Ridgway of Montana
W >>
William MacLeod Raine >> Ridgway of Montana
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 | 13 |
14
"You poor boy."
"And one night she came to me in a dream. She did not look as she had just
before she died, but strong and beautiful, with the color in her face she
used to have. She smiled at me and kissed me and rumpled my hair as she
used to do. I knew, then, it was all right. She understood, and I didn't
care whether others did or not. I woke up crying, and after I had had my
grief out I was myself again."
"It was so sweet of her to think to come to you. She must have been loving
you up in heaven and saw you were troubled, and came down just to comfort
you and tell you it was all right," the girl cried with soft sympathy.
"That's how I understood it. Of course, I was only a boy, but somehow I
knew it was more than a dream. I'm not a spiritualist. I don't believe such
things happen, but I know it happened to me," he finished illogically, with
a smile.
She sighed. "He was always so thoughtful of me, too. I do wish I had--could
have been--more--"
She broke off without finishing, but he understood.
"You must not blame yourself for that. He would be the first to tell you
so. He took you for what you could give him, and these last days were the
best he had known for many years."
"He was so good to me. Oh, you don't know how good."
"It was a great pleasure to him to be good to you, the greatest pleasure he
knew."
She looked up as he spoke, and saw shining deep in his eyes the spirit that
had taught him to read so well the impulse of another lover, and, seeing
it, she dropped her eyes quickly in order not to see what was there. With
him it had been only an instant's uncontrollable surge of ecstasy. He meant
to wait. Every instinct of the decent thing told him not to take advantage
of her weakness, her need of love to rest upon in her trouble, her
transparent care for him and confidence in him so childlike in its
entirety. For convention he did not care a turn of his hand, but he would
do nothing that might shock her self-respect when she came to think of it
later. Sternly he brought himself back to realities.
"Shall I see Mr. Mott for you and send him here? It would be better that he
should make the arrangements than I."
"If you please. I shall not see you again before I go, then?" Her lips
trembled as she asked the question.
"I shall come down to the hotel again and see you before you go. And now
good-by. Be brave, and don't reproach yourself. Remember that he would not
wish it."
The door opened, and Virginia came in, flushed with rapid walking. She had
heard the news on the street and had hurried back to the hotel.
Her eyes asked of Ridgway: "Does she know?" and he answered in the
affirmative. Straight to Aline she went and wrapped her in her arms, the
latent mothering instinct that is in every woman aroused and dormant.
"Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried softly.
Ridgway slipped quietly from the room and left them together.
CHAPTER 24. A GOOD SAMARITAN
Yesler, still moving slowly with a walking stick by reason of his green
wound, left the street-car and made his way up Forest Road to the house
which bore the number 792. In the remote past there had been some spasmodic
attempt to cultivate grass and raise some shade-trees along the sidewalks,
but this had long since been given up as abortive. An air of decay hung
over the street, the unmistakable suggestion of better days. This was writ
large over the house in front of which Yesler stopped. The gate hung on one
hinge, boards were missing from the walk, and a dilapidated shutter, which
had once been green, swayed in the breeze.
A woman of about thirty, dark and pretty but poorly dressed, came to the
door in answer to his ring. Two little children, a boy and a girl, with
their mother's shy long-lashed Southern eyes of brown, clung to her skirts
and gazed at the stranger.
"This is where Mr. Pelton lives, is it not?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Is he at home?"
"Yes, sir."
"May I see him?"
"He's sick."
"I'm sorry to hear it. Too sick to be seen? If not, I should like very much
to see him. I have business with him."
The young woman looked at him a little defiantly and a little suspiciously.
"Are you a reporter?"
Sam smiled. "No, ma'am."
"Does he owe you money" He could see the underlying blood dye her dusky
cheeks when she asked the question desperately, as it seemed to him with a
kind of brazen shame to which custom had inured her. She had somehow the
air of some gentle little creature of the forests defending her young.
"Not a cent, ma'am. I don't want to do him any harm."
"I didn't hear your name."
"I haven't mentioned it," he admitted, with the sunny smile that was a
letter of recommendation in itself. "Fact is I'd rather not tell it till he
sees me."
From an adjoining room a querulous voice broke into their conversation.
"Who is it, Norma?"
"A gentleman to see you, Tom."
"Who is it?" more sharply.
