outside his door. She placed the tray on a table in the hall. The door
was opened from within. Paul had heard his mother go up before, heard
her pause at the stairs, and, after a silence, enter her own room.
“She knows that I know,” he said to himself. “That knowledge will be
always between us; we can never look each other in the face again.” To
Moya he endeavored to speak lightly.
“It sounded very gay downstairs to-night. You must have had a houseful.”
“I have been with your mother the last hour,” answered Moya, vaguely on
the defensive. Since Paul's return there had been little of the old free
intercourse in words between them, and without this outlet their mutual
consciousness became acute. Often as they saw each other during the day,
the keenest emotion attached to the first meeting of their eyes.
Paul was unnerved by his sudden recall from death to life. Its contrasts
were overwhelming to his starved senses: from the dirt and dearth and
grimy despair of his burial hutch in the snow to this softly lighted,
close-curtained room, warm and sweet with flowers; from the gaunt,
unshaven spectre of the packer and his ghostly revelations, to Moya,
meekly beautiful, her bright eyes lowered as she trailed her soft skirts
across the carpet; Moya seated opposite, silent, conscious of him
in every look and movement. Her lovely hands lay in her lap, and the
thought of holding them in his made him tremble; and when he recalled
the last time he had kissed her he grew faint. He longed to throw
off this exhausting self-restraint, but feared to betray his helpless
passion which he deemed an insult to his soul's worship of her.
And she was thinking: “Is this all it is going to mean--his coming
home--our being together? And I was almost his wife!”
“So it was my mother you were talking to in the study? I thought I heard
a man's voice.”
“It was the doctor. Your mother was not quite herself this evening. He
came in to see her, but he does not think she is ill. 'Rest and change,'
he says she needs.”
Paul gave the words a certain depth of consideration. “Are you as well
as usual, Moya?”
“Oh, I am always well,” she answered cheerlessly. “I seem to thrive on
anything--everything,” she corrected herself, and blushed.
The blush made him gasp. “You are more beautiful than ever. I had
forgotten that beauty is a physical fact. The sight of you confuses me.”
“I always told you you were morbid.” Moya's happy audacity returned.
“Now, how long are you going to sit and think about that?”
“Do I sit and think about things?” His reluctant, boyish smile, which
all women loved, captured his features for a moment. “It is very rude of
me.”
“Suppose I should ask you what you are thinking about?”
“Ah! I am afraid you would say 'morbid' again.”
“Try me! You ought to let me know at once if you are going to break out
in any new form of morbidness.”
“I wish it might amuse you, but it wouldn't. Let me put you a
case--seriously.”
Moya smiled. “Once we were serious--ages ago. Do you remember?”
“Do I remember!”
“Well? You are you, and I am I, still.”
“Yes; and as full of fateful surprises for each other.”
“I bar 'fateful'! That word has the true taint of morbidness.”
“But you can't 'bar' fate. Listen: this is a supposing, you know.
Suppose that an accident had happened to our leader on the way home--to
your Lieutenant Winslow, we'll say”--
“_My_ lieutenant!”
“Your father's--the regiment's--Lieutenant Winslow 'of ours.' Suppose we
had brought him back in a state to need a surgeon's help; and without a
word to any one he should get up and walk out of the hospital with his
hurts not healed, and no one knew why, or where he had gone? There would
be a stir about it, would there not? And if such a poor spectre of a
bridegroom as I were allowed to join the search, no one would think it
strange, or call it a slight to his bride if the fellow went?”
“I take your case,” said Moya with a beaming look. “You want to go after
that poor man who suffered with you.”
“Who went with us to save us from our own headstrong folly, and would
have died there alone”--
“Yes; oh, yes!--before you begin to think about yourself, or me. Because
he is nobody 'of ours,' and no one seems to feel responsible, and we go
on talking and laughing just the same!”
“Do they talk of this downstairs?”
“To-night they were talking--oh, with such philosophy! But how came you
to know it?”
Paul did not answer this question. “Then”--he drew a long breath,--“then
you could bear it, dear?--the comment, even if they called it a slight
to you and a piece of quixotic lunacy? Others will not take my case,
remember.”
“What others?”
