Part 28 (2/2)
Respecting the stricture laid by Judge Menefee against comments upon the stories, all were silent when the pa.s.senger who was n.o.body in particular had concluded. And then the ingenious originator of the contest cleared his throat to begin the ultimate entry for the prize.
Though seated with small comfort upon the floor, you might search in vain for any abatement of dignity in Judge Menefee. The now diminis.h.i.+ng firelight played softly upon his face, as clearly chiselled as a Roman emperor's on some old coin, and upon the thick waves of his honourable grey hair.
”A woman's heart!” he began, in even but thrilling tones--”who can hope to fathom it? The ways and desires of men are various. I think that the hearts of all women beat with the same rhythm, and to the same old tune of love. Love, to a woman, means sacrifice. If she be worthy of the name, no gold or rank will outweigh with her a genuine devotion.
”Gentlemen of the--er--I should say, my friends, the case of Redruth _versus_ love and affection has been called. Yet, who is on trial? Not Redruth, for he has been punished. Not those immortal pa.s.sions that clothe our lives with the joy of the angels. Then who? Each man of us here to-night stands at the bar to answer if chivalry or darkness inhabits his bosom. To judge us sits womankind in the form of one of its fairest flowers. In her hand she holds the prize, intrinsically insignificant, but worthy of our n.o.blest efforts to win as a guerdon of approval from so worthy a representative of feminine judgment and taste.
”In taking up the imaginary history of Redruth and the fair being to whom he gave his heart, I must, in the beginning, raise my voice against the unworthy insinuation that the selfishness or perfidy or love of luxury of any woman drove him to renounce the world. I have not found woman to be so unspiritual or venal. We must seek elsewhere, among man's baser nature and lower motives for the cause.
”There was, in all probability, a lover's quarrel as they stood at the gate on that memorable day. Tormented by jealousy, young Redruth vanished from his native haunts. But had he just cause to do so? There is no evidence for or against. But there is something higher than evidence; there is the grand, eternal belief in woman's goodness, in her steadfastness against temptation, in her loyalty even in the face of proffered riches.
”I picture to myself the rash lover, wandering, self-tortured, about the world. I picture his gradual descent, and, finally, his complete despair when he realises that he has lost the most precious gift life had to offer him. Then his withdrawal from the world of sorrow and the subsequent derangement of his faculties becomes intelligible.
”But what do I see on the other hand? A lonely woman fading away as the years roll by; still faithful, still waiting, still watching for a form and listening for a step that will come no more. She is old now.
Her hair is white and smoothly banded. Each day she sits at the door and gazes longingly down the dusty road. In spirit she is waiting there at the gate, just as he left her--his forever, but not here below. Yes; my belief in woman paints that picture in my mind. Parted forever on earth, but waiting! She in antic.i.p.ation of a meeting in Elysium; he in the Slough of Despond.”
”I thought he was in the bughouse,” said the pa.s.senger who was n.o.body in particular.
Judge Menefee stirred, a little impatiently. The men sat, drooping, in grotesque att.i.tudes. The wind had abated its violence; coming now in fitful, virulent puffs. The fire had burned to a ma.s.s of red coals which shed but a dim light within the room. The lady pa.s.senger in her cosey nook looked to be but a formless dark bulk, crowned by a ma.s.s of coiled, sleek hair and showing but a small s.p.a.ce of snowy forehead above her clinging boa.
Judge Menefee got stiffly to his feet.
”And now, Miss Garland,” he announced, ”we have concluded. It is for you to award the prize to the one of us whose argument--especially, I may say, in regard to his estimate of true womanhood--approaches nearest to your own conception.”
No answer came from the lady pa.s.senger. Judge Menefee bent over solicitously. The pa.s.senger who was n.o.body in particular laughed low and harshly. The lady was sleeping sweetly. The Judge essayed to take her hand to awaken her. In doing so he touched a small, cold, round, irregular something in her lap.
”She has eaten the apple,” announced Judge Menefee, in awed tones, as he held up the core for them to see.
XIII
THE MISSING CHORD
I stopped overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time when I called ”Hallo!” at his. .h.i.tching-rack; but from that moment until my departure on the next morning we were, according to the Texas code, undeniable friends.
After supper the ranchman and I lugged our chairs outside the two-room house, to its floorless gallery roofed with chaparral and sacuista gra.s.s. With the rear legs of our chairs sinking deep into the hardpacked loam, each of us reposed against an elm pillar of the structure and smoked El Toro tobacco, while we wrangled amicably concerning the affairs of the rest of the world.
As for conveying adequate conception of the engaging charm of that prairie evening, despair waits upon it. It is a bold chronicler who will undertake the description of a Texas night in the early spring.
An inventory must suffice.
The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The ambient prairie, diversified by arroyos and murky patches of brush and pear, lay around us like a darkened bowl at the bottom of which we reposed as dregs. Like a turquoise cover the sky pinned us there. The miraculous air, heady with ozone and made memorably sweet by leagues of wild flowerets, gave tang and savour to the breath. In the sky was a great, round, mellow searchlight which we knew to be no moon, but the dark lantern of summer, who came to hunt northward the cowering spring. In the nearest corral a flock of sheep lay silent until a groundless panic would send a squad of them huddling together with a drumming rush. For other sounds a shrill family of coyotes yapped beyond the shearing-pen, and whippoorwills twittered in the long gra.s.s. But even these dissonances hardly rippled the clear torrent of the mocking-birds' notes that fell from a dozen neighbouring shrubs and trees. It would not have been preposterous for one to tiptoe and essay to touch the stars, they hung so bright and imminent.
Mr. Kinney's wife, a young and capable woman, we had left in the house. She remained to busy herself with the domestic round of duties, in which I had observed that she seemed to take a buoyant and contented pride. In one room we had supped. Presently, from the other, as Kinney and I sat without, there burst a volume of sudden and brilliant music. If I could justly estimate the art of piano-playing, the construer of that rollicking fantasia had creditably mastered the secrets of the keyboard. A piano, and one so well played, seemed to me to be an unusual thing to find in that small and unpromising ranch-house. I must have looked my surprise at Rush Kinney, for he laughed in his soft, Southern way, and nodded at me through the moonlit haze of our cigarettes.
”You don't often hear as agreeable a noise as that on a sheep-ranch,”
he remarked; ”but I never see any reason for not playing up to the arts and graces just because we happen to live out in the brush. It's a lonesome life for a woman; and if a little music can make it any better, why not have it? That's the way I look at it.”
”A wise and generous theory,” I a.s.sented. ”And Mrs. Kinney plays well.
I am not learned in the science of music, but I should call her an uncommonly good performer. She has technic and more than ordinary power.”
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