Janet of the Dunes Part 20

"They are often the outward expression."

"Or counterfeits. Have you ever read 'Peer Gynt,' d.i.c.k?"

"Yes. Ibsen has a gloomy charm for me. I read all he writes in about the same way a child reads goblin tales. I enjoy the s.h.i.+vers."

"You remember the woman who gave Peer permission to marry the one pure love of his life but stipulated that _she_ should forever sit beside them?"

"Yes!" Thornly smiled grimly. "That was a devilishly Ibsen-like idea."

"It was a truer touch than the young can understand. Those ghostly women of an early folly often sit beside a man and the later, purer love of his life. Some men are able to ignore the gray spectres and get a deal of comfort from the saner reality of maturer years; I never could. That girl"--he touched the closed book as if it were the grave that concealed her--"has always come between me and later desires for a home and closer ties. Her wonderful eyes, that looked so much and meant so little, have held me by a power that death and years have never conquered."

"She died then?" Thornly could no longer s.h.i.+eld himself from the undesired knowledge; he must hear the end.

"Yes. She came from near here, poor little soul! I can never get rid of the impression that her death was hurried, not only by trouble, but sheer homesickness. You cannot fit these slow, quiet natures into the city's whirlpool. I was a young fellow, down for the summer. I was ensnared by her beauty, and hadn't sense enough to see the danger. She followed me to the city,--took a place in a shop, and was about as wretched as a sea gull in a desert. I was fool enough to think it a n.o.ble act to befriend her and so I complicated matters. My father must have found out, though I was never sure of that. Father was a man who kept a calm exterior under any emotion; but he sent me abroad, and I, not knowing that he had discovered anything, dared not confess. I meant to come back at a year's end and set all straight in some way. Good G.o.d!

set things straight! How we poor devils go through the world knocking down things like so many ten pins and solacing ourselves with the fancy that when we finish the game we'll set the pins in place again! We never get that chance, d.i.c.k, take my word for it! Whatever the plan of life is, it isn't for us to set up the game! We may play fair, if it is in us, but once we get through, we need not hope for any going back process. When I returned at the end of two years, I could not find her!

It wasn't love that set me upon the search for her, d.i.c.k, I always knew that; but I think it was the one decent element that has ever kept me from going to the deepest depths. I got discouraged, finally, and took our old family lawyer into my confidence."

"Did you look down here?" Thornly asked slowly. The tale had clutched him in a nightmarish way that shook his nerves.

"They don't come back here, my boy, once they tread the path of that poor child. They simplify morality in Quinton along with all else, and the one unpardonable sin suffices for them. They grade their society by their att.i.tude toward that. But old Thornd.y.k.e took this place into consideration as a beginning, for he aided me in my search when he was convinced of my determination."

"And you never found her?" Thornly was leaning forward with hands close clasped before him, his face showing tense in the red glow of the fire.

"Thornd.y.k.e did."

"Ah!"

"Yes, the poor little thing had been rescued after a fas.h.i.+on. Soon after I left her, a fellow who had always had a liking for her, a chap who had worked in the shop with her, was willing to marry her and she consented. You wouldn't think she could, quite, with those eyes, but she did! The man was good to her; but the city, and other things, were too much, and she lived only a short time. There was a child! I wanted to do something for it; I had a pa.s.sion of remorse then, but Thornd.y.k.e told me that the child's best interest lay in my letting her alone. She was respected and comfortable. For me to interfere would be to throw dishonor upon the dead mother and a cloud upon the child. All had been buried and forgotten in the mother's grave. About all I could do to better the business was to keep my hands off; and that I did!"

Devant's head drooped upon his chest, and Thornly felt a kind of pity that stirred a new liking for the man.

"You think the lawyer told you the true facts?" he asked; "true in every particular?"

Devant started up and turned deep eyes upon the questioner.

"Great heavens! yes. You do not know Thornd.y.k.e. He was about as cast iron an old Puritan as ever survived the times. He was devoted to our family, and served us to his life's end as counsellor and friend; but not for the hope of heaven would he have lied! No, that's why I confided in Thornd.y.k.e, I could not have trusted any one else. I knew he would never respect me afterward; he never did. But he served me as no one else could, and I bore his contempt with positive grat.i.tude."

"But you could never forget?" Thornly spoke almost affectionately. The older man looked up.

"No. And as I grow older I thank G.o.d I never could. We ought not forget such things as that. We ought to expiate them as long as we live. I have grown to take a kind of joy in the hurt of the memory, a kind of savage exaltation in the suffering. So, perhaps, can I wipe out the wrong in this life and get strength of a better sort for the next trial on beyond, if there is another trial! I suppose every man wants to show, and live the best that is in him; not many get the chance here, from what I see. I reckon that is why we old fellows have an interest in you younger ones. It goes against the grain, if we have a sneaking regard for you, to see you quench the divine spark with the same galling water we've gone through. Going, d.i.c.k?"

