Peak and Prairie Part 8

"I think you have been misinformed, my dear. It was your mother's property, and is now yours."

"Oh, no, papa! You have a life-interest in it. I am surprised that you did not know that."

"And I am surprised that you should be, or pretend to be, ignorant that the property stands in your name. I have no more concern in it than--Miss Hunniman."

"But, papa!"

"We won't discuss the matter, if you please, my dear. We can gain nothing by discussion."

"I don't want to discuss it, papa," taking a critical survey of her embroidery; "but if you won't go snacks, I won't. Uncle Nicholas told me never to say 'go snacks,'" she added, with a side glance around the edge of the lamp-shade.

His face relaxed so far that she ventured to add: "Uncle Nicholas would be furious if we were to go snacks."

Stanwood smiled appreciatively.

"Nothing could be more painful to me than to miss an opportunity of making Nick furious," he said; "but I have not lived fifty years without having learned to immolate myself and my dearest ambitions upon the appropriate altars."

After which eloquent summing-up, he turned the conversation into another channel.

It was not long after this that Stanwood found himself experiencing a peculiar depression of spirits, which he positively refused to trace to its true source. He told himself that he wanted his freedom; he was getting tired of Elizabeth; he must send her home. It was nonsense for her to stay any longer, spoiling her complexion and his temper; it was really out of the question to have this thing go on any longer. Having come to which conclusion, it annoyed him very much to find himself enjoying her society. His depression of spirits was intermittent.

One morning, when he found her sitting on the saw-horse, with the new bronco taking his breakfast from a bag she held in her lap, the sun shining full in her clear young face, health and happiness in every line of her figure, a positive thrill of fatherly pride and affection seized him. But the reaction was immediate.

He turned on his heel, disgusted at this refutation of his theories. He was wretched and uncomfortable as he had never been before, and if it was not this intruding presence that made him so, what was it? Of course he was getting tired of her; what could be more natural? For fifteen years he had not known the pressure of a bond. Of course it was irksome to him! He really must get rid of it.

His moodiness did not escape Elizabeth, nor did she fail to note the recent accentuating of those lines in his face, which had at first struck her painfully, but which she had gradually become accustomed to.

In her own mind she concluded that her father had lived too long at this high alt.i.tude, and that she must persuade him to leave it.

"Papa," she said, as they stood for a moment in the doorway after supper, "don't you think it would be good fun to go abroad this autumn?"

His drooping spirit revived; she was getting tired of ranching.

"A capital plan, my dear. Just what you need," he replied, with more animation than he had shown since morning.

"Let us start pretty soon," she went on persuasively, deceived by his ready acquiescence.

"Us? My dear, what are you thinking of? I' m tired to death of Europe!

Nothing would induce me to go."

"Oh, well. Then I don't care anything about it," she said. "We'll stay where we are, of course. I am as happy and contented as I could be anywhere."

Stanwood turned upon her with a sudden, fierce irritation.

"This is nonsense!" he cried. "You are not to bury yourself alive out here! I won't permit it! The sooner you go, _the better for both of us_!"

His voice was harsh and strained; it was the tone of it more than the words themselves that cut her to the heart. He did not want her; it had all been a miserable failure. She controlled herself with a strong effort. Her voice did not tremble; there was only the pathos of repression in it as she answered: "Very well, papa; perhaps I have had my share."

Stanwood thought, and rebelled against the thought, that he had never seen a finer thing than her manner of replying. For himself, he felt as if he had come to the dregs of life and should like to fling the cup away.

They occupied themselves that evening a good deal with the collies, and they parted early; and then it was that Stanwood was brought face to face with himself.

For half an hour or more he made a pretence of reading the papers, and looking at the pictures in a stray magazine, thus keeping himself at arm's length, as it were. But after a while even that restraint became unendurable. He went to the back door of the house and opened it. The collies appeared in a delighted group to rush into the house. He suffered them to do so, and then, stepping out, he closed the door upon them and stood outside. There was a strong north wind, and, for a moment, its breath refreshed him like a dash of cold water. Only for a moment, however. The sense of oppression returned upon him, and he felt powerless to shake it off. With the uncertain, wavering step of a sleep-walker, he moved across to the spot where he had poured his libation three weeks ago. He stood there, strangely fascinated, glancing once or twice, furtively over his shoulder. Then, hardly knowing what he did, he got down on his knees and put his face to the ground. Was it the taste or the smell that he craved? He could not have told. He only knew that he knelt there and pressed his face to the earth, and that a sickening sense of disappointment came over him at finding all trace of it gone.

