Son of the Wind/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
THE SOD ON THE PANE
ON the eighth day of Carron's idyl, Beetles the dog became ill. Whether his propensity for swallowing foreign substances—some venomous member of the tribe of insects to which he was devoted, from which he had received his name—had brought the sickness and the fever, was impossible to tell. He lay on a little piece of sacking on the side porch, and Blanche hung over him as though he had been an ailing infant. But her hands shook when she tried to get the medicine between his teeth. She drenched his poor head in wet cloths that would not stay cold. In her anxiety she made the wretched animal more wretched. Carron, gravely squatted on his heels, prescribed for the case and took it into his own hands. Sick dogs he had handled occasionally, as well as horses and men. He hung up a piece of wet sacking where the draft would blow through it coolly upon the forlorn creature, and he sat through intervals of a blazing afternoon, patiently putting cracked ice on Beetles' head, or, with hands deft enough to overcome any difficulty, gently prying open his mouth and pouring in the drops. Occasionally he walked and smoked under the trees, and revolved things far from the question of a dog; again he sat waving a folded paper above his patient to keep away flies. Blanche's face, appearing at the door, brought always the encouraging reassurance, "Seems to be getting on all right;" but to Mrs. Rader he gave less encouraging report. "Never can tell what they get in 'em. His tongue looks swollen to me—hate to see it." He murmured persuasively beneath his breath, encouraging the dog to unclose his teeth that he might slip in the bit of ice.
He stuck to his post until nearly midnight, aware that if he did not the girl would. He persuaded her to bed early, with the pleasant fiction that he noticed an improvement in Beetles' case, when in fact he only entertained the gloomiest expectations of playing the part of sexton on the next day. He was down-stairs early in the morning, and his heart sank to hear in the upper hall and following him on the stair, the rapid patter of straw slippers with expectancy in their haste, expecting evidently, without doubt, to find the hopeful lying prophecy fulfilled. He had scarcely taken in the fact that the dog was still alive, when Blanche appeared, a dressing-robe hugged over her nightgown. Her eyes were still full 
Carron prescribed for the case
"His tongue is better," Carron said critically, aware this time he spoke the truth. "I don't think he's quite so hot."
"And he is moving his tail," she said in excitement. "Oh, do you think he's going to be all right?" "Of course he is. Didn't I tell you?" He was delighted to see how she accepted this quite seriously. "What do you mean by getting up at this hour?" he asked her sternly. "Go up-stairs again and get some more sleep. Run! I hear your mother coming." This piece of imagination had the desired effect. Carron lit a pipe and walked about in the open space through which the drive made its loop. He felt happy to see the terrier's ears lift faintly with returning interest in the world, happy to see that whatever he touched he was successful in. With the empty feeling of before-breakfast, the smoke of the pipe, the fine, light, out-of-door air he grew a little poetic, looked up at the façade of the new hotel and perceived a likeness in it to Mrs. Rader. It was spare, a little disapproving, but not in the least forbidding, with an exact sense of its position in society and its duty toward the world at large, and for these things a deep respect. Also the little vertical apertures for light, in the garret, gave a faint expression of anxiety. The old wing was Mr. Rader—not classic enough, but elderly, individual, unexpected, and having the courage of its convictions. There was nothing like Blanche, unless it were the pale, cool light and hot pools of sun in the pine forest. But she was not only the near light and shade, in which a man could rest and be stimulated. by the sharp, uncloying sweetness. She was also the inexhaustible blue arch of the sky.
Whistling between his teeth, the cold pipe held fast in them, his upper mind occupied, it occurred to his baser perceptions that the pine-needles had drifted a good deal in the last week. He hunted out a rake from the tool house and set himself to work, raking back the brown drift to the edges of the clearing, and then into separate little cocks with a good collar of bare earth around each. He remembered how, with the autumn, little pyres like these had been set blazing down the Greenwich streets; how the boys had leaped them, and the girls, in greater danger because of skirts. The thought floated in his mind of how Blanche would have leaped, with no fear of the fire, with only the fear of not leaping highest and best. He could see how she would look, a child with rough, streaming curls, and the light of competition in her eye. She would have permitted no boy but himself to be her better!
