Chapter 5

THE FACE OF DEATH.

In the days that followed they talked but little. Lawrence had fallen into the habit of speaking only when she seemed to desire conversation, and his mind was occupied with planning their escape. If he thought of her in any other way than merely as his eyes, he never showed it. Though watchful of her comfort, in every act and word, he was markedly impersonal.

Following the river, they had progressed steadily north and east over increasingly higher and rougher ground. The tropical vegetation of intertwining crimson was now changing to a faint gold. There were days when they were forced to make long détours over broken ridges to get around some deep gorge through which the gray-green stream dashed its foamy way downward. They were well into the mountains, and above them the higher Andes raised their snowy peaks in forbidding austerity. It was daily growing colder, and their clothes were now only ragged strips. Then came days when sharp, biting winds whipped through the cañon they followed, or headed against them on some plateau, and they were forced to face new issues. Food was less plentiful, and winter was at hand. To be sure they were in the tropics, but on the mountains the air was cold, and warmer clothes became imperative.

Claire's ankle was almost well. After weeks of pain, which she had borne bravely, it was healing, and the time was near when she would be able to walk. Shoes were absolutely essential for her. Furthermore, Lawrence's own shoes were worn through, and his walking was becoming a continual pain. In spite of Claire's increasingly careful guidance, he stepped on small, sharp rocks that dug into his flesh. He did not complain, but Claire knew that he was suffering. The times when he stepped out freely became more and more seldom, and his face was usually taut.

They were, indeed, a pitiable couple. Lawrence's thin face was shaggy with hair. Claire's once soft skin was now brown and hard. Both were thin and wiry, with the gaunt lines of the undernourished showing plainly.

One morning, to fight the frost that bit into them, they were forced to build a fire long before dawn. As they sat huddled together over it, Lawrence finally broached the subject that had been engrossing both their minds for days.

"Claire," he said thoughtfully, "we can't make it through. We'll have to find a place somewhere and prepare for winter. It's tough, but it's inevitable. I hate to give up now, but it will be even worse for us if we don't get meat, fur, and a house against the snow that will soon be covering everything."

"I know," she said sadly, her thin hands supporting her chin. "It seems as though we had played our long farce to its end. Death is as inexorable in its demands as life." The circles under her eyes were great half-moons.

"We have done well, though," he argued. "We've done better than well. Who would have believed that a blind man and a crippled woman could have come as far as this?"

"I didn't believe it, Lawrence," she said, and her voice and eyes were full of a warmth that had grown of late to be fairly constant. "I didn't believe it, and I wouldn't believe it now if I were told the story back home."

"I'm not sure; I might have," Lawrence said proudly. "I know the blind and their capabilities."

"I'm learning to know them," she admitted, and lapsed into silence.

"Shall we go into camp, then," he asked, as if they had not mentioned anything else.

Claire hesitated, then said slowly: "It's our only chance. Are you willing to spend a winter with me?" Her eyes glanced amusedly at him.

Catching the note in her voice, Lawrence laughed. "It seems inevitable," he said, "and, anyway, I couldn't ask for a better companion. You don't disturb me, and I don't irritate you--that is, not especially."

She looked at him impatiently. "Don't you?" she said, meditatively. "Well, I'm glad I don't bother you."

"Yes," he assented seriously. "You've been mighty open-minded, Claire, and you haven't hampered me with incredulities."

"Oh, that is what you mean."

He moved uneasily, his muscles drawing a little. Claire saw and wondered.

"Yes," Lawrence said shortly. "When morning comes, we'll hunt for a location."

They ceased speaking, each occupied with his own thoughts.

Claire was asking herself what the winter would mean to her, spent with this silent man, and he was questioning how long she would continue to regard him as a mere imperfect carrier, devoid of the stuff that men are made of. Sometimes when her body was in his arms, he had wondered if she was capable of love, but always he had remembered her husband, her social life, her assumption of superior reserve, and had forced himself into a habitual attitude of indifference. The strain was telling on his will, however, and often he longed to make this woman see him as he was. He thought of the old days in his studio when he had proved himself master of blindness in his power to imagine and carry the sense of form into the carved stone. He recalled the praise of his comrades, and over all else there surged in him the swift, warm blood of the artist.

