THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the smiling,
sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were driving: a white girl
of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older. Back of
them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a
straggling, desolate village. Ahead, to either side, was the rolling
brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall,
the blue of a cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a
mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless after
three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit mightily. Though
the day was perfectly still, the canvas curtains of the old surrey
flapped lazily in a breeze born of the pace alone. The harness on the
ponies shuffled and creaked with every move. Though the bolts of the
ancient vehicle had been carefully tightened, it nevertheless groaned at
intervals with the motion; mysteriously, like the unconscious sigh of
the aged, apparently without reason. Beneath the wheels the frost-dried
grass rattled continuously, monotonously; but save this last there was
no other sound. Since the two humans had left the limits of the tiny
town there had been no other sound. Now and then the girl had glanced
behind, instinctively, almost fearfully; but not once had the man
followed her example, had he stirred in his place. Swiftly, silently, he
was leaving civilisation behind him; by the scarce visible landmarks he
alone distinguished was returning to his own, to the wild that lay in
the distance beyond.
Thus westward, direct as a tight cord, on and on they went; and back of
them gradually, all but unconsciously, the low-built terminus grew
dimmer and dimmer, vanished detail by detail as completely as though it
had never been. Last of all to disappear, already a mere black dot
against the blue, was the water tank beside the station. For three
miles, four, it held its place; then, as, with the old unconscious
motion the girl turned to look back, she searched for it in vain. Behind
them as before, unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue
surrounding wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there
with no observer save nature and nature's God, she and the other were
alone.
As the first man and the first woman were alone they were alone. From
horizon to horizon was not a sign of human handiwork, not a suggestion
of human presence. They might live or die, or laugh or weep, or love or
hate--and none of their kind would be the wiser. All her life that she
could remember the girl had lived so, all her life she had but to lift
her eyes above her feet to gaze into the infinite; yet in the irony of
fate never until this moment, the moment when of all she should have
been the happiest, did the immensity of this solitude appeal to her so,
did appreciation of the terrible, haunting loneliness it concealed touch
her with its grip. Care free, thoughtless, never until the whirl of the
last fortnight had the future, her future, appealed to her as something
which she herself must shape or alter. Heretofore it had been a thing
taken for granted, preordained as the alternate coming of light and of
darkness. But in that intervening time, short as it was, she had
awakened. Rude as had been the circumstances that had aroused her, they
had nevertheless been effective. Without volition upon her part the
panorama of another life had been unrolled before her eyes. Sensations,
thoughts, impulses of which she had never previously dreamed had been
hers. Passions unconceived had stalked before her gaze. More a nightmare
on the whole than an awakening it had all been; yet nevertheless the
experience had been hers. Much of its meaning had passed her by. Events
had crowded too thickly for her to grasp the whole; but _en masse_ the
effect had been definite--startlingly definite. Unbelievable as it may
seem, for the first time in her existence she had aroused to the
consciousness of being an individual entity. The inevitable
metamorphosis of age, the thing which differentiates a child from an
adult, belated long in her passive life, had at last taken place.
Bewilderingly sudden, so sudden that as yet she had not adjusted herself
to the change, had barely become conscious thereof, yet certain as
existence itself, the transformation had come to pass. Looking back
there that afternoon, looking where the town had been and now was not,
mingling with the impressions of a day full to overflowing, there came
to the girl for the first time a definite appreciation of this thing
that she had done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear
again, passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place,
taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth Landor the
woman.
Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long. With the
swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement vanished, the
personal menace gone, the impression it had made passed promptly into
abeyance. As when she and the man had sat alone in the tiny room of the
hotel, another consideration was too insistent, too vital, to prevent
dominating the moment. Any other diversion, save absolute physical pain
itself, would have been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by
minute, as the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing
impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead, looming
bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm cloud until it
blotted out every other thought, came realisation of the thing she had
done: came appreciation of its finality, its immensity. Then it was that
the infinite bigness of this uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite
loneliness, pressed her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a
child is afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this
intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the future
endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably smiling, she fancied
a time when it would not smile, when its passive eventless monotony
would be maddening. Swiftly, cumulatively as with every intense nature
impressions reproduce, this one augmented. Again into the consideration
intruded the absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More
distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory recalled
the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For better or for
worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part." No, there was
no escape, no possible avenue that remained unguarded. The knowledge
overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague possibilities, recently born,
became realities. Closer and closer gripped the solitude. For the first
time in her existence the dead surrounding silence became unbearable.
Almost desperately she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she
sought the hand of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her
eyes, until the very team itself was blotted out.
"Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!"
The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened but not
yet completely returned.
"Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?"
"Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit."
"Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the team to a
walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased flapping, hung close.
"I don't think I understand. Tell me why, Bess."
"I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark. The dark has
never hurt it. It merely is."
At her side the man sat looking at her. He did not touch her, he did not
move. In the time since they had come into his own a wonderful change
had come into the face of this Indian man; and never was it so wonderful
as at this moment. He still wore the grotesque ready-made clothes. The
high collar, galling to him as a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made
a red circle about his throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious.
