The Eye of Dread

“‘Larry, for love of me, let me go–for the gulf between my twin brother and me will never be passed until I go to him.’ And this was true enough. ‘I will make them love you. Hester loves you now. She will help me.’ Hester was the sweet wife of her brother. So she clung to me, and her hands touched me and caressed me–lad, I feel them now. I put her on the boat, and the money he sent relieved the suffering around me, and I gave thanks with a sore heart. It was for them, our own peasantry, and for her, I parted with her then, but as soon as I could I sold my little holding near my grandfather’s house to an Englishman who had long wanted it, and when it was parted with, I took the money and delayed not a day to follow her.

“I wrote to her, telling her when and where to meet me in the little town of Leauvite, and it was on the bluff over the river. I went to a home I knew there–where they thought well of me–I think. In the evening I walked up the long path, and there under the oak trees at the top where we had been used to sit, I waited. She came to me, walking in the golden light. It was spring. The whip-poor-wills called and replied to each other from the woods. A mourning dove spoke to its mate among the thick trees, low and sad, but it is only their way. I was glad, and so were they.

“I held her in my arms, and the river sang to us. She told me all over again the love in her heart for me, as she used to tell it. Lad! There is only one theme in the world that is worth telling. There is only one song in the universe that is worth singing, and when your heart has once sung it aright, you will never sing another. The air was soft and sweet around us, and we stayed until a town clock struck twelve; then I took her back, and, as she was not strong, part of the way I carried her in my arms. I left her at her brother’s door, and she went into the shadows there, and I was left outside,–all but my heart. She had been home so short a time–her brother was not yet reconciled, but she said she knew he would be. For me, I vowed I would make money enough to give her a home that would shame him for the poverty of his own–his, which he thought the finest in the town.”

For a long time there was silence, and Larry Kildene sat with his head drooped on his breast. At last he took up the thread where he had left it. “Two days later I stood in the heavy parlor of that house,–I stood there with their old portraits looking down on me, and my heart was filled with ice–ice and fire. I took what they placed in my arms, and it was–my–little son, but it might have been a stone. It weighed like lead in my arms, that ached with its weight. Might I see her? No. Was she gone? Yes. I laid the weight on the pillow held out to me for it, and turned away. Then Hester came and laid her hand on my arm, but my flesh was numb. I could not feel her touch.

“‘Give him to me, Larry,’ she was saying. ‘I will love him like my own, and he will be a brother to my little son.’ And I gave him into her arms, although I knew even then that he would be brought up to know nothing of his father, as if I had never lived. I gave him into her arms because he had no mother and his father’s heart had gone out of him. I gave him into her arms, because I felt it was all I could do to let his mother have the comfort of knowing that he was not adrift with me–if they do know where she is. For her sake most of all and for the lad’s sake I left him there.

“Then I knocked about the world a while, and back in Ireland I could not stay, for the haunting thought of her. I could bide nowhere. Then the thought took me that I would get money and take my boy back. A longing for him grew in my heart, and it was all the thought I had, but until I had money I would not return. I went to find a mine of gold. Men were flying West to become rich through the finding of mines of gold, and I joined them. I tried to reach a spot that has since been named Higgins’ Camp, for there it was rumored that gold was to be found in plenty, and missed it. I came here, and here I stayed.”

Now the big man rose to his feet, and looked down on the younger one. He looked kindly. Then, as if seized and shaken by a torrent of impulses which he was trying to hold in check, he spoke tremulously and in suppressed tones.

“I longed for my son, but I tell you this, because there is a strange thing which grasps a man’s soul when he finds gold–as I found it. I came to love it for its own sake. I lived here and stored it up–until I am rich–you may not find many men so rich. I could go back and buy that bank that was Peter Craigmile’s pride–” His voice rose, but he again suppressed it. “I could buy that pitiful little bank a hundred times over. And she–is–gone. I tried to keep her and the remembrance of her in my mind above the gold, but it was like a lunacy upon me. At the last–until I found you there on the verge of death–the gold was always first in my mind, and the triumph of having it. I came to glory in it, and I worked day after day, and often in the night by torches, and all I gathered I hid, and when I was too weary to work, I sat and handled it and felt it fall through my fingers.