"It is I, Mr. Pelton. I came to have a talk with you." Yesler pushed
forward into the dingy sitting-room with the pertinacity of a bookagent. "I
heard you were not well, and I came to find out if I can do anything for
you."
The stout man lying on the lounge grew pale before the blood reacted in a
purple flush. His very bulk emphasized the shabbiness of the stained and
almost buttonless Prince Albert coat he wore, the dinginess of the little
room he seemed to dwarf.
"Leave my house, seh. You have ruined this family, and you come to gloat on
your handiwork. Take a good look, and then go, Mr. Yesler. You see my wife
in cotton rags doing her own work. Is it enough, seh?"
The slim little woman stepped across the room and took her place beside her
husband. Her eyes flashed fire at the man she held responsible for the fall
of her husband. Yesler's generous heart applauded the loyalty which was
proof against both disgrace and poverty. For in the past month both of
these had fallen heavily upon her. Tom Pelton had always lived well, and
during the past few years he had speculated in ventures far beyond his
means. Losses had pursued him, and he had looked to the senatorship to
recoup himself and to stand off the creditors pressing hard for payment.
Instead he had been exposed, disgraced, and finally disbarred for attempted
bribery. Like a horde of hungry rats his creditors had pounced upon the
discredited man and wrested from him the remnants of his mortgaged
property. He had been forced to move into a mere cottage and was a man
without a future. For the only profession at which he had skill enough to
make a living was the one from which he had been cast as unfit to practise
it. The ready sympathy of the cattleman had gone out to the politician who
was down and out. He had heard the situation discussed enough to guess
pretty close to the facts, and he could not let himself rest until he had
made some effort to help the man whom his exposure had ruined, or, rather,
had hastened to ruin, for that result had been for years approaching.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Pelton. If I've injured you I want to make it right."
"Make it right!" The former congressman got up with an oath. "Make it
right! Can you give me back my reputation, my future? Can you take away the
shame that has come upon my wife, and that my children will have to bear in
the years to come? Can you give us back our home, our comfort, our peace of
mind?"
"No, I can't do this, but I can help you to do it all," the cattleman made
answer quietly.
He offered no defense, though he knew perfectly well none was needed. He
had no responsibility in the calamity that had befallen this family.
Pelton's wrong-doing had come home to those he loved, and he could rightly
blame nobody but himself. However much he might arraign those who had been
the agents of his fall, he knew in his heart that the fault had been his
own.
Norma Pelton, tensely self-repressed, spoke now. "How can you do this, sir?"
"I can't do it so long as you hold me for an enemy, ma'am. I'm ready to cry
quits with your husband and try a new deal. If I injured him he tried to
even things up. Well, let's say things are squared and start fresh. I've
got a business proposition to make if you're willing to listen to it."
"What sort of a proposition?"
"I'm running about twenty-five thousand sheep up in the hills. I've just
bought a ranch with a comfortable ranch-house on it for a kind of central
point. My winter feeding will all be done from it as a chief place of
distribution. Same with the shearing and shipping. I want a good man to put
in charge of my sheep as head manager, and I would be willing to pay a
proper salary. There ain't any reason why this shouldn't work into a
partnership if he makes good. With wool jumping, as it's going to do in the
next four years, the right kind of man can make himself independent for
life. My idea is to increase my holdings right along, and let my manager in
as a partner as soon as he shows he is worth it. Now that ranch-house is a
decent place. There's a pretty good school, ma'am, for the children. The
folks round that neighborhood may not have any frills, but--"
"Are you offering Tom the place as manager?" she demanded, in amazement.
"That was my idea, ma'am. It's not what you been used to, o' course, but if
you're looking for a change I thought I'd speak of it," he said
diffidently.
She looked at him in a dumb surprise. She, too, in her heart knew that this
man was blameless. He had done his duty, and had nearly lost his life for
it at the hands of her husband. Now, he had come to lift them out of the
hideous nightmare into which they had fallen. He had come to offer them
peace and quiet and plenty in exchange for the future of poverty and shame
and despair which menaced them. They were to escape into God's great hills,
away from the averted looks and whispering tongues and the temptations to
drown his trouble that so constantly beset the father of her children.
Despite his faults she still loved Tom Pelton; he was a kind and loving
husband and father. Out on the range there still waited a future for him.
When she thought of it a lump rose in her throat for very happiness. She,
who had been like a rock beside him in his trouble, broke down now and
buried her head in her husband's coat.
