A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories

He picked up the paddle; she caught his hand, trembling.

“No, no!” – she whispered, with bent head – “I cannot; don’t take me so – so quickly. Truly we must be mad to think of it.”

He held the paddle poised; after a while her hand slid from the blade and she looked up into his eyes. The canoe moved on.

“Oh, we are quite mad,” she said, unsteadily.

“I am glad we are,” he said.

The mellow dip! dip! of the paddle woke the drowsing red-winged blackbirds from the reeds; the gray snipe wheeled out across the marsh in flickering flight.

The aged parson of Foxville, intent on his bobbing cork, looked up in mild surprise to see a canoe, heavily hung with water-lilies, glide into his pool and swing shoreward.

The parson of Foxville was a very old man – almost too old to fish for trout.

Crawford led him a pace aside, leaving Miss Castle, somewhat frightened, knee-deep in the purple iris.

Then the old parson came toddling to her and took her hand, and peered at her with his aged eyes, saying, “You are quite mad, my child, and very lovely, and very, very young. So I think, after all, you would be much safer if you were married.”

Somebody encircled her waist; she turned and looked into the eyes of her lover, and still looking at him, she laid her hands in his.

A wedding amid the iris, all gray with the hovering, misty wings of moths – that was her fate – with the sky a canopy of fire above her, and the curlew calling through the kindling dusk, and the blue processional of the woods lining the corridors of the coming night.

And at last the aged parson kissed her and shook hands with her husband and shambled away across the meadows.

Slowly northward through the dusk stole the canoe once more, bearing the bride of an hour, her head on her husband’s knees. The stars came out to watch them; a necklace of bubbles trailed in the paddle’s wake, stringing away, twinkling in the starlight.

Slowly through the perfumed gloom they glided, her warm head on his knees, his eyes fixed on the vague water ahead.

A stag crashed through the reeds ashore; the June fawn stared with eyes like rubies in the dark.

Onward, onward, through the spell-bound forest; and at last the windows of the house glimmered, reflected in the water.

Garcide and Crawford awaited them on the veranda as they came up, rising in chilling silence, ignoring the offered hands of greeting.

“I’ve a word to say to you,” snarled the Hon. John Garcide, in his ward’s ear – “and another word for your fool of an aunt!”

She shrank back against her husband, amazed and hurt. “What do you mean?” she stammered; “we – we are married. Will you not speak to my – my husband?”

A silence, too awful to last, was broken by a hoarse laugh.

“You’re all right, Jim,” said the elder Crawford, slowly. “Ophir Steel won’t slip through your fingers when I’m under the sod. Been married long, Jim?”

THE FIRE-WARDEN

I

“AND of course what I buy is my own,” continued Burleson, patiently. “No man here will question that, I suppose?”

For a moment there was silence in the cross-roads store; then a lank, mud-splashed native arose from behind the stove, shoving his scarred hands deep into the ragged pockets of his trousers.

“Young man,” he said, harshly, “there’s a few things you can’t buy; you may think you can buy ’em – you may pay for ’em, too – but they can’t be bought an’ sold. You thought you bought Grier’s tract; you thought you bought a lot o’ deer an’ birds an’ fish, several thousand acres in timber, and a dozen lakes. An’ you paid for ’em, too. But, sonny, you was took in; you paid for ’em, but you didn’t buy ’em, because Grier couldn’t sell God’s free critters. He fooled ye that time.”

“Is that the way you regard it, Santry?” asked Burleson. “Is that the way these people regard private property?”

“I guess it is,” replied the ragged man, resuming his seat on the flour-barrel. “I cal’late the Lord A’mighty fashioned His wild critters f’r to peramble round about, offerin’ a fair mark an’ no favor to them that’s smart enough to git ’em with buck, bird-shot, or bullet. Live wild critters ain’t for sale; they never was made to buy an’ sell. The spryest gits ’em – an’ that’s all about it, I guess, Mister Burleson.”

A hard-faced young man leaning against the counter, added significantly: “We talked some to Grier, an’ he sold out. He come here, too, just like you.”

The covert menace set two spots of color deepening in young Burleson’s lean cheeks; but he answered calmly:

“What a man believes to be his own he seldom abandons from fear of threats.”

“That’s kinder like our case,” observed old man Santry, chewing vigorously.

Another man leaned over and whispered to a neighbor, who turned a grim eye on Burleson without replying.

As for Burleson and his argument, a vicious circle had been completed, and there was little chance of an understanding; he saw that plainly, but, loath to admit it, turned towards old man Santry once more.

“If what has been common rumor is true,” he said, “Mr. Grier, from whom I bought the Spirit Lake tract, was rough in defending what he believed to be his own. I want to be decent; I desire to preserve the game and the timber, but not at the expense of human suffering. You know better than I do what has been the history of Fox Cross-roads. Twenty-five years ago your village was a large one; you had tanneries, lumber-mills, paper-mills – even a newspaper. To-day the timber is gone, and so has the town except for your homes – twenty houses, perhaps. Your soil is sand and slate, fit only for a new forest; the entire country is useless for farming, and it is the natural home of pine and oak, of the deer and partridge.”

He took one step nearer the silent circle around the stove. “I have offered to buy your rights; Grier hemmed you in on every side to force you out. I do not want to force you; I offer to buy your land at a fair appraisal. And your answer is to put a prohibitive price on the land.”

“Because,” observed old man Santry, “we’ve got you ketched. That’s business, I guess.”

Burleson flushed up. “Not business; blackmail, Santry.”

Another silence, then a man laughed: “Is that what they call it down to York, Mr. Burleson?”

“I think so.”

“When a man wants to put up a skyscraper an’ gits all but the key-lot, an’ if the owner of the key-lot holds out for his price, do they call it blackmail?”

“No,” said Burleson; “I think I spoke hastily.”

Not a sound broke the stillness in the store. After a moment old man Santry opened his clasp-knife, leaned forward, and shaved off a thin slice from the cheese on the counter. This he ate, faded eyes fixed on space. Men all around him relaxed in their chairs, spat, recrossed their muddy boots, stretching and yawning. Plainly the conference had ended.

“I am sorry,” said young Burleson; “I had hoped for a fair understanding.”

Nobody answered.

He tucked his riding-crop under one arm and stood watching them, buttoning his tan gloves. Then with the butt of his crop he rubbed a dry spot of mud from his leather puttees, freed the incrusted spurs, and turned towards the door, pausing there to look back.

“I hate to leave it this way,” he said, impulsively. “I want to live in peace with my neighbors. I mean to make no threats – but neither can I be moved by threats… Perhaps time will aid us to come to a fair understanding; perhaps a better knowledge of one another. Although the shooting and fishing are restricted, my house is always open to my neighbors. You will be welcome when you come – ”

The silence was profound as he hesitated, standing there before them in the sunshine of the doorway – a lean, well-built, faultless figure, an unconscious challenge to poverty, a terrible offence to their every instinct – the living embodiment of all that they hated most in all the world.

And so he went away with a brief “Good-morning,” swung himself astride his horse, and cantered off, gathering bridle as he rode, sweeping at a gallop across the wooden bridge into the forest world beyond.