Karl Wander rode wearily up the hill on his black mare. Honora saw him coming and waved to him from the window. There was no one to put up his horse, and he drove her into the stables and fed her and spread her bed while Honora watched what he and she had laughingly termed "the outposts." For she believed she had need to be on guard, and she thanked heaven that all of the approaches to the house were in the open and that there was nothing nearer than the rather remote grove of piñon trees which could shelter any creeping enemy.
Wander came on at last to the house, making his way deliberately and scorning, it would seem, all chance of attack. But Honora's ears fairly reverberated with the pistol shot which did not come; the explosion which was now so long delayed. She ran to open the door for him and to drag him into the friendly kitchen, where, in the absence of any domestic help, she had spread their evening meal.
There was a look in his face which she had not seen there before--a look of quietude, of finality.
"Well?" she asked.
He flung his hat on a settle and sat down to loosen his leggings.
"They've gone," he said, "bag and baggage."
"The miners?"
"Yes, left this afternoon--confiscated some trains and made the crews haul them out of town. They shook their fists at the mines and the works as if they had been the haunt of the devil. I couldn't bring myself to skulk. I rode Nell right down to the station and sat there till the last carload pulled out with the men and women standing together on the platform to curse me."
"Karl! How could you? It's a marvel you weren't shot."
"Too easy a mark, I reckon."
"And Elena?"
"Lifted on board by two rival suitors. She didn't even look at me." He drew a long breath. "I was guiltless in that, Honora. You've stood by through everything, and you've made a cult of believing in me, and I want you to know that, so far as Elena was concerned, you were right to do it. I may have been a fool--but not consciously--not consciously."
"I know it. I believe you."
A silence fell between them while Honora set the hot supper on the table and put the tea to draw.
"It's very still," he said finally. "But the stillness here is nothing to what it is down where my village stood. I've made a frightful mess of things, Honora."
"No," she said, "you built up; another has torn down. You must get more workmen. There may be a year or two of depression, but you're going to win out, Karl."
"I've fought a good many fights first and last, Honora,--fights you know nothing about. Some of them have been with men, some with ideas, some of the worst ones with myself. It would be a long story and a strange one if I were to tell it all."
"I dare say it would."
"I suppose I must seem very strange to a civilized woman like you, or--or your friend, Kate Barrington."
"You seem very like a brave man, Karl, and an interesting one."
"But I'm tired, Honora,--extraordinarily tired. I don't feel like fighting. Quiet and rest are what I'm longing for, and I'm to begin all over again, it appears. I've got to struggle up again almost from the bottom."
"Come to supper, Karl. Never mind all that. We have food and we have shelter. No doubt we shall sleep. Things like that deserve our gratitude. Accept these blessings. There are many who lack them."
Suddenly he threw up his arms with a despairing gesture.
"Oh, it isn't myself, Honora, that I'm grieving for! It's those hot-headed, misguided, wayward fellows of mine! They've left the homes I tried to help them win, they've followed a self-seeking, half-mad, wholly vicious agitator, and their lives, that I meant to have flow on so smoothly, will be troubled and wasted. I know so well what will happen! And then, their hate! It hangs over me like a cloud! I'm not supposed to be sensitive. I'm looked on as a swaggering, reckless, devil-may-care fellow with a pretty good heart and a mighty sure aim; but I tell you, cousin, among them, they've taken the life out of me."
"It's your dark hour, Karl. You're standing the worst of it right now. To-morrow things will look better."
"I couldn't ask a woman to come out here and stand amid this ruin with me, Honora. You know I couldn't. The only person who would be willing to share my present life with me would be some poor, devil-driven creature like Elena--come to think of it, even she wouldn't! She's off and away with a lover at each elbow!"
"Here!" said Honora imperatively. She held a plate toward him laden with steaming food.
He arose, took it, seated himself, and tried a mouthful, but he had to wash it down with water.
"I'm too tired," he said. "Really, Honora, you'll have to forgive me."
She got up then and lighted the lamp in his bedroom.
"Thank you," he said. "Rest is what I need. It was odd they didn't shoot, wasn't it? I thought every moment that they would."
"You surely didn't wish that they would, Karl?"
"No." He paused for a moment at the door. "No--only everything appeared to be so futile. My bad deeds never turned on me as my good ones have done. It makes everything seem incoherent. What--what would a woman like Miss Barrington make of all that--of harm coming from good?"
"I don't know," said Honora, rather sharply. "She hasn't written. I told her all the trouble we were in,--the danger and the distress,--but she hasn't written a word."
"Why should she?" demanded Wander. "It's none of her concern. I suppose she thinks a fool is best left with his folly. Good-night, cousin. You're a good woman if ever there was one. What should I have done without you?"
Honora smiled wanly. He seemed to have forgotten that it was she who would have fared poorly without him.
She closed up the house for the night, looking out in the bright moonlight to see that all was quiet. For many days and nights she had been continually on the outlook for lurking figures, but now she was inclined to believe that she had overestimated the animosity of the strikers. After all, try as they might, they could bring no accusations against the man who, hurt to the soul by their misunderstanding of him, was now laying his tired head upon his pillow.
