Mrs. Falchion Part 29

"I know. I feel it. You must not tell me. It was a woman, and this other woman, this Mrs. Falchion knows, and she would try to ruin you, or"--here she seemed to be moved suddenly by a new thought--"or have you love her. But she shall not, she shall not--neither! For I will love you, and G.o.d will listen to me, and answer me."

"Would to Heaven I were worthy of you! I dare not think of where you might be called to follow me, Ruth."

"'Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy G.o.d my G.o.d,'" she rejoined in a low voice.

"'Thy G.o.d my G.o.d!'" he repeated after her slowly. He suddenly wondered if his G.o.d was her G.o.d; whether now, in his trouble, he had that comfort which his creed and profession should give him. For the first time he felt acutely that his choice of this new life might have been more a reaction from the past, a desire for expiation, than radical belief that this was the right and only thing for him to do. And when, some time after, he bade Ruth good-bye, as she went with her father, it came to him with appalling conviction that his life had been a mistake. The twist of a great wrong in a man's character distorts his vision; and if he has a tender conscience he magnifies his misdeeds.

In silence Roscoe and I watched the two ride down the slope. I guessed what had happened: afterwards I was told all. I was glad of it, though the end was not yet promising. When we turned to go towards the house again, a man lounged out of the trees towards us. He looked at me, then at Roscoe, and said:

"I'm Phil Boldrick's pal from Danger Mountain." Roscoe held out his hand, and the man took it, saying: "You're The Padre, I suppose, and Phil was soft on you. Didn't turn religious, did he? He always had a streak of G.o.d A'mighty in him; a kind of give-away-the-top-of-your-head chap; friend o' the widow and the orphan, and divvy to his last crust with a pal. I got your letter, and come over here straight to see that he's been tombed accordin' to his virtues; to lay out the dollars he left me on the people he had on his visitin' list; no loafers, no gophers, not one; but to them that stayed by him I stay, while prog and liquor last."

I saw Roscoe looking at him in an abstracted way, and, as he did not reply, I said: "Phil had many friends and no enemies." Then I told him the tale of his death and funeral, and how the valley mourned for him.

While I spoke he stood leaning against a tree, shaking his head and listening, his eyes occasionally resting on Roscoe with a look as abstracted and puzzled as that on Roscoe's face. When I had finished he drew his hand slowly down his beard and a thick sound came from behind his fingers. But he did not speak.

Then I suggested quietly that Phil's dollars could be put to a better use than for prog and liquor.

He did not reply to this at all; but after a moment's pause, in which he seemed to be studying the gambols of a squirrel in a pine tree, he rubbed his chin nervously, and more in soliloquy than conversation said: "I never had but two pals that was pals through and through. And one was Phil and the other was Jo--Jo Brackenbury."

Here Roscoe's hand, which had been picking at the bark of a poplar, twitched suddenly.

The man continued: "Poor Jo went down in the 'Fly Away' when she swung with her bare ribs flat before the wind, and swamped and tore upon the b.l.o.o.d.y reefs at Apia.... G.o.d, how they gnawed her! And never a rag holdin' nor a stick standin', and her pretty figger broke like a tin whistle in a Corliss engine. And Jo Brackenbury, the dandiest rip, the noisiest pal that ever said 'Here's how!' went out to heaven on a tearing sea."

"Jo Brackenbury--" Roscoe repeated musingly. His head was turned away from us.

"Yes, Jo Brackenbury; and Captain Falchion said to me" (I wonder that I did not start then) "when I told him how the 'Fly Away' went down to Davy, and her lovers went aloft, reefed close afore the wind--'Then,'

says he, 'they've got a d.a.m.ned sound seaman on the Jordan, and so help me! him that's good enough to row my girl from open sea, gales poundin'

and breakers showin' teeth across the bar to Maita Point, is good enough for use where seas is still and reefs ain't fas.h.i.+onable.'"

Roscoe's face looked haggard as it now turned towards us. "If you will meet me," he said to the stranger, "to-morrow morning, in Mr. Devlin's office at Viking, I will hand you over Phil Boldrick's legacy."

The man made as if he would shake hands with Roscoe, who appeared not to notice the motion, and then said: "I'll be there. You can bank on that; and, as we used to say down in the Spicy Isles, where neither of you have been, I s'pose, Talofa!"

He swung away down the hillside.

Roscoe turned to me. "You see, Marmion, all things circle to a centre.

The trail seems long, but the fox gets killed an arm's length from his hole."

"Not always. You take it too seriously," I said. "You are no fox."

"That man will be in at the death," he persisted.

"Nonsense, Roscoe. He does not know you. What has he to do with you?

This is overwrought nerves. You are killing yourself with worry."

He was motionless and silent for a minute. Then he said very quietly: "No, I do not think that I really worry now. I have known"--here he laid his hand upon my shoulder and his eyes had a s.h.i.+ning look--"what it is to be happy, unspeakably happy, for a moment; and that stays with me. I am a coward no longer."

He drew his finger tips slowly across his forehead. Then he continued: "To-morrow I shall be angry with myself, no doubt, for having that moment's joy, but I cannot feel so now. I shall probably condemn myself for cruel selfishness; but I have touched life's highest point this afternoon, Marmion."

