An hour had passed. As the afternoon sun sank lower the shadow blot beneath the big maple had lengthened and deepened. In consequence the annoying light-rift was no more. Overhead the leaves were vibrating, barely vibrating, with the first breath of breeze of evening born. Otherwise there was no change; just the big red roadster and the man and the girl idling beside.

“Poverty, work, subservience,” conversation had drifted where it would, at last had temporarily halted, with the calendar rolled back twenty years; “poverty, work, subservience,” the man had paused there to laugh, the odd, repressed laugh that added an emphasis no mere words could express. “Yes; they’re old friends of mine, very old friends, very. I’m not likely to forget the contrast they’ve made, ever, no matter what the future holds.”

“You’ve not forgotten, then, what’s past,—overlooked 242 it? Isn’t it better to forget, sometimes,—some things?”

“Forget?” The man was looking straight up into space. “I wish I could forget, wish it from the bottom of my soul. It makes me—hard at times, and I don’t want to be hard. But I can’t ever. Memory is branded in too deeply.”

The girl was picking a blade of grass to pieces, bit by bit.

“I’m disappointed. I fancied you could do anything you wished,” she said low. “That’s what has made me afraid of you sometimes.”

The man did not stir.

“Are you afraid of me sometimes, really?” he asked.

“Yes, horribly—as much afraid as when we were coming out here to-day.”

“I’m sorry, Elice, sorry for several reasons. Most of all because I love you.”

It was the first word of the kind that had ever passed between them. Yet neither showed surprise, nor did either change position. It was as though he had said that gravitation makes the apple fall, or that the earth was round, a thing they had both known for long, had become instinctively adjusted to. 243

“I knew that,” said the girl gently, “and know too that you’re sorry I am afraid. You can’t help it. If it weren’t true, though, you wouldn’t be you.”

The man looked at her gravely.

“You think it will always be that way?” he asked. “You’ll always be afraid at times, I mean?”

“Yes. You’re bigger than I am. I can’t understand you, I never can wholly. I’ve given up hope. We’re all afraid of things we can’t completely understand.”

Silently the man passed his hand across his face, unconsciously; his arm fell lax at his side. As the girl had known, he did not follow the lead, would not follow it unless she directed the way.

“You said you fancied I could forget what’s past,” he said at last. “Did you honestly believe that?”

“Yes, or ignore it.”

“Ignore it—or forget!” The fingers of the great hands twitched. “Some things one can’t ignore or forget, girl. To do so would be superhuman. You don’t understand.”

“No; you’ve never told me. You’ve suggested at times, merely suggested; nothing more.” 244

“You’d like to know why—the reason? It would help you to understand?”

“Yes; I think it would help.”

“It might even lead to making you—unafraid?”

A halt this time, then, “Yes, it might possibly do even that.”

Again the man looked at her for long in silence, and again very gravely.

“I’ll tell you, then,” he said. “It isn’t pleasant for me to tell nor for you to hear; but I’d like you to know why—if you can. They’re all back, back, the things I’d like to forget and can’t, a very long way. They date from the time I first knew anything.”

The girl settled deeper into the soft coat, her eyes half closed.

“You told me once you couldn’t remember your mother even,” she suggested.

“No, nor my father, nor any other relatives, if I ever had any. I was simply stranded in Kansas City when it was new. I wasn’t born there, though, but out West on a prairie ranch somewhere. The tradition is that my parents were hand-to-mouth theatrical people, who’d got the free home craze and tried to live out on the west Kansas desert, who were dried out and 245 starved out until they went back on the road; and who then, of course, didn’t want me. I don’t know. Anyway, when my brain awoke I was there in Kansas City. As a youngster I had a dozen homes—and none. I was any one’s property—and no one’s. I did anything, accepted whatever Providence offered, to eat. Animals must live and I was no exception. The hand seemingly of every man and woman in the world was against me, and I conformed to the inevitable. Any one weaker than I was my prey, any one stronger my enemy. I learned to fight for my own, to run when it was wisest, to take hard knocks when I couldn’t avoid them—and say nothing. It was all in the game. I know this isn’t pleasant to hear,” he digressed.

“I’m listening. Go on, please.”

