The Reclaimers Part 22

Eugene asked, suddenly.

"Very little. Cornelius told me that he had a full account of it. That was on the very day he was--he pa.s.sed away. The papers, except the one Jerry found here the day after the funeral, have all been mislaid."

"Then I'd advise you to write to this Macpherson person and find out exactly what we have to fight against," the young man suggested.

"Meantime I'll write to Jerry. I'm sure she should be ready to listen now. All I claim to know of that beastly region out West I learned from my father, but that is enough for me. If there were really a bit of landscape worth the cost of the canvas I might go out there and paint it. But who cares to paint in only two colors, blue one half--that's sky, unclouded, monotonous; and chrome yellow, the other half--that's land. I could paint the side of the cattle-barn over yonder half yellow, half blue, and put as much expression into it."

Mrs. Darby listened approvingly. "I'm very thankful that you see things so sensibly. The sooner you replace what isn't worth while with what is the sooner you will know you are a success in your business. We will write those letters to-night. I'm having your favorite dishes for dinner now, and we'll be served here. It is so pleasant here at this time of day. I'll go and see to things right away, and we'll have everything brought out pretty soon."

The owner of all this dainty comfort and restfulness and beauty hurried away, leaving Eugene Wellington alone in the rose-arbor--alone with memories of Jerry Swaim, and Uncle Cornie, and life, and love, and hope and high ambition, and himself--the self that a man must go right with, if he goes with him at all.

For a long half-hour he sat there in the rose-arbor, the appealing call of his divine gift filling his artist soul. Then his judgment prevailed.

What he most wanted to have was here, ready to have now--and to hold later with only a little patient waiting. A few weeks, or months, or maybe even a year, a run of four swift seasons, and the girl of his heart's heart would come back into her own, and find him ready for her coming. That impossible York was not to be considered. Jerry was no fool, if she was sometimes a bit foolish in her pranks. And he, Eugene Wellington, had only this day learned of the whole Swaim situation, what was vastly valuable to know. Meantime, his the task to keep that precious Jerusha Darby will intact; or, failing in that, came the more difficult and delicate task of controlling or holding back the pen that would write another will. And in the end Jerry would love him forever for what he would save for her--for her--

The memory of what he had learned that day in the business house in the city came with its testimony that he was shaping his life course well.

Only one little foxy fear dodged about in his mind--the fear that Jerry--the Jerry he knew, lovable in spite of all her little failings, beautiful, picturesque, and surprising--that this Jerry, whom he thought he knew so well, might prove to be an unknowable, unguessable Jerry whose course would baffle all his plans, his efforts, his heart longings. It must not be. He would prevent that. But could he?

The coming of dainty viands with exquisite appointments gave nourishment to his ready appet.i.te, and dulled for a time the thing within him that sometime must cry out to power or be sleeked down into fat and unfeeling subjection.

That night two letters were written to New Eden, Kansas, but neither writer really knew the reader to whom the letter was written, nor measured life purposes by the same gauge, so setting anew the world-old stage for a drama in human affairs whose crowning act shapes human destinies.

XII

THIS SIDE OF THE RUBICON

In the late afternoon of a July Sabbath Jerry Swaim had gone for a stroll along the quiet outskirts of New Eden. Laura was napping in the porch swing, and York had gone to his office in answer to a telephone call. Jerry was rarely lonely with herself and she was a good walker.

She was learning, too, the need for being alone with herself, for there were many things crowding into her mind that demanded recognition.

Jerry attended church with the Macphersons every Sunday, but it was a mere perfunctory act on her part. To-day the minister was away. He had gone to the upper Sage Brush to officiate at the funeral of Mrs. Nell Belkap that had been Nell Poser, she of the tow hair and big-lunging baby. She had died of congestion, following over-heating in cooking for thres.h.i.+ng-hands for her mother, her father being the kind of man that objected to hired help for "wimmin folks." All that was nothing to Jerry, who found herself wondering, in a vague sort of way, just where that baby would sprawl itself, unattached to its mother's anchorage.

