Part 34 (1/2)
They had reached the ranch road now. She knew the general lay of the land well enough to recognize it, and she could trust Sunbeam to keep it. A dense black cloud, the rearguard of the storm, had covered the moon, but there were stars enough to light the way somewhat.
”Would you mind telling me why you risked your life for me?” Stephen asked abruptly.
Some seconds went by before she answered. Then: ”I think there was reason enough in my being to blame for it all,” she said; ”I behaved outrageously.”
”And the other reason? There was another reason, I take it.”
His voice was not eager, not lover-like; there was more curiosity than anything else in the tone. Again the moon shone out, and lighted up her face distinctly, as she answered him, looking straight before her along the snowy road.
”I think,” she said, speaking with a slow consideration of her words; ”I think it was because I could not bear to have you--go out of the world, believing--what was not true! It seemed like a deceit going over into eternity!”
Would he say something very dreadful in reply, she wondered; something that would haunt her for the rest of her days?
She was still bracing herself for the worst,--for he had not yet broken the silence,--when they came to the gate, fixed there, half closed.
There was just room for Sunbeam to pa.s.s out, and Amy fell behind for a moment. Stephen drew rein and waited for her, while she vainly tried to close the gate.
”Don't mind that,” he said. ”It will close of itself when the snow melts.”
She came obediently and walked beside him. They had turned aside from the direction of Springtown, toward a little house a few rods away. They were almost there when Stephen spoke again.
”You must be sorry about it all,” he said, ”though you very wisely leave that to be understood. You have made a mistake and you think you have caused another person great and lasting unhappiness. I can't tell to-night whether that is so or not, but there is one thing that I think you have a right to know.”
”And that is?” She felt that she must fill in the pause, for he evidently found it difficult to go on.
”I think I know you well enough,” he said; ”to be sure of your feeling about it, though it is different from what some people would have under the circ.u.mstances. But somehow I am sure that you will be glad to know, that when I thought I was going to perish in the storm,--after I was thrown, and before I had seen that there was shelter near by,--it was _not you_ my thoughts were running on.”
Again he paused while she lifted the latch of the little gate. Then, as Sunbeam pa.s.sed through, and Amy walked by his side up the snowy path, Stephen said:
”I think it must have been a good many minutes that I lay there, thinking that the end was coming, and the only person in the world that I seemed to care about was--_my mother_!”
At the word, the bond that had irked her was gently loosed, and he, for his part, could only wonder that he felt no pain. The great cold moonlit calm of the night seemed to enter into their hearts, swept clean by the storm. They looked into one another's faces in the solemn white light, with a fine new unconcern. Where were all their perplexities? What had it all been about?
It was as if the snow had melted, and the great gate had closed itself.
Was it Paradise or Purgatory they had shut themselves out from?
XIII.
A GOLDEN VISTA.
Tramp, tramp, tramp,--the heavy boots had sounded on the road,--tramp, tramp, tramp! since Sunday morning, and now it was Tuesday noon. Often for hours together there had been no witness to the steady march, save the lordly pine-trees, standing straight and grand in the mountain ”parks,” or scaling boldly the precipitate sides of the encroaching cliffs; the cliffs themselves, frowning sternly above the path; and always somewhere on the horizon, towering above the nearer hills or closing in the end of the valley, a snowy peak gleaming like a transcendent promise against the sky. Waldo Kean, as he strode steadily down from his father's mountain ranch toward a wonderful new future whose door was about to be flung wide to him, felt the inspiration of those rugged mountain influences, the like of which had been his familiars all the seventeen years of his life. The chattering brooks had nothing to say to him as they came das.h.i.+ng down from the hills to join the rollicking stream whose course his path followed; the sunflowers, gilding the edge of the road, were but frills and furbelows to his thinking. But in the pine-trees there was a perfectly clear significance,--in those hardy growths, finding a foothold among the rocks, drawing sustenance from Heaven knew where, yet ever growing skyward, straight and tall and strong. As he pa.s.sed among them, standing at gracious intervals in the broad ”parks,” they seemed to flush with understanding and sympathy. His way led from north to south and as often as he turned and looked back among the trees, the stems glowed ruddily and his heart warmed to them. He knew that it was merely the southern exposure that had tinged their bark and caused that friendly glow, but he liked it all the same.
