Sunlight Patch Part 31

"It would be so negative. How long will the Colonel and Dale be closeted?"

"Lord knows. They've lots to talk about. Dale has reached a place where the Colonel finds him exciting."

"Isn't he a marvel!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, he's a marvel, all right," Brent grumbled. "But his vanity will surpa.s.s his great achievements;--don't delude yourself about that!"

"Well; you're an authority on that condition of life. Do you enjoy it?"

"If you'll give me more reason to be vain, I'll tell you."

She ignored this, and when they were among the cedars he began again; not caring what he talked about as much as to be talking. He felt that if he stopped, she might read through his depression.

"Do you remember the last time we were here? You lectured me for loafing, and shooting woodp.e.c.k.e.rs. There were other things, but you couldn't recall them at the moment. I've been doing some right stiff thinking since then!"

"Retrospection is good for the soul," she smiled at him.

"On the contrary, retrospection makes for hollow eyes, and introspection is tinged with bitterness. Keep your face to the future if you would have your soul contented."

"And what is your future?" she archly inquired.

"These coming minutes while you are here with me."

"Really," she flashed him a rather bewildering look, "I did think for once you were going to be serious!"

"I am serious," he dug the heel of his boot thoughtfully into the tanbark. "I wish I weren't--or didn't have to be."

"Has something gone wrong--with the road?" There was a slight tinge of irony in the suggestion.

"No, but something's gone wrong with the world. I wish," he suddenly looked up at her, "that I could be as sure of laying a smooth grade for--for my friends as I am for trains of coal!"

"Your friends might have to wait a long time before traveling about,"

she laughed, but there was a note of apprehension in her voice which again put him on his guard;--and yet he could not help feeling that a partial preparation was only fair to her.

"It wouldn't be a bad thing if some people never traveled about," he smiled. "I might then succeed in keeping you here, and those hot-headed mountaineers would stay back in their holes and rot forever, as they ought."

"Oh, Brent," she exclaimed, in a hurt voice, "there is such a wealth of splendid human material up there if we can only get hold of it! They're all ambitious--if stirred!"

He waited, asking: "And what else?"

"Nothing else."

"But you didn't say anything nice about Dale!"

She laughed. "I thought you knew about Dale--and me; for I'm of the mountains!"

"You didn't belong to those people," he murmured. "You're a spirit who lived in a deep spring, and you just floated down with the brook. I know, because I've dreamed about you. And I know, too," he shook off the spell, "a little something about stirring the ambition of _real_ people up there. I've seen it tried in a mining camp where a railroad has been running for years! I've seen a fair and square company build model cottages, and in every way try to improve conditions. It put in baths, and the tubs were used for vegetable bins. It built a reading room, and the walls were covered with charcoal pictures. Two men used their little front porches for firewood, rather than pick up all they wanted a hundred yards away. One winter coal took a jump. The mine had a bonanza chance, and the men who had been making their two and a half dollars a day, or thereabouts, could with the same hours' work pull down twice that much. Did they? I'll tell you what they did: they laughed at the superintendent and worked half time; they sat about the store and whittled, saying that two and a half was all they needed. But they forgot this quick enough when the union afterwards went in and told them they ought to get twenty cents more! You'd have thought then that they'd been on the verge of starvation for years, and the harrowing tales which went forth about their 'wretched conditions' would have made you laugh--had you known the facts. The union had photographs taken of the two cottages without front porches, and sent them broadcast so the world could see how capital trod upon its hire. Ambition? They don't know the word deeper than its two first letters! And you've got to be ready for many a disappointment here, too--let me tell you that!"

She was looking at him earnestly, and in a few moments said: "I agree with everything you say. I grant it all, every bit. But, Brent, consider! A mother tells her little boy to wash his face, to read his primer, and he doesn't. And the next day she tells him, and he doesn't.

And so on, for days and days, she tells and tells. It seems utterly hopeless, but all the time she is persisting, and gradually bringing him nearer to a sense of obligation. After ten or twelve years you will find him stepping briskly on to admirable manhood; but it is because she has never turned her back on him--she never faltered. See what Dale's sister has done with patient perseverance! Surely, you would not get in a pout and hold back the road simply because a few mountaineers are sometimes obstinate little children!"

He felt the double reproach of this and began to smile, saying:

"I hadn't intended to tell you, but now you force me to it: the line is twice as far along as when you were over here last!"