All was very still. The moonlight touched to silver the snow upon the mountains; the sound of the leaping river was like a distant flute; the wind was rising with long, wavelike sounds. Honora lingered in the doorway, looking and listening. Her heart was big with pity--pity for that disheartened man whose buoyancy and self-love had been so deeply wounded, pity for those wandering, angry, aimless men and women who might have rested secure in his guardianship; pity for all the hot, misguided hearts of men and women. Pity, too, for the man with the most impetuous heart of them all, who wandered in some foreign land with a woman whose beauty had been his lure and his undoing. Yes, she had been given grace in those days, when she seemed to stand face to face with death, to pity even David and Mary!
She walked with a slow firm step up to her room, holding her head high. She had learned trust as well as compassion. She trusted Karl and the issue of his sorrow. She even trusted the issue of her own sorrow, which, a short time before, had seemed so shameful. She threw wide her great windows, and the wind and the moonlight filled her chamber.
Two days later Karl Wander and Honora Fulham rode together to the village, now dismantled and desolate.
"I remember," said Karl, "what a boyish pride I took in the little town at first, Honora, to have built it, and had it called after me and all. Such silly fools as men are, trying to perpetuate themselves by such childish methods."
"Perpetuation is an instinct with us," said Honora calmly, "Immortality is our greatest hope. I'm so thankful I have my children, Karl. They seem to carry one's personality on, you know, no matter how different they actually may be from one's self."
"Oh, yes," said Karl, with a short sigh, "you're right there. You've a beautiful brace of babies, Honora. I believe I'll have to ask you to appoint me their guardian. I must have some share in them. It will give me a fresh reason for going on."
"Are you a trifle short of reasons for going on, Karl?" Honora asked gently, averting her look so that she might not seem to be watching him.
"Yes, I am," he admitted frankly. "Although, now that the worst of my chagrin is over at having failed so completely in the pet scheme of my life, I can feel my fighting blood getting up again. I'm going to make a success of the town of Wander yet, my cousin, and those three mines that lie there so silently are going to hum in the old way. You'll see a string of men pouring in and out of those gates yet, take my word for it. But as for me, I proceed henceforth on a humbler policy."
"Humbler? Isn't it humble to be kind, Karl? That's what you were first and last--kind. You were forever thinking of the good of your people."
"It was outrageously insolent of me to do it, my cousin. Who am I that I should try to run another man's affairs? How should I know what is best for him--isn't he the one to be the judge of that? patronage, patronage, that's what they can't stand--that's what natural overmen like myself with amiable dispositions try to impose on those we think inferior to ourselves. We can't seem to comprehend that the way to make them grow is to leave them alone."
"Don't be bitter, Karl."
"I'm not bitter, Honora. I'm rebuked. I'm literal. I'm instructed. I have brought you down here to talk the situation over with me. I can get men in plenty to advise me, but I want to know what you think about a number of things. Moreover, I want you to tell me what you imagine Miss Barrington would think about them."
"Why don't you write and ask her?" asked Honora. She herself was hurt at not having heard from Kate.
"I gave her notice that I wasn't going to write any more," said Karl sharply. "I couldn't have her counting on me when I wasn't sure that I was a man to be counted on."
"Oh," cried Honora, enlightened. "That's the trouble, is it? But still, I should think she'd write to me. I told her of all you and I were going through together--" she broke off suddenly. Her words presented to her for the first time some hint of the idea she might have conveyed to Kate. She smiled upon her cousin beautifully, while he stared at her, puzzled at her unexpected radiance.
"Kate loves him," she decided, looking at the man beside her with fresh appreciation of his power. She was the more conscious of it that she saw him now in his hour of defeat and perceived his hope and ingenuity, his courage and determination gathering together slowly but steadily for a fresh effort.
"Dear old Kate," she mused. "Karl rebuffed her in his misery, and I misled her. If she hadn't cared she'd have written anyway. As it is--"
But Karl was talking.
"Now there's the matter of the company store," he was saying. "What would Miss Barrington think about the ethical objections to that?"
Honora turned her attention to the matter in hand, and when, late that afternoon, the two rode their jaded horses home, a new campaign had been planned. Within a week Wander left for Denver. Honora heard nothing from him for a fortnight. Then a wire came. He was returning to Wander with five hundred men.
"They're hoboes--pick-ups," he told Honora that night as the two sat together at supper. "Long-stake and short-stake men--down-and-outs--vagrants--drunkards, God knows what. I advertised for them. 'Previous character not called into question,' was what I said. 'Must open up my mines. Come and work as long as you feel like it.' I haven't promised them anything and they haven't promised me anything, except that I give them wages for work. A few of them have women with them, but not more than one in twenty. I don't know what kind of a mess the town of Wander will be now, but at any rate, it's sticking to its old programme of 'open shop.' Any one who wants to take these fellows away from me is quite welcome to do it. No affection shall exist between them and me. There are no obligations on either side. But they seem a hearty, good-natured lot, and they said they liked my grit."
Something that was wild and reckless in all of the Wanders flashed in Honora's usually quiet eyes.
"A band of brigands," she laughed. "Really, Karl, I think you'll make a good chief for them. There's one thing certain, they'll never let you patronize them."
"I shan't try," declared Karl. "They needn't look to me for benefits of any sort. I want miners."
