CHAPTER SEVEN
The next afternoon while Anne packed her trunk, her mother kept wandering to the door and gazing in the puzzled excitement of a child who encounters something pleasant, but so extraordinary and unexpected that its delight is lost in bewilderment—like being confronted with a Christmas tree on the Fourth of July. Without turning from her task, Anne felt her come, stare, decide to say something and go, unable to express her thought.
At last the trunk was packed, locked and corded. Anne rose and smiled at her mother, again in the doorway.
"By the look on your face, one would think you had never expected me to marry."
Hilda came in and sat on the bed-edge. "Of course, I did, Annie. I wouldn't like either of you girls to be old maids. Women have a lot to put up with either way, married or single. But you have certainly rushed right along. First you quit a good job, dash off to a place where there isn't a man for miles and come home engaged; don't tell a soul for weeks and then marry in the lunch hour. I feel all upside-down."
Anne patted her knee. "Well, you'll get right side up again before I come back and then we'll have some good times, momsy."
Hilda's pleasure at the prospect vanished almost instantly.
"What papa will say, I'm sure I don't know."
"Shall I write him a note? I will, if it will make things easier. I don't want to upset him needlessly, for your sake. But he wouldn't be any better if he had a month to think about it."
"I know. But then, you must make allowances, Anne. At our ages we can't shift round so quick as you young folks, and papa thinks——"
"I know what papa thinks. Let's not go into that. But I don't, and, as I am the one marrying, papa's opinion doesn't matter. Besides, you know, I can get a job any day. I don't have to sit at home and be supported."
"Now see here, Anne, you may be a lot smarter than I ever was, but I'm older than you, and one thing I've learnt, if nothing else, it doesn't pay for a woman to work after she's married. A man may pretend he doesn't want her to and all that, but he gets used to it mighty soon and takes it for granted. And no woman can do it—keep a home and work and have babies. Just wait till some morning when you feel sick and have to go out as usual. Why, when Belle was coming, I couldn't lift up my head till ten o'clock. I——"
Anne turned quickly and began putting some things in a handbag. In a few moments Hilda wandered back again from her own first confinement to Anne's marriage.
"And to think you were married yesterday and came home here as cool as you please. Now when I was young, if a girl had done a thing like that it would have been thought wicked, although I don't know but what it is a good thing for the man. It's just as well to keep them waiting as long as you can. Besides, an hotel room, just an ordinary room where the man's been living right along, seems kind of—coarse."
Anne's flaming face bent lower over the grip. There was a short silence. Then Hilda whispered:
"Annie—is there—anything—you would like to know?"
Anne did not even shake her head. She had felt like this once, strengthless in disgust, when Belle had persisted in showing her the colored illustration of a disease in its worst stage. At last she succeeded in turning to her mother.
"I'm going to phone for the taxi, now, mamma, and we'll have a cup of tea before it comes."
"I'll put the kettle right on." Hilda bustled away, relieved. For she had always found it a little difficult to enlighten Anne and had a vague idea that it would have been easier if Anne had been a brunette. Certain simple truths had a way of splattering all over Anne's fairness, and making Hilda uncomfortable.
"Oh, well, I dare say she knows more than I did at her age; everything's different than it used to be, anyhow."
With this large, comforting deduction, Hilda began to make the tea. They drank it in a constrained effort on Anne's part to keep the conversation general, and finished just as the taxi driver rang the bell. The little trunk went bobbing down the stairs; Hilda took Anne in her arms and they clung together, not crying, but very quiet.
"There, dear, I must run, and you can say I eloped and phoned you afterwards, or anything that comes handiest."
"Oh, I'm not going to lie about it. It's done now. Besides, papa's bark's a lot worse than his bite. He'll be decent when you get back."
Anne kissed her mother and ran quickly down the stairs, waved from the door and shut it behind her. As the taxi drove off, she looked back, but Hilda was not at the window. Anne's eyes clouded.
"Dear old moms. She does annoy me sometimes, but she has had a hard time. I'm going to see that it's better in the future."
And then Anne forgot all about her old home, and sat nervous and very timid on the edge of the taxi seat.
At dawn, Roger and Anne went down to the lake edge. In the east, the cold, night gray was melting in green and silver pools. Not a sound. Not a ripple on the surface of the lake. Beyond the lower hills, granite mountains rose, peak upon peak, to the snow-covered barrier beyond which the world lay. They stood silent, hand in hand, part of the eternal youth of the dew-drenched earth.
Behind the towering mountains were cities and hurrying men. Anne knew it because they had passed through them the night before, but it was hard to remember and impossible to visualize. This was the core of the world, calm, absolute in its perfect understanding, untouched by hurry or man's confusion.
Anne pressed closer to Roger and he put his arm about her.
The green and silver pools brightened with the coming light; a faint, crimson glow, herald of the day, spread its warmth for the advance of the sun, and then, suddenly, a great jolly sun looked over the rim of the world and laughed at them. They laughed back.
"The old fool thinks he's surprised us. As if we didn't know he was there and going to do exactly that."
Anne made a face at the sun, just as the breakfast bell at the ranch rang for the milkers' breakfast.
Hand in hand, they turned from the lake. The sun was already well over the mountain top. The herald had rolled his crimson carpet and gone. Day had come.
"I suppose a dewdrop should be meal enough, but I hope it's at least bacon and eggs and pancakes."
