Kindred of the Dust Part 7

"I'm glad of that. By the way, who is towing the garbage-barge to sea nowadays?"

"I don't know, sir. Mr. Daney hired somebody else and his boat when I had to quit because of my sciatica."

"Hereafter, we'll use your boat, Caleb, and engage a man to operate it. The rental will be ten dollars per trip, two trips a week, eighty dollars a month. Cheap enough; so don't think it's charity. Here's the first month's rental in advance. I'm going to run along now, Caleb, but I'll look in from time to time, and if you should need me in the interim, send for me."

He kissed little Don Brent, who set up a prodigious shriek at the prospect of desertion and brought his mother fluttering into the room.

He watched her soothe the youngster and then asked:

"Nan, where do you keep the arnica now? I cut my knuckles on that yellow rascal."

She raised a sadly smiling face to his.

"Where would the arnica be--if we had any, Donald?" she demanded.

"Where it used to be, I suppose. Up on that shelf, inside the bas.e.m.e.nt of that funny old half-portion grandfather's clock and just out of reach of the pendulum."

"You do remember, don't you? But it's all gone so many years ago, Donald. We haven't had a boy around to visit us since you left Port Agnew, you know. I'll put some tincture of iodine on your knuckles, however."

"Do, please, Nan."

A little later, he said:

"Do you remember, Nan, the day I stuck my finger into the cage of old Mrs. Biddle's South American parrot to coddle the brute and he all but chewed it off?"

She nodded.

"And you came straight here to have it attended to, instead of going to a doctor."

"You wept when you saw my mangled digit. Remember, Nan? Strange how that scene persists in my memory! You were so sweetly sympathetic I was quite ashamed of myself."

"That's because you always were the sweetest boy in the world and I was only the garbage-man's daughter," she whispered. "There's a ridiculous song about the garbage-man's daughter. I heard it once, in vaudeville--in San Francisco."

"If I come over some evening soon, will you sing for me, Nan?"

"I never sing any more, Don."

"n.o.body but you can ever sing 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginy' for me."

"Then I shall sing it, Don."

"Thank you, Nan."

She completed the anointing of his battle-scarred knuckles with iodine, and, for a moment, she held his hand, examining critically an old ragged white scar on the index-finger of his right hand. And quite suddenly, to his profound amazement, she bent her head and swiftly implanted upon that old scar a kiss so light, so humble, so benignant, so pregnant of adoration and grat.i.tude that he stood before her confused and inquiring.

"Such a strong, useful big hand!" she whispered. "It has been raised in defense of the sanct.i.ty of my home--and until you came there was 'none so poor to do me reverence.'"

He looked at her with sudden, new interest. Her action had almost startled him. As their eyes held each other, he was aware, with a force that was almost a shock, that Nan Brent was a most unusual woman. She was beautiful; yet her physical beauty formed the least part of her attractiveness, perfect as that beauty was. Instinctively, Donald visualized her as a woman with brains, character, n.o.bility of soul; there was that in her eyes, in the honesty and understanding with which they looked into his, that compelled him, in that instant, to accept without reservation and for all time the lame and halting explanation of her predicament he had recently heard from her father's lips. He longed to tell her so. Instead, he flushed boyishly and said, quite impersonally:

"Yes; you're beautiful as women go, but that's not the right word to express you. Physically, you might be very homely, but if you were still Nan Brent you would be sweet and compelling. You remind me of a Catholic chapel; there's always one little light within that never goes out, you know. So that makes you more than beautiful. Shall I say--glorious?"

She smiled at him with her wistful, sea-blue eyes--a smile tender, maternal, all-comprehending. She knew he was not seeking to flatter her, that the wiles, the Artifices, the pretty speeches of the polished man of the world were quite beyond him.

"Still the same old primitive pal," she murmured softly; "still thinking straight, talking straight, acting straight, and--dare I say it, Donald?--seeing straight. I repeat, you always were the sweetest boy in the world--and there is still so much of the little boy about you." Her hand fluttered up and rested lightly on his arm. "I'll not forget this day, my dear friend."

It was characteristic of him that, having said that which was uppermost in his mind, he should remember his manners and thank her for dressing his knuckles. Then he extended his hand in farewell.

"When you come again, Donald," she pleaded, as he took her hand, "will you please bring me some books? They're all that can keep me sane--and I do not go to the public library any more. I have to run the gantlet of so many curious eyes."

"How long is it since you have been away from the Sawdust Pile?"

"Since before my baby came."

He was silent a minute, pondering this. Since old Caleb had become house-ridden, then, she had been, without books. He nodded a.s.sent to her request.

