The Reclaimers

"I'd 'a' been a dead man if you hadn't come this minute," Ponk growled back.

"Congratulations! The good die young," York returned. "I failed to get through to the place I wanted to see. That Saturday rain filled the dry upper channels where a bridge would rot in the tall weeds, but an all-day rain puts a dangerous flood in every ford, so I came back in time to save your life. What's your grievance?"

Ponk's face was agonizing between smiles and tears. "Well, spite of all I, or anybody could do, Miss Swaim takes my little gadabout this morning and makes off with it."

"And broke the wind-shield? I told you to keep her at home."

York still refused to be serious.

"I don't know what's broke, except my feelin's. You tried yet to keep her anywhere? She would go off to that danged infernal blowout section of the country, and she ain't back yet."

York Macpherson grasped the little man by the arm. "Not back yet! Where is she, then?"

"She ain't; that's all I know," Ponk responded, flatly. "Yes, yes, yonder she is just soarin' into the avenue up by 'Castle Cluny' this minute. Thank the Lord an' that Quaker-colored gadabout!"

"Tell her I'll see her at the hotel as soon as I get my mail," York said, and he hurried to his office.

A few minutes later Jerry Swaim brought the gray runabout up to the doorway of the garage.

Ponk assisted her from it and took the livery hire mechanically.

"Thank you, Miss Swaim. Hope you had a safe day. No'm, that's too much," handing back a coin of the change. "That's regular. Yes'm." Then, as an afterthought, he added, with a bow, "York Macpherson he's in town again, an' he's waitin' to see you in the hotel 'parlor.'"

"Oh!" a gasp of surprise and relief. "Thank you, Mr. Ponk. Yes, I have had a safe day." And Jerry was gone.

The little man stared after her for a full minute. Then he gave a long whistle.

"She's a Spartan, an' she's goin' to die game. I'll gamble on that with Rockefeller. This is the rummiest, bummiest world I ever lived in," he declared to himself. "Why the dickens does the blowouts have to fall on the just as well as the unjust 's what I respectfully rise to ask of the Speaker of all good an' perfect gifts. An' I'm goin' to keep the floor till I get the recognition of Chair."

York Macpherson was standing with his back to the window, so that his face was in the shadow, when Jerry Swaim came into the little parlor. Her eyes were shining, and the pink bloom on her cheek betokened the tenseness of feeling held in check under a calm demeanor.

"Pardon me for keeping you waiting, Mr. Macpherson. I've been away from town all day and I wanted to get my mail before I came in. I'm a long way from everybody, you know."

There may have been a hint of tears in the voice, but the blue eyes were very brave.

"And you got it?"

That was not what York meant to say. It was well that his face was in the shadow while Jerry's was in the light. There are times when a man's heart may be cut to the quick, and because he is a man he must not cry out.

"No, not to-day. I don't know why," Jerry replied, slowly, with a determined set of her red lips, while the fire in her blue-black eyes burned steadily and the small hands gripped themselves together.

"I haven't had a word since I left home, and I had hoped that I might find a letter waiting for me here."

"Letters are delayed, and letter-writers, too, sometimes. Maybe they are all busy with Mrs. Darby's affairs. I remember when I was a boy up on the Winnowoc she could keep me busier than anybody else ever did," York offered.

"It must be that. Of course it must. Aunt Jerry is as industrious as I am idle." Jerry gave a sigh of relief.

After the strain of this day, it was vastly comforting to her to stop thinking forward, and just remember how beautiful it must be at "Eden" now; and Eugene was there, and it was twilight. But like a hot blast the memory of the hot sand-heaps of her landed estate came back.

"Did you want to see me about something?" she asked, suddenly. "Mr. Ponk said you did."

"Yes, Jerry. I came here to see you because my sister and I want you to come out to our house at once, and I have orders from Laura not to come home without you."

"You are very kind. You know where I have been to-day?"

York smiled. Even in her abstraction Jerry felt the genial force of that smile. How big and strong he was, and there was such a sense of protection in his presence.

"Yes. You denied me the privilege of escorting you on this journey. I had written a full description of your property to Cornelius Darby, in reply to some questions of his, but his death must have come before the letter reached Philadelphia. In the mass of business matters Mrs. Darby may have missed my report."