"Lawrence," said Claire suddenly, "at what do you value human life?"

"That depends," he answered, "on whose life it is."

"Well, at what would you value mine?" she demanded.

"From varying points of view, at varying prices. From your husband's point of view, it is invaluable. From your own, it is worth more than anything else. From my point of view, it is worth as much as my own, since without you mine ceases."

"Then your care of me and all your trouble is merely because you value your own life."

"What else?" He moved uneasily.

She ignored that question. "If you could get through without me, would you do it?"

"That depends on circumstances. If I could get through without you, and do it quickly, and could not get through with you"--he paused--"I should leave you behind."

"And suppose, when I can walk, I do that myself?"

He smiled. "As you please," he said quietly. "I advise you to make your estimate well, however. My hands and strength are assets which you might have trouble in doing without."

"And do you estimate the whole of our relationship on a carefully itemized basis of material gain and loss?"

"Claire, isn't that your understanding, stated by yourself, of our partnership?"

"Yes, but--well, it's hard to estimate human companionship."

"I know it." He shifted nearer the fire. "I've tried to estimate yours."

"Indeed?" Her voice was full of interest.

"I've failed. You are worth a great deal, potentially."

"Exactly what do you mean?"

"I mean just this"--he stood up suddenly and faced her, his shadow covering her like an ominous cloud--"that as Mrs. Claire Barkley you are worth nothing to me except eyes, and, therefore, your personality and conversation are of value only as time-fillers."

"Go on," she said steadily.

"But as Claire, the almost starved, ragged human being who is living with me through a prolonged war with death, you are worth everything to me--everything that I value."

"But isn't that what I have been from the beginning?" she flashed.

He answered slowly. "Yes--in a way."

Once more they lapsed into silence. In turn she tried to estimate his worth to her, but failed. She began to recall the men she knew, and concluded that she was without a standard of measurement. One by one she pictured them and cast them aside, as somehow not the scale by which to evaluate this man. At last, she began to think of her husband. It had not occurred to her to think of him in comparison with Lawrence before, and it made her wonder at her doing so now.

She fell to dreaming of the man who had been her lover in girlhood, and her husband and dear companion these past six years. He was surely at home, aching, yearning for the little girl he had lost. She could see him sitting before the fireplace in their big living-room, his head on his hands, his tired face in repose, while he gazed into the flames and longed and longed for her. The picture grew in clearness. She saw the joy that would be his when they met again, and she felt around her those dear arms, crushing her against him in a rapture of reunion. In sudden contrast, she was again conscious of the cold, impersonal arms of the man beside her. As she thought of the difference she hated Lawrence wildly. At least, her husband knew her worth. He knew her golden treasure-house of love; he knew her as she was.

This blind man before her there, unkempt, hard, expressionless, what did he know of her? What could he know, born of poor people, and working his way among inferiors? She almost laughed aloud. Why, at home this man, who had carried her in his arms, would have been one of her wards, an object of her charities. But would he? Lawrence was an artist. She considered that.

"Isn't it light enough to get moving, Claire?" His rich, warm tones broke in upon her thought like a shattering cataract. How musical and vibrant his voice was!

"I think so." She stood up unsteadily.

"Good. We'd better go down nearer the river. We will want a sheltered ravine for our winter camp."

"Very well." She threw her arm over his shoulder. "It isn't far down, and it's clear going. When we start again, I'll be able to walk. And then I'll lead you, Mr. Lawrence." She spoke half in jest.

"And if we are alive, I shall make it possible for you to do so comfortably. I hope for something to make shoes of." He answered with a frank, sincere joy at her being able to walk, and she was ashamed of her anger. He was not to blame for being anxious to have her well, to have felt otherwise would certainly have been to be a fool indeed. She should rejoice with him, for then they could get home that much sooner, home to her husband and her old life. She warmed at the idea, and felt a sense of gratitude toward Lawrence that was good and wholesome. "I have been silly," she thought. "He is really not to be expected to fall and adore me, and certainly I ought not to blame him for being blind. He couldn't help that, either."