Very, very young he looked at this time; fairly boyish. There was a
colour in his beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race. The
black eyes were soft as a child's, trusting as a child's. In the career
of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a period of
exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which serves as a
standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of How Landor the hour
had struck. This he knew; and yet, knowing, he could scarcely credit the
truth. His cup of happiness was full, full to overflowing; yet he was
almost afraid to put it to his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it
should prove a myth.
Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting,
worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian for his
God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with closed lips. Thus
the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein he should have been
eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity that would never be his
again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist looked on at her handiwork,
watched to the end; and then, observing that _finale_, laughed--and with
the voice of Elizabeth Landor.
"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't
understand, and I can't tell you."
She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a gesture
she had never used before, that had come very lately: come concomitantly
with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth. "Anyway, I think it will be all
right. I at least am not afraid of your eloping with someone else." She
laughed again at the thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap.
"It's quite impossible to think of you interfering with the property of
someone else; even though that property were a girl."
Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the reins. On
his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively he realised that
something was wrong; but how to set it right he did not know, and, true
to his instincts, waited.
"You wouldn't be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl,
"even though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of
anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd decided to
do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would never occur to
you; not even as possibility."
Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but no light
came.
"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It would never
occur to me to do so."
More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the voice of
Elizabeth Landor.
"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you haven't the
vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again involuntarily. "I
hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was even more deficient than
you; but now--now--" Once again the tense-strung laugh, while in her lap
the crossed hands locked and grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a
sudden I seem to see humour in everything!"
More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very inability to
fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team to a walk, fumbled
with the reins impotently.
"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying you. Tell
me what it is, won't you?"
"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly. "Wrong?"
Still again the laugh; unmusical, hysterical. "Certainly nothing is
wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so much in common as
you and I, who touch at so many places, are just married and alone?
Wrong: the preposterous idea!"
She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness seemed to
be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood and was looking
at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an expression that was terrible
in its haunting suggestion of unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He
did not say a word; he merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the
seconds passed there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace
of the glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did
the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the mortal stab
she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation in a gust and
contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a thunderclap her mood
changed, her own face, hysterically tense, relaxed in a flood of tears.
In an abandon of remorse her arms were about him, her face was pressed
close to his face.
"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm nervous
and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me; please!"
* * * * *
At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by the
map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey from nowhere
to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted for the night.
Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save once when,
far to the south, they had detected the blot of a grazing herd, they had
seen no sign of human presence. They saw no indication now. The short
fall day was drawing to a close. The sun, red as maple leaf in autumn,
was level with the earth when How Landor pulled up beside the low
sloping bank, and, the girl watching from her observation seat in the
old surrey, unharnessed and watered the team and hobbled them amid the
tall frost-cured grass to feed.
"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness have it
face north, south, east, or west?"
"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes up in the
morning."
With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work the man set
about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of the waggon box.
The furnishings, likewise his own, were close packed beside. More
quickly than the watcher fancied it possible the whole began to take
shape. Long before the glory had left the western sky the tent itself
was in place. Before the chill, which followed so inevitably and
swiftly, was in the air the diminutive soft coal heater was installed
and in service. Following, produced from the same receptacle as by
legerdemain, vanishing mysteriously within the mushroom house, followed
the blanket bed, the buffalo robes, the folding chairs and table, the
frontier "grub" chest. Last of all, signal to the world that the task
was complete, the battered lantern with the tin reflector was trimmed
and lit and, adding the final touch of comfort and of intimacy that
light alone can give, was hung from its old hook on the ridge pole.
Then at last, the first shadows of night stealing over the soundless
earth, the man approached the lone spectator and held out his arms for
her to descend.
"Come, Bess," he said. He smiled up at her as only such a man at such a
time can smile. "This is my night. I'm going to do everything; cook
supper and all. Come, girlie."
* * * * *
The meal was over, and again, as on that other occasion when Colonel
William Landor had called, the two people within the tent occupied the
same positions. In the folding rocking chair sat the girl, the light
from the single lantern playing upon her brown head and soft oval face.
In the partial darkness of the corner, stretched among the buffalo
robes, lay the man. His arms were locked behind his head. His face was
toward her. His eyes--eyes unbelievably soft and innocent for a mature
man--were upon her. As he had said, this was his night, and he was
living in it to the full. Ever taciturn with her as with others, he was
at this time even more silent than usual, silent in a happiness which
made words seem sacrilege. He merely looked at her, wonderingly,
worshipfully, with the mute devotion of a dog for its master, as a
devout Catholic gazes upon the image of the Virgin Mother. Since they
had entered the tent he had scarcely spoken more than a single sentence
at a time. Only once had he given a glimpse of himself. Then he had
apologised for the meagreness of the meal. "To-morrow," he had said,
"we will have game, the country is full of it; but to-day--" he had
looked down as he had spoken--"to-day I felt somehow as though I could
not kill anything. Life is too good to destroy, to-day."
