The Wayfarers. Mary Stewart Cutting
one, even though it promise much, is like taking a leap off into space.
The opportunity for which he had been longing indefinitely any time for six years back had come at last, but it had brought with it at this moment a strange and unanticipated sadness, after the absorbing calculations of the evening; the natural buoyancy of a mind pleased with a new undertaking and eager for power had given place to a weight of responsibility and foreboding. How much, and how much, and yet how much, depended on his efforts! He must not, could not, fail; and yet, when he had succeeded, what would success bring him individually that he had not now? Where would be his real and vital compensation? The toil of years piled up before him, with the pain of satisfied ambition at the end of it.
In the loneliness of the hour the loneliness of his soul stood confessed before him. He yearned at the moment unutterably, and with a mighty longing, for another to be as one with that soul in the comprehension of mood and aim and means and accomplishment which is in itself the deepest sympathy. His wife—she was very sweet, she was very beloved, but her utmost understanding of this life of his was the conscious effort of one who lived in an alien sphere. His children—he loved them fondly, but the responsibility of their future years weighed upon him; as long as he could foresee, the eyes of all would still wait upon him in his rôle of provider—neither in body nor in spirit could he ever again have the rest of freedom.
Then there came to him, swiftly and inexplicably, and in spite of the inner knowledge of true love for the bonds that held him, a wild desire for the untrammeled liberty of his boyish days. If he could take his fishing-rod and tramp off through the woods by himself, or lie on a bank under the green trees and dabble his bare feet in the brown pools of the brook that flowed beneath the bank, with none to look for him or question why, and have neither yesterday nor to-morrow to hamper him, but only the joy of living! To saunter back to the house late in the warm afternoon with a string of fish over his shoulder and a book under his arm! He knew how the cold draught of buttermilk tasted after the long and dusty walk, when he dipped it up with a china cup out of the stone crock on the wooden bench in the cool cellar. Oh, the happy, careless day!
The primeval, savage spirit of man awoke now and grew uppermost in him to escape from civilization and wander as he would upon the brown earth, without let or hindrance! In those far-off wilds where men tracked beasts to their lair he might leave his footsteps in the hot sands also, and joy in the fierce delight of killing. He had lost all connection now with his environment. The air that blew down from the hills and touched his cheek might have come over the burning desert, or have been freighted with the warm salt spray from wide tropical seas on which he sailed, never to return. Dark and darker thoughts possessed him now. His roaming fancy——
“Are you up still?”
Justin started—it was the voice of his wife. He came back to the familiar region of warm human love with a glad bound of relief so instantaneous that he had not even shame for his abnormal wanderings; they became already as though they had never been as he answered:
“Yes; I couldn’t have slept if I had gone to bed.”
“But you’re all cold sitting by that window, with the night air blowing in on you!”
Her hands had found out that fact in the darkness as they closed around his neck.
“Shut the window at once! You’re so imprudent. You must remember that it isn’t summer now.”
She lent herself to his embrace for a moment.
“Do you know how late it is?”
“No, and I don’t want to. Let’s sit here together for a little while, I’m unspeakably wide awake! I’ll make up a little fire for a few minutes and we’ll have a midnight talk.”
She laughed with evident pleasure. “Well!”
He took a match out of his pocket and, kneeling down on the hearth, lighted the small pine logs which were piled up there. A sudden flame brought into bold relief his sinewy frame and clear-cut features as he leaned forward—the light, waving hair pushed upward, and the strong set mouth and chin. His wife drew a low chair forward by him and put out her bare feet in their pink Turkish slippers to catch the warmth. When he turned, the flame had caught her also in its flaring light, and rose and wavered and fell around her.
It used to be the fashion in the old story-books to represent the parents of even the youngest infant as people of mature age and didactic wisdom; to be a mother was to be removed forever from the precincts of social vanities or young and active living. One can find in the books of fifty years ago the picture of a woman, austerely middle-aged, with banded hair, a cap, a long nose, and a kerchief, dispensing advice to abnormally small children in trousers and pinafores who cluster at her knees. Lois Alexander would have been a revelation to that epoch; with her white lace-frilled draperies wrapped around her and her pink-slippered feet, she might have served as a distinctly modern illustration of youthful motherhood.
She was not very tall, but gave the effect of height in her bearing. Her form was beautifully rounded and her throat and neck were of a soft whiteness peculiarly their own. Everything about her was richly colored—her lips, her cheeks, her blue eyes, which had a certain rayed starriness in them, and her brown hair, which, when it lay, as now, unfastened, fell in large loose curls upon her bosom. Her usual expression was somewhat pensive and absorbed, as if she were thinking of herself; but when she smiled she seemed to think only of you.
She put a soft detaining hand on his shoulder as he bent forward watching the blaze in a new absorption.
“I know you’re thinking of the new venture.”
“Yes; it’s a good deal to think of.”
“I should say so!” She caught her breath admiringly. “I listened to you and those men talking to-night until I couldn’t stand it a moment longer. I should think those figures would drive you crazy!”
“They won’t drive me crazy if I can make them come out as I wish,” said Justin emphatically.
“But I thought it was all settled that you could!”
“Oh, yes—on paper. Everything looks all right there—and it shall be, too! But when you get to working things out in real life you must allow for differences. I know the machine is good—I don’t take any chances on that, as I told you before; but there are new machines put on the market all the time to compete with; we haven’t a monopoly.”
“Well, you can make your prices lower than the others,” she suggested brightly.
“Oh, yes, of course,” he explained with patience, “but if we put prices too low there’s no profit. We may have to do it for a while, though; we’ve got to be seen doing business, even if it’s at a loss. That’s what the fifty thousand’s for—to tide us over just such a time.”
“It is a great deal to have to pay back,” she said anxiously, leaning forward to throw a small log on the fire. “I don’t like you to saddle yourself with such a debt. I don’t like it!”
What weighed on him most—the personal care and responsibility—made no impression on her; she had a loyal and wifely faith in his large ability; but the thought of the money, which filled him only with the exhilaration of sufficient capital, made her uneasy. She had all a woman’s horror of debt. What is to a man a very usual and legitimate business resource seemed to her almost a disgrace.
“I wish you could get along without the money.”
“I’m glad enough to have it,” he replied. “Rest assured, Lois, if they didn’t think me worth it they wouldn’t lend it to me—they expect big interest on their investment.”
“And is our living to come out of it, too?”
“Oh, yes—until there’s an income.”
“How much will you take?”
“Oh, no fixed sum—just as little as we can get along with at present. We’ll go slowly, Lois, and economize