Chapter IV: Part 4

“You see only one side of it,” said Paul. Unspeakable thoughts had kept pace with his father's words. “Nothing that happens, happens through us--or to us--alone. There was a girl I knew, outside. She was as happy, when I knew her first, as you say my mother used to be. Then she met some one--a man--and the shadow of his life crossed hers. He would have wrapped her up in it and put out her sunshine if he had stayed in the same world. Now she can be herself again, after a while. It cannot take long to forget a person you have known only a little over a year.”

The packer rose on one elbow. He reached across and shook his son.

“Where is that girl? Answer me! Take your face out of your hands!”

“At Bisuka Barracks. She is the commandant's daughter. I came out to marry her.”

“What possessed ye not to tell me?”

“Why should I tell you? We buried the wedding-day months back, in the snow.”

“Boy, boy!” the packer groaned.

“What difference can it make now?”

“_All_ the difference--all the difference there is! I thought you were out here touring it with them fool boys and they were all the chance you had for help outside. You suppose her father is going to see her git left? _They_'ll get in here, if they have to crawl on their bellies or climb through the tree-limbs. They know how! And we've wasted the grub and talked like a couple of women!”

“Oh, don't--don't torment me!” Paul groaned. “It was all over. Can't you leave the dead in peace!”

“We are not the dead! I 'most wish we were. Boy, I've got a big word to say to you about that. Come closer!” The packer's speech hoarsened and failed. They could only hear each other breathe. Then it seemed to the packer that his was the only breath in the darkness. He listened. A faint cheer arose in the forest and a crashing of the dead underlimbs of the pines.

He turned frantically upon his son, but no pledge could be extorted now. Paul's lips were closed. He had lost consciousness.

XIV

KIND INQUIRIES

The colonel's drawing-room was as hot as usual the first hour after dinner, and as usual it was full of kindly participant neighbors who had dropped in to repeat their congratulations on the good news, now almost a week old. Mrs. Bogardus had not come down, and, though asked after by all, the talk was noticeably freer for her absence.

Mrs. Creve, in response to a telegram from her brother, had arrived from Fort Sherman on the day before, prepared for anything, from frozen feet to a wedding. She had spent the afternoon in town doing errands for Moya, and being late for dinner had not changed her dress. There never was such a “natural” person as aunt Annie. At present she was addressing the company at large, as if they were all her promising children.

“Nobody talks about their star in these days. I used to have a star. I forget which it was. I know it was a pretty lucky one. Now I trust in Providence and the major and wear thick shoes.” She exhibited the shoes, a particularly large and sensible kind which she imported from the East. Everybody laughed and longed to embrace her. “Has Moya got a star?” she asked seriously.

“The whole galaxy!” a male voice replied. “Doesn't the luck prove it?”

“Moya has got a 'temperament,'” said Doctor Fleming, the Post surgeon. “That's as good as having a star. You know there are persons who attract misfortune just as sickly children catch all the diseases that are going. I knew that boy was sure to be found. Anything of Moya's would be.”

“So you think it was Moya's 'temperament' that pulled him out of the snow?” said the colonel, wheeling his chair into the discussion.

“How about Mr. Winslow's temperament? I prefer to leave a little of the credit to him,” said Moya sweetly.

A young officer, who had been suffering in the corner by the fire, jumped to his feet and bowed, then blushed and sat down again, regretting his rashness. Moya continued to look at him with steadfast friendliness. Winslow had led the rescue that brought her lover home. A glow of sympathy united these friends and neighbors; the air was electrical and full of emotion.

“I suppose no date has been fixed for the wedding?” Mrs. Dawson, on the divan, murmured to Mrs. Creve. The latter smiled a non-committal assent.

“I should think they would just put the doctor aside and be married anyhow. My husband says he ought to go to a warmer climate at once.”

“My dear, a young man can't be married in his dressing-gown and slippers!”

“No! It's not as bad as that?”

“Well, not quite. He's up and dressed and walks about, but he doesn't come down to his meals,--he can eat so very little at a time, and it tires him to sit through a dinner. It isn't one of those ravenous recoveries. It went too far with him for that.”

“His mother was perfectly magnificent through it all, they say.”

“Have you seen much of Mrs. Bogardus?”

“No; we left them alone, poor things, when the pinch came. But I used to see her walking the porch, up and down, up and down. Moya would go off on the hills. They couldn't walk together! That was after Miss Chrissy went home. Her mother took her back, you know, and then returned alone. Perfectly heroic! They say she dressed every evening for dinner as carefully as if she were in New York, and led the conversation. She used to make Moya read aloud to her--history, novels--anything to pretend they were not thinking. The strain must have begun before any of us knew. The colonel kept it so quiet. What is the dear man doing with your bonnet?”

The colonel had plucked his sister's walking-hat, a pert piece of millinery froward in feathers, from the trunk of the headless Victory, where she had reposed it in her haste before dinner.

“Mustn't be disrespectful to the household Lar,” he kindly reminded her.

