Claire Part 2

He laughed a little as he picked her up. She gasped with pain.

"I can't help hurting you," he said gently.

"It's all right," she answered, putting her arm around his neck so that he might the more easily bear her. "We are off on our great adventure.

The halt and the blind! Such a mad pair!"

He smiled, and started slowly up the beach.

"I shall have to develop a system of one word guides," she mused.

"Left--right--slow--ahead--all right--and so on," he admitted.

Suddenly she laughed out merrily. "My friend, a stranger pilgrimage the world never knew. What is your name?"

"Lawrence," he said.

"Mine," she answered, "is Claire. Go a little to the left."

He turned slightly, and plodded through the sand.

CHAPTER II.

THE WATER OF LIFE.

Still exhausted from his recent battle with the waves, Lawrence was not in the best condition for this new struggle. Before he had gone far, he was forced to rest. He lowered Claire to the ground carefully and dropped beside her. His effort in carrying her had made him breathe hard, the sun was beating down on them, and his throat was dry and parched. Speaking was becoming difficult.

"If we don't find water soon, we're ended," he managed to say.

"I'm afraid we are," she admitted. "Do you know, Lawrence, you shouldn't try to carry me. I weigh over a hundred and thirty pounds. That is too much for any man. Without me, you might make it, even though you couldn't travel so steadily ahead."

"Perhaps," he agreed. "I've thought of that. But, you see, I would have to feel my way. At best I'd get a lot of falls. I might walk off a precipice. That doesn't appeal to me, now that I've set myself to winning."

"And yet you are almost certain to wear yourself out to no purpose if you carry me," she repeated. "If you could do it and get me through, I'd never stop you. I've a husband in America who loves me, and I want to get back to him, but you aren't equal to it. I see no advantage in dying a mile or ten miles inland. For one's grave, this is as good a place as any."

She spoke of dying in a matter-of-fact way that made him feel strange, though he thought of it in exactly the same way himself. He believed that he was a mere animal and that death was a mere cessation of energy.

"I wonder if she feels just as I do about it," he pondered. "Perhaps not. But it can't matter anyway. Here we are, and death does seem fairly certain."

He was breathing more regularly now, though his throat burned and his tongue stuck to his mouth disagreeably.

"We'd better be moving," he said, rising with an effort.

"As you please," she a.s.sented.

Then, as he lifted her: "My ankle is swollen dreadfully. If we could find water, I'd bathe it and put a stick splint on it."

He did not answer. Silence fell between them while he plodded ahead.

They started up the mountainside, and the way became increasingly difficult. There was a dense undergrowth through which he was compelled to shove his feet. There were rocks which she could not see, down which he was constantly slipping. Her directions barely kept him from b.u.mping into the trees that grew closer and closer together. Occasionally she pushed a branch aside from before him, and laughed as he stooped to pa.s.s under, throwing her forward so that she had to cling to his neck to keep her position.

On and on he forced his way, his teeth clenched, his breath broken by the strain. She made herself as easy to carry as she could, but beyond that she showed no sign of sympathy. Again and again he was obliged to stop and put her down while he rested. His head was throbbing frightfully. He gave up trying to talk.

During one of their frequent rests she had asked him quietly, her eyes filled with a soft, calculative haze: "How much are you good for, Lawrence?"

He had answered: "Till we find water." She had laughed a little at that, and it had sounded unpleasant to him.

Now she said again: "You don't face facts, do you?" He made no answer.

She continued: "It's strange how we humans are always so overdetermined.

One ought to know by the time he is grown that he is a puppet in the hands of circ.u.mstance. Now I go on hoping that you can carry me out to life and my husband, and you plod determinedly on as if you were really able to do it. Of course, you may, but it is entirely dependent upon outside things."

He was too tired to answer, even to think. Besides, that was exactly his view of the situation.

"You see," she went on, "here we are, two distinct groups of living cells, each loving life and wanting it. Our pasts have been very different, our futures would have been; but here we are. I am resentful, because you are blind, because you are not stronger, because I cannot walk. You are probably resenting the same things. Perhaps you resent my saying what I do. You want me to rea.s.sure you and to promise success. If I did, you would know in your real mind that I was lying to you for the sake of getting you to do more. Yet both of us would feel happier if I could do it. I can't."

He stood up and took her in his arms without a word.

"We are going a few yards farther," she laughed. "Well, if ever any animal deserved life, you do."

He bit his lip and climbed on up the hill. In his mind he was saying over and over: "Just a mere intellect, nothing more. That's all she is."

Yet in his arms she felt very feminine. The sense of her body so close to him seemed strangely out of keeping with her talk.

He remembered a few other women of her type; he wondered what the end of their daily a.s.sociation would be. Then gradually his thinking ceased to be clear. His thirst more and more wove itself into his consciousness until his mind was a blurred fantasmagoria, in which, repeating itself over and over in the midst of strange ideas, would come the flashing sound of unattainable water. He did not talk, he did not think. Through the trees he wound his way with the grim determination of a beast fighting against death.

The sun pa.s.sed its zenith and sank slowly. It grew cooler in the forest through which he lurched, but he was hardly aware of it. Claire, too, was rapidly losing control over herself. She had ceased to talk, save to utter dull, monosyllabic commands to him. The pain from her ankle and her own thirst were blending into a dizzying maze of torture.

As darkness settled over the forest, she grew afraid. Ordinarily it would have been a delight to her, here among the trees, but now the shadowing night filled her with ideas of horror. She forgot her theories, and clung to him so that he was the more hampered. She grew afraid lest he should drop her, lest he should give up the fight, and with that came an overwhelming desire to urge him on. She thought of wild tales that she might tell to spur his faltering strength. At first she resisted, then as her desire for life grew within her, she began to lie to him. "It isn't far, just a little way to water," she whispered.

He struggled unsteadily forward. They had pa.s.sed the top of the ridge and were descending the other side. He was scarcely aware of his own motion. He did not hear her directions, and stumbled against the trees.

When her ankle struck a bough, she realized in a flash of pain that he was not listening to her. Then she felt him sinking down.

Gripping his shoulder, she shouted: "Go on! Water ahead!" He heard her, his mouth opened, and he gathered himself up to stumble a few steps farther through the darkness. They seemed to be deep in a wooded ravine.

He staggered again and fell.

She was thrown violently forward, and flung out a hand to save herself.

As she lay there, half-dazed, suddenly she felt her fingers grow cold and wet. Water! A small stream, no larger than that from a hydrant, was trickling over the rock.

Dragging herself to it, she drank greedily. She dipped her hands in it.

She laughed joyously and splashed. For a few minutes she played like a child. Then she remembered Lawrence.

Lifting her hands full of water, she threw it on his face. His mouth was open, and a few drops fell upon his black tongue. She threw another handful, then took her skirt and, wetting it, wrung it into his mouth.

He twisted over on his side and muttered: "Water."

She gave him more, and as he sat up, she said eagerly: "Here, Lawrence, here."

Taking his hand, she pulled him toward the stream. He drank ravenously, plunging his face and hands into the little line of water, making queer noises over it.