A week had passed at Eagle's Court--a week of mingled clouds and
sunshine by day, of rain over the green plateau and snow on the
mountain by night. Each morning had brought its fresh greenness to the
winter-girt domain, and a fresh coat of dazzling white to the barrier
that separated its dwellers from the world beyond. There was little
change in the encompassing wall of their prison; if anything, the snowy
circle round them seemed to have drawn its lines nearer day by day. The
immediate result of this restricted limit had been to confine the range
of cattle to the meadows nearer the house, and at a safe distance from
the fringe of wilderness now invaded by the prowling tread of predatory
animals.
Nevertheless, the two figures lounging on the slope at sunset gave very
little indication of any serious quality in the situation. Indeed,
so far as appearances were concerned, Kate, who was returning from an
afternoon stroll with Falkner, exhibited, with feminine inconsistency,
a decided return to the world of fashion and conventionality apparently
just as she was effectually excluded from it. She had not only discarded
her white dress as a concession to the practical evidence of the
surrounding winter, but she had also brought out a feather hat and sable
muff which had once graced a fashionable suburb of Boston. Even Falkner
had exchanged his slouch hat and picturesque serape for a beaver
overcoat and fur cap of Hale's which had been pressed upon him by Kate,
under the excuse of the exigencies of the season. Within a stone's throw
of the thicket, turbulent with the savage forces of nature, they walked
with the abstraction of people hearing only their own voices; in the
face of the solemn peaks clothed with white austerity they talked
gravely of dress.
“I don't mean to say,” said Kate demurely, “that you're to give up the
serape entirely; you can wear it on rainy nights and when you ride over
here from your friend's house to spend the evening--for the sake of old
times,” she added, with an unconscious air of referring to an already
antiquated friendship; “but you must admit it's a little too gorgeous
and theatrical for the sunlight of day and the public highway.”
“But why should that make it wrong, if the experience of a people has
shown it to be a garment best fitted for their wants and requirements?”
said Falkner argumentatively.
“But you are not one of those people,” said Kate, “and that makes all
the difference. You look differently and act differently, so that there
is something irreconcilable between your clothes and you that makes you
look odd.”
“And to look odd, according to your civilized prejudices, is to be
wrong,” said Falkner bitterly.
“It is to seem different from what one really is--which IS wrong. Now,
you are a mining superintendent, you tell me. Then you don't want to
look like a Spanish brigand, as you do in that serape. I am sure if you
had ridden up to a stage-coach while I was in it, I'd have handed you my
watch and purse without a word. There! you are not offended?” she added,
with a laugh, which did not, however, conceal a certain earnestness.
“I suppose I ought to have said I would have given it gladly to such
a romantic figure, and perhaps have got out and danced a saraband or
bolero with you--if that is the thing to do nowadays. Well!” she said,
after a dangerous pause, “consider that I've said it.”
He had been walking a little before her, with his face turned towards
the distant mountain. Suddenly he stopped and faced her. “You would have
given enough of your time to the highwayman, Miss Scott, as would have
enabled you to identify him for the police--and no more. Like your
brother, you would have been willing to sacrifice yourself for the
benefit of the laws of civilization and good order.”
If a denial to this assertion could have been expressed without the
use of speech, it was certainly transparent in the face and eyes of the
young girl at that moment. If Falkner had been less self-conscious he
would have seen it plainly. But Kate only buried her face in her lifted
muff, slightly raised her pretty shoulders, and, dropping her tremulous
eyelids, walked on. “It seems a pity,” she said, after a pause, “that
we cannot preserve our own miserable existence without taking something
from others--sometimes even a life!” He started. “And it's horrid to
have to remind you that you have yet to kill something for the invalid's
supper,” she continued. “I saw a hare in the field yonder.”
“You mean that jackass rabbit?” he said, abstractedly.
“What you please. It's a pity you didn't take your gun instead of your
rifle.”
“I brought the rifle for protection.”
“And a shot gun is only aggressive, I suppose?”
