The Long Lane's Turning Part 29

All that night, and for many days and nights thereafter, old Jubilee Jim, faithful to his word, struggled with death over the body of Harry Sevier.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

JUBILEE JIM'S JOURNEY

Harry stood in the doorway of the Bungalow, one hand shading his eyes, looking down the twisting trail to where, far below, a dark blotch toiled up the slope. During three days he had been alone, for Jubilee Jim had gone upon a journey to the city where lay the old life from which Harry had fled on the day he had ceased to be himself. The snows were gone and an early spring day of azure and gold lay over the satiny stillness of the folded hills. The fresh, pleasant air was full of the whirr of birds and the smell of new bark and bursting buds, the slender birches were unfurling the virginal green of their young leaves, and here and there on the hillsides blossoms were showing. All nature was fulfilling its annual mission of rebirth, audaciously triumphing over autumn's death and winter's sepulture.

The stalwart figure standing on the threshold was good to see. The fever that had followed that terrible night of physical exhaustion had been worsted at last by Jubilee Jim's homely medicaments and the balm of peace and sleep. There had been days when Harry had been perilously near the Great Adventure, but a.s.siduous nursing and a splendid native const.i.tution had in the end conquered. The pure air of the balsam forest and the comfort of the solitude had at length had their way with him. The flesh had come back to the wasted frame, the old brightness to the eye, and the flush of perfect health to the skin. Now, with his curling hair and his crisp dark beard, trimmed as of old, he was again the Harry Sevier of a year before--save that back of the eyes was a steady something, a deep conscious strength that had come to him from those bitter prison months when his soul had been tried in a fiery furnace of pain.

Sevier dropped his hand with a long sigh of relief, for at a turn in the path, the dark blotch had resolved itself into the figure of a man, followed by a great dog harnessed to a little cart. "It's Jube!" he said aloud. "He's made the trip safely, and he's got the things!"

This journey had been the outcome of much thought on Harry's part.

Lying there in the long weeks of convalescence, his mind had been busy with the problem of the future. What to do? He could not stay forever there on the mountain, a lonely hermit. Somewhere, he must take up life again. When he had beguiled those dark prison moods with thoughts of freedom, his imagination had pictured flight to some distant country where, under a borrowed name, he might find a refuge, barren as that refuge might be of all life's sweetness. Freedom now was his. Should he put the past forever behind him, make his disappearance good, and without more ado drop out of sight and sound forever? All his instinct rebelled against this drastic solution, this cavalier denial of life and its mental exercise for a career of empty futility.

What remained then? To go back to the life he had left behind him on the day he ceased to be Harry Sevier?

Why not? He was free--free to be himself again. Only one, beside Echo, had known that he and the captured house-breaker were identical--that was Craig. And Craig had been taken from his path.

And who else would connect Harry Sevier, the lawyer, the club-man of well-known and reputable past, the favourite of drawing-rooms--who could ever a.s.sociate him with a tawdry burglar and desperate convict who had escaped from a penitentiary in another State? Once more bearded and eye-gla.s.sed, without scar or mark to point resemblance or beckon identification, recognition would be the wildest improbability.

Once, as he bettered, Jubilee Jim had gone to the valley below to return with a bundle of back-copies of the County newspaper, and as Harry pored over these avidly, the old life had cried to him from every line. The movement that had been called into life by the Civic Club, in the hour when he had made the first speech of his life that had been untinctured with any personal ambition or selfish motive, had gained momentum; it had taken on party organisation and would be a force to be reckoned with in the coming campaign. On that day he had had his first taste of the joy of battle for a principle, and he longed inexpressibly to throw the power, of which he was now more than ever conscious, into the struggle for the new ideal.

Suppose he went back, and Craig recovered the mind that was now in eclipse--recovered and remembered? What then?

His safety lay in the fact that no one possessed the clue to the unthinkable reality. Craig, if he recovered, would possess this, and if he in his right senses denounced him, the accusation, spectacular and incredible as it might seem, would have to be seriously met. And he could not meet it, for it would be true! So long as Craig lived, the harrowing danger would always be there--a veritable Sword of Damocles! Would not his future be forever a dubious adventure, haunted always by a torturing shadow and the dread of discovery and shame? In fancy he saw himself seized--to be suddenly confronted with that shameful thing, to face a cloud of witnesses, be dragged back to a cell, despised and broken, once more a convict--that, or else flight, cringing and furtive, with the hounds of the law in cry!

