Ewing's Lady Part 33

"I can hardly bear it," she said, almost in a whisper. "You don't know what she is to me, how I've loved her and loved her and loved her. And yet I've accepted her as a matter of course, a thing that couldn't be taken from me, like the world itself. How could I think she might be like--like those others? Oh, I never dreamed I could lose my dearest--my dearest!"

He waited a moment, and at last said gently, "You won't lose your dearest--we won't lose her."

"Oh, but she's going, before our eyes."

"Listen to me, listen now! She's going to get well. She'll be strong again--I know it. I say she can't die; but you must be sure of it--as sure as I am--do you hear?--as sure as I am."

"Yes, yes--I will be sure." She tried to look at him through her tear-wet lashes. He smiled at her confidently.

"If we're both sure, we can have your sister crying in a month because Ben won't let her work in the garden."

"Oh, if you only--" She broke off to look at him in wondering grat.i.tude.

"And I'll go in and tell her so now," he added, rising.

"Yes, yes, make her feel sure, too," she implored. She turned quickly to the car window, where twilight was blurring the fields to a far, dreamy horizon, level and vast. He stood a moment, tracing with mental point the line of her profile under the boyish cap pinned to her yellow hair.

Mrs. Laithe lay on a narrow sofa in the stateroom. She had moved from that only to the berth at night since their start, and had betrayed a preference for being alone in the little compartment. Ewing had felt, however, that she liked to talk with him as evening drew on. She had sent for him at this hour the day before and they had sat together in the dusk. He was rea.s.sured by the cheerfulness of her tone as she greeted him now.

"We're flying so fast," she said joyously.

"To make you well the sooner. I've just been telling Virginia what we'll do for you even in a month. You'll be riding and climbing, and you'll cry because you can't fell trees or rive out shakes, or something."

"I'm not worrying about that. It will come right very soon."

"We'll make it come right. No one ever dies a natural death there, you know. I was just reading your sister a letter from Ben. Lee Jennings killed breaking a horse, Elmer Watts shot by Chester Lynch. Of course, in a way, that was a natural death for Elmer. He was bound to go that way sooner or later, but you're not going to ride a bucker, and you're not a gunfighter. Oh, you'll thrive, with a little stall feeding."

"And there's so much room out there." She smiled. "So much room to--to live. And life is so full. I like to hear it, through Virgie and through you. You are sh.e.l.ls that give me the roar of it."

He was sensitive to some pathos of aloofness which her whole being expressed for him, and he strove to meet this with pictures of herself returning, a well woman; but she turned her face from him at length, and did not speak for so long that he thought she might be sleeping. He went carefully out, with a last enveloping look.

When he had gone the woman laughed in a helpless, shuddering way, then raised herself far enough toward the window to see the fields rushing by outside. There was timidity in her look until she had seen a mile of that relentless earth rush back and away from her. She seemed to need this a.s.surance that she was going away from the trouble in the crude, literal sense of earthly distance--going off where there was room "to live," she had told Ewing; "to die," she had amended the phrase to herself. For death was now a solace she faced. She who had been so hot for the fight, so avid of life, had been cheated of a combatant's privileges. She could not tell Ewing the truth, and she could not live while he believed the lie. It was well, she thought, to know that she had only to let herself float down that placid current of the white death. She was amazed at her own calmness and tested it in all subtle ways, making sure of its foundations. She could find no weak spot. She craved only a moderate speed in the descent. Too long a wait would be wearisome, and the wise man had a.s.sured her against that. Yet she felt that she had the right to be a little glad when her brother told her the next day of a change in the plan.

"It will be better for you and Virgie to go to Ewing's place, Nell.

It's always quiet there, and my place is pretty busy and noisy. I'll manage to stay over there with you a good deal, and we'll get a woman to come and do for you--I know one that will be glad to come. It will only be for a little while, you know."

She smiled at that well-worn fiction, but applauded the plan.

"I shall like it, dear, and Virgie will, too, I'm sure, if you think it best, and if Mr. Ewing----"

"Ewing suggested it, and he didn't waste any words telling what a good plan he thought it was. We'll have some extra things brought up from Pagosa to make you comfortable, and you can have a bully long rest there."

"A long rest, yes--and let us have a piano. I'd like to hear some music while I'm resting."

"Sure! we'll have one up from Durango. You might need to stay there until--well--into the winter, you know."

"I think so, Clarence." She was tempted sometimes to confide to him the truth about her sickness, but refrained.

"Well, it won't be very long. All you want is a rest."

Her mind echoed it when he had gone. Yes, a rest. She looked up at Virginia, who had entered softly. Her face still shone with the thought of rest and release, and she smiled up at the girl, who had laid a cool hand on her flushing cheek, and now regarded her with devouring eyes.

She stood so a moment, then knelt to peer at the wasted face. She looked a long time without speaking, looked shrewdly and, at last, accusingly.

"What is it, dearest? I saw it in your face yesterday. What is it I see?

Something has frightened you--beaten you."

The other smiled protestingly, chidingly, with a raised finger; but the girl was not to be appeased.

