Robbing Oneself

NUMBER of things combined to make the crime of Darius Molden easy. He had planned it with a good deal of care, and he had fully provided himself with an excuse which would hold water with a somewhat hardened conscience. The opportunity was such that discovery was impossible.

“There's a lot of that money; old Jim Flint'll never use it, nor have any use for it; it'd make me well off and comfortable for life; then with the the income, I'd be able to do something worth while for the public!”

Old Flint had carefully hidden a fortune in gold and bills in several out-of-the way places. Molden, a night-bird, had discovered the old miser's secrets one by one. A stone was loose in the foundation of the big main barn, and behind that stone was a fruit-can with the top carefully screwed down on a rubber, and it was full of hundred- and fifty-dollar bills. The mid-lot fence-corner had another hoard, treasure all in gold. A flat stone, right in the corner, under a sod and a boulder, contained at least twenty pounds of gold—say three hundred and twenty ounces troy, worth not less than six thousand dollars, when it came to purchasing commodities or the labor of one's fellow-men. There were others.

The old miser was not known to be a miser at all. He was a horse-trader, cattle-buyer, owned two gristmills, a sawmill, three or four farms and no one knew how many mortgages, nor how much stock. He even owned shares in two banks and was director in one of them; and yet, as Darius Molden discovered, he had reverted to the old days of hoards and buried treasures and midnight hauntings of fence-lines and dark places—salting away money in large sums.

“He's been doing it for years!” Molden estimated as he turned a flash-lamp upon the pits and holes in which the hoards were distributed. “I guess my snooping around, 'studying nature,' has paid!”

Molden was an anomaly in Prescone, where he lived. All his neighbors were reputable, hard-working people. They had steady jobs and earned their wages. They paid their way easily and had money saved up. The whole little village thrived with industry and was doing its share of the world's work every day. The leading citizens were competent men, and they were hard-working.

Darius Molden was the son of a man who had been a leading citizen, but who was dead; and Darius' mother was dead also. He lived in the old house, which was not a large one, but comfortable. He dwelt in a kind of reputable squalor, never out of debt, but always taking in a little money from the curious results of his desultory wanderings around—a few dollars for furs which he trapped, and a few dollars for herbs and roots and leaves which he collected and sold. If he had dressed just a little more slackly, he would have been counted one of those shiftless village trappers, but when he walked downtown after his mail, he wore a white collar, and his overcoat was as good as anyone's.

Darius should have been quite a man, but he lacked something. He was perhaps lazy; perhaps, however, he had been brought up with the wrong kind of pride and could not for very pain undertake trade or business or profession or other steady occupation. Doubtless the little quirk in his nature was crookedness, which became more and more warped as he grew older—as he wandered through his twenties into his early thirties.

But he was by no means all crooked or all warped. He loved the outdoors passionately. He loved birds; and birds were a great temptation to him. He would go out into the woods or wood-lots, and sitting on a stump, listen to the passing migrants, watching for those rare moments when some particularly beautiful little creature would reveal itself in the moment of gorgeous wonder—little birds of paradise in supreme ecstasy of song and color.:

The birds were to him the embodiment of spirits and fairies. The mischief his love of nature led him into was because he had ventured forth in the night—nature's most wonderful hours—to listen to the sleeping sounds of the woods and fields and stream-sides. By day a bird-song is almost without suggestion under ordinary circumstances. It is simply a combination of vibrant sounds full of sweetness and gayety. But at night every sound is full of something else besides its own deliberate tone. Thus bird-songs in the night are the most wonderful sounds in the night-to-night nature neighboring a little village. Molden had become enraptured with such sounds. He knew the thrill of a sleeping bird's dreamland notes; and having succumbed to their temptation, he became a night-walker of the fields and” woods. He gave himself over wholly to the life of the outdoors. He would slip away when other people were going home to bed. He would often return just as his neighbors were starting off for a day's work.

So everyone talked about him. Nobody believed that anything good could come of a man who did not do the same as everyone else did. The girl who might have saved him from the bitterness and hardness which took hold of his heart abandoned him in a pet of indignation because when people talked about him, it was to warn her against his weakness, his shiftlessness, his worthlessness. She had believed them instead of going out with him to get to know the lovely things which he knew.

