CHAPTER VI
THE DRAWING
As has been previously said, one must go fast and far to come to a placewhere there is neither a Hotel Metropole nor a newspaper. Doubtlessthere are communities of civilized men on the North American continentwhere there is neither, but Comanche was not one of them.
In Comanche the paper was a daily. Its editor was a single-barreledgrafter who wore a green mohair coat and dyed whiskers. His office andestablishment occupied an entire twelve-by-sixteen tent; the name of thepaper was _The Chieftain_.
_The Chieftain_ had been one of the first enterprises of Comanche. Itgot there ahead of the first train, arriving in a wagon, fully equipped.The editor had an old zinc cut of a two-storied brick business house ona corner, which he had run with a grocery-store advertisement when hewas getting out a paper in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This he now made use of withimpressive effect and inspiring display of his cheerful confidence inhis own future and that of the town where, like a blowing seed ofcottonwood, he had found lodgment.
He ran this cut in every issue at the top of what would have been hiseditorial column if there had been time for him to write one, with thesewords:
FUTURE HOME OF _THE CHIEFTAIN_ ON THE CORNER THIS PAPER NOW OCCUPIES, AS DESIGNED BY THE EDITOR AND OWNER, J. WALTER MONG
From the start that Editor Mong was making in Comanche his dream did notappear at all unreasonable. Everybody in the place advertised, owing tosome subtle influence of which Mr. Mong was master, and which is knownto editors of his brand wherever they are to be found. If a business manhad the shield of respectability to present to all questioners, headvertised out of pride and civic spirit; if he had a past, J. WalterMong had a nose, sharpened by long training in picking up such scents;and so he advertised out of expediency.
That being the way matters stood, _The Chieftain_ carried very littlebut advertisements. They paid better than news, and news could wait itsturn, said the editor, until he settled down steadily into a weekly andhad room for it.
But Mr. Mong laid himself out to give the returns from the drawing forhomesteads, it being one of those rare chances in which an editor couldcombine business and news without putting on an extra form. Theheadquarters of the United States land-office for that territory beingat Meander, the drawing was to take place there. Meander was sixty milesfarther along, connected with the railroad and Comanche by stage andtelephone. So, every hour of the eventful day, Editor Mong was going toissue an extra on telephonic information from the seat of the drawing.
On the day of the drawing, which came as clear and bright as the painteddreams of those who trooped Comanche's streets, there remained in thetown, after the flitting entrants had come and gone, fully thirtythousand expectant people. They were those in whom the hope of lownumbers was strong. For one drawing a low number must make his selectionof land and file on it at Meander within a few days.
In the case of the first number, the lucky drawer would have but threedays to make his selection and file on it. If he lapsed, then Number Twobecame Number One, and all down the line the numbers advanced one.
So, in case that the winner of Number One had registered and gone hometo the far East or the middle states, he couldn't get back in time tosave his valuable chance. That gave big hope to those who expectednothing better than seven or nine or something under twenty. Three orfour lapses ahead of them would move them along, each peg addingthousands to their winnings, each day running out for them in goldensands.
By dawn the streets were filled by early skirmishers for breakfast, andsunrise met thousands more who, luggage in hand, talked and gesticulatedand blocked the dusty passages between the unstable walls of that cityof chance, which soon would come down and disappear like smoke from awayside fire. The thousands with their bags in hand would not sleepanother night beneath its wind-restless roofs. All those who expected todraw Claim Number One were ready to take the stage or hire a specialconveyance to Meander, or, failing of their expectations in the lottery,to board the special trains which the railroad had made ready, and leavefor home.
By nine o'clock it seemed to the waiting throngs that several ordinarydays had passed since they left their sagging canvas cots at daybreak tostand attendant upon the whim of chance. They gathered in the blazingsun in front of the office of the paper, looking in at Editor Mong, whoseemed more like a quack doctor that morning than ever before, with hiswrinkled coat-sleeves pushed above his elbows and his cuffs tucked backover them, his black-dyed whiskers gleaming in shades of green when thesun hit them, like the plumage of a crow.
