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Whether or not she detected any double meaning in his words, she was obliged to accept the challenge of his direct gaze, and, raising her eyes to his, drew back a little from him with a slight increase of color. “I was afraid you had heard bad news just now.”
“What would you call bad news?” asked Lee, clasping his hands behind his head, and leaning back on the sofa, but without withdrawing his eyes from her face.
“Oh, any news that would interrupt your convalescence, or break up our little family party,” said Mrs. Hale. “You have been getting on so well that really it would seem cruel to have anything interfere with our life of forgetting and being forgotten. But,” she added with apprehensive quickness, “has anything happened? Is there really any news from—from, the trails? Yesterday Mr. Falkner said the snow had recommenced in the pass. Has he seen anything, noticed anything different?”
She looked so very pretty, with the rare, genuine, and youthful excitement that transfigured her wearied and wearying regularity of feature, that Lee contented himself with drinking in her prettiness as he would have inhaled the perfume of some flower.
“Why do you look at me so, Mr. Lee?” she asked, with a slight smile. “I believe something HAS happened. Mr. Falkner HAS brought you some intelligence.”
“He has certainly found out something I did not foresee.”
“And that troubles you?”
“It does.”
“Is it a secret?”
“No.”
“Then I suppose you will tell it to me at dinner,” she said, with a little tone of relief.
“I am afraid, if I tell it at all, I must tell it now,” he said, glancing at the door.
“You must do as you think best,” she said coldly, “as it seems to be a secret, after all.” She hesitated. “Kate is dressing, and will not be down for some time.”
“So much the better. For I’m afraid that Ned has made a poor return to your hospitality by falling in love with her.”
“Impossible! He has known her for scarcely a week.”
“I am afraid we won’t agree as to the length of time necessary to appreciate and love a woman. I think it can be done in seven days and four hours, the exact time we have been here.”
“Yes; but as Kate was not in when you arrived, and did not come until later, you must take off at least one hour,” said Mrs. Hale gayly.
“Ned can. I shall not abate a second.”
“But are you not mistaken in his feelings?” she continued hurriedly. “He certainly has not said anything to her.”
“That is his last hold on honor and reason. And to preserve that little intact he wants to run away at once.”
“But that would be very silly.”
“Do you think so?” he said, looking at her fixedly.
“Why not?” she asked in her turn, but rather faintly.
“I’ll tell you why,” he said, lowering his voice with a certain intensity of passion unlike his usual boyish lightheartedness. “Think of a man whose life has been one of alternate hardness and aggression, of savage disappointment and equally savage successes, who has known no other relaxation than dissipation and extravagance; a man to whom the idea of the domestic hearth and family ties only meant weakness, effeminacy, or—worse; who had looked for loyalty and devotion only in the man who battled for him at his right hand in danger, or shared his privations and sufferings. Think of such a man, and imagine that an accident has suddenly placed him in an atmosphere of purity, gentleness, and peace, surrounded him by the refinements of a higher life than he had ever known, and that he found himself as in a dream, on terms of equality with a pure woman who had never known any other life, and yet would understand and pity his. Imagine his loving her! Imagine that the first effect of that love was to show him his own inferiority and the immeasurable gulf that lay between his life and hers! Would he not fly rather than brave the disgrace of her awakening to the truth? Would he not fly rather than accept even the pity that might tempt her to a sacrifice?”
“But—is Mr. Falkner all that?”
“Nothing of the kind, I assure you!” said he demurely. “But that’s the way a man in love feels.”
“Really! Mr. Falkner should get you to plead his cause with Kate,” said Mrs. Hale with a faint laugh.
“I need all my persuasive powers in that way for myself,” said Lee boldly.
Mrs. Hale rose. “I think I hear Kate coming,” she said. Nevertheless, she did not move away. “It IS Kate coming,” she added hurriedly, stooping to pick up her work-basket, which had slipped with Lee’s hand from her own.
It was Kate, who at once flew to her sister’s assistance, Lee deploring from the sofa his own utter inability to aid her. “It’s all my fault, too,” he said to Kate, but looking at Mrs. Hale. “It seems I have a faculty of upsetting existing arrangements without the power of improving them, or even putting them back in their places. What shall I do? I am willing to hold any number of skeins or rewind any quantity of spools. I am even willing to forgive Ned for spending the whole day with you, and only bringing me the wing of a hawk for supper.”
