“Time passed, and though you didn’t know, I was in Hell. Reason told me I was right. Instinct, something, called me a drag. I tried to compromise, and we were married. Then, for 172 the first time, came realization. We were the best of friends,––but only friends.”
“You wonder how I knew. I didn’t tell you then. I couldn’t. I could only feel, and that not clearly. The shadow of your ‘why’ was still dark upon me. What I vaguely felt then, though, I know now; as I recognize light or cold or pain.” Her voice assumed the tone of one who speaks of mysteries; slow, vibrant. “In every woman’s mind the maternal instinct should be uppermost; before everything, before God,––unashamed, inevitable. It’s unmistakably the distinction of a good woman from a bad. The choosing of the father of her child is a woman’s unfailing test of love.”
The face of the man before her dropped into his hands, but she did not notice.
“Gropingly I felt this, and the knowledge came almost as an inspiration. It gave a clue to––”
“Stop!” The man’s eyes blazed, as he leaped from his chair. “Stop!”
He took a step forward, his hand before him, his face twitching uncontrollably. The collie 173 on the step awoke, and seeing his mistress threatened, growled ominously.
“Stop, I tell you!” Arnold choked for words. This the man of “why,” whom nothing before could shake!
Camilla paled as her companion arose, and the dog, bristling, came inside the room.
“Get out!” blazed the man, with a threatening step, and the collie fled.
The interruption loosed words which came tumbling forth in a torrent, as Arnold returned to face her.
“You think I’m human, and yet tell me that to my face?” His voice was terrible. “You women brand men cruel! No man on earth would speak as you have spoken to a woman he’d lived with for four years!” The sentences crowded over each other, like water over a fall––his eyes flashing like a spray.
“I told you before, I’m not on trial; that it was not my place to defend. I don’t do so now; but since you’ve spoken, I’ll answer your question. You ask why I didn’t come a year ago, hinting that I wanted to be more cruel. God! the blindness and injustice of you women! Because 174 we men don’t show––Bah!... I was paying my own price. We weren’t living by the marriage vow; it was but a farce. Our own contract was the vital thing, and it had said––But I won’t repeat. God, it was bitter! But I thought you’d come back. I loved you still.” He paused for words, breathing hard.
“You say, I’ll never know what love is. Blind! I’ve always loved you until this moment, when you killed my love. You say I was untrue. It’s false. I swear it before––you, as you were once,––when you were my god. Had you trusted me, as I trusted you, there’d have been no thought of unfaithfulness in your mind.”
The woman sank back in the chair, her face covered, her whole body trembling; but Asa Arnold went on like the storm.
“Yes, I was ever true to you. From the first moment we met, and against my own beliefs. You didn’t see. You expected me to protest it daily: to repeat the tale as a child repeats its lesson for a comfit. Blind, I say, blind! You’ll charge that I never told you that I loved you. You wouldn’t have believed me, even had I 175 done so. Besides, I didn’t realize that you doubted, until the time when you were learning––” he walked jerkily across the room and took up his hat,––“learning the thing you threw in my face.” He started to leave, but stopped in the doorway, without looking back. “You tell me you’ve suffered. For the first time in my life I say to another human being: I hope so.” He turned, unsteadily, down the steps.
“Wait,” pleaded the woman. “Wait!”
The man did not stop, or turn.
Camilla Maurice sank back in the chair, weak as one sick unto death, her mind a throbbing, whirling chaos,––as of a patient under an anæsthetic. Something she knew she ought to do, intended doing, and could not. She groped desperately, but overwhelming, insistent, there had developed in her a sudden, preventing tumult––in paradox, a confusion in rhythm––like the beating of a great hammer on an anvil, only incredibly more swift than blows from human hands. Over and over again she repeated to herself the one word: “wait,” “wait,” “wait,” but mechanically now, without thought 176 as to the reason. Then, all at once, soft, all-enfolding, kindly Nature wrapped her in darkness.
She awoke with the big collie licking her hand, and a numbness of cramped limbs that was positive pain. A long-necked pullet was standing in the doorway, with her mouth open; others stood wondering, beyond. The sun had moved until it no longer shone in at the tiny south windows, and the shadow of the house had begun to lengthen.
Camilla stood up in the doorway; uncertain, dazed. A great lump was on her forehead, which she stroked absently, without surprise at its presence. She looked about the yard, and, her breath coming more quickly, at the prairie. A broad green plain, parted by the road squarely in the centre, smiled at her in the sunlight. That was all. She stepped outside and shaded her eyes with her hand. Not a wagon nor a human being was in sight.
Again the weakness and the blackness came stealing over her; she sank down on the doorstep. 177
“O God, what have I done!” she wailed.
The hens returned to their search for bugs; but the big collie stayed by her side, whimpering and fondling her hand. 178
The keen joy of life was warmly flooding Ichabod Maurice this spring day. Not life for the sake of an ambition or a duty, but delight in the mere animal pleasure of existence. He had risen early, and, a neighbor with him, they had driven forth: stars all about, perpendicular, horizontal, save in the reddening east, upon their long day’s drive to the sawmill. The two teams plodded along steadily, their footfall muffled in the soft prairie loam; the earth elsewhere soundless, with a silence which even yet was a marvel to the city man.
The majesty of it held him silent until day dawned, and with the coming of the sun there woke in unison the chorus of joyous animal life. Then Ichabod, his long legs dangling over the dashboard, lifted up a voice untrained as the note of a loon, and sang lustily, until his companion 179 on the wagon ahead,––boy-faced, man-bodied,––grinned perilously.
The long-visaged man was near happiness that morning,––unbelievably near. By nature unsocial, by habit, city inbred, artificially taciturn, there came with the primitive happiness of the moment the concomitant primitive desire for companionship. He smiled self-tolerantly when, obeying an instinct, he wound the lines around the seat, and went ahead to the man, who grinned companionably as he made room beside him.
“God’s country, this.” Ichabod’s hand made an all-including gesture, as he seated himself comfortably, his hat low over his eyes.
“Yes, sir,” and the grin was repeated.
The tall man reflected. Sunburned, roughly dressed, unshaven as he, Maurice, was, this boy-man never failed the word of respect. Ichabod examined him curiously out of his shaded lids. Big brown hands; body strong as a bull; powerful shoulders; neck turned like a model; a soft chin under a soft, light beard; gentle blue eyes––all in all, a face so open that its very legibility 180 seemed a mark. It reddened now, under the scrutiny.
“Pardon,” said Ichabod. “I was thinking how happy you are.”
