The Claim Jumpers - Stewart Edward White
"I'm sure it must be," agreed Bennington uncomfortably.
"What was I a-sayin'? You must excuse me, Mr. de Laney, but you, being
a man, can have no idea of the life us poor women folks lead, slavin'
our very lives away to keep things runnin', and then no thanks fer it
a'ter all. I'd just like t' see Bill Lawton try it _fer jest one week_.
He'd be a ravin' lunatic, an' thet I tell him often. This country's
jest awful, too. I tell him he must get out sometimes, and I 'spect he
will, when he's made his pile, poor man, an' then we'll have a chanst
to go back East again. When we lived East, Mr. de Laney, we had a
house--not like this little shack; a good house with nigh on to a dozen
rooms, and I had a gal to help me and some chanst to buy things once in
a while, but now that Bill Lawton's moved West, what's goin' to become
o' me I don't know. I'm nigh wore out with it all."
"Then you lived East once?" asked Bennington.
"Law, yes! We lived in Illinoy once, and th' Lord only knows I wisht we
lived there yet, though the farmin' was a sight of work and no pay
sometimes." The inner doubts as to the biscuits proved too much for
her. "Heaven knows, you ain't t' git much to eat," she cried, jumping
up, "but you ain't goin' to git anythin' a tall if I don't run right
off and tend to them biscuit."
She bustled out. Bennington had time then to notice the decorations of
the "parlour." They offered to the eye a strange mixture of the East
and West--reminiscences of the old home in "Illinoy" and trophies of
the new camping-out on the frontier. From the ceiling hung a heavy lamp
with prismatic danglers, surrounded by a globe on which were depicted
stags in the act of leaping six-barred gates. By way of complement to
this gorgeous centrepiece, the paper on the walls showed, in infinitely
recurring duplicate, a huntress in green habit and big hat carrying on
a desperate flirtation with a young man in the habiliments of the
fifteenth century, while across the background a huddle of dogs pursued
a mammoth deer. Mathematically beneath the lamp stood a table covered
with a red-figured spread. On the table was a glass bell, underneath
which were wax flowers and a poorly-stuffed robin. In one angle of the
room austerely huddled a three-cornered "whatnot" of four shelves. Two
china pugs and a statuette of a simpering pair of children under a
massive umbrella adorned this article of furniture. On the wall ticked
an old-fashioned square wooden clock. The floor was concealed by a rag
carpet. So much for the East. The West contributed brilliant green
copper ore, flaky white tin ore, glittering white quartz ore, shining
pyrites, and one or two businesslike specimens of oxygenated quartz,
all of which occupied points of exhibit on the "whatnot." Over the
carpet were spread a deer skin, and a rug made from the hide of a
timber wolf. Bennington found all this interesting but depressing. He
was glad when Mrs. Lawton returned and took up her voluble discourse.
In the midst of a dissertation on the relation of corn meal to eggs
the door opened, and Mr. Lawton sidled in.
"Oh, here y' are at last!" observed his spouse scornfully, and rattled
on. Lawton nodded awkwardly, and perched himself on the edge of a
chair. He had assumed an ill-fitting suit of store clothes, in which he
unaccustomedly writhed, and evidently, to judge from the sleekness of
his hair, had recently plunged his head in a pail of water. He said
nothing, but whenever Mrs. Lawton was not looking he winked elaborately
and solemnly at Bennington as though to imply that circumstances alone
prevented any more open show of cordiality. At last, catching the young
man's eye at a more than usually propitious moment, he went through the
pantomime of opening a bottle, then furtively arose and disappeared.
Mrs. Lawton, remembering her cakes, ran out. Bennington was left alone
again. He had not spoken six words.
The door slowly opened, and another member of the family sidled in.
Bennington owned a helpless feeling that this was a sort of show, and
that these various actors in it were parading their entrances and
their exits before him. Or that he himself were the object of
inspection on whom the others were satisfying their own curiosity.
The newcomer was a child, a little girl about eight or ten years old.
Bennington liked children as a usual thing. No one on earth could have
become possessed in this one's favour. She was a creature of regular
but mean features, extreme gravity, and evidently of an inquiring
disposition. On seeing her for the first time, one sophisticated would
have expected a deluge of questions. Bennington did. But she merely
stood and stared without winking.
