Chapter 20

He drove well, and he knew the road. It was a dangerous road, which, ever ascending, skirted sharp declivities and rounded buttressed rocks. Kate, prairie-reared, could not "escape the inevitable thrill," but she showed, and perhaps felt, no fear. She let the matter rest with him--this man with great shoulders and firm hands, who knew the primitive art of "waiting on himself." Their brief speech sufficed them for a time, and now they sat silent, well content. The old, tormenting question as to his relations with Honora did not intrude itself. It was swept out of sight like flotsam in the plenteous stream of present content.

They swung upon a purple mesa, and in the distance Kate saw a light which she felt was shining from the window of his home.

"It's just as I thought it would be," she said.

"Perhaps you are just the way it thought you would be," he replied. "Perhaps the soul of a place waits and watches for the right person, just as we human beings wander about searching for the right spot."

"_I'm_ suited," affirmed Kate. "I hope the mesa is."

"I know it well and I can answer for it."

The road continued to mount; they entered the piñon grove and rode in aromatic dusk for a while, and when they emerged they were at the doorway.

He lifted her down and held her with a gesture as if he had something to say.

"It's about my letter," he ventured. "You knew very well it wasn't that I didn't want you to write. But my life was getting tangled--I wasn't willing to involve you in any way in the débris. I couldn't be sure that letters sent me would always reach my hands. Worst of all, I accused myself of unworthiness. I do so still."

"I'm not one who worries much about worthiness or unworthiness," she said. "Each of us is worthy and unworthy. But I thought--"

"What?"

"I was confused. Honora said I was to congratulate you--and her. I didn't know--"

He stared incredulously.

"You didn't know--" He broke off, too, then laughed shortly. "I wish you had known," he added. "I would like to think that you never could misunderstand."

She felt herself rebuked. He opened the door for her and she stepped for the first time across the threshold of his house.

* * * * *

Half an hour later, Wander, sitting in his study at the end of the upper hall, saw his guest hastening toward Honora's room. She wore a plain brown house dress and looked uniformed and ready for service. She did not speak to him, but hastened down the corridor and let herself into that solemn chamber where Honora Fulham lay with wide-staring eyes gazing mountain ward. That Honora was in some cold, still, and appalling place it took Kate but a moment to apprehend. She could hardly keep from springing to her as if to snatch her from impending doom, but she forced all panic from her manner.

"Kate's come," she said, leaning down and kissing those chilly lips with a passion of pity and reassurance. "She's come to stay, sister Honora, and to drive everything bad away from you. Give her a kiss if you are glad."

Did she feel an answering salute? She could not be sure. She moved aside and watched. Those fixed, vision-seeing eyes were upon the snow-capped peaks purpling in the decline of the day.

"What is it you see, sister?" she asked. "Is there something out there that troubles you?"

Honora lifted a tragic hand and pointed to those darkening snows.

"See how the bergs keep floating!" she whispered. "They float slowly, but they are on their way. By and by they will meet the ship. Then everything will be crushed or frozen. I try to make them stay still, but they won't do it, and I'm so tired--oh, I'm so terribly tired, Kate."

Kate's heart leaped. She had, at any rate, recognized her.

"They really are still, Honora," she cried. "Truly they are. I am looking at them, and I can see that they are still. They are not bergs at all, but only your good mountains, and by and by all of that ice and snow will melt and flowers will be growing there."

She pulled down the high-rolled shades at the windows with a decisive gesture.

"But I must have them up," cried Honora, beginning to sob. "I have to keep watching them."

"It's time to have in the lamps," declared Kate; and went to the door to ask for them.

"And tea, too, please, Mrs. Hays," she called; "quite hot."

"We've been keeping her very still," warned Wander, rejoicing in Kate's cheerful voice, yet dreading the effect of it on his cousin.

"It's been too still where her soul has been dwelling," Kate replied in a whisper. "Can't you see she's on those bitter seas watching for the ice to crush David's ship? It's not yet madness, only a profound dream--a recurring hallucination. We must break it up--oh, we must!"

