The Man Thou Gavest Part 34

The money was never mentioned. In good and safe investments it lay, awaiting a day, so Truedale told McPherson, when it could be got rid of without dishonour or disgrace.

"But, good heavens! haven't you any personal ambitions--you and Lynda?"

McPherson had learned to admire Conning, and Lynda had always been one of his private inspirations.

"None that Lynda and I cannot supply ourselves," Truedale replied. "To have our work, and the necessity for our work, taken from us would be no advantage."

"But haven't you a duty to the money?"

"Yes, we have, and I'm trying to find out just what it is."

And living this strange, abnormal life--often wondering why, and fearing much--three, then four years, pa.s.sed them by.

It is one thing for two proud, sensitive natures to enter upon a deliberate course, and quite another for them to abandon it when the supposed need is past. There was now no doubt in Truedale's heart concerning Lynda's motive for marrying him; nor did Lynda for one moment question Truedale's deep affection for her. Yet they waited--quite subconsciously at first, then with tragic stubbornness--for something to sweep obstacles aside without either surrendering his position.

"He must want me so that nothing can sway him again," thought Lynda.

"She must know that my love for her can endure anything--even this!"

argued Conning, and his stand was better taken than hers as she was to find out one day.

It seemed enough, in the beginning, to live their lives close and confidentially--to feel the tie of dependence that held them; but the knot cut in deep at times and they suffered in foolish but proud silence.

Many things occurred during those years that widened the horizon for them all. Betty's first child came and went, almost taking the life of the young mother with it. Before the possible calamity Brace stood appalled, and both Conning and Lynda realized how true a note the girl was in their lives. She seemed to belong to them in a sense stronger than blood could have made her. They could not imagine life without her sunny companionship. Never were they to forget the grim dreariness of the once cheerful apartment during those days and nights when Death hovered near, weighing the chances. But Betty recovered and came back with a yearning look in her eyes that had never been there before.

"You see," she confided to Lynda, "there will always be moments when I must listen to hear if my baby is calling. At times, Lyn, it seems as if he were just on ahead--keeping me from forgetting. It doesn't make me sad, dear, it's really beautiful that he didn't quite escape me."

"And do you go to The Refuge to think and look and listen?" Lynda asked.

For they all worried now when Betty betook herself to the little house.

"Not much!" And here Betty twinkled. "I go there to meet Betty Arnold face to face, and ask her if she would rather trade back. And then I come trotting home, almost out of breath, to precious old Brace; I'm so afraid he won't know he's still the one big thing in the world for me."

This little child of Betty's and Brace's had made a deep impression upon them all. It had lived only three days and while it stayed the black shadow hanging over the mother had made the baby seem of less account; but later, they all recalled the pretty, soft mite with the strange, old look in its wide eyes. He had been beautiful as babies who are not going to stay often are. There were to be no years for him to change and grow and so loveliness came with him.

"I reckon the little chap thought we didn't want him," Brace choked as he spoke over the small, cold body of his first-born, "so he turned back home before he forgot the way."

"Don't, brother!" Lynda pleaded as she stood with Truedale beside him.

"You know the way home might have been longer and harder, by and by."

"I wish Betty and I might have helped to make it easier; for a time, anyway." The eternal revolt against seemingly useless suffering rang in the words.

And that night Truedale had kissed Lynda lingeringly.

"Such things," he said, referring to the day's sad duties, "such things do drag people together."

After that something new throbbed in their lives--something that had not held sway before. If Betty looked and listened for the little creature who had gone on ahead, Lynda listened and looked into what had been a void in her life before.

She had always loved children in a kindly, detached way, but she had never appropriated them. But now she could not forget the feeling of that small, downy head that for a day or so nestled on her breast while the young mother's feet all but slipped over the brink. She remembered the strange look in the child's deep eyes the night it died. The lonely, aged look that, in pa.s.sing, seemed trying to fix one familiar object. And when the dim light went out in the little face and only a dead baby lay in her arms, maternity had been called forth from its slumber and in following Betty's child, became vitalized and definite.

"I--I think I shall adopt a child." So she had thought while the cold little head yet lay in the hollow of her arm. She never let go this thought and only hesitated before voicing it to Truedale because she feared he could not understand and might cruelly misunderstand. Life was hard enough and difficult enough for them both just then, and often, coming into the quiet home at the day's end, Lynda would say, to cheer her faint heart:

"Oh, well, it's really like coming to a hearth upon which the fire is not yet kindled. But, thank heaven! it is a clean hearth, not cluttered with ashes--it is ready for the fire."

