A WALK IN THE STARLIGHT
Having no further pretext for calling upon her, Curtis thought of Elsie as of a strain of music which had passed. He was rather silent at dinner, but not noticeably so, for Maynard absorbed most of the time and attention of those present. At the first opportunity he returned to his papers, and was deep in work when Jennie came in to tell him that Elsie was coming over to stay the night.
"She has given up her bed to her father, and so she will sleep here. Go over about nine and get her."
If she knew how deeply this command moved him, she was considerate enough to make no comment. "Very well, sis," he replied, quietly. "As soon as I finish this letter."
But he did not finish the letter—did not even complete the sentence with which his pen was engaged when Jennie interrupted him. After she went out he sat in silence and in complete immobility for nearly an hour. At last he rose and went out into the warm and windless night.
When he entered the studio he found her seated upon one trunk and surveying another.
"This looks like flight," he said.
"Yes; papa insists on our going early to-morrow morning. Isn't it preposterous! I can only pack my clothing. He says the trouble is only beginning, and that I must not remain here another day."
"I have come to fetch you to Jennie."
"I will be ready presently. I am just looking round to decide on what to take. Be seated, please, while I look over this pile of sketches."
He took a seat and looked at her sombrely. "You'll leave a great big empty place here when you go."
"Do you mean this studio?"
"I mean in my daily life."
She became reflective. "I hate to go, and that's the truth of it. I am just beginning to feel my grip tighten on this material. I know I could do some good work here, but really I was frightened at papa's condition this afternoon. He is better now, but I can see that he is failing. If he insists on campaigning I must go with him—but, oh, how I hate it! Think of standing up and shaking hands with all these queer people for months! I oughtn't to feel so, of course, but I can't help it. I've no patience with people who are half-baked, neither bread nor dough. I believe I like old Mary and Two Horns better."
"I fear you are voicing a mood, not a conviction. We ought not to condemn any one;" he paused a moment, then added: "I don't like you to even say cruel things. It hurts me. As I look round this room I see nothing which has to do with duty or conviction or war or politics. There is peace and beauty here. You belong in this atmosphere; you are fitted to your environment. I admit that I was fired at first with a desire to convert you to my ways of thought; now, when a sense of duty troubles you, takes you away from the joy of your art, I question myself. You are too beautiful to wear yourself out in problems. I now say, remain an artist. There is something idyllic about your artist life as I now understand it. It is simple and childlike. In that respect it seems to have less troublesome questions of right or wrong to decide than science. Its one care seems to be, 'What will produce and preserve beauty, and so assuage the pain of the world?' No question of money or religion or politics—just the pursuit of an ideal in a sheltered nook."
"You have gone too far the other way, I fear," she said, sadly. "Our lives, even at the best, are far from being the ideal you present. It seems very strange to me to hear you say those things—"
"I have given the matter much thought," he replied. "If I have made you think of the woes of the world, so you have shown me glimpses of a life where men and women are almost free from care. We are mutually instructed." He rose at this point and, after hesitation, said: "When you go I wish you would leave this room just as it is, and when I am tired and irritable and lonely I'll come here and imagine myself a part of your world of harmonious colors, with no race questions to settle and no harsh duties to perform. Will you do this? These few hangings and lamps and easels are unimportant to you—you won't miss them; to me they will be priceless, and, besides, you may come back again some time. Say you will. It will comfort me."
There was a light in his eyes and an intensity in his voice which startled her. She stammered a little.
"Why, of course, if it will give you the slightest pleasure; there is nothing here of any particular value. I'll be glad to leave them."
"Thank you. So long as I have this room as it is I shall be able to persuade myself that you have not passed utterly out of my life."
She was a little alarmed now, and hastened to say: "I do not see why we should not meet again. I shall expect you to call when you come to Washington—" she checked herself. "I'm afraid my sense of duty to the Tetongs is not strong. Don't think too hardly of me because of it."
He seemed intent on another thought. "Do you know, you've given me a dim notion of a new philosophy. I haven't organized it yet, but it's something like this: Beauty is a sense of fitness, harmony. This sense of beauty—call it taste—demands positively a readjustment of the external facts of life, so that all angles, all suffering and violence, shall cease. If all men were lovers of the beautiful, the gentle, then the world would needs be suave and genial, and life harmoniously colored, like your own studio, and we would campaign only against ugliness. To civilize would mean a totally different thing. I'm not quite clear on my theory yet, but perhaps you can help me out."
