Part 43 (1/2)

For some seconds she lay luxuriating in the warmth that seemed incredible after that night of cold and terror. Then she moved softly, raised herself on one elbow, and looked at Philip. He slept. His face was haggard under his three days' growth of beard. She leaned over him, and pressed her lips ever so lightly to his forehead. He did not stir.

Tuesday grazed a few yards away; the vale lay green and peaceful in the sunlight; and from the pine woods, where that hideous cry had lifted in the night, came now only the gentle murmur of the breeze in the ma.s.sed foliage. By contrast with the chill horror of the night, the scene was positively exhilarating; and Marion rose to her work with hope throbbing through every vein, and courage singing along every nerve of her body.

First she fetched wood to renew the fire, now only a heap of smouldering embers. That done, she went to make her toilet in the brook, with the soap and towel she had stowed in her bundle for the shooting trip. Poor Seth! she thought, with a momentary pang; he would not get the deer he wanted, after all. And by this thought was set in motion a little current of regrets that filled her mind until it was diverted by the stream. She had intended only to wash her face and hands, now grimy after her labors at the fire. But chance led her to a deep, still pool with a bottom of fine sand and a tiny sh.o.r.e of pebbles that seemed to have been designed for bathing. Temptation seized her, and on the very impulse, seeing that a clump of willows screened her from the camp, she eagerly undressed, and plunged into the water, uttering quick gasps at the cold contact, and short-clipped shrieks of pleasure.

And so, behold a marvel! Three days ago, in the security and familiarity of the Park, where no hards.h.i.+ps or perils threatened, and where she knew that Philip was safe in his cottage across the ridge, and that her own pink bedroom awaited her at night, so deep was she in dejection that nothing could have induced an outburst of mere physical enjoyment such as this. But now, while Philip lay on his blankets, a prisoner in that narrow vale, and death stood at her side uncovered and undisguised, her spirits rose as they had never risen since her confession, on Mount Avalanche, and if Haig had been listening he might have heard her low laughter across the meadow.

Had she yet failed to realize her situation? Or was it that tragedy had put on its comic mask, and laughed at death? The truth is simple.

Her faith had triumphed over what seemed to be insuperable obstacles; and she was with Philip, for better or for worse. A miracle had been wrought; and miracles are not meaningless, or idle, or without purpose. It was a feeling perhaps unknown to man, who is merely a reasoning creature, much given to material consideration of natural causes and effects, and so compelled by his limitations to grope in outer darkness. And it was not so much a feeling as an instinct, and not so much an instinct as a law, of which she was the involuntary instrument. Her purpose was so strong within her that there was no need of thought; and so she did not think.

Leaping to the pebbly bank, she rubbed herself swiftly with the towel, and felt the glow of health rus.h.i.+ng through her body, all pink and gleaming in the sun. Then she dressed, and combed her hair; rinsed and wrung out the towel, and hung it on the willow-limbs to dry; and started back toward the camp in the highest spirits, and eager for service. And then, at twenty paces, she was stricken cold and rigid by the sight that met her unsuspecting eyes.

Haig had left his blankets, and was now dragging himself like a wounded animal along the earth. Already he had covered more than half the distance to the rock on which his revolver lay; and it seemed as if she would stand rooted there in helpless horror until he reached it. Then, with an incautious cry, she bounded forward. Haig heard her, and flung himself toward the stone with reckless determination. Where he had inches, Marion had yards to go; it was a race that might, in another age, have done credit to the ingenuity of a Roman emperor. If Philip was mad with pain and anger, Marion was frantic with fear and love. It seemed to her that the turf gripped her feet, that the wind in her face would strangle her, that her skirts were leaden sheets around her knees. And she barely resisted falling in a senseless heap when, at ten yards from the goal, she saw that she would be too late.

He beat her to the rock by merely a few seconds; but he was fairly spent. His fingers bled where he had dug them into the sand; the sweat rolled down his face; and exhaustion bound him as with bands of iron.

Yet he was able to reach for the gun, and clutch it; and with a final effort that seemed to tear the heart from his breast, he dragged the weapon under him, pressed the muzzle upward, pulled the trigger, at the very instant that Marion threw herself upon him.

There was a m.u.f.fled report, the fumes stung their eyes and nostrils, and for a moment both lay still. Then Marion felt a movement under her, and guessed that Haig was fumbling with the revolver. An indescribable energy seized her, something tigerish in its fury, and beyond her own proper powers, so that she flung him over on his back as if he had been a child in strength and size. With both hands she gripped the wrist below the clutched revolver, and while she held it away from his body she drew her own body over his, and threw herself on his extended arm, between his hand and his breast.

There was a savage struggle still, the man affirming his right to die, and the woman denying it. But the issue could not be long in doubt; for Haig's strength was at the ebb, while Marion's flowed in from earth and air and sky, from the future and from the past. And she wore him down at last, until the revolver dropped from his grasp, his eyelids closed, his limbs relaxed, and he lay still. Waiting a moment for certainty, she cautiously loosened one of her hands from his wrist, and grabbed the revolver, and flung it with all her might.

Then, seeing it land twenty feet away on the gra.s.s, she rolled away from him, and sat up panting, hollow-eyed, disheveled, and trembling on the verge of a collapse.

For some seconds there was no sound but their labored breathing; and not until Haig opened his eyes and looked at her, with a hunted, baffled, and still defiant expression in their somber depths, did Marion break down. Then suddenly, after a premonitory quivering of her chin, she buried her face in her hands, and wept without more effort at restraint, in utter abandonment to her agony. Haig watched, at first in anger, and then in some confusion of emotions. Once before he had looked upon her thus bowed and shaken; and now as then he felt a strange upheaval, and an unfathomable sensation that had no likeness to anything he had ever before experienced. He wanted very much to speak to her, but could not trust himself; and after all, what was there to be said?

It was she who rescued him from irresolution. She dropped her hands from her face, and cried out in a voice that was broken with sobbing: ”Why, Philip, why did you do that?”

”Why?” he asked, in something like amazement.

”Yes.”

”I've already told you why.”

”But--no--you haven't told me!”

”It was to save you--for one thing.”

”To save me?”

”I told you that your only chance is to go at once.”

”But I told you I wouldn't go!”

”I know. That's the reason.”

”But--don't you know, Philip, that--don't you see that--if you killed yourself you'd--kill me too?”

There should have been no necessity for these words. Perhaps any other man in the world, certainly most men of far less intelligence and less acuteness of feeling, would have known long ago just what she meant.