XXV
Now that the fight was done, Bill lay quite calm and peaceful in the drifts. The pain of the cold and the wrack of exhausted muscles were quite gone.
He was face to face with the flaming truth, and he knew his fate. The North, defied so long, had conquered him a last. It had been waiting for him, lurking, watching its chance; and with its cruel agents, the bitter cold and the unending snow, it had crushed and beaten him down. He felt no resentment. He was glad that the trial was over. He knew a deep, infinite peace.
Sleep was encroaching upon him now. He felt himself drifting, and the tide would never bring him back. He stirred a little, putting his hands in his armpits, his face resting on his elbow. The wind swept by, sobbing: there in the shadow of death he caught its tones and its messages as never before. He was being swept into space. ...
On the trail that he had made on the out-journey, and which he had tried to vainly to follow back, Virginia came mushing toward him. Never before had her muscles responded so obediently to her will; she sped at a pace that she had never traveled before. It was as if some power above herself was bearing her along, swiftly, easily, with never a wasted motion. She tilted the nose of her snowshoes just the right angle, no more or less, and all her muscles seemed to work in perfect unison.
The bitter cold of the early morning hours only made her blood flow faster and gave her added energy. She scarcely felt the pack on her back. The snowshoe trail, however, was so faint as to be almost invisible.
Because the snow had been firm in this part of Bill's journey, his track was not so deep and the drifting snow had almost completely filled it. In a few places the track was entirely obscured; always there were merely dim indentations. If she had started an hour later she could not have followed the trail at all. For all the day was clear, the wind still whirled flurries of dry snow across her path.
But she didn't permit herself to despair. If need be, she told herself, she would follow him clear to the Twenty-three Mile cabin. The tracks were ever more dim, but surely they would be deeper again where Bill had encountered the soft snow.
It became increasingly probable, however, that the tracks would completely fade away before that time. Soon the difficulty of finding the imprints in the snow began to slacken her gait. To lose them completely meant failure: she could not find her way in these snowy stretches unguided. As morning reached its full, the white wastes seemed to stretch unbroken.
Was the wind-blown snow going to defeat her purpose, after all? A great weight of fear and disappointment began to assail her. The truth of the matter was she had come to an exposed slope, and the trail had faded out under the snow dust.
At first there seemed nothing to do but turn back. It might be possible, however, to cross the ridge in front: the valley beyond was more sheltered by the wind and she might pick up the trail again. At least she could follow her own tracks back, if she failed. She sped swiftly on.
She had guessed right. Standing on the ridge top she could see, far off through one of the treeless glades that are found so often in the spruce forest, the long path of a snowshoe trail. Instinctively she followed it with her eyes.
Clear where the trail entered the spruce thicket, her keen eyes made out a curious, black shadow against the snow. For a single second she eyed it calmly, wondering what manner of wild creature it might be. Its outline grew more distinct under her intense gaze, and she cried out. It was only a little sound, half a gasp and half a sob, but it expressed the depths of terror and distress never known to her before.
It seemed to her that she could not move at first. She could only stand and gaze. The heart in her breast turned to ice, her blood seemed to go still in her veins. She recognized this figure now. It was Bill, lying still in the frozen drifts.
For endless hours, it seemed to her, she stood impotent with horror. In reality, the time was not an appreciable fraction of a breath. Then, sobbing, she mushed frantically down toward him. She fairly raced,—with never a misstep. For all the ghastly sickness that swept over her, she held her body in perfect discipline. She had no doubt but that this man was dead. Likely he had lain there for hours, and really only a very short time of such cold as this was needed to take life. Already, she thought, the life had gone from his dark, gentle eyes; the brave heart was still; the brave heart was still; the mighty muscles lifeless clay.