She carried in the lamps when they came, placing them where their glow would not trouble those burning eyes; and when Mrs. Hays brought the tea and toast, whispering, "She'll take nothing," Kate lifted her friend in her determined arms, and, having made her comfortable, placed the tray before her.

"For old sake's sake, Honora," she said. "Come, let us play we are girls again, back at Foster, drinking our tea!"

Mechanically, Honora lifted the cup and sipped it. When Kate broke pieces of the toast and set them before her, she ate them.

"You are telling me nothing about the babies," Kate reproached her finally. "Mayn't we have them in for a moment?"

"I don't think they ought to come here," said Honora faintly. "It doesn't seem as if they ought to be brought to such a place as this."

But Kate commanded their presence, and, having softly fondled them, dropped them on Honora's bed and let them crawl about there. They swarmed up to their mother and hung upon her, patting her cheeks, and investigating the use of eyelids and of ropes of hair. But when they could not provoke her to play, they began to whimper.

"Honora," said Kate sharply, "you must laugh at them at once! They mustn't go away without a kiss."

So Honora dragged herself from those green waters beyond the fatal Banks, half across the continent to the little children at her side, and held them for a moment--the two of them at once--in her embrace.

"But I'm so tired, Kate," she said wearily.

"Rest, then," said Kate. "Rest. But it wouldn't have been right to rest without saying good-night to the kiddies, would it? A mother has to think of that, hasn't she? They need you so dreadfully, you see."

She slipped the extra pillows from beneath the heavy head, and stood a moment by the bedside in silence as if she would impress the fact of her protection upon that stricken heart and brain.

"It is safe, here, Honora," she said softly. "Love and care are all about you. No harm shall come near you. Do you believe that?"

Honora looked at her from beneath heavy lids, then slowly let her eyes close. Kate walked to the window and waited. At first Honora's body was convulsed with nervous spasms, but little by little they ceased. Honora slept. Kate threw wide the windows, extinguished the light, and crept from the room, not ill-satisfied with her first conflict with the dread enemy.

* * * * *

Karl was waiting for her in the corridor when she came from Honora's room, and he caught both of her hands in his.

"You're cold with horror!" he said. "What a thing that is to see!"

"But it isn't going to last," protested Kate with a quivering accent. "We can't have it last."

"Come into the light," he urged. "Supper is waiting."

He led her down the stairs and into the simple dining-room. The table was laid for two before a leaping blaze. There was no other light save that of two great candles in sticks of wrought bronze. The room was bare but beautiful--so seemly were its proportions, so fitted to its use its quiet furnishings.

He placed her chair where she could feel the glow and see, through the wide window, a crescent moon mounting delicately into the clear sky. There was game and salad, custard and coffee--a charming feast. Mrs. Hays came and went quietly serving them. Karl said little. He was content with the essential richness of the moment. It was as if Destiny had distilled this hour for him, giving it to him to quaff. He was grave, but he did not resent her sorrowfulness. Sorrow, he observed, might have as sweet a flavor as joy. It did not matter by what name the present hour was called. It was there--he rested in it as in a state of being which had been appointed--a goal toward which he had been journeying.

"What's to be done?" he asked.

"I've been thinking," said Kate, "that we had better move her from that room. Is there none from which no mountains are visible? She ought not to have the continual reminder of those icebergs."

"Why didn't I think of that?" he cried with vexation. "That shows how stupid a man can be. Certainly we have such a room as you wish. It looks over the barnyard. It's cheerful but noisy. You can hear the burros and the chickens and pigs and calves and babies all day long."

"It's precisely what she needs. Her thoughts are the things to fear, and I know of no way to break those up except by crowding others in. Is the room pleasant--gay?"

"No--hardly clean, I should say. But we can work on it like fiends."

