So, in the midst of his turbulence, passed Michigan Red, but the evil that he had done mightily all the days of his life followed him into death, for the pounding hoofs spread embers of his fire over a leafy carpet, where the night wind found them. Leaping under its breath, small flames writhed tortuously across the glade to the thing that had been a man—touched and tasted its clothing with delicate lickings, then flashed up and sprang from the smouldering cinder into thick scrub, and so ran with incredible swiftness through the forest. Crouched, like a runner, at first, close to the ground, it suddenly straightened and bounded high over a patch of dry poplar burned by a former fire, cowered again, to crawl through thick green spruce, and so stole softly on, as though to catch the Cree in his sleep.As well try to singe a weasel. Already the Cree was urging his ragged pony, with squaw and papoose, towards Carter's camp, and, balked there, the fire swung with the veering wind into poplar woods, and flamed on, a roaring, ebullient tide, overtopping the tallest trees. Under its effulgence, black lakes and sullen tarns flashed out of thick night with scared deer, belly-deep in the water. Huge owls went flapping through the smoke, leading the ducks, geese, vagrant flocks of the night, leaving hawks and other day birds to circle, shrieking, ere they whizzed down to a fiery death. Gaining strength from its own draught and the freshening wind, it flowed, at an angle, over the railroad and poured down both sides, licking up bridges, trestles, culverts, leaving the hot rails squirming like scorched snakes in empty space; and so, about midnight, roared on to the great trestle at which Michigan had paused that afternoon, and where Carter had lined up his men.Roused by the Cree from a dream of Helen to a nightmare of flaming skies, Carter first sent out a gang under command of Hart and Smythe to back-fire around the camp, then loaded the remaining crews on flat-cars and raced the fire down to the trestle. Bender, who was with him in the engine-cab, leaned to his ear as the train pulled out of the cut."Michigan Red?""Looks it." Nodding, Carter turned to watch the rails which gleamed under the sky-glow, running like scarlet lines on black ribbon between dark, serried ranks of spruce. "Lucky it is coming at an angle," he said, as the engine thundered over the first bridge.Bender raised his big shoulders. "If the wind don't shift? But it generally does about this time o' night. If she slips to the east—p-s-st! a puff of steam, a crackle, an' we're gone up like flies in a baker's oven."Carter returned his shrug. "As good a way as any." He added, grimly smiling: "And very fit. Give us a chance to get acclimated. But with luck we ought to be able to wet her down and pull out south. Without it we can lie down in the creek.""I like mine wet," Bender grinned. "Drowning ain't exactly comfortable, but if there's to be any preference I'll take it." And in the face of danger and disaster, Carter smiled again.Starting out, it had seemed a toss-up between them and the fire, but the train rolled over the trestle and drew up in a cut on the southerly side, a quarter-hour to the good. The creek ran under the northerly end, with a short approach to the bank, the bulk of the trestle leading over a quarter-mile of morass to firm ground; so Carter, with Bender, Carrots Smith, and other half-dozen, dropped buckets from the bridge to the stream, thirty feet below, and passed them to the men who were strung along the plates. Dipping, drawing, dashing, they worked furiously under the glare of the conflagration. While still half a mile away, its heat set the trestle steaming. At a quarter of a mile, the furious draught rained embers large as a man's hand upon the men, who turned their faces away from the blistering heat. Casting uneasy glances over humped shoulders, they began to increase their distances, edging along the south approach towards the train; but as they still maintained communications, neither Carter nor Bender took notice until they suddenly broke and ran."Here! Come back!" Bender's angry roar drowned Carter's shout, and was lost, in turn, in a shrill whistling; for the engineer had seen that which had been hid from them."My God!" Carrots Smith cried; and Brady broke out in whimpering prayer to the saints.They stood, staring.As aforesaid, the fire was running south and westerly at an acute angle to—in fact, almost paralleling the railroad, with its extreme point farthest away but already beyond the trestle. And now, veering swiftly southeast, as Bender had feared, it swung at right angles and came broadside on, a fiery tide high over the forest. To the engineer it seemed that the wind lifted a mass of flame and threw it bodily into a tangle of poplar-brake, red willow, tall reeds, and sedge at the trestle's south end. Dry, explosively inflammable from a summer's heat, it touched off like a magazine, whirling skyward, a twisting water-spout of flame, and as he jerked wildly on his whistle he saw, as under the calcium of lurid melodrama, men running like wingless flies along the wet, black trestle. Careening, the column fell across them.Only the few who were drawing with Carter escaped that first explosive flame, and they gained only time to jump as the main fire came hurdling over the trees. Falling, Carter saw the stream, blood-red; jagged rocks rising swiftly to meet him. A flash blinded his eyes, then—He rubbed them—that is, he winked, for he was far too weak for such robust exercise. Yes, he winked it. Was—could that be Helen's face bending low over him?XXXIWHEREIN THE FATES SUBSTITUTE A CHANGE OF BILLCarter winked again. The face, however, did not move. On the contrary, it lit up with sudden delight and said smile helped his limping consciousness forward to the idea of a dream. Yes, he was dreaming, undoubtedly dreaming! No! Here memory took hold and gave him back the flaming forest; wet rocks, rising swiftly from red water, carried him back and left him at the precise moment that he had struck a projecting timber. He was falling! Involuntarily he stiffened, expecting the shock ... but—ah! a clew! He was dead—of the fall; and this? Must be heaven, or why Helen?Ift'other place? 'Twas not so bad as long as she was there! Here his eye, through removal of the face, touched the whitewashed ceiling, then wandered to blank walls, a stand with medicine, covered glasses and spoons, a linen-press, two chairs—he arrived at truth, a hospital! Then, tired out by these strenuous mental exercises, his eyes closed once more, to the ineffable relief of the anxious watcher, and sleep, natural sleep, replaced the coma that had held him these two days.For a while Helen listened to his breathing, then, once sure that he was really asleep, she tiptoed out to the corridor and, under urge of relief, ran, fairly flew, with her good news to the head doctor's office. For these had been days of haggard waiting, as, for the matter of that, had the last two weeks—Bender's battles, Carter's triumph, the strike and forest fire had all been packed into ten short days.Beginning at the morning after she saw Carter at dinner with the general manager, her joyful prayer had gone with the jubilant roar of press and people at the ceding of the crossing, and for several following days her ears drank thirstily of the plaudits which were universal in the hospital, on the street, at her boarding-house. When, indeed, the topic cropped up at her first operation, her fingers trembled so over a bandage that Carruthers excused her, thinking the sight of blood had turned her sick. At Jean Glaves's table she had to veil the eager exultance of her eyes. The merchants who were discussing competition in freight rates on the street would have stared could they have heard the heart-cry of the pretty nurse then passing."He did it! Yes, he is very clever—all that you say! But you cannot have him, for he is mine! I'll lend him to you—for a while! But I must have him back! He's mine! mine! mine!"From breathing the rare atmosphere of these exalted heights, she had been precipitated by the strike into bottom deeps of despair, and while agonizing therein over additional rumors of Greer & Smythe's impending failure, a morning paper came to her breakfast-table with six-inch fire scareheads and a long tale of burns, bruises, breakages that would have been longer but for the softness of the morass. Carter, Bender, Brady, Carrots Smith, all who were on the trestle, had been more or less injured; and six bridges, five trestles, dozens of culverts had gone up in smoke, a maleficent memorial to Michigan Red, before the conflagration back-fired itself out among labyrinthian lakes. But she paused not at the tale. The injured were on the way to the hospital, and with that piece of news clutched to her bosom she ran all the way and broke, at one time, a rule that was as the law of the Medes and Persians and the privacy of the head doctor's study.It will be easily seen that under such circumstances her hysterical gaspings were not exactly informing, but a man does not attain to headship of a hospital without ability to extract truth from obscure premises—what else is diagnosis?—and when, indicating the heading that told of Carter's injuries, she gasped, "My husband!" the Head grasped every detail of the situation."I must nurse him!" she pleaded. "Must! must!"A man prodigiously dignified and very solemn behind imposing glasses, the Head offered a stereotyped objection; but it speaks for the feeling beneath his dessicated exterior that he eventually set rules and regulations at defiance, and outraged the discipline and morale maintained by the Scotch head nurse, by appointing her, a novitiate, to a capital case."But remember," he said. "Only if you can forget, for the present, that he is your husband?"He did not believe she could, and had been astonished by her quiet, almost mechanical performance of duty during those two harrowing days. For he did not see her leaning over the inanimate form when alone in the ward; her strained watching, desperate listenings for the first flutter of the returning spirit. Now he did see her flushed delight, and muttered to himself as Carruthers, the under surgeon, hastened with her to Carter's bedside: "I suppose I ought to tellhim! ... What's the use; he'll hear soon enough."So her secret was kept, and being uninformed of the matrimonial complications in the case, the surgeon set her delighted flutterings to professional interest and so joined her felicitations. "'Twas touch and go," he whispered. "Few could stand such a crack on the head; must have made an omelet of his brains and his fever was hot enough to fry it. But he'll pull through, Mistress Morrill, and it is good that he will, for he's a gran' character, fine and useful to the province."To indulge a pleasant conceit, that refreshing sleep may be regarded as an intimation of the fates that comedy was about to be substituted for impending tragedy upon the boards; and the opening of Carter's eyes may very well be considered as the rise of the curtain on the first, and what would also have been the last, act had he been in the enjoyment of his usual health and strength. Lacking these, he could only take things as he found them; chief over all, a demure nurse who administered bitter draughts or took his pulse without sign of recognition, compunction, or emotion.As her shapely back always hid the pencil when she noted her observations on the