“That was the first stage. Then, together with a hundred other similar little beasts, a charitable organization got hold of me and transplanted me out into the country, as they do old footsore hack horses when they get to cluttering the pavement. Chance ordained that I should draw an old Norwegian farmer, the first generation over, and that he should draw me. I fancy we were equally pleased. His contract was to feed me and clothe me and,—I 246 was twelve at the time, by the way,—to get out of me in return what work he could. There was no written contract, of course; but nevertheless it was understood just the same.

“He fulfilled his obligation—in his way. He was the first generation over, I repeat, and had no more sense of humor than a turtle. He saw that I had all I could eat—after I’d done precisely so much work, his own arbitrary stint, and not a minute before. If I was one iota short I went hungry as an object-lesson. He gave me clothes to wear, after every other member of the family had discarded them, in supreme disregard for suitability or fit. He sent me to school—during the months of January and February, when there was absolutely nothing else to do, and when I should have been in the way at home. At times of controversy he was mighty with the rod. He was, particularly at the beginning of our intimacy, several sizes larger than I. It was all a very pleasant arrangement, and lasted four years. It ended abruptly one Thanksgiving Day.

“I remember that day distinctly, as much so as yesterday. Notwithstanding it was a holiday, I’d been husking corn all day steady, from dark until dark. There was snow on the ground, 247 and I came in wet through, chattering cold, hungry, and dog-tired—to find the entire family had left to celebrate the evening with a neighbor. They did that often of a holiday, but usually they left word. This time they’d forgotten, or didn’t care. Anyway, it didn’t matter, for that day had been the last straw. So far as I was concerned the clock had struck twelve and a new circuit had begun.

“I looked about the kitchen for supper, but there was none, so I proceeded to prepare one suitable to the occasion. Among other things, the farmer raised turkeys for the market and, although the season was late, there were a few birds left for seed. I went out to the barn with a lantern and picked the plumpest gobbler I could find off the roost, and an hour later had him in the oven. This was at eight o’clock in the evening. While he was baking I canvassed the old farmer’s wardrobe. I’d grown like a mushroom those last years and, though I was only sixteen, a suit of his ready-made clothes was a fair fit. I got into it grimly. I also found a dog-skin fur coat and, while it smelled a good deal like its original owner, it would be warm, and I laid it aside carefully for future reference. 248

“Then came supper. I didn’t hurry in the least, but I had a campaign in mind, so I went to work. When that bird was done I ate it, and everything else I could find. I had the appetite of an ostrich, and when I was through there wasn’t enough left for a hungry cat. I even considered taking the family cat in to the feast,—they had one, of course, and it always looked hungry, too; but I had a sort of pride in my achievement and I wanted to leave the remains as evidence.

“It was ten o’clock by this time and no one had shown up. I was positively sorry. I’d hoped the old farmer would return and find me. I had a few last words to say to him, some that had been lying heavy on my mind for a long time. But he didn’t come, and I couldn’t wait any longer; so I wrote them instead. I put on the dog-skin coat and started away on foot into the night. If I’d had money I would have left the value of the clothes; but he’d never given me a dollar in all those four years, so I took them on account. It was two miles to town and I made it in time to catch the ten-forty-five freight out.

“I forgot one thing, though. I went back after I’d got started a quarter of a mile to say 249 good-bye to the horses. I always liked horses, and old Bill and Jerry and I had been good friends. I rode the pilot of that engine and got into Kansas City the next morning. That was the second stage.... Still interested, are you, Elice?”

“Yes.”

“Next, I landed in the hardwood region of Missouri, the north edge of the Ozarks. It was the old story of one having to live, and I’d seen an ad in the papers for ‘loggers wanted.’ I had answered it, and the man in charge dropped on me like a hawk and gave me transportation by the first train. Evidently men for the job were not in excess, and when I’d been there a day I knew why. It was the most God-forsaken country I’d ever known, away back in the mountains, where civilization had ceased advancing fifty years before. The job was a contract to deliver so many thousand feet of lumber in the log daily at the mill on the nearest railway. There was a five-mile haul, and we worked under a boss in crews of four. Each crew had to deliver eight big logs a day, seven days in the week, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. How it was done, when they were cut, when hauled, was not the boss’s affair—just 250 so the logs came. When we of the crews ate or slept was no one’s affair—just so we kept on the job. No single man could handle one of those big cuts, no single mule team haul it in places over those cursed mountain roads. That’s why we worked in crews. On the average we worked eighteen hours a day. In summer this was long, in winter it seemed perpetual; but I was in it and I was going to stick—or thought I was. The other three in my gang were middle-aged men,—hard drinkers, good swearers, tough as oak themselves. The boss was a little tobacco-eating, bow-legged Irishman. I never, before or since, knew a man who could swear as he could, or drink so when he struck town. It seems to go with the logging business; but he was a master.

