Stonemason

“ But a man is no judge of his own looks. A disinterested observer might have given a different verdict. A young man less well favoured by nature would have gazed at Stonor’s long-limbed ease with helpless envy. He had that rare type of figure that never becomes encumbered with fat. The grace of youth and the strength of maturity met there. He would make a pattern colonel if he lived. Under the simple lines of his uniform one apprehended the ripple and play of unclogged muscles. If all men were like Stonor the tailor’s task would be a sinecure. ”

“ As Ally drew it slowly along, the tiny shreds of the abutilon petals and the slender filaments of the stamens followed it. On touching it they adhered slightly to the surface, as magnetized objects to a magnet. "Is Stonie eating them?" said Ally. "Is that what he lives on?" This persistent disposition on Ally's part to speak of the stone as a living and sentient thing, childish as it was, and as we all the while knew it to be, heightened our half superstitious sense of mystery in the thing. For the first time Mrs. Allen's face experienced a shade of the same feeling. ”

“ Stonor then ordered all the people into their tepees, and such is the power of a single resolute voice that they meekly obeyed. Proceeding from tepee to tepee he called out likely-looking individuals to be questioned out of sight of the others. For a long time it was without result; men and women alike, having taken their cue from Myengeen, feigned not to understand. Such children as he tried to question were scared almost into insensibility. Stonor began to feel as if he were butting his head against a stone wall. ”

“ But it gave no hint as to where the hiding-place might be.
Stone pondered long and deeply over the statement that the gems were in some crypt, and, as he thought, a great inspiration came to him.
"Of course!" he said to himself, "it is that! It can be nothing else!"
But he confided his new theory to nobody; he only began to ask more questions.
He quizzed Iris as to her Chicago visit, and [Pg 236] wanted a detailed account of every minute she had spent there. Then he asked her more particularly about the house where she was taken in the little motor car. ”

“ Pictures of his boyhood in the old Canadian city presented themselves unasked; the maple-foliage, incredibly dense and verdant, the shabby, comfortable houses behind the trees, and the homely, happy-go-lucky people who lived in the houses and sprayed their lawns on summer evenings; friendly people, like people everywhere prone to laughter and averse to thought. “People are so foolish and likeable, it’s amazing!” thought Stonor, visualizing his kind for the first. ”

“ Every crag and peak of Skillanscar shone in the bright rays of the glory wherein the whole landscape was steeped; and Captain Stondon, who had sat himself down amongst the heather to watch to its close this sunset amid the mountains, acknowledged to his heart that he had never seen anything in the way of scenery which so thoroughly satisfied and filled his soul as the smiling valley and the desolate hills—the gloomy ravine and the grey rugged mountains, on all of which the sun poured his light as though he were blessing the green earth ere leaving her to darkness and repose. ”

“ Stoneman was himself a gambler, and spent a part of almost every night at Hall & Pemberton’s Faro Palace on Pennsylvania Avenue, a place noted for its famous restaurant. It was here that he met Colonel Howle and learned to like him. He was a man of talent, cool and audacious, and a liar of such singular fluency that he quite captivated the old Commoner’s imagination.
“Upon my soul, Howle,” he declared soon after they met, “you made the mistake of your life going into the army. You’re a born politician. You’re what I call a natural liar, just as a horse is a pacer, a dog a setter. ”

“ Stonor kept the bullet as possible evidence. He then looked about for a suitable burial-place. His instinct was to provide the poor fellow with a fair spot for his last long rest. Up on top of the low precipice of rock that has been mentioned, there was a fine point of vantage visible up-river beyond the head of the rapids. At no small pains Stonor dragged the body up here, and with his knife dug him a shallow grave between the roots of a conspicuous pine. ”

“ In a company where sprightliness was the great desideratum, Stonor, no doubt, would have been considered slow. Men with strong reserves are necessarily a little slow in coming into action; they are apt, too, as a decent cover for their feelings, to affect more slowness than they feel. A woman can rarely look at that kind of man without feeling a secret desire to rouse him; there is so clearly something to rouse. It was Stonor’s hair which had given rise to the quaint name the native maidens had applied to him, the “Gold-piece.” ”

