CHAPTER XXIFOREST MADNESS
It was late the next forenoon when the quartette, in two guide-boats, set out from the Antlers dock for their twenty-four hour picnic to Brown’s Tract Pond.
A guide had started an hour earlier with the camping equipment and pack. Jack and Mrs. Hawarden led the way; Desirée and Caleb being delayed in starting by the vast pressure and vaster quantities of candy that must be brought to bear on Rex before the collie would consent to trust his cautious young life in their boat. When at last the reluctant dog’s fears were overcome and he lay curled in a contented, furry heap at Desirée’s feet in the stern,—Caleb bent to his oars with a swing that sent the frail guide boat over the mile of intervening lake in time to enter the inlet a bare length behind the Hawardens. Under the low wooden bridge they passed. Then began an erratic progress.
The sluggish stream wriggles through part of the old government tract once ceded to “Ossawotamie.” John Brown of anti-slavery memory. Formerly, green tamaracks lined the lowlands to either side of the inlet’s banks. The raising of the dams which, years ago, signed the murder-warrant for so manythousand splendid trees, have left the tamaracks here—as elsewhere along the watercourses,—a waste of feathery gray skeletons.
A bite of Autumn was in the air. From bush and from waterside grasses, the dying summer flashed its scarlet-and-gold warning of winter’s dread approach.
The inlet wound southward in a bewildering series of turns and twists; perhaps a hundred such abrupt turnings to the mile. There was hardly scope for three successive oar-strokes between the twists. Fast rowing was out of the question. A long stroke or two, for momentum; then the quick backing of an oar and a plunge of the stern paddle; and, unless the bow caught in the jutting huckleberry bushes of the bank, one turn was safely passed and another was at hand.
The gray stone mountains, with their clumps of evergreens shot with the red and yellow of maple or birch, rose against the sky on one side of the marsh. On the other, the deep forest ran down to the fringe of tamarack ghosts; a rare white birch standing out here and there, like a sheeted giant, amid the dusk of the hemlocks. Above blazed the white sun. The long grasses hummed with insect life. A mink darted to cover from beneath the bow of the guide boat. In the black loam of the bank burrowed a sleek gray water rat. Far to the northeast, a solitary, everlasting landmark for all the region, crouched old Blue Mountain, like some benevolent, haze-shrouded mastodon.
“I can’t remember,” observed Desirée, “when weweren’t squeezing past one turn and running into another. And I can’t imagine any time when we won’t still be doing it. It’s like one of those weird maze-places at Atlantic City where you go through a door only to find yourself staring at three others. The man who went for a walk and met himself coming back would have found himself facing whole family groups of selves if he’d come up this inlet. There’s where the Eighth Lake Carry begins. Over there to the left; where that tumble-down wooden dock is. We aren’t anywhere near Brown’s Tract Pond yet. Just hear Jack yodel! He’s as excited over this picnic as a school boy. He’s rowing like mad and—”
“Guess somebody must a been feedin’ him meat,” suggested Caleb unkindly; glancing back over his shoulders at the leading boat whose oarsman’s enthusiasm had driven its bow into the mudbank at one sharp turn. “Say, he’ awful much in love with you, Dey. Are you goin’ to end up by marryin’ him?”
“No,” said Desirée, shortly.
Ten minutes later the boats had been dragged over the last impasse and the pond was reached;—a circular blot of water amid the surrounding hills; a high island rising in its centre.
A halloo from Jack brought an answering call from the distant guide. Slipping along the shore where the yellow sand ran out for yards under its shallow covering of blue water, the two boats came to rest off the site chosen for the camp. The two tents were alreadypitched, and a fire crackled merrily. The guide was busy frying eggs and strips of bacon in huge black pans. Potatoes bubbled in one pot above the fire; while from another came the aroma of coffee.
“Heaven may be as beautiful as this grove,” sighed Desirée in ecstasy, “but I’m perfectly sure it will never smell so deliciously appetizing. I’m starved. Is that drinking-water, Steve?” she asked, pointing to a pail with a dipper beside it.
“Yes ma’am,” replied the guide. “Or it will be when I’ve boiled it.”
“I’m too thirsty to wait for it to boil,” she objected picking up the dipper. “Won’t somebody else have some?—Mrs. Hawarden?”
“’Tisn’t healthy to drink water from forest springs till it’s been boiled,” put in the guide. “It’s likely to be all chock-full of germs. Boilin’ kills em,” he added, proud of his scientific lore.
“I’d as lief be a germ aquarium as a germ cemetery,” decided the girl, drinking deep of the cold, limpid water, “Is there any fishing in this pond, I wonder?”
“Well,” drawled the guide, piqued that his medical advice should have gone for naught, “there’ll be better fishin’ to-night than there is just now. There’s pretty sure to be a heavy mountain fog after a day like this. And those fogs get so thick, around here, sometimes, that the fish can’t tell the difference between the fog and the water. And they swim right up into the tents.I’ve caught ’em that way dozens of times. Forrest Bird and ‘Smiling’ Kelly was telling me they came here once and—”
“Was itthatsort of a bait you used?” asked Desirée innocently, pointing to a flask-neck that had worked its way into view from the pocket of the guide’s jacket as he leaned over the fire.
He shoved back the offending flask; grinning sheepishly.
“Because” went on Desirée with the same wide-eyed innocence, “I’ve always heard it attracted more snakes than fish. Isn’t it lucky there are no snakes in the Adirondacks?”