Falkner looked at her for a moment, and then, as the hare suddenly
started across the open a hundred yards away, brought the rifle to his
shoulder. A long interval--as it seemed to Kate--elapsed; the animal
appeared to be already safely out of range, when the rifle suddenly
cracked; the hare bounded in the air like a ball, and dropped
motionless. The girl looked at the marksman in undisguised admiration.
“Is it quite dead?” she said timidly.
“It never knew what struck it.”
“It certainly looks less brutal than shooting it with a shot gun, as
John does, and then not killing it outright,” said Kate. “I hate what is
called sport and sportsmen, but a rifle seems--”
“What?” said Falkner.
“More--gentlemanly.”
She had raised her pretty head in the air, and, with her hand shading
her eyes, was looking around the clear ether, and said meditatively, “I
wonder--no matter.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“It is something,” said Falkner, with an amused smile, reloading his
rifle.
“Well, you once promised me an eagle's feather for my hat. Isn't that
thing an eagle?”
“I am afraid it's only a hawk.”
“Well, that will do. Shoot that!”
Her eyes were sparkling. Falkner withdrew his own with a slight smile,
and raised his rifle with provoking deliberation.
“Are you quite sure it's what you want?” he asked demurely.
“Yes--quick!”
Nevertheless, it was some minutes before the rifle cracked again. The
wheeling bird suddenly struck the wind with its wings aslant, and then
fell like a plummet at a distance which showed the difficulty of the
feat. Falkner started from her side before the bird reached the ground.
He returned to her after a lapse of a few moments, bearing a trailing
wing in his hand. “You shall make your choice,” he said gayly.
“Are you sure it was killed outright?”
“Head shot off,” said Falkner briefly.
“And besides, the fall would have killed it,” said Kate conclusively.
“It's lovely. I suppose they call you a very good shot?”
“They--who?”
“Oh! the people you know--your friends, and their sisters.”
“George shoots better than I do, and has had more experience. I've seen
him do that with a pistol. Of course not such a long shot, but a more
difficult one.”
Kate did not reply, but her face showed a conviction that as an artistic
and gentlemanly performance it was probably inferior to the one she
had witnessed. Falkner, who had picked up the hare also, again took his
place by her side, as they turned towards the house.
“Do you remember the day you came, when we were walking here, you
pointed out that rock on the mountain where the poor animals had taken
refuge from the snow?” said Kate suddenly.
“Yes,” answered Falkner; “they seem to have diminished. I am afraid you
were right; they have either eaten each other or escaped. Let us hope
the latter.”
“I looked at them with a glass every day,” said Kate, “and they've got
down to only four. There's a bear and that shabby, over-grown cat you
call a California lion, and a wolf, and a creature like a fox or a
squirrel.”
“It's a pity they're not all of a kind,” said Falkner.
“Why?”
“There'd be nothing to keep them from being comfortable together.”
“On the contrary, I should think it would be simply awful to be shut up
entirely with one's own kind.”
“Then you believe it is possible for them, with their different
natures and habits, to be happy together?” said Falkner, with sudden
earnestness.
“I believe,” said Kate hurriedly, “that the bear and the lion find the
fox and the wolf very amusing, and that the fox and the wolf--”
“Well?” said Falkner, stopping short.
“Well, the fox and the wolf will carry away a much better opinion of the
lion and bear than they had before.”
They had reached the house by this time, and for some occult reason Kate
did not immediately enter the parlor, where she had left her sister and
the invalid, who had already been promoted to a sofa and a cushion by
the window, but proceeded directly to her own room. As a manoeuvre to
avoid meeting Mrs. Hale, it was scarcely necessary, for that lady was
already in advance of her on the staircase, as if she had left the
parlor for a moment before they entered the house. Falkner, too, would
have preferred the company of his own thoughts, but Lee, apparently
the only unpreoccupied, all-pervading, and boyishly alert spirit in the
party, hailed him from within, and obliged him to present himself on
the threshold of the parlor with the hare and hawk's wing he was still
carrying. Eying the latter with affected concern, Lee said gravely:
“Of course, I CAN eat it, Ned, and I dare say it's the best part of the
fowl, and the hare isn't more than enough for the women, but I had no
idea we were so reduced. Three hours and a half gunning, and only one
hare and a hawk's wing. It's terrible.”