“That was all my folly, Mr. Lee,” said Kate, with swift mendacity; “he was all the time looking after something for you, when I begged him to shoot a bird to get a feather for my hat. And that wing is SO pretty.”
“It is a pity that mere beauty is not edible,” said Lee, gravely, “and that if the worst comes to the worst here you would probably prefer me to Ned and his moustachios, merely because I’ve been tied by the leg to this sofa and slowly fattened like a Strasbourg goose.”
Nevertheless, his badinage failed somehow to amuse Kate, and she presently excused herself to rejoin her sister, who had already slipped from the room. For the first time during their enforced seclusion a sense of restraint and uneasiness affected Mrs. Hale, her sister, and Falkner at dinner. The latter addressed himself to Mrs. Scott, almost entirely. Mrs. Hale was fain to bestow an exceptional and marked tenderness on her little daughter Minnie, who, however, by some occult childish instinct, insisted upon sharing it with Lee—her great friend—to Mrs. Hale’s uneasy consciousness. Nor was Lee slow to profit by the child’s suggestion, but responded with certain vicarious caresses that increased the mother’s embarrassment. That evening they retired early, but in the intervals of a restless night Kate was aware, from the sound of voices in the opposite room, that the friends were equally wakeful.
A morning of bright sunshine and soft warm air did not, however, bring any change to their new and constrained relations. It only seemed to offer a reason for Falkner to leave the house very early for his daily rounds, and gave Lee that occasion for unaided exercise with an extempore crutch on the veranda which allowed Mrs. Hale to pursue her manifold duties without the necessity of keeping him company. Kate also, as if to avoid an accidental meeting with Falkner, had remained at home with her sister. With one exception, they did not make their guests the subject of their usual playful comments, nor, after the fashion of their sex, quote their ideas and opinions. That exception was made by Mrs. Hale.
“You have had no difference with Mr. Falkner?” she said carelessly.
“No,” said Kate quickly. “Why?”
“I only thought he seemed rather put out at dinner last night, and you didn’t propose to go and meet him to-day.”
“He must be bored with my company at times, I dare say,” said Kate, with an indifference quite inconsistent with her rising color. “I shouldn’t wonder if he was a little vexed with Mr. Lee’s chaffing him about his sport yesterday, and probably intends to go further to-day, and bring home larger game. I think Mr. Lee very amusing always, but I sometimes fancy he lacks feeling.”
“Feeling! You don’t know him, Kate,” said Mrs. Hale quickly. She stopped herself, but with a half-smiling recollection in her dropped eyelids.
“Well, he doesn’t look very amiable now, stamping up and down the veranda. Perhaps you’d better go and soothe him.”
“I’m really SO busy just now,” said Mrs. Hale, with sudden and inconsequent energy; “things have got dreadfully behind in the last week. You had better go, Kate, and make him sit down, or he’ll be overdoing it. These men never know any medium—in anything.”
Contrary to Kate’s expectation, Falkner returned earlier than usual, and, taking the invalid’s arm, supported him in a more ambitious walk along the terrace before the house. They were apparently absorbed in conversation, but the two women who observed them from the window could not help noticing the almost feminine tenderness of Falkner’s manner towards his wounded friend, and the thoughtful tenderness of his ministering care.
“I wonder,” said Mrs. Hale, following them with softly appreciative eyes, “if women are capable of as disinterested friendship as men? I never saw anything like the devotion of these two creatures. Look! if Mr. Falkner hasn’t got his arm round Mr. Lee’s waist, and Lee, with his own arm over Falkner’s neck, is looking up in his eyes. I declare, Kate, it almost seems an indiscretion to look at them.”
Kate, however, to Mrs. Hale’s indignation, threw her pretty head back and sniffed the air contemptuously. “I really don’t see anything but some absurd sentimentalism of their own, or some mannish wickedness they’re concocting by themselves. I am by no means certain, Josephine, that Lee’s influence over that young man is the best thing for him.”
“On the contrary! Lee’s influence seems the only thing that checks his waywardness,” said Mrs. Hale quickly. “I’m sure, if anyone makes sacrifices, it is Lee; I shouldn’t wonder that even now he is making some concession to Falkner, and all those caressing ways of your friend are for a purpose. They’re not much different from us, dear.”