“Where am I to put my hats, then? I shall wear them on my head and come down to breakfast in them. Moya, dear, will you please rescue my hat? Put it anywhere, dear,--under your chair. There is not really a place in this house to put a thing. A wedding that goes off on time is bad enough, but one that hangs on from month to month--and doesn't even take care of its clothes! Forgive me, dear! The clothes are very pretty. I open a bureau-drawer to put away my middle-aged bonnet--a puff of violets! A pile of something white, and, behold, a wedding veil! There isn't a hook in the closet that doesn't say, 'Standing-room only,' and the standing-room is all stood on by a regiment of new shoes.”

“My dear woman, go light on our sore spots. We are only just out of the woods.”

“Isn't it bad to coddle your sore spots, Doctor? Like a saddle-gall, ride them down!” Mrs. Creve and Dr. Fleming exchanged a friendly smile on the strength of this nonsense. On the doctor's side it covered a suspicion: “'The lady, methinks, protests too much'!” The colonel, too, was restless, and Moya's sweet color came and went. She appeared to be listening for steps or sounds from some other part of the house.

The men all rose now as Mrs. Bogardus entered; one or two of the ladies rose also, compelled by something in her look certainly not intended. She was careful to greet everybody; she even crossed the room and gave her hand to Lieutenant Winslow, whom she had not seen since the night of his return. The doctor she casually passed over with a bow; they had met before that day. It was in the mind of each person present not of the family, and excepting the doctor, to ask her: 'How is your son this evening?' But for some reason the inquiry did not come off.

The company began suddenly to feel itself _de trop_. Mrs. Dawson, who had come under the doctor's escort, glanced at him, awaiting the moment when it would do to make the first move.

“I hear you lost a patient from the hospital yesterday?” said Lieutenant Winslow, at the doctor's side.

“_From_, did you say? That's right! He was to have been operated on to-day.” The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

“What!”

“Two broken ribs. One grown fast to the lung.”

“Wh-ew!”

“He just walked out. Said I had ordered him to have fresh air. There was a new hall-boy, a greenhorn.”

“He can't go far in that shape, can he?”

“Oh, there's no telling. The constitution of those men is beyond anything. You can't kill him. He'll suffer of course, suffer like an animal, and die like one--away from the herd. Maybe not this time, though.”

“Was he afraid of the operation?”

“I can't say. He did not seem to be either afraid or anxious for help. Not used to being helped. He would be taken to the Sisters' Hospital. Wouldn't come up here as the guest of the Post, not a bit! I believe from the first he meant to give us the slip, and take his chance in his own way.”

“Did you hear,”--Mrs. Creve spoke up from the opposite side of the room under that hypnotic influence by which a dangerous topic spreads,--“did you hear about the poor guide who ran away from the hospital to escape from our wicked doctor here? What a reputation you must have, Doctor!”

“All talk, my dear; town gossip,” said the colonel. “You gave him his discharge, didn't you, Doctor?” The colonel looked hard at the medical officer; he had prepared the way for a statement suited to a mixed company, including ladies. But Doctor Fleming stated things usually to suit himself.

“There was a man who left the Sisters' Hospital rather informally yesterday. I won't say he is not just as well off to-day as if he had stayed.”

“Who was it? Was it our man, father?”

“The doctor has more than one patient at the hospital.” Colonel Middleton looked reproachfully at the doctor, who continued to put aside as childish these clumsy subterfuges. “I think you ladies frightened him away with your attentions. He knew he was under heavy liabilities for all your flowers and fancy cookery.”

“Attentions! Are we going to let him die on the road somewhere?” cried Moya.

“Miss Moya?” Lieutenant Winslow spoke up with a mixture of embarrassment and resolution to be heard, though every voice in the room conspired against him. “Those men are a big fraternity. They have their outfitting places where they put in for repairs. Packer John had his blankets sent to the Green Meadow corral. They know him there. They say he had money at one of the stores. They all have a little money cached here and there. And they _can't_ get lost, you know!”

Moya's eyes shone with a suspicious brightness.

“'When the forest shall mislead me;
When the night and morning lie.'”

She turned her swimming eyes upon Paul's mother, who would be sure to remember the quotation.

Mrs. Bogardus remained perfectly still, her lips slightly parted. She grew very pale. Then she rose and walked quickly to the door.

“Just a breath of cold air!” she panted. The doctor, Moya, and Mrs. Creve had followed her into the hall. Moya placed herself on the settle beside her and leaned to support her, but she sat back rigidly with her eyes closed. Mrs. Creve looked on in quiet concern. “Let me take you into the study, Mrs. Bogardus!” the doctor commanded. “A glass of water, Moya, please.”

“How is she? What is it? Can we do anything?” The company crowded around Mrs. Creve on her return to the drawing-room. She glanced at her brother. There was no clue there. He stood looking embarrassed and mystified. “It is only the warm welcome we give our friends,” she said aloud, smiling calmly. “Mrs. Bogardus found the room too hot. I think I should have succumbed myself but for that little recess in the hall.”

The colonel attacked his fire. He thought he was being played with. Things were not right in the house, and no one, not the doctor, or even Annie, was frank with him. His kind face flushed as he straightened up to bid his guests good-night.