“A woman in England–Miss Evans, by name, only she writes under the name of a man, George Eliot–has written a tale of a poor weaver who came to love his little horde of gold as if it were alive and human. It’s a strong tale, that. A good one. Well, I came to understand what the poor little weaver felt. Summer and winter, day and night, week days and Sundays–and I was brought up to keep the Sunday like a Christian should–all were the same to me, just one long period for the getting together of gold. After a time I even forgot what I wanted the gold for in the first place, and thought only of getting it, more and more and more.

“This is a confession, lad. I tremble to think what would have been on my soul had I done what I first thought of doing when that horse of yours called me. He was calling for you–no doubt, but the call came from heaven itself for me, and the temptation came. It was, to stay where I was and know nothing. I might have done that, too, if it were not for the selfish reasons that flashed through my mind, even as the temptation seized it. It was that there might be those below who were climbing to my home–to find me out and take from me my gold. I knew there were prospectors all over, seeking for what I had found, and how could I dare stay in my cabin and be traced by a stray horse wandering to my door? Three coldblooded, selfish murders would now be resting on my soul. It’s no use for a man to shut his eyes and say ‘I didn’t know.’ It’s his business to know. When you speak of the ‘Curse of Cain,’ think what I might be bearing now, and remember, if a man repents of his act, there’s mercy for him. So I was taught, and so I believe.

“When I looked in your face, lying there in my bunk, then I knew that mercy had been shown me, and for this, here is the thing I mean to do. It is to show my gold and the mine from which it came to you–”

“No, no! I can’t bear it. I must not know.” Harry King threw up his hands as if in fright and rose, trembling in every limb.

“Man, what ails you?”

“Don’t. Don’t put temptation in my way that I may not be strong enough to resist.”

“I say, what ails you? It’s a good thing, rightly used. It may help you to a way out of your trouble. If I never return–I will, mind you,–but we never know–if not, my life will surely not have been spent for naught. You, now, are all I have on earth besides the gold. It was to have been my son’s, and it is yours. It might as well have been left in the heart of the mountain, else.”

“Better. The longer I think on it, the more I see that there is no hope for me, no true repentance,–” Again that expression on Harry King’s face filled Larry’s heart with deep pity. An inward terror seemed to convulse his features and throw a pallor as of age and years of sorrow into his visage. Then he continued, after a moment of self-mastery: “No true repentance for me but to go back and take the punishment. For this winter I will live here in peace, and do for Madam Manovska and her daughter what I can, and anything I can do for you,–then I must return and give myself up. The gold only holds out a worldly hope to me, and makes what I must do seem harder. I am afraid of it.”

“I’ll make you a promise that if I return I’ll not let you have it, but that it shall be turned to some good work. If I do not return, it will rest on your conscience that before you make your confession, you shall see it well placed for a charity. You’ll have to find the charity, I can’t say what it should be offhand now, but come with me. I must tell some man living my secret, and you’re the only one. Besides–I trust you. Surely I do.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE MINE–AND THE DEPARTURE

Larry Kildene went around behind the stall where he kept his own horse and returned with a hollow tube of burnt clay about a foot long. Into this he thrust a pine knot heavy with pitch, and, carrying a bunch of matches in his hand, he led the way back of the fodder.

“I made these clay handles for my torches myself. They are my invention, and I am quite proud of them. You can hold this burning knot until it is quite consumed, and that’s a convenience.” He stooped and crept under the fodder, and then Harry King saw why he kept more there than his horse could eat, and never let the store run low. It was to conceal the opening of a long, low passage that might at first be taken for a natural cave under the projecting mass of rock above them, which formed one side and part of the roof of the shed. Quivering with excitement, although sad at heart, Harry King followed his guide, who went rapidly forward, talking and explaining as he went. Under his feet the way was rough and made frequent turns, and for the most part seemed to climb upward.