"Don't you, honey--now, don't you cry." The big man had lost all his
pomposity, and was comforting his sweetheart as simply as a boy. "It's all
been my fault. I've been doing wrong for years--trying to pull myself out
of the mire by my bootstraps. By Gad, you're a man, Sam Yesler, that's what
you are. If I don't turn ovah a new leaf I'd ought to be shot. We'll make a
fresh start, sweetheart. Dash me, I'm nothing but a dashed baby." And with
that the overwrought man broke down, too.
Yesler, moved a good deal himself, maintained the burden of the
conversation cheerfully.
"That's all settled, then. Tell you I'm right glad to get a competent man
to put in charge. Things have been running at loose ends, because I haven't
the time to look after them. This takes a big load off my mind. You better
arrange to go up there with me as soon as you have time, Pelton, and look
the ground over. You'll want to make some changes if you mean to take your
family up there. Better to spend a few hundreds and have things the way you
want them for Mrs. Pelton than to move in with things not up to the mark.
Of course, I'll put the house in the shape you want it. But we can talk of
that after we look it over."
In his embarrassment he looked so much the boy, so much the culprit caught
stealing apples and up for sentence, that Norma Pelton's gratitude took
courage. She came across to him and held out both hands, the shimmer of
tears still in the soft brown eyes.
"You've given us more than life, Mr. Yesler. You can't ever know what you
have done for us. Some things are worse than death to some people. I don't
mean poverty, but--other things. We can begin again far away from this
tainted air that has poisoned us. I know it isn't good form to be saying
this. One shouldn't have feelings in public. But I don't care. I think of
the children--and Tom. I didn't expect ever to be happy again, but we
shall. I feel it."
She broke down again and dabbed at her eyes with her kerchief. Sam, very
much embarrassed but not at all displeased at this display of feeling,
patted her dark hair and encouraged her to composure.
"There. It's all right, now, ma'am. Sure you'll be happy. Any mother that's
got kids like these--"
He caught up the little girl in his arms by way of diverting attention from
himself.
This gave a new notion to the impulsive little woman.
"I want you to kiss them both. Come here, Kennie. This is Mr. Yesler, and
he is the best man you've ever seen. I want you to remember that he has
been our best friend."
"Yes, mama."
"Oh, sho, ma'am!" protested the overwhelmed cattleman, kissing both the
children, nevertheless.
Pelton laughed. He felt a trifle hysterical himself. "If she thinks it
she'll say it when she feels that way. I'm right surprised she don't kiss
you, too."
"I will," announced Norma promptly, with a pretty little tide of color.
She turned toward him, and Yesler, laughing, met the red lips of the new
friend he had made.
"Now, you've got just grounds for shooting me," he said gaily, and
instantly regretted his infelicitous remark
For both husband and wife fell grave at his words. It was Pelton that
answered them.
"I've been taught a lesson, Mr. Yesler. I'm never going to pack a gun again
as long as I live, unless I'm hunting or something of that sort, and I'm
never going to drink another drop of liquor. It's all right for some men,
but it isn't right for me."
"Glad to hear it. I never did believe in the hip-pocket habit. I've lived
here twenty years, and I never found it necessary except on special
occasions. When it comes to whisky, I reckon we'd all be better without
it."
Yesler made his escape at the earliest opportunity and left them alone
together. He lunched at the club, attended to some correspondence he had,
and about 3:30 drifted down the street toward the post-office. He had
expectations of meeting a young woman who often passed about that time on
her way home from school duties.
It was, however, another young woman whose bow he met in front of Mesa's
largest department store.
"Good afternoon, Miss Balfour."
She nodded greeting and cast eyes of derision on him.
"I've been hearing about you. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
"Yes, ma'am. What for in particular? There are so many things."
"You're a fine Christian, aren't you?" she scoffed.
"I ain't much of a one. That's a fact," he admitted. "What is it this
time--poker?"
"No, it isn't poker. Worse than that. You've been setting a deplorable
example to the young."
"To young ladies--like Miss Virginia?" he wanted to know.
"No, to young Christians. I don't know what our good deacons will say about
it." She illuminated her severity with a flashing smile. "Don't you know
that the sins of the fathers are to descend upon their children even to the
third and fourth generation? Don't you know that when a man does wrong he
must die punished, and his children and his wife, of course, and that the
proper thing to do is to stand back and thank Heaven we haven't been vile
sinners?"
