The Price of the Prairie Part 27

"You say you won't?" O'mie asked with a smile.

"No, I won't. Hereafter you may beg your way or starve!" Judson fairly shouted.

"Excuse me, Mr. Amos Judson, but I'm not to thim straits yit. Not yit.

I've a little bank account an' a good name at Cris Mead's bank. Most as good as yours."

The shot went home. Judson had but recently failed to get the bank's backing in a business dealing he had hoped to carry through on loans, and it had cut his vanity deeply.

"Good-bye, Amos, I'll be back, but not any sooner than ye nade me," and he was gone.

The next day Dever the stage driver told us O'mie was going up to Wyandotte on business.

"Whose business?" I asked. "He doesn't know a soul in Wyandotte, except Tell and Jim, who were working up there the last I knew. Tell may be in Fort Scott now. Whose business was it?"

"That's what I asked him," Dever answered with a grin, "and he said, his own."

Whatever it was, O'mie was back again before the end of the week. But he idled about for the full ten days, until Judson grew frantic. The store could not be managed without him, and it was gratifying to O'mie's mischievous spirit to be solicited with pledge and courtesy to take his place again.

After O'mie had left me in the courthouse yard, the evening after the party, I stopped on my way home to see Marjie a moment. She had gone with the Meads out to Red Range, her mother said, and might not be back till late, possibly not till to-morrow. Judson was sitting in the room when I came to the door. I had no especial reason to think Mrs. Whately was confused by my coming. She was always kind to everybody. But somehow the gray shadows of the clouded moon of the night before were chilling me still, and I was bitterly disappointed at missing my loved one's face in her home. It seemed ages since I had had her to myself; not since the night before my trip to Topeka. I stopped long enough to visit the "Rockport" letter-box for the answer to my letter I knew she would leave before she went out of town. There was no letter there. My heart grew heavy with a weight that was not to lift again for many a long day. Up on the street I met Dr. Hemingway. His kind eyes seemed to penetrate to my very soul.

"Good-evening, Philip," he said pleasantly, grasping my hand with a firm pressure. "Your face isn't often clouded."

I tried to look cheerful. "Oh, it's just the weather and some loss of sleep. Kansas Augusts are pretty trying."

"They should not be to a young man," he replied. "All weathers suit us if we are at peace within. That's where the storm really begins."

"Maybe so," I said. "But I'm all right, inside and out."

"You look it, Philip." He took my hand affectionately. "You are the very image of clean, strong manhood. Let not your heart be troubled."

I returned his hand-clasp and went my way. However much courage it may take to push forward to victory or death on the battle field, not the least of heroism does it sometimes require to walk bravely toward the deepening gloom of an impending ill. I have followed both paths and I know what each one demands.

At our doorway, waiting to welcome me, stood Rachel Melrose, smiling, sure, and effusively demonstrative in her friendship. She must have followed me on the next stage out of Topeka. Behind her stood Candace Baronet, the only woman I have ever known who never in all my life doubted me nor misunderstood me. Somehow the sunset was colorless to me that night, and all the rippling waves of wide West Prairie were shorn of their glory.

CHAPTER XV

ROCKPORT AND "ROCKPORT"

Glitters the dew, and shines the river, Up comes the lily and dries her bell; But two are walking apart forever, And wave their hands in a mute farewell.

--JEAN INGELOW.

The Melrose family was of old time on terms of intimacy with the house of Baronet. It was a family with a proud lineage, wealth, and culture to its credit. Rachel had an inherited sense of superiority. Too much staying between the White Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean is narrowing to the mental scope. The West to her was but a wilderness whereto the best things of life never found their way. She took everything in Ma.s.sachusetts as hers by due right, much more did it seem that Kansas should give its best to her; and withal she was a woman who delighted in conquest.

Her arrival in Springvale made a topic that was soon on everybody's tongue. In the afternoon of the day following her coming, when I went to my father's office before starting out to the stone cabin, I found Marjie there. I had not seen her since the party, and I went straight to her chair.

"Well, little girl, it's ten thousand years since I saw you last," I spoke in a low voice. My father was searching for some papers in his cabinet, and his back was toward us. "Why didn't I get a letter, dearie?"

