The Man of the Desert Part 19

"Oh!" she breathed, lifting her happy eyes. "It would be beautiful to never have to leave you again--but--you hardly know me. I am not fitted, you know. You are a great, wonderful missionary, and I--I am only a foolish girl who has fallen in love with you and can't ever be happy again without you."

She buried her face in the arm of the chair and cried happy, shamed tears, and he gathered her up in his arms and comforted her, his face shining with a glorified expression.

"Dear," he said when he could speak again, "dear, don't you know that is all I want? And don't ever talk that way again about me. I am no saint, as you'll very well find out, but I'll promise to love and cherish you as long as we both shall live. Will you marry me to-night?"

There was a silence in the little room broken only by the low crackling of the dying fire.

She lifted shy glad eyes to his, and then came and laid her two hands in his.

"If you are quite sure you want me," she breathed softly.

The rapture of his face and the tenderness of his arms a.s.sured her on that point.

"There is just one great regret I have," said the young man, lifting his eyes towards his mother's picture. "If she only could have known it was you that I loved. Why didn't I tell her your name? But then---- Why, my dear, I didn't know your name. Do you realize that? I haven't known your name until now."

"I certainly did realize it," said Hazel with rosy cheeks. "It used to hurt dreadfully sometimes to think that even if you wanted to find me you wouldn't know how to go about it."

"You dear! Did you care so much?" His voice was deep and tender and his eyes were upon her.

"So much!" she breathed softly.

But the splash of red light on the floor at their feet warned them of the lateness of the hour and they turned to the immediate business of the moment.

"It is wonderful that things are just as they are to-night," said Brownleigh in his full, joyous tones. "It certainly seems providential.

Bishop Vail, my father's old college chum, has been travelling through the West on missionary work for his church, and he is now at the stopping place where you spent last night. He leaves on the midnight train to-night, but we can get there long before that time, and he will marry us. There is no one I would rather have had, though the choice should have been yours. Are you going to mind very much being married in this brief and primitive manner?"

"If I minded those things I should not be worthy of your love," said Hazel softly. "No, I don't mind in the least. Only I've really nothing along to get married in--nothing suitable for a wedding gown. You won't be able to remember me in bridal attire--and there won't be even Amelia Ellen for bridesmaid." She smiled at him mischievously.

"You darling!" he said laying his lips upon hers again. "You need no bridal attire to make you the sweetest bride that ever came to Arizona, and I shall always remember you as you are now, as the most beautiful sight my eyes ever saw. If there was time to get word to some of my colleagues off at their stations we should have a wedding reception that would outrival your New York affairs so far as enthusiasm and genuine hearty good will is concerned, but they are all from forty to a hundred miles away from here and it will be impossible. Are you sure you are not too tired to ride back to the stopping place to-night?" He looked at her anxiously. "We will hitch Billy to the wagon, and the seat has good springs. I will put in plenty of cushions and you can rest on the way, and we will not attempt to come back to-night. It would be too much for you."

She began to protest but he went on:

"No, dear, I don't mean we'll stay in that little hole where you spent last night. That would be awful! But what would you say to camping in the same spot where we had our last talk? I have been there many times since and often spend the night there because of its sweet a.s.sociation with you. It is not far, you know, from the railroad--a matter of a few minutes' ride--and there is good water. We can carry my little tent and trappings, and then take as much of a wedding trip afterwards as you feel you have strength for before we return, though we shall have the rest of our lives to make one dear long wedding trip of, I hope. Will that plan suit you?"

"Oh, it will be beautiful," said Hazel with shining eyes.

"Very well, then. I will get everything ready for our start and you must rest until I call you." With that he stooped and before she realized what he was doing gently lifted her from her feet and laid her down upon his couch over in the corner, spreading a many-coloured Indian blanket over her. Then he deftly stirred up the fire, filled up the kettle, swung it back over the blaze, and with a smile went out to prepare Billy and the wagon.

Hazel lay there looking about her new home with happy eyes, noting each little touch of refinement and beauty that showed the character of the man who had lived his life alone there for three long years, and wondering if it were really herself, the lonely little struggling nurse with the bitter ache in her heart, who was feeling so happy here to-day--Hazel Radcliffe, the former New York society girl, rejoicing ecstatically because she was going to marry a poor home missionary and live in a shanty! How her friends would laugh and sneer, and how Aunt Maria would lift her hands in horror and say the family was disgraced!

But it did not matter about Aunt Maria. Poor Aunt Maria! She had never approved of anything that Hazel wanted to do all her life. As for her brother--and here her face took on a shade of sadness--her brother was of another world than hers and always had been. People said he was like his dead mother. Perhaps the grand man of the desert could help her brother to better things. Perhaps he would come out here to visit them and catch a vision of another kind of life and take a longing for it as she had done. He could not fail at least to see the greatness of the man she had chosen.

There was great comfort to her in this hour to remember that her father had been interested in her missionary, and had expressed a hope that she might meet him again some day. She thought her father would have been pleased at the choice she had made, for he had surely seen the vision of what was really worth while in life before he died.

Suddenly her eyes turned to the little square table over by the cupboard. What if she should set it?

She sprang up and suited the action to the thought.

Almost as a child might handle her first pewter set Hazel took the dishes from the shelves and arranged them on the table. They were pretty china dishes, with a fine old sprigged pattern of delicate flowers. She recognized them as belonging to his mother's set, and handled them reverently. It almost seemed as if that mother's presence was with her in the room as she prepared the table for her first meal with the beloved son.

