Told In The Hills Part 31

She said it so deliberately that he could not but feel some special thing was meant, and asked quickly:

"What?"

"Well, I might be given talents of benefit to people, and fritter them away for the people's pastime. The people would never know they had lost anything, or come so near a great gain; but I, the cheat, would know it.

After the lights were turned out and the curtain down on the farce, I would realize that it was too late to begin anew, but that the same lights and the same theater would have served as well for the truths of Christ as the pranks of Pantaloon--the choice lay only in the will of the worker."

Her eyes were turned away from him, as if she was seeking for metaphors in the white stretch of the snow-fall. He reached over and laid his hand on hers.

"Rachel!"

It was the only time he had called her that, and the caress of the name gave voice to the touch of his fingers.

"Rachel! What is it you are talking about? Look around here! I want to see you! Do you mean that you think of--of me like that--tell me?"

If Miss Fred could have seen them at that moment it would have done her heart good, for they really looked rather lover-like; each was unconscious of it, though their faces did not lack feeling. She drew her hand slowly away, and said, in that halting yet persistent way in which she spoke when very earnest yet not very sure of herself:

"You think me egotistical, I suppose, to criticise work that is beyond my own capabilities, but--it was you I meant."

"Well?"

His fingers closed over the arm of the chair instead of her hand. All his face was alight with feeling. Perhaps it was as well that her stubbornness kept her eyes from his; to most women they would not have been an aid to cool judgment.

"Well, there isn't anything more to say, is there?" she asked, smiling a little out at the snow. "It was the book that did it--made me feel like that about you; that your work is--well, surface work--skimmed over for pastime. But here and there are touches that show how much deeper and stronger the work you might produce if you were not either lazy or careless."

"You give one heroic treatment, and can be merciless. The story was written some time ago, and written under circ.u.mstances that--well, you see I do not sign my name to it, so I can't be very proud of it."

"Ah! that is it? Your judgment, I believe, is too good to be satisfied with it; I shouldn't waste breath speaking, if I was not sure of that.

But you have the right to do work you can be proud of; and that is what you must do."

Rachel's way was such a decided way, that people generally accepted her "musts" as a matter of course. Stuart did the same, though evidently unused to the term; and her cool practicalities that were so surely noting his work, not himself, had the effect of checking that first impulse of his to touch her--to make her look at him. He felt more than ever that the girl was strange and changeable--not only in herself, but in her influence. He arose and walked across the floor a couple of times, but came back and stood beside her.

"You think I am not ambitious enough; and you are right, I suppose. I have never yet made up my mind whether it was worth my while to write, or whether it might not be more wise to spare the public."

"But you have the desire--you must feel confidence at times."

"How do you know or imagine so much of what I feel?"

"I read it in that book," and she nodded toward the table. "In it you seem so often just on the point of saying or doing, through the people, things that would lift that piece of work into a strong moral lesson; but just when you reach that point you drop it undeveloped."

"You have read and measured it, haven't you?" and he sat down again beside her. "I never thought of--of what you mention in it. A high moral lesson," he repeated; "but to preach those a man should feel himself fit; I am not."

"I don't believe you!"

"What do you know about it?" he demanded so sharply that she smiled; it was so unlike him. But the sharpness was evidently not irritation, for his face had in it more of sadness than any other feeling; she saw it, and did not speak.

After a little he turned to her with that rare impetuosity that was so expressive.

"You are very helpful to me in what you have said; I think you are that to everyone--it seems so. Perhaps you are without work of your own in the world, that you may have thought for others who need help; that is the highest of duties, and it needs strong, good hearts. But do you understand that it is as hard sometimes to be thought too highly of as to be accused wrong-fully? It makes one feel such a cheat--such a cursed liar!"

"I rather think we are all cheats, more or less, in that respect," she answered. "I am quite sure the inner workings of my most sacred thought could not be advertised without causing my exile from the bosom of my family; yet I refuse to think myself more wicked than the rest of humanity."

"Don't jest!"