“Belle,” he pleaded with her, “listen, now: Money isn't everything! Just see—the birds are perfectly wonderful—and watching the muskrats build their houses in the fall—and following the mink to their dens—and the flowers! The posies! Don't you see how lovely the purple asters are? And the fire-weed? And if you'd only go with me, we'd have a camp up in the big woods, and we'd—oh, how we'd live!”

“What on?” she asked with the hard practicality which her own people had taught her.

“Why, on everything—game I'd kill, and fish, and you've no idea what lots of edible roots there are.”

“Be root-diggers?” she asked.

“Why, I gathered nine dollars' worth of roots, just Tuesday.”

“I suppose we'd eat muskrats too!” she said scornfully.

“They're fine!” he exclaimed with enthusiasm. “And the hides sell for sixty cents now. And—don't tell anybody!—I made eighty dollars, trapping, in November.”

Tell anyone! Belle Worlen would sooner have cut her hands off than tell anyone in that practical town that her lover, her sweetheart, the man she intended to marry, thought of making his living digging roots and trapping, and eating game and herbs. She would give him up first—and she did, rather than marry a man who was unlike anyone else in the town.

So he had lived alone, and it had been living! Birds and fish and game, flowers in every phase of their existence, wild apples and fruits and berries of a hundred square miles—butternuts, walnuts, hickory-nuts, beech-nuts. None knew how he lived, because none dreamed that every time he came home with his pockets or his game-bag bulging, he was storing up the fat of the land to live on. In his own garden grew a thousand wonderful weeds, and some few luxuriant vegetables. He lived on more kinds of meat than the local banker or butcher—game. He had more potpies than a chicken- or pigeon-fancier. He had, in fact, enough and to spare. His debts were but his defiance of custom—local custom. He was goaded to despise his fellows by their ignorance and their own slavery to habit, custom and thrift.

NE night he had seen old Flint digging in that mid-lot fence-corner. He had heard the chink of coin, and he had laughed at the old fellow's hoarding coins—for he was now in a frame of mind to despise money-grubbers. He saw the old fellow, with his carefully shaded lantern, drop five twenty-dollar gold-pieces into that jug of gold. The clink of that gold was a novel night-sound, interesting and surprising.

When old Flint had returned to his house, Molden went on his own way. No thought had occurred to him except the interest he had in possessing the old fellow's secret. A night-walker gets many a secret out of the bosom of the dark.

By and by, having his night-eyes open, Molden discovered others of old Flint's secrets. He took to watching for the old man. Flint had been one of the most jeering and scornful against Molden, because the young man was always chasing off across the fields, or staying out nights to catch bullheads or shoot foxes or something like that. He was always talking about Molden's squandering his life living outdoors, working—but at such jobs!

“The old cuss didn't want me out nights, because he wanted the nights to himself,” Molden laughed to himself. “I'd ought to scare him to death sometime!”

For more than four years the reticent Molden held the secret of the garrulous, swapping, secret-covering old Flint. And in the spring of the fourth year, which coincided with the fourth year of his trouble with Belle, his sweetheart,—four years in which she would not look at him as he passed her on the street,—B. Wilbo Croust arrived as a “summer resident,” the first summer visitor Prescone had ever known. Croust was a middle-aged widower, with a large woolen-mill down the river in Ramstin, and he wanted a summer home.

The first thing he did was to become acquainted with Belle Worlen, who was an attractive young woman, not too young, not too old—pretty and sensible, practical and prosaic. The sight of her riding around with Croust in his automobile, and the certainty that before long there would be a proposal and a big church wedding—this made Molden realize that he wanted Belle for his own wife, that he had been waiting for her to make up with him, and that if she did marry Croust, he would never hope again, nor have happiness, nor zest of living.

“All I lacked was a little fortune,” he told himself.

“There's all that stuff old Flint has hidden around to rust and to mold!” a tempting voice suggested.

Molden suddenly realized something with that definite putting into words of a lurking idea in his mind. He had thought for a long time that after old Flint died, as he soon must die, that hidden money would be his—the finder's.

“I could find it now, and say nothing,” he told himself.

As if to give him a perfectly safe opportunity, old Flint fell sick one day—dropped with a stroke at the post office and fairly in the arms of Molden, who carried the thin old frame like a baby to a store. Old Flint was semiconscious. He lingered along for days, and Molden, having waited five nights, at last could wait no longer.

WARM June night! It was perfectly dark, cloudy and about to rain. Not a star shone, and when Molden crept out into the fields, through orchards, along back fences, nothing appeared in his course—except: cows and pastured horses, and distant dogs which barked, and barbed-wire fences which creaked.

