Part 20

Things very surprising to herself were now happening to Edith. To her own huge disgust and dismay, she found herself one week-end a guest at the beautiful country-place of Solly Wirtheimer, a South African burglar-person, who was trying to jimmy his way into the polite world. Without any more interest in the horse than in the Mithraic mythology he owned a racing stable, and he was trying hard to lose enough money to the proper persons to enable him to associate with them. It really was hard work. He almost had to push it over to them. Edith naturally felt that nothing short of winning a pot of money would compensate her for the degradation of being one of Solly's house party. At the usual game of bridge, however, she lost persistently. Her game was degenerating or Solly's guests were especially clever or lucky. Eventually she became frightened at her losses. Her genial host offered to lend her any amount she required. She chose rather to accept the offer of her own partner, a friendly young American person, whom she met here for the first time and about whom she knew nothing. This loan naturally led to further acquaintance. It is a way with loans. They either lead to intimacy or estrangement. In the course of London activities her own fortune had been pretty well dissipated, and she had been more than ordinarily reckless because the future had seemed so well assured and the estates of Uxminster seemed to guarantee one against misfortune! Instead of bridge being a pastime, it must be confessed that a great many of the most refined people play it to win. Every smart house in London is a casino, and one must play well, or be very lucky, or have lots of money to lose. In the course of bridge Edith found herself again in need of a loan, and the friendly young American person seemed the most available resource. Young American persons have so much and are usually so delightfully careless with it. This was arranged over a luncheon at The Savoy grill room. At this luncheon the "American person" induced the Viscountess to talk of her husband. She took small pains to conceal her animosity. The upshot of this interview was that she achieved a remunerative occupation that promised an assured income and enabled her to gratify her supreme hate. The combination was delightful. It was understood that she was to give the American person a perusal of all Hal's papers and letters that were available, that she would exercise a supervision of all his future correspondence, and that she would induce him to leave London; that she would keep him out of the way and inaccessible so long as it suited the purposes of the young American person and his friends. This latter stipulation was the only part of the bargain that made her hesitate. She took this under advisement. One day shortly after this interview she was having her breakfast and, happening to look at the clock, she saw that it was six P.M., and after breakfast, when her mind was fairly clear, she looked into the mirror. She was frightened, thoroughly frightened. Her beauty had been her armor, her weapon, her resource, her salvation. She had always suffered. The aches, the pains, the discomfort of ill-health she could endure so long as she kept her personal appearance. Now, in the depths of the mirror, she saw walking toward her a faded, broken woman, with something in the background, something cold, inevitable, horrible, hovering near. Sir George had advised her to travel, to get away from London. London at the moment was difficult. She was under a small temporary cloud. It was very smart to go to the ends of the world in search of sport. Hal had urged it on that terrible night. He had not mentioned it since, because he had learned to conceal his desires. That he wanted to do anything, go anywhere, was sufficient to arouse her vivid opposition, and she was ingenious in making that opposition as painful as possible. He had resort therefore to the trick of advocating the exact opposite of his intent, but she was very cunning in seeing through such subterfuge. She saw, too, in their peregrinations enlarged opportunities of thwarting him. So to his intense amazement she announced her intention of giving up her own pleasures to gratify him, her willingness to go out, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." He concluded that she had become frightened about her health. His own position was deplorable. The atmosphere of the clubs where he would care to go was cold and clammy. The clubs where he would have been welcomed disgusted him. At home he wore the armor of silence and impassivity, to keep from being stung to death. Abroad he wandered here, he wandered there, without pleasure or purpose. At night he frequented the music-halls, bored, with a sneer on his lip for the bald common vulgarity of it all--the brazen women, the vicious youngsters, and the feeble slimy old men. He went to the sporting events, the races. He never missed the Sporting Club, and got some diversion from seeing one gladiator beat another into a bloody pulp. He was drinking again, and gambling too. He didn't have to look into a mirror to see the end of it all. At the suggestion that they go into the wilderness the rubber mask dropped from his face and he smiled. Dormant energy awoke in him. He suggested India. India suited the young American person too, and so it was agreed that they would go after the pigmy hog in Nepal and Sikkim, the cat-bear (_AElurus_), wild sheep and goats, and the musk-deer in the precipices of the Himalayas. It was the boy's salvation. It gave him something to think of, plan for, and at least he had the joys of imagination and anticipation all the long way to India. Of hunting he got precious little; of game almost none at all. Edith had no taste for hardship or even discomfort, and she was possessed with a satanic restlessness and capriciousness. No sooner had they determined on one course than she changed it. They were lucky to reach any destination before her whim veered. He had not the strength or the patience to fight these moods. It was easier to let her have her way. And so they drifted, drifted from day to day, from place to place, her preference always being for the cities where racing and other forms of gambling offered some diversion.