"She may have," Jerry echoed, faintly. "I cannot say. Then it is my estate that is all covered with sand, barren and worthless as a desert? I thought I might have been mistaken."

The hope died out of Jerry's face with the query.

"I wish I could have saved you this surprise," York said, earnestly. "Come home with me now. 'Castle Cluny' must be your castle, too, as long as you can put up with us. And you can take plenty of time to catch your breath. The earth is a big place, and, while most of it is covered with water, very little of it is covered entirely with sand."

How kind his tones were! Jerry remembered again that both his sister and Mr. Ponk had urged her to wait for his coming. But she was not accustomed to waiting for anybody. A faint but persistent self-blame gripped her.

"May I stay with you until I find where I really am? Just now I'm all smothered in bewildering sand-dunes." She smiled up at the tall man before her with a confiding, appealing earnestness.

Many women smiled upon York Macpherson. Many women confided in him. He was accustomed to it.

"Laura will consider it a boon, for you must know that she sometimes gets a trifle lonely in New Eden. We'll call the compact finished." Only a gracious intuition could have turned the favor so graciously back to the recipient. But that was York's gift.

In the dining-room at "Castle Cluny" that evening Jerry noticed a silver cup with a quaintly designed monogram on one side.

"That's an old heirloom," Laura said, as she saw her guest's eyes fixed on it. "Like everything else in this house, it is coupled up with some old Macpherson clan tradition, as befitting an old bachelor and old maid of that ilk."

"We used to have two of them," York said.

"We have yet somewhere," Laura replied. "I hadn't missed one from the sideboard before. It must be back in the silver-closet, with other old silver and old memories."

Jerry's day had been full of changes, up and down, from hope to bitter disappointment, from reality to forgetfulness, from clear conception to bewildered confusion, her mind had run since she had left the oak-grove in the forenoon. When she had occasion to remember that silver cup again, she wondered how she could have passed it over so lightly at this time.

Although Jerry's problem was very real, and she brought to its solution neither experience nor discipline, unselfish breadth nor spiritual trust, there was something in the homey atmosphere of "Castle Cluny" that seemed to smooth away the long day's wrinkles for her. Out in the broad porch in the twilight she nestled down like a tired child among the cushions, and gazed dreamily out at the evening landscape. York had been called away by a neighbor and Laura and her guest were alone.

"How beautiful it is here!" Jerry murmured, as the afterglow of a prairie sunset flooded the sky with a splendor of rose and opal and amethyst. "I saw a sunset like that not long ago in an art exhibit in Philadelphia. I thought then there couldn't be such a real sunset. It was in a landscape all yellow-gray and desert-like. I thought that was impossible, too. I've seen both – land and sky – to-day, and both are greater than the artist painted them."

"The artist never equals the thing he is trying to copy, neither can he create anything utterly unreal. I missed the exhibits very much when I first came West, but this is some compensation," Laura said, meditatively.

"Do you ever get lonely here? I suppose not, for you didn't come to find a great disappointment when you came to New Eden," Jerry declared, watching the tranquil face of her hostess.

"No, Jerry, I brought my disappointment with me," Laura said, with a smile that made her look very much like her brother. And Jerry realized that Laura Macpherson's maimed limb had not broken her heart. Laura was a very new type to her guest.

"Oh, I get lonely sometimes and resentful sometimes," Laura went on, "but we get over a good many little things in the day's run. And then I have York, you know, and now and then a guest who means a great deal to me. I have so many interests here, too. You'll like New Eden when you really know us. And up here this porch has become my holy of holies. There is something soothing and healing in the breezes that sweep up the Sage Brush on summer evenings. There is something restful in the stretch of silent prairie out there, and the wide starlit sky above it. Kansas sooner or later always has a message for the sons and daughters of men."

"And something always interesting in our neighbors. See who approaches." York, who had just come up the side steps, supplemented his sister's remark.

"Oh, that is Mrs. Stella Bahrr, the Daily Evening News. Jerry, York can always unhitch your wagon from its star. She really is his black beast, though; but you can't expect mere men to take an interest in milliners, make-overs, at that, however much interest they take in millinery and what is under it."

"And millinery bills, with or without interest," York interfered again.