chart, he could not see it tremble; and how was he to know that the pulse-taking was a sham? That she could feel only her own heart thudding five thousand thuds to the minute? That she had to guess the pulse by his temperature, which cardinal crime of the nurse's calendar was partly condoned, because if shehadset down its vibrations at the moments she held his hand, every doctor in the hospital would have come running as to a lost cause.Ignorant of all this, he could only lie and watch her moving about the ward, tantalizingly trim and pretty in her nurse's dress; wait till some softening of her coldness would justify the clean confession he ached to make. Always the desire was with him and it waxed with the days. But whether or no she discerned it lurking behind his surreptitious glances, she afforded no opportunity, and what can a man do against a fate that nips every approach to the tender with nasty medicine or chill phrase—"You are not to talk.""I believe you like to give me that stuff," he growled one day."Doctor's orders," she severely replied, and her stony face effectually repressed him while indicating that she was not to be drawn from her vantage-ground by that or a sudden remark—"It seems strange to see you in that uniform.""Doesn't feel so to me," she coldly answered, adding, with a spice of malice, "If it did I should get used to it, for I expect to wear it for the next three years."He winced, and he did not see her smile as he gave her his angry back—that or her droopings over his sleep an hour thereafter. Alone in the quiet ward, bent so low that her breath moved the hair on his temples, the occasion vividly recalled the night, long ago, when she had watched the moon etch with line and shadow the promise of the future upon his face. It lay there now, under her soft breath, the fulfilment. For two years stress and struggle had tooled away every roughness and left the accomplished promise, a man wrought by circumstance to a great fineness.She also had changed—from a well-intentioned if careless girl to a thoughtful woman. Contact with life in the rough had rubbed the scales from her eyes and now she saw clearly—many things, but all centring on one. Outside people were declaiming against the vindictive fate that had joined with the monopoly against this their champion. That morning's papers had it that Greer & Smythe were surely ruined. Yet she was glad, overjoyed. Wealthy and honored, it would have been difficult to the verge of impossibility for her to go back to him. Always she would have felt that he might doubt her motives. But now—"It's time to take your medicine!" She sprang up as he opened his eyes, wondering if he had felt her light kiss.Had he, it would have been "curtain" there and then, but as he did not the play went on, and its sequence proves that, however honorable her intentions, she had by no means relinquished her sex's unalienable right to bring things about in its own illogical, tantalizing, perversely charming way. Drooping over his sleep, hoping that he would wake and catch her, she took care that he should not—assumed a statuesque coldness at the first quiver of his eyelids. Undoubtedly, and with her sex's habitual unfairness, she scandalously abused her position, exercising a tyranny that was as sweet to herself as mortifying to him."You must not do that—must do this—now go to sleep." She hugged her power in place of him, and when he achieved a successful revolt against her ban of silence by appealing to the Head for permission to talk with Smythe, she revenged herself by injecting a personal interest into her dealings with Carruthers. It was madness for him to see their heads close together over his chart; the shining eyes she brought back from whispered conferences in the hall. To be sure, it was all about pills and plasters, but how was he to know that? And it was in revenge for this shamelessly injurious conduct that he arranged the scene which opens the second act.On the morning that he was promoted from spoon-feed to the dignity of a tray, behold him! head bent, elbows square with his ears, knife and fork grabbed at their points, proving his indifference to her opinion by the worst behavior that recent better practice permitted. Alas! he was cast all through for a losing part. Displaying, before his face, the irritating curiosity which a child bestows on a feeding lion, she privately peeped from behind the door-screen, gloated over the old familiar spectacle. She caught him coming and going. Also she turned a delighted ear when he dropped into the homely settler speech; listened for the old locutions; but called his bluff when he overdid the part by running amuck of the grammar in a manner frightful to behold."I really don't see why you talk like that," she remarked, patronizingly. "You speak quite well, almost correctly, to Dr. Hammand and Mr. Smythe.""Yes?" he retorted. "I didn't notice. Mebbe you'll correct me if I side-step it again?"But the last case of that man was worse than the first. "Thank you," she coldly answered. "I have given up teaching school."He sniffed sarcastically. "Hum! Shouldn't have known it. I always heard that the spanking habit stuck through life. But don't give up. Remember the copybook line, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.'" But she was going out of the door at the time and took care that he should think she had not heard. "You were speaking?" she inquired, coming back. And, of course, it would not bear repetition.He fared just as illy when, next morning, Bender hobbled into the ward with the aid of a crutch and cane. Having been visited by the lady protagonist, the giant was fully informed on the situation and so achieved a sly wink behind his chief's sarcastic introductions. "Mr. Bender—Mrs. Morrill."Also her quiet answer was disconcerting. "We have met before. Have you heard from Jenny lately, Mr. Bender?"Now Bender had. A letter, small note, simple and direct as Jenny herself, was even then burning his pocket, and, blushing like a school-boy caught in the theft of apples, he produced and read it. If he insisted—was perfectly certain that he couldn't get well without her—Jenny would!"'Fraid I took a mean advantage," he confessed. "Reg'lar cold-decked her. You see, a busted ankle ain't much to spread on, so I hinted at complications. She sure thinks I'm dyin,' an' when she comes she'll find me hopping around.""Oh, well." Carter glanced stealthily at Helen. "She has oceans of time to pay you. With any old luck you are good for eighty-five, and it doesn't take a loving wife that length of time to get even." For which insolence he paid instantly and doubly—first by a nasty dose, secondly by loss of Bender, who was summarily ejected under pretext of its being the patient's hour for sleep.So the war ran, and it did seem as though circumstance never tired of impressing allies for Helen's cause. Take Dorothy Chester, who called with Hart next day. She, like Carruthers, could only take the situation at face values, and so enthused over his luck in nurses; to all of which—in Helen's absence—Carter subscribed till Dorothy reached her climax."And Dr. Carruthers thinks so, too. Wouldn't it be nice if they made a match of it?"She was astounded by the heat of his reply. "No! A Scotch dromedary, suckled on predestination and damnation of infants? Pretty husband he'd make!" But she solved his vehemence for Hart's benefit on the way home. "He's in love with her himself.""Between patient and doctor? What a mix-up!" Hart laughed. "Odds are on the doctor if he's up to his job. I'd hate to be Carter on the chance of an overdose." For which flippancy his ears were well pulled.As he said, things were undoubtedly a little tangled, and if at first glance it would appear that Dorothy had not assisted in the unravelling, closer scrutiny shows that her remark helped at least to bring affairs to a head. For the remainder of the day Carter was very thoughtful, so preoccupied that he forgot to misbehave over his supper-tray while, time and again, Helen caught him surveying herself with a dark uneasiness. Puzzled, she came back to the ward before leaving and stood at the foot of his bed; but as yet his fever was confined to his mind, and he replied that he was feeling quite well to her question.The "good-night" she wished him was not, however, for him. Always darkness magnifies trouble, and through its black lens he saw suspicions as facts. Tossing restlessly, he heard the city clock chime the quarters, halves, hours, until, at twelve, the night nurse's lantern revealed him wide-eyed, staring, and knowing the efficacy of a change of thought in producing sleep, she stayed for a chat.Correct enough in theory, the treatment proved about as successful as would the application of a blister upon a sore; for he bent the conversation to his own uses, steering it by a circuitous route through the girl's own experience to Helen.She was liked in the hospital?Indeed she was! The night nurse was emphatic on that, and went on to say that beauty such as Helen's was not generally conducive of popularity. No, it wasn't jealousy! The nurse tossed her head at his question. Simply that pretty girls didn't have to be nice, so usually left amiability to be assumed with a double chin; and being a frank as well as a merry creature, she confessed to an accession of that desirable quality every time she saw her own nose in a glass. But Helen Morrill? She was sweet as she was pretty!Dr. Carruthers thought so, too?Well—the nurse would smile! And everybody in the hospital was glad of it. They would make such a perfect couple, an ideal match!It was as good as settled, then?Well—not given out yet, but every one knew! Her lantern being on the floor, she could not see his face, and he lay so quiet she thought he had fallen asleep, and was tiptoeing away when he spoke again.But—Mrs.Morrill? She had been married before! Her husband—dead?If he wasn't he ought to be—the nurse was sure of that. There was only one place for a man who could not live with such a nice girl. And if he were not—divorce was about as good in ridding one of the beast! With which she picked up her lantern and left him in darkness and despair. When she came next on her rounds she thought him asleep, but he resumed his restless tossings as soon as her back was turned. Dawn, however, betrayed him, and sent her flying to the head doctor with his pulse and temperature."He was all right last night!" the latter exclaimed. "Bring his chart down to the office." Studying it while he mixed sedatives a little later, he said: "Awake at midnight—hum! Talked, did he? What about? Mrs. Morrill?" He snatched truth out of her as though it had been an appendix. "Spoke of her and Dr. Carruthers?