Over the Pass

by Frederick Palmer

  XXXII

  A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY

  A library atmosphere was missing from the Wingfield library, with itsheavy panelling and rows of red and blue morocco backs. Rather thesuggestion was of a bastion of privacy, where a man of action might makehis plans or take counsel at leisure amid rich and mellow surroundings.Here, John Wingfield, Sr. had gained points through post-prandialgeniality which he could never have won in the presence of the battery ofpush-buttons; here, his most successful conceptions had come to him;here, he had known the greatest moments of his life. He was right insaying that he loved his library; but he hardly loved it for its books.

  When he returned to the house shortly before nine from his session withDr. Bennington, it was with the knowledge that another great moment wasin prospect. He took a few turns up and down the room before he rang forthe butler to tell Jack that he had come in. Then he placed a chair nearthe desk, where its occupant would sit facing him. After he sat down hemoved the desk lamp, which was the only light in the room, so that itsrays fell on the back of the chair and left his own face in shadow--aprecaution which he had taken on many other occasions in adroitness ofstage management. He drew from the humidor drawer of his desk a box ofthe long cigars with blunt ends which need no encircling gilt band inpraise of their quality.

  As Jack entered, the father welcomed him with a warm, paternal smile. Andbe it remembered that John Wingfield, Sr. could smile most pleasantly,and he knew the value of his smile. Jack answered the smile with one ofhis own, a little wan, a little subdued, yet enlivening under the glow ofhis father's evident happiness at seeing him. The father, who hadtransgressed the rules of longevity by taking a second cigar afterdinner, now pushed the box across the desk to his son. Jack said that hewould "roll one"; he did not care to smoke much. He produced a smallpackage of flake tobacco and a packet of rice paper and with a deftnessthat was like sleight of hand made a cigarette without spilling a singleflake. He had not always chosen the "makings" in place of private stockHavanas, but it seemed to suit his mood to-night.

  "That is one of the things you learned in the West," the father observedaffably, to break the ice.

  "I can do them with one hand," Jack answered. "But you are likely tohave an overflow--which is all right when you have the whole desert forthe litter. Besides, in a library it would have the effect of galleryplay, I fear."

  He was seated in a way that revealed all the supple lines of his figure.However relaxed his attitude before his father, it was always suggestiveof latent strength, appealing at once to paternal pride and paternaluncertainty as to what course the strength would take. His face under thelight of the lamp was boyish and singularly without trace of guile.

  The father struck a match and held it to light his son's cigarette;another habit of his which he had found flattering to men who werebrought into the library for conference. Jack took a puff slowly and,after a time, another puff, and then dropped the cigarette on the ashreceiver as much as to say that he had smoked enough. Something told JohnWingfield, Sr. that this was to be a long interview and in no wayhurried, as he saw the smile dying on the son's lips and misery cominginto the son's eyes.

  "These last two days have been pretty poignant for me," Jack began, in asimple, outright fashion; "and only half an hour ago I got this. It washard to resist taking the first train West." He drew a telegram from hispocket and handed it to his father.

  "We want you and though we don't suppose you can come, we simply had tolet you know.

  "JAMES R. GALWAY."

  "It is Greek to me," said the father. "From your Little Riversfriends, I judge."

  "Yes. I suppose that we may as well begin with it, as it drove everythingelse out of my mind for the moment."

  John Wingfield, Sr. swung around in his chair, with his face in theshadow. His attitude was that of a companionable listener who is preparedfor any kind of news.

  "As you will, Jack," he said. "Everything that pertains to you is myinterest. Go ahead in your own way."

  "It concerns John Prather. I don't know that I have ever told you abouthim in my talks of Little Rivers."

  "John Prather?" The father reflectively sounded the name, the while hestudied the spiral of smoke rising from his cigar. "No, I don't think youhave mentioned him."

  It was Jack's purpose to take his father entirely into his confidence; toreveal his own mind so that there should be nothing of its perplexitieswhich his father did not understand. He might not choose a logicalsequence of thought or event, but in the end nothing should be leftuntold. Indeed, he had not studied how to begin his inquiries. That hehad left to take care of itself. His chief solicitude was to keep hismind open and free of bitterness whatever transpired, and it was evidentthat he was under a great strain.