“I struck this place in the winter. It was in the winter following, again by chance on a holiday, but Christmas this time, that I quit. They don’t have much cold down in that country and usually but little snow; but this year there had been a lot,—soft, wet snow, half rain, that melted on the ground and made the roads almost impassable. For that reason we’d been getting behind in our contract. We simply could not make two trips a day; and Murphy, 251 the boss, grew black and blacker. He swore that if we couldn’t make but one trip a day on that one haul we’d have to carry two logs each instead of one. The thing was barely possible on good roads, wholly impossible with the ground softened; but he was the boss, his word law, and before daylight on this Christmas morning we were loaded and on the road.

“I was on the head wagon with Murphy behind me, the other three following. The first half-mile was down grade and we got along all right. Then came the inevitable up grade following and the team began to flounder. They were mules, of course,—horses could never have stood for a day the grief of that mountain hauling,—great big-framed, willing fellows that in condition would pull anything any team could pull; but now they were weak and tired, and so thin that their bones almost stuck through their hides from the endless grind. They did their best, though, and struggled along for a few rods. The wheels struck a rock in the road and they stopped. I urged them on and they tried again, but the load wouldn’t budge. There was but one thing to do,—to double with the team behind, and I slid off to make the coupling. 252

“Murphy had been watching it all in silence,—a bad sign with him. When he saw what I was going to do he held up his hand to the rear team, which meant:‘Stay where you are.’ ‘Give over the lines,’ he said to me.

“I knew what that meant. I’d seen him cripple animals before; but that was when I first came. Since then I’d had another year to grow and to get hard and tough. I was going on eighteen and as big as I am now almost; and I wasn’t afraid of him then or of any human being alive.

“‘It’s no use,’ I answered. ‘We may as well double and save time.’

“He said something then, no matter what; I was used to being sworn at.

“‘No,’ I said.

“He jumped off the load at that. I thought it was between us, so I jerked off my big mittens to be ready; but the mules’ turn was to come first, it seems. He didn’t wait for anything, just simply went at them, like a maniac, like a demon. I won’t tell you about it—it was too horribly brutal—or about what followed. I simply saw red. For the first time and the last time in my life, I hope, I fought a man—fought like a beast, tooth and nail. 253 When it was over he was lying there in the mud we’d made, unconscious; and I was looking down at him and gasping for breath. I was bleeding in a dozen places, for he had a knife; but I never noticed. I suppose I stood there so for a minute looking at him, the other three men who had come up looking at me, and not one of us saying a word. I reached over and felt of him from head to foot. There were no bones broken and he was breathing steadily. So I did what I suppose was a cruel thing, but one I’ve never regretted to this day, though I’ve never seen him since. I simply rolled him over and over in the mud and slush out of the road—and left him to come to. After that we pulled off the second log from each of the four wagons and left them there beside the track. Then we drove on to town, leaving him there; sitting up by that time, still dazed, by the side of the road. There was just one logging train a day on that stub, and when we pulled into town it was waiting. Without a word of understanding, or our pay for the month, the four of us took that train and went our four separate ways. That’s the third stage.... Begin to understand a little, do you, Elice?” 254

“Yes; I begin, just begin, to understand—many things.”

Roberts shifted position silently, his arms crossed under his head for a pillow. But he was still looking straight up, through the gently rocking leaves at the infinite beyond.

“The next stage found me in a southern Iowa soft-coal mine. The explanation is simple. I had saved a few dollars; while they lasted I drifted, and to the north. When they were gone I had to work or starve. I had no education whatever, no special training even. I was merely a big, healthy animal, fit only for hard, physical work. I happened to be in a farming and mining community. It was Winter and there was nothing to do on a farm, so by the law of necessity I went to work heaving coal.