Gradually he had worked his way around the clearing, and around that point where the drive turned from it to descend the hill.The road was visible for several rods below him. He was more upon it now than the drive. Linnets crossed it, and rabbits; and presently a man came into sight around the bend and approached. This person appeared as a midget of the landscape, a little dab of humanity among trees, like those figures painters introduce, merely for the sake of showing the superiority of the trees; thus he seemed, until he had come far enough to stand opposite and fix his attention on Carron. Then, perforce, the figure was resolved into its separate identity, one that had been met and known under circumstances rather odd and which had scarcely recommended themselves.
Carron nodded to him, wishing him good morning. He had no renewal of antagonism. The disparity in strength was too great. This fellow, Ferrier, appeared not to thrive in the early morning hours. He looked pinched and hugged his arms as if he were chilly, and Carron revolved the problem as to whether there was any way of putting him in possession of a decent coat for the winter, at the same time not letting his pride suffer. That was as threadbare as his clothes—no doubt as sensitive to strain. The man was watching him rather longer than an interest in the occupation of sweeping leaves seemed to warrant.
"I think the people are down-stairs by this time," Carron observed, offering the only piece of information he could imagine Ferrier's wanting of him.
"Are they?" the voice coming suddenly, sounded harsh. Carron looked up, observed him for the first time clearly, saw the man planted there irresolutely. He wore bravado like a cloak of gossamer. Agitation was apparent beneath it. "I didn't think they'd be up just yet. Old man Rader said you always were up first. I thought—" He seemed to decide that this was not the way to begin it. "I've something to say to you," he started again with a louder and more determined voice. "Would you mind walking down the road a little way?"
Carron let his rake rest in a surprised hand. The voice, the face, the request were curiously out of tune with the hour. "Why not talk here?"
"I'd rather not. Besides," he gave it with quite an air, "it is to your advantage."
"Indeed? Then we will stay here, if you don't mind."
Ferrier narrowed his lips. He glanced at the hotel. All that was visible was the blank side of the greater house, with every shade drawn. "Doesn't make any difference to me," he remarked, throwing an accent on the last word, but he seemed a little taken aback. He made a meditative half-circle in the pine-needles with his heel, then looked up at Carron from under his brows. "I was only going to say, you seem to be wasting a lot of time."
"Yes?" Carron had the gift of not talking. He saw occasion for exercising it now.
"I told you you would," Ferrier volunteered. His adversary merely looked at him, only too ready to let the conversation fall. Ferrier gathered himself together. "I know how you are! You'll never help a fellow an inch with what he's got to say!" He wavered, summoning his last resolution. "The fact is, I've thought over what you said to me the other night about a certain matter and I've decided to accept your proposition."
Carron opened cold wide eyes of astonishment. The past, so little past, flung up to him in this man's voice created in him intense distaste. He had no wish to recall it. He did not want to remember that he had ever made a proposition to Ferrier—and such a proposition! He indulged a vague speculation as to what the man wanted. More money? If so, he was asking for it in a bad way. Carron put his hand meditatively into his pocket. "I don't know what you are talking about," he said.
"You know mighty well," the other man's voice assumed unpleasantly the tones of a confidant. "I mean I know where the horse is; I'll show you, and I'll show you straight whenever you like—" he paused and then shot the full splendor of the proposition—"for no further consideration!" This was an unexpected turn of the affair. Carron could not restrain a smile, but he felt a little puzzled.
"You don't mean she has shown you?" The keen pointed glint of panic looked out of Ferrier's eyes. "No, no! I know she hasn't," he added quickly. "She wouldn't. She never will! You'd better take my proposition. It's the only chance you'll get."
Carron reached for the rake. "Why, Ferrier," he said patiently, "I don't want it."
"But I do know," the man passionately insisted. "I know what I've seen. It isn't a fake. If a horse is what you want, there's no horse like him in the world!" He took hold of Carron's arm. "I'm telling you the truth, and I won't go back on you this time, I swear! I give you my word of honor!"
