In Exile and Other Stories Part 3

"Oh, it wasn't the children."

"Well, I'm sorry. I had hoped"--

"Yes," said she, with a modest interrogation, as he hesitated, "what is it you had hoped?"

"That I might indirectly be the means of making your life less lonely here.

You remember that 'experiment' we talked about at the spring?"

"That _you_ talked about, you mean."

"I am going to try it myself. Not because you were so encouraging,--but--it's a risk anyway, you know, and I'm not sure the circ.u.mstances make so much difference. I've known people to be wretched with all the modern conveniences. I am going East for her in about two weeks. How sorry she will be to find you gone! I wrote to her about you.

You might have helped each other; couldn't you stand it, Miss Newell, don't you think, if you had another girl?"

"I'm afraid not," she said very gently. "I _must_ go home. You may be sure she will not need me; you must see to it that she doesn't need--any one."

They were walking back and forth on the hill.

"I was just looking for the cottonwood-trees; are they gone too?" she asked.

"Oh yes; there isn't a tree left in the canon. Don't you envy me my work?"

"I suppose everything we do seems like desecration to somebody. Here am I making history very rapidly for this colony of ants." She looked down with a rueful smile as she spoke.

"I wish you had the history of the entire species under your foot, and could finish it at once."

"I'm not sure that I would; I'm not so fond of extermination as you pretend to be."

"Well, keep the ants if you like them, but I am firm on the subject of the camp children. There _are_ blessings that brighten as they take their flight. I pay my monthly a.s.sessment for the doctor with the greatest cheerfulness; if it wasn't for him, in this climate, they would crowd us off the hill."

"Please don't!" she said wearily. "Even _I_ don't like to hear you talk like that; I am sure _she_ will not."

He laughed softly. "You have often reminded me of her in little ways: that was what upset me at the spring. I was very near telling you all about her that day."

"I wish that you had!" she said. They were walking towards home now. "I suppose you know it is talked of in the camp," she said, after a pause.

"Mr. Dyer told me, and showed me the house, a week ago. And now I must tell you about my violets. I had them in a box in my room all winter. I should like to leave them as a little welcome to her. Last night Nicky Dyer and I planted them on the bank by the piazza under the climbing-rose; it was a secret between Nicky and me, and Nicky promised to water them until she came; but of course I meant to tell you. Will you look at them to-night, please, and see if Nicky has been faithful?"

"I will, indeed," said Arnold. "That is just the kind of thing she will delight in. If you are going East, Miss Newell, shall we not be fellow-travelers? I should be so glad to be of any service."

"No, thank you. I am to spend a month in Santa Barbara, and escort an invalid friend home. I shall have to say good-by, now. Don't go any farther with me, please."

That night Arnold mused late, leaning over the railing of the new piazza in the moonlight. He fancied that a faint perfume of violets came from the damp earth below; but it could have been only fancy, for when he searched the bank for them they were not there. The new sod was trampled, and a few leaves and slight, uptorn roots lay scattered about, with some broken twigs from the climbing-rose. He had found the gate open when he came, and the Dyer cow had pa.s.sed him, meandering peacefully up the trail.

The crescent moon had waxed and waned since the night when it lighted the engineer's musings through the wind-parted live-oak boughs, and another slender bow gleamed in the pale, tinted haze of twilight. The month had gone, like a feverish dream, to the young schoolmistress, as she lay in her small, upper chamber, unconscious of all save alternate light and darkness, and rest following pain. When, at last, she crept down the short staircase to breathe the evening coolness, clinging to the stair-rail and holding her soft white draperies close around her, she saw the pink light lingering on the mountains, and heard the chorus to the "Sweet By and By" from the miners' chapel on the hill. It was Sunday evening, and the house was piously "emptied of its folk." She took her old seat by the parlor window, and looked across to the engineer's office; its windows and doors were shut, and the dogs of the camp were chasing each other over the loose boards of the piazza floor. She laughed a weak, convulsive laugh, thinking of the engineer's sallies of old upon that band of Ishmaelites, and of the scrambling, yelping rush that followed. He must have gone East, else the dogs had not been so bold. She looked down the valley where the mountains parted seaward, the only break in the continuous barrier of land that cut off her retreat and closed in about the atom of her own ident.i.ty. The thought of that immensity of distance made her faint.

There were steps on the porch,--not Captain Dyer's, for he and his good wife were lending their voices to swell the stentorian chorus that was shaking the church on the hill; the footsteps paused at the door, and Arnold himself opened it. He had not, evidently, expected to see her.

"I was looking for some one to ask about you," he said. "Are you sure you are able to be down?"

"Oh yes. I've been sitting up for several days. I wanted to see the mountains again."

