The Son of his Father

Nor was that mood of the easiest. She experienced feelings of disquiet, even alarm. She felt vexed, and a great resentment, and even genuine anger, began to take possession of her. But these were interspersed with moments when a certain irresponsibility and humor would not be denied, and underlying all and every other emotion was a great passionate longing, which she scarcely admitted even to herself.

Her mind was fixed upon two men: father and son. For the time at least, they were the pivot of all things worldly for her. In her thoughts the son possessed attributes little short of a demi-god, while the father had become a being endowed with a deep, reflected regard. There was room in her woman's heart for both in their respective places. She knew she loved them, and her variations of mood were inspired by the cruelly farcical atmosphere of the position surrounding them both. She was angry with Gordon, bitterly angry at one moment, at the next she reveled in the exquisite impudence of his daring. At one moment her woman's tender pity went out to the big-hearted man who had been submitted to such indignities by his own son and herself, and all those concerned in the conspiracy, and, at the next, she found herself smiling at the humor of his attitude towards his persecutors. Then, too, over all these complications of feeling she was stirred with alarm at that painful memory of the unguarded moment, when, lulled by her interest in the millionaire's talk, she had admitted her name to him. Visions of hideous possibilities rose before her eyes. If he should chance to know her father's name. Why not? Surely he knew. But after that one sharp interrogation he had given no sign.

She sighed a sort of half-hearted relief, but remained unconvinced. It was this last contingency which had inspired her night journey home. She had ridden out the moment she had been certain that their captive had retired for the night.

There were still some eight miles to go before the ranch would be reached when Hazel experienced a fright, which left her ready to turn and flee back over the way she had come as swiftly as the legs of her mare could carry her.

On clearing a bluff of spruce, around which her course lay, in the full radiance of the moon's high noon, she suddenly beheld a horseman riding towards her, a ghostly figure moving soundlessly over the high grass.

Such was the effect of this vision upon her, that, beyond being able to bring her mare to an abrupt halt, panic left her paralysed. In all her years she had never encountered a horseman riding late at night in the mountains. Who was he? Who could he be? And an eerie feeling set her flesh creeping at the ghostliness and noiselessness of his coming.

She sat there stupidly, her pretty cheeks ashen in the moonlight. And all the time the man was coming nearer and nearer, traveling the same trail she would have done had she pursued her course. Then an abject terror surged upon her. He must meet her!

In an instant her paralysis left her, and she gathered her reins to turn her mare about. But the maneuver was never effected. She had suddenly recognized the horse the man was riding. It was Sunset. The next moment she further recognized the broad shoulders of the man in the saddle, and a glad cry broke from her, and she urged her mare on to meet him.

"Gordon!" she cried, in a world of delight and relief as she came up with him.

"You, Hazel?" came the joyous response of her ghostly visitor.

"You just scared me all to death," protested the girl, as the big chestnut ranged up beside her.

"I did?" Gordon was smiling tenderly down at the pretty figure, so fascinating in the moonlight as it sat astride the brown mare.

"My, but I thought – I – oh, I don't know what I thought. But what are you doing around – now?"

The girl was smiling happily enough. Even in the silver of the moonlight it was obvious that the color had returned to her cheeks.

"I was going to ask you that," returned Gordon. "But I guess I best tell you things first." Then he began to laugh. "I was coming out to see you, but – not you only. Say, I'm just the weakest conspirator ever started out to trap a mouse. Look at me. Say, get a good look. It isn't the sort of thing you'll see every time you open your eyes. I was sick to death feeling the old dad was shut up a prisoner, and I felt I must get along, even if it was only just to get a peek, and be sure he wasn't suffering."

Hazel's eyes were tenderly regarding the great creature in the bright moonlight. She had been so recently angry at this son's heartless action, that his expression of contrition made her feel all the more tender towards him.

"He's in bed, and – I'd guess he's snoring elegantly by now," she said, with a smile. "I – I waited to start out till he was in bed." Then her eyes met his. "What were you coming to – see me for?"

The direct challenge very nearly precipitated matters. Gordon had excuses enough for seeing her, but only one real purpose. He hesitated before replying.