“Yes, sir.” And the face reddened again.
Ichabod smiled.
“When is it to be, Ole?”
The big body wriggled in blissful embarrassment.
“As soon as the house is built,”––confusedly.
“You’re building very fast, eh?”
The Swede grinned confirmation. Words were of value to Ole.
“I see the question was superfluous,” and Ichabod likewise smiled in genial comradery. A moment later, however, the smile vanished.
“You’re very content as it is, Ole,” he digressed, equivocally; “but––supposing––Minna were already the wife of a friend?”
The Swede stared in breathless astonishment.
“She isn’t, though” he gasped at length in startled protest.
“But supposing––”
“It would be so. I couldn’t help it.” 181
“You’d do nothing?” rank anarchy in the suggestion.
“What would there be to do?”
Ichabod temporized.
“Supposing again, she loved you, and didn’t love her husband?” Ole scratched his head, seeing very devious passages beyond. “That would be different,” and he crossed his legs.
Ichabod smiled. The world over, human nature is fashioned from one mould.
“Supposing, once more, it’s a year from now,––five years from now. You’ve married Minna, but you’re not happy. She’s grown to hate you,––to love another man?”
Ole’s faith was beautiful.
“It’s not to be thought of. It’s impossible!”
“But supposing,” urged Ichabod.
The boy-man was silent for a very long minute; then his face darkened, and the soft jaw grew hard.
“I don’t know––” he said slowly,––“I don’t know, but I think I kill that man.”
Ichabod did not smile this time.
“We’re all much alike, Ole. I think you would.” 182
They drove on; far past the town, now; the sun high in the sky; dew sparkling like prisms innumerable; the prairie colorings soft as a rug––its varied greens of groundwork blending with the narrow line of fresh breaking rolling at their feet.
“You were born in this country?” asked Ichabod suddenly.
“In Iowa. It’s much like this––only rougher.”
“You’ll live here, always?”
The Swede shook his head and the boy’s face grew older.
“No; some day, we’re going to the city––Minna and I. We’ve planned.”
Ichabod was thoughtful a minute.
“I’m a friend of yours, Ole.”
“A very good friend,” repeated the mystified Swede.
“Then, listen, and don’t forget.” The voice was vibrant, low, but the boy heard it clearly above the noise of the wagon. “Don’t do it, Ole; in God’s name, don’t do it! Stay here, you’ll be happy.” He looked the open-mouthed listener deep in the eyes. “If you ever say a 183 prayer, let it be the old one, even though it be an insult to a just God:––‘Lead us not into temptation.’ Avoid, as you would avoid death, the love of money, the fever of unrest, the desire to become greater than your fellows, the thirst to know and to taste all things, which is the spirit of the city. Live close to Nature, where all is equal and all is good; where sleep comes in the time of sleep, and work when it is day. Do that labor which comes to you at the moment, leaving to-morrow to Nature.” He crossed his long legs, and pressed his hat down over his eyes. “Accept life as Nature gives it, day by day. Don’t question, and you’ll find it good.” He repeated himself slowly. “That’s the secret. Don’t doubt, or question anything.”
In the Swede’s throat there was a rattling, which presaged speech, but it died away.
“Do you love children, Ole?” asked Ichabod, suddenly.
The boy face flushed. Ole was very young.
“I––” he lagged.
“Of course you do. Every living human being does. It’s the one good instinct, which even the lust of gain doesn’t down. It’s the tie that 184 binds,––the badge of brotherhood which makes the world one.” He gently laid his hand on the broad shoulder beside him.
“Don’t be ashamed to say you love children, boy, though the rest of the world laugh,––for they’re laughing at a lie. They’ll tell you the parental instinct is dying out with the advance of civilization; that the time will come when man will educate himself to his own extinction. It’s false, I tell you, absolutely false.” Ichabod had forgotten himself, and he rushed on, far above the head of the gaping Swede.
“There’s one instinct in the world, the instinct of parenthood, which advances eternal, stronger, infinitely, as man’s mind grows stronger. So unvarying the rule that it’s almost an index of civilization itself, advancing from a crude instinct of the body-base and animal––until it reaches the realm of the mind: the highest, the holiest of man’s desires: yet stronger immeasurably, as with the educated, things of the mind are stronger than things of the body. Those who deny this are fools, or imposters,––I know not which. To do so is to strike at the very foundation of human nature,––but impotently,––for 185 in fundamentals, human nature is good.” Unconsciously, a smile flashed over the long face.
“Talk about depopulating the earth! All the wars of primitive man were inadequate. The vices of civilization have likewise failed. Even man’s mightiest weapon, legislation, couldn’t stay the tide for a moment, if it would. While man is man, and woman is woman, that long, above government, religion,––life and death itself,––will reign supreme the eternal instinct of parenthood.”
Ichabod caught himself in his own period and stopped, a little ashamed of his earnestness. He sat up in the seat preparatory to returning to his own wagon, then dropped his hand once more on the boy’s shoulder.
“I’m old enough to be your father, boy, and have done, in all things, the reverse of what I advised you. Therefore, I know I was wrong. We may sneer and speak of poetry when the words proceed from another, my boy; but, as inevitable as death, there comes to every man the knowledge that he stands accursed of Nature, 186 who hasn’t heard the voice of his own child call ‘father!’”
He clambered down, leaving the speechless Ole sprawling on the wagon-seat. Back in his own wagon, he smiled broadly to himself.
“Strange, how easily the apple falls when it’s ripe,” he soliloquized.
They drove on clear to the mill without another word; without even a grin from the broad-faced Ole, who sat in ponderous thought in the wagon ahead. To a nature such as his the infrequency of a new idea gives it the force of a cataclysm; during its presence, obliterating everything else.
It was nearly noon when they reached the narrow fringe of trees and underbrush––deciduous and wind-tortured all––which bordered the big, muddy, low-lying Missouri; and soon they could hear the throb of the engine at the mill, and the swish of the saw through the green lumber; a sound that heard near by, inevitably carries the suggestion of scalpel and living flesh. Nothing but green timber was sawed thereabout in those days. The country was settling 187 rapidly, lumber was imperative, and available timber very, very limited.
Returning, the heavy loads grumbled slowly along, so slowly that it was nearly evening, and their shadows preceded them by rods when they reached the little prairie town. They stopped to water their teams; and Ole, true to the instincts of his plebeian ancestry, went in search of a glass of beer. He returned, quickly, his face very red.
“A fellow in there is talking about––about Mrs. Maurice,” he blurted.
“In the saloon, Ole?”
