Chapter 8

“The same old ones; poor Addison, you know. All those stories they tell an Easterner. As I pointed out to Mrs. Bogardus, in every case there was some predisposing cause. Addison had been too long in the mountains, and he was frightfully overworked; short of company officers. He came to me about an insect he said had got into his ear; buzzed, and bothered him day and night. The story got to the men's quarters. They joked about the colonel's 'bug.' I knew it was no joke. I condemned him for duty, but the Sioux were out. They thought at Washington no one but Addison could handle an Indian campaign. He was on the ground, too. So they sent him up higher where it was dry, with a thousand men in his hands. I knew he'd be a madman or a dead man in a month! There were a good many of the dead! By Jove! The boys who took his orders and loved the old fellow and knew he was sending them to their death! Well for him that he'll never know.”

“The 'altitude of heartbreak,'” sighed Mrs. Creve. The phrase was her own, for many a reason deeply known unto herself, but she gave it the effect of a quotation before the men.

“Then you think there is no 'altitude' in ours?”

“No; nor 'heartbreak' either,” said the doctor, helping himself to one of the colonel's cigars. “But I don't say there isn't enough to keep a woman awake nights, and to make those young men avoid the sight of each other for a time. Thanks, I won't smoke now. I'm going to take a look at Mrs. Bogardus as I go out.”

XV

A BRIDEGROOM OF SNOW

The doctor had taken his look, feeling a trifle guilty under his patient's counter gaze, yet glad to have relieved the good colonel's anxiety. If he loved to gossip, at least he was particular as to whom he gossiped with.

Moya closed the door after him and silently resumed her seat. Mrs. Bogardus helped herself to a sip of water. She was struggling with a dry constriction of the throat, and Moya protested a little, seeing the effort that it cost her to speak, even in the hoarse, unnatural tone which was all the voice she had left.

“I want to finish now,” she said, “and never speak of this again. It was I who accused them first--and then I asked him:--if there was anything he could say in their defense, to say it, for Chrissy's sake! 'I will never break bread with them again,' said he,--'either Banks or Horace. I will not eat with them, or drink with them, or speak with them again!' Think of it! How are we to live? How are they to inhabit the same city? He thinks I have been weak. I am weak! The only power I have is through--the property. Banks will never marry a poor girl. But that would be a dear-bought victory. Let her keep what faith in him she can. No; in families, the ones who can control themselves have to give in--to those who can't. If you argue with Christine she simply gives way, and then she gets hysterical, and then she is ill. It's a disease. Mothers know how their children--Christine was marked--marked with trouble! I am thankful she has any mind at all. She needs me more than Paul does. I cannot be parted from my power to help her--such as it is.”

“When she is Banks Bowen's wife she will need you more than ever!” said Moya.

“She will. I could prevent the marriage, but I am afraid to. I am afraid! So, as the family is cut in two--in three, for I--” Mrs. Bogardus stopped and moistened her lips again. “So--I think you and Paul had better make your arrangements and go as soon as you can wherever it suits you, without minding about the rest of us.”

Moya gave a little sobbing laugh. “You don't expect me to make the first move!”

“Doesn't he say anything to you--anything at all?”

“He is too ill.”

“He is not ill!” Mrs. Bogardus denied it fiercely. “Who says he is ill? He is starved and frozen. He is just out of the grave. You must be good to him, Moya. Warm him, comfort him! You can give him the life he needs. Your hands are as soft as little birds. They comfort even me. Oh, don't you understand!”

“Of course I understand!” Moya answered, her face aflame. “But I cannot marry Paul. He has got to marry me.”

“What nonsense that is! People say to a girl: 'You can't be too cold before you are married or too kind after!' That does not mean you and Paul. If you are not kind to him _now_, you will make a great mistake.”

“He is not thinking of marriage,” said Moya. “Something weighs on him all the time. I cannot ask him questions. If he wanted to tell me he would. That is why I come downstairs and leave him. But he won't come down! Is it not strange? If we could believe such things I would say a Presence came with, him out of that place. It is with him when I find him alone. It is in his eyes when he looks at me. It is not something past and done with, it is here--now--in this house! _What_ is it? What do _you_ believe?”

The eyes she sought to question hardened under her gaze. Here, too, was a veil. Mrs. Bogardus sat with her hands clasped in her lap. She was motionless, but the creaking of her silks could be heard as her bosom rose and fell. After a moment she said: “Paul's tray is on the table in the dining-room. Will you take it when you go up?”

Moya altered her own manner instantly. “But you?” she hesitated. “I must not crowd you out of all your mother privileges. You have handed over everything to me.”

