XIII

CURTAIN

A greater freedom followed this confession, as was natural. It became the basis for lighter confidences and bits of autobiography that came to the surface easily after this tremendous effort at sincerity. Paul found that he could speak even of the family past, into which by degrees he began to fit the real man in place of that bucolic abstraction which had walked the fields of fancy. He had never dared to actuate the "hired man," his father, on a basis of fact. He knew the speech and manners of the cla.s.s from which he came,--knew men of that cla.s.s, and talked with them every summer at Stone Ridge; but he had brooded so deeply over the tragic and sentimental side of his father's fate as to have lost sight of the fact that he was a man.

Reality has its own convincing charm, not inconsistent with plainness or even with commonness. To know it is to lose one's taste for toys of the imagination. Paul, at last, could look back almost with, a sense of humor at the doll-like progenitor he had played with so long. But when it came to placing the real man, Adam Bogardus, beside that real woman, once his wife, their son could but own with awe that there is mercy in extinction, after all; in the chance, however it may come to us, for slipping off those cruel disguises that life weaves around us.

In the strange, wakeful nights, full of starvation dreams, he saw his mother as she would look on state occasions in the hostess's place at her luxurious table; the odor of flowers, the smell of meats and wines, tantalized and sickened him. Christine would come in her dancing frocks, always laughing, greedy in her mirth; but Moya, face to face, he could never see. It was torture to feel her near him, a disembodied embrace.

Pa.s.sionate panegyrics and hopeless adjurations he would pour out to that hovering loveliness just beyond his reach. The agony of frustration would waken him, if indeed it were sleep that dissolved his consciousness, and he would be irritable if spoken to.

The packer broke in, one morning, on these unnerving dreams. "You wouldn't happen to have a picture of her along with you?"

Paul stared at him.

"No, of course you wouldn't! And I'd be 'most afeard to look at it, if you had. She must have changed considerable. Time hasn't stood still with her any more than the rest of us."

"I have no picture of my mother," Paul replied.

The packer saw that his question had jarred; he had waited weeks to ask it. He pa.s.sed it off now with one of his homely similes. "If you was to break a cup clean in two, and put the halves together again while the break was fresh, they'd knit so you wouldn't hardly see a crack. But you take one half and set it in the chainy closet and chuck the other half out on the ash-heap,--them halves won't look much like pieces of the same cup, come a year or two. The edges won't jine no more than the lips of an old cut that's healed without st.i.tches. No; married folks they grow together or they grow apart, and they're a-doing of the one or the other every minute of the time, breaks or no breaks. Does she go up to the old place summers?"

"Not lately, except on business," said Paul. "A company was formed to open slate quarries on the upper farm, a good many years ago. They are worth more than all the land forty times over."

"I always said so; always told the old man he had a gold mine in that ridge. Was this before he died?"

"Long after. It was my mother's scheme mainly. She controls it now. She is a very strong business woman."

"She got her training, likely, from that uncle in New York. He had the business head. The old man had no more contrivance than one of the bulls in his pastures. He could lock horns and stay there, but it wa'nt no trouble to outflank him. More than once his brother Jacob got to the windward of him in a bargain. He was made a good deal like his own land.

Winters of frost it took to break up that ground, and sun and rain to meller it, and then't was a hatful of soil to a cartful of stone. The plough would jump the furrows if you drew it deep. My arms used to ache as if they'd been pounded, with the jar of them stones. They used to tell us children a story how Satan, he flew over the earth a-sowing it with rocks and stones, and as he was pa.s.sing over our county a hole bu'st through his leather ap.r.o.n and he lost his whole load right slam there. I could 'a' p'inted out the very spot where the heft on it fell.

Ten Stone meadow, so-called. Ten million stone! I was pickin' stone in that field all of one summer when I was fifteen year old. We built a mile of fence with it.

"Them quarries must have brought a mint of money into the country.

Different sort of labor, too. Well, the world grows richer and poorer every year. More difference every year between the way rich folks and poor folks live. I wouldn't know where I belonged, 't ain't likely, if I was to go back there. I'd be way off! One while I used to think a good deal about going back, just to take a look around. It comes over me lately like hunger and thirst. I think about the most curious things when I'm asleep--foolish, like a child! I can smell all the good home smells of a frosty morning: apple pomace, steaming in the barnyard; sausage frying; Becky scouring the bra.s.s furnace-kittle with salt and vinegar. Killin' time, you know--makes you think of boiling souse and head-cheese. You ever eat souse?" The packer sucked in his breath with a lean smile. "It ain't best to dwell on it. But you can't help yourself, at night. I can smell Becky's fresh bread, in my dreams, just out of the brick oven. Never eat bread cooked in a stove till I came out here. I never drunk any water like that spring on the ridge. Last night I was back there, and the maples were all yellow like sunshine. Once it was spring, and apple-blooms up in the hill orchard. And little Emmy, a-setting on the fence, with her bunnit throwed back on her neck.