The Swede repeated the story, watching the tall man from the corner of his eye.
A man, very drunk, was standing by the bar, and telling how, in coming to town, he had seen a buggy drive away from the Maurice home very fast. He had thought it was the doctor’s buggy and had stopped in to see if any one was sick.
The fellow had grinned here and drank some more, before finishing the story; the surrounding audience winking at each other meanwhile, and drinking in company. 188
Then he went on to tell how Camilla Maurice had sat just inside the doorway, her face in her hands, sobbing,––so hard she hadn’t noticed him; and––and––it wasn’t the doctor who had been there at all!
Ichabod had been holding a pail of water so that a horse might drink. At the end he motioned Ole very quietly, to take his place.
“Finish watering them, and––wait for me, please.”
It was far from what the Swede had expected; but he accepted the task, obediently.
The only saloon of the town stood almost exactly opposite Hans Becher’s place, flush with the street. A long, low building, communicating with the outer world by one door––sans glass––its single window in front and at the rear lit it but imperfectly at midday, and now at early evening made faces almost indistinguishable, and cast kindly shadow over the fly specks and smoke stains of a low roof. A narrow pine bar, redolent of tribute absorbed from innumerable passing “schooners,” stretched the entire length of the room at one side; and back of it, in shirt sleeves and stained apron, presided the 189 typical bar-keeper of the frontier. All this Ichabod saw as he stepped inside; then, himself in shadow, he studied the group before him.
Railroad and cattle men, mostly, made up the gathering, with a scant sprinkling of farmers and others unclassified. A big, ill-dressed fellow was repeating the tale of scandal for the benefit of a newcomer; the narrative moving jerkily over hiccoughs, like hurdles.
“––I drew up to th’ house quick, an’ went up th’ path quiet like,”––he tapped thunderously on the bar with a heavy glass for silence––“quiet––sh-h––like; an’ when I come t’ th’ door, ther’ ’t was open, an’––as I hope––hope t’ die,... drink on me, b’ys, aller y’––set ’m up, Barney ol’ b’y, m’ treat,... hope t’ die, ther’ she sat, like this––” He looked around mistily for a chair, but none was convenient, and he slid flat to the floor in their midst, his face in his hands, blubbering dismally in imitation.... “Sat (hic) like this; rockin’ an’ moanin’ n’ callin’ his name: Asa––Asa––Asa––(hic) Arnold––’shure ’s I’m a sinner she––”
He did not finish. Very suddenly the surrounding 190 group had scattered, and he peered up through maudlin tears to learn the cause. One man alone stood above him. The room had grown still as a church.
The drunken one blinked his watery eyes and showed his yellow teeth in a convivial grin.
“G’d evnin’, pard.... Serve th’––th’ gem’n, Barney; m’ treat.” Again the teeth obtruded. “Was jes’––”
“Get up!”
He of the story winked harder than before.
“Bless m’––” He paused for an expletive, hiccoughed, and forgetting what had caused the halt, stumbled on:––“Didn’ rec’gniz’ y’ b’fore. Shake, ol’ boy. S––sh-sorry for y’.” Tears rose copiously. “Tough––when feller’s wife––”
Interrupting suddenly a muffled sound like the distant exhaust of a big engine––the meeting of a heavy boot with an obstacle on the floor. “Get up!”
A very mountain of human brawn resolved itself upward; a hand on its hips; a curse on its lips.
“You’ll apologize.”
“You damned lantern-faced––” No hiccough now, but a pause from pure physical impotence, pending a doubtful struggle against a half-dozen men.
“Order, gentlemen!” demanded the bar-keeper, adding emphasis by hammering a heavy bottle on the bar.
“Let him go,” commanded Ichabod very quietly; but they all heard through the confusion. “Let him go.”
The country was by no means the wild West of the story-papers, but it was primitive, and no man thought, then, of preventing the obviously inevitable.
Ichabod held up his hand, suggestively, imperatively, and the crowd fell back, silent,––leaving him facing the big man.
“You’ll apologize!” The thin jaw showed clear, through the shade of brown stubble on Ichabod’s face.
For answer, the big man leaning on the bar exhibited his discolored teeth and breathed hard.
“How shall it be?” asked Ichabod.
A grimy hand twitched toward a grimier hip.
“You’ve seen the likes of this––” 192
Ichabod turned toward the spectators.
“Will any man lend me––”
“Here––”
“Here––”
“And give us a little light.”
“Outside,” suggested the saloon-keeper.
“We’re not advertising patent medicine,” blazed Ichabod, and the lamps were lit immediately.
Once more the long-visaged man appealed to the group lined up now against the bar.
“Gentlemen––I never carried a revolver a half-hour in my life. Is it any more than fair that I name the details?”
“Name ’m and be quick,” acquiesced his big opponent before the others could speak.
“Thanks, Mr. Duggin,” with equal swiftness. “These, then, are the conditions.” For three seconds, that seemed a minute, Ichabod looked steadily between his adversary’s bushy eyebrows. “The conditions,” he repeated, “are, that starting from opposite ends of the room, we don’t fire until our toes touch in the middle line.” 193
“Good!” commended a voice; but it was not big Duggin who spoke.
“I’ll see that it’s done, too,”––added a listening cattleman, grasping Ichabod by the hand.
“And I.”
The building had been designed as a bowling-alley and was built the entire length of the lot. With an alacrity born of experience, the long space opposite the bar was cleared, and the belligerents stationed one at either end, their faces toward the wall. Midway between them a heavy line had been drawn with chalk, and beside it stood a half-dozen grim men, their hands resting suggestively on their hips. The room was again very quiet, and from out-of-doors penetrated the shrill sound of a schoolboy whistling “Annie Laurie” with original variations. So exotic seemed the entire scene in its prairie setting, that it might have been transferred bodily from the stage of a distant theatre and set down here,––by mistake.
“Now,” directed a voice. “You understand, men. You’re to face and walk to the line. When your feet touch––fire; and,” warningly––“remember, 194 not before. Ready, gentlemen. Turn.”
Ichabod faced about, the cocked revolver in his hand, the name Asa Arnold singing in his ears. A terrible cold-white anger was in his heart against the man opposite, who had publicly caused the resurrection of this hated, buried thing. For a moment it blotted out all other sensations; then, rushing, crowding came other thoughts,––vision from boyhood down. In the space of seconds, faded scenes of the dead past took on sudden color and as suddenly vanished. Faces, he had forgotten for years, flashed instantaneously into view. Voices long hushed in oblivion, re-embodied, spoke in accents as familiar as his own. Inwardly he was seething with the myriad shifting pictures of a drowning man. Outwardly he walked those half-score steps to the line, unflinchingly; came to certain death,––and waited: personification of all that is cool and deliberate––of the sudden abundant nerve in emergencies which comes only to the highly evolved.