I drew his hand down from my shoulder and pressed it. It was cold.

He withdrew his eyes from the mountain, and said: "I have had dreams, Marmion, and they are over. I lived in one: to expiate--to wipe out--a past, by spending my life for others. The expiation is not enough. I lived in another: to win a woman's love; and I have, and was caught up by it for a moment, and it was wonderful. But it is over now, quite over. ... And now for her sake renunciation must be made, before I have another dream--a long one, Marmion."

I had forebodings, but I pulled myself together and said firmly: "Roscoe, these are fancies. Stop it, man. You are moody. Come, let us walk, and talk of other things."

"No, we will not walk," he said, "but let us sit there on the coping and be quiet--quiet in that roar between the hills." Suddenly he swung round, caught me by the shoulders and held me gently so.

"I have a pain at my heart, Marmion, as if I'd heard my death sentence; such as a soldier feels who knows that Death looks out at him from iron eyes. You smile: I suppose you think I am mad."

I saw that it was best to let him speak his mind. So I answered: "Not mad, my friend. Say on what you like. Tell me all you feel. Only, for G.o.d's sake be brave, and don't give up until there's occasion. I am sure you exaggerate your danger, whatever it is."

"Listen for a minute," said he: "I had a brother Edward, as good a lad as ever was; a boisterous, healthy fellow. We had an old nurse in our family who came from Irish hills, faithful and kind to us both. There came a change over Edward. He appeared not to take the same interest in his sports. One day he came to me, looking a bit pale, and said: 'Galt, I think I should like to study for the Church.' I laughed at it, yet it troubled me in a way, for I saw he was not well. I told Martha, the nurse. She shook her head sadly, and said: 'Edward is not for the Church, but you, my lad. He is for heaven.'

"'For heaven, Martha?' laughed I.

"'In truth for heaven,' she replied, 'and that soon. The look of his eye is doom. I've seen it since I swaddled him, and he will go suddenly.'

"I was angry, and I said to her,--though she thought she spoke the truth,--'This is only Irish croaking. We'll have the banshee next.'

"She got up from her chair and answered me solemnly: 'Galt Roscoe, I HAVE heard the banshee wail, and sorrow falls upon your home. And don't you be so hard with me that have loved you, and who suffers for the lad that often and often lay upon my breast. Don't be so hard; for your day of trouble comes too. You, not he, will be priest at the altar. Death will come to him like a swift and easy sleep; but you will feel its hand upon your heart and know its hate for many a day, and bear the slow pangs of it until your life is all crushed, and you go from the world alone, Love crying after you and not able to save you, not even the love of woman--weaker than death.... And, in my grave, when that day comes beside a great mountain in a strange land, I will weep and pray for you; for I was mother to you too, when yours left you alone bewhiles, never, in this world, to come back.'

"And, Marmion, that night towards morning, as I lay in the same room with Edward, I heard his breath stop sharply. I jumped up and drew aside the curtains to let in the light, and then I knew that the old woman spoke true.... And now!... Well, I am like Hamlet--and I can say with him: 'But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart--but it is no matter!"'....

I tried to laugh and talk away his brooding, but there was little use, his convictions were so strong. Besides, what can you do with a morbidness which has its origin in fateful circ.u.mstances?

I devoutly wished that a telegram would come from Winnipeg to let me know if Boyd Madras, under his new name, could be found. I was a hunter on a faint trail.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE STRINGS OF DESTINY

When Phil's pal left us he went wandering down the hillside, talking to himself. Long afterwards he told me how he felt, and I reproduce his phrases as nearly as I can.

"Knocked 'em, I guess," he said, "with that about Jo Brackenbury....

Poor Jo! Stuck together, him and me did, after she got the steel in her heart."... He pulled himself together, shuddering.... "Went back on me, she did, and took up with a cursed swell, and got it cold--cold. And I?

By Judas! I never was shut of that. I've known women, many of 'em, all countries, but she was different. I expect now, after all these years, that if I got my hand on the devil that done for her, I'd rattle his breath in his throat. There's things that clings. She clings, Jo Brackenbury clings, and Phil Boldrick clings; and they're gone, and I'm left to go it alone. To play the single hand--what!--by Jiminy!"

He exclaimed thus on seeing two women approach from the direction of the valley. He stood still, mouth open, staring. They drew near, almost pa.s.sed him. But one of them, struck by his intense gaze, suddenly turned and came towards him.

"Miss Falchion! Miss Falchion!" he cried. Then, when she hesitated as if with an effort of memory, he added: "Don't you know me?"

"Ah," she replied abruptly, "Sam Kilby! Are you Sam Kilby, Jo Brackenbury's friend, from Samoa?"

"Yes, miss, I'm Jo Brackenbury's friend; and I've rowed you across the reefs with him more than once I guess so! But it's a long way from Apia to the Rockies, and it's funny to meet here."

"When did you come here--and from where?"

"I come to-day from the Hudson's Bay post at Danger Mountain. I'm Phil Boldrick's pal."