'Addy!' she called, way across the lot; 'Addy, come, help me down!' She was a master hand for venturin' up on places, but she didn't like the gettin' down.

"Well, she 'a learned the ups and downs by this time. She don't need Addy to help her. I'd have helped a big sight more if I had kep' my distance. It's a thing so con-demned foolish and unnecessary--I can't be reconciled to it noway!"

"You see only one side of it," said Paul. Unspeakable thoughts had kept pace with his father's words. "Nothing that happens, happens through us--or to us--alone. There was a girl I knew, outside. She was as happy, when I knew her first, as you say my mother used to be. Then she met some one--a man--and the shadow of his life crossed hers. He would have wrapped her up in it and put out her sunshine if he had stayed in the same world. Now she can be herself again, after a while. It cannot take long to forget a person you have known only a little over a year."

The packer rose on one elbow. He reached across and shook his son.

"Where is that girl? Answer me! Take your face out of your hands!"

"At Bisuka Barracks. She is the commandant's daughter. I came out to marry her."

"What possessed ye not to tell me?"

"Why should I tell you? We buried the wedding-day months back, in the snow."

"Boy, boy!" the packer groaned.

"What difference can it make now?"

"_All_ the difference--all the difference there is! I thought you were out here touring it with them fool boys and they were all the chance you had for help outside. You suppose her father is going to see her git left? _They_'ll get in here, if they have to crawl on their bellies or climb through the tree-limbs. They know how! And we've wasted the grub and talked like a couple of women!"

"Oh, don't--don't torment me!" Paul groaned. "It was all over. Can't you leave the dead in peace!"

"We are not the dead! I 'most wish we were. Boy, I've got a big word to say to you about that. Come closer!" The packer's speech hoa.r.s.ened and failed. They could only hear each other breathe. Then it seemed to the packer that his was the only breath in the darkness. He listened. A faint cheer arose in the forest and a crashing of the dead underlimbs of the pines.

He turned frantically upon his son, but no pledge could be extorted now.

Paul's lips were closed. He had lost consciousness.

XIV

KIND INQUIRIES

The colonel's drawing-room was as hot as usual the first hour after dinner, and as usual it was full of kindly partic.i.p.ant neighbors who had dropped in to repeat their congratulations on the good news, now almost a week old. Mrs. Bogardus had not come down, and, though asked after by all, the talk was noticeably freer for her absence.

Mrs. Creve, in response to a telegram from her brother, had arrived from Fort Sherman on the day before, prepared for anything, from frozen feet to a wedding. She had spent the afternoon in town doing errands for Moya, and being late for dinner had not changed her dress. There never was such a "natural" person as aunt Annie. At present she was addressing the company at large, as if they were all her promising children.

"n.o.body talks about their star in these days. I used to have a star. I forget which it was. I know it was a pretty lucky one. Now I trust in Providence and the major and wear thick shoes." She exhibited the shoes, a particularly large and sensible kind which she imported from the East.

Everybody laughed and longed to embrace her. "Has Moya got a star?" she asked seriously.

"The whole galaxy!" a male voice replied. "Doesn't the luck prove it?"

"Moya has got a 'temperament,'" said Doctor Fleming, the Post surgeon.

"That's as good as having a star. You know there are persons who attract misfortune just as sickly children catch all the diseases that are going. I knew that boy was sure to be found. Anything of Moya's would be."

"So you think it was Moya's 'temperament' that pulled him out of the snow?" said the colonel, wheeling his chair into the discussion.

"How about Mr. Winslow's temperament? I prefer to leave a little of the credit to him," said Moya sweetly.

A young officer, who had been suffering in the corner by the fire, jumped to his feet and bowed, then blushed and sat down again, regretting his rashness. Moya continued to look at him with steadfast friendliness. Winslow had led the rescue that brought her lover home.

A glow of sympathy united these friends and neighbors; the air was electrical and full of emotion.

"I suppose no date has been fixed for the wedding?" Mrs. Dawson, on the divan, murmured to Mrs. Creve. The latter smiled a non-committal a.s.sent.

"I should think they would just put the doctor aside and be married anyhow. My husband says he ought to go to a warmer climate at once."

"My dear, a young man can't be married in his dressing-gown and slippers!"

"No! It's not as bad as that?"

"Well, not quite. He's up and dressed and walks about, but he doesn't come down to his meals,--he can eat so very little at a time, and it tires him to sit through a dinner. It isn't one of those ravenous recoveries. It went too far with him for that."