“ Oh, wake up, man! There are lots of good things left in life if you only get out and look for them.”
Stone gazed fixedly into the darkness.
“Please don't say any more,” he said. “It won't do any good, and I don't like to hear it; it's worse than the laugh.”
“Look here, Stone,” said Sprague firmly, “you're going to stay with me in London. We're going to take rooms that I know of in the Gray's Inn Road—not a very salubrious neighborhood for a man with slathers of money, but cheap and central for me. You'll come to the rehearsals and take an interest in 'Lorette' in spite of yourself. ”

“ Stondon like a rational being. Come and see—not your relative’s wife—but merely a very beautiful and accomplished woman.”
“At some future time,” he said; “but to-night there is a dark mood on me, and I cannot face her. Can you not stay here?” he pleaded, as his companion turned to go away; “you are the only person on earth who talks frankly to me. You are the only being whose voice I care to hear.”
“Mr. Basil Stondon, I am honoured,” replied Miss Derno; and under the moonlight she made him a sweeping curtsey; “but society has its prejudices, and its prejudices we must study. ”

“ And this was not the only good result from that serious double accident; for the necessity of daily enquiry at our cottage became so pressing, and Stoneman so gallantly rose to this occasion, that the stiffness and coldness which had hitherto marked my mother's reception of him could no longer be maintained, but glided very quietly into goodwill and gratitude. All of us began to forgive him, more and more, for the crime of not belonging to an ancient county family, while the merits of his affluence almost drove us to maintain them against his own indifference. ”

“ That night in camp he had the satisfaction of hearing Imbrie say in answer to a question from the woman:
“No, not to-night. All day he’s been working like a slave to try and get on the good side of me. Well, let him work. I’ve no mind to break my back while I have him to work for me. According to the Kakisas we’ll have rapids now for a long way up. Let him pull us.”
So Stonor could allow himself to sleep with an easy mind for that night, anyway. ”

“ Big as a horse. Kill man while he sleeps. Wolf down there. Run in packs as many as all the Kakisas. Him starving this year.”
“Women’s talk!” said Stonor contemptuously.
“You get carry over those falls. Behind those falls is a great pile of white bones. It is the bones of all the men and beasts that were carried over in the past. Those falls have no voice to warn you above. The water slip over so smooth and soft you not know there is any falls till you go over.”
“Tell Ahchoogah he cannot scare white men with such tales. Tell him to bring me the dug-out to the river-shore below here.” ”

“ And Captain Henry 8Gower Stondon grew so interested in the idea that he leaned his chin on his hand preparatory to thinking out the matter with greater comfort.
“It must bring it very near. I do not know that I should like it;” and then he went on to reflect further that it must be unpleasant also to have the whole of life bounded by those hills, by those frowning mountains; to have to play out the whole drama of existence in that green sequestered valley; to have the horizon of external experience brought so near that an hour’s walk at any time would enable a man to lay his hand upon it ”

“ To Douglas Stone this was already an interesting case, and he brushed aside as irrelevant the feeble objections of the husband.
“It appears to be that or nothing,” said he brusquely. “It is better to lose a lip than a life.”
“Ah, yes, I know that you are right. Well, well, it is kismet, and must be faced. I have the cab, and you will come with me and do this thing.”
Douglas Stone took his case of bistouries from a drawer, and placed it with a roll of bandage and a compress of lint in his pocket. He must waste no more time if he were to see Lady Sannox. ”

“ The exchange of the Southerner’s slouch hat and Prince Albert for Phil’s derby and short coat completely fooled the guard in the dim light. The men were as much alike as twins except the shade of difference in the colour of their hair. He passed the sentinel without a challenge, and walked rapidly toward Stoneman’s house.
On the way he was astonished to meet five hundred soldiers just arrived on a special from Spartanburg. Amazed at the unexpected movement, he turned and followed them back to the jail. ”

