The Trimming of Goosie Part 12

She looked at him, smiling bravely with her white lips. "Goosie, dear,"

she said, a bit wearily; "Goosie, dear, I can't. I can't dear. I get dizzy. It makes me dreadfully sick."

He stood there on one leg, embarra.s.sed. He wanted to take her in his arms in great tenderness, but was held back by the tenacity of his purpose, by the knowledge of the peril of such a course.

"Go on," said Dolly, finally. "Go, Goosie; go on and fly. I'll stay here.

With Nicodemus," she added wistfully.

And Charles-Norton, the brute, still inexorable, flapped his great wings and went away, leaving her there in the meadow alone, with Nicodemus.

But he was to get his punishment. A few days later, returning at night, he found Dolly truly weeping.

She was kneeling by the fire, frying-pan in hand, preparing the evening meal; and at regular intervals two big dew-drops trickled out from her lowered lashes and dropped upon her hand. Charles-Norton, abashed and puzzled, went about a while, making a great show of occupation, and pretending not to see. And then, suddenly, out of the corner of his eyes he noted the rag which she had wrapped about the handle of the frying-pan. It was not the usual rag. It was a filmy thing within which ran a color like a flame. Lordy--it was the scarf which, several weeks before, he had stolen one night from the girl on the veranda, in the inn above the valley, and which he had since forgotten in the clothes-bag that served him as pillow.

He kept a prudent silence, and pretended not to see it, though vaguely tormented by the very menial service to which Dolly successively put that once radiant scarf. And Dolly said not a word about it. She went on with her little housekeeping routine very carefully and submissively, while now and again a tear oozed from her long lashes. But Charles-Norton felt vaguely now that the balance had swung, that he was fighting now at a terrible disadvantage.

CHAPTER XVI

Charles-Norton began to grow peevish.

"Good Lord," he would growl, as he flew along the crest; "why can't she smile once, for a change, as I leave her in the morning; why can't she speed me away with a smile, instead of that look. Why can't she be happy in her own way down there, and let me be happy up here? Why, why, why?"

He was pa.s.sing just then a deep gorge, blue beneath him. From it his question reascended to him, tenuous and fluttering, like a lost bird on uncertain wings. "Why--why--why?"

"She looks at me--as if I were a murderer. Just because I want to fly.

Just because I have wings. Just because everything in me says, Fly! And I have to carry that look around with me all day long, just like a net, just like a net of c.r.a.pe. Dam!"

"Dam!" said the profundities.

Charles-Norton evidently had arrived at the self-pitying stage--which was a bad sign, if he only had known it; which showed a certain weakening of his moral fiber. He fought on, though. Resolutely he continued to refuse to notice the daily little black smudge upon Dolly's cheek. She was more submissive and dolorous than ever. She had made him, with blankets, a union-suit that b.u.t.toned ingeniously about the roots of his wings; he put it on every morning, but hid it behind a rock till night as soon as he was out of sight.

But the very elements, the perversity of matter, seemed against Charles-Norton. "There's no more flour, Goosie," said Dolly one morning.

Charles-Norton did not catch the significance of this remark right away.

Perched on one foot, just in the act of taking wing, he had become absorbed in the examination of a fluffy and cold little white object which had just then settled upon his nose. He looked at it close as it disappeared between his fingers in a silver trickle. It was a snow-flake.

He glanced upward; the sky was very gray.

"Goosie, the flour is gone," repeated Dolly.

Charles-Norton came back to earth. "Well, we'll have to buy some more,"

he said, again preparing for flight.

Dolly was silent, evidently considering this remark. "Have you--have you any more--money?" she asked at length, hesitatingly.

Charles-Norton dropped his wings. "No," he said. "No, that I haven't--not a cent. It's--it's gone. Have you?"

"_I_ haven't any," said Dolly. Her eyes were very big.

Charles-Norton stood there motionless a while, a bit disturbed. Then his lower jaw advanced; he shrugged his shoulders: "Well--I'll see about it; to-morrow," he said airily, and was off.

But he didn't see about anything "to-morrow" or after. He had a fine time that day. A snow-flurry was pa.s.sing down the Sierra, and he went with it along the crest, mile after mile, to the South, the center of its soft white whirl, its winged tutelary G.o.d. When he returned, that night, a snow-carpet extended down from the top of the chain, down the slopes, to the edge of the meadow. Dolly was inside of the cabin, close to the fireplace. "Ooh, Goosie, but it's cold," she cried. "Yes," admitted Charles-Norton; "it is cold." His wings were encased in ice, and he sparkled rosily in the fire's glow.

