The Chalice Of Courage Part 22

At first the disparity between their situations, not so much on account of family or of property--the treasures of the mountains, hidden since creation, he had discovered and let lie--but because of the youth and position of the woman compared to his own maturer years, his desperate experience, and his social withdrawal, had reinforced his determination to live and love without a sign. But he had long since got beyond this.

Had he been free he would have taken her like a viking of old, if he had to pluck her from amid a thousand swords and carry her to a beggar's hut which love would have turned to a palace. And she would have come with him on the same conditions.

He did not know that. Women have learned through centuries of weakness that fine art of concealment which man has never mastered. She never let him see what she thought of him. Yet he was not without suspicion; if that suspicion grew to certainty, would he control himself then?

At first he had sought to keep out of her way, but she had compelled him to come in. The room that was kitchen and bedroom and store-room for him was cheerless and somewhat cold. Save at night or when he was busy with other tasks outside they lived together in the great room. It was always warm, it was always bright, it was always cheerful, there.

The little piles of ma.n.u.script she had noted were books he had written.

He made no effort to conceal such things from her. He talked frankly enough about his life in the hills, indeed there was no possibility of avoiding the discussion of such topics. On but two subjects was he inexorably silent. One was the present state of his affections and the other was the why and wherefore of his lonely life. She knew beyond peradventure that he loved her, but she had no faint suspicion even as to the reason why he had become a recluse. He had never given her the slightest clew to his past save that admission that he had known Kirkby, which was in itself nothing definite and which she never connected with that package of letters which she still kept with her.

The man's mind was too active and fertile to be satisfied with manual labor alone, the books that he had written were scientific treatises in the main. One was a learned discussion of the fauna and flora of the mountains. Another was an exhaustive account of the mineral resources and geological formations of the range. He had only to allow a whisper, a suspicion of his discovery of gold and silver in the mountains to escape him and the canons and crests alike would be filled with eager prospectors. Still a third work was a scientific a.n.a.lysis of the water powers in the canons.

He had willingly allowed her to read them all. Much of them she found technical and, aside from the fact that he had written them, uninteresting. But there was one book remaining in which he simply discussed the mountains in the various seasons of the year; when the snows covered them, when the gra.s.s and the moss came again, when the flowers bloomed, when autumn touched the trees. There was the soul of the man, poetry expressed in prose, man-like but none the less poetry for that. This book she pored over, she questioned him about it, they discussed it as they discussed Keats and the other poets.

Those were happy evenings. She on one side of the fire sewing, her finger wound with cloth to hold his giant thimble, fashioning for herself some winter garments out of a gay colored, red, white and black ancient and exquisitely woven Navajo blanket, soft and pliable almost as an old fashioned piece of satin--priceless if she had but known it--which he put at her disposal. While on the other side of the same homely blaze he made her out of the skins of some of the animals that he had killed, shapeless foot coverings, half moccasin and wholly legging, which she could wear over her shoes in her short excursions around the plateau and which would keep her feet warm and comfortable.

By her permission he smoked as he worked, enjoying the hour, putting aside the past and the future and for a few moments blissfully content.

Sometimes he laid aside his pipe and whatever work he was engaged upon and read to her from some immortal n.o.ble number. Sometimes the entertainment fell to her and she sang to him in her glorious contralto voice, music that made him mad. Once he could stand it no longer. At the end of a burst of song which filled the little room--he had risen to his feet while she sang, compelled to the erect position by the magnificent melody--as the last notes died away and she smiled at him, triumphant and expectant of his praise and his approval, he hurled himself out of the room and into the night; wrestling for hours with the storm which after all was but a trifle to that which raged in his bosom.

While she, left alone and deserted, quaked within the silent room till she heard him come back.

Often and often when she slept quietly on one side the thin part.i.tion, he lay awake on the other, and sometimes his pa.s.sion drove him forth to cool the fever, the fire in his soul, in the icy, wintry air. The struggle within him preyed upon him, the keen loving eye of the woman searched his face, scrutinized him, looked into his heart, saw what was there.

She determined to end it, deciding that he must confess his affections.

She had no premonition of the truth and no consideration of any evil consequences held her back. She could give free range to her love and her devotion. She had the ordering of their lives and she had the power to end the situation growing more and more impossible. She fancied the matter easily terminable. She thought she had only to let him see her heart in such ways as a maiden may, to bring joy to his own, to make him speak. She did not dream of the reality.

One night, therefore, a month or more after she had come, she resolved to end the uncertainty. She believed the easiest and the quickest way would be to get him to tell her why he was there. She naturally surmised that the woman of the picture, which she had never seen since the first day of her arrival, was in some measure the cause of it; and the only pain she had in the situation was the keen jealousy that would obtrude itself at the thought of that woman. She remembered everything that he had said to her and she recalled that he had once made the remark that he would treat her as he would have his wife treated if he had one; therefore whoever and whatever the picture of this woman was, she was not his wife. She might have been someone he had loved, who had not loved him. She might have died. She was jealous of her, but she did not fear her.