“They will say: 'Why doesn't he send a better man? He is no trailer.' It
is true. Money might find him and bring him back, but all the money
in the world could not teach him to trust his friends. There is a
misunderstanding here which is too bitter to be borne. It is hard to
explain,--the intimacy that grows up between men placed as we were. But
as soon as help reached us, the old lines were drawn. I belonged with
the officers, he with the men. We could starve together, but we could
not eat together. He accepted it--put himself on that basis at once.
He would not come up here as the guest of the Post. He is done with us
because he thinks we are done with him. And he knows that I must know
his occupation is gone. He will never guide nor pack a mule again.”
“Your mother and my father, they will understand. What do the others
matter?”
“I must tell you, dear, that I do not propose to tell them--especially
them--why I go. For I am going. I must go! There are reasons I cannot
explain.” He sighed, and looked wildly at Moya, whose smile was becoming
mechanical. “I hate the excuse, but it will have to be said that I go
for a change--for my health. My health! Great God! But it's 'orders,'
dear.”
“Your orders are my orders. You are never going anywhere again without
me,” said Moya slowly. Her smile was gone. She stood up and faced him,
pale and beautiful. He rose, too, and stooped above her, taking her
hands and gazing into her full blue eyes arched like the eyes of angels.
“I thought she was a girl! But she is a woman,” he said in a voice of
caressing wonder. “A woman, and not afraid!”
“I am afraid. I will not be left--I will not be left again! Oh, you
won't take me, even when I offer myself to you!”
“Don't--don't tempt me!” Paul caught her to him with a groan. “You don't
know me well enough to be afraid of _me!_”
“You! You will not let me know you.”
“Oh, hush, dear--hush, my darling! This isn't thinking. We must think
for our lives. I must take care of you, precious. We don't know where
this search may take us, or where it will end, or what the end will be.”
He kissed the sleeve of her dress, and put her gently from him, so that
he could look her in the eyes. She gave him her full pure gaze.
“It is the poor man again. You said he would spoil our lives.”
“He is _our_ poor man. You didn't go out of your way to find him. And
your way is mine.”
“It is so heavenly to be convinced! Who taught you to see things at a
glance,--things I have toiled and bungled over and don't know now if I
am right! _Who_ taught you?”
“Do you think I stood still while you were away! Oh, my heart was sifted
out by little pieces.”
“You shall sift mine. You shall tell me what to do. For I know nothing!
Not even if I may dare to take this angel at her word!”
“I knew you would not take me!” the girl whispered wildly. “But I shall
go.”
XVI
THE NATURE OF AN OATH
“Your tray! It is after ten o'clock. Your 'angel' is a bad nurse.” Moya
brought the tray and set it on a little stand beside Paul's chair. He
watched her shy, excited preparations as she moved about, conscious of
his eyes. The saucepan staggered upon the coals and they both sprang
to save the broth, and pouring it she burnt her thumb a little, and he
behaved quite like any ordinary young man. They were ecstatic to find
themselves at ease with each other once more. Moya became disrespectful
to her charge; such sweet daring looked from her eyes into his as made
him riotous with joy.
“Won't you take some with me?” He turned the cup towards her and watched
her as she sipped.
“'It was roast with fire,'” he pronounced softly and dreamily, 'because
of the dreadful pains. It was to be eaten with bitter herbs'”--
“What _are_ you saying?”--
“'To remind them of their bondage.'”
“I object to your talking about bondage and bitter herbs when you are
eating aunt Annie's delicious consommé.”
He gravely sipped in turn, still with his eyes in hers. “Can you
remember what you were doing on the second of November?”
“Can I remember!”
“Yes; tell me. I have a reason for asking.”
“Tell _me_ the reason first.”
“May we have a little more fire, darling? It gives me chills to think of
that day. It was the last of my wretched pot-hunting. There was nothing
to hunt for--the game had all gone down, but I did not know that.
Somewhere in the woods, a long way from the cabin, it began to occur to
me that I should not make shelter that night. A fool and his strength
are soon parted. It was a little hollow with trees all around so deep
that in the distance their trunks closed in like a wall. Snow can make
a wonderful silence in the woods. I seemed to hear the thoughts of
everybody I loved in the world outside. There had been a dullness over
me for weeks. I could not make it true that I had ever been happy--that
you really loved me. All that part of my life was a dream. Now, in that
silence suddenly I felt you! I knew that you cared. It was cruel to
die so if you did love me! It brought the 'pang and spur'! I fought the
drowsiness that was taking away my pain. I had begun to lean on it as
a comfortable breast. I woke up and tore myself away from that siren
sleep. It was my darling,--her love that saved me. Without that thought
of you, I never would have stirred again. Where were you, what were you
thinking that brought you so close to me?”