"Now, don't you begin on that, Miss Virginia," he warned.
"And after the man had disgraced himself and shot you, after all
respectable people had given him an extra kick to let him know he must stay
down and had then turned their backs upon him. I'm not surprised that
you're ashamed."
"Where did you get hold of this fairy-tale?" he plucked up courage to demand.
"From Norma Pelton. She told me everything, the whole story from beginning
to end."
"It's right funny you should be calling on her, and you a respectable young
lady--unless you went to deliver that extra kick you was mentioning," he
grinned.
She dropped her raillery. "It was splendid. I meant to ask Mr. Ridgway to
do something for them, but this is so much better. It takes them away from
the place of his disgrace and away from temptation. Oh, I don't wonder
Norma kissed you."
"She told you that, too, did she?"
"Yes. I should have done it, too, in her place."
He glanced round placidly. "It's a right public place here, but--"
"Don't be afraid. I'm not going to." And before she disappeared within the
portals of the department store she gave him one last thrust. "It's not so
public up in the library. Perhaps if you happen to be going that way "
She left her communication a fragment, but he thought it worth acting upon.
Among the library shelves he found Laska deep in a new volume on domestic
science.
"This ain't any kind of day to be fooling away your time on cook-books.
Come out into the sun and live," he invited.
They walked past the gallows-frames and the slag-dumps and the shaft-houses
into the brown hills beyond the point where green copper streaks showed and
spurred the greed of man. It was a day of spring sunshine, the good old
earth astir with her annual recreation. The roadside was busy with this
serious affair of living. Ants and crawling things moved to and fro about
their business. Squirrels raced across the road and stood up at a safe
distance to gaze at these intruders. Birds flashed back and forth, hurried
little carpenters busy with the specifications for their new nests. Eager
palpitating life was the key-note of the universe.
"Virginia told me about the Peltons," Laska said, after a pause.
"It's spreading almost as fast as if it were a secret," he smiled. "I'm
expecting to find it in the paper when we get back."
"I'm so glad you did it."
"Well, you're to blame."
"I!" She looked at him in surprise.
"Partly. You told me how things were going with them. That seemed to put it
up to me to give Pelton a chance."
"I certainly didn't mean it that way. I had no right to ask you to do
anything about it."
"Mebbe it was the facts put it up to me. Anyhow, I felt responsible."
"Mr. Roper once told me that you always feel responsible when you hear
anybody is in trouble," the young woman answered.
"Roper's a goat. Nobody ever pays any attention to him."
Presently they diverged from the road and sat down on a great flat rock
which dropped out from the hillside like a park seat. For he was still far
from strong and needed frequent rests. Their talk was desultory, for they
had reached that stage of friendship at which it is not necessary to bridge
silence with idle small talk. Here, by some whim of fate, the word was
spoken. He knew he loved her, but he had not meant to say it yet.
But when her steady gray eyes came back to his after a long stillness, the
meeting brought him a strange feeling that forced his hand.
"I love you, Laska. Will you be my wife?" he asked quietly.
"Yes, Sam," she answered directly. That was all. It was settled with a
word. There in the sunshine he kissed her and sealed the compact, and
afterward, when the sun was low among the hill spurs, they went back
happily to take up again the work that awaited them.
CHAPTER 25. FRIENDLY ENEMIES
Ridgway had promised Aline that he would see her soon, and when he found
himself in New York he called at the big house on Fifth Avenue, which had
for so long been identified as the home of Simon Harley. It bore his
impress stamped on it. Its austerity suggested the Puritan rather than the
classic conception of simplicity. The immense rooms were as chill as
dungeons, and the forlorn little figure in black, lost in the loneliness of
their bleakness, wandered to and fro among her retinue of servants like a
butterfly beating its wings against a pane of glass.
With both hands extended she ran forward to meet her guest.
"I'm so glad, so glad, so glad to see you."
The joy-note in her voice was irrepressible. She had been alone for weeks
with the conventional gloom that made an obsession of the shadow of death
which enveloped the house. All voices and footsteps had been subdued to
harmonize with the grief of the mistress of this mausoleum. Now she heard
the sharp tread of this man unafraid, and saw the alert vitality of his
confident bearing. It was like a breath of the hills to a parched traveler.