“Well, I wouldn’t stand there and let them see me looking at them as if I couldn’t bear them out of my sight for a moment,” said Kate, whisking herself out of the room. “They’re conceited enough, Heaven knows, already.”
That evening, at dinner, however, the two men exhibited no trace of the restraint or uneasiness of the previous day. If they were less impulsive and exuberant, they were still frank and interested, and if the term could be used in connection with men apparently trained to neither self-control nor repose, there was a certain gentle dignity in their manner which for the time had the effect of lifting them a little above the social level of their entertainers. For even with all their predisposition to the strangers, Kate and Mrs. Hale had always retained a conscious attitude of gentle condescension and superiority towards them—an attitude not inconsistent with a stronger feeling, nor altogether unprovocative of it; yet this evening they found themselves impressed with something more than an equality in the men who had amused and interested them, and they were perhaps a little more critical and doubtful of their own power. Mrs. Hale’s little girl, who had appreciated only the seriousness of the situation, had made her own application of it. “Are you dow’in’ away from aunt Kate and mamma?” she asked, in an interval of silence.
“How else can I get you the red snow we saw at sunset, the other day, on the peak yonder?” said Lee gayly. “I’ll have to get up some morning very early, and catch it when it comes at sunrise.”
“What is this wonderful snow, Minnie, that you are tormenting Mr. Lee for?” asked Mrs. Hale.
“Oh! it’s a fairy snow that he told me all about; it only comes when the sun comes up and goes down, and if you catch ever so little of it in your hand it makes all you fink you want come true! Wouldn’t that be nice?” But to the child’s astonishment her little circle of auditors, even while assenting, sighed.
The red snow was there plain enough the next morning before the valley was warm with light, and while Minnie, her mother, and aunt Kate were still peacefully sleeping. And Mr. Lee had kept his word, and was evidently seeking it, for he and Falkner were already urging their horses through the pass, with their faces towards and lit up by its glow.
CHAPTER VIII
Kate was stirring early, but not as early as her sister, who met her on the threshold of her room. Her face was quite pale, and she held a letter in her hand. “What does this mean, Kate?”
“What is the matter?” asked Kate, her own color fading from her cheek.
“They are gone—with their horses. Left before day, and left this.”
She handed Kate an open letter. The girl took it hurriedly, and read—
“When you get this we shall be no more; perhaps not even as much. Ned found the trail yesterday, and we are taking the first advantage of it before day. We dared not trust ourselves to say ‘Good-by!’ last evening; we were too cowardly to face you this morning; we must go as we came, without warning, but not without regret. We leave a package and a letter for your husband. It is not only our poor return for your gentleness and hospitality, but, since it was accidentally the means of giving us the pleasure of your society, we beg you to keep it in safety until his return. We kiss your mother’s hands. Ned wants to say something more, but time presses, and I only allow him to send his love to Minnie, and to tell her that he is trying to find the red snow.
“GEORGE LEE.”
“But he is not fit to travel,” said Mrs. Hale. “And the trail—it may not be passable.”
“It was passable the day before yesterday,” said Kate drearily, “for I discovered it, and went as far as the buck-eyes.”
“Then it was you who told them about it,” said Mrs. Hale reproachfully.
“No,” said Kate indignantly. “Of course I didn’t.” She stopped, and, reading the significance of her speech in the glistening eyes of her sister, she blushed. Josephine kissed her, and said—
“It WAS treating us like children, Kate, but we must make them pay for it hereafter. For that package and letter to John means something, and we shall probably see them before long. I wonder what the letter is about, and what is in the package?”
“Probably one of Mr. Lee’s jokes. He is quite capable of turning the whole thing into ridicule. I dare say he considers his visit here a prolonged jest.”
“With his poor leg, Kate? You are as unfair to him as you were to Falkner when they first came.”
Kate, however, kept her dark eyebrows knitted in a piquant frown.
“To think of his intimating WHAT he would allow Falkner to say! And yet you believe he has no evil influence over the young man.”
Mrs. Hale laughed. “Where are you going so fast, Kate?” she called mischievously, as the young lady flounced out of the room.
“Where? Why, to tidy John’s room. He may be coming at any moment now. Or do you want to do it yourself?”
“No, no,” returned Mrs. Hale hurriedly; “you do it. I’ll look in a little later on.”
