The Helpers

"If you think I deserve it. Why shouldn't you?"

"It is a question of obligations rather than of deservings, – my obligations. No brother of my own blood could have done more for me than you have."

"And you want to even it up?"

"No; but I want to tell you while I may that it has come very near to me in these last few days. At first I was inclined to make another query of it, and to speculate as to your probable motive; but latterly I've come to call it by its right name."

Jeffard shakes his head slowly, and removes his pipe to say: "Don't make any more mistakes, Lansdale. I'm neither better nor worse than I was that night when I told you the story of the man and his temptation. I know what you mean and what you would say; but this experiment and its results – the twenty odd pounds of flesh you have put on, and the new lease of life they stand for – mean more to me than they do to you."

"I don't begin to understand the drift of that," says Lansdale.

"No? I wonder if you would understand and believe if I should tell you the truth; if I should confess that my motive, so far as you are concerned, is entirely selfish?"

"Since understanding implies belief, I shall have to say no to that. But you might try, – for your own satisfaction."

"It's altogether unprofitable; but perhaps it's your due. I'll have to go back a little to make it clear. In the old days we were pretty good friends, but I think you will admit that there have always been reservations. You haven't known me and I haven't known you as friends of the David and Jonathan sort know each other. Isn't that so?"

Lansdale is constrained to say "Yes," wishing it were otherwise.

Jeffard refills his pipe and fishes for another live coal in the fire-fringe. The g-r-r-rh of the grazing horses comes from the near-by glade, and again the silence begins to grow. Suddenly he says: "Let's drop it, Lansdale, and talk about something else."

"No, go on; nothing you can say will efface the brotherly fact."

"Very well, – if you will have it. You said you were inclined to question my motive. It was more than questionable; it was frankly selfish."

"Selfish? You'll have to spell it out large for me. From my point of view it seems rather the other way about. What had you to gain by saddling yourself with the care of a sick man?"

"I can't put it in words – not without laying myself open to the charge of playing to the gallery. But let me state a fact and ask a question. A year ago you thought it was all up with you, and you didn't seem to care much. A few months later I found you fighting for your life like a shipwrecked sailor with land in sight. What did it?"

That the lava-crust of reserve is altogether molten is evinced in Lansdale's straightforward reply.

"Love, – love for a woman. I think you must have known that."

"I did. That was why you were making the desperate fight for life; and that is why we are here to-night, you and I. I love the woman, too."

Lansdale shakes his head slowly, and an ineffable smile is Jeffard's reward.

"And yet you call it selfishness, Henry. Man, man! you have deliberately gone about to save my life when another might have taken it!"

"I shall reap where I have sown," says Jeffard steadily. "Latterly I have been living for one day, – the day when I can take you back to her in the good hope that she will forget what has been for the sake of what I have tried to make possible."

Once more Lansdale's gaze is in the glowing heart of the fire, and the light in his eyes is prophetic.

"Verily, you shall reap, Henry; but not in a field where you have sown. Don't ask me how I know. That's my secret. But out of all this will come a thing not to be measured by your prefigurings. You shall have your reward; but I crave mine, too. Will you give it me?"

"If it be mine to give."

"It is. Do justice and love mercy, Henry. That is the thing I've been trying to find words to say to you all these weeks."

Jeffard lays the pipe aside and does not pretend to misunderstand.

"Tell me what you would like to have me do."

"I think you must know: find the man who drank of the bitter waters and went mad, and give him back that which you have taken from him."

"Isn't there a possibility that I can do neither?"

"I can help you to do the first, – and for the other I can only plead. I know what you would say: that the man had forfeited his right; that he tried to kill you; that by all the laws of man's inventing this money is yours. But God's right and your debt to your own manhood are above all these. As your poor debtor, I'm privileged to ask large things of you; can't you break the teeth of it and shake yourself free of the money-dragon?"

Jeffard is afoot, tramping a monotonous sentry beat between the wagon and the fire. His rejoinder is a question.

"Do you know where James Garvin is to be found?"

"I don't, but Bartrow does."

"Why didn't he tell me?"

"Because Dick is merciful. The man is a criminal, and you could send him to the penitentiary."

"And Dick thought – and you have thought – that I would prosecute him. It was the natural inference, I suppose, – from your point of view. The man who would rob his partner wouldn't stumble over a little thing like that. Will it help you to sleep the sounder if I say that vengeance isn't in me? – wasn't in me even in the white heat of it?"

Lansdale nods assent. "I'm on the asking hand, and any concession is grateful. If you were vindictive about it, I'm afraid the major contention would be hopeless."

"But as it is you do not despair?"

"I am very far from despairing, Henry. You spoke lightly of our friendship a little while ago, and one time I should have agreed with you. But I know you better now, and the incredibility of this thing that you have done has been growing upon me. It's the one misshapen column in a fair temple. Won't you pull it down and set up another in its place, – a clean-cut pillar of uprightness, which will harmonize with the others?"

Jeffard stops short at the tree-bole, with his hand on Lansdale's shoulder.

"It has taken me five weeks to find out why you consented to come afield with me," he says. "It was to say this, wasn't it?"

"Just that," says Lansdale, and his voice is the voice of one pleading as a mother pleads. "Say you will do it, Henry; if not for your own sake or mine, for the sake of that which has brought us together here."

Jeffard has turned away again, but he comes back at that to stand before Garvin's advocate.

"It is a small thing you have asked, Lansdale," he says, after a time; "much smaller than you think. The pillar isn't altogether as crooked as it looks; there is something in the perspective. You know how the old Greek builders used to set the corner column out of the perpendicular to make it appear plumb. We don't always do that; sometimes we can't do it without bringing the whole structure down about our ears. But in this case your critical eye shall be satisfied. We'll go down to the mine in the morning and use Denby's wire. If Bartrow can find Garvin, you shall see how easily the dragon's teeth may be broken. Is that what you wanted me to say?"

Lansdale's answer is a quotation.

"'And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking … that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.' I've seen my reward and felt of it; and yours will come a little later, – in a way you little dream of. Pass the tobacco, and let's have another whiff or two before we turn in. I'm too acutely thankful to be sleepy."

For a peaceful half-hour they sit before the glowing embers, smoking placidly while their talk drifts hither and yon over the spent sea of boyhood and youth. It is a heartening half-hour, and at the end of it Jeffard rises to get the blankets from the wagon. Lansdale elects to sleep at his tree-root, and he is rolling himself in his blanket when Jeffard says:

"How about the presentiment? Have we tired it out?"

Lansdale laughs softly. "It's gone," he says. "Perhaps it was nothing more than an upheaval of conscience. I'm subject to that when I've anything on my mind. Good-night, and God bless you, Henry."

And so the curtain goes down upon the summer night scene in the mountain-girt valley, with the two men sleeping peacefully before the fire, and the stars shining softly in the patch of velvety sky overhead. The midnight ebb of the snow-fed stream has set in, and the throbbing roll of the water drum is muffled. The fire burns low. The whispering leaves are stilled, and the wind slipping down from the snow coifs, sinks to a sigh. The pinions of the night are folded, and darkness and murmurous silence wrap the mantle of invisibility around the camp in the glade.