After a long and painful effort the woman had completed the winter suit she had made for herself. He had advised her and had helped her. It was a belted tunic that fell to her knees, the red and black stripes ran around it, edged the broad collar, cuffed the warm sleeves and marked the graceful waist line. It was excessively becoming to her. He had been down into the valley, or the pocket, for a final inspection of the burros before the night, which promised to be severe, fell, and she had taken advantage of the opportunity to put it on.

She knew that she was beautiful; her determination to make this evening count had brought an unusual color to her cheeks, an unwonted sparkle to her eye. She stood up as she heard him enter the other room, she was standing erect as he came through the door and faced her. He had only seen her in the now somewhat shabby blue of her ordinary camp dress before, and her beauty fairly smote him in his face. He stood before her, wrapped in his great fur coat, snow and ice clinging to it, entranced. The woman smiled at the effect she produced.

"Take off your coat," she said gently, approaching him. "Here, let me help you. Do you realize that I have been here over a month now? I want to have a little talk with you. I want you to tell me something."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE KISS ON THE HAND

"Did it ever occur to you," began Enid Maitland gravely enough, for she quite realized the serious nature of the impending conversation, "did it ever occur to you that you know practically all about me, while I know practically nothing about you?"

The man bowed his head.

"You may have fancied that I was not aware of it, but in one way or another you have possessed yourself of pretty nearly all of my short and, until I met you, most uneventful life," she continued.

Newbold might have answered that there was one subject which had been casually introduced by her upon one occasion and to which she had never again referred, but which was to him the most important of all subjects connected with her; and that was the nature of her relationship to one James Armstrong whose name, although he had heard it but once, he had not forgotten. The girl had been frankness itself in following his deft leads when he talked with her about herself, but she had shown the same reticence in recurring to Armstrong that he had displayed in questioning her about him. The statement she had just made as to his acquaintance with her history was therefore sufficiently near the truth to pa.s.s unchallenged and once again he gravely bowed in acquiescence.

"I have withheld nothing from you," went on the girl; "whatever you wanted to know, I have told you. I had nothing to conceal, as you have found out. Why you wanted to know about me, I am not quite sure."

"It was because--" burst out the man impetuously, and then he stopped abruptly and just in time.

Enid Maitland smiled at him in a way that indicated she knew what was behind the sudden check he had imposed upon himself.

"Whatever your reason, your curiosity--"

"Don't call it that, please."

"Your desire, then, has been gratified. Now it is my turn. I am not even sure about your name. I have seen it in these books and naturally I have imagined that it is yours."

"It is mine."

"Well, that is really all that I know about you. And now I shall be quite frank. I want to know more. You evidently have something to conceal or you would not be living here in this way. I have never asked you about yourself, or manifested the least curiosity to solve the problem you present, to find the solution of the mystery of your life."

"Perhaps," said the man, "you didn't care enough about it to take the trouble to inquire."

"You know," answered the girl, "that is not true. I have been consumed with desire to know?"

"A woman's curiosity?"

"Not that," was the soft answer that turned away his wrath.

She was indeed frank. There was that in her way of uttering those two simple words that set his pulses bounding. He was not altogether and absolutely blind.

"Come," said the girl, extending her hand to him, "we are alone here together. We must help each other. You have helped me, you have been of the greatest service to me. I can't begin to count all that you have done for me; my grat.i.tude--"

"Only that?"

"But that is all that you have ever asked or expected," answered the young woman in a low voice, whose gentle tones did not at all accord with the boldness and courage of the speech.

"You mean?" asked the man, staring at her, his face aflame.

"I mean," answered the girl swiftly, willfully misinterpreting and turning his half-spoken question another way, "I mean that I am sure that some trouble has brought you here. I do not wish to force your confidence--I have no right to do so--yet I should like to enjoy it.

Can't you give it to me? I want to help you. I want to do my best to make some return for what you have been to me and have done for me."

"I ask but one thing," he said quickly.

"And what is that?"

But again he checked himself.

"No," he said, "I am not free to ask anything of you."

And that answer to Enid Maitland was like a knife thrust in the heart.

The two had been standing, confronting each other. Her heart grew faint within her. She stretched out her hand vaguely, as if for support. He stepped toward her, but before he reached her she caught the back of the chair and sank down weakly. That he should be bound and not free, had never once occurred to her. She had quite misinterpreted the meaning of his remark.

The man did not help her; he could not help her. He just stood and looked at her. She fought valiantly for self-control a moment or two and then utterly oblivious to the betrayal of her feelings involved in the question--the moments were too great for consideration of such trivial matters--she faltered:

"You mean there is some other woman?"