“Ah,” said Moya in a whisper. “I was in that room across the hall,
alone. They were good to me that day; they made excuses and left me to
myself. In the afternoon a box came,--from poor father,--white roses,
oh, sweet and cold as snow! I took them up to that room and forced
myself to go in. It was where my things were kept, the trunks half
packed, all the drawers and closets full. And my wedding dress laid
out on the bed. We girls used to go up there at first and look at the
things, and there was laughing and joking. Sometimes I went up alone and
tried on my hats before the glass, and thought where I should be when
I wore them, and--Well! all that stopped. I dreaded to pass the door.
Everything was left just as it was; the shutters open, the poor dress
covered with a sheet on the bed. The room was a death-chamber. I went
in. I carried the roses to my dead. I drew down the sheet and put my
face in that empty dress. It was my selfish self laid out there--the
girl who knew just what she wanted and was going to get it if she could.
Happiness I dared not even pray for--only remembrance--everlasting
remembrance. That we might know each other again when no more life
was left to part us--_my_ life. It seemed long to wait, but that was
my--marriage vow. I gave you all I could, remembrance, faith till
death.”
“Then you are my own!” said Paul, his face transformed. “God was our
witness. Life of my life--for life and death!” Solemnly he took a
bridegroom's kiss from her lips.
“How do _you_ know that it is life that parts?”
“Speak so I can understand you!” Moya cried. “Ah, if I might! A man
must not have secrets from his wife. Secrets are destruction, don't you
think?”
Moya waited in silence.
“Now we come to this bondage!” He let the words fall like a load from
his breast. “This is a hideous thing to tell you, but it will cut us
apart unless you know it. It compels me to do things.” He paused, and
they heard a door down the passage open,--the door of his mother's room.
A step came forward a few paces. Silence; it retreated, and the door
closed again stealthily.
“She has not slept,” Paul murmured. “Poor soul, poor soul! Now, in what
I am going to say, please listen to the facts, Moya dear. Try not to
infer anything from my way of putting things. I shall contradict myself,
but the facts do that.
“The--the guide--John, we will call him, had a long fever in the woods.
It would come on worse at night, and then--he talked--words, of a
shocking intimacy. They say that nothing the mind has come in contact
with under strong emotion is ever lost, no matter how long in the past.
It will return under similar excitement. This man had kept stored away
in his mind, under some such pressure, the words of a woman's message,
a woman in great distress. Over and over, as his pulse rose, countless
times he would repeat that message. I went out of the hut at night and
stood outside in the snow not to hear it, but I knew it as well as he
did before we got through. Now, this was what he said, word for word.
“'Do not blame me, my dear husband. I have held out in this place as
long as I can. Don't wait for anything. Don't worry about anything. Come
back to me with your bare hands. Come!--to your loving Emmy!'
“'Come, come!' he would shout out loud. Then in another voice he would
whisper, 'Come back to me with your bare hands!' And he would stare at
his hands and his face would grow awful.”
Moya drew a long sigh of scared attention.
“Those words were all over the cabin walls. I heard them and saw them
everywhere. There was no rest from them. I could have torn the roof down
to stop his talking, but the words it was not possible to forget. And
where was the horror of it? Was not this what we had asked, for years,
to know?”
“You need not explain to me,” said Moya, shuddering.
“Yes; but all one's meanest motives were unearthed in a place like that.
Would I have felt so with a different man? Some one less uncouth? Was it
the man himself, or his”--
“Paul, if anything could make you a snob, it would be your deadly fear
of being one!”
“Well, if they had found us then, God knows how that fight would have
ended. But I won it--when there was nothing left to fight for. I owned
him--in the grave. We owned each other and took a bashful sort of
comfort in it, after we had shuffled off the 'Mister' and 'John.' I grew
quite fond of him, when we were so near death that his English didn't
matter, or his way of eating. I thought him a very remarkable man,
you remember, when he was just material for description. He was, he is
remarkable. Most remarkable in this, he was not ashamed of his son.”
