Part 28 (1/2)
Coffee,--is there any tea beside that you have?”
”No, but no need. I name it not.”
”Tea is light and easily brought. What else?”
”And paper. I ask for that but for me to write my little romance of all this--forgive--it is for occupation in the long winter. You also must write of your experiences--perhaps--of your history of--of--You like it not? Why, Mr. 'Arry! It is to make work for the mind. The mind must work--work--or die. The hands--well. I make lace with the hands--but for the mind is music--or the books--but here are no books--good--we make them. So, paper I ask, and of crayon--Alas! It is in the box! What to do?”
”Listen. We'll have that box, and bring it here on the mountain. I'll get it.”
”Ah, no! No. Will you break my heart?” She seized his arm and looked in his eyes, her own br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. Then she flung up her arms in her dramatic way, and covered her eyes. ”I can see it all so terrible. If you should go there and the Indian strike you dead--or the snow come too soon and kill you with the cold--in the great drift lying white--all the terrible hours never to see you again--Ah, no!”
In that instant his heart leaped toward her and the blood roared in his ears. He would have clasped her to him, but he only stood rigidly still. ”Hands off, murderer!” The words seemed shouted at him by his own conscience. ”I would rather die--than that you should not have your box,” was all he said, and left the cabin. He, too, had need to think things out alone.
CHAPTER XVIII
LARRY KILDENE'S STORY
”Man, but this is none so bad--none so bad.”
Larry Kildene sat on a bench before a roaring fire in the room added on to the fodder shed. The chimney which Harry King had built, although not quite completed to its full height, was being tried for the first time, as the night was too cold for comfort in the long, low shed without fire, and the men had come down early this evening to talk over their plans before Larry should start down the mountain in the morning. They had heaped logs on the women's fire and seen that all was right for them, and with cheerful good-nights had left them to themselves.
Now, as they sat by their own fire, Harry could see Amalia by hers, seated on a low bench of stone, close to the blazing torch of pine, so placed that its smoke would be drawn up the large chimney. It was all the light they had for their work in the evenings, other than the firelight. He could see her fingers moving rapidly and mechanically at some pretty open-work pattern, and now and then grasping deftly at the ball of fine white thread that seemed to be ever taking little leaps, and trying to roll into the fire, or out over the cabin floor. She used a fine, slender needle and seemed to be performing some delicate magic with her fingers. Was she one of the three fates continually drawing out the thread of his life and weaving therewith a charmed web? And if so--when would she cease?
”It's a good job and draws well.”
”The chimney? Yes, it seems to.” Harry roused himself and tried to close his mind against the warm, glowing picture. ”Yes--yes. It draws well. I'm inclined to be a bit proud, although I never could have done it if you had not given me the lessons.”
”It's art, my boy. To build a good fireplace is just that. Did you ever think that the whole world--and the welfare of it--centers just around that;--the fireplace and the hearth--or what stands for it in these days--maybe a little hole in the wall with a smudge of coal in it, as they have in the towns--but it's the hearth and the cradle beside it--and--the mother.”
Larry's voice died almost to a whisper, and his chin dropped on his breast, and his eyes gazed on the burning logs; and Harry, sitting beside him, gazed also at the same logs, but the pictures wrought in the alchemy of their souls were very different.
To Harry it was a sweet, oval face--a flush from the heat of the fire more on the smooth cheek that was toward it than on the other, and warm flame flashes in the large eyes that looked up at him from time to time, while the slender figure bent a little forward to see the better, as the wonderful hands kept up the never ceasing motion. A white linen cloth spread over her lap cast a clearer, more rosy light under her chin and brought out the strength of it and the delicate curves of it, which Harry longed even to dare to look upon in the rarest stolen intervals, without the clamor and outcry in his heart.
It was always the same--the cry of Cain in the wilderness. Would G.o.d it might some day cease! What to him might be the hearth fire and the cradle, and the mother, that the big man should dwell on them thus?
What had they meant in Larry Kildene's life, he who had lived for twenty years the life of a hermit, and had forsworn women forever, as he said?
”I tell ye, lad, there's a thing I would say to you--before I leave, but it's sore to touch upon.” Harry made a deprecating gesture. ”No, it's best I tell you. I--I'll come back--never fear--it's my plan to come back, but in this life you may count on nothing for a surety.
I've learned that, and to prove it, look at me. I made sure, never would I open my heart again to think on my fellow beings, but as aliens to my life, and I've lived it out for twenty years, and thought to hold out to the end. I held the Indians at bay through their superst.i.tions, and they would no more dare to cross my path with hostile intent than they would dare take their chances over that fall above there. Where did I put my pipe? I can't seem to find things as I did in the cabin.”
”Here it is, sir. I placed that stone further out at the end of the chimney on purpose for it, and in this side I've left a hole for your tobacco. I thought I was very clever doing that.”
”And we'd be fine and cozy here in the winter--if it wer'n't for the women--a--a--now I'm blundering. I'd never turn them out if they lived there the rest of their days. But to have a lad beside me as I might have had--if you'd said, 'Here it is, father,' but now, it would have have been music to me. You see, Harry, I forswore the women harder than I did the men, and it's the longing for the son I held in my arms an hour and then gave up, that has lived in me all these years.
The mother--gone--The son I might have had.”
”I can't say that--to you. I have a curse on me, and it will stay until I have paid for my crime. But I'll be more to you than sons are to their fathers. I'll be faithful to you as a dog to his master, and love you more. I'll live for you even with the curse on me, and if need be, I'll die for you.”
”It's enough. I'll ask you no more. Have you no curiosity to hear what I have to tell you?”
”I have, indeed I have. But it seems I can't ask it--unless I'm able to return your confidence. To talk of my sorrow only deepens it. It drives me wild.”