  He told of the coming of John Prather to Little Rivers while he wasabsent; of the mention of the likeness by his fellow-ranchers; and of thefears entertained by Jim Galway and Mary. When he came to the scene inthe store that afternoon it was given in a transparent fulness of detail;while all his changing emotions, from his first glimpse of Prather'sprofile to the effort to speak with him and the ultimatum of Prather'ssatirical gesture, were reflected in his features. He was thestory-teller, putting his gift to an unpleasant task in illumination ofsober fact and not the uses of imagination; and his audience was hisfather's cheek and ear in the shadow.

  "Extraordinary!" John Wingfield, Sr. exclaimed when Jack had finished,glancing around with a shrug. "Naturally, you were irritated. I like tothink that only two men have the Wingfield features--the features of theancestor--yes, only two: you and I!"

  "It was more than irritation; it was something profound and disturbing,almost revolting!" Jack exclaimed, under the disagreeable spell of hisvivid recollection of the incident. "The resemblance to you was sostriking, father, especially in the profile!" Jack was leaning forward,the better to see his father's profile, dim in the half light. "Yes,recognizable instantly--the nose and the lines about the mouth! You havenever met anyone who has seen this man? You have never heard of him?" heasked, almost morbidly.

  John Wingfield, Sr. broke into a laugh, which was deprecatory andmetallic. He looked fairly into Jack's eyes with a kind of inquiringamazement at the boy's overwrought intensity.

  "Why, no, Jack," he said, reassuringly. "If I had I shouldn't haveforgotten it, you may be sure. And, well, Jack, there is no use of beingsensitive about it, though I understand your indignation--especiallyafter he flaunted the fact of the resemblance in such a manner andrefused to meet you. From what I have heard about that fight withLeddy--Dr. Bennington told me--I can appreciate why he did not care tomeet you." He laughed, more genially this time, in the survey of hisson's broad shoulders. "I fear there is something of the old ancestor'sdevil in you when you get going!" he added.

  So his father had seen this, too--what Mary had seen--this thing born inhim with the coming of his strength!

  "Yes, I suppose there is," he admitted, ruefully. "Yes, I have reason toknow that there is."

  His face went moody. Any malice toward John Prather passed. He waspenitent for a feeling against a stranger that seemed akin to the dormantinstinct that had made him glory in holding a bead on Pete Leddy.

  "And I am glad of it!" said John Wingfield, Sr., with a flash of strongeremotion than he had yet shown in the interview.

  "I am not. It makes me almost afraid of myself," Jack answered.

  "Oh, I don't mean firing six-shooters--hardly! I mean backbone," hehastened to add, almost ingratiatingly. "It is a thing to control, Jack,not to worry about."

  "Yes, to control!" said Jack, dismally.

  He was hearing Ignacio's cry of "The devil is out of Senor Don't Care!"and seeing for the thousandth time Mary's horrified face as he pressedPedro Nogales against the hedge. Now poise was all on the side of thefather, who glanced away from Jack at the glint of the library cases inthe semi-darkness in satisfaction. But only a moment did the son's absentmood last. He leaned forward quivering, free from his spe
ll ofreflection, and his words came pelting like hail. He was at grip with thephantoms and nothing should loosen his hold till the truth was out.

  "Father, I could not fail to see the look on your face and the look onJasper Ewold's when you found him in the drawing-room!"

  At the sudden reversal of his son's attitude, John Wingfield, Sr. haddrawn back into the shadow, as, if in defensive instinct before the forcethat was beating in Jack's voice.

  "Yes, I was startled; yes, very startled! But, go on! Speak everythingthat you have in mind; for it is evident that you have much to say. Goon!" he repeated more calmly, and turned his face farther into theshadow, while he inclined his head toward Jack as if to hear better. Oneleg had drawn up under him and was pressing against the chair.

  Jack waited a moment to gather his thoughts. When he spoke hispassion was gone.

  "We have always been as strangers, father," he began. "I have norecollection of you in childhood until that day you came as a stranger tothe house at Versailles. I was seven, then. My mother was away, as youwill recall. I remember that you did not kiss me or show any affection.You did not even say who you were. You looked me over, and I was veryfrail. I saw that I did not please you; and I did not like you. In mychildish perversity I would speak only French to you, which you did notunderstand. When my mother came home, do you remember her look? I do. Shewent white as chalk and trembled. I was frightened with the thought thatshe was going to die. It was a little while before she spoke and when shedid speak she was like stone. She asked you what you wanted, as if youwere an intruder. You said: 'I have been looking at the boy!' Yourexpression told me again that you were not pleased with me. Withoutanother word you departed. I can still hear your steps on the walk as youwent away; they were so very firm."