“A mother's privilege is to see herself no longer needed. I can do nothing more for my son”--her smile was hard--“except take care of his money.”

“Paul's mother!”

“My dear, do you suppose we mind? It is a very great privilege to be allowed to step aside when your work is done.”

“Paul's _mother!_” Moya insisted.

Mrs. Bogardus rose. “You don't remember your own mother, my dear. You have an exaggerated idea of the--the importance of mothers. They are only a temporary arrangement.” She put out her hands and the girl's cheek touched hers for an instant; then she straightened herself and walked calmly out of the room. Moya remained a little longer, afraid to follow her. “If she would not smile! If she would do anything but smile!”

Paul was walking about his room, half an hour later, when Moya stopped outside his door. She placed the tray on a table in the hall. The door was opened from within. Paul had heard his mother go up before, heard her pause at the stairs, and, after a silence, enter her own room.

“She knows that I know,” he said to himself. “That knowledge will be always between us; we can never look each other in the face again.” To Moya he endeavored to speak lightly.

“It sounded very gay downstairs to-night. You must have had a houseful.”

“I have been with your mother the last hour,” answered Moya, vaguely on the defensive. Since Paul's return there had been little of the old free intercourse in words between them, and without this outlet their mutual consciousness became acute. Often as they saw each other during the day, the keenest emotion attached to the first meeting of their eyes.

Paul was unnerved by his sudden recall from death to life. Its contrasts were overwhelming to his starved senses: from the dirt and dearth and grimy despair of his burial hutch in the snow to this softly lighted, close-curtained room, warm and sweet with flowers; from the gaunt, unshaven spectre of the packer and his ghostly revelations, to Moya, meekly beautiful, her bright eyes lowered as she trailed her soft skirts across the carpet; Moya seated opposite, silent, conscious of him in every look and movement. Her lovely hands lay in her lap, and the thought of holding them in his made him tremble; and when he recalled the last time he had kissed her he grew faint. He longed to throw off this exhausting self-restraint, but feared to betray his helpless passion which he deemed an insult to his soul's worship of her.

And she was thinking: “Is this all it is going to mean--his coming home--our being together? And I was almost his wife!”

“So it was my mother you were talking to in the study? I thought I heard a man's voice.”

“It was the doctor. Your mother was not quite herself this evening. He came in to see her, but he does not think she is ill. 'Rest and change,' he says she needs.”

Paul gave the words a certain depth of consideration. “Are you as well as usual, Moya?”

“Oh, I am always well,” she answered cheerlessly. “I seem to thrive on anything--everything,” she corrected herself, and blushed.

The blush made him gasp. “You are more beautiful than ever. I had forgotten that beauty is a physical fact. The sight of you confuses me.”

“I always told you you were morbid.” Moya's happy audacity returned. “Now, how long are you going to sit and think about that?”

“Do I sit and think about things?” His reluctant, boyish smile, which all women loved, captured his features for a moment. “It is very rude of me.”

“Suppose I should ask you what you are thinking about?”

“Ah! I am afraid you would say 'morbid' again.”

“Try me! You ought to let me know at once if you are going to break out in any new form of morbidness.”

“I wish it might amuse you, but it wouldn't. Let me put you a case--seriously.”

Moya smiled. “Once we were serious--ages ago. Do you remember?”

“Do I remember!”

“Well? You are you, and I am I, still.”

“Yes; and as full of fateful surprises for each other.”

“I bar 'fateful'! That word has the true taint of morbidness.”

“But you can't 'bar' fate. Listen: this is a supposing, you know. Suppose that an accident had happened to our leader on the way home--to your Lieutenant Winslow, we'll say”--

“_My_ lieutenant!”

“Your father's--the regiment's--Lieutenant Winslow 'of ours.' Suppose we had brought him back in a state to need a surgeon's help; and without a word to any one he should get up and walk out of the hospital with his hurts not healed, and no one knew why, or where he had gone? There would be a stir about it, would there not? And if such a poor spectre of a bridegroom as I were allowed to join the search, no one would think it strange, or call it a slight to his bride if the fellow went?”

“I take your case,” said Moya with a beaming look. “You want to go after that poor man who suffered with you.”

“Who went with us to save us from our own headstrong folly, and would have died there alone”--

“Yes; oh, yes!--before you begin to think about yourself, or me. Because he is nobody 'of ours,' and no one seems to feel responsible, and we go on talking and laughing just the same!”

“Do they talk of this downstairs?”

“To-night they were talking--oh, with such philosophy! But how came you to know it?”