—ah! ha! Well, give him this and send Mrs. Morrill to me when she comes in."If short, the interview did not lack excitement when, a couple of hours later, Helen opposed the freshness of the morning to the Head's angry glare. Her delicate colors, the eyes cleared by sleep and full of light, were enough to have softened the heart of a Gorgon, but served only to irritate him, who looked upon them as so much material gone to waste."What have you done?" he roared after her. "Look at that!" And went on as her distressed eyes came back from the chart: "You have done nothing—that's the trouble. Why did I appoint you to this case? Because of your vast experience? No, because I thought you could administer something outside of medical practice. And now he's dying—of jealousy. You have done it; you must cure him." And taking her by the arm as though she were a medicine-tray, he marched her to Carter's ward, gave her a shake at the door like a bottle that is to be "well shaken before taken," and thrust her in with the parting admonition, "Now, do your duty."Here was an embarrassing position! Surely never before had nurse such orders—to administer love, like a dose, that, forsooth, to a patient who had already turned his broad back on her charms. Now did she pay toll of blushes for the perversity that had checked his every overture. How should—howcouldshe begin?Pleating and unpleating her apron, she stood at the foot of his bed, the prettiest picture of perplexity ever vouchsafed to gaunt, unshaven man. A week's stubble did not improve his appearance any more than his unnatural color, fixed, glazed eyes. But soon as a timid glance gave her these—she was on her knees beside him."Is that you, Helen?" Before she could speak he burst out in a sudden irruption of speech. "I'm so glad; there's something I want to tell you." Then it came, in a flood that washed away his natural reserve, the confession—his remorse for his obstinacy, the sorrow that had tamed his anger, his yearning through weary months for an overture from her; his ignorance of the settler's persecution, scorn of scandalous rumors; his attempts to communicate with and find her; all, down to his observation of her liking for Carruthers, finishing: "Through all, my every thought has been of you. But now—I see. It was a mistake, our marriage. It was wrong to couple roughness with refinement. So if you wish—" Her face was now buried in her arms, and he gently touched the golden hair. "Last night I made up my mind to bring no more misery into your life. But now ... that I see you ... it is difficult; ... but ... if you wish—"He got no further, for speech is impossible when a soft hand stoppers one's mouth. And while he was thus effectually gagged, she took a mean advantage: told him just what she thought of him. Such a stupid! A big man, so very strong, but oh,sosilly! Did he really think that she—any girl—would have waited upon him in such circumstances unless— Here she had to release his mouth to wipe away the streaming tears, and his question came out like an explosion:"What?"She told him, or, rather, conveyed the information in the orthodox way with lovers. This takes time, and becoming suddenly alive to the fact that he was sitting up in bed, she resumed her authority to make him lie down. In view of his condition she was certainly justified in using force to compel obedience; but was it right, was it proper for her, a nurse duly accredited to the case, to leave her arms about him? Well, she did, and—scandalous predicament!—her golden head was lying beside his on the pillow when the door opened for the matron, Carruthers, and the Head on their morning rounds."Well—I declare!Finegoings on!"Helen's faint cry of dismay was drowned by the matron's horrified exclamation, but Carter rose to the situation. "Miss Craig, doctor—my wife." He could not include Carruthers, who retired precipitously, and was then just outside the door, swallowing hugely in vain attempts to get what looked like a monstrous pill, but was really his heart, back to its proper place."Your what?" Having the general objections to matrimony which come with prim old maidhood, the matron almost screamed: "Good gracious, man! Couldn't you have waited till you were sure you wouldn't need a minister to bury you?" And she tossed a high head at his answer."No, ma'am. We were that impatient we got married two years ago."There she slid one in on him with a sniff of disdain. "Two years! Imph! One would never have thought it. And just look at this ward! Doctors' rounds and ward unswept, bed unmade; I doubt whether you've had your medicine! I'll send up another nurse at once. As for you, Mrs.—Carter"—she paused, flouncing out of the door—"you are—"She intended "discharged," but the head doctor interposed twinkling glasses between Helen and destruction. "She was merely giving treatment according to orders."How the matron stared! "Treatment? Orders? Whose orders, pray?""Mine."Her response as she bustled away, "Has every one gone mad!" set them all smiling, and Carter's remark, "A bit too long in the oven," eloquently described her crustiness.But if long study of people from interior views had left the matron purblind as to outward signs, sympathies, and emotions, she was not so short-sighted but that she came to a full stop at the sight of Carruthers, who stood, hands clinched, like a naughty boy, face to the wall."You poor man!" But though her tone was gentle as her touch on his shoulder, he threw her hand fiercely away and strode off uttering an unmistakable "damn.""Another lunatic!" she tartly commented, and was confirmed in that flattering opinion when, instead of pining in romantic fashion, he fell in love again and married a sweet girl the following summer.Left thus alone in the case, the head doctor nodded his satisfaction at the patient's decided improvement, while his further instructions were short as pleasant—"Same treatment, continued at intervals."These orders, be sure, were faithfully observed. Indeed, he had scarcely passed out than—but the next hour is their's, intrusion would be impertinent. Sufficient that its confidences left each possessed of the other's every thought and feeling throughout their separation.Her eyes dancing, she broke a happy silence to say: "You were dreadfully transparent. Did you really think I couldn't see through your misbehavior?" Then she told of how Dorothy had confided to her his appeal to Hart and efforts at self-improvement. "But," she added, with a sigh that was almost plaintive, "I wouldn't have cared."Also she told him of her proud espionage upon him at the general manager's dinner; in return for which she learned how he had waited at the forks of his own trail that winter's night—waited while his ponies shivered in the bitter wind until he picked hers and Elinor Leslie's voices from the groan of passing runners.She remembered. "Oh, was that you? Why didn't you come in?""I would—at least I think I would have," he corrected, "if you'd been alone. By-the-way, I saw her in Minneapolis the other day. She was taking an order from a fat Frenchman in a restaurant where Smythe and I had turned in for dinner. Luckily her back was turned, so we got out without her seeing me. But I caught her profile and she looked dreadfully weak and thin.""A waitress?" Helen cried. "Oh, the poor thing! Couldn't you have—" Pausing, she confirmed his wisdom. "No, it was better she did not see you."Silence fell between them, he thinking of the temptation in the warm gloaming, she busy with her own memories. Helen's watch beat like a pulse in the quiet; a house-fly rivalled the full boom of a bee as it battered its head against the window-pane, a futile illustration of Elinor Leslie's folly. Just so had she beaten at the invisible barriers that held her back from free passion. Now she lay, poor soul, bruised and beaten like a dying moth, wings singed by a single touch of the unholy flame.But sadness could not hold them. Smiling, Helen suddenly relieved herself of the astonishing remark: "I am so glad you are ruined. Yes, I am." She nodded firmly, misreading his comical surprise. "Now we can go back to the farm—just you and I—be ever so happy.""Why?" He listened with huge enjoyment to her explanation, then said, with mock concern, "It would be fine, and I'm that sorry to disappoint you, but—who said I was ruined?""Oh, everybody—the papers said this morning that—what is that funny name? Yes, Mr. Brass Bowels—that he had bought up enough of your liabilities to snow you under.""They did, did they? Well—they have another guess coming.""Aren't you ruined?" she asked.But though he laughed at her naïve distress, he refused to say more, laughingly assuring her that she would not be long in suspense.Nor had she long to wait. For as she was giving him his medicine the following afternoon, he bobbed up under her hand as though set on wire springs to the detriment of the snowy quilt, which absorbed the dose."Listen!"A whistle, deep-toned, fully two octaves below the shrill hoot of the monopoly's locomotives, thrilled in the distance. Drawing nearer, its vibrant bass gave the entire city pause—clerks waited, pens poised for a stroke; lawyers dropped their briefs; store-keepers, laborers, mechanics, the very Indians in the camps by the river, stood on gaze; motion ceased as at the voice of the falked siren; a hush fell in the streets, a silence complete as that of some enchanted city.It carried consternation into the offices of the monopoly, that whistle. Sparks, the division superintendent, dropped his pen and stared at his chief, who was giving last orders for the demolition of Greer & Smythe before he went back East. The latter's iron nerve, however, vouchsafed only a breathing space to surprise, then he continued in the same dry tones: "Previous instructions are hereby cancelled. That's an American whistle, Sparks—Jem Ball for a thousand. They've won out; it's all over but the shouting." And as eager tumult broke loose in the street, he added, "And there it goes."The shouting? They poured into the streets—doctors, lawyers, clerks, laborers; carpenters jumped from new buildings, plumbers left their braziers burning while they swelled the stream that poured out to see the first train, an engine with Pullman and palace-car, pull in over the new line.Shout? They did—and more. Your canny Canadian is the deil at celebrating when his backslidings carry him that way, and next morning many a worthy citizen sweated in thinking back to the cause of his headache. Ay, good church-members lugged flasks of old Scotch from blameless-appearing pockets; the carpenter exchanged news and drams with the millionaire. The N.P. had bought the new road! No, only leased it! No! no! they were merely to finance the enterprise, market its bonds in return for reciprocal traffic arrangements! There were other theories, all spun round a germ of truth, but thence to the source.As the siren sounded the second time, Carter looked at Bender, who sat opposite Helen, having dropped in for a chat, and his remark carries back to the strike. "Now you know why we went to Minneapolis. What does it all mean?" His face lit up as he turned to Helen. "It means cars, locomotives, rolling-stock; the use of N.P. equipment till we can instal our own. That we can rebuild the burned bridges this fall, and shove a temporary line through to Silver Creek and the camps in the Riding Mountains. It means that the Red River Valley will send its wheat south to Duluth this fall. It means—victory for us, competition for the province."That was his hour, but Helen shared it—even when Greer and Smythe ushered in the American railway-king. Twin to the general manager in massive build and strength of feature, he had come from a softer mould. His eyes, mouth were gentler, more pleasant. In him the high, sloping forehead—mark of the dreamer—was qualified by the strong jaw, wide-spaced eyes of the man of practical affairs. A glance told that here imagination and constructive power went hand in hand. Fun rippled and ran over innumerable fine facial lines, and he laughed out loud when Helen made to withdraw, assuring her that their conversation would not tax her sex's supposed weakness in the matter of secrets as they were not to talk business."We think too much of this