TWO SLEEPERS AWAKEN
It now befell that the imminent adventure of Ewing should bring him a
double rapture. The day after Mrs. Laithe secretly played special
Providence to that unsuspicious youth her brother found profit of his
own in the plan.
"I've a world of things to do here, Nell," he said. "I ought to stay
here this winter. I'd be that much forwarder with my work next spring."
"I shall be quite safe alone," she answered.
"Why go alone? If you insist on robbing the cradle, why not take the
innocent with you? Of course you'll have to see that he doesn't walk off
the train, or lose his hat out of the window, or eat too much candy, or
rough-house the other children on the way, but he'll serve every purpose
of a man and brother."
"To be sure!" she broke in with enthusiasm. "I worried last night about
his going. We'll put it that I'm in his charge, and he will really be in
mine."
"That's it. He'll feel important, and you'll be the tidy nurse. And with
both of you off my mind I can start those chaps to getting out logs for
the Bar-B mansion. I'll camp over there till a good tracking snow comes,
then I'll have an elk hunt--I want a good head for the dining room--then
I'll hole up here at Pierce's for the winter and learn how to handle my
stock. So that's settled."
Mrs. Laithe rode over to apprise Ewing of this plan. The little clearing
slept vacant in the sunlight. She left Cooney "tied to the ground" by
throwing the bridle rein over his head, and knocked on the open door of
the cabin with the handle of her quirt. There was no response save
echoes from the empty living room. Crossing this she drew aside the
blanket that curtained the door of the studio. The big room lay before
her in strange disorder. Pictures and hangings were gone from the wall.
Two yawning trunks stood by the door; canvases and portfolios lay about;
loose drawings and clothing littered the chairs and floor. Beyond this
disarray stood the easel, still holding the mother's portrait. In the
light from the window the eyes looked livingly into her own through the
silence. She was struck by some new glint of meaning in them, something
she read as an appeal, almost a prayer. Her own eyes fell and then she
first noticed the room's living occupant.
On the couch, in the shadow of the half-drawn curtain, Ewing lay asleep.
He had sprawled there easily, half turned on his side, one arm flung
about his head, the other hanging over to the floor. Now that she saw
him she heard his measured breathing. Some new, quick-born
interest--curiosity, sympathy, she knew not what--impelled her to scan
the sleeping face more closely. She stepped lightly across to the couch
and looked down at him, with a little air of carelessness against his
sudden awakening. It was the first time she had studied his face in
repose. Lacking the ready, boyish smile, it was an older face, revealing
lines of maturity she had not suspected in the arch of brow above the
deep-set eyes, in the lean jaws and sharply square chin, and in the
muscled neck, revealed by the thrown-back head. It was a new face, for
the unguarded faces of the sleeping, like the faces of the dead tell
many secrets. Ewing's face was all at once full of new suggestion, of
new depths, of unsuspected complexities. As she gazed, scarce breathing,
she was alive to a new consciousness of him. He had been a boy, winning
from her at once by his fresh, elemental humanness a regard that came
partly from the mother lying alert in her, and partly from the joyous,
willing and even wistful comrade which this woman was fitted to be. Now,
bending over the unmasked face, she divined with swift alarm that her
old careless attitude toward the sleeper might never be recovered. What
her new attitude must be she could not yet know, but she was conscious
of being swept by a great wave of tenderness for him; swept, too, by
fear of him; and the impact of these waves left her trembling before
him. Some flash of portent, some premonition born of instinct, warned
her with a clearness that was blinding. Tenderness and fear rolled in
upon her, though her reason weighed them as equal absurdities. Then her
look rose to the mother's portrait and she saw that the eyes had
followed her: they seemed now to challenge, almost fiercely. Only the
briefest of moments could she endure their gaze, a gaze that in some way
drew life to itself from the breathing of the sleeper. Instinctively she
brushed her hand before her own eyes, drew herself up with a little
flinching shudder and moved slowly backward to the door.
Then she was happily out in the sunlight, breathing deep of the
pine-spiced air, gratefully eying the familiar boundaries of the
clearing, the stumps, the huge pile of cut wood, and the fenced-in
vegetable garden. Over the line of green to the north a gray, bare
mountain shot above the lesser hills, rising splendidly from its
timbered base to a peak hooded in snow. It swam in her vision at first,
but presently something of its grounded sureness, something of the peace
that slept along its upper reaches, fell upon her own soul and her
serenity was restored.
