Other Main-Travelled Roads Part 29

"Why, of course, Maud."

So Maud got a book, and sat down over by the stove, quite distant from the bed, and read to him from _The Lady of the Lake_, while the mother, like a piece of tireless machinery, moved about the house at the never-ending succession of petty drudgeries which wear the heart and soul out of so many wives and mothers, making life to them a pilgrimage from stove to pantry, from pantry to cellar, and from cellar to garret--a life that deadens and destroys, coa.r.s.ens and narrows, till the flesh and bones are warped to the expression of the wronged and cheated soul.

Albert's selfishness was in a way excusable. He enjoyed beyond measure the sound of the girl's soft voice and the sight of her graceful head bent over the page. He lay, looking and listening dreamily, till the voice and the sunlit head were lost in a deep, sweet sleep.

The girl sat with closed book, looking at his face as he slept. It was a curious study to her, a young man--_this_ young man, asleep. His brown lashes lay on his cheek as placid as those of a child. As she looked she gained courage to go over softly and peer down on him. How boyish he seemed! How little to be feared! A boy outside uttered a shout, and she hurried away, pale and breathless. As she paused in the door and looked back at the undisturbed sleeper, she smiled, and the pink came back into her thin face.

Albert's superb young blood began to a.s.sert itself, and on the afternoon of the fifth day he was able to sit in his rocking-chair before the fire and read a little, though he professed that his eyes were not strong, in order that Maud should read for him. This she did as often as she could leave her other work, which was "not half often enough," the invalid grumbled.

"More than you deserve," she found courage to say.

Hartley let nothing interfere with the book business. "You take it easy," he repeated. "Don't you worry--your pay goes on just the same.

You're doing well right where you are. By jinks! biggest piece o' luck,"

he went on, half in earnest. "Why, I can't turn around without taking an order--fact! Turned in a book on the livery bill, so that's all fixed.

We'll make a clear hundred dollars out o' that little b.u.mp o' yours."

"Little b.u.mp! Say, now, that's--"

"Keep it up--put it on! Don't hurry about getting well. I don't need you to canva.s.s, and I guess you enjoy being waited on." He ended with a sly wink and cough.

Yes, convalescence was delicious, with Maud reading to him, bringing his food, and singing for him; all that marred his peace was the stream of people who came to inquire how he was getting along. The sympathy was largely genuine, as Hartley could attest, but it bored the invalid. He had rather be left in quiet with Walter Scott and Maud. In the light of common day the accident was hurrying to be a dream.

At the end of a week he was quite himself again, though he still had difficulty in wearing his hat. It was not till the second Sunday after the accident that he appeared in the dining-room for the first time, with a large travelling-cap concealing the suggestive bandages. He looked pale and thin, but his eyes danced with joy.

Maud's eyes dilated with instant solicitude. The rest sprang up in surprise, with shouts of delight, as hearty as brethren.

"Ginger! I'm glad t' see yeh!" said Troutt, so sincerely that he looked almost winning to the boy. The rest crowded around, shaking hands.

"Oh, I'm on deck again."

Ed Brann came in a moment later with his brother, and there was a significant little pause--a pause which grew painful till Albert turned and saw Brann, and called out:

"h.e.l.lo, Ed! How are you? Didn't know you were here."

As he held out his hand, Brann, his face purple with shame and embarra.s.sment, lumbered heavily across the room and took it, muttering some poor apology.

"Hope y' don't blame me."

"Of course not--fortunes o' war. n.o.body to blame; just my carelessness.--Yes; I'll take turkey," he said to Maud, as he sank into the seat of honor.

The rest laughed, but Brann remained standing near Albert's chair. He had not finished yet.

"I'm mighty glad you don't lay it up against me, Lohr; an' I want to say the doctor's bill is all right; you un'erstand, it's _all right_."

Albert looked at him a moment in surprise. He understood that this, coming from a man like Brann, meant more than a thousand prayers from a ready apologist. It was a terrible victory, and he was disposed to make it as easy for his rival as he could.

"Oh, all right, Ed; only I'd calculated to cheat him out o' part of it--I'd planned to turn in a couple o' Blaine's _Twenty Years_ on the bill."

Hartley roared, and the rest joined in, but not even Albert perceived all that it meant. It meant that the young savage had surrendered his claim in favor of the man he had all but killed. The struggle had been prodigious, but he had s.n.a.t.c.hed victory out of defeat; his better nature had conquered.

No one ever gave him credit for it; and when he went West in the spring, people said his pa.s.sion for Maud had been superficial. In truth, he had loved the girl as sincerely as he had hated his rival. That he could rise out of the barbaric in his love and his hate was heroic.