Perceiving that his friend was alone, Falkner dropped his burden in the
hall and strode rapidly to his side. “Look here, George, we must, I must
leave this place at once. It's no use talking; I can stand this sort of
thing no longer.”
“Nor can I, with the door open. Shut it, and say what you want quick,
before Mrs. Hale comes back. Have you found a trail?”
“No, no; that's not what I mean.”
“Well, it strikes me it ought to be, if you expect to get away. Have
you proposed to Beacon Street, and she thinks it rather premature on a
week's acquaintance?”
“No; but--”
“But you WILL, you mean? DON'T, just yet.”
“But I cannot live this perpetual lie.”
“That depends. I don't know HOW you're lying when I'm not with you. If
you're walking round with that girl, singing hymns and talking of
your class in Sunday-school, or if you're insinuating that you're a
millionaire, and think of buying the place for a summer hotel, I should
say you'd better quit that kind of lying. But, on the other hand, I
don't see the necessity of your dancing round here with a shot gun, and
yelling for Harkins's blood, or counting that package of greenbacks in
the lap of Miss Scott, to be truthful. It seems to me there ought to be
something between the two.”
“But, George, don't you think--you are on such good terms with Mrs. Hale
and her mother--that you might tell them the whole story? That is, tell
it in your own way; they will hear anything from you, and believe it.”
“Thank you; but suppose I don't believe in lying, either?”
“You know what I mean! You have a way, d--n it, of making everything
seem like a matter of course, and the most natural thing going.”
“Well, suppose I did. Are you prepared for the worst?”
Falkner was silent for a moment, and then replied, “Yes, anything would
be better than this suspense.”
“I don't agree with you. Then you would be willing to have them forgive
us?”
“I don't understand you.”
“I mean that their forgiveness would be the worst thing that could
happen. Look here, Ned. Stop a moment; listen at that door. Mrs. Hale
has the tread of an angel, with the pervading capacity of a cat. Now
listen! I don't pretend to be in love with anybody here, but if I were I
should hardly take advantage of a woman's helplessness and solitude with
a sensational story about myself. It's not giving her a fair show. You
know she won't turn you out of the house.”
“No,” said Falkner, reddening; “but I should expect to go at once, and
that would be my only excuse for telling her.”
“Go! where? In your preoccupation with that girl you haven't even found
the trail by which Manuel escaped. Do you intend to camp outside the
house, and make eyes at her when she comes to the window?”
“Because you think nothing of flirting with Mrs. Hale,” said Falkner
bitterly, “you care little--”
“My dear Ned,” said Lee, “the fact that Mrs. Hale has a husband, and
knows that she can't marry me, puts us on equal terms. Nothing that she
could learn about me hereafter would make a flirtation with me any less
wrong than it would be now, or make her seem more a victim. Can you say
the same of yourself and that Puritan girl?”
“But you did not advise me to keep aloof from her; on the contrary,
you--”
“I thought you might make the best of the situation, and pay her some
attention, BECAUSE you could not go any further.”
“You thought I was utterly heartless and selfish, like--”
“Ned!”
Falkner walked rapidly to the fireplace, and returned.
“Forgive me, George--I'm a fool--and an ungrateful one.”
Lee did not reply at once, although he took and retained the hand
Falkner had impulsively extended. “Promise me,” he said slowly, after a
pause, “that you will say nothing yet to either of these women. I ask it
for your own sake, and this girl's, not for mine. If, on the contrary,
you are tempted to do so from any Quixotic idea of honor, remember that
you will only precipitate something that will oblige you, from that same
sense of honor, to separate from the girl forever.”
“I don't understand.”
“Enough!” said he, with a quick return of his old reckless gayety.
“Shoot-Off-His-Mouth--the Beardless Boy Chief of the Sierras--has
spoken! Let the Pale Face with the black moustache ponder and beware how
he talks hereafter to the Rippling Cochituate Water! Go!”