Rex sniffed longingly at the candy-box lying on the pile of wraps near the fire. Then he looked at Desirée and waved his tail with an air of disinterested friendliness. After which he resumed his study of the box.
“It will make you quite ill if you eat candy before dinner, Rexie,” the girl told him.
The dog seemed impressed; for he moved away from the coveted treasure. But he eyed Desirée so sadly that she relented. Opening the box she searched till she found a chocolate wafer and tossed it to Rex. He caught it in mid-air. Caleb absent mindedly helped himself to a piece of candy from the open box.
“There was a young man so benighted,” she admonished Conover,
“He never knew when he was slighted.He’d go to a partyAnd eat just as heartyAs if he’d been really invited.
“He never knew when he was slighted.He’d go to a partyAnd eat just as heartyAs if he’d been really invited.
“He never knew when he was slighted.
He’d go to a party
And eat just as hearty
As if he’d been really invited.
“And the moral of this is:—Wait till people say ‘Please have some’ before you dip in.Whereare your manners, Caleb?Now, what are you looking at?”
“Say, but you’re pretty, to-day!” remarked Conover, his glance roving appraisingly over her trim figure in its roughing costume, and at the tanned, eager little face, “As pretty’s you can be.”
“I suppose everyone is,” laughed Desirée, in embarrassment; noting Mrs. Hawarden’s air of seeming not to have heard the bald praise, “Oh, see the beautiful green caterpillar that’s come to our party! And a whole army of nice hungry ants! There’s a spider, too.Dodrive him off, Jack! Don’t kill him, though. It’s bad luck. For the spider, anyway.”
“Avaunt, dread monster of the wilderness!” declaimed Jack; brushing the offender away.
Dinner and a long lazy afternoon. A row of exploration about the pond’s edge, a visit to the island; a ramble through the woods;—and nightfall found the campers eating a firelight supper with the crass hunger of the unaccustomed outdoor sojourner. Then a short, yawn-punctuated chat around the camp fire, and the signal for bed.
It is one thing for a man of cities to be delightfully sleepy after his first long day in the woods. It is quite a different matter for him to be able to fall asleepon a many-projectioned bed of balsam, while a guide snores raucously on one side of him and a second man tosses in uneasy, muttering slumber on the other. After counting up to one hundred, and keeping tabs on a flock of visionary sheep as they leaped an equally mythical wall (and hoping in morbid disgust that some of them would fall and break their imaginary necks), Conover rose quietly, pulled on such garments as he had removed, groped about till he found his thick waterproof coat and stumbled out into the open. He kicked the fire’s smouldering logs into a blaze and looked at his watch. It was barely nine-thirty. He took out a cigar and prepared to sit down beside the logs and smoke himself sleepy again.
Then she came.
He was not surprised. Even before he turned his head or noticed the fall of her light feet on the mold, he somehow knew she was drawing near. He looked around to find her close behind him. Her hair was caught up loosely, and shimmered like a rust-shot aureole in the waning firelight. She wore the sweater and walking skirt of the afternoon. But her high boots had been changed for moccasins.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered, clasping the hands he held out to her, “All the forest and the silences seemed calling to me. Besides, Mrs. Hawarden sleeps so,—so audibly. All at once, I felt you were out here. So I came. Is it very late?”
“No,” he answered in the same key, “Not much mor’n half past nine. Sit down here an’ I’ll get ablanket to wrap ’round you. I ought to send you back, so’s you won’t catch cold. But it’s—somehow it’s so good to have you right here by me. This time to-morrow night I’ll be glad to remember it.”
“Don’t get me any wrap,” she forbade, stretching out her hands to the blaze he was again stirring into life, “I’m warm enough. And you’d fall over something and swear and that would wake somebody. Then I’d have to go back to the stuffy tent.”
Rex, curled up asleep on the far side of the fire, lifted his head; wakened by the sibillant whispering. Seeing Desirée, he began to smite the earth resoundingly with his wagging tail.
“Hush!” whispered the girl, raising her finger in warning; as the collie’s sleepy, golden eyes blinked more and more friendly greetings and the bushy tail increased the tempo of its beats. Mistaking her gesture, Rex rose with lazy grace, stretched himself, alternately, fore and aft, collie-fashion; and picked his way daintily across the cleared space to Desirée’s side. He lay down at her feet, thrusting his cold nose affectionately into the hollow of her hand.
“What a gorgeous night!” murmured Desirée looking up at the black, star-strewn sky, “And we were going to waste it in sleep! The woods are calling. The dryads and fauns want us to come to their enchanted dell and dance with them. Shall we?”
Understanding not a tithe of her words the man nevertheless caught the flickering light of adventure in her eyes.
“I’m always game for anything you put a name to” he made answer, “I’m kind of heavy for dancin’. But if it’ll be any sort of pleasure for you, I might have a try at it.”
“Hush!” she warned, “If you speak as loudly as that you’ll be sure to wake them. Isn’t thisfun?” she went on with a happy little laugh, “I feel as if we’d run away from school and were going to be scolded terribly hard when we get back. I dare you,—oh, Idareyou! Idouble-dare you!”
“To what?” he demanded, infected by the sudden rush of mischief to her face and voice, “I’ll do anything you say. Want me to haul out Steve Martin an’ Jack an’ lick ’em for you, or set fire to the old lady’s tent?”