"We've made good," he said at last, by way of subterfuge, and the girl drew a deep breath of joyous content.

"You've – made – good?" she questioned, more in the way of reassuring herself than desiring a reply.

Gordon moved his horse so that she could turn about.

"Let's go back to the – prison," he said, his words charged with the excited delight stirring within him.

"Yes, we've made good." The girl turned her mare about and the two moved on the way she had already come, side by side. "Listen, while I tell you. Say, I could sort of shout it around the hill-tops – if they weren't so snowy and cold. Snake's Fall is just a surging land market for us at Buffalo. There are real estate offices opening everywhere, and everybody you meet on the sidewalk is a broker of some sort. The Bude and Sideley folk turned their holdings loose directly we got the surveyors and engineers of the railroad up, and the folks all jumped. Then the men at Snake's, who held in ours, followed suit. But your father, bless him, held tight. The boom fairly rose to a shriek, and we've been fighting to sit tight, and let the prices go up skywards. Then we had a meeting, and your father loosened up a bit. Just to keep the spurt on. Meanwhile I've handled things down east, and kept the wires singing. The railroad have started a great advertising campaign at my orders. The coal company, too, are talking Snake's Fall, and Buffalo Point. In a month there'll be such a rush as only America, and this continent generally knows how to make. Even now sites are changing hands at ridiculous prices. Meanwhile I've got the railroad busy. Already ten construction trains have come through, and they've started on the new depot." He drew a deep sigh of satisfaction. Then in a sort of shamefaced manner he went on. "But I've had to weaken in the old dad's direction. I can't make good and leave him out all together. You see, that play of Slosson's in Snake's will have to be made good, and my father will have to make it that way. So I've got your father to give me a six months' option on a stretch of land adjoining the coalpits which he hadn't ceded to the Bude people. You see, if there's coal there it'll put my father right with the game, and we shan't have hurt him any. Meanwhile things will go on, and we'll have to keep the old dad for another month. Then I sell, and – "

"You'll have won out," broke in Hazel, her eyes shining in the moonlight. Then a shadow crossed her face. "But when your father knows what you've done? What then?"

Gordon seemed to consider his reply carefully.

"You can leave that to me, Hazel," he said at last, with a whimsical smile. "There's surely got to be a grand finale to this, and when it comes I'll still need your help. Say, why were you riding in to the ranch – at dead of night?"

The abrupt question shocked the girl out of her delighted content. The memory of her trouble came overwhelmingly upon her. But Gordon was waiting.

"You're making good, but I've made pretty bad," she said, thrusting a desire to burst into tears resolutely from her. "I'm just every sort of fool and I – don't know how much damage I haven't done. Everything's gone right until this evening. Hip-Lee has just been as near perfect as a Chinaman can be. We've carried out all our plans right through, and I've never been near your father without Hip-Lee looking on. That is – until this evening." The girl sighed. The confession of her blundering was hard to make. "It was this way," she went on presently. "Your father was out walking. I hadn't seen him return. I was in the kitchen fixing his supper, and it was sticky hot, and I just hated the flies, so I went out for a breath of air. Hip-Lee had been playing his spy game on your father. Well, I just stood out front of the house taking a look at the hills, and wishing I was amongst their snows, when your father spoke. He had got back, and was sitting outside the house, and, maybe, like me he was yearning for that snow. Well, I just couldn't run away – so we talked. I guess we'd talked quite awhile, and I'd kind of forgotten things, and in the middle of his talk he started to address me by my name, and got as far as 'Miss.' Then, without a thought, I spoke my name. He just seemed startled, but never said a word about it, and now I'm worried to death. Was there ever such – "

The girl broke off, and it seemed to Gordon, in spite of her attempted smile, she was very near tears. Instantly he smothered his own feelings of alarm at her story and endeavored to console her. He laughed, but in Hazel's hyper-sensitive condition of anxiety, his laugh lacked its usual buoyancy.

