At breakfast next morning Kitty did not appear. Had it been possible
she would have fled into the far prairie and set up a lonely tabernacle
there; for with the day came a reaction from the courage possessing
her the night before and in the opal wakening of the dawn. When broad
daylight came she felt as though her bones were water and her body a
wisp of straw. She could not bear to meet Shiel Crozier’s eyes, and thus
it was she had an early breakfast on the plea that she had ironing to
do. She was not, however, prepared to see Jesse Bulrush drive up with
a buggy after breakfast and take Crozier away. When she did see them at
the gate the impulse came to cry out to Crozier; what to say she did not
know, but still to cry out. The cry on her lips was that which she
had seen in the newspaper the day before, the cry of the shipwrecked
seafarers, the signal of the wireless telegraphy, “S. O. S.”--the
piteous call, “Save Our Souls!” It sprang to her lips, but it got no
farther except in an unconscious whisper. On the instant she felt
so weak and shaken and lonely that she wanted to lean upon some one
stronger than herself; as she used to lean against her father, while he
sat with one arm round her studying his railway problems. She had been
self-sufficient enough all her life,--“an independent little bird of
freedom,” as Crozier had called her; but she was like a boat tossed on
mountainous waves now.
“S. O. S.!--Save Our Souls!”
As though she really had made this poignant call Crozier turned round in
the buggy where he sat with Jesse Bulrush, pale but erect; and, with a
strange instinct, he looked straight to where she was. When he saw her
his face flushed, he could not have told why. Was it that there had
passed to him in his sleep the subconscious knowledge of the kiss which
Kitty had given him; and, after all, had he said “My darling” to her
and not to the wife far away across the seas, as he thought? A strange
feeling, as of secret intimacy, never felt before where Kitty was
concerned, passed through him now, and he was suddenly conscious
that things were not as they had ever been; that the old impersonal
comradeship had vanished. It disturbed, it almost shocked him. Whereupon
he made a valiant effort to recover the old ground, to get out of the
new atmosphere into the old, cheering air.
“Come and say good-bye, won’t you?” he called to her.
“S. O. S.--S. O. S.--S. O. S.!” was the cry in her heart, but she called
back to him from her lips, “I can’t. I’m too busy. Come back soon,
soldier.”
With a wave of the hand he was gone. “Not a care in the world she has,”
Crozier said to Jesse Bulrush. “She’s the sunniest creature Heaven ever
made.”
“Too skittish for me,” responded the other with a sidelong look, for he
had caught a note in Crozier’s voice which gave him a sudden suspicion.
“You want the kind you can drive with an oatstraw and a chirp--eh, my
friend?”
“Well, I’ve got what I want,” was the reply. “Neither of us ‘ll kick
over the traces.”
“You are a lucky man,” replied Crozier. “You’ve got a remarkably big
prize in the lottery. She is a fine woman, is Nurse Egan, and I owe her
a great deal. I only hope things turn out so well that I can give her
a good fat wedding-present. But I shan’t be able to do anything
that’s close to my heart if I can’t get the cash for my share in the
syndicate.”
“Courage, soldier, as Kitty Tynan says,” responded Jesse Bulrush
cheerily. “You never know your luck. The cash is waiting for you
somewhere, and it’ll turn up, be sure of that.”
“I’m not sure of that. I can see as plain as your nose how Bradley and
his clique have blocked me everywhere from getting credit, and I’d give
five years of my life to beat them in their dirty game. If I fail to get
it at Aspen Vale I’m done. But I’ll have a try, a good big try. How far
exactly is it? I’ve never gone by this trail.”
Bulrush shook his head reprovingly. “It’s too long a journey for you to
take after your knock-out. You’re not fit to travel yet. I don’t like
it a bit. Lydia said this morning it was a crime against yourself, going
off like this, and--”
“Lydia?--oh yes, pardonnez-moi, m’sieu’! I did not know her name was
Lydia.”
“I didn’t either till after we were engaged.” Crozier stared in blank
amazement. “You didn’t know her name till after you were engaged? What
did you call her before that?”
“Why, I called her Nurse.” answered the fat lover. “We all called her
that, and it sounded comfortable and homelike and good for every day.
It had a sort of York-shilling confidence, and your life was in her
hands--a first-class you-and-me kind of feeling.”
“Why don’t you stick to it, then?”
“She doesn’t want it. She says it sounds so old, and that I’d be calling
her ‘mother’ next.”
“And won’t you?” asked Crozier slyly. “Everything in season,” beamed
Jesse, and he shone, and was at once happy and composed. Crozier
relapsed into silence, for he was thinking that the lost years had been
barren of children. He turned to look at the home they had left. It was
some distance away now, but he could see Kitty still at the corner of
the house with a small harvest of laundered linen in her hand.
“She made that fresh bed of boughs for me--ah, but I had a good sleep
last night!” he added aloud. “I feel fit for the fight before me.” He
drew himself up and began to nod here and there to people who greeted
him.
In the house behind them at that moment Kitty was saying to her mother,
“Where is he going, mother?”
“To Aspen Vale,” was the reply. “If you’d been at breakfast you’d have
heard. He’ll be gone two days, perhaps three.”
Three days! She regretted now that she had not said to herself,
“Courage, soldier,” and gone to say good-bye to him when he called
to her. Perhaps she would not see him again till after the other
woman--till after the wife-came. Then--then the house would be empty;
then the house would be so still. And then John Sibley would come and--