Duggin, the big man, turned likewise at the word and came part way swiftly; then stopped, 195 his face very pale. Another step he took, with another pause, and with great drops of perspiration gathering on his face, and on the backs of his hands. Yet another start, and he came very near; so near that he gazed into the blue of Ichabod’s eyes. They seemed to him now devil’s eyes, and he halted, looking at them, fingering the weapon in his hand, his courage oozing at every pore.
Out of those eyes and that long, thin face stared death; not hot, sudden death, but nihility, cool, deliberate, that waited for one! The big beads on his forehead gathered in drops and ran down his cheeks. He tried to move on, but his legs only trembled beneath him. The hopeless, unreasoning terror of the frightened animal, the raw recruit, the superstitious negro, was upon him. The last fragment of self-respect, of bravado even, was in tatters. No object on earth, no fear of hereafter, could have made him face death in that way, with those eyes looking into his.
The weapon shook from Duggin’s hand to the floor,––with a sound like the first clatter of gravel on a coffin lid; and in abasement absolute 196 he dropped his head; his hands nerveless, his jaw trembling.
“I beg your pardon––and your wife’s,” he faltered.
“It was all a lie? You were drunk?” Ichabod crossed the line, standing over him.
A rustle and a great snort of contempt went around the room; but Duggin still felt those terrible eyes upon him.
“I was very drunk. It was all a lie.”
Without another word Ichabod turned away, and almost immediately the other men followed, the door closing behind them. Only the bar-keeper stood impassive, watching.
That instant the red heat of the liquor returned to the big man’s brain and he picked up the revolver. Muttering, he staggered over to the bar.
“D––n him––the hide-faced––” he cursed. “Gimme a drink, Barney. Whiskey, straight.”
“Not a drop.”
“What?”
“Never another drop in my place so long as I live.”
“Get out! You coward!”
“But, Barney––”
“Not another word. Go.”
Again Duggin was sober as he stumbled out into the evening.
Ichabod moved slowly up the street, months aged in those last few minutes. Reaction was inevitable, and with it the future instead of the present, stared him in the face. He had crowded the lie down the man’s throat, but well he knew it had been useless. The story was true, and it would spread; no power of his could prevent. He could not deceive himself, even. That name! Again the white anger born of memory, flooded him. Curses on the name and on the man who had spoken it! Why must the fellow have turned coward at the last moment? Had they but touched feet over the line––
Suddenly Ichabod stopped, his hands pressed to his head. Camilla, home––alone! And he had forgotten! He hurried back to the waiting Swede, an anathema that was not directed at another, hot on his lips. 198
“All ready, Ole,” he announced, clambering to the seat.
The boy handed up the lines lingeringly.
“Here, sir.” Then uncontrollable, long-repressed curiosity broke the bounds of deference. “You––heard him, sir?”
“Yes.”
Ole edged toward his own wagon.
“It wasn’t so?”
“Duggin swore it was a lie.”
“He––”
“He swore it was false, I say.”
They drove out into the prairie and the night; the stars looking down, smiling, as in the morning which was so long ago, the man had smiled,––looking upward.
“Tiny, tiny mortal,” they twinkled, each to the other. “So small and hot, and rebellious. Tiny, tiny, mortal!”
But the man covered his face with his hands, shutting them out. 199
Asa Arnold sat in the small upstairs room at the hotel of Hans Becher. It was the same room that Ichabod and Camilla had occupied when they first arrived; but he did not know that. Even had he known, however, it would have made slight difference; nothing could have kept them more constantly in his mind than they were at this time. He had not slept any the night before; a fact which would have spoken loudly to one who knew him well; and this morning he was very tired. He lounged low in the oak chair, his feet on the bed, the usual big cigar in his mouth.
This morning, the perspective of the little man was anything but normal. Worse than that, he could not reduce it to the normal, try as he might.
His meeting with Camilla yesterday had produced a deep and abiding shock; for either of them to have been so moved signified the 200 stirring of dangerous forces. They––and especially himself––who had always accepted life, even crises, so calmly; who had heretofore laughed at all display of emotion––for them to have acted as they had, for them to have spoken to each other the things they had spoken, the things they could not forget, that he never could forgive––it was unbelievable! It upset all the established order of things!
His anger of yesterday against Camilla had died out. She was not to blame; she was a woman, and women were all alike. He had thought differently before; that she was an exception; but now he knew better. One and all they were mere puppets of emotion, and fickle.
In a measure, though, as he had excused Camilla he had incriminated Ichabod. Ichabod was the guilty one, and a man. Ichabod had filched from him his possession of most value; and without even the form of a by-your-leave. The incident of last evening at the saloon (for he had heard of it in the hour, as had every one in the little town) had but served to make more implacable his resentment. By the satire of 201 circumstances it had come about that he again, Asa Arnold, had been the cause of another’s defending the honor of his own wife,––for she was his wife as yet,––and that other, the defender, was Ichabod Maurice!
The little man’s face did not change at the thought. He only smoked harder, until the room was blue; but though he did not put the feeling in words even to himself, he knew in the depths of his own mind that the price of that last day was death. Whether it was his own death, or the death of Ichabod, he did not know; he did not care; but that one of them must die was inevitable. Horrible as was the thought, it had no terror for him, now. He wondered that it did not have; but, on the contrary, it seemed to him very ordinary, even logical––as one orders a dinner when he is hungry.
He lit another cigar, calmly. It was this very imperturbability of the little man which made him terrible. Like a great movement of Nature, it was awful from its very resistlessness; its imperviability to appeal. Steadily, as he had lit the cigar, he smoked until the air 202 became bluer than before. In a ghastly way, he was trying to decide whose death it should be,––as one decides a winter’s flitting, whether to Florida or California; only now the question was: should it be suicide, or,––as in the saloon yesterday,––leave the decision to Chance? For the time the personal equation was eliminated; the man weighed the evidence as impartially as though he were deciding the fate of another.
He sat long and very still; until even in the daylight the red cigar-end grew redder in the haze. Without being conscious of the fact, he was probably doing the most unselfish thinking of his life. What the result of that thought would have been no man will ever know, for of a sudden, interrupting, Hans Becher’s round face appeared in the doorway.