“Well, if it's not anything serious, you think. But you'll be sure to let us know?” said Mrs. Dawson. “Well, good-night, Mrs. Creve. _Good_-night, Colonel! You'll say good-night to Moya? Do let us know if there is anything we can do.”

Dr. Fleming was in the hall looking for his cape. The colonel touched him on the shoulder. “Don't be in a hurry, Doctor. Mrs. Dawson will excuse you.”

“I don't think you need me any more to-night. Moya is with Mrs. Bogardus. She is not ill. The room was a little close.”

“Never mind the _room_! Come in here. I want a word with you.”

The doctor laughed oddly, and obeyed.

“Annie, you needn't leave us.”

“Why, thank you, dear boy! It's awfully good of you,” Annie mocked him. “But I must go and relieve Moya.”

“I don't believe you are wanted in there,” said Doctor Fleming.

“It's more than obvious that I'm not in here.”

“Oh, do sit down,” said the teased colonel.

The fire sulked and smoked a trifle with its brands apart. Doctor Fleming leaned forward upon his knees and regarded it thoughtfully. The colonel sat fondling the tongs. In a deep chair Mrs. Creve lay back and shaded her face with the end of her lace scarf. By her manner she might have been alone in the room, yet she was keenly observant of the men, for she felt that developments were taking place.

“What is the matter with your patient upstairs, Doctor?” the colonel began his cross-examination. Doctor Fleming raised his eyebrows.

“He's had nothing to eat to speak of for six weeks, at an altitude”--

“Yes; we know all that. But he's twenty-four years old. They made an easy trip back, and he has been here a week, nearly. He's not as strong as he was when they brought him in, is he?”

“That was excitement. You have to allow for the reaction. He has had a shock to the entire system,--nerves, digestion,--must give him time. Very nervous temperament too much controlled.”

“Make it as you like. But I'm disappointed in his rallying powers, unless you are keeping something back. A boy with the grit to do what he did, and stand it as he did--why isn't he standing it better now?”

“We are all suffering from reaction, I think,” said Mrs. Creve diplomatically; “and we show it by making too much of little things. Tom, we oughtn't to keep the doctor up here talking nonsense. He wants to go to bed.”

“_I_'m not talking nonsense,” said the doctor. “I should be if I pretended there was anything mysterious about that boy's case upstairs. He has had a tremendous experience, say what you will; and it's pulled him down nervously, and every other way. He isn't ready or able to talk of it yet. And he knows as soon as he comes down there'll be forty people waiting to congratulate him and ask him how it was. I don't wonder he fights shy. If he could take his bride by the hand and walk out of the house with her I believe he could start to-morrow; but if there must be a wedding and a lot of fuss”--

Mrs. Creve nodded her head approvingly. The three had risen and stood around the hearth, while the colonel put the brands delicately together with the skill of an old campaigner. The flames breathed again.

“I don't offer this as a professional opinion,” said the doctor. “But a case like his is not a disease, it's a condition”--

“Of the mind, perhaps?” the colonel added significantly. He glanced at Mrs. Creve. “You've thought about that, Doctor? The letter his mother consulted you about?”

“Have you been worrying about that, Colonel? Why didn't you say so? There is nothing in it whatever. Why, it's so plain a case the other way--any one can see where the animus comes from!”

“Now you _are_ getting mysterious, and I'm going to bed!” said Mrs. Creve.

“No; we're coming to the point now,” said the colonel.

“What is it you want Bogardus to do?” asked Doctor Fleming. “Want him to get up and walk out of the house as my patient did at the hospital? Dare say he could do it, but what then? Will you let me speak out, Colonel? No regard to anybody's feelings? Now, this may be gossip, but I think it has a bearing on the case upstairs. I'm going to have it off my mind anyhow! When Mrs. Bogardus came to see the guide,--Packer John,--day before yesterday, was it?--he asked to see her alone. Said he had something particular to say to her about her son. We thought it a queer start, but she was willing to humor him. Well, she wasn't in there above ten minutes, but in that time something passed between them that hit her very hard, no doubt of that! Now, Bogardus holds his tongue like a gentleman as to what happened in the woods. He doesn't mention his comrades' names. And the packer has disappeared; so he can't be questioned. Seems to me a little bird told me there was an attachment between one of those Bowen boys and Miss Christine?

“Now we, who know what brutes brute fear will make of men, are not going to deny that those boys behaved badly. There are some things that can't be acknowledged among men, you know, if there is a hole to crawl out of. Cowardice is one of them. Well then, they lied, that's the whole of it. The little boys lied. They wrote Mrs. Bogardus a long letter from Lemhi,”--the doctor was reviewing now for Mrs. Creve's benefit,--“when they first got out. They probably judged, by the time they had had, that Paul and the packer would never tell their own story. Very well: it couldn't hurt Paul, it might be the saving of them, if they could show that something had queered him in the woods. They asked his mother if she had heard of the effects of altitude upon highly sensitive organizations. They recounted some instances--I will mention them later. One of the boys is a lawyer, isn't he? They are a pair of ingenious youths. Bogardus, they claim, avoided them almost from the time they entered the woods,--almost lived with the packer, behaved like a crank about the shooting. Whereas they had gone there to kill things, he made it a personal matter whenever they pursued this intention in a natural and undisguised manner. He had pangs, like a girl, when the creatures expired. He hated the carcases, the blood--forgive me, Mrs. Creve. In short, he called the whole business butchery.”