Thus he lay there now, motionless, wordless, oblivious of passing time;
and now and then in her place the girl's eyes lifted, found him gazing
at her--and each time looked away. For some reason she could not return
that look. For some reason as each time she caught it, read its meaning,
her brown face grew darker. As truly as out there on the prairie she was
afraid of the infinite solitude, she was afraid now of the worship that
gaze implied. She had awakened, had Elizabeth Landor; and in the depths
of her own soul she knew she was not worthy of such love, such
confidence absolute. She expected it, she wanted it--and still she did
not want it. She longed for oblivion such as his, oblivion of all save
the passing minute; and it was not hers. Prescience, without a reason
therefor which she would admit, prevented forgetfulness. She tried to
shake the impression off; but it clung tenaciously. Instinctively,
almost under compulsion, she even went ahead to meet it, to prepare the
way.
"You mustn't look at me that way, How," she laughed at last forcedly.
"It makes me afraid of myself--afraid of dropping. Supposing I should
fall, from up in the sky where you fancy I am! No one, not even you,
could ever put the pieces together."
"Fall," smiled the man, "you fall? You wouldn't; but if you did, I'd be
there to catch you."
"Then you, too, would be in fragments. I'm very, very far above earth,
you know."
"I'd want to be so, if you fell," said the man. "You're all there is in
the world, all there is in life, for me. I'd want to be annihilated,
too, then."
The girl's hands folded in her lap; as they had done that afternoon,
very carefully.
"You don't know me even yet, How," she guided on. "You think I'm
perfect, but I'm not. I know I'm very, very human, very--bad at times."
The other smiled; that was all.
"I'm liable to do anything, be anything. I'm liable to even fancy I
don't like you and run away."
"If you did you'd return very soon."
"Return?" She looked at him fully. "You think so?"
"I know so."
"Why, How?"
"Because you care for me."
"But it would be because I didn't care for you that I'd go, you know."
"You'd find your mistake and come back."
The clasped hand locked, as once before they had done.
"And when I did--come back--you'd forgive me, How?"
"There'd be nothing to forgive."
"It wouldn't be wrong--to leave you that way?"
"To me you could do no wrong, Bess."
"Not if I did anything, if I--ran away with another man?"
The listener smiled, until the beardless face was very, very boyish.
"I can't imagine the impossible, Bess."
"But just supposing I should?" insistently. "You'd take me back, no
matter what I'd done, and forgive me?"
For a half minute wherein the smile slowly vanished from his face the
man did not answer, merely looked at her; then for the first time since
they had been speaking his eyes dropped.
"I could forgive you anything, Bess; but to take you back, to have
everything go on as before--I am human. I could not."
A moment longer the two remained so, each staring at their feet; then of
a sudden, interrupting, the girl laughed, unmusically, hysterically.
"I'm glad you said that, How," she exulted; "glad I compelled you to say
it. As you confess, it makes you seem more human. A god shouldn't marry
a mortal, you know."
The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.
"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed on the
girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say, forgive me
anything; but how about the other man, the one who had induced me to run
away? Would you forgive him, too?"
Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not drop.
"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and I won't
give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the other man, too?"
Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the Indian lifted
in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted until his face stood
out clear in the light like the carving of a master.
"Forgive _him_, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a god?"
That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human being looking
at the speaker that moment would have pressed the query farther, no
human being could have misread the answer. With the same little
hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in her seat. The tense
hands went lax.
"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married every day,
you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a lot of things
lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves. I never supposed
before that I possessed them."
Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty, the man
arose. As deliberately he walked over and very, very gently lifted the
girl to her feet.
"Bess," he said low, "there's something that's troubling you, something
you'd feel better to tell me. Don't you trust me enough to tell me now,
girlie?"
Very long they stood so, face to face. For a time the girl did not look
up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her back, her long
lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly as the passing shadow
of an April cloud, the mood changed, she glanced up.
"I thought I could scare you, How," she joyed softly, "and I have." She
smiled straight into his eyes. "I wanted to see how much you cared for
me, was all. I've found out. There's absolutely nothing to tell, How,
man; absolutely nothing."
For another half minute the man looked at her deeply, silently; but,
still smiling, she answered him back, and with a last lingering grip
that was a caress his hands dropped.
"I trust you, Bess, completely," he said. "It makes me unhappy to feel
that you are unhappy, is all."
"I know, How." Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that came so
easily. "I'll try not to be bad again." She touched his sleeve. "I'm
very tired now and sleepy. You'll forgive me this once again, won't
you?"
"Forgive you!--Bess!" She was in his arms, pressed close to his breast,
the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating him, bearing him as
the fruit of the poppy to oblivion. "God, girl, if you could only
realise how I love you. I can't tell you; I can't say things; but if you
could only realise!"
Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown eyes,
sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips parted.
"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again. Tell me that
you love me. Tell me! tell me!"