Summerling cleared his throat and thereafter scratched his head.
"It's irregular. I told Gratton that. But he said there was--was
extenuatin' circumstances and all that. Hadn't been time for a licence.
It's irregular; don't know as I mightn't get in trouble for it----"
"The marriage would be binding, wouldn't it?" demanded King.
"Sure it would; once I said 'man and wife' nary man could set _that_
aside. But, if any one wanted to get _me_ in bad, seeing there's no
licence--well, it would make trouble with my bondsmen and they'd make
trouble with me."
King silenced the man with a scowl and led him and Jim into the
living-room, closing the door. It was unthinkable that Gloria should
hear a lot of talk about why's and how's. For Gloria, it struck him, had
undergone enough for one day. "Look here," he said to Summerling then,
"either you will or you won't. If you won't, then Miss Gaynor and myself
will go elsewhere. Now, which is it?"
"Gratton promised me a hundred dollars," muttered the "judge." "And he
cleared out without taking the trouble to pay me."
King's face cleared. His cheque for a hundred dollars decided the
"judge."
"That's a might of money to pay the old duffer for one night's work,
Mark," muttered Jim. "Strikes me that way, anyhow."
A might of money! King laughed.
"Now if you folks are ready," said Summerling, grown impatient the
moment the cheque was in his pocket, "I've got a long ride ahead of me."
This time Gloria did not keep them waiting. She came down the staircase
to Mark King standing at the bottom. In her pink dress, like a
thistledown, floating down to him. He was thinking--she, too,
remembered--how for the first time they had met thus. She smiled at him;
she put out her two hands to him as she had done that other time. And
right there they were married--on Gus Ingle's old Bible.
"It's done!" whispered Mark, bending over her. "You are mine now; mine
for all time, Gloria. And, girl of mine," he added reverently, "may God
deal with me as I deal with you."
"It's done!" In an awed little voice came Gloria's response, like an
echo. Mark King had seen her across the quicksands.
Jim and the "judge" had gone. They two were alone in the still house.
Gloria was nervous; King could see that and thought that he understood.
So he went for wood, made a cheery blaze in the fireplace, and drew two
chairs up to it.
"Tell me about papa's letter," said Gloria hastily Had there not been
that obvious topic she would have caught at another, any other. "He
didn't tell me how badly he was hurt or what had happened."
King put out his hand for hers, and while Gloria looked into the fire
and he looked into her face, he told her. At the end he brought out Gus
Ingle's Bible and read to her what was written in it. All the time that
his eyes were occupied she watched him eagerly, a little anxiously. But
by the time he had finished she had been intrigued for the moment out of
her own self-centred thoughts, her fancies caught by all that underlay
this crude tale of treasure and murder, of lust for gold, of treachery
and lonely death.
"And you know where it is?"
"I can go to it as straight as a string. Two days to get to it and to
stake a claim; two days to come out with a couple of horses loaded to
the guards. And that itself means a fortune, if it's clean, raw gold, as
would seem to be the case. We need not fear the poorhouse, you and I,
Mrs. King!"
"But Brodie? And Mr. Gratton?"
"They don't know where it is! They can't know, since we've got the
Bible, and Honeycutt was dead before they got to him! If they knew they
would have been on their way already. And I'll be striking out before
dawn, leaving no such trail that they can follow it in a hurry, even if
they should seek to. No; Brodie and Gratton and the rest of them have
lost the game!"
"You are going so soon? Papa wanted that?"
"He wanted me to telephone as soon as I got this." He rose, lingering
over her. "We mustn't forget him, even for our own happiness." He
brushed her hair with his lips; he hastened the few steps to the
telephone in Ben's study.
"I--I am going upstairs, Mark," called Gloria after him.
"All right, Queen of the World," he answered her. "I'm just to phone in
a message for him. It won't take me five minutes to get it done; just to
say: 'Tell Ben that I start at dawn and that he's got my word for it
that nothing's going to stop me! And--that I've just married Gloria!'"
But he was at the telephone longer than he thought to be. The operator
buzzed into his ear as he took down the receiver; San Francisco was
trying to get a message through. For Gloria Gaynor. Would he take the
message? Then an operator in San Francisco, droning the words: "For Miss
Gloria Gaynor. Your father is hurt in Coloma. Just sent me word. Says
not dangerously, but I must go to him immediately. Meet me there.
Mamma."
"Got it," said King, and San Francisco rang off. Thereafter he got his
own message through; he wondered how Mrs. Gaynor would take the news of
her new son-in-law. Ben would be glad; he was sure of Ben.
Gloria was still upstairs. King sat in front of the fire, staring into
the flames, listening to the wind in the chimney, waiting for Gloria.
When time passed and she did not come, he went softly upstairs and to
her door. It was closed and he knocked lightly, then dropped his hand to
the knob, awaiting her voice.
His knuckles had hardly brushed the door, this door which he approached
in reverence; Gloria had not even heard him. He called softly, his voice
little above a whisper:
"Gloria!" He heard her move; for a moment she did not answer. He could
not know how she stood, scarcely breathing, her hands at her breast; nor
how, now that the great step was taken, she was again half-frightened,
half-regretful, altogether bewildered and uncertain. Of herself, of him,
of everything----
"Is it you, Mark?"
"Yes. May I come in, Gloria?"
"Please, Mark. It's all so new, so strange ... I intended to come right
back downstairs, but I'm so tired, Mark. And I want to be alone a
little; to think. I haven't had time to think of anything! You don't
mind, do you, Mark?"
He answered promptly and heartily, refusing to allow himself to harbour
a shadow of disappointment.
"No. No, of course not. You will go right to bed? I know you must be
half-dead for sleep."
"Yes." There was a note of eagerness in the voice coming to him from
beyond the shut door.
"There was a message from your mother; she has gone to your father and
wanted you to meet her there. But we will talk of that later."
"Yes.... Good-night, Mark."
"Aren't you going to kiss me good-night?" he asked, hesitating a little
between the words. His new privilege, a lover's, a husband's, was not an
hour old; he felt strangely shy as he spoke softly to her.
"Please, Mark! I am terribly tired out, and--and I'm afraid I've mislaid
the key, and----"
That hurt him; his eyes darkened with the quick pain that came to him
from her words. He had hoped that Gloria had known him better than that.
"You need never lock your door against me, my dear," he told her gently.
"I don't want you to be afraid of me. Why, God bless you, I wouldn't
touch the hem of your dress if you didn't want me to."
"Yes," said Gloria. "I know. You are so good, Mark. But now----"
"I am going," he returned tenderly, "to sit by the fire and think. Just
to soak myself in the realization," he added with a happy laugh, "that
you are mine."
"Before you go in the morning you will come to my door?"
