Claire Part 4

"I hate to start in on roots or leaves. If we only had some berries!"

He got up determinedly. "I'll go down the ravine and hunt. If I get mixed in directions, I'll shout."

She watched him go, and when he had disappeared through the trees she felt strangely sadder and very much alone. She fell to wondering if he were really so necessary to her. Sooner or later would come the inevitable problem between them. Would he fall in love with her, and would she, in the days that they might be alone together, find his companionship growing into any really vital proportion in her life? That she, Claire Barkley, rich and independent, whose life had been selfish to a marked degree and who had never considered anything except from the point of view of vigor, perfection, or beauty, should ever love a blind man was incredible.

"No," she thought, "not even the closest of daily relationships with him could ever make me really care. He is not of my life." She wondered how much she would sacrifice for him if it were necessary in their pilgrimage toward civilization, and she answered herself, frankly: "No more than I must to maintain a balance in our forced business partnership." She knew that was all this meant to her.

From down the ravine she heard him shouting l.u.s.tily, and she answered, her clear, rich voice waking pleasant echoes as she called. She waited for some time before he came. In his arms he carried a bundle of branches loaded with red berries, while in one hand was a clump of large mushrooms.

Claire watched him as he approached, and was surprised at the ease with which he walked. There was less hesitation in his stride than she had thought, and he came briskly through the trees, dodging as though by instinct.

When he reached the rock, it was characteristic of her that she said: "You came through those trees remarkably well."

He laughed. "I have an uncanny way of feeling things on my face before they touch me. I experimented somewhat with it in the laboratory at college. It's a sort of tropism, perhaps, such as bugs have, that enables them to keep between two planks or that turns plant-roots toward the sun. Anyway, I've brought some breakfast. These berries may be good, and these other things may be toadstools. I brought them along."

"How does one tell?" she asked.

"Oh, mushrooms are pink underneath and ribbed like a fan."

She examined them and said they might be mushrooms, they looked it. He sat down again, but not until he had replenished the fire.

"They may be poison, both of them," he hazarded. "That's our sporting chance. Will you try them?"

Claire took some of the berries and ate them. "I don't feel anything yet," she announced after a minute's solemn munching.

"Oh, you probably won't for several hours anyway," he said lightly. Then he continued: "If we could devise a way, we might heat water and cook the mushrooms. Then, too, I've been thinking we might even catch a bird."

"Neither sounds very simple."

"Nothing in life is simple," he replied. "At home, in America, where we leave food-getting to the farmer, dress from a store, and go to heaven by way of a minister, things are fairly well arranged, but here we aren't even sure of salvation unless we mind the business of thinking."

He continued after a pause. "Of course, I don't especially remember that I counted on heaven. It always seemed a bit distant in the face of living and working. Perhaps, however, you counted it as vital."

"I was fairly occupied with more immediate things," she answered.

"However, that is a different world from this. What we did then can't especially matter to us here. This is our place of business, so to speak, and social life doesn't factor."

"I see." He accepted the snub thoughtfully. "But this business of ours will grow exceedingly irksome without talk. I doubt if we can find the means of escape an all-sufficient topic."

"We haven't boiled our water yet," she said. "And the bird is still free to roam."

He did not carry on his line of thought aloud. If she had known what was going on in his mind, she might have been angered. He was wondering just how much thinking she was capable of. Certain that she was beautiful, he had scarcely allowed that to occupy him. His experience had led him to estimate people almost wholly by their ability to be open-minded. In his struggle against blindness, he had concluded that open minds were rare indeed, and persons who limited his freedom of action or tended to baby him he had grown to dismiss with a shrug. Claire did not belong to that cla.s.s. "She has shown remarkable willingness to let me go my own pace,"

he thought, "but is this due to her mind or to mere indifference?" He decided at last that the relationship would be tiresome for both of them, and that she was not especially eager to prevent it from being so.

This conclusion led him to adopt a definite att.i.tude toward her. She could do as she pleased; he, for his part, would treat her simply as an uninteresting person, a machine that furnished the eyes which he could use in his travel to liberty.

He recalled how, when he had been displeased with convention, he had thought of life in the wild as the best possible means of liberty, and he laughed.

Claire looked up. "What is there amusing just now?"

"Myself, and you."

"Why, pray, am I amusing?" Then she was sorry she had said it.

"Because you are you."

"And are you other than yourself?" she asked scornfully.

"Not at all, but my own particular interests seem infinitely more important to me than there is any possibility of yours doing."

"You mean to say that you are an egotist."

"Frankly, I am," he agreed. "One is an egotist, I suppose, when he finds himself and his needs and whims essentially worth while. I'll admit I find mine so. Perhaps you feel the same about yours. One scarcely knows where egotism and vanity meet or end in a woman." He smiled, for he meant that to provoke, and it did.

Claire's voice was edged when she replied. "A very penetrating remark.

With men generally, vanity seems to be a widely extended cloak to spread over all things in a woman that they cannot dispose of in any other way.

If I find you dull, or if I am not struck with your ability, or if you do not seem to me sufficiently fascinating, I am possessed of feminine vanity."

"Precisely. And why not? If I choose to regard myself as all those things which you deny, why shouldn't I find the fault in you rather than in myself?"

"Because it may be in you," suggested Claire.

"It may, but that doesn't alter the case. I quite agree that you are right, but none the less you are at fault, because I, Lawrence, am the most important of all things to me."

She did not answer. The conversation seemed to her useless. She saw no reason for arguing the matter, and she half suspected that he was simply teasing her. Besides, she could not but feel that to sit here in his coat and discuss egotism was a trifle ridiculous. He was merely trying to establish a friendship in talk which she did not care to encourage.

That was her conclusion.

As he rose to gather more sticks, he asked: "Do you happen to see a rock that flattens to an edge?"

Told where he might find one, he brought it and struck it hard against their boulder. It did not break. "It may do," he said thoughtfully, and began to grind it against the side of the other rock. He worked steadily and long, and the result was a fairly good edge, which was nicked and toothed, but still an edge. He laid it down with a sigh of contentment.

"My first tool," he commented.

CHAPTER IV.

MUTUAL DISLIKE.

All day Lawrence worked, and when night came he had hollowed out a piece of log to a depth of some eighteen inches, leaving six inches of solid wood in the bottom. Both were very well pleased with the result. With the coming of darkness, he gathered more berries, and heated water in his log kettle. They were able to cook the mushrooms and to bind her ankle in moss soaked in hot water. The building of a shelter was discussed, but both decided to resume their journey on the following day, so they slept again in the heavy moss.

In the morning, Claire was glad indeed of the hot water, for it warmed her, and her ankle felt much better. They decided to follow the little stream which would doubtless wind its way somehow around the present ridge back to the ocean. Accordingly, they kept down the ravine, which cut across the ridge in a southerly direction.

For the whole of that day and the next they followed the stream, which grew to a small creek. At noon of the third day they dropped suddenly down a steep slope to find themselves at the juncture of their stream, with a river which flowed through a deep gorge out to the ocean. They determined to follow it up toward its head.

"Somewhere inland must be a town," argued Claire. "At any rate, it's the only way we can go."

After living for four days on berries, they were beginning to feel acutely the need of other food, but they discussed the problem at length without arriving at any feasible solution. Two days later fortune temporarily relieved their difficulty.