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“Then, you are still very bitter against me?”
Breckenridge considered. “No, sir. The one man I am bitter against is Clavering. Now, it may sound presumptuous, and not come very well from me, but I believe that Clavering, for his own purposes, forced your hand, and I had a certain respect for you, if only because of your thoroughness. You see, one can’t help realizing that you can look at every question quite differently.”
Torrance smiled drily. “Then if you are not too proud to be my guest to-night, I should be glad of your company and will find you a horse to take you back to Fremont when it suits you.”
Breckenridge, for some reason that was not very apparent, seemed pleased to agree, but a faint smile just showed in Torrance’s eyes when he went out again. Then, he turned to Miss Schuyler.
“I wonder what Mr. Clavering has done to win everybody’s dislike,” he said. “You do not seem anxious to plead for him.”
Flora Schuyler’s face grew almost vindictive. “No,” she said, “I don’t. I can, however, mention one thing I find it difficult to forgive him. When you promised him Hetty he had found favour with her maid, and made the most of the fact. It was not flattering to your daughter or my friend. He may not have told you that he promised to marry her.”
Torrance stared at her a moment, a dark flush rising to his forehead. “You are quite sure?”
“Ask the girl,” said Flora Schuyler.
Torrance struck the bell again, and waited until the maid came in. “I understand Mr. Clavering promised to marry you,” he said very quietly. “You would be willing to take him?”
The girl’s face grew a trifle pale, and she glanced at Miss Schuyler who nodded encouragingly.
“Yes,” she said.
Torrance smiled, but Miss Schuyler did not like the glint in his eyes. “Then,” he said with incisive distinctness, “if you are in the same mind in another week, he shall.”
The girl went out, and Torrance, who had watched her face, turned to Miss Schuyler. “I guess that young woman will be quite equal to him,” he said. “Well, I am putting my house in order, and I will ride over once and see Hetty before I leave Cedar. You will stay here until she comes back to Fremont, any way.”
Miss Schuyler promised to do so, and stayed two days, as did Breckenridge, who eventually rode to Fremont with her. He was very quiet during the journey, and somewhat astonished his companion by gravely swinging off his broad hat when they pulled upon the crest of a rise.
“I wonder if you would listen to something I wish to tell you,” he said. “The trouble is that it requires an explanation.”
Flora Schuyler glanced at him thoughtfully, for she recognized the symptoms now. Breckenridge appeared unusually grave, and there was a little flush on his forehead, and a diffidence she had not hitherto seen there, in his eyes.
“I can decide about the rest when I have heard the explanation,” she answered.
“Well,” said Breckenridge slowly, “I came out West, so to speak, because I was under a cloud. Now, I had never done anything distinctly bad, but my one ability seemed to consist in spending money, and when I had got through a good deal of it my friends sent me here, which was perhaps a little rough on your country. Well, as it happened, I fell in with men and women of the right kind – Larry, and somebody else who did more for me. That made a difference; and while I was realizing how very little I had got for the time and dollars I had wasted, affairs began to happen in the old country, and I should have the responsibility of handling a good many of them if I went back there now. It sounds abominably egotistical, but you see what it is leading to?”
Miss Schuyler, who had no difficulty on that point, regarded him thoughtfully. Breckenridge was a handsome young Englishman and she had liked him from the first. Larry had fallen to another, and that perhaps counted for more than a little to Breckenridge; but she had seen more than one friend of hers contented with the second best. Still, she sighed before she met his gaze.
“I think you must make it a little plainer,” she said.
“Well,” said Breckenridge quietly, “it is just this. You have done a good deal for me already, and I almost dare to fancy I could be a credit to you if you would do a little more, while it would carry conviction to my most doubting relatives if you went back to the old country with me. They would only have to see you.”
Flora Schuyler smiled. “This is serious, Mr. Breckenridge?”
Breckenridge made her a little inclination, and while in a curious fashion it increased Flora Schuyler’s liking for him she recognized that he was no longer the light-hearted and irresponsible young Englishman she had met a few months ago. He, too, had borne the burden, and there was a gravity in his eyes and a slight hardening of his lips that had its meaning.
“I never was more serious in my life, madam,” he said. “I know that I might have spoken – not more respectfully, but differently – but when I am too solemn everybody laughs at me.”
“Does it not strike you that you have only regarded the affair from one point of view so far?”
Breckenridge nodded. “I understand. But one feels very diffident when he knows the slight value of what he has to offer. I should always love you, whether you say yes or no. For the rest, there is a little land in the old country, and an income which I believe should be enough for two. It seems more becoming to throw myself on your charity.”
“And what would Larry do without you?” asked Miss Schuyler.