"Let's do it, then,--put in chintz, pictures, flowers, books, a jar of goldfish, a cage of finches,--anything that will make her forget that terrible white procession of bergs."

"You think it isn't too late? You think we can save her?"

"I won't admit anything else," declared Kate.

The wind began to rise. It came rushing from far heights and moaned around the house. The silence yielded to this mournful sound, yet kept its essential quality.

"It's a wild place," said Kate; "wilder than any place I have been in before. But it seems secure. I find it hard to believe that you have been in danger here."

"I am in danger now," said Karl. "Much worse danger than I was in when the poor excited dagoes were threatening me."

"What is your danger?" asked Kate.

She was incapable of coquetry after that experience in Honora's room; nor did the noble solitude of the place permit the thought of an excursion into the realms of any sort of dalliance. Moreover, though Karl's words might have led her to think of him as ready to play with a sentimental situation, the essential loftiness of his gaze forbade her to entertain the thought.

"I am in danger," he said gravely, "of experiencing a happiness so great that I shall never again be satisfied with life under less perfect conditions. Can you imagine how the fresh air seems to a man just released from prison? Well, life has a tang like that for me now. I tell you, I have been a discouraged man. It looked to me as if all of the things I had been fighting for throughout my manhood were going to ruin. I saw my theories shattered, my fortune disappearing, my reputation, as the successful manipulator of other men's money, being lost. I've been looked upon as a lucky man and a reliable one out here in Colorado. They swear by you or at you out in this part of the country, and I've been accustomed to having them count on me. I even had some political expectations, and was justified in them, I imagine. I had an idea I might go to the state legislature and then take a jump to Washington. Well, it was a soap-bubble dream, of course. I lost out. This tatterdemalion crew of mine is all there is left of my cohorts. I suppose I'm looked on now as a wild experimenter."

"Would it seem that way to men?" asked Kate, surprised. "To take what lies at hand and make use of it--to win with a broken sword--that strikes me as magnificent."

She forgot to put a guard on herself for a moment and let her admiration, her deep confidence in him, shine from her eyes. She saw him whiten, saw a look of almost terrible happiness in his eyes, and withdrew her gaze. She could hear him breathing deeply, but he said nothing. There fell upon them a profound and wonderful silence which held when they had arisen and were sitting before his hearth. They were alone with elemental things--night, silence, wind, and fire. They had the essentials, roof and food, clothing and companionship. Back and forth between them flashed the mystic currents of understanding. A happiness such as neither had known suffused them.

When they said "good-night," each made the discovery that the simple word has occult and beautiful meanings.

XXIX

At the end of a week Honora showed a decided change for the better. The horror had gone out of her face; she ate without persuasion; she slept briefly but often. The conclusion of a fortnight saw her still sad, but beyond immediate danger of melancholy. She began to assume some slight responsibility toward the children, and she loved to have them playing about her, although she soon wearied of them.

Kate had decided not to go back to Chicago until her return from California. She was to speak to the Federation of Women's Clubs which met at Los Angeles, and she proposed taking Honora with her. Honora was not averse if Kate and Karl thought it best for her. The babies were to remain safe at home.

"I wouldn't dare experiment with babies," said Kate. "At least, not with other people's."

"You surely wouldn't experiment with your own, ma'am!" cried the privileged Mrs. Hays.

"Oh, I might," Kate insisted. "If I had babies of my own, I'd like them to be hard, brown little savages--the sort you could put on donkey-back or camel-back and take anywhere."

Mrs. Hays shook her head at the idea of camels. It hardly sounded Christian, and certainly it in no way met her notion of the need of infants.

"Mrs. Browning writes about taking her baby to a mountain-top not far from the stars," Kate went on. "They rode donkey-back, I believe. Personally, however, I should prefer the camel. For one thing, you could get more babies on his back."

Mrs. Hays threw a glance at her mistress as if to say: "Is it proper for a young woman to talk like this?"

The young woman in question said many things which, according to the always discreet and sensible Mrs. Hays, were hardly to be commended.

