Carnac went slowly towards his father’s house on the hill. Fixed, as his mind was, upon all that had just happened, his eye took fondly from the gathering dusk pictures which the artist’s mind cherishes—the long roadway, with the maples and pines, the stump fences; behind which lay the garnered fields, where the plough had made ready the way for the Fall wheat; the robins twittering in the scattered trees; the cooing of the wood-pigeon; over all, the sky in its perfect purpling blue, and far down the horizon the evening-star slowly climbing. He noted the lizards slipping through the stones; he saw where the wheel of a wagon had crushed some wild flower-growth; he heard the far call of a milkmaid to the cattle; he caught the sweet breath of decaying verdure, and through all, the fresh, biting air of the new-land autumn, pleasantly stinging his face.
Something kept saying to his mind: “It’s all good. It’s life and light, and all good.” But his nerves were being tried; his whole nature was stirred.
He took the letter from his pocket again, and read it in the fading light. It was native, naive, brutal, and unconsciously clever—and the girl who had written it was beautiful. It had only a few lines. It asked him why he had deserted her, his wife. It said that he would find American law protected the deluded stranger. It asked if he had so soon forgotten the kisses he had given her, and did he not realize they were married? He felt that, with her, beneath all, there was more than malice; there was a passion which would run risks to secure its end.
A few moments later he was in the room where his mother, with her strong, fine, lonely face, sat sewing by the window. The door opened squarely on her, and he saw how refined and sad, yet self-contained, was the woman who had given him birth. The look in her eyes warmly welcomed him. Her own sorrows made her sensitive to those of others, and as Carnac entered she saw something was vexing him.
“Dear lad!” she said.
He was beside her now, and he kissed her cheek. “Best of all the world,” he said; and he did not see that she shrank a little.
“Are you in trouble?” she asked, and her hand touched his shoulder.
The wrong she had done him long ago vexed her. It was not possible this boy could fit in with a life where, in one sense, he did not belong. It was not part of her sorrow that he had given himself to painting and sculpture. In her soul she believed this might be best for him in the end. She had a surreptitious, an almost anguished, joy in the thought that he and John Grier could not hit it off. It seemed natural that both men, ignorant of their own tragedy, believing themselves to be father and son, should feel for each other the torture of distance, a misunderstanding, which only she and one other human being understood.
John Grier was not the boy’s father. Carnac was the son of Barode Barouche.
After a moment he said: “Mother, I know why I’ve come to you. It’s because I feel when I’m in trouble, I get helped by being with you.”
“How do I help, my boy?” she asked with a sad smile, for he had said the thing dearest to her heart.
“When I’m with you, I seem to get a hold on myself. I’ve always had a strange feeling about you. I felt when I was a child that you’re two people; one that lives on some distant, lonely prairie, silent, shadowy and terribly loving; and the other, a vocal person, affectionate, alert, good and generous.”
He paused, but she only shook her head. After a moment he continued: “I know you aren’t happy, mother, but maybe you once were—at the start.”
She got to her feet, and drew herself up.
“I’m happy in your love, but all the rest—is all the rest. It isn’t your father’s fault wholly. He was busy; he forgot me. Dear, dear boy, never give up your soul to things only, keep it for people.”
She was naturally straight and composed; yet as she stood there, she had a certain lonely splendour like some soft metal burning. Among her fellow-citizens she had place and position, but she took no lead; she was always an isolated attachment of local enterprises. It was in her own house where her skill and adaptability had success. She had brought into her soul misery and martyrdom, and all martyrs are lonely and apart.
Sharp visions of what she was really flashed through Carnac’s mind, and he said:
“Mother, there must be something wrong with you and me. You were naturally a great woman, and sometimes I have a feeling I might be a great man, but I don’t get started for it. I suppose, you once had an idea you’d play a big part in the world?”
“Girls have dreams,” she answered with moist eyes, “and at times I thought great things might come to me; but I married and got lost.”
“You got lost?” asked Carnac anxiously, for there was a curious note in her voice.
She tried to change the effect of her words.
“Yes, I lost myself in somebody else’s ambitions I lost myself in the storm.”
Carnac laughed. “Father was always a blizzard, wasn’t he? Now here, now there, he rushed about making money, humping up his business, and yet why shouldn’t you have ranged beside him. I don’t understand.”
“No, that’s the bane of life,” she replied. “We don’t understand each other. I can’t understand why you don’t marry Junia. You love her. You don’t understand why I couldn’t play as big a part as your father—I couldn’t. He was always odd—masterful and odd, and I never could do just as he liked.”
There was yearning sadness in her eyes. “Dear Carnac, John Grier is a whirlwind, but he’s also a still pool in which currents are secretly twisting, turning. His imagination, his power is enormous; but he’s Oriental, a barbarian.”
“You mean he might have had twenty wives?”
“He might have had twenty, and he’d have been the same to all of them, because they play no part, except to make his home a place where his body can live. That’s the kind of thing, when a wife finds it out, that either kills her slowly, or drives her mad.”
