CHAPTER x.x.x

MARK SEES THE DAWN

That same Tuesday afternoon Mark sat in the doorway of the cowshed looking at the road.

It was the first period of rest and ease he had had since his arrival. He had found the household disorganized, his father hovering, frantic, round the sick bed, and Sadie distractedly distributing her energies between her mother's room and the kitchen. It was he who had driven over to Stockton and brought back a nurse, insisted on the doctor staying in the house and made him a shakedown in the parlor. When things began to look better he had turned his hand to the farm work and labored through the week's acc.u.mulation, while the old man sat beside his wife's pillow, his chin sunk on his breast.

Today the tension had relaxed, for the doctor said Mother was going to pull through. An hour ago he had packed his kit and driven off to his own house up the valley, not to be back till tomorrow. It was very peaceful in the yard, the warm, sleepy air full of the droning of insect life which ran like a thin accompaniment under a low crooning of song from the kitchen where Sadie was straightening up. On the front porch, the farmer, his feet on the railing, his hat on his nose, was sunk in the depths of a recuperating sleep.

Astride the milking stool Mark looked dreamily at the familiar prospect, the black carpet of shade under the live oak, the bright bits of sky between its boughs, beyond the brilliant vividness of the landscape.

This was crossed by the tall trunks of the eucalyptus trees, all ragged bark and pendulous foliage, the road striped with their shadows. He looked down its length, then back along the line of the picket fence, his glance slowly traveling and finally halting at a place just opposite.

Here his imagination suddenly restored a picture from the past--the tramp asking for water. His senses, dormant and un.o.bserving, permitted the memory to attain a lifelike accuracy and the figure was presented to his inward eye with photographic clearness. Very still in the interest of this unprovoked recollection, he saw again the haggard face with its lowering expression, and remembered Chrystie's question about recognizing the man.

He felt now that he could, even in other clothes and a different setting. The eyes were unmistakable. He recalled them distinctly--a very clear gray as if they might have had a thin crystal glaze like a watch face. The lids were long and heavy, the look sliding out from under them coldly sullen.

As he pictured them--looking surlily into his--a conviction rose upon him that he had seen them since then, somewhere recently. They were not as morose as they had been that first time, had some vague a.s.sociation with smiles and pleasantness. He was puzzled, for he could only seem to get them without surroundings, without even a face, detached from all setting like a cat's eyes gleaming from the dark. Unable to link them to anything definite he concluded he had dreamed of them. But the explanation was not entirely satisfactory; he was left with a tormenting sense of their importance, that they were connected with something that he ought to remember.

He shook himself and rose from the stool--no good wasting time chasing such elusive fancies. The tramp had brought to his mind the money found in the tules and he decided to walk up the road and try to locate the spot described to him that morning by Sadie.

On the hillock, where eight months earlier Mayer had sat and cursed the marshes, he came to a stand, his glance ranging over the long, green floor. By Sadie's directions he set the place about midway between where he stood and the white square of the Ariel Club house. If it _was_ the tramp he had gone across from there, which would argue a knowledge of the complicated system of paths and planks. It was improbable--from his childhood he could remember the hoboes footing it doggedly round the head of the tules.

His thoughts were broken into by a voice hailing him, a fresh, reed-sweet pipe.

"h.e.l.lo, Mark--what you doin' there?"

It was t.i.to Murano returning from the Swede man's ranch up the trail, with a basket of eggs for his mother. t.i.to had become something of a hero in the neighborhood. In the preceding autumn he had developed typhoid, nearly died, and been sent to a relative in the higher land of the foothill fruit farms. From there he had only recently returned with the _reclame_ of one who has adventured far and seen strange lands.

Barelegged, his few rags flapping round his thin brown body, he charged forward at a run, holding the egg basket out at arm's length. His face was wreathed in happy smiles, for the encounter filled him with delight.

Mark was his idol and this was the first time he had seen him.

They sat side by side on the knoll and t.i.to told of his wanderings. At times he spit to show his growth in grace, and after studying the long sprawl of Mark's legs disposed his own in as close an imitation as their length would permit. It was when his story was over and the conversation showed a tendency to languish that Mark said:

"I was just looking out over there and trying to locate the place where the bandits had their cache."

t.i.to raised a grubby hand and pointed.

"Right away beyont where you see the water shinin'. It's a sort of island--I was out there after I come back but the hole was all washed away and filled up."

"_You_ were out there? Do you know the way?"

t.i.to spit calmly, almost contemptuously.

"_Me? _I bin often--there ain't a trail I don't know. I could lead you straight acrost. I took a tramp wonct; anyways I would have took him if he'd let me."

"A tramp!" Mark straightened up. "When?"

The episode of the tramp had almost faded from t.i.to's mind. What still lingered was not the memory of his fear but the way he had been swindled.

Now in company with one who always understood and never scolded, he was filled with a desire to tell it and gain a tardy sympathy. He screwed up his eyes in an effort to answer accurately.

"I guess it was last fall. Yes, it was, just before school commenced. I wouldn't 'a done it--Pop'd have licked me if he'd 'a known--but he promised me a quarter."

"Who promised you a quarter?"

"Him--the tramp. And I was doin' it, but he got awful mean, swore somethin' fierce and said I didn't know. And how was he to tell and us only halfway acrost?"

"You mean you only took him halfway?"