"I told you I would come."
"Yes. I've been looking for you every day. I've checked each one off on my
calendar. It's been three weeks and five days since I saw you."
"I thought it was a year," he laughed, and the sound of his uncurbed voice
rang strangely in this room given to murmurs.
"Tell me about everything. How is Virginia, and Mrs. Mott, and Mr. Yesler?
And is he really engaged to that sweet little school-teacher? And how does
Mr. Hobart like being senator?"
"Not more than a dozen questions permitted at a time. Begin again, please."
"First, then, when did you reach the city?"
He consulted his watch. "Just two hours and twenty-seven minutes ago."
"And how long are you going to stay?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"For one thing, on whether you treat me well," he smiled.
"Oh, I'll treat you well. I never was so glad to see a real live somebody
in my life. It's been pretty bad here." She gave a dreary little smile as
she glanced around at the funereal air of the place. "Do you know, I don't
think we think of death in the right way? Or, maybe, I'm a heathen and
haven't the proper feelings."
She had sat down on one of the stiff divans, and Ridgway found a place
beside her.
"Suppose you tell me about it," he suggested.
"I know I must be wrong, and you'll be shocked when you hear."
"Very likely."
"I can't help feeling that the living have rights, too," she began
dubiously. "If they would let me alone I could be sorry in my own way, but
I don't see why I have to make a parade of grief. It seems to--to cheapen
one's feelings, you know."
He nodded. "Just as if you had to measure your friendship for the dead with
a yardstick of Mother Grundy. It's a hideous imposition laid on us by
custom, one of Ibsen's ghosts."
"It's so good to hear you say that. And do you think I may begin to be
happy again?"
"I think it would be allowable to start with one smile a day, say, and
gradually increase the dose," he jested. "In the course of a week, if it
seems to agree with you, try a laugh."
She made the experiment without waiting the week, amused at his whimsical
way of putting it. Nevertheless, the sound of her own laughter gave her a
little shock.
"You came on business, I suppose?" she said presently.
"Yes. I came to raise a million dollars for some improvements I want to make."
"Let me lend it to you," she proposed eagerly.
"That would be a good one. I'm going to use it to fight the Consolidated.
Since you are now its chief stockholder you would be letting me have money
with which to fight you."
"I shouldn't care about that. I hope you beat me."
"You're my enemy now. That's not the way to talk." His eyes twinkled merrily.
"Am I your enemy? Let's be friendly enemies, then. And there's something I
want to talk to you about. Before he died Mr. Harley told me he had made
you an offer. I didn't understand the details, but you were to be in charge
of all the copper-mines in the country. Wasn't that it?"
"Something of that sort. I declined the proposition."
"I want you to take it now and manage everything for me. I don't know Mr.
Harley's associates, but I can trust you. You can arrange it any way you
like, but I want to feel that you have the responsibility."
He saw again that vision of power--all the copper interests of the country
pooled, with himself at the head of the combination. He knew it would not
be so easy to arrange as she thought, for, though she had inherited
Harley's wealth, she had not taken over his prestige and force. There would
be other candidates for leadership. But if he managed her campaign Aline's
great wealth must turn the scale in their favor.
"You must think this over again. You must talk it over with your advisers
before we come to a decision," he said gravely.
"I've told Mr. Jarmyn. He says the idea is utterly impossible. But we'll
show him, won't we? It's my money and my stock, not his. I don't see why he
should dictate. He's always 'My dear ladying' me. I won't have it," she
pouted.
The fighting gleam was in Ridgway's eyes now. "So Mr. Jannyn thinks it is
impossible, does he?"
"That's what he said. He thinks you wouldn't do at all."
"If you really mean it we'll show him about that."
She shook hands with him on it.
"You're very good to me," she said, so naively that he could not keep back
his smile.
"Most people would say I was very good to myself. What you offer me is a
thing I might have fought for all my life and never won."
"Then I'm glad if it pleases you. That's enough about business. Now, we'll
talk about something important."
He could think of only one thing more important to him than this, but it
appeared she meant plans to see as much as possible of him while he was in
the city.
"I suppose you have any number of other friends here that will want you?"
she said.
"They can't have me if this friend wants me," he answered, with that deep
glow in his eyes she recognized from of old; and before she could summon
her reserves of defense he asked: "Do you want me, Aline?"
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 | 13 |
14