"Lawrence," she said aloud, "I am a beastly unjust wretch."

"I don't see it," he protested.

"But you ought to see it. I don't play fair with you."

"You said that once before, I believe. I don't agree any more now that I did then."

"But I think all sorts of beastly things." She could not understand her frankness.

"Oh"--he paused. "So do I. But as I am not a Puritan, I scarcely hold myself responsible to you for my thoughts. One's thoughts are his own, and, as long as he keeps them to himself, he is entitled to as many as he pleases, of whatever variety he prefers."

"Do you think so?"

"Of course, and so do you."

"Yes, I did--but it seemed to me," she faltered, "that in the present case--oh, well, let it go." She laughed nervously, and said no more.

Lawrence wondered at her silence, and wanted to know very much what she thought, but he told himself that after all it was none of his business.

They had reached the river. The water rushed from the mouth of a gorge in rapids that sent its every drop sparkling and flashing over a great rock into a mass of white foam below.

"Oh," cried Claire, "it's beautiful, beautiful!"

He put her down and laughed. "It sounds as if it were leaping from points of light into cloud-banked foam."

She stared at him in amazement. "It is," she said in a subdued tone. "How did you know?"

"One learns," he said carelessly. "And how about a camp?"

Her admiration of him vanished into the commonplace.

"We can't find it here," she said, hiding her appreciation of the scene under her professional-guide tone.

He frowned. "Nowhere close?"

"No. And what is worse, we'll have to go over a mountain. The stream here is rushing right out from between cliff walls."

Lawrence's spirit sank, but he did not show it. "We'd better eat what little we have left and then be off," he suggested simply.

That morning was the beginning of their hardest experience since they first left the beach. Scarcely had they started to climb over the great ridge, which broke into sheer precipice at the river, when a sharp wind rose and cut through their unprotected bodies. Claire drew in against him as close as she could, while he tried to give her more protection with his arms. The slope was steep and filled with loose rocks so that he lost ground at every step. They were forced to stop often, and by noon he was worn out, and they were both bitterly cold. Claire thought they were near the top, so Lawrence nerved himself to press on.

Night found them standing on the crest of the ridge, in the face of a bitter wind; before them, across a small plateau, rose a still higher mountain around the northern side of which a ravine cut its jagged gash away from the river. Claire stared at the scene until her courage broke down.

"We can never do it, Lawrence," she moaned, and her head sank wearily against his shoulder. Her cry was the aching moan of a heart-broken child. The proud, self-contained Claire was gone. It stirred Lawrence strangely, and for the first time a warm tenderness for her came over him. He drew her to him, and tried to comfort her. Her poor undernourished body shook with the sobs that despair and the cold wrung from her, and, though his own hands and body were blue, he tried to warm her. Had he seen the ground ahead of them, he, too, might have given up, but blindness was the barring wall of black which shut out even defeat. He clenched his teeth firmly, and lifted Claire in his arms again resolutely.

"We've got to do it, Claire," he said, "and we will."

She attempted to paint the scene before him in graphic detail, her words broken by sobs. When she finished he started forward.

"We'll follow the gulf," he stated. "We must keep going, Claire. We don't dare to stop."

"We can't. It's dark, and will be black soon," she answered.

"We've got to do it," Lawrence repeated. "It isn't the first night of my life I've struggled against a black so dense its nothingness seemed overpowering."

She strained her eyes through the gathering night to turn him into the smoothest way, lapsing into jerky, habitual words of guidance.

In the darkness they entered the ravine and staggered down to its broken bottom. The time soon came when she could see hardly anything until they were almost upon it, and the white face of a boulder spotting the endless black before her filled her with a vague dread. Often they paused to rest, but the cold drove them on again. Claire almost ceased to direct him, and Lawrence gritted his teeth till they hurt him and forged ahead.

Once he slipped and fell, but got to his feet again and went on. Claire was not injured beyond a few bruises, but she noticed that he limped more than before and her fear increased.

