A Breath of Prairie and other stories Part 11

Silence fell upon them.

"Where were you a century ago?" digressed the woman.

"I wasn't born."

"Where will your child be a hundred years from now?"

"Dead likewise, probably; but the force for good, the Karma of the life, will be pa.s.sed on and remain in the world."

Unconsciously they both rose to their feet.

"Was man always on the earth?" she asked.

The question was answered almost before spoken.

"No."

"Will he always be here?"

"Science says 'no.'"

The woman came a step forward until they almost touched.

"What then becomes of your life of denial?" she challenged.

"You make it hard for me," said the man, simply.

"But am I not right?" She came toward him pa.s.sionately. "I come near you, and you start." She laid her hand on his. "I touch you, and your eyes grow warm. Both our hearts beat more quickly. Look at the sunshine! It's brighter when we're so close together. What of life?

It's soon gone--and then? What of convention that says 'no'? It's but a farce that gives the same thing we ask--at the price of a few words of mummery. Our strongest instincts of nature call for each other. Why shouldn't we obey them when we wish?" She hesitated, and her voice became tender. "We would be very happy together. Won't you come?"

The man broke away almost roughly.

"Don't you know," he demanded, "it's madness for us to be talking like this? We'll be taking it seriously, and then--"

The woman made a swift gesture of protest.

"Don't. Let's be honest--with each other, at least. I'm tired of pretending to be other than I am. Why did you say 'being true to my husband'? You know it's mockery. Is it being true to live with a man I hate because man's law demands it, rather than true to you whom Nature's law sanctions? Don't speak to me of society's right and wrong! I despise it. There is no other tribunal than Nature, and Nature says 'Come.'"

The man sat down slowly and dropped his head wearily into his hands.

"I say again, I cannot. I respect you too much. We're intoxicated now being together. In an hour, after we're separate--"

She broke in on him pa.s.sionately.

"Do you think a woman says what I have said on the spur of the moment?

Do you think I merely happened to see you to-day, merely happened to say what I've said? You know better. This has been coming for months.

I fought it hard at first; with convention, with your idea of right and wrong. Now I laugh at them both. Life is life, and short, and beyond is darkness. Think what atoms we are; and we struggle so hard.

Our life that seems to us so short--and so long! A thousand, perhaps ten thousand such, end to end, and we have the life of a world. And what is that? A cycle! A thing self-created, self-destructive: then of human life--nothingness. Oh, it's humorous! Our life, a ten thousandth part of that nothingness; and so full of tiny--great struggles and worries!" She was silent a moment, her throat trembling, a mult.i.tude of expressions shifting swiftly on her face.

"Do you believe in G.o.d?" she questioned suddenly.

"I hardly know. There must be--"

"Don't you suppose, then, He's laughing at us now?" She hesitated again and then went on, almost unconsciously. "I had a dream a few nights ago." The voice was low and very soft. "It seemed I was alone in a desert place, and partial darkness was about me. I was conscious only of listening and wondering, for out of the shadow came sounds of human suffering. I waited with my heart beating strangely. Gradually the voices grew louder, until I caught the meaning of occasional words and distinctly saw coming toward me the figure of a man and a woman bearing a great burden, a load so great that both together bent beneath the weight and sweat stood thick upon their brows. The edges of the burden were very sharp so that the hands of the man and the woman bled from the wounds and their shoulders were torn grievously where the load had shifted: those of the woman more than the man, for she bore more of the weight. I marvelled at the sight.

"Suddenly an intense brightness fell about me and I saw, near and afar, other figures each bearing similar burdens. The light pa.s.sed away, and I drew near the man and questioned him.

"'What rough load is that you carry?' I asked.

"'The burden of conventionality,' answered the man, wearily and with a note of surprise in his voice.

"'Why do you bear it needlessly?' I remonstrated.

"'We dare not drop it,' said the woman, hopelessly, 'lest that light, which is the searchlight of public opinion, return, showing us different from the others.'

"Even as she spoke the illumination again fell upon us, and by its brightness I saw a drop of blood gather slowly from the wounds on the woman's hand and fall into the dust at her feet."

A silence fell upon the inmates of the tiny m.u.f.fled office.

"But the burden isn't useless," said the man, gently. "The condemnation of society is an hourly reality. From the patronage of others we live.

The sun burns us, but we submit, for in return it gives life."

The woman arose with an abrupt movement, and looked down at him coldly.

"Are you a man, and use those arguments?" An expression akin to contempt formed about her mouth. "Are you afraid of a united voice the individuals of which you despise?"

The first hint of restrained pa.s.sion was in the answering voice.

"You taunt me in safety, for you know I love you." He looked up at her unhesitatingly. "Man's law is artificial, that I know; but it's made for conditions which are artificial, and for such it's right. Were we as in the beginning, Nature's law, which beside the law of man is no law, would be right; but we're of the world as it is now. Things are as they are, and we must conform or pay the price." He hesitated. His face settled back into a mask. "And that price of non-conformity is too high," he completed steadily.

The eyes of the woman blazed and her hands tightened convulsively.

"Oh, you're frozen--fossilized, man! I called you man! You're not a man at all, but a nineteenth century machine! You're run like a motor, from a power house; by the force of conventional thought, over wires of red tape. Fie on you! I thought to meet a human being, not a lifeless thing." She looked at him steadily, her chin in the air, a world of scorn in her face. "Go on sweating beneath the useless load!

Go on building your structure of artificiality that ends centuries from now in nothingness! Here's happiness to you in your empty life of self-effacement, with your machine prompted acts, years considered!"

Without looking at him, one hand made scornful motion of dismissal.

"Good-bye, ghost of man; I wash my hands of you."

"Wait, Eleanor!" The man sprang to his feet, the mask lifting from his face, and there stood revealed a mult.i.tude of emotions, unseen of the world, that flashed from the depths of his brown eyes and quivered in the angles of his mouth. He came quickly over and took her hand between his own.

"I'm proud of you,"--a world of tenderness was in his voice--"unspeakably proud--for I love you. I've done my best to keep us apart, yet all the time I believed with you. Nature is higher than man, and no power on earth can prove it otherwise." He looked into the softest of brown eyes, and his voice trembled. "Beside you the world is nothing. Its approval or its condemnation are things to be laughed at. With you I challenge conventionality--society--everything." He bent over her hand almost reverently and touched it softly with his lips.

"Farewell--until I come," he said.

CHAPTER II--THE LEAP

A man and a woman emerged from the dilapidated day-car as it drew up before the tiny, sanded station which marked the terminus of the railway. The man was tall, clean-shaven, quick of step and of glance.

The woman was likewise tall, well-gloved, and, strange phenomenon at a country station, carried no parcels.