as the divine +lines--because his lovely nurse listened to his fat, happy voice rising +and falling, swelling and receding on the waves of verse; though it meant +nothing to her that one who had the gift of pleasant sound was using it +on her behalf. + +This was not apparent to her Bulrush, though Crozier and Kitty +understood. Jesse only saw in the blue-garbed, clear-visaged woman a +mistress of his heart, who had all the virtues and graces and who did not +talk. That, to him, was the best thing of all. She was a superb +listener, and he was a prodigious talker--was it not all appropriate? + +One day he went searching for Kitty at her favourite retreat, a little +knoll behind and to the left of the house, where a half-dozen trees made +a pleasant resting-place at a fine look-out point. He found her in her +usual place, with a look almost pensive on her face. He did not notice +that, for he was excited and elated. + +"I want to read you something I've written," he said, and he drew from +his pocket a paper. + +"If it's another description of the timber-land you have for sale-please, +not to me," she answered provokingly, for she guessed well what he held +in his hand. She had seen him writing it. She had even seen some of the +lines scrawled and re-scrawled on bits of paper, showing careful if not +swift and skillful manufacture. One of these crumpled-up bits of paper +she had in her pocket now, having recovered it that she might tease him +by quoting the lines at a provoking opportunity. + +"It's not that. It's some verses I've written," he said, with a wave of +his hand. + +"All your own?" she asked with an air of assumed innocent interest, and +he did not see the frivolous gleam in her eyes, or notice the touch of +aloes on her tongue. + +"Yes. Yes. I've always written verses more or less--I write a good many +advertisements in verse," he added cheerfully. "They are very popular. +Not genius, quite, but there it is, the gift; and it has its uses in +commerce as in affairs of the heart. But if you'd rather not, if it +makes you tired--" + +"Courage, soldier, bear your burden," she said gaily. "Mount your horse +and get galloping," she added, motioning him to sit. + +A moment later he was pouring out his soul through a pleasing voice, from +fat lips, flanked by a high-coloured healthy cheek like a russet apple: + + "Like jewels of the sky they gleam, + Your eyes of light, your eyes of fire; + In their dark depths behold the dream + Of Life's glad hope and Love's desire. + + "Above your quiet brow, endowed + With Grecian charm to crown your grace, + Your hair in one soft Titian cloud + Throws heavenly shadows on your face." + +"Well, I've never had verses written to me before," Kitty remarked +demurely, when he had finished and sat looking at her questioningly. +"But 'dark depths'--that isn't the right thing to say of my eyes! And +Titian cloud of hair--is my hair Titian? I thought Titian hair was +bronzy-tawny was what Mr. Burlingame called it when he was spouting," +--her upper lip curled in contempt. + +"It isn't you, and you know it," he replied jerkily. She bridled. +"Do you mean to say that you come and read to me without a word of +explanation, so that I shouldn't misunderstand, verses written for +another? Am I to be told now that my eyes aren't eyes of light and eyes +of fire, that I haven't got a Grecian brow? Do you dare to say those +verses don't fit me--except for the Titian hair and heavenly shadows? +And that I've got no right to think they're meant for me? Is it so, that +a man that's lived in my mother's house for years, eating at the same +table with the family, and having his clothes mended free, with supper to +suit him and no questions asked--is it so, that he reads me poetry, four +lines at a stretch, and a rhyme every other line, and then announces it +isn't for me!" + +Her eyes flashed, her bosom palpitated, her hand made passionate +gestures, and she really seemed a young fury let loose. For a moment he +was deceived by her acting; he did not see the lurking grin in the depths +of her eyes. + +Her voice shook with assumed passion. "Because I didn't show what I felt +all these years, and only exposed my real feelings when you read those +verses to me, do you think any man who was a gentleman wouldn't in the +circumstances say, 'These verses are for you, Kitty Tynan'? You betrayed +me into showing you what I felt, and then you tell me your verses are for +another girl!" + +"Girl! Girl! Girl!" he burst out. "Nurse is thirty-seven--she told me +so herself, and how could I tell that you--why, it's absurd! I've only +thought of you always as a baby in long skirts"--she spasmodically drew +her skirts down over her pretty, shapely ankles, while she kept her eyes +covered with one hand--"and you've seen me makin' up to her ever since +Crozier got the bullet. Ever since he was operated on, I've--" + +"Yes, yes, that's right," she interrupted. "That's manly! Put the blame +on him--him that couldn't help himself, struck by a horse-thief's bullet +in the dark; him that's no more to blame for your carryings on while +death was prowling about the door there--" + +"Carryings on! Carryings on!" Jesse Bulrush was thoroughly excited and +indignant. The little devil, to put him in a hole like this! "Carryings +on! I've acted like a man all through--never anything else in your +house, and it's a shame that I've got to listen to things that have +never been said of me in all my life. My mother was a good, true woman, +and she brought me up--" + +"Yes, that's it, put it on your mother now, poor woman! who isn't here +to stretch out her hand and stop you from playing a double game with two +girls so placed they couldn't help themselves--just doing kind acts for a +sick man." Suddenly she got to her feet. "I tell you, Jesse Bulrush, +that you're a man--you're a man--" + +But she could keep it up no longer. She burst out laughing, and the +false tears of the actress she dashed from her eyes as she added: "That +you're a man after my own heart. But you can't have it, even if you are +after it, and you are welcome to the thirty-seven-year-old seraph in +there!" She tossed a hand towards the house. + +By this time he was on his feet too, almost bursting. "Well, you wicked +little rip--you Ellen Terry at twenty-two, to think you could play it up +like that! Why, never on the stage was there such--!" + +"It's the poetry made me do it. It inspired me," she gurgled. "I felt +--why, I felt here"--she pressed her hand to her heart "all the pangs of +unrequited love--oh, go away, go back to the house and read that to her! +She's in the sitting-room, and my mother's away down-town. Now's your +chance, Claude Melnotte." + +She put both hands on his big, panting chest and pushed him backward +towards the house. "You're good enough for anybody, and if I wasn't so +young and daren't leave mother till I get my wisdom-teeth cut, and till +I'm thirty-seven--oh, oh, oh!" She laughed till the tears came into her +eyes. "This is as good as--as a play." + +"It's the best acted play I ever saw, from 'Ten Nights in a Bar-room' to +'Struck Oil,'" rejoined Jesse Bulrush, with a face still half ashamed yet +beaming. "But, tell me, you heartless little woman, are the verses worth +anything? Do you think she'll like them?" + +Kitty grew suddenly serious, and a curious look he could not read +deepened in her eyes. "Nurse 'll like them--of course she will," she +said gently. "She'll like them because they are you. Read them to her +as you read them to me, and she'll only hear your voice, and she'll think +them clever and you a wonderful man, even if you are fifty and weigh a +thousand pounds. It doesn't matter to a woman what a man's saying or +doing, or whether he's so much cleverer than she is, if she knows that +under everthing he's saying, 'I love you.' A man isn't that way, but a +woman is. Now go." Again she pushed him with a small brown hand. + +"Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" he said admiringly. + +"Then be a father to me," she said teasingly. + +"I can't marry both your mother and nurse." + +"P'r'aps you can't marry either," she replied sarcastically, "and I know +that in any case you'll never be any relative of mine by marriage. Get +going," she said almost impatiently. + +He turned to go, and she said after him, as he rolled away, "I'll let you +hear some of my verses one day when you're more developed and can +understand them." + +"I'll bet they beat mine," he called back. + +"You'll win your bet," she answered, and stood leaning against a tree +with a curious look emerging and receding in her eyes. When he had +disappeared, sitting down, she drew from her breast a slip of paper, +unfolded it, and laid it on her knee. "It is better," she said. "It's +not good poetry, of course, but it's truer, and it's not done according +to a pattern like his. Yes, it's real, real, real, and he'll never see +it--never see it now, for I've fought it' all out, and I've won." + +Then she slowly read the verses aloud: + +"Yes, I've won," she said with determination. So many of her sex have +said things just as decisively, and while yet the exhilaration of their +decision was inflaming them, have done what they said they would never, +never, never do. Still there was a look in the fair face which meant a +new force awakened in her character. + +For a long time she sat brooding, forgetful of the present and of the +little comedy of elderly lovers going on inside the house. She was +thinking of the way conventions hold and bind us; of the lack of freedom +in the lives of all, unless they live in wild places beyond the social +pale. Within the past few weeks she had had visions of such a world +beyond this active and ordered civilisation, where the will and the +conscience of a man or woman was the only law. She was not lawless in +mind or spirit. She was only rebelling gainst a situation in which she +was bound hand and foot, and could not follow her honest and exclusive +desire, if she wished to do so. + +Here was a man who was married, yet in a real sense who had no wife. +Suppose that man cared for her, what a tragedy it would be for them to be +kept apart! This man did not love her, and so there was no tragedy for +both. Still all was not over yet--yes, all was "over and over and over," +she said to herself as she sprang to her feet with a sharp exclamation of +disgust--with herself. + +Her mother was coming hurriedly towards her from the house. There was a +quickness in her walk suggesting excitement, yet from the look in her +face it was plain that the news she brought was not painful. "He told me +you were here, and--" + +"Who told you I was here?" + +"Mr. Bulrush." + +"So it's all settled," she said, with a little quirk of her shoulders. + +"Yes, he's asked her, and they're going to be married. It's enough to +make you die laughing to see the two middle-aged doves cooing in there." + +"I thought perhaps it would be you. He said he would like to be a father +to me." + +"That would prevent me if nothing else would," answered the widow of +Tyndall Tynan. "A stepfather to an unmarried girl, both eyeing each +other for a chance to find fault--if you please, no thank you!" + +"That means you won't get married till I'm out of the way?" asked Kitty, +with a look which was as much touched with myrrh as with mirth. + +"It means I wouldn't get married till you are married, anyway," was the +complacent answer. + +"Is there any one special that--" + +"Don't talk nonsense. Since your father died I've only thought of his +child and mine, and I've not looked where I might. Instead, I've done my +best to prove that two women could live and succeed without a man to earn +for them; though of course without the pension it couldn't have been done +in the style we've done it. We've got our place!" + +There is a dignity attached to a pension which has an influence quite its +own, and in the most primitive communities it has an aristocratic +character which commands general respect. In Askatoon people gave Mrs. +Tynan a better place socially because of her pension than they would have +done if she had earned double the money which the pension brought her. + +"Everybody has called on us," she added with reflective pride. + +"Principally since Mr. Crozier came," added Kitty. "It's funny, isn't +it, how he made people respect him before they knew who he was?" + +"He would make Satan stand up and take off his hat, if he paid Hades a +visit," said Mrs. Tynan admiringly. "Anybody'd do anything for him." + +Kitty eyed her mother closely. There was a strange, far-away, brooding +look in Mrs. Tynan's eyes, and she seemed for a moment lost in thought. + +"You're in love with him," said Kitty sharply. + +"I was, in a way," answered her mother frankly. "I was, in a way, a kind +of way, till I knew he was married. But it didn't mean anything. I +never thought of it except as a thing that couldn't be." + +"Why couldn't it be?" asked Kitty, smothering an agitation rising in her +breast. + +"Because I always knew he belonged to where we didn't, and because if he +was going to be in love himself, it would be with some girl like you. +He's young enough for that, and it's natural he should get as his profit +the years of youth that a young woman has yet to live." + +"As though it was a choice between you and me, for instance!" + +Mrs. Tynan started, but recovered herself. "Yes. If there had been any +choosing, he'd not have hesitated a minute. He'd have taken you, of +course. But he never gave either of us a thought that way." + +"I thought that till--till after he'd told us his story," replied Kitty +boldly. + +"What has happened since then?" asked her mother, with sudden +apprehension. + +"Nothing has happened since. I don't understand it, but it's as though +he'd been asleep for a long time and was awake again." + +Mrs. Tynan gravely regarded her daughter, and a look of fear came into +her face. "I knew you kept thinking of him always," she said; "but you +had such sense, and he never showed any feeling for you; and young girls +get over things. Besides, you always showed you knew he wasn't a +possibility. But since he told us that day about his being married and +all, has--has he been different towards you?" + +"Not a thing, not a word," was the reply; "but--but there's a difference +with him in a way. I feel it when I go in the room where he is." + +"You've got to stop thinking of him," insisted the elder woman +querulously. "You've got to stop it at once. It's no good. It's bad +for you. You've too much sense to go on caring for a man that--" + +"I'm going to get married," said Kitty firmly. "I've made up my mind. +If you have to think about one person, you should stop thinking about +another; anyhow, you've got to make yourself stop. So I'm going to +marry--and stop." + +"Who are you going to marry, Kitty? You don't mean to say it's John +Sibley !" + +"P'r'aps. He keeps coming." + +"That gambling and racing fellow!" + +"He owns a big farm, and it pays, and he has got an interest in a mine, +and--" + +"I tell you, you shan't," peevishly interjected Mrs. Tynan. "You shan't. +He's vicious. He's--oh, you shan't! I'd rather--" + +"You'd rather I threw myself away--on a married man?" asked Kitty +covertly. + +"My God--oh, Kitty!" said the other, breaking down. "You can't mean it +--oh, you can't mean that you'd--" + +"I've got to work out my case in my own way," broke in Kitty calmly. +"I know how I've got to do it. I have to make my own medicine--and take +it. You say John Sibley is vicious. He has only got one vice." + +"Isn't it enough? Gambling--" + +"That isn't a vice; it's a sport. It's the same as Mr. Crozier had. +Mr. Crozier did it with horses only, the other does it with cards and +horses. The only vice John Sibley's got is me." + +"Is you?" asked her mother bewilderedly. + +"Well, when you've got an idea you can't control and it makes you its +slave, it's a vice. I'm John's vice, and I'm thinking of trying to cure +him of it--and cure myself too," Kitty added, folding and unfolding the +paper in her hand. + +"Here comes the Young Doctor," said her mother, turning towards the +house. "I think you don't mean to marry Sibley, but if you do, make him +give up gambling." + +"I don't know that I want him to give it up," answered Kitty musingly. + +A moment later she was alone with the Young Doctor. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +ALL ABOUT AN UNOPENED LETTER + +"What's this you've been doing?" asked the Young Doctor, with a +quizzical smile. "We never can tell where you'll break out." + +"Kitty Tynan's measles!" she rejoined, swinging her hat by its ribbon. +"Mine isn't a one-sided character, is it?" + +"I know one of the sides quite well," returned the Young Doctor. + +"Which, please, sir?" + +The Young Doctor pretended to look wise. "The outside. I read it like a +book. It fits the life in which it moves like the paper on the wall. +But I'm not sure of the inside. In fact, I don't think I know that at +all." + +"So I couldn't call you in if my character was sick inside, could I?" +she asked obliquely. + +"I might have an operation, and see what's wrong with it," he answered +playfully. + +Suddenly she shivered. "I've had enough of operations to last me +awhile," she rejoined. "I thought I could stand anything, but your +operation on Mr. Crozier taught me a lesson. I'd never be a doctor's +wife if I had to help him cut up human beings." + +"I'll remember that," the Young Doctor replied mockingly. + +"But if it would help put things on a right basis, I'd make a bargain +that I wasn't to help do the carving," she rejoined wickedly. The Young +Doctor always incited her to say daring things. They understood each +other well. "So don't let that stand in the way," she added slyly. + +"The man who marries you will be glad to get you without the anatomy," he +returned gallantly. + +"I wasn't talking of a man; I was talking of a doctor." + +He threw up a hand and his eyebrows. "Isn't a doctor a man?" + +"Those I've seen have been mostly fish." + +"No feelings--eh?" + +She looked him in the eyes, and he felt a kind of shiver go through him. +"Not enough to notice. I never observed you had any," she replied. "If +I saw that you had, I'd be so frightened I'd fly. I've seen pictures of +an excited whale turning a boat full of men over. No, I couldn't bear to +see you show any feeling." + +The dark eyes of the Young Doctor suddenly took on a look which was a +stranger to them. In his relations with women he was singularly +impersonal, but he was a man, and he was young enough to feel the Adam +stir in him. The hidden or controlled thing suddenly emerged. It was +not the look which would be in his eyes if he were speaking to the woman +he wanted to marry. Kitty saw it, and she did not understand it, for she +had at heart a feeling that she could go to him in any trouble of life +and be sure of healing. To her he seemed wonderful; but she thought of +him as she would have thought of her father, as a person of authority and +knowledge--that operation showed him a great man, she thought, so +skillful and precise and splendid; and the whole countryside had such +confidence in him. + +She regarded him as a being apart; but for a moment, an ominous moment, +he was almost one with that race of men who feed in strange pastures. +She only half saw the reddish glow which came swimming into his eyes, and +she did not realise it, for she did not expect to find it there. For an +instant, however, he saw with new eyes that primary eloquence of woman +life, the unspent splendour of youth, the warm joy of the material being, +the mystery of maidenhood in all its efflorescence. It was the emergence +of his own youth again, as why should it not be, since he had never +married and had never dallied! But in a moment it was gone again--driven +away. + +"What a wicked little flirt you are!" he said, with a shake of the head. +"You'll come to a bad end, if you don't change your ways." + +"Perform an operation, then, if you think you know what's the matter with +me," she retorted. "Sometimes in operating for one disease we come on +another, and then there's a lot of thinking to be done." + +The look in her face was quizzical, yet there was a strange, elusive +gravity in her eyes, an almost pathetic appealing. "If you were going to +operate on me, what would it be for?" she asked more flippantly than her +face showed. + +"Well, it's obscure, and the symptoms are not usual, but I should strike +for the cancer love," he answered, with a direct look. + +She flushed and changed on the instant. "Is love a cancer?" she asked. +All at once she felt sure that he read her real story, and something very +like anger quickened in her. + +"Unrequited love is," he answered deliberately. "How do you know it is +unrequited?" she asked sharply. + +"Well, I don't know it," he answered, dismayed by the look in her face. +"But I certainly hope I'm right. I do, indeed." + +"And if you were right, what would you do--as a surgeon?" she +questioned, with an undertone of meaning. + +"I would remove the cause of the disease." + +She came close and looked him straight in the eyes. "You mean that he +should go? You think that would cure the disease? Well, you are not +going to interfere. You are not going to manoeuvre anything to get him +away--I know doctors' tricks. You'd say he must go away east or west to +the sea for change of air to get well. That's nonsense, and it isn't +necessary. You are absolutely wrong in your diagnosis--if that's what +you call it. He is going to stay here. You aren't going to drive away +one of our boarders and take the bread out of our mouths. Anyhow, you're +wrong. You think because a girl worships a man's ability that she's in +love with him. I adore your ability, but I'd as soon fall in love with a +lobster--and be boiled with the lobster in a black pot. Such conceit men +have!" + +He was not convinced. He had a deep-seeing eye, and he saw that she was +boldly trying to divert his belief or suspicion. He respected her for +it. He might have said he loved her for it--with a kind of love which +can be spoken of without blushing or giving cause to blush, or reason for +jealousy, anger, or apprehension. + +He smiled down into her gold-brown eyes, and he thought what a real woman +she was. He felt, too, that she would tell him something that would give +him further light if he spoke wisely now. + +"I'd like to see some proof that you are right, if I am wrong," he +answered cautiously. + +"Well, I'm going to be married," she said, with an air of finality. + +He waved a hand deprecatingly. "Impossible--there's no man worth it. +Who is the undeserving wretch?" + +"I'll tell you to-morrow," she replied. "He doesn't know yet how happy +he's going to be. What did you come here for? Why did you want to see +me?" she added. "You had something you were going to tell me. Hadn't +you?" + +"That's quite right," he replied. "It's about Crozier. This is my last +visit to him professionally. He can go on now without my care. Yours +will be sufficient for him. It has been all along the very best care he +could have had. It did more for him than all the rest, it--" + +"You don't mean that," she interrupted, with a flush and a bosom that +leaped under her pretty gown. "You don't mean that I was of more use +than the nurse--than the future Mrs. Jesse Bulrush?" + +"I mean just that," he answered. "Nearly every sick person, every sick +man, I should say, has his mascot, his ministering angel, as it were. +It's a kind of obsession, and it often means life or death, whether the +mascot can stand the strain of the situation. I knew an old man--down by +Dingley's Flat it was, and he wanted a boy--his grand-nephew-beside him +always. He was getting well, but the boy took sick and the old man died +the next day. The boy had been his medicine. Sometimes it's a +particular nurse that does the trick; but whoever it is, it's a great +vital fact. Well, that's the part you played to Mr. Shiel Crozier of +Lammis and Castlegarry aforetime. He owes you much." + +"I am glad of that," she said softly, her eyes on the distance. + +"She is in love with him in spite of what she says," remarked the Young +Doctor to himself. "Well," he continued aloud, "the fact is, Crozier's +almost well in a way, but his mind is in a state, and he is not going to +get wholly right as things are. Since things came out in court, since he +told us his whole story, he has been different. It's as though--" + +She interrupted him hastily and with suppressed emotion. "Yes, yes, do +you think I've not noticed that? He's been asleep in a way for five +years, and now he's awake again. He is not James Gathorne Kerry now; he +is James Shiel Gathorne Crozier, and--oh, you understand: he's back again +where he was before--before he left her." + +The Young Doctor nodded approvingly. "What a little brazen wonder you +are! I declare you see more than--" + +"Yet you won't have me?" she asked mockingly. "You're too clever for +me," he rejoined with spirit. "I'm too conceited. I must marry a girl +that'd kneel to me and think me as wise as Socrates. But he's back +again, as you say, and, in my view, his wife ought to be back again +also." + +"She ought to be here," was Kitty's swift reply, "though I think mighty +little of her--mighty little, I can tell you. Stuckup, great tall stork +of a woman, that lords it over a man as though she was a goddess. Wears +diamonds in the middle of the day, I suppose, and cold-blooded as--as a +fish." + +"She ought to have married me, according to your opinion of me. You said +I was a fish," remarked the Young Doctor, with a laugh. + +"The whale and the catfish!" + +"Heavens, what spite!" he rejoined. "Catfish--what do you know about +Mrs. Crozier? You may be brutally unjust--waspishly unjust, I should +say." + +"Do I look like a wasp?" she asked half tearfully. She was in a strange +mood. + +"You look like a golden busy bee," he answered. But tell me, how did you +come to know enough about her to call her a cat?" + +"Because, as you say, I was a busy golden bee," she retorted. + +"That information doesn't get me much further," he answered. + +"I opened that letter," she replied. + +"'That letter'--you mean you opened the letter he showed us which he had +left sealed as it came to him five years ago?" The Young Doctor's face +wore a look of dismay. + +"I steamed the envelope open--how else could I have done it! I steamed +it open, saw what I wanted, and closed it up again." + +The