Charles-Norton began to grow peevish.
"Good Lord," he would growl, as he flew along the crest; "why can't she
smile once, for a change, as I leave her in the morning; why can't she
speed me away with a smile, instead of that look. Why can't she be happy
in her own way down there, and let me be happy up here? Why, why, why?"
He was passing just then a deep gorge, blue beneath him. From it his
question reascended to him, tenuous and fluttering, like a lost bird on
uncertain wings. "Why--why--why?"
"She looks at me--as if I were a murderer. Just because I want to fly.
Just because I have wings. Just because everything in me says, Fly! And I
have to carry that look around with me all day long, just like a net,
just like a net of crape. Dam!"
"Dam!" said the profundities.
Charles-Norton evidently had arrived at the self-pitying stage--which was
a bad sign, if he only had known it; which showed a certain weakening of
his moral fiber. He fought on, though. Resolutely he continued to refuse
to notice the daily little black smudge upon Dolly's cheek. She was more
submissive and dolorous than ever. She had made him, with blankets, a
union-suit that buttoned ingeniously about the roots of his wings; he put
it on every morning, but hid it behind a rock till night as soon as he
was out of sight.
But the very elements, the perversity of matter, seemed against
Charles-Norton. "There's no more flour, Goosie," said Dolly one morning.
Charles-Norton did not catch the significance of this remark right away.
Perched on one foot, just in the act of taking wing, he had become
absorbed in the examination of a fluffy and cold little white object
which had just then settled upon his nose. He looked at it close as it
disappeared between his fingers in a silver trickle. It was a snow-flake.
He glanced upward; the sky was very gray.
"Goosie, the flour is gone," repeated Dolly.
Charles-Norton came back to earth. "Well, we'll have to buy some more,"
he said, again preparing for flight.
Dolly was silent, evidently considering this remark. "Have you--have you
any more--money?" she asked at length, hesitatingly.
Charles-Norton dropped his wings. "No," he said. "No, that I haven't--not
a cent. It's--it's gone. Have you?"
"_I_ haven't any," said Dolly. Her eyes were very big.
Charles-Norton stood there motionless a while, a bit disturbed. Then his
lower jaw advanced; he shrugged his shoulders: "Well--I'll see about it;
to-morrow," he said airily, and was off.
But he didn't see about anything "to-morrow" or after. He had a fine time
that day. A snow-flurry was passing down the Sierra, and he went with it
along the crest, mile after mile, to the South, the center of its soft
white whirl, its winged tutelary God. When he returned, that night, a
snow-carpet extended down from the top of the chain, down the slopes, to
the edge of the meadow. Dolly was inside of the cabin, close to the
fireplace. "Ooh, Goosie, but it's cold," she cried. "Yes," admitted
Charles-Norton; "it is cold." His wings were encased in ice, and he
sparkled rosily in the fire's glow.
The next day, though, was warmer; the carpet of snow gradually retreated
up the slopes. It remained on the crest, however, frozen and
scintillating. It was a world of increased beauty that now spread beneath
Charles-Norton. The crest glittered from horizon to horizon; here and
there little lakes gleamed like hard diamonds; and lower, the willows in
the hollows lay very light, like painted vapor.
The next morning Dolly said: "There's no sugar, Goosie."
"Coffee is better without sugar," said Charles-Norton, sententiously.
For a few days the young couple, with wry faces, drank unsweetened
coffee. Then this difficulty disappeared. Taking up the tin before
breakfast, Dolly discovered that there was no more coffee.
The last of the canned fruit followed, and the last slice of bacon.
"Thank the Lord we can live on trout," said Charles-Norton, piously.
As if in answer, the next morning, the trout refused to take his bait of
red flannel.
Alone there on the shore of the lake, while Dolly waited within the
cabin, Charles-Norton passed a bad quarter-of-an-hour. Then he went up
the slopes back of the meadow and captured a handful of grasshoppers
springing there in the rising sun. The trout took them with gratitude.
"Whee!" said Charles-Norton, when at last he had his catch.
And then, to a cold blast from the East, a few days later, the
grasshoppers all disappeared. Charles-Norton took his axe, went into the
woods, and chopping open mouldy logs, obtained a store of white grub. The
trout took them.
But Fatality now was dogging him close. When, with tingling skin, he
opened the cabin-door a few mornings later, a cry escaped him. A
snow-carpet spread from the crest over the face of the whole visible
world, clear down to the western plain. It covered deep the meadow, hung
in miniature mountain-chains on the boughs of the pines, filigreed the
lake. The lake was frozen.
Charles-Norton chopped a hole in the ice, then chopped logs and
replenished his supply of grubs. The trout refused them. They could not
be blamed; the grubs, hibernating, had shrunk themselves into hard little
sticks devoid of the least suspicion of succulence.
Charles-Norton and Dolly went breakfastless that morning. All day
Charles-Norton roamed above the land with a vague idea of catching
something. But living creatures seemed to have withdrawn into the earth;
the few still out had put on white liveries; when Charles-Norton flew
low, they fled him, and when he flew high, he could not distinguish them
from the earth's impassive mantle. He thought once of the ranch in the
plain and of its chicken-yard, but dropped the idea immediately. Dolly's
vigorous little New England conscience would never accept a compromise
such as this.
Charles-Norton and Dolly that night went supperless to bed; they arose in
the morning with no prospect of breakfast. Charles-Norton moped long at
the fire while Dolly, very wisely silent, trotted about her work.
Suddenly Charles-Norton rose with a smothered exclamation. In two
strides he made for the door, opened it, and took wing; Dolly saw him
flitting among the branches of the pines in mysterious occupation. He
returned in great triumph and threw on the table a double handful of
small, dry objects that looked like wooden beans. "We'll eat pine-nuts!"
he cried enthusiastically. "Pine-nuts are just chuck full of protein!"
For three days they lived on pine-nuts. And then, as on the third
evening, they sat before the little heap which made their meal, Dolly
fell forward on the table with a wide movement of her arms that scattered
the supper in a dry tinkle to the floor, and remained thus with heaving
shoulders.
Charles-Norton rose and stood above her. Dolly was weeping this time,
truly weeping, beyond the slightest doubt, openly and freely. This was
the end; he was cornered at last, his last twisting over. She wept there
in an abandonment of woe, her face in her arms, her hair desolate on the
surface of the table, her shoulders palpitating. And as he gazed down
upon her, a great, vague mournfulness slowly rose through him, a
mournfulness part regret, part sacrifice; he stood there gazing down
upon her as a child gazing down on a broken toy, a broken toy in the ruin
of which lay the ruin of his dreams. She wept; and he felt as if a
wreath, a wreath soft and flowery but very heavy, had fallen about his
neck and were drawing him down, down out of the altitudes of his will.
And so, gently, he asked the question, the answer of which he knew, the
asking of which was renunciation.
"Dolly, Dolly," he whispered; "what is the matter, Dolly?"
"Ooh, ooh, ooh," sobbed Dolly; "ooh, Goosie, I can't--can't eat
pine-nuts, Goosie! I can't!"
Her shoulders shook, the table trembled, her wail rose to a perfect
little whistle of woe. Charles-Norton sat down by her and took her in his
arms. "Well, we won't have to, Dolly," he said gently; "us won't have to.
We--we'll go back!"
They remained thus long, entwined, while little by little the violence of
Dolly's despair moderated. At length she freed herself, with a smile like
the sunlight of an April shower, and still with a little catch in her
throat, took the lamp from the table and set it on the sill of the
western window.
Half an hour later there was a knock at the door.