For all the news that came to Comanche over the telephone-wire that daymust come through the office of _The Chieftain_. There was but onetelephone in the town; that was in the office of the stage-line, and byarrangement with its owners, the editor had bottled up the slightestchance of a leak.
There would be no bulletins, the editor announced. Anyone desiring newsof the drawing must pay twenty-five cents for a copy of the papercontaining it. It was the editor's one great chance for graft, and hemeant to work it until it was winded.
The lottery was to open in Meander at ten o'clock; but long before thathour the quivering excitement which shook the fabric of Comanche hadreached the tent where Mrs. Reed mothered it over the company ofadventurers. The lumberman and insurance agent were away early; SergeantSchaefer and Milo Strong followed them to the newspaper office veryshortly; and the others sat out in front, watching the long shadowscontract toward the peg that June had driven in the ground the daybefore at the line of ten o'clock.
"Well, this is the day," said William Bentley. "What will you take foryour chance, Doctor?"
"Well, it wouldn't take very much to get it this morning," Dr. Slavensreplied, peering thoughtfully at the ground, "for it's one of thosethings that grow smaller and smaller the nearer you approach."
"I'd say twenty-five hundred for mine," offered Horace.
"Great lands!" exclaimed Mrs. Reed, blinking, as she looked out acrossthe open toward the river. "If anybody will give me three dollars for mychance he can take it, and welcome."
"Then you'd feel cheap if you won," June put in. "It's worth more thanthat even up in the thousands; isn't it, Mr. Walker?"
Walker was warm in his declaration that it would be a mighty small andpoor piece of Wyoming that wouldn't be worth more than that.
"We haven't heard from you, Miss Horton," said William Bentley.
"I'm afraid nothing would tempt me to part with my chance," Agnesreplied. "I hold it just the reverse of Dr. Slavens. The longer I lookat it the bigger it gets."
The doctor was the only one present who understood fully how much shehad built around that chance. Their eyes met as he looked across at her;he remembered what she had said of planting trees, and having rosesbeside her door.
"It's almost there!" cried June, looking at her stake.
"Twenty minutes yet," announced Horace, who sat with his watch in hispalm.
They were all bonneted and booted, ready for an expedition, althoughthey had none in sight. It was as if they expected Number One to comeflying through the town, to be caught and held by the swiftest of foot,the one alert and ready to spring up and dash after it.
"Shall we go over to the newspaper office?" asked the doctor, lookingacross again and catching Agnes' eyes.
June jumped up and accepted the proposal for all.
"Oh, let's do!" she exclaimed. "Let's be there to get the very firstword!"
On the part of the ladies there was a dash into the tent to adjust theirheadgear before glasses and to renew the powder on their noses. Whilethey were gone Horace Bentley, the lawyer, stood with his watch exposedto his impatient eye.
"In five minutes," he announced as the ladies rejoined them, "they willdraw the first name from the wheel at Meander. I hope that it may be thename of someone in this party."
"I hope it will be yours," said Dr. Slavens' eyes as he looked earnestlyat Agnes; and:
"Number Two would do very well for me in case your namecame first," her eyes seemed to answer him.
But there was none by who knew what had passed between them of theirhopes, so none could read the messages, even if there had been any socurious as to try.
Mrs. Mann was humming a little song as they started away toward thenewspaper office, for she was tiring of Wyoming, where she had not seena single cowboy yet; and the prospect of returning to the miller wasgrowing dear to her heart. There was a quiet over Comanche that morningwhich seemed different from the usual comparative peace of that portionof the day--a strained and fevered quiet, as of hushed winds before agale. It took hold of even June as the party passed through the mainstreet, joining the stream of traffic which pressed in one directiononly.
They could not arrive within a square of the newspaper-tent, for thecrowd around it was packed and dense; so they stopped where there wasbreathing-space among groups of men who stood with their gripsacksbetween their feet, waiting for the first word.