Honora chuckled pleasantly and looked at her cousin from the corner of her eye. She had her own ideas about his ability to maintain such detachment.
He amused her a little later by telling her how he had formed a town government and he described the men he had appointed to office.
"They take it seriously, too," he declared. "We have a ragamuffin government and regulations that would commend themselves to the most judicious. 'Pon my soul, Honora, though it's only play, I swear some of these fellows begin to take on little affectations of self-respect. We're going to have a council meeting to-morrow. You ought to come down."
That gave Honora a cue. She was wanting something more to do than to look after the house, now that servants had again been secured. It occurred to her that it might be a good idea to call on the women down at Wander. She was under no error as to their character. Broken-down followers of weak men's fortunes,--some with the wedding ring and some without,--they nevertheless were there, flesh and blood, and possibly heart and soul. Not the ideal but the actual commended itself to her these days. Kate had taught her that lesson. So, quite simply, she went among them.
"Call on me when you want anything," she said to them. "I'm a woman who has seen trouble, and I'd like to be of use to any of you if trouble should come your way. Anyhow, trouble or no trouble, let us be friends."
In her simple dress, with her quiet, sad face and her deep eyes, she convinced them of sincerity as few women could have done. They bade her enter their doors and sit in their sloven homes amid the broken things the Italians had left behind them.
"Why not start a furniture shop?" asked Honora. "We could find some men here who could make plain furniture. I'll see Mr. Wander about it."
That was a simple enough plan, and she had no trouble in carrying it out. She got the women to cooperate with her in other ways. Among them they cleaned up the town, set out some gardens, and began spending their men's money for necessaries.
"Do watch out," warned Karl; "you'll get to be a Lady Bountiful--"
"And you a benevolent magnate--"
"Damned if I will! Well, play with your hobo brides if you like, Honora, but don't look for gratitude or rectitude or any beatitude."
"Not I," declared Honora. "I'm only amusing myself."
They kept insisting to each other that they had no higher intention. They were hilarious over their failures and they persisted in taking even their successes humorously. At first the "short-stake men" drifted away, but presently they began to drift back again. They liked it at Wander,--liked being mildly and tolerantly controlled by men of their own sort,--men with some vested authority, however, and a reawakened perception of responsibility. Wander was their town--the hoboes' own city. It was one of the few places where something was expected of the hobo. Well, a hobo was a man, wasn't he? The point was provable. A number of Karl Wander's vagrants chose to prove that they were not reprobates. Those who had been "down and out" by their own will, or lack of it, as well as those whom misfortune had dogged, began to see in this wild village, in the heart of these rich and terrific mountains, that wonderful thing, "another chance."
"Would Miss Barrington approve of us now?" Karl would sometimes ask Honora.
"Why should she?" Honora would retort. "We're not in earnest. We're only fighting bankruptcy and ennui."
"That's it," declared Karl. "By the way, I must scrape up some more capital somewhere, Honora. I've borrowed everything I could lay my hands on in Denver. Now I've written to some Chicago capitalists about my affairs and they show a disposition to help me out. They'll meet in Denver next week. Perhaps I shall bring them here. I've told them frankly what my position was. You see, if I can swing things for six months more, the tide will turn. Do you think my interesting rabble will stick to me?"
"Don't count on them," said Honora. "Don't count on anybody or anything. But if you like to take your chance, do it. It's no more of a gamble than anything else a Colorado man is likely to invest in."
"You don't think much of us Colorado men, do you, my cousin?"
"I don't think you are quite civilized," she said. Then a twinge of memory twisted her face. "But I don't care for civilized men. I like glorious barbarians like you, Karl."
"Men who are shot at from behind bushes, eh? If I ever have to hide in a cave, Honora, will you go with me?"
"Yes, and load the guns."
He flashed her a curious look; one which she could not quite interpret. Was he thinking that he would like her to keep beside him? For a second, with a thrill of something like fear, this occurred to her. Then by some mysterious process she read his mind, and she read it aright. He was really thinking how stirring a thing life would seem if he could hear words like that from the lips of Kate Barrington.
It had been a busy day for Honora. She had been superintending the house-cleaning and taking rather an aggressive part in it herself. She rejoiced that her strength had come back to her, and she felt a keen satisfaction in putting it forth in service of the man who had taken her into community of interest with him when, as he had once put it, she was bankrupted of all that had made her think herself rich.
Moreover, she loved the roomy, bare house, with its uncurtained windows facing the mountains, and revealing the spectacles of the day and night. Because of them she had learned to make the most of her sleepless hours. The slow, majestic procession in the heavens, the hours of tumult when the moon struggled through the troubled sky, the dawns with their swift, wide-spreading clarity, were the finest diversions she ever had known.
She remembered how, in the old days, she and David had patronized the unspeakably puerile musical comedies under the impression that they "rested" them. Now, she was able to imagine nothing more fatiguing.