Not pausing to review those amazing moments of inner tumult, she stepped
again to the door and with her old, careless, mildly amused laugh she
beat upon it, loudly this time. She heard an inarticulate call from the
studio, and again she assaulted the panel. Then the curtain was drawn
aside and Ewing stared at her from the doorway.
"I believe you were sleeping," she started to say, but he came quickly
to her with something between a laugh and a shout.
"Then it's true, it _is_ true--you're real! I just dreamed that you
became Ben Crider and made me walk in the middle of the street." He
fairly rushed her into the studio and waved excitedly to the open
trunks.
"There! I began to pack last night so I could see it when I woke up and
have a proof that things were true. I didn't sleep at all till about
eight this morning."
She sat on the couch, feeling that she was foolish beyond measure to
avoid the eyes of the portrait. Then she smiled at him with an effort to
recover the amused ascendancy of their first meetings.
"It's all true, I assure you, and I wonder if you'd mind taking charge
of me when you go East. My brother has suggested it, and I'll promise
not to be a trouble."
His look of wondering delight was so utterly boyish, his helpless
laughter so entirely without reserve that she regained for the moment
her old easy dominance.
"Would I mind--mind going with you? That's a joke, isn't it?" He seized
both her hands in a grasp from which she caught some thrill of his
deep-breathed, electric joy.
"But of course this is nonsense," he went on; "I'm still lying there."
"Enough of dreams," she broke in warningly. "You'll find it only too,
too real. You're going to work. It's simple."
He sat down on one of the trunks, trying to subdue his excitement, his
hands clenched.
"If this feeling lasts I can do anything, _anything_, you understand,
learn everything, do everything, be everything. I have power. Ever since
you left yesterday I've felt full of steel springs, all tightly coiled.
Only I must be careful. If they went off all at once there'd be an
explosion, and I'm afraid I couldn't ever be repaired."
She grimaced with an effort at mock dismay which was not wholly
successful. She divined the literal truth under his jesting. The springs
were coiled and their steel was not too well tempered, she believed. The
thought left a shadow on her face.
"You're not doubting anything?" he asked quickly.
"Not doubting, O youth! Only a little innocent wonder."
"But isn't life an enchantment? Isn't it all miracles? Oh, I understand
poets at last. They can't tell you their secret unless you already know
it. They sing in big numbers. They say a million is true, and you say,
'Yes, that's very pretty, but it's poetry--exaggeration; he really means
that a hundred is true,' and you never know any better till the light
comes. Then you see that the poet was literal and quite prosaic all the
time. The whole million was always true, in beauty and bigness and
wonder."
"Stop!" she protested. "You're making me feel as old as the world
itself, ancient and scarred with wisdom."
"You!" he burst in, "you're as young as the world. You are foolish and I
am the wise one if you can't see that. Indeed, you're looking
beautifully foolish this minute. You are thinking all kinds of doubts
underneath a lot of things you won't tell me. You're secretive. You hide
a lot from me."
She laughed, a little uneasily.
"You are a babe for wisdom," she retorted; "but you're not to be
enlightened in a day--nor by me. I'll give you a year. You shall tell me
then which of us two is the older. Now you must be at your packing. Can
you be ready by Monday?"
"Monday? and I'd been wondering what would be the name of the day. So
it's merely Monday? How many Mondays there have been, how many, many
Mondays, that were like any other day! And now this Monday steals
up--yes, I'll be ready."
"I see you are past reason----"
"Say above it----"
"Anyway, get on with your packing. So much is true." He would have
ridden back with her, but she demurred.
"It's so far," he urged.
"It isn't half far enough," she mocked him, "I have so much thinking to
do!"
"Monday, Monday, Monday, then!" he chanted, as he went out to lift her
into the saddle. But when he had done this he suddenly bowed his head to
kiss her hand, as he had seen his father long ago kiss his mother's
hand.
"You are all the world, just now, all I know of it," he said.
She looked back to where he stood, straight and buoyant, his head thrown
back in joyous challenge.
"And you are youth--dear, dear youth!" she cried; but this he could not
hear.
A little farther on she breathed softly, "Poor dead Kitty--don't be
afraid!"