A Breath of Prairie and other stories Part 18

Again the bitterness of memory prompted Camilla to speak the harshest words of her life.

"No, you hadn't the decency. It was more pleasure to thrust your shame daily in my face."

Arnold's color paled above the dark beard line; but the woman took no heed.

"Why did you wait a year," continued the bitter voice, "to end in--this? If it must have been--why not before?"

"I repeat, I'm not on trial. If you've anything to say, I'll listen."

Something new in the man's face caught Camilla's attention, softened the tone of her voice.

"I've only this to say. You've asked for an explanation and a promise; but I can give you neither. If there ever comes a time when I feel they're due you, and I'm able to comply, I'll give them both gladly."

The absent look of the past returned to her eyes. "Even if I wished, I couldn't give you an explanation now. I can't make myself understand the contradiction. Somehow, knowing you so long, your beliefs crept insistently into my loneliness. It seems hideous now, but I was honest then. I believed them, too. I don't blame you; I only pity you. You were the embodiment of protest against the established, of the non-responsibility of the individual, of skepticism in everything.

Your eternal 'why' covered my horizon. Every familiar thing came to bear a question I couldn't answer. My whole life seemed one eternal doubt. One thing I'd never known, and I questioned it most of all; the one thing I know now to be the truth,--the greatest truth in the world." For an instant the present crowded the past from Camilla's mind, but only for an instant. "Whatever I was at the time, you'd made me--with your deathless 'why.' When I signed the obligation of that day, I believed it was of my own free will; but I know now it was you who wrote it for both of us--you, with your perpetual interrogation. I don't accuse you of doing this deliberately, maliciously. We were both deceived; but none the less the fact remains." A shadow, almost of horror, pa.s.sed over her face.

"Time pa.s.sed, and though you didn't know, I was in h.e.l.l. Reason told me I was right. Instinct, something, called me a drag. I tried to compromise, and we were married. Then, for the first time, came realization. We were the best of friends,--but only friends."

"You wonder how I knew. I didn't tell you then. I couldn't. I could only feel, and that not clearly. The shadow of your 'why' was still dark upon me. What I vaguely felt then, though, I know now; as I recognize light or cold or pain." Her voice a.s.sumed the tone of one who speaks of mysteries; slow, vibrant. "In every woman's mind the maternal instinct should be uppermost; before everything, before G.o.d,--unashamed, inevitable. It's unmistakably the distinction of a good woman from a bad. The choosing of the father of her child is a woman's unfailing test of love."

The face of the man before her dropped into his hands, but she did not notice.

"Gropingly I felt this, and the knowledge came almost as an inspiration. It gave a clue to--"

"Stop!" The man's eyes blazed, as he leaped from his chair. "Stop!"

He took a step forward, his hand before him, his face twitching uncontrollably. The collie on the step awoke, and seeing his mistress threatened, growled ominously.

"Stop, I tell you!" Arnold choked for words. This the man of "why,"

whom nothing before could shake!

Camilla paled as her companion arose, and the dog, bristling, came inside the room.

"Get out!" blazed the man, with a threatening step, and the collie fled.

The interruption loosed words which came tumbling forth in a torrent, as Arnold returned to face her.

"You think I'm human, and yet tell me that to my face?" His voice was terrible. "You women brand men cruel! No man on earth would speak as you have spoken to a woman he'd lived with for four years!" The sentences crowded over each other, like water over a fall--his eyes flashing like a spray.

"I told you before, I'm not on trial; that it was not my place to defend. I don't do so now; but since you've spoken, I'll answer your question. You ask why I didn't come a year ago, hinting that I wanted to be more cruel. G.o.d! the blindness and injustice of you women!

Because we men don't show--Bah!... I was paying my own price. We weren't living by the marriage vow; it was but a farce. Our own contract was the vital thing, and it had said--But I won't repeat.

G.o.d, it was bitter! But I thought you'd come back. I loved you still."

He paused for words, breathing hard.

"You say, I'll never know what love is. Blind! I've always loved you until this moment, when you killed my love. You say I was untrue. It's false. I swear it before--you, as you were once,--when you were my G.o.d. Had you trusted me, as I trusted you, there'd have been no thought of unfaithfulness in your mind."

The woman sank back in the chair, her face covered, her whole body trembling; but Asa Arnold went on like the storm.