"Mrs. Bahrr will want a full report of Jerry, with the blank spaces for remarks filled out," Laura went on. "Why, she has changed her course and is tacking away with the wind."

"Going over to the Lenwells', I suppose. They are in some way sort of distantly related to her. Just near enough, anyhow, to listen to all her stories, and then say: 'For goodness sake don't say I told it; I got it from Stellar, you know.' She will put into any port right now. I'm her lighthouse warning," York declared. "She never approaches when I'm present."

York had risen and was standing in the doorway, where the growing moon revealed him clearly. Mrs. Bahrr, coming up the walk toward the Macpherson drive, suddenly turned about and hurried away, her tall, angular form in relief against the sky-line in the open space that lay between the Macpherson home and the nearest buildings down the slope toward the heart of the town.

"Coming back to common things," York continued, dropping into his favorite chair. "My sister scandalizes me on every occasion. Whether or not you hitch your wagon to a star, Jerry, is not so important, after all. The real test is in just what kind of a star you hitch to. That will tell whether you are going to ride to glory or cut such a figure as the cow did that jumped over the moon."

"It is not always that lawyers give counsel for nothing, Jerry," Laura began, but the line of talk was again interrupted.

The coming of callers led to many lines of discussion during the long summer evening, in which Jerry took little part. In this new hemisphere in which she was trying to find herself, where east seemed south and her right hand her left, there was so much of the old hemisphere against which she had partly burnt her bridges. The friendly familiarity of New Eden neighbors was very different from the caste exclusiveness of the Darby-Swaim set in Philadelphia. With the Winnowoc Valley people the rich landholders had no social traffic. But the broad range of conversation to-night, token of general information, called up home memories in Jerry's mind and the long evenings when Jim Swaim's friends gathered there to discuss world topics with her father, while she listened with delight to all that was said. Her mother didn't care for these things and wondered why her artistic daughter could be so interested in them. But when the Macphersons and their guests spoke of the latest magazines and the popular fiction and the recent drama it brought up Lesa Swaim in her element to the listening young stranger. It seemed so easy for the Macphersons to entertain gracefully, to make everybody at home in the shadowy comfort of that big porch, to bring in limeade and nut-cakes in cut-glass and fine china service, to forget none of the things due to real courtesy, and yet to envelop all in the genuine, open-hearted informality of the genial, open-hearted West.

Long after the remainder of the Macpherson household was asleep Jerry Swaim lay wide awake, her mind threshed upon with the situation in which she had suddenly found herself. And over and over in the aisles of her thoughts what York Macpherson had said about unhitching from a star ran side by side with Uncle Cornie's words, "If a man went right with himself."

VIII

IF A MAN WENT RIGHT WITH HIMSELF

There were two of a kind of the Swaim blood, Geraldine Swaim, who had always had her own way, and Jerusha Swaim Darby, who had always had her own way. When the wills and the ways of these two clashed – well, Jerusha had lived many years and knew a thing or two by experience that niece Geraldine had yet to learn.

On the very day that Jerry Swaim left "Eden" Mrs. Darby had gone into the city for a conference with her late husband's business associates. Sloth in action never deprived her of any opportunities; and quick action now meant everything in the accomplishment of the purpose she had before her.

"Cornelius was such a quiet man, he was never very much company. He really did not care for people, like most men," Mrs. Darby said to her business partners, who had known her husband intimately. "Eugene Wellington has already surpassed him in getting hold of some things he never quite reached to, being an older man. And now that Eugene is proving such splendid help in taking up the less important details in my affairs he ought to do fine clerical work in the House here. There is no telling how much ability he may have for being useful to all of us along the lines that Cornelius has developed. He has proved that he is equal to a lot of things besides painting. People of little brain power and financial skill ought to paint the pictures and not rob our big affairs of business ability."

Mrs. Darby held a controlling interest in the House, so the outcome of the conference was that an easy berth on more than moderate pay, with possible prospects – just possible, of course – was what Mrs. Darby had to take back to "Eden" to serve up to Eugene Wellington when he should return from his brief errand up in the Winnowoc country. And as that was what Mrs. Darby wished to accomplish, her day's journey to the city was a success.