When Albert went to ride again, it was on melting snow, with the slowest horse Troutt had. Maud was happier than she had been since she left school, and fuller of color and singing. She dared not let a golden moment pa.s.s now without hearing it ring full, and she dared not think how short this day of happiness might be.

IV

At the end of the fifth week of their stay in Tyre a suspicion of spring was in the wind as it swept the southern exposure of the valley. March was drawing to a close, and there was more than a suggestion of April in the rapidly melting snow which still lay on the hills and under the cedars and tamaracks in the swamps. Patches of green gra.s.s, appearing on the sunny side of the road where the snow had melted, led to predictions of spring from the loafers beginning to sun themselves on the salt-barrels and shoe-boxes outside the stores.

A group sitting about the blacksmith shop were discussing it.

"It's an early seedin'--now mark my words," said Troutt, as he threw his knife into the soft ground at his feet. "The sun is crossing the line earlier this spring than it did last."

"Yes; an' I heard a crow to-day makin' that kind of a--a spring noise that sort o'--I d' know what--kind o' goes all through a feller."

"And there's Uncle Sweeney, an' that settles it; spring's comin' sure!"

said Troutt, pointing at an old man, much bent, hobbling down the street. "When _he_ gits out the frogs ain't fur behind."

"We'll be gittin' on to the ground by next Monday," said Sam Dingley to a crowd who were seated on the newly painted harrows and seeders which Svend & Johnson had got out ready for the spring trade. "Svend & Johnson's Agricultural Implement Depot" was on the north side of the street, and on a spring day the yard was one of the pleasantest loafing-places that could be imagined, especially if one wished company.

Albert wished to be alone. Something in the touch and tone of this spring afternoon made him restless and inclined to strange thoughts. He took his way out along the road which followed the river-bank, and in the outskirts of the village threw himself down on a bank of gra.s.s which the snows had protected, and which had already a tinge of green because of its wealth of sun.

The willows had thrown out their tiny light-green flags, though their roots were under the ice, and some of the hardwood twigs were tinged with red. There was a faint but magical odor of uncovered earth in the air, and the touch of the wind was like a caress from a moist, magnetic hand.

The boy absorbed the light and heat of the sun as some wild thing might.

With his hat over his face, his hands folded on his breast, he lay as still as a statue. He did not listen at first, he only felt; but at length he rose on his elbow and listened. The ice cracked and fell along the bank with a long, hollow, booming crash; a crow cawed, and a jay answered it from the willows below. A flight of sparrows pa.s.sed, twittering innumerably. The boy shuddered with a strange, wistful longing, and a realization of the flight of time.

He could have wept, he could have sung, but he only shuddered and lay silent under the stress of that strange, sweet pa.s.sion which quickened his heart, deepened his eyes, and made his breath come and go with a quivering sound. Across the dazzling blue arch of the sky the crow flapped, sending down his prophetic, jubilant note; the breeze, as soft and sweet as April, stirred in his hair; the hills, deep in their dusky blue, seemed miles away; and the voices of the care-free skaters on the melting ice of the river below came to the ear subdued to a unity with the scene.

Suddenly a fear seized upon the boy--a horror! Life, life was pa.s.sing!

Life that can be lived only once, and lost, is lost forever! Life, that fatal gift of the Invisible Powers to man--a path, with youth and joy and hope at its eastern gate, and despair, regret, and death at its low western portal!

The boy caught a momentary glimpse of his real significance. "I am only a gnat, a speck in the sun, a youth facing the millions of great and wise and wealthy!" He leaped up in a frenzy. "Oh, I mustn't stay here! I must get back to my studies. Life is slipping by me, and I am doing nothing, being nothing!"

His face, as pale as death, shone with pa.s.sionate resolution, and his hands were clinched in silent vow.

But on his way back he met the jocund party of skaters going home from the river, and with the easy shift and change of youth joined in their ringing laughter. The weird power of the wind's voice was gone, and he sank to the level of the unthinking boy again. However, the problem was only put off, not solved.

That night Hartley said: "Well, pardner, we're getting 'most ready to pull out. Someways I always get restless when these warm days begin."

This was as sentimental as Hartley ever got; or, if he ever felt more sentiment, he concealed it carefully.

"I s'pose it must 'a' been in spring that those old chaps, on their steeds and in their steel shirts, started out for to rescue some damsel, hey?" he ended, with a grin. "Now, that's the way I feel--just like striking out for, say, Oshkosh. That little piece of lofty tumbling of yours was a big boom, and no mistake. Why, your share o' this campaign will be a hundred and twenty dollars sure."

"More'n I've earned," replied Bert.

"No, it ain't. You've done your duty like a man. Done as much in your way as I have. Now, if you want to try another county with me, say so.

I'll make a thousand dollars this year out o' this thing."