“Do please let that part alone. I want to know what he was doing, hiding
away by himself all these years? I believe he is an impostor!”
“We came to that, of course; though somehow I forgave him before he
could answer the question. In the long watch beside him I got very close
to him. It was not possible to believe him a deserter, a sneak. Can you
take my word for his answer? It was given as a death-bed confession and
he is living.”
“I would take your word for anything except yourself!” Moya did not
smile, or think what she was saying.
“That answer cleared him, in my mind, with something over to the credit
of blind, stupid heroism. He is not a clever man. But, speaking as one
who has teen face to face with the end of things, I can say that I know
of no act of his that should prevent his returning to his family--if he
had a family--not even his deserting them for twenty years. _If_, I say!
“When the soldiers found us we were too far gone to realize the issue
that was upon us. He was the first to take it in. It was on the march
home, at night, he touched me and began speaking low in our corner of
the tent. 'As we came in here, so we go out again, and so we stay,' he
said. I told him it could not be. To suppress what I had learned would
make the whole of life a lie, a coward's lie. That knowledge belonged to
my mother. I must render it up to her. To do otherwise would be to treat
her like a child and to meddle with the purposes of God. 'No honest man
robs another of his secrets,' he said. He was very much excited. She
was the only one now to be considered--and what did I know about God's
purposes? He refused to take my scruples into consideration, except such
as concerned her. But, after a long argument, very painful, weak as we
were and whispering in the dark, he yielded this much. If I were bent on
digging up the dead, as he called it, it must be done in such a way as
to leave her free. Free she was in law, and she must be given a chance
to claim her freedom without talk or publicity. Absolute secrecy he
demanded of me in the mean time. I begged him to see how unfair it was
to her to bring her face to face with such a discovery without one word
of preparation, of excuse for him. She would condemn him on the very
fact of his being alive. So she would, he said, if she were going
to judge him; not if she felt towards him as--as a wife feels to her
husband. It was that he wanted to know. It was that or nothing he would
have from her. 'Bring me face to face with her alone, and as sudden as
you like. If she knows me, I am the man. And if she wants me back, she
will know me--and that way I'll come and no other way.' Was not that
wonderful? A gentleman could hardly have improved on that. Whatever
feeling he might be supposed to have towards her in the matter we
could never touch upon. But I think he had his hopes. That decision was
hanging over us--and I trembled for her. Day before yesterday, was it, I
persuaded her to see the sick guide. She wondered why I was faint as
she kissed me good-by. I ought to have prepared her. It was a horrible
snare. And yet he meant it all in delicacy, a passionate consideration
for her. Poor fool. How could I prepare _him!_ How could he keep
pace with the changes in her! After all, it is externals that make
us,--habits, clothes. Great God! Things you could not speak of to a
naked soul like him. But he would have it 'straight,' he said--and
straight he got it. And he is gone; broke away like an animal out of
a trap. And I am going to find him, to see at least that he has a roof
over his head. God knows, he may not die for years!”
“She has got years before her too.”
“She!--What am I saying! We have plunged into those damnable inferences
and I haven't given you the facts. Wait. I shall contradict all this in
a moment. I thought, she must have done this for her children. She
must be given another chance. And I approached the thing on my very
knees--not to let her know that I knew, only to hint that I was not
unprepared, had guessed--could meet it, and help her to meet the
problems it would bring into our lives. Help her! She stood and faced
me as if I had insulted her. 'I have been your father's widow for
twenty-two years. If that fact is not sacred to you, it is to me. Never
dare to speak of this to me again!'”
“Ah,” said Moya in a long-drawn sigh, “then she did not”--
“Oh, she did, explicitly! For I went on to speak of it. It was my last
chance. I asked her how she--we--could possibly go through with it; how
with this knowledge between us we could look each other in the face--and
go on living.
“'Put this hallucination out of your mind,' she said. 'That man and I
are strangers.'”
“Was that--would you call that a lie?” asked Moya fearfully.