They had an early supper, for Karl was leaving for a day or two in Denver and had to be driven ten miles to the station. He was unusually silent, and Honora was well pleased that he should be so, for, though she had kept herself so busily occupied all the day, she had not been able to rid herself of the feeling that a storm of memories was waiting to burst upon her. The feeling had grown as the hours of the day went on, and she at once dreaded and longed for the solitude she should have when Karl was gone. She was relieved to find that the little girls were weary and quite ready for their beds. She watched Karl drive away, standing at the door for a few moments till she heard his clear voice calling a last good-bye as the station wagon swept around the piñon grove; then she locked the house and went to her own room. A fire had been laid for her, and she touched a match to the kindling, lighted her lamp, and took up some sewing. But she found herself too weary to sew, and, moreover, this assailant of recollection was upon her again.
She had once seen the Northern lights when the many-hued glory seemed to be poured from vast, invisible pitchers, till it spread over the floor of heaven and spilled earthward. Her memories had come upon her like that.
Then she faced the fact she had been trying all day not to recognize.
It was David's birthday!
She admitted it now, and even had the courage to go back over the ways they had celebrated the day in former years; at first she held to the old idea that these recollections made her suffer, but presently she perceived that it was not so. Had her help come from the hills, as Karl had told her it would?
She sat so still that she could hear the ashes falling in the fireplace--so still that the ticking of her watch on the dressing-table teased her ears. She seemed to be listening for something--for something beautiful and solemn. And by and by the thing she had been waiting for came.
It swept into the house as if all the doors and windows had been thrown wide to receive it. It was as invisible as the wind, as scentless as a star, as complete as birth or death. It was peace--or forgiveness--or, in a white way, perhaps it was love.
Suddenly she sprang to her feet.
"David!" she cried. "David! Oh, Ibelieve I understand!"
She went to her desk, and, as if she were compelled, began to write. Afterward she found she had written this:--
"DEAR DAVID:--"It is your birthday, and I, who am so used to sending you a present, cannot be deterred now. Oh, David, my husband, you who fathered my children, you, who, in spite of all, belong to me, let me tell you how I have at last come, out of the storm of angers and torments of the past year, into a sheltered room where you seem to sit waiting to hear me say, 'I forgive you.'"That is my present to you--my forgiveness. Take it from me with lifted hands as if it were a sacrament; feed on it, for it is holy bread. Now we shall both be at peace, shall we not? You will forgive me, too,for all I did not do."We are willful children, all of us, and night over-takes us before we have half learned our lessons."Oh, David--"
She broke off suddenly. Something cold seemed to envelop her--cold as a crevasse and black as death. She gave a strangled cry, wrenched the collar from her throat, fighting in vain against the mounting waves that overwhelmed her.
Long afterward, she shuddered up out of her unconsciousness. The fire had burned itself out; the lamp was sputtering for lack of oil. Somewhere in the distance a coyote called. She was dripping with cold sweat, and had hardly strength to find the thing that would warm her and to get off her clothes and creep into bed.
At first she was afraid to put out the light. It seemed as if, should she do so, the very form and substance of Terror would come and grip her. But after a time, slowly, wave upon wave, the sea of Peace rolled over her--submerging her. She reached out then and extinguished the light and let herself sink down, down, through the obliterating waters of sleep--waters as deep, as cold, as protecting as the sea.
"Into the Eternal Arms," she breathed, not knowing why.
But when she awakened the next morning in response to the punctual gong, she remembered that she had said that.
"Into the Eternal Arms."
She came down to breakfast with the face of one who has eaten of the sacred bread of the spirit.
The next two days passed vaguely. A gray veil appeared to hang between her and the realities, and she had the effect of merely going through the motions of life. The children caused her no trouble. They were, indeed, the most normal of children, and Mrs. Hays, their old-time nurse, had reduced their days to an agreeable system. Honora derived that peculiar delight from them which a mother may have when she is not obliged to be the bodily servitor and constant attendant of her children. She was able to feel the poetry of their childhood, seeing them as she did at fortunate and picturesque moments; and though their lives were literally braided into her own,--were the golden threads in her otherwise dun fabric of existence,--she was thankful that she did not have the task of caring for them. It would have been torture to have been tied to their small needs all day and every day. She liked far better the heavier work she did about the house, her long walks, her rides to town, and, when Karl was away, her supervision of the ranch. Above all, there was her work at the village. She could return from that to the children for refreshment and for spiritual illumination. In the purity of their eyes, in the liquid sweetness of their voices, in their adorable grace and caprice, there was a healing force beyond her power to compute.
During these days, however, her pleasure in them was dim, though sweet. She had been through a mystic experience which left a profound influence upon her, and she was too much under the spell of it even to make an effort to shake it off. She slept lightly and woke often, to peer into the velvet blackness of the night and to listen to the deep silence. She was as one who stands apart, the viewer of some tremendous but uncomprehended event.
The third day she sent the horses for Karl, and as twilight neared, he came driving home. She heard his approach and threw open the door for him. He saw her with a halo of light about her, curiously enlarged and glorified, and came slowly and heavily toward her, holding out both hands. At first she thought he was ill, but as his hands grasped hers, she saw that he was not bringing a personal sorrow to her but a brotherly compassion. And then she knew that something had happened to David. She read his mind so far, almost as if it had been a printed page, and she might have read further, perhaps, if she had waited, but she cried out:--
"What is it? You've news of David?"
"Yes," he said. "Come in."
"You've seen the papers?" he asked when they were within the house. She shook her head.
"I haven't sent over for the mail since you left, Karl. I seemed to like the silence."
