The Desert and The Sown
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Mary Hallock Foote >> The Desert and The Sown
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"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 consomme."
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."
Moya came and wreathed her arm in his, and they paced the room in silence.
At length she said, "If we go to find John Hagar, shall we not be meddling
again? A man who respects a woman's freedom must love his own. It is the
last thing left him. Don't hunt him down. I believe nothing could hurt him
now like seeing you again."
"He shall not see me unless he wants to, but he shall know where I stand
on this question of the Impostor. It shall be managed so that even he can
see I am protecting her. No, call himself what he will, the tie between
him and me is another of those facts."
"But do you love him, Paul?"
"Oh--I cannot forget him! He is--just as he used to be--'poor father out
there in the cold.' We must find him and comfort him somehow."
"For our own peace of mind? Forgive me for arguing when everything is so
difficult. But he is a man--a brave man who would rather be forever out in
the cold than be a burden. Do not rob him of his right to _be_ John Hagar
if he wants to, for the sake of those he loves. You do not tell me it was
love, but I am sure it was, in some mistaken way, that drove him into
exile. Only love as pure as his can be our excuse for dragging him back.
He did not want shelter and comfort from her. Only one thing. Have we got
that to give him?"
"Well then, I go for my own sake--it is a physical necessity; and I go for
hers. She has put it out of her own power to help him. It will ease her a
little to know I am trying to reach him in his forlorn disguise."
"But you were not going to tell her?"
"In words, no. But she will understand. There is a strange clairvoyance
between us, as if we were accomplices in a crime!"
Moya reflected silently. This search which Paul had set his heart upon
would equally work his own cure, she saw. Nor could she now imagine for
themselves any lover's paradise inseparable from this moral tragedy, which
she saw would be fibre of their fibre, life of their life. A family is an
organism; one part may think to deny or defy another, but with strange
pains the subtle union exerts itself; distance cannot break the thread.
They kissed each other solemnly like little children on the eve of a long
journey full of awed expectancy.
Mrs. Bogardus stood holding her door ajar as Moya passed on her way
downstairs. "You are very late," she uttered hoarsely. "Is nothing settled
yet?"
"Everything!" Moya hesitated and forced a smile, "everything but where we
shall go. We will start--and decide afterwards."
"You go together? That is right. Moya, you have a genius for happiness!"
"I wish I had a genius for making people sleep who lie awake hours in the
night thinking about other people!"
"If you mean me, people of my age need very little sleep."
"May I kiss you good-night, Paul's mother?"
"You may kiss me because I am Paul's mother, not because I do not sleep."
Moya's lips touched a cheek as white and almost as cold as the frosted
window-panes through which the moon was glimmering. She thought of the icy
roses on her wedding dress.
Downstairs her father was smoking his bedtime cigar. Mrs. Creve, very
sleepy and cosy and flushed, leaned over the smouldering bed of coals. She
held out her plump, soft hand to Moya.
"Come here and be scolded! We have been scolding you steadily for the last
hour."
"If you want that young man to get his strength back, you'd better not
keep him up talking half the night," the colonel growled softly. "Do you
see what time it is?"
Moya knelt and leaned her head against her father. She reached one hand to
Mrs. Creve. They did not speak again till her weak moment had passed. "It
will be very soon," she said, pressing the warm hand that stroked her own.
"You will help me pack, aunt Annie; and then you'll stay--with father? I
know you are glad to have me out of the way at last!"
XVII
THE HIDDEN TRAIL
Because they had set forth on a grim and sorrowful quest, it need not be
supposed that Paul and Moya were a pair of sorrowful pilgrims. It was
their wedding journey. At the outset Moya had said: "We are doing the best
we know. For what we don't know, let us leave it and not brood."
They did not enter at once upon the more eccentric stages of the search.
They went by way of the Great Northern to Portland, descending from snow
to roses and drenching rains. At Pendleton, which is at the junction of
three great roads, Paul sent tracers out through express agents and train
officials along the remotest slender feeders of these lines. Through the
same agents it was made known that for any service rendered or expense
incurred on behalf of the person described, his friends would hold
themselves gratefully responsible.
At Portland, Paul searched the steamer lists and left confidential orders
in the different transportation offices; and Moya wrote to his mother--a
woman's letter, every page shining with happiness and as free from
apparent forethought as a running brook.
They returned by the Great Northern and Lake Coeur d'Alene, stopping over
at Fort Sherman to visit Mrs. Creve, who was giddy with joy over the
wholesome change in Paul. She, too, wrote a woman's letter concerning that
visit, to the colonel, which cleared a crowd of shadows from his lonely
hearth.
Thence again to Pendleton came the seekers, and Paul gathered in his
lines, but found nothing; so cast them forth again. But through all these
distant elaborations of the search, in his own mind he saw the old man
creeping away by some near, familiar trail and lying hid in some warm
valley in the hills, his prison and his home.
It was now the last week in March. The travelers' bags were in the office,
the carriage at the door, when a letter--pigeon-holed and forgotten since
received some three weeks before--was put into Paul's hand.
I run up against your ad. in the Silver City Times [the communication
began]. If you haven't found your man yet, maybe I can put you onto the
right lead. I'm driving a jerky on the road from Mountain Home to Oriana,
but me and the old man we don't jibe any too well. I've got a sort of
disgust on me. Think I'll quit soon and go to mining. Jimmy Breen he runs
the Ferry, he can tell you all I know. Fifty miles from Mountain Home good
road can make it in one day. Yours Respecfully,
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