Chapter 21

On Christmas morning the thought occurred to Lee that he had heard nothing more from Imogene of the plan for him to spend the day at the McDonnells', which she had mentioned the night of their talk. Rather strangely, too, he had not received from either of the girls even a note of holiday greeting; to Imogene he had had sent from Denver an edition of Ibsen's plays, and to Ruth a splendid set of furs, both in care of Mrs. McDonnell, who had promised they should be delivered when Santa Claus came down the chimney. Odd, the girls' silence.

He was at work on his accounts at the moment, but now he remained biting the end of his pen-holder and staring through the window. From somewhere in the sagebrush came the sound of shots: Dave potting tin cans with the .22 rifle that had been Lee's gift to him. In the room was only the snapping of the fire. Presently the telephone rang.

"Imo now," he exclaimed. "I'll be hanged if I go down and carry out the farce before the McDonnells."

But the person proved to be Louise Graham.

"I wondered--well, several things," she said, when he had answered. "First, if you had gone away anywhere; next, in case you hadn't, whether you were working; and last, should the camp be resting to-day, if you wouldn't come to Christmas dinner with father and me."

"No work's going on."

"Then we'll be delighted to have you come--and Dave also, of course. There's an especially fattened turkey ready to slide into the oven now. Father has just said, too, to tell you that there's going to be something else--Tom and Jerry. How does that sound?"

"Like a man and a boy coming down the road toward Diamond Creek," Lee answered, with a laugh. "Thank you for your thoughtfulness in remembering us."

"I'll judge how sincere you are by the amount of turkey you eat," she said. "Dinner will be about one o'clock."

"We shall be prompt."

Lee hung up the receiver, then glanced at his watch. It was ten. He reseated himself at his desk and endeavoured to fasten his thoughts upon the entries in the book before him, but at last he exclaimed, throwing down his pen: "Damned if I can or will!" and jumped up, and went to tramping about the office, and when Dave's cat and kitten presented themselves to be stroked, unfeelingly thrust them aside with his boot as he tramped. And when Dave came in, about half-past eleven, the boy found him part way into a clean white shirt, with the cat and the kitten eying him resentfully, and received the order: "Get a move on you; we're going to the Grahams' for dinner. See that you scrub your face, too--and ears!" Which left Dave quite as indignant as the cat, for he always washed his ears.

They arrived at the Graham ranch house shortly after noon, where wreaths of holly, strings of evergreen, and red paper bells created a Christmas atmosphere. Coming from their cold ride into these cheerful rooms and to a warm welcome, the hearts of both man and boy glowed with unaccustomed feeling. And throughout the dinner that followed betimes--during which Mr. Graham's pleasantries and Louise's gay spirits and mirth evoked in Lee a blitheness to which he long had been a stranger and in Dave a state of joyous bliss--they luxuriated in halcyon well-being. After the meal Louise, at her father's suggestion, went to the piano and sang while the men were smoking their cigars. And then followed an hour at cards, High Five, at which Mr. Graham and Dave won the most games; and then a maid, a Mexican girl, Rosita, brought in a bowl of nuts and raisins for the rancher and the boy who settled themselves for a match at checkers, and Lee and Louise strolled to a window seat at the other end of the long living room.

A delicate pink was in the girl's cheeks. Her eyes were tender under their long lashes; a smile still lingered on her lips. It was as if her countenance, her mind, her spirit, were suffused with the happiness and peace of the hour, of the day.

"My poor one-armed man, how is he?" she asked. "I intended to go see him, but the cold has been so steady that I gave it up. You said over the telephone several days ago that he was doing as well as could be expected."

"Quite out of danger now," Lee replied. "The doctor told him a lady assisted at the operation and now he's full of curiosity regarding you."

"I'll surprise him some day by just walking up to his cot and saying: 'Good morning, how's my patient?' The day I'm going to pick is the next one you move camp: I want to see how all those tents and shacks and everything rise up on their feet and travel."

"You shall," he stated, with a laugh. "I'll notify you of the date. About New Year's Day the next migration will occur. You've had your turn at hospital work and now perhaps you wish to try your hand at transportation. I wager you'd make a good camp manager if you took hold of the job."

"Would you revive me a second time if I threatened to faint?" she queried, gayly. "You and Imogene Martin gave me just the right treatment that evening, for you kept my thoughts off the ordeal I'd been through. Next day I was myself, as I told you when you called up."

"I haven't seen you since that day," Lee remarked. "I was really worried that afternoon, you know." And an echo of the anxiety he had suffered sounded in his voice.

Her face showed that she noted it, and it softened.

"And you have so many anxieties, too," said she.

He stirred, then withdrew his gaze from her and directed it out a window. The emotion he had experienced that afternoon when she sat before his fire, when she sat there so frank and so simple-hearted, was rising in his breast again. The breath trembled a little upon his lips. But after a time he felt himself grow calmer.

"I have anxieties, yes," he said, "but so, I suppose, has every man and woman, of his or her own kind and degree. And they aren't the important thing, after all. What has happened in the past, not what may occur in the future, is what really matters. One can't change the past, what's done; especially by one's own act. And if the act was a serious mistake. That's fatal! I see now that failure to accomplish what one sets out to do, as for instance in the building of my canal, may not be ruinous to a man. A man may fail and be quite as able a man as ever, as those who succeed; for human beings can do only so much and no more. Nothing that he has done or not done would alter the result. And he need not take the failure greatly to heart. But voluntary and heedless acts of folly, precipitate and unconsidered leaps in the dark, these indeed are ruinous. Oh, yes, they do the business. They become balls and chains. Leave him no choice or action. If it were only so simple as the game of checkers your father and Dave are playing! When one game is over, they can start another. But there's only one game to life."