“Do you make _that_ a sign of lunacy?” Mrs. Creve flung in.

“I am quoting, you know.” The doctor smiled indulgently. “They declare that they offered--even begged--to stay behind with him, one of them, at least, but he rejected their company in a manner so unpleasant that they saw it would only be courting a quarrel to remain. And so, treating him perforce like a child _or_ a lunatic _pro tem._, and having but little time to decide in, they cut loose and hurried back for help. This is the tale, composed on reflection. They said nothing of this to Winslow--to save publicity, of course! Mrs. Bogardus's lips are doubly sealed, for her son's sake and for the sake of the young scamp who is to be her son, by and by! I saw she winced at my opinion, which I gave her plainly--brutally, perhaps. And she asked me particularly to say nothing, which I am particularly not doing.

“This, I think, you will find is the bitter drop in the cup of rejoicing upstairs. And they are swallowing it in silence, those two, for the sake of the little girl and the old friends in New York. Of course she has kept from Paul that last shot in the back from those sweet boys! The packer had some unruly testimony he was bursting with, which he had sense enough to keep for her alone, and she doesn't want the case to spread. It is singular how a man in his condition could get out of the way as suddenly as he did. You might think he'd been taken up in a cloud.”

“Doctor, what do you mean by such an insinuation as that?”

“Colonel, have I insinuated anything? Did I say she had oiled the wheels of his departure?”

“Come, come! You go too far!”

“Not at all. That's your own construction. I merely say that I am not concerned about that man's disappearance. I think he'll be looked after, as a valuable witness should be.”

“Well,” the colonel grumbled uneasily, “I don't like mysteries myself, and I don't like family quarrels nor skeletons at the feasts of old friends. But I suppose there must be a drop in every cup. What were your altitude cases, Doctor?”

“The same old ones; poor Addison, you know. All those stories they tell an Easterner. As I pointed out to Mrs. Bogardus, in every case there was some predisposing cause. Addison had been too long in the mountains, and he was frightfully overworked; short of company officers. He came to me about an insect he said had got into his ear; buzzed, and bothered him day and night. The story got to the men's quarters. They joked about the colonel's 'bug.' I knew it was no joke. I condemned him for duty, but the Sioux were out. They thought at Washington no one but Addison could handle an Indian campaign. He was on the ground, too. So they sent him up higher where it was dry, with a thousand men in his hands. I knew he'd be a madman or a dead man in a month! There were a good many of the dead! By Jove! The boys who took his orders and loved the old fellow and knew he was sending them to their death! Well for him that he'll never know.”

“The 'altitude of heartbreak,'” sighed Mrs. Creve. The phrase was her own, for many a reason deeply known unto herself, but she gave it the effect of a quotation before the men.

“Then you think there is no 'altitude' in ours?”

“No; nor 'heartbreak' either,” said the doctor, helping himself to one of the colonel's cigars. “But I don't say there isn't enough to keep a woman awake nights, and to make those young men avoid the sight of each other for a time. Thanks, I won't smoke now. I'm going to take a look at Mrs. Bogardus as I go out.”

XV

A BRIDEGROOM OF SNOW

The doctor had taken his look, feeling a trifle guilty under his patient's counter gaze, yet glad to have relieved the good colonel's anxiety. If he loved to gossip, at least he was particular as to whom he gossiped with.

Moya closed the door after him and silently resumed her seat. Mrs. Bogardus helped herself to a sip of water. She was struggling with a dry constriction of the throat, and Moya protested a little, seeing the effort that it cost her to speak, even in the hoarse, unnatural tone which was all the voice she had left.

“I want to finish now,” she said, “and never speak of this again. It was I who accused them first--and then I asked him:--if there was anything he could say in their defense, to say it, for Chrissy's sake! 'I will never break bread with them again,' said he,--'either Banks or Horace. I will not eat with them, or drink with them, or speak with them again!' Think of it! How are we to live? How are they to inhabit the same city? He thinks I have been weak. I am weak! The only power I have is through--the property. Banks will never marry a poor girl. But that would be a dear-bought victory. Let her keep what faith in him she can. No; in families, the ones who can control themselves have to give in--to those who can't. If you argue with Christine she simply gives way, and then she gets hysterical, and then she is ill. It's a disease. Mothers know how their children--Christine was marked--marked with trouble! I am thankful she has any mind at all. She needs me more than Paul does. I cannot be parted from my power to help her--such as it is.”

“When she is Banks Bowen's wife she will need you more than ever!” said Moya.

“She will. I could prevent the marriage, but I am afraid to. I am afraid! So, as the family is cut in two--in three, for I--” Mrs. Bogardus stopped and moistened her lips again. “So--I think you and Paul had better make your arrangements and go as soon as you can wherever it suits you, without minding about the rest of us.”

Moya gave a little sobbing laugh. “You don't expect me to make the first move!”

“Doesn't he say anything to you--anything at all?”

“He is too ill.”

