Читать книгу The Silent Battle - George Gibbs - Страница 8

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The third morning rose cold and clear. Kee-way-din had brushed the heavens clean, and the rising sun was burnishing them. Orange and rose color vied for precedence in the splendid procession across the zenith, putting to flight the shadows of violet and purple which retreated westward in rout before the gorgeous pageantry of the dawn.

The girl stirred and started up at once, smiling hopefully at the radiant sky. Each tree awoke; each leaf and bough sent forth its fragrant tribute. Nature had wept, was drying her tears; and all the woods were glad.

The man still slept. The girl listened again for the sounds of his breathing, and then rose slowly and walked out. She shivered with the cold and dampness, for her feet had been wet the night before and were not yet dry, but the fire still glowed warmly. The damp twigs sputtered in protest as she put them on and a shaft of white smoke slanted down the wind, but presently the grateful crackling was followed by a burst of flame.

The explosion of a pine-knot awoke the sleeper in the hut, who rolled over on his couch, looking around him with heavy eyes, unable to put his thoughts together. A ray of sunlight fell upon the girl’s face and rested there; and he saw that she was pale and that her hair had fallen in disorder about her shoulders. He understood then. He had slept upon her bed while she—for all he knew—had spent the night where he now saw her. He straightened, struggled stiffly to his feet and stumbled out, rubbing his eyes.

She greeted him with a wan smile.

“Good morning,” she said. “I awoke first, you see.”

“I c-can’t forgive myself.”

“Oh, yes, you can, since I do.”

“I don’t know what to say to you.”

“You might say ‘good morning.’”

“I’ve been asleep,” he went on with a slow shake of his head, “while you lay—on the ground. I didn’t know. I only remember sitting there. I meant to get up——”

She laughed deliciously.

“But you couldn’t have—unless you had walked in your sleep.”

“I remember nothing.” He ran his blackened fingers through his hair. “Oh, yes, the trail—the deer—and—you cooking fish—and then—after that—we talked, didn’t we?”

He was awake now, and blundered forward eagerly to take the branch which she had lifted from the wood-pile. But she yielded grudgingly.

“I’m to do my share—that we agreed——”

“No—you’re a woman. You shall do nothing—go into the hut and rest.”

“I’m not tired.”

Her appearance belied her words. He looked down at her tenderly and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.

“You have not slept?”

“Oh, yes, I slept,” looking away.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“It wasn’t necessary.”

She smiled, but did not meet his gaze, which she felt was bent eagerly in search of her own.

“Where did you sleep?” he asked again.

“In the shelter—beside you.”

“And I did not know! Do you think you can forgive me?”

She put her hand to her shoulder and gently removed his fingers. But his own seized hers firmly and would not let them go.

“Listen, please,” he pleaded, “won’t you? I want you to understand—many things. I want you to know that I wouldn’t willingly have slept there for anything in the world. It’s a matter of pride with me to make you comfortable. I’m under a moral obligation to myself—it goes deeper than you can ever guess—to bring you safely out of this, and give you to your people. You don’t know how I’ve blessed the chance that threw you in my way—here—since I’ve been in the woods—that it happened to be my opportunity instead of some one else’s who didn’t need it as I did. I did need it. I can’t tell you how or why, but I did. It doesn’t matter who I am, but I want you to appreciate this much, at least, that I never knew anything of the joy of living until I found it here, the delight of the struggle to satisfy the mere pangs of healthy hunger—yours and mine, the wonderful ache of muscles stretched to the snapping point.” He stopped, with a sharp sigh.

“Oh, I know you can’t understand all this. I don’t think I want you to—or why it hurts me to know that for one night at least you have suffered——”

“I do understand, I think,” she murmured slowly. She had not looked at him, and her gaze sought the distant trees. “I did not suffer, though,” she added.

“You had been crying—they hurt me, too, those anxious eyes of yours.”

“I was afraid you might not come back, that was all,” she said frankly. “I’m rather useless, you see.”

He took her other hand and made her look at him.

“You felt the need of me?” he queried.

“Yes, of course,” she said simply. “What would I have done without you?”

He laughed happily, “What wouldn’t you have done—if you hadn’t cut your finger?”

She colored and her eyes, in some confusion, sought the two trees which still bore the evidence of her ill-fated building operation.