  "Yes, Jack, I can never forget." The tone was that of a man racked. "Whatelse?" he asked. "Go on, Jack!"

  "You know the life my mother and I led, study and play together. Andthat was the only time you saw me until I was fourteen. I was mortally inawe of you then and in awe of you the day I went West with your messageto get strong. But I got strong; yes, strong, father!"

  "Yes, Jack," said the father. "Yes, Jack, leave nothing unsaid--nothing!"

  Now Jack swept back to the villa garden in Florence, the day of theDoge's call; and from there to the Doge's glance of recognition thatfirst night in Little Rivers; then to the scene in front of thebookstore, when the Doge hesitated about going to see the Velasquez. Hepictured the Doge's absorption over the mother's portrait; he repeatedMary's story on the previous evening.

  All the while the profile, so dimly outlined in the outer darkness beyondthe lamp's circle of light, to which he had been speaking, had notstirred. The father's cigar had gone out. It lay idly in his fingers,which rested on the arm of the chair, above a tiny pile of ashes on therug. But there was no other sign of emotion, except his half affirmativeinterjections, with a confessional's encouragement to empty the mind ofits every affliction.

  "Why were my mother and myself always in exile? What was this barrierbetween you and her? Why was it that I never saw you? Why this bitternessof Jasper Ewold against you? Why should that bitterness be turned againstme? I want to know, father, so that we can start afresh and right. I nolonger want to be in the dark, with its mystery, but in the light, whereI can grapple with the truth!"

  There was no rancor, no crashing of sentences; only high tension in thefinality of an inquiry in which hope and fear rose together.

  "Yes, Jack!" exclaimed John Wingfield, Sr., after a silence in which heseemed to be passing all that Jack had said in review. "I am glad youhave told me this; that you have come to the one to whom you should comein trouble. You have made it possible for me to speak of something that Inever found a way to speak about, myself. For, Jack, you truly have beena stranger to me and I to you, thanks to the chain of influences whichyou have mentioned."

  Very slowly John Wingfield, Sr. had turned in his chair. Distress wasrising in his tone as he leaned toward Jack. His face under the rim oflight of the lamp had a new charm, which was not that of the indulgent orflattering or winning smile, or the masterful set of his chin on anobject. He seemed pallid and old, struggling against a phantom himself;almost pitiful, this man of strength, while his eyes looked into Jack'swith limpid candor.

  "Jack, I will tell you all I can," he said. "I want to. It is duty. It isrelief. But first, will you tell me what your mother told you? What herreasons were? I have a right to know that, haven't I, in my effort tomake my side clear?" He spoke in direct, intimate appeal.

  Jack's lips were trembling and his whole nature was throbbing in anew-found sympathy. For the first time he saw his father as a man ofsensitive feeling, capable of deep suffering. And he was to have thetruth, all the truth, in kindness and affection.

  "After you had left the house at Versailles," said Jack, "she took me inher arms and said that you were my father. 'Did you like him?' she asked;and I said no, realizing nothing but the childish impression of theinterview. At that she was wildly, almost hysterically, triumphant. I wasglad to have made her so happy. 'You are mine alone! You have only me!'she declared over and over again. 'And you must never ask me anyquestions, for that is best.' She never mentioned you afterward; and inall my life, until I was fourteen, I was never away from her."

  Again the palm of John Wingfield, Sr.'s hand ran back and forth over hisknee and the foot that was against the chair leg beat a nervous tattoo;while he drew a longer breath than usual, which might have been either ofsurprise or relief. His face fell back behind the rim of the lamp's rays,but he did not turn it away as he had when Jack was talking.

  "You know only the Jasper Ewold who has been mellowed by time," he began."His scholarship was a bond of companionship for you in the isolation ofa small community. I know him as boy and young man. He was veryprecocious. At the age of eight, as I remember, he could read his Caesar.You will appreciate what that meant in a New England town--that he wassomewhat spoiled by admiration. And, naturally, his character and minewere very different, thanks to the difference in our situations; for theEwolds had a good deal of money in those days. I was the type of boy whowas ready to work at any kind of odd job in order to get dimes andquarters for my little bank.

