Hidden Creek

by Katharine Newlin Burt

CHAPTER XIV

SHEILA AND THE STARS

Hilliard's first messenger had been hindered by death. Several times it seemed that his second messenger would suffer the same grim prevention. But this second messenger was young and set like steel to his purpose. He left the railroad at Millings, hired a horse, crossed the great plain above the town and braved the Pass, dangerous with overbalanced weights of melting snow. There, on the lonely Hill, he had his first encounter with that Arch-Hinderer. A snow-slide caught him and he left his horse buried, struggling out himself from the cold smother like a maimed insect to lie for hours by the road till breath and life came back to him. He got himself on foot to the nearest ranch, and there he hired a fresh horse and reached Rusty, at the end of the third day.

Rusty was overshadowed by a tragedy. The body of the trapper, Hilliard's first messenger, had been found under the melting snow, a few days before, and to the white-faced young stranger was given that stained and withered letter in which Hilliard had excused and explained his desertion.

Nothing, at Rusty, had been heard of Sheila. No one knew even that she had ever left Miss Blake's ranch—the history of such lonely places is a sealed book from snowfall until spring. Their tragedies are as dumb as the tragedies of animal life. No one had ever connected Sheila's name with Hilliard's. No one knew of his plans for her. The trapper had set off without delay, not even going back to his house, some little distance outside of Rusty, to tell his wife that he would be bringing home a lodger with him. There was, to be sure, at the office a small bundle of letters all in the same hand addressed to Miss Arundel. They had to wait, perforce, till the snow-bound country was released.

"It's not likely even now," sly and twinkling Lander of the hotel told
Dickie, "that you can make it to Miss Blake's place. No, sir, nor to
Hilliard's neither. Hidden Creek's up. She's sure some flood this time of
the year. It's as much as your life's good for, stranger."

But Dickie merely smiled and got for himself a horse that was "good in deep water." And he rode away from Rusty without looking back.

He rode along a lush, wet land of roaring streams, and, on the bank of Hidden Creek, there was a roaring that drowned even the beating of his heart. The flood straddled across his path like Apollyon.

A dozen times the horse refused the ford—at last with a desperate toss of his head he made a plunge for it. Almost at once he was swept from the cobbled bed. He swam sturdily, but the current whirled him down like a straw—Dickie slipped from the saddle on the upper side so that the water pressed him close to the horse, and, even when they both went under, he held to the animal with hands like iron. This saved his life. Five blind, black, gasping minutes later, the horse pulled him up on the farther bank and they stood trembling together, dazed by life and the warmth of the air.

It was growing dark. The heavy shadow of the mountain fell across them and across the swollen yellow river they had just escaped. There began to be a dappling light—the faint shining of that slim young moon. She was just a silver curl there above the edge of the hill. In an hour she would set. Her brightness was as shy and subtle as the brightness of a smile. The messenger pulled his trembling body to the wet saddle and, looking about for landmarks that had been described to him, he found the faint trail to Hilliard's ranch. Presently he made out the low building under its firs. He dropped down, freed the good swimmer and turned him loose, then moved rapidly across the little clearing. It was all so still. Hidden Creek alone made a threatening tumult. Dickie stopped before he came to the door. He stood with his hands clenched at his sides and his chin lifted. He seemed to be speaking to the sky. Then he stumbled to the door and called,

"Sheila—"

She seemed to rise up from the floor and stand before him and put her hands on his arms.

A sort of insanity of joy, of childish excitement came upon Sheila when she had recognized her visitor. She flitted about the room, she laughed, she talked half-wildly—it had been such a long silence—in broken, ejaculatory sentences. It was Dickie's dumbness, as he leaned against the door, looking at her, that sobered her at last. She came close to him again and saw that he was shivering and that streams of water were running from his clothes to the floor.

"Why, Dickie! How wet you are!"—Again she put her hands on his arms—he was indeed drenched. She looked up into his face. It was gray and drawn in the uncertain light.

"That dreadful river! How did you cross it!"

Dickie smiled.

"It would have taken more than a river to stop me," he said in his old, half-demure, half-ironical fashion. And that was all Sheila ever heard of that brief epic of his journey. He drew away from her now and went over to the fire.

"Dickie"—she followed him—"tell me how you came here. How you knew where I was. Wait—I'll get you some of Cosme's clothes—and a cup of tea."