“I stayed there a little over seven months and during that time I scarcely saw the sun. I’d go into the tunnel at seven in the morning, take my lunch with me, and never come out until quitting time. I worked seven days in the week here too. There wasn’t any union and, anyway, no one seemed to think of doing differently. At first it used to worry me, that being always in the dark. My imagination kept working, picturing sunlight and green things; 255 after a bit that stage passed and I used to dread to come out of the tunnel. The glare hurt my eyes and made me blink like an owl in the daytime. I felt chilly, too, and shivered so my teeth chattered. But I stuck to it, and after a few months the thing seemed natural and almost as though I’d been there always. I began to cease to think and to work unconsciously, like a piece of machinery. I even quit counting the days. They were all the same, so what was the use? I just worked, worked, and the coal dust ground into me and sweated into me until I looked more like a negro than a white man.

“Time drifted on this way, from Winter until Spring, from Spring until Summer; at last the something unusual that always comes about sooner or later happened, and I awoke. It was just after dinner one day and I’d gone back to the job. I had a lot of loose coal knocked down in the drift and was shovelling steadily into a car when, away down the main tunnel, I saw a bunch of lights bobbing in the darkness. It wasn’t the time of day for an inspection, and anyway there were several people approaching, so I waited to see what it meant. 256

“They came on slowly, stopping to look at everything by the way. At last they got near enough so I could make them out; there were three men and a woman. I recognized one of the men by this time,—our foreman, Sharp. He was guiding the others and I knew then they were visitors, owners probably, because no stranger had ever come before while I was there. The woman, I saw that she was a girl now, called one of the men ‘father’; and from the way she spoke I guessed why she was along too. She’d come anyway, whether they approved or not. The drift I was working in was a new one, just opened; and when they got there the whole group stopped a little way off, and Sharp began explaining, talking fast and giving figures. If any of the men saw me they didn’t pay any attention; they just listened, and now and then one of them asked a question. But the girl wasn’t interested or listening. She was all eyes, looking about here and there, taking in everything; and after a bit she noticed the light in my cap and came peering over to see what it meant. I just stood there watching her and she came quite close, all curiosity, until finally she could see my face. She stopped. 257

“‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I thought it was just a light. It’s a man.’

“‘Yes, it’s a man,’ I said.

“She was looking at me steadily by this time, wholly curious.

“‘A—a white man?’ she asked.

“I thought a moment, then I understood.

“‘Yes, a white man,’ I answered.

“She came up to the car at that and looked in. She glanced back at me. Evidently she wasn’t entirely satisfied.

“‘How old are you?’ she asked. ‘You look awfully old.’

“I leaned over on the car too; I’d begun to think. I remembered that to me she seemed so very, very young; and all at once it flashed over me that probably I wasn’t a day older.

“‘Eighteen,’ I said.

“‘Eighteen!’ She stared. ‘Why, I’m eighteen. And you—have you been here long?’

“I suppose I smiled. Anyway I know I scared her. She drew back.

“‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve forgotten. If you’ll tell me the date maybe I can answer. I don’t know.’

“‘You don’t know! You can’t mean that.’

“‘Yes, I’ve forgotten.’ 258

“She didn’t say a word after that, just looked at me—as a youngster looks when it goes to the circus for the first time. I fancy we stood there half a minute so; then at last, interrupting, the man she’d called ‘father’ looked over and saw us. He frowned, I could see that, and said something to the foreman. He spoke her name.”

Just for a moment Roberts shifted his head, looking at his silent listener steadily. “What do you fancy was that name he called, Elice?”

Elice Gleason started involuntarily, and settled back in her place.

“I haven’t the slightest idea, of course.”

“It wasn’t an ordinary name. At that time I’d never heard it before.”

“I’m not good at guessing.”

Roberts shifted back to his old position.

“It was ‘Elice.’ ‘Elice, come,’ he said.

“The daughter hesitated. I imagine she wanted to ask me several things yet,—whether I had cloven feet, for instance, and lived on spiders; but she didn’t. She went back to the other three and they moved on. That was the last I saw of them.