"I think I see what you mean. But my world," she hastened to say, "is nothing like so blameless as you think it. Don't think artists are actually what they should be. They are very human, eager to succeed, to outstrip each other; and they are sordid, too. No, you are too kind to us. We are a poor lot when you take us as a whole, and the worst of it is the cleverest makers of the beautiful are often the least inspiring in their lives. I mean they're ignorant and spiteful, and often dishonorable." She stopped abruptly.
"I'm sorry to hear you say that. It certainly shatters a beautiful theory I had built up out of what you and other artists have said to me." After a little silence he resumed: "It comes down to this, then: that all arts and professions are a part of life, and life is a compromise between desire and duty. There are certain things I want to do to-day, but my duties for to-morrow forbid. You are right in going away with your father—I'm not one to keep you from doing that—but I must tell you how great has been the pleasure of having you here, and I hope you will come again. If you go to-morrow morning I shall not see you again."
"Why not?"
"I start at dawn to arrest Cut Finger."
"Alone?"
"No. The captain of the police goes with me."
Her face paled a little. "Oh! I wish you wouldn't! Why don't you take the soldiers?"
"They are not necessary. I shall leave here about four o'clock and surprise the guilty man in his bed. He will not fight me." He rose. "Are you ready to go now?"
"In a moment," she said, and softly crossed the floor to peep into the bedroom. "Poor papa, he looks almost bloodless as he sleeps."
As they stepped out into the darkness Curtis realized that this was their last walk together, and the thought was both sweet and sad.
"Will you take my arm?" he asked. "It is very dark, though there should be a new moon."
"It has gone down; I saw it," she replied, as she slipped her hand through his elbow. "How peaceful it all is! It doesn't seem possible that to-morrow you will risk your life in the performance of duty, and that I will leave here, never to return. I have a curious feeling about this place now. It seems as though I were settled here, and that I am to go on living here forever."
"I wish it were true. Women like you—you know what I mean; there are no women like you, of course—come into my life too seldom. I dread the empty futility of to-morrow. As an Indian agent, I must expect to live without companionship with such as you. I have a premonition that Jennie is going to leave me—as she ought."
"You will be very lonely then; what will you do?"
"Work harder; do more good, and so cheat myself into forgetfulness that time is flying."
"You are bitter to-night."
"Why shouldn't I be when you are going away? It wouldn't be decent of me to be gay."
"Your methods of flattery are always effective. At one moment you discuss the weightiest matters with me—which argues I have brains—and then you grow gloomy over my going and would seem to mean that I am charming, which I don't think is quite true."
"If I weren't a poor devil of an army officer I'd convince you of my sincerity by asking you not to go away at all."
"That would be convincing," she said, laughingly. "Please don't do it!"
His tone became suddenly serious. "You are right, I can't ask you to share a life like mine. It is too uncertain. I may be ordered back to my regiment next winter, and then nothing remains but garrison duty. I think I will then resign. But I am unfitted for business, or for any money-getting, and so I've decided that as an honorable man I must not imperil the happiness of a woman. I claim to be a person of taste, and the girl I admired would have other chances in life. I can't afford to say to her, 'Give up all your comfort and security and come with me to the frontier.' She would be foolish to listen—no woman of the stamp I have in mind could do it." They were nearing "the parsonage" gate, and he ended in a low voice: "Don't you think I am right?"
"The theory is that nothing really counts in a woman's life but love," she replied, enigmatically.
"Yes, but theory aside—"
"Well, then, I can conceive of a girl—a very young girl—leaving wealth and friends, and even her art, for the man she loved, but—"
He waited a moment as a culprit listens to his judge. "But then—but in case—"
"If the girl were grown up and loved luxurious living, and shared an enthusiasm—say for art—then—" She broke off and said, wearily, "Then she might palter and measure values and weigh chances, and take account of the future and end by not marrying at all."
They had reached the gate and he spoke with perceivable effort: "I've no right to ask it, of course, but if you take pity on my loneliness at any time and write to me, your letters will be more welcome than it is seemly in me to say, and I'll promise not to bore you with further details of my 'Injines.' Will you be kind to me?"
"I will be glad to write," she replied, but in her voice was something he did not understand. As they entered the house Elsie said: "Captain Maynard, Captain Curtis is going out to-morrow morning to arrest that crazy Indian. Do you think he ought to go alone?"
"Certainly not! It would be too dangerous. He shall have an escort," replied Maynard, emphatically.
"No, no!" said Curtis, decisively. "I am safer to go unarmed and alone."
"George!" protested Jennie, "you shall not go out there alone. Why don't you send the police?"
Maynard here interposed. "Don't take on worry; I'll go with him myself."
This last hour in Elsie's company was a mingled pain and pleasure to Curtis, for she was most charming. She laid aside all hauteur, all perversity, and gave herself unreservedly to her good friends. They were all at high tension, and the talk leaped from jest to protest, and back to laughter again, agile and inconsequent. The time and the place, the past and the future, counted for little to these four, for they were young and they were lovers.