The cities brought them in contact with the military class, with its painful and odious memories. She wouldn't go into the forests or the mountains with him, and she wouldn't let him go alone. So drifting here and there up and down over the earth like two lost souls, they found themselves one day at Hardwar, near the head-waters of the sacred Ganges, and Hal felt the call of the mountain, and determined to go into the Kedarnath region for game, but, game or no game, he felt that he must get away, go into the solitudes and have a "long think." He had endured the caprices, the nagging, the ingenious cruelties of her deviltry as long as it was possible. He knew she would not follow him, at least not far. She returned to Hardwar, as he knew she would, before he reached the waters of the Bhaghirati, where they camped for the night.

After the evening meal, as they were gathered about the camp-fire--the guides, interpreter, the carriers--out of the shadows of the night, into the fitful gleam of the flames, walked a religious mendicant, a holy man. Almost naked, oblivious to the intense cold, with the abstraction of the devotee, he stood in proud humility. If he came to beg for food, his purpose was at once absorbed, merged in a rhapsodical fervor. From the perfunctory murmur of what might have been a benediction or a prayer, his voice rose to a penetrating and commanding pitch, reached an intense climax, and then he went out again into the night as he had come. What he said produced a profound impression on his hearers.

Hal was conscious of being moved, thrilled, awed by it, though he had no notion of its meaning. A profound silence followed the disappearance of the fakir, a silence that finally became unbearable. Hal somehow dreaded to ask what the old man had said, but finally he started to discuss the plans for the ensuing day. The interpreter shook his head. On the following day they would go back, he informed the sahib. Go back? What for? They had scarcely started. Then it was explained to him that it would be unsafe, unwise, to go on in face of the warning they had received. This was most annoying. Hal indignantly protested against having his plans upset by the wild words of a crazy old man. He would go on. He was informed that in that event he would go alone. The natives would go no further. He fumed, raged, but saw that it was to no purpose. They would return on the morrow. Again he must submit. There was no other way. When all the others had retired he asked the interpreter what the holy man had said. He was informed that the devout man had suddenly become conscious of the presence of a stranger, for whom he brought a message. The voices of destiny cried to him to flee from the East; to go back, to retrace his steps, to find his life where he had lost it, in the far-away where the sun sets in the West. Was that all? No. The written word was following him about the world, running toward him; he must turn back to meet it. That was not all. It was difficult to get the interpreter to complete it. Under pressure he admitted that the wise and holy one had seen a serpent coiled about him, slowly crushing, strangling his soul; that he had disappeared into the night, crying to him: "Escape, escape, escape!"

The following day, on the way back to Hardwar, as they halted for the noonday meal, a native joined them and attached himself to their party without attracting the attention of the sahib who was silent, abstracted, despondent. That night as they camped again the native, having in various ways established to his own satisfaction the identity of the European gentleman, handed him an envelope containing two letters, one from John McCloud and Wah-na-gi, and the other from Walter Gifford. The native was attached to the Indian secret police. That night the sahib had a "long think." When he reached Hardwar the following night he found Edith sunk in a complete stupor. Over the writing-table were scattered letters. In looking for his own it was inevitable that he should see complete evidence of the extent to which he had been the victim of her malice. That night he wrote to John McCloud to forward his papers by registered mail to the care of Secretary Walker at Washington. He wrote to Gifford saying that he would be in Washington at the earliest possible moment, and he left a note for Edith advising her to return to London, where he promised to meet her on his return from America.