"Hullo, little girl!" Bennington greeted her uneasily.
The creature only stared the harder.
"My doll's name is Garnet M-a-ay," she observed suddenly, with a
long-drawn nasal accent.
After this interesting bit of information another silence fell.
"What is your name, little girl?" Bennington asked desperately at
last.
"Maude," remarked the phenomenon briefly.
This statement she delivered in that whining tone which the extremely
self-conscious infant imagines to indicate playful childishness. She
approached.
"D' you want t' see my picters?" she whimpered confidingly.
Bennington expressed his delight.
For seven geological ages did he gaze upon cheap and horrible woodcuts
of gentlemen in fashionable raiment trying to lean against
conspicuously inadequate rustic gates; equally fashionable ladies, with
flat chests, and rat's nest hair; and animals whose attitudes denoted
playful sportiveness of disposition. Each of these pictures was
explained in minute detail. Bennington's distress became apathy. Mrs.
Lawton returned from the cakes presently, yet her voice seemed to break
in on the duration of centuries.
"Now, Maude!" she exclaimed, with a proper maternal pride, "you mustn't
be botherin' the gentleman." She paused to receive the expected
disclaimer. It was made, albeit a little weakly. "Maude is very good
with her Book," she explained. "Miss Brown, that's the school teacher
that comes over from Hill Town summers, she says Maude reads a sight
better than lots as is two or three years older. Now how old would you
think she was, Mr. de Laney?"
Mr. de Laney tried to appraise, while the object hung her head
self-consciously and twisted her feet. He had no idea of children's
ages.
"About eleven," he guessed, with an air of wisdom.
"Jest eight an' a half!" cried the dame, folding her hands
triumphantly. She let her fond maternal gaze rest on the prodigy.
Suddenly she darted forward with extraordinary agility for one so well
endowed with flesh, and seized her offspring in relentless grasp.
"I do declare, Maude Eliza!" she exclaimed in horror-stricken tones,
"you ain't washed your ears! You come with me!"
They disappeared in a blue mist of wails.
As though this were his cue, the crafty features of Lawton appeared
cautiously in the doorway, bestowed a furtive and searching inspection
on the room, and finally winked solemnly at its only occupant. A hand
was inserted. The forefinger beckoned. Bennington arose wearily and
went out.
Lawton led the way to a little oat shed standing at some distance from
the house. Behind this he paused. From beneath his coat he drew a round
bottle and two glass tumblers.
"No joke skippin' th' ole lady," he chuckled in an undertone. He poured
out a liberal portion for himself, and passed the bottle along.
Bennington was unwilling to hurt the old fellow's feelings after he had
taken so much trouble on his account, but he was equally unwilling to
drink the whisky. So he threw it away when Lawton was not looking.
They walked leisurely toward the house, Lawton explaining various
improvements in a loud tone of voice, intended more to lull his wife's
suspicions than to edify the young man. The lady looked on them
sternly, and announced dinner. At the table Bennington found Mary
already seated.
The Easterner was placed next to Mrs. Lawton. At his other hand was
Maude Eliza. Mary sat opposite. Throughout the meal she said little,
and only looked up from her plate when Bennington's attention was
called another way.
Her mere presence, however, seemed to open to the young man a different
point of view. He found Mrs. Lawton's lengthy dissertations amusing; he
considered Mr. Lawton in the light of a unique character, and Maude
Eliza, while as disagreeable as ever, came in for various excuses and
explanations on her own behalf in the young man's mind. He became more
responsive. He told a number of very good stories, at which the others
laughed. He detailed some experiences of his own at places in the world
far remote, selected, it must be confessed, with some slight reference
to their dazzling effect on the company. Without actually "showing
off," he managed to get the effect of it. The result of his efforts was
to harmonize to some extent these diverse elements. Mrs. Lawton became
more coherent, Mr. Lawton more communicative; Maude Eliza stopped
whining--occasionally and temporarily. Bennington had rarely been in
such high spirits. He was surprised himself, but then was not that day
of moment to him, and would he not have been a strange sort of
individual to have seen in the world aught but brightness?
But Mary responded not at all. Rather, as Bennington arose, she fell,
until at last she hardly even moved in her place.
"Chirk up, chirk up!" cried Mrs. Lawton gaily, for her. "I know some
one who ought to be happy, anyhow." She glanced meaningly from one to
the other and laughed heartily.