Young Doctor's face was pale now. This was a terrible revelation. +He had a man's view of such conduct. He almost shrank from her, though +she stood there as inviting and innocent a specimen of girlhood as the +eye could wish to see. She did not look dishonourable. + +"Do you realise what that means?" he asked in a cold, hard tone. + +"Oh, come, don't put on that look and don't talk like John the +Evangelist," she retorted. "I did it, not out of curiosity, and not to +do any one harm, but to do her good--his wife." + +"It was dishonourable--wicked and dishonourable." + +"If you talk like that, Mr. Piety, I'm off," she rejoined, and she +started away. + +"Wait--wait," he said, laying firm fingers on her arm. "Of course you +did it for a good purpose. I know. You cared enough for him for that." + +He had said the right thing, and she halted and faced him. "I cared +enough to do a good deal more than that if necessary. He has been like a +second father to me, and--" + +Suddenly a light of humour shot into the eyes of both. Sheil Crozier as +a "father" to her was too artificial not to provoke their sense of the +grotesque. + +"I wanted to find out his wife's address to write to her and tell her to +come quick," she explained. "It was when he was at the worst. And then, +too, I wanted to know the kind of woman she was before I wrote to her. +So--" + +"You mean to say you read that letter which he had kept unopened and +unread for five long years?" The Young Doctor was certainly disturbed +again. + +"Every word of it," Kitty answered shamelessly, "and I'm not sorry. It +was in a good cause. If he had said, 'Courage, soldier,' and opened it +five years ago, it would have been good for him. Better to get things +like that over." + +"It was that kind of a letter, was it--a catfish letter?" + +Kitty laughed a little scornfully. "Yes, just like that, Mr. Easily +Shocked. Great, showy, purse-proud creature!" + +"And you wrote to her?" + +"Yes--a letter that would make her come if anything would. Talk of tact +--I was as smooth as a billiard-ball. But she hasn't come." + +"The day after the operation I cabled to her," said the Young Doctor. + +"Then you steamed the letter open and read it too?" asked Kitty +sarcastically. + +"Certainly not. Ladies first-and last," was the equally sarcastic +answer. "I cabled to Castlegarry, his father's place, also to Lammis +that he mentioned when he told us his story. Crozier of Lammis, he was." + +"Well, I wrote to the London address in the letter," added Kitty. +"I don't think she'll come. I asked her to cable me, and she hasn't. I +wrote such a nice letter, too. I did it for his sake." + +The Young Doctor laid his hands on both her shoulders. "Kitty Tynan, the +man who gets you will get what he doesn't deserve," he remarked. + +"That might mean anything." + +"It means that Crozier owes you more than he can guess." + +Her eyes shone with a strange, soft glow. "In spite of opening the +letter?" + +The Young Doctor nodded, then added humorously: "That letter you wrote +her--I'm not sure that my cable wouldn't have far more effect than your +letter." + +"Certainly not. You tried to frighten her, but I tried to coax her, to +make her feel ashamed. I wrote as though I was fifty." + +The Young Doctor regarded her dubiously. "What was the sort of thing you +said to her?" + +"For one thing, I said that he had every comfort and attention two +loving women and one fond nurse could give him; but that, of course, his +legitimate wife would naturally be glad to be beside him when he passed +away, and that if she made haste she might be here in time." + +The Young Doctor leaned against a tree shaking with laughter. + +"What are you smiling at?" Kitty asked ironically. "Oh, she'll be sure +to come--nothing will keep her away after being coaxed like that!" he +said, when he could get breath. + +"Laughing at me as though I was a clown in a circus!" she exclaimed. +"Laughing when, as you say yourself, the man that she--the cat--wrote +that fiendish letter to is in trouble." + +"It was a fiendish letter, was it?" he asked, suddenly sobered again. +"No, no, don't tell me," he added, with a protesting gesture. "I don't +want to hear. I don't want to know. I oughtn't to know. Besides, if +she comes, I don't want to be prejudiced against her. He is troubled, +poor fellow." + +"Of course he is. There's the big land deal--his syndicate. He's got a +chance of making a fortune, and he can't do it because--but Jesse Bulrush +told me in confidence, so I can't explain." + +"I have an idea, a pretty good idea. Askatoon is small." + +"And mean sometimes." + +"Tell me what you know. Perhaps I can help him," urged the Young Doctor. +"I have helped more than one good man turn a sharp corner here." + +She caught his arm. "You are as good as gold." "You are--impossible," +he replied. + +They talked of Crozier's land deal and syndicate as they walked slowly +towards the house. Mrs. Tynan met them at the door, a look of excitement +in her face. "A telegram for you Kitty," she said. + +"For me!" exclaimed Kitty eagerly. "It's a year since I had one." + +She tore open the yellow envelope. A light shot up in her face. She +thrust the telegram into the Young Doctor's hands. + +"She's coming; his wife's coming. She's in Quebec now. It was my +letter--my letter, not your cable, that brought her," Kitty added +triumphantly. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +NIGHT SHADE AND MORNING GLORY + +It was as though Crozier had been told of the coming of his wife, for +when night came, on the day Kitty had received her telegram, he could not +sleep. He was the sport of a consuming restlessness. His brain would +not be still. He could not discharge from it the thoughts of the day and +make it vacuous. It would not relax. It seized with intentness on each +thing in turn, which was part of his life at the moment, and gave it an +abnormal significance. In vain he tried to shake himself free of the +successive obsessions which stormed down the path of the night, dragging +him after them, a slave lashed to the wheels of a chariot of flame. + +At last it was the land deal and syndicate on which his future depended, +and the savage fate which seemed about to snatch his fortune away as it +had done so often before; as it had done on the day when Flamingo went +down near the post at the Derby with a madwoman dragging at the bridle. +He had had a sure thing then, and it was whisked away just when it would +have enabled him to pass the crisis of his life. Wife, home, the old +fascinating, crowded life--they had all vanished because of that vile +trick of destiny; and ever since then he had been wandering in the +wilderness through years that brought no fruit of his labours. Yet here +was his chance, his great chance, to get back what he had and was in the +old misspent days, with new purposes in life to follow and serve; and it +was all in cruel danger of being swept away when almost within his grasp. + +If he could but achieve the big deal, he could return to wife and home, +he could be master in his own house, not a dependent on his wife's +bounty. That very evening Jesse Bulrush, elated by his own good fortune +in capturing Cupid, had told him as sadly as was possible, while his own +fortunes were, as he thought, soaring, that every avenue of credit seemed +closed; that neither bank nor money-lender, trust nor loan company, would +let him have the ten thousand dollars necessary for him to hold his place +in the syndicate; while each of the other members of the clique had +flatly and cheerfully refused, saying they were busy carrying their own +loads. Crozier had commanded Jesse not to approach them, but the fat +idealist had an idea that his tongue had a gift of wheedling, and he +believed that he could make them "shell out," as he put it. He had +failed, and he was obliged to say so, when Crozier, suspecting, brought +him to book. + +"They mean to crowd you out--that's their game," Bulrush had said. +"They've closed up all the ways to cash or credit. They're laying to do +you out of your share. Unless you put up the cash within the four days +left, they'll put it through without you. They told me to tell you +that." + +And Crozier had not even cursed them. He said to Jesse Bulrush that it +was an old game to get hold of a patent that made a fortune for a song +while the patentee died in the poor-house. Yet that four days was time +enough for a live man to do a "flurry of work," and he was fit enough to +walk up their backs yet with hobnailed boots, as they said in Kerry when +a man was out for war. + +Over and over again this hovering tragedy drove sleep from his eyes; and +in the spaces between there were a hundred fleeting visions of little and +big things to torture him--remembrances of incidents when debts and +disasters dogged his footsteps; and behind them all, floating among the +elves and gnomes of ill-luck and disappointment, was a woman's face. It +was not his wife's face, not a face that belonged to the old life, but +one which had been part of his daily existence for over four years. It +was the first face he saw when he came back from consciousness after the +operation which saved his life--the face of Kitty Tynan. + +And ever since the day when he had told the story of his life this face +had kept passing before his eyes with a disturbing persistence. Kitty +had said to her mother and to the Young Doctor that he had seemed after +he had told his story like one who had awakened; and in a sense it was +startlingly true. It was as though, while he was living under an assumed +name, the real James Shiel Gathorne Crozier did not exist, or was in the +far background of the doings and sayings of J. G. Kerry. His wife and +the past had been shadowy in a way, had been as part of a life lived out, +which would return in some distant day, but was not vital to the present. +Much as he had loved his wife, the violent wrench away from her had +seemed almost as complete as death itself; but the resumption of his own +name and the telling if his story had produced a complete psychological +change in him mentally and bodily. The impersonal feeling which had +marked his relations with the two women of this household, and with all +women, was suddenly gone. He longed for the arms of a woman round his +neck--it was five years since any woman's arms had been there, since he +had kissed any woman's lips. Now, in the hour when his fortunes were +again in the fatal balance, when he would be started again for a fair +race with the wife from whom he had been so long parted, another face +came between. + +All at once the question Burlingame asked him, as to whether his wife was +living, came to him. He had never for an instant thought of her as dead, +but now a sharp and terrifying anxiety came to him. If his wife was +living! Living? Her death had never been even a remote possibility to +his mind, though the parting had had the decisiveness of death. Beneath +all his shrewdness and ability he was at heart a dreamer, a romancist to +whom life was an adventure in a half-real world. + +It was impossible to sleep. He tossed from side to side. Once he got up +in the dark and drank great draughts of water; once again, as he thought +of Mona, his wife, as she was in the first days of their married life, a +sudden impulse seized him. He sprang from his bed, lit a candle, went to +the desk where the unopened letter lay, and took it out. With the +feeling that he must destroy this record, this unread but, as he knew, +ugly record of their differences, and so clear her memory of any cruelty, +of any act of anger, he was about to hold it to the flame of the candle +when he thought he heard a sound behind him as of the door of his room +gently closing. Laying the letter down, he went to the door and opened +it. There was no one stirring. Yet he had a feeling as though some one +was there in the darkness. His lips framed the words, + +"Who is it? Is any one there?" but he did not utter them. + +A kind of awe possessed him. He was Celtic; he had been fed on the +supernatural when he was a child; he had had strange, indefinable +experiences or hallucinations in the days when he lived at Castlegarry, +and all his life he had been a friend of the mystical. It is hard to +tell what he thought as he stood there and peered into the darkness of +the other room-the living-room of the house. He was in a state of +trance, almost, a victim of the night. But as he closed the door softly +the words of the song that Kitty Tynan had sung to him the day when he +found her brushing his coat came to him and flooded his brain. The last +two verses of the song kept drowning his sense of the actual, and he was +swayed by the superstition of bygone ancestors: + + "Whereaway goes my lad--tell me, has he gone alone? + Never harsh word did I speak, never hurt I gave; + Strong he was and beautiful; like a heron he has flown + Hereaway, hereaway will I make my grave. + + "When once more the lad I loved hereaway, hereaway, + Comes to lay his hand in mine, kiss me on the brow, + I will whisper down the wind, he will weep to hear me say-- + 'Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?'" + +He went to bed again, but sleep would not come. The verses of the lament +kept singing in his brain. He tossed from side to side, he sought to +control himself, but it was of no avail. Suddenly he remembered the bed +of boughs he had made for himself at the place where Kitty had had her +meeting with the Young Doctor the previous day. Before he was shot he +used to sleep in the open in the summer-time. If he could get to sleep +anywhere it would be there. + +Hastily dressing himself in flannel shirt and trousers, and dragging a +blanket from the bed, he found his way to the bedroom door, went into the +other room, and felt his way to the front door, which would open into the +night. All at once he was conscious of another presence in the room, but +the folk-song was still beating in his brain, and he reproved himself for +succumbing to fantasy. Finding the front door in the dark, he opened it +and stepped outside. There was no moon, but there were millions of stars +in the blue vault above, and there was enough light for him to make his +way to the place where he had slept "hereaway and oft." + +He knew that the bed of boughs would be dry, but the night would be his, +and the good, cool ground, and the soughing of the pines, and the sweet, +infinitesimal and innumerable sounds of the breathing, sleeping earth. +He found the place and threw himself down. Why, here were green boughs +under him, not the dried remains of what he had placed there! Kitty--it +was Kitty, dear, gay, joyous, various Kitty, who had done this thing, +thinking that he might want to sleep in the open again after his illness. +Kitty--it was she who had so thoughtfully served him; Kitty, with the +instinct of strong, unselfish womanhood, with the gift of the outdoor +life, with the unpurchasable gift of friendship. What a girl she was! +How rich she could make the life of a man! + + "Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes, + Held my hand, and laid his cheek warm against my brow, + Home I saw upon the earth, heaven stood there in the skies + Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?" + +How different she was, this child of the West, of Nature, from the woman +he had left behind in England, the sophisticated, well-appointed, well- +controlled girl; too well-controlled even in the first days of married +life; too well-controlled for him who had the rushing impulses of a +Celtic warrior of olden days. Delicate, refined, perfectly poised, and +Kitty beside her like a sunflower to a sprig of heliotrope! Mona--Kitty, +the two names, the two who, so far, had touched his life, each in her own +way, as none others had done, they floated before his eyes till sight and +feeling grew dim. With a last effort he strove to eject Kitty from his +thoughts, for there was the wife he had won in the race of life, and he +must stand by her, play the game, ride honestly, even in exile from her, +run straight, even with that unopened, bitter, upbraiding letter in the-- + +He fell asleep, and soon and slowly and ever so dimly the opal light of +the prairie dawn crept shyly over the landscape. With it came stealing +the figure of a girl towards the group of trees where lay the man of +Lammis on the bed of green boughs which she had renewed for him. She had +followed him from the dark room, where she had waited near him through +the night--near him, to be near him for the last time; alone with him and +the kind, holy night before the morrow came which belonged to the other +woman, who had written to him as she never could have written to any man +in whose arms she ever had lain. And the pity and the tragedy of it was +that he loved his wife--the catfish wife. The sharp, pitiless instinct +of love told her that the stirring in his veins which had come of late to +him, which beat higher, even poignantly, when she was near him now, was +only the reflection of what he felt for his wife. She knew the +unmerciful truth, but it only deepened what she felt for him, yet what +she must put away from herself after to-morrow. Those verses she wrote +--they were to show that she had conquered herself. Yet, but a few hours +after, here she was kneeling outside his door at night, here she was +pursuing him to the place where he slept. The coming of the other woman +--she knew well that she was something to this man of men--had roused in +her all she had felt, had intensified it. + +She trembled, but she drew near, accompanied by the heavenly odours of +the freshened herbs and foliage and the cool tenderness of the river +close by. In her white dress and loosened hair she was like some spirit +of a new-born world finding her way to the place she must call home. It +was all so dim, so like clouded silver, the trees and the grass and the +bushes and the night. Noiselessly she stole over the grass and into the +shadows of the trees where he lay. Again and again she paused. What +would she do if he was awake and saw her? She did not know. The moment +must take care of itself. She longed to find him sleeping. + +It was so. The hazy light showed his face upward to the skies, his +breast rising and falling in a heavy, luxurious sleep. + +She drew nearer and nearer till she was kneeling beside him. His face +was warm with colour even in the night air, warmer than she had ever seen +it. One hand lay across his chest and one was thrown back over his head +with the abandon of perfect rest. All the anxiety and restlessness which +had tortured him had fled, and his manhood showed bold and serene in the +brightening dusk. + +A sob almost broke from her as she gazed her fill, then slowly she leaned +over and softly pressed her lips to his--the first time that ever in love +they had been given to any man. She had the impulse to throw her arms +round him, but she mastered herself. He stirred, but he did not wake. +His lips moved as she withdrew hers. + +"My darling!" he said in the quick, broken way of the dreamer. + +She rose swiftly and fled away among the trees towards the house. + +What he had said in his sleep--was it in reality the words of +unconsciousness, or was it subconscious knowledge?--they kept ringing +in her ears. + +"My darling!" he had said when she kissed him. There was a light of joy +in her eyes now, though she felt that the words were meant for another. +Yet it was her kiss, her own kiss, which had made him say it. If--but +with happy eyes she stole to her room. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +"S. O. S." + +At breakfast next morning Kitty did not appear. Had it been possible she +would have fled into the far prairie and set up a lonely tabernacle +there; for with the day came a reaction from the courage possessing her +the night before and in the opal wakening of the dawn. When broad +daylight came she felt as though her bones were water and her body a wisp +of straw. She could not bear to meet Shiel Crozier's eyes, and thus it +was she had an early breakfast on the plea that she had ironing to do. +She was not, however, prepared to see Jesse Bulrush drive up with a buggy +after breakfast and take Crozier away. When she did see them at the gate +the impulse came to cry out to Crozier; what to say she did not know, but +still to cry out. The cry on her lips was that which she had seen in the +newspaper the day before, the cry of the shipwrecked seafarers, the +signal of the wireless telegraphy, "S. O. S."--the piteous call, "Save +Our Souls!" It sprang to her lips, but it got no farther except in an +unconscious whisper. On the instant she felt so weak and shaken and +lonely that she wanted to lean upon some one stronger than herself; as +she used to lean against her father, while he sat with one arm round her +studying his railway problems. She had been self-sufficient enough all +her life,--"an independent little bird of freedom," as Crozier had called +her; but she was like a boat tossed on mountainous waves now. + +"S. O. S.!-Save Our Souls!" + +As though she really had made this poignant call Crozier turned round in +the buggy where he sat with Jesse Bulrush, pale but erect; and, with a +strange instinct, he looked straight to where she was. When he saw her +his face flushed, he could not have told why. Was it that there had +passed to him in his sleep the subconscious knowledge of the kiss which +Kitty had given him; and, after all, had he said "My darling" to her and +not to the wife far away across the seas, as he thought? A strange +feeling, as of secret intimacy, never felt before where Kitty was +concerned, passed through him now, and he was suddenly conscious that +things were not as they had ever been; that the old impersonal +comradeship had vanished. It disturbed, it almost shocked him. +Whereupon he made a valiant effort to recover the old ground, to get out +of the new atmosphere into the old, cheering air. + +"Come and say good-bye, won't you?" he called to her. + +"S. O. S.--S. O. S.--S. O. S.!" was the cry in her heart, but she called +back to him from her lips, "I can't. I'm too busy. Come back soon, +soldier." + +With a wave of the hand he was gone. "Not a care in the world she has," +Crozier said to Jesse Bulrush. "She's the sunniest creature Heaven ever +made." + +"Too skittish for me," responded the other with a sidelong look, for he +had caught a note in Crozier's voice which gave him a sudden suspicion. + +"You want the kind you can drive with an oatstraw and a chirp--eh, my +friend?" + +"Well, I've got what I want," was the reply. "Neither of us 'll kick +over the traces." + +"You are a lucky man," replied Crozier. "You've got a remarkably big +prize in the lottery. She is a fine woman, is Nurse Egan, and I owe her +a great deal. I only hope things turn out so well that I can give her a +good fat wedding-present. But I shan't be able to do anything that's +close to my heart if I can't get the cash for my share in the syndicate." + +"Courage, soldier, as Kitty Tynan says," responded Jesse Bulrush +cheerily. "You never know your luck. The cash is waiting for you +somewhere, and it'll turn up, be sure of that." + +"I'm not sure of that. I can see as plain as your nose how Bradley and +his clique have blocked me everywhere from getting credit, and I'd give +five years of my life to beat them in their dirty game. If I fail to get +it at Aspen Vale I'm done. But I'll have a try, a good big try. How far +exactly is it? I've never gone by this trail." + +Bulrush shook his head reprovingly. "It's too long a journey for you to +take after your knock-out. You're not fit to travel yet. I don't like +it a bit. Lydia said this morning it was a crime against yourself, going +off like this, and--" + +"Lydia?