A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories Part 35

The edge of the woods was warm in the suns.h.i.+ne. Faint perfumes of the vanished summer lingered in fern and bramble.

He did not enter the woods. There was a fallen log, rotten and fragrant, half buried in the briers, and on it he found a seat, calling his dogs to his feet.

In the silence of morning he could hear the pine-borers at work in the log he was sitting on, scra-ape! scra-ape! scr-r-rape! deep in the soft, dry pulp under the bark. There were no insects abroad except the white-faced pine hornets, crawling stiffly across the moss. He noticed no birds, either, at first, until, glancing up, he saw a great drab butcher-bird staring at him from a dead pine.

At first that inert oppression which always came when the memory of his father returned to him touched his fine lips with a gravity too deep for his years. No man had ever said that his father had dealt unfairly with men, yet for years now his son had acc.u.mulated impressions, vague and indefinable at first, but clearer as he grew older, and the impressions had already left the faintest tracery of a line between his eyebrows. He had known his father as a hard man; he knew that the world had found him hard and shrewd. And now, as he grew older and understood what the tribute of honest men was worth, even to the dead, he waited to hear one word. But he never heard it. He had heard other things, however, but always veiled, like the menacing outbreak of old man Jocelyn--nothing tangible, nothing that he could answer or refute. At times he became morbid, believing he could read reproach in men's eyes, detect sarcasm in friendly voices. Then for months he would shun men, as he was doing now, living alone month after month in the great, silent house where his father and his grandfather's father had been born. Yet even here among the Sagamore Hills he had found it--that haunting hint that honor had been moulded to fit occasions when old Gordon dealt with his fellow-men.

He glanced up again at the butcher-bird, and rose to his feet. The bird's cruel eyes regarded him steadily.

"You wholesale murderer," thought Gordon, "I'll just give you a charge of shot."

But before he could raise his gun, the shrike, to his amazement, burst into an exquisite song, sweet and pure as a thrush's melody, and, spreading its slaty wings, it sailed off through the suns.h.i.+ne.

"That's a new trick to me," said Gordon, aloud, wondering to hear such music from the fierce feathered criminal. But he let it go for the sake of its song, and, lowering his gun again, he pushed into the underbrush.

The yellow beech leaves illuminated the woods above and under foot; he smelled the scent of ripened foliage, he saw the purple gentians wistfully raising their buds which neither sun nor frost could ever unseal.

In a glade where brambles covered a tiny stream, creeping through layers of jewel-weed and mint, the white setter in the lead swung suddenly west, quartered, wheeled, crept forward and stiffened to a point. Behind him his mate froze into a silvery statue. But Gordon walked on, gun under his arm, and the covey rose with a roar of heavy wings, driving blindly through the tangle deep into the dim wood's depths.

Gordon was not in a killing mood that morning.

When the puzzled dogs had come wagging in and had been quietly motioned to heel, Gordon stood still and looked around at the mottled tree-trunks glimmering above the underbrush. The first beechnuts had dropped; a few dainty sweet acorns lay under the white oaks. Somewhere above a squirrel scolded incessantly.

As he was on the point of moving forward, stooping to avoid an ozier, something on the edge of the thicket caught his eye. It was a twig, freshly broken, hanging downward by a film of bark.

After he had examined it he looked around cautiously, peering into the thicket until, a few yards to the right, he discovered another twig, freshly broken, hanging by its film of bark.

An ugly flush stained his forehead; he set his lips together and moved on noiselessly. Other twigs hung dangling every few yards, yet it took an expert's eye to detect them among the tangles and cl.u.s.tering branches. But he knew what he was to find at the end of the blind trail, and in a few minutes he found it. It was a deadfall, set, and baited with winter grapes.

Noiselessly he destroyed it, setting the heavy stone on the moss without a sound; then he searched the thicket for the next "line," and in a few moments he discovered another broken twig leading to the left.

He had been on the trail for some time, losing it again and again before the suspicion flashed over him that there was somebody ahead who had either seen or heard him and who was deliberately leading him astray with false "lines" that would end in nothing. He listened; there was no sound either of steps or of cracking twigs, but both dogs had begun growling and staring into the demi-light ahead. He motioned them on and followed. A moment later both dogs barked sharply.

As he stepped out of the thicket on one side, a young girl, standing in the more open and heavier timber, raised her head and looked at him with grave, brown eyes. Her hands were on the silky heads of his dogs; from her belt hung a great, fluffy c.o.c.k-partridge, outspread wings still limber.

He knew her in an instant; he had seen her often in church. Perplexed and astonished, he took off his cap in silence, finding absolutely nothing to say, although the dead partridge at her belt furnished a text on which he had often displayed biting eloquence.

After a moment he smiled, partly at the situation, partly to put her at her ease.

"If I had known it was you," he said, "I should not have followed those very inviting twigs I saw dangling from the oziers and moose-vines."

"Lined deadfalls are thoroughfares to woodsmen," she answered, defiantly. "You are as free as I am in these woods--but not more free."

The defiance, instead of irritating him, touched him. In it he felt a strange pathos--the proud protest of a heart that beat as free as the thudding wings of the wild birds he sometimes silenced with a shot.

"It is quite true," he said, gently; "you are perfectly free in these woods."

"But not by your leave!" she said, and the quick color stung her cheeks.

"It is not necessary to ask it," he replied.

"I mean," she said, desperately, "that neither I nor my father recognize your right to these woods."

"Your father?" he repeated, puzzled.

"Don't you know who I am?" she said, in surprise.

"I know you sing very beautifully in church," he said, smiling.

"My name," she said, quietly, "is the name of your father's old neighbor. I am Jessie Jocelyn."

His face was troubled, even in his surprise. The line between his eyes deepened. "I did not know you were Mr. Jocelyn's daughter," he said, at last.

Neither spoke for a moment. Presently Gordon raised his head and found her brown eyes on him.

"I wish," he said, wistfully, "that you would let me walk with you a little way. I want to ask your advice. Will you?"

"I am going home," she said, coldly.

She turned away, moving two or three paces, then the next step was less hasty, and the next was slower still. As he joined her she looked up a trifle startled, then bent her head.

"Miss Jocelyn," he said, abruptly, "have you ever heard your father say that my father treated him harshly?"

She stopped short beside him. "Have you?" he repeated, firmly.

"I think," she said, scornfully, "your father can answer that question."

"If he could," said Gordon, "I would ask him. He is dead."

She was listening to him with face half averted, but now she turned around and met his eyes again.

"Will you answer my question?" he said.

"No," she replied, slowly; "not if he is dead."

Young Gordon's face was painfully white. "I beg you, Miss Jocelyn, to answer me," he said. "I beg you will answer for your father's sake and--in justice to my father's son."

"What do you care--" she began, but stopped short. To her surprise her own bitterness seemed forced. She saw he did care. Suddenly she pitied him.

"There was a promise broken," she said, gravely.

"What else?"

"A man's spirit."

They walked on, he clasping his gun with nerveless hands, she breaking the sapless twigs as she pa.s.sed, with delicate, idle fingers.

Presently he said, as though speaking to himself: "He had no quarrel with the dead, nor has the dead with him--now. What my father would now wish I can do--I can do even yet--"