CHAPTER XII
THE GOOD OLD WORLD AGAIN
Hilliard carried Sheila into the house that he had built for her and laid her down in that big bedroom that "got the morning sun." For a while it seemed to him that she would never open her eyes again, and when she did regain consciousness she was so prostrate with her long fear and the shock of Miss Blake's death that she lay there too weak to smile or speak, too weak almost to breathe. Hilliard turned nurse, a puzzled, anxious nurse. He would sit up in his living-room half the night, and when sleep overpowered his anxiety he would fall prone on the elk-hide rug before his fire.
At last Sheila pulled herself up and crept about the house. She spent a day in the big log chair before Hilliard's hearth, looking very wan, shrinking from speech, her soft mouth gray and drawn.
"Aren't you ever going to smile for me again?" he asked her, after a long half-hour during which he had stood as still as stone, his arm along the pine mantelshelf, looking at her from the shelter of a propping hand.
She lifted her face to him and made a pitiful effort enough. But it brought tears. They ran down her cheeks, and she leaned back and closed her lids, but the crystal drops forced themselves out, clung to her lashes, and fell down on her clenched hands. Hilliard went over to her and took the small, cold hands in both of his.
"Tell me about what happened, Sheila," he begged her. "It will help."
Word by difficult word, he still holding fast to her hands, she sobbed and gasped out her story, to which he listened with a whitening face. He gripped her hands tighter, then, toward the end, he rose with a sharp oath, lit his cigarette, paced to and fro.
"God!" he said at the last. "And she told you I had gone from the country! The devil! I can't help saying it, Sheila—she tortured you. She deserved what God sent her."
"Oh, no!"—Sheila rocked to and fro—"no one could deserve such dreadful terror and pain. She—she wasn't sane. I was—foolish to trust her … I am so foolish—I think I must be too young or too stupid for—for all this. I thought the world would be a much safer place." She looked up again, and speech had given her tormented nerves relief, for her eyes were much more like her own, clear and young again. "Mr. Hilliard—what shall I do with my life, I wonder? I've lost my faith and trustingness. I'm horribly afraid."
He stood before her and spoke in a gentle and reasonable tone. "I'll tell you the answer to that, ma'am," he said. "I've thought that all out while I've been taking care of you."
She waited anxiously with parted lips.
"Well, ma'am, you see—it's like this. I'm plumb ashamed of myself through and through for the way I have acted toward you. I was a fool to listen to that dern lunatic. She told me—lies about you."
"Miss Blake did?"
"Yes, ma'am." His face crimsoned under her look.
Sheila closed her eyes and frowned. A faint pink stole up into her face. She lifted her lids again and he saw the brightness of anger. "And, of course, you took her lies for the truth?"
"Oh, damn! Now you're mad with me and you won't listen to my plan!"
He was so childish in this outbreak that Sheila was moved to dim amusement. "I'm too beaten to be angry at anything," she said. "Just tell me your plan."
"No," he said sullenly. "I'll wait. I'm scared to tell you now!"
She did not urge him, and it was not till the next morning that he spoke about his plan. She had got out to her chair again and had made a pretense of eating an ill-cooked mess of canned stuff which he had brought to her on a tray. It was after he had taken this breakfast away that he broke out as though his excitement had forced a lock.
"I'm going down to Rusty to-day," he said. His eyes were shining. He looked at her boldly enough now.
"And take me?" Sheila half-started up. "And take me?"
"No, ma'am. You're to stay here safe and snug." She dropped back. "I'll leave everything handy for you. There's enough food here for an army and enough fuel…. You're as safe here as though you were at the foot of God's throne. Don't look like that, girl. I can't take you. You're not strong enough to make the journey in this cold, even on a sled. And we can't"—his voice sunk and his eyes fell—"we can't go on like this, I reckon."
"N-no." Sheila's forehead was puckered. Her fingers trembled on the arms of her chair. "N-no…." Then, with a sort of quaver, she added, "Oh, why can't we go on like this?—till the snow goes and I can travel with you!"
"Because," he said roughly, "we can't. You take my word for it." After a pause he went on in his former decisive tone. "I'll be back in two or three days. I'll fetch the parson."
Sheila sat up straight.
His eyes held hers. "Yes, ma'am. The parson. I'm going to marry you, Sheila."
She repeated this like a lesson. "You are going to marry me…."
"Yes, ma'am. You'll have three days to think it over. If you don't want to marry me when the parson comes, why, you can just go back to Rusty with him." He laughed a little, came over to her, put a hand on each arm of her chair, and bent down. She shrank back before him. His eyes had the glitter of a hawk's, and his red and beautiful lips were soft and eager and—again—a little cruel.
"No," he said, "I won't kiss you till I come back—not even for good-bye. Then you'll know how I feel about you. You'll know that I believe that you're a good girl and, Sheila"—here he seemed to melt and falter before her: he slipped down with one of his graceful Latin movements and hid his forehead on her knees—"Sheila, my darling—that I know you are fit—oh, so much more than fit—to be the mother of my children …"
In half an hour, during which they were both profoundly silent, he came to her again. He was ready for his journey. She was sitting far back in her chair, her slim legs stretched out. She raised inscrutable eyes wide to his.
"Good-bye," he said softly. "It's hard to leave you. Good-bye."
She said good-bye even more softly with no change in her look. And he went out, looking at her over his shoulder till the last second. She heard the voice of his skis, hissing across the hard crust of the snow. She sat there stiff and still till the great, wordless silence settled down again. Then she started up from her chair, ran across to the window, and saw that he was indeed gone. She came storming back and threw herself down upon the hide. She cried like a deserted child.
