Son of the Wind/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE WOOD WALK
ABANDONED by Rader, left by the women to the melancholy sight of a spent breakfast table, Carron put on his hat at an exasperated backward angle and opened the outer door.
Little doors opening without the formality of a hall, with delightful directness on the forest, seemed to be a characteristic of this old part of the house. He stepped from one soft greenish light into another deeper and more sharply marked with shadows. A warmer and fresher air met him, and the ground sprung under his feet. The stir of peace was in the underwoods; but peace was not at all what Carron wanted. This veil of branches was monotonous and irritating. He wanted again a glimpse of mountains, of the sudden craggy heads against the sky, of the scattered stone heaps at their feet, of the dramatic lone tree, and the thin river—the country where such a creature as Son of the Wind might inhabit. He walked slowly along the side of the house, looking upon the ground, seeing, in every fantastic silhouetted mass of branches, a shadow as of a horse in the sky.
He came to the corner of the house and paused, aimless. He had a sense of losing his hold on the situation. He understood that Rader was a man guarded, both by his isolation at the end of that long passage, and by the vigilance of his straightly-inquiring wife. Furthermore, in this flat mood of the morning, it might be that seeing Rader would do no good at all. No doubt Rader regretted urging him to stay; and was at a loss to know how to make good his random promise of a companion. Practical application of ideas was evidently not the scholar's strong point.
He heard his name called. The voice came from over his head. He raised his eyes. The windows of his room were above him, all opened wide, with curtains drawn back. The flight of outside steps was near to where he stood, and, leaning on the wooden rail of the little balcony, Blanche Rader was looking down upon him. She had a cloth in her hand as if she had been dusting, and a cloth tied over her head. With her hair covered by this trying bandage, all in her face that had passed unnoticed or not been noticed enough started out at him. Her eyes showed bluer, larger, and her eyebrows became a beauty. He saw that her nose was inclined to the large, slightly aquiline, but without any look of pinching at the bridge, and with adorable pliant nostrils. Whatever that feature may have given to her face of overmuch will—or obstinacy—the mouth made up for now as it smiled at him.
"Are you going for a walk?" she asked.
He whipped off his hat. "To tell the truth, I don't know where I'm going." He hung on his heel, enjoying the sight, and grudging the inroad it made on his concentration. "Everything looks the same to me. Perhaps you will graciously point out a pleasant direction."
She rested her chin consideringly in her hand. "If you like, I can go with you and show you. I shall have the time. Mother has changed her mind about the up-stairs cleaning. She is going to help father with his books instead."
Fate, it seemed, had decreed that the morning should be given to this young woman. Or, did he see the hand of Rader obscurely working in the dark? If that were so, he reflected, the bias on Rader's part was probably due to the fact that there was no one else to commit him to. Yet, for all he knew, the girl herself might be responsible for the alteration of Mrs. Rader's plan.
Carron resigned himself. "I'd like it," he declared with emphasis, and to his surprise realized that he had spoken the truth, "I'd like it above all things."
She gave a slight sidewise inclination of the head, accepting this. "Then, if you'll just wait a moment—" She turned to the door behind her which stood open and entered the room.
He saw her catch up his pillow, give it a pat, and deposit it plump and smooth upon his smoothed up bed, flick her dusting cloth over the top of the bureau, then stoop and gather up his soiled linen from the floor where he had thoughtlessly flung it. This was worse than having her mail his letters. for him. He must see that she didn't have to do that again. She matter-of-factly rolled the garments up under her arm, and, coming to one of the open windows, called to him, "I'll send your things to the Chinaman, shan't I; he'll have them done in a few days."
Carron replied that she was very thoughtful. This mixture of domesticity and idyl was confusing.
He watched her close all his windows but one, draw all curtains, and then close the door, shutting herself from sight. There was a moment of silence, and he wondered if, in the interval, she had condescended to take off her sweeping cap in front of his mirror. Then he heard the shutting of the inner door. He awaited her in the hall at the foot of the clambering stair. His expectation had not time to sharpen to impatience before she appeared, still in her brown skirt and working blouse, but with the dull cloud of her hair admirably controlled.
"We might go out through the new house," she suggested, and led the way.
