A Breath of Prairie and other stories Part 30

"Yes."

"You swear you didn't?"--the grip tightened--"you swear it?"

"I swear--oh, you're hurting me!"

Mollie Babc.o.c.k let her hands drop.

"I believe you"--wearily. "It seemed that everybody knew. G.o.d help me!" She sank to the bed, her face in her hands. "I believe I'm going mad!"

"Mollie--Mollie Babc.o.c.k! You mustn't talk so--you mustn't!" The seconds ticked away. Save for the quick catch of suppressed sobs, not a sound was heard in the mean, austere little room; not an echo penetrated from the outside world.

Then suddenly the brown head lifted from the pillow, and Mollie faced almost fiercely about.

"You think I am--am mad already." Then, feverishly: "Don't you?"

Helpless at a crisis, Annie Warren could only stand silent, the pink, childish under-lip held tight between her teeth to prevent a quiver.

Her fingers played nervously with the filmy lace shawl about her shoulders.

Mollie advanced a step. "Don't you?"

Annie found her voice.

"No, no, no! Oh, Mollie, no, of course not! You--Mollie--" Instinct all at once came to her rescue. With a sudden movement she gathered the woman in her arms, her tender heart quivering in her voice and glistening in her eyes. "Mollie, I can't bear to have you so! I love you, Mollie. Tell me what it is--me--your friend, Annie."

Mollie's lips worked without speech, and Annie became insistent.

"Tell me, Mollie. Let me share the ache at your heart. I love you!"

Here was the crushing straw to one very, very heartsick and very weary. For the first time in her solitary life, Mollie Babc.o.c.k threw reticence to the winds, and admitted another human being into the secret places of her confidence.

"If you don't think me already mad, you will before I'm through." Like a caged wild thing that can not be still, she was once more on her feet, vibrating back and forth like a shuttle. "I'm afraid of myself at times, afraid of the future. It's like the garret used to be after dark, when we were children: it holds only horrors.

"Child, child!" She paused, her arms folded across her breast, her throat a-throb. "You can't understand--thank G.o.d, you never will understand--what the future holds for me. You are going back home; back to your own people, your own life. You've been here but a few months. To you it has been a lark, an outing, an experience. In a few short weeks it will be but a memory, stowed away in its own niche, the pleasant features alone remaining vivid.

"Even, while here, you've never known the life itself. You've had Jack, the novelty of a strange environment, your antic.i.p.ation of sure release. You are merely like a sightseer, locked for a minute in a prison-cell, for the sake of a new sensation.

"You can't understand, I say. You are this, and I--I am the life-prisoner in the cell beyond, peering at you through the bars, viewing you and your mock imprisonment."

Once more the speaker was in motion, to and fro, to and fro, in the shuttle-trail. "The chief difference is, that the life-prisoner has a hope of pardon; I have none--absolutely none."

"Mollie"--pleadingly, "you mustn't. I'll ask Jack to give Steve a place at home, and you can go--"

"Go!" The bitterness of her heart welled up and vibrated in the word.

"Go! We can't go, now or ever. It's death to Steve if we leave. I've got to stay here, month after month, year after year, dragging my life out until I grow gray-haired--until I die!" She halted, her arms tensely folded, her breath coming quick. Only the intensity of her emotion saved the att.i.tude from being histrionic. In a sudden outburst, she fiercely apostrophized:

"Oh, Dakota! I hate you, I hate you! Because I am a woman, I hate you!

Because I would live in a house, and not in this endless dreary waste of a dead world, I hate you! Because your very emptiness and solitude are worse than a prison, because the calls of the living things that creep and fly over your endless bosom are more mournful than death itself, I hate you! Because I would be free, because I respect s.e.x, because of the disdain for womanhood that dwells in your crushing silence, I hate--oh, my G.o.d, how I hate you!" She threw her arms wide, in a frantic gesture of rebellion.

"I want but this," she cried pa.s.sionately: "to be free; free, as I was at home, in G.o.d's country. And I can never be so here--never, never, never! Oh, Annie, I'm homesick--desperately, miserably homesick! I wish to Heaven I were dead!"

Annie Warren, child-woman that she was, was helpless, when face to face with the unusual. Her senses were numbed, paralyzed. One thought alone suggested itself.

"But"--haltingly--"for Steve's sake--certainly, for him--"

"Stop! As you love me, stop!" Again no suggestion of the histrionic in the pa.s.sionate voice. "Don't say that now. I can't stand it. I--oh, I don't mean that! Forget that I said it. I'm not responsible this morning. Please leave me."

She was prostrate on the bed at last, her whole body a-tremble.

"But--Mollie--"

"Go--go!" cried Mollie, wildly. "Please go!"

Awed to silence, Annie Warren stared helplessly a moment, then gathered her shawl about her shoulders, and slipped silently away.

III

Mollie Babc.o.c.k was listlessly going about some imperative domestic task, behind the mean structure which represented home for her, when Steve came upon her.

She was not looking for him. He had been gone so long, out there somewhere, in that abomination of desolation, building a railroad, that the morbid fancy had come to dwell with her that the prairie had swallowed him, and that she would never see him more. So he came upon her unawares.

The buffalo gra.s.s rustled with the pa.s.sage of her skirts. His eyes lighted, the man seemed to grow in stature--six feet of sun-blessed, primitive health. Now was the time--

"Mollie!"

There was a sudden gasp from the woman. With a hand to her throat, she wheeled swiftly round, confronting him.

"I'm back at last. Aren't you glad to see me?"

She was as pallid as an Easter-lily; pallid, despite the fact that she had decided, and had nerved herself for his coming.

Steve was puzzled. "Mollie, girl"--he did not advance, merely stood as he was--"aren't you glad to see me? Won't you--come?"

There was a long s.p.a.ce of silence; the woman did not stir. Then a strange, inarticulate cry was smothered in her throat. Swiftly, all but desperately, she stumbled blindly forward, although her eyes were shining with the enchantment of his presence; close to him she came, flung her arms around his broad chest, and strained him to her with the abandon of a wild creature.

"Steve!" tensely, "how could you? Glad? You know I'm glad--oh, so glad! You startled me, that was all."

"Mollie, girlie"--he lifted her at arms' length, joying in this testimony of his renewed strength and manhood--"I rode all last night to get here--to see you. Are you happy, girlie, happy?"

"Yes, Steve"--her voice was chastened to a murmur--"I--I'm very happy."

"That completes my happiness." Drawing her tenderly to him, he kissed her again and again--hungrily, pa.s.sionately; then, abruptly, he fell to scrutinizing her, with a meaning that she was quick to interpret.

"Isn't there something you've forgotten, Mollie?"

"No, I've not forgotten, Steve." She drew the bearded face down to her own. Had Steve been observant he would have noticed that the lips so near his own were trembling; but he was not observant, this Steve Babc.o.c.k. Once, twice and again she kissed him.

"I think I'll never forget, Steve, man--never!" With one hand she indicated the prairie that billowed away to the skyline. "This is our home, and I love it because it is ours. I shall always have you--I know now, Steve. And I'm the happiest, most contented woman in all the wide world."