“Ichabod Maurice to see you,” coughed the German, obscured in the cloud of smoke which passed out like steam through the opening.
It cannot be said that Asa Arnold’s face grew impassive; it was that already. Certain it was, though, that behind the mask there occurred, at that moment, a revolution. Born of it, the old mocking smile sprang to his lips. 203
“The devil fights for his own,” he soliloquized. “I really believe I,”––again the smile,––“I was about to make a sacrifice.”
“Sir?”
“Thank you, Hans.”
The German’s jaw dropped in inexpressible surprise.
“Sir?” he repeated.
“You made a decision for me, then. Thank you.”
“I do not you understand.”
“Tell Mr. Maurice I shall be pleased to see him.”
The round face disappeared from the door.
“Donnerwetter!” commented the little landlord in the safe seclusion of the stairway. Later, in relating the incident to Minna, he tapped his forehead, suggestively.
Ichabod climbed the stair alone. “To your old room,” Hans had said; and Ichabod knew the place well. He knocked on the panel, a voice answered: “Come,” and he opened the door. Arnold had thrown away his cigar and opened the window. The room was clearing rapidly.
Ichabod stepped inside and closed the door 204 carefully behind him. A few seconds he stood holding it, then swung it open quickly and glanced down the hallway. Answering, there was a sudden, scuttling sound, not unlike the escape of frightened rats, as Hans Becher precipitately disappeared. The tall man came back and for the second time slowly closed the door.
Asa Arnold had neither moved nor spoken since that first word,––“come”; and the self-invited visitor read the inaction correctly. No man, with the knowledge Ichabod possessed, could have misunderstood the challenge in that impassive face. No man, a year ago, would have accepted that challenge more quickly. Now––But God only knew whether or no he would forget,––now.
For a minute, which to an onlooker would have seemed interminable, the two men faced each other. Up from the street came the ring of a heavy hammer on a sweet-voiced anvil, as Jim Donovan, the blacksmith, sharpened anew the breaking ploughs which were battling the prairie sod for bread. In the street below, a group of farmers were swapping yarns, an 205 occasional chorus of guffaws interrupting to punctuate the narrative. The combatants heard it all, as one hears the drone of the cicada on a sleepy summer day; at the moment, as a mere colorless background which later, Time, the greater adjuster, utilizes to harmonize the whole memory.
Ichabod had been standing; now he sat down upon the bed, his long legs stretched out before him.
“It would be useless for us to temporize,” he initiated. “I’ve intruded my presence in order to ask you a question.” The long fingers locked slowly over his knees. “What is your object here?”
The innate spirit of mockery sprang to the little man’s face.
“You’re mistaken,” he smiled; “so far mistaken, that instead of your visit being an intrusion, I expected you”––an amending memory came to him––“although I wasn’t looking for you quite so soon, perhaps.” He paused for an instant, and the smile left his lips.
“As to the statement of object. I think”––slowly––“a disinterested observer would have 206 put the question you ask into my mouth.” He stared his tall visitor up and down critically, menacingly. Of a sudden, irresistibly, a very convulsion shot over his face. “God, man, you’re brazen!” he commented cumulatively.
Ichabod had gambled with this man in the past, and had seen him lose half he possessed without the twitch of an eyelid. A force which now could cause that sudden change of expression––no man on earth knew, better than Ichabod, its intensity. Perhaps a shade of the same feeling crept into his own answering voice.
“We’ll quarrel later, if you wish,”––swiftly. “Neither of us can afford to do so now. I ask you again, what are your intentions?”
“And I repeat, the question is by right mine. It’s not I who’ve changed my name and––and in other things emulated the hero of the yellow-back.”
Ichabod’s face turned a shade paler, though his answer was calm.
“We’ve known each other too well for either to attempt explanation or condemnation. You wish me to testify first.” The long fingers unclasped 207 from over his knee. “You know the story of the past year: it’s the key to the future.”
A smile, sardonic, distinctive, lifted the tips of Arnold’s big moustaches.
“Your faith in your protecting gods is certainly beautiful.”
Ichabod nursed a callous spot on one palm.
“I understand,”––very slowly. “At least, you’ll answer my question now, perhaps,” he suggested.
“With pleasure. You intimate the future will be but a repetition of the past. It’ll be my endeavor to give that statement the lie.”
“You insist on quarrelling?”
“I insist on but one thing,”––swiftly. “That you never again come into my sight, or into the sight of my wife.”
One of Ichabod’s long hands extended in gesture.
“And I insist you shall never again use the name of Camilla Maurice as your wife.”
The old mocking smile sprang to Asa Arnold’s face.
“Unconsciously, you’re amusing,” he derided. 208 “The old story of the mouse who forbids the cat.... You forget, man, she is my wife.”
Ichabod stood up, seemingly longer and gaunter than ever before.
“Good God, Arnold,” he flashed, “haven’t you the faintest element of pride, or of consistency in your make-up? Is it necessary for a woman to tell you more than once that she hates you? By your own statement your marriage, even at first, was merely of convenience; but even if this weren’t so, every principle of the belief you hold releases her. Before God, or man, you haven’t the slightest claim, and you know it.”
“And you––”
“I love her.”
Asa Arnold did not stir, but the pupils of his eyes grew wider, until the whole eye seemed black.
“You fool!” he accented slowly. “You brazen egoist! Did it never occur to you that others than yourself could love?”
Score for the little man. Ichabod had been pinked first. 209
“You dare tell me to my face you loved her?”
“I do.”
“You lie!” blazed Ichabod. “Every word and action of your life gives you the lie!”
Not five minutes had passed since he came in and already he had forgotten!
Asa Arnold likewise was upon his feet and they two faced each other,––a bed length between; in their minds the past and future a blank, the present with its primitive animal hate blazing in their eyes.
“You know what it means to tell me that.” Arnold’s voice was a full note higher than usual. “You’ll apologize?”
“Never. It’s true. You lied, and you know you lied.”
The surrounding world turned dark to the little man, and the dry-goods box with the tin dipper on its top, danced before his eyes. For the first time in his memory he felt himself losing self-control, and by main force of will he turned away to the window. For the instant all the savage of his nature was on the surface, 210 and he could fairly feel his fingers gripping at the tall man’s throat.
A moment he stood in the narrow south window, full in the smiling irony of Nature’s sunshine; but only a moment. Then the mocking smile that had become an instinctive part of his nature spread over his face.
“I see but one way to settle this difficulty,” he intimated.
A taunt sprang to Ichabod’s tongue, but was as quickly repressed.
