Claire Part 8

"We can't find it here," she said, hiding her appreciation of the scene under her professional-guide tone.

He frowned. "Nowhere close?"

"No. And what is worse, we'll have to go over a mountain. The stream here is rushing right out from between cliff walls."

Lawrence's spirit sank, but he did not show it. "We'd better eat what little we have left and then be off," he suggested simply.

That morning was the beginning of their hardest experience since they first left the beach. Scarcely had they started to climb over the great ridge, which broke into sheer precipice at the river, when a sharp wind rose and cut through their unprotected bodies. Claire drew in against him as close as she could, while he tried to give her more protection with his arms. The slope was steep and filled with loose rocks so that he lost ground at every step. They were forced to stop often, and by noon he was worn out, and they were both bitterly cold. Claire thought they were near the top, so Lawrence nerved himself to press on.

Night found them standing on the crest of the ridge, in the face of a bitter wind; before them, across a small plateau, rose a still higher mountain around the northern side of which a ravine cut its jagged gash away from the river. Claire stared at the scene until her courage broke down.

"We can never do it, Lawrence," she moaned, and her head sank wearily against his shoulder. Her cry was the aching moan of a heart-broken child. The proud, self-contained Claire was gone. It stirred Lawrence strangely, and for the first time a warm tenderness for her came over him. He drew her to him, and tried to comfort her. Her poor undernourished body shook with the sobs that despair and the cold wrung from her, and, though his own hands and body were blue, he tried to warm her. Had he seen the ground ahead of them, he, too, might have given up, but blindness was the barring wall of black which shut out even defeat.

He clenched his teeth firmly, and lifted Claire in his arms again resolutely.

"We've got to do it, Claire," he said, "and we will."

She attempted to paint the scene before him in graphic detail, her words broken by sobs. When she finished he started forward.

"We'll follow the gulf," he stated. "We must keep going, Claire. We don't dare to stop."

"We can't. It's dark, and will be black soon," she answered.

"We've got to do it," Lawrence repeated. "It isn't the first night of my life I've struggled against a black so dense its nothingness seemed overpowering."

She strained her eyes through the gathering night to turn him into the smoothest way, lapsing into jerky, habitual words of guidance.

In the darkness they entered the ravine and staggered down to its broken bottom. The time soon came when she could see hardly anything until they were almost upon it, and the white face of a boulder spotting the endless black before her filled her with a vague dread. Often they paused to rest, but the cold drove them on again. Claire almost ceased to direct him, and Lawrence gritted his teeth till they hurt him and forged ahead.

Once he slipped and fell, but got to his feet again and went on. Claire was not injured beyond a few bruises, but she noticed that he limped more than before and her fear increased.

How they ever fought that night through neither knew, but morning came at last and found them still staggering down the ravine. They were almost out of it now and were entering a rather heavy pine forest.

Fortunately the gulf they followed had turned around the mountain in the direction of the river, and their desire for water drove them to keep on. To their blue and shaking bodies all feeling had grown vague, tingling, and uncertain. When Claire looked at Lawrence she could have screamed. His lips were drawn back, and his hairy cheeks and sightless eyes flashed before her the image of a dehumanized death mask. Her own face must look like that, she thought, and buried her head on his shoulder. Through that morning he struggled on, faltering, lurching, resting a little, girding himself against the death now so surely at hand. In his mind thought had ceased to be coherent; his starved body, whipped by the cold, was beginning to play with the imagery.

He gurgled a grim little laugh, and all clear thought was at an end.

Claire heard and looked at him wonderingly. She knew that she was freezing, and she had resigned herself, but this man, what was he doing?

He still lunged through the trees, where, at all events it seemed a little warmer. She heard him muttering incoherent jargon that gradually cleared to speech. "We'll go on, Claire. We'll go on to the end. I've got to do it. I need my life. I need you!"

She started and listened, though even in her present state she grew resentful. "So that was it," she thought; "he's waiting to get me out before he breaks into his love. He wants his rescue as an argument."

Then her thinking was broken into detached images. She saw her husband and cried aloud to him. She had pictures flashing in her mind of him, of old scenes, parties, places they had been together, tenements she had visited in her charity work, the beach that morning when Lawrence had found her, and in and through it all she heard words falling from his lips that recalled later, stung her to wrath.