*CHAPTER XXIII*

Down from the summits of the Moquitch had swept "Winter-man" with legions upon legions of white cavalry and overrun the land. Trails, roads, trees, rocks, landmarks, fences, rivers, disappeared. Cabins and stables had to be unsnowed. Man's boasted dominion reached from the cabin to the stable and back again. The throbbing, suffering earth had gone to sleep, to dream under a white silence.

John McCloud was dying and God had said to the world, "Peace! Be still!" In the crowded haunts of men brooding sorrow does not sit down by the fireside, and stay. Even sorrow is hustled and bustled about. The butcher and baker are at the kitchen door. The telephone-bell rings. The postman brings the claims of church, hospital, school, town, county, or State. Friends put books, pictures in our hands, close the shutters, take us away, lead us where music soothes, or into strange lands, or into the playhouse where the tragedy of imaginary sins and sufferings forces us for the blessed moment to forget our own. Life, multitudinous life, goes on and sweeps us with it. In the desert sorrow sits by the fire, comes to the table, lies down beside one in the terrible night. There is no other voice except the voice of God. Wah-na-gi and John McCloud had each a noble gift for loving, a gift that had been narrowed down almost to the other. Silence, solitude, and suffering had put the eternal sign and seal upon their love. Out of the wreck of their lives this seemed to be all. It made them very tender, very thoughtful, very considerate of each other. She took elaborate pains that he should not see her anxiety, her terror, her fierce protest against the cruelty of it. She tried very hard to surround the invalid with an atmosphere of comfort, hope, and courage. At times the pretence wore a very thin disguise, and he tried so hard not to let her see him suffer, not to tax her strength, not to shadow her young life with incurable sorrow. Each made a brave show of a cheerfulness neither felt. Each was very sensitive of the smallest change in the simple elements that made up their lives. Each seized upon the smallest sign of encouragement to hand to the other, and each turned away from the grim truth. The tide ebbed and flowed, but on the morning and evening of each day both could take the measure of his drift out to the eternal sea, the measure of their parting.

All that care, ever watchful; all that prayer, silent and spoken; all that love could do to hold him back had been done, and the tide kept on its inevitable way.

As the certain separation came closer and closer each clung to the other with desperate tenderness.

Oh, if the cruel snows would go, and the warm sun would come, and the flowers, and the gentle spring, and give this brave, battling soul a chance! Finally she sent word to McShay to come. She felt that she must have help, help to face this, to do what was to be done, to meet what was to come, if nothing could be done. She cried out for help, and McShay was a strong man, the strongest man she knew, and he loved John McCloud too. He would come. Mike came, came knowing he could do nothing, but glad to come; glad to bring his silent offering. He came when he could, and with him came a storm that raged with unabated fury and made his return impossible; a storm that cut them off completely from the world, that blotted out the sky, that swept the great white plains, caught up the snow in angry swirls, throwing it into vast drifts, tearing it up again and tossing it back against the falling heavens, the turbulent air filled with blinding, stinging, suffocating flakes, while through it all the wind moaned and shrieked and called for victims.

"Beats all," said McShay. "Never will let up, I reckon. Ain't seen a storm like this since I kin remember."