Bennington felt a momentary disgust at her tactlessness, but covered it
with some laughing sally of his own. The meal broke up in great good
humour. Mrs. Lawton and Maude Eliza remained to clear away the dishes.
Mr. Lawton remarked that he must get back to work, and shook hands in
farewell most elaborately. Bennington laughingly promised them all that
he would surely come again. Then he escaped, and followed Mary up the
hill, surmising truly enough that she had gone on toward the Rock. He
thought he caught a glimpse of her through the elders. He hastened his
footsteps. At this he stumbled slightly. From his pocket fell a letter
he had received that morning. He picked it up and looked at it idly.
It was from his mother and covered a number of closely-written pages.
As he was about to thrust it back into his pocket a single sentence
caught his eye. It read: "Sally Ogletree gave a supper last week, which
was a very pretty affair."
He stopped short on the trail, and the world seemed to go black around
him. He almost fell. Then resumed his way, but step now was hesitating
and slow, and he walked with his eyes bent thoughtfully on the ground.
CHAPTER XVII
NOBLESSE OBLIGE
The thought which caused Bennington de Lane so suddenly look grave was
suggested by the sentence in his mother's letter. For the first time he
realized that these people, up to now so amusing, were possibly
destined to come into intimate relations with himself. Old Bill Lawton
was Mary's father; while Mrs. Lawton was Mary's mother; Maude was
Mary's sister.
The next instant a great rush of love into his heart drove this feeling
from it. What matter anything, provided she loved him and he loved her?
Generous sentiment so filled him that there was room for nothing else.
He even experienced dimly in the depths of his consciousness, a faint
pale joy that in thus accepting what was disagreeable to his finer
sensibilities, he was proving more truly to his own self the
boundlessness of his love. For the moment he was exalted by this
instant revulsion against anything calculating in his passion. And
then slowly, one by one, the objections stole back, like a flock of
noisome sombre creatures put to flight by a sudden movement, but now
returning to their old nesting places. The very unassuming method of
their recurrence lent them an added influence. Almost before Bennington
knew it they had established a case, and he found himself face to face
with a very ugly problem.
Perhaps it will be a little difficult for the average and democratic
reader to realize fully the terrible proportions of this problem. We
whose lives assume little, require little of them. Intangible
objections to the desires of our hearts do not count for much against
their realization; there needs the rough attrition of reality to turn
back our calm, complacent acquisition of that which we see to be for
our best interest in the emotional world. Claims of ancestry mean
nothing. Claims of society mean not much more. Claims of wealth are
considered as evanescent among a class of men who, by their efforts and
genius, are able to render absolute wealth itself an evanescent
quality. When one of us loves, he questions the worth of the object of
his passion. That established, nothing else is of great importance.
There is a grand and noble quality in this, but it misses much. About
the other state of affairs--wherein the woman's appurtenances of all
kinds, as well as the woman herself, are significant--is a delicate and
subtle aura of the higher refinement--the long refinement of the spirit
through many generations--which, to an eye accustomed to look for
gradations of moral beauty, possesses a peach-blow iridescence of its
own. From one point of view, the old-fashioned forms of thought and
courtesy are stilted and useless. From another they retain still the
lofty dignity of _noblesse oblige_.
So we would have none set down Bennington de Laney as a prig or a snob
because he did not at once decide for his heart as against his
aristocratic instincts. Not only all his early education, but the life
lessons of many generations of ancestors had taught him to set a
fictitious value on social position. He was a de Laney on both sides.
He had never been allowed to forget it. A long line of forefathers,
proud-eyed in their gilded frames, mutely gazed their sense of the
obligations they had bequeathed to this last representative of their
race. When one belongs to a great family he can not live entirely for
himself. His disgrace or failure reflects not alone on his own
reputation, but it sullies the fair fame of men long dead and buried;
and this is a dreadful thing. For all these old Puritans and Cavaliers,
these knights and barons, these king's councillors and scholars, have
perchance lived out the long years of their lives with all good intent
and purpose and with all earnestness of execution, merely that they
might build and send down to posterity this same fair fame. It is a
bold man, or a wicked man, who will dare lightly to bring the efforts
of so many lives to naught! In the thought of these centuries of
endeavour, the sacrifice of mere personal happiness does not seem so
great an affair after all. The Family Name has taken to itself a soul.
