The Way of the Strong Part 73

The change he realized made him turn his eyes upon his new aspect of life with still further questioning, and he knew that it had brought him not one moment of happiness that could compare with those by-gone days, somewhere behind him, beyond the painful gulf he still feared to gaze upon.

But an added trouble was with him now. Fate had sternly decreed that his lot was still bound up with Deep Willows. There was no escape.

Austin Leyburn had morally forced this place, he wished to shun, upon him, and, further, the subtle appeal of his affections had been played upon. There was mockery in the conflicting object, of his return to the place. His whole love was bound up in two women. He was paradoxically journeying to bring comfort to the two lives he had brought pain into, while, at the same time, he knew, in spite of Leyburn's a.s.surances to the contrary, his duty pointed directly the opposite.

His boyish mind was disturbed, his kindly heart was troubled. While he believed that his new thought was right, all his inclinations tore him in other directions, now that his affections had been brought into conflict.

At last he drove down the wood-lined main street of the village. He pa.s.sed several empty, outlying houses which he remembered he had always known as empty. The rotting sidewalk of wood, too, was just the same as he remembered it. He pa.s.sed the little wooden church, which possessed a bell so reminiscent of the prairie homestead. There, too, was the parson's house beside it. Then, next, a cross street, and beyond that the stores, six in number, that made up the commercial interests of the place. On the next corner stood the Russell Hotel. Yes, he could see it. There was a buggy outside it. There was generally a buggy outside it, he remembered. Whose was it? There was some one in it. Ah, yes, a woman. No, why it was--yes, it was Phyllis.

His heart beat fast as his buckboard rattled up. His eyes had grown bright with something of their old boyish smile of delight as he noted the bent head of the girl poring over a book she was reading. For the moment, all his doubts and regrets were forgotten. Phyllis was waiting for him. Waiting, though he did not realize it, as she would always wait for him.

He called out a greeting as he drew nearer, and the girl looked up with a glad smile. Then, though many yards still separated them, he became aware of a marked change in her young face. She was thinner, the old freshness of her rounded cheeks had somehow sobered down to a delicate smoothness, almost thinness. The brilliant look of perfect, open-air health had given place to a delicate pallor that in no way robbed her of beauty, but quite banished the sun-tanned freshness gleaned from her work in the fields. Her eyes, too, they seemed bigger and wider than ever. Then there was her change of attire. The old Phyllis was gone.

Here was a city girl in her place, dressed with simple taste, but in clothes that must have cost far more money than she could afford.

But his astonishment did not lessen his delight at the sight of her.

Never had she looked more beautiful to him, never had she possessed more attraction. He knew that most of her time was spent at Monica's side, a place he often felt that should have been his. She had told him of the changes in her life, and that since Monica's illness her own home and mother saw her at week-ends only, while Hendrie's money provided that her little farm lacked not in its prosperity.

"Why, Phyl," he cried, as he came up. "You waiting for me here, like this? I might have been hours late."

The girl smiled happily as she closed her book.

"Certainly you might. But"--with a simple sincerity--"it would have made no difference. I have waited longer than this for you--before. And often enough sitting on a hard, well-polished old log."

For once Frank detected that which underlaid her words. He remembered that time in Toronto when she had ventured alone from her home to find him. He remembered that she had said she would always be waiting for him, and his boyish heart went out more tenderly to her than ever.

But what he said conveyed nothing of this.

"But this sun," he cried. "It--it is scorching."

The girl only smiled and shook her head.

"You can pay off your teamster, and leave your baggage here. Guess you'd best get up beside me, and I'll drive you in."

In a moment the man's mind came back to all that this visit entailed.

The sight of this girl had put it out of his head.

"Yes," he said, "I'll get up beside you, but----" Then he turned to his teamster. "Put the horses in the barn," he said, "and book me a room.

You'll see to yourself, and wait for me here."

Then he alighted and climbed into Phyllis's buggy, and the next moment they were rolling smoothly along in the direction of Deep Willows.

Phyllis leaned back in her seat and dropped her hands in her lap. The horse was pleasantly ambling along a trail it was used to.

She looked round with a half humorous smile.

"Of course. Say, I forgot you belonged to the--enemy, Frank," she said.

"I just forgot everything, but that you were coming to see Monica. You said in your letter you'd got to get right here in your--work. It seems queer. I--say, Frank, I just can't fix you as an--enemy," she cried, in a tone of raillery.

The man's eyes were on the two, small, gloved hands in her lap.

"I'm--not an enemy, Phyl," he said, in a low tone.

"Aren't you?" She laughed. "I suppose it's just friendship to us all to come along, just around harvest, and tell the boys to quit work, so as to make us poor farmers lose our crops, and keep the boys who work the harvest from making a great stake for the winter. You see, we've had men around these weeks and weeks, telling the boys that way. They're men belonging to Leyburn, same as you do."

Frank looked up with hot eyes.

"I don't belong to Leyburn," he cried. "I belong to no man but myself, and my--my convictions."

His sudden heat sobered the girl at his side. She seemed to be reduced to penitence.

"I'm real sorry I said that, Frank, I am sure. You see, I was just teasing. Guess I didn't think--except about poor Monica. You see, dear, she's so--so ill, and I don't think she'll ever get better. That's partly why I sent for you. When this--this trouble comes I'm half afraid it'll kill her."