At last Jennie rose. "If you people are to rise at dawn you must go to sleep now. Good-night! Come, Elsie Bee Bee."
Maynard followed Jennie into the hall with some jest, and Curtis seized the opportunity to delay Elsie. He offered his hand, and she laid hers therein with a motion of half-surrender.
"Good-night, Captain. I appreciate your kindness more than I can say."
"Don't try. I feel now that I have done nothing—nothing of what I should have done; but I didn't think you were to leave so soon. If I had known—"
"You have done more than you realize. Once more, good-night!"
"Good-night!" he said, in an unsteady voice; "and remember, you promised to write!"
"I will keep my promise." She turned at the door. "Don't try to write around your red people. I believe I'd like to hear how you get on with them."
"Defend me from mine enemies within the gates, and I'll work out my problem."
"I'll do my best. Good-bye!"
"No, not good-bye—just good-night!"
For a moment he stood meditating a further word, then stepped into the hall. Elsie, midway on the stairs, had turned and was looking down at him with a face wherein the eyes were wistful and brows perplexed. She guiltily lowered her lashes and turned away, but that momentary pause—that subtle interplay of doubt and dream—had given the soldier a pleasure deeper than words.
Jennie was waiting at the door of the tiny room in which Elsie was to sleep, her face glowing with admiration and love. "Oh, you queenly girl!" she cried, with a convulsive clasp of her strong arms. "I can't get over the wonder of your being here in our little house. You ought to live always in a castle."
Elsie smiled, but with tears in her eyes. "You're a dear, good girl. I never had a truer friend."
"I wish you were poor!" said Jennie, as they entered the plain little room; "then you could come here as a missionary or something, and we could have you with us all the time. I hate to think of your going away to-morrow."
"You must come and see me in Washington."
"Oh no! That wouldn't do!" said Jennie, half alarmed. "It might spoil me for life out here. You must visit us again."
There was a note of honest, almost boyish suffering in Jennie's entreaties which moved the daughter of wealth very deeply, and she went to her bed with a feeling of loss, as though she were taking leave of something very sweet and elementally comforting.
She thought of her first lover, and her cheeks burned with disgust of her folly. She thought of two or three good, manly suitors whose protestations of love had left her cold and humorously critical. On Lawson's suit she lingered, for he was still a possibility should she decide to put her soldier-lover away. "But I have done so—definitely," she said to some pleading within herself. "I can't marry him; our lives are ordered on divergent lines. I can't come here to live."
"Happiness is not dependent on material things," argued her newly awakened self. "He loves you—he is handsome and true and good."
"But I don't love him."
"Yes, you do. When you returned Osborne Lawson's ring you quite plainly said so."
She burned with a new flame with this confession; but she protested, "Let us be sensible! Let us argue!"
"You cannot argue with love."
"I am not a child to be carried away by a momentary gust of emotion. See how impossible it is for me to share his work—his austere life."
And here entered the far-reaching question of the life and death of a race. In a most disturbing measure this obscure young soldier represented a view of life—of civilization antagonistic to her faith, and in stern opposition to the teachings of her father. In a subtle fashion he had warped the word duty from its martial significance to a place in a lofty philosophy whose tenets were only just beginning to unfold their inner meaning to her.
Was it not true that she was less sympathetic with the poor brown peoples of the earth than with the animals? "How can you be contemptuous of God's children, whom the physical universe has colored brown or black or yellow—you, who are indignant when a beast is overburdened? If we repudiate and condemn to death those who do not please us, who will live?"
She felt in herself some singular commotion. Conceptions, hitherto mere shells of thought, became infilled with passion; and pity, hitherto a feeble sentiment with her, expanded into an emotion which shook her, filled her throat with sobs, discrediting her old self with her new self till the thought of her mean and selfish art brought shame. How small it all was, how trivial, beside the consciousness of duty well done, measured against a life of self-sacrifice, such as that suggested by this man, whose eyes sought her in worship!
Could there be any greater happiness than to stand by his side, helping to render a dying, captive race happier—healthier? Could her great wealth be put to better use than this of teaching two hundred thousand red people how to meet and adjust themselves to the white man's way of life? Their rags, their squalor, their ignorance were more deeply depressing to her lover than the poverty of the slums, for the Tetongs had been free and joyous hunters. Their condition was a tragic debasement. She began to feel the arguments of the Indian helpers. Their words were no longer dead things; they had become electric nodes; they moved her, set her blood aflame, and she clinched her hands and said: "I will help him do this great work!"