Paul did not answer this question. “Then”--he drew a long breath,--“then you could bear it, dear?--the comment, even if they called it a slight to you and a piece of quixotic lunacy? Others will not take my case, remember.”

“What others?”

“They will say: 'Why doesn't he send a better man? He is no trailer.' It is true. Money might find him and bring him back, but all the money in the world could not teach him to trust his friends. There is a misunderstanding here which is too bitter to be borne. It is hard to explain,--the intimacy that grows up between men placed as we were. But as soon as help reached us, the old lines were drawn. I belonged with the officers, he with the men. We could starve together, but we could not eat together. He accepted it--put himself on that basis at once. He would not come up here as the guest of the Post. He is done with us because he thinks we are done with him. And he knows that I must know his occupation is gone. He will never guide nor pack a mule again.”

“Your mother and my father, they will understand. What do the others matter?”

“I must tell you, dear, that I do not propose to tell them--especially them--why I go. For I am going. I must go! There are reasons I cannot explain.” He sighed, and looked wildly at Moya, whose smile was becoming mechanical. “I hate the excuse, but it will have to be said that I go for a change--for my health. My health! Great God! But it's 'orders,' dear.”

“Your orders are my orders. You are never going anywhere again without me,” said Moya slowly. Her smile was gone. She stood up and faced him, pale and beautiful. He rose, too, and stooped above her, taking her hands and gazing into her full blue eyes arched like the eyes of angels.

“I thought she was a girl! But she is a woman,” he said in a voice of caressing wonder. “A woman, and not afraid!”

“I am afraid. I will not be left--I will not be left again! Oh, you won't take me, even when I offer myself to you!”

“Don't--don't tempt me!” Paul caught her to him with a groan. “You don't know me well enough to be afraid of _me!_”

“You! You will not let me know you.”

“Oh, hush, dear--hush, my darling! This isn't thinking. We must think for our lives. I must take care of you, precious. We don't know where this search may take us, or where it will end, or what the end will be.” He kissed the sleeve of her dress, and put her gently from him, so that he could look her in the eyes. She gave him her full pure gaze.

“It is the poor man again. You said he would spoil our lives.”

“He is _our_ poor man. You didn't go out of your way to find him. And your way is mine.”

“It is so heavenly to be convinced! Who taught you to see things at a glance,--things I have toiled and bungled over and don't know now if I am right! _Who_ taught you?”

“Do you think I stood still while you were away! Oh, my heart was sifted out by little pieces.”

“You shall sift mine. You shall tell me what to do. For I know nothing! Not even if I may dare to take this angel at her word!”

“I knew you would not take me!” the girl whispered wildly. “But I shall go.”

XVI

THE NATURE OF AN OATH

“Your tray! It is after ten o'clock. Your 'angel' is a bad nurse.” Moya brought the tray and set it on a little stand beside Paul's chair. He watched her shy, excited preparations as she moved about, conscious of his eyes. The saucepan staggered upon the coals and they both sprang to save the broth, and pouring it she burnt her thumb a little, and he behaved quite like any ordinary young man. They were ecstatic to find themselves at ease with each other once more. Moya became disrespectful to her charge; such sweet daring looked from her eyes into his as made him riotous with joy.

“Won't you take some with me?” He turned the cup towards her and watched her as she sipped.

“'It was roast with fire,'” he pronounced softly and dreamily, 'because of the dreadful pains. It was to be eaten with bitter herbs'”--

“What _are_ you saying?”--

“'To remind them of their bondage.'”

“I object to your talking about bondage and bitter herbs when you are eating aunt Annie's delicious consommé.”

He gravely sipped in turn, still with his eyes in hers. “Can you remember what you were doing on the second of November?”

“Can I remember!”

“Yes; tell me. I have a reason for asking.”

“Tell _me_ the reason first.”

“May we have a little more fire, darling? It gives me chills to think of that day. It was the last of my wretched pot-hunting. There was nothing to hunt for--the game had all gone down, but I did not know that. Somewhere in the woods, a long way from the cabin, it began to occur to me that I should not make shelter that night. A fool and his strength are soon parted. It was a little hollow with trees all around so deep that in the distance their trunks closed in like a wall. Snow can make a wonderful silence in the woods. I seemed to hear the thoughts of everybody I loved in the world outside. There had been a dullness over me for weeks. I could not make it true that I had ever been happy--that you really loved me. All that part of my life was a dream. Now, in that silence suddenly I felt you! I knew that you cared. It was cruel to die so if you did love me! It brought the 'pang and spur'! I fought the drowsiness that was taking away my pain. I had begun to lean on it as a comfortable breast. I woke up and tore myself away from that siren sleep. It was my darling,--her love that saved me. Without that thought of you, I never would have stirred again. Where were you, what were you thinking that brought you so close to me?”