She looked up with eyes whose brown depths were full of pain and sorrow, but with an expression I had never seen on her face before, a kind of impenetrable coldness. It cut me like a sword-thrust, and I bent over her.

"Oh, Marjie, my Marjie, what is wrong?"

"Here is that paper at last," my father said before he turned around.

Even as he spoke, Rachel Melrose swept into the room.

"Why, Philip, I missed you after all. I didn't mean to keep you waiting, but I can never get accustomed to your Western hurry."

She was very handsome and graceful, and always at ease with me, save in our interviews alone.

"I didn't know you were coming," I said frankly; "but I want you to meet Miss Whately. This is the young lady I have told you about."

I took Marjie's hand as I spoke. It was cold, and I gave it the gentle pressure a lover understands as I presented her. She gave me a momentary glance. Oh, G.o.d be thanked for the love-light in those brown eyes! The memory of it warmed my heart a thousand times when long weary miles were between us, and a desolate sky shut down around the far desolate plains of a silent, featureless land.

"And this is Miss Melrose, the young lady I told you of in my letter," I said to Marjie. A quick change came into her eyes, a look of surprise and incredulity and scorn. What could have happened to bring all this about?

Rachel Melrose had made the fatal mistake of thinking that no girl reared west of the Alleghenies could be very refined or at ease or appear well dressed in the company of Eastern people. She was not prepared for the quiet courtesy and self-possession with which the Kansas girl greeted her; nor had she expected, as she told me afterward, to find in a town like Springvale such good taste and exquisite neatness in dress. True, she had many little accessories of an up-to-date fashion that had not gotten across the Mississippi River to our girls as yet, but Marjie had the grace of always choosing the right thing to wear. I was very proud of my loved one at that moment. There was a show of cordiality between the two; then Rachel turned to me.

"I'm going with you this afternoon. Excuse me, Miss Whately, Mr. Baronet promised me up at Topeka to take me out to see a wonderful cottonwood tree that he said just dwarfed the little locust there, that we went out one glorious moonlight night to see. It was a lovely stroll though, wasn't it, Philip?"

This time it was my father's eyes that were fixed upon me in surprise and stern inquiry.

"He will believe I am a flirt after all. It isn't possible to make any man understand how that miserable girl can control things, unless he is on the ground all the time." So ran my thoughts.

"Father, must that trip be made to-day? Because I'd rather get up a party and go out when Miss Melrose goes."

But my father was in no mood to help me then. He had asked me to go alone. Evidently he thought I had forgotten business and constancy of purpose in the presence of this pretty girl.

"It must be done to-day. Miss Melrose will wait, I'm sure. It is a serious business matter--"

"Oh, but I won't, Mr. Baronet. Your son promised me to do everything for me if I would only come to Springvale; that was away last Spring, and my stay will be short at best. I must go back to-morrow afternoon. Don't rob us of a minute."

She spoke with such a pretty grace, and yet her words were so trifling that my father must have felt as I did. He could have helped me then had he thought that I deserved help, for he was a tactful man. But he merely a.s.sented and sent us away. When we were gone Marjie turned to him bravely.

"Judge Baronet, I think I will go home. I came in from Red Range this noon with the Meads. It was very warm, coming east, and I am not very well." She was as white as marble. "I will see you again; may I?"

John Baronet was a man of deep sympathy as well as insight. He knew why the bloom had left her cheeks.

"All right, Marjie. You will be better soon."

He had risen and taken her cold hand. There was a world of cheer and strength in that rich resonant voice of his. "Little girl, you must not worry over anything. All the tangles will straighten for you. Be patient, the sunshine is back of all shadows. I promised your father, Marjory, that no harm should come to you. I will keep my promise. 'Let not your heart be troubled.'" His words were to her what the good minister's had been to me.

In the months that came after that my father was her one strong defence.

Poor Marjie! her days as well as mine were full of creeping shadows. I had no notion of the stories being poured into her ears, nor did I dream of the mischief and sorrow that can be wrought by a jealous-hearted girl, a grasping money lover, and a man whose business dealings will not bear the light of day.