man to bother him with details," he said. "These gentlemen have attended to everything, and all we require is his signature to a few papers. Celebrations won't be in order till he's well enough to run down to St. Paul. Then—well, you'd better not let him come alone." So, talking and laughing for a pleasant half-hour, he gave off his superabundant energy until the ward was charged, then went away leaving the patient stimulated to the verge of open mutiny."I'm as well as you." He defied the Head to his face that evening. "Send up my clothes.""In two weeks, if you are good!" the Head calmly answered."Two weeks? I'll be head over heels in work by then, and there is something I want to do first. I'll be out of here in one." And, albeit a trifle chalky as to complexion and wobbly of knee, he was. On the last day—But first the record of that week; and as Bender's bulk overshadows all else, behold him, mid-week, hobbling into the ward with Jenny trailing behind like a kitten in the wake of the family house dog."Mrs. Bender, if you please," he corrected Carter, chuckling; and for once he permitted some one else to do the blushing. Wherein he showed great taste, as she did it right prettily, exhibiting, moreover, a much superior article.Next day, Dorothy, becomingly mortified because the good news had come to her through her father out of Smythe. "To hear of it in such a roundabout way!" she declared. "You little traitor! and when I think of your speculations about his wife! Positively I had resolved never to forgive you, but—" Kisses, of course.Thereafter, Brady, Big Hans, Carrots Smith—all more or less singed and nursing various breakages—ostensibly to see the boss, really to take a look at his pretty wife, whom, they decided, shamed the specifications.Then, to everybody's astonishment—indeed, the Head shadowed the man along the corridor as though he were an anarchist with a bomb in his pocket—theGeneral Manager! brisk, steel-like, yet twinkling. "Trounced us, didn't you?" he laughed. "Well, one never can tell when one has made an end. Competition? Perhaps, for a while; but wait till Jem Ball and I get a bellyful of fighting. However, by that time you'll be well cured of your desires for the public weal and be ready to listen to reason. Oh yes, you will! We all take 'em like chicken-pox or measles, but they are not fatal—unless you get 'em late in life. I feel so sure of your eventual recovery that I just dropped in to bury the hatchet. Fifty years won't see the finish of our plans, and whenever you feel a yearning for fresh enterprises, just look me up."Therewith the gray cynic hurried away to plan and scheme, upbuild, tear down, without slack or satiety of enormous constructive appetite; to live in travail greater than the labor of woman, and give birth ceaselessly to innumerable works; to inundate the plains with seas of wheat and carry bread to Europe's teeming millions; to sow towns, villages, cities broadcast over the north, make farms for countless thousands; to join Occident and Orient with gleaming rails, clipper ships, to do evil consciously all his days and work unconscious good, crushing the individual for the weal of the race, and caring nothing for either; to live feared and die respected, leaving the world bigger and better than he found it.Lastly, the cook, just down from the camp with news of Michigan Red. Flying in front of the fire, the black stallion had come in with the rat-tailed mare to be shot as a murderer after the Cree had tracked down the Thing that had been his master; and so, if there be aught in Cree mythology, the soul of the fierce brute would fight it out once more with the fiercer man in the place of the teamsters.While beguiling the tedium, these tales and conversations failed to exclude from Carter's ear a distant hammering that attended the building of his station and freight-sheds. Also he could hear the hoarse coughing of locomotives going up and down his line. And as themateria medicacontains no tonics like happiness and success, small wonder that, as aforesaid, he demanded his clothes at the end of the week."Once you get hold of a fellow you are never satisfied till you have gone all through his clock-work," he replied to the Head's objections. "But though I sympathize with your industry, you'll have to wait for another go at mine. They are needed in my business."First—Helen with him, of course—he directed his steps, or rather the wheels of a hack, to the new station where the ring of saws, hammering, noise and bustle of work, acted upon him like the draught of the elixir of life, bringing color to his cheeks, stiffness to his knees, sparkle to his eyes. Thence they drove for a conference to Greer & Smythe's; whereafter nothing would suit him but a long drive out to the prairies. It was a strenuous beginning, but fresh air and sunshine are ever potent. He gained color and strength under her anxious eyes; seemed fresher when he dropped her at Jean Glaves's house that evening than in the morning.Throughout the happy day they had lived in the present. But though he had made no plan for the future, she had trusted, and her face lit up with flashing intuition when he said good-night."Mistress Morrill, you are to take the morning train to Lone Tree."This was the "something he wanted to do."XXXIITHE TRAIL AGAINSkipping that long if happy night, peep with dawn into Helen's bedroom, and see her up and singing small snatches of song that presently brought Jean Glaves, herself the earliest of birds, from bed to assist at the toilet. Should she wear this, that, or the other? There was the usual doubt which beset a young lady who wishes to look her best for occasion; but the result that went forth from big Jean's hug? A vision of healthy beauty that drew tentative smiles from a brace of drummers and attracted the stealthy regard of the entire station when she finally broke, like a burst of sunlight, on the platform. Continuing the figure, the smile, its crowning asset, faded like the afterglow when her anxious eyes refused her the tall familiar figure; and when the train pulled out without him, her disconsolate expression filled the aforesaid drummers with manly longings towards consolation.Unpunctual? On such an occasion? And how silly she would look at Lone Tree! Slightly offended at first, she then grew alarmed. Perhaps he had suffered a relapse, was ill, dying! Be sure that her terrors compassed the possible and impossible during an hour's journey, and not until she saw a man come dashing across the tracks to the Lone Tree platform did she realize the fulness of his inspiration. He had taken the freight out the night before! If thinner, paler, he was very like the young man who had come to meet her three years ago. There, also, was the lone poplar that had christened the station; the ramshackle town with its clapboard hotels, false-fronted stores, grain-sheds, sitting in the midst of the plains that, flat and infinitely yellow, ran with the tracks over a boundless horizon. Lastly, there was Nels and his bleached grin, holding Death and the Devil, sleek, fat, and sinful as ever.Carter's whispered greeting helped to keep her in the past. "Is this Miss Morrill?""Mr. Carter, I believe?" she had just time for the roguish answer, then their little comedy had to be laid aside till they were alone on trail. For the doctor came running from his office, the store-keeper plunged madly across tracks, Hooper, the agent, yelled, "Well, I swan!" and jumped to shake hands, while from a grain-shed emerged Jimmy Glaves, who had taken a lift in with Nels.Wasn't she glad to see them? Yet a deeper happiness enveloped her when, looking back, she again saw Lone Tree, shrunken in the distance, its grain-sheds looking like red Noah's arks on a yellow carpet; when she heard only the pole and harness jigging a merry accompaniment to the beat of quick feet, whirring song of swift wheels.It was very like that first occasion. Though stiff night frosts were now giving timely notice of winter's chill approach, the clerk of the weather had made special arrangements for a south wind; so it was warm as on that far day. Birds, animals, scenery, too, all helped to bring the happy past forward to the happy present, while Death and the Devil, those wicked ones, fostered the illusion by frequent boltings. Surely she remembered the ridge where her first coyote had caused her to cling to Carter, and earned a kiss by repetition of that shameful performance and faithful mimicry of his accent. "He shore looks hungry." Immediately thereafter they plunged out from among scattered farms into the "Dry Lands," but its yellow miles, generally a penance, flowed unnoticed under the buck-board. They were both astonished when, suddenly as before, they rattled through a bluff and dropped over the edge of the valley upon Father Francis at the mission door.Nothing would suit but that they must dine with him while Louis, the half-breed stableman, fed and watered the ponies. But if the good priest's twinkle expressed knowledge that another of his day's works was come to fruitage, his quiet converse brought no jarring note into their communings.Undisturbed, they began again at the ford and continued while the Park Lands rolled in great billows under the wheels. The Cree chimneys, Indian graveyards, other well-remembered objects passed in pleasant procession ere, coming to Flynn's, he looked at her. A shake of the head confirmed his doubt. Another time! So they swept on through vast, sun-washed spaces where cattle wandered freely as the whispering winds under flitting cloud-shadows, and so, about sundown, came to their own place with but a single interruption.Passing Danvers at their own forks, he grinned his delight as he turned out to let them by and shouted after: "Say! I heard from Leslie! He's doing well on the Rand! Sends regards to both of you!"While that bit of good news was still ringing in her ears, the house flashed out under the eaves of the forest, warm and bright under the setting sun. All was unchanged—the lake, stained just now a ruby red, the golden stubble fenced in by dark, environing woods. Within all was neat and clean as Nels's racial passion for soap and water could make it. So while he stabled the tired ponies, she donned one of her old aprons, rolled sleeves above dimpled elbows, and cooked supper; rather a superfluous performance aside from the grave pleasure he took in looking on.Afterwards they sat on the doorstep, she between his knees, head pillowed against his breast, and looked at the copper moon that hung in the trees across the lake—watched it brighten to silver; listened to the harmonies of the night, the loon's weird alto, the bittern's bass, cry of a pivoting mallard, owl's solemn choral, a wilder, freer movement than was ever chained in a stave. Once a snuffle, soft-lapping, drifted in, and he replied to her start, "Bear-drinking." Otherwise they were silent up to the moment she arose, shivering."It is getting colder. I think I'll go in."He stayed a little longer, stretched luxuriously out on the grass; was still there when, having made their bed, she came to the door. A vivid memory gave her pause. Just so had he looked—that night—dark, still, as the marble effigy of some old Crusader, with the moonlight quivering about him like an emanation."Are you coming, dear?" Perhaps the memory tinged her tone. Anyway, he sprang up, arms extended, and as she came running, he lifted her clear of the ground; carried her in and closed the door.