“He is not ill!” Mrs. Bogardus denied it fiercely. “Who says he is ill? He is starved and frozen. He is just out of the grave. You must be good to him, Moya. Warm him, comfort him! You can give him the life he needs. Your hands are as soft as little birds. They comfort even me. Oh, don't you understand!”

“Of course I understand!” Moya answered, her face aflame. “But I cannot marry Paul. He has got to marry me.”

“What nonsense that is! People say to a girl: 'You can't be too cold before you are married or too kind after!' That does not mean you and Paul. If you are not kind to him _now_, you will make a great mistake.”

“He is not thinking of marriage,” said Moya. “Something weighs on him all the time. I cannot ask him questions. If he wanted to tell me he would. That is why I come downstairs and leave him. But he won't come down! Is it not strange? If we could believe such things I would say a Presence came with, him out of that place. It is with him when I find him alone. It is in his eyes when he looks at me. It is not something past and done with, it is here--now--in this house! _What_ is it? What do _you_ believe?”

The eyes she sought to question hardened under her gaze. Here, too, was a veil. Mrs. Bogardus sat with her hands clasped in her lap. She was motionless, but the creaking of her silks could be heard as her bosom rose and fell. After a moment she said: “Paul's tray is on the table in the dining-room. Will you take it when you go up?”

Moya altered her own manner instantly. “But you?” she hesitated. “I must not crowd you out of all your mother privileges. You have handed over everything to me.”

“A mother's privilege is to see herself no longer needed. I can do nothing more for my son”--her smile was hard--“except take care of his money.”

“Paul's mother!”

“My dear, do you suppose we mind? It is a very great privilege to be allowed to step aside when your work is done.”

“Paul's _mother!_” Moya insisted.

Mrs. Bogardus rose. “You don't remember your own mother, my dear. You have an exaggerated idea of the--the importance of mothers. They are only a temporary arrangement.” She put out her hands and the girl's cheek touched hers for an instant; then she straightened herself and walked calmly out of the room. Moya remained a little longer, afraid to follow her. “If she would not smile! If she would do anything but smile!”

Paul was walking about his room, half an hour later, when Moya stopped outside his door. She placed the tray on a table in the hall. The door was opened from within. Paul had heard his mother go up before, heard her pause at the stairs, and, after a silence, enter her own room.

“She knows that I know,” he said to himself. “That knowledge will be always between us; we can never look each other in the face again.” To Moya he endeavored to speak lightly.

“It sounded very gay downstairs to-night. You must have had a houseful.”

“I have been with your mother the last hour,” answered Moya, vaguely on the defensive. Since Paul's return there had been little of the old free intercourse in words between them, and without this outlet their mutual consciousness became acute. Often as they saw each other during the day, the keenest emotion attached to the first meeting of their eyes.

Paul was unnerved by his sudden recall from death to life. Its contrasts were overwhelming to his starved senses: from the dirt and dearth and grimy despair of his burial hutch in the snow to this softly lighted, close-curtained room, warm and sweet with flowers; from the gaunt, unshaven spectre of the packer and his ghostly revelations, to Moya, meekly beautiful, her bright eyes lowered as she trailed her soft skirts across the carpet; Moya seated opposite, silent, conscious of him in every look and movement. Her lovely hands lay in her lap, and the thought of holding them in his made him tremble; and when he recalled the last time he had kissed her he grew faint. He longed to throw off this exhausting self-restraint, but feared to betray his helpless passion which he deemed an insult to his soul's worship of her.

And she was thinking: “Is this all it is going to mean--his coming home--our being together? And I was almost his wife!”

“So it was my mother you were talking to in the study? I thought I heard a man's voice.”

“It was the doctor. Your mother was not quite herself this evening. He came in to see her, but he does not think she is ill. 'Rest and change,' he says she needs.”

Paul gave the words a certain depth of consideration. “Are you as well as usual, Moya?”

“Oh, I am always well,” she answered cheerlessly. “I seem to thrive on anything--everything,” she corrected herself, and blushed.

The blush made him gasp. “You are more beautiful than ever. I had forgotten that beauty is a physical fact. The sight of you confuses me.”

“I always told you you were morbid.” Moya's happy audacity returned. “Now, how long are you going to sit and think about that?”

“Do I sit and think about things?” His reluctant, boyish smile, which all women loved, captured his features for a moment. “It is very rude of me.”

“Suppose I should ask you what you are thinking about?”

“Ah! I am afraid you would say 'morbid' again.”

“Try me! You ought to let me know at once if you are going to break out in any new form of morbidness.”

“I wish it might amuse you, but it wouldn't. Let me put you a case--seriously.”

Moya smiled. “Once we were serious--ages ago. Do you remember?”

“Do I remember!”

“Well? You are you, and I am I, still.”

“Yes; and as full of fateful surprises for each other.”

“I bar 'fateful'! That word has the true taint of morbidness.”

“But you can't 'bar' fate. Listen: this is a supposing, you know. Suppose that an accident had happened to our leader on the way home--to your Lieutenant Winslow, we'll say”--

“_My_ lieutenant!”

