SACRIFICE
A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred with the
slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in the barren
dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover, with each repetition
the arrival had been earlier, the halt longer. Though the weather was
perfect, nevertheless the beast had grown impatient under the long
waits, and telltale, a glaring black mound had come into being where he
had pawed his displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully
concealed the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard
litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the mound had
grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared to question the
visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the wolf was no longer
present to stare his disapproval. Verily, unchallenged, the king had
come into his own in this realm of one; and as a monarch absolute ever
rules, Clayton Craig had reigned, was reigning now.
For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never been
invited to enter, yet he had entered--and the girl had spoken no word to
prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding stick hanging from a
peg beside the few belongings of How Landor; yet, likewise unchallenged,
they were there. Not by the girl's solicitation was he lounging
intimately in the single rocker the room boasted; yet once again the
bald fact remained that though it was not yet nine by the clock, he was
present, his legs comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids,
whimsically observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour
of putting the place to rights.
"I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted that
unoffending table three times by actual count since I've been watching.
Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and entertain your company?"
The girl did not smile.
"Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you were
tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer--" She drew another
chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands in her lap.
A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the
whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had
grown to assume in her presence took its place.
"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop sarcasm
when you and I are together? I know I've been a most reprehensible
offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"
"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your idea of
punishment?"
The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably in the
past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed
plain.
"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways you've held
me at arm's length until I'm beginning to despair."
"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so dull that
I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"
For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the role that
the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too effective to
abandon at once.
"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week, Bess," he
objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again; but that is all.
Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were when I first returned."
"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost refused to
appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least I've gotten
immeasurably farther away from another."
"Your husband you mean?"
"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."
The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.
"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too much to
each other not to know everything there is to know."
"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now. The
inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly--and she herself had
chosen. "He's merely given me up."
"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face, something
else as well, something akin to exultation.
"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."
"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"
Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old defiance, the old
pride, broke forth.
"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have known before
this if he objected?" she flamed.
"Bess!"
"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that." Already the blaze had
died, never to be rekindled. "Forget that I said that. I didn't mean
to."
The man did not answer, he scarcely heard. Almost as by a miracle, the
last obstacle had been removed from his way. He had counted upon
blindness, the unsuspicion of perfect confidence; but a passive,
conscious conformity such as this--The thing was unbelievable,
providential, too unnaturally good to last. The present was a strategic
moment, the time for immediate, irrevocable action, ere there came a
change of heart. It had not been a part of Clayton Craig's plans to
permit a meeting between himself and the Indian. As a matter of fact he
had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary precautions to
avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity passed, he did not
alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the red man. He had proven to
himself by an incontrovertible process of reasoning that such was not
the case. It was merely to avoid unpleasantness for himself and for the
girl--particularly for the latter. Moreover, no possible object could be
gained by such a meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He
merely decided to hasten the move. It was the forming of this decision
that had held him silent. It was under its influence that he spoke.
"When is it to be, Bess," he asked abruptly, "the final break, I mean?"
"It has already been, I tell you. It's all over."
"The new life, then," guided the man. "You can't go on this way any
longer. It's intolerable for both of us."
"Yes," dully, "it's intolerable for all of us."
Craig arose and, walking to the door, looked out. In advance he had
imagined that the actual move, when all was ready, would be easy. Now
that the time had really arrived, he found it strangely difficult. He
hardly knew how to begin.
"Bess." Of a sudden he had returned swiftly and, very erect, very
dominant, stood looking down at her. "Bess," repeated, "we've avoided
the obvious long enough, too long. As I said, you've succeeded in
keeping me at arm's length all the last week; but I won't be denied any
longer. I'm willing to take all the blame of the past, and all the
responsibility of the future. I love you, Bess. I've told you that
before, but I repeat it now. I want you to go away with me, away from
this God-cursed land that's driving us both mad--at least leave for a
time. After a while, when we both feel different, we can come back if we
wish; but for the present--I can't stand this uncertainty another week,
another day." He paused for breath, came a step nearer.
"Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake," he rushed on; "but we
can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and forget it." He
cleared his throat needlessly. "It's this getting away that I've
arranged for since I've been here. I've not been entirely idle the last
week, and every detail is complete. There are three relays of horses
waiting between here and the railroad. One team is all ready at the
ranch house the minute I give the signal. They'll get us to town before
morning. You've only to say the word, and I'll give the sign." Again,
nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say,
not interfere; but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been
enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides,
the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is over at
the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything after we're gone.
Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them.
There's no possible excuse for delay." He bent over her, his hands on
her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly. "God knows
you've been buried here long enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to
live, do you hear? We'll be very happy together, you and I, Bess;
happier than you ever dreamed of being. Will you come?"
He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the
dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat
looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As
she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed.
Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an
evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden,
within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The
instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than
life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading,
distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her
ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn
philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she
had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full
knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him
so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a
wife--.
The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face
drew nearer.
"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in suspense.
Will you go?"
With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back
until she was free.
"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to
think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go with you, yes;
but to-day, now--I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must
consent--"
"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he digressed. "I
can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you
must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not
insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?"
The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.
"I can't now, as things are."
"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for me?"
For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.
The man came a step forward, and another.
"Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?"
"I have told you," said a low voice.
Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as a human
being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the girl could move
or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must go then," he
commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her again, hungrily,
irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer. You will go."
"Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's impotent
effort to be free. "You must not, we must not--yet. I'm bad, I know, but
not wholly. Please let me go."
Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught save the
moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory, in her effort to
escape. Save that one casual glance long before, he had not looked out
of doors. Had he done so, had he seen--.
But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four walls. His
back was toward the door. His own great shoulders walled the girl in.
Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure that had drifted from out
the prairie swiftly into the dooryard, dreamed that that same
all-knowing shadow, on soundless moccasined feet, had advanced to the
doorway, stood silent, watching therein. As the first man and the first
woman were alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might
have exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.
"Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just gotten
you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm made of clay and
not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and closer, until she could
no longer struggle, until she lay still in his arms. "I'll never let you
go again, girl, not if God himself were to demand your release. You're
mine, Bess, mine by right of capture, mine--"
The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible
muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the
shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside
them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the
invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent
poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent
passions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder
in breathless expectation, breathless fascination.
* * * * *
While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count,
the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical
spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction
had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure,
there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense,
desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.
"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened his lips
and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to understand, I
guess. What are you going to do about it?"
The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the
two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his
presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once
more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful,
he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More
maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that
passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot
blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until
his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband,
tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward
menacingly.
"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last, perhaps,
not to dare me to take something of yours away from you." Word by word
his voice had risen until he fairly shouted. "You've lost, fool; lost,
lost! Are you blind that you can't see? You've lost, I say!"
From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted; and that
instant the room became deathly still.
A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so; then,
white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two, paused so,
motionless:--for of a sudden a voice, an even, passionless voice, was
speaking.
"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided. Just a step
the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he recognised the
white man's presence. His eyes were steady and level. His voice,
unbelievably low in contrast to that of the other, when he spoke was
even as before.
"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he said.
"I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One thing I
expect, however, and that is that you'll not interrupt again. You may
listen or not, as you wish. Later, I may have a word to say to you; but
now there is nothing to be said." Just a moment longer the look held, a
moment wherein the other man felt his tongue grow dumb; then with the
old impassivity, the old isolation, the black eyes shifted until they
rested on the face of the girl.
But for still another moment--he was as deliberate as nature herself,
this man--he stood so, looking down. Always slender, he had grown more
so these last weeks. Moreover, he had the look of one weary unto death.
His black eyes were bright, mysteriously bright, and on his thin hands,
folded across his chest, the veins stood out full and prominent; but
look where one would on the lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath
the close-fitting clothes, distinct to emaciation. Standing there now,
very grave, very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his
expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness, infinite
in its pathos. When he spoke the same incredible tolerance throbbed in
the low-pitched voice.
"I've just a few things I wish to say to you, Bess," he began, "and a
request to make--and that is all. I didn't come back so, unexpectedly,
to be unpleasant, or to interfere with what you wish to do. I came
because I fancied you were going to do an unwise thing: because I had
reason to believe you were going to run away." Unconsciously, one of the
folded hands loosened, passed absently over his forehead; then returned
abruptly to its place. "Perhaps I was mistaken. If so I beg your pardon
for the suspicion; but at least, if I can prevent, I don't want you to
do so. It's this I came to tell you." Again the voice halted, and into
it there came a new note: a self-conquered throb that lingered in the
girl's recollection while memory lasted.
"It's useless to talk of yourself and of myself, Bess," he went on.