She found a large white towel in the cupboard drawer that she spread on the rough little table, and set the delicate dishes upon it: two plates, two cups and saucers, knives and forks--two of everything! How it thrilled her to think that in a little while she would belong here in this dear house, a part of it, and that they two would have a right to sit together at this table through the years. There might come hardships and disappointments--of course there would. She was no fool! Life was full of disappointments for everybody, as well as of beautiful surprises! But come what would she knew by the thrill in her heart that she would never be sorry for this day in which she had promised to become the wife of the man of the desert, and she would always cherish the memory of this her first setting of the little table, and let it make all future settings of that table a holy ordinance.

She found a can of soup in the cupboard, and made it hot in a small saucepan on the fire, and set forth on the table crackers and cheese, a gla.s.s of jelly, a small bottle of stuffed olives and some little cakes she had brought with her in her suit-case. She had thought she might need something of the sort when she landed in Arizona, for there was no telling but she might have to ride across the desert to find her missionary; and sure enough that had been the case.

It looked very cozy when Brownleigh came in to say that the wagon was ready and he thought he saw the Indian in the dusk coming across the plain, but he stopped short without speech, for here before him was the picture which his mind and heart had painted for him many a time: this girl, the one girl in all the earth for him, kneeling beside his hearth and dishing up the steaming soup into the hot dishes, the firelight playing on her sweet face and golden hair, and every line and motion of her graceful body calling for his adoration! So he stood for one long minute and feasted his hungry eyes upon the sight, until she turned and saw his heart in his eyes, and her own face grew rosy with the joy and the meaning of it all.

And so they sat down to their first meal in the little house together, and then having sent the Indian back to the fort with a message, they took their way forth in the starlight together to begin their wedding journey.

XVII

DEDICATION

Billy made good time in spite of the fact that he had been out all day on parishional work, but he knew who he was hauling, and seemed to take deep satisfaction in having Hazel back again, for now and again he would turn back towards the wagon when they stopped for water and whinny happily.

They reached the stopping place about nine o'clock, and the news that the missionary was going to be married spread like wildfire among the men and out to the neighbouring shacks. In no time a small crowd had collected about the place, peering out of the starlit darkness.

Hazel retired to the forlorn little chamber where she had spent the night before and rummaged in her trunk for bridal apparel. In a few minutes she emerged into the long dining-room where the table had been hastily cleared and moved aside, and upon which the boarders were now seated in long rows, watching the proceedings curiously.

She was dressed in a simple white muslin, touched here and there with exquisite hand embroidery and tiny cobwebby edges of real lace. The missionary caught his breath as he saw her come out to him, and the rough faces of the men softened as they watched her.

The white-haired bishop arose to meet her and welcomed her in a fatherly way he had, and the woman who kept the stopping place came following in Hazel's wake, hastily wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n, and casting it behind her as she entered. She had been preparing an impromptu supper out of any materials that happened to be at hand, but she could not miss the ceremony if the coffee did burn. Weddings did not come her way every day.

In the doorway, his stolid face shining in the glare of many candles, stood the Indian from the fort. He had followed silently behind the couple to witness the proceedings, well knowing he would be forgiven by his mistress at the fort when he told his news. The missionary was well beloved--and the missionary was going to be married!

What would the four hundred of her own select New York circle have said could they have seen Hazel Radcliffe standing serene, in her simple gown, with her undecked golden hair, in the midst of that motley company of men, with only three curious slatternly women in the background to keep her company, giving herself away to a man who had dedicated his life to work in the desert? But Hazel's happy heart was serenely unconscious of the incongruity of her surroundings, and she answered with a clear ring to her voice as the bishop asked her the questions: "I will." She was coming gladly to her new home.

It was her own ring, the ring she had given him, that John Brownleigh put upon her hand in token of his loyalty and love for her, the ring that for a whole year had lain next his own heart and comforted its loneliness because she had given it, and now he gave it back because she had given him herself.

Graciously she placed her small white hand in the rough awkward ones of the men who came to offer her congratulations, half stumbling over their own feet in their awe and wonder at her beauty. It was to them as if an angel from heaven had suddenly dropped down and condescended to walk their daily path in sight of them all.

Cheerfully she swallowed the stale cake and muddy coffee that the slatternly landlady produced, and afterwards, as she was being helped to get back into her riding dress, bestowed upon her a little lilac wool frock from her trunk that the woman admired greatly. From that moment the landlady of the stopping place was a new creature. Missions and missionaries had been nothing to her through the years, but she believed in them forever after, and donned her new lilac gown in token of her faith in Christianity. Thus Hazel won her first convert, who afterwards proved her fidelity in time of great trial, and showed that even a lilac gown may be an instrument of good.

Out into the starlight together again they rode, with the blessing of the bishop upon them, and the cheers of the men still sounding in their ears.

"I wish mother could have known," said the bridegroom as he drew his bride close within his arm and looked down upon her nestling by his side.

"Oh, I think she does!" said Hazel as she dropped a thankful, weary head against his shoulder. Then the missionary stooped and gave his wife a long, tender kiss, and raising his head and lifting his eyes to the starlit sky he said reverently:

"Oh, my Father, I thank Thee for this wonderful gift. Make me worthy of her. Help her never to regret that she has come to me."

Hazel crept her hand into his free one, and laid her lips upon his fingers, and prayed all quietly by herself for gladness. So they rode out to their camp beneath G.o.d's sky.

Three days later an Indian on the way to the fort turned aside with a message for Hazel--a telegram. It read:

"Arrived safe. Married Burley to once so I could see to him. Do come home right away. Burley says come and live with us. Answer right away. I can't enjoy my new home worrying about you.