Richard Aumerle Maher

“ He found Donahue browsing contentedly among the trees much as he had left him, and a world mockingly unchanged.
Of course, he could not stay there. The haunting, whispering sweetness of Augusta's presence was there at every turn of his eyes, in the breath of every breeze that brushed his cheek, in the song of every bird that piped. There memories choked him, of the nights when she had fought the fever with him, of days when their hearts had danced together in the joy of work. There he had learned why the human race continues to wish [227] to live—he had learned to know a sweet woman's heart. ”

“ He loved Augusta with a love which had deepened in these weeks from a boy's harum-scarum affection into [21] the deep, tender, protecting love of a man. He loved her, and would have given his life to save her the anguish of having to leave her mother in this place. Yet, he knew that it was unfair, wrong, unnatural. For her mother's sake, Augusta would sacrifice herself and marry any man. Wardwell knew it. Being Augusta, there was no choice for her. It was cruel, an outrage on her brave girlhood. But—So help him God!—he'd try to see that she never suffered from it. ”

“ McQuade had given her a helping of wax so big that she had not believed that she could eat a quarter of it. And, without thinking or stopping, she had eaten up every bit of it. And she was hungry for more.
She looked up in horror, and exclaimed confusedly:
"I beg everybody's pardon. I never piggied anything up so in my life!"
"Don't apologize, dear," said Fan McQuade, smiling down into Augusta's burning face. "We'd've been disappointed if you hadn't done just as you did. I always distrust people who don't forget themselves when they first eat sugar wax. ”

“ In a little room, as simple and unadorned as the quiet grace of his own bearing, the Parish Priest of New York received them and began to question Augusta.
Wardwell, listening, found himself forgetting somewhat of the business in hand and absorbed suddenly in his own particular business. He was a born writer and novelist, in spite of his own jibes. And, just as the true artist finds himself forever reaching for a brush, he could never be in the presence of character without trying to grasp at the one vital element which was the spring of it. ”

“ But Augusta knew that it was not the restlessness of Spring that threatened her. And she knew that not even the sullen restiveness of a call of blood could hurt in the way that she was going to be hurt.
She was a woman. And she knew that only through a woman could she be wounded to her heart's depth. That strange prescience, that border land insight which had come to her in other times, and had sometimes been kind to her and sometimes cruel, had lately been turning up pictures to her mind. ”

“ Augusta and Wardwell, accustomed to seeing Rose Wilding day by day, could not realize the extent of the change that had come over her. To them she was today practically as she had been yesterday. But to a stranger the picture of the large handsome woman, her face blanched now by hidden disease to a transparent pearl white, the skin smooth and unlined as a growing baby's, her pallor doubled by the white of the bed and the enamel that covered every object in the room, was in all a sight to arouse a nameless, creeping dread of something present but unseen. ”

“ Even now, as he watched the German gun being poked into its place above the line of the dirt on the far hillside, he shuddered at the humiliation and the ignominy of that winter. Augusta had known that there was something wrong. She had, of course, seen it in his eyes and sensed it in the air about him, from the very beginning. But he had never been able to tell her. He knew Augusta's peculiar jealousy. It was not the usual property-holding interest by which the average woman clings to her rights in a man, because she is afraid of the consequences of letting him slip away from her. ”

“ Augusta sat back, saying nothing. She was sorry that she had spoken now, and about this. Jimmie, she felt, had told the literal truth. And the incident seemed to make it more difficult to lead up to the things which she must say today.
They rode to the door in silence, both subdued by the nearness of a crisis which each foresaw in a different way. As the lugubrious coach drove away they stood on the sidewalk looking after it, both half conscious that it was the last vestige of an existence with which they were now finished. ”

“ But Augusta was not to be turned aside by his diversion.
"I'm afraid," she confessed, shrinking in closer to him so that she seemed so little and so forlorn that Jimmie instinctively put his hand on hers to stop her, "afraid that I would be coward enough to want you to stay even if I knew you wanted to go. And then you'd begin to talk. And you'd be so kind and so bright and jolly that I'd begin to let myself be fooled. You know how you can talk. You can make anybody almost believe anything. Please, darling," she pleaded, "promise you won't ever use it to deceive me!" ”

“ McQuade's three sons and two hired men had been in the camp ten days now, breaking roads through the settling snow, scalding out sap buckets and boiling pans, and tapping trees. Jimmie and Augusta, in wonder and ignorance, had watched the men going from tree to tree with augers, boring out a hole in each, into which they drove the wooden spout, and hung the tin bucket beneath. They stood among the bare trees on a southerly slope of the hills where the late March sun of a lovely morning beat warm and strong, and they saw a miracle. ”

“ And he, with this full knowledge of her fiercely proud little heart, had brought another woman in to despoil the sacred shrine of Augusta's love. He knew that she had thanked him for getting her pet back for her as the dearest thing he had ever done for her. And now when she should come to know the truth—as she would—it would embitter her to know that she owed it to another woman.
As the letters continued to come and the worry and humiliation of keeping up what seemed like an intrigue grew upon him he moodily wished that Augusta might learn the truth. ”