Now and then the solitude was relieved by the appearance of a horseman riding with flapping arms and jingling spurs up the pa.s.s; or again the silence was broken by the inconsequent bleating of a flock of sheep wandering in search of their scant pasturage or huddling together, an agitated ma.s.s of grimy wool, its outskirts painfully exposed to the sharp but well-intentioned admonitions of a somewhat irascible collie.
Neither man nor beast took special note of the overgrown boy striding so confidently on his way, nor was one observer more likely than the other to guess what inspiring thoughts were animating the roughly clad, uncouth form. The boy's clothes were shabby and travel-stained, and over his shoulders was slung a canvas bag, its miscellaneous contents making sharp, angular protuberances on its surface. He had left the ranch with clothes and books enough to give the bag a pretty weight, and this he had unconcernedly increased by the insertion into the straining receptacle of many a ”specimen” picked up by the way. For the eyes were keen and observant that looked out from under the strongly marked brows, and bits of fluorite and ”fool's gold,” and of rarer minerals as well, which had lain for years beside the road, noted as little by cowboy and ranchman and mountain tourist as by the redman whose feet first trod the pa.s.s, were destined to-day to start on their travels, enlisted in the service of Science.
It must have been a daring specimen indeed that should have thought of resisting its fate when it came at the hands of Waldo Kean. There was a certain rough strength not only in the muscular frame, but in the face itself, with its rude features, its determined outlines, its heavy under-lip; and in the stiff black hair roughly clipped on the ample skull, growing in a bushy thatch above the keen dark eyes. It seemed but natural that just that type of boy should feel himself drawn to the study of the rocky foundation of things.
Four years ago Waldo Kean had found out that he wanted to be a geologist, and that to this end he must go to college. Yet though the college was in Springtown, and though Springtown lies close to the foot of the ”range,” it had taken him four years to get there. During that enforced interval he had done his full share of the heavy ranch work, he had found one and another means of acc.u.mulating a little capital of his own; at off hours and off seasons he had cudgelled his brain over books with ugly difficult t.i.tles and anything but tractable contents. In short he had fairly earned his pa.s.sport, and now, at last, on this radiant October morning, he was striding over the few intervening miles that separated him from that wonderful Land of Promise, where Latin and Greek grew on every tree, and the air was electric with the secrets of Science itself. What wonder that he was unconscious of hards.h.i.+p and fatigue, that he counted as nothing the three days' tramp; the icy nights spent out under the chill stars; the only half-satisfied hunger of a healthy boy, living on food which the dry mountain air was rapidly reducing to a powdery consistency! He was going to College; he was going to be a Geologist. What did he care for any paltry details by the way?
He seated himself for his noon meal, the last crumbling sandwich of his store, at the foot of a big pine-tree, just where the pa.s.s narrows to a wild ravine. As he took out the slice of bread and meat neatly wrapped about with brown paper, his thoughts reverted with a certain sore compunction to the hand that had prepared it for him. It had been his mother's farewell service, and he somehow realized now as he had not realized at the time, how much all those careful preparations meant, to her and to himself. He remembered how, late Sat.u.r.day night, she had sat mending a new rip in his best coat, and that when she p.r.i.c.ked her finger, and a little bead of red blood had to be disposed of before she could go on with the work, he had wondered why women were always p.r.i.c.king their fingers when there was no need. It was not until the very moment of departure that the pain of it seized him. His mother was a quiet, undemonstrative woman of the New England race, and if mother and son loved each other,--as it now transpired that they did,--no mention had ever been made of the fact on either side. The consequence was, that when, at parting, an iron hand seemed to be gripping the boy's throat, he had been so taken at unawares, that he had found it impossible to articulate a single word. On the mother's part there had been one little, half-suppressed sob that sounded in his ears yet. It left an ache in him that he did not at first know what to do with, but which clearly called for heroic treatment. Accordingly, after much pondering the situation, he had adopted a great resolution,--a resolution which involved no less arduous a task than that of writing a letter to his mother and telling her that he loved her. He thought it possible that the confession might give her pleasure, coming from a safe distance and involving no immediate consequences, and in any case he did not feel justified in keeping to himself a discovery which so nearly concerned another person. He had thought a good deal about the letter and of how he should approach the subject, and he had about decided to make the momentous statement in a postscript down in one corner and to sign it ”Waldy.”