“Yesterday, when I was away you started to build a shack for me,” he went on. “It was your right, of course——”

“No, no,” she protested, lowering her head. “I thought you’d like it so, I——”

“I understand,” gently. “But it seems——”

“It was a selfish motive after all,” she broke in again. “Your strength is more important than mine——”

He smiled and shook his head.

“You can’t mislead me. Last night I learned something of what you are—gentle, courageous, motherly, self-effacing. I’ll remember you so—always.”

She disengaged her hands abruptly and took up the saucepan.

“Meanwhile, the breakfast is to be cooked—” she said coolly. There was no reproof in her tone, only good fellowship, a deliberate confirmation of her promises of the night before.

With a smile he took the saucepan from her hand and went about his work. It seemed that his failure yesterday to find a way out meant more to him this morning than it did to her. His limbs were heavy, too, and his body ached from top to toe; but he went to the brook and washed, then searched the woods for the blueberries that she liked and silently cooked the meal.

As he did not eat she asked him, “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Not very.”

He took up a fish and turned it over in his fingers. “I think I’ll wait for the venison pasty.”

“Don’t you feel well?”

“Just a little loggy,” that’s all. “I think I slept too long.”

She looked up at him suddenly, and then with friendly solicitude, laid her fingers lightly along his brow. The gesture was natural, gentle, so exquisitely feminine, that he closed his eyes delightedly, conscious of the agreeable softness of her fingers and the coolness of their touch.

“Your brow is hot,” she said quickly.

“Is it?” he asked. “That’s queer, I feel chilly.”

“You’ve caught a bad cold, I’m afraid,” she said, removing her fingers. “It’s very—very imprudent of you.”

Not satisfied with the rapidity of her diagnosis, he thrust his hand toward her for confirmation.

“I haven’t any fever, have I?”

Her fingers lightly touched his wrist.

“I’m afraid so. Your pulse is thumping pretty fast.”

“Very fast?”

“Yes.”

“You must be mistaken.”

“No, you have fever. You’ll have to rest to-day.”

“I don’t want to rest. I couldn’t if I wanted to.”

“You must!” she said peremptorily. “There’s nothing but the firewood. I can get that.”

“There’s the shack to build,” he said.

“The shack must wait,” she replied.

“And the deer to be butchered?”

She looked at the carcass and then put her fingers over her eyes. But she looked up at him resolutely.

“Yes,” she persisted, “I’ll do that, too—if you’ll show me how.”

He looked at her a moment with a soft light in his deep-set eyes and then rose heavily to his feet.

“It’s very kind of you to want to make me an invalid,” he said, “but that can’t be. There’s nothing wrong with me. What I want is work. The more I have the better I’ll feel. I’m going to skin the deer.” And disregarding her protests, he leaned over and caught up the hind-legs of the creature, dragging it into the bushes.

The effort cost him a violent throbbing in the head and pains like little needle pricks through his body. His eyes swam and the hand that held his knife was trembling; but after a while he finished his work, and cutting a strong young twig, thrust it through the tendons of the hind legs and carried the meat back to camp, hanging it high on a projecting branch near the fire.

She watched him moving slowly about, but covered her eyes at the sight of his red hands and the erubescent carcass.

“Don’t you feel like a murderer?” she asked.

“Yes,” he admitted, “I think I do; half of me does—but the hunter, the primitive man in me is rejoicing. There’s an instinct in all of us that belongs to a lower order of creation.”

“But it—it’s unclean——”

“Then all meat is unclean. The reproach is on the race—not on us. After all we are only first cousins to the South-Sea gentlemen who eat one another,” he laughed.

“I don’t believe I can eat it,” she shuddered.

“Oh, yes, you will—when you’re hungry.”

“I’ll never eat meat again,” she insisted. “Never! The brutality of it!”

“What’s the difference?” he laughed. “In town we pay a butcher to do our dirty work—here we do it ourselves. Our responsibilities are just as great there as here.”

“That’s true—I never thought of that, but I can’t forget that creature’s eyes.” And while she looked soberly into the fire, he went down to the stream and cleansed himself, washing away all traces of his unpleasant task. When he returned she still sat as before.

“Why is it?” she asked thoughtfully, “that the animal appetites are so repellent, since we ourselves are animals? And yet we tolerate gluttony—drunkenness among our kind? We’re only in a larva state after all.”

He had sunk on the log beside her for the comfort of the blaze, and as she spoke the shadows under his brows darkened with his frown and the chin beneath its stubble hardened in deep lines.