"Really, I am not jesting," she answered. "And I believe you are over-sensitive as to your own short-comings, whatever they happen to be.

Because I have faith in your ability to do strong work, don't think I am going to skirmish around for a pedestal, or think I've found a piece of perfection in human nature, because they're not to be found, my friend."

"How old are you?" he asked her suddenly.

She laughed, feeling so clearly the tenor of his thought.

"Twenty-two by my birthdays, but old enough to know that the strongest workers in the world have not been always the most immaculate. What matter the sort of person one has been, or the life one has lived if he come out of it with knowledge and the wish to use it well? You have a certain power that is yours, to use for good or bad, and from a fancy that you should not teach or preach, you let it go to waste. Don't magnify peccadillos!"

"You seem to take for granted the fact that all my acts have been trifling--that only the promises are worthy," he said impatiently.

"I do believe," she answered smiling brightly, "that you would rather I thought you an altogether wicked person than an average trifler. But I will not--I do not believe it possible for you deliberately to do any wicked thing; you have too tender a heart, and--"

"You don't know anything about it!" he repeated vehemently. "What difference whether an act is deliberate or careless, so long as the effect is evil? I tell you the greater part of the suffering in the world is caused not by wicked intents and hard hearts, but by the careless desire to s.h.i.+rk unpleasant facts, and the soft-heartedness that will a.s.suage momentary pain at the price of making a life-long cripple, either mentally, morally, or physically. Nine times out of ten the man whom we call soft-hearted is only a moral coward. Ah, don't help me to think of that; I think of it enough--enough!"

He brought his clenched hand down on the arm of the chair with an emphasis that was heightened by the knitted brow and compressed lips. He did not look at her. The latter part of the rapid speech seemed more to himself than to her. At least it admitted of no answer; the manner as much as the words kept her silent.

"Come! come!" he added, after a little, as if to arouse himself as well as her. "You began by giving me some good words of advice and suggestion; I must not repay you by dropping into the blues. For a long time I've been a piece of drift-wood, with nothing to anchor ambition to; but a change is coming, I think, and--and if it brings me fair weather, I may have something then to work for; then I may be worth your belief in me--I am not now. My intentions to be so are all right, but they are not always to be trusted. I said, before, that you had the faculty of making people speak the truth to you, if they spoke at all, and I rather think I am proving my words."

He arose and stood looking down at her. Since he had found so many words, she had seemed to lose hers; anyway, she was silent.

"It can't be very pleasant for you," he said at last, "to be bored by the affairs of every renegade to whom you are kind, because of some fancied good you may see in him; but you are turning out just the sort of woman I used to fancy you might be--and--I am grateful to you."

"That's all right," she answered in the old brusque way. To tell the truth, a part of his speech was scarcely heard. Something in the whole affair--the confidence and personal interest, and all--had taken her memory back to the days of that cultus corrie, when another man had shared with her scenes somewhat similar to this. Was there a sort of fate that had set her apart for this sort of thing? She smiled a little grimly at the fancy, and scarcely heard him. He saw the ghost of a smile, and it made him check himself in something he was about to say, and walk toward the door.

She neither spoke nor moved; her face was still toward the window.

Turning to look at her, his indecision disappeared, and in three steps he was beside her.

"Rachel, I want to speak to you of something else," he said rapidly, almost eagerly, as if anxious to have it said and done with; "I--I want to tell you what that anchor is I've been looking for, and without which I never will be able to do the higher cla.s.s of work, and--and--"

"Yes?"

He had stopped, making a rather awkward pause after his eager beginning.

With the one encouraging word, she looked up at him and waited.

"It is a woman."

"Not an unusual anchor for mankind," she remarked with a little laugh.

But there was no answering smile in his eyes; they were very serious.

"I never will be much good to myself, or the rest of the world, until I find her again," he said, "though no one's words are likely to help me more than yours. You would make one ambitious if he dared be and--"

"Never mind about that," she said kindly. "I am glad if it has happened so. And this girl--it is someone you--love?"