Part 29 (1/2)
”Only your friend?”
”Oh, see, there's a place where perhaps we can slide right over the pitch! Let's!”
She was on the sled in an instant, and I behind her. I kicked it loose.
With a gentle crunching sound the runners started sc.r.a.ping through the snow; then, as the speed increased, the sound rose to a whine which mingled with the rush of air in our ears and the spray of snow in our faces. Jean's heels were just above the snow surface, and when, as happened once or twice, they dropped too low, they showered us with flying icy crystals. Then, just at the dip, one heel drove in much too deep--too deep to be accidental--the sled trembled, turned sideways, and went over.
We disentangled ourselves, laughing, but we did not immediately reclimb the hill. I found a sheltered spot in the pitch where we might sit on the sled with our backs to the great drift while our faces caught the slanting warmth of the sun and our eyes could range the field of tiny rainbow signals thrown up from the ripple at our feet.
Jean broke up the crusted snow with the heel of her overshoe; then buried her feet in the powdery mound. Presently a toe came wiggling up through it. . . . . . . .
”Jean, don't!” I cried. ”You take me back to those old days! We understood everything then; then everything was supposed to be settled.”
The toe settled to stillness in its burrowing; Jean's sensitive lips, too, settled to a stillness firm and sad.
”Tell me, Jean,” I pressed at length; ”why can't we go back; why can't we start over again--like that?”
”We have always been good friends,” she murmured.
”Good friends--yes. Must it stop at that?”
”And neighbours,” she continued. ”We have always been good neighbours.
Perhaps that is the trouble.”
”How--the trouble?”
”Well, it's like this,” she said, and again the toe began to gyrate in the snow. ”We've known each other so well, and so long, there isn't anything--much--left to know, is there? Could you stand the boredom of a person who has no new thoughts, no strange ideas, no whims--nothing that you haven't already seen and known a hundred times?”
”There never could be boredom with you, dear. Just to have you with me, to feast on you, to know you were mine, would be enough for me.”
”For about a week. You'd soon tire of a feast with no flavor to it. _I_ would, at any rate. . . . Oh, I see it working out already. I don't want to gossip, and Jack and Marjorie have been everything they could to me, but already I can see them settling down to the routine--_the deadly routine_. Bad enough anywhere, but on these prairies, with their isolation, their immensity--unbearable. I couldn't stand it.”
I studied her for a moment in silence. Jean might know all about me; I might have no new thoughts, new ideas, new whims, but it was quite plain I didn't know all about her.
”Still, there are many couples on these prairies living happily, I suppose,” I ventured.
”You suppose,” she repeated. ”That's right. It is just supposition.
n.o.body knows; that is, the public doesn't know. But what is their happiness? An ox-like acceptance of the routine. Breakfast, work; dinner, work; supper, work; sleep; breakfast--the whole circle over again. I couldn't stand it, Frank; there's no use pretending I could.
I'd--I'd run away with some one!”
”Jean!”
”Yes, I know what you're thinking. But it would break the routine, anyway; it wouldn't be that way I would lose my soul; perhaps that way I might save it.”
”You're a strange girl, Jean.”
”Yes? After all these years? I am so glad. As long as I am strange you will be interested in me. That's the trouble with you; you're not strange. I know all about you. And I wouldn't be your housekeeper for life for the sake of being your lover for a week.”
”Jean!”