"If you want me to...."
"Of course, Mark."
"Then--good-night, dear."
"Good-night, Mark."
_Chapter XVI_
King was astir long before dawn. He got the fire going in the kitchen
and started breakfast, seeking to be very silent and succeeding in
making the usual clatter of a male among pots and pans. Whilst water
heated and bacon sizzled, he rummaged through the store-room at the rear
of the house, gathering what he meant to put into his pack for the four
or five days' trip. As he returned from the last journey to the
store-room, his arms full of camp accessories, including canvas and camp
blankets, he confronted Gloria, fully dressed. He dropped his arm-load
and filled his eyes with her. Any shadow left overnight in his heart was
sent scurrying before his new joyousness. Gloria had come down to him
while he deemed her fast asleep!
"Gloria!" he cried.
A more radiantly lovely Gloria he had never looked upon. She had slept
and rested; she had bathed and groomed and set herself in order. She was
dressed after a fashion to bewilder a mere man in the only utterly
ravishing outing costume Mark King had ever seen. He felt insanely
inclined to pick up her little boots, one after the other, and go down
on his knees and kiss them; her hat was a flopsy turban, from under the
brim of which the most adorable of golden-brown curls half escaped to
throw kiss-shadows on her rosy cheeks. And Gloria's eyes!
This time there was no door between them, nor even the memory of a
door. He gathered her up into his arms so that her boot-heels swung
clear of the floor.
"Do you know ... do you guess ... have you the faintest suspicion how I
love you?"
"The--the coffee!" gasped Gloria. "It's boiling over!"
He laughed joyously at that, and finally, when he had set her down,
Gloria, bright and flushed, laughed too.
"Burning bacon last night, boiling coffee this morning!" he chuckled.
And then, there in the kitchen, they sat down to breakfast. "It's sweet
of you," he told her softly, "to get up and come down and see me off."
"Oh," said Gloria, "I am going with you."
Not once had King dared think of a thing like that. He had thought that
at best he would be with her again in four or five days. But that she
should go with him into the mountains on this quest of his? He sat and
pondered and stared at her.
"Don't you want me?" asked Gloria. "Aren't you glad, Mark?"
She was serenely prepared for objections, should they be forthcoming.
For it was not on any spur of the moment, but after long deliberation,
that she had decided that she would go with him. She wanted no scandal
in the papers; she meant that there should be none. If it were rumoured
that she had gone out of town with Gratton; if Gratton wanted to be ugly
and feed rumour; then on top of that if she appeared within reach of a
reporter without a husband, there would be talk. If it were answered
that she was married to Mark King, there would be the question: "And
where, my dear, is this Mark King?" Those girl friends in San Francisco
who had met him at her birthday-party would be fairly squirming with
excited curiosity to know _everything_. Among themselves they would make
insinuations about the Bear Tamer or the Animal Trainer, as Gloria knew
that they would variously and mirthfully designate him. They would find
it unusual that King had married her one day and had gone off the next
without her. They would hazard endless unpleasant explanations; they
would get their heads together; they would make an astonishing patchwork
of scraps of distorted rumour and bits of wild speculation.... From
upstairs last night she had heard fragmentary outbursts from the
"judge." "Irregular; no licence." Now Gloria meant to kill the snake
outright, not to allow the scotched reptile to writhe free. She was
married; she was going with her husband into the wilderness on the most
romantic of all honeymoons. The papers were free to make much of that.
"Of course I want you," said King slowly. "Glad? Glad that you want to
come with me? Can't you see that I am the gladdest man on earth?
But----"
"I have already written a message I wanted to send to a girl friend in
San Francisco...." It was to Miss Mildred Carter, who was engaged to be
married to Bob Dwight of the _Chronicle_.... "I was going to have it
phoned in to her. It tells her I'm--married. To you, Mark. And that
we're off on the most wonderful trip together into the heart of the wild
country."
"God bless you," he said heartily. But Gloria, glancing at him swiftly,
saw that his eyes were clouded with perplexity.
"Of course," she said, "if you don't want a girl along----"
"Gloria!"
"Well, then? It's settled? I'm to go?"
"Only I'm afraid it isn't the sort of a trip for a girl. It's hard
going, and--Oh, it's a cursed shame I can't put it off."
"You said last night that you weren't afraid of anything Brodie and his
men could do? That they didn't even know where to go? That they'd never
know where to find you?"
"Yes. And I meant it. But----"
He wanted her with him; she wanted to come. Further, it pained him to
think that those first glorious days should be spent with the mountains
between them. He was tempted, sorely tempted. Gloria knew; she smiled
at him across the table; she tempted him further. ...Was there really
any danger, would there be danger to her? If he thought so, that there
was the faintest likelihood of harm to her, he would say no, no matter
what the yearning in his heart. But if they made a quick dash in and
out; two days each way, not over one day at Gus Ingle's caves? If they
went on horseback nearly all the way, and travelled light? He carried a
rifle nowadays, and he rather believed he might carry it ten years
without ever firing a shot at any man of their hulking crowd. They could
go in one way, come out another. They had at least a full day's head
start of any possible followers. No, in his heart he did not believe
that there would be any danger to Gloria. Further, the thought struck
him that she would not be altogether safe here; there was venom in
Gratton, God only knew how virulent. And there was sinister significance
in the fact that Gratton was hand in glove now with Swen Brodie. Then,
too, Gratton knew from Gloria's own lips that she had brought the
message from her father in Coloma; hence Gratton might suspect, and
Brodie after him, that Gloria was in possession of old Loony Honeycutt's
secret. Instead of seeming hazardous to take Gloria with him, it began
to appear that his new responsibility of guarding her from all harm had
begun already, and that he could best protect her from any possible evil
by having her always with him. He could not allow her to go to her
parents in Coloma; he thought of that, but that was Brodie's hangout,
and Ben was in no condition to send for her. Nor was it advisable for
her to go alone to San Francisco; her mother was not there, and Gratton
might be looked on to follow her....So with himself communed Mark King,
never a man overly given to caution, but seeking now to measure chances,
to set them in the scales over against the desire of his heart. A
fanciful thought insisted on being heard: had Gus Ingle's treasure
hidden itself all these years, awaiting the time when he and Gloria
together came to it? Their wedding gift! How much more precious then
than mere gold!
"We'd travel light," he said thoughtfully, and Gloria knew that she had
won. "We'd go in quick, out quick. It's getting late in the year," he
added with a smile, "and we'd have to hurry, Brodie or no Brodie. I've
no notion for a prolonged honeymoon snow-bound in those mountains."
Her eyes danced.
"Wouldn't that be fun!"