There was, for example, the evening she had stood in the westward end of the veranda and called:--

"Archangels! Come quick and see them!"

The summons was so stirring that they all ran,--even Honora, who was just beginning to move about the house,--but Wander reached Kate's side first.

"She's right, Honora," he announced. "It is archangels--a whole party of them. Come, see!"

But it had been nothing save a sunset rather brighter than usual, with wing-like radiations.

"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Hays confidentially to the cook.

"Shouldn't you think they'd burn up with all that flaming crimson on them?" Kate cried. "And, oh, their golden hair! Or does that belong to the Damosel? Probably she is leaning over the bar of heaven at this minute."

In Mrs. Hays's estimation, the one good thing about all such talk was that Mrs. Fulham seemed to like it. Sometimes she smiled; and she hung upon the arm of her friend and looked at her as if wondering how one could be so young and strong and gay. Mr. Wander, too, seemed never tired of listening; and the way that letters trailed after this young woman showed her that a number--quite an astonishingly large number--of persons were pleased to whet their ideas on her. Clarinda Hays decided that she would like to try it herself; so one morning when she sat on the veranda watching the slumbers of the little girls in their hammocks, and Miss Barrington sat near at hand fashioning a blouse for Honora's journey, she ventured:--

"You're a suffragette, ain't you, Miss?"

"Why, yes," admitted Kate. "I suppose I am. I believe in suffrage for women, at any rate."

"Well, what do you make of all them carryings-on over there in England, ma'am? You don't approve of acid-throwing and window-breaking and cutting men's faces with knives, do you?" She looked at Kate with an almost poignant anxiety, her face twitching a little with her excitement. "A decent woman couldn't put her stamp on that kind o' thing."

"But the puzzling part of it all is, Mrs. Hays, that it appears to be decent women who are doing it. Moreover, it's not an impulse with them but a plan. That rather sets one thinking, doesn't it? You see, it's a sort of revolution. Revolutions have got us almost everything we have that is really worth while in the way of personal liberty; but I don't suppose any of them seemed very 'decent' to the non-combatants who were looking on. Then, too, you have to realize that women are very much handicapped in conducting a fight."

"What have they got to fight against, I should like to know?" demanded Mrs. Hays, dropping her sewing and grasping the arms of her chair in her indignation.

"Well," said Kate, "I fancy we American women haven't much idea of all that the Englishwomen are called upon to resent. I do know, though, that an English husband of whatever station thinks that he is the commander, and that he feels at liberty to address his wife as few American husbands would think of doing. It's quite allowed them to beat their wives if they are so minded. I hope that not many of them are minded to do anything of the kind, but I feel very sure that women are 'kept in their place' over there. So, as they've been hectored themselves, they've taken up hectoring tactics in retaliation. They demand a share in the government and the lawmaking. They want to have a say about the schools and the courts of justice. If men were fighting for some new form of liberty, we should think them heroic. Why should we think women silly for doing the same thing?"

"It won't get them anywhere," affirmed Clarinda Hays. "It won't do for them what the old way of behaving did for them, Miss. Now, who, I should like to know, does a young fellow, dying off in foreign parts, turn his thoughts to in his last moments? Why, to his good mother or his nice sweetheart! You don't suppose that men are going to turn their dying thoughts to any such screaming, kicking harridans as them suffragettes over there in England, do you?"

Kate heard a chuckle beyond the door--the disrespectful chuckle, as she took it, of the master of the house. It armed her for the fray.

"I don't think the militant women are doing these things to induce men to feel tenderly toward them, Mrs. Hays. I don't believe they care just now whether the men feel tenderly toward them or not. Women have been low-voiced and sweet and docile for a good many centuries, but it hasn't gained them the right to claim their own children, or to stand up beside men and share their higher responsibilities and privileges. I don't like the manner of warfare, myself. While I could die at the stake if it would do any good, I couldn't break windows and throw acid. For one thing, it doesn't seem to me quite logical, as the damage is inflicted on the property of persons who have nothing to do with the case. But, of course, I can't be sure that, after the fight is won, future generations will not honor the women who forgot their personal preferences and who made the fight in the only way they could."