Nevertheless, as soon as the door had closed upon Falkner, Lee's smile
vanished. With his colorless face turned to the fading light at the
window, the hollows in his temples and the lines in the corners of his
eyes seemed to have grown more profound. He remained motionless and
absorbed in thought so deep that the light rustle of a skirt, that would
at other times have thrilled his sensitive ear, passed unheeded. At
last, throwing off his reverie with the full and unrestrained sigh of
a man who believes himself alone, he was startled by the soft laugh of
Mrs. Hale, who had entered the room unperceived.
“Dear me! How portentous! Really, I almost feel as if I were
interrupting a tete-a-tete between yourself and some old flame. I
haven't heard anything so old-fashioned and conservative as that sigh
since I have been in California. I thought you never had any Past out
here?”
Fortunately his face was between her and the light, and the unmistakable
expression of annoyance and impatience which was passed over it was
spared her. There was, however, still enough dissonance in his manner to
affect her quick feminine sense, and when she drew nearer to him it was
with a certain maiden-like timidity.
“You are not worse, Mr. Lee, I hope? You have not over-exerted
yourself?”
“There's little chance of that with one leg--if not in the grave at
least mummified with bandages,” he replied, with a bitterness new to
him.
“Shall I loosen them? Perhaps they are too tight. There is nothing so
irritating to one as the sensation of being tightly bound.”
The light touch of her hand upon the rug that covered his knees,
the thoughtful tenderness of the blue-veined lids, and the delicate
atmosphere that seemed to surround her like a perfume cleared his face
of its shadow and brought back the reckless fire into his blue eyes.
“I suppose I'm intolerant of all bonds,” he said, looking at her
intently, “in others as well as myself!”
Whether or not she detected any double meaning in his words, she was
obliged to accept the challenge of his direct gaze, and, raising her
eyes to his, drew back a little from him with a slight increase of
color. “I was afraid you had heard bad news just now.”
“What would you call bad news?” asked Lee, clasping his hands behind
his head, and leaning back on the sofa, but without withdrawing his eyes
from her face.
“Oh, any news that would interrupt your convalescence, or break up our
little family party,” said Mrs. Hale. “You have been getting on so well
that really it would seem cruel to have anything interfere with our life
of forgetting and being forgotten. But,” she added with apprehensive
quickness, “has anything happened? Is there really any news from--from,
the trails? Yesterday Mr. Falkner said the snow had recommenced in the
pass. Has he seen anything, noticed anything different?”
She looked so very pretty, with the rare, genuine, and youthful
excitement that transfigured her wearied and wearying regularity of
feature, that Lee contented himself with drinking in her prettiness as
he would have inhaled the perfume of some flower.
“Why do you look at me so, Mr. Lee?” she asked, with a slight smile.
“I believe something HAS happened. Mr. Falkner HAS brought you some
intelligence.”
“He has certainly found out something I did not foresee.”
“And that troubles you?”
“It does.”
“Is it a secret?”
“No.”
“Then I suppose you will tell it to me at dinner,” she said, with a
little tone of relief.
“I am afraid, if I tell it at all, I must tell it now,” he said,
glancing at the door.
“You must do as you think best,” she said coldly, “as it seems to be a
secret, after all.” She hesitated. “Kate is dressing, and will not be
down for some time.”
“So much the better. For I'm afraid that Ned has made a poor return to
your hospitality by falling in love with her.”
“Impossible! He has known her for scarcely a week.”
“I am afraid we won't agree as to the length of time necessary to
appreciate and love a woman. I think it can be done in seven days and
four hours, the exact time we have been here.”
“Yes; but as Kate was not in when you arrived, and did not come until
later, you must take off at least one hour,” said Mrs. Hale gayly.
“Ned can. I shall not abate a second.”
“But are you not mistaken in his feelings?” she continued hurriedly. “He
certainly has not said anything to her.”
“That is his last hold on honor and reason. And to preserve that little
intact he wants to run away at once.”
“But that would be very silly.”
“Do you think so?” he said, looking at her fixedly.
“Why not?” she asked in her turn, but rather faintly.