"With cereal and cream first," Anne laughed.
Roger squeezed her hand. "I'm awfully glad, Mrs. Barton, that you suggested marrying me."
"Always take my suggestions. You'll find they will always be right, even if I do say so," Anne teased.
"Not a doubt of it." Roger stopped and took Anne in his arms. Tenderness beyond passion was in his hold. "Princess—it's—so good to be alive and love you."
Day after day, deeper and deeper in their understanding, Anne and Roger wandered in the hills. Icy streams tumbled roaring through granite gorges, suddenly emerged to wide sunny meadows, and spread in flat stillness. The fat, black earth of the lower mountains thinned to sheer granite slopes, where sparse trees grew miraculously in tiny crevices, their roots hanging like ropes from the cliffs.
They sat by the lake, which, beginning a hundred yards from the ranch, stretched to the blue distance of the hills. The lake fascinated Anne. No fish swam in it, no birds alighted upon it, the wind seemed scarcely to ruffle its terrible stillness. No one drank of its water. No one swam in it. No craft sailed it. In its own brackish depths, it hid the reason of its existence. No one knew how many centuries it had lain there, acrid, wide, as indifferent to man's need as man to its uselessness. "The lake," the rancher and his wife spoke as if it were a person who had committed some unmentionable crime and been banished from human intercourse because of it. There were legends that, ages ago, the Indians had worshipped a god living far out in its bitter depth. But now, they were afraid of it. The Christian God had stolen their god and given them fear. But the lake was as indifferent to this Christ as it had been to their pagan deity. It needed neither god nor man.
They talked and were still. They were very near.
At the end of the second week, the first sheep-man came. Early in the morning, Anne and Roger were waked by the baaing of the lambs, a piercing wail of terror, as of children pursued by a malignant force. They went quickly to the window. Hundreds of gray, dusty sheep were coming up the road. Every now and then they stopped to nibble the thick, sweet grass. But the dogs, at a call from the shepherd, ran among them and with uncanny knowledge, drove them on. Bleating, they obeyed. The rancher hurried out and opened the gate. The dogs began to maneuver them through. Behind the band, the shepherd came, carrying a lamb in his arms.
"A hierarchy of authority," Roger said. "The shepherd directs the dogs, the dogs drive the sheep."
At last they were all safely through and the gate closed. In a few moments, the bleating was over. The sheep were contentedly munching the lush grass.
"They are like people. A moment ago and they seemed really to have some definite point of view. They wanted to do something. And now, they've forgotten what it was. They'll eat the meadow flat and then the dogs and the shepherd will drive them on, and they'll rebel and yield and eat another meadow flat—and go on—and on."
Anne patted his hand, resting on her breast. Roger was always seeing things so, analogies between animals and mountains and trees and people. Nothing was just itself to Roger, but always a picture of something else. It made Anne very tender and filled her with the same sense of deep protectiveness that a child's belief in fairies does; a gladness, touched faintly with wistful envy and regret that faith must go.
As they sat down to breakfast they realized a new feeling of bustle and industry in the air. The sheep had come. Soon tourists would follow. Automobiles would pass, meals would be called for at all hours. The rancher and his wife talked of rooms to be opened, supplies brought up from cellars, bedding aired. Roger and Anne sat silent, as silent as the dark Indian girl who served them.
The rancher ate quickly and went. In a moment his wife followed. They crossed the rear yard and disappeared in a storehouse. Roger looked at Anne and sighed.
"I suppose it's the end. The place will be all cluttered up with people soon."
"I suppose it will. It's been perfect, hasn't it?"
Roger's hand moved over and took hers. "Absolutely perfect. We——"
A note so clear, so sweet, so rounded that it seemed to be the spirit of the earth slipping into sound, stole into the room.
"Oh!" Anne whispered and held fast to Roger's hand.
The Indian girl straightened and stood listening. A brightness flashed over the brown silence of her face and vanished as she moved noiselessly to the door and passed through. Outside, in the sun-filled meadow, the Basque shepherd stood among his sheep, his arms raised, a little wooden flute to his lips. Once more he sounded the clear, sweet call and then, at the sight of the girl, the happiness of the whole earth came rippling and dancing from his flute.
For a moment, the girl remained motionless on the doorstep. Then, without a sign of recognition, glided away toward the dense high reeds of the lake edge. Still playing, the Basque shepherd moved after her through the munching sheep. At the edge of the reeds, the music stopped. He parted them and they closed, thick and blank, behind him.
That evening, Roger and Anne took their last walk. They walked far along the lake, until a chill little wind crept out from the cañons, a jealous little wind, guarding the tremendous silence of the night from these paltry, human intruders.
Roger and Anne turned back. The sheep were huddled a dark mass in the corner of the meadow. Over the embers of a campfire, the Basque herder and two half-breed milkers were playing cards. Against the door of her whitewashed shack the Indian girl leaned, her black hair in two great braids to her waist, facing toward the glow of the dying fire. As Anne and Roger crossed the front yard, she slipped inside and closed the door.
The rotation of the days had fulfilled its promise. The perfect had come to its own end. Anne lay in Roger's arms.
"I always felt there was something perfect somewhere," she whispered.
Roger drew her closer to him.
"I love you, I love you, I love you," he answered hotly. Anne's arms closed about him. Through the force sweeping him, almost to unconsciousness of Anne as a separate body, he felt her lips, warm, soft, as eager as his own.