“Your father's--the regiment's--Lieutenant Winslow 'of ours.' Suppose we had brought him back in a state to need a surgeon's help; and without a word to any one he should get up and walk out of the hospital with his hurts not healed, and no one knew why, or where he had gone? There would be a stir about it, would there not? And if such a poor spectre of a bridegroom as I were allowed to join the search, no one would think it strange, or call it a slight to his bride if the fellow went?”

“I take your case,” said Moya with a beaming look. “You want to go after that poor man who suffered with you.”

“Who went with us to save us from our own headstrong folly, and would have died there alone”--

“Yes; oh, yes!--before you begin to think about yourself, or me. Because he is nobody 'of ours,' and no one seems to feel responsible, and we go on talking and laughing just the same!”

“Do they talk of this downstairs?”

“To-night they were talking--oh, with such philosophy! But how came you to know it?”

Paul did not answer this question. “Then”--he drew a long breath,--“then you could bear it, dear?--the comment, even if they called it a slight to you and a piece of quixotic lunacy? Others will not take my case, remember.”

“What others?”

“They will say: 'Why doesn't he send a better man? He is no trailer.' It is true. Money might find him and bring him back, but all the money in the world could not teach him to trust his friends. There is a misunderstanding here which is too bitter to be borne. It is hard to explain,--the intimacy that grows up between men placed as we were. But as soon as help reached us, the old lines were drawn. I belonged with the officers, he with the men. We could starve together, but we could not eat together. He accepted it--put himself on that basis at once. He would not come up here as the guest of the Post. He is done with us because he thinks we are done with him. And he knows that I must know his occupation is gone. He will never guide nor pack a mule again.”

“Your mother and my father, they will understand. What do the others matter?”

“I must tell you, dear, that I do not propose to tell them--especially them--why I go. For I am going. I must go! There are reasons I cannot explain.” He sighed, and looked wildly at Moya, whose smile was becoming mechanical. “I hate the excuse, but it will have to be said that I go for a change--for my health. My health! Great God! But it's 'orders,' dear.”

“Your orders are my orders. You are never going anywhere again without me,” said Moya slowly. Her smile was gone. She stood up and faced him, pale and beautiful. He rose, too, and stooped above her, taking her hands and gazing into her full blue eyes arched like the eyes of angels.

“I thought she was a girl! But she is a woman,” he said in a voice of caressing wonder. “A woman, and not afraid!”

“I am afraid. I will not be left--I will not be left again! Oh, you won't take me, even when I offer myself to you!”

“Don't--don't tempt me!” Paul caught her to him with a groan. “You don't know me well enough to be afraid of _me!_”

“You! You will not let me know you.”

“Oh, hush, dear--hush, my darling! This isn't thinking. We must think for our lives. I must take care of you, precious. We don't know where this search may take us, or where it will end, or what the end will be.” He kissed the sleeve of her dress, and put her gently from him, so that he could look her in the eyes. She gave him her full pure gaze.

“It is the poor man again. You said he would spoil our lives.”

“He is _our_ poor man. You didn't go out of your way to find him. And your way is mine.”

“It is so heavenly to be convinced! Who taught you to see things at a glance,--things I have toiled and bungled over and don't know now if I am right! _Who_ taught you?”

“Do you think I stood still while you were away! Oh, my heart was sifted out by little pieces.”

“You shall sift mine. You shall tell me what to do. For I know nothing! Not even if I may dare to take this angel at her word!”

“I knew you would not take me!” the girl whispered wildly. “But I shall go.”

XVI

THE NATURE OF AN OATH

“Your tray! It is after ten o'clock. Your 'angel' is a bad nurse.” Moya brought the tray and set it on a little stand beside Paul's chair. He watched her shy, excited preparations as she moved about, conscious of his eyes. The saucepan staggered upon the coals and they both sprang to save the broth, and pouring it she burnt her thumb a little, and he behaved quite like any ordinary young man. They were ecstatic to find themselves at ease with each other once more. Moya became disrespectful to her charge; such sweet daring looked from her eyes into his as made him riotous with joy.

“Won't you take some with me?” He turned the cup towards her and watched her as she sipped.

“'It was roast with fire,'” he pronounced softly and dreamily, 'because of the dreadful pains. It was to be eaten with bitter herbs'”--

“What _are_ you saying?”--

“'To remind them of their bondage.'”

“I object to your talking about bondage and bitter herbs when you are eating aunt Annie's delicious consommé.”

He gravely sipped in turn, still with his eyes in hers. “Can you remember what you were doing on the second of November?”

“Can I remember!”

“Yes; tell me. I have a reason for asking.”

“Tell _me_ the reason first.”

“May we have a little more fire, darling? It gives me chills to think of that day. It was the last of my wretched pot-hunting. There was nothing to hunt for--the game had all gone down, but I did not know that. Somewhere in the woods, a long way from the cabin, it began to occur to me that I should not make shelter that night. A fool and his strength are soon parted. It was a little hollow with trees all around so deep that in the distance their trunks closed in like a wall. Snow can make a wonderful silence in the woods. I seemed to hear the thoughts of everybody I loved in the world outside. There had been a dullness over me for weeks. I could not make it true that I had ever been happy--that you really loved me. All that part of my life was a dream. Now, in that silence suddenly I felt you! I knew that you cared. It was cruel to die so if you did love me! It brought the 'pang and spur'! I fought the drowsiness that was taking away my pain. I had begun to lean on it as a comfortable breast. I woke up and tore myself away from that siren sleep. It was my darling,--her love that saved me. Without that thought of you, I never would have stirred again. Where were you, what were you thinking that brought you so close to me?”