The dust of yesterday was gone from the dining-room, but the chairs, covered with cloths, still towered terrifically on the tables. The hard, yellowish light was reflected on them from four directions. She looked up at the ceiling and around at the staring uncurtained windows. "It's a beautiful dining-room," she said; then her unexpected quick turn of the head caught Carron's expression. She smiled, appreciative, but not disturbed by his amusement. "It is a beautiful dining-room," she explained, "it's so convenient. Convenient things look just as beautiful to mother as pretty ones do to us," she added, as their feet made a clatter down the glistening uncarpeted hall. "Of course, the old house is nicer to look at, and to live in; but these rooms are quite nice to dance in, and when I was a child, I used to like to play here. I used to love to make a run, and then slide from there—" she indicated with her finger— "down to the front door."
Carron saw that the æsthetic sense of this young woman had been neglected—he doubted if she knew she had one—and he observed that her body rejoiced in activity. He was altogether entertained and delighted. "You would love to slide now, wouldn't you?" he inquired.
She glanced sidelong at the floor, but walked demurely. She resisted his invitation, but the invitation of the sky and trees, seen through the open door, she evidently found more potent. Whether she ran or not he wasn't sure, but her getting over the threshold and half-way down the steps was like nothing so much as the flash of a bird. She looked around her, and back at him, and her animation seemed to have taken a leap. "Which way shall we go?" she inquired.
"Oh, any way! You take me!" Her spirits had caught him. His irritation, his chafings were withdrawn.
"Then I will take you to the spring. It is about the only thing there is to see that we will have time for."
If he had expected her to race him through the shadows he was to be disappointed. For after that one instant of wildness that had touched her as she stood on the threshold, she schooled herself to a leisurely saunter. She had not quite the air of a girl curbed and repressed to her good behavior, but more the air of a girl unconsciously holding much in reserve. What the intenser expression. might be one could guess at—but it would be uncertain work. It was her simpler, more exterior self she was giving him now as they walked along the drive. She went in silence a few paces, her lips touched with some amusing thought; then turning to him with the mischievous elation that had first met his eyes when she had entered the dining-room. "I think I have something of yours," she volunteered.
He looked puzzled.
"Didn't you lose something yesterday when you were driving up?"
His hand clapped his watch pocket. "Why I—don't know of anything." He felt quite at sea, though her smiling eyes were accusing him that certainly he must know very well.
She slid her hand into the fold of her skirt where women conceal the mysterious thing they call a pocket. "I felt sure it was yours as soon as I saw you," she said as if there admitted of no doubt on this point. "You came near losing it a second time, too. My pup got it and tried to swallow it." She drew her hand slowly out again, enjoying his suspense, showing herself again the child. The sound of a horse's hoofs on the drive in front of them made her pause and look down the brown track. Around a near turn the rider came in view; and she closed her hand tightly, and let it fall at her side. The man on the road, the man the Raders called "Bert," pulled his pony to a walk and got unhandily out of the saddle.
He had seen the girl first. His look at sight of Carron made that unsusceptible person sorry for him. He seemed to consider the possibilities of retreat, then came on unwillingly as if impelled by a combination of appearances which he half hated and half feared.
Coming quite close to them he dragged off his hat. "Good morning, Blanche," his voice was soft and suppressed.
She gave him a clear and rather merciless eye. "Good morning." She seemed to be waiting for him to go by, but he came a little nearer and stopped, his hat clenched nervously in his hand. Evidently the poor devil was in disgrace for his last night's behavior.
"How are you this morning?" Carron said cheerfully.
The man replied sullenly, inaudibly.
Blanche Rader gave this greeting between the two her pointed surprise.
Carron smiled at her. "Well, aren't you going to show me what you promised?"
She sent a flying look at Ferrier, gave a slight shrug as if to say that after all his being there didn't matter. She held up and opened her hand. "There it is."
Carron looked curiously at the twenty-dollar gold piece. In spite of him the color was coming into his face. He recognized the coin as being new, as being of the date that he remembered.
"Here it is," the girl insisted, holding it out.
To appear surprised was not difficult. "Where did you find it?"
"A little way below where I caught the stage. A stirrup was getting loose and I got off to fix it, and dropped the hair-pin I was fixing it with; just put my hand into the dust to get it again and found this in my fingers!"
Carron raised his eyes, most conscious of the other man's face. It was a study. The fellow had stretched his neck; he was crimson, his mouth a little open, and he looked at Carron in a suspense that was equal to suffering, expecting his next word.
"Of course, I'd like very much to accept it," Carron said, very much amused by the play, "but unfortuately I have lost nothing of the kind."