Everything was an alarm that night! But when he arrived at the Flint boundary-line and entered the meadows, which had been cut for their hay, it was dead quiet.

He caught the loose stone in the barn foundation and drew out the fruit-jar with its wadded bills. He went to the orchard, and in the hollow apple-tree stump he found another fruit-jar. He went down to the cow-pasture, and from the old stone-heap there removed a brass cylinder which had been sealed up tight and brazed—its contents were unknown. He went to seven different hoards; and finally he lifted out the jug of gold.

And as he replaced the flat stone and heaped on the sod and the boulder, he heard something. It was a little clatter away off yonder somewhere, faint and slow and yet enormous in the dark. As he froze, listening, he heard the most wonderful of night-songs of the country he knew.

Just over the ridge was a low, level evergreen swamp. Cedars, tamarack, a number of hemlocks and many swamp maples and northern gums grew there. It was one of his favorite resorts, night or day. In the open swales were muskrats and wood ducks and grebes; in the trees around were a hundred kinds of birds nesting. In the depths were herons with a score of rare nests. He knew every tree, every bird, every creature in that swamp. One of them, the most loved of all, raised its voice in pure tremolo:

“Tu-u—ree—ree—ree—reee-e—e—e,”

The white-throated sparrow, dreaming of its love, perhaps, lifted into the dull black night that voice which is at once jubilant in its sweet hope and sad—inexpressibly sad—in its certainty of mournful sin. Molden loved that bird's song more than any other song of the fields or trees.

He shrank from the sound as he would not have dodged a blow or a challenge. He scurried away with his loot, with such feelings as he had never known before in the night. He crawled through fences; he dodged through orchards; he slipped along trails he alone knew; and he crept like a hunted fox into its hole through the back yard of his own house and into its fastnesses.

HERE in the stillness of his library, behind the blinds of the windows, he turned on the light and stacked up the things which he had gathered—the harvest of old Flint's crop. He knew that old Flint was worth a million dollars. He was not prepared, however, for what he found in his loot. He spent hours counting it, spreading the bills into bricks and piling up the gold.

Old Flint had provided one hundred thousand dollars cash against time of riot, famine, war and storm. There it was—probably not all that old Flint had hidden away, at that. Now Molden had it. He could hide it himself, and by degrees shift it into the channels of commerce, taking out good interest-bearing bonds or dividend-paying stocks.

“That means—let's see,” he figured. “At six per cent, six thousand dollars a year. Ah!”

Molden caught his breath in ecstasy. His income.during the previous twelve months had been $354.37, all told. Literally he had lived on the land, picking up a meal here and there. He had learned to go without. He had been proud of his resemblance to Thoreau. But real contentment had not been in his heart. He had been in dread of sickness, of privation, of accident.

“Now I've got one hundred thousand dollars!” he whispered to himself. “I can live—I can travel—I could—I could marry Belle!”

He shook his head. No, he couldn't marry Belle! That other fellow! He shuddered at the thought of Belle's going to that other man, just when the income she demanded had come to her old lover.

He placed his loot on the table, and he cut open the curious brass cylinder. In it he found a few pitiful trinkets. There was a ring, a brooch, a string of beads, a pearl-handled knife and a letter. The letter was written in old-fashioned copper-plate script; Molden stared at it as if he would not be able to take his eyes from that wonderful penmanship—fascinating and reminiscent; he read it at last, word by word:

Darius Molden started up from his chair with a sound like a dog that has discovered poison in its stomach. He backed away from the things on the table—that old-fashioned, beautiful, diamond ring, and pearls and brooch.

“Mother! My mother—Mother!” Molden choked. “What have I done?” e cried.

He dashed to the window, but it was after daylight. The thought that he would return those things all to their places had struck him, but when he saw the dawn, he knew that it was too late. Through an open window he heard the morning song of a whitethroat sparrow, and each note was a torment in his soul.

The son of that girl Cherrie—had fallen to this! From her he had inherited his passionate love of trees, bird-songs, flowers—and now the sweetest bird-song of all was a torment in his soul!

He fell upon the floor in an anguish of remorse. His mind was shaken by the horror he felt for himself. He had, in his night-wanderings, absorbed the morals of a fox, the habits of a weasel, the careless craft of a crow or raven. Out of his soul had gone the sweetness of thought and rectitude of purpose.

