[Illustration]
It was not yet June, but the winds blow cold on the prairie later than
June at nightfall. The moment the sun goes down, up come the chill
winds.
Sick at heart, Seth coaxed the shuddering Celia down the steps into
the cellar-like habitation dimly lighted by a single half window dug
out mansard fashion at the side.
He was silent, hurt in every fibre of his being. His manner was one of
profound apology. She was right. It was only a hole in the ground; but
he, accustomed to dugouts during the months he had spent on the
prairie preparing for the joy of her coming, had overlooked its
deficiencies and learned to think of it as home.
There were two chairs. He was glad of that. For a long time there had
been only one.
He placed her in the new one, bought in honor of her coming, seating
her deferentially as if she had been a Queen, and went hurriedly
about, building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs
along the river that the gay crackle of them might cheer her.
As she sat looking on, she saw in this humble service not his
devotion, but his humiliation, not his great love for her which
glorified all service humble or exalted, but the fact that he had so
descended in the scale of life as to put his hand to work that she had
been used to see done only by negroes.
Her pride, her only inheritance from haughty slave-holding ancestors,
was wounded. Not all Seth's devotion, not all his labor in her behalf
could salve that wound.
As he knelt before the blazing twigs, apparently doing their best to
aid him in his effort to cheer her, something of this feeling
penetrated to his inner consciousness.
Nevertheless, he piled on twig after twig until the refreshing flames
brilliantly illumined the dugout.
From dirt floor to dirt roof they filled it with light.
The poor little twigs, eagerly flashing into flame to help him!
Better far if, wet and soggy, they had burned dimly or not at all; for
their blaze only served to exhibit every deficiency Seth should have
endeavored to hide. The thatch of the roof, the sod, the carpetless
floor, the lack of furniture, the plain wooden bedstead in the corner
with its mattress of straw, the crazy window fashioned by his own rude
carpentry, the shapeless door which was like a slap in the face with
its raw and unpainted color of new wood.
After the first wild glance about her, Celia buried her face in her
hands, resolutely shutting out the view for fear of bursting into
uncontrollable tears.
Seth, seeing this, rose from his knees slowly, lamely, as if suddenly
very tired, and went about his preparations for their evening meal.
Men with less courage than it required to perform this simple duty
have stood up to be shot at.
Knowing full well that with each act of humble servitude he sank lower
and lower in the estimation of the one living creature in whose
estimation he wished to stand high, he once more knelt on the hearth,
placed potatoes in the ashes, raked a little pile of coals together
and set the coffee pot on them.
He drew the small deal table out and put upon it two cups and saucers,
plates and forks for two. There was but one knife. That was for Celia.
A pocket knife was to serve for himself.
It had been his pleasure throughout his lonely days of waiting to
picture this first meal which Celia and he should eat together.
Never once had he dreamed that the realization could come so near
breaking a strong man's heart,--that things seemingly of small import
could stab with a thrust so knife-like.
He felt the color leave his cheek at the thought that he had failed to
provide a cloth for the table, not even a napkin. He fumbled at his
bandana, then hopelessly replaced it in his pocket. He grew cold at
the realization that every luxury to which she had been accustomed,
almost every necessity, was absent from that plain board.
He had counted on her love to overlook much.
It had overlooked nothing.
When all was in readiness he drew up a chair and begged her to be
seated.
He took the opposite chair and the meal proceeded in silence, broken
only by the wail of the wind and the crackle of the little dry twigs
that burned on the hearth.
"I am afraid of it," sighed Celia.
"Of what, sweet?" he asked, and she answered:
"I am afraid of the wind."
"There is nothing to be afraid of," he explained quickly. "It is only
the ordinary wind of the prairies. It ain't a cyclone. Cyclones nevah
come this way, neah to the forks of two rivers wheah we ah," and
waxing eloquent on this, his hobby, he began telling her of the great
and beautiful and prosperous city which was sometime to be built on
this spot; perhaps the very dugout in which they sat would form its
center. He talked enthusiastically of the tall steepled temples that
would be erected, of the schools and colleges, of the gay people
beautifully dressed who would drive about in their carriages under the
shade of tall trees that would line the avenues, of the smiling men
and women and children whose home the Magic City would be, and how he
was confident they would build it here because, in the land of
terrible winds, when people commenced to erect their metropolis, they
must put it where no deadly breath of cyclone or tornado could tear at
it or overturn it.
With that he went on to describe the destructive power of the
cyclones, telling how one in a neighboring country had licked up a
stream that lay in its course, showering the water and mud down fifty
miles away.
"But no cyclone will ever come here," he added and explained why.
Because it was the place of the forks of two rivers, the Big Arkansas
and the Little Arkansas. A cyclone will go out of its way, he told
her, rather than tackle the forks of two rivers. The Indians knew
that. They had pitched their tents here before they had been driven
into the Territory and that was what they had said. And they were very
wise about some things, those red men, though not about many.
But Celia could not help putting silent questions to herself. Why
should a cyclone that could snatch up a river and toss it to the
clouds, fight shy of the forks of two?
Looking fearfully around at the shadows, she interrupted him:
"I am afraid," she whispered. "I am afraid!"
Seth left his place at the table and took her in his arms.
"Po' little gurl," he said. "Afraid, and tiahd, too. Travelin' so fah.
Of cose, she's tiahd!"
And with loving hands, tender as a mother's, he helped her undress and
laid her on the rough bed of straw, covered with sheets of the
coarsest, wishing it might be a bed of down covered with silks,
wishing they were back in the days of enchantment that he might change
it into a couch fit for a Princess by the wave of a wand.
Then he left her a moment, and walking out under the wind-blown stars
he looked up at them reverently and said aloud:
(For in the dreary deserts of loneliness one often learns to talk
aloud very openly and confidentially to God, since people are so
scarce and far away:)
"Tempah the wind to this po' shiverin' lam, deah Fathah!"
Then with a fanatic devotion, he added:
"And build the Magic City!"