Part 9 (1/2)

”From the coast,” she shuddered. ”It has been terrible!”

His face expressed utter amazement as he repeated: ”From the coast? It is a miracle!”

She made no reply, for Lawrence stirred and tried to sit up.

”You'd better lie still,” the stranger said kindly. ”You deserve rest, my friend.” Then, as to himself, he added: ”It is the first miracle in which I can believe.”

Claire stared at him, and he laughed softly. ”Pardon, _madame_! I am an unhappy seeker after truth,” he apologized, throwing a log on the fire.

For Lawrence and Claire the days that followed were uneventful days of recovery from their hards.h.i.+p. Slowly both of them grew stronger and resumed their normal habits of thought and speech. Their host was a gentle nurse, kindly and considerate. Claire a.s.sumed her wonted att.i.tude of the cultured woman, a guest in the house of a friend, and the Spaniard met her with the polished courtesy of a cosmopolitan. Lawrence, too, became the usual man that he was, careless of little niceties, indifferent to form, but a charming companion and a delightful guest.

From the first he and Philip became intensely interested in each other.

They discovered early that each was a thinker and a searcher in his own way for the one great solution of life.

During the first half-hour Claire had demanded of their rescuer where they were and how soon they could get back to civilization. Philip had laughed gently.

”You are on the borders of Bolivia,” he told her, ”and the nearest railroad is two hundred miles away. It is impossible to get out until spring. Long ere this snow will have barred the way through the one pa.s.s that leads out and we are prisoners--the three of us. You will have to accept the hospitality of Philip Ortez until the spring.”

Lawrence had accepted the verdict with calm indifference.

”Oh, well,” he said, ”it's hard on you, but as far as I'm concerned, one place is as good as another.”

”I shall enjoy your company,” their host laughed.

After voicing polite thanks, Claire, in her own thought, had rebelled against the situation vehemently. She wanted to get home, she wanted to get away from everything that suggested her last weeks of suffering, she wanted to get away from these men. Her heart leaped to the ever-recurring dream of the husband, whose arms should take her up and hold her warmly against the memory of their separation.

”Then there is no way out?” she asked again.

”None, _madame_,” and Philip Ortez bowed. ”You will have to be the guest of a humble mountaineer.”

”I shall enjoy it, I am sure,” she answered. ”It is simply a woman's natural desire for home which leads me to ask again.”

His eyes clouded. Claire somehow found herself fancying a tragic mystery in the life of this man, and then rebuked herself for romancing.

Certainly, such fancies were not her habit, and she wondered why they were occurring to her.

The cabin stood on the very edge of the forest through which Lawrence had carried Claire the last morning of their long march. Protected by its pines, the little house fronted on a small lake, a place where the river which they had followed widened to a half-mile, and stayed thus with scarcely any current save directly through the center. All around the lake the forest stretched its ma.s.sed green, and here Philip trapped.

The lake, in its turn, provided him with fish.

The week after their arrival snow had heaped itself into the ravine and piled up high around the cabin. Ice was beginning to form on the edge of the lake, and their host was preparing for his winter's work. They were too weak to go with him, and he left them in possession of the cabin.

At first there had been an unaccountable awkwardness between Lawrence and Claire, and it had left a reserve which was difficult to overcome.

Lawrence had explained their situation to Philip; the Spaniard had been apologetically gracious, but there was something in Claire's nature that made her wish that Lawrence had never been thought of as her husband.

Dressed in Philip's clothes, and in the presence of a roof and fire, she felt a desire to be free from the memory of the days when she had clung about Lawrence's neck, and, above all, she felt that she was not able to meet him with understanding. His blindness in these surroundings seemed to set a sudden and impa.s.sable barrier between them, and made her ill at ease when she was alone with him.

Lawrence was irritated that she should so immediately react into what he called the old conventional habit toward blind people, and keep it standing like a stupid but solid wall between all their talk. Now that she was no longer dependent on him, she appeared to him more attractive.

He thought of her husband, and wondered if Claire's att.i.tude toward himself was tempered with the thought of the man at home. ”Surely,” he told himself, ”she can't be allowing that to come between us, for it is so obviously quite unnecessary.” Then he began to wonder how much of her life was centered about her husband. What sort of man was he, and did she love him devotedly? As he thought, there crept into his feeling a sense of irritation against the unknown man who was obstructing his friends.h.i.+p with the woman he had carried half through the Andes Mountains.

Then the longing for his work came over him, and there were times when he felt he must do something. He spoke needlessly sharp words to Claire. Though she concealed her anger, there grew between them a continuous straining born out of mutual misunderstanding and a great submerged tangle of emotions.