“ John Gaviller carried Miss Pringle and the charming unknown up to the clap-boarded villa until the humble shack attached to the English mission could be made fit to receive them. Stonor went for a long walk to cool his fevered blood. He was thoroughly disgusted with himself. By his timidity, not to use a stronger word, he had lost precious hours; indeed, now that he had missed his first opportunity, he might be overlooked altogether. The other men would not be likely to help him out at all. ”

“ How terrible must have been that wound which prevented Basil Stondon seeking consolation for the frowns of one woman in the smiles of another! How wonderful the power of that love which could still retain a hold over him when he was travelling on—on—over the sea, away from the smiles and the tears and the weakness and the strength of Phemie, who had said, “You shall never forget me—never love girl, nor woman, nor wife as you have loved me. When you are lying awake in the darkness you shall think of me; when you are standing in the twilight you shall remember me. ”

“ It came away slowly. Stonor had an instant’s glimpse of the ghastly tow bobbing astern, before settling down to the business in hand. For awhile all went well, though the added pull of the submerged body put a terrific strain on Mary. Fortunately she was as strong as a man. Stonor aided her all he could with his paddle, but that was little. He was kept busy fending his egg-shell craft off the rocks. He had instructed Mary, as the slack accumulated, to walk gradually up the beach. This was to avoid the danger of the canoe’s broaching too far to the current. ”

“ He was like a man who, feeling every hour in the day twinges and pangs that are the premonitory symptoms of a mortal malady, will yet not even whisper to himself that he is sick. He has not courage to turn from the sunlight and look down into the grave. Basil Stondon was for once in his life afraid to think of his new love. All his 93wounds before had been trifling in comparison to this cancer, that he dared not show to mortal. ”

“ Stonor further saw from the style of his axe-work that he was a white man; a white man chops a sapling with one stroke clean through: a red man makes two chops, half-way through on each side. This was pretty conclusive evidence that Imbrie had first come from down-river. ”

“ Eyes behind almost opaque lead-glass goggles, head and body encased in a multi-layered suit each ply of which was copiously smeared with thick lead paint, Stone studied the raging monster of the heavens from the closest viewpoint any human being had ever attained – and lived. ”

“ I hate to see men humbling themselves before women, more especially before such a piece of languid superiority as Mrs. Stondon. And she is just the same to everybody; she orders that young Stondon—what is his name? Basil Stondon—about as though he were not next heir to Marshlands ”

“ That was a fine saying of Solon's," he mused, "an heroic reply to the news of his son's death, 'I knew that I had begotten a mortal being.' Or was it Anaxagoras, as some say, or Xenophon? But that is the pathos of the past; the truth of matters becomes obscured." ”

“ It is a recognised fact that the worship of stones is more widely distributed than any other primitive cult. Its almost universal distribution can be referred to the tendency of the half savage mind to confuse persons and things, and from seeming likeness of the inanimate to the animate, to endue the lifeless object with the virtue and power of the living object. This mental outlook is better understood in practice than in theory. A Melanesian native may come across a large stone, lying upon the top of a number of smaller stones. ”

“ He prayed that Imbrie might have many a rapid to buck that day.
On top of the bench the prairie rolled to the horizon with nothing to break the expanse of grass but patches of scrub. Stonor’s heart, burdened as it was, lifted up at the sight. “After all, there’s nothing like the old bald-headed to satisfy a man’s soul,” he thought. “If I only had Miles Aroon under me now!” Taking his bearings, he set off through the grass at the rolling walk he had learned from the Indians. ”

“ And through them, faint, thread-like as a far-off echo, she heard another voice—whether of child or angel she knew not: “You’ll find it up by the Stones, where the giant hare-bells grow. It’s the most precious thing in the world, and when you find it, keep it—always—always—always!”
The giant hare-bells! There they grew at the foot of that grim Stone where the child had lain all night, unafraid because God was there. She saw them, pale in the moonlight, and in memory of little Ruth she stooped to gather one. ”