This time, exhausted as he was, Dickie did not fail to stand up to take the cup she brought him. He shook his head at the dry clothes. He didn't want Hilliard's things, thank you; he was drying out nicely by the fire. He wasn't a bit cold. He sat and drank the tea, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. He was, after all, just the same, she decided—only more so. His Dickie-ness had increased a hundredfold. There was still that quaint look of having come in from the fairy doings of a midsummer night. Only, now that his color had come back and the light of her lamp shone on him, he had a firmer and more vital look. His sickly pallor had gone, and the blue marks under his eyes—the eyes were fuller, deeper, more brilliant. He was steadier, firmer. He had definitely shed the pitifulness of his childhood. And Sheila did not remember that his mouth had so sweet a firm line from sensitive end to end of the lips.

Her impatience was driving her heart faster at every beat.

"You must, please, tell me everything now, Dickie," she pleaded, sitting on the arm of Hilliard's second chair. Her cheeks burned; her hair, grown to an awkward length, had come loose from a ribbon and fallen about her face and shoulders. She had made herself a frock of orange-colored cotton stuff—something that Hilliard had bought for curtains. It was a startling color enough, but it could not dim her gypsy beauty of wild dark hair and browned skin with which the misty and spiritual eyes and the slightly straightened and saddened lips made exquisite disharmony.

Dickie looked up at her a minute. He put down his cup and got to his feet. He went to stand by the shelf, half-turned from her.

"Tell me, at least," she begged in a cracked key of suspense, "do you know anything about—Hilliard?"

At that Dickie was vividly a victim of remorse.

"Oh—Sheila—damn! I am a beast. Of course—he's all right. Only, you see, he's been hurt and is in the hospital. That's why I came."

"You?—Hilliard?—Dickie. I can't really understand." She pushed back her hair with the same gesture she had used in the studio when Sylvester Hudson's offer of "a job" had set her brain whirling.

"No, of course. You wouldn't." Dickie spoke slowly again, looking at the rug. "I went East—"

"But—Hilliard?"

He looked up at her and flashed a queer, pained sort of smile. "I am coming to him, Sheila. I've got to tell you some about myself before I get around to him or else you wouldn't savvy—"

"Oh." She couldn't meet the look that went with the queer smile, for it was even queerer and more pained, and was, somehow, too old a look for Dickie. So she said, "Oh," again, childishly, and waited, staring at her fingers.

"I went to New York because I thought I'd find you there, Sheila. Pap's hotel was on fire."

"Did you really burn it down, Dickie?"

He started violently. "I burned it down? Good Lord! No. What made you think such a thing?"

"Never mind. Your father thought so."

Dickie's face flushed. "I suppose he would." He thought it over, then shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't. I don't know how it started … I went to New York and to that place you used to live in—the garret. I had the address from the man who took Pap there."

"The studio? Our studio?—You there, Dickie?"

"Yes, ma'am. I lived there. I thought, at first, you might come … Well"—Dickie hurried as though he wanted to pass quickly over this necessary history of his own experience—"I got a job at a hotel." He smiled faintly. "I was a waiter. One night I went to look at a fire. It was a big fire. I was trying to think out what it was like—you know the way I always did. It used to drive Pap loco—I must have been talking to myself. Anyway, there was a fellow standing near me with a notebook and a pencil and he spoke up suddenly—kind of sharp, and said: 'Say that again, will you?'—He was a newspaper reporter, Sheila … That's how I got into the job. But I'm only telling you because—"

Sheila hit the rung of her chair with an impatient foot. "Oh, Dickie! How silly you are! As if I weren't dying to hear all about it. How did you get 'into the job'? What job?"

"Reporting," said Dickie. He was troubled by this urgency of hers. He began to stammer a little. "Of course, the—the fellow helped me a lot. He got me on the staff. He went round with me. He—he took down what I said and later he—he kind of edited my copy before I handed it in. He—he was almighty good to me. And I—I worked awfully hard. Like Hell. Night classes when I wasn't on night duty, and books. Then, Sheila, I began to get kind of crazy over words." His eyes kindled. And his face. He straightened. He forgot himself, whatever it was that weighed upon him. "Aren't they wonderful? They're like polished stones—each one a different shape and color and feel. You fit 'em this way and that and turn 'em and—all at once, they shine and sing. God! I never knowed what was the matter with me till I began to work with words—and that is work. Sheila! Lord! How you hate them, and love them, and curse them, and worship them. I used to think I wanted whiskey." He laughed scorn at that old desire; then came to self-consciousness again and was shamefaced—"I guess you think I am plumb out of my head," he apologized. "You see, it was because I was a—a reporter, Sheila, that I happened to be there when Hilliard was hurt. I was coming home from the night courts. It was downtown. At a street-corner there was a crowd. Somebody told me; 'Young Hilliard's car ran into a milk cart; turned turtle. He's hurt.' Well, of course, I knew it'd be a good story—all that about Hilliard and his millions and his coming from the West to get his inheritance—it had just come out a couple of months before…."