She seemed incredulous. "But you" she began, and Carron was sure she was about to say, "You recognized it"—which was true indeed.
He shook his head. "It isn't mine! Couldn't some one on the stage have lost it—or some one else in this part of the country? You don't happen to know," he said, turning to the man on the road, "of any one around here who has lost such a thing?"
There was a click in the fellow's throat. He seemed to draw breath with a great effort. "It's mine!"
Blanche Rader gave him the full benefit of her amazement. "Why, you—" She started again, "Why, Bert—"
"It's mine; I lost it yesterday!" He drew a trembling hand across his forehead, suddenly damp.
She took him all in, his worn flannel shirt, patched trousers stuck into old boots that needed patching, his whole appearance of a rather reckless poverty; she glanced at Carron. His eye refuted her implication. Its steady insistence expected a certain action from her as it had from the man on the road. She was perplexed, and he thought a little chagrined that her amusing supposition had taken this unexpected turn on her, but she held out the gold piece slowly and let it fall into the other man's hand.
The man on the road seemed submerged from thought by some crushing emotion. Expression was washed out of his face; he was nerveless; his throat made a convulsive movement—an attempt for speech; his hand closed on the money, and with a jerk plunged it into his pocket. "I—" he began, but there his tongue stopped; his head drooped, and he turned away. He moved on up the drive, leading his horse as if he had not ambition enough to mount it, and left a quality of silence behind him that was astonishment. "What in the world?" Blanche Rader seemed not to ask of Carron so much as herself. "What in the world is the matter with him?"
Carron's eyes were twinkling. "Probably thought you were going to withhold his proper due."
"But it doesn't seem as if it could be his!"
"Oh, why not?"
She looked at him with smiling scorn, very pretty upon such a tender mouth. "Where would he get it—twenty dollars!"
"He sold a horse," Carron said. He said it to amuse himself. It fitted so nicely into an outward lie and an inward truth; but the expression it summoned in her was amazing—the sudden proud suspicious look her eyes darted, the rush of a red spot to each cheek, the quick lift of the bosom. It was gone in a flash, leaving her paler, gone with the long sigh which expelled her fears. "Why, his horse isn't worth ten dollars," she said lightly.
Carron couldn't immediately speak. As quickly as her expression had come and gone—so quickly a supposition had touched his mind. He entertained it not a minute. It wasn't possible! This being who fastened on stirrups with a hair-pin! "What's got me?" he thought. "I'm so possessed with an idea that I accuse every one I see of knowing about it."
Blanche Rader's momentary suspicion, whatever it had been, evidently had blown away. Mere curiosity was left. "Did he tell you he had sold a horse?" she asked.
"I gathered it from what he said."
"Then you've met him before?"
"Yesterday. He very kindly directed me here. He said Raders might take me in and keep me overnight, and so, you see, I am grateful to him."
"Yes, he's obliging." She spoke like one anxious to be fair, but there was a trace of irritation in her voice. "I'm glad if he has made some money, for I'm afraid he needs it terribly. This has been a cruel summer."
"He lives in this part of the country, I suppose?"
"A mile down the main road. The Ferriers have been here longer than we have. I've known Bert. ever since I was a child." They were walking again, still on the main road, with unending trees around them, and with motion her good humor was returning.
The drama just enacted on the drive had interested Carron, and pricked his curiosity far more than he had shown. What was the girl's mind toward the man on the road, and why, taking the gold piece from her, should the fellow turn upon her such a face. He looked at her himself, and looking thought, "She certainly isn't pretty. She's less—or more." Aloud he said, "And have you lived here long?"
"Eight years. The new house has been built since then," she mused. "Of course, the old drawing-rooms were impossible. Their woodwork was rotted, but I was sorry when they tore down the old ball-room."
"The ball-room?" Carron repeated, with an involuntary survey of the solemn prospect of trees.
"Yes, I liked it." Her white teeth flashed at the memory. "It was so funny, and so grand. Leslie de Shallener, the dancer—did you ever hear of her?—she was up here the first summer we had the place; and one night she took me into the ball-room where we were all alone, and no light but moonlight, and danced for me. I've never forgotten it. I don't often see things like that."
"I'm sure I don't," said Carron. What he was thinking of, however, was the great room, and the large-eyed child, spellbound in the moonlight, with the gyrations of a toe-dancer.
"I think you must have seen a great deal," she answered. "Look, there are the old gate-posts. They ought to have been pulled down long ago, but I am afraid I should miss them. The spring path turns off just here."