The man's resentment had utterly died out. In its place was a terrible, straining anxiety and grief.

"Kill her? Oh, Phyl, you can't--you don't mean that. Surely she is not so ill as all that. Surely you're just troubled, and fancy that.

How--how can any labor trouble hurt her. It can't. There will be no trouble if Hendrie is--reasonable. That is what Leyburn said. He promised me that."

"Promised you?" said the girl quickly. Her mind was wide open and watchful. This boy was all the world to her.

"Yes, yes. He promised me before I accepted this work. Oh, you don't understand. You can't. We want the employers to realize their responsibilities. We want them to make the lives of those who toil for them happier and better. We want them to give them a fair wage, and let them enjoy life instead of keeping them crushed beneath the grindstone of their labor. Hendrie, I believe, will do this. Then--there can be no trouble that can hurt Monica."

Phyllis gazed out ahead and nodded.

"You, too, feared your work might hurt Monica," she said, "or you would not have made him promise--that."

Frank started. He knew that fear had been in his mind. Was still in it.

But Phyllis did not wait for an answer. She turned at once to him, and her beautiful eyes were very tender as she beheld the pucker of anxious thought between his brows.

"Men are so queer," she said, with a quaint little twisted smile. "I'd say they aren't a bit like women in--some things. Say, dear, I guess it wouldn't hurt you just a little bit if I'd set right out to carry on a war against everything that belonged to your life. It wouldn't hurt you to think your son had just got right to work to make you do things that you couldn't see the justice of. It wouldn't hurt you, no matter how he told you he was your friend, if he acted the way of an enemy. To a woman that just seems dreadful. It's like your own child, the child you've done all you could to help--when he's helpless, the child you've never been too ill, or too tired to nurse and fix right, the child you'd be ready any time to give your life for, just turning right around and hitting you in the face when--when you're helpless. It doesn't matter if trouble comes or not, you're leading the folks against your Monica. While she's abed sick to death, and can't help herself, you're--you're just going to hit her in the face. Maybe it's not just only in the face. Maybe it's her poor, tired heart, that's been crying these nights and nights for sight of you."

"Phyl! Phyl! For G.o.d's sake don't talk that way," Frank burst out, a great, pa.s.sionate grief in his honest eyes. "You make me out the cruelest monster living. Can't I convince you of the rightness of all I want to do? Monica? I'd give my life a hundred times to help her. I love her as never mother was loved. I would not hurt her, not a hair of her head."

"I know, dear," the girl replied soothingly. "I know all that, and--much more. I know that you are not going to hurt her. G.o.d is watching over her, and He would never permit you such a--crime. Then, dear"--she smiled her gentle smile up into his face, and her pretty teeth clipped together as she spurred herself to her final thrust--"there's another watching over her, too. But he's only an earthly creature. Still, he's a big, strong man, who's just full of all the faults which belong to all strong human nature. Yes, oh, yes. He's anything but a saint. But he sets your Mon before all things in his life, before everything, and he's--her husband. He is there to protect her, as, some day, you may want to protect--me."

The buggy rounded the last bend in the trail, and the great house came into view as Phyllis finished speaking. Frank made no answer. He had nothing to say. The girl at his side had stirred his tender heart as it had never been stirred before, and he sat gazing hopelessly out ahead at the palatial home, with all its luxury of surroundings, where the woman he regarded as a mother was denied the health and happiness which the world believed wealth could never fail to bestow.

He could not help thinking of it, though well-nigh overwhelmed with grief. All the wealth which others were crying out to share in, was hers, and yet he felt that there was greater health and happiness to be found in the houses of poverty it was his desire to champion.

No, he had no answer for this wise girl he loved. How could he answer her? His eyes were opening to possibilities which had seemed so utterly impossible before. In his mind he had accused Hendrie, and all others of his cla.s.s, of being monsters of inhumanity, devoid of heart, a race apart from those who toiled for the barest existence, and Phyllis was telling him how perfectly human were these hated creatures.

This man Hendrie was just as the rest of men. Whatever his pa.s.sions, his unscrupulous methods of dealing with those who crossed his path, he shared all these things in common with all humanity. His love for Monica was just man's love for woman, only, perhaps, more strong, more vital, by reason of the wonderful strength of manhood which was his.

Greater than all in his life stood out this love of his for his wife.

Notwithstanding all that had pa.s.sed, notwithstanding the cla.s.s Hendrie represented, notwithstanding that, even now, he, Frank, was embarked upon a mission in opposition to this very man, a strange warmth of feeling rose up in his heart for him who could so watch and guard over Monica, and strive with body and mind to keep her from all hurt.

Phyllis sat watching him covertly. Perhaps she understood something of what was pa.s.sing in his mind. She understood his doubt. That there was no mistaking. She knew the value of that doubt, and wondered if it was the seed that must grow and develop, and finally bring back to herself and Monica the boy they both loved so well. She believed it was, and the comfort of the thought held her silent, too.

Presently she drew the horse up at the entrance porch. She flung the reins to the waiting servant, and sprang una.s.sisted from the vehicle.

Frank moved more slowly, and lumbered his great body from between the spidery wheels.