"That's nothing to worry over," he said. "I'd say if your name had meant anything to him he wouldn't have given you breathing time before you'd learned a heap of things that wouldn't have sounded pretty. Dad's no end of a sport, but when he gets a punch, and the fellow who gives it him don't vanish quick, he's got a way of hitting back mighty hard. I don't guess that break's going to figure any in our play. He never said a word?"

"Not a word." Hazel tried to take comfort, but still remained unconvinced. "Anyway what could he do?"

Gordon remained serious for some moments. Then his eyes lit again.

"Not a thing," he said emphatically, and Hazel knew he meant it.

For some time they rode on in silence, and thought was busy with them both. Hazel was thinking of so many things, all of which somehow focussed round the man at her side, and her ardent desire to obey his lightest commands in the schemes of his fertile brain. Gordon had dismissed every other thought from his mind but the delightful companionship of this ride, which had come all unexpectedly. The girl's mare led slightly, and the sober chestnut kept his nose on a level with her shoulder, and thus Gordon was left free to regard the girl he loved without fear of embarrassment to her. But somehow Hazel was not unaware of his regard. A curious subconsciousness left her with the feeling that her every movement was observed, and a pleasant, excited nervousness began to stir her. She hastily broke the silence.

"You said you'd still need my help when – the grand finale came," she demanded.

"Sure," came the prompt reply. Then very slowly the man added; "I can't do anything without your help – now."

The girl glanced round quickly.

"You mean – with your father a prisoner?"

The man's smile deepened, and his blue eyes gazed thoughtfully, ardently, into the hazel eyes, which, in a moment, became hidden from him.

"I don't think I meant – quite that," he said.

The girl offered no reply, and the man went on.

"You see, we have become sort of partners in most everything, haven't we? I don't seem to think of anything without you being in it." Then he laughed, a little nervous laugh. "I don't try to either. Say, I went out to the cattle station, and had a look at Slosson the other day. The boys have got him pretty right, and – I felt sorry for him."

"Why?" Hazel asked her question without thinking. She somehow felt incapable of thought just now. She felt like one drifting upon some tide which was beyond her control, and the only guiding hand that mattered was this man's.

Gordon gave one of his curious short laughs, which might have meant anything.

"I don't know," he said. Then: "Yes, I do though. Think of a fellow who's had his business queered, who's staked a big gamble and lost, not only that, but the girl he's crazy about, and meanwhile is rounded up in a shack that wouldn't keep a summer shower out, and seems as though it was set up on purpose by some crazy genius as a sort of playground for every sort of wind ever blew. Say, if I lost my partner now, I'd – Guess our partnership ought to expire in a month. This play will be through then."

"Yes."

With all her desire to talk on indifferently, Hazel could find no word to add to the monosyllable. She was trembling with a delightful apprehension she could not check. And somehow she had no desire to check it. This man was all powerful to sway her emotions, and she knew it. The moments were growing almost painful in the tenseness of her emotions.

"Another month. It's – awful for me to think of."

"Is it?"

The inanity of her remark would have made Hazel laugh at any other time. Now, it passed her by, its meaninglessness conveying nothing with the submerging of her humor in the sea of stronger emotions.

Gordon urged his horse to draw level with the mare. Then he deliberately drew it down to a walk on the rustling grass, and Hazel followed his example without protest. All about them was the delicate silver tracery of the moonlight through the trees. The warmth of the perfumed night air possessed a seductiveness only equaled by the night beauties of the scene about them. It was such a moment when the most timorous lover must become emboldened, and emulate the bravest. But Gordon knew no timidity. His only fear was for failure. Had he realized the tumult which his words had stirred within this girl's bosom he might well have flung all hesitation to the winds. As it was he threw the final cast with all the strength of his virile, impetuous nature.