His smile quickened. Her childish ignorance of what such an adventure
would mean was in keeping with her vast inexperience with matters of the
outdoors; she had merely begun, in his company, to glimpse the true
meanings of the solitudes. She would learn further--with him. And a warm
glow of pleasure came with the thought that Gloria wanted to go.
* * * * *
The pearl-grey dawn was flowering into a still pink morning when they
locked the door behind them and stepped out into the crisp, sweet
freshness of the autumn air. He had made two small packs, provisions
rolled into the bedding and the whole wrapped in pieces of canvas; he
estimated they would be gone five days, and then, making due allowance
for any reasonable delay, provisioned for ten. When he saw that Gloria
had noted how for the first time on a woodland jaunt with her he carried
a very businesslike-looking rifle, he explained laughingly that if they
developed abnormal appetites there were both deer and bear to be had.
She was much interested in everything, and looked out to the mountains
eagerly when King had swung her up to her saddle on Blackie, the tall,
sober-faced horse, where she sat with a roll of blankets at her back and
with the horn before her decorated with a miscellany of camp
equipment--a frying-pan, a short-handled axe in its sheath, an overcoat
done into a compact bundle. Here was another moment when thoughts were
too slow processes to emphasize themselves; she was swayed by emotions
provoked by the moment. Where were the trunks and suitcases and
hat-boxes to accompany the young bride? In their stead, a coat tied into
a tight bundle and a frying-pan before her. King looked at her and
marvelled; her cheeks were roses, her eyes were Gloria's own, wonderful
and big and deep beyond fathoming. From his own saddle on the buckskin
he nodded his approval of her.
"You are not afraid that I can't take care of you, are you, Gloria?" he
asked.
And Gloria laughed gaily, answering:
"My dear Mr. Man, I am not the least little bit afraid of anything in
all the world this morning!"
So with the glorious day brightening all about them they turned away
from the log house and into the trail which straightway King dubbed
"Adventure Trail." And as they went he sang out joyously:
"The Lord knows what we'll find, dear heart, and the deuce knows what
we'll do.
But we're back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
And Life runs large on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new."
_Chapter XVII_
The magnificent wilderness into which rode Mark and Gloria King seemed
to prostrate its august self to do them honour upon this their wedding
morning. Succeeding the paler tints of the earlier hour came the rare
blue day. Last night's clouds had vanished; the air was clear and crisp,
with still a hint of frost. On all hands had October in passing splashed
the world with colour. Along the creek the aspens danced and played and
shivered in bright golden raiment; through the bushes there was a
glimpse of vivid scarlet where the leaves of a dwarf maple were as
bright as snow-plants. A little grove of gracefully slender poplars
trembled in yellow against the azure above. The clear, thin sunlight
pricked out colours until it made the woods a riot of them, greens dark
and light, the grey of sage, the white of a granite seam, the black of a
lava rock, and in the creek spray a brilliant vari-coloured rainbow
sheen. They two, riding side by side, while the broad trail permitted,
passed over the ridge and out of sight of the house. Immediately the
solitudes shut down about them with titanic walls. They rode down into a
long, shadowy hollow, out through a tiny verdant meadow fringed with the
rusty brown of sunflower leaves, and on up to the crest of the second
ridge. Already they were alone in the world, a man and his mate, with
only infinity and its concrete symbols embracing them, ancient and
ageless trees, limitless sky, mile after mile of ridge and precipice and
barren peak. And upon them and about them and within them the utter
serene hush of the Sierra.
With every swinging step of the horses taking them on, a new gladness
blossomed in King's heart. For they were pushing ever further into the
portion of the world which he knew best, loved best. The present left
him nothing to wish for; he had Gloria, and Gloria had elected to come
with him. Until high noon they would wind along, for the most part
climbing pretty steadily with the old trail--Indian trail, miners'
trail, trail which even to-day seems to lead from the first generation
of the twentieth century straight back into the heart of 1850 and
beyond. Here men did not penetrate save at long intervals; here was true
solitude. And soon, when they should leave this trail to travel as
straight a line as the broken country would allow toward Gus Ingle's
caves, they would enter a region given over entirely to the wild's own
bright-eyed, shy inhabitants.
There were red spots in Gloria's cheeks when they started. King sought
to guess at what might be the emotions of a young girl going on with
Gloria's present emotional adventure--vain task of a mere man seeking to
fathom those troubled feminine depths!--marking that she was a little
nervous and distrait.
"I know the place Gus Ingle tried to describe," he said, "as well as I
know my old hat. Or at least I'd have said so until he mentioned the
third cave. I've been there dozens of times, too, but I've got to see
more than two caves there yet."
Together they had read the crabbed lines in the Bible; they had been
silent thereafter as to each came imagined pictures like ghosts from the
past; ghosts of greed and envy and despair. Now Gloria mused aloud:
"I wonder--do you suppose we'll find it as he says?"
"At least we'll see about it. And whether there be heaps and piles of
red, red gold, as the tale telleth, be sure our trip is going to be
worth the two days' ride. I'll show you such chasms and gorges and crags
as you've never turned those two lovely eyes of yours upon, Mrs. Gloria
King." (He couldn't abstain absolutely from all love-making.) "And a
little grove of sequoias which belongs to me. Or, at least, I believe I
am the only man who knows where they are. Friends of mine, those big
fellows are, five old noble-souled monarchs."
She looked interested and treated him to a fleeting smile, but asked
curiously:
"How can a man speak of a tree that way? As though it were alive--" She
broke off, laughing, and amended: "But they _are_ alive, aren't they? I
mean--human."
"Why, you poor little city-bred angel," he cried heartily. "You will
answer your own question inside of two days. No doubt I'm going to grow
jealous of old Vulcan and Thor and Majesty. Sure, I've named them," he
chuckled. "And you'll come with me into their dim cathedral to-morrow at
dusk and listen with me to their old sermon. A man ought to go to church
to them at least once a year, to keep his soul cleaned out and growing
properly."
Gloria appeared thoughtful; that she was interested just now less in
that of which he spoke than in the man himself he did not suspect. She
was noting how he spoke of trees as friends; how he was different from
other men whom she knew in that he stood so much closer to the ancient
mother, the wilderness now embracing them. Instinctively she knew that
it behoved her to penetrate as deeply as she might into the inner nature
of this man who, hardly more than a pleasant, attractive stranger
yesterday, was to-day her husband.
"What is the oldest thing in the world?" he asked her abruptly.
She wrinkled her brows prettily at him.
"Church to-morrow evening and school now?" she countered lightly.
"Answer," insisted King. "Just at a rough guess what would you say was
the oldest thing in the world?"
Gloria cudgelled her brains. Finally, since he seemed quite serious, and
she knew that wisdom lay in pleasing the male of the species in small
and unimportant matters, she sought to reply.