“Neither,” she decreed sternly; adding with perverse wistfulness, “Though it would be interesting to see how Mrs. Hawarden’s airy dignity would sustain her in a blazing tent. No, no. What I was going to dare you to do is much less spectacular. Nothing more exciting than a walk.”
“A walk?” echoed Conover, “Why, it’s near ten o’clock, an’ cold as charity. Besides, it’ll be all dark an’ damp in the thick part of the woods.”
“But I’msurewe’ll run across a ring of fairies,—or a satyr, at the very least. Oh, the night is throbbing with magic! And the forests are calling. Shan’t we answer the call?”
“Sounds to me more like katydids,” he demurred, “But, if you like, we can take a stroll. We’ll be backin half an hour or so, an’ that ought to be early enough, even for old Mrs. Propriety in there,” with a nod toward Mrs. Hawarden’s tent, “But you’ll want some wrap, won’t you?”
“No. I’m warm as toast. This sweater’s so wudgy and soft; and it’s as thick as thick can be. Come along!”
Laughing excitedly under their breath, after the manner of school-boys making safe escape to truancy, the two stole away on tiptoe from the radius of fire shine. Rex, waking again at their departure, sighed as devotion dragged him from sleep and warmth; and trotted along solemnly in the wake of the two truants.
Before them lay a natural vista winding between ranks of black trees. Starlight filtered through, giving an uncanny glimmer to the still darkness.
“It is like breaking into fairyland!” gasped the girl, tense and vibrant with the hushed wonder of it all, “We are mortals. We have no right in Oberon’s domain. But he sees what veryverynice, harmless mortals we are. So he doesn’t change us to bats or fireflies. He just lets us trespass all we want to. And perhaps he’ll even let us see a real fairy. An elf, anyway.”
Caleb laughed, in sheer happiness. Of her Oberon rigmarole he grasped little. But he saw she was in childishly wild spirits, and the knowledge of her joy thrilled him. The cold bit deeper as they struck rising ground and followed the glimmering forest-vista upward. Both instinctively quickened their pace to keepfrom shivering. But mere cold could not quench Desirée’s pleasure in the simple escapade.
“We are runaway slaves!” she cried, her mood shifting from fairyland to a newer fantasy, “We are escaping from a fearsome Simon Legree named Conventionality! Conventionality is a wicked master who has whipped us and piled chains on us ever since we were born. And now we’ve put him to sleep in two tents and we’re running away from him. He’d be furious if he woke up. But he’s snoring very industriously. And he surely won’t wake,—in either tent—for at least an hour. And by that time we’ll be safe back again with our chains all nicely riveted on. And he’ll never, never even guess we once ran away from him. No,—I’d rather think we’re running away forever and ever and ever,—and then some more after that. And he’ll never find us, no matter how long he hunts. We’ll spend the rest of our life in the enchanted woodland, and live on berries and nuts. And our faithful hound who’s followed us from slavery will catch venison for us. And—and if you ask himverypolitely, Caleb, perhaps he’ll catch a tripe sandwich sometimes for you.”
“Still rememberin’ that awful break of mine?” chuckled Caleb, as unreasonably excited as she. “That ain’t fair!”
“It,wasn’ta break!” she pronounced judgment. “It was a smashing blow at our Simon Legree, Conventionality. You are a hero. Not a lowly squidge.See how silver the light is getting! I’m sure that means we’re on the courtyard of the fairy palace. I shouldn’t be one atom surprised if—”
With a little cry of alarm she clutched Caleb. From almost under her feet a partridge whirred upward, his beating wings rattling through the stillness like double castanets. Rex, with one staccato growl deep down in his throat, gave chase. But as the bird utterly refused to fly fair, and even resorted to unsportsmanlike rocketings that carried it far up through the treetops, the pursuit was quickly over. Rex, his ruff a-bristle, strutted back to the girl, walking on the tips of his toes and casting baleful glances of warning to left and right at any other lurking partridge that might be tempted to brave his ire.
“What was it? Whatwasit?” demanded Desirée, startled far out of her fit of eerie gaiety.
“Maybe ’twas one of those fairies or satires you was hopin’ would drop in on us,” suggested Caleb, cruelly, “It was a reel treat to see how glad you was to meet him.”
“You’re horrid!” declared the girl. “As if any self-respecting fairy would jump up with a noise like ten gatling guns! I—Oh, the silver is turning gray. It’s fog! The fog Steve Martin said we’d have to-night. And it’s coming down around us like, like a Niagara of—of—”
“Of pea soup,” supplemented Conover. “It’s thick enough to cut. An’ ten minutes ago the sky wasperfec’ly clear. Best get back to the camp, before the measly stuff makes us lose our way. Then wewouldbe in a sweet fix.”
Backward they turned upon their tracks. Already the guiding tree vistas were wiped out. The two walked rapidly, pushing along with no better guide than their sense of general direction. For a full half hour they walked; Caleb helping Desirée over a series of fallen trees, gullies and boulders that neither had noted during their outward journey.
Then, out of breath, Desirée halted.
“We’re not going the right way!” she exclaimed. “We’re going up-hill. I know we are. I can tell by the feeling. And the camp lies down by the pond.”
They struck off at another angle. After ten minutes of fast, difficult walking, through the water-thick mist, Desirée came again to a halt.
“This rock,” she declared, “is the very one I leaned against when we stopped before. I’m certain. We’ve been going in a circle.”
“Maybe we were going right, in the first place,” said Caleb. “On the way out we went up hills an’ down ’em, too. Maybe if we’d kep’ on going upward we’d a come out on the hill above the camp.”
