Part 51

"Have you got it?" he asked, quietly. "It's noon now."

"May God help me to redeem my past," answered the other, in a new voice.

"You've got it--sure?" Tim's voice was meditative.

"God has spoken to me," was the simple answer.

"I've got a friend'll be glad to hear that," he said; and once more, in imagination, he saw Laura Sloly standing at the door of her home, with a light in her eyes he had never seen before.

"You'll want some money for your journey?" Tim asked.

"I want nothing but to go away--far away," was the low reply.

"Well, you've lived in the desert--I guess you can live in the grass-country," came the dry response, "Good-bye--and good-luck, Scranton."

Tim turned to go, moved on a few steps, then looked back.

"Don't be afraid--they'll not follow," he said. "I'll fix it for you all right."

But the man appeared not to hear; he was still on his knees.

Tim faced the woods once more.

He was about to mount his horse when he heard a step behind him. He turned sharply--and faced Laura.

"I couldn't rest. I came out this morning. I've seen everything," she said.

"You didn't trust me," he said, heavily.

"I never did anything else," she answered.

He gazed half-fearfully into her eyes. "Well?" he asked. "I've done my best, as I said I would."

"Tim," she said, and slipped a hand in his, "would you mind the religion--if you had me?"

THE LITTLE WIDOW OF JANSEN

Her advent to Jansen was propitious. Smallpox in its most virulent form had broken out in the French-Canadian portion of the town, and, coming with some professional nurses from the East, herself an amateur, to attend the sufferers, she worked with such skill and devotion that the official thanks of the Corporation were offered her, together with a tiny gold watch, the gift of grateful citizens. But she still remained on at Jansen, saying always, however, that she was "going East in the spring."

Five years had passed, and still she had not gone East, but remained perched in the rooms she had first taken, over the Imperial Bank, while the town grew up swiftly round her. And even when the young bank manager married, and wished to take over the rooms, she sent him to the right-about from his own premises in her gay, masterful way. The young manager behaved well in the circumstances, because he had asked her to marry him, and she had dismissed him with a warning against challenging his own happiness--that was the way she had put it. Perhaps he was galled the less because others had striven for the same prize, and had been thrust back, with an almost tender misgiving as to their sense of self-preservation and sanity. Some of them were eligible enough, and all were of some position in the West. Yet she smiled them firmly away, to the wonder of Jansen, and to its satisfaction, for was it not a tribute to all that she would distinguish no particular unit by her permanent favor? But for one so sprightly and almost frivolous in manner at times, the self-denial seemed incongruous. She was unconventional enough to sit on the sidewalk with a half-dozen children round her blowing bubbles, or to romp in any garden, or in the street, playing Puss-in-the-ring; yet this only made her more popular. Jansen's admiration was at its highest, however, when she rode in the annual steeplechase with the best horsemen of the province. She had the gift of doing as well as of being.

"'Tis the light heart she has, and slippin' in and out of things like a hummin'-bird, no easier to ketch and no longer to stay," said Finden, the rich Irish landbroker, suggestively to Father Bourassa, the huge French-Canadian priest who had worked with her through all the dark weeks of the smallpox epidemic, and who knew what lay beneath the outer gayety. She had been buoyant of spirit beside the beds of the sick, and her words were full of raillery and humor, yet there was ever a gentle note behind all; and the priest had seen her eyes shining with tears as she bent over some stricken sufferer bound upon an interminable journey.

"Bedad! as bright a little spark as ever struck off the steel," added Finden to the priest, with a sidelong, inquisitive look, "but a heart no bigger than a marrowfat pea--selfishness, all self. Keepin' herself for herself when there's many a good man needin' her. Mother o' Moses, how many! From Terry O'Ryan, brother of a peer, at Latouche, to Bernard Bapty, son of a millionaire, at Vancouver, there's a string o' them. All pride and self; and as fair a lot they've been as ever entered for the Marriage Cup. Now isn't that so, father?"

Finden's brogue did not come from a plebeian origin. It was part of his commercial equipment, an asset of his boyhood spent among the peasants on the family estate in Galway.

Father Bourassa fanned himself with the black broadbrim hat he wore, and looked benignly but quizzically on the wiry, sharp-faced Irishman.

"You t'ink her heart is leetla. But perhaps it is your mind is not so big enough to see--hien?" The priest laughed noiselessly, showing white teeth. "Was it so selfish in Madame to refuse the name of Finden--n'est-ce pas?"

Finden flushed, then burst into a laugh. "I'd almost forgotten I was one of them--the first almost. Blessed be he that expects nothing, for he'll get it sure. It was my duty, and I did it. Was she to feel that Jansen did not price her high? Bedad, father, I rose betimes and did it, before anny man should say he set me the lead. Before the carpet in the parlor was down, and with the bare boards soundin' to my words, I offered her the name of Finden."

"And so--the first of the long line! Bien, it is an honor." The priest paused a moment, looked at Finden with a curious reflective look, and then said, "And so you t'ink there is no one; that she will say yes not at all--no?"