“ Men would pass him from one hard hand to another, and he would be beaten for the sin of being old. Meanwhile, she would save lumps of sugar and quarts of oats. And Jimmie did not care.
The glow of her sacrifice was cold and dead and the ashes of it were in her hair.
In the morning Jimmie awakened to the fact that he was alone in the room. He had not heard Augusta go out. Or was it that she had just this instant gone and that her going had stirred him out of deep sleep. He dressed hastily, wondering at his excitement. She had run out to see Donahue. ”

“ Because he was as ignorant of Augusta as all fairly good men will always be of women, he did not know that Augusta wanted him to say nothing of the kind. What she did want him to do was to take her forcibly in his arms and tell her that he understood all that it meant to her. Like all men who think quickly and deeply he did not know the value of the spoken word, to a woman. He did not know that, while intuition and understanding are very well within certain limits, there are certain things which to a woman are never true until she hears them spoken in so many words. ”

“ She called on him for an effort, pleading with him to try, to put one foot before another, to help just one little bit. But his weight lay almost dead upon her shoulder. He was fainting from his effort to come to her and from the shock of the last terrible explosion. She must do all herself. The hoop of fire flamed before her, through which she must drag him, and her mind and reason quailed but her heart fought on for its love, blessing God for the strong sure feet that the hills had given her and the cunning strength in handling the helpless bodies of men which her training had taught her. ”

“ A talkative man died talking. A quiet man turned his head from you and died his own way.
They had been sickening years, those two years when the claws of the Beast were at the throat of the world. And there had been many times when Wardwell, in the spirit weariness which every good man felt sooner or later, would have been willing to lie down and ask for death, saying that he had done his share. But death had not come for him, and his mind had turned definitely back and rested with conviction on the sentence which Augusta had written for him. ”

“ Augusta did not need him. He was of no use to her, or to anybody. He never would, in fact, be of any use. It would be better to let it end now. He had never really been Augusta's husband. He had served her as well as he could. But that was over now. She did not need him now. He pressed his self inflicted hurt home and took a sort of miserable pleasure from the pain. She at least could be happy. Why should he drag her down the long dark path with himself. He might live on and on for a deuce of a while—people did, you know. No, he was not going to let the poor girl in for anything like that. ”

“ Jimmie was fretting to get back his grip on life. He wanted to be putting his hand to something, to be doing something, to be getting somewhere. With all his surface nonsense and his ways of an ungrown boy, Augusta knew the hot rage of ambition that had burned within him. And she knew that with returning strength it would come to flame again. It must not be allowed to eat hopelessly at him while they drifted aimlessly along a seemingly endless road. ”

“ Augusta was in this, as in so many things, different from any woman whom Wardwell had ever known or imagined. Like all people that live a great deal within themselves, the things that were her own, even the little things, had a sacred and a touching value to Augusta. If a thing was not entirely her own she did not care for it at all. She wanted nothing near her that she had to share in any way with another person. Wardwell [225] remembered that she had once given away her best coat because another girl had put it on herself just for a moment to see how she would look in it. ”

“ He must have been dreaming of Augusta.
As a matter of fact, Augusta had been in that place, in that room but a moment or two before. Perhaps some tone of her voice had touched something in Wardwell's numb brain and had waked him slowly.
She had not seen him. There was no good reason why she should go near him or see him. He was just one of twenty-five or thirty variously wrapped bundles that had just come down from the field stations, each containing a man. So long as the man slept after the jolting and the fainting fatigue of the journey, he need not be disturbed. ”

“ You have eaten her apples. What then? It is time for you to speak."
Thus adjured, Donahue turned his head slightly and sniffed delicately of the mingled tang of Augusta's wood fire and the savor of the cooking steak. His head was close to the ground. He wriggled one ear in a deliberate and patent pretense that a fly was bothering him. Then, as though realizing that that subterfuge would not serve, he calmly and meditatively lifted his off fore leg and deliberatively scratched the prominence back of his ear, with the soft side of his hock. ”

“ And you might as well humor them. It does them no harm. You never can tell what they'll think of next. God help all that's afflicted!"
"But, that is your Augusta," said Wardwell.
"Now, Mr. Jimmie, you know you're always at you nonsense!" Rose Wilding answered, smiling slowly at him.
Now, curiously enough, it was that smile that brought the perspiration to Wardwell's forehead. It was the sane, deep, slowbreaking smile of Rose Wilding herself, the smile that had won the heart and the confidence of every child in every poor family of the parish. ”

“ The big man turned for a look at Donahue. "Them horses was white," he argued, "I know all about them. He's a rusty red."
"Of course," said Augusta cheerfully as she dived into her stores and handed forth potatoes and bacon, "that's rust, from the dampness."
The big man exploded into a roaring laugh. "God bless the handy liar that made that up for you! I don't think you did it yourself."
"No," Augusta admitted, "it's my husband. You see, inventing is his business. I only quote. And Donahue, who is truly wise, he only listens."
Jimmie was dutifully unhitching Donahue. ”