They started once more; going purposely upward this time; groping their way through the blinding mist without speaking.
Of a sudden the fog was gone from before them. A step or two farther and they stood on a hilltop, under the stars.
Desirée sank wearied on the stump of a twin tree, her back against the trunk of the unfelled half. Caleb glanced about to locate the camp. His exclamation of wonder brought the tired girl to her feet.
It was no hilltop they stood on. It was a tiny island jutting upward out of an immeasurable sea. In the distance to either hand rose similar islets. Above was the cloudless sky. Below, lay that vast waveless deep.
“It’s the fog!” cried the girl, finding her voice as the marvel explained itself. “Don’t you see? It lies low, over the water and the valley. And we’re above it. It has settled down over everything like a white cloud. But some of the hilltops pierce the top of it. We’re ‘above the clouds!’” she quoted, laughing; her spirits coming back with her returning strength.
“We’re above that one, anyhow,” assented Conover. “You’re right. But where’s the camp?”
“Down there, somewhere,” she replied, vaguely.
“But how can we find it?” he urged. “We don’t know which side of this hill it’s on. It may be five miles away. If we go down, the chances are a million to one we won’t strike it. An’ then we’ll have to wander ’round all night in that slimy white cloud, like we’ve been doin’ for the past hour. We’re up against it, girl.”
“I wouldn’t spend another hour in that mist for a fortune,” she shuddered. “It stifled me; and hideous woozzey faces seemed to be peering at us out of it. I could hear invisible things whispering all around us. Ugh!”
Caleb filled his lungs and shouted across the sea of mist. Again and again he bellowed forth his long-drawn halloo. To anyone on the nearer hilltop islands his call might readily have been heard. But human voice could as readily have penetrated a mountain of cotton-batting as carry sound through that waste of cloud-reek.
At length the two fugitives realized this. A last shout, a final straining of ears for some answering cry; then Conover turned again to the girl.
“They wouldn’t hear us a hundred yards away,” said he, “even if they was awake. We’ll have to,—Why, you’re shiverin’!”
To Desirée the glow of the long climb was giving place to the chill air of the Adirondack autumn night. Her teeth were chattering; but she bravely scouted the idea of discomfort.
Nevertheless, in an instant Caleb had whipped off his thick mackintosh and wrapped her in its huge folds. She vainly protested that he must not rob himself; but the cozy comfort of the big garment as well as his flat refusal to let her remove it soon silenced her objections. Conover had taken charge of the situation. It was the work of a minute to scratch together an armful of twigs, chips and small boughs,—relics of the hewn tree,—to thrust under the heap a crumpled letter from his pocket, and to set a match to the impromptu fire.
Then, as the twigs crackled and blazed, he scoured the hilltop for larger wood. Half rotted logs thatwould smoulder like peat, huge tree branches that must be dragged instead of carried to the fire; a bulky length of lumber overlooked when the tree had been cut up and carted away. These and lesser fuel served in an amazingly short time to turn the sputtering flamelets into a roaring camp fire.
Piece after piece of his gathered wood Caleb fed to the blaze; Desirée leaning back, deliciously warm and happy, to encourage the labor. A second journey into the dark and Conover was back with more fuel, which he piled in reserve beyond the reach of the flame tongues.
“You work like a veteran woodsman,” she praised.
“Why wouldn’t I?” he puffed, dragging in a new bunch of long boughs for the reserve pile. “I had to hustle fires an’ grub for the section gang, ten months or more, when I was a youngster. That’s why it seems funny to me that folks should pay big money for a chance of chasin’ out to the wilderness an’ doin’ the choresIused to get $1.85 a day for. Still, once in a lifetime, it comes in handy to know how.”
The heat was fierce. Caleb drew back from the fire, mopping his red face. Then he took off his tweed jacket. Crossing to Desirée, he lifted his mackintosh from her shoulders and made her put on the jacket. The latter’s hem fell to her knees. Conover rolled back its sleeves until her engulfed hands were once more visible. Then he spread the mackintosh on the ground near the fire; incidentally dislodging Rex from a carefully chosen bed.
“There!” proclaimed the Fighter. “That’sdone. Now you’ve a camp bed. Lay down on that mackintosh an’ I’ll wrap you up in it. You won’t catch cold, even if the fire dies out. Which same it won’t; for I’m goin’ to set up an’ keep it burnin’.”
“In other words,” she said with the stern air of rebuke that he loved, “I am going to curl up in all the wraps there are and go fast to sleep, while you sit up all night long and keep the fire going? I think I see myself doing it!”
“If we had a lookin’ glass along,” he answered, unruffled, “you could. As it is, you’ll just have to take my word for it. I’ll set back on that stump where you are now, an’ I’ll have that big trunk to rest my head on. An’ I’ll sleep a blamed sight better’n I ever do in a Pullman. When I feel cold I’ll know the fire’s dyin’ down an’ I’ll get up an’ tend it, an’ then go to sleep again. It’s a—”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” contradicted Desirée. “I’ll—”
“Listen, you little girl,” put in Caleb with rough tenderness. “I like nothin’ so well, as a rule, as to let you boss me. But here’s the one time thatI’mgoin’ to do the bossin’. You’re tired out, an’ you’re li’ble to take cold unless you keep wrapped up an’ get a good comf’tble sleep. An’ you’re goin’ to get it. Don’t you worry ’boutme, neither. By the time I’ve been restin’ ’gainst that tree trunk five minutes I’ll be in the arms of old Morpheus. It seems a kind of measlytrick to put up on Morpheus, whoever he may be. But it’s what I’m goin’ to do.”