--oh yes, pardonnez-moi, m'sieu'! I did not know her name was +Lydia." + +"I didn't either till after we were engaged." Crozier stared in blank +amazement. "You didn't know her name till after you were engaged? What +did you call her before that?" + +"Why, I called her Nurse." answered the fat lover. "We all called her +that, and it sounded comfortable and homelike and good for every day. +It had a sort of York-shilling confidence, and your life was in her hands +--a first-class you-and-me kind of feeling." + +"Why don't you stick to it, then?" + +"She doesn't want it. She says it sounds so old, and that I'd be calling +her 'mother' next." + +"And won't you?" asked Crozier slyly. "Everything in season," beamed +Jesse, and he shone, and was at once happy and composed. Crozier +relapsed into silence, for he was thinking that the lost years had been +barren of children. He turned to look at the home they had left. It was +some distance away now, but he could see Kitty still at the corner of the +house with a small harvest of laundered linen in her hand. + +"She made that fresh bed of boughs for me--ah, but I had a good sleep +last night!" he added aloud. "I feel fit for the fight before me." He +drew himself up and began to nod here and there to people who greeted +him. + +In the house behind them at that moment Kitty was saying to her mother, +"Where is he going, mother?" + +"To Aspen Vale," was the reply. "If you'd been at breakfast you'd have +heard. He'll be gone two days, perhaps three." + +Three days! She regretted now that she had not said to herself, +"Courage, soldier," and gone to say good-bye to him when he called to +her. Perhaps she would not see him again till after the other woman-- +till after the wife-came. Then--then the house would be empty; then the +house would be so still. And then John Sibley would come and-- + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +IN THE CAMP OF THE DESERTER + +Three days passed, but before they ended there came another telegram from +Mrs. Crozier stating the time of her expected arrival at Askatoon. It +was addressed to Kitty, and Kitty almost savagely tore it up into little +pieces and scattered it to the winds. She did not even wait to show it +to the Young Doctor; but he had a subtle instinct as to why she did not; +and he was rather more puzzled than usual at what was passing before his +eyes. In any case, the coming of the wife must alter all the relations +existing in the household of the widow Tynan. The old, unrestrained, +careless friendship could not continue. The newcomer would import an +element of caste and class which would freeze mother and daughter to the +bones. Crozier was the essence of democracy, which in its purest form is +akin to the most aristocratic element and is easily affiliated with it. +He had no fear of Crozier. Crozier would remain exactly the same; but +would not Crozier be whisked away out of Askatoon to a new fate, +reconciled to being a receiver of his wife's bounty. + +"If his wife gets her arms round his neck, and if she wants to get them +there, she will, and once there he'll go with her like a gentleman," said +the Young Doctor sarcastically. Admiring Crozier as he did, he also had +underneath all his knowledge of life an unreasonable apprehension of +man's weakness where a woman was concerned. The man who would face a +cannon's mouth would falter before the face of a woman whom he could +crumple with one hand. + +The wife arrived before Crozier returned, and the Young Doctor and Kitty +met the train. The local operator had not divulged to any one the +contents of the telegram to Kitty, and there were no staring spectators +on the platform. As the great express stole in almost noiselessly, like +a tired serpent, Kitty watched its approach with outward cheerfulness. +She had braced herself to this moment, till she looked the most buoyant, +joyous thing in the world. It had not come easily. With desperation she +had fought a fight during these three lonely days, till at last she had +conquered, sleeping each night on Crozier's star-lit bed of boughs and +coming in with the silver-grey light of dawn. Now she leaned forward +with heart beating fast; but with smiling face and with eyes so bright +that she deceived the Young Doctor. + +There was no sign of inward emotion, of hidden troubles, as she leaned +forward to see the great lady step from the train--great in every sense +was this lady in her mind; imposing in stature, a Juno, a tragedy queen, +a Zenobia, a daughter of the gods who would not stoop to conquer. She +looked in vain, however, for the Mrs. Crozier she had imagined made no +appearance from the train. She hastened down the platform still with +keen eyes scanning the passengers, who were mostly alighting to stretch +their legs and get a breath of air. + +"She's not here," she said at last darkly to the Young Doctor who had +followed her. + +Then suddenly she saw emerge from a little group at the steps of a car +a child in a long dress--so it seemed to her, the being was so small and +delicate--and come forward, having hastily said good-bye to her fellow- +passengers. As the Young Doctor said afterwards, "She wasn't bigger than +a fly," and she certainly was as graceful and pretty and piquante as a +child-woman could be. + +Presently, with her alert, rather assertive blue eyes she saw Kitty, and +came forward. "Miss Tynan?" she asked, with an encompassing look. + +Now Kitty was idiomatic in her speech at times, and she occasionally used +slang of the best brand, but she avoided those colloquialisms which were +of the vocabulary of the uneducated. Indeed, she had had no inclination +to use them, for her father had set her a good example, and she liked to +hear good English spoken. That was why Crozier's talk had been like +music to her; and she had been keen to distinguish between the rhetorical +method of Augustus Burlingame, who modelled himself on the orators of all +the continents, and was what might be called a synthetic elocutionist. +Kitty was as simple and natural as a girl could be, and as a rule had +herself in perfect command; but she was so stunned by the sight of this +petite person before her that, in reply to Mrs. Crozier's question, she +only said abruptly + +"The same!" + +Then she came to herself and could have bitten her tongue out for that +plunge into the vernacular of the West; and forthwith a great prejudice +was set up in her mind against Mona Crozier, in whose eyes she caught a +look of quizzical criticism or, as she thought, contemptuous comment. +That for one instant she had been caught unawares and so had put herself +at a disadvantage angered her; but she had been embarrassed and +confounded by this miniature goddess, and her reply was a vague echo of +talk she heard around her every day. Also she could have choked the +Young Doctor, whom she caught looking at her with wondering humour, as +though he was trying to see "what her game was," as he said to her +afterwards. + +It was all due to the fact that from the day of the Logan Trial, and +particularly from the day when Shiel Crozier had told his life-story, +she had always imagined his wife as a stately Amazonian being with the +carriage of a Boadicea. She had looked for an empress in splendid +garments, and--and here was a humming-bird of a woman, scarcely bigger, +than a child, with the buzzing energy of a bee, but with a queer sort of +manfulness too; with a square, slightly-projecting chin, as Kitty came to +notice afterwards; together with some small lines about the mouth and at +the eyes, which came from trouble endured and suffering undergone. Kitty +did not notice that, but the Young Doctor took it in with his embracing +glance, as the wife saluted Kitty with her inward comment, which was: + +"So this is the chit who wrote to me like a mother!" But Mona Crozier +did not underestimate Kitty for all that, and she wondered why it was +that Kitty had written as she did. One thing was quite clear: Kitty had +had good intentions, else why have written at all? + +All these thoughts had passed through the mind of each, with a good many +others, while they were shaking hands; and the Young Doctor summoned his +man to carry Mona's hand-luggage to the extra buggy he had brought to the +station. One of the many other thoughts that were passing through three +active minds was Kitty's unspoken satire: + +"Just think; this is the woman he talked of as though she was a moving +mountain which would fall on you and crush you, if you didn't look out!" + +No doubt Crozier would have repudiated this description of his talk, but +the fact was he had unconsciously spoken of Mona with a sort of hush in +his voice; for a woman to him was something outside real understanding. +He had a romantic mediaeval view, which translated weakness and beauty +into a miracle, and what psychologists call "an inspired control." + +"She's no bigger than--than a wasp," said Kitty to herself, after the +Young Doctor had assured Mrs. Crozier that her husband was almost well +again; that he had recovered more quickly than was expected, and had +gained strength wonderfully after the crisis was passed. + +"An elephant can crush you, but a wasp can sting you," was Kitty's +further inward comment, "and that's why he was always nervous when he +spoke of her." Then, as the Young Doctor had already done, she noticed +the tiny lines about the tiny mouth, and the fine-spun webs about the +bird-bright eyes. + +The Young Doctor attributed these lines mostly to anxiety and inward +suffering, but Kitty set them down as the outward signs of an inward +fretfulness and quarrelsomeness, which was rendered all the more +offensive in her eyes by the fact that Mona Crozier was the most, +spotless thing she had ever seen, at the end of a journey--and this, a +journey across a continent. Orderliness and prim exactness, taste and +fastidiousness, tireless tidiness were seen in every turn, in every fold +of her dress, in the way everything she wore had been put on, in the +decision of every step and gesture. Kitty noticed all this, and she said +to herself, + +"Wound up like a watch, cut like a cameo," and she instinctively felt the +little dainty cameo-brooch at her own throat, the only jewellery she ever +wore, or had ever worn. + +"Sensible of her not to bring a maid," commented the Young Doctor +inwardly. "That would have thrown Kitty into a fit. Yet how she manages +to look like this after six thousand miles of sea and land going is +beyond me--and Crozier so rather careless in his ways. Not what you +would call two notes in the same key, she and Crozier," he reflected as +he told her she need not trouble about her luggage, and took charge of +the checks for it. + +"My husband--is--is he quite better now?" Mrs. Crozier asked with sharp +anxiety, as the two-seated "rig" started away with the ladies in the back +seat. + +"Oh, better, thanks to him," was Kitty's reply, nodding towards the Young +Doctor. + +"You have told him I was coming?" + +"Wasn't it better to have a talk with you first?" asked Kitty meaningly. + +Mrs. Crozier almost nervously twitched the little jet bag she carried, +then she looked Kitty in the eyes. + +"You will, of course, have reason for thinking so, if you say it," was +her enigmatical reply. "And of course you will tell me. You did not let +him know that you had written to me, or that the doctor had cabled me?" + +"Oh, you got his cable?" questioned Kitty with a little ring of triumph +in her voice, meant to reach the ears of the Young Doctor. It did reach +him, and he replied to the question. + +"We thought it better not; chiefly because he had in this country planned +his life with an exclusiveness, and on a principle which did not, +unfortunately, take you into account." + +The little lady blushed, or flushed. "May I ask how you know this to be +so, if it is so?" she asked, and there was the sharpness of the wasp in +her tone, as it seemed to Kitty. + +"The Logan Trial--I mentioned it in my letter to you," interposed Kitty. +"He was shot for the evidence he gave at the trial. Well, at the trial +a great many questions were asked by a lawyer who wanted to hurt him, +and he answered them." + +"Why did the lawyer want to hurt him?" Mona Crozier asked quickly. + +"Just mean-hearted envy and spite and devilry," was Kitty's answer. +"They were both handsome men, and perhaps that was it." + +"I never thought my husband handsome, though he was always distinguished +looking," was the quiet reply. + +"Ah, but you haven't seen him at all for so long!" remarked Kitty, a +little spitefully. + +"How do you know that?" Mrs. Crozier was nettled, though she did not +show it; but Kitty felt it was so, and was glad. + +"He said so at the Logan Trial." + +"Was that the kind of question asked at the trial?" the wife quickly +interjected. + +"Yes, lots of that kind," returned Kitty. + +"What was the object?" + +"To make him look not so distinguished--like nothing. If a man isn't +handsome, but only distinguished"--Kitty's mood was dangerous--"and you +make him look cheap, that's one advantage, and--" + +Here the Young Doctor, having observed the rising tide of antagonism in +the tone of the voices behind him, gently interposed, and made it clear +that the purpose was to throw a shadow on the past of her husband in +order to discredit his evidence; to which Mrs. Crozier nodded her +understanding. She liked the Young Doctor, as who did not who came in +contact with him, except those who had fear of him, and who had an idea +that he could read their minds as he read their bodies. And even this +girl at her side--Mona Crozier realised that the part she had played was +evidently an unselfish one, though she felt with piercing intuition that +whatever her husband thought of the girl, the girl thought too much of +her husband. Somehow, all in a moment, it made her sorry for the girl's +sake. The girl had meant well by her husband in sending for his wife, +that was certain; and she did not look bad. She was too sedately and +reservedly dressed, in spite of her auriferous face and head and her +burnished tone, to be bad; too fearless in eye, too concentrated to be +the rover in fields where she had no tenure or right. + +She turned and looked Kitty squarely in the eyes, and a new, softer look +came into her own, subduing what to Kitty was the challenging alertness +and selfish inquisitiveness. + +"You have been very good to Shiel--you two kind people," she said, and +there came a sudden faint mist to her eyes. + +That was her lucky moment, and she spoke as she did just in time, for +Kitty was beginning to resent her deeply; to dislike her far more than +was reasonable, and certainly without any justice. + +Kitty spoke up quickly. "Well, you see, he was always kind and good to +other people, and that was why--" + +"But that Mr. Burlingame did not like him?" The wife had a strange +intuition regarding Mr. Burlingame. She was sure that there was a woman +in the case--the girl beside her? + +"That was because Mr. Burlingame was not kind or good to other people," +was Kitty's sedate response. There was an undertone of reflection in the +voice which did not escape Mrs. Crozier's senses, and it also caught the +ear of the Young Doctor, to whom there came a sudden revelation of the +reason why Burlingame had left Mrs. Tynan's house. + +"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Crozier enigmatically. Presently, with suppressed +excitement as she saw the Young Doctor reining in the horses slowly, she +added: "My husband--when have you arranged that I should see him?" + +"When he gets back--home," Kitty replied, with an accent on the last +word. + +Mrs. Crozier started visibly. "When he gets back home-back from where? +He is not here?" she asked in a tone of chagrin. She had come a long +way, and she had pictured this meeting at the end of the journey with a +hundred variations, but never with this one--that she should not see +Shiel at once when the journey was over, if he was alive. Was it hurt +pride or disappointed love which spoke in her face, in her words? After +all, it was bad enough that her private life and affairs should be +dragged out in a court of law; that these two kind strangers, whom she +had never seen till a few minutes ago, should be in the inner circle of +knowledge of the life of her husband and herself, without her self-esteem +being hurt like this. She was very woman, and the look of the thing was +not nice to her eyes, while it must belittle her in theirs. Had this +girl done it on purpose? Yet why should she--she who had so appealed to +her to come to him--have sought to humiliate her? + +Kitty was not quite sure what she ought to say. "You see, we expected +him back before this. He is very exact!" + +"Very exact?" asked Mrs. Crozier in astonishment. This was a new phase +of Shiel Crozier's character. He must, indeed, have changed since he had +caused her so much anxiety in days gone by. + +"Usen't he to be so?" asked Kitty, a little viciously. "He is so very +exact now," she added. "He expected to be back home before this"--how +she loved to use that word home--"and so we thought he would be here when +you arrived. But he has been detained at Aspen Vale. He had a big +business deal on--" + +"A big business deal? Is he--is he in a large way of business?" Mona +asked almost incredulously. Shiel Crozier in a large way of business, +in a big business deal? It did not seem possible. His had ever been the +game of chance. Business--business? + +"He doesn't talk himself, of course; that wouldn't be like him,"--Kitty +had joy in giving this wife the character of her husband," but they say +that if he succeeds in what he's trying to do now he will make a great +deal of money." + +"Then he has not made it yet?" asked Mrs. Crozier. + +"He has always been able to pay his board regularly, with enough left for +a pew in church," answered Kitty with dry malice; for she mistook the +light in the other's eyes, and thought it was avarice; and the love +of money had no place in Kitty's make-up. She herself would never have +been influenced by money where a man was concerned. + +"Here's the house," she quickly added; "our home, where Mr. Crozier +lives. He has the best room, so yours won't be quite so good. It's +mother's--she's giving it up to you. With your trunks and things, you'll +want a room to yourself," Kitty added, not at all unconscious that she +was putting a phase of the problem of Crozier and his wife in a very +commonplace way; but she did not look into Mrs. Crozier's face as she +said it. + +Mrs. Crozier, however, was fully conscious of the poignancy of the +remark, and once again her face flushed slightly, though she kept outward +composure. + +"Mother, mother, are you there?" Kitty called, as she escorted the wife +up the garden walk. + +An instant later Mrs. Tynan cheerfully welcomed the disturber of the +peace of the home where Shiel Crozier had been the central figure for so +long. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +And I was very lucky--worse luck! +God help the man that's afraid of his own wife! +Sensitive souls, however, are not so many as to crowd each other + + + + + +YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK + +[BEING THE STORY OF A MATRIMONIAL DESERTER] + +By Gilbert Parker + +Volume 3. + + +XII. AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM +XIII. KITTY SPEAKS HER MIND AGAIN +XIV. AWAITING THE VERDICT +XV. "MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM" +XVI. "'TWAS FOR YOUR PLEASURE YOU CAME HERE, YOU GO BACK FOR MINE" +XVII. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT? +EPILOGUE + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM + +"What are you laughing at, Kitty? You cackle like a young hen with her +first egg." So spoke Mrs. Tynan to her daughter, who alternately swung +backwards and forwards in a big rocking-chair, silently gazing into the +distant sky, or sat still and "cackled" as her mother had said. + +A person of real observation and astuteness, however, would have noticed +that Kitty's laughter told a story which was not joy and gladness-- +neither good humour nor the abandonment of a luxurious nature. +It was tinged with bitterness and had the smart of the nettle. + +Her mother's question only made her laugh the more, and at last Mrs. +Tynan stooped over her and said, "I could shake you, Kitty. You'd make a +snail fidget, and I've got enough to do to keep my senses steady with all +the house-work--and now her in there!" She tossed a hand behind her +fretfully. + +Quick with love for her mother, as she always was, Kitty caught the +other's trembling hand. "You've always had too much to do, mother; +always been slaving for others. You've never had time to think whether +you're happy or not, or whether you've got a problem--that's what people +call things, when they're got so much time on their hands that they make +a play of their inside feelings and work it up till it sets them crazy." + +Mrs. Tynan's mouth tightened and her brow clouded. "I've had my problems +too, but I always made quick work of them. They never had a chance to +overlay me like a mother overlays her baby and kills it." + +"Not 'like a mother overlays,' but 'as a mother overlays,'" returned +Kitty with a queer note to her voice. "That's what they taught me at +school. The teacher was always picking us up on that kind of thing. +I said a thing worse than that when Mrs. Crozier"--her fingers motioned +towards another room--"came to-day. I don't know what possessed me. I +was off my trolley, I suppose, as John Sibley puts it. Well, when Mrs. +James Shiel Gathorne Crozier said--oh, so sweetly and kindly--'You are +Miss Tynan?' what do you think I replied? I said to her, 'The same'!" + +Rather an acidly satisfied smile came to Mrs. Tynan's lips. "That was +like the Slatterly girls," she replied. "Your father would have said it +was the vernacular of the rail-head. He was a great man for odd words, +but he knew always just what he wanted to say and he said it out. You've +got his gift. You always say the right thing, and I don't know why you +made that break with her--of all people." + +A meditative look came into Kitty's eyes. "Mr. Crozier says every one +has an imp that loves to tease us, and trip us up, and make us appear +ridiculous before those we don't want to have any advantage over us." + +"I don't want Mrs. Crozier to have any advantage over you and me, I can +tell you that. Things'll never be the same here again, Kitty dear, and +we've all got on so well; with him so considerate of every one, and a +good friend always, and just one of us, and his sickness making him seem +like our own, and--" + +"Oh, hush--will you hush, mother!" interposed Kitty sharply. "He's +going away with her back to the old country, and we might just as well +think about getting other borders, for I suppose Mr. Bulrush and his +bonny bride will set up a little bulrush tabernacle on the banks of the +Nile"--she nodded in the direction of the river outside--"and they'll +find a little Moses and will treat it as their very own." + +"Kitty, how can you!" + +Kitty shrugged a shoulder. "It would be ridiculous for that pair to have +one of their own. It's only the young mother with a new baby that looks +natural to me." + +"Don't talk that way, Kitty," rejoined her mother sharply. "You aren't +fit to judge of such things." + +"I will be before long," said her daughter. "Anyway, Mrs. Crozier isn't +any better able to talk than I am," she added irrelevantly. "She never +was a mother." + +"Don't blame her," said Mrs. Tynan severely. "That's God's business. +I'd be sorry for her, so far as that was concerned, if I were you. It's +not her fault." + +"It's an easy way of accounting for good undone," returned Kitty. +"P'r'aps it was God's fault, and p'r'aps if she had loved him more--" + +Mrs. Tynan's face flushed with sudden irritation and that fretful look +came to her eyes which accompanies a lack of comprehension. "Upon my +word, well, upon my word, of all the vixens that ever lived, and you +looking like a yellow pansy and too sweet for daily use! Such thoughts +in your head! Who'd have believed that you--!" + +Kitty made a mocking face at her mother. "I'm more than a girl, I'm a +woman, mother, who sees life all around me, from the insect to the +mountain, and I know things without being told. I always did. Just life +and living tell me things, and maybe, too, the Irish in me that father +was." + +"It's so odd. You're such a mixture of fun and fancy, at least you +always have been; but there's something new in you these days. Kitty, +you make me afraid--yes, you make your mother afraid. After what you +said the other day about Mr. Crozier I've had bad nights, and I get +nervous thinking." + +Kitty suddenly got up, put her arm round her mother and kissed her. +"You needn't be afraid of me, mother. If there'd been any real danger, +I wouldn't have told you. Mr. Crozier's away, and when he comes back +he'll find his wife here, and there's the end of everything. If there'd +been danger, it would have been settled the night before he went away. +I kissed him that night as he was sleeping out there under the trees." + +Mrs. Tynan sat down weakly and fanned herself with her apron. "Oh, oh, +oh, dear Lord!" she said. "I'm not afraid to tell you anything I ever +did, mother," declared Kitty firmly; "though I'm not prepared to tell you +everything I've felt. I kissed him as he slept. He didn't wake, he just +lay there sleeping--sleeping." A strange, distant, dreaming look came +into her eyes. She smiled like one who saw a happy vision, and an eerie +expression stole into her face. "I didn't want him to wake," she +continued. "I asked God not to let him wake. If he'd waked--oh, I'd +have been ashamed enough till the day I died in one way! Still he'd have +understood, and he'd have thought no harm. But it wouldn't have been +fair to him--and there's his wife in there," she added, breaking off into +a different tone. "They're a long way above us--up among the peaks, and +we're at the foot of the foothills, mother; but he never made us feel +that, did he? The difference between him and most of the men I've ever +seen! The difference!" + +"There's the Young Doctor," said her mother reproachfully. + +"He-him! He's by himself, with something of every sort in him from the +top to the bottom. There's been a ditcher in his family, and there may +have been a duke. But Shiel Crozier--Shiel"--she flushed as she said the +name like that, but a little touch of defiance came into her face too-- +"he is all of one kind. He's not a blend. And he's married to her in +there!" + +"You needn't speak in that tone about her. She's as fine as can be." + +"She's as fine as a bee," retorted Kitty. Again she laughed that almost +mirthless laugh for which her mother had called her to account a moment +before. "You asked me a while ago what I was laughing at, mother," she +continued. "Why, can't you guess? Mr. Crozier talked of her always as +though she was--well, like the pictures you've seen of Britannia, all +swelling and spreading, with her hand on a shield and her face saying, +'Look at me and be good,' and her eyes saying, 'Son of man, get upon thy +knees!' Why, I expected to see a sort of great--goodness--gracious +goddess, that kept him frightened to death of her. Bless you, he never +opened her letter, he was so afraid of her; and he used to breathe once +or twice hard--like that, when he mentioned her!" She breathed in such +mock awe that her mother laughed with a little kindly malice too. + +"Even her letter," Kitty continued remorselessly, "it was as though she +--that little sprite--wrote it with a rod of chastisement, as the Bible +says. It--" + +"What do you know of the inside of that letter?" asked her mother, +staring. + +"What the steam of the tea-kettle could let me see," responded Kitty +defiantly; and then, to her shocked mother, she told what she had done, +and what the nature of the letter was. + +"I wanted to help him if I could, and I think I'll be able to do it--I've +worked it all out," Kitty added eagerly, with a glint of steel in the +gold of her eyes and a fantastic kind of wisdom in her look. + +"Kitty," said her mother severely and anxiously, "it's madness +interfering with other people's affairs--of that kind. It never was +any use." + +"This will be the exception to the rule," returned Kitty. "There she +is"--again she flicked a hand towards the other room--"after they've been +parted five years. Well, she came after she read my letter to her, and +after I'd read that unopened letter to him, which made me know how to put +it all to her. I've got intuition--that's Celtic and mad," she added, +with her chin thrusting out at her mother, to whom the Irish that her +husband had been, which was so deep in her daughter, was ever a mystery +to her, and of which she was more or less afraid. + +"I've got a plan, and I believe--I know--it will work," Kitty continued. +"I've been thinking and thinking, and if there's trouble between them; if +he says he isn't going on with her till he's made his fortune; if he +throws that unopened letter in her face, I'll bring in my invention to +deal with the problem, and then you'll see! But all this fuss for a +little tiny button of a thing like that in there--pshaw! Mr. Crozier is +worth a real queen with the beauty of one of the Rhine maidens. How he +used to tell that story of the Rhinegold--do you remember? Wasn't it +grand? Well, I am glad now that he's going--yes, whatever trouble there +may be, still he is going. I feel it in my heart." + +She paused, and her eyes took on a sombre tone. Presently, with a +slight, husky pain in her voice, like the faint echo of a wail, she went +on: "Now that he's going, I'm glad we've had the things he gave us, +things that can't be taken away from us. What you have enjoyed is yours +for ever and ever. It's memory; and for one moment or for one day or one +year of those things you loved, there's fifty years, perhaps, for memory. +Don't you remember the verses I cut out of the magazine: + + "'Time, the ruthless idol-breaker, + Smileless, cold iconoclast, + Though he rob us of our altars, + Cannot rob us of the past.'" + +"That's the way your father used to talk," replied her mother. "There's +a lot of poetry in you, Kitty." "More than there is in her?" asked +Kitty, again indicating the region where Mrs. Crozier was. + +"There's as much poetry in her as there is in--in me. But she can do +things; that little bit of a babywoman can do things, Kitty. I know +women, and I tell you that if that woman hadn't a penny, she'd set to +and earn it; and if her husband hadn't a penny, she'd make his home +comfortable just the same somehow, for she's as capable as can be. She +had her things unpacked, her room in order herself--she didn't want your +help or mine--and herself with a fresh dress on before you could turn +round." + +Kitty's eyes softened still more. "Well, if she'd been poor he would +never have left her, and then they wouldn't have lost five years--think +of it, five years of life with the man you love lost to you!