Part 11 (1/2)

”I find here in these mountains the medicine that _Hamlet_ should have had. He would have been no _Hamlet_ had he ranged this plateau for a day in winter.”

”And the world would be the loser,” Lawrence interposed.

Claire rose and started to prepare their evening meal. She had taken over the duties of housekeeping from the time her ankle had allowed her to walk.

”If you two are going to plunge the house into an argument such as that one promises to be,” she said gaily, ”I am going to reenforce the inner man so that at least you won't suffer from physical exhaustion.”

Both men laughed, and one of them listened to her thoughtfully as she moved about, while the other watched her, his dark eyes full of a keen appreciation of her grace and her concise, accurate movements.

”How good it is to have her here,” thought Philip. Aloud, he said, seriously: ”I do not think the world gains enough from _Hamlet_ to make it worth the price he paid.”

”Why not?” Lawrence was quick to respond. ”Whatever his agony, whatever his failures and his death, he left the world a picture of man's heroic struggles to solve the riddle of the universe, his wisdom, his strength--and his weakness.”

”But that is just what we don't want--the picture of man's weakness. It is made all the worse when it is presented with the power of a sublime work.”

Claire turned from the stove, and looked at Philip. His eyes were burning with a deep, earnest fire that held her fascinated. She thought him the most beautiful of all the men she knew. It was not his face, not his appearance generally, but his eyes. Oh, the loss of such eyes! she thought--yes, they are what makes him a finer man than Lawrence. Why hasn't Lawrence such eyes?

”Believe me, friend,” Philip was speaking again, ”if I could erase from my knowledge the weakness of man, I would not need to trail my feet through these snow-buried forests to find an hour's rest from life.”

Claire saw his fingers move nervously on the arms of his chair, and thought: ”That is it, then; I was right; he has his tragedy.” She looked at him again, and as she met his eyes she felt that she was sorrier for him than she had ever been for Lawrence. Yes, she was sorrier for this man whose soul burned out of his eyes than for that other whose soul was always curtained by the expressionless mask that hid him.

”I can't quite agree with you,” Lawrence was saying; ”I, too, know the weakness of man, but there is, nevertheless, the glory of sublime beauty which alone stands, immortal. I should indeed mourn for man if he were unable to be truly immortal even in his created work. That, it seems to me, saves him.”

”Or loses him,” Philip added. ”One golden life of unbroken suns.h.i.+ne, dead at last and laid away in the memory of friends is worth more than your greatest poem.”

”I should call that sentimentality,” Lawrence laughed.

”So it is,” Philip flashed, ”and why not? Must we kill sentiment and go about with hearts of ice because our world is hard?”

”Is there no way to keep ourselves warm without poultices?” retorted Lawrence.

Claire sat down at the table. ”Come on and enjoy your venison, you two, and have done with the ills of the universe.”

The two men joined her. It was a strange trio: Claire, a das.h.i.+ng boy in Philip's made-over corduroys; Lawrence wearing his host's summer serge as though it were his own, and Philip looking at them, amusedly.

”I never quite recover from the charm of you in male attire,” Ortez remarked, looking into her face.

”I've tried at times since our fortunate misfortune to imagine her in evening gowns and furs,” said Lawrence; ”but I always fail and end by getting her into some sort of barbaric costume belonging to the distant past.”

”You are both flattering and both foolish,” she told them. ”It's my business to look well in clothes, you know, and it's masculine to admit my efficiency in a particularly feminine line.”

”You were scarcely fascinatingly efficient in the garb in which you first appeared to me.” Philip laughed at the recollection.

”That isn't fair. I would have been if I had had enough to eat.”

She looked at him, and her eyes sparkled gaily.

”I surrender,” he said. ”You would have been. Too fascinating!”

”That also depends on circ.u.mstances,” said Lawrence. ”She wouldn't be fascinatingly efficient in that back-to-nature garb if she were doing charity work at home or if she were taking a trip in an airplane.”