The Cross-Cut

The Cross-Cut, by Courtney
Ryley Cooper,

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Title: The Cross-Cut
Author: Courtney Ryley Cooper

Release Date: December 13, 2006 [eBook #20104]
Language: English
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CROSS-CUT***
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THE CROSS-CUT
by
COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER
With Frontispiece by George W. Gage

[Frontispiece: Carbide pointing the way, he turned back, pushing the
tram before him.]

Boston Little, Brown, and Company 1921 Copyright, 1921, by Little,
Brown, and Company. All rights reserved Published May, 1921

TO
G. F. C.
I'VE THREATENED YOU WITH A DEDICATION
FOR A LONG TIME AND HERE IT IS!

THE CROSS-CUT
CHAPTER I
It was over. The rambling house, with its rickety, old-fashioned

furniture--and its memories--was now deserted, except for Robert
Fairchild, and he was deserted within it, wandering from room to room,
staring at familiar objects with the unfamiliar gaze of one whose vision
suddenly has been warned by the visitation of death and the sense of
loneliness that it brings.
Loneliness, rather than grief, for it had been Robert Fairchild's promise
that he would not suffer in heart for one who had longed to go into a
peace for which he had waited, seemingly in vain. Year after year,
Thornton Fairchild had sat in the big armchair by the windows,
watching the days grow old and fade into night, studying sunset after
sunset, voicing the vain hope that the gloaming might bring the twilight
of his own existence,--a silent man except for this, rarely speaking of
the past, never giving to the son who worked for him, cared for him,
worshiped him, the slightest inkling of what might have happened in
the dim days of the long ago to transform him into a beaten thing,
longing for the final surcease. And when the end came, it found him in
readiness, waiting in the big armchair by the windows. Even now, a
book lay on the frayed carpeting of the old room, where it had fallen
from relaxing fingers. Robert Fairchild picked it up, and with a sigh
restored it to the grim, fumed oak case. His days of petty sacrifices that
his father might while away the weary hours with reading were over.
Memories! They were all about him, in the grate with its blackened
coals, the old-fashioned pictures on the walls, the almost gloomy rooms,
the big chair by the window, and yet they told him nothing except that
a white-haired, patient, lovable old man was gone,--a man whom he
was wont to call "father." And in that going, the slow procedure of an
unnatural existence had snapped for Robert Fairchild. As he roamed
about in his loneliness, he wondered what he would do now, where he
could go; to whom he could talk. He had worked since sixteen, and
since sixteen there had been few times when he had not come home
regularly each night, to wait upon the white-haired man in the big chair,
to discern his wants instinctively, and to sit with him, often in silence,
until the old onyx clock on the mantel had clanged eleven; it had been
the same program, day, week, month and year. And now Robert
Fairchild was as a person lost. The ordinary pleasures of youth had

never been his; he could not turn to them with any sort of grace. The
years of servitude to a beloved master had inculcated within him the
feeling of self-impelled sacrifice; he had forgotten all thought of
personal pleasures for their sake alone. The big chair by the window
was vacant, and it created a void which Robert Fairchild could neither
combat nor overcome.
What had been the past? Why the silence? Why the patient, yet
impatient wait for death? The son did not know. In all his memories
was only one faint picture, painted years before in babyhood: the return
of his father from some place, he knew not where, a long conference
with his mother behind closed doors, while he, in childlike curiosity,
waited without, seeking in vain to catch some explanation. Then a
sad-faced woman who cried at night when the house was still, who
faded and who died. That was all. The picture carried no explanation.
And now Robert Fairchild stood on the threshold of something he