At five minutes past ten the editor of _The Chieftain_ handed hisprinter a slip of paper, and the name of the winner of Claim Number Onewas put in type. The news was carried by one who pushed through thethrong, his hat on the back of his head, sweat drenching his face. Theman was in a buck-ague over the prospect of that name being his own, itseemed, and thought only of drawing away from the sudden glare offortune until he could collect his wits.
Some people are that way--the timid ones of the earth. They go throughlife leaving a string of baited traps behind them, lacking courage to goback and see what they have caught.
More than two hundred names were in the first extra run off _TheChieftain's_ press at half-past ten. The name of the winner of NumberOne was Axel Peterson; his home in Meander, right where he could stepacross the street and file without losing a minute.
Milo Strong, the schoolmaster from Iowa, drew Number Thirty-Seven. Noneof the others in the colony at the Hotel Metropole figured in the firstreturns.
They went back as silently as they had come, the doctor carrying thelist in his hand. Before the tent stood the lumberman and the insuranceagent, their bags in their hands.
"We've got just six minutes to catch the first train out," said theinsurance agent, his big smile just as wide as ever. "Good luck to youall, and hope we meet again."
The lumberman waved his farewell as he ran. For them the gamble was off.They had staked on coming in below one hundred, and they had lost. Therewas nothing more to hang around Comanche for, and it is supposed thatthey caught the train, for they were seen there no more.
There were several hundred others in that quick-coming and quick-goingpopulation whose hopes were dispersed by the printed list. And so thetown suffered a heavy drain with the departure of the first train forthe East. The railroad company, foreseeing the desire to be gone, hadarranged a long string of coaches, with two engines hitched up andpanting to set out. The train pulled away with every inch of spaceoccupied.
All day the enterprising editor printed and sold extras. His press, runby an impertinent little gasoline engine, could turn out eighteenhundred of those single-sheet dodgers in an hour, but it couldn't turnthem out fast enough. Every time Editor Mong looked out of his tent andsaw two men reading one paper he cursed his limited vision which hadstood in the way of putting sixty dollars more into a press of twicethat capacity. As it was, the day's work brought him nearly threethousand dollars, money on the spot; no back subscriptions to worryover, no cabbage or cordwood in exchange.
When the drawing closed for the day and the last extra was off, morethan three thousand numbers had been taken from the wheel at Meander.The only one among the Metropole colony to draw after the firstpublished list was Agnes Horton. Claim Number Nine Hundred and Five fellto her lot.
Claims that high were useless, and everybody knew it; so interestdropped away, the little gasoline engine popped its last impertinent popand subsided, and the crowds drifted off to get ready to depart as fastas trains could be made up to haul them. Sergeant Schaefer, havingfailed of his expectations, felt a revival of interest in the militarylife, and announced that he would leave on the first train out nextmorning.
That night the price of cots suffered a dispiriting drop. Fifty centswould hire the most exclusive bed in the phantom city of Comanche.
As for Dr. Slavens, the day's events had left him with a dazed feelingof insecurity. His air was cleared of hope; he could not touch a stablebit of footing as far around him as he could reach. He had counted agood deal on drawing something along in the early hundreds; and as theday wore along to his disappointment in that hope he thought that hemight come tagging in at the end, in the mean way that his cross-grainedluck had of humiliating him and of forcing the fact that he was more orless a failure before his eyes.
No matter what he drew under three thousand, he said, he'd take it andbe thankful for it. If he could locate on a trickle of water somewhereand start out with a dozen ewes and a ram, he'd bury himself away in thedesert and pull the edges of it up around him to keep out thedisappointments of the world. A man might come out of it in a few yearswith enough money--that impenetrable armor which gives security even tofools--to buy a high place for himself, if he couldn't win it otherwise.Men had done well on small beginnings with sheep; that country was fullof them; and it was a poor one, indeed, that wasn't able to buy up anyten doctors he could name.