“There is but one, unless––” with meaning pause.
“I repeat, there is but one.”
Ichabod’s long face held like wood.
“Consider yourself, then, the challenged party.”
They were both very calm, now; the immediate exciting cause in the mind of neither. It seemed as if they had been expecting this time for years, had been preparing for it.
“Perhaps, as yesterday, in the saloon?” The points of the big moustaches twitched ironically. “I promise you there’ll be no procrastination as––at certain cases recorded.” 211
The mockery, malice inspired, was cleverly turned, and Ichabod’s big chin protruded ominously, as he came over and fairly towered above the small man.
“Most assuredly it’ll not be as yesterday. If we’re going to reverse civilization, we may as well roll it away back. We’ll settle it alone, and here.”
Asa Arnold smiled up into the blue eyes.
“You’d prefer to make the adjustment with your hands, too, perhaps? There’d be less risk, considering––” He stopped at the look on the face above his. No man vis-à-vis with Ichabod Maurice ever made accusation of cowardice. Instead, instinctive sarcasm leaped to his lips.
“Not being of the West, I don’t ordinarily carry an arsenal with me, in anticipation of such incidents as these. If you’re prepared, however,––” and he paused again.
Ichabod turned away; a terrible weariness and disgust of it all––of life, himself, the little man,––in his face. A tragedy would not be so bad, but this lingering comedy of death––One thing alone was in his mind: to have it over, and quickly. 212
“I didn’t expect––this, either. We’ll find another way.”
He glanced about the room. A bed, the improvised commode, a chair, a small table with a book upon it, and a tallow candle––an idea came to him, and his search terminated.
“I may––suggest––” he hesitated.
“Go on.”
Ichabod took up the candle, and, with his pocket-knife, cut it down until it was a mere stub in the socket, then lit a match and held the flame to the wick, until the tallow sputtered into burning.
“You can estimate when that light will go out?” he intimated impassively.
Asa Arnold watched the tall man, steadily, as the latter returned the candle to the table and drew out his watch.
“I think so,” sotto voce.
Ichabod returned to his seat on the bed.
“You are not afraid, perhaps, to go into the dark alone?”
“No.”
“No,” again, very slowly. Arnold understood now.
“You swear?” Ichabod flashed a glance with the question.
“I swear.”
“And I.”
A moment they both studied the sputtering candle.
“It’ll be within fifteen minutes,” randomed Ichabod.
Arnold drew out his watch slowly.
“It’ll be longer.”
That was all. Each had made his choice; a trivial matter of one second in the candle’s life would decide which of these two men would die by his own hand.
For a minute there was no sound. They could not even hear their breathing. Then Arnold cleared his throat.
“You didn’t say when the loser must pay his debt,” he suggested.
Ichabod’s voice in answer was a trifle husky.
“It won’t be necessary.” A vision of the future flashed, sinister, inevitable. “The man who loses won’t care to face the necessity long.” 214
Five minutes more passed. Down the street the blacksmith was hammering steadily. Beneath the window the group of farmers had separated; their departing footsteps tapping into distance and silence.
Minna went to the street door, calling loudly for Hans, Jr., who had strayed,––and both men started at the sound. The quick catch of their breathing was now plainly audible.
Arnold shifted in his chair.
“You swear––” his voice rang unnaturally sharp, and he paused to moisten his throat,––“you swear before God you’ll abide by this?”
“I swear before God,” repeated Ichabod slowly.
A second, and the little man followed in echo.
“And I––I swear, I, too, will abide.”
Neither man remembered that one of this twain, who gave oath before the Deity, was an agnostic, the other an atheist!
A lonely south wind was rising, and above the tinkle of the blacksmith’s hammer there sounded the tap of the light shade as it flapped in the wind against the window-pane. Low, drowsy, moaning,––typical breath of 215 prairie,––it droned through the loosely built house, with sound louder, but not unlike the perpetual roar of a great sea-shell.
Ten minutes passed, and the men sat very still. Both their faces were white, and in the angle of the jaw of each the muscles were locked hard. Ichabod was leaning near the candle. It sputtered and a tiny globule of hot tallow struck his face. He winced and wiped the drop off quickly. Observing, Arnold smiled and opened his lips as if to make comment; then closed them suddenly, and the smile passed.
Two minutes more the watches ticked off; very, very slowly. Neither of the men had thought, beforehand, of this time of waiting. Big drops of sweat were forming on both their faces, and in the ears of each the blood sang madly. A haze, as from the dropping of a shade, seemed to have formed and hung over the room, and in unison sounds from without acquired a certain faintness, like that born of distance. Through it all the two men sat motionless, watching the candle and the time, as the fascinated bird watches its charmer; as the subject watches the hypnotist,––as if the 216 passive exercise were the one imperative thing in the world.
“Thirteen minutes.”
Unconsciously, Arnold was counting aloud. The flame was very low, now, and he started to move his chair closer, then sank back, a smile, almost ghastly, upon his lips. The blaze had reached the level of the socket, and was growing smaller and smaller. Two minutes yet to burn! He had lost.
He tried to turn his eyes away, but they seemed fastened to the spot, and he powerless. It was as though death, from staring him in the face, had suddenly gripped him hard. The panorama of his past life flashed through his mind. The thoughts of the drowning man, of the miner who hears the rumble of crumbling earth, of the prisoner helpless and hopeless who feels the first touch of flame,––common thought of all these were his; and in a space of time which, though seeming to him endless, was in reality but seconds.
Then came the duller reaction and the events of the last few minutes repeated themselves, impersonally, spectacularly,––as though they 217 were the actions of another man; one for whom he felt very sorry. He even went into the future and saw this same man lying down with a tiny bottle in his hand, preparing for the sleep from which there would be no awakening,––the sleep which, in anticipation, seemed so pleasant.
Concomitant with this thought the visionary shaded into the real, and there came the determination to act at once, this very afternoon, as soon as Ichabod had gone. He even felt a little relief at the decision. After all, it was so much simpler than if he had won, for then––then––He laughed gratingly at the thought. Cursed if he would have known what to have done, then!
The sound roused him and he looked at his watch. A minute had passed, fourteen from the first and the flame still sputtered. Was it possible after all––after he had decided––that he was not to lose, that the decision was unnecessary? There was not in his mind the slightest feeling of personal elation at the prospect, but rather a sense of injury that such a scurvy trick 218 should be foisted off upon him. It was like going to a funeral and being confronted, suddenly, with the grinning head of the supposed dead projecting through the coffin lid. It was unseemly!