He would hardly have known it was a path. To one driving by it would look like a natural opening in the forest. She had to lead him now, the way was so narrow. It showed indications of having been wider once in the short green growth of pine on either side. Some little distance on he saw the fragment of a board hanging gray and rain-worn from a post; farther yet the thin iron legs of a chair—such a chair as one sees around café tables—thrust out of the drift of pine-needles. Between these relics the lithe body of the girl swung at a quick-footing pace, here stooping her head, there lifting a branch aside, now glancing over her shoulder at him. Then, a little in front of him, he saw two hand-rails, tottering, all but collapsing, yet somehow clinging together, and opening out, embracing a sort of inclosure. Within was a level space, clear of pines and perhaps thirty feet across. In the center of this Blanche Rader was standing when he came up to her, standing by a circular railing closely boarded below, and with a broad ledge around the top of it inclosing what looked to be a well. An iron bench, scarlet with rust, was toppled upon the ground. The helplessness of its aspect, four legs in the air, and the staggering white rail, gave an air of forlornness to the spectacle which in no way seemed to touch the girl's consciousness. Custom, no doubt, had taken away her vision of the place.
"This is where they used to come in the morning to drink the water," she explained.
Carron was astonished and enlightened. "Do you mean to tell me that this was a health resort, off here at the end of creation?"
She nodded. "'The Giant Mineral Springs Hotel.' Remember the tumble-down sign as you came in the gate? I supposed you knew—but of course mother never speaks of it. She feels so badly about it."
Carron raised interrogative eyebrows at her. "What is wrong with having a health resort?"
She gave him all her smile. "Nothing, if it is a real one. But you see—well, we didn't know when we bought it."
"You—bought it—" The words were not quite a question, but allowed themselves to be taken as such.
"Not exactly. I don't think any one would ever have done that, do you? Father took it for a debt. A friend of his, a Mr. Janfer, built the place. I think they called it 'Janfer's Folly.' I know he lost. money on it. It was a very fine house at the time it was built, but it had been closed so long when we got it, it was dreadfully run down. You see we thought we could sell it. Father thought the mineral springs would be worth something, but whenwe had them analyzed we found out they were just ordinary water that had been charged with sulphur and iron." She laughed. "Think what Mr. Janfer said when father told him what we had found out! He said, Why, of course, I expected that you would do as I did."
"And Mr. Rader didn't?"
She shook her head. "Mother wanted to, but he wouldn't let her. She says he doesn't have the problem of running a hotel on not enough; and besides it would be good for the people to drink a lot of water even if it is just plain. But father said he couldn't live a pretense."
"And how about you?" Carron inquired, resting his arm on the well curb. The warm personal look he turned on her—the look that had got him so much of what he wanted—took away from the impertinence of curiosity. Indeed, he was more than curious; he was interested, attracted by the unusualness of the three people, struck by their singular surrounding. To himself, if he had thought of himself at that moment, he would have appeared the idlest of idlers, the most disinterested of acquaintances; but, for a fact, he was never disinterested. He had the imagination that works only toward an object. With a faculty he was not aware of he utilized everything. He was utilizing now, unintentionally, utilizing this girl, to draw out of her details of character, of opinion, of history, among the people in the small scenario around him—the actors among whom he expected to play a part.
She was a clear well to draw from, but over his last question she took time.
"I mean," he explained himself, "what would you decide about it?"
"I? Oh, I don't know. I suppose it would be hard to know all the time that you were cheating people; but the way the thing is now is rather hard on mother."
"Doesn't she—isn't it—" He was afraid he was going too far, but the idea of any one in financial straits, above all these two women, disturbed him mightily. Financial assistance was something he understood how to offer very well.
"Oh, yes; we have a number of people in the summer. We do quite well enough in a business way, only if it were a health resort we should do much better; so much better that by and by we could stop, and go somewhere else, and see a different sort of people."
"Doesn't she like the sort of people here?"
"Oh, for herself she doesn't care at all! It's on my account, you see." She made a little grimace. "The people who come here are not 'advantageous'—at least that is what she says."
Carron could easily imagine it. The people who up in such out-of-the-way places are those strange people out of nowhere. He could very easily fancy how they would look, sitting around the yellow pine drawing-room in the evenings. "And do you like them?"
"They are more fun than the advantageous people; yes, on the whole, I do."
"And do you like the place?"