The quiet mastery of the man permitted no argument. Indeed, Desirée for some strange reason felt herself unaccountably stirred by it.
“Now,” he went on, “one more armful of this stuff on the pile an’ then I’ll warm the mackintosh for you by the fire an’ let you go to sleep. I wish I’d wore a vest to-day.”
“Why? Oh, you’re cold! You need this—”
“No. I’d like it to roll up into a pillow for you. I’m warm, all right. An’ this fire’ll stay goin’ all night if I feed it up once or twice before mornin’.”
He picked up one of the longer boughs and swung it onto the blaze. The sweep of his arm sent the end of the branch against Desirée. She was rising from her tree-stump seat, at the moment; and the impact of the strong-swung bushy end of the bough threw her off her balance. Not in the least hurt, she nevertheless lost her footing and fell, with an exclamation of dismay, to the ground.
At her cry, Caleb turned. Realizing that he had knocked her down and fearful lest she be badly bruised by the blow, he sprang forward; and with a volley of loud self-reproach, lifted her to her feet.
The grip of his powerful arms gave Desirée a sense of utter peace and protection. That and something more. Something she could not—would not—analyze. Unresisting, she let her body rest inert in hismighty grasp the fraction of an instant longer than was perhaps really needful.
And in that atom of time the mischief was made.
Conover was staring down at her in eager solicitude; still begging her to tell him if she were hurt. She looked up, and their eyes met. Hers were sick with a love that transfigured her. And before their gaze, Conover’s heavy face went blank; then filled with a light of wonder and utter rapture that fairly frightened the girl.
His arms tightened about her in a clasp that robbed her of breath,—and of all will to breathe. She felt herself crushed against the man’s chest, and her upturned face was buried in fierce ecstatic kisses. Kisses wildly awkward and vehement; those of a man unused to giving or receiving caresses. Kisses that kindled in the girl a swift bliss that blinded,—enthralled her.
For a moment Desirée stood moveless, leaning back limply in the iron arms that bound her to her lover’s breast. His kisses rained down on her rapt, white face; upon her wide, starry eyes, her loosened hair.
Then, with a gasping murmur of joy she could not put into words, she suddenly threw her arms about Conover’s thick neck and gave him kiss for kiss. The rank scent of tobacco upon his lips,—the bristle of a day-old beard,—the ugly face itself with its undershot jaw, its square, crude massiveness,—all these things were nothing. Behind them she read and gloried in the love that blazed in the Fighter’s pale eyes.That was all she saw,—had ever seen,—would ever see.
Whether for a minute or for a century the two stood clasped heart to heart, soul to soul, neither could ever remember. At last the great arms released her. The triumphant love that shone in Conover’s face was again tinged with a wonder that was almost reverence.
“Why in blazes didn’t we know this before?” he demanded, hoarse and shaking.
“Speak for yourself!” sobbed the girl. “I’ve known it always, always,always! Ever since I was a child. Every minute since then. There’s just beenyou! Nothing else counted. And—and you never—”
“Never cared?” he guessed. “Girl, I’ve cared so much it was the life of me. An’ because it was the life I lived n’ the breath I breathed, I didn’t even guess it. Never once. Oh it’s like I’d been trav’lin’ through heaven blin’folded. Why didn’t youtellme? Why wasn’t it like this two years ago? Dey, if I’d known—if I’d understood I felt that way ’bout you, I’d a’—no, I wouldn’t, either. I’d a kep’ away for fear of breakin’ my heart. For it wouldn’t a’ seemed possible you could love me.Sayyou love me, girl!” he ordered, fiercely. “Say it over an’ over—a lot of times!”
“Love you?” murmured Desirée, her sobs dying away. “Loveyou?—Why,—!”
With a sudden passion of adoration she flung herarms again about his neck, straining him close to her. She could not speak. She could only press her soft, hot face close—ever so close—to his rough cheek; and cling fast to him as though she feared he might vanish, dreamlike, from her clasp.
“When you went away,” he continued after a divine silence, “it was like the heart of me had been torn out. I didn’t know what ailed me. I thought it was a craze to work. An’ I worked till I set all Granite to totterin’. An’ all the time it was you,—you! Then when I saw you again, there at the station in the mist, it seemed like I’d come home. I wanted to catch hold of your dress an’ beg you never to get out of my sight again. An’ I was ashamed of feelin’ that way, an’ I was afraid you’d find out an’ laugh at me. I was wild inlovewith you, girl,—an’ I never knew it. Did—didyouknow I was?”
“I always knew it,” she whispered. “I knew you loved me. That you cared almost as much as I cared. But you never even suspected. And,—oh, how couldItell you?”
Again they were silent for a space. Then she said, a little timidly:
“God meant us for each other, dear love. I believe in such things. And so must you. And we have found each other at last. Here, alone, on the top of the world. Just as He meant us to. Oh, I must be good—so good—if I am to deserve all this.”