“Ah,” said Moya in a whisper. “I was in that room across the hall, alone. They were good to me that day; they made excuses and left me to myself. In the afternoon a box came,--from poor father,--white roses, oh, sweet and cold as snow! I took them up to that room and forced myself to go in. It was where my things were kept, the trunks half packed, all the drawers and closets full. And my wedding dress laid out on the bed. We girls used to go up there at first and look at the things, and there was laughing and joking. Sometimes I went up alone and tried on my hats before the glass, and thought where I should be when I wore them, and--Well! all that stopped. I dreaded to pass the door. Everything was left just as it was; the shutters open, the poor dress covered with a sheet on the bed. The room was a death-chamber. I went in. I carried the roses to my dead. I drew down the sheet and put my face in that empty dress. It was my selfish self laid out there--the girl who knew just what she wanted and was going to get it if she could. Happiness I dared not even pray for--only remembrance--everlasting remembrance. That we might know each other again when no more life was left to part us--_my_ life. It seemed long to wait, but that was my--marriage vow. I gave you all I could, remembrance, faith till death.”

“Then you are my own!” said Paul, his face transformed. “God was our witness. Life of my life--for life and death!” Solemnly he took a bridegroom's kiss from her lips.

“How do _you_ know that it is life that parts?”

“Speak so I can understand you!” Moya cried. “Ah, if I might! A man must not have secrets from his wife. Secrets are destruction, don't you think?”

Moya waited in silence.

“Now we come to this bondage!” He let the words fall like a load from his breast. “This is a hideous thing to tell you, but it will cut us apart unless you know it. It compels me to do things.” He paused, and they heard a door down the passage open,--the door of his mother's room. A step came forward a few paces. Silence; it retreated, and the door closed again stealthily.

“She has not slept,” Paul murmured. “Poor soul, poor soul! Now, in what I am going to say, please listen to the facts, Moya dear. Try not to infer anything from my way of putting things. I shall contradict myself, but the facts do that.

“The--the guide--John, we will call him, had a long fever in the woods. It would come on worse at night, and then--he talked--words, of a shocking intimacy. They say that nothing the mind has come in contact with under strong emotion is ever lost, no matter how long in the past. It will return under similar excitement. This man had kept stored away in his mind, under some such pressure, the words of a woman's message, a woman in great distress. Over and over, as his pulse rose, countless times he would repeat that message. I went out of the hut at night and stood outside in the snow not to hear it, but I knew it as well as he did before we got through. Now, this was what he said, word for word.

“'Do not blame me, my dear husband. I have held out in this place as long as I can. Don't wait for anything. Don't worry about anything. Come back to me with your bare hands. Come!--to your loving Emmy!'

“'Come, come!' he would shout out loud. Then in another voice he would whisper, 'Come back to me with your bare hands!' And he would stare at his hands and his face would grow awful.”

Moya drew a long sigh of scared attention.

“Those words were all over the cabin walls. I heard them and saw them everywhere. There was no rest from them. I could have torn the roof down to stop his talking, but the words it was not possible to forget. And where was the horror of it? Was not this what we had asked, for years, to know?”

“You need not explain to me,” said Moya, shuddering.

“Yes; but all one's meanest motives were unearthed in a place like that. Would I have felt so with a different man? Some one less uncouth? Was it the man himself, or his”--

“Paul, if anything could make you a snob, it would be your deadly fear of being one!”

“Well, if they had found us then, God knows how that fight would have ended. But I won it--when there was nothing left to fight for. I owned him--in the grave. We owned each other and took a bashful sort of comfort in it, after we had shuffled off the 'Mister' and 'John.' I grew quite fond of him, when we were so near death that his English didn't matter, or his way of eating. I thought him a very remarkable man, you remember, when he was just material for description. He was, he is remarkable. Most remarkable in this, he was not ashamed of his son.”

“Do please let that part alone. I want to know what he was doing, hiding away by himself all these years? I believe he is an impostor!”

“We came to that, of course; though somehow I forgave him before he could answer the question. In the long watch beside him I got very close to him. It was not possible to believe him a deserter, a sneak. Can you take my word for his answer? It was given as a death-bed confession and he is living.”

“I would take your word for anything except yourself!” Moya did not smile, or think what she was saying.

“That answer cleared him, in my mind, with something over to the credit of blind, stupid heroism. He is not a clever man. But, speaking as one who has teen face to face with the end of things, I can say that I know of no act of his that should prevent his returning to his family--if he had a family--not even his deserting them for twenty years. _If_, I say!