“It didn’t kill you, mother,” remarked Carnac with a little laugh.
“No, it didn’t kill me.”
“And it didn’t drive you mad,” he continued.
She looked at him with burning intensity. “Oh, yes, it did—but I became sane again.” She gazed out of the window, down the hillside. “Your father will soon be home. Is there anything you want to say before that?”
Carnac wanted to tell his tragic story, but it was difficult. He caught his mother’s hand.
“What’s the matter, Carnac? You are in trouble. I can see it in your eyes—I feel it. Is it money?” she asked. She knew it was not, yet she could not help but ask. He shook his head in negation.
“Is it business?”
She knew his answer, yet she must make these steps before she said to him: “Is it a woman?”
He nodded now. She caught his eyes and held them with her own. All the silence and sorrow, all the remorse and regret of the past twenty-six years gathered in her face.
“Yes and no,” he answered with emotion. “You’ve quarrelled with Junia?”
“No,” he replied.
“Why don’t you marry her?” she urged. “We all would like it, even your father.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?” She leant forward with a slight burning of the cheek. “Why, Carnac?”
He had determined to keep his own secret, to hide the thing which had vexed his life, but a sudden feeling overcame his purpose. With impulse he drew out the letter he had received in John Grier’s office and handed it to her.
“Read that, and then I’ll tell you all about it—all I can.”
With whitening face, she took the letter and read its few lines. It was written in French, with savage little flourishes and twists, and the name signed at the end was “Luzanne.” At last she handed it back, her fingers trembling.
“Who is Luzanne, and what does it mean?” What she had read was startling.
He slowly seated himself beside her. “I will tell you.”
When Carnac had ended his painful story, she said to him: “It’s terrible—oh, terrible. But there was divorce.”
“Yes, but they told me I couldn’t get a divorce. Yet I wish now I’d tried for it. I’ve never heard a word from the girl till I got that letter. It isn’t strange she hasn’t moved in the thing till now. It was I that should have acted; and she knew that. She means business, that’s clear, and it’ll be hard to prove I didn’t marry her with eyes wide open. It gets between me and my work and my plans for the future; between—”
“Between you and Junia,” she said mournfully. “Don’t you think you ought to get a divorce for Junia’s sake, if nothing else?”
“Yes, of course. But I’m not sure I could get a divorce—evidence is so strong against me, and it was a year ago! If I can see Luzanne again perhaps I can get her to tear up the marriage-lines—that’s what I want. She isn’t all bad. I must go again to New York; and Junia can wait. I’m not much, I know—not worth waiting for, maybe, but I’m in earnest where Junia’s concerned. I could make a little home for her at once, and a better one as time went on, if she would marry me.”
After a moment of silence, Carnac added: “I’m going to New York. Don’t you think I ought to go?”
The gaunt, handsome face of the woman darkened, and then she answered: “Yes.”
There was silence again for a moment, deep and painful, and then Carnac spoke.
“Mother, I don’t think father is well. I see a great change in him. He hasn’t long to travel, and some day you’ll have everything. He might make you run the business, with Tarboe as manager.”
She shuddered slightly. “With Tarboe—I never thought of that—with Tarboe!... Are you going to wait for—your father? He’ll be here presently.”
“No, I’m off. I’ll go down the garden, through the bushes,” he said.... “Mother, I’ve got nearer you to-night than in all the rest of my life.”
She kissed him fondly. “You’re going away, but I hope you’ll come back in time.”
He knew she meant Junia.
“Yes, I hope I’ll come back in time.”
A moment later he was gone, out of the sidedoor, through the bushes, and down the hill, running like a boy. He had for the first time talked to his mother about the life of their home; the facts she told him stripped away the curtain that hid the secret things of life from his eyes.
John Grier almost burst upon his wife. He opened and shut the door noisily; he stamped into the dusky room.
“Isn’t it time for a light?” he said with a quizzical nod towards her.
The short visit of Carnac had straightened her back. “I like the twilight. I don’t light up until it’s dark, but if you wish—”
“You like the twilight; you don’t light up until it’s dark, but if I wish—ah, that’s it! Have your own way.... I’m the breadwinner; I’m the breadwinner; I’m the fighter; I’m the man that makes the machine go; but I don’t like the twilight, and I don’t like to wait until it’s dark before I light up. So there it is!”
She said nothing at once, but struck a match, and lit the gas.
“It’s easy to give you what you want,” she answered after a little. “I’m used to it now.”
There was something animal-like in the thrust forward of his neck, in the anger that mounted to his eyes. When she had drawn down the blinds, he said to her: “Who’s been here?”
For an instant she hesitated. Then she said: “Carnac’s been here, but that has naught to do with what I said. I’ve lived with you for over thirty years, and I haven’t spoken my mind often, but I’m speaking it now.”
“Never too late to mend, eh!” he gruffly interposed. “So Carnac’s been here! Putting up his independent clack, eh? He leaves his old father to struggle as best he may, and doesn’t care a damn. That’s your son Carnac.”
