Part 48 (1/2)
”That's over and done with. He's probably here somewhere, come through with a train that's scattered. And, anyway, you can't do any good by thinking about him.”
This time the false rea.s.surances came with the pang that the dead man was rousing in tardy retribution.
”I should like to know it,” she said wistfully, ”to feel sure. It's the only thing that mars our happiness. If I knew he was safe and well somewhere there'd be nothing in the world for me but perfect joy.”
Her egotism of satisfied body and spirit jarred upon him. The pa.s.sion she had evoked had found no peace in its fulfillment. She had got what he had hoped for. All that he had antic.i.p.ated was destroyed by the unexpected intrusion of a part of himself that had lain dead till she had quickened it, and quickening it she had killed his joy. In a flash of divination he saw that, if she persisted in her worry over David, she would rouse in him an antagonism that would eventually drive him from her. He spoke with irritation:
”Put him out of your mind. Don't worry about him. You can't do any good, and it spoils our love.”
After a pause, she said with a hesitating attempt at cajolery:
”Let me and Daddy John drive into the valley and try and get news of him. We need supplies and we'll be gone only two or three days. We can inquire at the Fort and maybe go on to Sacramento, and if he's been there we'll hear of it. If we could only hear, just hear, he was safe, it would be such a relief. It would take away this dreary feeling of anxiety, and guilt too, Low. For I feel guilty when I think of how we left him.”
”Where was the guilt? You've no right to say that. You understood we had to go. I could take no risks with you and the old man.”
”Yes,” she said, slowly, tempering her agreement with a self-soothing reluctance, ”but even so, it seemed terrible. I often tell myself we couldn't have done anything else, but----”
Her voice dropped to silence and she sat staring out at the quiet night, her head blurred with the filaments of loosened hair.
He did not speak, gripped by his internal torment, aggravated now by torment from without. He wondered, if he told her the truth, would she understand and help him to peace. But he knew that such knowledge would set her in a new att.i.tude toward him, an att.i.tude of secret judgment, of distracted pity, of an agonized partisans.h.i.+p built on loyalty and the despairing pa.s.sion of the disillusioned. He could never tell her, for he could never support the loss of her devoted belief, which was now the food of his life.
”Can I go?” she said, turning to look at him, smiling confidently as one who knows the formal demand unnecessary.
”If you want,” he answered.
”Then we'll start to-morrow,” she said, and, leaning down, kissed him.
He was unresponsive to the touch of her lips, lay inert as she nestled down into soft-breathing, child-like sleep. He watched the tent opening pale into a glimmering triangle wondering what their life would be with the specter of David standing in the path, an angel with a flaming sword barring the way to Paradise.
Two days later she and Daddy John, sitting on the front seat of the wagon, saw the low drab outlines of the Fort rising from the plain.
Under their tree was a new encampment, one tent with the hood of a wagon behind it, and oxen grazing in the sun. As they drew near they could see the crouched forms of two children, the light filtering through the leaf.a.ge on the silky flax of their heads. They were occupied over a game, evidently a serious business, its floor of operations the smooth ground worn bare about the camp fire. One of them lay flat with a careful hand patting the dust into mounds, the other squatted near by watching, a slant of white hair falling across a rounded cheek. They did not heed the creak of the wagon wheels, but as a woman's voice called from the tent, raised their heads listening, but not answering, evidently deeming silence the best safeguard against interruption.
Susan laid a clutching hand on Daddy John's arm.
”It's the children,” she cried in a choked voice. ”Stop, stop!” and before he could rein the mules to order she was out and running toward them, calling their names.
They made a clamor of welcome, Bob running to her and making delighted leaps up at her face, the little girl standing aloof for the first bashful moment, then sidling nearer with mouth upheld for kisses.
Bella heard them and came to the tent door, gave a great cry, and ran to them. There were tears on her cheeks as she clasped Susan, held her oft and clutched her again, with panted e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of ”Deary me!” and ”Oh, Lord, Missy, is it you?”
It was like a meeting on the other side of the grave. They babbled their news, both talking at once, not stopping to finish sentences, or wait for the answer to questions of the marches they had not shared.
Over the clamor they looked at each other with faces that smiled and quivered, the tie between them strengthened by the separation when each had longed for the other, closer in understanding by the younger's added experience, both now women.
Glen was at the Fort and Daddy John rolled off to meet him there. The novelty of the moment over, the children returned sedately to their play, and the women sat together under the canopy of the tree. Bella's adventures had been few and tame, Susan's was the great story. She was not discursive about her marriage. She was still shy on the subject and sensitively aware of the disappointment that Bella was too artlessly amazed to conceal. She pa.s.sed over it quickly, pretending that she did not hear Bella's astonished:
”But why did you get married at Humboldt? Why didn't you wait till you got here?”
It was the loss of David that she made the point of her narrative, anxiously impressing on her listener their need of going on. She stole quick looks at Bella, watchful for the first shade of disapprobation, with all Low's arguments ready to sweep it aside. But Bella, with maternal instincts in place of a comprehensive humanity, agreed that Low had done right. Nature, in the beginning, combined with the needs of the trail, had given her a viewpoint where expediency counted for more than altruism. She with two children and a helpless man would have gone on and left anyone to his fate. She did not say this, but Susan, with intelligence sharpened by a jealous pa.s.sion, felt that there was no need to defend her husband's action. As for the rest of the world--deep in her heart she had already decided it should never know.
”You couldn't have done anything else,” said Bella. ”I've learned that when you're doing that sort of thing, you can't have the same feelings you can back in the States, with everything handy and comfortable. You can be fair, but you got to fight for your own. They got to come first.”