“I sometimes think that Thoreau had the right idea of life,” she said slowly. “There are infinite degrees of gluttony—infinite degrees of drunkenness. I felt shame for you just now—for myself—for the blood on your hands. I can’t explain it. It seemed different from everything else that you have done here in the woods, for the forest is clean, sweet-smelling. I did not like to feel ashamed for you. You see,” she smiled, “I’ve been rating you very highly.”

“No,” he groaned, his head in his hands. “Don’t! You mustn’t do that!”

At the somber note she turned and looked at him keenly. She could not see his face, but the fingers that hid it were trembling.

“You’re ill!” she gasped. “Your body is shaking.”

He sat up with an effort and his face was the color of ashes.

“No, it’s nothing. Just a chill, I think. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

But she put her arm around him and made him sit on the log nearest to the fire.

“This won’t do at all,” she said anxiously. “You’ve got to take care of yourself—to let me take care of you. Here! You must drink this.”

She had taken the flask from her pocket and before he knew it had thrust it to his lips. He hesitated a moment, his eyes staring into space and then without question, drank deep, his eyes closed.

And as the leaping fires went sparkling through his body, he set the vessel down, screwed on the lid and put it on the log beside him. Two dark spots appeared beneath the tan and mounted slowly to his temples, two red spots like the flush of shame. An involuntary shudder or two and the trembling ceased. Then he sat up and looked at her.

“A mustard foot-bath and some quinine, please,” he asked with a queer laugh.

But she refused to smile. “You slept in your soaking clothes last night,” severely.

He shrugged his shoulders and laughed again.

“That’s nothing. I’ve done that often. Besides, what else could I do? If you had wakened me——”

“That is unkind.”

She was on the verge of tears. So he got to his feet quickly and shaking himself like a shaggy dog, faced her almost jauntily.

“I’m right as a trivet,” he announced. “And I’m going to call you Hebe—the cup-bearer to the gods—or Euphrosyne. Which do you like the best?”

“I don’t like either,” she said with a pucker at her brow. And then with the demureness which so became her. “My name is—is Jane.”

“Jane!” he exclaimed. “Jane! of course. Do you know I’ve been wondering, ever since we’ve been here what name suited you best, Phyllis, Millicent, Elizabeth, and a dozen others I’ve tried them all; but I’m sure now that Jane suits you best of all. Jane!” he chuckled gleefully. “Yes, it does—why, it’s you. How could I ever have thought of anything else?”

Her lips pouted reluctantly and finally broke into laughter, which showed her even white teeth and discovered new dimples.

“Do you really like it?”

“How could I help it? It’s you, I tell you—so sound, sane, determined and a little prim, too.”

“I’m not prim.”

“Yes,” he decided, “you’re prim—when you think that you ought to be.”

“Oh.”

He seated himself beside her, looking at her quizzically as though she was a person he had never seen before—as though the half-identity she provided had invested her with new and unexpected attributes.

“It was nice of you to tell me. My name is Phil,” he said.

“Is it?” she asked almost mechanically.

“Yes, don’t you like it?”

Her glance moved quickly from one object to another—the shelter, the balsam bed, and the crutch which leaned against the door flap.

“Don’t you like it?” he repeated eagerly.

“No,” quietly. “It isn’t like you at all.”

Probed for a reason, she would give none, except the woman’s reason which was no reason at all. Only when he ceased probing did she give it, and then voluntarily.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to change it then,” he laughed.

“Yes, change it, please. The only Phils I’ve ever known were men of a different stripe—men without purposes, without ambitions.” And then, after a pause, “I believe you to be different.”

“No! I have no purposes—no ambitions,” he said glowering again at the fire.

“That is not true.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you have ideals—of purity, of virtue, of courage.”

“No,” he mumbled, “I have no ideals. Life is a joke—without a point. If it has any, I haven’t discovered it yet.”

Her eyes sought his face in a vague disquiet, but he would not meet her look. The flush on his cheek had deepened, his gaze roved dully from one object to another and his fingers moved aimlessly upon his knees. She had proved him for three days, she thought, with the test of acid and the fire, but she did not know him at this moment. The thing that she had discovered and recognized as the clean white light of his inner genius had been suddenly smothered. She could not understand. His words were less disturbing than his manner, and his voice sounded gruff and unfamiliar to her ears.