Only a minute more: a half now––yes, he would win. For the first time he felt that his forehead was wet, and he mopped his face with his handkerchief jerkily; then sank back in the chair, instinctively shooting forward his cuffs in motion habitual.
“Fifteen seconds.” There could be no question now of the result; and the outside world, banished for the once, returned. The blacksmith was hammering again, the strokes two seconds apart, and the fancy seized the little man to finish counting by the ring of the anvil.
“Twelve, ten, eight,” he counted slowly. “Six” was forming on the tip of the tongue when of a sudden the tiny flame veered far over toward the holder, sputtered and went out. For the first time in those interminable minutes, Arnold looked at his companion. Ichabod’s face was within a foot of the table, and in line 219 with the direction the flame had veered. Swift as thought the small man was on his feet, white anger in his face.
“You blew that candle!” he challenged.
Ichabod’s head dropped into his hands. An awful horror of himself fell crushingly upon him; an abhorrence of the selfishness that could have forgotten––what he forgot; and for so long,––almost irrevocably long. Mingled with this feeling was a sudden thanksgiving for the boon of which he was unworthy; the memory at the eleventh hour, in time to do as he had done before his word was passed. Arnold strode across the room, his breath coming fast, his eyes flashing fire. He shook the tall man by the shoulder roughly.
“You blew that flame, I say!”
Ichabod looked up at the furious, dark face almost in surprise.
“Yes, I blew it,” he corroborated absently.
“It would have burned longer.”
“Perhaps––I don’t know.”
Arnold moved back a step and the old smile, mocking, maddening, spread over his face; 220 tilting, perpendicular, the tips of the big moustaches.
“After all––” very slowly––“after all, then, you’re a coward.”
The tall man stood up; six-feet-two, long, bony, immovable: Ichabod himself again.
“You know that’s a lie.”
“You’ll meet me again,––another way, then?”
“No, never!”
“I repeat, you’re a cursed coward.”
“I’d be a coward if I did meet you,” quickly.
Something in Ichabod’s voice caught the little man’s ear and held him silent, as, for a long half-minute, the last time in their lives, the two men looked into each other’s eyes.
“You’ll perhaps explain.” Arnold’s voice was cold as death. “You have a reason?”
Ichabod walked slowly over to the window and leaned against the frame. Standing there, the spring sunshine fell full upon his face, drawing clear the furrows at the angles of his eyes and the gray threads of his hair. He paused a moment, looking out over the broad prairie shimmering indistinctly in the heat, and 221 the calm of it all took hold of him, shone in his face.
“I’ve a reason,” very measuredly, “but it’s not that I fear death, or you.” He took up his hat and smoothed it absently. “In future I shall neither seek, nor avoid you. Do what you wish––and God judge us both.” Without a glance at the other man, he turned toward the door.
Arnold moved a step, as if to prevent him going.
“I repeat, it’s my right to know why you refuse.” His feet shifted uneasily upon the floor. “Is it because of another––Eleanor?”
Ichabod paused.
“Yes,” very slowly. “It’s because of Eleanor––and another.”
The tall man’s hand was upon the knob, but this time there was no interruption. An instant he hesitated; then absently, slowly, the door opened and closed. A moment later indistinct, descending steps sounded on the stairway.
Alone, Asa Arnold stood immovable, looking blindly at the closed door, listening until the tapping feet had passed into silence. Then, in 222 a motion indescribable, of pain and of abandon, he sank back into the single chair.
His dearest enemy would have pitied the little man at that moment! 223
In the chronology of the little town, day followed day, as monotonously as ticks the tall clock on the wall. Only in multiple they merged into the seasons which glided so smoothly, one into the other, that the change was unnoticed, until it had taken place.
Thus three months passed by, and man’s work for the year was nearly done. The face of the prairie had become one of many colors; eternal badge of civilization as opposed to Nature, who paints each season with its own hue. Beside the roadways great, rank sunflowers turned their glaring yellow faces to the light. In every direction stretched broad fields of flax; unequally ripening, their color scheme ranging from sky blue of blossoms to warm browns of maturity. Blotches of sod corn added here and there a dash of green to the picture. Surrounding all, a setting for all, the unbroken virgin prairie, mottled green and brown, stretched, 224 smiling, harmonious, beneficent; a land of promise and of plenty for generations yet unborn.
All through the long, hot summer Asa Arnold had stayed in town, smoking a big pipe in front of the hotel of Hans Becher. Indolent, abnormally indolent, a stranger seeing him thus would have commented; but, save Hans the confiding, none other of the many interested observers were deceived. No man merely indolent sleeps neither by night nor by day; and it seemed the little man never slept. No man merely indolent sits wide-eyed hour after hour, gazing blankly at the earth beneath his feet––and uttering never a word. Brooding, not dreaming, was Asa Arnold; brooding over the eternal problem of right and wrong. And, as passed the slow weeks, he moved back––back on the trail of civilization, back until Passion and not Reason was the god enthroned; back until one thought alone was with him morning, noon, and night,––and that thought preponderant, overmastering, deadly hate.
Observant Curtis, the doctor, shrugged his shoulders. 225
“The old, old trail,” he satirized.
It was to Bud Evans, the little agent, that he made the observation.
“Which has no ending,” completed the latter.
The doctor shrugged afresh.
“That has one inevitable termination,” he refuted.
“Which is––”
“Madness––sheer madness.”
The agent was silent a moment.
“And the end of that?” he suggested.
Curtis pursed his lips.
“Tragedy, or a strait-jacket. The former, in this instance.”
Evans was silent longer than before.
“Do you really mean that?” he queried at last, significantly.
“I’ve warned Maurice,”––sententiously. “I can do no more.”
“And he?” quickly.
“Thanked me.”
“That was all?”
“That was all.”
The two friends looked at each other, steadily; yet, though they said no more, each 226 knew the thought of the other, each knew that in future no move of Asa Arnold’s would pass unnoticed, unchallenged.
Again, weeks, a month, passed without incident. It was well along in the fall and of an early evening that a vague rumor of the unusual passed swiftly, by word of mouth, throughout the tiny town. Only a rumor it was, but sufficient to set every man within hearing in motion.
On this night Hans Becher had eaten his supper and returned to the hotel office, as was his wont, for an evening smoke, when, without apparent reason, Bud Evans and Jim Donovan, the blacksmith, came quietly in and sat down.
“Evening,” they nodded, and looked about them.