"Oh, you good-for-nothing--splendid!" she impulsively cried; but more wistfully added: "Why wouldn't you have told me? Why do you try to keep people from seeing when you do good things, and only show the--the not so good?" He did not answer, and she spoke again with a new and delicate caress in her voice: "You haven't deceived me utterly--there are times when I've been tremendously proud of you."

"Jane," he said, and stopped. His eyes were looking deep into her own, and while she gave him back look for look he seemed incapable of continuing. But she turned away, somewhat confused, and slowly he continued: "One time I discovered that in us all there is a secret temple, with a very small but highly prized altar lighted by a tiny taper flame, where we keep just our own little treasures--our wonderful selves." She glanced up in some surprise, but this time he was staring at the ground. "In some, its door is studiously, carefully locked; in others, its paths of approach are overgrown with weeds and almost lost; in others still, it is hard to find because it has been starved, or hurt, or laughed at--but always when a certain current of thought or sound sweeps by, that wonderful part of our souls upon this little altar is set a-quivering. Old soldiers feel its pulsing at the booming of a cannon; old women feel it at the laughter of a child; others know it is there while beneath the spell of an orchestra, a breeze in the pines, a bird's note, the fragrance of certain flowers, the caress of a voice.

You will forgive this unintentional preamble," he looked slowly up at her, "when I say that your voice just now has been all of these things to me--and more!"

"Oh, Brent," she cried, with a brave pretense at lightness, "if only you weren't such a trifler! The dangerous thing about you is that you mean this now--almost; enough, anyway, to give it a ring of sincerity. Were I less sophisticated, I might go home believing it, and thinking what a wonderful man you are starting out to be; but in the morning find my ideals shattered, and on the ash heap!"

"You are so worldly, then?" he smiled.

But she had arisen and now stood at the entrance of the path, looking slightly over her shoulder and ignoring his question with another:

"You say things are really hurrying?"

"Dulany is buying the necessary land in record time," he answered.

"But," she hesitated, pouting just a little, "that implies no work of your own! Still, I suppose I should be thankful for whatever we receive.

And, oh, Brent," she now turned and looked seriously up at him, "if you would only stop this wretched drinking! Tell me, why do you? What call, or what cause, makes you? Is it to drug the mind into some sort of mock rest, or the body into sleep, or the soul--ah, Brent, what does the soul do when it is stupefied? The pity of it flares up in me like a great scorching flame!"

He opened his lips, but could not speak. The words, their sincerity, sympathy, and wonderfully strange appeal, came like an unfelt air; for a second time setting a-tremble the tiny taper flame in that reliquary of which he had told her. Another moment she looked appealingly up at him, then turned toward the house.

"Jane!" His voice, hoa.r.s.e and vibrating, held her where she stood. She dared not see the face which her senses said had been driven white by some tremendous feeling. So she waited, listening.

The smell of cedar buds was in the air about them; and wafted out on this, as though it might have been just now brought up from the musty depths of some old cedar chest, they heard the thin voice of Miss Liz scolding one of the servants. Otherwise, the morning seemed to have no life except the lazy drone of insects.

Again she started slowly to the house; but this time he did not speak, and only watched until she disappeared.

CHAPTER XXII

TWO PLANS

When Colonel May returned he was tired. He paused at the library door, for a moment watching the bent head of the indomitable student, now oblivious to everything except the page before him, hesitated, and then pa.s.sed on in search of Brent. He seemed to appreciate the uselessness of calling the mountaineer who was in a realm too remote for human interference. The Colonel was not the first that day to look in, pause, and then pa.s.s on.

He found the young engineer out under the trees, deep in the contemplation of the sky. Jerkily pulling off his gloves, he said:

"I want a drink!"

"You must have caught his eye," Brent smiled, as the tactful Zack was seen following from the house with two frosted, green-tipped goblets of silver hugged close to his stomach. It was obviously an effort to s.h.i.+eld them from the windows of Miss Liz's room and her inquisitorial lorgnette. Colonel May noticed this shameless evidence of stealth, and colored.

"I wish I could drink in my own house like a gentleman, sir," he raged, "without hurting the sensibilities of super-sensitive ladies! This schoolboy tomfoolery is sickening, and I'm going to put a stop to it right now, sir!" So when the servant drew near, with a sly smile that did anything but a.s.suage the Colonel's humor, he raged anew: "Zack, you rascal, hereafter when you bring me a julep I want you first to ask Miss Liz if she thinks it looks well enough to be served!"