"The Sphinx or the Pyramids, I'd guess," she offered.
"Naturally," he returned. "And what will you say when I introduce you to
the Pharaoh who was a big, husky giant before Thebes was thought of?"
Again she looked to see a twinkle of jest in his eyes.
"Pharaoh?" she said. "Just a tree? Over two or three thousand years
old!"
"By at least another thousand," he rejoined triumphantly. "And as
staunch an old gentleman as you'll find."
Even Gloria, a poor little city-bred angel, must muse upon the
statement. Having caught her interest he told her picturesquely of his
old friends; how they had dwelt on serenely while peoples were born and
empires rose and fell; while Rome smote Greece and both went down in the
dust; while Columbus pushed his three boats across the seas; while the
world itself passed from one phase to another; how they were all but
co-eternal with eternity.
"When you think how these old fellows were a thousand years old when the
Christ was a little boy," he ended simply, "you will begin to realize
the sort of things they have a way of saying to you while you lie still
and look up and up, and still up among their branches that seem at
night to brush against the stars."
She let her fancies drift in the leash of his. But again they left the
picturesque ancient trees and returned to him. A little smile touched
her lips and was gone before he was sure of it; she was thinking that a
man like King kept always in his heart something of the simplicity of a
little child; she wondered if she herself, though so much younger in
actual years, were not worlds more sophisticated. For his part King
noted that she displayed to-day none of that chattering, singing gaiety
of their former rides together; he remembered, sympathetically, that she
had had very little sleep last night, and that she had endured a
wearisome twenty-four hours before, and that the long, nervous strain
under which she had struggled must certainly have told upon her, both
physically and mentally. So, believing that she would be grateful for
silence, he grew silent with her.
Further and ever further into the heart of the solitudes they rode
through the quiet hours of the forenoon, with Gloria ever more
abstracted and Mark King holding apart from her, doing her reverence,
drinking always deep of that soft, sweet beauty which was hers. They
forsook the creeks where the yellow-leaved aspens fluttered their myriad
little gleaming banners; they made slow, zigzag work of climbing a
flinty-sided mountain; they looked back upon green meadow and gay poplar
grove far below; they galloped their horses across a wide table-land
over which shrilled the wind, already sharpened by the season for the
work it had to do before many weeks passed. Though there were some few
level spaces, though now and then as King sought for her the easier way
they rode down short slopes, with every mile put behind them they had
climbed perceptibly. Already Gloria had the sensation of being by the
world forgotten--though for her the world could not be forgot. A ridge
from which they looked out across the peaks and valleys seemed to her
like an island, lost, remote, eternally set apart from other people
whom she knew, from all her life as she had lived it. She went on and on
and felt like one in a dream, journeying into a fierce, rugged land over
which lay a spell of enchantment, a spell that had been cast over it
before King's all but immortal trees had burst from the seeds, so that
now, while the outside world pulsed and beat with life, and swung back
and forth with its pendulous progress, here all was unchanged,
changeless.
King led her, well before midday, to the spot in which from the first he
had planned that they would noon. A forest pool ringed with boulders,
which were green with moss under the splashing of the water from above,
where the swaying pines mirrored themselves and shivered in the little
breeze which ruffled the clear, cold water. Here was a tiny upland
meadow and much rich grass; here a sheltered spot where Gloria might sit
in the sun and be protected from the colder air.
He was quick to help her to dismount and noted that she came down
stiffly; the eyes which she turned to him were heavy with fatigue; some
of the rose flush had faded from her cheeks.
"Maybe I shouldn't have let you come after all, dear," he said
contritely. "These are harder trails than we've ridden before, and we've
had to keep at it steadier."
There was an effort in her smile answering him.
"The last two days _have_ been hard to get through with," she said as
she yielded to his insistence and sat down on the sun-warmed
pine-needles. "I am sorry I am so--so----"
He did not allow her to run down the elusive word.
"Nonsense," he told her heartily. "You've got a right to be tired. But
when you've had some hot lunch and a cup of hot coffee you'll be tip-top
again. You'll see."
King unsaddled and tethered the horses where they could browse and rest
and roll; built his little fire and went about lunch-getting with a joy
he had never known in the old accustomed routine before. Now and then he
glanced toward Gloria; he could not help that. But he saw that she was
lying back, her eyes closed, and while his heart went out to her he did
not force his sympathy on her. She was tired and, what was more, she had
every right and reason to be tired. He hoped that she might get three
winks of sleep. When he came near her for the coffee-pot he tiptoed. She
seemed to be asleep.
But Gloria was not asleep. Never had her mind raced so. It was done and
she was Mark King's wife! Higher and higher loomed that fact above all
other considerations. But there were other considerations; her father
hurt, she did not know how badly; her mother mystified, by now perhaps
informed of Gloria's marriage; Gratton with the poison extracted from
his fangs had the fangs still; gold ahead somewhere, in caves where men
long ago had laboured and fought and snarled at one another like
starving wolves and died; Brodie somewhere, Brodie with the horrible
face. She shivered and stirred restlessly, and King, who saw everything,
thought that she had dreamed a bad dream. But lunch was ready; he came
to her with plate and cup. And again Gloria did her best to smile
gratefully.
"You are so good to me, Mark," she said. Her eyes were thoughtful; would
he always be good to her? Even when--but she was too weary to think. It
seemed to her that only now was she beginning to feel the effects of all
she had been through.
"I want to learn how to be good to you, wife of mine," he said very
gently. "That is all on earth I ask. Just to make you happy."
"You love me so much, Mark?" she asked, as one who wondered at what she
had read in his low voice and glimpsed in his eyes.
"Gloria," he told her gently, "I don't understand this thing they call
love yet; it is too new, too wonderful. But I do know that in all the
world there is nothing else that matters."
"Not even Gus Ingle's red, red gold?" she said rather more lightly than
she had spoken.
"Not even Gus Ingle's red, red gold."
She looked at him long and curiously.
"You would do anything you could to make me happy? Anything, Mark?"
"I pray with all my heart and soul that I always may!"
Gloria seemed to rest through the noon hour and to brighten. When she
saw him the second time look at the sun she got up from the ground and
said:
"Time to go on? I'm ready. And after that banquet I feel all _me_
again!"
He laughed and went off after the horses, singing at the top of his
voice. She stood very still, looking off after him, her brows puckering
into a shadowy frown. Oh, if she could only read herself as he allowed
her to read him; if she could only be as sure of Gloria as she was of
Mark; if she could only look deep into her heart as she looked into his.
But she could not! His heart was like the clear pool just yonder across
which the sunshine lay and far down in which she could see the stones
and pebbles as through so much clear glass; hers was like the rushing
stream above, eddying and swirling and hiding itself under its own light
spray. All day long she had tried to see what lay under the surface.
