THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
The days dragged by under the burdens of doubt and torture, and out of
the Valley of the Shadow came Philip Haig, with some new and
disquieting thoughts to occupy him in his convalescence. Toiling up
out of the darkness, where foul fiends seemed to have torn and mangled
his body with their fiery claws, his fingers were still warm from the
pressure of a soft, guiding hand; there was a haunting memory of
kisses on his forehead, of a cheek laid close to his; and he could
still hear the gentle but commanding voice that told him to be
patient--to be still--that life was coming back to him.
Life! As if he cared for life! Had he not spent years on years in
seeking what just now had been in his very grasp, only to be withdrawn
by two caressing hands? And Doctor Morris, on the day of his final
visit, had left him no possibility of misunderstanding.
"Miss Gaylord has saved your life," he said. "I could do little. It
was her nursing that pulled you through."
He wanted much to tell the doctor just how much value he placed on
that life. But to what purpose? Doctors lived in their own peculiar
atmosphere of conceit and self-deception, crowing like a hen over a
new-laid egg whenever they chanced to bring back a soul to the
miseries from which it had struggled to escape. It would be a waste of
words, for Norris would never understand. Would Marion? Cold terror
seized him at the thought of the coming, the inevitable scene with
her. She, he realized vaguely, was different from--from all the others
he had ever seen and looked down upon from his safe heights of cynical
hatred and contempt. She was not selfish or mercenary--not consciously
selfish or mercenary. And she was not vile. But she was all the more
dangerous because her heart was pure. She was too high-bred, too fine,
to demand payment of his debt; but her very reticence and delicacy, he
foresaw, would make his repudiation of that debt--that factitious
debt--more difficult. Twice or thrice, as he struggled with his
problem, he was conscious of a curious, disturbing thrill. She loved
him. There had been a time, long, long ago--But now he was a man; he
had learned his lesson; and he knew that the chains would be no less
hateful because they were made of gold.
There came a day when he sat, wrapped in blankets, in an armchair near
the window, where he could see the grass waving in the sunlight on the
slope above the cottage, and the pines bending in the breeze high up
the hill. Marion, near him, her hands folded in her lap, looked
sometimes out of the window but more often at him, though his eyes
avoided hers. She was scarcely less pale than he, and very tired and
worn. Despite Hillyer's protestations she had slept little in the ten
days of Philip's peril; for she would trust no one but herself to do
with iron determination exactly what the doctor had commanded.
Philip's pitiable pleading for water in his semi-delirium her love
alone was strong enough to resist. But this was the last day of her
watch over him. In an hour she must go. She had frankly asked Robert
to let her have this last afternoon alone with Philip; and had
promised him that he should then have the answer to every question
that he had loyally put aside for her.
They sat a long time silent, while the shadow of the cottage
lengthened on the grass.
"It wasn't worth it, Miss Gaylord," Haig said at length.
"I--I don't understand," she faltered.
"Doctor Norris tells me that you saved my life."
"I'm glad if he thinks I helped a little," she answered, trying to
smile.
"He left me no room for doubt. Very plain-spoken is Doctor Norris."
"I'm afraid he exaggerated," she protested gently.
"No."
"But Jim--"
"Jim's all right in his way, but he couldn't have done it."
"I am paid," she said simply.
"Paid?"
"Yes. Knowing that you live."
"No. You think you mean that, perhaps, but you don't."
"I don't mean what?" she asked in surprise.
"You don't mean that you are paid."
She turned away, and looked out the window, her heart throbbing.
"I must tell you something, Miss Gaylord," he went on resolutely. "I'm
not grateful."
"Not grateful?"
"I mean, I'm not glad to owe my life to you."
"But I haven't asked--"
"No. Not directly." He hesitated a moment. "It's like this: If a man
had saved my life, I could pay him. There would be a clasp of the
hand, and a look from man to man. Or I should save his life in turn,
or do him some service. Or--there are other ways. There's Pete's way
and Jim's way--of paying. But I can't pay you in any of the ways I
could pay a man. And I can't pay in the only way a woman knows."
"Don't," she cried. "Don't, please!"
She was right, he thought. He was doing it brutally. He must try
another method. There followed a long silence, while he tried to frame
a speech that would tell her, and would not hurt too much; for now,
strangely, he found himself reluctant to give her pain, even to put
himself in a false light before her--to be misunderstood. At last he
leaned toward her--forced her to meet his gaze.
"Could you--if you had ever loved one man with all your heart
and soul--held him as dear to you as life--dearer than life
itself--without whom life would be impossible--could you ever
love another?"
For all her anguish she was able to detect the trap that he had set
for her. "Yes" would cheapen the quality and deny the finality of her
love for him; "no" would be an acceptance of the doom and tragedy she
saw shadowing his eyes. She did not answer.
"You see, you dare not answer that," he went on. "I suppose I ought to
tell you the story. But I won't. It's long, and not a pretty story at
all. But this much I will tell you. I gave one woman all I had to
give. She threw it away--and laughed at me. I have nothing more."
She took it very bravely and very quietly, as it seemed to him. He
felt a certain admiration. There was good blood in the girl. Her
father must have been worth knowing. His thoughts would have taken a
different direction--would have been nothing so complacent if he had
known just what she was thinking. His speech, terrifying at first, had
actually renewed a hope that had fallen very low. She did not believe
a word of what he had said, that is, of his having nothing more to
give. Whenever did woman believe any such thing as that, no matter how
solemnly, on what stoutest oaths, with what tragic air a man has told
it to her? Love is not love that doubts its own compelling power. And
Marion, gazing fondly at Philip now, felt somewhat as a mother feels
who smilingly indulges some childhood tragedy of her boy, knowing that
it will pass as the cloud upon an April sky. If this was the worst he
had to say to her--
But it was not the worst. Philip felt an intense relief to see her
accept the situation with such unexpected calm. He admired her
consciously now,--for her intelligence. He began to think that he
might almost take her hand, and thank her, as he would thank a man for
doing him a service, however mistakenly. But something held him back
from that folly. He wondered a little at her silence, and it was by
way of breaking it before it should become embarrassing that he
searched for something safe and commonplace to say to her.