So, in the midst of his turbulence, passed Michigan Red, but the evil that he had done mightily all the days of his life followed him into death, for the pounding hoofs spread embers of his fire over a leafy carpet, where the night wind found them. Leaping under its breath, small flames writhed tortuously across the glade to the thing that had been a man—touched and tasted its clothing with delicate lickings, then flashed up and sprang from the smouldering cinder into thick scrub, and so ran with incredible swiftness through the forest. Crouched, like a runner, at first, close to the ground, it suddenly straightened and bounded high over a patch of dry poplar burned by a former fire, cowered again, to crawl through thick green spruce, and so stole softly on, as though to catch the Cree in his sleep.
As well try to singe a weasel. Already the Cree was urging his ragged pony, with squaw and papoose, towards Carter's camp, and, balked there, the fire swung with the veering wind into poplar woods, and flamed on, a roaring, ebullient tide, overtopping the tallest trees. Under its effulgence, black lakes and sullen tarns flashed out of thick night with scared deer, belly-deep in the water. Huge owls went flapping through the smoke, leading the ducks, geese, vagrant flocks of the night, leaving hawks and other day birds to circle, shrieking, ere they whizzed down to a fiery death. Gaining strength from its own draught and the freshening wind, it flowed, at an angle, over the railroad and poured down both sides, licking up bridges, trestles, culverts, leaving the hot rails squirming like scorched snakes in empty space; and so, about midnight, roared on to the great trestle at which Michigan had paused that afternoon, and where Carter had lined up his men.
Roused by the Cree from a dream of Helen to a nightmare of flaming skies, Carter first sent out a gang under command of Hart and Smythe to back-fire around the camp, then loaded the remaining crews on flat-cars and raced the fire down to the trestle. Bender, who was with him in the engine-cab, leaned to his ear as the train pulled out of the cut.
"Michigan Red?"
"Looks it." Nodding, Carter turned to watch the rails which gleamed under the sky-glow, running like scarlet lines on black ribbon between dark, serried ranks of spruce. "Lucky it is coming at an angle," he said, as the engine thundered over the first bridge.
Bender raised his big shoulders. "If the wind don't shift? But it generally does about this time o' night. If she slips to the east—p-s-st! a puff of steam, a crackle, an' we're gone up like flies in a baker's oven."
Carter returned his shrug. "As good a way as any." He added, grimly smiling: "And very fit. Give us a chance to get acclimated. But with luck we ought to be able to wet her down and pull out south. Without it we can lie down in the creek."
"I like mine wet," Bender grinned. "Drowning ain't exactly comfortable, but if there's to be any preference I'll take it." And in the face of danger and disaster, Carter smiled again.
Starting out, it had seemed a toss-up between them and the fire, but the train rolled over the trestle and drew up in a cut on the southerly side, a quarter-hour to the good. The creek ran under the northerly end, with a short approach to the bank, the bulk of the trestle leading over a quarter-mile of morass to firm ground; so Carter, with Bender, Carrots Smith, and other half-dozen, dropped buckets from the bridge to the stream, thirty feet below, and passed them to the men who were strung along the plates. Dipping, drawing, dashing, they worked furiously under the glare of the conflagration. While still half a mile away, its heat set the trestle steaming. At a quarter of a mile, the furious draught rained embers large as a man's hand upon the men, who turned their faces away from the blistering heat. Casting uneasy glances over humped shoulders, they began to increase their distances, edging along the south approach towards the train; but as they still maintained communications, neither Carter nor Bender took notice until they suddenly broke and ran.
"Here! Come back!" Bender's angry roar drowned Carter's shout, and was lost, in turn, in a shrill whistling; for the engineer had seen that which had been hid from them.
"My God!" Carrots Smith cried; and Brady broke out in whimpering prayer to the saints.
They stood, staring.
As aforesaid, the fire was running south and westerly at an acute angle to—in fact, almost paralleling the railroad, with its extreme point farthest away but already beyond the trestle. And now, veering swiftly southeast, as Bender had feared, it swung at right angles and came broadside on, a fiery tide high over the forest. To the engineer it seemed that the wind lifted a mass of flame and threw it bodily into a tangle of poplar-brake, red willow, tall reeds, and sedge at the trestle's south end. Dry, explosively inflammable from a summer's heat, it touched off like a magazine, whirling skyward, a twisting water-spout of flame, and as he jerked wildly on his whistle he saw, as under the calcium of lurid melodrama, men running like wingless flies along the wet, black trestle. Careening, the column fell across them.
Only the few who were drawing with Carter escaped that first explosive flame, and they gained only time to jump as the main fire came hurdling over the trees. Falling, Carter saw the stream, blood-red; jagged rocks rising swiftly to meet him. A flash blinded his eyes, then—
He rubbed them—that is, he winked, for he was far too weak for such robust exercise. Yes, he winked it. Was—could that be Helen's face bending low over him?
XXXI
WHEREIN THE FATES SUBSTITUTE A CHANGE OF BILL
Carter winked again. The face, however, did not move. On the contrary, it lit up with sudden delight and said smile helped his limping consciousness forward to the idea of a dream. Yes, he was dreaming, undoubtedly dreaming! No! Here memory took hold and gave him back the flaming forest; wet rocks, rising swiftly from red water, carried him back and left him at the precise moment that he had struck a projecting timber. He was falling! Involuntarily he stiffened, expecting the shock ... but—ah! a clew! He was dead—of the fall; and this? Must be heaven, or why Helen?Ift'other place? 'Twas not so bad as long as she was there! Here his eye, through removal of the face, touched the whitewashed ceiling, then wandered to blank walls, a stand with medicine, covered glasses and spoons, a linen-press, two chairs—he arrived at truth, a hospital! Then, tired out by these strenuous mental exercises, his eyes closed once more, to the ineffable relief of the anxious watcher, and sleep, natural sleep, replaced the coma that had held him these two days.
For a while Helen listened to his breathing, then, once sure that he was really asleep, she tiptoed out to the corridor and, under urge of relief, ran, fairly flew, with her good news to the head doctor's office. For these had been days of haggard waiting, as, for the matter of that, had the last two weeks—Bender's battles, Carter's triumph, the strike and forest fire had all been packed into ten short days.
Beginning at the morning after she saw Carter at dinner with the general manager, her joyful prayer had gone with the jubilant roar of press and people at the ceding of the crossing, and for several following days her ears drank thirstily of the plaudits which were universal in the hospital, on the street, at her boarding-house. When, indeed, the topic cropped up at her first operation, her fingers trembled so over a bandage that Carruthers excused her, thinking the sight of blood had turned her sick. At Jean Glaves's table she had to veil the eager exultance of her eyes. The merchants who were discussing competition in freight rates on the street would have stared could they have heard the heart-cry of the pretty nurse then passing.
"He did it! Yes, he is very clever—all that you say! But you cannot have him, for he is mine! I'll lend him to you—for a while! But I must have him back! He's mine! mine! mine!"
From breathing the rare atmosphere of these exalted heights, she had been precipitated by the strike into bottom deeps of despair, and while agonizing therein over additional rumors of Greer & Smythe's impending failure, a morning paper came to her breakfast-table with six-inch fire scareheads and a long tale of burns, bruises, breakages that would have been longer but for the softness of the morass. Carter, Bender, Brady, Carrots Smith, all who were on the trestle, had been more or less injured; and six bridges, five trestles, dozens of culverts had gone up in smoke, a maleficent memorial to Michigan Red, before the conflagration back-fired itself out among labyrinthian lakes. But she paused not at the tale. The injured were on the way to the hospital, and with that piece of news clutched to her bosom she ran all the way and broke, at one time, a rule that was as the law of the Medes and Persians and the privacy of the head doctor's study.
It will be easily seen that under such circumstances her hysterical gaspings were not exactly informing, but a man does not attain to headship of a hospital without ability to extract truth from obscure premises—what else is diagnosis?—and when, indicating the heading that told of Carter's injuries, she gasped, "My husband!" the Head grasped every detail of the situation.
"I must nurse him!" she pleaded. "Must! must!"
A man prodigiously dignified and very solemn behind imposing glasses, the Head offered a stereotyped objection; but it speaks for the feeling beneath his dessicated exterior that he eventually set rules and regulations at defiance, and outraged the discipline and morale maintained by the Scotch head nurse, by appointing her, a novitiate, to a capital case.
"But remember," he said. "Only if you can forget, for the present, that he is your husband?"
He did not believe she could, and had been astonished by her quiet, almost mechanical performance of duty during those two harrowing days. For he did not see her leaning over the inanimate form when alone in the ward; her strained watching, desperate listenings for the first flutter of the returning spirit. Now he did see her flushed delight, and muttered to himself as Carruthers, the under surgeon, hastened with her to Carter's bedside: "I suppose I ought to tellhim! ... What's the use; he'll hear soon enough."
So her secret was kept, and being uninformed of the matrimonial complications in the case, the surgeon set her delighted flutterings to professional interest and so joined her felicitations. "'Twas touch and go," he whispered. "Few could stand such a crack on the head; must have made an omelet of his brains and his fever was hot enough to fry it. But he'll pull through, Mistress Morrill, and it is good that he will, for he's a gran' character, fine and useful to the province."
To indulge a pleasant conceit, that refreshing sleep may be regarded as an intimation of the fates that comedy was about to be substituted for impending tragedy upon the boards; and the opening of Carter's eyes may very well be considered as the rise of the curtain on the first, and what would also have been the last, act had he been in the enjoyment of his usual health and strength. Lacking these, he could only take things as he found them; chief over all, a demure nurse who administered bitter draughts or took his pulse without sign of recognition, compunction, or emotion.
