The Reclaimers Part 31

"I will not," Joe declared, doggedly. "And I've already told you that I've always taken the Lord Almighty into partnership, or I'd have been a derelict on a sea of sand lang syne."

"Joe, your faith in the Lord and faith in the prairies might move mountains, but they haven't yet moved the desert."

"Not entirely," Joe replied, "but if I do my part, who knows what Providence may do?"

As he sat there in the hope and strength of his youth, something in Joe Thomson's expectant face brought a pang to the man beside him.

"Joe, your lease will soon expire. I said to you three years ago that women are shiftier than blowouts. You didn't believe me, but it's the truth."

"Naturally the Macpherson Mortgage Company must acquire much knowledge of such things in the development of their business," Joe responded, jokingly. "Little Thelma Ekblad on the claim above mine has helped to pay off the mortgage your company held, and sent herself to the university, working in the harvest-fields and at the hay-baler to do it.

Thelma never seemed shifty to me. She's a solid little rock of a woman who never flinches."

"I'll except Thelma. You ought--" But York went no further, for he knew Joe's spirit would not respond to his thought, and he had no business to be thinking, anyhow. He had known Joe Thomson from childhood. He admired Jerry Swaim greatly for what she had been doing, but he knew much of the Philadelphia end of the game, and his heart ached for the young Westerner, who, he believed, had shouldered a stupendous, tragical burden for the sake of a heart-longing only a strong nature like Joe's could know.

"By the way, Jerry Swaim's aunt, back East, is in a bad way and may die at any time, but she will never forgive Jerry to the point of inheritance. I happen to be in the old lady's confidence that far."

"You are a social Atlas, York," Joe declared. "You hold the world on your shoulders. But what you say doesn't interest me at all. So don't prejudge any of us, maid or man."

"And don't you let your bloomin' self-confidence and ability to work half-miracles be your undoing. A house builded on the sand may fall, where one built on gold dust may stand firm," York retorted.

"Do you believe your own words?" Joe asked, rising to his feet.

"The point is for you to believe them, whether I do or not," York answered, as Joe disappeared through the doorway.

"Why, in the name of fitness, can't that fellow fall in love with that little Thelma Ekblad, a girl who knows what sacrifice on the Sage Brush means and who has a grip on the real values of life? Oh, well, just to watch the crowd run awry ought to be entertainment enough for a bachelor like myself," York thought, as he sat staring after Joe. "I've lived to see a few half-miracles myself in the last decade. Anybody whose lot is cast in western Kansas can see as many of them as the old Santa Fe Trail bull-whackers saw of mirages in the awful 'fifties. There's a lot of reclaiming being done on the Sage Brush, even if that struggle of Joe's with the blowout is a failure. Thelma Ekblad in her splendid victory over ignorance, carrying a university degree; Stellar Bahrr"--York smiled, "Ponk, who would put a flourish after his name if he were signing his own death-warrant, the little hero of a hundred knocks, living above everything but his funny little strut, and he's getting over that a bit; old Fishing Teddy, brave old soul, down in his old shack alone; Jerry, with her luxurious laziness and doubt in G.o.d and a hereafter--all winning slowly to better things, maybe; but as to sand and Joe--

"'Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?' You'll never do it, Joe, never, and you'll never win the goal you've set your heart on. Poor fellow!"

That night, on the silent porch alone, York finished the battle he had begun on the evening after he and Jerry had called on Stella Bahrr.

"It's the artist bank clerk against the field, and we'll none of us bat above his average. Good night, old moon, and good night, York, to what can't be."

He waved a hand at the dying light in the west, and a dying hope, and went inside.

XVI

A POSTLUDE IN "EDEN"

Cornelius Darby had lain in his beautifully decorated grave for three years, and a graceful white shaft pointing heavenward amid the shrubbery had become a landmark for the bunch of grubs who rode the Winnowoc local.

"Must be getting close to the deppo. Yonder is old Corn Darby's gravestone over on the bluff," they would say, as the train chuffed up out of the valley on either side of the station. That was all the memory of him that remained, save as now and then a girl in a far-away Kansas town remembered a June evening when a discus shied out from its course and rolled to the door of a rose-arbor.

But "Eden," as a country estate, lost nothing by the pa.s.sing of the husband of its lady and mistress, who spared none of the Darby dollars to make both the town and country home delightful in all appointments, hoping and believing that in her policy of stubbornness and force she could have her way, and bring back to the East the girl whom she would never invite to return, the girl whose future she had determined to control. The three years had found Jerusha Darby's will to have Jerry Swaim become her heir under her own terms--mistaking dependence for appreciation, and idleness for happiness--had ceased to be will and become a mania, the ruling pa.s.sion of her years of old age. She never dreamed that she was being adroitly managed by her husband's relative, Eugene Wellington, but she did recognize, and, strangely enough, resent, the fact that the Darby strain in his blood was proving itself in his ability, not to earn dollars, but to make dollars earn dollars once they were put plentifully into his hands.