Only, that Winnowoc local was uncomfortably hot and crowded. Her trusty chauffeur had resigned his position on the day after Cornelius was buried, and Mrs. Darby was timid about the bluff road, anyhow. If only Jerry had been here to drive for her! With all Jerry's dash and slash, she was a fearless driver and always put the car exactly where she wanted it to be. There was some satisfaction in having a hand like Jerry's on the steering-wheel. So, pleased as to one horn of her dilemma, but tired and perspiring, Mrs. Darby came home determined more than ever to bring about her other purpose – to have Jerry Swaim in her home, because she, Jerusha Darby, wanted her there.

Jerry always filled the place with interest. And Jerry was gone, actually gone, bag and baggage. She had cleared out that morning early on a fool's errand to Kansas. What right had Jerry to go off to earn a living when a living was here ready-made merely for her subjection to a selfish old woman's wishes? Mrs. Darby did not think it in such words, because she no more understood her own mind than that pretty girl with her dark-blue eyes and wavy, gold-tinged hair understood her own mind. One thing she did understand – Jerry must come back.

A week later Eugene Wellington dropped off the morning train running down from Winnowoc. It was too early for the household to be astir, save the early feeder of stock and milker of kine, the early man-of-all-odd-jobs who looked after the fowls, and the early maid-of-all-good-things-to-eat who would have big puffy biscuit for breakfast, with tender fried chicken and gravy that would stand alone. All the homey sounds of the early summer morning flitted out from the "Eden" kitchen and barn-yard. But the misty stillness of dawn rested on the "Eden" lawns, whose owner, with the others of the household, was not yet awake.

At the rose-arbor the young artist paused to let the refreshing morning zephyrs sweep across his face. He wondered if Jerry was awake yet. Ever since he had left "Eden" the hope had been growing in him that she would change her mind. After all, Aunt Jerry might be right about it. This was too beautiful a house to throw aside for a whim – an ideal, however fine, of self-support and all that. Women were made to be cared for, not to support themselves – least of all a pretty, wilful, but winsomely magnetic creature like Jerry Swaim, with her appealing, beautiful eyes, her brown hair all glinted with gold, her strong little white hands, and her daring spirit, exhilarating as wine in its exuberant influence. No, Jerry mustn't go. She belonged to the soft and lovely settings of life.

Eugene leaned against the door of the rose-arbor as these things filled his mind, and a love of the luxuries that surrounded him here drove back for the moment the high purpose of his own life.

In the woodwork of the arbor, where the lightning had left its imprint, he saw a little white envelop wedged in a splintered rift. The rose-vine had hid it from every angle except the one he had chanced to take. He slipped it out and read this inscription:

"To Mr. Eugene Wellington, Artist."

Inside, on Jerry's visiting-card, in her own hand-writing, was the message: "Write me at New Eden, Kansas, Care of Mr. York Macpherson. Don't forget what we are going to do, and when we have done, and won, we'll meet again. Good-by. Jerry."

The young artist dropped the card and stared down the lilac-bordered avenue toward the shadowy gray-blue west whither Jerry Swaim was gone. And all the world seemed gray-blue, a great void, where there was neither top nor bottom. Then he picked up the card again and put it into his pocket, and went into the house to get ready for breakfast.

Mrs. Darby greeted his return as warmly as it was in her repressed nature to do, conveying to him, not by any word, the feeling that he meant more to her now than he had ever meant before.

"Didn't Jerry leave suddenly? I didn't know she was going so soon. I – I was hoping – to find her here," was what he was going on to say.

"That she would be willing to stay here; to give up this scheme of hers." Mrs. Darby finished the sentence for him. "Yes, I hoped so, too. That was the only right thing to do. She chose her own time for leaving, but she will be back soon if we manage right. Don't be a bit discouraged, Eugene, and don't give up to her too much. She loves a resisting force. She always did."

Eugene looked anything but encouraged just then. All "Eden" was but an echo of Jerry Swaim, and the droop of his well-formed lips suggested only a feeble resisting force against her smallest wish.

"She is my own flesh and blood. I know her best, of course," Mrs. Darby went on. "The only way to meet her is to let her meet you. But we will drop that now. After breakfast I want you to look up the men. I have told them to report to you on the crop values, and harvest plans, and fall seeding later. Look over the place well, won't you? Then meet me in the rose-arbor at ten o'clock for a cup of tea and we will counsel together."