“I worked the rest of that day, did about three men’s work, I remember. That night I 259 drew my pay and went to bed; but I didn’t go to sleep. I did a lot of thinking and made up my mind to something. I decided I’d been the under dog long enough. I haven’t changed the opinion since. Next day I saw the sun when it was straight overhead and soaked the coal dust out of my skin—as much as possible.... That’s all of the fourth stage.... Hadn’t I better stop?”

The girl shook her head, but still without looking at him.

“No; I want to learn what you did after that, after you woke up.”

“I went West. I hadn’t seen the sun or the sky for so long that I was hungry for it. In Omaha I fell in with a bunch of cattlemen and, as I always liked to handle stock, that settled it. I accepted an offer as herder; they didn’t call it that, but it amounted to the same. I had a half-dozen ponies, rations for six months, and something under a thousand head of stock to look after. By comparison it wasn’t work at all; only I was all alone and it took all the time, day and night. I didn’t sleep under a roof half a dozen nights from July to October. When the cattle bunched at night I simply rolled up in a blanket where they were and 260 watched the stars until I forgot them; the next thing I knew it was morning. I had hours to read in though, hours and hours; and that was another thing I was after. For I could read, I wasn’t quite illiterate, and I was dead in earnest at last. When the Fall round-up came I quit and went to Denver, and portered in a big hotel and went to night school.

“There isn’t much to tell after this. I drifted all over the West and the Southwest during the next few years. I got the mining fever and prospected in Colorado and California and Arizona; but I never struck anything. I learned something though; and that was that it isn’t the fellow who makes a find who wins, but the chap who buys the prospect, almost invariably. That was useful. Every Winter I landed in a big city and went to school,—night school or mining school or commercial school. Finally it dawned upon me that I was taking the long road to an end, that the short cut was to be really ready to do a thing before making the attempt. I decided to go to a university. That would take years, and meantime I had to live. I could make a living in a little city easier than a big one, so I came here.... You know the rest.” 261

Elice Gleason sat up, her fingers locked over her knees.

“Yes, I know the rest; but—” She was silent.

“But you don’t wholly understand,” completed the other. “You don’t, even yet, do you, Elice?”

“No, not entirely, even yet.”

“Why I can’t forget when I wish or help being hard?”

“Yes, when you have such infinite possibilities now.”

“Now,” supplemented the man evenly, “when society at large couldn’t pound me down any longer or prevent my getting out of their power.”

The girl did not answer.

Deliberately Roberts sat up; no longer listless or tolerantly self-analytic, but very wide awake, very direct.

“I’ll have to tell you a few more reasons, then; read between the lines a bit. I never did this before to any one; never will again—to any one. But I must make you understand what made me as I am. I must; you know why. Tell me to stop when you wish, I’ll obey gladly; but don’t tell me you don’t understand. 262

“To begin again at the beginning. My parents abandoned me. Why? They were starved to it, forced to it. Self-preservation is the first law. I don’t clear them, but I understand. They were starving and irresponsible. I merely paid the price of relief, the price society at large demanded.

“At the first home I had afterward the man drank,—drank to forget that he, too, was an under dog. Some one again must pay the price, and I paid it. Now and then I’d succeed in selling a few papers, or do an errand, and earn a few pennies. After the manner of all lesser animals I’d try to hide with them; but he’d find me every time. He seemed to have a genius for it. He’d whip me with whatever was handy; at first for trying to hide, later, when I wouldn’t cry, because I was stubborn. Finally, after he’d got tired or satisfied, he’d steal my coppers and head for the nearest bar. Once in January I remember a lady I met on the street took me into a store and bought me a new pair of shoes. I hid them successfully for a week. One day he caught me with them on—and pawned them.

“The old farmer the charity folks traded me to was a Lutheran. Every morning after breakfast 263 he read prayers. He never missed a day. Then he’d send me out with one of his sons,—a grown-up man of twenty-two,—and if I didn’t do exactly as much work as the son I went hungry until I got it done if it took half the night. He also had a willow sapling he relied upon when hunger didn’t prove effective. He’d pray before he used that too,—pray with one hand gripping my neckband so I couldn’t get away. I earned a dollar a day—one single solitary dollar—when I was logging oak in the Ozarks. Day after day when we were on the haul I used to strap myself fast to the load to keep from going to sleep and rolling off under the wheels. I got so dead tired that I fell asleep walking, when I did that to keep awake. You won’t believe it, but it’s true. I’ve done it more than once.