Since Mrs. Darby had only one life-purpose--to leave her property to Jerry Swaim under her own terms--it galled her to think of it pa.s.sing to the hands of the relatives of the late Cornelius. She believed that love of Eugene would bring Jerry back, for she was Lesa's own romance-loving child--even if the luxuries that wealth can offer should fail; and she had coddled Eugene Wellington for this very purpose. But after three years he had failed to satisfy her. She was becoming slowly but everlastingly set on one thing. She would put her property elsewhere by will--when she was through with it. She could not do without Eugene as long as she lived--which would be indefinitely, of course. But she would have her say--and (in a whisper) it would _not_ be a Darby nor _kin_ of a Darby who might be sitting around now, waiting for her to pa.s.s to her fathers, who would possess it.

In this intense state of mind she called Eugene out to "Eden" in the late May of the third year of Jerry Swaim's stay in Kansas. The rose-arbor was aglow with the same blossoming beauty as of old, and all the grounds were a dream of May-time verdure.

Eugene Wellington, driving out from the city in a big limousine car, found them more to his taste than ever before, and he took in the premises leisurely before going to the arbor to meet Mrs. Darby.

"If I could only persuade Jerry to come now, all would be well," he meditated. "And I have hopes. The last news of her tells me a few things. She hasn't fallen in love with York Macpherson. He'd hate me less if she had, and he detests me. I saw that, all right, when he was here last month. And she's pretty tired of the life of the wilderness. I know that. If she would come right now it would settle things forever.

I'd go after her if the old lady would permit it. I'd go, anyhow, if I dared. But I must keep an eye on Uncle Cornie's widow day and night, and, hungry as I am for one glimpse of Jerry's sweet face, I couldn't meet Jerusha D. in her wrath if I disobeyed her."

Eugene had the chauffeur pause while he surveyed the lilac-walk and the big maples and the lotus-pond.

"If Jerry would come _now_," he began again, with himself, "she would be heir to all this. If she doesn't come soon, there's trouble ahead for Eugene of the soft snaps. To the rose-arbor, Henderson."

So Henderson whirled the splendid young product to the doorway of the pretty retreat.

Mrs. Darby met her nephew with a sterner face even than she was accustomed to wear.

"I want to see you at once," she said, as the young man loitered a moment outside.

"Yes, Aunt Jerry," he responded, dutifully enough--as to form.

"What have you heard from Jerry recently?" she demanded.

"What York Macpherson told us--that she has had a hard year's work in a school-room," Eugene replied.

"Humph! I knew that. What are you doing to bring her back to me?" Mrs.

Darby snapped off the words.

"Nothing now!" the young man answered her.

"'Nothing now!' Why not?" Mrs. Darby was in her worst of humors.

"Because there is positively nothing to do but to wait," Eugene said, calmly. "She is not in love anywhere else. She is getting tired and disgusted with her plebeian surroundings, and as to her estate--"

"What of her estate? I refused to let York Macpherson say a word, although he tried to over-rule me. I told him two things: I'd never forgive Jerry if she didn't come back uninvited by me; and I'd never listen to him blow a big Kansas story of her wonderful possessions. What do you know? You'd be unprejudiced." The old woman had never seemed quite so imperious before.

"I have here a paper describing it. York Macpherson sent it to Uncle Cornelius the very week he died. I found it among some other papers shortly after his death and after Jerry left. When York was here he confirmed the report at my insistent request. Read it."

Jerusha Darby read, realizing, as she did so, that neither her husband nor York Macpherson had succeeded in doing what Eugene Wellington had done easily. Each had tried in vain to have her read that paper.

"You knew the condition of this estate for three years, and never told me. Why?" The old woman's face was very pale.

"I did not dare to do so," Eugene replied, that line of weakness in his face which Jerry had noted three years before revealing itself for the first time to her aunt.

"This is sufficient," she said, in a quiet sort of way. "To-morrow I make my will--just to be sure. I shall probably outlive many younger people than myself. Write and tell Jerry I have done it. This time to-morrow night will see my estate settled so far as the next generation is concerned. If I do not do it, Eugene, some distant and improvident relatives of Cornelius will claim it. Send the lawyer out in the morning."

"All right, Aunt Jerry. I must go now. I have a club meeting in the city and I can make it easily. The car runs like the wind with Henderson at the wheel. Good-by."

And Eugene Wellington was gone.

"Three years ago I'd have left everything to him if I had been ready to make a will then. I'm ready now, and any time in the next ten years I can change it if I want to. But this will bring things my way, after all. I told York I'd never forgive Jerry!"