“I'll tell you why,” he said, lowering his voice with a certain
intensity of passion unlike his usual boyish lightheartedness. “Think of
a man whose life has been one of alternate hardness and aggression, of
savage disappointment and equally savage successes, who has known no
other relaxation than dissipation and extravagance; a man to whom
the idea of the domestic hearth and family ties only meant weakness,
effeminacy, or--worse; who had looked for loyalty and devotion only in
the man who battled for him at his right hand in danger, or shared his
privations and sufferings. Think of such a man, and imagine that an
accident has suddenly placed him in an atmosphere of purity, gentleness,
and peace, surrounded him by the refinements of a higher life than he
had ever known, and that he found himself as in a dream, on terms of
equality with a pure woman who had never known any other life, and yet
would understand and pity his. Imagine his loving her! Imagine that the
first effect of that love was to show him his own inferiority and the
immeasurable gulf that lay between his life and hers! Would he not fly
rather than brave the disgrace of her awakening to the truth? Would
he not fly rather than accept even the pity that might tempt her to a
sacrifice?”
“But--is Mr. Falkner all that?”
“Nothing of the kind, I assure you!” said he demurely. “But that's the
way a man in love feels.”
“Really! Mr. Falkner should get you to plead his cause with Kate,” said
Mrs. Hale with a faint laugh.
“I need all my persuasive powers in that way for myself,” said Lee
boldly.
Mrs. Hale rose. “I think I hear Kate coming,” she said. Nevertheless,
she did not move away. “It IS Kate coming,” she added hurriedly,
stooping to pick up her work-basket, which had slipped with Lee's hand
from her own.
It was Kate, who at once flew to her sister's assistance, Lee deploring
from the sofa his own utter inability to aid her. “It's all my fault,
too,” he said to Kate, but looking at Mrs. Hale. “It seems I have
a faculty of upsetting existing arrangements without the power of
improving them, or even putting them back in their places. What shall I
do? I am willing to hold any number of skeins or rewind any quantity of
spools. I am even willing to forgive Ned for spending the whole day with
you, and only bringing me the wing of a hawk for supper.”
“That was all my folly, Mr. Lee,” said Kate, with swift mendacity; “he
was all the time looking after something for you, when I begged him to
shoot a bird to get a feather for my hat. And that wing is SO pretty.”
“It is a pity that mere beauty is not edible,” said Lee, gravely, “and
that if the worst comes to the worst here you would probably prefer me
to Ned and his moustachios, merely because I've been tied by the leg to
this sofa and slowly fattened like a Strasbourg goose.”
Nevertheless, his badinage failed somehow to amuse Kate, and she
presently excused herself to rejoin her sister, who had already slipped
from the room. For the first time during their enforced seclusion a
sense of restraint and uneasiness affected Mrs. Hale, her sister, and
Falkner at dinner. The latter addressed himself to Mrs. Scott, almost
entirely. Mrs. Hale was fain to bestow an exceptional and marked
tenderness on her little daughter Minnie, who, however, by some
occult childish instinct, insisted upon sharing it with Lee--her great
friend--to Mrs. Hale's uneasy consciousness. Nor was Lee slow to profit
by the child's suggestion, but responded with certain vicarious caresses
that increased the mother's embarrassment. That evening they retired
early, but in the intervals of a restless night Kate was aware, from
the sound of voices in the opposite room, that the friends were equally
wakeful.
A morning of bright sunshine and soft warm air did not, however, bring
any change to their new and constrained relations. It only seemed to
offer a reason for Falkner to leave the house very early for his
daily rounds, and gave Lee that occasion for unaided exercise with an
extempore crutch on the veranda which allowed Mrs. Hale to pursue her
manifold duties without the necessity of keeping him company. Kate also,
as if to avoid an accidental meeting with Falkner, had remained at home
with her sister. With one exception, they did not make their guests the
subject of their usual playful comments, nor, after the fashion of their
sex, quote their ideas and opinions. That exception was made by Mrs.
Hale.
“You have had no difference with Mr. Falkner?” she said carelessly.
“No,” said Kate quickly. “Why?”
“I only thought he seemed rather put out at dinner last night, and you
didn't propose to go and meet him to-day.”