And yet, did not the chances that Craig would not regain his faculties vastly preponderate? The newspapers Harry had read had not contained the item chronicling Craig's journey to Buda-Pesth, and recovery was not an imminent possibility to his mind. A year had gone by, and all the skill that wealth could invoke had no doubt been applied, and vainly. Even if sometime he to some extent recovered, it was more than likely that his memory of that fatal night in his library would be impaired. So Harry told himself.

Over and over he followed the trail of painful reflection, in a vicious circle that centred always in the one thought that sent his mind shrinking in upon itself--Echo. What would that old life be to him, denied its old relations? He and she were nothing to one another any more: she was only a stinging memory. And he would see her, meet her, talk with her, always with that sickening pretence of ignorance between them, in a painful hypocrisy, till she should love and marry--some one else than him! A wave of sick revolt had surged over him at the thought. What to him was freedom, even life itself, if each hour held the thumb-screw and the rack?

Thus his resolve had swung back and forth, pendulum-like, tiring itself with the endless question, and much thinking had brought him no nearer a solution. Meanwhile time had been pa.s.sing, and pending final decision it was necessary for him in some measure to pick up the old threads. There were responsibilities which he had not yet laid down.

There were his apartment, his servants, his office--for though provision of a sort had fortunately been made for a time, his affairs must now be put upon a securer basis which would permit of his taking whatever course should seem best. So, finally, he had sent Jubilee Jim on the long journey, after thoroughly schooling the old man on the part he was to play. By him he had sent a letter to his man of business, with minute instructions which would enable his affairs to be put in order, another to his bank directing the sale of certain securities for cash to be held at his instant demand, a third to Suzuki, his j.a.panese valet, instructing him to send clothes, and other needful articles, his private papers and a few books--for solace in this solitude until he should have determined what to do.

"Good, Jube!" said Harry, as the old negro came into the room carrying the big bundle from his little cart. "You got everything, then?"

"Yas, Ma.r.s.e Harry. Ah brung dem all--dee papers, en dee close, en dee money f'um dee bank, en all. Moughty glad ah got dis 'yer ole dawg erlong, wid sech er heap o' money on me! Reck'n Ah spent er lot--had tuh pay er qua'tah bof ways fo' him tuh ride on dee baggage-cyah: wouldn't let him in dee smokah nohow. Dey argyfied he too big."

Harry spread out the clothing on the table--suits of fas.h.i.+onable cut, speaking loudly and insistently of the old life. Those he wore at the moment had once been modish too, but their one-time owner would no longer have recognised them, for they were threadbare and as battered as the home-made moccasins on Harry's feet. At the first opportunity he purposed anonymously to send John Stark double their value, with certain articles the garments had contained--watch, cigarette-case, cuff-links and what-not--now wrapped in a little package in a safe hiding-place.

Harry turned. "Well, Jube, tell me all about it. When you got off the train, where did you go first?"

"To de bank fust. Man dah was moughtily s'prised tuh git yo' lettah.

'Reck'n Mistah Sevier gwine tuh Africy er sumwhah,' he say."

"Where did you go next?"

"To Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k Brent's office--whah dey meks dee newspapahs. Foun' him settin' dah wid er pipe in he mouf, lookin' jes' ez nachul ez life, same ez when he up hyuh wid yo'-all dat time. Ah cert'n'y glad tuh see Ma.r.s.e Brent, en he ax pow'ful lot o' questions 'bout yo'. 'Mah lan'!'

he say; 'Tuh think he up in dat ole mount'n all dis G.o.d's-blessed time, loafin' eroun' en gittin' fat ez er buzzard, when we-alls is wu'kin'

ouah souls tuh deff, en polytics gittin' red-hot. Whaffoh he do dat?

When he come up dar, Jube?' 'Well,' Ah says, 'Ah ain' got no haid fo'

gogerfy, Ma.r.s.e Brent, but Ah reck'n et mus' a ben las' fall sometime.

En den Ma.r.s.e Harry ben moughty sick in dee fall en wintah.' 'Sick!' he say. 'Yo' ole rascal, yo' ain' got no mo' sense dan er snake have hips! Why yo' don' sen' no word home erbout it?' 'Ma.r.s.e Harry he say not tuh,' I say. 'Clar' he ain' gwine be no trubbil tuh n.o.body. So Ah doctahs him en nusses him, en aftah while he git all right ergen. On'y he so fon' o' de ole bungalow he jes' cain' bear tuh leave et.' 'Sho!'

he say. 'When Ah thinks o' dis hyuh ole wuk, Ah reck'n Ah don' blame him none.' Den he tek me down tuh yo' place fo' dee clo's en things--walkin' erlong wid me jes' lak Ah been yo'-se'f. 'Moughty lot er folkses sorry yo' Ma.r.s.e Harry ain' erbout no mo', Jube,' he say.