“There you see it. I discovered a vein of ore back there at the place we entered, and assayed it and found it rich, and see how I worked it out! Here it seemed to end, and then I was still sane enough to think I had enough gold for my life; I left the digging for a while, and went to find my boy. I learned that he was living and had gone into the army with his cousin, and I knew we would be of little use to each other then, but reasoned that the time was to come when the war would be over, and then he would have to find a place for himself, and his father’s gold would help. However it was–I saw I must wait. Sit here a bit on this ledge, I want to tell you, but not in self-justification, mind you, not that.

“I had been in India, and had had my fill of wars and fighting. I had no mind to it. I went off and bought stores and seed, and thought I would make more of my garden and not show myself again in Leauvite until my boy was back. It was in my thought, if the lad survived the army, to send for him and give him gold to hold his head above–well–to start him in life, and let him know his father,–but when I returned, the great madness came on me.

“I had built the shed and stabled my horse there, and purposely located my cabin below. The trail up here from the plain is a blind one, because of the wash from the hills at times, and I didn’t fear much from white men,–still I concealed my tracks like this. Gold often turns men into devils.”

He was silent for a time, and Harry King wondered much why he had made no further effort to find his son before making to himself the offer he had, but he dared not question him, and preferred to let Larry take his own way of telling what he would. As if divining his thought Larry said quietly: “Something held me back from going down again to find my son. The way is long, and in the old way of traveling over the plains it would take a year or more to make the journey and return here, and somehow a superstition seized me that my boy would set out sometime to find me, and I would make the way easy for him to do it. And here on the mountain the years slip by like a long sleep.”

He began moving the torch about to show the walls of the cave in which they sat, and as he did so he threw the light strongly on the young man’s face, and scrutinized it sharply. He saw again that terrible look of sadness as if his soul were dying within him. He saw great drops of sweat on his brow, and his eyes narrowed and fixed, and he hurried on with the narrative. He could not bear the sight.

“Now here, look how this hole widens out? Here was where I prospected about to find the vein again, and there is where I took it up. All this overhead is full of gold. Think what it would mean if a man had the right apparatus for getting it out–I mean separating it! I only took what was free; that is, what could be easily freed from the quartz. Sometimes I found it in fine nuggets, and then I would go wild, and work until I was so weak I could hardly crawl back to the entrance. I often lay down here and slept with fatigue before I could get back and cook my supper.”

As they went on a strange roaring seemed gradually to fill the passage, and Harry spoke for the first time since they had entered. He feared the sound of his own voice, as though if he began to speak, he might scream out, or reveal something he was determined to hide. He thought the roaring sound might be in his own ears from the surging of blood in his veins and the tumultuous beating of his heart.

“What is it I hear? Is my head right?”

“The roaring? Yes, you’re all right. I thought when I was working here and slowly burrowing farther and farther that it might be the lack of air, and tried to contrive some way of getting it from the outside. I thought all the time that I was working farther into the mountain, and that I would have to stop or die here like a rat in a hole. But you just wait. You’ll be surprised in a minute.”

Then Harry laughed, and the laugh, unexpected to himself, woke him from the trancelike feeling that possessed him, and he walked more steadily. “I’ve been being more surprised each minute. Am I in Aladdin’s cave–or whose is it?”

“Only mine. Just one more turn here and then–! It was not in the night I came here, and it was not all at once, as you are coming–hold on! Let me go in front of you. The hole was made gradually, until, one morning about ten o’clock, a great mass of rock–gold bearing, I tell you–rich in nuggets–I was crazed to lose it–fell out into space, and there I stood on the very verge of eternity.”