"Oh, Cosme, I'm afraid to be alone! I'm afraid! Why did I let you go?
Come back! Oh, please come back!"
* * * * *
It was late that night when Hilliard reached Rusty, traveling with all his young strength across the easy, polished surface of the world. He was dog-tired. He went first to the saloon. Then to the post-office. To his astonishment he found a letter. It was postmarked New York and he recognized the small, cramped hand of the family lawyer. He took the letter up to his bedroom in the Lander Hotel and sat on the bed, turning the square envelope about in his hands. At last, he opened it.
"MY DEAR COSME [the lawyer had written … he had known Hilliard as a child], It is my strong hope that this letter will reach you promptly and safely at the address you sent me. Your grandfather's death, on the fifteenth instant, leaves you, as you are no doubt aware, heir to his fortune, reckoned at about thirty millions. If you will wire on receipt of this and follow wire in person as soon as convenient, it will greatly facilitate arrangements. It is extremely important that you should come at once. Every day makes things more complicated … in the management of the estate. I remain, with congratulations,
"Sincerely your friend, …"
The young man sat there, dazed.
He had always known about those millions; the expectation of them had always vaguely dazzled his imagination, tampered more than he was aware with the sincerity of his feelings, with the reality of his life; but now the shower of gold had fallen all about him and his fancy stretched its eyes to take in the immediate glitter.
Why, thought Hilliard, this turns life upside down … I can begin to live … I can go East. He saw that the world and its gifts were as truly his as though he were a fairy prince. A sort of confusion of highly colored pictures danced through his quick and ignorant brain. The blood pounded in his ears. He got up and prowled about the little room. It was oppressively small. He felt caged. The widest prairie would have given him scant elbow-room. He was planning his trip to the East when the thought of Sheila first struck him like a cold wave … or rather it was as if the wave of his selfish excitement had crashed against the wave of his desire for her. All was foam and confusion in his spirit. He was quite incapable of self-sacrifice—a virtue in which his free life and his temperament had given him little training. It was simply a war of impulses. His instinct was to give up nothing—to keep hold of every gift. He wanted, as he had never in his life wanted anything before, to have his fling. He wanted his birthright of experience. He had cut himself off from all the gentle ways of his inheritance and lived like a very Ishmael through no fault of his own. Now, it seemed to him that before he settled down to the soberness of marriage, he must take one hasty, heady, compensating draft of life, of the sort of life he might have had. He would go East, go at once; he would fling himself into a tumultuous bath of pleasure, and then he would come back to Sheila and lay a great gift of gold at her feet. He thought over his plans, reconstructing them. He got pen and ink and wrote a letter to Sheila. He wrote badly—a schoolboy's inexpressive letter. But he told his story and his astounding news and drew a vivid enough picture of the havoc it had wrought in his simplicity. He used a lover's language, but his letter was as cold and lumpish as a golden ingot. And yet the writer was not cold. He was throbbing and distraught, confused and overthrown, a boy of fourteen beside himself at the prospect of a holiday … It was a stolen holiday, to be sure, a sort of truancy from manliness, but none the less intoxicating for that. Cosme's Latin nature was on top; Saxon loyalty and conscience overthrown. He was an egoist to his finger-tips that night. He did not sleep a wink, did not even try, but lay on his back across the bed, hands locked over his hair while "visions of sugar plums danced through his head." In the morning he went down and made his arrangements for Sheila, a little less complete, perhaps, than he had intended, for he met a worthy citizen of Rusty starting up the country with a sled to visit his traps and to him he gave the letter and confided his perplexities. It was a hasty interview, for the stage was about to start.
"My wife will sure take your girl and welcome; don't even have to ask her," the kind-eyed old fellow assured Hilliard. "We'll be glad to have her for a couple of months. She'll like the kids. It'll be home for her. Yes, sir"—he patted the excited traveler on the shoulder—"you pile into the stage and don't you worry any. I'll be up at your place before night and bring the lady down on my sled. Yes, sir. Pile in and don't you worry any."
Cosme wrung his hand, avoided his clear eye, and climbed up beside the driver on the stage. He did not look after the trapper. He stared ahead beyond the horses to the high white hill against a low and heavy sky of clouds.
"There's a big snowstorm a comin' down," growled the driver. "Lucky if we make The Hill to-day. A reg'lar oldtimer it's agoin' to be. And cold—ugh!"
Cosme hardly heard this speech. The gray world was a golden ball for him to spin at his will. Midas had touched the snow. The sleigh started with a jerk and a jingle. In a moment it was running lightly with a crisp, cutting noise. Cosme's thoughts outran it, leaping toward their gaudy goal … a journey out to life and a journey back to love—no wonder his golden eyes shone and his cheeks flushed.
"You look almighty glad to be going out of here," the driver made comment.
Hilliard laughed an explosive and excited laugh. "No almighty gladder than I shall be to be coming back again," he prophesied.
But to prophesy is a mistake. One should leave the future humbly on the knees of the gods. That night, when Hilliard was lying wakeful in his berth listening to the click of rails, the old trapper lay under the driving snow. But he was not wakeful. He slept with no visions of gold or love, a frozen and untroubled sleep. He had caught his foot in a trap, and the blizzard had found him there and had taken mercy on his pain. They did not find his body until spring, and then Cosme's letter to Sheila lay wet and withered in his pocket.