--and there +wouldn't be this tough old knot to untie now." + +"She has suffered--that little sparrow has suffered, I tell you, Kitty. +She has a grip on herself like--like--" + +"Like Mr. Crozier with a broncho under his hand," interjected Kitty. +"She's too neat, too eternally spick and span for me, mother. It's as +though the Being that made her said, 'Now I'll try and see if I can +produce a model of a grown-up, full-sized piece of my work.' Mrs. +Crozier is an exhibition model, and Shiel Crozier's over six feet three, +and loose and free, and like a wapiti in his gait. If he was a wapiti +he'd carry the finest pair of antlers ever was." + +"Kitty, you make me laugh," responded the puzzled woman. "I declare, +you're the most whimsical creature, and--" + +At that moment there came a tapping at the door behind them, and a small, +silvery voice said, "May I come in?" as the door opened and Mrs. +Crozier, very precisely yet prettily dressed, entered. + +"Please make yourself at home--no need to rap," answered Mrs. Tynan. +"Out in the West here we live in the open like. There's no room closed +to you, if you can put up with what there is, though it's not what you're +used to." + +"For five months in the year during the past five years I've lived in a +house about half as large as this," was Mrs. Crozier's reply. "With my +husband away there wasn't the need of much room." + +"Well, he only has one room here," responded Mrs. Tynan. "He never +seemed too crowded in it." + +"Where is it? Might I see it?" asked the small, dark-eyed, dark-haired +wife, with the little touch of nectarine bloom and a little powder also; +and though she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, there was a look of +wistfulness in her eyes, a gleam of which Kitty caught ere it passed. + +"You've been separated, Mrs. Crozier," answered the elder woman, "and +I've no right to let you into his room without his consent. You've had +no correspondence at all for five years--isn't that so?" + +"Did he tell you that?" the regal little lady asked composedly, but with +an underglow of anger in her eyes. + +"He told the court that at the Logan Trial," was the reply. + +"At the murder trial--he told that?" Mrs. Crozier asked almost +mechanically, her face gone pale and a little haggard. + +"He was obliged to answer when that wolf, Gus Burlingame, was after him," +interposed Kitty with kindness in her tone, for, suddenly, she saw +through the outer walls of the little wife's being into the inner courts. +She saw that Mrs. Crozier loved her husband now, whatever she had done in +the past. The sight of love does not beget compassion in a loveless +heart, but there was love in Kitty's heart; and it was even greater than +she would have wished any human being to see; and by it she saw with +radium clearness through the veil of the other woman's being. + +"Surely he could have avoided answering that," urged Mona Crozier +bitterly. + +"Only by telling a lie," Kitty quickly answered, "and I don't believe he +ever told a lie in his life. Come," she added, "I will show you his +room. My mother needn't do it, and so she won't be responsible. You +have your rights as a wife until they're denied you. You mustn't come, +mother," she said to Mrs. Tynan, and she put a tender hand on her arm. + +"This way," she added to the little person in the pale blue, which suited +well her very dark hair, blue eyes, and rose-touched cheeks. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +KITTY SPEAKS HER MIND AGAIN + +A moment later they stood inside Shiel Crozier's room. The first glance +his wife gave took in the walls, the table, the bureau, and the desk +which contained her own unopened letter. She was looking for a +photograph of herself. + +There was none in the room, and an arid look came into her face. The +glance and its sequel did not escape Kitty's notice. She knew well--as +who would not?--what Mona Crozier was hoping to see, and she was human +enough to feel a kind of satisfaction in the wife's chagrin and +disappointment; for the unopened letter in the baize-covered desk which +she had read was sufficient warrant for a punishment and penalty due the +little lady, and not the less because it was so long delayed. Had not +Shiel Crozier had his draught of bitter herbs to drink over the past five +years? + +Moreover, Kitty was sure beyond any doubt at all that Shiel Crozier's +wife, when she wrote the letter, did not love her husband, or at least +did not love him in the right or true way. She loved him only so far as +her then selfish nature permitted her to do; only in so far as the pride +of money which she had, and her husband had not, did not prevent; only in +so far as the nature of a tyrant could love--though the tyranny was pink +and white and sweetly perfumed and had the lure of youth. In her +primitive way Kitty had intuitively apprehended the main truth, and that +was enough to justify her in contributing to Mona Crozier's punishment. + +Kitty's perceptions were true. At the start, Mona was in nature +proportionate to her size; and when she married she had not loved Crozier +as he had loved her. Maybe that was why--though he may not have admitted +it to himself--he could not bear to be beholden to her when his ruin +came. Love makes all things possible, and there is no humiliation in +taking from one who loves and is loved, that uncapitalised and communal +partnership which is not of the earth earthy. Perhaps that was why, +though Shiel loved her, he had had a bitterness which galled his soul; +why he had a determination to win sufficient wealth to make himself +independent of her. Down at the bottom of his chivalrous Irish heart +he had learned the truth, that to be dependent on her would beget in her +contempt for him, and he would be only her paid paramour and not her +husband in the true sense. Quixotic he had been, but under his quixotism +there was at least the shadow of a great tragical fact, and it had made +him a matrimonial deserter. Whether tragedy or comedy would emerge was +all on the knees of the gods. + +"It's a nice room, isn't it?" asked Kitty when there had passed from +Mona Crozier's eyes the glaze or mist--not of tears, but stupefaction-- +which had followed her inspection of the walls, the bureau, the table, +and the desk. + +"Most comfortable, and so very clean--quite spotless," the wife answered +admiringly, and yet drearily. It made her feel humiliated that her man +could live this narrow life of one room without despair, with sufficient +resistance to the lure of her hundred and fifty thousand pounds and her +own delicate and charming person. Here, it would seem, he was content. +One easy-chair, made out of a barrel, a couch, a bed--a very narrow bed, +like a soldier's, a bed for himself alone--a small table, a shelf on the +wall with a dozen books, a little table, a bureau, and an old-fashioned, +sloping-topped, shallow desk covered with green baize, on high legs, so +that like a soldier too he could stand as he wrote (Crozier had made that +high stand for the desk himself). That was what the room conveyed to +her--the spirit of the soldier, bare, clean, strong, sparse: a workshop +and a chamber of sleep in one, like the tent of an officer on the march. +After the feeling had come to her, to heighten the sensation she espied a +little card hung under the small mirror on the wall. There was writing +on it, and going nearer, she saw in red pencil the words, "Courage, +soldier!" + +These were the words which Kitty was so fond of using, and the girl had +a thrill of triumph now as she saw the woman from whom Crozier had fled +looking at the card. She herself had come and looked at it many times +since Crozier had gone, for he had only put it there just before he left +on his last expedition to Aspen Vale to carry through his deal. It had +brought a great joy to Kitty's heart. It had made her feel that she had +some share in his life; that, in a way, she had helped him on the march, +the vivandiere who carried the water-bag which would give him drink when +parched, battle-worn, or wounded. + +Mona Crozier turned away from the card, sadly reflecting that nothing in +the room recalled herself; that she was not here in the very core of his +life in even the smallest way. Yet this girl, this sunny creature with +the call of youth and passion in her eyes, this Ruth of the wheat-fields, +came and went here as though she was a part of it. She did this and that +for him, and she was no doubt on such terms of intimacy with him that +they were really part of each other's life in a scheme of domesticity +unlike any boarding-house organization she had ever known. Here in +everything there was the air, the decorum, and the unartificial comfort +of home. + +This was why he could live without his wedded wife and her gold and her +brocade, and the silk and the Persian rugs, and the grand piano and the +carriages and the high silk hat from Piccadilly. Her husband had had the +luxuries of wealth, and here he was living like a Spartan on his hill-- +and alone; though he had a wife whom men had beseiged both before and +after marriage. A feeling of impotent indignation suddenly took +possession of her. Here he was with two women, unattached,--one +interesting and good and agreeable and good-looking, and the other almost +a beauty,--who were part of the whole rustic scheme in which he lived. +They made him comfortable, they did the hundred things that a valet or a +fond wife would do; they no doubt hung on every word he uttered--and he +could be interesting beyond most men. She had realised terribly how +interesting he was after he had fled; when men came about her and talked +to her in many ways, with many variations, but always with the one tune +behind all they said; always making for the one goal, whatever the point +from which they started or however circuitous their route. + +As time went on she had hungrily longed to see her husband again, and +other men had no power to interest her; but still she had not sought to +find him. At first it had been offended pride, injured self-esteem, in +which the value of her own desirable self and of her very desirable +fortune was not lost; then it became the pride of a wife in whom the +spirit of the eternal woman was working; and she would have died rather +than have sought to find him. Five years--and not a word from him. + +Five years--and not a letter from him! Her eyes involuntarily fell on +the high desk with the greenbaize top. Of all the letters he had written +at that desk not one had been addressed to her. Slowly, and with an +unintentional solemnity, she went up to it and laid a hand upon it. Her +chin only cleared the edge of it-he was a tall man, her husband. + +"This is the place of secrets, I suppose?" she said, with a bright smile +and an attempt at gaiety to Kitty, who had watched her with burning eyes; +for she had felt the thrill of the moment. She was as sensitive to +atmosphere of this sad play of life as nearly and as vitally as the +deserted wife. + +"I shouldn't think it a place of secrets," Kitty answered after a moment. +"He seldom locks it, and when he does I know where the key is." + +"Indeed?" Mona Crozier stiffened. A look of reproach came into her +eyes. It was as though she was looking down from a great height upon a +poor creature who did not know the first rudiments of personal honour, +the fine elemental customs of life. + +Kitty saw and understood, but she did not hasten to reply, or to set +things right. She met the lofty look unflinchingly, and she had pride +and some little malice too--it would do Mrs. Crozier good, she thought-- +in saying, as she looked down on the humming-bird trying to be an eagle: + +"I've had to get things for him-papers and so on, and send them on when +he was away, and even when he was at home I've had to act for him; and so +even when it was locked I had to know where the key was. He asked me to +help him that way." + +Mona noted the stress laid upon the word home, and for the first time she +had a suspicion that this girl knew more than even the Logan Trial had +disclosed, and that she was being satirical and suggestive. + +"Oh, of course," she returned cheerfully in response to Kitty--"you acted +as a kind of clerk for him!" There was a note in her voice which she +might better not have used. If she but knew it, she needed this girl's +friendship very badly. She ought to have remembered that she would not +have been here in her husband's room had it not been for the letter Kitty +had written--a letter which had made her heart beat so fast when she +received it, that she had sunk helpless to the floor on one of those soft +rugs, representing the soft comfort which wealth can bring. + +The reply was like a slap in the face. + +"I acted for him in any way at all that he wished me to," Kitty answered, +with quiet boldness and shining, defiant face. + +Mona's hand fell away from the green baize desk, and her eyes again lost +their sight for a moment. Kitty was not savage by nature. She had been +goaded as much by the thought of the letter Crozier's wife had written to +him in the hour of his ruin as by the presence of the woman in this +house, where things would never be as they had been before. She had +struck hard, and now she was immediately sorry for it: for this woman was +here in response to her own appeal; and, after all, she might well be +jealous of the fact that Crozier had had close to him for so long and in +such conditions a girl like herself, younger than his own wife, and +prettier--yes, certainly prettier, she admitted to herself. + +"He is that kind of a man. What he asked for, any good woman could give +and not be sorry," Kitty convincingly added when the knife had gone deep +enough. + +"Yes, he was that kind of a man," responded the other gently now, and +with a great sigh of relief. Suddenly she came nearer and touched +Kitty's arm. "And thank you for saying so," she added. "He and I have +been so long parted, and you have seen so much more of him than I have of +late years! You know him better--as he is. If I said something sharp +just now, please forgive me. I am--indeed, I am grateful to you and your +mother." + +She paused. It was hard for her to say what she felt she must say, for +she did not know how her husband would receive her--he had done without +her for so long; and she might need this girl and her mother sorely. The +girl was a friend in the best sense, or she would not have sent for her. +She must remind herself of this continually lest she should take wrong +views. + +Kitty nodded, but for a moment she did not reply. Her hand was on the +baize-covered desk. All at once, with determination in her eyes, she +said: "You didn't use him right or you'd not have been parted for five +years. You were rich and he was poor, he is poor now, though he may be +rich any day, and he wouldn't stay with you because he wouldn't take your +money to live on. If you had been a real wife to him he wouldn't have +seen that he'd be using your money; he'd have taken it as though it was +his own, out of the purse always open and belonging to both, just as +though you were partners. You must feel--" + +"Hush, for pity's sake, hush!" interrupted the other. + +"You are going to see him again," Kitty persisted. "Now, don't you think +it just as well to know what the real truth is?" + +"How do you know what is the truth?" asked the trembling little stranger +with a last attempt to hold her position, to conceal from herself the +actual facts. + +"The Young Doctor and my mother and I were with him all the time he was +ill after he was shot, and the Trial had only told half the truth. He +wanted us, his best friends here, to know the whole truth, so he told us +that he left you because he couldn't bear to live on your money. It was +you made him feel that, though he didn't say so. All the time he told +his story he spoke of you as though you were some goddess, some great +queen--" + +A look of hope, of wonder, of relief came into the tiny creature's eyes. +"He spoke like that of me; he said--?" + +"He said what no one else would have said, probably; but that's the way +with people in love--they see what no one else sees, they think what no +one else thinks. He talked with a sort of hush in his voice about you +till we thought you must be some stately, tall, splendid Helen of Troy +with a soul like an ocean, instead of"--she was going to say something +that would have seemed unkind, and she stopped herself in time--"instead +of a sort of fairy, one of the little folk that never grow up; the same +as my father used to tell me about." + +"You think very badly of me, then?" returned the other with a sigh. +Her courage, her pride, her attempt to control the situation had vanished +suddenly, and she became for the moment almost the child she looked. + +"We've only just begun. We're all his friends here, and we'll judge you +and think of you according to what happens between you and him. You +wrote him that letter!" + +She suddenly placed her hand on the desk as the inspiration came to her +to have this matter of the letter out now, and to have Mrs. Crozier know +exactly what the position was, no matter what might be thought of +herself. She was only thinking of Shiel Crozier and his future now. + +"What letter did I write?" There was real surprise and wonder in her +tone. + +"That last letter you wrote to him--the letter in which you gave him fits +for breaking his promise, and talked like a proud, angry angel from the +top of the stairs." + +"How do you know of that letter? He, my husband, told you what was in +that letter; he showed it to you?" The voice was indignant, low, and +almost rough with anger. + +"Yes, your husband showed me the letter--unopened." + +"Unopened--I do not understand." Mona steadied herself against the foot +of the bed and looked in a helpless way at Kitty. Her composure was +gone, though she was very quiet, and she had that look of a vital +absorption which possesses human beings in crises of their lives. + +Suddenly Kitty took from behind a book on the shelf a key, opened the +desk, and drew out the letter which Crozier had kept sealed and unopened +all the years, which he had never read. + +"Do you know that?" Kitty asked, and held it out for Mrs. Crozier to +see. + +Two dark blue eyes stared confusedly at the letter--at her own +handwriting. Kitty turned it over. "You see it is closed as it was when +you sent it to him. He has never opened it. He does not know what is in +it." + +"He has-kept it--five years--unopened," Mona said in broken phrases +scarce above a whisper. + +"He has never opened it, as you see." + +"Give--give it to me," the wife said, stepping forward to stay Kitty's +hand as she opened the lid of the desk to replace the letter. + +"It's not your letter--no, you shall not," said Kitty firmly as she +jerked aside the hand laid upon her wrist, and threw one arm on the lid, +holding it down as Mrs. Crozier tried to keep it open. Then with a swift +action of the free hand she locked the desk and put the key in her +pocket. + +"If you destroyed this letter he would never believe but that it was +worse than it is; and it is bad enough, Heaven knows, for any woman to +have written to her husband--or to any one else's husband. You thought +you were the centre of the world when you wrote that letter. Without a +penny, he would be a great man, with a great future; but you are only a +pretty little woman with a fortune, who has thought a great lot of +herself, and far too much of herself only, when she wrote that letter." + +"How do you know what is in it?" There was agony and challenge at once +in the other's voice. "Because I read it--oh, don't look so shocked! +I'd do it again. I knew just how to act when I'd read it. I steamed it +open and closed it up again. Then I wrote to you. I'm not sorry I did +it. My motive was a good one. I wanted to help him. I wanted to +understand everything, so that I'd know best what to do. Though he's so +far above us in birth and position, he seemed in one way like our own. +That's the way it is in new countries like this. We don't think of lots +of things that you finer people in the old countries do, and we don't +think evil till it trips us up. In a new country all are strangers among +the pioneers, and they have to come together. This town is only twenty +years old, and scarcely anybody knew each other at the start. We had to +take each other on trust, and we think the best as long as we can. Mr. +Crozier came to live with us, and soon he was just part of our life--not +a boarder; not some one staying the night who paid you what he owed you +in the morning. He was a friend you could say your prayers with, or eat +your meals with, or ride a hundred miles with, and just take it as a +matter of course; for he was part of what you were part of, all this out +here--don't you understand?" + +"I am trying hard to do so," was the reply in a hushed voice. Here was a +world, here were people of whom Mona Crozier had never dreamed. They +were so much of an antique time--far behind the time that her old land +represented; not a new world, but the oldest world of all. She began to +understand the girl also, and her face took on a comprehending look, as +with eyes like bronze suns Kitty continued: + +"So, though it was wrong--wicked--in one way, I read the letter, to do +some good by it, if it could be done. If I hadn't read it you wouldn't +be here. Was it worth while?" + +At that moment there was a knock at the outer door of the other room, or, +rather, on the lintel of it. Mona started. Suppose it was her husband +--that was her thought. + +Kitty read the look. "No, it isn't Mr. Crozier. It's the Young Doctor. +I know his knock. Will you come and see him?" + +The wife was trembling, she was very pale, her eyes were rather staring, +but she fought to control herself. It was evident that Kitty expected +her to do so. It was also quite certain that Kitty meant to settle +things now, in so far as it could be done. + +"He knows as much as you do?" asked Mrs. Crozier. + +"No, the Young Doctor hasn't read the letter and I haven't told him +what's in it; but he knows that I read it, and what he doesn't know he +guesses. He is Mr. Crozier's honest, clever friend. I've got an idea-- +an invention to put this thing right. It's a good one. You'll see. But +I want the Young Doctor to know about it. He never has to think twice. +He knows what to do the very first time." + +A moment later they were in the other room, with the Young Doctor smiling +down at "the little spot of a woman," as he called Crozier's wife. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +AWAITING THE VERDICT + +"You look quite settled and at home," the Young Doctor remarked, as he +offered Mrs. Crozier a chair. She took it, for never in her life had she +felt so small physically since coming to the great, new land. The +islands where she was born were in themselves so miniature that the minds +of their people, however small, were not made to feel insignificant. But +her mind, which was, after all, vastly larger in proportion than the body +enshrining it, felt suddenly that both were lost in a universe. Her +impulse was to let go and sink into the helplessness of tears, to be +overwhelmed by an unconquerable loneliness; but the Celtic courage in +her, added to that ancient native pride which prevents one woman from +giving way before another woman towards whom she bears jealousy, +prevented her from showing the weakness she felt. Instead, it roused +her vanity and made her choose to sit down, so disguising perceptibly the +disparity of height which gave Kitty an advantage over her and made the +Young Doctor like some menacing Polynesian god. + +Both these people had an influence and authority in Mona Crozier's life +which now outweighed the advantage wealth gave her. Her wealth had not +kept her husband beside her when delicate and perfumed tyranny began to +flutter its banners of control over him. Her fortune had driven him +forth when her beauty and her love ought to have kept him close to her, +whatever fate might bring to their door, or whatever his misfortune or +the catastrophe falling on him. It was all deeply humiliating, and the +inward dejection made her now feel that her body was the last effort of a +failing creative power. So she sat down instead of standing up in a vain +effort at retrieval. + +The Young Doctor sat down also, but Kitty did not, and in her buoyant +youth and command of the situation she seemed Amazonian to Mona's eyes. +It must be said for Kitty that she remained standing only because a +restlessness had seized her which was not present when she was with Mona +in Crozier's room. It was now as though something was going to happen +which she must face standing; as though something was coming out of the +unknown and forbidding future and was making itself felt before its time. +Her eyes were almost painfully bright as she moved about the room doing +little things. Presently she began to lay a cloth and place dishes +silently on the table--long before the proper time, as her mother +reminded her when she entered for a moment and then quickly passed on +into the kitchen, at a warning glance from Kitty, which said that the +Young Doctor and Mona were not to be disturbed. + +"Well, Askatoon is a place where one feels at home quickly," added the +Young Doctor, as Mona did not at once respond to his first remark. +"Every one who comes here always feels as though he--or she--owns the +place. It's the way the place is made. The trouble with most of us is +that we want to put the feeling into practice and take possession of +'all and sundry.' Isn't that true, Miss Tynan?" + +"As true as most things you say," retorted Kitty, as she flicked the +white tablecloth. "If mother and I hadn't such wonderful good health I +suppose you'd come often enough here to give you real possession. Do you +know, Mrs. Crozier," she added, with her wistful eyes vainly trying to be +merely mischievous, "he once charged me five dollars for torturing me +like a Red Indian. I had put my elbow out of joint, and he put it in +again with his knee and both hands, as though it was the wheel of a wagon +and he was trying to put on the tire." + +"Well, you were running round soon after," answered the Young Doctor. +"But as for the five dollars, I only took it to keep you quiet. So long +as you had a grievance you would talk and talk and talk, and you never +were so astonished in your life as when I took that five dollars." + +"I've taken care never to dislocate my elbow since." + +"No, not your elbow," remarked the Young Doctor meaningly, and turned to +Mona, who had now regained her composure. + +"Well, I shan't call you in to reduce the dislocation--that's the +medical term, isn't it?" persisted Kitty, with fire in her eyes. + +"What is the dislocation?" asked Mona, with a subtle, inquiring look but +a manner which conveyed interest. + +The Young Doctor smiled. "It's only her way of saying that my mind is +unhinged and that I ought to be sent to a private hospital for two." + +"No--only one," returned Kitty. + +"Marriage means common catastrophe, doesn't it?" he asked quizzically. + +"Generally it means that one only is permanently injured," replied Kitty, +lifting a tumbler and looking through it at him as though to see if the +glass was properly polished. + +Mona was mystified. At first she thought there had been oblique +references to her husband, but these remarks about marriage would +certainly exclude him. Yet, would they exclude him? During the time in +which Shiel's history was not known might there not have been--but no, +it could not have been so, for it was Kitty who had sent the letter which +had brought her to Askatoon. + +"Are you to be married--soon?" she asked of Kitty, with a friendly yet +trembling smile, for her agitation was, despite appearances, troubling +every nerve. + +"I've thought of it quite lately," responded Kitty calmly, seating +herself now and looking straight into the eyes of the woman, who was +suggesting more truth than she knew. + +"May I congratulate you? Am I justified on such slight acquaintance? +I am sure you have chosen wisely," was the smooth rejoinder. + +Kitty did not shrink from looking Mona in the eyes. "It isn't quite time +for congratulations yet, and I'm not sure I've chosen wisely. My family +very strongly disapproves. I can't help that, of course, and I may have +to elope and take the consequences." + +"It takes two to elope," interposed the Young Doctor, who thought that +Kitty, in her humorous extravagance, was treading very dangerous ground +indeed. He was thinking of Crozier and Kitty; but Kitty was thinking of +Crozier, and meaning John Sibley. Somehow she could not help playing +with this torturing thing in the presence of the wife of the man who was +the real "man in possession" so far as her life was concerned. + +"Why, he is waiting on the doorstep," replied Kitty boldly and referring +only to John Sibley. + +At that minute there was the crunch of gravel on the pathway and the +sound of a quick footstep. Kitty and Mona were on their feet at once. +Both recognised the step of Shiel Crozier. Presently the Young Doctor +recognised it also, but he rose with more deliberation. + +At that instant a voice calling from the road arrested Crozier's advance +to the open door of the room where they were. It was Jesse Bulrush +asking a question. Crozier paused in his progress, and in the moment's +time it gave, Kitty, with a swift look of inquiry and with a burst of the +real soul in her, caught the hand of Crozier's wife and pressed it +warmly. Then, with a face flushed and eyes that looked straight ahead of +her, she left the room as the Young Doctor went to the doorway and +stepped outside. Within ten feet of the door he met Crozier. + +"How goes it, patient?" he said, standing in Crozier's way. Being a man +who thought much and wisely for other people, he wanted to give the wife +time to get herself in control. + +"Right enough in your sphere of operations," answered Crozier. + +"And not so right in other fields, eh?" + +"I've come back after a fruitless hunt. They've got me, the thieves!" +said Crozier, with a look which gave his long face an almost tragic +austerity. Then suddenly the look changed, the mediaeval remoteness +passed, and a thought flashed up into his eves which made his expression +alive with humour. + +"Isn't it wonderful, that just when a man feels he wants a rope to hang +himself with, the rope isn't to be had?" he exclaimed. "Before he can +lay his hands on it he wants to hang somebody else, and then he has to +pause whether he will or no. Did I ever tell you the story of the old +Irishwoman who lived down at Kenmare, in Kerry? Well, she used to sit at +her doorway and lament the sorrows of the world with a depth of passion +that you'd think never could be assuaged. 'Oh, I fale so bad, I am so +wake--oh, I do fale so bad,' she used to say. 'I wish some wan would +take me by the ear and lade me round to the ould shebeen, and set me +down, and fill a noggen of whusky and make me dhrink it--whether I would +or no!' Whether I would or no I have to drink the cup of self-denial," +Crozier continued, "though Bradley and his gang have closed every door +against me here, and I've come back without what I went for at Aspen +Vale, for my men were away. I've come back without what I went for, but +I must just grin and bear it." He shrugged his shoulders and gave a +great sigh. + +"Perhaps you'll find what you went for here," returned the Young Doctor +meaningly. + +"There's a lot here--enough to make a man think life worth while"--inside +the room the wife shrank at the words, for she could hear all--"but just +the same I'm not thinking the thing I went to look for is hereabouts." + +"You never know your luck," was the reply. "'Ask and you shall find, +knock and it shall be opened unto you.'" + +The long face blazed up with humour again. "Do you mean that I haven't +asked you yet?" Crozier remarked, with a quizzical look, which had still +that faint hope against hope which is a painful thing for a good man's +eyes to see. + +The Young Doctor laid a hand on Crozier's arm. "No, I didn't mean that, +patient. I'm in that state when every penny I have is out to keep me +from getting a fall. I'm in that Starwhon coal-mine down at Bethbridge, +and it's like a suction-pump. I couldn't borrow a thousand dollars +myself now. I can't do it, or I'd stand in with you, Crozier. No, I +can't help you a bit; but step inside. There's a room in this house +where you got back your life by the help of a knife. There's another +room in there where you may get back your fortune by the help of a wife." + +Stepping aside he gave the wondering Crozier a slight push forward into +the doorway, then left him and hurried round to the back of the house, +where he hoped he might see Kitty. + +The Young Doctor found Kitty pumping water on a pail of potatoes and +stirring them with a broom-handle. + +"A most unscientific way of cleaning potatoes," he said, as Kitty did not +look at him. "If you put them in a trough where the water could run off, +the dirt would go with the water, and you would'nt waste time and +intelligence, and your fingers would be cleaner in the end." + +The only reply Kitty made was to flick the broomhead at him. It had been +dipped in water, and the spray from it slightly spattered his face. + +"Will you never grow up?" he exclaimed as he applied a handkerchief to +his ruddy face. + +"I'd like you so much better if you were younger--will you never be +young?" she asked. + +"It makes a man old before his time to have to meet you day by day and +live near you." + +"Why don't you try living with me?" she retorted. "Ah, then, you meant +me when you said to Mrs. Crozier that you were going to be married? +Wasn't that a bit 'momentary'? as my mother's cook used to remark. I +think we haven't 'kept company'--you and I" + +"It's true you haven't been a beau of mine, but I'd rather marry you than +be obliged to live with you," was the paradoxical retort. + +"You have me this time," he said, trying in vain to solve her reply. + +Kitty tossed her head. "No, I haven't got you this time, thank Heaven, +and I don't want you; but I'd rather marry you than live with you, as I +said. Isn't it the custom for really nice-minded people to marry to get +rid of each other--for five years, or for ever and ever and ever?" + +"What a girl you are, Kitty Tynan !" he said reprovingly. He saw that +she meant Crozier and his wife. + +Kitty ceased her work for an instant and, looking away from him into the +distance, said: "Three people said those same words to me all in one day +a thousand years ago. It was Mr. Crozier, Jesse Bulrush, and my mother; +and now you've said it a thousand years after; as with your inexpensive +education and slow mind you'd be sure to do." + +"I have an idea that Mrs. Crozier said the same to you also this very +day. Did she--come, did she?" + +"She didn't say, 'What a girl you are!' but in her mind she probably did +say, 'What a vixen!"' + +The Young Doctor nodded satirically. "If you continued as you began when +coming from the station, I'm sure she did; and also I'm sure it wasn't +wrong of her to say it." + +"I wanted her to say it. That's why I uttered the too, too utter-things, +as the comic opera says. What else was there to do? I had to help cure +her." + +"To cure her of what, miss?" + +"Of herself, doctor-man." + +The Young Doctor's look became graver. He wondered greatly at this young +girl's sage instinct and penetration. "Of herself? Ah, yes, to think +more of some one else than herself! That is--" + +"Yes, that is love," Kitty answered, her head bent over the pail and +stirring the potatoes hard. + +"I suppose it is," he answered. + +"I know it is," she returned. + +"Is that why you are going to be married?" he asked quizzically. + +"It will probably cure the man I marry of himself," she retorted. "Oh, +neither of us know what we are talking about--let's change the subject!" +she added impatiently now, with a change of mood, as she poured the water +off the potatoes. + +There was a moment's silence in which they were both thinking of the same +thing. "I wonder how it's all going inside there?" he remarked. +"I hope all right, but I have my doubts." + +"I haven't any doubt at all. It isn't going right," she answered +ruefully; "but it has to be made go right." + +"Whom do you think can do that?" + +Kitty looked him frankly and decisively in the face. Her eyes had the +look of a dreaming pietist for the moment. The deep-sea soul of her was +awake. "I can do it if they don't break away altogether at once. I +helped her more than you think. I told her I had opened that letter." + +He gasped. "My dear girl--that letter--you told her you had done such a +thing, such--!" + +"Don't dear girl me, if you please. I know what I am doing. I told her +that and a great deal more. She won't leave this house the woman she was +yesterday. She is having a quick cure--a cure while you wait." + +"Perhaps he is cured of her," remarked the Young Doctor very gravely. + +"No, no, the disease might have got headway, but it didn't," Kitty +returned, her face turned away. "He became a little better; but he was +never cured. That's the way with a man. He can never forget a woman he +has once cared for, and he can go back to her half loving her; but it +isn't the case with a woman. There's nothing so dead to a woman as a man +when she's cured of him. The woman is never dead to the man, no matter +what happens." + +The Young Doctor regarded her with a strange, new interest and a puzzled +surprise. "Sappho--Sappho, how did you come to know these things!" he +exclaimed. "You are only a girl at best, or something of a boy-girl at +worst, and yet you have, or think you have, got into those places which +are reserved for the old-timers in life's scramble. You talk like an +ancient dame." + +Kitty smiled, but her eyes had a slumbering look as if she was half +dreaming. "That's the mistake most of you make--men and women. There's +such a thing as instinct, and there's such a thing as keeping your eyes +open." + +"What did Mrs. Crozier say when you told her about opening that five- +year-old letter? Did she hate you?" + +Kitty nodded with wistful whimsicality. "For a minute she was like an +industrious hornet. Then I made her see she wouldn't have been here at +all if I hadn't opened it. That made, her come down from the top of her +nest on the church-spire, and she said that, considering my +opportunities, I was not such an aboriginal after all." + +"Now, look you, Saphira, prospective wife of Ananias, she didn't say +that, of course. Still, it doesn't matter, does it? The point is, +suppose he opens that letter now." + +"If he does, he'll probably not go with her. It was a letter that would +send a man out with a scalping-knife. Still, if Mr. Crozier had his +land-deal through he might not read the letter as it really is. His +brain wouldn't then be grasping what his eyes saw." + +"He hasn't got his land-deal through. He told me so just now before he +saw her." + +"Then it's ora pro nobis--it's pray for us hard," rejoined Kitty +sorrowfully. "Poor man from Kerry!" At that moment Mrs. Tynan came from +the house, her face flushed, her manner slightly agitated. "John Sibley +is here, Kitty--with two saddle-horses.... He says you promised to ride +with him to-day." + +"I probably did," responded Kitty calmly. "It's a good day for riding +too. But John will have to wait. Please tell him to come back at six +o'clock. There'll be plenty of time for an hour's ride before sundown." + +"Are you lame, dear child?" asked her mother ironically. "Because if +you're not, perhaps you'll be your own messenger. It's no way to treat a +friend--or whatever you like to call him." + +Kitty smiled tenderly at her mother. "Then would you mind telling him +to come here, mother darling? I'm giving this doctor-man a prescription. +Ah, please do what I ask you, mother! It is true about the prescription. +It's not for himself; it's for the foreign people quarantined inside." +She nodded towards the room where Shiel Crozier and his wife were shaping +their fate. + +As her mother disappeared with a gesture of impatience and the remark +that she washed her hands of the whole Sibley business, the Young Doctor +said to Kitty, "What is your prescription, Ma'm'selle Saphira? Suppose +they come out of quarantine with a clean bill of health?" + +"If they do that you needn't make up the prescription. But if Aspen Vale +hasn't given him what he wanted, then Mr. Shiel Crozier will still be an +exile from home and the angel in the house." + +"What is the prescription? Out with your Sibylline leaves!" + +"It's in that unopened letter. When the letter is opened you'll see it +effervesce like a seidlitz powder." + +"But suppose I am not here when the letter is opened?" + +"You must be here-you must. You'll stay now, if you please." + +"I'm afraid I can't. I have patients waiting." Kitty made an impetuous +gesture of command. "There are two patients here who are at the crisis +of their disease. You may be wanted to save a life any minute now." + +"I thought that with your prescription you were to be the AEsculapius." + +"No, I'm only going to save the reputation of AEsculapius by giving him a +prescription got from a quack to give to a goose." + +"Come, come, no names. You are incorrigible. I believe you'd have your +joke on your death-bed." + +"I should if you were there. I should die laughing," Kitty retorted. + +"There will be no death-bed for you, miss. You'll be translated--no, +that's not right; no one could translate you." + +"God might--or a man I loved well enough not to marry him." + +There was a note of emotion in her laugh as she uttered the words. It +did not escape the ear of the Young Doctor, who regarded her fixedly for +a moment before he said: "I'm not sure that even He would be able to +translate you. You speak your own language, and it's surely original. +I am only just learning its alphabet. No one else speaks it. I have a +fear that you'll be terribly lonely as you travel along the trail, Kitty +Tynan." + +A light of pleasure came into Kitty's eyes, though her face was a little +drawn. "You really do think I'm original--that I'm myself and not like +anybody else?" she asked him with a childlike eagerness. + +"Almost more than any one I ever met," answered the Young Doctor gently; +for he saw that she had her own great troubles, and he also felt now +fully what this comedy or tragedy inside the house meant to her. "But +you're terribly lonely--and that's why: because you are the only one of +your kind." + +"No, that's why I'm not going to be lonely," she said, nodding towards +the corner of the house where John Sibley appeared. + +Suddenly, with a gesture of confidence and almost of affection, she laid +a hand on the Young Doctor's breast. "I've left the trail, doctor-man. +I'm cutting across the prairie. Perhaps I shall reach camp and perhaps I +shan't; but anyhow I'll know that I met one good man on the way. And I +also saw a resthouse that I'd like to have stayed at, but the blinds were +drawn and the door was locked." + +There was a strange, eerie look in her face again as her eyes of soft +umber dwelt on his for a moment; then she turned with a gay smile to John +Sibley, who had seen her hand on the Young Doctor's chest without dismay; +for the joy of Kitty was that she hid nothing; and, anyhow, the Young +Doctor had a place of his own; and also, anyhow, Kitty did what she +pleased. Once when she had visited the Coast the Governor had talked to +her with great gusto and friendliness; and she had even gone so far as to +touch his arm while, chuckling at her whimsically, he listened to a story +she told him of life at the rail-head. And the Governor had patted her +fingers in quite a fatherly way--or not, as the mind of the observer saw +it; while subsequently his secretary had written verses to her. + +"So you've been gambling again--you've broken your promise to me," she +said reprovingly to Sibley, but with that wonderful, wistful laughter in +her eyes. + +Sibley looked at her in astonishment. "Who told you?" he asked. It had +only happened the night before, and it didn't seem possible she could +know. + +He was quite right. It wasn't possible she could know, and she didn't +know. She only divined. + +"I knew when you made the promise you couldn't keep it; that's why I +forgive you now," she added. "Knowing what I did about you, I oughtn't +to have let you make it." + +The Young Doctor saw in her words a meaning that John Sibley could never +have understood, for it was a part of the story of Crozier's life +reproduced--and with what a different ending! + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +"MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM" + +When Crozier stepped out of the bright sunlight into the shady living- +room of the Tynan home, his eyes were clouded by the memory of his +conference with Studd Bradley and his financial associates, and by the +desolate feeling that the five years since he had left England had +brought him nothing--nothing at all except a new manhood. But that he +did not count an asset, because he had not himself taken account of this +new capital. He had never been an introspective man in the philosophic +sense, and he never had thought that he was of much account. He had +lived long on his luck, and nothing had come of it--"nothing at all, at +all," as he said to himself when he stepped inside the room where, +unknown to him, his wife awaited him. So abstracted was he, so disturbed +was his gaze (fixed on the inner thing), that he did not see the figure +in blue and white over against the wall, her hand on the big arm-chair +once belonging to Tyndall Tynan, and now used always by Shiel Crozier, +"the white-haired boy of the Tynan sanatorium," as Jesse Bulrush had +called him. + +There was a strange timidity, and a fear not so strange, in Mona's eyes +as she saw her husband enter with that quick step which she had so +longingly remembered after he had fled from her; but of which she had +taken less account when he was with her at Lammis long ago-When Crozier +of Lammis was with her long ago. How tall and shapely he was! How large +he loomed with the light behind him! How shadowed his face and how +distant the look in his eyes. + +Somehow the room seemed too small for him, and yet he had lived in this +very house for four years and more; he had slept in the next room all +that time; had eaten at this table and sat in this very chair--Mrs. Tynan +had told her that--for this long time, like the master of a household. +With that far-away, brooding look in his face, he seemed in one sense as +distant from her as when she was in London in those dreary, desolate +years with no knowledge of his whereabouts, a widow in every sense save +one; but in her acts--that had to be said for her--a wife always and not +a widow. She had not turned elsewhere, though there had been temptation +enough to do so. + +Crozier advanced to the centre of the room, even to the table laid for +dinner, before he was conscious of some one in the room, of a figure by +the chair. For a moment he stood still, startled as if he had seen a +vision, and his sight became blurred. When it cleared, Mona had come a +step nearer to him, and then he saw her clearly. He caught his breath as +though Life had burst upon him with some staggering revelation. If she +had been a woman of genius, as in her way Kitty Tynan was, she would have +spoken before he had a chance to do so. Instead, she wished to see how +he would greet her, to hear what he would say. She was afraid of him +now. It was not her gift to do the right thing by perfect instinct; +she had to think things out; and so she did now. Still it has to be said +for her that she also had a strange, deep sense of apprehension in the +presence of the man whose arms had held her fast, and then let her go +for so bitter a length of time, in which her pride was lacerated and her +heart brought low. She did not know how she was going to be met now, and +a womanly shyness held her back. If she had said one word--his name +only--it might have made a world of difference to them both at that +moment; for he was tortured by failure, and now when hope was gone, here +was the woman whom he had left in order to force gifts from fate to bring +himself back to her. + +"You--you here!" he exclaimed hoarsely. He did not open his arms to her +or go a step nearer to her. His look was that of blank amazement, of +mingled remembrance and stark realisation. This was a turn of affairs +for which he had made no calculation. There had ever been the question +of his return to her, but never of her coming to him. Yet here she was, +debonnaire and fresh and perfectly appointed--and ah, so terribly neat +and spectacularly finessed! Here she was with all that expert formality +which, in the old days, had been a reproach to his loosely-swung life and +person, to his careless, almost slovenly but well-brushed, cleanly, and +polished ease--not like his wife, as though he had been poured out of a +mould and set up to dry. He was not tailor-made, and she had ever been +so exact that it was as though she had been crystallised, clothes and +all--a perfect crystal, yet a crystal. It was this very perfection, so +charming to see, but in a sense so inhuman, which had ever dismayed him. +"What should I be doing in the home of an angel!" he had exclaimed to +himself in the old home at Lammis. + +Truth is, he ought never to have had such a feeling, and he would not +have had it, if she had diffused the radiance of love, which would have +made her outer perfectness mere slovenliness beside her inner charm and +magnetism. Very little of all this passed through Crozier's mind, as +with confused vision he looked at her. He had borne the ordeal of the +witness-box in the Logan Trial with superb coolness; he had been in +physical danger over and over again, and had kept his head; he had never +been faced by a human being who embarrassed him--except his own wife. +"There is no fear like that of one's own wife," was the saying of an +ancient philosopher, and Crozier had proved it true; not because of +errors committed, but because he was as sensitive as a girl of +sensibility; because he felt that his wife did not understand him, and he +was ever in fear of doing the wrong thing, while eager beyond telling to +please her. After all, during the past five years, parted from her while +loving her, there had still been a feeling of relief unexplainable to +himself in not having to think whether he was pleasing her or not, or to +reproach himself constantly that he was failing to conform to her +standard. + +"How did you come--why? How did you know?" he asked helplessly, as she +made no motion to come nearer; as she kept looking at him with an +expression in her eyes wholly unfamiliar to him. Yet it was not wholly +unfamiliar, for it belonged