At the front of Caleb Brent's little house there was a bench upon which the old man was wont to sit on sunny days--usually in the morning, before the brisk, cool nor'west trade-wind commenced to blow. Following Hector McKaye's departure, Nan sought this bench until she had sufficiently mastered her emotions to conceal from her father evidence of a distress more pronounced than usual; as she sat there, she revolved the situation in her mind, scanning every aspect of it, weighing carefully every possibility.
In common with the majority of human kind, Nan considered herself entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and now, at a period when, in the ordinary course of events, all three of these necessary concomitants of successful existence (for, to her, life meant something more than mere living) should have been hers in bounteous measure, despite the handicap under which she had been born, she faced a future so barren that sometimes the distant boom of the breakers on Tyee Head called to her to desert her hopeless fight and in the blue depths out yonder find haven from the tempests of her soul.
In an elder day, when the Sawdust Pile had been Port Agnew's garbage-dump, folks who clipped their rose bushes and thinned out their marigold plants had been accustomed to seeing these slips take root again and bloom on the Sawdust Pile for a brief period after their ash-cans had been emptied there; and, though she did not know it, Nan Brent bore pitiful resemblance to these outcast flowers. Here, on the reclaimed Sawdust Pile, she had bloomed from girlhood into lovely womanhood--a sweet forget-me-not in the Garden of Life, she had been transplanted into Eden until Fate, the grim gardener, had cast her out, to take root again on the Sawdust Pile and ultimately to wither and die.
It is terrible for the great of soul, the ambitious, the imaginative, when circumstances condemn them to life amid dull, uninteresting, drab, and sometimes sordid surroundings. Born to love and be loved, Nan Brent's soul beat against her environment even as a wild bird, captured and loosed in a room, beats against the window-pane. From the moment she had felt within her the vague stirrings of womanhood, she had been wont to gaze upon the blue-back hills to the east, to the horizon out west, wondering what mysteries lay beyond, and yearning to encounter them. Perhaps it was the sea-faring instinct, the
Wanderlust of her forebears; perhaps it was a keener appreciation of the mediocrity of Port Agnew than others in the little town possessed, a realization that she had more to give to life than life had to give to her. Perhaps it had been merely the restlessness that is the twin of a rare heritage--the music of the spheres--for with such had Nan been born. It is hard to harken for the reedy music of Pan and hear only the whine of a sawmill or the boom of the surf.
Of her mother, Nan had seen but little. Her recollections of her mother were few and vague; of her mother's people, she knew nothing save the fact that they dwelt in a world quite free of Brents, and that her mother had committed a distinctly social
faux pas in marrying Caleb Brent she guessed long before Caleb Brent, in his brave simplicity, had imparted that fact to her. An admiral's daughter, descendant of an old and wealthy Revolutionary family, the males of which had deemed any calling other than the honorable profession of arms as beneath the blood and traditions of the family, Nan's mother had been the pet of Portsmouth until, inexplicably, Caleb Brent, a chief petty officer on her father's flag-ship, upon whom the hero's medal had just been bestowed, had found favor in her eyes. The ways of love, as all the philosophers of the ages are agreed, are beyond definition or understanding; even in his own case, Caleb Brent was not equal to the task of understanding how their love had grown, burgeoned into an engagement, and ripened into marriage. He only knew that, from a meek and well-disciplined petty officer, he had suddenly developed the courage of a Sir Galahad, and, while under the influence of a strange spell, had respectfully defied the admiral, who had foolishly assumed that, even if his daughter would not obey him, his junior in the service would. Then had come the baby girl, Nan, the divorce--pressed by the mother's family--and the mother's death.
If his wife had discerned in him the nobility that was so apparent to his daughter--Poor old hero! But Nan always checked her meditations at this point. They didn't seem quite fair to her mother.
Seated on the bench this afternoon, Nan reviewed her life from her sixth year, the year in which her father had claimed her. Until her eighteenth year, she had not been unhappy, for, following their arrival in Port Agnew, her father had prospered to a degree which permitted his daughter the enjoyment of the ordinary opportunities of ordinary people. If she had not known extravagance in the matter of dress, neither had she known penury; when her feminine instinct impelled her to brighten and beautify the little home on the Sawdust Pile from time to time, she had found that possible. She had been graduated with honors from the local high school, and, being a book-lover of catholic taste and wide range, she was, perhaps, more solidly educated than the majority of girls who have had opportunities for so-called higher education. With the broad democracy of sawmill towns, she had not, in the days gone by, been excluded from the social life of the town, such as it was, and she had had her beaus, such as they were. Sometimes she wondered how the choir in the Presbyterian church had progressed since she, once the mezzo-soprano soloist, had resigned to sing lullabys to a nameless child, if Andrew Daney still walked on the tips of his shoes when he passed the collection-plate, and if the mortgage on the church had ever been paid.
She rose wearily and entered the little house. Old Caleb sat at the dining-room table playing solitaire. He looked up as she entered, swept the cards into a heap and extended his old arm to encircle her waist as she sat on the broad arm of his chair. She drew his gray head down on her breast.
"Dadkins," she said presently, "Donald McKaye isn't coming to dinner to-morrow after all."
"Oh, that's too bad, Nan! Has he written you? What's happened?"
"No; he hasn't written me, and nothing's happened. I have decided to send him word not to come."
"Aren't you feeling well, my dear?"
"It isn't that, popsy-wops. He's the new laird of Tyee now, and he must be careful of the company he keeps."
