David held in his hands a photograph--the picture of a girl. He had half
guessed what he would find when he began to unfold the newspaper
wrapping and saw the edge of gray cardboard. In the same breath had come
his astonishment--a surprise that was almost a shock. The night had been
filled with changes for him; forces which he had not yet begun to
comprehend had drawn him into the beginning of a strange adventure; they
had purged his thoughts of _himself_; they had forced upon him other
things, other people, and a glimpse or two of another sort of life; he
had seen tragedy, and happiness--a bit of something to laugh at; and he
had felt the thrill of it all. A few hours had made him the bewildered
and yet passive object of the unexpected. And now, as he sat alone on
the edge of his bed, had come the climax of the unexpected.
The girl in the picture was not dead--not merely a lifeless shadow put
there by the art of a camera. She was alive! That was his first
thought--his first impression. It was as if he had come upon her
suddenly, and by his presence had startled her--had made her face him
squarely, tensely, a little frightened, and yet defiant, and ready for
flight. In that first moment he would not have disbelieved his eyes if
she had moved, if she had drawn away from him and disappeared out of the
picture with the swiftness of a bird. For he--some one--had startled
her; some one had frightened her; some one had made her afraid, and yet
defiant; some one had roused in her that bird-like impulse of flight
even as the camera had clicked.
He bent closer into the lampglow, and stared. The girl was standing on a
flat slab of rock close to the edge of a pool. Behind her was a carpet
of white sand, and beyond that a rock-cluttered gorge and the side of a
mountain. She was barefooted. Her feet were white against the dark rock.
Her arms were bare to the elbows, and shone with that same whiteness. He
took these things in one by one, as if it were impossible for the
picture to impress itself upon him all at once. She stood leaning a
little forward on the rock slab, her dress only a little below her
knees, and as she leaned thus, her eyes flashing and her lips parted,
the wind had flung a wonderful disarray of curls over her shoulder and
breast. He saw the sunlight in them; in the lampglow they seemed to
move; the throb of her breast seemed to give them life; one hand seemed
about to fling them back from her face; her lips quivered as if about to
speak to him. Against the savage background of mountain and gorge she
stood out clear-cut as a cameo, slender as a reed, wild, palpitating,
beautiful. She was more than a picture. She was life. She was
there--with David in his room--as surely as the woman had been with him
in the coach.
He drew a deep breath and sat back on the edge of his bed. He heard
Father Roland getting into his creaky bed in the adjoining room. Then
came the Missioner's voice.
"Good-night, David."
"Good-night, Father."
For a space after that he sat staring blankly at the log of his room.
Then he leaned over again and held the photograph a second time in the
lampglow. The first strange spell of the picture was broken, and he
looked at it more coolly, more critically, a little disgusted with
himself for having allowed his imagination to play a trick on him. He
turned it over in his hands, and on the back of the cardboard mount he
saw there had been writing. He examined it closely, and made out faintly
the words, "Firepan Creek, Stikine River, August...." and the date was
gone. That was all. There was no name, no word that might give him a
clue as to the identity of the mysterious woman in the coach, or her
relationship to the strange picture she had left in her seat when she
disappeared at Graham.
Once more his puzzled eyes tried to find some solution to the mystery of
this night in the picture of the girl herself, and as he looked,
question after question pounded through his head. What had startled her?
Who had frightened her? What had brought that hunted look--that
half-defiance--into her poise and eyes, just as he had seen the strange
questing and suppressed fear in the eyes and face of the woman in the
coach? He made no effort to answer, but accepted the visual facts as
they came to him. She was young, the girl in the picture; almost a child
as he regarded childhood. Perhaps seventeen, or a month or two older; he
was curiously precise in adding that month or two. Something in the
_woman_ of her as she stood on the rock made it occur to him as
necessary. He saw, now, that she had been wading in the pool, for she
had dropped a stocking on the white sand, and near it lay an object
that was a shoe or a moccasin, he could not make out which. It was
while she had been wading--alone--that the interruption had come; she
had turned; she had sprung to the flat rock, her hands a little
clenched, her eyes flashing, her breast panting under the smother of her
hair; and it was in this moment, as she stood ready to fight--or
fly--that the camera had caught her.
Now, as he scanned this picture, as it lived before his eyes, a faint
smile played over his lips, a smile in which there was a little humour
and much irony. He had been a fool that day, twice a fool, perhaps three
times a fool. Nothing but folly, a diseased conception of things, could
have made him see tragedy in the face of the woman in the coach, or have
induced him to follow her. Sleeplessness--a mental exhaustion to which
his body had not responded in two days and two nights--had dulled his
senses and his reason. He felt an unpleasant desire to laugh at himself.