"If I do not say very much, you will understand, nevertheless, how grateful I am," she continued. "To-day, the sun has shone. Whatever your thoughts may have been, Donald, you controlled your face and you were decent enough not to say, 'Poor Nan.'"

He had no answer to that. He was conscious only of standing helpless in the midst of a terrible tragedy. His heart ached with pity for her, and just for old sake's sake, for a tender sentiment for lost youth and lost happiness of the old comradely days when she had been Cinderella and he the prince, he wished that he might take her in a fraternal embrace and let her cry out on his breast the agony that gnawed at her heart like a worm in an apple. But it was against his code to indicate to her by word or action that she was less worthy than other women and hence to be pitied, for it seemed to him that her burden was already sufficient.

"Let me know if those people return to annoy you, Nan," was all he said. Then they shook hands very formally, and the young laird of Tyee returned to the mill-office to report to Andrew Daney that the Sawdust Pile had been cleaned out, but that, for the present at least, they would get along with the old drying-yard.

Somehow, the day came to an end, and he went home with tumult in his soul.

VII

An unerring knowledge of men in general and of his own son in particular indicated to Hector McKaye, upon the instant that the latter appeared at the family dinner-table, that his son's first day in command had had a sobering effect upon that young man. He had gone forth that morning whistling, his eyes alert with interest and antic.i.p.ation; and a feeling of profound contentment had come to The Laird as he watched Donald climb into his automobile and go briskly down the cliff highway to Port Agnew. Here was no unwilling exile, shackled by his father's dollars to a backwoods town and condemned to labor for the term of his natural life. Gladly, eagerly, it seemed to Hector McKaye, his son was a.s.suming his heritage, casting aside, without one longing backward glance, a brighter, busier, and more delightful world.

Although his son's new arena of action was beautiful and The Laird loved it with a pa.s.sionate love, he was sufficiently imaginative to realize that, in Port Agnew, Donald might not be as happy as had been his father. Old Hector was sufficiently unselfish to have harbored no resentment had this been so. It had been his one anxiety that Donald might take his place in the business as a matter of duty to himself rather than as a duty to his father, and because he had found his lifework and was approaching it with joy, for The Laird was philosopher enough to know that labor without joy is as dead-sea fruit. Indeed, before the first day of his retirement had pa.s.sed, he had begun to suspect that joy without labor was apt to be something less than he had antic.i.p.ated.

The Laird observed in his son's eyes, as the latter took his place at table, a look that had not been there when Donald left for the mill that morning. His usually pleasant, "Evening, folks!" was perfunctory to-night; he replied briefly to the remarks addressed to him by his mother and sisters; the old man noted not less than thrice a slight pause with the spoon half-way to his mouth, as if his son considered some problem more important than soup. Mrs. McKaye and the girls chattered on, oblivious of these slight evidences of mental perturbation, but as The Laird carved the roast (he delighted in carving and serving his family, and was old-fashioned enough to insist upon his right, to the distress of the girls, who preferred to have the roast carved in the kitchen and served by the j.a.panese butler), he kept a contemplative eye upon his son, and presently saw Donald heave a slight sigh.

"Here's a t.i.tbit you always liked, son!" he cried cheerfully, and deftly skewered from the leg of lamb the crisp and tender tail.

"Confound you, Donald; I used to eat these fat, juicy little lamb's tails while you were at college, but I suppose, now, I'll have to surrender that prerogative along with the others." In an effort to be cheerful and distract his son's thoughts, he attempted this homely badinage.

"I'll give you another little tale in return, dad," Donald replied, endeavoring to meet his father's cheerful manner. "While we were away, a colony of riffraff from Darrow jumped old Caleb Brent's Sawdust Pile, and Daney was weak enough to let them get away with it. I'm somewhat surprised. Daney knew your wishes in the matter; if he had forgotten them, he might have remembered mine, and if he had forgotten both, it would have been the decent thing to have thrown them out on his own responsibility."

So that was what lay at the bottom of his son's perturbation! The Laird was relieved.

"Andrew's a good man, but he always needed a leader, Donald," he replied. "If he didn't lack initiative, he would have been his own man long ago. I hope you did not chide him for it, lad."

"No; I did not. He's old enough to be my father, and, besides, he's been in the Tyee Lumber Company longer than I. I did itch to give him a rawhiding, though."

"I saw smoke and excitement down at the Sawdust Pile this morning, Donald. I dare say you rectified Andrew's negligence."

"I did. The Sawdust Pile is as clean as a hound's tooth."