“Ah,” said Moya in a whisper. “I was in that room across the hall, alone. They were good to me that day; they made excuses and left me to myself. In the afternoon a box came,--from poor father,--white roses, oh, sweet and cold as snow! I took them up to that room and forced myself to go in. It was where my things were kept, the trunks half packed, all the drawers and closets full. And my wedding dress laid out on the bed. We girls used to go up there at first and look at the things, and there was laughing and joking. Sometimes I went up alone and tried on my hats before the glass, and thought where I should be when I wore them, and--Well! all that stopped. I dreaded to pass the door. Everything was left just as it was; the shutters open, the poor dress covered with a sheet on the bed. The room was a death-chamber. I went in. I carried the roses to my dead. I drew down the sheet and put my face in that empty dress. It was my selfish self laid out there--the girl who knew just what she wanted and was going to get it if she could. Happiness I dared not even pray for--only remembrance--everlasting remembrance. That we might know each other again when no more life was left to part us--_my_ life. It seemed long to wait, but that was my--marriage vow. I gave you all I could, remembrance, faith till death.”

“Then you are my own!” said Paul, his face transformed. “God was our witness. Life of my life--for life and death!” Solemnly he took a bridegroom's kiss from her lips.

“How do _you_ know that it is life that parts?”

“Speak so I can understand you!” Moya cried. “Ah, if I might! A man must not have secrets from his wife. Secrets are destruction, don't you think?”

Moya waited in silence.

“Now we come to this bondage!” He let the words fall like a load from his breast. “This is a hideous thing to tell you, but it will cut us apart unless you know it. It compels me to do things.” He paused, and they heard a door down the passage open,--the door of his mother's room. A step came forward a few paces. Silence; it retreated, and the door closed again stealthily.

“She has not slept,” Paul murmured. “Poor soul, poor soul! Now, in what I am going to say, please listen to the facts, Moya dear. Try not to infer anything from my way of putting things. I shall contradict myself, but the facts do that.

“The--the guide--John, we will call him, had a long fever in the woods. It would come on worse at night, and then--he talked--words, of a shocking intimacy. They say that nothing the mind has come in contact with under strong emotion is ever lost, no matter how long in the past. It will return under similar excitement. This man had kept stored away in his mind, under some such pressure, the words of a woman's message, a woman in great distress. Over and over, as his pulse rose, countless times he would repeat that message. I went out of the hut at night and stood outside in the snow not to hear it, but I knew it as well as he did before we got through. Now, this was what he said, word for word.

“'Do not blame me, my dear husband. I have held out in this place as long as I can. Don't wait for anything. Don't worry about anything. Come back to me with your bare hands. Come!--to your loving Emmy!'

“'Come, come!' he would shout out loud. Then in another voice he would whisper, 'Come back to me with your bare hands!' And he would stare at his hands and his face would grow awful.”

Moya drew a long sigh of scared attention.

“Those words were all over the cabin walls. I heard them and saw them everywhere. There was no rest from them. I could have torn the roof down to stop his talking, but the words it was not possible to forget. And where was the horror of it? Was not this what we had asked, for years, to know?”

“You need not explain to me,” said Moya, shuddering.

“Yes; but all one's meanest motives were unearthed in a place like that. Would I have felt so with a different man? Some one less uncouth? Was it the man himself, or his”--

“Paul, if anything could make you a snob, it would be your deadly fear of being one!”

“Well, if they had found us then, God knows how that fight would have ended. But I won it--when there was nothing left to fight for. I owned him--in the grave. We owned each other and took a bashful sort of comfort in it, after we had shuffled off the 'Mister' and 'John.' I grew quite fond of him, when we were so near death that his English didn't matter, or his way of eating. I thought him a very remarkable man, you remember, when he was just material for description. He was, he is remarkable. Most remarkable in this, he was not ashamed of his son.”

“Do please let that part alone. I want to know what he was doing, hiding away by himself all these years? I believe he is an impostor!”

“We came to that, of course; though somehow I forgave him before he could answer the question. In the long watch beside him I got very close to him. It was not possible to believe him a deserter, a sneak. Can you take my word for his answer? It was given as a death-bed confession and he is living.”

“I would take your word for anything except yourself!” Moya did not smile, or think what she was saying.

“That answer cleared him, in my mind, with something over to the credit of blind, stupid heroism. He is not a clever man. But, speaking as one who has teen face to face with the end of things, I can say that I know of no act of his that should prevent his returning to his family--if he had a family--not even his deserting them for twenty years. _If_, I say!