The quick enthusiasm in Breckenridge’s face pleased her. “Larry’s work is splendidly done already,” he said. “He asked nothing for himself – and got no more; but now the State is offering every man the rights he fought for. The proclamations are out, and any citizen who wants it can take up his homestead grant. It will be something to remember that I carried his shield; but Larry has no more need of an armour-bearer.”
“I am older than you are.”
“Ten years in wisdom, and fifty in goodness, but I scarcely fancy that more than six months separate our birthdays. Now, I know I am not expressing myself very nicely, but, you see, we can’t all be eloquent, and perhaps it should count for a little when I tell you that I never made an attempt of the kind before. I am, however, most painfully anxious to convince you.”
Miss Schuyler recognized it, and liked him the more for the diffidence which he wrapped in hasty speech. “Then,” she said softly, “if in six months from now – ”
Breckenridge swayed in his saddle; but the girl’s heel was quicker, and as her horse plunged the hand he would have laid on her bridle fell to his side.
“No!” she said. “If in six months you are still in the same mind, you can come to Hastings-on-the-Hudson, and speak to me again. Then, you may find me disposed to listen; but we will go on to Fremont in the meanwhile.”
Breckenridge’s response was unpremeditated, but the half-broken horse, provoked by his sudden movement, rose with fore hoofs in the air, and then whirled round in a circle. Its rider laughed exultantly, swaying lithely, with the big hat still in one hand that disdained the bridle; but his face grew grave when there was quietness again, and he turned towards the girl.
“I shall be in the same mind,” he said, “for ever and ever.”
They rode on to Fremont, and the next day Breckenridge drove Miss Schuyler, who was going back to New York, the first stage of her journey to the depot. A month had passed when one evening Torrance rode that way. The prairie, lying still and silent with a flush of saffron upon its western rim, was tinged with softest green, but broad across the foreground stretched the broken, chocolate-tinted clods of the ploughing, and the man’s face grew grimmer as he glanced at them. He turned and watched the long lines of crawling cattle that stretched half-way across the vast sweep of green; and Larry and his wife, who stood waiting him outside the homestead, understood his feelings. Raw soil, rent by the harrows and seamed by the seeder, and creeping bands of stock, were tokens of the downfall of the old régime. Then Torrance, drawing bridle, sat still in his saddle while Hetty and her husband stood by his stirrup.
“I promised your friend, Hetty, that I would see you before I went away,” he said. “I left Cedar for the last time a few hours ago, and I am riding in to the railroad now. The stock you see there are mine and Allonby’s, and the cars are waiting to take them to Omaha. I shall spend the years that may be left me on the Pacific slope.”
Hetty’s lips quivered, and it was Larry who spoke.
“Was it necessary, sir?”
Torrance smiled grimly. “Yes. The State offered me a few paltry concessions, and a little of what was all mine by right. It didn’t seem a fit thing to accept their charity. Well, you have beaten us, Larry.”
Grant’s face flushed a little. “Only that the rest will gain more than the few will lose I could almost be sorry, sir.”
Torrance swung himself down from the saddle and laid his hand on Hetty’s shoulder.
“You have chosen your husband among the men who pulled us down, and nothing can be quite the same between you and me,” he said. “But I am getting an old man, and may never see you again.”
Hetty looked up at him with a faint trace of pride in her misty eyes. “There was nobody among our friends fit to stand beside him,” she said. “If you kiss me you will shake hands with Larry.”
“I can do both,” and Torrance held out his hand when he turned to Grant. “Larry, I believe now you tried to do the square thing, and there might have been less trouble between us but for Clavering. I hope you will bear me no ill will, and while we can’t quite wipe out the bitterness yet, by and by we may be friends again.”
“I hope so, sir,” said Larry.
Torrance said nothing further, but, moving stiffly, swung himself into the saddle and slowly rode away. Hetty watched him with a curious wistfulness in her eyes until he wheeled his horse on the crest of the rise, and sat still a moment looking back on them, a lonely, dusky object silhouetted against the paling sky. Then he turned again, and sank into the shadowy prairie. Hetty clung a little more tightly to her husband’s arm, and for a time they stood watching the crawling cattle and dim shapes of the stockriders slowly fade, until the last pale flicker of saffron died out and man and beast sank into the night. A little cold wind came sighing out of the emptiness and emphasized its silence.
Hetty shivered. “Larry,” she said, “they will never come back.”
Grant drew her closer to him. “It had to be, my dear,” he said. “They blocked the way, and nothing can stop the people you and I – and they – belong to, moving on. Well, we will look forward and do what we can, for we must be ready to step out when our turn comes and watch the rest go by.”