She turned away with a sigh. The sun was shining brilliantly outside. Through the half-open blinds its long shafts seemed to be searching the house for the lost guests, and making the hollow shell appear doubly empty. What a contrast to the dear dark days of mysterious seclusion and delicious security, lit by Lee’s laughter and the sparkling hearth, which had passed so quickly! The forgotten outer world seemed to have returned to the house through those open windows and awakened its dwellers from a dream.
The morning seemed interminable, and it was past noon, while they were deep in a sympathetic conference with Mrs. Scott, who had drawn a pathetic word-picture of the two friends perishing in the snow-drift, without flannels, brandy, smelling-salts, or jelly, which they had forgotten, when they were startled by the loud barking of “Spot” on the lawn before the house. The women looked hurriedly at each other.
“They have returned,” said Mrs. Hale.
Kate ran to the window. A horseman was approaching the house. A single glance showed her that it was neither Falkner, Lee, nor Hale, but a stranger.
“Perhaps he brings some news of them,” said Mrs. Scott quickly. So complete had been their preoccupation with the loss of their guests that they could not yet conceive of anything that did not pertain to it.
The stranger, who was at once ushered into the parlor, was evidently disconcerted by the presence of the three women.
“I reckoned to see John Hale yer,” he began, awkwardly.
A slight look of disappointment passed over their faces. “He has not yet returned,” said Mrs. Hale briefly.
“Sho! I wanter know. He’s hed time to do it, I reckon,” said the stranger.
“I suppose he hasn’t been able to get over from the Summit,” returned Mrs. Hale. “The trail is closed.”
“It ain’t now, for I kem over it this mornin’ myself.”
“You didn’t—meet—anyone?” asked Mrs. Hale timidly, with a glance at the others.
“No.”
A long silence ensued. The unfortunate visitor plainly perceived an evident abatement of interest in himself, yet he still struggled politely to say something. “Then I reckon you know what kept Hale away?” he said dubiously.
“Oh, certainly—the stage robbery.”
“I wish I’d known that,” said the stranger reflectively, “for I ez good ez rode over jist to tell it to ye. Ye see John Hale, he sent a note to ye ‘splainin’ matters by a gentleman; but the road agents tackled that man, and left him for dead in the road.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Hale impatiently.
“Luckily he didn’t die, but kem to, and managed to crawl inter the brush, whar I found him when I was lookin’ for stock, and brought him to my house—”
“YOU found him? YOUR house?” interrupted Mrs. Hale.
“Inter MY house,” continued the man doggedly. “I’m Thompson of Thompson’s Pass over yon; mebbe it ain’t much of a house; but I brought him thar. Well, ez he couldn’t find the note that Hale had guv him, and like ez not the road agents had gone through him and got it, ez soon ez the weather let up I made a break over yer to tell ye.”
“You say Mr. Lee came to your house,” repeated Mrs. Hale, “and is there now?”
“Not much,” said the man grimly; “and I never said LEE was thar. I mean that Bilson waz shot by Lee and kem—”
“Certainly, Josephine!” said Kate, suddenly stepping between her sister and Thompson, and turning upon her a white face and eyes of silencing significance; “certainly—don’t you remember?—that’s the story we got from the Chinaman, you know, only muddled. Go on sir,” she continued, turning to Thompson calmly; “you say that the man who brought the note from my brother was shot by Lee?”
“And another fellow they call Falkner. Yes, that’s about the size of it.”
“Thank you; it’s nearly the same story that we heard. But you have had a long ride, Mr. Thompson; let me offer you a glass of whiskey in the dining-room. This way, please.”
The door closed upon them none too soon. For Mrs. Hale already felt the room whirling around her, and sank back into her chair with a hysterical laugh. Old Mrs. Scott did not move from her seat, but, with her eyes fixed on the door, impatiently waited Kate’s return. Neither spoke, but each felt that the young, untried girl was equal to the emergency, and would get at the truth.
The sound of Thompson’s feet in the hall and the closing of the front door was followed by Kate’s reappearance. Her face was still pale, but calm.
“Well?” said the two women in a breath.
“Well,” returned Kate slowly; “Mr. Lee and Mr. Falkner were undoubtedly the two men who took the paper from John’s messenger and brought it here.”
“You are sure?” said Mrs. Scott.
“There can be no mistake, mother.”