"His millions?" repeated Sheila. She slipped off the arm of her chair without turning her wide look from Dickie and sat down with an air of deliberate sobriety. "His inheritance?" she repeated.

"Yes, ma'am. That's what took him East. He had news at Rusty. He wrote you a letter and sent it by a man who was to fetch you to Rusty. You were to stay there with his wife till Hilliard would be coming back for you. But, Sheila, the man was caught in a trap and buried by a blizzard. They found him only about a week ago—with Hilliard's letter in his pocket." Dickie fumbled in his own steaming coat. "Here it is. I've got it."

"Don't give it to me yet," she said. "Go on."

"Well," Dickie turned the shriveled and stained paper lightly in restless fingers. "That morning in New York I got up close to the car and had my notebook out. Hilliard was waiting for the ambulance. His ribs were smashed and his arm broken. He was conscious. He was laughing and talking and smoking cigarettes. I asked him some questions and he took a notion to question me. 'You're from the West,' he said; and when I told him 'Millings,' he kind of gasped and sat up. That turned him faint. But when they were carrying him off, he got a-holt of my hand and whispered, 'Come see me at the hospital.' I was willing enough—I went. And they took me to him—private room. And a nice-looking nurse. And flowers. He has lots of friends in New York—Hilliard, you bet you—" It was irony again and Sheila stirred nervously. That changed his tone. He moved abruptly and came and sat down near her, locking his hands and bending his head to study them in the old way. "He found out who I was and he told me about you, Sheila, and, because he was too much hurt to travel or even to write, he asked me to go out and carry a message for him. Nothing would have kept me from going, anyway," Dickie added quaintly. "When I learned what had been happening and how you were left and no letters coming from Rusty to answer his—well, sir, I could hardly sit still to hear about all that, Sheila. But, anyway—" Dickie moved his hands. They sought the arms of his chair and the fingers tightened. He looked past Sheila. "He told me then how it was with you and him. That you were planning to be married. And I promised to find you and tell you what he said."

"What did he say?"

Dickie spoke carefully, using his strange gift. With every word his face grew a trifle whiter, but that had no effect upon his eloquence. He painted a vivid and touching picture of the shattered and wistful youth. He repeated the shaken words of remorse and love. "I want her to come East and marry me. I love her. Tell her I love her. Tell her I can give her everything she wants in all the world. Tell her to come—" And far more skillfully than ever Hilliard himself could have done, Dickie pleaded the intoxication of that sudden shower of gold, the bewildering change in the young waif's life, the necessity he was under to go and see and touch the miracle. There was a long silence after Dickie had delivered himself of the burden of his promise. The fire leapt and crackled on Hilliard's forsaken hearth. It threw shadows and gleams across Dickie's thin, exhausted face and Sheila's inscrutably thoughtful one.

She held out her hand.

"Give me the letters now, Dickie."

He handed her the bundle that had accumulated in Rusty and the little withered one taken from the body of the trapper. Sheila took them and held them on her knee. She pressed both her hands against her eyes; then, leaning toward the fire, she read the letters, beginning with that one that had spent so many months under the dumb snow.

Berg, who had investigated Dickie, leaned against her knee while she read, his eyes fixed upon her. She read and laid the pile by on the table behind her. She sat for a long while, elbows on the arms of her chair, fingers laced beneath her chin. She seemed to be looking at the fire, but she was watching Dickie through her eyelashes. There was no ease in his attitude. He had his arms folded, his hands gripped the damp sleeves of his coat. When she spoke, he jumped as though she had fired a gun.

"It is not true, Dickie, that things were—were that way between Cosme and me … We had not settled to be married …" She paused and saw that he forced himself to sit quiet. "Do you really think," she said, "that the man that wrote those letters, loves me?" Dickie was silent. He would not meet her look. "So you promised Hilliard that you would take me back to marry him?" There was an edge to her voice.

Dickie's face burned cruelly. "No," he said with shortness. "I was going to take you to the train and then come back here. I am going to take up this claim of Hilliard's—he's through with it. He likes the East. You see, Sheila, he's got the whole world to play with. It's quite true." He said this gravely, insistently. "He can give you everything—"

"And you?"

Dickie stared at her with parted lips. He seemed afraid to breathe lest he startle away some hesitant hope. "I?" he whispered.

"I mean—you don't like the East?—You will give up your work?"

"Oh—" He dropped back. The hope had flown and he was able to breathe again, though breathing seemed to hurt. "Yes, ma'am. I'll give up newspaper reporting. I don't like New York."

"But, Dickie—your—words? I'd like to see something you've written."