"It was my own fault, you know, that I was injured."
"Why your own fault?"
"I was in a bad humor. I lost my self-control. And I got what I
deserved."
He thought she would ask him why he had been in a bad humor, and he
purposed to say that he was raging in discontent, longing for the
white road again. It would be safe enough now, no doubt, to tell her
in this fashion that if ever she should come to the Park again she
would not find him there. But his words had suggested something
entirely different to her mind.
"What are you going to do with him?" she asked, in sudden vague
anxiety.
"Do with him?"
"Yes--Sunnysides? I wish you'd please sell him."
"Sell him? Sell Sunnysides?" His voice betrayed his astonishment.
"Yes."
"But I haven't ridden him yet."
"You don't mean--" Her voice failed.
"That I'm going to ride him? Just as soon as I get well."
For some seconds she sat dazed. It was so utterly unexpected. The
thought had not once occurred to her that he would try again what had
all but cost him his life. It is at some such point as this that man's
and woman's natures make one of their many departures from the
parallel. To Haig the taming of Sunnysides now meant everything; to
Marion it seemed a useless, a worse than useless risk, a wicked waste.
What had been the worth, then, of all her labor of love, if it was to
be thrown away? He would be killed the next time. And in the horror
with which she foresaw that tragic end of all that she had planned and
builded, her courage and confidence fell away from her, and left her
weak and helpless. She uttered a thin, little cry, and slipped to the
floor on her knees, clasping his emaciated hand that lay on an arm of
the chair.
"No! No!" she cried frantically. "Please, Philip! Please promise me
you won't do that!"
Then she broke down completely, her head drooped, and she sank down in
a heap, with her face between her hands.
Haig was stunned. He had blundered again. Fool, not to have let her go
away from him in silence, in calm! He looked down at that crumpled
figure, at the mass of tawny hair, with the red-gold lights in it, the
enticing soft whiteness of her neck where the hair curved cleanly
upward, the graceful slope of the shoulders that now shook with sobs.
And something stirred in him, something deep, too deep to be reached
and overpowered. It grew until it sang through all his being, a
feeling such as he had never known before. She was fine and beautiful;
she was a thing to be desired; and he had only to reach out, and take
her for his own. Before he was aware of it, he had stretched out his
hand until it almost touched her hair. Then from across the years a
mocking voice rang out shrill and cold and cruel: "Now don't you go
mussing up my apartment, Pipo!"
He drew back his hand with a jerk, and clutched the chair; and sat
bolt upright, while every nerve rang with the alarm.
Minutes passed. The sobs gradually subsided; the figure on the floor
slowly ceased its convulsive movements; and again a deep silence
enveloped the room. Out on the brown-green slope the sun's rays were
slanting low, the shadow of the cottage climbed the hill.
Well, Haig thought, he had bungled the business after all. That was
what came of trying to do it nicely, with delicacy. Hard words were
the kindest in the end, because the quickest understood.
She had not yet lifted her head when he turned to look at her again;
and that made it easier.
"I can't leave the ranch--just now," he said slowly. "If I could, I
would. So I think--I think you ought to go back home--to New York, I
mean--at once."
She did not answer. And it was only after another silence that she
looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were still filled with
tears, and there was a curious little puckering of her chin.
"You said you wished you could repay me," she said. "Do you?"
"Yes," he answered, wondering. "But I told you--"
"But there is a way!"
"Well?"
"Promise me you will not ride Sunnysides."
He shook his head.
"No. I can't promise that."
"Why?"
"That's one of the things you couldn't possibly understand."
"But it's such a little thing!"
"If I gave you that, I should indeed have nothing left. You would have
all."
It was true that she could not in the least understand. But she knew
she could not move him.
"Then promise me," she pleaded, "that you'll not try it until you are
quite, quite well!"
"Oh. I promise you that!" he replied, with a grim smile.
"Thank you--Philip!"
Presently she arose, and looked down at him with a long, lingering
gaze that seemed to be searching for something in his features.
"You'll take just what Jim gives you?" she asked anxiously.
"Of course."
"And not try to--boss him about the medicines and the food?"
"I promise to obey orders."
"And you'll be very careful?"
"Yes."
She moved slowly toward the door. But halfway there she stopped, and
turned to look at him again. How could she leave him now? She
couldn't! She couldn't! He was gazing away from her, out through the
window. Wasn't he going to say a word to her--of farewell? She came
back unsteadily, and stood behind his chair, her hands stretched out
above his head. Then suddenly, impulsively, not touching him with her
hands, she leaned down, and kissed his forehead.
"Good-by!" she said, her voice breaking.
"Good-by!" he answered gently, but without turning his head.
He heard the door opened and closed, very softly. After that he sat a
long time in silence. Well, she was gone! It had been a trying
afternoon, and he was glad to have it ended. And yet the room seemed
to be extraordinarily empty, as it had never been before his illness.
The stillness rather oppressed him. Damn it all, sickness did strange
things to a man! Took a lot out of him! He straightened himself in his
chair.
Presently Jim entered.
"Well, Jim!" said Haig. "Here we are again, eh? I'm hungry."
"You eat, she come back," Jim answered shrewdly.
Haig looked at him sharply, but the Chinaman's face was like a paper
mask.
"Shut up!" he cried savagely.