"There's silence enough in all patience!" he cried. "Sixteen hundred voices have ceased."
"I don't understand."
"The Cyclops has gone down--a new ship, the largest on the sea."
"Why, that seems impossible."
"Not when there are icebergs floating off the banks and when the bergs carry submerged knives of ice. One of them gored the ship. It was fatal."
"How terrible!" For a second's space she had forgotten the possible application to her. Then the knowledge came rushing back upon her.
She put her hands over her heart with the gesture of one wounded.
"David?" she gasped.
Karl nodded.
"He was on it--with Mary. They were coming back to America. He had been given the Norden prize, as you know,--the prize you earned for him. I think he was to take a position in some Eastern university. He and Mary had gone to their room, the paper says, when the shock came. They ran out together, half-dressed, and Mary asked a steward if there was anything the matter. 'Yes, madam,' he said quietly, just like that, 'I believe we are sinking.' You'll read all about it there in those papers. Mary was interviewed. Well, they lowered the boats. There were enough for about a third of the passengers. They had made every provision for luxury, but not nearly enough for safety. The men helped the women into the boats and sent them away. Then they sat down together, folded their arms, and died like gentlemen, with the good musicians heartening them with their music to the last. The captain went down with his ship, of course. All of the officers did that. Almost all of the men did it, too. It was very gallant in its terrible way, and David was among the most gallant. The papers mention him particularly. He worked till the last helping the others off, and then he sat down and waited for the end."
Honora turned on her cousin a face in which all the candles of her soul were lit.
"Oh, Karl, how wonderful! How beautiful!"
He said nothing for amazement.
"In that half-hour," she went on, speaking with such swiftness that he could hardly follow her, "all his thoughts streamed off across the miles of sea and land to me! I felt the warmth of them all about me. It was myself he was thinking of. He came back to me, his wife! I was alone, waiting for something, I couldn't tell what. Then I remembered it was his birthday, and that I should be sending him a gift. So I sent him my forgiveness. I wrote a letter, but for some reason I have not sent it. It is here, the letter!" She drew it from her bosom. "See, the date and hour is upon it. Read it."
Karl arose and held the letter in a shaking hand. He made a calculation.
"The moments correspond," he said. "You are right; his spirit sought yours."
"And then the--the drowning, Karl. I felt it all, but I could not understand. I died and was dead for a long time, but I came up again, to live. Only since then life has been very curious. I have felt like a ghost that missed its grave. I've been walking around, pretending to live, but really half hearing and half seeing, and waiting for you to come back and explain."
"I have explained," said Karl with infinite gentleness. "Mary is saved. She was taken up with others by the Urbania, and friends are caring for her in New York. She gave a very lucid interview; a feeling one, too. She lives, but the man she ruined went down, for her sake."
"No," said Honora, "he went down for my sake. He went down for the sake of his ideals, and his ideals were mine. Oh, how beautiful that I have forgiven him--and how wonderful that he knew it, and that I--" She spoke as one to whom a great happiness had come. Then she wavered, reached out groping hands, and fell forward in Karl's arms.
For days she lay in her bed. She had no desire to arise. She seemed to dread interruption to her passionate drama of emotion, in which sorrow and joy were combined in indeterminate parts. From her window she could see the snow-capped peaks of the Williston range, rising with immortal and changeful beauty into the purple heavens. As she watched them with incurious eyes, marking them in the first light of the day, when their iridescence made them seem as impalpable as a dream of heaven; eyeing them in the noon-height, when their sides were the hue of ruddy granite; watching them at sunset when they faded from swimming gold to rose, from rose to purple, they seemed less like mountains than like those fair and fatal bergs of the Northern Atlantic. She had read of them, though she had not seen them. She knew how they sloughed from the inexhaustible ice-cap of Greenland's bleak continent and marched, stately as an army, down the mighty plain of the ocean. Fair beyond word were they, with jeweled crevasses and mother-of-pearl changefulness, indomitable, treacherous, menacing. Honora, closing weary eyes, still saw them sailing, sailing, white as angels, radiant as dawn, changing, changing, lovely and cold as death.
Mind and gaze were fixed upon their enchantment. She would not think of certain other things--of that incredible catastrophe, that rent ship, crashing to its doom, of that vast company tossed upon the sea, of those cries in the dark. No, she shut her eyes and her ears to those things! They seemed to be the servitors at the doors of madness, and she let them crook their fingers at her in vain. Now and then, when she was not on guard, they swarmed upon her, whispering stories of black struggle, of heart-breaking separation of mother and child, of husband and wife. Sometimes they told her how Mary--so luxurious, so smiling, so avid of warmth and food and kisses--had shivered in that bleak wind, as she sat coatless, torn from David's sheltering embrace. They had given her elfish reminders of how soft, how pink, how perfumed was that woman's tender flesh. Then as she looked the blue eyes glazed with agony, the supple body grew rigid with cold, and down, down, through miles of water, sank the man they both had loved.
No, no, it was better to watch the bergs, those glistering, fair, white ships of death! Yes, there from the window she seemed to see them! How the sun glorified them! Was the sun setting, then? Had there been another day?