How she longed to say to him, “That’s not your son Carnac!” but she could not. A greyness crossed over her face.
“Is Carnac staying here?”
She shook her head in negation.
“Well, now I’ll tell you about Carnac,” he said viciously. “I’m shutting him out of the business of my life. You understand?”
“You mean—” She paused.
“He’s taken his course, let him stick to it. I’m taking my course, and I’ll stick to it.”
She came close and reached out a faltering hand. “John, don’t do what you’ll be sorry for.”
“I never have.”
“When Fabian was born, you remember what you said? You said: ‘Life’s worth living now.’”
“Yes, but what did I say when Carnac was born?”
“I didn’t hear, John,” she answered, her face turning white.
“Well, I said naught.”
Fabian Grier’s house was in a fashionable quarter of a fashionable street, the smallest of all built there; but it was happily placed, rather apart from others, at the very end of the distinguished promenade. Behind it, a little way up the hill, was a Roman Catholic chapel.
The surroundings of the house were rural for a city habitation. Behind it were commendable trees, from one of which a swing was hung. In a corner, which seemed to catch the sun, was a bird-cage on a pole, sought by pigeons and doves. In another corner was a target for the bow and arrow-evidence of the vigorous life of the owners of the house.
On the morning after Carnac told his mother he was going away, the doors of the house were all open. Midway between breakfast and lunch, the voices of children sang through the dining-room bright with the morning sun. The children were going to the top of the mountain-the two youngsters who made the life of Fabian and his wife so busy. Fabian was a man of little speech. He was slim and dark and quiet, with a black moustache and smoothly brushed hair, with a body lithe and composed, yet with hands broad, strong, stubborn.
As Junia stood by the dining-room table and looked at the alert, expectant children, she wished she also was going now to the mountain-top. But that could not be—not yet. Carnac had sent a note saying he wished to see her, and she had replied through Denzil that her morning would be spent with her sister. “What is it?” she remarked to herself. “What is it? There’s nothing wrong. Yet I feel everything upside down.”
Her face turned slowly towards the wide mountain; it caught the light upon the steeple of the Catholic chapel. She shuddered slightly, and an expression came into her shadowed eyes not belonging to her personality, which was always buoyant.
As she stood absorbed, her mind in a maze of perplexity, a sigh broke from her lips. She suddenly had a conviction about Carnac; she felt his coming might bring a crisis; that what he might say must influence her whole life. Carnac—she threw back her head. Suddenly a sweet, appealing, intoxicating look crossed her face. Carnac! Yes, there was a man, a man of men.
Tarboe got his effects by the impetuous rush of a personality; Carnac by something that haunted, that made him more popular absent than present. Carnac compelled thought. When he was away she wanted him; when he was near she liked to quarrel with him. When they were together, one moment she wanted to take his hands in her hands, and in the next she wanted to push him over some great cliff—he was so maddening. He provoked the devil in her; yet he made her sing the song of Eden. What was it?
As she asked the question she heard a firm step on the path. It was Carnac. She turned and stood waiting, leaning against the table, watching the door through which he presently came. He was dressed in grey. His coat was buttoned. He carried a soft grey hat, and somehow his face gave her a feeling that he had come to say good-bye. It startled her; and yet, though she was tempted to grip her breast, she did not. Presently she spoke.
“I think you’re a very idle man. Why aren’t you at work?”
“I am at work,” Carnac said cheerfully.
“Work is not all paint and canvas of course. There has to be the thinking beforehand. Well, of what are you thinking now?”
“Of the evening train to New York.”
His face was turned away from her at the instant, because he did not wish to see the effect of his words. He would have seen that apprehension came to her eyes. Her mouth opened in quick amazement. It was all too startling. He was going—for how long?
“Why are you going?” she asked, when she had recovered her poise.
“Well, you see I haven’t quite learned my painting yet, and I must study in great Art centres where one isn’t turned down by one’s own judgment.”
“Ananias!” she said at last. “Ananias!”
“Why do you say I’m a liar?” he asked, flushing a little, though there was intense inquiry in his eyes. “Because I think it. It isn’t your work only that’s taking you away.” Suddenly she laughed. “What a fool you are, Carnac! You’re not a good actor. You’re not going away for work’s sake only.”
“Not for work’s sake only—that’s true.”
“Then why do you go?”
“I’m in a mess, Junia. I’ve made some mistakes in my life, and I’m going to try and put one of them right.”
“Is anybody trying to do you harm?” she asked gently.
“Yes, somebody’s trying to hurt me.”
“Hurt him,” she rejoined sharply, and her eyes fastened his.
He was about to say there was no him in the matter, but reason steadied him, and he said:
“I’ll do my best, Junia. I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. What’s to be done must be done by myself alone.”
“Then it ought to be done well.”