"Things are as they are--and final. I don't judge you, I--understand.
Above everything else in life, I wish you to be happy; and I realise now
I can't make you so. Another perhaps can; I hope so and trust so. At
least I shall not stand in your way any longer. It is that I came to
tell you. It is I who shall leave and not you, Bess." Of a sudden he
stepped back and lifted one hand free, preventingly. "Just a moment,
please," he requested. "Don't interrupt me until I say what I came to
say." His arms folded back as before, his eyes held hers compellingly.
"I said I had a request to make. This is it--that you don't leave until
you are married again. You won't have to wait long if I leave. I have
inquired and found out. A few days, a few weeks at the longest, and you
will be free. Meanwhile stay here. Everything is yours. I never owned
anything except the house, and that is yours also." For the last time he
halted; then even, distinct, came the question direct. "Will you promise
me this, Bess?" he asked.
Save once, when she had tried to interrupt, the girl had listened
through it all without a move, without a sound. Now that he was silent,
and it was her turn to speak, she still stood so, passive, waiting. Ever
in times of stress his will had dominated her will; and the present was
no exception. There was an infinity of things she might have said. A
myriad which she should have spoken, would occur to her when he was
gone. But at the present, when the opportunity was hers, there seemed
nothing to offer; nothing to gainsay. She even forgot that she was
expected to answer at all, that he had asked a question.
"Won't you promise me this one thing, Bess?" repeated the voice gently.
"I've never made a request of you before, and I probably never shall
again."
At last the girl aroused; and of a sudden she realised that her lips
were very dry and hot. She moistened them with her tongue.
"Yes, How," she said dully, "I promise."
Silence fell, a silence deathly in its significance, in its finality;
but the girl did not break it, said no more--and forever the moment, her
moment, vanished into the past.
"Thank you, Bess," acknowledged the man monotonously. Slowly, strangely
different from his usual alert certainty, he moved across the room.
"There are just a few things here I'd like to take with me," he
explained apologetically. "They'd only be in your way if I left them."
With a hand that fumbled a bit, he took down a battered telescope
satchel from a peg on the wall and began packing. He moved about slowly
here and there, his moccasined feet patting dully on the bare floor. No
one offered to assist him, no one interrupted; and in dead silence,
except for the sound he himself made, he went about his work. Into the
satchel went a few books from the shelf on the wall: an old army
greatcoat that had been Colonel William Landor's: a weather-stained cap
which had been a present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered
in one of his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and
there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was small,
and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter he stood
beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put on the cover
and began tightening the straps. The leather was old and the holes
large, but he found difficulty even then in fastening the buckles. At
last, though, it was done, and he straightened. Both the white man and
the girl were watching him; but no one spoke. For the second time, the
last time, the Indian stood so while his intense black eyes shifted from
nook to nook, taking in every detail of the place that had once been his
heaven, his nest, but now his no more; then of a sudden he lifted his
burden and started to leave. Opposite the girl he paused and held out
his hand.
"Good-bye, Bess," he said. He looked her deep in the eyes, deep into her
very soul. "If I knew what religion is, I'd say God bless you, girl; but
I don't, so I'll only say good-bye--and--I wish you happiness." Just a
moment longer he remained so; then at something he saw, he dropped her
hand and drew away swiftly, preventingly.
"Don't, Bess," he pleaded, "don't say it--as you cared for me once.
Don't make things any harder--make them impossible!" Desperately,
without another pause, ere she could disobey, he started for the door.
Beside the entrance--for he was not watching these last minutes--stood
the white man; and just for a moment at his side the Indian halted.
Despite the will of Clayton Craig, their eyes met. For an instant,
wherein time lapsed, they stood face to face; then swiftly as he did
everything, now the Indian spoke: and, as once before in his life, those
words and the look that accompanied them went with the alien to his
grave.
"As for you, Mr. Craig," said the voice, "I have one thing only to say.
Make Bess happy. There's nothing in the world to prevent your doing so,
if you will. If you do not--" a pause of horrible ice-cold menace--"if
you do not," repeated, "suicide." Just for the fraction of a second not
a civilised man but a savage stared the listener in the face. "I shall
know if you fail, and believe me, it were better, a thousand times
better, if you do as I say."
Again, as beside the girl, there was a mute, throbbing lapse; then,
similarly before there could be an answer, upon the tense silence there
broke the swift pat of moccasined feet, and he was gone.