“I was sick one day in the coal mine, deathly sick. The air at times was awful. I laid down just outside the car track. I thought I was going to die and felt distinctly pleased at the prospect. Some one reported me to the superintendent. He evidently knew the symptoms, for he came with a pail of water and soaked me where I lay, marked time, and went away. I laid there for three hours in a puddle of water 264 and soft coal grime; then I went back to work. I know it was three hours because my time check was docked exactly that much.

“When I was going to night school in Denver the day clerk, who’d got me the place, took half my tips, the only pay I received, to permit me to hold the place. It was the rule, I discovered, the under-dog penalty.

“I said I never struck anything prospecting. I did. I struck a silver lead down in Arizona. While I was proving it a couple of other prospectors came along, dead broke—and out of provisions. I divided food with them, of course—it’s the unwritten law—and they camped for the night. We had supper together. That was the last I knew. When I came to it was thirty-six hours later and I was a hundred miles away in a cheap hotel—without even my bill paid in advance. The record showed that claim was filed on the day I disappeared. The mine is paying a hundred dollars a day now. I never saw those two prospectors again. The present owner bought of them square. I don’t hold it up against him.

“I went to night school all one winter in San Francisco with a fellow named Stuart, another under dog like myself. We roomed together in 265 a hall-bedroom to save expense and ate fifteen-cent dinners together at the same soup-house. He clerked in a little tobacco store daytimes. I was running an express elevator. We both saved a little money above what it cost to live. Things went on in this way for four months, until the end of the winter term. One morning when I woke up I found he’d gone. I also found that the little money I’d saved was gone. They went together. I never saw either again.

“I had another friend once, I thought. It was after I’d decided to come here to the university. I was harvesting on a wheat ranch in Nebraska, making money to pay for my matriculation. He was a student too, he said, from New York State, and working for the same purpose. We worked there together all through harvest, boiled side by side in the same sun. One day he announced a telegram from home. His mother was dying. He was crazy almost because he hadn’t nearly enough money to take him back at once. And there his mother was in New York State dying! I lent him all I had saved,—seventy odd dollars; and he gave me his note, insisted on doing so—though he hoped the Lord would strike him dead if he failed to return the loan within four days. I 266 have that note yet. Perhaps the Lord did strike him dead. I don’t know.

“It was nearly September by this time and harvest was over, my job with it, of course; so I started on east afoot, tramping it. I wasn’t a particularly handsome specimen, but still I was clean, and I never asked for a meal without offering to work for it. Yet in the three hundred miles I covered before school opened I had four farmers’ wives call the dog,—I recorded the number; and I only slept under a roof two nights.

“Even after I came here, after—Elice, don’t! I’m a brute to have done this! From the bottom of my soul I beg your pardon.”

The girl was weeping repressedly, her face buried in her hands, her whole body tense.

“Elice, please don’t! I’m ashamed. I only wanted you to understand; and now—I’m simply ashamed.”

“You needn’t be at all.” As suddenly as it had come the storm abated, under compulsion. “I wanted to know several things very much; and now I think I do know them. At least I don’t wonder any more—why.” She stood up decisively, disdaining to dry her eyes.

“But we mustn’t stop to chatter any more 267 now,” she digressed preventingly. “You made me forget all about time, and cooks should never forget that. It’s nearly sundown and father—he’ll have been hungry for two hours.”

Roberts got to his feet slowly. If in the new light of understanding there was more he had intended saying that day, or if at the sudden barring of opportunity he felt disappointment, his face gave no indication of the fact. He merely smiled in tolerant appreciation of the suggestion last made.

“Doesn’t your father know the remedy for hunger yet, at his age?” he queried whimsically.

“Knows it, yes,” with an odd laugh; “but it would never occur to him unless some one else suggested it.”

A pause, then she looked her companion full in the face, significantly so. “He’s dependent and irresponsible as a child or—as Steve Armstrong. They’re helpless both, absolutely, left to themselves; and speaking of that, they’re both by themselves now.” She started for the motor hastily, again significantly so.

“Come, please,” she requested.