"In the summer? Yes, it is rather fun."
"No, at all times, summer and winter. How do you like living here all the year around?"
Evidently she had never considered this before. "I don't know. It's my home."
"What of that? I never liked my home, and I haven't seen it for ten years."
She had a way of seeming never to have formed an opinion on a subject, but just to meet it for the first time as it was presented to her. At this one she looked surprised and a little dubious. "I like it here well enough." She glanced vaguely around her. "I like it much better than the Sacramento Valley. It's beautiful here when you get off in the mountains." The expression in her eyes grew further away. "Yes, I think I'm happy here. At least," she murmured it as if she had forgotten he was there, "I have been happy this September."
"I hope you're not going to be less happy for the next week." It was horribly crude, the primary personality. Carron blushed for himself, but the result was what he wanted.
Her gaze came back promptly upon him. She did not reply, did not try to turn his sentiment. Actually, with her large arrested gaze, she seemed to consider it. In the pause, in the silence, he felt his foolish platitude was gathering significance. "What can you be to my happiness or unhappiness?" the look of hers seemed to say. Seriousness was he last note he wanted to strike; but in spite of him, it was struck between them. The question in her eyes had provoked the question from his. For a breath, the tentative thought was sent out from one to the other, and withdrawn.
"There is one favor I must ask of you," Carron said lightly. "I shall have to let you make my pillows sit up properly, for that I can't do; but I do draw the line at your rubbing down my mare."
It was a chance shot, but it drew fire. "Oh, I enjoy that. I like it better than the housework. George cleans the stalls for me, and usually does the horses. I only oversee, but I curried yours for the fun of it. She is such a beauty, and she was quite glad to see me."
"Naturally! She'll be delighted to carry you, too. Perhaps some day when you have time you will be good enough to try her."
"Oh, I should love to!"
Her fervor quickened him with a feeling of companionship for her. "You like them, don't you?"
"Horses?" Her hesitation surprised him. "Oh, yes, I like them well enough. They are lovely!" She meditated, then added, "But they're so silly."
"Silly?"
"Yes; letting us put steel in their mouths, and stick steel into their sides, and pull their heads about with reins—giving in to us and obeying us, when they could trample us into nothing!"
He drew down the corners of his mouth and shot up his eyebrows at her. "But sometimes they do trample us into nothing."
"Not often." She spoke as if it were to be regretted.
"My bloodthirsty young friend!" He threw back his head and laughed until the desolate old spring walk and well echoed. "Don't you believe in the Christian virtues of meekness and obedience?"
"No—they're stupid. They're all right for children, and dogs; but for splendid crashing things like horses—"
He looked at her curiously. The faint color was coming up under her dusky white skin, not rose, but a duller, more passionate hue. Her head had turned slowly to the profile, and again he felt her thought was traveling away from him. She did not see, as Carron saw, a long slow-dancing shadow coming down the walk between the gray hand-rails. The approach of feet was soundless on the forest's strewn carpet. She did not see her father as he dawned between the close pine branches.
He stopped just at the threshold of the inclosure, a queer figure astray in the trees, an indoor figure, one that would have been at home at a desk, or that would have known its way about among bookshelves. His glasses were pushed up, his foggy hair was distracted on his head, his hands plunged deep in his pockets. In the warm, out-of-door light he looked more dry, more lined, more than ever built of thoughts, without actions. His survey was straight before him at his dreaming daughter. Carron had never seen him look at any one so deliberately, so concentratedly or so long. This time there was a deal more than affection in his face; there was introspection, there was a philosophic smile.
When his eyes moved, they moved rapidly. They met the young man's with an interrogation, pointed, peculiar, unaware of itself, and the more unguarded because of that. "How is it? Well, what did you find out?" he seemed to demand. Carron felt suddenly limp. The significance of the question seized him before he could challenge it. For once he was captured and carried off his feet by another man's conviction. He received it as a fact, reflected upon him from the scholar's candid, inquisitive face. The duel of looks—"Can you mean it?" answering "Did she tell you?"—passed between them, across the distance, shifted, and with a common instinct merged into a direct regard of the girl. She sat above them, forgetful of the one, unaware of the other, looking over their heads at the invisible something she saw, far away from this time and place. She appeared an unfamiliar creature, suddenly of importance, of tremendous significance. "A woman!" he thought; and, with a mixed sense of amazement and incredulous delight repeated, "A woman, good Lord, a woman!"