"You're such a grand talker, Miss, that it's hard running opposite to you, but I was brought up to think that a woman ought to be as near an angel as she could be. I never answered my husband back, no matter what he said to me, and I moved here and there to suit him. I was always waiting for him at home, and when he got there I stood ready to do for him in any way I could. We was happy together, Miss, and when he was dying he said that I had been a good wife. Them words repaid me, Miss, as having my own way never could."

Clarinda Hays had grown fervid. There were tears in her patient eyes, and her face was frankly broken with emotion.

Kate permitted a little silence to fall. Then she said gently:--

"I can see it is very sweet to you--that memory--very sweet and sacred. I don't wonder you treasure it."

She let the subject lie there and arose presently and, in passing, laid her firm brown hand on Mrs. Hays's work-worn one.

Wander was in the sitting-room and as she entered it he motioned her to get her hat and sweater. She did so silently and accepted from him the alpenstock he held out to her.

"Is it right to leave Honora?" he asked when they were beyond hearing. "I had little or nothing to do down in town, and it occurred to me that we might slip away for once and go adventuring."

"Oh, Honora's particularly well this morning. She's been reading a little, and after she has rested she is going to try to sew. Not that she can do much, but it means that she's taking an interest again."

"Ah, that does me good! What a nightmare it's been! We seem to have had one nightmare after another, Honora and I."

They turned their steps up the trail that mounted westward.

"It follows this foothill for a way," said Wander, striding ahead, since they could not walk side by side. "Then it takes that level up there and strikes the mountain. It goes on over the pass."

"And where does it end? Why was it made?"

"I'm not quite sure where it ends. But it was made because men love to climb."

She gave a throaty laugh, crying, "I might have known!" for answer, and he led on, stopping to assist her when the way was broken or unusually steep, and she, less accustomed but throbbing with the joy of it, followed.

They reached an irregular "bench" of the mountain, and rested there on a great boulder. Below them lay the ranch amid its little hills, dust-of-gold in hue.

"I have dreamed countless times of trailing this path with you," he said.

"Then you have exhausted the best of the experience already. What equals a dream? Doesn't it exceed all possible fact?"

"I think you know very well," he answered, "that this is more to me than any dream."

An eagle lifted from a tree near at hand and sailed away with confidence, the master of the air.

"I don't wonder men die trying to imitate him," breathed Kate, wrapt in the splendor of his flight. "They are the little brothers of Icarus."

"I always hope," replied Wander, "when I hear of an aviator who has been killed, that he has had at least one perfect flight, when he soared as high as he wished and saw and felt all that a man in his circumstances could. Since he has had to pay so great a price, I want him to have had full value."

"It's a fine thing to be willing to pay the price," mused Kate. "If you can face whatever-gods-there-be and say, 'I've had my adventure. What's due?' you're pretty well done with fears and flurries."

"Wise one!" laughed Wander. "What do you know about paying?"

"You think I don't know!" she cried. Then she flushed and drew back. "The last folly of the braggart is to boast of misfortune," she said. "But, really, I have paid, if missing some precious things that might have been mine is a payment for pride and wilfullness."

"I hope you haven't missed very much, then,--not anything that you'll be regretting in the years to come."

"Oh, regret is never going to be a specialty of mine," declared Kate. "To-morrow's the chance! I shall never be able to do much with yesterday, no matter how wise I become."

"Right you are!" said Wander sharply. "The only thing is that you don't know quite the full bearing of your remark--and I do."

She laughed sympathetically.

"Truth is truth," she said.

"Yes." He hung over the obvious aphorism boyishly. "Yes, truth is truth, no matter who utters it."

"Thanks, kind sir."