With an instant’s impulse he moved towards her. She went to the window, however, and she said: “Here’s Fabian. You’ll be glad of that. You’ll want to say good-bye to him and Sibyl.” She ran from him to the front door. “Fabian—Fabian, here’s a bad boy who wants to tell you things he won’t tell me.” With these words she went into the garden.
“I don’t think he’ll tell me,” came Fabian’s voice. “Why should he?”
A moment afterwards the two men met.
“Well, what’s the trouble, Carnac?” asked Fabian in a somewhat challenging voice.
“I’m going away.”
“Oh—for how long?” Fabian asked quizzically. “I don’t know—a year, perhaps. I want to make myself a better artist, and also free myself.”
Now his eyes were on Junia in her summer-time recreation, and her voice, humming a light-opera air, was floating to him through the autumn morning.
“Has something got you in its grip, then?”
“I’m the victim of a reckless past, like you.” Something provocative was in his voice and in his words.
“Was my past reckless?” asked Fabian with sullen eyes.
“Never so reckless as mine. You fought, quarrelled, hit, sold and bought again, and now you’re out against your father, fighting him.”
“I had to come out or be crushed.”
“I’m not so sure you won’t be crushed now you’re out. He plays boldly, and he knows his game. One or the other of you must prevail, and I think it won’t be you, Fabian. John Grier does as much thinking in an hour as most of us do in a month, and with Tarboe he’ll beat you dead. Tarboe is young; he’s got the vitality of a rhinoceros. He knows the business from the bark on the tree. He’s a flyer, is Tarboe, and you might have been in Tarboe’s place and succeeded to the business.”
Fabian threw out his arms. “But no! Father might live another ten years—though I don’t think so—and I couldn’t have stood it. He was lapping me in the mud.”
“He doesn’t lap Tarboe in the mud.”
“No, and he wouldn’t have lapped you in the mud, because you’ve got imagination, and you think wide and long when you want to. But I’m middle-class in business. I’ve got no genius for the game. He didn’t see my steady qualities were what was needed. He wanted me to be like himself, an eagle, and I was only a robin red-breast.”
Suddenly his eyes flashed and his teeth set. “You couldn’t stand him, wouldn’t put up with his tyranny. You wanted to live your own life, and you’re doing it. When he bought me out, what was there for me to do but go into the only business I knew, with the only big man in the business, besides John Grier. I’ve as good blood as he’s got in his veins. I do business straight.
“He didn’t want me to do it straight. That’s one of the reasons we fell out. John Grier’s a big, ruthless trickster. I wasn’t. I was for playing the straight game, and I played it.”
“Well, he’s got his own way now. He’s got a man who wouldn’t blink at throttling his own brother, if it’d do him any good. Tarboe is iron and steel; he’s the kind that succeeds. He likes to rule, and he’s going to get what he wants mostly.”
“Is that why you’re going away?” asked Fabian. “Don’t you think it’ll be just as well not to go, if Tarboe is going to get all he wants?”
“Does Tarboe come here?”
“He’s been here twice.”
“Visiting?”
“No. He came on urgent business. There was trouble between our two river-driving camps. He wanted my help to straighten things out, and he got it. He’s pretty quick on the move.”
“He wanted you to let him settle it?”
“He settled it, and I agreed. He knows how to handle men; I’ll say that for him. He can run reckless on the logs like a river-driver; he can break a jam like an expert. He’s not afraid of man, or log, or devil. That’s his training. He got that training from John Grier’s firm under another name. I used to know him by reputation long before he took my place in the business—my place and yours. You got loose from the business only to get tied up in knots of your own tying,” he added. “What it is I don’t know, but you say you’re in trouble and I believe you.” Suddenly a sharp look came to his face. “Is it a woman?”
“It’s not a man.”
“Well, you ought to know how to handle a woman. You’re popular with women. My wife’ll never hear a word against you. I don’t know how you do it. We’re so little alike, it makes me feel sometimes we’re not brothers. I don’t know where you get your temperament from.”
“It doesn’t matter where I got it, it’s mine. I want to earn my own living, and I’m doing it.” Admiration came into Fabian’s face. “Yes,” he said, “and you don’t borrow—”
“And don’t beg or steal. Mother has given me money, and I’m spending my own little legacy, all but five thousand dollars of it.”
Fabian came up to his brother slowly. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay where you are. You’re not the only man that ought to be married. Tarboe’s a strong man, and he’ll be father’s partner. He’s handsome in his rough way too, is Tarboe. He knows what he wants, and means to have it, and this is a free country. Our girls, they have their own way. Why don’t you settle it now? Why don’t you marry Junia, and take her away with you—if she’ll have you?”
“I can’t—even if she’ll have me.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I’m afraid of the law.”
An uneasy smile hung at Carnac’s lips. He suddenly caught Fabian’s shoulder in a strong grip. “We’ve never been close friends, Fabian. We’ve always been at sixes and sevens, and yet I feel you’d rather do me a good turn than a bad one. Let me ask you this—that you’ll not believe anything bad of me till you’ve heard what I’ve got to say. Will you do that?”
