第25章

"Hullo, young man," he shouted at Thorpe's mud-splashed figure, "come back to view, the remains? All well again, heigh? That's good!"He strode down to grip the young fellow heartily by the hand.It was impossible not to be charmed by the sincere cordiality of his manner.

"I didn't know you were through," explained Thorpe, "I came to see if I could get a job.""Well now I AM sorry!" cried Radway, "you can turn in and help though, if you want to."Thorpe greeted the cook and old Jackson Hines, the only two whom he knew, and set to work to tie up bundles of blankets, and to collect axes, peavies, and tools of all descriptions.This was evidently the last wagon-trip, for little remained to be done.

"I ought by rights to take the lumber of the roofs and floors,"observed Radway thoughtfully, "but I guess she don't matter."Thorpe had never seen him in better spirits.He ascribed the older man's hilarity to relief over the completion of a difficult task.

That evening the seven dined together at one end of the long table.

The big room exhaled already the atmosphere of desertion.

"Not much like old times, is she?" laughed Radway."Can't you just shut your eyes and hear Baptiste say, 'Mak' heem de soup one tam more for me'? She's pretty empty now."Jackson Hines looked whimsically down the bare board."More room than God made for geese in Ireland," was his comment.

After supper they even sat outside for a little time to smoke their pipes, chair-tilted against the logs of the cabins, but soon the chill of melting snow drove them indoors.The four teamsters played seven-up in the cook camp by the light of a barn lantern, while Thorpe and the cook wrote letters.Thorpe's was to his sister.

"I have been in the hospital for about a month," he wrote."Nothing serious--a crack on the head, which is all right now.But I cannot get home this summer, nor, I am afraid, can we arrange about the school this year.I am about seventy dollars ahead of where I was last fall, so you see it is slow business.This summer I am going into a mill, but the wages for green labor are not very high there either," and so on.

When Miss Helen Thorpe, aged seventeen, received this document she stamped her foot almost angrily."You'd think he was a day-laborer!"she cried."Why doesn't he try for a clerkship or something in the city where he'd have a chance to use his brains!"The thought of her big, strong, tanned brother chained to a desk rose to her, and she smiled a little sadly.

"I know," she went on to herself, "he'd rather be a common laborer in the woods than railroad manager in the office.He loves his out-of-doors."

"Helen!" called a voice from below, "if you're through up there, Iwish you'd come down and help me carry this rug out."The girl's eyes cleared with a snap.

"So do I!" she cried defiantly, "so do I love out-of-doors! I like the woods and the fields and the trees just as much as he does, only differently; but I don't get out!"And thus she came to feeling rebelliously that her brother had been a little selfish in his choice of an occupation, that he sacrificed her inclinations to his own.She did not guess,--how could she?--his dreams for her.She did not see the future through his thoughts, but through his words.A negative hopelessness settled down on her, which soon her strong spirit, worthy counterpart of her brother's, changed to more positive rebellion.Thorpe had aroused antagonism where he craved only love.The knowledge of that fact would have surprised and hurt him, for he was entirely without suspicion of it.He lived subjectively to so great a degree that his thoughts and aims took on a certain tangible objectivity,--they became so real to him that he quite overlooked the necessity of communication to make them as real to others.He assumed unquestioningly that the other must know.So entirely had he thrown himself into his ambition of making a suitable position for Helen, so continually had he dwelt on it in his thoughts, so earnestly had he striven for it in every step of the great game he was beginning to play, that it never occurred to him he should also concede a definite outward manifestation of his feeling in order to assure its acceptance.

Thorpe believed that he had sacrificed every thought and effort to his sister.Helen was becoming convinced that he had considered only himself.

After finishing the letter which gave occasion to this train of thought, Thorpe lit his pipe and strolled out into the darkness.

Opposite the little office he stopped amazed.

Through the narrow window he could see Radway seated in front of the stove.Every attitude of the man denoted the most profound dejection.He had sunk down into his chair until he rested on almost the small of his back, his legs were struck straight out in front of him, his chin rested on his breast, and his two arms hung listless at his side, a pipe half falling from the fingers of one hand.All the facetious lines had turned to pathos.In his face sorrowed the anxious, questing, wistful look of the St.Bernard that does not understand.

"What's the matter with the boss, anyway?" asked Thorpe in a low voice of Jackson Hines, when the seven-up game was finished.

"H'aint ye heard?" inquired the old man in surprise.

"Why, no.What?"

"Busted," said the old man sententiously.

"How? What do you mean?"