“Deserve it?” he echoed in choked amaze. “Girl,you make me feel like hidin’ my head somewheres. What is there in all this foryou? I’m a rough, uneddicated chap that most folks look down on, an’ the rest don’t look at, at all. I got nothin’ but my money an’—Oh, Dey, I gotyou! An’ I’m the happiest man that ever got lost in this measly, heavenly wilderness. It ain’t true. An’ presently I’ll wake up. But while it lasts—”
“It will last forever, darling,” she interposed. “Forever and a day. We couldn’t be brought together like this, just to be parted again. Even Fate couldn’t be as cruel as that. Tell me why you didn’t know you loved me. Sometimes, when you used to talk about marrying—someone else,—I had to bite my lips to keep from calling to you—‘Youcan’t! It’sIyou love!’”
“Why didn’t you, then? You saw me stumblin’ along in the dark. Why did you let me do it, when if you’d said the first word—?”
“I should have said it some day. I know I should. Some day before it was too late. Oh, beloved, did you really think I was going to let you marry—her? Why evensheknew better.”
Conover threw back his head and laughed long and loud. A laugh of absolute boyish happiness that rang out over the miles of fog like a challenge to Fate.
“Oh, Lord!” he gurgled. “Gener’lly it gets me wild to be made a fool of. But this is the dandiest joke ever. The whole crowd was on, you say? Ev’rybody but me!”
He grew grave and drew her to him once more. Not impetuously now, but with a gentle reverence.
“Sweetheart,” he said, “I ain’t fit to kiss one of those soaked little mocc’sins of yours. I never worried much, before, ’bout such things;—but now—I kind of wish I’d done diff’rent in lots of things; so’s I could tell you I was reely worth your marryin’. But if you’ll help me, Dey, I’m goin’ to be everything you’d want. An’ one of these days I’ll make you proud of me.”
“I’m prouder of you now, dear,—and I’ve always been prouder—than I could be of any other man alive,” she insisted. “Oh, the miracle of it!”
Before he could stay her, or so much as guess her intent, she had slipped to her knees. Stooping to raise her, he saw her hands were clasped and her lips moving. Awed, he drew back a pace, and looked timidly upward into the Star Country. Then, shutting his eyes very tight he opened communication with Heaven for the first and last time in his life.
“Thanks!” he muttered under his breath.
A pause of mental hiatus,—a helpless groping for words in a wild universe of incoherent gratitude;—then once more a mumbled, shy “Thanks!”—and the prayer,—two words in all,—was ended.
It is possible that longer, more eloquent orisons than his have penetrated less far beyond the frontier of the stars and less close to the ear of the Hearer and Answerer.
Desirée had risen. Simply, half-shyly, like two little children, they kissed each other.
“Now you must go to sleep,” he ordered, picking up the mackintosh and wrapping it closely about her.
“To sleep!” she echoed. “Afterthis? I don’t think I shall ever throw away happy hours again by sleeping through them. I couldn’t sleep now to save my life, even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. Please let me do the bossing just alittlelonger, dear heart.”
He had flung another armful of wood upon the fire. Now, picking Desirée up as he might have lifted a baby, he returned to the stump seat. Holding her in his arms, close to his breast, he sat there, and gazed into the flames.
Tired, deliriously content, she nestled to him with a sigh of absolute rapture. There they remained; still; ineffably beatific; at rest; while the fire snapped merrily and the dog at their feet growlingly pursued numberless coveys of low-flying partridges through the aisles of dreamland. Then—
“I don’t s’pose I’ll ever reely understand it,” mused Caleb. “Here I’ve always been thinkin’ I looked on you like you were my daughter an’ that I was a million years older’n you’d ever get to be. An’ now in just one second the whole world turns inside out, an’ I land in heaven; I’m talkin’ ’bout ‘heaven’ to-night like any sky-scout, ain’t I? But it sort of seems the only word.”
“It is very near us,” she made reply, softly. “See,” raising herself in his arms and looking out over the star-gleaming mists below them. “See, the world is new. The seas have swept over all its old sins and follies and sordid workaday life. This island stands alone in the universe. All the rest is engulfed. And you and I are the only people on God’s new earth. We have risen above the old life of mistakes and blindness. Here,—alone—in our new marvel world,—forever and ever.”
Her head sank on his breast. He buried his face in the fragrant wonder of her hair. And once more they fell silent.
“There ain’t a thing I won’t do for you, girl,” went on Conover, by and by. “All by myself I’ve got rich an’ I’ve won ev’ry fight I’ve made. With you to work for I’ll hammer away at Old Man Dest’ny till I’ve got the whole State in my vest pocket. Yes, an’ I’ll try for the White House, too, before I’m done; if you’d like me to. We’re goin’ to build the biggest, most expensive house, right off, that was ever put up in Granite. We’ll build it on Pompton Av’noo, right in the thick of the swells. White marble we’ll make it. An’ you’ll have all the servants an’ horses an’ joolry an’ everything else you want. There won’t be a thing money can buy that you can’t have. I’ll fight the whole world till I’ve piled up such a fortune as’ll make those great big eyes of yours dazzled. An’ it’ll all be foryou. Allyours.”
“You darling old schoolboy!” she laughed.“Even your daydreams are studded with dollar signs. What do you suppose I care for such things? I haveyou, and we’re to be together always and always. What else could I want? And, dear,” more gravely, “I’d rather we stayed just as we are and not try for more wealth or more power. I seem to see such things in a new way to-night. Every dollar you win, every forward step in fame or fortune that you take, may mean unhappiness for someone who is less lucky. And, we are so happy, heart of mine, that we can surely let others be happy, too. Can’t we? Let us be content where we stand. You are so rich already that everyone envies you. Don’t let’s turn that envy into hatred by wringing more from people who already have less than we. It will make me so much comfortabler to feel we are using our wealth for happiness. Both for our own and for other peoples’. Am I talking like a goody-goody Sunday School teacher? I don’t mean to. But I know my way is best.”
