Claire Part 29

They ate their supper in silence. Claire glanced at Philip occasionally and found in his eyes the antic.i.p.ated look of tender ownership. She let him slip out of her mind while she thought again of the afternoon when Lawrence had declared his creative principle. How dearly she would love to help him, to have him model his statue of her. He had said that she was savage and elemental underneath her polish. He had known, then, all the time. What a man he was! If only she knew how to find his love, to reawaken it. But no, he would never forget. Well, he would not have been able to care for her, anyway, she was so utterly sensual despite all her training in culture. He would want a more spiritual woman to fire his imagination to do great work. She tried to imagine what sort of woman would be best for his wife.

Lawrence stirred restlessly. She rose and went quickly to the bed. He was still asleep and she stood looking down at him. In her heart was a great tenderness and a great fear. What if he should die? Memories of their days in the woods swept over her in waves of love.

Abruptly she turned to Philip and said quietly: "Philip, until I am your wife you must not touch me again."

He looked up, startled, then smiled. "I understand, my dear," he said, "I will not."

She sat down at the table to wait for Lawrence's waking. It was late when he did, and immediately they realized that he was worse. Claire gave him some hot soup made from dried meal and helped Philip get him undressed and into bed.

"I'll put some blankets here and sleep on the floor beside him," Philip whispered. "I don't in the least mind, and I can help him if he wants help during the night."

"Thank you," Claire said gratefully. She felt indebted to this man for every kindness shown Lawrence.

Long before morning she was aroused by the sound of movements out there in the room.

"What is it?" she called softly.

"I am looking for something in which to heat water," came Philip's voice.

She scrambled out of bed, drew on a few clothes, and went out. Lawrence was tossing on his bed and breathing heavily. She set to work heating the water herself, and sent Philip back to his blankets. There was a pleasure in doing this nursing for Lawrence. She felt glad that hers was the chance to care for him.

"You're to have the best nursing a sick man ever got, Lawrence," she said, stooping over him tenderly.

He smiled faintly and whispered: "Good, Claire."

"You'll be well so quick you won't remember being ill."

"I know," he murmured huskily.

"What do you know?" she asked eagerly.

"I know, it's natural for you, this kindness."

"Is that all you know, Lawrence?"

"About all, Claire. About all, yet."

"Why do you say 'yet'?"

"I haven't thought it out yet."

"What, Lawrence?"

"My platform, my work-bench for the future."

She laughed, a little sadly. "You would better stop thinking about that for a day or so, wouldn't you?"

"Perhaps. I can't, though."

She drew up a chair and sat beside him. "I'm going to become a regular guard, and if you don't sleep and let thinking wait, I'll scold dreadfully."

He tossed uneasily and turned toward her, his cheeks brilliant with fever.

"I like to hear you scold, Claire," he said. "I shall go my limit."

She rubbed her cool hand across his forehead for answer.

When he at last slept, she continued to watch by his side, rocking slowly in her chair. It was peace for her to sit there and dream. There was rest from her ceaseless questionings, and it was welcome rest.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE QUESTION ANSWERED.

During the days that followed Claire's att.i.tude grew into one of motherhood. She watched over Lawrence for the least thing she might do, the least promise of returning health. There were times when he raved in delirium, and she listened with a swelling heart.

One morning he began suddenly talking of himself. In broken sentences, shapeless phrases, half finished thoughts, he unfolded a strange tale.

Claire was glad that Philip was away at work with his traps. She sat beside Lawrence, her hands clasped, and did not miss a word.

"You see," he began one day without preliminaries, "you see, I wasn't just given the best of chances. That was the beginning of it all. I wasn't fairly treated." She tried to comfort him into sleep, but he did not know she was talking to him and went on earnestly with his unconscious revelation.

"The whole business was a squalid sort of thing banked by mountains so grand in their rugged strength that I never got used to the dirty, dusty little half-civilized town there on the plateau. Even as a child I felt the intolerable difference between the place and its surroundings. Men ought to be better up there, but they aren't. They just magnify faults with the bigness of the hills around. Lots of it was romantic, lots of it ought never to be lost, the frank freedom, the vital living, the joy of uncertain victory over the dirt of the mines. It made men wild, wild to the last degree, that ever possible stumbling into gold, pure, glittering gold. Why, I saw it as a kid, shining like stars all over the side of the tunnel. It made even the children mad, I think. When I modeled rude little figures out of the red clay, I was always on the outlook for a possible gold-mine."

He laughed, then went on seriously. "I didn't have the chance to grow up learning things gradually. There was no dividing-line between vice and virtue, all of it spread out there, street behind street, in a glow of abandoned riot. Even virtue flashed with a loose frankness that deceived a growing boy. It was a grand drama. Fifty thousand mad men and women!"

She looked at him in amazement. This was something beyond her knowledge.

What was it all that he was talking about?

"There was Josey; she didn't know. I didn't. We saw love played with in hilarious open pa.s.sion. We thought it was the thing to do. Children oughtn't to see it quite that way."

Claire felt guilty, but he stopped and when he began again he was on a different line of old memories.

"Why, when I sold papers down on the main street I could see the girls of the district standing around, one block below, in their business regalia. I thought at first they were angels."

Claire sat in wonder and listened.

"The first time I ever went down there I was eight. Eight years old, and one of them called me from the open door of her house. When I stepped to the door, she was coming down a stairway, her white dress open and spread like wings at either side of her naked body. I was sure she was an angel out of my Sunday-school book. I could scarcely take the dime she gave me. I never forgot her kissing me and patting my head when I stared so at her."

Claire felt a strangely tender pity for the little chap she was seeing now in her imagination.

"And the fighting, dirty, freckled sons of those women--they kept me hard at it, keeping the money I got. After that day, I went down there often. Traded a paper with a golden-haired angel for a box of cigarettes, the first I ever owned. It was great, wonderful, to have her cigarettes. I smoked them with a sense of reverence.

"Wright and I played hooky, and the girls hid us all day in their shacks, played with us, teased us about s.e.x, and taught us things we oughtn't to have known. Poor old Wright! They sent him to the pen for burglary after I had been gone years and was blind. I wonder if I'd have followed him. Most likely would.

"And, oh, the hills! There was old Pisga, pined to its cone point, and a race-track, with a saloon, at its foot. I ran away out there once at a big Fourth of July barbecue. It rained like the devil and I lounged in the bar with jockeys and sporting girls, listening to their ribald talk.