The Ramrodders Part 39

"The world is all outside of this place, Harlan. You know we have always spoken of all other places than this as 'outside.' You have stepped through the great door. Now you see. You can't help seeing. It's all outspread before you. No one can blame you for not looking back here into the shadows. The great light is all ahead. I am--I ought not to speak about myself. I have no right to. But you'll forgive me. I didn't have any one to tell me! I didn't have any mother to advise me. I have played through all the long days, I don't know anything. Other girls--"

"Clare! G.o.d save you, little Clare--don't--don't!" he pleaded.

"You have been away only a few days, and yet you have found out the difference. You told me about her. She is beautiful, and she is wise.

She has not wasted the long days. She can help you with knowledge. She can--"

He put out his arms and tried to take her, cursing himself for his thoughtless cruelty. Infinite pity and something else--fervent, hungry desire to clasp her overmastered all the prudence of the past. But she eluded him. She sprang away. She retreated to the upper step of the church porch, and he paused, gazing up at her.

"Oh, Blessed Virgin, put your fingers on my lips!" she gasped. "Why did I say it?"

"Listen to me, Clare," he urged, holding his arms to her. "I know now that I've been waiting for you. I thought it was friends.h.i.+p, but now I--"

She cried out so loudly, so bitterly, that he stopped.

"If you say it--if you say it now, Harlan, it will shame me so that I can never lift my eyes to yours again. I realize what I have said. It is I that have put the thoughts into your mind--almost the words in your mouth. Don't speak to me now. Oh, you can see how little I know--what a fool I am, forward, shameless, ignorant about all that a girl should know! Do not come near me--not now!" He had started to come up the steps--he was crying out to her. "Oh, Harlan, don't you understand?

Don't you see that I can't listen to you now? I have driven you to say something to save my pride. I say I _have_! You are good and honest, and you pity me--and my folly needs your pity. But if you should tell me now that you love me, I'd die of shame--I'd distrust that love! I couldn't help it--and I've brought it all on myself. Oh, my G.o.d, why have I grown up a fool--why have I wasted the long days?"

She ran down past him. He did not try to stay her. He understood women not at all. He obeyed her cry to be silent--to keep away from her.

She turned to him when she reached the ground.

"I haven't even known enough to understand how it stands between us.

Between us!" There was a wail in her voice. She sobbed the rest rather than spoke it: "That river out there is between us! I don't even belong to your country!"

She pointed at the great cross of the church-yard. It stood outlined in the starlight.

"Religion stands between us! My father and your grandfather are between us!"

She came back two steps, her face tear-wet, her features quivering with grief.

"But there's something else between us, Harlan, blacker and deeper than all the rest. Don't try to cross it to come to me. You will sink in it.

Fools for wives have spoiled too many men in this world. I understand now! Your grandfather knew." She raised her eyes, and crossed herself reverently. "Mother Mary, help me in this, my temptation!"

She turned, and ran away, sobbing.

Harlan hurried a few steps after her, crying appeals. But he did not persist. Her pa.s.sionate protests had come from her heart, he knew. He did not dare to force himself on her when she was in that mood.

He sat down again on the church steps. He remained there in deep thought until the red eyes in Dennis Kavanagh's house blinked out. He did not find it easy to understand himself, exactly. His feelings had been played upon too powerfully to permit calm consideration. He felt confident in his affection for her. But her youth and the obstacles he understood so well put marriage so out of immediate consideration that he merely grieved rather than made definite plans for their future. With moist eyes he looked up at the dark house on the hill and pledged loyalty to the child-woman, knowing that he loved her. But that the love was the love that mates man and woman for the struggles, the prizes, the woes, and the contentment of life he was not sure--for he still looked on Clare Kavanagh as more child than woman.

Marriage seemed yet a long way ahead of him. He rode slowly back to "The Barracks." His problem seemed to be riding double with him. The problem, one might say, was in the form of a maid on a pillion. But he did not look behind to see whether the maid bore the features of Clare Kavanagh or Madeleine Presson. At that moment he was sure that only Clare's image rode with him. But in thinking of her he understood his limitations.

For, woodsman and unversed in the ways of women, he had not arrived at that point in life where he could a.n.a.lyze even a boy's love, much less a man's pa.s.sion.

The next morning he left Fort Canibas with big Ben Kyle, to make a tour of the Thornton camps. It was a trip that took in the cruising of a towns.h.i.+p for standing timber on short rations and in the height of the blackfly season, an experience not conducive to reflections on love and matrimony.

But when he returned to Fort Canibas, on the eve of his departure to take up his duties as General Waymouth's chief of staff, he saddled his horse and rode across the long bridge.