"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow--"
Darkness was falling. But even in the darkness she saw the ice-ships slipping down from that great frozen waste, along the glacial rivers, past the bleaklisière, into the bitter sea, and on down, down to meet that other ship--that ship bearing its mighty burden of living men--and to break it in unequal combat.
Oh, could she never sleep! Would those white ships never reach port!
Did she hear Karl say he had telegraphed for Kate Barrington? But what did it matter? Neither Kate nor Karl, strong and kind as they were, could stem the tide that bore those ships along the never-quiet seas.
So Kate was coming!
He had cravenly rebuffed her, and she had borne the rebuff in silence. Yet now that he needed her, she was coming. Ah, that was what women meant to men. They were created for the comforting of them. He always had known it, but he had impiously doubted them--doubted Her. Because fortune had turned from him, he had turned from Her--from Kate Barrington. He had imagined that she wanted more than he could give; whereas, evidently, all she ever had wanted was to be needed. He had called. She had answered. It had been as swift as telegraphy could make it. And now he was driving to the station to meet her.
Life, it appeared, was just as simple as that. A man, lost in the darkness, could cry for a star to guide him, and it would come. It would shine miraculously out of the heavens, and his path would be made plain. It seemed absurd that the horses should be jogging along at their usual pace over the familiar road. Why had they not grown shining wings? Why was the old station wagon not transformed, by the mere glory of its errand, into a crystal coach? But, no, the horses went no faster because they were going on this world-changing errand. The resuscitated village, with the American litter heaped on the Italian dirt, looked none the less slovenly because She was coming into it in a few minutes. The clock kept its round; the sun showed its usual inclination toward the west. But notwithstanding this torpidity, She was coming, and that day stood apart from all other days.
That it was Honora's desperate need which she was answering, in no way lessened the value of her response to him. His need and Honora's were indissoluble now; it was he who had called, and it was not to Honora alone that she was coming with healing in her hands.
He saw her as she leaped from the train,--tall, alert, green-clad,--and he ran forward, sweeping his Stetson from his head. Their hands met--clung.
"You!" he said under his breath.
She laughed into his eyes.
"No,you!" she retorted.
He took her bags and they walked side by side, looking at each other as if their eyes required the sight.
"How is she?" asked Kate.
"Very bad."
"What is it?"
"The doorway to madness."
"You've had a specialist?"
"Yes. He wanted to take her to a sanatorium. I begged him to wait--to let you try. How could I let her go out from my door to be cast in with the lost?"
"I suppose it was David's death that caused it."
"Oh, yes. What else could it be?"
"Then she loved him--to the end."
"And after it, I am sure."
He led the way to the station wagon and helped her in; then brought her luggage on his own shoulder.
"Oh," she cried in distress. "Do you have to be your own stevedore? I don't like to have you doing that for me."
"Out here we wait on ourselves," he replied when he had tumbled the trunk into the wagon. He seated himself beside her as if he were doing an accustomed thing, and she, too, felt as if she had been there beside him many times before.
As they entered the village, he said:--
"You must note my rowdy town. Never was there such a place--such organized success built on so much individual failure. From boss to water-boy we were failures all; so we understood each other. We haven't sworn brotherhood, but we're pulling together. Some of us had known no law, and most of us had a prejudice against it, but now we're making our own laws and we rather enjoy the process. We've made the town and the mines our own cause, so what is the use of playing the traitor? Some of us are short-stake men habitually and constitutionally. Very well, say we, let us look at the facts. Since there are short-stake men in the world, why not make allowances for them? Use their limited powers of endurance and concentration, then let 'em off to rest up. If there are enough short-stake men around, some one will always be working. We find it works well."
"Have you many women in your midst?"
"At first we had very few. Just some bedraggled wives and a few less responsible ladies with magenta feathers in their hats. At least, two of them had, and the magenta feather came to be a badge. But they've disappeared--the feathers, not the ladies. Honora had a hand in it. I think she pulled off one marriage. She seemed to think there were arguments in favor of the wedding ceremony. But, mind you, she didn't want any of the poor women to go because they were bad. We are sinners all here. Stay and take a chance, that's our motto. It isn't often you can get a good woman like Honora to hang up a sign like that."
"Honora couldn't have done it once," said Kate. "But think of all she's learned."
"Learned? Yes. And I, too. I've been learning my lessons, too,--they were long and hard and I sulked at some of them, but I'm more tractable new."
"I had my own hard conning," Kate said softly. "You never could have done what I did, Mr. Wander. You couldn't have been cruel to an old father."
"Honora has made all that clear to me," said Karl with compassion. "When we are fighting for liberty we forget the sufferings of the enemy."
There was a little pause. Then Karl spoke.
"But I forgot to begin at the beginning in telling you about my made-over mining town. Yet you seemed to know about it."
"Oh, I read about it in the papers. Your experiment is famous. All of the people I am associated with, the welfare workers and sociologists, are immensely interested in it. That's one of the problems now--how to use the hobo, how to get him back into an understanding of regulated communities."
"Put him in charge," laughed Karl. "The answer's easy. Treat him like a fellow-man. Don't annoy him by an exhibition of your useless virtues."
"I never thought of that," said Kate.
They turned their backs on the straggling town and faced the peaks. Presently they skirted the Williston River which thundered among boulders and raged on toward the low-lying valley. From above, the roar of the pines came to them, reverberant and melancholy.
