Every Saturday the distinguished physician from Angelica City came to
Manzanita on the afternoon train, spent two or three hours at Camilla
Van Arsdale's camp, and returned in time to catch Number Seven back. No
imaginable fee would have induced him to abstract one whole day from his
enormous practice for any other patient. But he was himself an ardent
vocal amateur, and to keep Royce Melvin alive and able to give forth her
songs to the world was a special satisfaction to his soul. Moreover, he
knew enough of Banneker's story to take pride in being partner in his
plan of deception and self-sacrifice. He pretended that it was a needed
holiday for him: his bills hardly defrayed the traveling expense.
Now, riding back with Banneker, he meditated a final opinion, and out of
that opinion came speech.
"Mr. Banneker, they ought to give you and me a special niche in the Hall
of Fame," he said.
A rather wan smile touched briefly Banneker's lips. "I believe that my
ambitions once reached even that far," he said.
The other reflected upon the implied tragedy of a life, so young, for
which ambition was already in the past tense, as he added:
"In the musical section. We've got our share in the nearest thing to
great music that has been produced in the America of our time. You and
I. Principally you."
Banneker made a quick gesture of denial.
"I don't know what you owe to Camilla Van Arsdale, but you've paid the
debt. There won't be much more to pay, Banneker."
Banneker looked up sharply.
"No." The visitor shook his graying head. "We've performed as near a
miracle as it is given to poor human power to perform. It can't last
much longer."
"How long?"
"A matter of weeks. Not more. Banneker, do you believe in a personal
immortality?"
"I don't know. Do you?"
"I don't know, either. I was thinking.... If it were so; when she gets
across, what she will feel when she finds her man waiting for her. God!"
He lifted his face to the great trees that moved and murmured overhead.
"How that heart of hers has sung to him all these years!"
He lifted his voice and sent it rolling through the cathedral aisles of
the forest, in the superb finale of the last hymn.
"For even the purest delight may pall,
And power must fail, and the pride must fall
And the love of the dearest friends grow small--
But the glory of the Lord is all in all."
The great voice was lost in the sighing of the winds. They rode on,
thoughtful and speechless. When the physician turned to his companion
again, it was with a brisk change of manner.
"And now we'll consider you."
"Nothing to consider," declared Banneker.
"Is your professional judgment better than mine?" retorted the other.
"How much weight have you lost since you've been out here?"
"I don't know."
"Find out. Don't sleep very well, do you?"
"Not specially."
"What do you do at night when you can't sleep? Work?"
"No."
"Well?"
"Think."
The doctor uttered a non-professional monosyllable. "What will you do,"
he propounded, waving his arm back along the trail toward the Van
Arsdale camp, "when this little game of yours is played out?"
"God knows!" said Banneker. It suddenly struck him that life would be
blank, empty of interest or purpose, when Camilla Van Arsdale died, when
there was no longer the absorbing necessity to preserve, intact and
impregnable, the fortress of love and lies wherewith he had surrounded
her.
"When this chapter is finished," said the other, "you come down to
Angelica City with me. Perhaps we'll go on a little camping trip
together. I want to talk to you."
The train carried him away. Oppressed and thoughtful, Banneker walked
slowly across the blazing, cactus-set open toward his shack. There was
still the simple housekeeping work to be done, for he had left early
that morning. He felt suddenly spiritless, flaccid, too inert even for
the little tasks before him. The physician's pronouncement had taken the
strength from him. Of course he had known that it couldn't be very
long--but only a few weeks!
He was almost at the shack when he noticed that the door stood half
ajar.
But here, where everything had been disorder, was now order. The bed was
made, the few utensils washed, polished, and hung up; on the table a
handful of the alamo's bright leaves in a vase gave a touch of color.
In the long chair (7 T 4031 of the Sears-Roebuck catalogue) sat Io. A
book lay on her lap, the book of "The Undying Voices." Her eyes were
closed. Banneker reached out a hand to the door lintel for support.
A light tremor ran through Io's body. She opened her eyes, and fixed
them on Banneker. She rose slowly. The book fell to the floor and lay
open between them. Io stood, her arms hanging straitly at her side, her
whole face a lovely and loving plea.
"Please, Ban!" she said, in a voice so little that it hardly came to his
ears.
Speech and motion were denied him, in the great, the incredible surprise
of her presence.
"Please, Ban, forgive me." She was like a child, beseeching. Her firm
little chin quivered. Two great, soft, lustrous tears welled up from the
shadowy depths of the eyes and hung, gleaming, above the lashes. "Oh,
aren't you going to speak to me!" she cried.
At that the bonds of his languor were rent. He leapt to her, heard the
broken music of her sob, felt her arms close about him, her lips seek
his and cling, loath to relinquish them even for the passionate murmurs
of her love and longing for him.
"Hold me close, Ban! Don't ever let me go again! Don't ever let me doubt
again!"
When, at length, she gently released herself, her foot brushed the
fallen book. She picked it up tenderly, and caressed its leaves as she
adjusted them.
"Didn't the Voices tell you that I'd come back, Ban?" she asked.
He shook his head. "If they did, I couldn't hear them."
"But they sang to you," she insisted gently. "They never stopped
singing, did they?"
"No. No. They never stopped singing."
"Ah; then you ought to have known, Ban. And I ought to have known that
you couldn't have done what I believed you had. Are you sure you forgive
me, Ban?"
She told him of what she had discovered, of the talk with Russell
Edmonds ("I've a letter from him for you, dearest one; he loves you,
too. But not as I do. Nobody could!" interjected Io jealously), of the
clue of the telegram. And he told her of Camilla Van Arsdale and the
long deception; and at that, for the first time since he knew her, she
broke down and gave herself up utterly to tears, as much for him as for
the friend whom he had so loyally loved and served. When it was over and
she had regained command of herself, she said:
"Now you must take me to her."
So once more they rode together into the murmurous peace of the forest.
Io leaned in her saddle as they drew near the cabin, to lay a hand on
her lover's shoulder.
"Once, a thousand years ago, Ban," she said, "when love came to me, I
was a wicked little infidel and would not believe. Not in the Enchanted
Canyon, nor in the Mountains of Fulfillment, nor in the Fadeless Gardens
where the Undying Voices sing. Do you remember?"
"Do I not!" whispered Ban, turning to kiss the fingers that tightened on
his shoulder.
"And--and I blasphemed and said there was always a serpent in every
Paradise, and that Experience was a horrid hag, with a bony finger
pointing to the snake.... This is my recantation, Ban. I know now that
you were the true Prophet; that Experience has shining wings and eyes
that can lock to the future as well as the past, and immortal Hope for a
lover. And that only they two can guide to the Mountains of Fulfillment.
Is it enough, Ban?"
"It is enough," he answered with grave happiness.
"Listen!" exclaimed Io.
The sound of song, tender and passionate and triumphant, came pulsing
through the silence to meet them as they rode on.
THE END