So Dr. Slavens ran on, following the lead of a fresh dream, which hadits foundation on the sands of despair. When the drawing had passed thehigh numbers which he had set as his possible lowest, he felt likesneaking away, whipped, to hide his discouragement where there was noone to see. His confounded luck wouldn't even grant him the opportunityof burying himself out there in that gray sea of blowing dust!
There was no use in trying to disguise the fact any longer; he was afizzle. Some men were designed from the beginning for failures, and hewas one of the plainest patterns that ever was made. There was a placefor Axel Peterson, the alien, but there was no place for him.
In spite of his age and experience, he did not understand that the worldvalues men according to the resistance they interpose against it;according to the stamping down of feet and the presenting of shouldersand the squaring arms to take its blows. Cowards make a front before itand get on with amazing success; droves of poltroons bluster and storm,with empty shells of hearts inside their ribs, and kick up a fine dustin the arena, under the cloud of which they snatch down many of thelaurels which have been hung up for worthier men. Success liesprincipally in understanding that the whole game is a bluff on theworld's part, and that the biggest bluffer in the ring takes down thepurse.
But the timid hearts of the earth never learn this; the sentimentalistsand the poets do not understand it. You can't go along sweeping a clearpath for your feet with a bunch of flowers. What you need is a good,sound club. When a hairy shin impedes, whack it, or make a feint and abluff. You'll be surprised how easily the terrifying hulks of adversityare charmed out of the highway ahead of you by a little impertinence, alittle ginger, and a little gall.
Many a man remains a coward all his life because somebody cowed him whenhe was a boy. Dr. Slavens had put his hands down, and had stood with hisshoulders hunched, taking the world's thumps without striking back, forso many years in his melancholy life that his natural resistance hadshrunk. On that day he was not as nature had intended him, but ascircumstances had made him.
It had become the friendly fashion in camp for the doctor and Agnes totake a walk after supper. June's mother had frowned on the boldness ofit, whispering to June's aunt. But the miller's wife, more liberal andromantic, wouldn't hear of whisperings. She said their conduct was asirreproachable in that country as eating peas with a spoon.
"I wish I was in her place!" she sighed.
"_Dorothy Ann!_" gasped Mrs. Reed. "Remember your husband, DorothyAnn!"
"I do," sighed the miller's wife.
"Well, if you _were_ in her place you'd ask somebody to accompany you
onyour moonlight strolls, I hope. I _hope_ that's what you'd do, DorothyAnn."
"No," answered the miller's wife thoughtfully. "I'd propose. She'll losehim if she doesn't."
On the evening of that day of blasted hopes the two of them walked awayin the gloaming toward the river, with few words between them until theyleft the lights of Comanche behind.
"Mr. Strong is considerably elated over his luck," said Agnes at last,after many sidling glances at his gloomy profile.
"That's the way it goes," Dr. Slavens sighed. "I don't believe thatchance is blind; I think it's just perverse. I should say, not countingmyself, that Strong is the least deserving of any man in the crowd ofus. Look at old Horace Bentley, the lawyer. He doesn't say anything, butyou can see that his heart is aching with disappointment."
"I have noticed it," she agreed. "He hasn't said ten words since thelast extra."
"When a man like that dreams, he dreams hard--and deep," the doctorcontinued. "But how about yourself?"
She laughed, and placed a restraining hand upon his arm.
"You're going too fast," she panted. "I'll be winded before we get tothe river."
"I guess I was trying to overtake my hopes," said he. "I'm sorry; we'llgo slower--in all things--the rest of the way."
She looked at him quickly, a little curiously, but there was noexplanation in his eyes, fixed on the graying landscape beyond theriver.
"It looks like ashes," said he softly, with a motion of the hand towardthe naked hills. "There is no life in it; there is nothing of the dead.It is a cenotaph of dreams. But how about your claim?"
"It's a little farther up than I had expected," she admitted, but with acheerful show of courage which she did not altogether feel.