to the days when he courted her, when she +seemed to have got nearer to him than in the more intimate relations of +married life. + +"Is--is that all you have to say to me, Shiel?" she asked, with a +swelling note of feeling in her voice; while there was also emerging in +her look an elusive pride which might quickly become sharp indignation. +That her deserter should greet her so after five years of such offence to +a woman's self-respect, as might entitle her to become a rebel against +matrimony, was too cruel to be borne. This feeling suddenly became alive +in her, in spite of a joy in her heart different from that which she had +ever known; in defiance of the fact that now that they were together once +more, what would she not do to prevent their being driven apart again! + +"After abandoning me for five years, is that all you have to say to me, +Shiel? After I have suffered before the world--" + +He threw up his arms with a passionate gesture. "The world!" he +exclaimed--"the devil take the world! I've been out of it for five +years, and well out of it. What do I care for the world!" + +She drew herself up in a spirit of defence. "It isn't what you care for +the world, but I had to live in it--alone, and because I was alone, +eyebrows were lifted. It has been easy enough for you. You were where +no one knew you. You had your freedom"--she advanced to the table, and, +as though unconsciously, he did the same, and they gazed at each other +over the white linen and its furnishings--"and no one was saying that +your wife had left you for this or that, because of her bad conduct or of +yours. Either way it was not what was fair and just; yet I had to bear +and suffer, not you. There is no pain like it. There I was in misery +and--" + +A bitter smile came to his lips. "A woman can endure a good deal when +she has all life's luxuries in her grasp. Did you ever think, Mona, that +a man must suffer when he goes out into a world where he knows no one, +penniless, with no trade, no profession, nothing except his own helpless +self? He might have stayed behind among the luxuries that belonged to +another, and eaten from the hand of his wife's charity, but"--(all the +pride and pain of the old situation rose up in him, impelled by the +brooding of the years of separation, heightened by the fact that he was +no nearer to his goal of financial independence of her than he was when +he left London five years before)--"but do you think, no matter what I've +done, broken a pledge or not, been in the wrong a thousand times as much +as I was, that I'd be fed by the hand of one to whom I had given a pledge +and broken it? Do you think that I'd give her the chance to say, or not +to say, but only think, 'I forgive you; I will give you your food and +clothes and board and bed, but if you are not good in the future, I will +be very, very angry with you'? Do you think--?" + +His face was flaming now. The pent-up flood of remorse and resentment +and pride and love--the love that tore itself in pieces because it had +not the pride and self-respect which independence as to money gives-- +broke forth in him, fresh as he was from a brutal interview with the +financial clique whom he had given the chance to make much money, and who +were now, for a few thousand dollars, trying to cudgel him out of his one +opportunity to regain his place in his lost world. + +"I live--I live like this," he continued, with a gesture that embraced +the room where they were, "and I have one room to myself where I have +lived over four years"--he pointed towards it. "Do you think I would +choose this and all it means--its poverty and its crudeness, its distance +from all I ever had and all my people had, if I could have stood the +other thing--a pauper taking pennies from his own wife? I had had taste +enough of it while I had a little something left; but when I lost +everything on Flamingo, and I was a beggar, I knew I could not stand the +whole thing. I could not, would not, go under the poor-law and accept +you, with the lash of a broken pledge in your hand, as my guardian. So +that's why I left, and that's why I stay here, and that's why I'm going +to stay here, Mona." + +He looked at her firmly, though his face had that illumination which the +spirit in his eyes--the Celtic fire drawn through the veins of his +ancestors--gave to all he did and felt; and now as in a dream he saw +little things in her he had never seen before. He saw that a little +strand of her beautiful dark hair had broken away from its ordered place +and hung prettily against the rosy, fevered skin of her cheek just beside +her ear. He saw that there were no rings on her fingers save one, and +that was her wedding-ring--and she had always been fond of wearing rings. +He noted, involuntarily, that in her agitation the white tulle at her +bosom had been disturbed into pretty disarray, and that there was neither +brooch nor necklace at her breast or throat. + +"If you stay, I am going to stay too," she declared in an almost +passionate voice, and she spoke with deliberation and a look which left +no way open to doubt. She was now a valiant little figure making a fight +for happiness. + +"I can't prevent that," he responded stubbornly. + +She made a quick, appealing motion of her hands. "Would you prevent it? +Aren't you glad to see me? Don't you love me any more? You used to love +me. In spite of all, you used to love me. Even though you hated my +money, and I hated your gambling--your betting on horses. You used to +love me--I was sure you did then. Don't you love me now, Shiel?" + +A gloomy look passed over his face. Memory of other days was admonishing +him. "What is the good of one loving when the other doesn't? And, +anyhow, I made up my mind five years ago that I would not live on my +wife. I haven't done so, and I don't mean to 'do so. I don't mean to +take a penny of your money. I should curse it to damnation if I was +living on it. I'm not, and I don't mean to do so." + +"Then I'll stay here and work too, without it," she urged, with a light +in her eyes which they had never known. + +He laughed mirthlessly. "What could you do--you never did a day's work +in your life!" + +"You could teach me how, Shiel." + +His jaw jerked in a way it had when he was incredulous. "You used to say +I was only--mark you, only a dreamer and a sportsman. Well, I'm no +longer a dreamer and a sportsman; I'm a practical man. I've done with +dreaming and sportsmanship. I can look at a situation as it is, and--" + +"You are dreaming--but yes, you are dreaming still," she interjected. +"And you are a sportsman still, but it is the sport of a dreamer, and a +mad dreamer too. Shiel, in spite of all my faults in the past, I come to +you, to stay with you, to live on what you earn if you like, if it's only +a loaf of bread a day. I--I don't care about my money. I don't care +about the luxuries which money can buy; I can do without them if I have +you. Am I not to stay, and won't you--won't you kiss me, Shiel?" + +She came close to him-came round the table till she stood within a few +feet of him. + +There was one trembling instant when he would have taken her hungrily +into his arms, but as if some evil spirit interposed with malign purpose, +there came the sound of feet on the gravel outside, and the figure of a +man darkened the doorway. It was Augustus Burlingame, whose face as he +saw Mona Crozier took on an ironical smile. + +"Yes--what do you want?" inquired Crozier quietly. "A few words with +Mr. Crozier on business, if he is not too much occupied?" + +"What business?" + +"I am acting for Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons." + +The cloud darkened on Crozier's face. His lips tightened, his face +hardened. "I will see you in a moment--wait outside, please," he added, +as Burlingame made as though to step inside. "Wait at the gate," he +added quietly, but with undisguised contempt. + +The moment of moments for Mona and himself had passed. All the +bitterness of defeat was on him again. All the humiliation of undeserved +failure to accomplish what had been the dear desire of five years bore +down his spirit now. Suddenly he had a suspicion that his wife had +received information of his whereabouts from this very man, Burlingame. +Had not the Young Doctor said that Burlingame had written to lawyers in +the old land to get information concerning him? Was it not more than +likely that he had given his wife the knowledge which had brought her +here? + +When Burlingame had disappeared he turned to Mona. "Who told you I was +here? Who wrote to you?" he asked darkly. The light had died away from +his face. It was ascetic in its lonely gravity now. + +"Your doctor cabled to Castlegarry and Miss Tynan wrote to me." + +A faint flush spread over Crozier's face. "How did Miss Tynan know where +to write?" + +Mona had told the truth at once because she felt it was the only way. +Now, however, she was in a position where she must either tell him that +Kitty had opened that still sealed letter from herself to him which he +had carried all these years, or else tell him an untruth. She had no +right to tell him what Kitty had confided to her. There was no other way +save to lie. + +"How should I know? It was enough for me to get her letter," she +replied. + +"At Castlegarry?" + +What was there to do? She must keep faith with Kitty, who had given her +this sight of her husband again. + +"Forwarded from Lammis," she said. "It reached me before the doctor's +cable." + +So it was Kitty--Kitty Tynan-who had brought his wife to this new home +from which he had been trying so hard to get back to the old home. +Kitty, the angel of the house. + +"You wrote me a letter which drove me from home," he said heavily. + +"No--no--no," she protested. "It was not that. I know it was not that. +It was my money--it was that which drove you away. You have just said +so." + +"You wrote me a hateful letter," he persisted. "You didn't want to see +me. You sent it to me by your sweet, young brother." + +Her eyes flashed. "My letter did not drive you away. It couldn't have. +You went because you did not love me. It was that and my money, not the +letter, not the letter." + +Somehow she had a curious feeling that the very letter which contained +her bitter and hateful reproaches might save her yet. The fact that he +had not opened it--well, she must see Kitty again. Her husband was in a +dark mood. She must wait. She knew that her fortunate moment had passed +when the rogue Burlingame appeared. She must wait for another. + +"Shall I go now? You want to see that man outside. Shall I go, Shiel?" +She was very pale, very quiet, steady and gentle. + +"I must hear what that fellow has to say. It is business--important," +he replied. "It may mean anything--everything, or nothing." + +As she left the room he had an impulse to call her back, but he conquered +it. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +"'TWAS FOR YOUR PLEASURE YOU CAME HERE, YOU SHALL GO BACK FOR MINE" + +For a moment Crozier stood looking at the closed doorway through which +Mona had gone, with a look of repentant affection in his eyes; but as the +thought of his own helpless insolvency and broken hopes flashed across +his mind, a look of dark and harassed reflection shadowed his face. He +turned to the front doorway with a savage gesture. The mutilated dignity +of his manhood, the broken pride of a lifetime, the bitterness in his +heart need not be held in check in dealing with the man who waited to +give him a last thrust of enmity. + +He left the house. Burlingame was seated on the stump of a tree which +had been made into a seat. "Come to my room if you have business with +me," Crozier said sharply. + +As they went, Crozier swung aside from the front door towards the corner +of the house. + +"The back way?" asked Burlingame with a sneer. + +"The old familiar way to you," was the smarting reply. "In any case, you +are not welcome in Mrs. Tynan's part of the house. My room is my own, +however, and I should prefer you within four walls while doing business +with you." + +Burlingame's face changed colour slightly, for the tone of Crozier's +voice, the grimness of his manner, suggested an abnormal condition. +Burlingame was not a brave man physically. He had never lived the +outdoor life, though he had lived so much among outdoor people. +He was that rare thing in a new land, a decadent, a connoisseur in vice, +a lover of opiates and of liquor. He was young enough yet not to be +incapacitated by it. His face and hands were white and a little flabby, +and he wore his hair rather long, which, it is said, accounts for the +weakness of some men, on the assumption that long hair wastes the +strength. But Burlingame quickly remembered the attitude of the lady-- +Crozier's wife, he was certain--and of Crozier in the dining-room a few +moments before, and to his suspicious eyes it was not characteristic of +a happy family party. No doubt this grimness of Crozier was due to +domestic trouble and not wholly to his own presence. Still, he felt +softly for the tiny pistol he always carried in his big waistcoat pocket, +and it comforted him. + +Beyond the corner of the house Crozier paused and took a key from his +pocket. It opened a side door to his own room, seldom used, since it was +always so pleasant in this happy home to go through the main living-room, +which every one liked so much that, though it was not the dining-room, it +was generally used as such, and though it was not the parlour, it was its +frequent substitute. Opening the door, Crozier stepped aside to let +Burlingame pass. It was two years since Burlingame had been in this +room, and then he had entered it without invitation. His inquisitiveness +had led him to explore it with no good intent when he lived in the house. + +Entering now, he gave it quick scrutiny. It was clear he was looking for +something in particular. He was, in fact, searching for signs of its +occupancy by another than Shiel Crozier--tokens of a woman's presence. +There was, however, no sign at all of that, though there were signs of +a woman's care and attention in a number of little things--homelike, +solicitous, perhaps affectionate care and attention. Certainly the +spotless pillows, the pretty curtains, the pincushion, and charmingly +valanced bed and shelves, cheap though the material was, showed a woman's +very friendly care. When he lived in that house there were no such +little attentions paid to him! It was his experience that where such +attentions went something else went with them. A sensualist himself, it +was not conceivable to him that men and women could be under the same +roof without "passages of sympathetic friendship and tokens of affinity." +That was a phrase he had frequently used when pursuing his own sort of +happiness. + +His swift scrutiny showed that Crozier's wife had no habitation here, and +that gave him his cue for what the French call "the reconstruction of the +crime." It certainly was clear that, as he had suggested at the Logan +Trial, there was serious trouble in the Crozier family of two, and the +offender must naturally be the man who had flown, not the woman who had +stayed. Here was circumstantial evidence. + +His suggestive glance, the look in his eyes, did not escape Crozier, who +read it all aright; and a primitive expression of natural antipathy +passed across his mediaeval face, making it almost inquisitorial. + +"Will you care to sit?" he said, however, with the courtesy he could +never avoid; and he pointed to a chair beside the little table in the +centre of the room. As Burlingame sat down he noticed on the table a +crumpled handkerchief. It had lettering in the corner. He spread it out +slightly with his fingers, as though abstractedly thinking of what he was +about to say. The initial in the corner was K. Kitty had left it on the +table while she was talking to Mrs. Crozier a halfhour before. Whatever +Burlingame actually thought or believed, he could not now resist picking +up the handkerchief and looking at it with a mocking smile. It was too +good a chance to waste. He still hugged to his evil heart the +humiliating remembrance of his expulsion from this house, the share +Crozier had had in it, and the things which Crozier had said to him then. +He had his enemy now between the upper and the nether mill-stones, and he +meant to grind him to the flour of utter abasement. It was clear that +the arrival of Mrs. Crozier had brought him no relief, for Crozier's face +was not that of a man who had found and opened a casket of good fortune. + +"Rather dangerous that, in the bedroom of a family man," he said, +picking up the handkerchief and looking suggestively from the lettering +in the corner to Crozier. He laid it down again, smiling detestably. + +Crozier calmly picked up the handkerchief, saw the lettering, then went +quietly to the door of the room and called Mrs. Tynan's name. Presently +she appeared. Crozier beckoned her into the room. When she entered, he +closed the door behind her. + +"Mrs. Tynan," he said, "this fellow found your daughter's handkerchief on +my table, and he has said regarding it, 'Rather dangerous that, in the +bedroom of a family man.' What would you like me to do with him?" + +Mrs. Tynan walked up to Burlingame with the look of a woman of the +Commune and said: "If I had a son I would disown him if he didn't mangle +you till your wife would never know you again, you loathesome thing. +There isn't a man or woman in Askatoon who'd believe your sickening +slanders, for every one knows what you are. How dare you enter this +house? If the men of Askatoon had any manhood in them they would tar- +and-feather you. My girl is as good as any girl that ever lived, and +you know it. Now go out of here--now!" + +Crozier intervened quietly. "Mrs. Tynan, I asked him in here because it +is my room. I have some business with him. When it is over, then he +shall go, and we will fumigate the place. As for the tar-and-feathers, +you might leave that to me. I think I can arrange it. + +"I'll turn the hose on him as he goes out, if you don't mind," the irate +mother exclaimed as she left the room. + +Crozier nodded. "Well, that would be appropriate, Mrs. Tynan, but it +wouldn't cleanse him. He is the original leopard whose spots are there +for ever." + +By this time Burlingame was on his feet, and a look of craft and fear and +ugly meaning was in his face. Morally he was a coward, physically he was +a coward, but he had in his pocket a weapon which gave him a feeling +of superiority in the situation; and after a night of extreme self- +indulgence he was in a state of irritation of the nerves which gave +him what the searchers after excuses for ungoverned instincts and acts +call "brain-storms." He had had sense enough to know that his amorous +escapades would get him into trouble one day, and he had always carried +the little pistol which was now so convenient to his hand. It gave him a +fictitious courage which he would not have had unarmed against almost any +man--or woman--in Askatoon. + +"You get a woman to do your fighting for you," he said hatefully. "You +have to drag her in. It was you I meant to challenge, not the poor girl +young enough to be your daughter." His hand went to his waistcoat +pocket. Crozier saw and understood. + +Suddenly Crozier's eyes blazed. The abnormal in him--the Celtic strain +always at variance with the normal, an almost ultra-natural attendant of +it awoke like a tempest in the tropics. His face became transformed, +alive with a passion uncanny in its recklessness and purpose. It was a +brain-storm indeed, but it had behind it a normal power, a moral force +which was not to be resisted. + +"None of your sickly melodrama here. Take out of your pocket the pistol +you carry and give it to me," Crozier growled. "You are not to be +trusted. The habit of thinking you would shoot somebody some time-- +somebody you had injured--might become too much for you to-day, and then +I should have to kill you, and for your wife's sake I don't want to do +that. I always feel sorry for a woman with a husband like you. You +could never shoot me. You couldn't be quick enough, but you might try. +Then I should end you, and there'd be another trial; but the lawyer who +defended me would not have to cross-examine any witness about your +character. It is too well-known, Burlingame. Out with it--the pistol!" +he added, standing menacingly over the other. + +In a kind of stupor, under the storm that was breaking above him, +Burlingame slowly drew out of a capacious waistcoat pocket a tiny but +powerful pistol of the most modern make. + +"Put it in my hand," insisted Crozier, his eyes on the other's. + +The flabby hand laid the weapon in Crozier's lean and strenuous fingers. +Crozier calmly withdrew the cartridges and then tossed the weapon back on +the table. + +"Now we have equality of opportunity," he remarked quietly. "If you +think you would like to repeat any slander that's slid off your foul +tongue, do it now; and in a moment or two Mrs. Tynan can turn the hose on +the floor of this room." + +"I want to get to business," said Burlingame sullenly, as he took from +his pocket a paper. + +Crozier nodded. "I can imagine your haste," he remarked. "You need all +the fees you can get to pay Belle Bingley's bills." + +Burlingame did not wince. He made no reply to the challenge that he was +the chief supporter of a certain wanton thereabouts. + +"The time for your option to take ten thousand dollars' worth of shares +in the syndicate is up," he said; "and I am instructed to inform you that +Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons propose to take over your +unpaid shares and to complete the transaction without you." + +"Who informed Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons that I am +not prepared to pay for my shares?" asked Crozier sharply. + +"The time is up," surlily replied Burlingame. "It is assumed you can't +take up your shares, and that you don't want to do so. The time us up," +he added emphatically, and he tapped the paper spread before him on the +table. + +Crozier's eyes half closed in an access of stubbornness and hatred. +"You are not to assume anything whatever," he declared. "You are to +accommodate yourself to actual facts. The time is not up. It is not up +till midnight, and any action taken before then on any other assumption +will give grounds for damages." + +Crozier spoke without passion and with a coldblooded insistence not lost +on Burlingame. Taking down a calendar from the wall, he laid it beside +the paper on the table before the too eager lawyer. "Examine the dates," +he said. "At twelve o'clock tonight Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, +Baxter, & Simmons are free to act, if the money is not at the disposal of +the syndicate by then; but till then my option is indefeasible. Does +that meet the case or not?" + +"It meets the case," said Burlingame in a morose voice, rising. +"If you can produce the money before the stroke of midnight, why can't +you produce it now? What's the use of bluffing! It can't do any good in +the end. Your credit--" + +"My credit has been stopped by your friends," interrupted Crozier, "but +my resources are current." "Midnight is not far off," viciously remarked +Burlingame as he made for the door. + +Crozier intercepted him. "One word with you on another business before +you go," he said. "The tar-and-feathers for which Mrs. Tynan asks will +be yours at any moment I raise my hand in Askatoon. There are enough +women alone who would do it." + +"Talk of that after midnight," sneered Burlingame desperately as the door +was opened for him by Crozier. "Better not go out by the front gate," +remarked Crozier scornfully. "Mrs. Tynan is a woman of her word, and the +hose is handy." + +A moment later, with contemptuous satisfaction, he saw Burlingame climb +the picket-fence at the side of the house. + +Turning back into the room, he threw up his arms. "Midnight--midnight-- +my God, where am I to get the money! I must--I must have it . . . +It's the only way back." + +Sitting down at the table, he dropped his head into his hands and shut +his eyes in utter dejection. "Mona--by Heaven, no, I'll never take it +from her!" he said once, and clenched his hands at his temples and sat +on and on unmoving. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT? + +For a full half-hour Crozier sat buried in dark reflection, then he +slowly raised his head, and for a minute looked round dazedly. His +absorption had been so great that for a moment he was like one who had +awakened upon unfamiliar things. As when in a dream of the night the +history of years will flash past like a ray of light, so for the bad +half-hour in which Crozier had given himself up to despair, his mind had +travelled through an incongruous series of incidents of his past life, +and had also revealed pictures of solution after solution of his present +troubles. + +He had that-gift of visualization which makes life an endless procession +of pictures which allure, or which wear the nature into premature old +age. The last picture flashing before his eyes, as he sat there alone, +was of himself and his elder brother, Garnett, now master of Castlegarry, +racing ponies to reach the lodge-gates before they closed for the night, +after a day of disobedience and truancy. He remembered how Garnett had +given him the better pony of the two, so that the younger brother, who +would be more heavily punished if they were locked out, should have the +better chance. Garnett, if odd in manner and character, had always been +a true sportsman though not a lover of sport. + +If--if--why had he never thought of Garnett? Garnett could help him, and +he would do so. He would let Garnett stand in with him--take one-third +of his profits from the syndicate. Yes, he must ask Garnett to see him +through. Then it was that he lifted his head from his hands, and his +mind awakened out of a dream as real as though he had actually been +asleep. Garnett--alas! Garnett was thousands of miles away, and he had +not heard from him for five years. Still, he knew the master of +Castlegarry was alive, for he had seen him mentioned in a chance number +of The Morning Post lately come to his hands. What avail! Garnett was +at Castlegarry, and at midnight his chance of fortune and a new life +would be gone. Then, penniless, he would have to face Mona again; and +what would come of that he could not see, would not try to see. There +was an alternative he would not attempt to face until after midnight, +when this crisis in his life would be over. Beyond midnight was a +darkness which he would not now try to pierce. As his eyes again became +used to his surroundings, a look of determination, the determination of +the true gambler, came into his face. The real gambler never throws up +the sponge till all is gone; never gives up till after the last toss of +the last penny of cash or credit; for he has seen such innumerable times +the thing come right and good fortune extend a friendly hand with the +last hazard of all. + +Suddenly he remembered--saw--a scene in the gambling rooms at Monte Carlo +on the only visit he had ever paid to the place. He had played +constantly, and had won more or less each day. Then his fortune turned +and he lost and lost each day. At last, one evening, he walked up to a +table and said to the croupier, "When was zero up last?" The croupier +answered, "Not for an hour." Forthwith he began to stake on zero and on +nothing else. For two hours he put his louis at each turn of the wheel +on the Lonely Nought. For two hours he lost. Increasing his stake, +which had begun at five francs and had risen at length to five louis, he +still coaxed the sardonic deity. Finally midnight came, and he was the +only person playing at the table. All others had gone or had ceased to +play. These stayed to watch the "mad Inglesi," as a foreigner called +him, knocking his head against the foot stool of an unresponsive god of +chance. The croupiers watched also with somewhat disdainful, somewhat +pitying interest, this last representative of a class who have an insane +notion that the law of chances is in their favour if they can but stay +the course. And how often had they seen the stubborn challenger of a +black demon, who would not appear according to the law of chances, leave +the table ruined for ever! + +Smiling, Crozier had played on till he had but ten louis left. Counting +them over with cheerful exactness, he rose up, lit a cigarette, placed +the ten louis on the fatal spot with cynical precision, and with a gay +smile kissed his hand to the refractory Nothing and said, "You've got it +all, Zero-good-night! Goodnight, Zero!" Then he had buttoned his coat +and turned away to seek the cool air of the Mediterranean. He had gone +but a step or two, his head half gaily turned to the table where the +dwindling onlookers stood watching the wheel spin round, when suddenly +the croupier's cry of "Zero!" fell upon his ears. + +With cheerful nonchalance he had come back to the table and picked up the +many louis he had won--won by his last throw and with his last available +coin. + +As the scene passed before him now he got to his feet and, with that look +of the visionary in his eyes, which those only know who have watched the +born gamester, said, "I'll back my hand till the last throw." Then it +was, as his eyes gazed in front of him dreamily, he saw the card on his +mirror bearing the words, "Courage, soldier!" + +With a deepening flame in his eyes he went over and gazed at it. At +length he reached out and touched the writing with a caressing finger. + +"Kitty--Kitty, how great you are!" he said. Then as he turned to the +outer door a softness came into his face, stole up into his brilliant +eyes and dimmed them with a tear. "What a hand to hold in the dark--the +dark of life!" he said aloud. "Courage, soldier!" he added, as he +opened the door by which he had entered, through which Burlingame had +gone, and strode away towards the town of Askatoon, feeling somehow in +his heart that before midnight his luck would turn. + +From the dining-room Kitty had watched him go. "Courage, soldier!" she +whispered after him, and she laughed; but almost immediately she threw +her head up with a gasping sigh, and when it was lowered again two tears +were stealing down her cheeks. + +With an effort she conquered herself, wiped away the tears, and said +aloud, with a whimsical but none the less pitiful self-reproach, "Kitty- +Kitty Tynan, what a fool you are!" + +Entering the room Crozier had left, she went to the desk with the green- +baize top, opened it, and took out the fateful letter which Mona Crozier +had written to her husband five years ago. Putting it into her pocket +she returned to the dining-room. She stood there for a moment with her +chin in her hands and deep reflection in her eyes, and then, going to the +door of her mother's sitting-room, she opened it and beckoned. A moment +later Mrs. Crozier and the Young Doctor entered the dining-room and sat +down at a motion from her. Presently she said: + +"Mrs. Crozier, I have here the letter your husband received from you five +years ago in London." + +Mrs. Crozier flushed. She had been masterful by nature and she had had +her way very much in life. To be dominated in the most intimate things +of her life by this girl was not easy to be borne; but she realised that +Kitty had been a friend indeed, even if not conventional. In response to +Kitty's remark now she inclined her head. + +"Well, you have told us that you and your husband haven't made it up. +That is so, isn't it?" Kitty continued. + +"If you wish to put it that way," answered Mona, stiffening a little in +spite of herself. + +"P'r'aps I don't put it very well, but it is the stony fact, isn't it, +Mrs. Crozier?" + +Mona hesitated a moment, then answered: "He is very upset concerning the +land syndicate, and he has a quixotic idea that he cannot take money from +me to help him carry it through." + +"I don't quite know what quixotic means," rejoined Kitty dryly. "If it +wasn't understood while you lived together that what was one's was the +other's, that it was all in one purse, and that you shut your eyes to +the name on the purse and took as you wanted, I don't see how you could +expect him, after your five years' desertion, to take money from you +now." + +"My five years' desertion!" exclaimed Mona. Surely this girl was more +than reckless in her talk. Kitty was not to be put down. "If you don't +mind plain speaking, he was always with you, but you weren't always with +him in those days. This letter showed that." She tapped it on her +thumb-nail. "It was only when he had gone and you saw what you had lost, +that you came back to him--in heart, I mean. Well, if you didn't go away +with him when he went, and you wouldn't have gone unless he had ordered +you to go--and he wouldn't do that--it's clear you deserted him, since +you did that which drove him from home, and you stayed there instead of +going with him. I've worked it out, and it is certain you deserted him +five years ago. Desertion does't mean a sea of water between, it means +an ocean of self-will and love-me-first between. If you hadn't deserted +him, as this letter shows, he wouldn't have been here. I expect he told +you so; and if he did, what did you say to him?" + +The Young Doctor's eyes were full of decorous mirth and apprehension, for +such logic and such impudence as Kitty's was like none he had ever heard. +Yet it was commanding too. + +Kitty caught the look in his eyes and blazed up. "Isn't what I said +correct? Isn't it all true and logical? And if it is, why do you sit +there looking so superior?" + +The Young Doctor made a gesture of deprecating apology. "It's all true, +and it's logical, too, if you stand on your head when you think it. But +whether it is logical or not, it is your conclusion, and as you've taken +the thing in hand to set it right, it is up to you now. We can only hold +hard and wait." + +With a shrug of her graceful shoulders Kitty turned again to Mrs. +Crozier, who intervened hastily, saying, "I did not have a chance of +saying to him all I wished. Of course he could not take my money, but +there was his own money! I was going to tell him about that, but just +then the lawyer, Mr. Burlingame--" + +"They all call him 'Gus' Burlingame. He doesn't get the civility of Mr. +here in Askatoon," interposed Kitty. + +Mona made an impatient gesture. "If you will listen, I want to tell you +about Mr. Crozier's money. He thinks he has no money, but he has. He +has a good deal." + +She paused, and the Young Doctor and Kitty leaned forward eagerly. +"Well, but go on," said Kitty. "If he has money he must have it to-day, +and now. Certainly he doesn't know of it. He thinks he is broke,--dead +broke,--and there'd be a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for him if he +could put up ten thousand dollars to-night. If I were you I wouldn't +hide it from him any longer." + +Mona got to her feet in anger. "If you would give me a chance to +explain, I would do so," she said, her lips trembling. "Unfortunately, +I am in your hands, but please give me credit for some intelligence--and +some heart. In any case I shall not be bullied." + +The Young Doctor almost laughed outright, despite the danger of the +situation. He was not prepared for Kitty's reply and the impulsive act +that marched with it. In an instant Kitty had caught Mona Crozier's hand +and pressed it warmly. "I was only doing what I've seen lawyers do," she +said eagerly. "I've got something that I want you to do, and I've been +trying to work up to it. That's all. I'm not as mean and bad mannered +as you think me. I really do care what happens to him--to you both," she +hastened to add. + +Struggling to keep back her tears, and in a low voice, Mona rejoined: "I +meant to have told him what I'm going to tell you now. I couldn't say +anything about the money belonging to him till I had told him how it came +to be his." + +After a moment' pause she continued: "He told you all about the race +which Flamingo lost, and about that letter." She pointed to the letter +which Kitty still carried in her hand. "Well, that letter was written +under the sting of bitter disappointment. I was vain. I was young. +I did not understand as I do now. If you were not such good friends-- +of his--I could not tell you this. It seemed to me that by breaking his +pledge he showed he did not care for me; that he thought he could break a +sacred pledge to me, and it didn't matter. I thought it was treating me +lightly--to do it so soon after the pledge was given. I was indignant. +I felt we weren't as we might be, and I felt, too, that I must be at +fault; but I was so proud that I didn't want to admit it, I suppose, when +he did give me a grievance. It was all so mixed. I was shocked at his +breaking his pledge, I was so vexed that our marriage hadn't been the +success it might have been, and I think I was a little mad." + +"That is not the monopoly of only one of your sex," interposed the Young +Doctor dryly. "If I were you I wouldn't apologise for it. You speak to +a sister in like distress." + +Kitty's eyes flamed up, but she turned her head, as though some licensed +libertine of speech had had his say, and looked with friendly eyes at +Mona. "Yes, yes--please go on," she urged. + +"When I wrote that letter I had forgotten what I had done the day before +the race. I had gone into my husband's room to find some things I needed +from the drawer of his dressing-table; and far at the back of a drawer I +found a crumpled-up roll of ten-pound notes. It was fifty pounds +altogether. I took the notes--" + +She paused a moment, and the room became very still. Both her listeners +were sure that they were nearing a thing of deep importance. + +In a lower voice Mona continued: "I don't know what possessed me, but +perhaps it was that the things he did of which I disapproved most had got +a hold on me in spite of myself. I said to myself: 'I am going to the +Derby. I will take the fifty pounds, and I'll put it on a horse for +Shiel.' He had talked so much to my brother about Flamingo, and I had +seen him go wrong so often, that I had a feeling if I put it on a horse +that Shiel particularly banned, it would probably win. He had been wrong +nearly every time for two years. It was his money, and if it won, it +would make him happy; and if it didn't win, well, he didn't know the +money existed--I was sure of that; and, anyhow, I could replace it. I +put it on a horse he condemned utterly, but of which one or two people +spoke well. You know what happened to Flamingo. While at Epsom I heard +from friends that Shiel was present at the race, though he had said he +would not go. Later I learned that he had lost heavily. Then I saw him +in the distance paying out money and giving bills to the bookmakers. It +made me very angry. I don't think I was quite sane. Most women are like +that at times." + +"As I said," remarked the Young Doctor, his face mirthfully alive. Here +was a situation indeed. + +"So I wrote him that letter," Mona went on. "I had forgotten all about +the money I put on the outsider which won the race. As you know, I was +called away to my sick sister that evening, and the money I won with +Shiel's fifty pounds was not paid to me till after Shiel had gone." + +"How much was it?" asked Kitty breathlessly. + +"Four thousand pounds." + +Kitty exclaimed so loudly that she smothered her mouth with a hand. +"Why, he only needs for the syndicate two thousand pounds--ten thousand +dollars," she said excitedly. "But what's the good of it, if he can't +lay his hand on it by midnight to-night!" + +"He can do so," was Mona's quick reply. "I was going to tell him that, +but the lawyer came, and--" + +Kitty sprang up and down in excitement. "I had a plan. It might have +worked without this. It was the only way then. But this makes it sure +--yes, most beautifully sure. It shows that the thing to do is to follow +your convictions. You say you actually have the money, Mrs. Crozier?" + +Mona took from her pocket an envelope, and out of it she drew four Bank +of England notes. "Here it is--here are four one-thousand-pound notes. +I had it paid to me that way five years ago, and here--here it is," she +added, with almost a touch of hysteria in her voice, for the excitement +of it all acted on her like an electric storm. + +"Well, we'll get to work at once," declared Kitty, looking at the notes +admiringly, then taking them from Mona and smoothing them out with tender +firmness. "It's just the luck of the wide world, as my father used to +say. It actually is. Now you see," she continued, "it's like this. +That letter you wrote him"--she addressed herself to Mona--"it has to be +changed. You have got to rewrite it, and you must put into it these four +bank-notes. Then when you see him again you must have that letter opened +at exactly the right moment, and--oh, I wonder if you will do it exactly +right!" she added dubiously to Mona. "You don't play your game very +well, and it's just possible that, even now, with all the cards in your +hands, you will throw them away as you did in the past. I wish that--" + +Seeing Mona's agitation changing to choler, the Young Doctor intervened. +He did not know Kitty was purposely stinging Crozier's unhappy little +consort, so that she should be put upon her mettle to do the thing +without bungling. + +"You can trust Mrs. Crozier to act carefully; but what exactly do you +mean? I judge that Mrs. Crozier does not see more distinctly than I do," +he remarked inquiringly to Kitty, and with admonishment in tone and +emphasis. + +"No, I do not understand quite--will you explain?" interposed Mona with +inner resentment at being managed, but feeling that she could not do +without Kitty even if she would. + +"As I said," continued Kitty, "I will open that letter, and you will put +in another letter and these bank-notes; and when he repeats what he said +about the way you felt and wrote when he broke his pledge, you can blaze +up and tell him to open the letter. Then he will be so sorry that he'll +get down on his knees, and you will be happy ever after." + +"But it will be a fraud, and dishonest and dishonourable," protested +Mona. + +Kitty almost sniffed, but she was too agitated to be scornful. "Just +leave that to me, please. It won't make me a bit more dishonourable to +open the letter again--I've opened it once, and I don't feel any the +worse for it. I have no conscience, and things don't weigh on my mind at +all. I'm a light-minded person." + +Looking closely at her, the Young Doctor got a still further insight into +the mind and soul of this prairie girl, who used a lid of irony to cover +a well of deep feeling. Things did not weigh on her mind! He was sure +that pain to the wife of Shiel Crozier would be mortal torture to Kitty +Tynan. + +"But I felt exactly what I wrote that Derby Day when he broke his pledge, +and he ought to know me exactly as I was," urged Mona. "I don't want to +deceive him, to appear a bit better than I am." + +"Oh, you'd rather lose him!" said Kitty almost savagely. "Knowing how +hard it is to keep a man under the best circumstances, you'd willingly +make the circumstances as bad as they can be--is that it? Besides, +weren't you sorry afterwards that you wrote that letter?" + +"Yes, yes, desperately sorry." + +"And you wished often that your real self had written on Derby Day and +not the scratch-cat you were then?" + +Mona flushed, but answered bravely, "Yes, a thousand times." + +"What business had you to show him your cat-self, your unreal, not your +real self on Derby Day five years ago? Wasn't it your duty to show him +your real self?" + +Mona nodded helplessly. "Yes, I know it was." + +"Then isn't it your duty to see that your real self speaks in that letter +now?" + +"I want him to know me exactly as I am, and then--" + +Kitty made a passionate gesture. Was ever such an uncomprehending woman +as this diamond-button of a wife? + +"And then you would be unhappy ever after instead of being happy ever +after. What is the good of prejudicing your husband against you by +telling the unnecessary truth. He is desperate, and besides, he has been +away from you for five years, and we all change somehow--particularly +men, when there are so many women in the world, and very pretty women of +all ages and kinds and colours and tastes, and dazzling, deceitful +hussies too. It isn't wise for any woman to let her husband or any one +at all see her exactly as she is; and only the silly ones do it. They +tell what they think is the truth about their own wickedness, and it +isn't the truth at all, because I suppose women don't know how to tell +the exact truth; and they can be just as unfair to themselves as they are +to others. Besides, haven't you any sense of humour, Mrs. Crozier? It's +as good as a play, this. Just think: after five years of desertion, and +trouble without end, and it all put right by a little sleight-of-hand. +Shall I open it?" + +She held the letter up. Mona nodded almost eagerly now, for come of a +subtle, social world far away, she still was no match for the subtlety of +the wilds--or was it the cunning the wild things know? + +Kitty left the room, but in a moment afterwards returned with the letter +open. "The kettle on the hob is the friend of the family," she said +gaily. "Here it is all ready for what there is to do. You go and keep +watch for Mr. Crozier," she added to the Young Doctor. "He won't be gone +long, I should think, and we don't want him bursting in on us before I've +got that letter safe back into his desk. If he comes, you keep him busy +for a moment. When we're quite ready I'll come to the front door, and +then you will know it is all right." + +"I'm to go while you make up your prescription--all right!" said the +Young Doctor, and with a wave of the hand he left the room. + +Instantly Kitty brought a lead pencil and paper. "Now sit down and write +to him, Mrs. Crozier," she said briskly. "Use discretion; don't gush; +slap his face a little for breaking his pledge, and afterwards tell him +that you did at the Derby what you had abused him for doing. Then +explain to him about this four thousand pounds--twenty thousand dollars +--my, what a lot of money, and all got in one day! Tell him that it was +all won by his own cash. It's as easy as can be, and it will be a +certainty now." + +So saying, she lit a match. "You--hold this wicked old catfish letter +into the flame, please, Mrs. Crozier, and keep praying all the time, and +please remember that 'our little hands were never made to tear each +other's eyes.'" + +Mona's small fingers were trembling as she held the fateful letter into +the flame, and then in silence both watched it burn to a cinder. A +faint, hopeful smile was on Mona's face now. + +"What isn't never was to those that never knew," said Kitty briskly, and +pushed a chair up to the table. "Now sit down and write, please." + +Mona sat down. Taking up a sheet of notepaper she looked at it +dubiously. + +"Oh, what a fool I am!" said Kitty, understanding the look. "And that's +what every criminal does--he forgets something. I forgot the notepaper. +Of course you can't use that notepaper. Of course not. He'd know it in +a minute. Besides, the sheet we burned had an engraved address on it. +I never thought of that--good gracious!" + +"Wait--wait," said Mona, her face lighting. "I may have some sheets in +my writing-case. It's only a chance, but there were some loose sheets in +it when I left home. I'll go and see." + +While she was gone to her bedroom Kitty stood still in the middle of the +room lost in reflection, as completely absorbed as though she was seeing +things thousands of miles away. In truth, she was seeing things millions +of miles away; she was seeing a Promised Land. It was a gift of hers, or +a penalty of her life, perhaps, that she could lose herself in reverie at +a moment's notice--a reverie as complete as though she was subtracted +from life's realities. Now, as she looked out of the door, far over the +prairie to a tiny group of pine-trees in the vanishing distance, lines +she once read floated through her mind: + + "Away and beyond the point of pines, + In a pleasant land where the glad grapes be, + Purple and pendent on verdant vines, + I know that my fate is awaiting me." + +What fate was to be hers? There was no joy in her eyes as she gazed. +Mrs. Crozier was beside the table again before she roused herself from +her trance. + +"I've got it--just two sheets, two solitary sheets," said Mona in +triumph. "How long they have been in my case I don't know. It is almost +uncanny they should be there just when they're most needed." + +"Providential, we should say out here," was Kitty's response. "Begin, +please. Be sure you have the right date. It was--" + +Mona had already written the date, and she interrupted Kitty with the +words, "As though I could forget it!" All at once Kitty put a +restraining hand on her arm. + +"Wait--wait, you mustn't write on that paper yet. Suppose you didn't +write the real wise thing--and only two sheets of paper and so much to +say?" + +"How right you always are!" said Mona, and took up one of the blank +sheets which Kitty had just brought her. + +Then she began to write. For a minute she wrote swiftly, nervously, and +had nearly finished a page when Kitty said to her, "I think I had better +see what you have written. I don't think you are the best judge. You +see, I have known him better than you for the last five years, and I am +the best judge please, I mean it in the rightest, kindest way," she +added, as she saw Mona shrink. It was like hurting a child, and she +loved children--so much. She had always a vision of children at her +knee. + +Silently Mrs. Crozier pushed the sheets towards her. Kitty read the page +with a strange, eager look in her eyes. "Yes, that's right as far as it +goes," she said. "It doesn't gush. It's natural. It's you as you are +now, not as you were then, of course." + +Again Mona bent over the paper and wrote till she had completed a page. +Then Kitty looked over her shoulder and read what had been written. "No, +no, no, that won't do," she exclaimed. "That won't do at all. It isn't +in the way that will accomplish what we want. You've gone quite, quite +wrong. I'll do it. I'll dictate it to you. I know exactly what to say, +and we mustn't make any mistake. Write, please--you must." + +Mona scratched out what had been written without a word. "I am waiting," +she said submissively. + +"All right. Now we go on. Write. I'll dictate." "'And look here, +dearest,'" she began, but Mona stopped her. + +"We do not say 'look here' in England. I would have said 'and see.'" + +"'And see-dearest,'" corrected Kitty, with an accent on the last word, +"'while I was mad at you for the moment for breaking your promise--'" + +"In England we don't say 'mad' in that connection," Mona again +interrupted. "We say 'angry' or 'annoyed' or 'vexed.'" There was real +distress in her tone. + +"Now I'll tell you what to do," said Kitty cheerfully. "I'll speak it, +and you write it my way of thinking, and then when we've finished you +will take out of the letter any words that are not pure, noble, classic +English. I know what you mean, and you are quite right. Mr. Crozier +never says 'look here' or 'mad,' and he speaks better than any one I ever +heard. Now, we certainly must get on." + +After an instant she began again. + +"--While I was angry at you a moment for breaking your promise, I cannot +reproach you for it, because I, too, bet on the Derby, but I bet on a +horse that you had said as much against as you could. I did it because +you had very bad luck all this year and lost, and also last year, and I +thought--" + +For several minutes, with greater deliberation than was usual with her, +Kitty dictated, and at the end of the letter she said, "I am, dearest, +your--" + +Here Mona sharply interrupted her. "If you don't mind I will say that +myself in my own way," she said, flushing. + +"Oh, I forgot for the moment that I was speaking for you!" responded +Kitty, with a lurking, undermeaning in her voice. "I threw myself into +it so. Do you think I've done the thing right?" she added. + +With a direct, honest friendliness Mona looked into Kitty eyes. "You +have said the exact right thing as to meaning, I am sure, and I can +change an occasional word here and there to make it all conventional +English." + +Kitty nodded. "Don't lose a minute in copying it. We must get the +letter back in his desk as soon as possible." + +As Mona wrote, Kitty sat with the envelope in her hand, alternately +looking at it and into the distance beyond the point of pines. She was +certain that she had found the solution of the troubles of Shiel and Mona +Crozier, for Crozier would now have his fortune, and the return to his +wife was a matter of course. Was she