It is a living thing. It may be worked for, it may be nourished by
affection, it may even be worshipped. Men may give their lives to it
with as great a devotion, with as exalted a sense of renunciation, and
as lofty a joy in that renunciation, as those who vow allegiance to St.
Francis or St. Dominic. The tearing of the heart from the bosom often
proves to be a mortal hurt when there is nothing to put in the gap of
its emptiness. Not so when a tradition like this may partly take its
place.
These, and more subtle considerations, were the noblest elements of
Bennington de Laney's doubts. But perhaps they were no more potent than
some others which rushed through the breach made for them in the young
man's decision.
He had always lived so much at home that he had come to accept the home
point of view without question. That is to say, he never examined the
value of his parent's ideas, because it never occurred to him to doubt
them. He had no perspective.
In a way, then, he accepted as axioms the social tenets held by his
mother, or the business methods practised by his father. He believed
that elderly men should speak precisely, and in grammatical, but
colourless English. He believed also that people should, in society,
conduct themselves according to the fashion-plate pattern designed by
Mrs. de Laney. He believed these things, not because he was a fool, or
shallow, or lacking in humour, or snobbish, but because nothing had
ever happened to cause him to examine his beliefs closely, that he
might appreciate what they really were. One of these views was, that
cultured people were of a class in themselves, and could not and should
not mix with other classes. Mrs. de Laney entertained a horror of
vulgarity. So deep-rooted was this horror that a remote taint of it was
sufficient to thrust forever outside the pale of her approbation any
unfortunate who exhibited it. She preferred stupidity to common sense,
when the former was allied with good form, and the latter only with
plain kindliness. This was partly instinct and partly the result of
cultivation. She would shrink, with uncontrollable disgust, from any of
the lower classes with whom she came unavoidably in contact. A slight
breach of the conventions earned her distrust of one of her own caste.
As this personal idiosyncrasy fell in line with the de Laney pride, it
was approved by the head of the family. Under encouragement it became
almost a monomania.
Bennington pictured to himself only too vividly the effect of the
Lawtons on this lady's aristocratic prejudices. He knew, only too well,
that Bill Lawton's table manners would not be allowed even in her
kitchen. He could imagine Mrs. Lawton's fatuous conversation in the de
Laney's drawing-room, or Maude Eliza's dressed-up self-consciousness.
The experience of having the three Westerners to dinner just once
would, Bennington knew, drive his lady mother to the verge of nervous
prostration--he remembered his father's one and only experience in
bringing business connections home to lunch--; his imagination failed
to picture the effect of her having to endure them as actual members of
the family! As if this were not bad enough, his restless fancy carried
him a step farther. He perceived the agonies of shame and
mortification, real even though they were conventional, she would have
to endure in the face of society. That the de Laneys, social leaders,
rigid in respectability, should be forced to the humiliation of
acknowledging a misalliance, should be forced to the added humiliation
of confessing that this marriage was not only with a family of inferior
social standing, but with one actually unlettered and vulgar!
Bennington knew only too well the temper of his mother--and of society.
It would not be difficult to expand these doubts, to amplify these
reasons, and even to adduce others which occurred to the unhappy young
man as he climbed the hill. But enough has been said. Surely the
reader, no matter how removed in sympathy from that line of argument,
must be able now at least to sympathize, to perceive that Bennington de
Laney had some reason for thought, some excuse for the tardiness of his
steps as they carried him to a meeting with the girl he loved.
For he did love her, perhaps the more tenderly that doubts must,
perforce, arise. All these considerations affected not at all his
thought of her. But now, for the first time, Bennington de Laney was
weighing the relative claims of duty and happiness. His happiness
depended upon his love. That his duty to his race, his parents, his
caste had some reality in fact, and a very solid reality in his own
estimation, the author hopes he has shown. If not, several pages have
been written in vain.
The conflict in his mind had carried him to the Rock. Here, as he
expected, he found Mary already arrived. He ascended to the little
plateau and dropped wearily to the moss. His face had gone very white
in the last quarter of an hour.
"You see now why I asked you to come to-day," she said without
preliminary. "Now you have seen them, and there is nothing more to
conceal."
"I know, I know," he replied dully. "I am trying to think it out. I
can't see it yet."