"It was all he'd let me," said t.i.to, on the defensive. "I tolt him it was all right, but he just stood up there cursin' me. And then he got to throwin' things, almost had me here"--he put his hand against his ear--"like he was plumb crazy. But I guess he wasn't, for he wouldn't give me the quarter."

"Did you leave him there?"

"Sure I did. I run, I was scairt. Pop and Mom'd always be tellin' me to have nothin' to do with tramps. And it was awful lonesome out there and him swearin' and firin' rocks."

t.i.to did not receive that immediate consolation he had looked for. His friend was silent; a side glance showed him studying the tules with meditative eyes. For a moment the little boy had a dreary feeling that his confidence was going to be rewarded by a reprimand, then Mark said:

"Do you remember what the man looked like?"

"Awful poor with long whiskers all sort 'er stragglin' round. He'd a straw hat and a basket and eyes on him like he was sleepy."

Again Mark made no response, and t.i.to, feeling that he had not grasped the full depths of the tragedy, piped up plaintively:

"I'd 'a stood the swearin' and I could 'a dodged the rocks if he'd given me the quarter. But I couldn't get it off him--not even a dime."

That had a good effect, much better than t.i.to's highest hopes had antic.i.p.ated.

"Well, he treated you mean, old man. And, take it from me--don't you go showing the way to any more tramps. They're the kind to let alone. As for the quarter I guess that's due with interest. Here it is." And a half dollar was laid on t.i.to's knee.

At the first glance he could hardly believe it, then seeing it immovable, a gleaming disk of promise, his face flushed deep in the uprush of his joy. He took it, weighed it on his palm, wanted to study it, but instead slipped it mannishly into the pocket of his blouse. His education had not included a training in manners, so he said nothing, just straightened up and sent a slanting look into Mark's face. It was an eloquent look, beaming, jubilant, a shining thanks.

They walked back together, or rather Mark walked and t.i.to circled round him, curvetting in bridling ecstasy. Mrs. Murano's temper being historic, Mark took the egg basket, and t.i.to, all fears of accident removed, abandoned himself to the pure joys of the imagination. He became at once a horse and his rider, pranced, backed, took mincing sidesteps and long, spirited rushes; at one moment was all steed, mettlesome and wild; at the next all man, calling, gruff-voiced, in quelling authority.

Mark, the eggs safe, was thoughtful. So it must have been the tramp as he had suspected. But the eyes--he could not shake off that haunting fancy of a second encounter. All the way home his mind hovered round them, strained for a clearer vision, seemed at moments on the edge of illumination, then lost it all.

That night in his room under the eaves he did not sleep till late. The house sank early into the deep repose following emotional stress, the nurse's lamp brightening one window in its black bulk. Outside the night brooded, deep and calm, with whispers in the great oak's foliage, open field and wooded slope pale and dark under the light of stars. Mark, his hands clasped behind his head, looked at the blue s.p.a.ce of the window and dreamed of Lorry. He saw her in various guises, a procession of Lorrys pa.s.sing across the blue background. Then he saw her as she had been the last time and that Lorry had not pa.s.sed with the rest of the procession.

She had lingered, reluctant to follow the fleeting, unapproachable others, had seemed to draw nearer to him, almost with her hands out, almost with a shining question in her eyes. Holding that picture of her in his heart he finally fell asleep.

Some hours later he woke with the sound of her voice in his ears. She was calling him--"Mark, Mark," a clear, thin cry, imploring and urgent. He sat up answering, heard his own voice suddenly fill the silence loud and startling, "Lorry," and then again lower, "Lorry." For a moment he had no idea where he was, then the starlight through the open window showed him the familiar outlines, and, looking stupidly about, he repeated, dazed, certain he had heard her, "Lorry, where are you?"

The silence of the house, the large outer silence enfolding it, answered him.

He was fully awake now and rose. The reality of the cry in its tenuous, piercing importunity, grew as his mind cleared. He could not believe but that he had heard it, that she might not be somewhere near calling to him in distress. He opened the door and looked into the hall--not a sound. At the foot of the stairs the light from his mother's room fell across the darkness in a golden slant. He turned and went to the window. His awakening had been so startling, his sense of revelation so acute, that for the moment he had no consciousness of prohibiting conditions. When he looked out of the window he would have felt no surprise if he had seen Lorry below gazing up at him.

After that he stood for a s.p.a.ce realizing the fact. He had had no dream, the voice had come to him from her, a summons from the depths of some dire necessity. He knew it as well as if he had heard her say so, as if she _had_ been outside the window calling him to come. He knew she was beset, needed him, that her soul had cried to his and in its pa.s.sionate urgency had broken through material limitations.

He struck a match and consulted his watch--a quarter to four. Then, as he dressed and threw some clothes into a bag, he thought over the quickest route to the city. A stage line to Stockton crossed the valley eight miles to the south. By making a rapid hike he could catch the down stage and be in San Francis...o...b..fore midday. He scrawled a few lines to Sadie, stood the note up across the face of the clock, and, his shoes in his hand, stole down the stairs and out of the house.

The country slept under the hush that comes before the dawn. There was not a rustle in the roadside trees, a whisper in the gra.s.s. Farmhouse and mansion showed in forms of opaque black, m.u.f.fled in black foliage and backed by a blue-black horizon. Above the heavens spread, vast and far removed, paved with stars and mottlings of star dust. The sparkling dome, p.r.i.c.ked with white points and blotted with milky stains, diffused a high, aerial l.u.s.ter, palely clear above the land's dense darkness.