He was sitting on a three-legged stool by the chimney in the living-room of the cabin of the Red Butte Ranch, smoking his pipe. The remark was addressed more to himself than to Wah-na-gi, who sat beside a couch covered with skins and Navajo blankets, which had been drawn down into the glow of the roaring fire. The light from a bracket oil lamp swung from the ceiling fell over her and the pale face resting against the black bear skin, and showed her holding the ghostly hand of all that was left of John McCloud. He was sleeping fitfully, painfully. The windows on each side of the storm-door in the back were shivering in their sockets. The cabin nestled close to the ground or the wild wind would have torn it loose. As it was, it trembled as the wind caught it in its teeth, shook it fiercely, and dropped it howling with impotent fury. As the storm-door opened vagrant hurrying flakes danced into the room and died an instant death in the glow of the great fire. With them Big Bill entered and shook the snow from his cap and clothes, and beat his big hands to get the blood flowing in them.

"Well, Bill, any news?" asked McShay quietly.

"Yes, Rough-house Joe's got in, but he's in awful bad shape, frost-bitten, starving; never will git over it, I guess."

"And the supplies? What about the supplies?"

"Lost!"

"Lost?" and Mike indulged in a low, long whistle.

"Snowslide comin' through Dead Man's Canyon. As far as he knows, Joe's the only one of the party left."

"Gee, that's tough, ain't it?" said McShay quietly.

"The stuff you brought in, Mike, is gone, and we're up against it." Bill referred to the former visit of McShay's in which he had brought a wagon-load of supplies.

"We got to git in touch with somewhere or starve."

Both men realized that help from without was unlikely as no one would know of their necessities. It would be natural to suppose that the supplies lost in Dead Man's Canyon had reached their destination. The situation was serious.

Bill got a stool and came down and sat on the other side of the fireplace and they smoked in silence for some time. Finally Mike said:

"No one will try to break through to us."

"Some of us got to git through to them," said Bill. "That's about the size of it."

"I've only been waitin' for the storm to let up a bit," said the Irishman.

"Gosh, it may keep this up for a month of Sundays. No use waitin' any longer. I think it's a dyin' down some. I'm fer a try at it."

"You?" said Mike with incredulity. "Git out. That's my job. You with your rheumatiz? You ain't any longer young, Bill. Better leave it to me."

Both Bill and McShay had reached the age when it is impossible to take advice. Each went about his preparations while the argument continued.

"You can go if you like," Bill suggested; "but I'm agoin'."

"Ain't you old fellers vain?" protested Mike. "You'll only be a nuisance to me. Better stay."

"Old fellers, eh? Say, you needn't be afraid. If I can't pull you through I won't run away from you. I'll bring you back."

"What is it, Bill?" asked Wah-na-gi, looking up and seeing their elaborate preparations.

"Well, we're clean out o' grub, Wah-na-gi, and some one's got to git through to Calamity or the fort or the Agency."

"Oh, Bill," she said; "couldn't you bring back a doctor for him?"

Bill and McShay exchanged looks and the latter bent over the clergyman and listened to his breathing for a second, and then he said very gently to her:

"It wouldn't be no use, Wah-na-gi. He's pretty nearly over the Divide, I guess. You won't be afraid to be left here alone, will you?"

"Oh, no," she answered simply.

Afraid of what? There was nothing to be afraid of, except this grim spectre which sat on the other side of the couch and held the other hand of her foster-father.

"He may pass out to-night," said McShay, following her gaze.

"Don't see how he can play the game much longer. Gee, he's made a game fight! He was just lent to us, I guess, just to show us what a real man was like; a man who was on the level and wasn't lookin' for the best of it. In my experience I've seen men handled; I've handled 'em myself, and you can appeal to every feller's fear or his lust or his cupidity, and that about lets 'em out. I've always thought this 'love-one-another' thing, this 'turn-the-other-cheek' game, this 'bear-ye-one-another's-burden' racket was a beautiful fairy tale, a good thing for little boys and old women, but say, he makes it good. John, here, makes you believe in it. A life like his puts it up to you, the Christ story, and says: 'Say, what about it?'" Wah-na-gi was weeping. The preacher was asleep, so she could have the relief of tears.

"Don't you cry, little woman," said Mike, trying to console her. "He's had a tough job here. It can't be as hard for him farther on. Would you want to keep him here knowin' what he suffers?"