"Another month. Must it end then, Hazel?" He reached out and seized, with gentle firmness, the girl's bridle hand. "Must it? Say, can't it be partners – for life?" His eyes were very tender, but their humor was still lurking in their depths. He leaned towards her and the girl's hand remained unresistingly in his. "D'you know, dear, I sort of feel to-night I'd like to have a dozen Slossons standing around waiting, while I scrapped 'em all in turn for you. Maybe that don't tell you much. It can't mean anything to you. It means this to me. It means I just want to be the fellow who's got to see to it that life runs as smooth as the wheels of a Pullman for you. It means I don't care a thing for anything else in the world but you, not even this play we're at now. I guess I just loved you the day I first saw you, and have gone on loving you worse and worse ever since, till I don't guess there's any doctor, but having you always with me, can save me from an early grave." Somehow the two horses had come to a standstill. Nor were they urged on. "I just want you, Hazel, all the time," Gordon went on, more and more tenderly. "You'll never get to know how badly I want you. Will you – shall it be – partners – always?"

The girl was gazing out over the moonlight scene so that Gordon could see nothing of the light of happiness shining in her pretty eyes. All he knew was the trembling of the hand he still held in his. Then, suddenly, while he waited, he felt the girl's other hand, soft, warm, full of that quiet strength which he knew to be hers, close over his, and a wild thrill swept through his whole body.

"Is it 'yes'?" he demanded, with a passionate pressure of his hand, and a great light burning in his eyes. "Mine! Mine! For – as long as we live?"

The girl still made no verbal reply, but she bowed her head and gently raised his hand, and tenderly pressed it to her soft bosom. In an instant she lay crushed in his arms while the two horses, with heads together, seemed lost in a friendly discussion of the extraordinary proceedings going on between their riders.

What they thought about them was apparently on the whole favorable, for presently, with mute expressions of good will, their handsome heads drew apart and lowered significantly. The next moment they were enjoying a pleasant siesta, such as only a four-footed creature can accomplish standing without risk to life and limb.

Half an hour later they were wide awake and full of bustling activity. The closed heels on their saddle cinchas warned them that even lovers' madness has its limits of duration, and that the practical affairs of life must inevitably become paramount in the end.

So they answered the call, and raced down the trail in the cool of the night.

CHAPTER XXIII

IN NEW YORK

Mrs. James Carbhoy had endured anything but a happy time for several weeks. She had received no news from her beloved son; her husband had spirited himself away on business and left her without a word of definite information as to his whereabouts; while even the trying presence of her young daughter was denied her, since she had been forced to dispatch that personification of childish willfulness to their estate at Tuxedo, that she might be put through a course of disciplining by her various governesses.

She was alone, she reminded herself not less than three times a day, and to be alone in her great mansion at Central Park was the limit of earthly punishment as she understood it. She detested it. She hated the hot summer landscape of the park; she was worried to death by the chorus of automobile hooters as the cars sped up and down the great asphalt way; she felt that the red-and-white stone palaces with which she was surrounded were the ugliest things ever hidden from blind eyes, and an army of servants could be, and was, the most nerve-racking thing she had ever been called upon to endure. For two peas she would pack a bag – no, her maid would have to pack it; she was denied even that pleasure – and hie herself to Europe.

This was something of the condition of mind to which she was reduced, when one morning two events happened almost simultaneously which changed the whole aspect of things, and created in her something approaching a desire to continue the dreary monotony of life.

The first was the advent of her mail, with a long letter from her son dated at Buffalo Point, and the second was an urgent request from her husband's manager, Mr. Harker, desiring permission to wait upon her, as he had the most encouraging news from the long-lost Gordon and her husband's affairs generally.

Gordon's mother did not read her son's letter at once. She saw the heading and glanced at the opening paragraph. The satisfaction so inspired caused her to set it aside for careful perusal after her breakfast. Mr. Harker would be up to see her at about eleven o'clock. That would give her ample time to have digested its contents before he arrived.

For the first time in weeks she ate an ample breakfast at her customary early hour. She further forgot to make her maid's life a burden during the process of dressing, and she even enjoyed glancing over the advertisements of the daily newspapers. Then came the hour of seclusion in her boudoir when she yielded herself to the perusal of her boy's letter.

"BUFFALO POINT,

Near Snake's Fall.