  "Well, it is quite absurd to go back to that as the beginning of JasperEwold's feelings toward me; but one day young Wingfield felt that youngEwold was patronizing him. We had a turn at fisticuffs which resulted inmy favor. Jasper was a proud boy, and he never quite forgave me. In fact,he was not used to being crossed. Learning was easy for him; he wasgood-looking; he had an attractive manner, and it seemed only his rightthat all doors should open when he knocked. Soon after our battle he wentaway to school. Not until we were well past thirty did our paths crossagain. He was something of a painter, but he really had had no setpurpose in life except the pleasures of his intellectual diversions. Iwill not say that he was wild, but at least he had lived in the abundantfreedom of his opportunities. He fell in love at the same time that I didwith Alice Jamison. You have seen your mother's picture, but that givesyou little idea of her beauty in girlhood."

  "I have always thought her beautiful!" Jack exclaimed spontaneously.

  "Yes. I am glad. She always was beautiful to me; but I like best to thinkof her before she turned against me. I like to think of her as she was inthe days of our courtship. Fortune favored me instead of Jasper Ewold. Ican well understand the blow it was to him, that she should take thestorekeeper, the man without learning, the man without family, as peoplesupposed then, when he thought that she belonged entirely to his world.But his enmity thereafter I can only explain by his wounded pride; by amortal defeat for one used to having his way, for one who had never knowndiscipline. Your mother and I were very happy for a time. I thought thatshe loved me and had chosen me because I was a man of purpose, whileJasper Ewold was not."

  John Wingfield, Sr. spoke deliberately, measuring his thought before heput it into words, as if he were trying to set himself apart as onefigure
in a drama while he aimed to do exact justice to the others.

  "It was soon after you were born that your mother's attitude changed. Shewas, as you know, supersensitive, and whatever her grievances were shekept them to herself. My immersion in my affairs was such that I couldnot be as attentive to her as I ought to have been. Sometimes I thoughtthat the advertisement with our name in big letters in every morningpaper might be offensive to her; again, that she missed in me theeducation I had had to forfeit in youth, and that my affection couldhardly take its place. I know that Jasper Ewold saw her occasionally, andin his impulse I know that he said things about me that were untrue. Butthat I pass over. In his place I, too, might have been bitter.

  "The best explanation I can find of your mother's change toward me is onethat belongs in the domain of psychology and pathology. She suffered agreat deal at your birth and she never regained her former strength. Whenshe rose from her bed it was with a shadow over her mind. I saw that shewas unhappy and nervous in my presence. Indeed, I had at times to facethe awful sensation of feeling that I was actually repugnant to her. Shewas especially irritable if I kissed or fondled you. She dropped all herfriends; she never made calls; she refused to see callers. I consultedspecialists and all the satisfaction I had was that she was of apeculiarly high-strung nature and that in certain phases of melancholia,where there is no complete mental and physical breakdown, the patientturns on the one whom she would hold nearest and dearest if she werenormal. The child that had taken her strength became the virtual passionof her worship, which she would share with no one.

  "When she proposed to go to Europe for a rest, taking you with her, Iwelcomed the idea. I rejoiced in the hope that the doctors held out thatshe would come back well, and I ventured to believe in a happy future,with you as our common object of love and care. But she never returned,as you know; and she only wrote me once, a wild sort of letter about whata beautiful boy you were and that she had you and I had the store and Iwas never to send her any more remittances.

  "I made a number of trips to Europe. I could not go frequently, becausein those days, Jack, I was a heavy borrower of money in the expansion ofmy business, and only one who has built up a great business canunderstand how, in the earlier and more uncertain period of our bankingcredits, the absence of personal attention in any sudden crisis mightthrow you on the rocks. Naturally, when I went I wrote to Alice that Iwas coming; but I always found that she had gone and left no address forforwarding mail from the Credit Lyonnais. Once when I went withoutwriting she eluded me, and the second time I found that she had a cottageat Versailles. That, as you know, was the only occasion when I ever sawyou or her until I came to bring you home after her sudden death."

  "Yes," Jack whispered starkly. "That day I had left her as well asusual and came home to find her lying still and white on a couch, herbook fallen out of her hand onto the floor and--" the words choked inhis throat.

  "And the stranger, your father, who came for you seemed very hard andforbidding to you!"

  "Yes," Jack managed to say.

  "But, Jack, when my steps sounded so firm the day I left you atVersailles it was the firmness of force of will fighting to accept theinevitable. For I had seen your face. It was like mine, and yet I had togive you up! I had to give you up knowing that I might not see you again;knowing that this tragic, incomprehensible fatality had set you againstme; knowing that any further efforts to see you meant only pain for Aliceand for me. Whatever happiness she knew came from you, and that sheshould have. And remember, Jack, that out of all this tragedy I, too, hadmy point of view. I had my moments of reproach against fate; my momentsof bitterness and anger; my moments when I set all my mind with, volcanicenergy into my affairs in order to forget my misfortune. I had to buildfor the sake of building. Perhaps that hardened me.