He was looking at her intently, while she flushed with weakness, and drew the fringes of her shawl over her tremulous hands.

"How ill you have been! I have wished myself a woman, that I might do something for you! I suppose Mrs. Dyer nursed you like a horse."

"Oh no; she was very good; but I don't remember much about the worst of it.

I thought you had gone home."

"Home! Where do you mean? I didn't know that I had ever boasted of any reserved rights of that kind. I have no mortgage, in fact or sentiment, on any part of the earth's surface, that I'm acquainted with!"

He spoke with a hard carelessness in his manner which make her shrink.

"I mean the East. I am homeless, too, but all the East seems like home to me."

"You had better get rid of those sentimental, backward fancies as soon as possible. The East concerns itself very little about us, I can tell you! It can spare us."

She thrilled with pain at his words. "I should think you would be the last one to say so,--you, who have so much treasure there."

"Will you please to understand," he said, turning upon her a face of bitter calmness, "that I claim no treasure anywhere,--not even in heaven!"

She sat perfectly still, conscious that by some fatality of helpless incomprehension every word that she said goaded him, and she feared to speak again.

"Now I have hurt you," he said in his gentlest voice. "I am always hurting you. I oughtn't to come near you with my rough edges! I'll go away now, if you will tell me that you forgive me!"

She smiled at him without speaking, while her fair throat trembled with a pulse of pain.

"Will you let me take your hand a moment? It is so long since I have touched a woman's hand! G.o.d! how lonely I am! Don't look at me in that way; don't pity me, or I shall lose what little manhood I have left!"

"What is it?" she said, leaning towards him. "There is something strange in your face. If you are in trouble, tell me; it will help me to hear it. I am not so very happy myself."

"Why should I add my load to yours? I seem always to impose myself upon you, first my hopes, and now my--no, it isn't despair; it is only a kind of brutal numbness. You must have the fatal gift of sympathy, or you would never have seen my little hurt."

Miss Frances was not strong enough to bear the look in his eyes as he turned them upon her, with a dreary smile. She covered her face with one hand, while she whispered,--

"Is it--you have not lost her?"

"Yes! Or, rather, I never had her. I've been dreaming like a boy all these years,--'In sleep a king, but waking, no such matter.'"

"It is not death, then?"

"No, she is not dead. She is not even false; that is, not very false. How can I tell you how little it is, and yet how much! She is only a trifle selfish. Why shouldn't she be? Why should we men claim the exclusive right to choose the best for ourselves? It was selfish of me to ask her to share such a life as mine; and she has gently and reasonably reminded me that I'm not worth the sacrifice. It's quite true. I always knew I wasn't. She put it very delicately and sweetly;--she's the sweetest girl you ever saw.

She'd marry me to-morrow if I could add myself, such as I am,--she doesn't overrate me,--to what she has already; but an exchange she wasn't prepared for. In all my life I never was so clearly estimated, body and soul. I don't blame her, you understand. When I left her, three years ago, I saw my way easily enough to a reputation, and an income, and a home in the East; she never thought of anything else; I never taught her to look for anything else. I dare say she rather enjoyed having a lover working for her in the unknown West; she enjoyed the pretty letters she wrote me; but when it came to the bare bones of existence in a mining camp, with a husband not very rich or very distinguished, she had nothing to clothe them with. You said once that to be happy here a woman must not have too much imagination; she hadn't quite enough. I had to be dead honest with her when I asked her to come. I told her there was nothing here but the mountains and the sunsets, and a few items of picturesqueness which count with some people. Of course I had to tell her I was but little better off than when I left. A man's experience is something he cannot set forth at its value to himself; she pa.s.sed it over as a word of no practical meaning. There her imagination failed her again. She took me frankly at my own estimate; and in justice to her I must say I put myself at the lowest figures. I made a very poor show on paper."

"You wrote to her!" exclaimed Miss Frances. "You did not go on? Oh, you have made a great mistake! Do go: it cannot be too late. Letters are the most untrusty things!"

"Wait," he said. "There is something else. She has a head for business; she proposed that I should come East, and accept a superintendentship from a cousin of hers, the owner of a gun-factory in one of those shady New England towns women are so fond of. She intimated that he was in politics, this cousin, and of course would expect his employees to become part of his const.i.tuency. It's a very pretty little bribe, you see; when you add the--the girl, it's enough to shake a man--who wants that girl. I'm not worth much to myself, or to anybody else, apparently, but by Heaven I'll not sell out as cheap as that!

"It all amounts to nothing except one more illusion gone. If there is a woman on this earth that can love a man without knowing for what, and take the chances of life with him without counting the cost, I have never known her. I asked you once if a woman could do that. You hadn't the courage to tell me the truth. I wouldn't have been satisfied if you had; but I'm satisfied now."