She rose quietly and moved away, and he did not follow her. He did not even turn his head and for all she knew was not aware that she had gone. This was unlike him, for there had never been a moment since they had met when she could have questioned his chivalry, his courtesy or good manners. Her mind was troubled vaguely, like the surface of a lake which trembles at the distant storm.

A walk through the forest soothed her. The brook—her brook and his—sang as musically as before, the long drawn aisles had not changed, and the note of praise still swelled among the fretted vaults above. The birds made light of their troubles, too, and the leaves were whispering joyously the last gossip of the wood. What they said she could not guess, but she knew by the warm flush that had risen to her cheeks that it must be personal.

When she returned to camp her arms were full of asters and cardinal flowers. He greeted her gravely, with an almost too elaborate politeness.

“I hope you’ll forgive me,” he begged her. “I don’t think I’m quite myself to-day.”

“Are you feeling better?” she questioned.

“Yes, I’m quite—quite comfortable. I was afraid I had offended you.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t understand you for a moment. That was all.” She lifted the flowers so that he might see them better. “I’ve brought these for our lunch-table.”

But he did not look at them. His eyes, still glowing unfamiliarly, sought only hers.

“Will you forgive me?”

“Yes, of course,” lightly.

“I want—I want your friendship. I can’t tell you how much. I didn’t say anything that offended you, did I? I felt pretty seedy. Everything seemed to be slipping away from me.”

“Not now?”

“Oh, no. I’m all right.”

He took the flowers from her arms and laid them at the foot of a tree. Then coming forward he thrust out both his hands suddenly and took her by the elbows.

“Jane!” he cried, “Jane! Look up into my eyes! I want you to see what you’ve written there. Why haven’t you ever seen it? Why wouldn’t you look and read? It’s madness, perhaps; but if it’s madness, then madness is sweet—and all the world is mad with me. There isn’t any world. There’s nothing but you and me—and Arcadia.”

She had turned her gaze to the ground and would not look at him but she struggled faintly in his embrace. The color was gone from her cheeks now and beneath the long lashes that swept her cheek—one great tear trembled and fell.

“No, no—you mustn’t,” she whispered, stifling. “It can’t—it mustn’t be. I don’t——”

But he had seized her more closely in his arms and shackled her lips with his kisses.

“I’m mad—I know—but I want you, Jane. I love you—I love you—I want the woods to hear——”

She wrenched one arm free and pushed away, her eyes wide, for the horror of him had dawned slowly.

“Oh!” she gasped. “You!”

As he seized her again, she drew back, mad with fear, shrunken within herself, like a snake in a thicket coiling itself to thrust and then struck viciously.

He felt the impact of a blow full in the face and staggered back releasing her. And her accents, sharp, cruel, vicious, clove the silence like sword-cuts.

“You cad! You brute! You utter brute!”

He came forward like a blind man, mumbling incoherently, but she avoided him easily, and fled.

“Jane!” he called hoarsely. “Come back to me, Jane. Come back to me! Oh, God!”

He stumbled and fell; then rose again, putting his hands to his face and running heavily toward the spot where she had vanished into the bushes—the very spot where three days ago she had appeared to him. He caught a glimpse of her ahead of him and blundered on, calling for forgiveness. There was no reply but the echo of his own voice, nor any glimpse of her. After that he remembered little, except that he went on and on, tripping, falling, tearing his face and clothes in the briars, getting to his feet and going on again, mad with the terror of losing her—an instinct only, an animal in search of its wounded mate.

He did not know how long he strove or how far, but there came a time when he fell headlong among some boulders and could rise no more.

That morning two Indian guides in search of a woman who had been lost, met another Indian at the headwaters of a stream, and together they followed a fresh trail—the trail of a big man wearing hob-nailed boots and carrying a burden. In the afternoon they found an empty shack beside which a fire was burning. Two creels hung side by side near the fire and upon the limb of a tree was the carcass of a deer. There were many trails into the woods—some made by the feet of a woman, some by the feet of a man.

The three guides sat at the fire for awhile and smoked, waiting.

Then two of them got up and after examining the smaller foot-marks silently disappeared. When they had gone the third guide, a puzzled look on his face, picked up an object which had fallen under a log and examined it with minute interest. Then with a single guttural sound from his throat, put the object in his pocket and bending well forward, his eyes upon the ground, glided noiselessly through the underbrush after them.