  "When you came home I saw that you were mine in blood but not mine inheart. All your training had been foreign, all of estrangement from thebusiness and the ways of the home-country; which you could not help, Icould not help, nothing now could help. But, after all, I had beenbuilding for you; that was my new solace. I wanted you to be equal towhat was coming to you, and that change meant discipline. To be frankwith you, as you have been with me, you were sickly, hectic, dreamy; andwhen word came that you must go to the desert if your life were to besaved--well, Jack, I had to put affection aside and consider this blowfor what it was, and think not of kind words but of what was best for youand your future. I knew that my duty to you and your duty to yourself wasto see you become strong, and for your sake you must not return until youwere strong.

  "Now, as for the scene in the drawing-room the other day: I could notforget what Jasper Ewold had said of me. That was one thing. Another wasthat I had detected his influence over you; an influence against thepurpose and steadiness that I was trying to inculcate in you; andsuddenly coming upon him in my own house, in view of his enmity and theway in which he had spoken about me, I was naturally startled andindignant and withdrew to avoid a scene. That is all, Jack. I haveanswered your questions to the best of my knowledge. If others occur toyou I will try my best to answer them, too;" and the father seemed readyto submit every recess of his mind to the son's inquisition.

  "You have answered everything," said Jack; "everything--fairly,considerately, generously."

  There was a flash of triumph in the father's eyes. Slowly he rose andstood with his finger-ends caressing the blotting-pad. Jack rose atthe same time, his movement automatic, instinctively in sympathy withhis father's. His head was bowed under stress of the emotion,incapable of translation into language, which transfixed him. It hadall been made clear, this thing that no one could help. His feelingtoward his mother could never change; but penetrating to the depths inwhich it had been held sacred was a new feeling. The pain that hadbrought him into the world had brought misery to the authors of hisbeing. There was no phantom except the breath of life in his nostrilswhich they had given him.

  Watchfully, respecting the son's silence, the father's lips tightened,his chin went out slightly and his brows drew together in a way thatindicated that he did not consider the battle over. At length, Jack'shead came up and his face had the strength of a youthful replica of theancestor's, radiant in gratitude, and in his eyes for the first time, inlooking into his father's, were trust and affection. There was no word,no other demonstration except the steady, liquid look that spoke thebirth of a great, understanding comradeship. The father fed his hungerfor possession, which had been irresistibly growing in him for the lasttwo months, on that look. He saw his son's strength as something that hadat last become malleable; and this was the moment when the metal was atwhite heat, ready for knowing turns with the pincers and knowing blows ofthe hammer.

  The message from Jim Galway was still on the table where the father hadlaid it after reading. Now he pressed his fingers on it so hard that thenails became a row of red spots.

  "And the telegram, Jack?" he asked.

  Jack stared at the yellow slip of paper as the symbol of problems thatreappeared with burning acuteness in his mind. It smiled at him in thesatire of John Prather triumphing in Little Rivers. It visualizedpictures of lean ranchers who had brought him flowers in the days of hisconvalescence; of children gathered around him on the steps of hisbungalow; of all the friendly faces brimming good-will into his own onthe day of his departure; of a patch of green in desert loneliness, witha summons to arms to defend its arteries of life.

  "They want me to help--I half promised!" he said.

  "Yes. And just how can you help?" asked his father, gently.

  "Why, that is not quite clear yet. But a stranger, they made me one ofthemselves. They say that they need me. And, father, that thrilled me. Itthrilled the idler to find that there was some place where he could be ofservice; that there was some one definite thing that others thought hecould do well!"

  The father proceeded cautiously, reasonably, with his questions, as onewho seeks for light for its own sake. Jack's answers were luminouslyfrank. For there
was always to be truth between them in their newfellowship, unfettered by hopes or vagaries.

  "You could help with your knowledge of law? With political influence?Help these men seasoned by experience in land disputes in that region?"

  "No!"

  "And would Jasper Ewold, whom I understand is the head and founder of thecommunity, want you to come? Has he asked you?" the father continued,drawing in the web of logic.

  "On the contrary, he would not want me."

  "And Miss Ewold? Would she want you?"

  There Jack hesitated. When he spoke, however, it was to admit the factthat was stabbing him.

