King Spruce Part 4

She understood him. His eyes and the quiver in his voice spoke to her heart. She clung to his hands when he would have withdrawn them. The look she gave her father checked that gentleman's contemptuous mutterings.

"I am ashamed of my father, Mr. Wade," she said, pa.s.sionately. "I offer you the apologies of our home."

"Say, look here!" snarled Barrett, this scornful rebelliousness putting his wits to flight, "if that's the way you feel about me, put on your hat and go with him. I'll be d--d if I don't mean it! Go and starve."

He realized the folly of his outburst as he returned their gaze. But he persisted in his puerile attack.

"Oh, you don't want her that way, do you?" he sneered. "You want her to bring the dollars that go along with her!"

Then Wade forgot himself.

He wrested one hand from the gentle clasp that entreated him, and would have struck the mouth that uttered the wretched insult. The girl prevented an act that would have been an enormity. She caught his wrist, and when his arm relaxed he did not dare, at first, to look at her. Then he gave her one quick stare of horror and looked at his hand, dazed and ashamed.

Barrett, strangely enough, was jarred back to equanimity by the threat of that blow. He folded his arms, drew himself up, and stood there, the outraged master of the mansion restored to command, silent, cold, rigid, his whole att.i.tude of indignant reproach more effective than all the curses in Satan's lexicon.

Talk could not help that distressing situation. The young man's white lips tried to frame the words "I apologize," but even in his anguish the grim humor of this reciprocation of apology rose before his dizzy consciousness.

"Good-night!" he gasped.

Then he left her and went into the hall, John Barrett close on his heels. The millionaire watched him take his hat, followed him out upon the broad porch, and halted him at the edge of the steps.

"Mr. Wade," he said, "you'd rather resign your position than be kicked out, I presume?"

"You mean that it is your wish that I should go away from Stillwater?"

"That is exactly what I mean. You resign, or I will have your resignation demanded by the school board."

"I think my school relations are entirely my own business," retorted the young man, fighting back his mounting wrath.

"I'll make it mine, and have you kicked out of this town like a cur."

Wade remembered at that instant the face of the man whom he had seen leave John Barrett's office that morning. He recollected his words--"I'd relish bein' the man that mistook him for a bear!" He knew now how that man felt. And feeling the l.u.s.t of killing rise in his own soul for the first time, he clinched his fists, set his teeth, and strode away into the night.

CHAPTER III

THE MAKING OF A "CHANEY MAN"

"We're bound for the choppin's at Chamberlain Lake, And we're lookin' for trouble and suthin' to take.

We reckon we'll manage this end of the train, And we'll leave a red streak up the centre of Maine."

--Murphy's "Come-all-ye."

A company of reserves posted in a thicket, after valiantly withstanding the hammering of a battery, were suddenly routed by wasps. They broke and ran like the veriest knaves.

Dwight Wade had determined to face John Barrett's battery of persecution. But at the end of a week he realized that the little city of Stillwater was looking askance at him. He knew that gossip attended his steps and stood ever at his shoulders, as one from the tail of the eye sees shadowy visions and, turning suddenly, finds them gone.

That John Barrett would deliberately start stories in which his daughter's affairs were concerned seemed incredible to the lover who, for the sake of her fair fame and her peace of mind, had resolved to make fetish of duty, realizing even better than she herself that Elva Barrett's sense of justice would weigh well her duties as daughter before she could be won to the duties of wife.

Yet Wade could hardly tell why he determined to stay in Stillwater. He wanted to console himself with the belief that a sudden departure would give gossip the proof it wanted. For gossip, as he caught its vague whispers, said that John Barrett had kicked--actually and violently kicked--the princ.i.p.al of the Stillwater high-school out of his mansion.

Wade did not like to think that Barrett, by himself or a servant, started that story. Yet the thought made Wade suspect that the bitterness of the night at "Oaklands" still rankled, and that he was remaining in Stillwater for the sake of defying John Barrett, and was not simply crucifying his spirit for the sake of the peace of John Barrett's daughter.

For he confessed that his stay there would be martyrdom. He had resolved that he would not try to see her; that would only mean grief for her and humiliation for him. He was proud of his love for Elva Barrett, in spite of her father's contempt and insults. He found no reproach for himself because he had loved her and had told her so. But for the role of a Lochinvar his New England nature had no taste. He realized, without arguing the question with himself, that Elva Barrett was not to be won by the impetuous folly that demanded blind sacrifice of name and position and father and friends.

There was no cowardice in this realization. It was rather a pathetic sacrifice on the part of simple loyalty and a love that was absolute devotion. In deciding to remain in Stillwater he kept his love alight like a flame before a shrine. But beyond his daily work and the unflinching purpose of his great love he could not see his way.