“When the soldiers found us we were too far gone to realize the issue that was upon us. He was the first to take it in. It was on the march home, at night, he touched me and began speaking low in our corner of the tent. 'As we came in here, so we go out again, and so we stay,' he said. I told him it could not be. To suppress what I had learned would make the whole of life a lie, a coward's lie. That knowledge belonged to my mother. I must render it up to her. To do otherwise would be to treat her like a child and to meddle with the purposes of God. 'No honest man robs another of his secrets,' he said. He was very much excited. She was the only one now to be considered--and what did I know about God's purposes? He refused to take my scruples into consideration, except such as concerned her. But, after a long argument, very painful, weak as we were and whispering in the dark, he yielded this much. If I were bent on digging up the dead, as he called it, it must be done in such a way as to leave her free. Free she was in law, and she must be given a chance to claim her freedom without talk or publicity. Absolute secrecy he demanded of me in the mean time. I begged him to see how unfair it was to her to bring her face to face with such a discovery without one word of preparation, of excuse for him. She would condemn him on the very fact of his being alive. So she would, he said, if she were going to judge him; not if she felt towards him as--as a wife feels to her husband. It was that he wanted to know. It was that or nothing he would have from her. 'Bring me face to face with her alone, and as sudden as you like. If she knows me, I am the man. And if she wants me back, she will know me--and that way I'll come and no other way.' Was not that wonderful? A gentleman could hardly have improved on that. Whatever feeling he might be supposed to have towards her in the matter we could never touch upon. But I think he had his hopes. That decision was hanging over us--and I trembled for her. Day before yesterday, was it, I persuaded her to see the sick guide. She wondered why I was faint as she kissed me good-by. I ought to have prepared her. It was a horrible snare. And yet he meant it all in delicacy, a passionate consideration for her. Poor fool. How could I prepare _him!_ How could he keep pace with the changes in her! After all, it is externals that make us,--habits, clothes. Great God! Things you could not speak of to a naked soul like him. But he would have it 'straight,' he said--and straight he got it. And he is gone; broke away like an animal out of a trap. And I am going to find him, to see at least that he has a roof over his head. God knows, he may not die for years!”

“She has got years before her too.”

“She!--What am I saying! We have plunged into those damnable inferences and I haven't given you the facts. Wait. I shall contradict all this in a moment. I thought, she must have done this for her children. She must be given another chance. And I approached the thing on my very knees--not to let her know that I knew, only to hint that I was not unprepared, had guessed--could meet it, and help her to meet the problems it would bring into our lives. Help her! She stood and faced me as if I had insulted her. 'I have been your father's widow for twenty-two years. If that fact is not sacred to you, it is to me. Never dare to speak of this to me again!'”

“Ah,” said Moya in a long-drawn sigh, “then she did not”--

“Oh, she did, explicitly! For I went on to speak of it. It was my last chance. I asked her how she--we--could possibly go through with it; how with this knowledge between us we could look each other in the face--and go on living.

“'Put this hallucination out of your mind,' she said. 'That man and I are strangers.'”

“Was that--would you call that a lie?” asked Moya fearfully.

“You can see your answer in her face. I do not say that hers was the first lie. It must always be foolish, I think, to evade the facts of life as we make them for ourselves. He refused to meet his facts, from the noblest motives;--but now I'm tangling you all up again! Rest your head here, darling. This is such a business! It is a pity I cannot tell you his whole story. Half the meaning of all this is lost. But--here is a solemn declaration in writing, signed John Hagar, in which this man we are speaking of says that Adam Bogardus was his partner, who died in the woods and was buried by his hand; that he knew his story, all the scenes and circumstances of his life in many a long talk they had together, as well as he knew his own. In his delirium he must have confused himself with his old partner, and half in dreams, he said, half in the crazy satisfaction of pretending to himself he had a son, he allowed the delusion to go on; saw it work upon me, and half feared it, half encouraged it. Afterwards he was frightened at the thought of meeting my mother, who would know him for an impostor. His seeming scruples were fear of exposure, not consideration for her. This was why he guarded their interview so carefully. 'No harm's been done,' he says, 'if you'll act now like a sensible man. I'll be disappointed in you if you make your mother any trouble about this. You've treated me as square as any man could treat another. Remember, I say so, and think as kindly as you can of a harmless, loony old impostor'--and he signs himself 'John Hagar,'--which shows again how one lie leads to another. We go to find 'John Hagar.'”

“Have you shown your mother this letter? You have not? Paul, you will not rob her of her just defense!”

“I will not heap coals of fire on her head! This letter simply completes his renunciation, and he meant it for her defense. But when a man signs himself 'John Hagar' in the handwriting of my father, it shows that somebody is not telling the truth. I used to pore over the old farm records in my father's hand at Stone Ridge in the old account books stowed away in places where a boy loves to poke and pry. I know it as well as I know yours. Do you suppose she would not know it? When a man writes as few letters as he does, the handwriting does not change.” Paul laid the letter upon the coals. “It is the only witness against her, but it loses the case.”

“She never could have loved him. I never believed she did!” said Moya.

“She thinks she can live out this deep-down, deliberate--But it will kill her, Moya. Her life is ended from this on. How could I have driven her to that excruciating choice! I ought to have listened to him altogether or not at all. There is a hell for meddlers, and the ones who meddle for conscience' sake are the deepest damned, I think.”