"Yes; it puts you out of the chance of drawing any agricultural land,throws you into the grazing and mineral," said he.
"Unless there are a great many lapses," she suggested.
"There will be hundreds, in my opinion," he declared. "But in case thereare not enough to bring you down to the claim worth having--one uponwhich you could plant trees and roses and such things?"
"I'll stick to it anyhow," said she determinedly.
"So this is going to be home?" he asked.
"Home," she answered with a caressing touch upon the word. "I came hereto make it; I sha'n't go away without it. I don't know just how long itwill take me, nor how hard it will be, but I'm going to collect intereston my hopes from this country before I turn my back."
"You seem to believe in it," said he.
"Perhaps I believe more in myself," she answered thoughtfully. "Have youdetermined what you are going to do?"
He laughed--a short, harsh expression of ironical bitterness.
"I've gone through the mill today of heat and cold," said he. "First, Iwas going to sell my relinquishment for ten thousand dollars as soon asthe law would allow, but by noon I had come down to five hundred. Afterthat I took up the notion of sheep stronger than Milo, from Iowa, everthought of it. It took just one more extra to put that fire out, and nowthe ashes of it aren't even warm. Just what my next phantasy will be Ican't say."
"But you're going to stay here, aren't you?"
"I've thought of that, too. I've thought of making another try at it ina professional way. But this is a big, empty country. Few people live init and fewer die. I don't know."
"Well, you're a doctor, not an undertaker, anyhow," she reminded him.
"Yes; I missed my calling," he laughed, with the bitterness of defeat.
"No," she corrected; "I didn't mean that. But perhaps at something elseyou might get on faster here--business of some kind, I mean."
"If I had the chance!" he exclaimed wearily, flinging his hat to theground as he sat beside her on a boulder at the river's edge. "I'venever had a square and open chance at anything yet."
"I don't know, of course," said she. "But the trouble with most of us,it seems to me, is that we haven't the quickness or the courage to takehold of the chance when it comes. All of us let so many good ones getaway."
Dusk had deepened. The star-glow was upon the river, placid there in itsserene approach to the rough passage beyond. He sat there, the windlifting the hair upon his forehead, pondering what she had said.
Was it possible that a man could walk blindly by his chances forthirty-five years, only to be grasping, empty-palmed, after them whenthey had whisked away? For what else did his complainings signify? Hehad lacked the courage or the quickness, or some essential, as she hadsaid, to lay hold of them before they fled away beyond his reachforever.
There was a chance beside him going to waste tonight--a golden, greatchance. Not for lack of courage would he let it pass, he reflected; butlet it pass he must. He wanted to tell her that he would be a differentman if he could remain near her all the rest of his years; he longed tosay that he desired dearly to help her smooth the rough land and plantthe trees and draw the water in that place which she dreamed of andcalled home.
But there was nothing in his past to justify her confidence in hisfuture. Women worth having did not marry forlorn hopes in theexpectation of making a profit out of them by and by. He had no hearthto offer her; he had no thatch; he had not a rood of land to lead amountain stream across and set with the emerald and royal purple ofalfalfa; not a foot of greensward beside the river, where a yeaning ewemight lie and ease the burden of her pains. He had nothing to offer,nothing to give. If he asked, it must be to receive all and returnnothing, except whatever of constancy time might prove out of hisheart.
If he had even a plan to lay down before her and ask her to share, itwould be something, he thought; or a brave resolve, like her own. Butthere was emptiness all around him; his feet could not find a squareyard of solid earth to shape his future upon. It was not that hebelieved that she cared for money or the material rewards of success,for she had spoken bitterly of that. The ghosts of money's victims werebehind her; she had said as much the first time they had talked of theirhopes in that new land.
There must be something in that place for him, as she had said; theremust be an unimproved opportunity which Fate had fashioned for his hand.Hope lifted its resilient head again. Before the morning he must have aplan, and when he had the plan he would speak.
"We'll have to be breaking up camp in a day or two more," Agnes said,disturbing the long silence which had settled between them.