_Did she love Mark King_? She had thrilled to him as she had thrilled to
no other man; but that had been in the springtime. Twice then she had
been sure that she loved him. But that was so long ago. And now that she
had allowed him to carry her out of the quicksands? What now? She was so
borne down by all that she had lived through; he was so much a part of
the mountainous solitudes towering about them. And was she one to love
the wilderness--for long? Or did it not begin to bear down upon her
uncertain spirit? Did it not menace and frighten and, in the end, would
it not repel? Oh, if she had only let him go on alone this morning; if
she had remained where she could rest and think and thus come to see
clearly, even into her own troubled heart!
Their first hour after lunch led them through a region which, given
over to silence itself, denied them any considerable opportunity for
conversation. King rode ahead, turning off to the left from their
resting-place by the pool, and riding through a sea of grey brush,
following a narrow trail made by deer. Then the mountain-side reared its
barrier and made all forward and upward progress slow and toilsome.
Three times they dismounted and King led the horses; here Gloria clung
to the steep mountain-side, looking fearfully down into the monster
gorge carved at its base, dwelling with fascinated fancies on the
thought of slipping, losing handhold and foothold and plunging down
among the jagged boulders strewing the lower levels. There was really no
great danger, she told herself over and over; King's cheery calls
reassured her; no danger so long as they went forward on foot. But now
and then when a horse's foot slipped and a wild cascade of loose soil
and rocks went hurtling downward, she grew rigid with apprehension.
But there was only an hour of this. Thereafter they rode down a long
slope and into a long, narrow, twisting ravine, rocky cliffs on one hand
and a noisy stream on the other, a fair trail underfoot. Nearly always
now King rode ahead, finding the way for her; and Gloria, her spirits
drooping again with the advancing afternoon, vaguely oppressed by the
solemn stillness about her, was glad that she too could be silent. When
he did call to her she needed only nod or smile; he turned to point out
some rare view that appealed to him, a vista worth her seeing, a cascade
or a fall of cliff, or a ferny nook, or perhaps a late ceanothus-
blossom. He pointed out a scampering Douglas squirrel and had her
hearken to a quail.
"We're already in the finest timber belt in the world," he told her,
full of enthusiastic loyalty to his beloved mountains.
Thus, he leading the way, she following with head down and shoulders
drooping, they came about four o'clock to a small meadow, cliff-ringed,
studded with big yellow pines and here and there graced with an incense
cedar. Stopping in the open, sitting sideways in the saddle, he waited
for her.
"And what do you think of this, Miss Gloria?" he called gaily as her
horse thrust his black nose through the alders down by the creek.
Gloria drew rein and looked at him with large eyes across the twenty
paces separating them.
"I can't go any further," she said bleakly. "I'm tired out!"
He was quick to see a gathering of tears, and swung down from his horse
and went to her with long strides, his own eyes filled with concern.
"Poor little kidlet," he said humbly. "I've let you do yourself up...."
And it was his duty, his privilege, and no one's else in the world, to
shelter her, to stand between her and all hardship. He put out his arms
to take her into them quite as he could have picked up a little maid of
six, something stirring in the depths of him which in man is twin to the
maternal instinct in woman. But Gloria said hurriedly: "Please, Mark, I
am so tired ..." and drew back, and he let his hands fall to his side.
For a second time her act hurt him; her gesture was akin to locking a
door last night. But in a moment, his pity and loyalty and staunch faith
in her crowding the small ache out of his heart, he was unrolling a
pack, making a temporary couch for her and commanding her lovingly just
to lie down and look up at the tree-tops above her, and rest while he
staked out the horses. Sensing that perhaps the very bigness and
majestic silence of these uplands might rest heavy upon her spirit and
perhaps depress if not actually awake in her an emotion akin to fear, he
strove to cheer her by his own blithe acceptance of the fortune of the
hour. He told her heartily that she had earned a rest if any one ever
had; that it was well, after all, to get an early start at pitching
camp; that he was going to make his lady-love as cosy here in his big
outdoor home as was ever princess in castle walls. Gloria shivered and
threw herself face down on the blankets. Gloria did not know what
possessed her; she fought for repression, hiding her face from him. Out
of a hideously stern world a black spirit had leaped upon her; it
clutched at her throat, it dragged at her heart. When King called a
cheery word from beyond the thicket where he had gone with the horses,
she could have screamed. She was so nervous that now and again a fierce
tremor shook her from head to foot.
* * * * *
King was counting it fortunate that they were granted so likely a camp
site for the night. He looked up at the tall black cliffs shutting in
the little meadow; they would hold back the night winds from Gloria. He
chose the spot, well back from the creek, where she would sleep. High
overhead, like brooding giants, stood the upright pines. Where a little
clump of mere youngsters, lusty fellows not a score of years old, had
the air of pressing close together as though thus with their combined
strength they sought to match the strength of their aloof parents, a
compact grove to make a further shelter against the mountain air, Gloria
would sleep. He stretched a strip of canvas from tree to tree, making a
five-foot wall of it. Close by he started his fire, knowing from
experience oft repeated how a cheery blaze in the forest may dispel
shadows within even as it makes the sombrest of shadows dance gaily
under the trees; to one side he laid many resinous faggots, planning on
their crackling light later on when the dark came. He ringed his fire
with rocks, lugging them as heavy as he could carry up from the creek
side, making the rudest of fireplaces. But it had the merit that it
threw the heat back toward his extended canvas, and there between it
would be snug and warm. All about him, as he laboured, was the singing
of water and, high in air, the singing of pine tops. They made merry
music and King, gone down to the stream to fill his coffee-pot, sang
with it from a full, brimming heart. Gloria was tired, but she was
resting now. And in a little while, when dark came, he and she would sit
by his fire and look into it and talk in hushed voices, hand locked in
hand; they would watch for the first of the big blazing stars to come
out--he and Gloria, alone in the wilderness.
He saw a trout swinging lazily in a quiet pool. Trout for Gloria! He
glanced toward where she lay; he was glad that she was not looking. It
would be a surprise for her. He hurried to his kit in his pack, got out
hook and line, baited with a tiny bit of red flannel, and went back to
the creek. For he knew that it was not likely that the trout here could
have had any remembered encounters with man; they were plentiful and
might, like many other sorts of beings, be lured to their undoing by
curiosity and greed. He cut a willow pole, stood back and cast out his
gay bit of bait, letting it drift with the riffles. There came a quick
tug, another, sharp and vigorous, and he swung his prize out of the
water, breaking the surface into scattering jewels, flashing in the
sunlight as it struck against the grass along the creek's edge.