altogether sure? But yes, she was +altogether sure. She remembered, with a sudden, swift plunge of blood in +her veins, that early dawn when she bent over him as he lay beneath the +tree, and as she kissed him in his sleep he had murmured, "My darling!" +That had not been for her, though it had been her kiss which had stirred +his dreaming soul to say the words. If they had only been meant for her, +then--oh, then life would be so much easier in the future! If--if she +could only kiss him again and he would wake and say-- + +She got to her feet with an involuntary exclamation. For an instant she +had been lost in a world of her own, a world of the impossible. + +"I almost thought I heard a step in the other room," she said in +explanation to Mona. Going to the door of Crozier's room, she appeared +to listen for a moment, and then she opened it. + +"No, it is all right," she said. + +In another few minutes Mona had finished the letter. "Do you wish to +read it again?" she asked Kitty, but not handing it to her. + +"No, I leave the words to you. It was the right meaning I wanted in it," +she replied. + +Suddenly Mona came to her and laid a hand on her arm. "You are +wonderful--a wonderful, wise, beloved girl," she said, and there were +tears in her eyes. + +Kitty gave the tiny fingers a spasmodic clasp, and said: "Quick, we must +get them in!" She put the banknotes inside the sheets of paper, then +hastily placed both in the envelope and sealed the envelope again. + +"It's just a tiny bit damp with the steam yet, but it will be all right +in five minutes. How soiled the envelope is!" Kitty added. "Five years +in and out of the desk, in and out of his pocket--but all so nice and +unsoiled and sweet and bonny inside," she added. "To say nothing of the +bawbees, as Mr. Crozier calls money. Well, we are ready. It all depends +on you now, Mrs. Crozier." + +"No, not all." + +"He used to be afraid of you; now you are afraid of him," said Kitty, as +though stating a commonplace. + +There was no more shrewishness left in the little woman to meet this +chastisement. The forces against her were too many. Loneliness and the +long struggle to face the world without her man; the determination of +this masterful young woman who had been so long a part of her husband's +life; and, more than all, a new feeling altogether--love, and the +dependence a woman feels, the longing to find rest in strong arms, which +comes with the first revelation of love, had conquered what Kitty had +called her "bossiness." She was now tremulous before the crisis which +she must presently face. Pride in her fortune, in her independence, had +died down in her. She no longer thought of herself as a woman especially +endowed and privileged. She took her fortune now like a man; for she had +been taught that a man could set her aside just because she had money, +could desert her to be independent of it. It had been a revelation to +her, and she was chastened of all the termagancy visible and invisible in +her. She stood now before Kitty of "a humble and a contrite heart," and +made no reply at all to the implied challenge. Kitty, instantly sorry +for what she had said, let it go at that. She was only now aware of how +deeply her arrows had gone home. + +As they stood silent there was a click at the gate. Kitty ran into +Crozier's room, thrust the letter into its pigeonhole in the desk, and in +a moment was back again. In the garden the Young Doctor was holding +Crozier in conversation, but watching the front door. So soon, however, +as Kitty had shown herself, as she had promised, at the front door and +then vanished, he turned Crozier towards the house again by an adroit +word, and left him at the door-step. + +Seeing who was inside the room Crozier hesitated, and his long face, with +paleness added to its asceticism, took on a look which could have given +no hope of happiness to Mona. It went to her heart as no look of his had +ever gone. Suddenly she had a revelation of how little she had known of +what he was, or what any man was or could be, or of those springs of +nature lying far below the outer lives which move in orbits of sheltering +convention. It is because some men and women are so sheltered from the +storms of life by wealth and comfort that these piercing agonies which +strike down to the uttermost depths so seldom reach them. + +Shiel half turned away, not sullen, not morose, but with a strange apathy +settled on him. He had once heard a man say, "I feel as though I wanted +to crawl into a hole and die." That was the way he felt now, for to be +beaten in the game which you have played like a man yourself and have +been fouled into an unchallenged defeat, without the voice of the umpire, +is a fate which has smothered the soul of better men than Crozier. + +Mona's voice stopped him. "Do not go, Shiel," she urged gently. "No, +you must not go--I want fair-play from you, if nothing else. You must +play the game with me. I want justice. I have to say some things I had +no chance to say before, and I want to hear some things I have a right to +hear. Indeed, you must play the game." + +He drew himself up. Not to be a sportsman, not to play the game--to +accuse him of this would have brought him back from the edge of the +grave. + +"I'm not fit to-day. Let it be to-morrow, Mona," was his hesitating +reply; but he did not leave the doorway. + +She shook her head and made a swift little childlike gesture towards him. +"We are sure of to-day; we are not sure of to-morrow. One or the other +of us might not be here to-morrow. Let us do to-day the thing that +belongs to to-day." + +That note struck home, for indeed the black spirit which whispers to men +in their most despairing hours to end it all had whispered to him. + +"Let us do to-day the thing that belongs to to-day," she had just said, +and, strange to say, there shot into his mind words that belonged to the +days when he went to church at Castlegarry and thought of a thousand +things other than prayer or praise, but yet heard with the acute ears of +the young, and remembered with the persistent memory of youth. "For the +night cometh when no man can work," were the words which came to him. He +shuddered slightly. Suppose that this indeed was the beginning of the +night! As she said, he must play the game--play it as Crozier of Lammis +would have played it. + +He stepped inside the room. "Let it be to-day," he said. + +"We may be interrupted here," she replied. Courage came to her. "Let us +talk in your own room," she added, and going over she opened the door of +it and walked in. The matured modesty of a lost five years did not cloak +her actions now. She was a woman fighting for happiness, and she had +been so beaten by the rods of scorn, so smothered by the dust of +humiliation, that there had come to her the courage of those who would +rather die fighting than in the lethargy of despair. + +It was like her old self to take the initiative, but she did it now in so +different a way--without masterfulness or assumption. It was rather like +saying, "I will do what I know you wish me to do; I will lay all reserve +aside for your sake; I will be bold because I love you." + +He shut the door behind them and motioned her to a chair. + +"No, I will not sit," she said. "That is too formal. You ask any +stranger to sit. I am at home here, Shiel, and I will stand." + +"What was it you wanted to say, Mona?" he asked, scarcely looking at +her. + +"I should like to think that there was something you wished to hear," she +replied. "Don't you want to know all that has happened since you left +us--about me, about your brother, about your friends, about Lammis? I +bought Lammis at the sale you ordered; it is still ours." She gave +emphasis to "ours." "You may not want to hear all that has happened to +me since you left, still I must tell you some things that you ought to +know, if we are going to part again. You treated me badly. There was no +reason why you should have left and placed me in the position you did." + +His head came up sharply and his voice became a little hard. "I told you +I was penniless, and I would not live on you, and I could do nothing in +England; I had no trade or profession. If I had said good-bye to you, +you would probably have offered me a ticket to Canada. As I was a pauper +I preferred to go with what I had out of the wreck--just enough to bring +me here. But I've earned my own living since." + +"Penniless--just enough to bring you out here!" Her voice had a sound of +honest amazement. "How can you say such a thing! You had my letter--you +said you had my letter?" + +"Yes, I had your letter," he answered. "Your thoughtful brother brought +it to me. You had told him all the dear womanly things you had said or +were going to say to your husband, and he passed them on to me with the +letter." + +"Never mind what he said to you, Shiel. It was what I said that +mattered." She was getting bolder every minute. The comedy was playing +into her hands. + +"You wrote in your letter the things he said to me," he replied. + +Her protest sounded indignantly real. "I said nothing in the letter I +wrote you that any man would not wish to hear. Is it so unpleasant for a +man who thinks he is penniless to be told that he has made the year's +income of a cabinet minister?" + +"I don't understand," he returned helplessly. + +"You talk as though you had never read my letter. + +"I never have read your letter," he replied in bewilderment. + +Her face had the flush of honest anger. "You do not dare to tell me you +destroyed my letter without reading it--that you destroyed all that +letter contained simply because you no longer cared for your wife; +because you wanted to be rid of her, wanted to vanish and never see her +any more, and so go and leave no trace of yourself! You have the +courage here to my face"--the comedy of the situation gained much from +the mock indignation--she no longer had any compunctions--"to say that +you destroyed my letter and what it contained--a small fortune it would +be out here." + +"I did not destroy your letter, Mona," was the embarrassed response. + +"Then what did you do with it? Gave it to some one else to read--to some +other woman, perhaps." + +He was really shocked and greatly pained. "Hush! You shall not say that +kind of thing, Mona. I've never had anything to do with any woman but my +wife since I married her." + +"Then what did you do with the letter?" + +"It's there," he said, pointing to the high desk with the green baize +top. + +"And you say you have never read it?" + +"Never." + +She raised her head with dainty haughtiness. "Then if you have still the +same sense of honour that made you keep faith with the bookmakers--you +didn't run away from them!--read it now, here in my presence. Read it, +Shiel. I demand that you read it now. It is my right. You are in +honour bound--" + +It was the only way. She dare not give him time to question, to suspect; +she must sweep him along to conviction. She was by no means sure that +there wasn't a flaw in the scheme somewhere, something that would betray +her; and she could hardly wait till it was over, till he had read the +letter. + +In a moment he was again near her with the letter in his hand. + +"Yes, that's it--that's the letter," she said, with wondering and +reproachful eyes. "I remember the little scratchy blot from the pen on +the envelope. There it is, just as I made it five years ago. But how +disgracefully soiled the envelope is! I suppose it has been tossed about +in your saddle-bag, or with your old clothes, and only kept to remind you +day by day that you had a wife you couldn't live with--kept as a warning +never to think of her except to say, 'I hate you, Mona, because you are +rich and heartless, and not bigger than a pinch of snuff.' That was the +kind way you used to speak of her even when you were first married to +her--contemptuously always in your heart, no matter what you said out +loud. And the end showed it--the end showed it; you deserted her." + +He was so fascinated by the picture she made of passion and incensed +declamation that he did not attempt to open the letter, and he wondered +why there was such a difference between the effect of her temper on him +now and the effect of it those long years ago. He had no feeling of +uneasiness in her presence now, no sense of irritation. In spite of her +tirade, he had a feeling that it didn't matter, that she must bluster in +her tiny teacup if she wanted to do so. + +"Open the letter at once," she insisted. "If you don't, I will." She +made as though to take the letter from him, but with a sudden twist he +tore open the envelope. The bank-notes fell to the floor as he took out +the sheet inside. Wondering, he stooped to pick them up. + +"Four thousand pounds!" he exclaimed, examining them. "What does it +mean?" + +"Read," she commanded. + +He devoured the letter. His eyes swam; then there rushed into them the +flame which always made them illumine his mediaeval face like the light +from "the burning bush." He did not question or doubt, because he saw +what he wished to see, which is the way of man. It all looked perfectly +natural and convincing to him. + +"Mona--Mona--heaven above and all the gods of hell and Hellas, what +a fool, what a fool I've been!" he exclaimed. "Mona--Mona, can you +forgive your idiot husband? I didn't read this letter because I thought +it was going to slash me on the raw--on the raw flesh of my own +lacerating. I simply couldn't bear to read what your brother said was +in the letter. Yet I couldn't destroy it, either. It was you. I had +to keep it. Mona, am I too big a fool to be your husband?" + +He held out his arms with a passionate exclamation. "I asked you to kiss +me yesterday, and you wouldn't," she protested. "I tried to make you +love me yesterday, and you wouldn't. When a woman gets a rebuff like +that, when--" + +She could not bear it any longer. With a cry of joy she was in his arms. + +After a moment he said, "The best of all was, that you--you vixen, you +bet on that Derby and won, and--" + +"With your money, remember, Shiel." + +"With my money!" he cried exultingly. "Yes, that's the best of it--the +next best of it. It was your betting that was the best of all--the best +thing you ever did since we married, except your coming here." + +"It's in time to help you, too--with your own money, isn't it?" + +He glanced at his watch. "Hours--I'm hours to the good. That crowd-- +that gang of thieves--that bunch of highwaymen! I've got them--got them, +and got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, too, to start again at +home, at Lammis, Mona, back on the--but no, I'm not sure that I can live +there now after this big life out here." + +"I'm not so sure, either," Mona replied, with a light of larger +understanding in her eyes. "But we'll have to go back and stop the +world talking, and put things in shape before we come here to stay." + +"To stay here--do you mean that?" he asked eagerly. + +"Somewhere in this big land," she replied softly; "anyhow, to stay here +till I've grown up a little. I wasn't only small in body in the old +days, I was small in mind, Shiel." + +"Anyhow, I've done with betting and racing, Mona. I've just got time +left--I'm only thirty-nine--to start and really do something with +myself." + +"Well, start now, dear man of Lammis. What is it you have to do before +twelve o'clock to-night?" "What is it? Why, I have to pay over two +thousand of this,"--he flourished the banknotes--"and even then I'll +still have two thousand left. But wait--wait. There was the original +fifty pounds. Where is that fifty pounds, little girl alive? Out with +it. This is the profit. Where is the fifty you staked?" His voice was +gay with raillery. + +She could look him in the face now and prevaricate without any shame or +compunction at all. "That fifty pounds--that! Why, I used it to buy my +ticket for Canada. My husband ought to pay my expenses out to him." + +He laughed greatly. All Ireland was rioting in his veins now. He had no +logic or reasoning left. "Well, that's the way to get into your old +man's heart, Mona. To think of that! I call it tact divine. Everything +has spun my way at last. I was right about that Derby, after all. It +was in my bones that I'd make a pot out of it, but I thought I had lost +it all when Flamingo went down." + +"You never know your luck--you used to say that, Shiel." + +"I say it again. Come, we must tell our friends--Kitty, her mother, and +the Young Doctor. You don't know what good friends they have been to me, +mavourneen." + +"Yes, I think I do," said Mona, opening the door to the outer room. + +Then Crozier called with a great, cheery voice--what Mona used to call +his tally-ho voice. Mrs. Tynan appeared, smiling. She knew at a glance +what had happened. It was so interesting that she could even forgive +Mona. + +"Where's Kitty?" asked Crozier, almost boisterously. + +"She has gone for a ride with John Sibley," answered Mrs. Tynan. + +"Look, there she is!" said Mona, laying a hand on Crozier's arm, and +pointing with the other out over the prairie. + +Crozier looked out towards the northwestern horizon, and in the distance +was a woman riding as hard as her horse could go, with a man galloping +hard after her. It seemed as though they were riding into the sunset. + +"She's riding the horse you won that race with years ago when you first +came here, Mr. Crozier," said Mrs. Tynan. "John Sibley bought it from +Mr. Brennan." + +Mona did not see the look which came into Crozier's face as, with one +hand shading his eyes and the other grasping the banknotes which were to +start him in life again, independent and self-respecting, he watched the +girl riding on and on, ever ahead of the man. + +It was at that moment the Young Doctor entered the room, and he +distracted Mona's attention for a moment. Going forward to him Mona +shook him warmly by the hand. Then she went up to Mrs. Tynan and kissed +her. + +"I would like to kiss your daughter too, Mrs. Tynan," Mona said. . . . +"What are you looking at so hard, Shiel?" she presently added to her +husband. + +He did not turn to her. His eyes were still shaded by his hand. + +"That horse goes well yet," he said in a low voice. "As good as ever-- +as good as ever." + +"He loves horses so," remarked Mona, as though she could tell Mrs. Tynan +and the Young Doctor anything about Shiel Crozier which they did not +know. + +"Kitty rides well, doesn't she?" asked Mrs. Tynan of Crozier. + +"What a pair--girl and horse!" Crozier exclaimed. "Thoroughbred-- +absolutely thoroughbred!" + +Kitty had ridden away with her heart's secret, her very own, as she +thought: but Shiel Crozier knew--the man that mattered knew. + + + + +EPILOGUE + +Golden, all golden, save where there was a fringe of trees at a +watercourse; save where a garden, like a spot of emerald, made a button +on the royal garment wrapped across the breast of the prairie. Above, +making for the trees of the foothills far away, a golden eagle floated, +a prairie-hen sped affrighted from some invisible thing; and in the far +distance a railway train slipped down the plain like a serpent making for +a covert in the first hills of the first world that ever was. + +At a casual glance the vast plain seemed uninhabited, yet here and there +were men and horses, tiny in the vastness, but conquering. Here and +there also--for it was July--a haymaker sharpened his scythe, and the +sound came singing through the air radiant and stirring with life. + +Seated in the shade of a clump of trees a girl sat with her chin in her +hands looking out over the prairie, an intense dreaming in her eyes. Her +horse was tethered near by, but it scarcely made a sound. It was a horse +which had once won a great race, with an Irish gentleman on his back. +Long time the girl sat absorbed, her golden colour, her brown-gold hair +in harmony with the universal stencil of gold. With her eyes drowned in +the distance, she presently murmured something to herself, and as she did +so the eyes deepened to a nameless umber tone, deeper than gold, warmer +than brown; such a colour as only can be found in a jewel or in a leaf +the frost has touched. + +The frost had touched the soul which gave the colour to the eyes of the +girl. Yet she seemed all summer, all glow and youth and gladness. Her +voice was golden, too, and the words which fell from her lips were as +though tuned to the sound of falling water. The tone of the voice would +last when the gold of all else became faded or tarnished. It had its +origin in the soul: + + "Whereaway goes my lad? Tell me, has he gone alone? + Never harsh word did I speak; never hurt I gave; + Strong he was and beautiful; like a heron he has flown + Hereaway, hereaway will I make my grave." + +The voice lingered on the words till it trailed away into nothing, like +the vanishing note of a violin which seems still to pulse faintly after +the sound has ceased. + +"But he did not go alone, and I have not made my grave," the girl said, +and raised her head at the sound of footsteps. With an effort she +emerged from the half-trance in which she had been, and smiled at a man +hastening towards her. + +"Dear bully, bulbous being--how that word 'bully' would have, made her +cringe!" she said as the man ambled nearer. He could not go as fast as +his mind urged him. + +"I've got news--news, news!" he exclaimed, wading through his own +perspiration to where she sat. "I can guess what it is," the girl +remarked smilingly, as she reached out a hand to him, but remained +seated. "It's a real, live baby born to Lydia, wife of Methuselah, the +woman also being of goodly years. It is, isn't it." + +"The fattest, finest, most 'scrumpshus' son of all the ages that ever--" + +Kitty laughed happily and very whimsically. "Like none since Moses was +found among the bulrushes! Where was this one found, and what do you +intend to call him--Jesse, after his 'pa'?" + +"No--nothing so common. He's to be called Shiel--Shiel Crozier Bulrush, +that's to be his name." + +The face of the girl became a shade pensive now. "Oh! And do you think +you can guarantee that he will be worth the name? Do you never think +what his father is?" + +"I'm starting him right with that name. I can do so much, anyway," +laughed the imperturbable one. "And Mrs. Bulrush, after her great +effort--how is she? + +"Flying--simply flying. Earth not good enough for her. Simply flying. +But here--here is more news. Guess what--it's for you. I've just come +from the post office, and they said there was an English letter for you, +so I brought it." + +He handed it over. She laid it in her lap and waited as though for him +to go. + +"Can't I hear how he is? He's the best man that ever crossed my path," +he said. + +"It happens to be in his wife's, not his, handwriting--did ever such a +scrap of a woman write so sprawling a hand!" she replied, holding the +letter up. + +"But she'll let us know in the letter how Crozier is, won't she?" + +Kitty had now recovered herself, and slowly she opened the envelope and +took out the letter. As she did so something fluttered to the ground. + +Jesse Bulrush picked it up. "That looks nice," he said, and he whistled +in surprise. "It's a money-draft on a bank." + +Kitty, whose eyes were fixed on the big, important handwriting, answered +calmly and without apparently looking, as she took the paper from his +hand: "Yes, it's a wedding present--five hundred dollars to buy what I +like best for my home. So she says." + +"Mrs. Crozier, of course." + +"Of course." + +"Well, that's magnificent. What will you do with it?" + +Kitty rose and held out her hand. "Go back to your flying partner, happy +man, and ask her what she would do with five hundred dollars if she had +it." + +"She'd buy her lord and master a present with it, of course," he +answered. + +"Good-bye, Mr. Rolypoly," she responded, laughing. "You always could +think of things for other people to do; and have never done anything +yourself until now. Good-bye, father." + +When he was gone and out of sight her face changed. With sudden anger +she crushed and crumpled up the draft for five hundred in her hand. "'A +token of affection from both!'" she exclaimed, quoting from the letter. +"One lone leaf of Irish shamrock from him would--" + +She stopped. "But he will send a message of his own," she continued. +"He will--he will. Even if he doesn't, I'll know that he remembers just +the same. He does--he does remember." + +She drew herself up with an effort, and, as it were, shook herself free +from the memories which dimmed her eyes. + +Not far away a man was riding towards the clump of trees where she was. +She saw, and hastened to her horse. + +"If I told John all I feel he'd understand. I believe he always has +understood," she added with a far-off look. + +The draft was still crushed in her hand when she mounted the beloved +horse, whose name now was Shiel. + +Presently she smoothed out the crumpled paper. "Yes, I'll take it; I'll +put it by," she murmured. "John will keep on betting. He'll be broke +some day and he'll need it, maybe." + +A moment later she was riding hard to meet the man who, before the wheat- +harvest came, would call her wife. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +He saw what he wished to see, which is the way of man +Searchers after excuses for ungoverned instincts and acts +Telling the unnecessary truth +What isn't never was to those that never knew + + + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK": + +And I was very lucky--worse luck! +Anny man as is a man has to have one vice +God help the man that's afraid of his own wife! +He saw what he wished to see, which is the way of man +Her moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios +Law's delays outlasted even the memory of the crime committed +Searchers after excuses for ungoverned instincts and acts +Sensitive souls, however, are not so many as to crowd each other +She looked too gay to be good +Telling the unnecessary truth +They had seen the world through the bottom of a tumbler +What isn't never was to those that never knew + + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK, ENTIRE *** + +********** This file should be named gp11510.txt or gp11510.zip *********** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, gp11511.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gp11510a.txt + +This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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