He got up from his knees, very shaky and weak, and then it was that he looked himself in the face and knew what the ignominious craving meant.

He slunk into the house, cowed and shamed. The sight of the dogs, huddled about the door inside, gave him a guilty start, and he drove them angrily out. Then he got himself to bed in the dark. He lay there in the dark, wondering foolishly what Jacob Stanwood would say if he knew what had happened; till, suddenly, he became aware that his mind was wandering, upon which he laughed harshly. Elizabeth heard the laugh, and a vague fear seized upon her. She got up and listened at her door, but the noise was not repeated. Perhaps it was a coyote outside; they sometimes made strange noises.

She went to the window and drew back the Persian altar-cloth. The wind came from the other side of the house; she had been too preoccupied to notice it before. Now it shook the house rudely, and then went howling and roaring across the plains. It was strange to hear it and to feel its force, and yet to see no evidence of it: not a tree to wave its branches, not a cloud to scurry through the sky; only the vast level prairie and the immovable hills, and up above them a sky, liquid and serene, with steady stars shining in its depths, all unconcerned with the raving wind. She felt comforted and strengthened, and when she went back to bed she rested in the sense of comfort. But she did not sleep.

She was hardly aware that she was not sleeping, as the hours pa.s.sed unmarked, until, in a sudden lull of the wind, a voice struck her ear; a voice speaking rapidly and eagerly. She sprang to her feet. The voice came from her father's room. Had some one lost his way in the night, and had her father taken him in? It did not sound like a conversation; it was monotonous, unvarying, unnatural. She hastily threw on a dressing-gown, and crept to her father's door. She recognized his voice now, but the words were incoherent. He was ill, he was delirious. There was no light within. She opened the door and whispered "Papa," but he did not hear her. In a moment she had lighted a lamp; another moment, and she stood beside him. He was sitting straight up in his bed, talking and gesticulating violently; his eyes glittered in the lamp-light, his face showed haggard and intense.

Elizabeth placed the lamp upon a stand close at hand.

"Papa," she said, "don't you know me? I'm Elizabeth."

He caught at the name.

"You lie!" he cried shrilly. "Elizabeth's dead! I won't have her talked about! She's dead, I say! Hush-sh! Hush-sh! Don't wake her up. Sleep's a good thing--a good thing."

On the table where she had placed the lamp was a tiny bottle marked "chloral." There was also a gla.s.s of water upset upon the table.

Stanwood's clothing and other belongings lay scattered upon the floor.

She had never before seen his room disordered. Well! he was ill, and here she was to take care of him.

He was not talking so fast now, but what he said was even more incoherent. The light and the presence of another person in the room seemed to confuse and trouble him. She took his hand and felt the pulse.

The hand was hot, and grasped hers convulsively. She put his coat over his shoulders, and then she sat with her arm about him, and gradually he stopped talking, and turned his face to hers with a questioning look.

"What can I do for you, papa? Tell me if there is anything I can do for you."

"Do for me?" he repeated.

"Yes, dear. Is there nothing I can do, nothing I can get for you?"

"Get for me?"

He drew off from her a little, and a crafty look, utterly foreign to the man's nature, came into the tense face.

"I don't suppose you've got a drop of whisky!" he said insinuatingly.

The sound of the word upon his own lips seemed to bring the excitement back on him. "Whisky! Yes, that's it! I don't care who knows it! Whisky!

Whisky!" He fairly hissed the words.

For the first time since she came into the room Elizabeth was frightened.

"I think you ought to have a doctor," she said.

She felt him lean against her again, and she gently lowered him to the pillow. His head sank back, and he lay there with white lips and closed lids. She knelt beside him, watching his every breath. After a few minutes he opened his eyes. They were dull, but no longer wild.

"Ought you not to have a doctor, papa dear?" she asked.