Old Caleb growled in his throat.
"Much he cares what people think."
"I know it. And much I care what people think, for I've grown accustomed to their thoughts. But I do care what his father thinks, for, of course, he has plans for Donald's future, and if Donald, out of the kindness of his heart, should become a frequent visitor here, The Laird would hear of it sooner or later--sooner, perhaps, for it would never occur to Donald to conceal it--and then the poor laird would be worried. And we don't owe The Laird that, father Brent!"
"No; we do not." The old face was troubled.
"I met Mrs. Daney on the beach, and it was she who gave me the intimation that The Laird had heard some cruel gossip that was disturbing him."
"I'm sorry. Well, use your own judgment, daughter."
"I'm sure Donald will understand," she assured him. "And he will not think the less of us for doing it."
She got up and went to the peculiar and wholly impractical little desk which Mrs. McKaye had picked up in Italy and which Donald, calm in the knowledge that his mother would never use it or miss it, had given her to help furnish the house when first they had come to the Sawdust Pile. On a leaf torn from a tablet, she wrote:
THE SAWDUST PILE, Saturday Afternoon.
DEAR DONALD:
I had planned to reserve my thanks for the books and the candy until you called for dinner to-morrow. Now, I have decided that it will be better for you not to come to dinner to-morrow, although this decision has not been made without father and me being sensible of a keen feeling of disappointment. We had planned to sacrifice an old hen that has outlived her margin of profit, hoping that, with the admixture of a pinch of saleratus, she would prove tender enough to tempt the appetite of a lumberjack, but, upon sober second thought, it seems the part of wisdom to let her live.
We honor and respect you, Donald. You are so very dear to us that we wish to cherish always your good opinion of us; we want everybody in Port Agnew to think of you as we do. People will misunderstand and misconstrue your loyalty to the old friends of your boyhood if you dare admit your friendship. Indeed, some have already done so. I thank you for the books and the candy, but with all my heart I am grateful to you for a gift infinitely more precious but which is too valuable for me to accept. I shall have to treasure it at a distance. Sometimes, at colors, you might wave to
Your old friend,
NAN BRENT.
Her letter completed, she sealed it in a plain white envelop, after which she changed into her best dress and shoes and departed up-town.
Straight to the mill office of the Tyee Lumber Company she went, her appearance outside the railing in the general office being the signal for many a curious and speculative glance from the girls and young men at work therein. One of the former, with whom Nan had attended high school, came over to the railing and, without extending a greeting, either of word or smile, asked, in businesslike tones,
"Whom do you wish to see?"
In direct contrast with this cool salutation, Nan inclined her head graciously and smilingly said:
"Why, how do you do, Hetty? I wonder if I might be permitted a minute of Mr. Daney's time."
"I'll see," Hetty replied, secretly furious in the knowledge that she had been serenely rebuked, and immediately disappeared in the general manager's office. A moment later, she emerged. "Mr. Daney will see you, Miss Brent," she announced. "First door to your right. Go right in."
"Thank you very much, Hetty."
Andrew Daney, seated at a desk, stood up as she entered.
"How do you do, Nan?" he greeted her, with masculine cordiality, and set out a chair. "Please be seated and tell me what I can do to oblige you."
A swift scrutiny of the private office convinced her that they were alone; so she advanced to the desk and laid upon it the letter she had addressed to Donald McKaye.
"I would be grateful, Mr. Daney, if you would see that Mr. Donald McKaye receives this letter when he comes in from the woods to-night," she replied. Daney was frankly amazed.
"Bless my soul," he blurted, "why do you entrust me with it? Would it not have been far simpler to have mailed it?"
"Not at all, Mr. Daney. In the first place, the necessity for writing it only developed an hour ago, and in order to be quite certain Mr. McKaye would receive it this evening, I would have had to place a special-delivery stamp upon it. I did not have a special-delivery stamp; so, in order to get one, I would have had to go to the post-office and buy it. And the instant I did that, the girl on duty at the stamp-window would have gone to the mail-chute to get the letter and read the address. So I concluded it would be far more simple and safe to entrust my letter to you. Moreover," she added, "I save ten cents."
"I am very greatly obliged to you, Nan," Daney answered soberly. "You did exactly right," Had she conferred upon him a distinct personal favor, his expression of obligation could not have been more sincere. He took a large envelop of the Tyee Lumber Company, wrote Donald's name upon it, enclosed Nan's letter in this large envelop, and sealed it with a mighty blow of his fist. "Now then," he declared, "what people do not know will not trouble them. After you go, I'll place this envelop in Don's mail-box in the outer office. I think we understand each other," he added shrewdly.
"I think we do, Mr. Daney."
"Splendid fellow, young Donald! Thundering fine boy!"
"I agree with you, Mr. Daney. If Donald has a fault, it is his excessive democracy and loyalty to his friends. Thank you so much, Mr. Daney. Good-afternoon."
"Not at all--not at all! All this is quite confidential, of course, otherwise you would not be here." He bowed her to the door, opened it for her, and bowed again as she passed him. When she had gone, he summoned the young lady whom Nan had addressed as "Hetty."
"Miss Fairchaild," he said, "'phone the local sales-office and tell them to deliver a load of fire-wood to the Brent house at the Sawdust Pile."
Two minutes later, the entire office force knew that Nan Brent had called to order a load of fire-wood, and once more the world sagged into the doldrums.