“It’s always best,” he agreed after a moment. “An’ even if it wasn’t, it’syourway; and so it goes. We’ll do whatever you say. It’ll seem queer to stop fightin’. But,—it’ll seem nice, too. I never thought I’d feel that way. But I do now. An’ I always shall, while you’re by me. You can do anything you want to with me. You always could, an’ you always can.”
“Your arms are so big—so strong,” murmured Desirée. “I seem to be in a fortress where no ill can ever get to me. I’mhome!”
He wrapped the coat more closely about her and held her tenderly as a mother, reverently as a priest might bear the Host. And after a time, as she lay against his broad breast, the long curling fringe of her eyelashes began to waver. Sleepily she lifted her face.
“Kiss me goodnight,” she said, her voice slow with drowsiness.
The fire died down and the ring of heat-ramparts it had reared against the autumn cold crumbled away. The sleeping girl rested cozily warm in Conover’s arms. The man, his back against the tree, sat motionless; fearing by the slightest move to disturb her sleep.
He dared not rise to replenish the smouldering fire. He was coatless, and the growing cold gnawed with increasing keenness through the thin négligée shirt, into his arms and shoulders. It was the coldest night he had known since his arrival at the Adirondacks.
As the last flame died down upon the bed of red-gray coals, Rex woke with a quiver of chilliness, crept close to the embers and lay down again. Caleb, first making sure the movement had not disturbed Desirée, fell to envying the dog. The cold had sank into his very bones. The impossibility of shifting his stilted position galled him, as the endless hours crept by. Cramped, half frozen, racked with the agony of stiffening muscles and of blood that could no longer circulate, he clenched his teeth over his underlip from sheer pain. The girl, who at first had lain feather-likein his arms, now seemed heavy enough to tear loose his throbbing biceps. Nor would he, for all the physical anguish of his plight, move her body one hair’s breadth.
And so, like a sleepless Galahad before some old-world forest shrine,—like Stylites on his pillar,—worshipping yet in infinite suffering,—he sat the long night through.
At length his body grew numb, his blood congested. Aching discomfort and cold had wrought their worst on his frame of iron and had left it hardily impervious to further ill. His mind, when bodily surcease came, awoke to new activity. His thoughts, at first disjointed and wonderingly happy, settled down soon to their wonted sharp clearness. Then it was he coolly weighed this thing he had done.
It was like him to array in battle-order all the contrary arguments of the case; that with the brute force of his domination he might batter them to pieces. And a long array they were.
First,—his own social yearnings, his golden dreams of a secure place within the inner charmed circle of Granite society! The only road of ingress had been through marriage with a daughter of that circle. Preferably with Letty Standish. Now all that was out of the question. Desirée herself was popular. But he knew she could not drag up to social prominence a man like himself. She had not family nor other prestige for such a tremendous uplift. Nor, as she herself had said, did she value such position.
Had she married Hawarden, Caine or any of a half dozen other eligible Granite men, Desirée’s own place in society would straightway have become more than assured. With Conover as a husband, she must take rank—or lack of rank—with him. Nothing higher could be in store for her. Forever, Caleb must assail the circle in vain, or else sink back content with his own lot far outside its radius.
The very fact that he was married,—and married to an outsider who would not second his attack,—would render the walls of society impregnable against him. As a single man,—with money and with the power to use the money as a battering ram,—he had already knocked great breaches in the fortifications. Now he could never pass triumphant through those gaps.
A life-ambition,—all-compelling even if unworthy of a strong man,—was wilfully to be foregone. He, who had ever fought with all that was within him for the gratification of his few desires, must now forever abandon the earliest and greatest of them all. On the very eve of his career’s most complete victory he must for all time lay aside the sword.
Something like a sigh broke from between his blue-cold lips. The sound made the girl stir ever so slightly in her sleep. Caleb glanced down in alarm, dreading lest he had broken her slumber. There, against his arm rested Desirée’s upturned face. The dark silken lashes lay peacefully above the sleep-flushed cheeks. She was so little, so helpless, so wonderful,to the eyes bending above her! Inexpressibly precious to him always; a thousand-fold more so, now, in the hour of his renunciation of all else for love of her.
A wave of undreamed-of tenderness swept over Conover; possessing him to the utter extinction of every other thought or passion; sweeping away in its headlong rush all vestige of doubts and regrets. In an instant of blinding soul-light he saw once and for all the futility of what he had abandoned; the God-given marvel of what he had won in its place.
The battle was over. Caleb Conover had lost—and won. In his heart he knew he was no longer the Fighter; no more a seeker for Dead-Sea Fruit. His battles, social and financial, were at an end. This coming clash at the Legislature,—this mission on which Desirée was dispatching him, her true knight, to save the fortunes of others,—should be his last field. After that, a new, strange peace!—and Desirée!
Defiantly, Conover glared out into the night, beyond the smoking remnant of the fire; as though challenging the ghosts of slain ambitions to rise again before him that he might confound them all by merely pointing at the girl who slept in his arms. She—the mere sight of her—should be his reply to their taunts.
