Stepsons of Light Part 8

"Charlie," said Mr. See again. "Six months and eight days."

Mr. Hobby Lull sighed dreamily. "Dear me! It doesn't seem over two weeks!"

A mesquite fire crackled in the friendly room. The night air bore no chill; it was the meaning of that fire to be cheerful; the wide old fireplace was the heart of the house. Adam Forbes spread his fingers to the blaze and sighed luxuriously.

"Charlie, when you build your house you want a fireplace like this in every room. Hob, who's going to sell Charlie a farm?"

"What's the matter with yours?"

Adam appeared a little disconcerted at this suggestion. "That idea hadn't struck me, exactly," he confessed. "But it may come to that yet. Lots of things may happen. I might find my placer gold, say.

Didn't know I was fixing to find a gold mine, did you? Well, I am.

I wanted Charlie to go snooks with me, but he hasn't got time. Me, I've been projectin' and pirootin' over the pinnacles after that gold for a year now, and I've just about got it tracked to its lair.

To-morrow--"

"Oh, gold!" said Lyn disdainfully, and wrinkled her nose.

"_Ain't I told you a hundred times-- Baby!

Ain't I told you a hundred times, There ain't no money in the placer mines?

Baby!_"

"Lyn! Wherever do you pick up such deplorable songs?" said Aunt Peg, highly scandalized. "But she's right, Adam. The best gold is like that in the old fable--buried under your apple trees. You dig there faithfully and you will need no placer mines."

White Edith turned to Charlie See.

"If you really intend to buy a farm here you ought to be getting about it. You might wait too long, Mr. See."

"Charlie. Exactly what do you mean by that remark, my fair-haired child?"

"Here! This has gone far enough!" declared Hob. "We men have got to stand together--or else pull stakes and go where the women cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. Don't you let her threats get you rattled, Charlie See. We'll protect you."

"Silly! I meant, of course, that the Mexicans are not selling their lands cheaply now, as they used to do."

"Not so you could notice it," said Uncle Dan. "Those that wanted to sell, they've sold and gone, just about all of them. What few are left are the solid ones. Not half-bad neighbors either. Pretty good sort.

They're apt to stick."

"Not long," said Hobby rather sadly. "They'll go, and we'll go too, most of us. The big dam will be built, some time or other; we'll be offered some real money. We'll grab it and drift. Strangers will take comfort where we've grubbed out stumps. We are the scene s.h.i.+fters. The play will take place later. 'Sall right; I hope the actors get a hand.

But I hate to think of strangers living--well, in this old house. Say, we've had some happy times here."

"Won't you please hush?" said Adam. "Why so doleful? There's more happy times in stock. This bunch don't have to move away. Why, when I get my gold mine in action we can all live happy ever after.

To-morrow--"

"Hobby is right," said Aunt Peg. "Pick your words as you please, bad luck or improvidence on the one side, thrift or greed on the other--yes, and as many more words of praise or blame as you care for; and the fact remains that the people who care for other things more than they do for money are slowly crowded out by the people who care more for money than for anything else."

"Uncle Dan, is that why you grasping Scotchmen have crowded out the Irish round these parts?" inquired Charlie. "McClintock, MacCleod, Simpson, Forbes, Campbell, Monroe, Fenderson, Stewart, Buchanan--why, say, there's a raft of you here; and across the river it is worse."

"You touch there on a very singular thing, Mr. Charlie. Not that we crowded out the Irish. There were only a few families, and most of them are here yet. They happened to come first, and named the settlements--that's all. But for the Scotch--you find more good Scots' names to the hundred, once you strike the hills, than you will find to the thousand on the plain country. Love of the hills is in the blood of them; they followed the Rocky Mountains down from Canada."

"But, Uncle Dan," said Hobby, "how did so many of them happen to be in Canada?"