Babies were not in Jerry's scheme of things at all.

The subst.i.tute minister was more interesting to think about. He had a three-piece country charge over which to spread the Gospel, "Summit School-House," "Slack Crick Church," and "Locust Grove Grange." He said "have went" and he called the members of one of Saint Paul's churches "The Thessalonnykins." And he really didn't know the Lord's Prayer correctly, for he said "forgive us our trespa.s.ses," instead of "our debts," as dear accurate Saint Matthew has written it.

Jerry's mind was on him as an aside, on him, and that Paul Ekblad whom she caught sight of in the Ekblad car with Thelma. They had stopped a minute to speak with York Macpherson as they were on their way to that up-country Poser funeral. Why should Paul Ekblad go so far to a funeral?

Jerry strolled aimlessly along the smooth road leading out to the New Eden cemetery, her bead-trimmed parasol shading her bare head, and her pale-green organdie gown making her appear very summery. Jerry had the trick of fitting all weather except the heated, sand-filled days of mid-June on a freight-train, which condition Junius Brutus Ponk declared "was enough to muss a angel's wings an' make them divine partial-eclipse angel draperies look dingier than dish-rags."

There were half a dozen well-grown cottonwood-trees in the cemetery, with rows of promising little elms, catalpas, and box-elders all symmetrically set. The gra.s.s was brown, but free from weeds; the walks were only smooth paths. But the shade of the cottonwood group, and the quiet of the place, seemed inviting. Every foot of the wind-swept elevation was visible to the whole town, but the distance was guarantee for undisturbed meditation. Jerry had no interest in cemeteries. She had rarely visited the corner of "Eden" where the few elect by family ties had their last resting-place. She walked down the gra.s.sy paths toward the largest cottonwoods, now, indifferent alike to the humble headstone and the expensive and sometimes grotesque granite memorial. By the tallest shaft in the place, designated by Stellar Bahrr as "Granddad Poser's monniment," she sat down in the shade of the biggest trees, and looked out at New Eden in its Sabbath-afternoon nap; at the winding Sage Brush and the green and yellow fields, and black hedgerows, and rolling prairies, with purple-shadowed draws and pale-brown swells, and groves about distant farmhouses. She sat still for a long time, and she was so lost in this view that she did not hear steps approaching until Mr. Ponk was almost beside her.

"Good afternoon, Miss Swaim. Takin' a const.i.tutional? They ain't no Swaims laid away out here I reckon."

"Oh no," Jerry replied. "I shouldn't come here for that if there were."

Something about Ponk always made her good-natured. He was so grotesquely impossible to her--a caricature cut from some comic magazine, rounded out and animated.

"Say you wouldn't? Now that's real queer." The short man opened his little eyes wide with surprise. "Now I soar down here regular every Sunday evenin' of the world, summer and winter."

"What for?" Jerry asked, looking up at the speaker with curiosity.

New Eden was still in that stage when a funeral was a public event. And the belief was still maintained that the dead out in the cemetery must be conscious of every attention or lack of it shown to their memory by visits and flowers, and the price of tombstones. In a word, to the New Eden living, the New Eden dead were not really in the Great Hereafter, but here, demanding consideration in the social economy of the community.

Ponk was more shocked at Jerry's query than she could begin to comprehend, and his interest in her and pity for her took a still stronger grip on life.

"Why, Miss Swaim, I come out here to see my mother. I 'ain't never failed to bring her a flower in summer, or a green leaf in winter, one single Sunday since she was laid out there on the south slope one Easter day eight Aprils ago."

"But she isn't there." Jerry spoke gently now, realizing that she had hurt him unintentionally.

"She is to me, an' I'd ruther think it thataway an' feel like I was callin' every Sunday, never forgettin'," Ponk said, sadly.

"Where's your dead to you, Miss Swaim?" he asked, after a pause.