  "No, she would not. She has dismissed me. But--but I half promised," headded, his features setting firmly as they had after Leddy had fired athim. "It seems like duty, unavoidable."

  The metal was cooling, losing its malleability, and the father proceededto thrust it back into the furnace.

  "Then, I take it that your value to Little Rivers is your cool handwith a gun," he said, "and the summons is to uncertainties which maylead to something worse than a duel. You are asked to come because youcan fight. Do you want to go for that? To go to let the devil, as youcall it, out of you?"

  Now the metal was soft with the heat of the shame of the moment when Jackhad called to Leddy, "I am going to kill you!" and of the moment when hesaw Pedro Nogales's limp, broken arm and ghastly face.

  "No, no!" Jack gasped. "I want no fight! I never want to draw a bead on aman again! I never want to have a revolver in my hand again!"

  He was shuddering, half leaning against the desk for support. Hisfather waited in observant comprehension. Convulsively, Jackstraightened with desperation and all the impassioned pleading to Maryon the pass was in his eyes.

  "But the thing that I cannot help--the transcendent thing, not of logic,not of Little Rivers' difficulties--how am I to give that up?" he cried.

  "Miss Ewold, you mean?"

  "Yes!"

  "Jack, I know! I understand! Who should understand if not I?" The fatherdrew Jack's hand into his own, and the fluid force of his desire formastery was flowing out from his finger-ends into the son's fibres, whichwere receptively sensitive to the caress. "I know what it is when thewoman you love dismisses you! You have her to think of as well asyourself. Your own wish may not be lord. You may not win that which willnot be won"--how well he knew that!--"either by protest, by persistence,or by labor. You are dealing with the tender and intangible; withfeminine temperament, Jack. And, Jack, it is wise for you, isn't it, tobear in mind that your life has not been normal? With the switch fromdesert to city life homesickness has crept over you. From to-night thingswill not be so strange, will they? But if you wish a change, go toEurope--yes, go, though I cannot bear to think of losing you the verymoment that we have come to know each other; when the past is clear andamends are at hand.

  "And, Jack, if your mother were here with us and were herself, would shewant you to go back to take up a rifle instead of your work at my side? Ido not pretend to understand Jasper Ewold's or Mary Ewold's thoughts. Shehas preferred to make another generation's ill-feeling her own in a thingthat concerns her life alone. She has seen enough of you to know hermind. For, from all I hear, you have not been a faint-hearted lover. Isit fair to her to follow her back to the desert? Is it the courage ofself-denial, of control of impulse on your part? Would your mother wantyou to persist in a veritable conquest by force of your will, whosestrength you hardly realize, against Mary Ewold's sensibilities? And ifyou broke down her will, if you won, would there be happiness for you andfor her? Jack, wait! If she cares for you, if there is any germ of lovefor you in her, it will grow of itself. You cannot force it into blossom.Come, Jack, am I not right?"

  Jack's hands lay cold and limp in his father's; so limp that it seemedonly a case of leading, now. Yet there was always the uncertain in theboy; the uncertain hovering under that face of ashes that the father wasso keenly watching; a face so clearly revealing the throes of a strugglethat sent cold little shivers into his father's warm grasp. Jack's eyeswere looking into the distance through a mist. He dropped the lids as ifhe wanted darkness in which to think. When he raised them it was to lookin his father's eyes firmly. There was a half sob, as if thissentimentalist, this Senor Don't Care, had wrung determination from aprecipice edge, even as Mary Ewold had. He gripped his father's handsstrongly and lifted them on a level with his breast.

  "You have been very fine, father! I want you to be patient and go onhelping me. The trail is a rough one, but straight, now. I--I'm toobrimming full to talk!" And blindly he left the library.

  When the door closed, John Wingfield, Sr. seized the telegram, rolled itup with a glad, fierce energy and threw it into the waste-basket. Hishead went up; his eyes became points of sharp flame; his lips parted in asmile of relief and triumph and came together in a straight line beforehe sank down in his chair in a collapse of exhaustion. After a while hehad the decanter brought in; he gulped a glass of brandy, lighted anothercigar, and, swinging around, fell back at ease, his mind a blank exceptfor one glowing thought:

  "He will not go! He will give up the girl! He is to be all mine!"

  It is said that the best actors never go on the stage. They play realparts in private life, making their own lines as they watch the otherplayers. One of this company, surveying the glint of his bookcases, wassatisfied with the greatest effort of his life in his library.