But was it? More and more as the time went on and Truedale kept his faith and walked his way near hers--oh! they were thankful for that--but still apart, Lynda wondered. It was all so futile, so utterly selfish and childish--yet neither spoke. Then suddenly came the big thing that drove them together and swept aside all the barrier of rubbish they had erected. Like many great and portentous things it seemed very like the still, small voice in the burning bush--the tiny star in the black night.

Truedale had had an enlightening conversation with McPherson in the afternoon. The old doctor was really a soft-hearted sentimentalist and occasionally he laid himself bare to the eye of some trustworthy friend.

This time it was Truedale.

Up and down the plain, businesslike office McPherson was tramping when Conning was announced.

"Oh! come in, come in!" called McPherson. "You can better understand this than some. I've had a devil of a day. One confounded thing after another to take the soul out of me. And now this letter from old Jim White!"

Conning started. It had now been years since Pine Cone had touched his thought sharply.

"What's the matter with White?" he asked.

"Look out of the window!"

Truedale did so, and into the wall-like snow which had been falling all day.

"They've been having that in the mountains for weeks. Trails blotted out, folk hiding like beasts, and that good old chap, White, took this time to break his leg. There he lay for a whole week, d.a.m.n it all! Two of his dogs died--he, himself, almost starved. Managed to crawl to the food while there was any, and then some one ploughed through to get Jim to organize a hanging or some other trifling thing, and found him! Good Lord, Truedale, what they need down there is roads! roads! Roads over which folk can travel to one another and become human. That's all the world needs anyway!" Here McPherson stopped in front of Truedale and glared as if about to put the blame of impeded traffic up to him. "Roads over which folk can travel to one another. See here, you're looking for some excuse to get rid of your d.a.m.ned money. Why don't you build roads?"

"Roads?" Truedale did not know whether to laugh or take his man seriously.

"Yes, roads. I'm going down to Jim. I haven't much money; I've made a good deal, but somehow I never seem able to be caught with the goods on me. But what little I've got now goes to Jim for the purpose of forging a connecting link between him and the Centre. But here's a job for you.

You can grasp this need. I've got a boy in the hospital; he caved in from over-study. Trying to get an education while starving himself to death and doing without underclothes. You ought to know how to hew a short cut to him, Truedale; you did some hacking through underbrush yourself. If I didn't believe folk would travel to one another over roads, if there _were_ roads, I'd go out and cut my throat."

The big man, troubled and as full of sympathy as a tender woman, paused in his strides and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed:

"d.a.m.n it all, Truedale!" Had he been a woman he would have dissolved in tears.

Truedale at last caught his meaning. Here was a possible chance to set the acc.u.mulating money free. For two hours, while the sun travelled down to the west, the men talked over plans and projects.

"Of course I'll look after the boy in the hospital, Dr. McPherson. I know the short cut to him and he probably can lead me to others, but I want"--and here Truedale's eyes grew gloomy--"I want you to take with you down to Pine Cone some checks signed in blank. I know the need of roads down there," did he not? and for an instant his brows grew furrowed as he reflected how different his own life might have been, had travelling been easy, back in the time when he was at the mercy of the storm.

"I'd like to do something for Pine Cone. Make the roads, of course, but back up those men and women who are doing G.o.d's work down there with little help or money. They know the people--Jim has explained them to me. They're not 'extry polite,' Jim says, but they understand the needs.

I don't care to have my name known--I'm rather poor stuff for a philanthropist--but I want to do something as a starter, and this seems an inspiration."

McPherson had been listening, and gradually his long strides became less nervous.

"Until to-day, I haven't wished your uncle back, Truedale, since he went. He was a poor, inarticulate fellow, but I've learned to realize that he had a wide vision."

"Thank you, Dr. McPherson, but I have often wished him back."

Once outside McPherson's house, Truedale raised his head and sniffed the clear, winter air with keen enjoyment. A sense of achievement possessed him; the joy of feeling he had solved a knotty problem. He found he could think of Pine Cone--and, yes, of Nella-Rose--without a hurting smart. He was going to do something for her--for her people! He was going to make life easier--happier--for them, so he prayed in his silent, wordless way. He had a new and strange impulse to go to Lynda and tell her that at last he was released from any hold of the past. He was going to do what he could and there was no longer any dragging of the anchors. He wanted her to help him--to work out some questions from the woman's point of view. So he hurried on and entered the house with a light, boyish step.

Thomas, bent but stately, was laying the table in the cheerful dining room. There were flowers in a deep green bowl, pale golden asters.

Long afterward Truedale recalled everything as if it had been burned in his mind.

"Is Miss Lynda in?" he asked, for they all clung to the t.i.tles of the old days.