They took entirely for granted that each knew the subject of the
other's thoughts. The girl seemed much the more self-possessed of the
two.
"We may as well understand each other," she said quietly, without
emotion. "You have told me a certain thing, and have asked me for a
certain answer. I could not give it to you before without deceiving
you. Now the answer depends on you. I have deceived you in a way," she
went on more earnestly, "but I did not mean to. I did not realize the
difference, truly I didn't, until I saw the girl on the train. Then I
knew the difference between her and me, and between her's and mine. And
when you turned away, I saw that you were her kind, and I saw, too,
that you ought to know everything there was about me. Then you spoke."
"I meant what I said, too," he interrupted. "You must believe that,
Mary, whatever comes."
"I was sorry you did," she went on, as though she had not heard him.
Then with just a touch of impatience tingeing the even calm of her
voice, "Oh, why will men insist on saying those things!" she cried.
"The way to win a girl is not thus. He should see her often, without
speaking of love, being everything to her, until at last she finds she
can not live without him."
"Have I been that to you, Mary? Has it come to that with me?" he asked
wistfully.
"Heaven help me, I am afraid it has!" she cried, burying her face in
her hands.
A great gladness leaped up into his face, and died as the blaze of a
fire leaps up and expires.
"That makes it easier--and harder," he said. "It is bad enough as it
is. I don't know how I can make you understand, dear."
"I understand more than you think," she replied, becoming calm again,
and letting her hands fall into her lap. "I am going to speak quite
plainly. You love me, Ben--ah, don't I know it!" she cried, with a
sudden burst of passion. "I have seen it in your eyes these many days.
I have heard it in your voice. I have felt it welling out from your
great heart. It has been sweet to me--so sweet! You can not know, no
man ever could know, how that love of yours has filled my soul and my
heart until there was room for nothing else in the whole wide world!"
"You love me!" he said wonderingly.
"If I had not known that, do you think I would have endured a moment's
hesitation after you had seen the objectionable features of my life? Do
you think that if I had the slightest doubts of your love, I could now
understand _why_ you hesitate? But I do, and I honour you for it."
"You love me!" he repeated.
"Yes, yes, Ben dear, I _do_ love you. I love you as I never thought
to be permitted to love. Do you want to know what I did that second day
on the Rock--the day you first showed me what you really were? The day
you told me of your old home and the great tree? It was all so
peaceful, and tender, and comforting, so sweet and pure, that it rested
me. I felt, here is a man at last who could not misunderstand me, could
not be abrupt, and harsh, and cruel. I said to myself, 'He is not
perfect nor does he expect perfection.' I shut my eyes, and then
something choked me, and the tears came. I cried out loud, 'Oh, to be
what I was, to give again what I have not! O God, give me back my heart
as it once was, and let me love!' Yes, Ben dear, I said 'love.' And
then I was not happy any more all day. But God answered that prayer,
Ben dear, and we do love one another now, and that is why we can look
at things together, and see what is best for us both."
"You love me!" he exclaimed for the third time.
"And now, dear, we must talk plainly and calmly. You have seen what my
family is."
"I don't know, Mary, that I can make you understand at all," began
Bennington helplessly. "I can't express it even to myself. Our people
are so different. My training has been so different. All this sort of
thing means so much to us, and so little to you."
"I know exactly," she interrupted. "I have read, and I have lived East.
I can appreciate just how it is. See if I can not read your thoughts.
My family is uneducated. If it becomes your family, your own parents
will be more than grieved, and your friends will have little to do with
you. You have also duties toward your family, _as_ a family. Is that
it?"
"Yes, that _is_ it," answered he, "but there are so many things it does
not say. It seems to me it has come to be a horrible dilemma with me.
If I do what I am afraid is my duty to my family and my people, I will
be unhappy without you forever. And if I follow my heart, then it seems
to me I will wrong myself, and will be unhappy that way. It seems a
choice of just in what manner I will be miserable!" he ended with a
ghastly laugh.
"And which is the most worth while?" she asked in a still voice.
"I don't know, I don't know!" he cried miserably. "I must think."
He looked out straight ahead of him for some time. "Whichever way I
decide," he said after a little, "I want you to know this, Mary: I love
you, and I always will love you, and the fact that I choose my duty, if
I do, is only that if I did not, I would not consider myself worthy
even to look at you." A silence fell on them again.