A minute later Dr. Curtis and Hank Judge, the machine man, dropped unostentatiously into chairs. They likewise muttered “Evening,” and made observation from under their hat-brims. Others followed rapidly, until the room was full and dark figures waited outside. At last Curtis spoke. 227
“Your boarder, Asa Arnold, where is he, Hans?”
The unsuspecting German blew a cloud of smoke.
“He a while ago went out.” Then, as an afterthought: “He will return soon.”
Silence once more for a time, and a steadily thickening haze of smoke in the room.
“Did he have supper, Hans?” queried Bud Evans, impatiently.
Again the German’s face expressed surprise.
“No, it is waiting for him. He went to shoot a rabbit he saw.”
The men were on their feet.
“He took a gun, Hans?”
“A rifle, to be sure.” The mild brown eyes glanced up reproachfully. “A man does not go hunting without––... What is this!” he completed in consternation, as, finding himself suddenly alone, he hurried outside and stood confusedly scratching his bushy poll, in the block of light surrounding the open doorway.
The yard was deserted. As one snuffs a candle, the men had vanished. Hans’ pipe had 228 gone out and he went inside for a match. Though the stars fell, the German must needs smoke. Only a minute he was gone, but during that time a group of horsemen had gathered in the street. Others were coming across lots, and still others were emerging from the darkness of alleys. Some were mounted; some led by the rein, wiry little bronchos. Watching, it almost seemed to the German that they sprang from the ground.
“Are you all ready?” called a voice, Bud Evans’ voice.
“Here––”
“Here––”
“All ready?”
“Yes––”
“We’re off, then.”
There was a sudden, confused trampling, as of cattle in stampede; a musical creaking of heavy saddles; a knife-like swish of many quirts through the air; a chorus of dull, chesty groans as the rowels of long spurs bit the flanks of the mustangs, and they were gone––down the narrow street, out upon the prairie, their hoof beats pattering diminuendo into silence; a cloud of 229 dust, grayish in the starlight, marking the way they had taken.
Jim Donovan, the blacksmith, came running excitedly up from a side street. He stopped in front of the hotel, breathlessly. Holding his sides, he followed with his eyes the trail of dust leading out into the night.
“Have they gone?” he panted. “I can’t find another horse in town.”
“Where is it to?” sputtered the German.
“Have they gone, I say?”
Hans gasped.
“Yes, to be sure.”
“They’ll never make it.” The blacksmith mopped his brow with conviction. “He has an hour’s start.”
Hans grasped the big man by the coat.
“Who is too late?” he emphasized. “Where are they going?”
Jim Donovan turned about, great pity for such density in his eyes.
“Is it possible you don’t understand? It’s to Ichabod Maurice’s they’re going, to tell him of Arnold.” The speaker mopped his face 230 anew. “It’s useless though. They’re too late,” he completed.
“But Arnold is not there,” protested the German. “He went for a rabbit, out on the breaking. He so told me.”
“He lied to you. He’s mad. I tell you they’re too late,” repeated the smith, obstinately.
Hans clung tenaciously to the collar.
“Some one knew and told them?” He pointed in the direction the dust indicated.
“Yes, Bud Evans; but they wouldn’t believe him at first, and”––bitterly––“and waited.” Donovan shook himself free, and started down the walk. “I’m going to bed,” he announced conclusively.
Meanwhile the cloud of dust was moving out over the prairie like the wind. The pace was terrific, and the tough little ponies were soon puffing steadily. Small game, roused from its sleep by the roadside, sprang winging into the night. Once a coyote, surprised, ran a distance confusedly ahead in the roadway; then, an indistinct black ball, it vanished amongst the tall grass. 231
Well out on the prairie, Bud Evans, the leader, raised in his stirrups and looked ahead. There was no light beyond where the little cottage should be. The rowels of his spur dug anew at the flank of his pony as he turned a voice like a fog-horn back over his shoulder.
“The place is dark, boys,” he called. “Hurry.”
Answering, a muttering sound, not unlike an approaching storm, passed along the line, and in accompaniment the quirts cut the air anew.
Silent as the grave was the little farmstead when, forty odd minutes from the time of starting, they steamed up at the high fence bounding the yard. One of Ichabod’s farm horses whinnied a lone greeting from the barn as they hastily dismounted and swarmed within the inclosure.
“We’re too late,” prophesied a voice.
“I’m glad my name’s not Arnold, if we are,” responded another, threateningly.
Hurrying up the path in advance, the little land-agent stumbled over a soft, dark object, and a curse fell from his lips as he recognized the dead body of the big collie. 232
“Yes, we’re too late,” he echoed.
The door of the house swung ajar, creaking upon its hinges; and, as penetrates the advance wave of a flood, the men swarmed through the doorway inside, until the narrow room was blocked. Simultaneously, like torches, lighted matches appeared aloft in their hands, and the tiny whitewashed room flashed into light. As simultaneously there sprang from the mouth of each man an oath, and another, and another. Waiting outside, not a listener but knew the meaning of that sound; and big, hairy faces crowded tightly to the one small window.
For a moment not a man in the line stirred. Death was to them no stranger; but death such as this––
In more than one hand the match burned down until it left a mark like charcoal, and without calling attention. One and all they stood spellbound, their eyes on the floor, their lips unconsciously uttering the speech universal of anger and of horror, the instinctive language of anathema.
On the floor, sprawling, as falls a lifeless body, lay the long Ichabod. On his forehead, 233 almost geometrically near the centre, was a tiny, black spot, around it a lighter red blotch; his face otherwise very white; his hair, on the side toward which he leaned, a little matted; that was all.
Prostrate across him, in an attitude of utter abandon, reposed the body of a woman, soft, graceful, motionless now as that of the man: the body of Camilla Maurice. One hand had held his head and was stained dark. On her lips was another stain, but lighter. The meaning of that last mark came as a flash to the spectators, and the room grew still as the figures on the floor.
Suddenly in the silence the men caught their breath, with the quick guttural note that announces the unexpected. That there was no remaining life they had taken for granted––and Camilla’s lips had moved! They stared as at sight of a ghost; all except Curtis, the physician.
“A lamp, men,” he demanded, pressing his ear to Camilla’s chest.
“Help me here, Evans,” he continued without turning. “I think she’s fainted is all,” and 234 together they carried their burden into the tiny sleeping-room, closing the door behind.
That instant Ole, the Swede, thrust a curious head in at the outer doorway. He had noticed the light and the gathering, and came to ascertain their meaning. Wondering, his big eyes passed around the waiting group and from them to the floor. With that look self-consciousness left him; he crowded to the front, bending over the tall man and speaking his name.