"What sounds! What sounds!" cried Kate.
"The mountains breathing," answered Wander.
He drove well, and he knew the road. It was a dangerous road, which, ever ascending, skirted sharp declivities and rounded buttressed rocks. Kate, prairie-reared, could not "escape the inevitable thrill," but she showed, and perhaps felt, no fear. She let the matter rest with him--this man with great shoulders and firm hands, who knew the primitive art of "waiting on himself." Their brief speech sufficed them for a time, and now they sat silent, well content. The old, tormenting question as to his relations with Honora did not intrude itself. It was swept out of sight like flotsam in the plenteous stream of present content.
They swung upon a purple mesa, and in the distance Kate saw a light which she felt was shining from the window of his home.
"It's just as I thought it would be," she said.
"Perhaps you are just the way it thought you would be," he replied. "Perhaps the soul of a place waits and watches for the right person, just as we human beings wander about searching for the right spot."
"I'msuited," affirmed Kate. "I hope the mesa is."
"I know it well and I can answer for it."
The road continued to mount; they entered the piñon grove and rode in aromatic dusk for a while, and when they emerged they were at the doorway.
He lifted her down and held her with a gesture as if he had something to say.
"It's about my letter," he ventured. "You knew very well it wasn't that I didn't want you to write. But my life was getting tangled--I wasn't willing to involve you in any way in the débris. I couldn't be sure that letters sent me would always reach my hands. Worst of all, I accused myself of unworthiness. I do so still."
"I'm not one who worries much about worthiness or unworthiness," she said. "Each of us is worthy and unworthy. But I thought--"
"What?"
"I was confused. Honora said I was to congratulate you--and her. I didn't know--"
He stared incredulously.
"You didn't know--" He broke off, too, then laughed shortly. "I wish you had known," he added. "I would like to think that you never could misunderstand."
She felt herself rebuked. He opened the door for her and she stepped for the first time across the threshold of his house.
Half an hour later, Wander, sitting in his study at the end of the upper hall, saw his guest hastening toward Honora's room. She wore a plain brown house dress and looked uniformed and ready for service. She did not speak to him, but hastened down the corridor and let herself into that solemn chamber where Honora Fulham lay with wide-staring eyes gazing mountain ward. That Honora was in some cold, still, and appalling place it took Kate but a moment to apprehend. She could hardly keep from springing to her as if to snatch her from impending doom, but she forced all panic from her manner.
"Kate's come," she said, leaning down and kissing those chilly lips with a passion of pity and reassurance. "She's come to stay, sister Honora, and to drive everything bad away from you. Give her a kiss if you are glad."
Did she feel an answering salute? She could not be sure. She moved aside and watched. Those fixed, vision-seeing eyes were upon the snow-capped peaks purpling in the decline of the day.
"What is it you see, sister?" she asked. "Is there something out there that troubles you?"
Honora lifted a tragic hand and pointed to those darkening snows.
"See how the bergs keep floating!" she whispered. "They float slowly, but they are on their way. By and by they will meet the ship. Then everything will be crushed or frozen. I try to make them stay still, but they won't do it, and I'm so tired--oh, I'm so terribly tired, Kate."
Kate's heart leaped. She had, at any rate, recognized her.
"They really are still, Honora," she cried. "Truly they are. I am looking at them, and I can see that they are still. They are not bergs at all, but only your good mountains, and by and by all of that ice and snow will melt and flowers will be growing there."
She pulled down the high-rolled shades at the windows with a decisive gesture.
"But I must have them up," cried Honora, beginning to sob. "I have to keep watching them."
"It's time to have in the lamps," declared Kate; and went to the door to ask for them.
"And tea, too, please, Mrs. Hays," she called; "quite hot."
"We've been keeping her very still," warned Wander, rejoicing in Kate's cheerful voice, yet dreading the effect of it on his cousin.
"It's been too still where her soul has been dwelling," Kate replied in a whisper. "Can't you see she's on those bitter seas watching for the ice to crush David's ship? It's not yet madness, only a profound dream--a recurring hallucination. We must break it up--oh, we must!"
She carried in the lamps when they came, placing them where their glow would not trouble those burning eyes; and when Mrs. Hays brought the tea and toast, whispering, "She'll take nothing," Kate lifted her friend in her determined arms, and, having made her comfortable, placed the tray before her.
"For old sake's sake, Honora," she said. "Come, let us play we are girls again, back at Foster, drinking our tea!"
Mechanically, Honora lifted the cup and sipped it. When Kate broke pieces of the toast and set them before her, she ate them.
"You are telling me nothing about the babies," Kate reproached her finally. "Mayn't we have them in for a moment?"
"I don't think they ought to come here," said Honora faintly. "It doesn't seem as if they ought to be brought to such a place as this."
But Kate commanded their presence, and, having softly fondled them, dropped them on Honora's bed and let them crawl about there. They swarmed up to their mother and hung upon her, patting her cheeks, and investigating the use of eyelids and of ropes of hair. But when they could not provoke her to play, they began to whimper.
"Honora," said Kate sharply, "you must laugh at them at once! They mustn't go away without a kiss."