Mrs. Darby would have told the late Cornelius to "come in for instructions later." But Eugene Wellington wasn't a sure result. He was only in the process of solution. And Eugene, being very human, was unconsciously flattered by this deference to a penniless young man. It made him pleased with himself and gave him a vague sense of proprietorship which Cornelius Darby, the real-in-law owner of this fine country estate, never dreamed of enjoying.

"I wonder what Jerry is doing this morning," he thought as he rode Cornelius Darby's high-school-gaited horse to the far side of the place.

"The more I see of this farm the finer it looks to me. Not a foot of waste ground, not a nesting-place for weeds, not a broken fence; grove and stream, and tilled fields, and gardens, and lawns, and well-kept buildings. Not an unpainted board nor broken hinge – everything in perfect repair except that splintered framework at the rose-arbor." He paused on a little ridge above the Winnowoc from which the whole farm lay in full view. His artistic eye noted the peaceful beauty of the scene, the growing crops, the yellowing wheat, the black-green corn, the fertile meadows swathed in June sunshine, the graceful shrubbery and big forest trees through which the red-tiled roofs of the buildings glowed, the pigeons circling about the cupolas of the barn. And not the least attractive feature of the picture, although he was unconscious of it, was the young artist himself, astride a graceful black horse, in relief against a background of wooded border of the bluff above the clear gurgling Winnowoc. Eugene looked well on horseback, although he was no lover of horses, and preferred the steady, sure mounts to the spirited ones.

"I wonder if Jerry's big estate can be as well appointed as this. I wish she were here with me now." The rider fell to dreaming of Jerry, trying to put her in a picture of this "Eden" six times enlarged.

At this same hour Jerry Swaim was sitting in Junius Brutus Ponk's gray runabout under the shade of the low oak-grove, gazing with burning eyes at her own kingdom built out of Kansas sand.

Mrs. Darby had hot coffee and cold chicken and cherry preserves and cake with blackberry wine all daintily served for a hungry man to enjoy after a long three hours on horseback in the sunshine. The rose-arbor was odorous with perfume from the sweet-peas, clinging to the trellis that ran between the side lawn and the grape-arbor.

What took place in that council had its results in the letter that Eugene Wellington wrote that night to Jerry Swaim. He did not mail it for several days, and when he went to his tasks on the morning after his fingers had let go of it at the lip of the iron mail-box, the artist in him said things to him that to the day of his death he would never quite forget.

Late one afternoon, a fortnight after the day of Jerry's visit to her claim, Ponk, of the Commercial Hotel and Garage, slipped into the office of the Macpherson Mortgage Company.

"York, what happens to folks that tends to other folks's affairs?" he asked, as he spread his short proportions over a chair beside York's desk.

"Sometimes they get the gratitude of posterity. More generally their portion is present contempt and future obscurity. Are you in line for promotion on that, Ponk?" York replied.

"I'm 'bout ready to take chances," Ponk said, with a good-natured grin.

"All right. Am I involved in your scheme of things?" York inquired.

"You bet you are," Ponk assured him. "And, to be brief, knowin' how valuable your time is for gougin' mortgages out of unsuspectin' victims – "

"Well, we haven't foreclosed on the Commercial Hotel and Garage yet," York interrupted.

"No, but you're likely to the minute my back's turned. That's why I have to go facin' south all the time. But to get to real business now, York – "

"I wish you would," York declared.

His caller paid no heed to the thrust, and continued, seriously, "I can't get some things off my mind, and I've got to unload, that's all."

"Go ahead. I'm your dumping-ground," York said, with a smile.

"That's what you are, you son of a horse-thief. I mean the tool of a grasping bunch of loan sharks known as the Macpherson Mortgage Company. Well, it's that young lady at your house."

"I see. We robbed you of a boarder," York suggested.

"Aw, shut up an' listen, now, will you? You know I'm a man of affairs here. Owner and proprietor and man-of-all-work at the Commercial Hotel an' Gurrage, bass soloist in the Baptist choir, and – by the removal of the late deceased incumbent – also treasurer of the board of education of the New Eden schools – "