He put the brass case away and in horror wandered up and down his house. Late in the afternoon he went downtown, and as he asked for his mail, a man said to another:

“Hello, John! Well, I see old Flint's dead!”

“Yes—what time?”

“About midnight.”

“Well, too bad! Must leave a lot of property.”

“Oh, yes! Old Flint was worth from five hundred thousand to a million.”

“Who gets it?”

“No telling. Got some cousins out the western part of the State, I believe.”

“They wont get it. He's left a will, I bet!”

Molden could hardly keep from crying out. Old Flint knew, now, that her son—that honest mother's son, was a thief! He could, perhaps, atone for his crime. He could never undo it. He went home. He went out into the woods, and the whitethroat's song drove him back to the house. The money in the hoard would not let him remain in the house, and he went downtown. From all sides he seemed to hear the birds calling him: ''“Thief! Thief! Thief!”''

That which he so loved now turned upon him. It cursed him; it filled him with horror of his own heart and soul. But in the day that followed, he had even a more dreadful blow.

Belle Worlen came to his gate and met him at the sidewalk.

“Darius,” she said, “I want to talk to you.”

“To me?” he asked inanely.

“Yes. I want to tell you that I think you are noble. Oh, how can I tell you? You've gone on—living! Living your own life! You enjoy the birds—you love the flowers—you are happy! I'm not happy, Darius! I want to tell you I've been mean, sordid, wicked! I wanted such nice things—so much—I wanted to—to be rich! It hurt so, when you wouldn't do like the others and make money. If you could forgive me—Darius!”

She had come back. She had come back, expecting to find the old Darius who laughed with the jays and played with absurd chipmunks and tamed frogs and whistled to all the birds as they passed, so that the birds whistled to him. From over the hill a whitethroat called:

“Tu—ree—ree—ree—tree-e—e—e.”

Love, sweetness, happiness, innocence, honesty of purpose—all had gone. The dry husks of living remained. Molden saw the thing, the enormity of his failure to keep faith, to be patient. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Belle!” he whispered. “Oh—you've come back to—to a scoundrel!”

She stared, unbelieving. An automobile came swirling up the street and stopped at his horse-block.

“Hello, Darius!” the driver greeted.

“Why—Judge Linzet!”

“Yes sir! I know, you two'll be ever so discouraged when I tell you what— You're going to Mr. Flint's funeral to-morrow, Darius?”

“To Mr. Flint's funeral?” the man gasped, turning white.

“Yes. You must, Darius. I thought I'd better tell you. It would seem strange, afterwards, if you didn't. You see,”—he looked around,—“you see, Darius, you're the chief beneficiary under his will!”

“What!”

“Sh! Yes sir—almost a million!”

The girl shrank back, her hands on her bosom.

“Almost a million!” Darius repeated. “Who—who to?”

“Why, to you! He took a fancy to you—liked your independence, and said you had the gumption to live honest, the way you wanted to, instead of the way everybody else wanted everybody else to live! Yes sir! He said you were the likeliest citizen and the best example of a real man anywhere in this town. Said you were like your mother—”

White, choking, suffering from an emotion neither the girl nor the old attorney could understand, Darius Molden staggered back till he leaned helplessly on the old fence of his little cottage yard.

“You don't mean it! You—he didn't know. He didn't mean it!” Darius gasped.

“He knew what a nobleman you have been, living to be yourself!” the girl cried; and the old lawyer smiled, nodding, his keen eyes searching the face, the eyes, the very soul of Darius Molden. He wondered in his own mind at that expression.

The attorney drove on. The girl stood back, waiting. Molden looked up at her with pleading in his eyes.

“Belle—Belle!” he whispered.

Loathing himself, he would have turned to her for refuge, but in his extremity he suddenly realized what that final degradation would be. He fought it.

“Belle,” he whispered, “if I could tell you how I love you! What a hate I have for myself—to think—to think—I've spoiled it all!”

“What do you mean?” she cried, frightened.

“I can't tell you!” he said. “How I've needed you!”

“You'll go to the funeral?” she asked, thinking he was going insane.

“Yes—of course!” he nodded. “Of course. But—I must think—I must think!”

He pulled himself together; he would do his duty by her; he walked home with her; he left her at the gate and returned to his own cottage. When he was in it, he fell upon his knees.

“I'm a thief! I'm a thief! I've robbed myself—of birds and songs—and so I've robbed everybody! Oh, Belle! What a fool I've been!”