Something in his own look or attitude stirred a latent chord of memory. He recalled, by an odd turn of thought, a double-page drawing in one of the English weeklies that he had long ago seen at Desirée’s:—
A rocky hillock whereon sat a man clad in skins;—inhis arms an unconscious woman whose long hair streamed over her loose robe;—confronting the twain a shadowy, armored goddess into whose commanding eyes the skin-clad man was staring with an awed courage born of desperation. Beneath the picture were the lines:
“So grüsse mir Walhall! Grüsse mir Wotan! Grüsse mir Wälse und alle Helden! Zu ihnen folg’ ich dir nicht!”
Desirée had translated the words for Caleb. She had told him the pictured man was Siegmund; who, pausing in his flight to a place of refuge, with the fainting Sieglinde whom he loved, beheld the Valkyr, Brunhilde, and was told by her that a hero’s death and a hero’s reward in Valhalla were in store for him. There in the Viking Paradise, waited the warrior-parent he had lost; there Wotan the All-Father would welcome him. The Valkyries were preparing his place. The heroes of olden days would be his boon companions.
And Siegmund, the Luckless, heard with joy. But one question he asked the goddess:—Would Sieglinde, his fellow fugitive, join him in that abode of the blest? Brunhilde scoffingly replied that Valhalla was for heroes; not for mere women. Then, unflinchingly casting aside his every hope of Paradise, Siegmund kissed the senseless woman’s brow; and, again facing the goddess, made answer:
“Greet for me Valhalla! Greet for me Wotan! Greet for me my father and all the heroes! To them,I’ll follow thee not! Where Sieglinde bides, there shall Siegmund stay.”
Caleb at the time had been but mildly interested in the tale. The fact that Desirée could translate such queer-looking words was to him the most noteworthy feature of the whole affair. Now, with a whimsical comparison to his own case, the incident recurred to him.
Was he not, like Siegmund, keeping watch and ward in the wilderness over the unconscious woman of his heart? Was not the Brunhilde of ambition standing there somewhere in the mystic star-shadows before him, pointing out all that might be his were he to renounce love? And was he not making reply as defiantly, if perhaps not in quite such highflown terms, as had that Dutch chap in the bearskin clothes?
The idea tickled Conover’s torpid imagination; he dwelt upon it with some pride at his own powers of analogy. Then he fell to dreaming of his vast new happiness, of the golden vista that stretched before him and Desirée. And again a wonder, almost holy, filled his heart.
The night voices ceased. Brunhilde, piqued at such unwonted obstinacy from one who had ever heretofore been her slave, had scuttled back to Valhalla in a fine fit of rage; leaving this latter day Siegmund and Sieglinde to their own foolish, self-chosen fate. The cold pressed in more and more cruelly as the night waned. It pierced at times through Caleb’s numbness. He had great ado to keep his teeth from chattering soloudly as to wake the exhausted girl on his breast. The stars grew dim. The dawn-wind breathed across the sky. A paleness crept over the eastern horizon of the fog-sea. The man’s heavy head nodded;—once—and again,—then hung still.
With a sensation of being stared at, Caleb Conover opened his eyes. The pale shimmer in the east had given place to gray dawn. The dawn-wind, too, had waxed stronger; sweeping the fog before it. No longer were the man and woman on an island; but on a hilltop whence on every side stretched away leagues of dull green landscape. Only over the pond did the mist still hover. Directly below, not a quarter mile away, lay the camp.
Nor were they alone on their wonder-hill. On the far side of the dead fire Jack Hawarden stood eyeing them. And his face was as gray and as lifeless as the strewn ashes at his feet.
Conover and the lad looked at each other without speaking. Long and expressionlessly Jack gazed at the waking and the sleeping. Conover noted that the boy’s eyes were haggard and that the youth and jollity had been stricken from his face as by a blow. It was Hawarden who spoke first:
“No one down there is awake yet,” he said, whispering so low that the girl’s slumber was not broken. “I woke up and missed you. I came out of the tent and saw you up here. I didn’t know when you wouldwake and I was afraid the others might see. So I came. Don’t let her know.”
There was a catch in his breath at the last words. He turned abruptly on his heel and sped down the hillside; his stockinged feet making no sound on the damp mold. Caleb looked dazedly after his receding figure.
“He’s white,” muttered Conover. “White, clear through!”
Desirée moved at sound of his voice, and opened her eyes. For a moment she gazed up into Caleb’s face with blank amaze. Then she knew. Up went her arms, like a waking baby’s, and about his neck. As he bent to kiss her the agony of his stiffened muscles wellnigh made him cry out.
Flushed, laughing, big-eyed from her long sleep, Desirée sprang to her feet. Her glance caught the white gleam of the tents below.
“Oh what luck!” she exclaimed, delightedly. “Not a soul astir! We can get back without anyone knowing. What time is it? Or has time stopped being?”
He rose to feel for his watch;—rose, and toppled clumsily to his knees. His benumbed body refused to obey the will that was never numb. But, mumbling something about having tripped over a root, he forced himself to rise and to put his torturing muscles into motion.
“You’re cold!” she cried, accusingly. “The fire’s out and—”
“Not a bit of it,” he denied, compelling his teeth not to chatter. “I’m as warm as toast. Never felt spryer in my life. Say, girl,” he went on, to turn the subject from his own acute ills, “you’ve had your wish, all right. You said you wanted to give the slip to a Simon Legree chap named Conventionality. An’ I guess we done it.”
His arm about her, her hands clasped over one of his aching shoulders, they made their way down the hillside to the silent camp in the waterside dusk below.