The Re-Creation of Brian Kent Part 9

"You will do something, certainly," she answered; "but, before you can DO anything that is worth doing, you must BE something. Life isn't DOING;--it is BEING."

"I wonder if that was not the real reason for my wretched failures,"

said Brian, thoughtfully.

"It is the real reason for most of our failures," she returned. "And so you are not going to fail again. You are not going away somewhere, you don't know where, to do something you don't know what. You are going to stay right here, and just BE something. Then, when the time comes, you will do whatever is yours to do as naturally and as inevitably as the birds sing, as the blossoms come in the spring, or as the river finds its way to the sea."

And more than ever Brian Kent felt in the presence of Auntie Sue as a little boy to whom the world had grown suddenly very big and very wonderful.

But, after a while, he shook his head, smiling wistfully. "No, no, Auntie Sue, that sounds all true and right enough, but it can't be. I must go just the same."

"Why can't it be, Brian?"

"For one thing," he returned, "I cannot risk the danger to you. After all, as long as I am living, there is a chance that my ident.i.ty will be discovered, and you--no, no; I must not!"

"As for that," she answered quickly, "the chances of your being identified are a thousand times greater if you go into the world again too soon. Some day, of course, you must go; but you are safer now right here. And"--she added quickly--"it would be no easier for me, dear boy, to--to--have it happen somewhere away from me. You are mine, you know, no matter where you go."

"But, Auntie Sue," he protested, "I am not a gentleman of means that I can do nothing indefinitely; neither am I capable of living upon your hospitality for an extended period. I must earn my bread and b.u.t.ter."

The final sentence came with such a lifting of his head, such a look of stern decision, and such an air of pride, that the gentle old school-teacher laughed until her eyes were filled with tears; and Judy, at the crack in the kitchen door, wondered if the mistress of the little log house by the river were losing her mind.

"Oh, Brian! Brian!" cried Auntie Sue, wiping her eyes. "I knew you would come to the 'bread and b.u.t.ter' at last. That is where all our philosophies and reasonings and arguments come at last, don't they? Just 'bread and b.u.t.ter,' that is all. And I love you for it. Of course you can't live upon my hospitality,--and I couldn't let you if you would.

And if you WOULD, I wouldn't let you if I could. I am no more a lady of means, my haughty sir, than you are a gentleman of independent fortune.

The fact is, Brian, dear, I suspect that you and I are about the two poorest people in the world,--to be anything like as pretentiously respectable and properly proud as we are."

When the man could make no reply, but only looked at her with a much-puzzled and still-proud expression, she continued, half-laughingly, but well pleased with him: "Please, Brian, don't look so haughtily injured. I had no intention of insulting you by offering charity. Far from it."

Instantly, the man's face changed. He put out his hands protestingly, and his blue eyes filled, as he said, impulsively. "Auntie Sue, after what you have done for me, I--"

She answered quickly: "We are considering the future. What has been, is past. Our river is already far beyond that point in its journey. Don't let us try to turn the waters back. I promise you I am going to be very, very practical, and make you pay for EVERYTHING."

Smiling, now, he waited for her to explain.

"I must tell you, first," she began, "that, except for a very small amount in the--in a savings bank, I have nothing to provide for my last days except this little farm."

"What a shame," Brian Kent exclaimed, "that a woman like you can give her life to the public schools for barely enough salary to keep her alive during her active years, and then left in her old age with no means of support. It is a national disgrace."

Auntie Sue chuckled with appreciation of the rather grim humor of the situation. What would Brian Kent, indignant at the public neglect of the school-teacher, say of the man who had robbed her of the money that was to provide for her closing years? "After all, most public sins are only individual sins at the last," she said, musingly.

"I beg your pardon," said Brian, not in the least seeing the relevancy of her words.

Auntie Sue came quickly back to her subject: "Only thirty acres of my little farm is under cultivation. The remaining fifty acres is wild timberland. If I could have that fifty acres also in cultivation, with the money that the timber would bring,--which would not be a great deal,--I would be fairly safe for the--for the rest of my evening," she finished with a smile. "Do you see?"

"You mean that I--that you want me to stay here and work for you?"

"I mean," she answered, "that, if you choose to stay for awhile, you need not feel that you would be accepting my hospitality as charity,"

she returned gently. "I am not exactly offering you a job: I am only showing you how you could, without sacrificing your pride, remain in this quiet retreat for awhile before returning to the world."

"It would be heaven, Auntie Sue," he returned earnestly. "I want to stay so bad that I fear myself. Let me think it over until to-morrow. Let me be sure that I am doing the right thing, and not merely the thing I want to do."

She liked his answer, and did not mention the subject again until Brian himself was ready. And, strangely enough, it was poor, twisted Judy who helped him to set matters straight.

CHAPTER X.

BRIAN KENT DECIDES.

Brian had walked along the river-bank below the house to a spot just above the point where the high bluff jutting out into the river-channel forms Elbow Rock.