So Honora dragged herself from those green waters beyond the fatal Banks, half across the continent to the little children at her side, and held them for a moment--the two of them at once--in her embrace.
"But I'm so tired, Kate," she said wearily.
"Rest, then," said Kate. "Rest. But it wouldn't have been right to rest without saying good-night to the kiddies, would it? A mother has to think of that, hasn't she? They need you so dreadfully, you see."
She slipped the extra pillows from beneath the heavy head, and stood a moment by the bedside in silence as if she would impress the fact of her protection upon that stricken heart and brain.
"It is safe, here, Honora," she said softly. "Love and care are all about you. No harm shall come near you. Do you believe that?"
Honora looked at her from beneath heavy lids, then slowly let her eyes close. Kate walked to the window and waited. At first Honora's body was convulsed with nervous spasms, but little by little they ceased. Honora slept. Kate threw wide the windows, extinguished the light, and crept from the room, not ill-satisfied with her first conflict with the dread enemy.
Karl was waiting for her in the corridor when she came from Honora's room, and he caught both of her hands in his.
"You're cold with horror!" he said. "What a thing that is to see!"
"But it isn't going to last," protested Kate with a quivering accent. "We can't have it last."
"Come into the light," he urged. "Supper is waiting."
He led her down the stairs and into the simple dining-room. The table was laid for two before a leaping blaze. There was no other light save that of two great candles in sticks of wrought bronze. The room was bare but beautiful--so seemly were its proportions, so fitted to its use its quiet furnishings.
He placed her chair where she could feel the glow and see, through the wide window, a crescent moon mounting delicately into the clear sky. There was game and salad, custard and coffee--a charming feast. Mrs. Hays came and went quietly serving them. Karl said little. He was content with the essential richness of the moment. It was as if Destiny had distilled this hour for him, giving it to him to quaff. He was grave, but he did not resent her sorrowfulness. Sorrow, he observed, might have as sweet a flavor as joy. It did not matter by what name the present hour was called. It was there--he rested in it as in a state of being which had been appointed--a goal toward which he had been journeying.
"What's to be done?" he asked.
"I've been thinking," said Kate, "that we had better move her from that room. Is there none from which no mountains are visible? She ought not to have the continual reminder of those icebergs."
"Why didn't I think of that?" he cried with vexation. "That shows how stupid a man can be. Certainly we have such a room as you wish. It looks over the barnyard. It's cheerful but noisy. You can hear the burros and the chickens and pigs and calves and babies all day long."
"It's precisely what she needs. Her thoughts are the things to fear, and I know of no way to break those up except by crowding others in. Is the room pleasant--gay?"
"No--hardly clean, I should say. But we can work on it like fiends."
"Let's do it, then,--put in chintz, pictures, flowers, books, a jar of goldfish, a cage of finches,--anything that will make her forget that terrible white procession of bergs."
"You think it isn't too late? You think we can save her?"
"I won't admit anything else," declared Kate.
The wind began to rise. It came rushing from far heights and moaned around the house. The silence yielded to this mournful sound, yet kept its essential quality.
"It's a wild place," said Kate; "wilder than any place I have been in before. But it seems secure. I find it hard to believe that you have been in danger here."
"I am in danger now," said Karl. "Much worse danger than I was in when the poor excited dagoes were threatening me."
"What is your danger?" asked Kate.
She was incapable of coquetry after that experience in Honora's room; nor did the noble solitude of the place permit the thought of an excursion into the realms of any sort of dalliance. Moreover, though Karl's words might have led her to think of him as ready to play with a sentimental situation, the essential loftiness of his gaze forbade her to entertain the thought.
"I am in danger," he said gravely, "of experiencing a happiness so great that I shall never again be satisfied with life under less perfect conditions. Can you imagine how the fresh air seems to a man just released from prison? Well, life has a tang like that for me now. I tell you, I have been a discouraged man. It looked to me as if all of the things I had been fighting for throughout my manhood were going to ruin. I saw my theories shattered, my fortune disappearing, my reputation, as the successful manipulator of other men's money, being lost. I've been looked upon as a lucky man and a reliable one out here in Colorado. They swear by you or at you out in this part of the country, and I've been accustomed to having them count on me. I even had some political expectations, and was justified in them, I imagine. I had an idea I might go to the state legislature and then take a jump to Washington. Well, it was a soap-bubble dream, of course. I lost out. This tatterdemalion crew of mine is all there is left of my cohorts. I suppose I'm looked on now as a wild experimenter."
"Would it seem that way to men?" asked Kate, surprised. "To take what lies at hand and make use of it--to win with a broken sword--that strikes me as magnificent."
She forgot to put a guard on herself for a moment and let her admiration, her deep confidence in him, shine from her eyes. She saw him whiten, saw a look of almost terrible happiness in his eyes, and withdrew her gaze. She could hear him breathing deeply, but he said nothing. There fell upon them a profound and wonderful silence which held when they had arisen and were sitting before his hearth. They were alone with elemental things--night, silence, wind, and fire. They had the essentials, roof and food, clothing and companionship. Back and forth between them flashed the mystic currents of understanding. A happiness such as neither had known suffused them.
When they said "good-night," each made the discovery that the simple word has occult and beautiful meanings.