Fabian nodded. “Of course. But if I were you, I wouldn’t bet on myself, Carnac. Junia’s worth running risks for. She’s got more brains than my wife and me together, and she bosses us; but with you, it’s different. I think you’d boss her. You’re unexpected; you’re daring; and you’re reckless.”
“Yes, I certainly am reckless.”
“Then why aren’t you reckless now? You’re going away. Why, you haven’t even told her you love her. The other man—is here, and—I’ve seen him look at her? I know by the way she speaks of him how she feels. Besides, he’s a great masterful creature. Don’t be a fool! Have a try ... Junia—Junia,” he called.
The figure in the garden with the flowers turned. There was a flicker of understanding in the rare eyes. The girl held up a bunch of flowers high like a torch.
“I’m coming, my children,” she called, and, with a laugh, she ran forward through the doorway.
“What is it you want, Fabian?” she asked, conscious that in Carnac’s face was consternation. “What can I do for you?” she added, with a slight flush.
“Nothing for me, but for Carnac—” Fabian stretched out a hand.
She laughed brusquely. “Oh, Carnac! Carnac! Well, I’ve been making him this bouquet.” She held it out towards him. “It’s a farewell bouquet for his little journey in the world. Take it, Carnac, with everybody’s love—with Fabian’s love, with Sibyl’s love, with my love. Take it, and good-bye.”
With a laugh she caught up her hat from the table, and a moment later she was in the street making for the mountain-side up which the children had gone.
Carnac placed the bouquet upon the table. Then he turned to his brother.
“What a damn mess you make of things, Fabian!”
“Well, what’s happened since I’ve been gone, mother?” asked Carnac. “Is nobody we’re interested in married, or going to be married?”
It was spring-time eight months after Carnac had vanished from Montreal, and the sun of late April was melting the snow upon the hills, bringing out the smell of the sprouting verdure and the exultant song of the birds.
His mother replied sorrowfully: “Junia’s been away since last fall. Her aunt in the West was taken ill, and she’s been with her ever since. Tell me, dearest, is everything all right now? Are you free to do what you want?”
He shook his head morosely. “No, everything’s all wrong. I blundered, and I’m paying the price.”
“You didn’t find Luzanne Larue?”
“Yes, I found her, but it was no good. I said there was divorce, and she replied I’d done it with my eyes open, and had signed our names in the book of the hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Carnac Grier and divorce would not be possible. Also, I’d let things go for a year, and what jury would give me relief! I consulted a lawyer. He said she had the game in her hands, and that a case could be put up that would discredit me with jury or judge, so there it is.... Well, bad as she is, she’s fond of me in her way. I don’t think she’s ever gone loose with any man; this is only a craze, I’m sure. She wanted me, and she meant to have me.”
His mother protested: “No pure, straight, honest girl would—”
Carnac laughed bitterly, and interrupted. “Don’t talk that way, mother. The girl was brought up among exiles and political criminals in the purlieu of Montmartre. What’s possible in one place is impossible in another. Devil as she is, I want to do her justice.”
“Did she wear a wedding-ring?”
“No, but she used my name as her own: I saw it on the paper door-plate. She said she would wait awhile longer, but if at the end of six months I didn’t do my duty, she’d see the thing through here among my own people.”
“Six months—it’s overdue now!” She said in agitation.
He nodded helplessly. “I’m in hell as things are. There’s only this to be said: She’s done naught yet, and she mayn’t do aught!”
They were roused by the click of the gate. “That’s your father—that’s John Grier,” she said.
They heard the front door open and shut, a footstep in the hall, then the door opened and John Grier came into the room.
Preoccupation, abstraction, filled his face, as he came forward. It was as though he was looking at something distant that both troubled and pleased him. When he saw Carnac he stopped, his face flushed. For an instant he stood unmoving, and then he held out his hand.
“So you’ve come back, Carnac. When did you get here?”
As Carnac released his hand from John Grier’s cold clasp, he said: “A couple of hours ago.”
The old man scrutinized him sharply, carefully. “Getting on—making money?” he asked. “Got your hand in the pocket of the world?”
Carnac shook his head. “I don’t care much about the pocket of the world, but they like my work in London and New York. I don’t get Royal Academy prices, but I do pretty well.”
“Got some pride, eh?”
“I’m always proud when anybody outside Montreal mentions your name! It makes me feel I have a place in the world.”
“Guess you’ve made your own place,” said the other, pleasure coming to his cheek. “You’ve got your own shovel and pick to make wealth.”
“I care little about wealth. All I want is enough to clothe and feed me, and give me a little home.”
“A little home! Yes, it’s time,” remarked the other, as he seated himself in his big chair by the table. “Why don’t you marry?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed until there could only be seen a slit of fire between the lids, and a bitter smile came to his lips. He had told his wife a year ago that he had cut Carnac out of all business consideration. So now, he added:
“Tarboe’s taken your place in the business, Carnac. Look out he doesn’t take your little home too.”