Dusk gathered while he worked over his fire. The aroma of boiling coffee
rose, crept through the air, blended with the aromas of the woods. He
had made toast, holding the bread to the coals upon a sharpened stick.
There were strips of crisp bacon garnishing a trout browned to the last
painstaking turn. There were fried potatoes, cut by King's pocket-knife
into thin strips and turned into gold by the alchemy of cooking. He set
out his dishes upon a flat-topped rock, replenished his fire, threw on
some fresh-cut green cedar boughs for their delightful fragrance, and
went to call Gloria.
* * * * *
Gloria, too tired bodily and mentally to wage a winning battle against
those black vapours which flock so frequently about luckless youth, had
suffered and yielded and gone down in misery. She had been crying, just
why she knew not; crying because she could not help it. Hers was a state
of overwrought nerves which forbade clear thinking, which distorted and
warped and magnified. The babble of the water which had been music to
King was to her a chorus of jeering voices; the wind in the pines an
eerie moaning as of lost spirits wailing; the trees themselves, merging
with the dusk, were brooding, shadowy giant things which she suddenly
both feared and hated; the cliffs rising against the sky loomed so near
and so gigantically tall that she felt as though they were pressing in
upon her to suffocate her, to crush her, to annihilate her. The world
was turning black with the night; the night rushed, treading out the
last gleam of sunlight; even the one star which she had glimpsed through
her tears impressed her only with its remoteness. She was frightened;
not because of any physical violence, for Mark King stood between her
and that. But of vague horrors. She thought of San Francisco; of her own
bright room there; of the lights in the streets, of pedestrians and
motors and street-cars filling that other steel-cañoned wilderness with
familiar noises. And somehow, San Francisco seemed further away,
immeasurably further away, than that one remote star blazing through the
vastness of space.
"A cup of coffee and a bit of supper," King said gently. "You'll feel a
lot better."
She rose wearily and followed him. Without a word she dropped down
beside his banquet, putting out a listless hand to her tin cup. The
firelight upon her face showed him her thoughtful eyes; but they were
turned not toward him but toward the bed of coals. He had anticipated
her lively surprise at the trout; she pushed the brown morsel aside,
saying absently:
"I am not hungry. It was good of you to go to all of this trouble. I am
afraid I am not much of a camper." She forced the shadow of a smile with
the admission.
"Tuckered out," he thought as he looked into her face across which light
and shadow flickered as flame and smoke in the camp-fire came and went
fitfully, twisted by the evening breeze. "Clean tuckered out."
Gloria, feeling his gaze so steady upon her, turned her eyes toward his,
eyes heavy and sober with her drooping spirit. As the flames frolicked
about the pitch-pine he had tossed to the coals, he saw the traces of
tears. He said nothing, supposing that he understood; he but strove the
harder to be good to her, to share with her some of that rare joy
filling his own heart. He sought with unobtrusive tenderness to
anticipate her slightest want; he jumped to his feet and brought her a
cup of water; he shoved aside a burning branch which rolled impudently
too near the divine foot; he removed the offending fish from under her
nostrils hastily and half apologetically; he piled the fire high when he
saw her shiver. And finally when she pushed her cup away and let her two
hands drop into her lap he gathered the dishes and carried them away to
the nearest pool to wash them, leaving Gloria silent and thoughtful,
brooding over his fire.
When he came back to her in the hush of the first hour of night, he
thought that he understood her need for silence, and spoke only
infrequently and briefly, and very, very softly, calling her attention
now to the last lingering light upon the piney ridge behind them or to
the liquid music of the creek, which, with the coming of night, seemed
to grow clearer and finer and sweeter, or finally to the big star
burning gloriously in the perfect deep-blue sky.
"And now," he said, taking up his short-handled axe, "I am going to make
for my lady-love the finest couch for tranquil, restful sleep that
mortal ever had."
As he strode away toward a grove of firs he was lost to her eyes before
he had gone a hundred paces. The night came so swiftly it seemed to her
feverish fancies that in the dark the big tree trunks were huddling
closer together. In a moment she heard the sound of his axe, striking
softly through green juicy branches. He worked swiftly, grudging every
minute away from her. And then, with his arms full of the fragrant,
balsamy boughs, he stopped and let them slip down to the ground and
himself sat down upon a log and filled his pipe with slow fingers. He'd
force himself to smoke one pipe before he went back to her, thinking
that she would be grateful for a few moments alone.
Almost with the first puff of smoke there came to him Gloria's piercing
scream. His heart stopping, he jumped up and ran through the trees to
her, shouting: "Gloria I Gloria! I'm coming. What is it?"
Gloria was cowering against the nearest tree, her face showing
frightened in the firelight, her eyes wide with nervous horror.
"There is something there ... in the bushes!" she cried excitedly. "I
heard it moving...."
He looked where she pointed. Down by the creek, just waddling back into
the alders, was a fat old porcupine, dimly seen in the fringe of the
camp-fire. But King did not laugh. His first impulse upon him,
strengthened by Gloria's helplessness, he took her into his arms,
holding her close to him.
"Why did you leave me?" asked Gloria petulantly. "So long."
He had been away from her fifteen minutes while he cut an armful of
fir-boughs, and thereafter filled and lighted his pipe--and to Gloria
the time had seemed long! Little enough of love's confession, surely,
but a golden crumb to a man's starving love. He drew her closer; their
faces, ruddy with fire-glow, each tense with its own emotion, were close
together.
"Oh!" cried Gloria. She wrenched away from him violently. "You--you hurt
me. Let me go!" She buried her face in her hands; he saw her shoulders
lift and droop; he heard her sob: "Oh, I was a fool----"
His arms had dropped to his sides and he stood for a moment speechless,
staring at her as across a chasm shadow-filled.
"Gloria," he said, bewildered.
But now her hands, too, were at her sides, clenched and nervous; her
white face was lifted and she broke out passionately into hot words; he
saw her breast heaving and sensed that she was stirred to depths never
until now plumbed. What he could not glimpse were the vague,
unreasonable reasons, the distorted horrors grinning at her among the
spaces of black gloom into which her spirit had sunk; had he been a
fancy-sick poet, a pale-blooded creature given to blue devils and
nightmare conjecture, he might have come somewhere near an
understanding. But being plain Mark King, a straightforward, healthy,
and unjaundiced man, his comprehension found never a clue to a condition
which in Gloria was hardly other than an inevitable result of all that
had gone before.
"I was half-mad last night," she panted. "There was no way to turn. That
beast of a man drove me to desperation. Then you came, and--and----Oh,
I wish that I were dead!"
Incredulous, amazed, near stupefied, he stood rooted to the ground.
"I don't understand," he said dully after a long silence broken only by
a tumble and frolic of the water and Gloria's quick, hard breathing. He
strove to be very gentle with her. "Just what is it? Can you tell me,
dear?"