“THEN,” said Mrs. Scott, with triumphant feminine logic, “I don’t want anything more to satisfy me that they are PERFECTLY INNOCENT!”
More convincing than the most perfect masculine deduction, this single expression of their common nature sent a thrill of sympathy and understanding through each. They cried for a few moments on each other’s shoulders. “To think,” said Mrs. Scott, “what that poor boy must have suffered to have been obliged to do—that to—to—Bilson—isn’t that the creature’s name? I suppose we ought to send over there and inquire after him, with some chicken and jelly, Kate. It’s only common humanity, and we must be just, my dear; for even if he shot Mr. Lee and provoked the poor boy to shoot him, he may have thought it his duty. And then, it will avert suspicions.”
“To think,” murmured Mrs. Hale, “what they must have gone through while they were here—momentarily expecting John to come, and yet keeping up such a light heart.”
“I believe, if they had stayed any longer, they would have told us everything,” said Mrs. Scott.
Both the younger women were silent. Kate was thinking of Falkner’s significant speech as they neared the house on their last walk; Josephine was recalling the remorseful picture drawn by Lee, which she knew was his own portrait. Suddenly she started.
“But John will be here soon; what are we to tell him? And then that package and that letter.”
“Don’t be in a hurry to tell him anything at present, my child,” said Mrs. Scott gently. “It is unfortunate this Mr. Thompson called here, but we are not obliged to understand what he says now about John’s message, or to connect our visitors with his story. I’m sure, Kate, I should have treated them exactly as we did if they had come without any message from John; so I do not know why we should lay any stress on that, or even speak of it. The simple fact is that we have opened our house to two strangers in distress. Your husband,” continued Mr. Hale’s mother-in-law, “does not require to know more. As to the letter and package, we will keep that for further consideration. It cannot be of much importance, or they would have spoken of it before; it is probably some trifling present as a return for your hospitality. I should use no INDECOROUS haste in having it opened.”
The two women kissed Mrs. Scott with a feeling of relief, and fell back into the monotony of their household duties. It is to be feared, however, that the absence of their outlawed guests was nearly as dangerous as their presence in the opportunity it afforded for uninterrupted and imaginative reflection. Both Kate and Josephine were at first shocked and wounded by the discovery of the real character of the two men with whom they had associated so familiarly, but it was no disparagement to their sense of propriety to say that the shock did not last long, and was accompanied with the fascination of danger. This was succeeded by a consciousness of the delicate flattery implied in their indirect influence over the men who had undoubtedly risked their lives for the sake of remaining with them. The best woman is not above being touched by the effect of her power over the worst man, and Kate at first allowed herself to think of Falkner in that light. But if in her later reflections he suffered as a heroic experience to be forgotten, he gained something as an actual man to be remembered. Now that the proposed rides from “his friend’s house” were a part of the illusion, would he ever dare to visit them again? Would she dare to see him? She held her breath with a sudden pain of parting that was new to her; she tried to think of something else, to pick up the scattered threads of her life before that eventful day. But in vain; that one week had filled the place with implacable memories, or more terrible, as it seemed to her and her sister, they had both lost their feeble, alien hold upon Eagle’s Court in the sudden presence of the real genii of these solitudes, and henceforth they alone would be the strangers there. They scarcely dared to confess it to each other, but this return to the dazzling sunlight and cloudless skies of the past appeared to them to be the one unreal experience; they had never known the true wild flavor of their home, except in that week of delicious isolation. Without breathing it aloud, they longed for some vague denoument to this experience that should take them from Eagle’s Court forever.
It was noon the next day when the little household beheld the last shred of their illusion vanish like the melting snow in the strong sunlight of John Hale’s return. He was accompanied by Colonel Clinch and Rawlins, two strangers to the women. Was it fancy, or the avenging spirit of their absent companions? but HE too looked a stranger, and as the little cavalcade wound its way up the slope he appeared to sit his horse and wear his hat with a certain slouch and absence of his usual restraint that strangely shocked them. Even the old half-condescending, half-punctilious gallantry of his greeting of his wife and family was changed, as he introduced his companions with a mingling of familiarity and shyness that was new to him. Did Mrs. Hale regret it, or feel a sense of relief in the absence of his usual seignorial formality? She only knew that she was grateful for the presence of the strangers, which for the moment postponed a matrimonial confidence from which she shrank.