"You won't tell me, Nell; I know you; you'll keep it in. But, oh, dearest!" She suddenly gathered the sick woman into her strong young arms, raising her head from the pillow, holding the fevered face to her breast, pressing her own cool cheek to the hot brow.

"Dearest dear, let me in. Trust me. Tell me where it hurts. Let me mother you."

"There, there, dear! Everything is all right. Lay me down again and be easy in that mind of yours."

But once more on the pillow she had to endure again the girl's accusing eyes.

"Nell, someone hasn't loved you enough. That's what I feel. Who is it?"

"Nonsense! You're only worried because I'm a little run down. Everyone loves me enough--all I deserve. There, dear, I think I can rest." The girl kissed her shut eyes, and went out, after a long, doubting look.

The sick woman raised her arms once, like a child who would be taken, but they fell back, and she painfully laughed the old low laugh of secrecy.

She mused on her brother's words. "A little rest." Yes, a rest. "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep."

She remembered now that it would come to her in the shelter of those hills, perhaps in that room to which her thoughts had flown so many times, where she had seen the awakening man in the sleeping boy, and caught misty shadowings of the portent he bore for her. Her eyes might fall before his now, but they need not fall before the eyes of his mother.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE HILLS OF REST

Ben Crider waited for them on the station platform at Pagosa. He was excited to a point of feverish unrest until the train warned its way out of the last canon. Then, by a masterful effort, he became elaborately nonchalant. That train had brought Ewing back to him, but he constrained himself to handle the occasion as one rising hardly to common levels. He would have considered any other demeanor "shameless."

He nodded to Bartell, who supported his sister from the car, and stared politely at the pretty but anxious-looking girl who followed them. But when Ewing appeared, burdened with handbags, Ben ignored him, and rushed to shake the hand of Beulah Pierce, returning from a three-days' trip to Durango. So effusive was his greeting that Pierce mentally convicted him of having lingered at the "Happy Days" bar for one too many drinks, and broke from his affectionate grasp with some embarra.s.sment.

Ben strolled forward to the baggage car, humming lightly, and, with the bored air of a man creating diversion for himself, laid listless hands on the trunks as they were unloaded. He was whirling one of the heaviest of these to the waiting wagon when Ewing fell on him with a glad shout.

Ben paused briefly, balancing the trunk on a corner, glanced up with moderate surprise, and spoke his welcome.

"Oh, that you, Kid? Howdy!" He resumed his struggle with the trunk, blind to the other's outstretched hand, and when Ewing thereupon hissed at him, "You d.a.m.ned Mexican sheep herder!" he allowed pleasure to show but faintly in his face. But when he was seized by the collar, hurled half across the platform, and slammed brutally against the wall of the station, he protested with pleased annoyance as he picked up his hat, "Aw, quit yer foolin', now, Kid! I got to hustle them trunks." He was sufficiently refreshed by the attack, however, to sing to himself as he labored. And when the start was made he insisted that Ewing should drive. Ben sat in the rear seat. He wanted to look at Ewing's back for five hours.

The sick woman, in another and easier conveyance, rejoiced that she was going still farther into the peace of her last refuge. As they left the brown-floored valley and began to climb the mountain road, she was glad that the green walls closed in behind them; glad of every difficult ascent; every stream forded; every confusing turn of the way. She was hiding herself, cunningly insuring the peace of her last hours.

She was troubled now only by Virginia, who hung upon her with an agonized solicitude. But she promised herself to wear this down by her own cheerfulness and expressed certainty. Virginia would see her peaceful, hopeful, happy; she would become used to the idea of her wasting; and the actual going out would come gently to her as something fit and benign. Life so abounding as Virginia's could not long droop under the shadow of death.

Made at home in the lake cabin, she still felt the world rushing back from her as had the fields rushed by when she looked from the car window. And she rested in this. Affairs went on about her, plans were made, talk of the future or of the day; all went by her unheeded, save for a blurred and pleasant effect of swiftness. Outwardly she was serene, languorous, incuriously placid. Inwardly she thrilled with a luxury of inertness. She had loosed herself in the ebbing tide, and she folded her hands and smiled from this with the a.s.sured indolence of one who knows that some earned reward will not long be delayed. The slow-paced even life was a balm to her, the gathering about the table at mealtimes, the evenings in the studio, when her sister played or talked with Ewing; when she could lie still on the couch and try to make herself forgotten, regretting only the short dry cough that racked her night and morning and brought her to the minds of the others.

She had thought that she could adjust herself, after a little, to the new look in Ewing's eyes, knowing as she did its secret spring. It was a look of blind acceptance, of unquestioning adoration--and mingled with it was a maddening pity. But there flashed from him, too, at times, a look of purpose and a.s.surance, steady, secret, determined. She detected this chiefly when he glanced up to her from his drawing. He had brought with him a story to ill.u.s.trate for the _Knickerbocker_, and he was, at last, to finish that series of Western scenes for the same periodical.

And he had flown to this work with a frantic haste, with the look, as he bent over the board, that seemed to say: "This is for you. Be patient with me, it will soon be done."