"Don't call me dear ... like that," she cried sharply. "Just as though I
were your ... _property_." He saw the roundness of her eyes. She
shuddered. "You knew that I was driven to it, to save my name, to stop
hideous gossip...."
In her disordered mind she had been flung, as upon shoals, to many bleak
points of view; she had blamed fate for her undoing, she had blamed
Gratton, she had laid the responsibility upon her mother for having
allowed her to drift; but always she had looked upon herself as the
victim. Now, in her agitation, which had risen close to hysteria, it was
suddenly Mark King whom she blamed for everything; he, in the guise of
fate, had betrayed her!
"You saw that I was half dead with terror; that I hardly knew what I was
doing; that all I could think of was escape from the horrible trap that
had been set for me; you----"
"So that was it?" But still his tone was utterly devoid of any emotion
save that of incredulity. "You mean you didn't love me, Gloria?"
"When did you ever ask me if I loved you?"
"But you ... you married me.... Great God!" He ran his hand across his
brow as though to brush away an obsession. "Not loving me, you married
me just to save yourself from possible scandal?"
"What girl wouldn't?" she cried wildly. "Driven as I was?"
He tried to think with all of that calm deliberation which this moment
so plainly required. In mind he went back stage by stage through all of
last night's events. And so he came in retrospect in due time to the
moment when he had come to the porch and had looked in through the
window to take his last farewell of her; when he had seen her standing
at Gratton's side. She had drooped so like a figure of despondency; she
had lifted her head slowly at the "judge's" question. And then there had
occurred that sudden change in her bearing and in her voice alike, when
abruptly she had cried out: "No. No and no and no!"
"Tell me," said King heavily, "when you refused to marry Gratton last
night--did you know that I was outside?"
"Yes," she answered. She wondered why he asked. "There was a mirror; I
saw your reflection in it."
"If I had not come--would you have gone on with the thing?" He
hesitated, then said harshly: "Would you have married him?"
"I don't know. Oh," she exclaimed, twisting at her hands, "how can I
tell what I would have done? driven one way, torn another----"
"You might have married him? You but chose me as the lesser of two
evils? Was that it?"
"I tell you I don't know! I only know that I was hideously compromised;
I would never have dared show my face again in San Francisco--anywhere--it
would have killed me----"
And even yet there was in King's face only a queer tortured incredulity.
For a long time neither moved nor spoke. His eyes were on her, hers
intently on him. When he answered it was in a voice from which all of
to-day's joyousness had fled.
"I'm going to make your bed, Gloria," he said evenly. "Near the fire,
which I'll keep going. I'll make mine on the outside, so you need not
be afraid of any prowling animal. Then in the morning we will talk."
She watched him go back for his scattered fir-boughs. And even Gloria
noted how heavy was his walk. But she could not guess how when he was
alone with his trees, and the darkness dropped curtainwise between him
and her he went down on both knees and buried his face in one of those
same fallen sprays from the fir.
_Chapter XVIII_
Flat on his back lay Mark King, his hands under his head, his eyes upon
the slow procession of the stars. Just so had he lain many a night in
the forest-land--but life then and now were as two distinct existences
which had nothing in common, but were set apart in two separate worlds,
remote one from the other. Now he saw the stars, as it were, with the
physical eye alone, merely because they blazed so bright against the
darkness above him; he was scarcely conscious of their gleam and
sparkle. Of old he had been wont to commune with them; through the long
years they had woven themselves into his rough-and-ready religion.
Countless times had he watched them and mused and hearkened to the
message which, as with a still voice, infinitely calming, travelled to
him across the limitless vastitude of the universe. Countless times that
voice had called him away from the toils and victories and defeats of
the day, up into a place of quiet from which a man might look about him
with a somewhat truer perspective; he glimpsed futility in much of human
strife and striving; he saw nobility enshrined in a "small" act; he
marked how, set in the scales of the eternal balances of scope and
eternity, a copper penny set against a million dollars were as two
feathers; they rode light, and there was little choice between them. He
had known that firefly cluster of lights above to be the majestic
processional of worlds. He saw himself as small; the universe as big.
And the knowledge did not crush; it elevated. Throughout the whole of
creation ran the fine chain of divine ordinance, of a law that flowered
in beauty. There was God's work above him, about him, within him. And
God stood back of it all, vouching for it, making it good. The spinning
of worlds, the pulses of tides, the course of the blood in his
veins--these were kindred phenomena; the law of God bound about with its
fine chain of divine will and love the greater and the lesser bodies
moving through the universe. Upon such a comprehension, brotherhood of
man and tree and sun and flower, had been raised Mark King's haphazard
edifice of a theory of life. The stars reminded him that through the
eons all had been right with the world of worlds; they sang of hope and
happiness and beauty. They showed a man the way to rich, full
contentment. They lighted the path to generous dealings with other men.
They threw their searchlight upon the day a man had just done with and
set him thinking; they led his thoughts ahead to the day soon to dawn,
making him wish to make a better job of things.
But to-night between him and his beloved stars stretched a region of
shadows through which the eyes of his soul did not look. Something
within him had been stricken; sorely wounded; beaten to its knees;
chilled with death. He sought to think quite calmly, and for a long time
clear consecutive thought was beyond his reach. A moment had come when
he could only _feel_. He was swept this way and that. He had given to
Gloria his love without stint, without reservation, without limit. The
love which no other woman had ever awakened had poured itself out before
Gloria like a flood of clear swift water breaking free. He loved after
the only fashion possible to him, with his whole heart and soul, with
his whole being. He adored. He made of his beloved a princess, a
goddess. He saw her upon a plane where no woman ever lived, in an
atmosphere too rare for flesh-and-blood humanity. A man does not love
through human reason; rather through a reason, hidden even to him,
deeper than humanity. Then Gloria had put her hand into his; Gloria had
married him; Gloria had elected to come with him. After that he had seen
nothing in its true light; Gloria had remade the world into paradise
ineffable.
He had been on the heights, lifted among the stars. And without warning,
without mercy, the world had crashed about him. From the zenith to the
nadir. Small wonder that thoughts did not come logically! He floundered,
lost, crushed, bewildered.
Just yonder, on the bed of fir-boughs he had made for her, lay Gloria.
He did not look that way. The wind was rising; he heard it go rushing
through the tree-tops; it struck with sudden, relentless impact; it set
the shivering needles to shrill whistling; it made the staunch old
trunks shudder. He heard the canvas flap-flapping by Gloria's bed; above
him tossing boughs scraped and creaked.