"Yes, I was ever true to you. From the first moment we met, and against my own beliefs. You didn't see. You expected me to protest it daily: to repeat the tale as a child repeats its lesson for a comfit.

Blind, I say, blind! You'll charge that I never told you that I loved you. You wouldn't have believed me, even had I done so. Besides, I didn't realize that you doubted, until the time when you were learning--" he walked jerkily across the room and took up his hat,--"learning the thing you threw in my face." He started to leave, but stopped in the doorway, without looking back. "You tell me you've suffered. For the first time in my life I say to another human being: I hope so." He turned, unsteadily, down the steps.

"Wait," pleaded the woman. "Wait!"

The man did not stop, or turn.

Camilla Maurice sank back in the chair, weak as one sick unto death, her mind a throbbing, whirling chaos,--as of a patient under an anaesthetic. Something she knew she ought to do, intended doing, and could not. She groped desperately, but overwhelming, insistent, there had developed in her a sudden, preventing tumult--in paradox, a confusion in rhythm--like the beating of a great hammer on an anvil, only incredibly more swift than blows from human hands. Over and over again she repeated to herself the one word: "wait," "wait," "wait,"

but mechanically now, without thought as to the reason. Then, all at once, soft, all-enfolding, kindly Nature wrapped her in darkness.

She awoke with the big collie licking her hand, and a numbness of cramped limbs that was positive pain. A long-necked pullet was standing in the doorway, with her mouth open; others stood wondering, beyond. The sun had moved until it no longer shone in at the tiny south windows, and the shadow of the house had begun to lengthen.

Camilla stood up in the doorway; uncertain, dazed. A great lump was on her forehead, which she stroked absently, without surprise at its presence. She looked about the yard, and, her breath coming more quickly, at the prairie. A broad green plain, parted by the road squarely in the centre, smiled at her in the sunlight. That was all.

She stepped outside and shaded her eyes with her hand. Not a wagon nor a human being was in sight.

Again the weakness and the blackness came stealing over her; she sank down on the doorstep.

"O G.o.d, what have I done!" she wailed.

The hens returned to their search for bugs; but the big collie stayed by her side, whimpering and fondling her hand.

CHAPTER V--THE DOMINANCE OF THE EVOLVED

The keen joy of life was warmly flooding Ichabod Maurice this spring day. Not life for the sake of an ambition or a duty, but delight in the mere animal pleasure of existence. He had risen early, and, a neighbor with him, they had driven forth: stars all about, perpendicular, horizontal, save in the reddening east, upon their long day's drive to the sawmill. The two teams plodded along steadily, their footfall m.u.f.fled in the soft prairie loam; the earth elsewhere soundless, with a silence which even yet was a marvel to the city man.

The majesty of it held him silent until day dawned, and with the coming of the sun there woke in unison the chorus of joyous animal life. Then Ichabod, his long legs dangling over the dashboard, lifted up a voice untrained as the note of a loon, and sang l.u.s.tily, until his companion on the wagon ahead,--boy-faced, man-bodied,--grinned perilously.

The long-visaged man was near happiness that morning,--unbelievably near. By nature unsocial, by habit, city inbred, artificially taciturn, there came with the primitive happiness of the moment the concomitant primitive desire for companionship. He smiled self-tolerantly when, obeying an instinct, he wound the lines around the seat, and went ahead to the man, who grinned companionably as he made room beside him.

"G.o.d's country, this." Ichabod's hand made an all-including gesture, as he seated himself comfortably, his hat low over his eyes.

"Yes, sir," and the grin was repeated.

The tall man reflected. Sunburned, roughly dressed, unshaven as he, Maurice, was, this boy-man never failed the word of respect. Ichabod examined him curiously out of his shaded lids. Big brown hands; body strong as a bull; powerful shoulders; neck turned like a model; a soft chin under a soft, light beard; gentle blue eyes--all in all, a face so open that its very legibility seemed a mark. It reddened now, under the scrutiny.

"Pardon," said Ichabod. "I was thinking how happy you are."

"Yes, sir." And the face reddened again.

Ichabod smiled.

"When is it to be, Ole?"

The big body wriggled in blissful embarra.s.sment.

"As soon as the house is built,"--confusedly.

"You're building very fast, eh?"