"DEAREST MUM:

"It seems so long since I sent you any mail, and I seem to have so much news to tell you, and I've so completely forgotten what I have already told you, that I hardly know where to begin. However, you'll see by the heading of this letter I am at Buffalo Point, and am glad to say I have received a visit from the dear old Dad, who is just as happy as any man of his devotion to work can be – on vacation. His visit to me here has placed me in a position of great trust in his affairs in the neighborhood, and I am very proud that, through my own efforts, I have been so placed. After this I feel that the dear old Dad will never have cause to question my ability in dealing with big affairs. I feel he will acknowledge that the seed of his example has really fallen on fruitful soil, and that, after all, perhaps I shall yet prove a worthy son of a great father.

"This, I guess, brings me to the discussion of a subject which has kind of interested me some these last days. It is the modern understanding of filial duty. I s'pose even such a duty changes in its aspect, as everything else seems to change, with the passage of time. Chasing around in the dark days of pre-civilized times filial duty seemed pretty clearly marked. One of the first duties of a son was, when his mother wasn't around to claim the privilege, to get in the way when his father wanted to hit something with his club. He was also kind of handy as a sacrifice, either well broiled or minced into fancy chunks, to make his father's Gods feel good and get benevolent. Then he was mighty useful doing chores around the home, so his father didn't have to do more work than it took him filling his stomach with Saurian steaks and Pterodactyl cutlets, and getting drunk on a sort of beer, which his wife had contracted the habit of making for him in the intervals between being laid out cold with a stone club.

"There don't seem to be much doubt about those days. A son's filial duty lasted just as long as his father could enforce it with physical discipline. When he couldn't do it that way any longer, then the son and father generally made a big talk together, and whatever odds and ends of the father could be collected at the finish of the pow-wow were handed over to some local soup kitchen to make stock.

"Then the son usually took a wife, and so the same old play went on.

"With variations and moderations these things seem to have gone on, on some such general lines, right down to our present day. In some grades of present-day life I don't think there's such a heap of change as you'd guess. The conditions prevail, only the weapons and things are different. However, that's by the way. The thing that requires careful study is how far filial duty is justified.

"Filial duty is a pretty arbitrary thing when a man who can really think looks into it. I maintain that obligation is too much imposed upon offspring. I contend they don't owe a thing to their parents. It's the parents who owe to the offspring. This may shock you, but I hope you will put all personal feeling aside and regard it in the nature of an academic discussion. First of all, the fact of life is dependent upon the whim of parents to impose it. It is not a thing which a child owes gratitude for. Say, take a feller who can't swim, tie half a ton of lead around his neck and boost him into a whirlpool full of rocks and things, and ask him for gratitude. I'm open to gamble when he gets his breath he won't say a thing – not a thing – about gratitude. Maybe he'll remember every other emotion ever given to erring humanity, but I don't guess he'd be able to spell the word gratitude, let alone talk it.

"We'll pass the subject of life for the moment. We've got it. We didn't want, but we got. And all the kicking won't alter it. Now filial duty demands obedience, and parents start right in from the first to make a kid's life a burden that way. Say, we'll take that whirlpool racket again. It's like two folks standing high and dry on a rock above it, and firing stones all around the poor darned fool struggling to win out. It don't matter which way he turns he's headed off with a rock dropped plumb ahead of him. Those rocks are labeled 'obey.' Say, after about twenty years of dodging those rocks parents 'll tell that feller of all they did for him in his youth, and say he's ungrateful just because he's learned enough sense to realize his parents are fools, anyway, and ought to be petrified mummies in a public museum.

"One of the worst sins of parents toward children is the fact that as soon as they take to sitting around in rockers, and their hinges start to creak when they get up, they don't ever seem to remember the time when their joints didn't have to make queer noises. When folks get that way they reckon it's the duty of all offspring just to sit around and gape in fool credulity, while they tell 'em what wonderful folk their parents – used to be, and how they – the children – if they lived a century, could never hope to be half as wonderful. A really bright kid generally hopes that for once his parent is talking truth. I say it with all respect that the gentlest, most harmless, most inoffensive father would resort to any subterfuge to have his son think he could lick creation if he fancied that way; and there isn't a woman so almighty plain but what she'll contrive to get her daughters – while they're still children – crazy enough to believe she was the beauty of her family, and that all their good looks are due to her side of the matrimonial contract.