“He must be bored with my company at times, I dare say,” said Kate, with
an indifference quite inconsistent with her rising color. “I shouldn't
wonder if he was a little vexed with Mr. Lee's chaffing him about his
sport yesterday, and probably intends to go further to-day, and bring
home larger game. I think Mr. Lee very amusing always, but I sometimes
fancy he lacks feeling.”
“Feeling! You don't know him, Kate,” said Mrs. Hale quickly. She stopped
herself, but with a half-smiling recollection in her dropped eyelids.
“Well, he doesn't look very amiable now, stamping up and down the
veranda. Perhaps you'd better go and soothe him.”
“I'm really SO busy just now,” said Mrs. Hale, with sudden and
inconsequent energy; “things have got dreadfully behind in the last
week. You had better go, Kate, and make him sit down, or he'll be
overdoing it. These men never know any medium--in anything.”
Contrary to Kate's expectation, Falkner returned earlier than usual,
and, taking the invalid's arm, supported him in a more ambitious walk
along the terrace before the house. They were apparently absorbed in
conversation, but the two women who observed them from the window could
not help noticing the almost feminine tenderness of Falkner's manner
towards his wounded friend, and the thoughtful tenderness of his
ministering care.
“I wonder,” said Mrs. Hale, following them with softly appreciative
eyes, “if women are capable of as disinterested friendship as men? I
never saw anything like the devotion of these two creatures. Look! if
Mr. Falkner hasn't got his arm round Mr. Lee's waist, and Lee, with his
own arm over Falkner's neck, is looking up in his eyes. I declare, Kate,
it almost seems an indiscretion to look at them.”
Kate, however, to Mrs. Hale's indignation, threw her pretty head back
and sniffed the air contemptuously. “I really don't see anything but
some absurd sentimentalism of their own, or some mannish wickedness
they're concocting by themselves. I am by no means certain, Josephine,
that Lee's influence over that young man is the best thing for him.”
“On the contrary! Lee's influence seems the only thing that checks
his waywardness,” said Mrs. Hale quickly. “I'm sure, if anyone makes
sacrifices, it is Lee; I shouldn't wonder that even now he is making
some concession to Falkner, and all those caressing ways of your friend
are for a purpose. They're not much different from us, dear.”
“Well, I wouldn't stand there and let them see me looking at them as if
I couldn't bear them out of my sight for a moment,” said Kate, whisking
herself out of the room. “They're conceited enough, Heaven knows,
already.”
That evening, at dinner, however, the two men exhibited no trace of the
restraint or uneasiness of the previous day. If they were less impulsive
and exuberant, they were still frank and interested, and if the term
could be used in connection with men apparently trained to neither
self-control nor repose, there was a certain gentle dignity in their
manner which for the time had the effect of lifting them a little
above the social level of their entertainers. For even with all their
predisposition to the strangers, Kate and Mrs. Hale had always retained
a conscious attitude of gentle condescension and superiority towards
them--an attitude not inconsistent with a stronger feeling, nor
altogether unprovocative of it; yet this evening they found themselves
impressed with something more than an equality in the men who had amused
and interested them, and they were perhaps a little more critical
and doubtful of their own power. Mrs. Hale's little girl, who had
appreciated only the seriousness of the situation, had made her own
application of it. “Are you dow'in' away from aunt Kate and mamma?” she
asked, in an interval of silence.
“How else can I get you the red snow we saw at sunset, the other day, on
the peak yonder?” said Lee gayly. “I'll have to get up some morning very
early, and catch it when it comes at sunrise.”
“What is this wonderful snow, Minnie, that you are tormenting Mr. Lee
for?” asked Mrs. Hale.
“Oh! it's a fairy snow that he told me all about; it only comes when
the sun comes up and goes down, and if you catch ever so little of it
in your hand it makes all you fink you want come true! Wouldn't that be
nice?” But to the child's astonishment her little circle of auditors,
even while assenting, sighed.
The red snow was there plain enough the next morning before the valley
was warm with light, and while Minnie, her mother, and aunt Kate were
still peacefully sleeping. And Mr. Lee had kept his word, and was
evidently seeking it, for he and Falkner were already urging their
horses through the pass, with their faces towards and lit up by its
glow.