The next day, though, was warmer; the carpet of snow gradually retreated up the slopes. It remained on the crest, however, frozen and scintillating. It was a world of increased beauty that now spread beneath Charles-Norton. The crest glittered from horizon to horizon; here and there little lakes gleamed like hard diamonds; and lower, the willows in the hollows lay very light, like painted vapor.

The next morning Dolly said: "There's no sugar, Goosie."

"Coffee is better without sugar," said Charles-Norton, sententiously.

For a few days the young couple, with wry faces, drank unsweetened coffee. Then this difficulty disappeared. Taking up the tin before breakfast, Dolly discovered that there was no more coffee.

The last of the canned fruit followed, and the last slice of bacon.

"Thank the Lord we can live on trout," said Charles-Norton, piously.

As if in answer, the next morning, the trout refused to take his bait of red flannel.

Alone there on the sh.o.r.e of the lake, while Dolly waited within the cabin, Charles-Norton pa.s.sed a bad quarter-of-an-hour. Then he went up the slopes back of the meadow and captured a handful of gra.s.shoppers springing there in the rising sun. The trout took them with grat.i.tude.

"Whee!" said Charles-Norton, when at last he had his catch.

And then, to a cold blast from the East, a few days later, the gra.s.shoppers all disappeared. Charles-Norton took his axe, went into the woods, and chopping open mouldy logs, obtained a store of white grub. The trout took them.

But Fatality now was d.o.g.g.i.ng him close. When, with tingling skin, he opened the cabin-door a few mornings later, a cry escaped him. A snow-carpet spread from the crest over the face of the whole visible world, clear down to the western plain. It covered deep the meadow, hung in miniature mountain-chains on the boughs of the pines, filigreed the lake. The lake was frozen.

Charles-Norton chopped a hole in the ice, then chopped logs and replenished his supply of grubs. The trout refused them. They could not be blamed; the grubs, hibernating, had shrunk themselves into hard little sticks devoid of the least suspicion of succulence.

Charles-Norton and Dolly went breakfastless that morning. All day Charles-Norton roamed above the land with a vague idea of catching something. But living creatures seemed to have withdrawn into the earth; the few still out had put on white liveries; when Charles-Norton flew low, they fled him, and when he flew high, he could not distinguish them from the earth's impa.s.sive mantle. He thought once of the ranch in the plain and of its chicken-yard, but dropped the idea immediately. Dolly's vigorous little New England conscience would never accept a compromise such as this.

Charles-Norton and Dolly that night went supperless to bed; they arose in the morning with no prospect of breakfast. Charles-Norton moped long at the fire while Dolly, very wisely silent, trotted about her work.

Suddenly Charles-Norton rose with a smothered exclamation. In two strides he made for the door, opened it, and took wing; Dolly saw him flitting among the branches of the pines in mysterious occupation. He returned in great triumph and threw on the table a double handful of small, dry objects that looked like wooden beans. "We'll eat pine-nuts!"

he cried enthusiastically. "Pine-nuts are just chuck full of protein!"

For three days they lived on pine-nuts. And then, as on the third evening, they sat before the little heap which made their meal, Dolly fell forward on the table with a wide movement of her arms that scattered the supper in a dry tinkle to the floor, and remained thus with heaving shoulders.

Charles-Norton rose and stood above her. Dolly was weeping this time, truly weeping, beyond the slightest doubt, openly and freely. This was the end; he was cornered at last, his last twisting over. She wept there in an abandonment of woe, her face in her arms, her hair desolate on the surface of the table, her shoulders palpitating. And as he gazed down upon her, a great, vague mournfulness slowly rose through him, a mournfulness part regret, part sacrifice; he stood there gazing down upon her as a child gazing down on a broken toy, a broken toy in the ruin of which lay the ruin of his dreams. She wept; and he felt as if a wreath, a wreath soft and flowery but very heavy, had fallen about his neck and were drawing him down, down out of the alt.i.tudes of his will.

And so, gently, he asked the question, the answer of which he knew, the asking of which was renunciation.

"Dolly, Dolly," he whispered; "what is the matter, Dolly?"

"Ooh, ooh, ooh," sobbed Dolly; "ooh, Goosie, I can't--can't eat pine-nuts, Goosie! I can't!"

Her shoulders shook, the table trembled, her wail rose to a perfect little whistle of woe. Charles-Norton sat down by her and took her in his arms. "Well, we won't have to, Dolly," he said gently; "us won't have to.

We--we'll go back!"

They remained thus long, entwined, while little by little the violence of Dolly's despair moderated. At length she freed herself, with a smile like the sunlight of an April shower, and still with a little catch in her throat, took the lamp from the table and set it on the sill of the western window.