Tragedy! A woman in distress! He shrugged his shoulders, and his teeth
gleamed in a cold smile at the girl in the picture. Surely there was no
tragedy or mystery in her poise on that rock! She had been bathing,
alone, hidden away as she thought; some one had crept up, had disturbed
her, and the camera had clicked at the psychological moment of her
bird-like poise when she was not yet decided whether to turn in flight
or remain and punish the intruder with her anger. It was quite clear to
him. Any girl caught in the same way might have betrayed the same
emotions. But--Firepan Creek--Stikine River.... And she was wild. She
was a creature of those mountains and that wild gorge, wherever they
were--and beautiful--slender as a flower--lovelier than....
David set his lips tight. They shut off a quick breath, a gasp, the
sharp surge of a sudden pain. Swift as his thoughts there had come a
transformation in the picture before his eyes--a drawing of a curtain
over it, like a golden veil; and then _she_ was standing there, and the
gold had gathered about her in the wonderful mantle of her
hair--shining, dishevelled hair--a bare, white arm thrust upward through
its sheen, and _her_ face--taunting, unafraid--_laughing at him_! Good
God! could he never kill that memory? Was it upon him again to-night,
clutching at his throat, stifling his heart, grinding him into the agony
he could not fight--that vision of her--_his wife?_ That girl on her
rock, so like a slender flower! That woman in her room, so like a golden
goddess! Both caught--unexpectedly! What devil-spirit had made him pick
up this picture from the woman's seat? What....
His fingers tightened upon the photograph, ready to tear it into bits.
The cardboard ripped an inch--and he stopped suddenly his impulse to
destroy. The girl was looking at him again from out of the
picture--looking at him with clear, wide eyes, surprised at his
weakness, startled by the fierceness of his assault upon her, wondering,
amazed, questioning him! For the first time he saw what he had missed
before--that _questioning_ in her eyes. It was as if she were on the
point of asking him something--as if her voice had just come from
between her parted lips, or were about to come. And for _him;_ that was
it--for _him!_
His fingers relaxed. He smoothed down the torn edge of the cardboard, as
if it had been a wound in his own flesh. After all, this inanimate thing
was very much like himself. It was lost, a thing out of place, and out
of home; a wanderer from now on depending largely, like himself, on the
charity of fate. Almost gently he returned it to its newspaper wrapping.
Deep within him there was a sentiment which made him cherish little
things which had belonged to the past--a baby's shoe, a faded ribbon, a
withered flower that _she_ had worn on the night they were married; and
memories--memories that he might better have let droop and die.
Something of this spirit was in the touch of his fingers as he placed
the photograph on the table.
He finished undressing quietly. Before he turned in he placed a hand on
his head. It was hot, feverish. This was not unusual, and it did not
alarm him. Quite often of late these hot and feverish spells had come
upon him, nearly always at night. Usually they were followed the next
day by a terrific headache. More and more frequently they had been
warning him how nearly down and out he was, and he knew what to expect.
He put out his light and stretched himself between the warm blankets of
his bed, knowing that he was about to begin again the fight he
dreaded--the struggle that always came at night with the demon that
lived within him, the demon that was feeding on his life as a leech
feeds on blood, the demon that was killing him inch by inch. Nerves
altogether unstrung! Nerves frayed and broken until they were bleeding!
Worry--emptiness of heart and soul--a world turned black! And all
because of _her_--the golden goddess who had laughed at him in her room,
whose laughter would never die out of his ears. He gritted his teeth;
his hands clenched under his blankets; a surge of anger swept through
him--for an instant it was almost hatred. Was it possible that she--that
woman who had been his wife--could chain him now, enslave his thoughts,
fill his mind, his brain, his body, _after what had happened?_ Why was
it that he could not rise up and laugh and shrug his shoulders, and
thank God that, after all, there had been no children? Why couldn't he
do that? _Why? Why?_
A long time afterward he seemed to be asking that question. He seemed to
be crying it out aloud, over and over again, in a strange and mysterious
wilderness; and at last he seemed to be very near to a girl who was
standing on a rock waiting for him; a girl who bent toward him like a
wonderful flower, her arms reaching out, her lips parted, her eyes
shining through the glory of her windswept hair as she listened to his
cry of "_Why? Why?_"
He slept. It was a deep, cool sleep; a slumber beside a shadowed pool,
with the wind whispering gently in strange tree tops, and water rippling
softly in a strange stream.