The bank here is not so high above the roaring waters of the rapids, for the spur of the mountain which forms the cliff lies at a right angle to the river, and the greater part of the cliff is thus on the sh.o.r.e, with its height growing less and less as it merges into the main slope of the mountain-side. From the turn in the road, in front of the house, a footpath leads down the bank of the river to the cliff, and, climbing stairlike up the face of the steep bluff, zigzags down the easier slope of the down-river side, to come again into the road below. The road itself, below Elbow Rock, is forced by the steep side of the mountain-spur and the precipitous bluff to turn inland from the river, and so, climbing by an easier grade up past Tom Warden's place, crosses the ridge above the schoolhouse, and comes back down the mountain again in front of Auntie Sue's place, to its general course along the stream.

The little path forms thus a convenient short cut for any one following the river road on foot.

Brian, seated on the river-bank a little way from the path where it starts up the bluff, was trying to decide whether it would be better for him to follow his desire and stay with Auntie Sue for a few weeks or months, or whether he should not, in spite of the land he might clear for her, return to the world where he could more quickly earn the money to pay back that which he had stolen.

And as he sat there, the man was conscious that he had reached one of those turning-points that are found in every life where results, momentous and far-reaching, are dependent upon comparatively unimportant and temporary issues. He could not have told why, and yet he felt a certainty that, for him, two widely separated futures were dependent upon his choice. Nor could he, by thinking, discover what those futures held for him, nor which he should choose. Even as his boat that night had hung on the edge of the eddy,--hesitating on the dividing-line between the two currents,--so the man himself now felt the pull of his life-currents, and hesitated,--undecided.

Looking toward the house, he thought how like the life offered by Auntie Sue was to the quiet waters of The Bend, and--his mind finished the simile--how like the life to which he would go was to the rapids at Elbow Rock; and, yet, he reflected, the waters could never reach the sea without enduring the turmoil of the rapids. And, again, the thought came, "The Bend is just as much the river as the troubled pa.s.sage around the rock."

When he had given up life, and, to all intent and purpose, had left life behind him, the river, without his will or knowledge, had mysteriously elected to save him from the death he had chosen as his only refuge from the utter ruin that had seemed so inevitable. As the currents of the river had carried his boat to the eddy at the foot of Auntie Sue's garden, the currents of life had mysteriously brought him to the saving influence of Auntie Sue herself. Should he push out again into the stream to face the danger he knew beset such a course? or should he wait for a season in the secure calm of the harbor she offered until he were stronger? Brian Kent knew, instinctively, that there was in the wisdom and love of Auntie Sue's philosophy and faith a strength that would, if he could make it his, insure his safe pa.s.sage through every danger of life, and yet--The man's meditations were interrupted by a chance look toward the bluff which towered above him.

Judy was climbing the steep trail.

Curiously, Brian watched the deformed mountain girl as she made her way up the narrow, stairlike path, and her cutting words came back to him: "G.o.d-A'mighty and my drunken pap made me like I am. But you,--d.a.m.n you!--you made yourself what you be." And Auntie Sue had said that the all-important thing in life was not to DO something, but to BE something.

The girl, who had gained a point halfway to the top of the bluff, paused to look searchingly about, and Brian, who was half-hidden by the bushes, started to call to her, thinking she might be looking for him; but some impulse checked him and he remained silently watching her. Climbing hurriedly a little higher up the path Judy again stopped to look carefully around, as if searching the vicinity for some one. Then, once more, she went on until she stood on top of the cliff; and now, as she looked about over the surrounding country, she called: "Mr. Burns! Oh, Mr. Burns! Who-o-e-e! Mr. Burns!"

Brian's lips were parted to answer the call when something happened on top of the bluff which held him for the moment speechless.

From beyond where Judy stood on the brink of the cliff, a man's head and shoulders appeared. Brian saw the girl start and turn to face the newcomer as if in sudden fear. Then she whirled about to run. Before she could gain the point where the path starts down from the top, the man caught her and dragged her roughly back, so that the two disappeared from Brian's sight. Brian was halfway up the bluff when he heard the girl's shrill scream.

There was no sign of weakness, now, in the man that Judy had dragged from the river. He covered the remaining distance to the top in a breath. From among the bushes, a little way down the mountainside, came the sound of an angry voice mingled with Judy's pleading cries.

An instant more, and Brian reached the spot where poor Judy was crouching on the ground, begging the brute, who stood over her with menacing fists, not to hit her again.

The man was a vicious-looking creature, dressed in the rough garb of the mountaineer; dirty and unkempt, with evil, close-set eyes, and a scraggly beard that could not hide the wicked, snarling mouth.

He stood for a second looking at Brian, as if too surprised by the latter's sudden appearance to move; then he went down, felled by as clean a knockout as was ever delivered by an Irish fist.

"Are you hurt, Judy?" demanded Brian, as he lifted the girl to her feet.

"Did he strike you?"

"He was sure a-fixin' ter lick me somethin' awful when you-all put in,"

returned the poor girl, trembling with fear. "I know, 'cause he's done hit to me heaps er times before. He's my pap."

"Your father!" exclaimed Brian.

Judy nodded;--then screamed: "Look out! He'll git you, sure!"