"Scotland was a poor country and a cold country, England was rich and warm, Canada was cold and hard. The English had no call to Canada, the Hudson Bay Company captained their outflung posts with Scotchmen; the easier that the Hanoverian kings, as a matter of policy, harried the Jacobite clans by fair means and foul. You were speaking of across the river. That is another curious matter. The California Company, now--ruling a dozen dukedoms--California lends the name of it and supplied the money; but the heads that first dreamed it were four long Scottish heads. And their brand is the John Cross. Any stranger cowman would read that brand as J Half Circle Cross. But we call it John Cross. And why, sirs?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Hobby. "It was always the John Cross and it never entered my head to ask why."

"Look you there, now!" Uncle Dan held out an open palm and traced on it with a stubby and triumphant finger. "Their fathers had served John Company, the Hudson Bay Company! And there you are linked back with two hundred years! 'John Company has a long arm,' they said; 'John Company lost a good man there!' How the name began is beyond my sure knowing; but it is in my mind that it goes back farther still, to the East India Company, to Clive and to Madras. Lyn, you are the bookman, I'll get you to look it up some of these--Lyn! Lyn! Charlie See! The young devils! Now wouldn't that jar you?"

"A fool and his honey are soon started," observed Adam.

"We're out here, Uncle Dan; all nice and comfy. There's a moon. And itty-bitsy stars," answered a soothing voice--Charlie See's--from the porch. "Oodles of stars. How I wonder what they are. G'wan, Uncle Dan--tell us about the East India Company now."

Hobby Lull rose tragically and bestowed a withering glance upon Uncle Dan. "You old fat fallacy with an undistributed middle--see what you've done now! You and your John Company! Go to bed! Forbes, you brought this man See. You go home!"

"Overlook it this one time," urged Forbes. "Don't send us away--the girls are going to sing. Forgive us all both, and I'll get rid of See to-morrow."

"Be sure you do, then. Lyn! Come here to me."

"Don't shoot, colonel, I'll come down," said Lyn.

Her small face was downcast and demure. Charlie See came tiptoe after her and sidled furtively to the fire.

"Sing, then," commanded Hobby. He brought the guitars and gave one to each girl.

The coals glowed on the hearth; side by side, the fair head and the brown bent at the task of tuning. That laughing circle was scattered long ago and it was written that never again should all those friendly faces gather by any hearthfire--never again. It has happened so many, many times; even to you and to me, so many, many times! But we learn nothing; we are still bitter, and hard, and unkind--with kindness so cheap and so priceless--as if there was no such thing as loss or change or death.

And because of some hours of your own, it is hoped you will not smile at the songs of that lost happy hour. They were old-fas.h.i.+oned songs; indeed, it is feared they might almost be called Victorian. Their bourgeois simplicity carried no suggestive double meaning.

"When other lips and other hearts"--that was what they sang, brown Lyn and white Edith. Kirkconnel Lea they sang, and Jeanie Morrison, and Rosamond:

_Rose o' the world, what man would wed When he might dream of your face instead?_

Folly? Perhaps. Perhaps, too, in a world where we can but love and where we must lose, it may be no unwisdom if only love and loss seem worth the singing.

The swift hour pa.s.sed. The last song, even as the first, was poignant with the happy sadness of youth:

_When my heart is sad and troubled, Then my quivering lips shall say,_ "_Oh! by and by you will forget me, By and by when far away!_"

Good-bys were said at last; Forbes and See put foot to stirrup and rode jingling into the white moonlight; the others stood silent on the porch and watched them go. A hundred yards down the road, Adam Forbes drew rein. A guitar throbbed low behind them.

"Hark," he said.

Edith Harkey stood in the shaft of golden light from the doorway; she bore herself like the Winged Victory; her voice thrilled across the quiet of the moonlit night:

"_Never the nightingale, Oh, my dear!

Never again the lark Thou wilt hear; Though dusk and the morning still_

"_Tap at thy window-sill, Though ever love call and call Thou wilt not hear at all, My dear, my dear!_"

The sad notes melted into the sweet pagan heartbreak of the enchanted night. They turned to go.