“He’s had near a year, and he hasn’t done it yet.”
“Is that through any virtue of yours?”
“Probably not,” answered Carnac ironically. “But I’ve been away; he’s been here. He’s had everything with him. Why hasn’t he pulled it off then?”
“He pulls off everything he plans. He’s never fallen over his own feet since he’s been with me, and, if I can help it, he won’t have a fall when I’m gone.”
Suddenly he got to his feet; a fit of passion seized him. “What’s Junia to me—nothing! I’ve every reason to dislike her, but she comes and goes as if the place belonged to her. She comes to my office; she comes to this house; she visits Fabian; she tries to boss everybody. Why don’t you regularize it? Why don’t you marry her, and then we’ll know where we are? She’s got more brains than anybody else in our circle. She’s got tact and humour. Her sister’s a fool; she’s done harm. Junia’s got sense. What are you waiting for? I wouldn’t leave her for Tarboe! Look here, Carnac, I wanted you to do what Tarboe’s doing, and you wouldn’t. You cheeked me—so I took him in. He’s made good every foot of the way. He’s a wonder. I’m a millionaire. I’m two times a millionaire, and I got the money honestly. I gave one-third of it to Fabian, and he left us. I paid him in cash, and now he’s fighting me.”
Carnac bristled up: “What else could he do? He might have lived on the interest of the money, and done nothing. You trained him for business, and he’s gone on with the business you trained him for. There are other lumber firms. Why don’t you quarrel with them? Why do you drop on Fabian as if he was dirt?”
“Belloc’s a rogue and a liar.”
“What difference does that make? Isn’t it a fair fight? Don’t you want anybody to sit down or stand up till you tell them to? Is it your view you shall tyrannize, browbeat, batter, and then that everybody you love, or pretend to love, shall bow down before you as though you were eternal law? I’m glad I didn’t. I’m making my own life. You gave me a chance in your business, and I tried it, and declined it. You gave it to some one else, and I approved of it. What more do you want?”
Suddenly a new spirit of defiance awoke in him. “What I owe you I don’t know, but if you’ll make out what you think is due, for what you’ve done for me in the way of food and clothes and education, I’ll see you get it all. Meanwhile, I want to be free to move and do as I will.”
John Grier sat down in his chair again, cold, merciless, with a scornful smile.
“Yes, yes,” he said slowly, “you’d have made a great business man if you’d come with me. You refused. I don’t understand you—I never did. There’s only one thing that’s alike in us, and that’s a devilish self-respect, self-assertion, self-dependence. There’s nothing more to be said between us—nothing that counts. Don’t get into a passion, Carnac. It don’t become you. Good-night—good-night.”
Suddenly his mother’s face produced a great change in Carnac. Horror, sorrow, remorse, were all there. He looked at John Grier; then at his mother. The spirit of the bigger thing crept into his heart. He put his arm around his mother and kissed her.
“Good-night, mother,” he said. Then he went to his father and held out a hand. “You don’t mind my speaking what I think?” he continued, with a smile. “I’ve had a lot to try me. Shake hands with me, father. We haven’t found the way to walk together yet. Perhaps it will come; I hope so.”
Again a flash of passion seized John Grier. He got to his feet. “I’ll not shake hands with you, not to night. You can’t put the knife in and turn it round, and then draw it out and put salve on the wound and say everything’s all right. Everything’s all wrong. My family’s been my curse. First one, then another, and then all against me,—my whole family against me!”
He dropped back in his chair sunk in gloomy reflection.
“Well, good-night,” said Carnac. “It will all come right some day.”
A moment afterwards he was gone. His mother sat down in her seat by the window; his father sat brooding by the table.
Carnac stole down the hillside, his heart burning in him. It had not been a successful day.
During Carnac’s absence, Denzil had lain like an animal, watching, as it were, the doorway out of which Tarboe came and went. His gloom at last became fanaticism. During all the eight months of Carnac’s absence he prowled in the precincts of memory.
While Junia was at home he had been watchfully determined to save her from Tarboe, if possible. He had an obsession of wrong-mindedness which is always attached to crime. Though Luke Tarboe had done him no wrong, and was entitled, if he could, to win Junia for himself, to the mind of Denzil the stain of his brother’s past was on Tarboe’s life. He saw Tarboe and Junia meet; he knew Tarboe put himself in her way, and he was right in thinking that the girl, with a mind for comedy and coquetry, was drawn instinctively to danger.
Undoubtedly the massive presence of Tarboe, his animal-like, bull-headed persistency, the fun at his big mouth and the light in his bold eye had a kind of charm for her. It was as though she placed herself within the danger zone to try her strength, her will; and she had done it without real loss. More than once, as she waited in the office for old John Grier to come, she had a strange, intuitive feeling that Tarboe might suddenly grip her in his arms.