"I need you, Claire," she heard him again, and then, "I shall use you, Claire. You will be my masterpiece. It is you, proud, superior, human, social, intellectual, s.e.xed, vital, you, carrying in your being the whole tumultuous riot of the ages gone, and hiding it under a guarded social exterior, not knowing when in a sentence it breaks through, you, you, Claire, you, the woman!"

He stumbled, regained his balance, and plunged through a fringe of pines, staggered against one, then another, cursed, and went again forward and out into a clearing. She saw it vaguely before them. At first she doubted, then, as he let his hold on her slip, she gripped his neck with arms that scarcely felt the body they closed around.

"Lawrence," she screamed in a voice that was shrill--"Lawrence, a cabin, a cabin!"

He sank down with her clinging to him still. "I know," he muttered, "I've got to find one." Then he lay quiet.

She freed herself and crept toward the house. She was at the back of it, and she was obliged to crawl slowly on hands and knees around to the front. There was a door, she pushed on it, but it did not open. She grew angry at it, and beat against it with her fists, abusing it for its obstinacy. When at last it opened she laughed wildly.

Before her, his tall body, clad in warm, heavy clothes, stood a man whose dark eyes grew wet with tears of pity the instant they saw her. He lifted her in his arms like a child and carried her inside. She had a fleeting sense of being at home, she thought he was her husband and threw her arms around him pa.s.sionately, then, remembering Lawrence, she murmured as he laid her down, "Out there--behind the cabin!" and was unconscious.

The man turned and hurried out. In a few minutes he came back, carrying Lawrence, and his face was lined with pity at the state of these two human beings.

He laid them together on a wide berth at the side of the cabin and began to work over them alternately. Swiftly and deftly he heated blankets and prepared food. He wound them in the hot cloth, chafed their hands and arms, and forced brandy down their throats.

Lawrence's eyelids drew back.

"The man is blind," muttered the stranger in Spanish.

Claire was looking at him dazedly and reaching greedily toward the kettle that simmered over a great open fireplace.

He brought a bowl of hot savory soup and started feeding them. Lawrence swallowed mechanically, but he could hardly get the spoon out of Claire's mouth.

"Not too much, _senora_," he said, turning away.

When he looked again toward them they were both asleep. The utter exhaustion of their long night claimed rest. He walked over to Claire and stood looking down at her.

"She was beautiful," he thought. "And he is blind. Ah, well, for her, beauty is again possible, but for him"--he shrugged his shoulders--"it is bad, bad!" he said softly, and, turning to a shelf of books that stood against the wall, he drew out a volume and sat down before the fire to read.

CHAPTER VI.

THE STONE THREAT.

When Claire awoke she stared around her for a few minutes before the events of their frantic struggle came back to her. Her eyes strayed to the figure before the fireplace. Idly she noted the l.u.s.trous, wavy black hair and deep brown eyes protected by unusually heavy lashes. It was clearly the face of a thinker, a dreamer, yet there was something sensual about the mouth, potentially voluptuous, abandoned, and suggestive of tremendous pa.s.sion that slumbered close beneath the brain that was so actively awake. Claire ached, and her body tingled with the unaccustomed warmth. She lay quiet, looking at the fire, her mind still uncertain in its action, weaving sharp, dynamic images about this new personality. While his appearance gripped and awed her strangely, at the same time she felt drawn to him. She turned and threw out her hand. Her host closed his book and looked up, smiling.

"Ah, _la senora se siente mejor_?" His deep, rich voice, although lighter than Lawrence's, was full of music, but she did not understand his words. Her blank expression told him, and he smiled again.

"I remember, you spoke English," he said with only the slightest accent.

"Are you better, _madame_?"

She answered his warm smile and said weakly: "Much better, thank you!"

"And your husband?" Claire saw that he was looking beyond her, and she turned to find Lawrence at her side. Instinctively she resented his being there. The warm blood rushed to her face.

"He--oh--he will be all right, I trust!" she stammered falteringly, and her host looked puzzled. Her impulse was to tell him that Lawrence was not her husband, but she thought better of it and said nothing about the relationship.

"He had a long, desperate struggle to bring me here," she said instead.

"You see, I broke my ankle and he had to carry me."

"Oh!" The man rose, his face filled with respect as he looked at Lawrence asleep beside her.

"From where did he carry you?" he asked.