"I suppose so," he responded; "but I don't know what the plans of theothers are."
"Mr. Strong is going to Meander in the morning," she told him; "andHorace Bentley is going with him, poor fellow, to look around, he says.William Bentley told me this evening that he would leave for home in aday or two, and Mrs. Reed and her charges are waiting to hear from afriend of June's who was in school with her--I think she is theGovernor's daughter, or maybe he's an ex-governor--about a long-standinginvitation to visit her in her summer home, which is near here, as theycompute distances in Wyoming."
"And Schaefer is leaving in the morning," reflected the doctor. "Thatleaves but you and me unaccounted for. Are you going on to Meandersoon?"
"Yes; I want to be there to file when my time comes."
"I've thought of going over there to feel things out, too," Dr. Slavenswent on. "This place will shrink in a few days like a piece of wetleather in the sun. They'll have nothing left of it but the stores, andno business to sustain them until the country around here is settled.That may be a long time yet. Still, there may be something around herefor me. I'm going to look into the possibilities tomorrow. And we'llhave at least another talk before we part?"
"Many more, I hope," she said.
Her answer presented an alluring lead for him to say more, but before hecould speak, even if minded to do it, she went on:
"This has been a pleasant experience, this camping in the clean, unusedcountry, and it would be a sort of Persian poet existence if we could goon with it always; but of course we can't."
"It isn't all summer and fair skies here," he reminded her, "any morethan it i
s in--well, Persia. Twenty below in winter sometimes, Smithsaid. Do you remember?"
"Yes," she sighed. "But it seems impossible."
"You wouldn't believe this little river could turn into a wild andsavage torrent, either, a few hundred yards along, if you had nothing tojudge it by but this quiet stretch," he returned. "But listen to it downthere, crashing against the rocks!"
"There's no news of that rash man who went into the canyon for thenewspaper?" Agnes asked.
"He must have lodged in there somewhere; they haven't picked him up onthe other side," he said, a thoughtful abstraction over him.
"I hope you've given up the thought of trying to explore it?"
"I haven't thought much about it lately," he replied; "but I'm of thesame opinion. I believe the difficulties of the canyon are greatlyexaggerated. In fact, as I told you before, the reward posted by thatnewspaper looks to me like easy money."
"It wouldn't pay you if the reward were ten times as large," shedeclared with a little argumentative heat.
"Perhaps not," said he, as if he had but a passing and shallow interestin the subject.
Sitting there bareheaded to the wind, which was dropping down coldlyfrom the far mountains, he seemed to be in a brooding humor.
"The moon is late tonight," he noted. "Shall we wait till it rises?"
"Yes," she answered, feeling the great gentleness that there was abouthim when he was in a serious way.
Why he had not been successful in the profession for which natureplainly had designed him she could not understand; for he was a man toinspire confidence when he was at his best, and unvexed by the memory ofthe bitter waters which had passed his lips. She felt that there wouldbe immeasurable solace in his hand for one who suffered; she knew thathe would put down all that he had in life for a friend.
Leaning her chin upon her palm, she looked at him in the last light ofthe west, which came down to them dimly, as if falling through dunwater, from some high-floating clouds. As if following in her thoughtsomething that had gone before, she said:
"No; perhaps you should not stay in this big, empty country when thereare crowded places in the world that are full of pain, and littlechildren in them dying for the want of such men as you."
He started and turned toward her, putting out his hand as if to place itupon her head.
"How did you know that it's the children that give me the strongest callback to the struggle?" he asked.
"It's in your eyes," said she. And beneath her breath she added: "Inyour heart."
"About all the success that I ever won I sacrificed for a child," hesaid, with reminiscent sadness.
"Will you tell me about it?"
"It was a charity case at that," he explained, "a little girl who hadbeen burned in a fire which took all the rest of the family. She neededtwenty-two square inches of skin on her breast. One gave all that hecould very well part with----"
"That was yourself," she nodded, drawing a little nearer to him quiteunconsciously.