She flushed at the thought of it; it seemed so absurd. Yet that very thought had passed through the mind of the man. He was by nature a hunter; he was self-willed and reckless. No woman had ever moved him in his life until this girl crossed his path, and he reached out towards her with the same will to control that he had used in the business of life. Yet, while this brute force suggested physical control of the girl, it had its immediate reaction. She was so fine, so delicate, and yet so full of summer and the free unfettered life of the New World, so unimpassioned physically, yet so passionate in mind and temperament, that he felt he must atone for the wild moment’s passion—the passion of possession, which had made him long to crush her to his breast. There was nothing physically repulsive in it; it was the wild, strong life of conquering man, of which he had due share. For, as he looked at her sitting in his office, her perfect health, her slim boyishness, her exquisite lines and graceful turn of hand, arm and body, or the flower-like turn of the neck, were the very harmony and poetry of life. But she was terribly provoking too; and he realized that she was an unconscious coquette, that her spirit loved mastery as his did.
Denzil could not know this, however. It was impossible for him to analyse the natures of these two people. He had instinct, but not enough to judge the whole situation, and so for two months after Carnac disappeared he had lived a life of torture. Again and again he had determined to tell Junia the story of Tarboe’s brother, but instinctive delicacy stopped him. He could not tell her the terrible story which had robbed him of all he loved and had made him the avenger of the dead. A half-dozen times after she came back from John Grier’s office, with slightly heightening colour, and the bright interest in her eyes, and had gone about the garden fondling the flowers, he had started towards her; but had stopped short before her natural modesty. Besides, why should he tell her? She had her own life to make, her own row to hoe. Yet, as the weeks passed, it seemed he must break upon this dangerous romance; and then suddenly she went to visit her sick aunt in the Far West. Denzil did not know, however, that, in John Grier’s office as she had gone over figures of a society in which she was interested, the big hand of Tarboe had suddenly closed upon her fingers, and that his head bent down beside hers for one swift instant, as though he would whisper to her. Then she quickly detached herself, yet smiled at him, as she said reprovingly:
“You oughtn’t to do that. You’ll spoil our friendship.”
She did not wait longer. As he stretched out his hands to her, his face had gone pale: she vanished through the doorway, and in forty-eight hours was gone to her sick aunt. The autumn had come and the winter and the spring, and the spring was almost gone when she returned; and, with her return, Catastrophe lifted its head in the person of Denzil.
Perhaps it was imperative instinct that brought Junia back in an hour coincident with Carnac’s return—perhaps. In any case, there it was. They had both returned, as it were, in the self-same hour, each having endured a phase of emotion not easy to put on paper.
Denzil told her of Carnac’s return, and she went to the house where Carnac’s mother lived, and was depressed at what she saw and felt. Mrs. Grier’s face was not that of one who had good news. The long arms almost hurt when they embraced her. Yet Carnac was a subject of talk between them—open, clear eyed talk. The woman did not know what to say, except to praise her boy, and the girl asked questions cheerfully, unimportantly as to sound, but with every nerve tingling. There was, however, so much of the comedienne in her, so much coquetry, that only one who knew her well could have seen the things that troubled her behind all. As though to punish herself, she began to speak of Tarboe, and Mrs. Grier’s face clouded; she spoke more of Tarboe, and the gloom deepened. Then, with the mask of coquetry still upon her she left Carnac’s mother abashed, sorrowful and alone.
Tarboe had called in her absence. Entering the garden, he saw Denzil at work. At the click of the gate Denzil turned, and came forward.
“She ain’t home,” he said bluntly. “She’s out. She ain’t here. She’s up at Mr. Grier’s house, bien sur.”
To Tarboe Denzil’s words were offensive. It was none of Denzil’s business whether he came or went in this house, or what his relations with Junia were. Democrat though he was, he did not let democracy transgress his personal associations. He knew that the Frenchman was less likely to say and do the crude thing than the Britisher.
Tarboe knew of the position held by Denzil in the Shale household; and that long years of service had given him authority. All this, however, could not atone for the insolence of Denzil’s words, but he had controlled men too long to act rashly.
“When will Mademoiselle be back?” he asked, putting a hand on himself.
“To-night,” answered Denzil, with an antipathetic eye.
“Don’t be a damn fool. Tell me the hour when you think she will be at home. Before dinner—within the next sixty minutes?”
“Ma’m’selle is under no orders. She didn’t say when she would be back—but no!”
“Do you think she’ll be back for dinner?” asked Tarboe, smothering his anger, but get to get his own way.
“I think she’ll be back for dinner!” and he drove the spade into the ground.
“Then I’ll sit down and wait.” Tarboe made for the verandah.
Denzil presently trotted after and said: “I’d like a word with you.”
Tarboe turned round. “Well, what have you got to say?”
“Better be said in my house, not here,” replied Denzil. His face was pale, but there was fire in his eyes. There was no danger of violence, and, if there were, Tarboe could deal with it. Why should there be violence? Why should that semi-insanity in Denzil’s eyes disturb him? The one thing to do was to forge ahead. He nodded.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked presently, as they passed through the gate.