This time there was no white figure on the church porch and no wistful voice to call after him. He kept on up the hill. He was not thinking about what Dennis Kavanagh might say to him. He had resolved to ask Clare manfully if she would continue to trust him for a while until both could be certain that their boy and girl love signified to them the love that life needed for its bounty and its blessing. That seemed the honest way. It seemed the only way, as matters lay between them and their families.

Dennis Kavanagh was seated on his veranda, smoking his short pipe and inhaling the freshness of the shower-cooled summer air along with the aroma of his tobacco.

"I would like to see your daughter, Mr. Kavanagh," announced the young man, boldly. "And I have not come sneaking by the back way. It will be a good while before I can see her again."

"That it will," responded Mr. Kavanagh, dryly, "and it will be a good long while before ye'll see her now--that may be mixed, but I reckon ye'll get the drift of it!"

"It will be better for all our interests if I have a few words with her," persisted the young man, trying to keep his temper.

"Will ye talk to her through the air or over the telephone?" inquired the father, sarcastically. "She is not here, she is not near here, and if ye wait for her to come back ye'll best arrange to have your meals brought."

He did not pause for Harlan to ask any more questions. He came down from the porch on his stubby legs and handed up an envelope. The flap of the envelope had been opened.

"She left this," he said; "and having opened it and seen that it held nothing but what ye might profitably know, Thornton's grandson, I here give it into your hand, and ye needn't thank me."

Harlan, wondering, apprehensive, fearing something untoward, took out the single sheet of paper. He read:

"BIG BOY,--Go on and let the world make you a great man. I'm groping.

Perhaps I'll see my way some day and can follow. But just as there's a cure for ignorance, so there's a cure for hearts, maybe. Your friend, CLARE."

Harlan looked over the edge of the paper into the twinkling little eyes of the father. Mr. Kavanagh seemed to be getting much satisfaction from the expression on his victim's face.

"Can't you tell me what this means, Mr. Kavanagh? I beg of you humbly, and in all sincerity."

"The Kavanaghs are never backward in politeness, Mr. Harlan Thornton. It means that my girl is done playing child and riding c.o.c.k-horse. She's off to learn to be the finest and knowingest lady in all the land--she's off because she wanted to go, and she's got all of Dennis Kavanagh's fat wallet behind her!" He slapped his breast-pocket.

"Off where?"

"Where they know things and teach things better than they do over in your Yankeeland of airs and frills. And now good-day to ye!"

He climbed the porch steps, and relighted his pipe, gazing with much relish past the flame of the match, studying Harlan's dismay.

The young man suddenly came to himself, struck his horse, and galloped wildly away.

The next morning he departed to offer political hand and sword in the cause of General Waymouth.

CHAPTER XXI

STARTING A MULE TEAM

Some men are extremely good and loyal politicians so long as the machine runs smoothly, and they are not called upon to sacrifice their interests and their opinions. Luke Presson and his a.s.sociates on the State Committee were of that sort. But Thelismer Thornton was a better politician than they.

The Duke had saved the chairman and his committeemen from themselves at that critical moment in the little room off the convention stage, when they were ready to invite ruin by defying General Waymouth. It had been as bitter for Thornton as it had been for the others. Beyond question, he would have gone down fighting were the question a private or a personal one. But when the interests of his party were at stake he knew how to compromise, taking what he could get instead of what he had determined to get. After the convention he gave fatherly advice to the committee, and then Presson went up to Burnside village with the olive-branch. But while he extended that in one hand, he held out his little political porringer in the other. He couldn't help doing it. The chairman was no altruist in politics. He didn't propose to cultivate the spirit.

He put it plainly to General Waymouth--that while he sympathized to some extent with the latter's desires for general reform, there were certain interests that propped the party and must be handled with discretion in the clean-up. He had already drawn some consolation from the fact that General Waymouth had modified in a measure the planks that he submitted for the party platform. He followed up this as a step that hinted a general compromise, and at last frankly presented his requests. He asked that tax reform be smoothed over, that the corporations be allowed an opportunity to "turn around," and finally that the prohibitory law should be let alone. He argued warmly that General Waymouth could not be criticised by either side if he left the law as he found it. The radicals were satisfied with the various enactments as they stood, and if there were infractions it became a matter of the police and sheriffs, and the Governor could not be held accountable. And he laid stress on the fact that the people did not want a Governor to tarnish the dignity of his office by fighting bar-rooms.

But Chairman Presson found an inflexible old man who listened to all he said, and at the end declared his platform broadly and without details.