One thing only seemed clear to him: the time had come when a man must
seek to hold himself in check, when he must not leap, when he must
strive with all the stubborn will in him to reserve judgment. His own
life's crisis had come to him, revealing itself with the blinding
swiftness of a flash of lightning. A step forward or back now would be
one step toward which his entire destiny, from the hour of birth until
now, had led him; there would be no retracing it; it would be final; and
everything--everything--was at stake. He must think; he must try to
understand all that Gloria had experienced; to see what impulses had
moved her; to make allowances for her; to come to read aright what lay
in her heart. He must see clearly into two human hearts! Task for the
gods! As though the wilderness about him were a colossal malevolent
entity endowed with the power to look into human breasts, it jeered at
him with its voice of the wind.
He had but half a mind to give to physical senses. Though the wind
howled all night long, he scarce was conscious of it; though the cold
increased, he did not know that he was cold before he had grown numb.
He had given to Gloria all of their bedding, save alone the one blanket
he had wrapped about him; he had kept on all his clothing, buttoned up
his coat, and forgotten that he was not warmly covered. Now he got up
and walked up and down; he made the fire blaze up; he sat huddled over
it until it burned down to a bed of glowing red coals.
Once or twice he heard Gloria stir restlessly upon her fir-bough bed.
But he did not speak. There was nothing to be said between them now;
they would wait until she had rested, until morning. Then there would be
no more delay. They would understand each other then as few men and
women had understood; there would be plain words and but few of them. He
grew impatient for morning and sat looking forward to its coming with a
face set and hard, growing as stern as death.
Gloria, exhausted, had gone to sleep, snuggled warmly into her blankets.
It was the wind that awoke her; she started wide awake, her heart in her
throat, startled by the flapping of the canvas at her head. She lay
still and looked up; the pines were black and swayed dismally; the wind
among them made shuddersome music; the cold began to drive through her
blankets, through her clothing. Her body was stiff and sore; the
branches of fir under her hurt her through the canvas and one blanket
which covered them. She turned, twisting into a position of less
discomfort. The creek babbled and splashed; its voice merged with the
wilds into a bleak, cheerless duet.
She lifted her head a little; the fire was dying out and King had gone!
The darkness bore down upon her; she heard everywhere vague sounds,
noises as of stealthy feet. She knew a moment of blind terror; she tried
to cry out but only a little choking gasp resulted. She saw something
moving, a vague, formless, dreadful something, and lay back, chilled
with fright. It was King; he was bringing fresh fuel. She sank back and
again looked up at the pines swaying against the field of stars. She
began to shiver; a nervous chill. She felt the slow tears form and spill
over and trickle down her cheeks. She gathered her nether lip between
her teeth and lay very still, shaken now and then by a noiseless sob.
She existed through a period of suppressed excitement. If King found
cool logic eluding him, Gloria's mind was an orgy of nervous imaginings.
She was back with her mother, weeping, sobbing out upon a comforting
breast all of her hideous adventures; she was reading the tall headlines
in the newspapers; she was commenting on them with simulated flippancy
to Georgia and Ernestine; she was meeting Mr. Gratton for the first time
again, treating him to such haughty disdain as put hot blood into his
white face; she was standing erect in the morning, confronting Mark King
fearlessly, demanding her rights, commanding that he take her home. And,
piteously lonely and frightened, she was longing to have him come to her
now, to put his arms about her, to hold her tight, to set his fearless
body between hers and the vague and terrible menaces of the night and
the jeering night voices. She heard a twig snap; her heart beat wildly;
she wondered what she would do when he came--and she saw that he sat
motionless by the fire.
The night wore on. She dozed now and then, fitfully, awakened always
rudely by unaccustomed noises or by the cold or the discomfort of her
bed. She put her hand to her cheek, wondering if she were going to be
feverish; her face was cold. She saw that King had lighted his pipe. She
wanted to scream at him. How she hated him for that. That he could smoke
while she lay here in such wretchedness made her briefly hot with anger.
He was a man, and sweepingly she told herself that she loathed all
mankind. She accused him of heartlessness, of lack of understanding, of
brutal lack of sympathy. He and he alone was responsible for
everything--that vague, terrible _everything_. He sat there as still as
a rooted tree; he bulked big through the gloom like a rugged boulder; he
was a part of this wild land, as indifferent, as cold, as merciless.
The thought now that he might come to her made her quake with fear; she
was afraid of him.
If she could only sleep! No sleep to-night, little the night before,
less the night before that. No wonder her brain swirled. If all this had
happened at any other time--She was a bundle of nerves--nerves that
vibrated at the slightest suggestion. She was going to be ill. Perhaps
the end of it would be that she would die. All of the misshapen,
monstrous fancies which are bred of a sleepless and nervous night made
for her a period of such stress that as the hours wore on they blanched
her cheeks and put dark shadows under her eyes and taunted her with
longings for a rest which they denied her.
Thus, in the stern grips of their destinies, Mark King and Gloria lived
through the night, two uncertain spirits awaiting the light of day. And
thus their brains, those finite organs upon which mankind entrusts the
ordering of great events, prepared themselves for the moment when they
must grapple with and decide a matter of supreme moment. And all night
the wind, like a hateful voice, jeered.
* * * * *
At four o'clock that chill, wind-blown morning King began the day. He
saw that Gloria was awake and sitting up, looking straight ahead of her.
He gave no sign of having noted her, but busied himself in a swift,
silent sort of way with fire-building and breakfast preparation. Gloria,
in turn, saw him; she experienced aloof wonder at the look on his face.
He was haggard; his mouth was set and hard.
She had thought to be thankful when daylight came. Now she got up and
went to the fire, rubbing her cold hands together, looking at an
awakened world with dull, lack-lustre eyes. It was not yet full day;
what light filtered down here into this sheltered spot was cheerless; as
it drew forest details out of the thinning shadows it seemed to be
painting them in cold grey monotones upon a cold grey world.
He and she, when he came back with an arm-load of wood, looked straight
into each other's eyes, long and soberly, searchingly and hopelessly.
After that they did not again look into each other's faces; no
good-morning had passed between them since both sensed that any time for
empty civilities had gone. There could be no conventional pretence at
harmony even in small things; they must be in each other's arms or
worlds apart.
Out of a night's grappling with chimeras, King had come to one and only
one determination: he would go slowly, he would hold an iron check upon
himself, he would throttle down a temper which more than once in his
life, at moments of tempest, had blazed out uncontrollably. He would
smother within himself that passion which in forthright men is so prone
to burst into violence. Were Gloria to show herself to be this or that,
were she to say this word or another, he would speak with her coolly, he
would listen to her calmly, and in the end, since judge he must, he
would judge with his heart ordered to beat steadily and not with a wild
rush of blood. He had set a guard in his own breast as he might have set
a guard over a camp of treacherous enemies.