"Yes, yes, of course," Carron said rather soothingly, "I believe you, certainly I do. But you see I don't want the horse; and wouldn't take it as a gift. There's no use talking, that's the end of it."
Ferrier let his hand fall from Carron's sleeve. It appeared he had been sure of his cast. His trembling had not been at thought of failure, but at the peril to himself involved in success. Now he looked white. There was a slight sucking in of the nostrils. This fellow with the small, hawk look about his nose, perhaps had the hawk wish in his heart to peck, but lacked blood courage. "Then what are you staying for?"
Evidently they had reached the real issue of the case. Carron suffered illumination. "That," he said, picking up his rake, "is none of your business."
"If you think you're going to get her by staying," Ferrier breathlessly began, "you're fooled! You can't!" But his anguish told how little certain he was. "You can't, I tell you! No one can take her away from me! O, God!" The weight of his fear seemed to fall on him all at once. He sat down on the bank and took his head in his hands.
Carron looked at him with an embarrassed and compassionate eye. He felt very sorry for him. "Look here, Ferrier," he murmured, "there's no use in our talking—better drop it."
Ferrier was on his feet again. "Yes, we'll drop it! When you go!" That sound of pity in Carron's voice seemed to be more than he could bear. "I'll drop it, if you'll get out this day and this minute."
The man who had been struggling to leave this harrassing conversation and resume his mild occupation with dead leaves let the rake fall with a clatter on the ground. "Who directed me here?" he demanded. "Now what are you whimpering about?"
"Never mind this!" Ferrier declared shrilly. "I didn't direct you here for this reason. I thought you were a decent kind of a feller. I didn't expect you to come here, and take a girl and try to—"
Carron made the quick step of the boxer toward him. The fellow chocked the word and dodged. "You've got your chance to go peaceably and take the horse," he stammered—"or stay and you'll be kicked out in twenty-four hours. I'll tell them!" His voice began to rise as if it tried to reach the height of some appalling warning. "I'll tell Mrs. Rader."
Carron began to laugh. There was no sneer in the long sound of mirth. That threat had struck him as particularly funny. "All right," he said cheerfully. "Go ahead. You've my entire permission. Suppose we go up together now and you tell her about it." He looked at Ferrier with a bantering eye.
Ferrier's face was a peculiarly unpleasant dull red. "Do you think I don't mean it?"
"I think you mean every word—and I mean every word. Whenever you like; it's the same to me." He shouldered his rake and walked away up the drive.
He knew well enough that Ferrier would not follow him then and there. If he had supposed that he would have been nervous enough. The man could not tell Mrs. Rader more about himself and Blanche than she already knew or suspected; but he might put the business in an ugly light to her; considering his caliber and his state of mind he might say anything, and who could tell if Mrs. Rader might not believe him? As usual, at a crisis, Carron was without premeditated thought—but a series of decisions were born in his mind and produced immediate action. He walked rapidly, amusement still overflowing his eyes at the idea of Mrs. Rader as an avenging deity, one of whom Blanche would be in terror. Ferrier had been impertinent to the last degree; yet it was strange the way he could rouse no feeling but a sort of pity; and upon this occasion Carron was aware of a warmer and more positive feeling toward him—gratitude! Instead of hindering, the man had given him a push in the right direction. That morning Carron had been fancying the past and finding Blanche there. Now he had had a sharp impetus forward to the edge of the future. He looked into it rejoicing, seeing an actual world.
Reaching the house he found a check to the immediateness of his resolution. Mrs. Rader had one of her fainting attacks and Blanche was up-stairs with her, so Rader, solitary at the breakfast table, informed him. He had to wait. He inquired of the scholar what time the stage went down to Beckwith. Rader thought that it was at nine-thirty. He said no more, but once, even twice, Carron found him, with his attention lifted from his book, looking at him with a pondering eye. It took a deal to get the scholar's attention at this hour! The young man was apprehensive. He did not want to be questioned now. He didn't want to be questioned any more at all. That was not the way he intended the thing to go. He made haste to write out a message very plainly to Esmeralda Charley, so that the large words stood clear as print.
"Pay another week's storage on the stuff. Tell the people I will look out for it after that. Go home on the afternoon train.