For the other had risen and was holding out his hand in a confused but eager fas.h.i.+on.

"Yes, Mr. Devant, and thank you! You're not an old man, I sincerely wish that you might some day, well, you understand--not forget exactly, but get another trial here!"

"Too late for that, d.i.c.k. Can't you stay over night?"

"No. I'm going to the Hills. I've some last things to do there."

"And to-morrow, d.i.c.k?"

"I'm going to Katharine!" The two men looked keenly into each other's eyes.

"I'll meet you then at the train, my boy, at 7.50. I've business in the city. I always put up at the Holcomb; look me up after you've seen Katharine."

"Good night, Mr. Devant, and again thank you!"

Devant walked with Thornly to the outer door, and then to the windswept piazza. "It's sharp to-night," he said; "I'll soon have to give up Bluff Head. Davy's Light has got it all its own way to-night, not a star or moon to rival its beauty. A time back I fancied one evening that the Light failed me. It was only for a few moments I imagined it, but it gave me quite a jog. I suppose it was the state of my nerves; one can rely upon Davy. He's a great philosopher in his way. His lamp is his duty; his lamp and that poor crippled wife of his who has just died.

Davy is one of the few men I've met, d.i.c.k, who seems to have played the game fair and has never tried to comfort himself with the hope of going back. 'I'm ready for the next duty,' he said to me the other day with his old rugged face s.h.i.+ning; 'there's always another duty ready at hand, when you drop one as finished.'"

The master of Bluff Head watched the straight young figure fade into the night. Then he turned again to Davy's Light.

"The weight of a dead duty," he muttered. "That's what anchors a man! It isn't in the order of things to trust a man with a new duty, when he failed with the last. There isn't any light to guide a man that's anch.o.r.ed by a dead duty."

Then Devant went back into his lonely house and sat down before the dulling fire to think it out about Thornly.

"He'll never go to any one but me, after he's seen Katharine," he thought. "He may not come to me. It all depends upon how deep the thing has gone, but, in case he needs any one, I'd better be on hand. I may serve as a buffer, and that's better than not serving at all."

CHAPTER X

Janet had conquered the art of crocheting in order that she might construct a Tam o' Shanter cap. It had been a difficult task, and the result was far from satisfying. Dropped st.i.tches and uneven rows were in evidence all over the creation of dark red, with its bushy little knot on top. But Janet had an eye for the impressionistic touch, and as she glanced in the mirror of Susan Jane's bureau, the general effect was gratifying. Under the dull red the splendid, dusky gold of the girl's hair shone exquisitely. Janet had trained the rebellious locks at last to an upward tendency and the ma.s.s was knotted loosely beneath the artistic headgear. The eye for color had never been lacking in this girl of the dunes. Nature had taught her true, but Thornly had, later, a.s.sisted Nature; and no French modiste could more accurately have chosen the shade of reddish brown to suit the complexion than had Janet selected, from the village store, her coa.r.s.e flannel for blouse and skirt. The skirt was long now, and the heavy shoes were worn religiously through heat and cold. There was to be no more absolute freedom for Janet of the Dunes.

David had come down from his Light, heavy eyed and weary. Mark Tapkins's absence caused extra duty for David, but the man would ask for no other helper; it would seem like disloyalty to Mark. Janet took a turn now and again to relieve David, and that helped considerably. The girl had borne her share the previous night, but her face showed no trace of the vigil.

"Sprucin'?" Davy paused. Tired as he was, the girl's beauty caught and held him.

"Some. I've set your breakfast out on the table, Davy, and the coffee is on the stove."

"Yer gettin' t' be a master hand at cookin', Janet. I don't b'lieve Pa Tapkins can beat yer coffee. Expectin' Mark back?" There was a double interest in this question.

"I haven't heard a word, Davy."

"Goin' visitin'?"

"No, Davy; n.o.body seems to want me to come visiting. The summer's doings have sort of rent Quinton asunder, and in some way I've managed to fall in the crack. I don't know what I've done," she smiled a crooked little smile, and gave the artistic Tam a new angle, "but I'm rather frozen out. Mrs. Jo G.'s Amelia made a 'face' at me yesterday. I shouldn't have noticed it, for the creature's hideous anyway, but she called an explanation after me; 'I've made a snoot at you!' she screamed, and would have said more, but Maud Grace pulled her in. No, Davy, I'm going up to Bluff Head."

"It's empty," Davy said, moving between stove and table clumsily.

"Eliza Jane's there, and James B. I wonder if they are going to shut the house for the winter?" asked Janet.

"Like as not," Davy nodded, and spoke from the depths of his coffee cup.

Janet bethought her of the cellar window and the old unbroken calm, and she sighed yearningly.