THE BETROTHAL
Strength came to us as we had need, and gradually even the weaker of us
two became able to complete the day's journey without the exhaustion it
at first had cost her. Summer was now upon us, and the heat at midday
was intense, although the nights, as usual, were cold. Deprived of all
pack animals, except our dog, we were perforce reduced to the lightest
of gear, and discomfort was our continual lot. Food, however, we could
still secure, abundant meat, and sometimes the roots of plants which I
dug up and tested, though I scarce knew what they were.
We moved steadily on toward the west and northwest, but although we
crossed many old Indian trails, we saw no more of these travelers of the
Plains. At that time the country which we were traversing had no white
population, although the valley of the Platte had long been part of a
dusty transcontinental highway. It was on this highway that the savages
were that summer hanging, and even had we been certain of its exact
location, I should have feared to enter the Platte valley, lest we
should meet red men rather than white.
At times we lost the buffalo for days, more especially as we approached
the foothills of the mountains, and although antelope became more
numerous there, they were far more difficult to kill, and apt to cost us
more of our precious ammunition. I planned to myself that if we did not
presently escape I would see what might be done toward making a bow and
arrows for use on small game, which we could not afford to purchase at
the cost of precious powder and ball.
I was glad, therefore, when we saw the first timber of the foothills;
still gladder, for many reasons, when I found that we were entering the
winding course of a flattened, broken stream, which presently ran back
into a shingly valley, hedged in by ranks of noble mountains, snow white
on their peaks. Here life should prove easier to us for the time, the
country offering abundant shelter and fuel, perhaps game, and certainly
change from the monotony of the Plains.
Here, I said to myself, our westward journey must end. It would be
bootless to pass beyond Laramie into the mountains, and our next course,
I thought, must be toward the south. I did not know that we were then
perhaps a hundred miles or more northwest of Laramie, deep in a mountain
range far north of the transcontinental trail. For the time, however, it
seemed wise to tarry here for rest and recruiting. I threw down the
pack. "Now," said I to her, "we rest."
"Yes," she replied, turning her face to the south, "Laramie is that way
now. If we stop here my father will come and find us. But then, how
could he find us, little as we are, in this big country? Our trail would
not be different from that of Indians, even if they found it fresh
enough to read. Suppose they _never_ found us!"
"Then," said I, "we should have to live here, forever and ever."
She looked at me curiously. "Could we?" she asked.
"Until I was too old to hunt, you too weak to sew the robes or cook the
food."
"What would happen then?"
"We would die," said I. "The world would end, would have to begin all
over again and wait twice ten million years until man again was evolved
from the amoeba, the reptile, the ape. When we died, this dog here would
be the only hope of the world."
She looked at the eternal hills in their snow, and made no answer.
Presently we turned to our duties about the camp.
It was understood that we should stay here for at least two days, to
mend our clothing and prepare food for the southern journey. I have said
I was not happy at the thought of turning toward that world which I had
missed so little. Could the wild freedom of this life have worked a
similar spell on her? The next day she came to me as I sat by our meager
fireside. Without leading of mine she began a manner of speech until now
foreign to her.
"What is marriage, John Cowles?" she asked of me, abruptly, with no
preface.
"It is the Plan," I answered, apathetically. She pondered for a time.
"Are we, then, only creatures, puppets, toys?"
"Yes," I said to her. "A man is a toy. Love was born before man was
created, before animals or plants. Atom, ran to atom, seeking. It was
love." She pondered yet a while.
"And what is it, then, John Cowles, that women call 'wrong'?"
"Very often what is right," I said to her, apathetically. "When two love
the crime is that they shall not wed. When they do not love, the crime
is when they do wed."
"But without marriage," she hesitated, "the home--"
"It is the old question," I said. "The home is built on woman's virtue;
but virtue is not the same where there is no tome, no property, where
there is no society--it is an artificial thing, born of compromise, and
grown stronger by custom of the ages of property-owning man."
I saw a horror come across her eyes.
"What do you say to me, John Cowles? That what a woman prizes is not
right, is not good? No, that I shall _not_ think!" She drew apart from
me.
"Because you think just as you do, I love you," I said.
"Yet you say so many things. I have taken life as it came, just as other
girls do, not thinking. It is not nice, it is not _clean_, that girls
should study over these things. That is not right."
"No, that is not right," said I, dully.
"Then tell me, what is marriage--that one thing a girl dreams of all her
life. Is it of the church?"