It was because his way was so obscure that the wasps found him an easier victim.

He heard the buzzings at street corners as he pa.s.sed. There were stings of glances and of half-heard words.

Like the pastor of a church in a small place, the princ.i.p.al of a high-school is one in whom the community feels a sense of proprietorship, with full right to canva.s.s his goings and comings and liberty to circ.u.mscribe and control. For is he not the one that should "set example"?

The wasps would not accept his silent surrender. They suspected something hidden, and their imaginings saw the worst. They buzzed more busily every day. That they would not allow him the peace and the pathetic liberty of renunciation drove Wade frantic. With all the courage of his conscience, he still faced John Barrett's battery. But the wasps he could not face.

And he fled. In the end it was nothing but that--he was put to flight!

The people of Stillwater accepted it as flight, for he placed his resignation in the hands of the school board barely a week before the date for the opening of the autumn term. And on the train on which he fled was the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt, still unconscious that the word of gossip he had dropped was the match that lighted a fuse, and that the fuse was briskly burning.

Above the rumble of the starting car-wheels Wade heard the mills of Stillwater screaming their farewell taunt at him.

Then the Honorable Pulaski Britt came and sat down in his seat, penning him next to the window.

"Yes, sir," said Britt, with keen memory as to where he had left off in his previous conversation and with dogged determination to have his say out, "a man that reads a book written by a perfesser that don't know the difference between a ramdown and a dose of catnip tea, and then thinks he understands forestry of the kind that there's a dollar in, needs to have his head examined for hollows. Do you find anything in them books about how to get the best figgers on dressed beef?--and when you are buyin' it in fifty-ton lots for a dozen camps a half a cent on a pound means something! Is there anything about hirin' men and makin' 'em stay and work, gettin' cooks and saw-filers that know their business, chasin'

thieves away from depot-camps, keepin' crews from losin' half the tools? Forestry! Making trees grow! Gawd-amighty, young man, Nature will attend to the tree-growin'. That's all Nature has got to do. She was doin' it before we got here, and doin' it well, and do you reckon we have any right to set up and tell Nature her business? I've got something else to think of besides tellin' Nature how to run her end.

I'd like to know how to grow men instead of trees. My Jerusalem boss, MacLeod, writes me he has been two weeks getting together his hundred men for that operation. He'll meet me at the Umcolcus junction, up the line here a hundred miles. And I've been tryin' most of that time to get hold of the right sort of a 'chaney man.'"

Wade, in his resentment at Britt's intrusion on his thoughts, was in no mood for philological research, but sudden and rather idle curiosity impelled him to ask what a "chaney man" was.

"Why, a clerk--a camp clerk, time-keeper, w.a.n.gan store overseer, supply accountant, and all that," snapped Britt, with small patience for the young man's ignorance.

At that instant it came more plainly to Wade that he was a fugitive.

When he had left Elva Barrett behind he had let go the strongest cable of hope. A day before--the day after--his manly spirit probably would not have allowed him to become a clerk for Pulaski Britt. This day the impetuous desire to hide in the woods, to escape the wasps of humanity, to be in some place where sneers and false pity and taunt could not reach him--that desire was coined into performance.

"Wouldn't I fit into a job of that sort, Mr. Britt?" he asked, blurting the question. And when the lumberman stared at him with as much astonishment as Pulaski Britt ever allowed himself to display, Wade added, "I have given up school-teaching because--well, I want to get into the woods for my health!"

"It will be healthy, all right, but it won't be dude work," said Britt.

"You'll have to hump 'round on snow-shoes or a jumper to five camps.

Board and thirty-five a month! What's the particular ailment with you?"

he demanded, rather suspiciously. "You look rugged enough."

The young man did not reply, and the Honorable Pulaski stared at him, his eyes narrowing shrewdly. Mr. Britt had no very delicate notions of repressing an idea when it occurred to him "Say, look here, young man,"

he cried, "I reckon I understand! The Barrett girl, hey? And John got after you! Well, he can make it hot for any one he takes a niff at."

"Can't I have that job, Mr. Britt, without a general discussion of my affairs?" asked Wade, with temper.

"You're hired!" There was the click of business in Britt's tone, but his gossip's nature showed itself in the somewhat humorous drawl in which he added: "I'm glad to know that it's only love that ails you. Outside of that, you strike me as bein' a pretty rugged chap, and it's rugged chaps we're lookin' for in 'Britt's Busters.' If it's only love that ails you, I reckon we won't have any trouble about sendin' you out cured in the spring."