No moment of her life had ever been fraught with such overwhelming bitterness as this. She had never known such fear, even in the grip of the wild waters or during the grizzly's charge. This was something that went deeper than mere life: it touched realms of her spirit undreamed of, and the blow seemed more cruel and more dreadful than any that the world could deal direct to her. If she had paused for one second of self-analysis, heaven knows what light might have burst upon her spirit—what deep and wondrous realizations of her attitude toward Bill might have come to her; but she did not pause. She only knew that she must reach his side. Her only thought was that Bill was dead, gone from her life as a flame goes from an extinguished candle.
She knelt beside him, and with no knowledge of effort turned him over and lifted his head and shoulders into her arms. His eyes were closed, his face expressionless, his arms dropped limply to his side. At first she dared not dream but that the cold had already taken away his life. The dread Spirit of the North had lain in ambush for him a long time, but it had conquered him at last.
They made an unearthly picture,—these two so silent in the drifts. Endless about them lay the snow; the winter forest was deep in its eternal silence, the little spruce trees stood patient and inert and queer, under their heavy loads of snow. Never a voice in all the wastes, never a tear of pity or a stretching hand of mercy,—only the cold, only the silence, only the dread solitude of a land untamed,—the unconquerable wild. Yet her sorrow, her ineffable despair left no room for resentment against this dreadful land. It was only a lost fight in an eternal war; only a little incident in the vast and inscrutable schemes of a remorseless Nature.
She knew life now, this girl of cities. She knew that in her past life she had never really lived: she had only moved in a gentle dream that an artificial civilization had made possible. The gayeties, the culture, the luxuries and the fashions that had seemed so real and so essential before were revealed in their true light, only as dreams that would pass: deep in them she had never heard the crash of armor in the battlefields without her bower. But she knew now. She saw life as it was, stark and cruel, remorseless, pitiless to the weak, treacherous to the strong, ever waging war against all creatures that dwelt upon the earth.
Yet so easily could it have been redeemed! If this man were standing strong beside her, life would be nothing to fear, nothing to appall her spirit. All the ancient persecutions of the elements, all the pitfalls of life and the exigencies of fortune could never bow their heads. Instead they would know high adventure and the exhilaration of battle; even if at the day's end they should go down into death, it would be with unbroken spirits and brave hearts.
But she couldn't stand alone! She needed the touch of his hand, his shoulder against hers, the communion of his spirit and his strength. Life was an appalling thing to face alone! There was no joy now in the punishing cold and the wastes of forest; only sadness and fear and despair. Sitting in the snow, his head and shoulders in her arms, she knew a fear and a loneliness undreamed of before, a loss that could never be atoned for or redeemed.
She too knew the lesson that Bill had learned in his hour of bitterness,—that one moment of heaven may atone for a whole life of struggle and sorrow. One clasp of arms, one whispered message, one mighty impulse of the soul in which eternity is seized and the stars are gathered might glorify the whole bitter struggle of existence. One little kiss might pay for it all. Yet for all that Harold still lived and waited for her in the cabin, she felt that this one little instant of resurrection was irrevocably lost.
It seemed so strange to her that he should be lying here, impotent in her arms. Always he had been so strong, he had stood so straight,—always coming to her aid in a second of need, always strengthening her with his smile and his eyes. She could hardly believe that this was he,—never to cheer her again in their hard tramps, to lend her his mighty strength in a moment of crisis, to laugh with her at some little tragedy. She sobbed softly, and her tears lay on his face. "Bill, oh, Bill, won't you wake up and speak to me?" she cried. She pleaded softly, but he didn't seem to hear.
"Come back to me, Bill—I need you," she told him. He had always been so quick to come when she needed him before now. "Are you dead?— Oh, you couldn't be dead! It's so cold—and I'm afraid. Oh, please open your eyes——"
She kissed him over and over—on the lips, on his closed eyes. She pressed his head against her soft breast, as if her fluttering heart would give some of its life to him.
Dead? Was that it? All at once she set to work to win back her self-control. It might not yet be too late to help. She gripped herself, dispelling at once all hysteria, all her vagrant thoughts. He would have been hard at work long since. His face was still warm—perhaps life had not yet passed.
She put her head to his breast. His heart was beating—slowly, but steadily and strong.