As her shapely back always hid the pencil when she noted her observations on the chart, he could not see it tremble; and how was he to know that the pulse-taking was a sham? That she could feel only her own heart thudding five thousand thuds to the minute? That she had to guess the pulse by his temperature, which cardinal crime of the nurse's calendar was partly condoned, because if shehadset down its vibrations at the moments she held his hand, every doctor in the hospital would have come running as to a lost cause.
Ignorant of all this, he could only lie and watch her moving about the ward, tantalizingly trim and pretty in her nurse's dress; wait till some softening of her coldness would justify the clean confession he ached to make. Always the desire was with him and it waxed with the days. But whether or no she discerned it lurking behind his surreptitious glances, she afforded no opportunity, and what can a man do against a fate that nips every approach to the tender with nasty medicine or chill phrase—"You are not to talk."
"I believe you like to give me that stuff," he growled one day.
"Doctor's orders," she severely replied, and her stony face effectually repressed him while indicating that she was not to be drawn from her vantage-ground by that or a sudden remark—"It seems strange to see you in that uniform."
"Doesn't feel so to me," she coldly answered, adding, with a spice of malice, "If it did I should get used to it, for I expect to wear it for the next three years."
He winced, and he did not see her smile as he gave her his angry back—that or her droopings over his sleep an hour thereafter. Alone in the quiet ward, bent so low that her breath moved the hair on his temples, the occasion vividly recalled the night, long ago, when she had watched the moon etch with line and shadow the promise of the future upon his face. It lay there now, under her soft breath, the fulfilment. For two years stress and struggle had tooled away every roughness and left the accomplished promise, a man wrought by circumstance to a great fineness.
She also had changed—from a well-intentioned if careless girl to a thoughtful woman. Contact with life in the rough had rubbed the scales from her eyes and now she saw clearly—many things, but all centring on one. Outside people were declaiming against the vindictive fate that had joined with the monopoly against this their champion. That morning's papers had it that Greer & Smythe were surely ruined. Yet she was glad, overjoyed. Wealthy and honored, it would have been difficult to the verge of impossibility for her to go back to him. Always she would have felt that he might doubt her motives. But now—
"It's time to take your medicine!" She sprang up as he opened his eyes, wondering if he had felt her light kiss.
Had he, it would have been "curtain" there and then, but as he did not the play went on, and its sequence proves that, however honorable her intentions, she had by no means relinquished her sex's unalienable right to bring things about in its own illogical, tantalizing, perversely charming way. Drooping over his sleep, hoping that he would wake and catch her, she took care that he should not—assumed a statuesque coldness at the first quiver of his eyelids. Undoubtedly, and with her sex's habitual unfairness, she scandalously abused her position, exercising a tyranny that was as sweet to herself as mortifying to him.
"You must not do that—must do this—now go to sleep." She hugged her power in place of him, and when he achieved a successful revolt against her ban of silence by appealing to the Head for permission to talk with Smythe, she revenged herself by injecting a personal interest into her dealings with Carruthers. It was madness for him to see their heads close together over his chart; the shining eyes she brought back from whispered conferences in the hall. To be sure, it was all about pills and plasters, but how was he to know that? And it was in revenge for this shamelessly injurious conduct that he arranged the scene which opens the second act.
On the morning that he was promoted from spoon-feed to the dignity of a tray, behold him! head bent, elbows square with his ears, knife and fork grabbed at their points, proving his indifference to her opinion by the worst behavior that recent better practice permitted. Alas! he was cast all through for a losing part. Displaying, before his face, the irritating curiosity which a child bestows on a feeding lion, she privately peeped from behind the door-screen, gloated over the old familiar spectacle. She caught him coming and going. Also she turned a delighted ear when he dropped into the homely settler speech; listened for the old locutions; but called his bluff when he overdid the part by running amuck of the grammar in a manner frightful to behold.
"I really don't see why you talk like that," she remarked, patronizingly. "You speak quite well, almost correctly, to Dr. Hammand and Mr. Smythe."
"Yes?" he retorted. "I didn't notice. Mebbe you'll correct me if I side-step it again?"
But the last case of that man was worse than the first. "Thank you," she coldly answered. "I have given up teaching school."
He sniffed sarcastically. "Hum! Shouldn't have known it. I always heard that the spanking habit stuck through life. But don't give up. Remember the copybook line, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.'" But she was going out of the door at the time and took care that he should think she had not heard. "You were speaking?" she inquired, coming back. And, of course, it would not bear repetition.
He fared just as illy when, next morning, Bender hobbled into the ward with the aid of a crutch and cane. Having been visited by the lady protagonist, the giant was fully informed on the situation and so achieved a sly wink behind his chief's sarcastic introductions. "Mr. Bender—Mrs. Morrill."
Also her quiet answer was disconcerting. "We have met before. Have you heard from Jenny lately, Mr. Bender?"
Now Bender had. A letter, small note, simple and direct as Jenny herself, was even then burning his pocket, and, blushing like a school-boy caught in the theft of apples, he produced and read it. If he insisted—was perfectly certain that he couldn't get well without her—Jenny would!
"'Fraid I took a mean advantage," he confessed. "Reg'lar cold-decked her. You see, a busted ankle ain't much to spread on, so I hinted at complications. She sure thinks I'm dyin,' an' when she comes she'll find me hopping around."
"Oh, well." Carter glanced stealthily at Helen. "She has oceans of time to pay you. With any old luck you are good for eighty-five, and it doesn't take a loving wife that length of time to get even." For which insolence he paid instantly and doubly—first by a nasty dose, secondly by loss of Bender, who was summarily ejected under pretext of its being the patient's hour for sleep.
So the war ran, and it did seem as though circumstance never tired of impressing allies for Helen's cause. Take Dorothy Chester, who called with Hart next day. She, like Carruthers, could only take the situation at face values, and so enthused over his luck in nurses; to all of which—in Helen's absence—Carter subscribed till Dorothy reached her climax.
"And Dr. Carruthers thinks so, too. Wouldn't it be nice if they made a match of it?"
She was astounded by the heat of his reply. "No! A Scotch dromedary, suckled on predestination and damnation of infants? Pretty husband he'd make!" But she solved his vehemence for Hart's benefit on the way home. "He's in love with her himself."
"Between patient and doctor? What a mix-up!" Hart laughed. "Odds are on the doctor if he's up to his job. I'd hate to be Carter on the chance of an overdose." For which flippancy his ears were well pulled.
As he said, things were undoubtedly a little tangled, and if at first glance it would appear that Dorothy had not assisted in the unravelling, closer scrutiny shows that her remark helped at least to bring affairs to a head. For the remainder of the day Carter was very thoughtful, so preoccupied that he forgot to misbehave over his supper-tray while, time and again, Helen caught him surveying herself with a dark uneasiness. Puzzled, she came back to the ward before leaving and stood at the foot of his bed; but as yet his fever was confined to his mind, and he replied that he was feeling quite well to her question.
The "good-night" she wished him was not, however, for him. Always darkness magnifies trouble, and through its black lens he saw suspicions as facts. Tossing restlessly, he heard the city clock chime the quarters, halves, hours, until, at twelve, the night nurse's lantern revealed him wide-eyed, staring, and knowing the efficacy of a change of thought in producing sleep, she stayed for a chat.
Correct enough in theory, the treatment proved about as successful as would the application of a blister upon a sore; for he bent the conversation to his own uses, steering it by a circuitous route through the girl's own experience to Helen.
She was liked in the hospital?
Indeed she was! The night nurse was emphatic on that, and went on to say that beauty such as Helen's was not generally conducive of popularity. No, it wasn't jealousy! The nurse tossed her head at his question. Simply that pretty girls didn't have to be nice, so usually left amiability to be assumed with a double chin; and being a frank as well as a merry creature, she confessed to an accession of that desirable quality every time she saw her own nose in a glass. But Helen Morrill? She was sweet as she was pretty!
Dr. Carruthers thought so, too?
Well—the nurse would smile! And everybody in the hospital was glad of it. They would make such a perfect couple, an ideal match!
It was as good as settled, then?
Well—not given out yet, but every one knew! Her lantern being on the floor, she could not see his face, and he lay so quiet she thought he had fallen asleep, and was tiptoeing away when he spoke again.
But—Mrs.Morrill? She had been married before! Her husband—dead?
If he wasn't he ought to be—the nurse was sure of that. There was only one place for a man who could not live with such a nice girl. And if he were not—divorce was about as good in ridding one of the beast! With which she picked up her lantern and left him in darkness and despair. When she came next on her rounds she thought him asleep, but he resumed his restless tossings as soon as her back was turned. Dawn, however, betrayed him, and sent her flying to the head doctor with his pulse and temperature.
"He was all right last night!" the latter exclaimed. "Bring his chart down to the office." Studying it while he mixed sedatives a little later, he said: "Awake at midnight—hum! Talked, did he? What about? Mrs. Morrill?" He snatched truth out of her as though it had been an appendix. "Spoke of her and Dr. Carruthers?—ah! ha! Well, give him this and send Mrs. Morrill to me when she comes in."
If short, the interview did not lack excitement when, a couple of hours later, Helen opposed the freshness of the morning to the Head's angry glare. Her delicate colors, the eyes cleared by sleep and full of light, were enough to have softened the heart of a Gorgon, but served only to irritate him, who looked upon them as so much material gone to waste.
"What have you done?" he roared after her. "Look at that!" And went on as her distressed eyes came back from the chart: "You have done nothing—that's the trouble. Why did I appoint you to this case? Because of your vast experience? No, because I thought you could administer something outside of medical practice. And now he's dying—of jealousy. You have done it; you must cure him." And taking her by the arm as though she were a medicine-tray, he marched her to Carter's ward, gave her a shake at the door like a bottle that is to be "well shaken before taken," and thrust her in with the parting admonition, "Now, do your duty."