“You can see your answer in her face. I do not say that hers was the
first lie. It must always be foolish, I think, to evade the facts of
life as we make them for ourselves. He refused to meet his facts, from
the noblest motives;--but now I'm tangling you all up again! Rest your
head here, darling. This is such a business! It is a pity I cannot tell
you his whole story. Half the meaning of all this is lost. But--here is
a solemn declaration in writing, signed John Hagar, in which this man we
are speaking of says that Adam Bogardus was his partner, who died in the
woods and was buried by his hand; that he knew his story, all the scenes
and circumstances of his life in many a long talk they had together, as
well as he knew his own. In his delirium he must have confused himself
with his old partner, and half in dreams, he said, half in the crazy
satisfaction of pretending to himself he had a son, he allowed the
delusion to go on; saw it work upon me, and half feared it, half
encouraged it. Afterwards he was frightened at the thought of meeting
my mother, who would know him for an impostor. His seeming scruples were
fear of exposure, not consideration for her. This was why he guarded
their interview so carefully. 'No harm's been done,' he says, 'if you'll
act now like a sensible man. I'll be disappointed in you if you make
your mother any trouble about this. You've treated me as square as any
man could treat another. Remember, I say so, and think as kindly as
you can of a harmless, loony old impostor'--and he signs himself 'John
Hagar,'--which shows again how one lie leads to another. We go to find
'John Hagar.'”
“Have you shown your mother this letter? You have not? Paul, you will
not rob her of her just defense!”
“I will not heap coals of fire on her head! This letter simply completes
his renunciation, and he meant it for her defense. But when a man signs
himself 'John Hagar' in the handwriting of my father, it shows that
somebody is not telling the truth. I used to pore over the old farm
records in my father's hand at Stone Ridge in the old account books
stowed away in places where a boy loves to poke and pry. I know it as
well as I know yours. Do you suppose she would not know it? When a man
writes as few letters as he does, the handwriting does not change.” Paul
laid the letter upon the coals. “It is the only witness against her, but
it loses the case.”
“She never could have loved him. I never believed she did!” said Moya.
“She thinks she can live out this deep-down, deliberate--But it will
kill her, Moya. Her life is ended from this on. How could I have
driven her to that excruciating choice! I ought to have listened to him
altogether or not at all. There is a hell for meddlers, and the ones who
meddle for conscience' sake are the deepest damned, I think.”
Moya came and wreathed her arm in his, and they paced the room in
silence. At length she said, “If we go to find John Hagar, shall we not
be meddling again? A man who respects a woman's freedom must love his
own. It is the last thing left him. Don't hunt him down. I believe
nothing could hurt him now like seeing you again.”
“He shall not see me unless he wants to, but he shall know where I stand
on this question of the Impostor. It shall be managed so that even he
can see I am protecting her. No, call himself what he will, the tie
between him and me is another of those facts.”
“But do you love him, Paul?”
“Oh--I cannot forget him! He is--just as he used to be--'poor father out
there in the cold.' We must find him and comfort him somehow.”
“For our own peace of mind? Forgive me for arguing when everything is so
difficult. But he is a man--a brave man who would rather be forever out
in the cold than be a burden. Do not rob him of his right to _be_ John
Hagar if he wants to, for the sake of those he loves. You do not tell me
it was love, but I am sure it was, in some mistaken way, that drove him
into exile. Only love as pure as his can be our excuse for dragging him
back. He did not want shelter and comfort from her. Only one thing. Have
we got that to give him?”
“Well then, I go for my own sake--it is a physical necessity; and I go
for hers. She has put it out of her own power to help him. It will ease
her a little to know I am trying to reach him in his forlorn disguise.”
“But you were not going to tell her?”
“In words, no. But she will understand. There is a strange clairvoyance
between us, as if we were accomplices in a crime!”
Moya reflected silently. This search which Paul had set his heart upon
would equally work his own cure, she saw. Nor could she now imagine for
themselves any lover's paradise inseparable from this moral tragedy,
which she saw would be fibre of their fibre, life of their life. A
family is an organism; one part may think to deny or defy another, but
with strange pains the subtle union exerts itself; distance cannot break
the thread.
They kissed each other solemnly like little children on the eve of a
long journey full of awed expectancy.
Mrs. Bogardus stood holding her door ajar as Moya passed on her way
downstairs. “You are very late,” she uttered hoarsely. “Is nothing
settled yet?”
“Everything!” Moya hesitated and forced a smile, “everything but where
we shall go. We will start--and decide afterwards.”
“You go together? That is right. Moya, you have a genius for happiness!”