"But it is a long one, and changes," Louise said.

She glanced at him. He intended that his words should be taken, she perceived, in a general sense. But the mind always seeks the specific: hers instinctively seized on the particular thorn that had prompted his utterance. Of Ruth Gardner's extraordinary and inexplicable behaviour she had become informed, like everyone else; it at first amazed, then shocked, and finally outraged her sense of decency. It repelled her--but, then, her early attempts at friendship with the other had never advanced. The girl had always been absorbed in her own doings, immersed in pleasure or in plans for pleasure, concerned entirely with the friends she had, and, unlike Imogene, received Louise's calls and approaches at cordiality with an indifference that withered all feeling. With the passing of time Louise had considered Lee's course in relation to the girl as a cause for wonder. The engineer was singularly patient, or incredibly obtuse, or marvellously in love. Whichever it was, her heart stirred with pity. He deserved better, he deserved the best. As for Ruth Gardner, she could now only think of her with a hot resentment that set her lips quivering; and she was moved at moments by a profound desire to express her sympathy to him and to give that warm encouragement his spirit on occasion must need. But she must refrain.

At his speech her conclusions, but not her feelings, underwent a sharp revision. The revelation startled her. He had not been obtuse. He no longer was marvellously in love with Ruth Gardner, nor in love with her at all. Relief followed surprise in her mind, the relief that comes at a fear unrealized, a disaster avoided. Disaster had been precisely what she had sensed if not thought, since a union of two persons whose natures were as utterly different, as essentially opposed, as Lee's and Ruth's would inevitably lead to disillusionment, antagonism, sorrow, havoc. That his eyes at last were open was a blessing.

"What are you thinking of?" he asked, all at once.

She found his eyes full upon her.

"Of what you had said," she responded. "And at this minute I'm speculating on whether anything--one's decisions, or acts, or sentiments--are ever quite conclusive or final. Or fatal, too, as you said. We might possibly except murder and suicide." She smiled as she mentioned this reservation.

Lee shifted his position with a trace of impatience.

"I'm not a pessimist," he exclaimed.

"No, you're too active to be. Pessimism is at bottom a kind of mental indolence, I'd say--an unpleasant kind."

"Some matters are not solved by action," said he. "That is, when they are out of one's hands and in another's."

Her attention was caught by those words, and she hung on them for a little. They distressed her; they caused her to understand the forced immobility of his face as he spoke, and wish that he would give way to his feeling. The phrase "out of one's hands and in another's" referred undoubtedly to Ruth Gardner. She did not trust herself to speak.

"What became of all those flowers that were in your garden last summer?" he asked, suddenly. "Do you dig up the roots, or cover them, or let them freeze? You have no idea how many times these cold days the recollection of that hour with you last summer when we walked among them recurs to me. It seems ages ago, however. That was one of the happy days, Louise."

A delicate tint of pink stole into her face. For to her also the day had been one of happiness, as clear-cut in her memory as a cameo. The thought that it and she had been dwelling in his mind produced in her breast an unaccountable agitation. The coral pink in her cheeks deepened to a flush; she lowered her eye-lashes and averted her look.

"The flowers are banked with straw, the perennials," she said, to prevent a silence.

"I shall come and see them when they're blooming again," he stated. "The more I recall them, the more beautiful it seems they were--yes, and the orchard, too, and the grassy canals, and the sunshine that day. And you in the picture--the centre of the picture, Louise. The impressions one retains that stand out vividly in the mind are few: that is one of the number for me. But perhaps not for you."

"Oh, for me also," she exclaimed.

Bryant stared at her round forearms and hands lying on her lap, but without observing them. He had marked the quick sincerity of her response. It affected him as would her soft hand-clasp. He began to glance restlessly about the room.

The dusk of the early winter night was at hand. It had thickened in the corners and over where Mr. Graham and Dave were meditating their game in silence. The flames crackling in the fireplace intensified the forming shadows. Lee recognized that it was time to be going. Nevertheless, he continued to linger for a while, with his eyes sometimes resting on his companion in enjoyment of her face, engaged in thought, experiencing a contentment in merely being in her presence.

"This will be another of those days," he at length remarked, in a musing tone.

His words aroused her from her own reflections.

"One for winter as well as for summer," she said, raising her look. "Did I seem to be dreaming when you spoke? I was doing scarcely that; my mind was lulled; the quiet--the twilight--Christmas Day--they bring a soothing mood."

"Something that in a world of money, money can't buy," Lee said. He appeared about to make a further remark, but failed to do so. His thoughts, however, had gone off somewhere, Louise observed. Then he inquired in a matter-of-fact way: "When will you ride up to camp again?"

"Not until it grows warmer. Twelve miles or more is rather too far for a canter on a sharp day."

He cast his eyes about at the strings of evergreen and the suspended red bells and holly wreaths.

"I'll run down again, if I may, before the holidays are over," said he. "If only for another look at those things. They give a fellow a pull--out of the ditch, so to speak." And he rose.

"Come, by all means," Louise replied, with a nod.