Here was an embarrassing position! Surely never before had nurse such orders—to administer love, like a dose, that, forsooth, to a patient who had already turned his broad back on her charms. Now did she pay toll of blushes for the perversity that had checked his every overture. How should—howcouldshe begin?
Pleating and unpleating her apron, she stood at the foot of his bed, the prettiest picture of perplexity ever vouchsafed to gaunt, unshaven man. A week's stubble did not improve his appearance any more than his unnatural color, fixed, glazed eyes. But soon as a timid glance gave her these—she was on her knees beside him.
"Is that you, Helen?" Before she could speak he burst out in a sudden irruption of speech. "I'm so glad; there's something I want to tell you." Then it came, in a flood that washed away his natural reserve, the confession—his remorse for his obstinacy, the sorrow that had tamed his anger, his yearning through weary months for an overture from her; his ignorance of the settler's persecution, scorn of scandalous rumors; his attempts to communicate with and find her; all, down to his observation of her liking for Carruthers, finishing: "Through all, my every thought has been of you. But now—I see. It was a mistake, our marriage. It was wrong to couple roughness with refinement. So if you wish—" Her face was now buried in her arms, and he gently touched the golden hair. "Last night I made up my mind to bring no more misery into your life. But now ... that I see you ... it is difficult; ... but ... if you wish—"
He got no further, for speech is impossible when a soft hand stoppers one's mouth. And while he was thus effectually gagged, she took a mean advantage: told him just what she thought of him. Such a stupid! A big man, so very strong, but oh,sosilly! Did he really think that she—any girl—would have waited upon him in such circumstances unless— Here she had to release his mouth to wipe away the streaming tears, and his question came out like an explosion:
"What?"
She told him, or, rather, conveyed the information in the orthodox way with lovers. This takes time, and becoming suddenly alive to the fact that he was sitting up in bed, she resumed her authority to make him lie down. In view of his condition she was certainly justified in using force to compel obedience; but was it right, was it proper for her, a nurse duly accredited to the case, to leave her arms about him? Well, she did, and—scandalous predicament!—her golden head was lying beside his on the pillow when the door opened for the matron, Carruthers, and the Head on their morning rounds.
"Well—I declare!Finegoings on!"
Helen's faint cry of dismay was drowned by the matron's horrified exclamation, but Carter rose to the situation. "Miss Craig, doctor—my wife." He could not include Carruthers, who retired precipitously, and was then just outside the door, swallowing hugely in vain attempts to get what looked like a monstrous pill, but was really his heart, back to its proper place.
"Your what?" Having the general objections to matrimony which come with prim old maidhood, the matron almost screamed: "Good gracious, man! Couldn't you have waited till you were sure you wouldn't need a minister to bury you?" And she tossed a high head at his answer.
"No, ma'am. We were that impatient we got married two years ago."
There she slid one in on him with a sniff of disdain. "Two years! Imph! One would never have thought it. And just look at this ward! Doctors' rounds and ward unswept, bed unmade; I doubt whether you've had your medicine! I'll send up another nurse at once. As for you, Mrs.—Carter"—she paused, flouncing out of the door—"you are—"
She intended "discharged," but the head doctor interposed twinkling glasses between Helen and destruction. "She was merely giving treatment according to orders."
How the matron stared! "Treatment? Orders? Whose orders, pray?"
"Mine."
Her response as she bustled away, "Has every one gone mad!" set them all smiling, and Carter's remark, "A bit too long in the oven," eloquently described her crustiness.
But if long study of people from interior views had left the matron purblind as to outward signs, sympathies, and emotions, she was not so short-sighted but that she came to a full stop at the sight of Carruthers, who stood, hands clinched, like a naughty boy, face to the wall.
"You poor man!" But though her tone was gentle as her touch on his shoulder, he threw her hand fiercely away and strode off uttering an unmistakable "damn."
"Another lunatic!" she tartly commented, and was confirmed in that flattering opinion when, instead of pining in romantic fashion, he fell in love again and married a sweet girl the following summer.
Left thus alone in the case, the head doctor nodded his satisfaction at the patient's decided improvement, while his further instructions were short as pleasant—"Same treatment, continued at intervals."
These orders, be sure, were faithfully observed. Indeed, he had scarcely passed out than—but the next hour is their's, intrusion would be impertinent. Sufficient that its confidences left each possessed of the other's every thought and feeling throughout their separation.
Her eyes dancing, she broke a happy silence to say: "You were dreadfully transparent. Did you really think I couldn't see through your misbehavior?" Then she told of how Dorothy had confided to her his appeal to Hart and efforts at self-improvement. "But," she added, with a sigh that was almost plaintive, "I wouldn't have cared."
Also she told him of her proud espionage upon him at the general manager's dinner; in return for which she learned how he had waited at the forks of his own trail that winter's night—waited while his ponies shivered in the bitter wind until he picked hers and Elinor Leslie's voices from the groan of passing runners.
She remembered. "Oh, was that you? Why didn't you come in?"
"I would—at least I think I would have," he corrected, "if you'd been alone. By-the-way, I saw her in Minneapolis the other day. She was taking an order from a fat Frenchman in a restaurant where Smythe and I had turned in for dinner. Luckily her back was turned, so we got out without her seeing me. But I caught her profile and she looked dreadfully weak and thin."
"A waitress?" Helen cried. "Oh, the poor thing! Couldn't you have—" Pausing, she confirmed his wisdom. "No, it was better she did not see you."
Silence fell between them, he thinking of the temptation in the warm gloaming, she busy with her own memories. Helen's watch beat like a pulse in the quiet; a house-fly rivalled the full boom of a bee as it battered its head against the window-pane, a futile illustration of Elinor Leslie's folly. Just so had she beaten at the invisible barriers that held her back from free passion. Now she lay, poor soul, bruised and beaten like a dying moth, wings singed by a single touch of the unholy flame.
But sadness could not hold them. Smiling, Helen suddenly relieved herself of the astonishing remark: "I am so glad you are ruined. Yes, I am." She nodded firmly, misreading his comical surprise. "Now we can go back to the farm—just you and I—be ever so happy."
"Why?" He listened with huge enjoyment to her explanation, then said, with mock concern, "It would be fine, and I'm that sorry to disappoint you, but—who said I was ruined?"
"Oh, everybody—the papers said this morning that—what is that funny name? Yes, Mr. Brass Bowels—that he had bought up enough of your liabilities to snow you under."
"They did, did they? Well—they have another guess coming."
"Aren't you ruined?" she asked.
But though he laughed at her naïve distress, he refused to say more, laughingly assuring her that she would not be long in suspense.
Nor had she long to wait. For as she was giving him his medicine the following afternoon, he bobbed up under her hand as though set on wire springs to the detriment of the snowy quilt, which absorbed the dose.
"Listen!"
A whistle, deep-toned, fully two octaves below the shrill hoot of the monopoly's locomotives, thrilled in the distance. Drawing nearer, its vibrant bass gave the entire city pause—clerks waited, pens poised for a stroke; lawyers dropped their briefs; store-keepers, laborers, mechanics, the very Indians in the camps by the river, stood on gaze; motion ceased as at the voice of the falked siren; a hush fell in the streets, a silence complete as that of some enchanted city.
It carried consternation into the offices of the monopoly, that whistle. Sparks, the division superintendent, dropped his pen and stared at his chief, who was giving last orders for the demolition of Greer & Smythe before he went back East. The latter's iron nerve, however, vouchsafed only a breathing space to surprise, then he continued in the same dry tones: "Previous instructions are hereby cancelled. That's an American whistle, Sparks—Jem Ball for a thousand. They've won out; it's all over but the shouting." And as eager tumult broke loose in the street, he added, "And there it goes."
The shouting? They poured into the streets—doctors, lawyers, clerks, laborers; carpenters jumped from new buildings, plumbers left their braziers burning while they swelled the stream that poured out to see the first train, an engine with Pullman and palace-car, pull in over the new line.
Shout? They did—and more. Your canny Canadian is the deil at celebrating when his backslidings carry him that way, and next morning many a worthy citizen sweated in thinking back to the cause of his headache. Ay, good church-members lugged flasks of old Scotch from blameless-appearing pockets; the carpenter exchanged news and drams with the millionaire. The N.P. had bought the new road! No, only leased it! No! no! they were merely to finance the enterprise, market its bonds in return for reciprocal traffic arrangements! There were other theories, all spun round a germ of truth, but thence to the source.
As the siren sounded the second time, Carter looked at Bender, who sat opposite Helen, having dropped in for a chat, and his remark carries back to the strike. "Now you know why we went to Minneapolis. What does it all mean?" His face lit up as he turned to Helen. "It means cars, locomotives, rolling-stock; the use of N.P. equipment till we can instal our own. That we can rebuild the burned bridges this fall, and shove a temporary line through to Silver Creek and the camps in the Riding Mountains. It means that the Red River Valley will send its wheat south to Duluth this fall. It means—victory for us, competition for the province."
That was his hour, but Helen shared it—even when Greer and Smythe ushered in the American railway-king. Twin to the general manager in massive build and strength of feature, he had come from a softer mould. His eyes, mouth were gentler, more pleasant. In him the high, sloping forehead—mark of the dreamer—was qualified by the strong jaw, wide-spaced eyes of the man of practical affairs. A glance told that here imagination and constructive power went hand in hand. Fun rippled and ran over innumerable fine facial lines, and he laughed out loud when Helen made to withdraw, assuring her that their conversation would not tax her sex's supposed weakness in the matter of secrets as they were not to talk business.