They rounded the turn as he talked, and Larry Kildene stood forward under the stars and waved the torch over his head and held Harry back from the edge with his other hand. The air over their heads was sweet and pure and cold, and full of the roar of falling water. They could see it in a long, vast ribbon of luminous whiteness against the black abyss–moving–and waving–coming out from nothingness far above them, and reaching down to the nethermost depths–in that weird gloom of night–into nothingness again.

Harry stepped back, and back, into the hole from which they had emerged, and watched his companion stand holding the torch, which lit his features with a deep red light until he looked as if he might be the very alchemist of gold–red gold–and turning all he looked upon into the metal which closes around men’s hearts. The red light flashed on the white ribbon of water, and this way and that, as he waved it around, on the sides of the passage behind him, turning each point of projecting rock into red gold.

“Do you know where we are? No. We’re right under the fall–right behind it. No one can ever see this hole from the outside. It is as completely hidden as if the hand of the Almighty were stretched over it. The rush of this body of water always in front of it keeps the air in the passage always pure. It’s wonderful–wonderful!”

He turned to look at Harry, and saw a wild man crouched in the darkness of the passage, glaring, and preparing to leap. He seized and shook him. “What ails you, man? Hold on. Hold on. Keep your head, I say. There! I’ve got you. Turn about. Now! It’s over now. That’s enough. It won’t come again.”

Harry moaned. “Oh, let me go. Let me get away from it.”

The big man still gripped him and held him with his face toward the darkness. “Tell me what you see,” he commanded.

Still Harry moaned, and sank upon his knees. “Lord, forgive, forgive!”

“Tell me what you see,” Larry still commanded. He would try to break up this vision seeing.

“God! It is the eye. It follows me. It is gone.” He heaved a great sigh of relief, but still remained upon his knees, quivering and weak. “Did you see it? You must have seen it.”

“I saw nothing, and you saw nothing. It’s in your brain, and your brain is sick. You must heal it. You must stop it. Stand now, and conquer it.”

Harry stood, shivering. “I wanted to end it. It would have been so easy, and all over so soon,” he murmured.

“And you would die a coward, and so add one more crime to the first. You’d shirk a duty, and desert those who need you. You’d leave me in the lurch, and those women dependent on me–wake up–”

“I’m awake. Let’s go away.” Harry put his hand to his forehead and wiped away the cold drops that stood out like glistening beads of blood in the red light of the torch.

Larry grieved for him, in spite of the harshness of his words and tone, and taking him by the elbow, he led him kindly back into the passage.

“Don’t trouble about me now,” Harry said at last. “You’ve given me a thought to clutch to–if you really do need me–if I could believe it.”

“Well, you may! Didn’t you say you’d do for me more than sons do for their fathers? I ask you to do just that for me. Live for me. It’s a hard thing to ask of you, for, as you say, the other would be easier, but it’s a coward’s way. Don’t let it tempt you. Stand to your guns like a man, and if the time comes and you can’t see things differently, go back and make your confession and die the death–as a brave man should. Meantime, live to some purpose and do it cheerfully.” Larry paused. His words sank in, as he meant they should. He guided Harry slowly back to the place from which they had diverged, his arm across the younger man’s shoulder.

“Now I’ve more to show you. When I saw what I had done, I set myself to find another vein, and see this large room? I groveled all about here, this way and that. A year of this, see. It took patience, and in the meantime I went out into the world–as far as San Francisco, and wasted a year or more; then back I came.

“I tell you there is a lure in the gold, and the mountains are powers of peace to a man. It seemed there was no other place where I could rest in peace of mind. The longing for my son was on me,–but the war still raged, and I had no mind for that,–yet I was glad my boy was taking his part in the world out of which I had dropped. For one thing it seemed as if he were more my own than if he lived in Leauvite on the banker’s bounty. I would not go back there and meet the contempt of Peter Craigmile, for he never could forget that I had taken his sister out of hand, and she gone–man–it was all too sad. How did I know how my son had been taught to think on me? I could not go back when I would.