The Cow Puncher - Robert J. C. Stead (best reads .TXT) 📗

an open space, he looked about, kicking in the dry grass. At length his toe disturbed a few bleached bones, and he stood and looked with unseeing eyes far across the shimmering valley.

"Brownie," he said at length. "Brownie." The whole scene came back upon him; the moonlight, and Irene's distress, and the little bleeding body. And he had said he didn't know anything about the justice of God; all he knew was the crittur that couldn't run was the one that got caught.… And he had said that was life.… He had said it was only nature.

And then they had stood among the trees and beneath the white moon and pledged their faith.…

Again his head went up, and the old light flashed in his eyes. "The first thing is to kill the wolf," he said aloud. "No other innocent shall fall to his fangs. Then—my country."

Darkness had again fallen before Dave found his car threading the streets of the city, still feverish with its new-born excitement of war. He returned his car to the garage; an attendant looked up curiously,—it was evident from his glance that Dave had already been missed—but no words were exchanged. He stood for a moment in the street collecting his thoughts and rehearsing his resolves. He was amazed to find that, even in his bitterness, the city reached a thousand hands to him—hands of habit, and association, and custom of mind—all urging him back into the old groove; all saying, "The routine is the thing; be a spoke in the wheel; go 'round with the rest of us."

"No," he reminded himself. "No, I can't do that. I have business on hand. First—to kill the wolf."

He remembered that he had given his revolver to Irene. And suddenly she sat with him again at the tea table.… Where was he? Yes, he had given his revolver to Irene. Well, there was another in his rooms. First to kill the wolf.

In the hallway of the block in which he had his bachelor apartments Dave almost collided with a woman. He drew back, and the light fell on his face, but hers was in the shadow. And then he heard her voice. "Oh, Dave, I'm so glad—why, what has happened?" The last words ran into a little treble of pain as she noted his haggard face; he had not eaten for twenty-four hours, nor slept for thirty-six.

"You—Edith," he managed to say. "Whatever——"

She came toward him and placed her hands on his. "I've been here a hundred times—ever since morning—ever since Bert Morrison called up to say you had disappeared—that there was some mystery. There isn't, is there, Dave? You're all right, Dave, aren't you, Dave?"

"I guess I'm all right," he managed to answer, "but I got a job on—an important job on. I must get it done. There is not time——"

But her woman's intuition had gone far below his idle words. "There is something wrong, Dave," she said. "You never looked like this before. Tell me what it is. Tell me, Dave; not that I want to know, for knowing's sake, but just that I—perhaps I—can help."

Dave was silent for a moment, watching her. She had changed her position, and he could see her face. Suddenly it occurred to him that Edith Duncan was beautiful. If she had not quite the fine features of Irene, she had a certain softness of expression, a certain mellowness, even tenderness, of lip and eye; a certain womanly delicacy——

"Edith," he said, "you're white. Why is it that the woman a man loves will fail him, and the woman he only likes—stays true?"

"Oh!" she cried, and he could not guess the depths from which her cry was wrung.… "I should not have asked you, Dave," she said. "I'm sorry."

They stood a moment, neither wishing to move away. "You said you had something must be done at once," she reminded him at length.

"Yes," he answered. "I have to kill a man. Then I'm going to join up with the army."

Her hands were again upon him. "But you mustn't, Dave," she pleaded. "No matter—no matter what—you mustn't do that. That is the one thing you must not do."

"Edith, you are not a man. You don't understand. That is the one thing I must do."

"But you can't fight for your country, then. You will only increase its troubles in these troubled times. Don't think I'm pleading for him, Dave, but for you, for the sake of us—for the sake of those—who care."

He took her hands in his and raised them to his shoulders and drew her face close to his. Then, speaking very slowly, and with each word by itself, "Do you really care?" he said.

"Oh, Dave!"

"Then come to my room and talk to me. Talk to me! Talk to me! For God's sake talk to me. I must talk to some one."

She followed him. Inside the room he had himself under control again. The street lights flooded through the windows, so he did not press the switch. He motioned her to a chair.

And then he told her the story, all he knew.

When he had finished she arose and walked to one of the windows and stood looking with unseeing eyes upon the street. For the second time in his life Dave Elden had laid his heart bare to her, and again after all these years he still talked as friend to friend. That was it. She was under no delusion. Dave's eyes were as blind to her love as they had been that night when he had first told her of Irene Hardy. And she could not tell him. Most of all, she could not tell him now.… Yes, she was very sure of that. If she should tell him now—if she should let him know—he would turn to her in his grief. He would be clay in her hands. And afterwards he would despise her for having taken advantage of his hour of weakness. She had waited all these years, and still she must wait.