"We think too much of this man to bother him with details," he said. "These gentlemen have attended to everything, and all we require is his signature to a few papers. Celebrations won't be in order till he's well enough to run down to St. Paul. Then—well, you'd better not let him come alone." So, talking and laughing for a pleasant half-hour, he gave off his superabundant energy until the ward was charged, then went away leaving the patient stimulated to the verge of open mutiny.
"I'm as well as you." He defied the Head to his face that evening. "Send up my clothes."
"In two weeks, if you are good!" the Head calmly answered.
"Two weeks? I'll be head over heels in work by then, and there is something I want to do first. I'll be out of here in one." And, albeit a trifle chalky as to complexion and wobbly of knee, he was. On the last day—
But first the record of that week; and as Bender's bulk overshadows all else, behold him, mid-week, hobbling into the ward with Jenny trailing behind like a kitten in the wake of the family house dog.
"Mrs. Bender, if you please," he corrected Carter, chuckling; and for once he permitted some one else to do the blushing. Wherein he showed great taste, as she did it right prettily, exhibiting, moreover, a much superior article.
Next day, Dorothy, becomingly mortified because the good news had come to her through her father out of Smythe. "To hear of it in such a roundabout way!" she declared. "You little traitor! and when I think of your speculations about his wife! Positively I had resolved never to forgive you, but—" Kisses, of course.
Thereafter, Brady, Big Hans, Carrots Smith—all more or less singed and nursing various breakages—ostensibly to see the boss, really to take a look at his pretty wife, whom, they decided, shamed the specifications.
Then, to everybody's astonishment—indeed, the Head shadowed the man along the corridor as though he were an anarchist with a bomb in his pocket—theGeneral Manager! brisk, steel-like, yet twinkling. "Trounced us, didn't you?" he laughed. "Well, one never can tell when one has made an end. Competition? Perhaps, for a while; but wait till Jem Ball and I get a bellyful of fighting. However, by that time you'll be well cured of your desires for the public weal and be ready to listen to reason. Oh yes, you will! We all take 'em like chicken-pox or measles, but they are not fatal—unless you get 'em late in life. I feel so sure of your eventual recovery that I just dropped in to bury the hatchet. Fifty years won't see the finish of our plans, and whenever you feel a yearning for fresh enterprises, just look me up."
Therewith the gray cynic hurried away to plan and scheme, upbuild, tear down, without slack or satiety of enormous constructive appetite; to live in travail greater than the labor of woman, and give birth ceaselessly to innumerable works; to inundate the plains with seas of wheat and carry bread to Europe's teeming millions; to sow towns, villages, cities broadcast over the north, make farms for countless thousands; to join Occident and Orient with gleaming rails, clipper ships, to do evil consciously all his days and work unconscious good, crushing the individual for the weal of the race, and caring nothing for either; to live feared and die respected, leaving the world bigger and better than he found it.
Lastly, the cook, just down from the camp with news of Michigan Red. Flying in front of the fire, the black stallion had come in with the rat-tailed mare to be shot as a murderer after the Cree had tracked down the Thing that had been his master; and so, if there be aught in Cree mythology, the soul of the fierce brute would fight it out once more with the fiercer man in the place of the teamsters.
While beguiling the tedium, these tales and conversations failed to exclude from Carter's ear a distant hammering that attended the building of his station and freight-sheds. Also he could hear the hoarse coughing of locomotives going up and down his line. And as themateria medicacontains no tonics like happiness and success, small wonder that, as aforesaid, he demanded his clothes at the end of the week.
"Once you get hold of a fellow you are never satisfied till you have gone all through his clock-work," he replied to the Head's objections. "But though I sympathize with your industry, you'll have to wait for another go at mine. They are needed in my business."
First—Helen with him, of course—he directed his steps, or rather the wheels of a hack, to the new station where the ring of saws, hammering, noise and bustle of work, acted upon him like the draught of the elixir of life, bringing color to his cheeks, stiffness to his knees, sparkle to his eyes. Thence they drove for a conference to Greer & Smythe's; whereafter nothing would suit him but a long drive out to the prairies. It was a strenuous beginning, but fresh air and sunshine are ever potent. He gained color and strength under her anxious eyes; seemed fresher when he dropped her at Jean Glaves's house that evening than in the morning.
Throughout the happy day they had lived in the present. But though he had made no plan for the future, she had trusted, and her face lit up with flashing intuition when he said good-night.
"Mistress Morrill, you are to take the morning train to Lone Tree."
This was the "something he wanted to do."
XXXII
THE TRAIL AGAIN
Skipping that long if happy night, peep with dawn into Helen's bedroom, and see her up and singing small snatches of song that presently brought Jean Glaves, herself the earliest of birds, from bed to assist at the toilet. Should she wear this, that, or the other? There was the usual doubt which beset a young lady who wishes to look her best for occasion; but the result that went forth from big Jean's hug? A vision of healthy beauty that drew tentative smiles from a brace of drummers and attracted the stealthy regard of the entire station when she finally broke, like a burst of sunlight, on the platform. Continuing the figure, the smile, its crowning asset, faded like the afterglow when her anxious eyes refused her the tall familiar figure; and when the train pulled out without him, her disconsolate expression filled the aforesaid drummers with manly longings towards consolation.
Unpunctual? On such an occasion? And how silly she would look at Lone Tree! Slightly offended at first, she then grew alarmed. Perhaps he had suffered a relapse, was ill, dying! Be sure that her terrors compassed the possible and impossible during an hour's journey, and not until she saw a man come dashing across the tracks to the Lone Tree platform did she realize the fulness of his inspiration. He had taken the freight out the night before! If thinner, paler, he was very like the young man who had come to meet her three years ago. There, also, was the lone poplar that had christened the station; the ramshackle town with its clapboard hotels, false-fronted stores, grain-sheds, sitting in the midst of the plains that, flat and infinitely yellow, ran with the tracks over a boundless horizon. Lastly, there was Nels and his bleached grin, holding Death and the Devil, sleek, fat, and sinful as ever.
Carter's whispered greeting helped to keep her in the past. "Is this Miss Morrill?"
"Mr. Carter, I believe?" she had just time for the roguish answer, then their little comedy had to be laid aside till they were alone on trail. For the doctor came running from his office, the store-keeper plunged madly across tracks, Hooper, the agent, yelled, "Well, I swan!" and jumped to shake hands, while from a grain-shed emerged Jimmy Glaves, who had taken a lift in with Nels.
Wasn't she glad to see them? Yet a deeper happiness enveloped her when, looking back, she again saw Lone Tree, shrunken in the distance, its grain-sheds looking like red Noah's arks on a yellow carpet; when she heard only the pole and harness jigging a merry accompaniment to the beat of quick feet, whirring song of swift wheels.
It was very like that first occasion. Though stiff night frosts were now giving timely notice of winter's chill approach, the clerk of the weather had made special arrangements for a south wind; so it was warm as on that far day. Birds, animals, scenery, too, all helped to bring the happy past forward to the happy present, while Death and the Devil, those wicked ones, fostered the illusion by frequent boltings. Surely she remembered the ridge where her first coyote had caused her to cling to Carter, and earned a kiss by repetition of that shameful performance and faithful mimicry of his accent. "He shore looks hungry." Immediately thereafter they plunged out from among scattered farms into the "Dry Lands," but its yellow miles, generally a penance, flowed unnoticed under the buck-board. They were both astonished when, suddenly as before, they rattled through a bluff and dropped over the edge of the valley upon Father Francis at the mission door.
Nothing would suit but that they must dine with him while Louis, the half-breed stableman, fed and watered the ponies. But if the good priest's twinkle expressed knowledge that another of his day's works was come to fruitage, his quiet converse brought no jarring note into their communings.
Undisturbed, they began again at the ford and continued while the Park Lands rolled in great billows under the wheels. The Cree chimneys, Indian graveyards, other well-remembered objects passed in pleasant procession ere, coming to Flynn's, he looked at her. A shake of the head confirmed his doubt. Another time! So they swept on through vast, sun-washed spaces where cattle wandered freely as the whispering winds under flitting cloud-shadows, and so, about sundown, came to their own place with but a single interruption.
Passing Danvers at their own forks, he grinned his delight as he turned out to let them by and shouted after: "Say! I heard from Leslie! He's doing well on the Rand! Sends regards to both of you!"
While that bit of good news was still ringing in her ears, the house flashed out under the eaves of the forest, warm and bright under the setting sun. All was unchanged—the lake, stained just now a ruby red, the golden stubble fenced in by dark, environing woods. Within all was neat and clean as Nels's racial passion for soap and water could make it. So while he stabled the tired ponies, she donned one of her old aprons, rolled sleeves above dimpled elbows, and cooked supper; rather a superfluous performance aside from the grave pleasure he took in looking on.
Afterwards they sat on the doorstep, she between his knees, head pillowed against his breast, and looked at the copper moon that hung in the trees across the lake—watched it brighten to silver; listened to the harmonies of the night, the loon's weird alto, the bittern's bass, cry of a pivoting mallard, owl's solemn choral, a wilder, freer movement than was ever chained in a stave. Once a snuffle, soft-lapping, drifted in, and he replied to her start, "Bear-drinking." Otherwise they were silent up to the moment she arose, shivering.
"It is getting colder. I think I'll go in."
He stayed a little longer, stretched luxuriously out on the grass; was still there when, having made their bed, she came to the door. A vivid memory gave her pause. Just so had he looked—that night—dark, still, as the marble effigy of some old Crusader, with the moonlight quivering about him like an emanation.
"Are you coming, dear?" Perhaps the memory tinged her tone. Anyway, he sprang up, arms extended, and as she came running, he lifted her clear of the ground; carried her in and closed the door.