Jerry, who was gazing down the Sage Brush Valley, turned slowly at his words, her big eyes luminous with tears.

"They are not." She waved a hand against viewless air.

"Oh yes, they are, walkin' beside you every day, lovin' you and proud of you! A good mother just lives on an' keeps doin' good, and so does a father, if you let 'em." Ponk hesitated, and his moon-round face was flushed. "I ain't tryin' to preach," he added, hastily. "They's some things, though, we all got to cling to or else get hustled off our feet into a big black void where we just sink and die. It ain't just Sage-Brushers, but it's all Christians--Baptists and Cammylites and High Church and everybody. It's safer to stand in the light than sink in the bottomless night. But, say, look who's comin' an' see what's trailin'

him. I guess I'll be soarin' back to the hotel now. Pleased to meet you--always am pleased." Ponk lifted his hat and bowed uncovered, and uncovered walked away.

What he had said in the sincerity of his spiritual belief fell on fertile soil in the mind of his listener. He had preached a sermon to her that was good for her to hear.

Jerry looked out in the direction he had indicated and saw York Macpherson, walking a bit briskly for him and the place and the afternoon.

It was no wonder that Jerusha Darby should expect York to be caught by the charms of his guest. As she sat there in the shade of the cottonwoods, where, in all the cemetery, the blue gra.s.s grew rankest, with her pale-green gown, her smooth pink cheeks, and the wavy ma.s.ses of golden-brown hair coiled low at the back of her head, York wondered if the spirit of the wild rose in bloom and the spirit of some Greek nymph had not combined in the personification before him.

At the gateway he met Ponk.

"Why do you run away? I have a special-delivery letter for Miss Swaim. I thought I'd better come and find her, but that needn't interfere with you."

"Oh, you smooth-bore! But I have to go, anyhow. I'm headin' off what's trailin' you. Don't look back. It's Stellar Bahrr, comin' out to see who's been to see their folks to-day and who's neglectin' 'em, 'specially late arrivals. She's seen my game, though, now, an' she's shabbin' off to the side gate, knowin' I'd head her back to town. Say, York, she's after Miss Swaim now. You watch out. Them that's the worthlessest and has the least influence in a community can start the biggest fires burnin'. Everybody in New Eden's been buffaloed by her--just scared blue--except maybe us two. You ain't, I know, and I'm right sure I ain't."

"Ponk, you are as good as you are good-looking," York said, heartily.

"The Big Dipper could start a tale of our guest meeting gentlemen friends in the cemetery. And yet for privacy it's about like meeting them on the sidewalk before the Commercial Hotel. However, she's started scandal with less material. I have business with Miss Swaim, so I'll walk home with her."

Jerry waited for her host under the flickering, murmuring leaves of the cottonwood. She had seen some woman wandering diagonally from the cemetery road toward the corner of the inclosure, but she had no interest in strangers and might never have thought of her again but for a word of York's that day.

He had seen the girl looking after Stellar as she made a wide flank movement. A sense of duty coupled with a strange interest in Jerry, for which he had as yet given no account to himself, was urging him to tell her, as he had told his sister, to have no traffic with the town's greatest liability, but with all of Ponk's warning he could not bring himself to speak now.

"May I sit here with you awhile?" he asked, lifting his hat as he spoke.

"Certainly. It is so quiet and peaceful out here, and, as I have no a.s.sociations with this place, I can sit here without being unhappy or irreverent," Jerry replied.

"I came out to find you. There are callers at home now, so I'll give you my message here, unless you want to follow Mr. Ponk's example and 'soar' off home."

"That man interests me," Jerry declared. "He said some good things about his mother just now. And yet he's so--so funny."

"Oh, Ponk's outside is against him. If he could be husked out of himself and let the community get down to the kernel of him he is really fine wheat," York said, conscious the while that he had not meant, for some reason, to praise the strutting fellow. Yet he had never felt so toward the little man before.