How they ever fought that night through neither knew, but morning came at last and found them still staggering down the ravine. They were almost out of it now and were entering a rather heavy pine forest. Fortunately the gulf they followed had turned around the mountain in the direction of the river, and their desire for water drove them to keep on. To their blue and shaking bodies all feeling had grown vague, tingling, and uncertain. When Claire looked at Lawrence she could have screamed. His lips were drawn back, and his hairy cheeks and sightless eyes flashed before her the image of a dehumanized death mask. Her own face must look like that, she thought, and buried her head on his shoulder. Through that morning he struggled on, faltering, lurching, resting a little, girding himself against the death now so surely at hand. In his mind thought had ceased to be coherent; his starved body, whipped by the cold, was beginning to play with the imagery.

He gurgled a grim little laugh, and all clear thought was at an end. Claire heard and looked at him wonderingly. She knew that she was freezing, and she had resigned herself, but this man, what was he doing? He still lunged through the trees, where, at all events it seemed a little warmer. She heard him muttering incoherent jargon that gradually cleared to speech. "We'll go on, Claire. We'll go on to the end. I've got to do it. I need my life. I need you!"

She started and listened, though even in her present state she grew resentful. "So that was it," she thought; "he's waiting to get me out before he breaks into his love. He wants his rescue as an argument." Then her thinking was broken into detached images. She saw her husband and cried aloud to him. She had pictures flashing in her mind of him, of old scenes, parties, places they had been together, tenements she had visited in her charity work, the beach that morning when Lawrence had found her, and in and through it all she heard words falling from his lips that recalled later, stung her to wrath.

"I need you, Claire," she heard him again, and then, "I shall use you, Claire. You will be my masterpiece. It is you, proud, superior, human, social, intellectual, sexed, vital, you, carrying in your being the whole tumultuous riot of the ages gone, and hiding it under a guarded social exterior, not knowing when in a sentence it breaks through, you, you, Claire, you, the woman!"

He stumbled, regained his balance, and plunged through a fringe of pines, staggered against one, then another, cursed, and went again forward and out into a clearing. She saw it vaguely before them. At first she doubted, then, as he let his hold on her slip, she gripped his neck with arms that scarcely felt the body they closed around.

"Lawrence," she screamed in a voice that was shrill--"Lawrence, a cabin, a cabin!"

He sank down with her clinging to him still. "I know," he muttered, "I've got to find one." Then he lay quiet.

She freed herself and crept toward the house. She was at the back of it, and she was obliged to crawl slowly on hands and knees around to the front. There was a door, she pushed on it, but it did not open. She grew angry at it, and beat against it with her fists, abusing it for its obstinacy. When at last it opened she laughed wildly.

Before her, his tall body, clad in warm, heavy clothes, stood a man whose dark eyes grew wet with tears of pity the instant they saw her. He lifted her in his arms like a child and carried her inside. She had a fleeting sense of being at home, she thought he was her husband and threw her arms around him passionately, then, remembering Lawrence, she murmured as he laid her down, "Out there--behind the cabin!" and was unconscious.

The man turned and hurried out. In a few minutes he came back, carrying Lawrence, and his face was lined with pity at the state of these two human beings.

He laid them together on a wide berth at the side of the cabin and began to work over them alternately. Swiftly and deftly he heated blankets and prepared food. He wound them in the hot cloth, chafed their hands and arms, and forced brandy down their throats.

Lawrence's eyelids drew back.

"The man is blind," muttered the stranger in Spanish.

Claire was looking at him dazedly and reaching greedily toward the kettle that simmered over a great open fireplace.

He brought a bowl of hot savory soup and started feeding them. Lawrence swallowed mechanically, but he could hardly get the spoon out of Claire's mouth.

"Not too much, _señora_," he said, turning away.

When he looked again toward them they were both asleep. The utter exhaustion of their long night claimed rest. He walked over to Claire and stood looking down at her.

"She was beautiful," he thought. "And he is blind. Ah, well, for her, beauty is again possible, but for him"--he shrugged his shoulders--"it is bad, bad!" he said softly, and, turning to a shelf of books that stood against the wall, he drew out a volume and sat down before the fire to read.