"It is not of the church," I said.
"Then it is the law."
"It is not the law," I said.
"Then what is it?" she asked. "John Cowles, tell me, what makes a
wedding between two who really and truly love. Can marriage be of but
two?"
"Yes," said I.
"But there must be witnesses--there must be ceremony--else there is no
marriage," she went on. Her woman's brain clung to the safe, sane groove
which alone can guide progress and civilization and society--that great,
cruel, kind, imperative compromise of marriage, without which all the
advancement of the world would be as naught. I loved her for it. But for
me, I say I had gone savage. I was at the beginning of all this, whereas
it remained with her as she had left it.
"Witnesses?" I said. "Look at those!" I pointed to the mountains.
"Marriages, many of them, have been made with no better witnesses than
those."
My heart stopped when I saw how far she had jumped to her next speech.
"Then we two are all the people left in the world, John Cowles? When I
am old, will you cast me off? When another woman comes into this valley,
when I am bent and old, and cannot see, will you cast me off, and, being
stronger than I am, will you go and leave me?"
I could not speak at first. "We have talked too much," I said to her
presently. But now it was she who would not desist.
"You see, with a woman it is for better, for worse--but with a man--"
"With a Saxon man," I said, "it is also for better, for worse. It is one
woman."
She sat and thought for a long time. "Suppose," she said, "that no one
ever came."
Now with swift remorse I could see that in her own courage she was
feeling her way, haltingly, slowly, toward solution of problems which
most women take ready solved from others. But, as I thank God, a filmy
veil, softening, refining, always lay between her and reality. In her
intentness she laid hold upon my arm, her two hands clasping.
"Suppose two were here, a man and a woman, and he swore before those
eternal witnesses that he would not go away any time until she was dead
and laid away up in the trees, to dry away and blow off into the air,
and go back--"
"Into the flowers," I added, choking.
"Yes, into the trees and the flowers--so that when she was dead and he
was dead, and they were both gone back into the flowers, they would
still know each other for ever and ever and never be ashamed--would that
be a marriage before God, John Cowles?"
What had I brought to this girl's creed of life, heretofore always so
sweet and usual? I did not answer. She shook at my arm. "Tell me!" she
said. But I would not tell her.
"Suppose they did not come," she said once more. "It is true, they may
not find us. Suppose we two were to live here alone, all this
winter--just as we are now--none of my people or yours near us. Could we
go on?"
"God! Woman, have you no mercy!"
She sat and pondered for yet a time, as though seriously weighing some
question in her mind.
"But you have taught me to think, John Cowles. It is you who have begun
my thinking, so now I must think. I know we cannot tell what may happen.
I ask you, 'John Cowles, if we were brought to that state which we both
know might happen--if we were here all alone and no one came, and if you
loved me--ah, then would you promise, forever and forever, to love me
till death did us part--till I was gone back into the flowers? I
remember what they say at weddings. They cling one to the other,
forsaking all others, till death do them part. Could you promise me--in
that way? Could you promise me, clean and solemn? Because, I would not
promise you unless it was solemn, and clean, and unless it was forever."
Strange, indeed, these few days in the desert, which had so drawn apart
the veil of things and left us both ready to see so far. She had not
seen so far as I, but, womanlike, had reasoned more quickly.
As for me, it seemed that I saw into her heart. I dropped my hands from
my eyes and looked at her strangely, my own brain in a whirl, my logic
gone. All I knew was that then or elsewhere, whether or not rescue ever
came for us, whether we died now or later, there or anywhere in all the
world, I would, indeed, love her and her only, forsaking all others
until, indeed, we were gone back into the sky and flowers, until we
whispered again in the trees, one unto the other! Marriage or no
marriage, together or apart, in sickness or in health--so there came to
me the stern conviction--love could knock no more at my heart, where
once she had stood in her courage and her cleanness. Reverence, I say,
was now the one thing left in my heart. Still we sat, and watched the
sun shine on the distant white-topped peaks. I turned to her slowly at
length.
"Ellen," I said, "do you indeed love me?"
"How can I help it, John Cowles," she answered bravely. My heart stopped
short, then raced on, bursting all control. It was long before I could
be calm as she.
"You have helped it very long," I said at last, quietly. "But now I must
know--would you love me anywhere, in any circumstances, in spite of all?
I love you because you are You, not because you are here. I must be
loved in the same way, always."
She looked at me now silently, and I leaned and kissed her full on the
mouth.