Carron."
With this in his hand he presently made the descent of the hill at a good sprinter's pace, only in time to see the stage lumbering down the road, toward Beckwith, and sending up dust above the tree-tops. All Carron's attempts to attract the driver's attention were useless, for the rattle of the heavy wheels drowned his voice and the clouds of dust hid him from view.
He stuffed Esmeralda Charley's message in his pocket, deciding to start in time to catch the stage the next morning, then turned back to the house. He had some long hours to himself that day, and filled them only with his own impatience, and the setting alight of his heaps of pine-needles in the clearing. After lunch Blanche came, saying she hadn't a minute; but Mrs. Rader was better. She always had these "spells"—Blanche put it in the old country fashion—once or twice in a summer.
"Why, that's good," Carron said absently, and hastily explained that what he had meant was, it was good that she was better. What he had thought in fact had been, that happily, for the day at least, Ferrier could not get hold of her.
"You'll have to give me a minute," he said, "and a little more. I have something to say to you," and hailed her out.
On the side of the clearing, opposite the house, and in plain sight of it, they sat down beneath the fringe of trees. Below them flicked pointed flames, or pale blue threads rose straight in the still air, making it more misty. The smoke of the little fires was in their nostrils, the odor of the sacrifice to winter. "I want you to do me a very great favor," Carron said. "Probably you won't like it, but you will, won't you?"
"Yes." She was prompt. Had no hesitations.
"Tell your mother all about how the matter stands with us," he said. Then, as she fixed him with doubtful eyes, "You know—tell her that I've got to go back to the ranch at the end of this week, and you are going too. Aren't you?" he added, with a sudden edge of anxiety at finding her silent. Her breast rose in long breaths. Her head, inclined slightly forward, looked down upon the fires. "You knew that you were, didn't you?" he insisted, trying to get her averted eye.
"O, yes!" She turned to him and looked at him, as though once more she realized, with astonishment, how well she knew him. "But now that it has come, I—" She seemed to strain at a leash, aware perhaps for the first time how he had entrapped her fleet youth.
"It has come so soon," she murmured. "Can't we be like this a little longer? It's so lovely."
"But we can't. The end of the week, perhaps before, I've got to be off." He mused. "I suppose it will be rather a job, telling your mother. This is just what she has been afraid of."
Blanche laughed, and laughed again. "No, you goose! Don't you see?" Apparently he did not, and she unbent from her heights of wisdom, and enlightened him. "We have understood it so well from the very first that this was to be for ever and ever! We forgot that she might not know it."
He was blank.
"How stupid you are!" she said affectionately. "Mother has thought all along that you were a sad deceiver."
"Good Lord!" He took a rapid glance at the past. "Do you mean to tell me she couldn't see that I was the dust under your feet?"
"You didn't act like it." Their faces were near together.
"I felt like it so hard, I never thought of anything else. The poor lady!" He was contrite enough, even a little shocked, but couldn't help feeling amused. Mrs. Rader's idea of the situation struck him as a little theatric. "Then you must tell her now, immediately."
Presented with the practical proposition, Blanche began to show signs of wishing to evade it. "But she is asleep."
"Well, then, as soon as she wakes."
"Oh, dear, I hate to. She will say we ought to wait— that we haven't known each other long enough."
"But we won't and we have. The short time is a distinct advantage. You can tell her that."
"No, you do it." Carron would not have made that flippant remark to Mrs. Rader for any consideration, and he suspected that the wicked girl knew it.
"I have to see your father," he said with great dignity.
She looked at him quaintly. "O, that will just be fun! I can't imagine father under such circumstances. What do you suppose he will say?"
"He will say that like all sinners, I have great hopes of heaven."
They used frivolous, mirthful words, but their eyes said deeper things to each other, and half spoken sentences were forgotten on their lips. She was the first to remember the time. "Oh, how long have we been here? And mother may be wanting me!" She fled; but at the veranda steps, she stopped, conscience smitten. "We forgot all about him!" she said in a horrified voice.
"Who?"
"Beetles!" At the sound of his name the dog turned his head with lifted ears, and weakly beat his tail.