Ah, that's a hard question to ask. It's only answered by another, and not answered then.

"Don't your arm git tired holdin' it that-a'-way hour after hour?" said the Irishman, trying to divert her.

"He sleeps better that way," was all she said.

"Beats all," said Mike with undisguised admiration. "He clings to the Almighty with one hand, and a little Injin woman with the other. Suppose there's Injin angels, Bill?"

"Looks that-a'-way, don't it?" replied the foreman. "It's a sure thing there's _one_."

Bill had always kept a small supply of liquor on the ranch, hidden away with supreme cunning. Where or what his private cellar was no one ever knew, but on state occasions and in emergency Bill could be depended on to produce. The law of supply having been completely suspended, the private cellar had been reduced to a bottle containing perhaps one and a half drinks of whiskey and another containing perhaps a third of a bottle of brandy. The brandy he now divided carefully into three parts. One flask he handed to McShay, the other he put in the inside of his own storm-coat, and the rest he poured into a cup which he held out to Wah-na-gi.

"What is it, Bill?" she asked.

"It's fer him," he said, nodding toward the invalid. Wah-na-gi had to move to take the cup and, though she disengaged her hand ever so gently, the drifting man felt the anchor drag, and he woke with a little start.

"Well, boys," he said with a faint smile, seeing the two men over him; "what is it?"

"Just tellin' Wah-na-gi to make you take a little of this if you should feel faint in the night," said Bill.

"I've reformed, Bill. I'm not drinking now," said the sick man with a quizzical look playing about his eyes, tenuous and vapory. "I won't need it. Thank you just the same."

The noble voice was gone, the voice he had played upon with all the skill of a great musician, the voice that had swayed multitudes. He spoke with effort in a husky whisper.

"Bill and I are going to try to git through to Calamity or the fort, Parson," said McShay.

"In this storm?" asked the sick man.

"Oh, Bill and I don't mind a little thing like a storm."

"And the wind has died down a whole lot," added Bill cheerfully.

"May God go with you," said the clergyman, raising himself upon the couch. "I'll say good-by to you before you go."

"Oh, shucks," laughed Mike uneasily. "'Tain't good-by, Parson. We're a-comin' back."

"But I won't be here, Mike."

Each one knew what McCloud meant, and each one tried to look as if he didn't. Wah-na-gi, seeing that he wanted to sit up, had put a pillow under his shoulders, and now he stretched out an emaciated hand, to the two big brawny men, and his eyes looked from one to the other with admiration.

"You are two fine, brave, splendid men. I'm proud to have known you, to have called you my friends."

The lines about Bill's mouth twitched and all he could say was, "Same here, Parson," and he walked away to the fire.

Wah-na-gi had gone to the window, as if to look out at the storm, but really to hide her tears. McShay glanced at her and Bill furtively, then he sat down on the stool, and bent down over the sick man and spoke for his ear alone: "And say, Parson, just before comin' over this time, I--I--sold out my liquor business. Thought maybe it would please you, and somehow couldn't think of anything else that would."

A smile spread over the wan face.

"Oh, thank you, Mike. Thank you. Perhaps I haven't lived in vain."

"Anything we kin do fer you while we're gone?" asked Bill, not turning, but gazing deep into the fire. "Any letters, or telegrams, or messages you want to trust us with?"

"No, Bill, thank you. There is just one thing troubles me, and only one--this dear child." He nodded his head in the direction of the window where she was standing weeping. "She's made such a noble fight, against such frightful odds, she mustn't go back; she mustn't be allowed to give up or be forced into the old environment. She must be saved."

"Say, Parson, rest your mind easy about that," said Mike earnestly. "She ain't agoin' to want a friend while Bill or me lives. Ain't that right, Bill?"

"It sure is, Mike."

"That's all," said the sick man with a sigh of relief. "And now I'm ready to go." He meant for the long, long journey.

Bill and Mike were ready too. The wind had died down to a cruel whine and their project waited.