Dave's eyes were upon her form, silhouetted against the window. It occurred to him that in form Edith was very much like Irene. He recalled that in those dead past days when they used to ride together Edith had reminded him of Irene. When she stood silent so long he spoke again.

"I'm afraid I haven't played a very heroic part," he said, somewhat shamefacedly. "I should have buried my secret in my heart; buried it even from you; perhaps most of all from you. I should have faced the world with a smile, as one who rises above the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. People do that kind of thing in books; perhaps some do in real life. I suppose you can't tell from the outside what may be carried within—even by your closest friend. But—you can advise me, Edith. I will value whatever you say."

She trembled until she thought he must see her, and she feared to trust her voice, but she could delay a reply no longer.

"You are right, Dave," she said at length. "You never can tell what other people are carrying; perhaps, even, as you say, your closest friends. The first thing is to get rid of the idea that your experience is unique; that your lot is harder than that of other people. It may be different, but it is not harder. When you get that point of view you will be able to pass sane judgments.

"'And when you can pass sane judgment you may see that the evidence is not, even at the worst, very conclusive. Why should you take Conward's word in such a matter as this?"

"I didn't take Conward's word. That's why I didn't kill him at once. It wasn't his word—it was the insult—that cut. But she tried to save him. She threw herself upon me. She would have taken the bullet herself rather than let it find him. That was what—that was what——"

"I know, Dave." She had to hold herself in check lest the tenderness that welled within her, and would shape words of endearing sympathy in her mind, should find utterance in speech. "I know, Dave," she said. "The next thing then is to make sure in your own mind whether you ever really loved Irene Hardy."

He sprang to his feet. "Loved Irene!" he exclaimed, and she was in a turmoil of fear and hope that he would approach her. But he paced his own side of the room.

"Edith," he said, "there is no way of explaining this. You can't understand. I know you have given yourself up to a life of service, and I honour you very much, and all that, but there are some things you won't be able to understand. You can't understand just how much I loved Irene."

"I think I can," she answered, quietly. "You have kept your love faithful and single for a dozen years, and I—I think I can understand. But that isn't why I asked. Because if you loved Irene a week ago you love her to-night."

"Have you never known of love being turned to hate?"

"No. Other impulses may be, but not love. Love can no more turn to hate than sunlight can turn to darkness. Believe me, Dave, if you hate Irene now you never loved her. Listen:

"'Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things!'"

"Not all things, Edith; not all things."

"It says all things."

Dave was silent for some time. When he spoke again she caught a different sound in his voice; a tone as though his soul in those few moments had gone through a life-time of experience.

"Edith," he said, "when you repeated those words I knew you had something that I have not. I knew it, not by the words, but by the way you said them. You made me feel that you were not setting a higher standard for me than you would accept for yourself. You made me know that in your own life, if you loved, you would be ready to endure all things. Tell me, Edith, how may this thing be done?"

She trembled with delight at the new tone in his voice, for she knew that in that hour Dave had crossed a boundary of his life and entered into a new and richer field of existence. She knew that for him life would never again be the empty, flippant, selfish, irresponsible thing which in the past he had called life. He was already beginning to taste of that wine of compensation provided for those who pass through the valley of sorrow.

"In your case," she said, "the course is simple. It is just a case of forgiving."

He gazed for a time into the street, while thoughts of bitterness and revenge fought for domination of his mind. "Edith," he said at length, "must I—forgive?"

"I do not say you must," she answered. "I merely say if you are wise you will. Forgiveness is the balm of our moral life, by which we keep the wounds of the soul from festering and poisoning the spirit. Nothing, it seems to me, is so much misunderstood as forgiveness. The popular idea is that the whole benefit of forgiveness is to the person who is forgiven. Really, there is a very much greater benefit to the person who forgives. The one who is forgiven may merely escape punishment, but the one who forgives experiences a positive spiritual expansion. Believe me, Dave, it is the only philosophy which rings true under the most critical tests; which is absolutely dependable in every emergency."

"Is that Christianity?" he ventured.

"It is one side of Christianity. The other side is service. If you are willing to forgive and ready to serve I don't think you need worry much over the details of your creed. Creeds, after all, are not expressed in words, but in lives. When you know how a man lives you know what he believes—always."

"Suppose I forgive—what then?"

"Service. You are needed right now, Dave—forgive my frankness—your country needs you right now.