"But that was not half enough," he continued as if unaware of theinterruption. "I had to get it into the papers and ask for volunteers,for you know that an average of only one in three pieces of cuticleadheres when set into a wound, especially a burn. The papers made a gooddeal of it, and I couldn't keep my name out, of course. Well, enoughschool-children came forward to patch up three or four girls, andtogether we saved her.
"No matter. The medical association of that city jumped me very promptly.The old chaps said that I had handled the case unprofessionally and hadused it merely for an advertisement. They charged unprofessionalconduct against me; they tried me in their high court and found meguilty. They dug the ground from under my feet and branded me as aquack. They broke me, they tried to have my license to practice revoked.But they failed in that. That was three years ago. I hung on, but Istarved. So when I speak in what may seem a bitter way of the narrowtraditions of my profession, you know my reason is fairly well grounded."
"But you saved the little girl!"
It was too dark for him to see her eyes. The tears that lay in themcould not drop their balm upon his heart.
"She's as good as new," said he cheerfully, fingering the inner pocketof his coat. "She writes to me right along. Here's a picture-card thatfollowed me here, mailed from the home that the man who gave his toughold hide to mend her found for her when she was well. She lives inOklahoma now, and her sweet fortitude under her misfortune has been aremembrance to sustain me over many a hungry day."
"But you saved the little girl!" Agnes repeated with unaccountableinsistence, as if trying to beat down the injustice of his heavy penancewith that argument.
And then he saw her bow her head upon her folded arms like a littlechild, and weep in great sobs which came rackingly as if torn from thecore of her heart.
Dr. Slavens picked up his hat, put it on, got to his feet, and took astride away from her as if he could not bear the sight of her poignantsympathy. Then he turned, came back, and stooped above her, laying hishand upon her hair.
"Don't do that!" he pleaded. "All that's gone, all that I've missed, isnot worth a single tear. You must not make my troubles your own, for atthe worst there's not enough for two."
She reached out her tear-wet hand and clung to his, wordless for alittle while. As it lay softly within his palm he stroked it soothinglyand folded it between his hands as if to yield it freedom nevermore.Soon her gust of sorrow passed. She stood beside him, breathing brokenlyin the ebb of that overmastering tide. In the opening of the broadvalley the moon stood redly. The wind trailed slowly from the hills tomeet it, as if to warm itself at its beacon-fire.
"You saved the little girl!" said she again, laying her warm hand for amoment against his cheek.
In that moment it was well for Dr. Warren Slavens that the lesson of hishard years was deep within his heart; that the continence and abnegationof his past had ripened his restraint until, no matter how his lipsmight yearn to the sweets which were not his own, they would not taste.He took hold of himself with a rough hand, for the moonlight was uponher trembling lips; it stood imprisoned in the undried tears which layupon her cheeks.
The invitation was there, and the time, such as the lines of a man'slife are plotted to lead up to from the beginning. But there was lackingtoo much on his part for an honest man to stoop and gather whatpresented. He might have folded his arms about her and drawn her to hisbreast, as the yearning of his soul desired; he might have kissed herlips and dispelled the moonlight from her trembling tears--and spoiledit all for both.
For that would have been a trespass without mitigation, a sacrilegebeyond excuse. When a man took a woman like that in his arms and kissedher, according to his old-fashioned belief, he took from every other manthe right to do so, ever. In such case he must have a refuge to offerher from the world's encroachments, and a security to requite her in allthat she yielded for his sake.
Such he had not. There was no hearthstone, there was no roof-tree, therewas no corner of refuge in all the vast, gray world. He had no right totake where he could not give, although it wrenched his heart to give itup.
He took the soft, warm hand which had bestowed its benediction on hischeek, and held it in childish attitude, swinging at his side. No wordwas said as they faced back to the unstable city, their shadows trailingthem, long and grotesque, like the sins of men which come after them,and gambol and grimace for all the world to see but those who believethem hidden.