“To my little house by the Three Trees. I’ve got things I’d like to show you, and there’s some things I’d like to say. You are a big hulk of a man, and I’m nobody, but yet I’ve been close to you and yours in my time—that’s so, for sure.”
“You’ve been close to me and mine in your time, eh? I didn’t know that.”
“No, you didn’t know it. Nobody knew it—I’ve kept it to myself. Your family wasn’t all first-class—but no.”
They soon reached the plain board-house, with the well-laid foundation of stone, by the big Three Trees. Inside the little spare, undecorated room, Tarboe looked round. It was all quiet and still enough. It was like a lodge in the wilderness. Somehow, the atmosphere of it made him feel apart and lonely. Perhaps that was a little due to the timbered ceiling, to the walls with cedar scantlings showing, to the crude look of everything-the head of a moose, the skins hanging down the sides of the walls, the smell of the cedar, and the swift movement of a tame red squirrel, which ran up the walls and over the floor and along the chimney-piece, for Denzil avoided the iron stove so common in these new cold lands, and remained faithful to a huge old-fashioned mantel.
Presently Denzil faced him, having closed the door. “I said I’d been near to your family and you didn’t believe me. Sit down, please to, and I’ll tell you my story.”
Seating himself with a little curt laugh, Tarboe waved a hand as though to say: “Go ahead. I’m ready.”
It was difficult for Denzil to begin. He walked up and down the room, muttering and shaking his head. Presently, however, he made the Sign of the Cross upon himself, and, leaning against the wall, and opposite to Tarboe, he began the story he had told Carnac.
His description of his dead fiancee had flashes of poetry and excruciating touches of life:
“She had no mother, and there was lots of things she didn’t know because of that—ah, plenty! She had to learn, and she brought on her own tragedy by not knowing that men, even when good to look at, can’t be trusted; that every place, even in the woods and the fields where every one seems safe to us outdoor people, ain’t safe—but no. So she trusted, and then one day—”
For the next five minutes the words poured from him in moroseness. He drew a picture of the lonely wood, of the believing credulous girl and the masterful, intellectual, skilful man. In the midst of it Tarboe started. The description of the place and of the man was familiar. He had a vision of a fair young girl encompassed by clanger; he saw her in the man’s arms; the man’s lips to hers, and—
“Good God—good God!” he said twice, for a glimmer of the truth struck him. He knew what his brother had done. He could conceive the revenge to his brother’s amorous hand. He listened till the whole tale was told; till the death of the girl in the pond at home—back in her own little home. Then the rest of the story shook him.
“The verdict of the coroner’s court was that he was shot by his own hand—by accident,” said Denzil. “That was the coroner’s verdict, but yes! Well, he was shot by his own gun, but not by his own hand. There was some one who loved the girl, took toll. The world did not know, and does not know, but you know—you—you, the brother of him that spoiled a woman’s life! Do you think such a man should live? She was the sweetest girl that ever lived, and she loved me! She told me the truth—and he died by his own gun—in the woods; but it wasn’t accident—it wasn’t accident—but no! The girl had gone, but behind her was some one that loved her, and he settled it once for all.”
As he had told the story, Denzil’s body seemed to contract; his face took on an insane expression. It was ghastly pale, but his eyes ware aflame. His arms stretched out with grim realism as he told of the death of Almeric Tarboe.
“You’ve got the whole truth, m’sieu’. I’ve told it you at last. I’ve never been sorry for killing him—never—never—never. Now, what are you going to do about it—you—his brother—you that come here making love too?”
As the truth dawned upon Tarboe, his great figure stretched itself. A black spirit possessed him.
When Denzil had finished, Tarboe stood up. There was dementia, cruelty, stark purpose in his eyes, in every movement.
“What am I going to do? You killed my brother! Well, I’m going to kill you. God blast your soul—I’m going to kill you!”
He suddenly swooped upon Denzil, his fingers clenched about the thick throat, insane rage was on him.
At that moment there was a knock at the door, it opened, and Carnac stepped inside. He realized the situation and rushed forward. There was no time to struggle.
“Let him go,” he cried. “You devil—let him go.” Then with all his might, he struck Tarboe in the face. The blow brought understanding back to Tarboe. His fingers loosed from the Frenchman’s throat, and Carnac caught Denzil as he fell backwards.
“Good God!” said Carnac. “Good God, Tarboe! Wasn’t it enough for your brother to take this man’s love without your trying to take his life?”
Carnac’s blow brought conviction to Tarboe, whose terrible rage passed away. He wiped the blood from his face.
“Is the little devil all right?” he whispered.
Denzil spoke: “Yes. This is the second time M’sieu’ Carnac has saved my life.”
Carnac intervened. “Tell me, Tarboe, what shall you do, now you know the truth?”
At last Tarboe thrust out a hand. “I don’t know the truth,” he said.
By this Carnac knew that Denzil was safe from the law.