"So we did; but he's all right. He's coming along nicely." Carron examined his patient with gratification. "To-morrow he'll be on his feet."
She fell on her knees beside the terrier, took his head between her hands, murmured reproaches of herself, and endearing words, promises of joy for the future—she would even let him chase rabbits. Then, springing up, she flung her arms around Carron and ecstatically whirled him. "What shall I do for you, who have done so much? It must be something very wonderful."
"You are going to do something more than wonderful," he answered.
"O, but over and above that," she insisted.
"There is nothing."
She let him have his way with his conviction. It was hers too. She went, her feet rushing on the stair. Never before, perhaps never afterward, did they have quite that wild music of joy in toes and heels.
He thought of it in his room that night, after the whole house was still. Like a refrain of delight it recurred between the soberer sentences of his discussion with Rader. Blanche's prophecy had been fulfilled. It had been fun telling the scholar. "What do you want to do that for?" he had demanded of the young man who had announced himself as wanting to marry his daughter. Carron, who, two weeks ago, would have put the same question to any acquaintance, had been able immediately to give reasons as to why he was wiser than all men. The scholar had shaken his head. "But what is she going to say to your profession?"
Here he had struck a point truly; but Carron had ridden it down. He had snapped his ringers. "O, what difference will that make to her now? She won't have to see anything of it; and besides, she has something else to think of. Why, look at me, think of what I came here for! Think of how I was then, and now look at me."
Rader had done so silently for some seconds. "And you have given up your first idea?" he inquired.
"It doesn't seem worth worrying her about," Carron answered.
"Why need she be worried about it?" Rader had answered with such a peculiar significance that Carron looked at him in astonishment. "The horse," the scholar proceeded, unfolding his meaning, "is only an idea to her, isn't it? She has no desire to possess it. She only wants to see it while it's here. She knows that presently it will disappear, go back, perhaps, to the plains." He looked dreamily at the horse-breaker's hands. "Now, suppose you wanted the horse; and suppose you knew where it was, and just how to get it; you could easily take it, couldn't you, and she would never be any the wiser?"
Carron shook with amusement now, when he remembered it. The old theorizer had accurately worked the matter out; and certainly he had hit the nail on the head! It seemed the scholar and he had rather changed places since the first time they had talked in the study. He could laugh about it now in his room. But he had felt a little tormented while the scholar had probed the old passion with his accurate supposition. He realized it was there yet; but it was there as a background for the new, young, more fiery passion, which he had not grown up with and become accustomed to, but which had seized him in his full strength, melted him and translated him with its wonder and with its promises. This held other thought at a distance. He still heard clearer than anything else; the joyous running of Blanche's feet.
He blew out his candle, since already a brightness, which sifted into his room from without, made the pointed flames pale. Upon his floor and all across the wall, lay marvelous tracery of black and silver, a perfect mimic—lacking only color—of the trees outside. He was standing in the enchanted semblance of a wood. He remembered that for the eight past days this brocading had been gray. He drew a curtain aside. The fan of cloud, that coquetry of the moon, was furled and gone; the sky stood deep and clear above the pines. The moon's self was not high enough yet to be visible, since to be visible from where he stood she must reach nearly mid-heaven, but her radiance was upon everything.
The circle of tall trees solemnly surrounding the clearing made a wreath of shadows like velvet, and all that was not shadow was drenched in clear white fire. Between the clouded and the clear moonlight there was such difference as between beauty clothed and beauty unveiled. The sight of this brought him thoughts, strange and beautiful past the telling. He let the curtain fall, and turned back. The hour was scant eleven o'clock, but the house was still. He was not tired, not sleepy. He was preternaturally wide-awake. There seemed to be an owl on the edge of the clearing, complaining in its deep chest voice. The body of a bat struck his window-screen. The creatures all came out with full moon. There it was again, that sound, a swish and a soft thud. This time it flew higher and hit the glass. His coat half off, he turned and looked attentively. In a moment, up-shooting from below, plop, the small, dark object came a third time. He realized now what was happening. Some one had thrown a sod of earth lightly against his window-pane.