'Speakin' o' dat,' he say, 'dahs one o' dem ar' folkses, Ah reck'n, comin' down dee street dis minute!' Ah looks up en Ah sees er moughty pretty young lady, tall en white lak er big lily. 'Dat Miss Echo Allen,' he say."

Harry turned away abruptly and looked out of the open doorway. His face had paled.

"Ma.r.s.e Brent tek off he hat, en he say, 'Miss Echo, what yo' reck'n dee las' spectaculous news is? Harry Sevier been up at ole Blue Mount'n all dis yeah!' Well, suh, seems lak dat lady so s'prised she mos'

faint right on dee spot. Den dee colah come back in huh cheeks en she laugh--moughty happifyed laugh, but somehow, et got er little cry en it too, sumwhah. She look at me, en huh eyes jes' de coloh o' er cat-buhd's aig. 'Dis 'yer Jubilee Jim Sandahs,' Ma.r.s.e Brent say, 'whut cook fo' Sevier's outfit up dah, en he also er numbah one nuss, kase dee young loafah ben sick. Bet yo' ben ovah-feedin' him, Jube.' Miss Echo she walk down dee street wid we-all, clar tuh yo' house. Ax how yo' is now, how yo' look, is yo' got thinnah--fifty hundud things she ax erbout. Ole Jube he sho' reck'n dat lady think er pow'ful sight o'

yo', Ma.r.s.e Harry!"

Harry choked back an exclamation of misery. Every word had been like a hot needle thrust into a quivering nerve. Her face, with its ivory clearness, under its wonderful whorl of red-gold hair--her eyes deep as sky-mirroring pools in late sun-light--her laugh, her voice! He suddenly seemed to feel the actual touch of her hand in his, as vastly sweet as the shadow of rose-leaves.

"Ma.r.s.e Harry," said Jubilee Jim, humbly, "dee ole man don' know whuffoh yo' come hyuh dis time, er whuffoh yo' so long 'way f'om home. Ain'

mah biz'ness, Ah knows. But dee mount'n ain' no place fo' folks tuh stay, cep'n fo' ole Jube whut lib hyuh allus. En Ma.r.s.e Harry, down dah in dee city, ev'y one jes' waitin' en watchin' fo' yo'. Ma.r.s.e Brent, en ... en dee pretty lady, en all!"

There was a long silence. At last Harry turned from the doorway.

"Thank you, Jube," he said in a low voice. "Now--tell me about Aunt Judy."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

THE CALL

In the big living-room, now flooded with the mountain suns.h.i.+ne that streamed in through the open door, Richard Brent leaned to knock the ashes from his pipe against the end of the hewn bench on which he sat.

Then he looked up at Sevier standing in front of the empty fire-place.

"Well," he asked, "what do you think of it? How's that for a chance, eh?"

Sevier nodded. One hand was tugging at his dark beard, the other was clasping and unclasping nervously behind him. "The new organisation can't win, of course," he answered quietly. "Politically speaking it's too young, and it lacks leaders. But it can make a strong showing, I should think."

Brent laughed as he explored his capacious tobacco-pouch. "Especially if the platform is built wide enough." He pointed to a newspaper he had brought with him, that lay beside him. "That editorial of mine hits the nail squarely on the head. There is one issue and only one which will draw in all the elements opposed to the party that now rules--that is the liquor issue. That _must_ go in!"

A quick gleam crossed Harry's face. None but he knew what liquor had done for him, no eye but his might see the pitiful trail it had dragged across his burnished life!

Brent laughed again. "It's strange that they don't see it!" he said.

"Can't they deduce anything. Look at the growth of similar movements in other states. Do they really believe that any genuine good-government party can sit in the same saddle with John Barleycorn?

That's why the thing has always failed in the past--compromise, temporise, fusion. Fiddlesticks! why can't they take the bull by the horns? They would, too, if there was some one who would crystallise the thing in their minds." He shot a keen side-glance at Harry. "When you made that Civic Club speech last year," he said shrewdly, "I picked you for the Peter the Hermit of the new Gospel. And then, confound it!

you bury yourself in the wilds up here, while every one thinks you've gone abroad, and I have to pack my rheumatic bones twenty miles on an infernal burro, to dig you out of your sh.e.l.l!"

Harry's eyes had been absently fixed on the spread-out newspaper.

Something in the other's words, in his manner, caught him. A colour came to his cheeks. "Dig me out of my sh.e.l.l?" he repeated. "What do you mean by that?"