Dickie's hand went to an inner pocket.

"I wanted you to see this, Sheila," His eyes were lowered to hide a flaming pride. "My poems."

Sheila felt a shock of dread. Dickie's poems! She was afraid to read them. She could not help but think of his life at Millings, of that sordid hotel lobby … Newspaper stories—yes—that was imaginable. But—poetry? Sheila had been brought up on verse. There was hardly a beautiful line that had not sung itself into the fabric of her brain.

"Poems?" she repeated, just a trifle blankly; then, seeing the hurt in his face, about the sensitive and delicate lips, she put out a quick, penitent hand. "Let me see them—at once!"

He handed a few folded papers to her. They were damp. He put his face down to his hands and looked at the floor as though he could not bear to watch her face. Sheila saw that he was shaking. It meant so much to him, then—? She unfolded the papers shrinkingly and read. As she read, the blood rushed to her checks for shame. She ought never to have doubted him. Never after the first look into his face, never after hearing him speak of the "cold, white flame" of an unforgotten winter night. Dickie's words, so greatly loved and groped for, so tirelessly pursued in the face of his world's scorn and injury, came to him, when they did come, on wings. In the four short poems, there was not a word outside of his inner experience, and yet she felt that those words had blown through him mysteriously on a wind—the wind that fans such flame—

"Oh, little song you sang to me
A hundred, hundred days ago,
Oh, little song whose melody
Walks in my heart and stumbles so;
I cannot bear the level nights,
And all the days are over-long,
And all the hours from dark to dark
Turn to a little song—"

"Like the beat of the falling rain,
Until there seems no roof at all,
And my heart is washed with pain—"

"Why is a woman's throat a bird,
White in the thicket of the years?—"

Sheila suddenly thrust back the leaves at him, hid her face and fell to crying bitterly. Dickie let fall his poems; he hovered over her, utterly bewildered, utterly distressed.

"Sheila—h-how could they possibly hurt you so? It was your song—your song—Are you angry with me—? I couldn't help it. It kept singing in me—It—it hurt."

She thrust his hand away.

"Don't be kind to me! Oh—I am ashamed! I've treated you so! And—and snubbed you. And—and condescended to you, Dickie. And shamed you. You—! And you can write such lines—and you are great—you will be very great—a poet! Dickie, why couldn't I see? Father would have seen. Don't touch me, please! I can't bear it. Oh, my dear, you must have been through such long, long misery—there in Millings, behind that desk—all stifled and cramped and shut in. And when I came, I might have helped you. I might have understood … But I hurt you more."

"Please don't, Sheila—it isn't true. Oh,—damn my poems!"

This made her laugh a little, and she got up and dried her eyes and sat before him like a humbled child. It was quite terrible for Dickie. His face was drawn with the discomfort of it. He moved about the room, miserable and restless.

Sheila recovered herself and looked up at him with a sort of wan resolution.

"And you will stay here and work the ranch and write, Dickie?"

"Yes, ma'am." He managed a smile. "If you think a fellow can push a plough and write poetry with the same hand."

"It's been done before. And—and you will send me back to Hilliard and—the good old world?"

Dickie's artificial smile left him. He stood, white and stiff, looking down at her. He tried to speak and put his hand to his throat.

"And I must leave you here," Sheila went on softly, "with my stars?"

She got up and walked over to the door and stood, half-turned from him, her fingers playing with the latch.

Dickie found part of his voice.

"What do you mean, Sheila, about your stars?"

"You told me," she said carefully, "that you would go and work and then come back—But, I suppose—"

That was as far as she got. Dickie flung himself across the room. A chair crashed. He had his arms about her. He was shaking. That pale and tender light was in his face. The whiteness of a full moon, the whiteness of a dawn seemed to fall over Sheila.

"He—he can give you everything—" Dickie said shakily.

"I've been waiting"—she said—"I didn't know it until lately. But I've been waiting, so long now, for—for—" She closed her eyes and lifted her soft sad mouth. It was no longer patient.

That night Dickie and Berg lay together on the hide before the fire, wrapped in a blanket. Dickie did not sleep. He looked through the uncurtained, horizontal window, at the stars.

"You've got everything else, Hilliard," he muttered. "You've got the whole world to play with. After all, it was your own choice. I told you how it was with me. I promised I'd play fair. I did play fair." He sighed deeply and turned with his head on his arm and looked toward the door of the inner room. "It's like sleeping just outside the gate of Heaven, Berg," he said. "I never thought I'd get as close as that—" He listened to the roar of Hidden Creek. "It won't be long, old fellow, before we take her down to Rusty and bring her back." Tears stood on Dickie's eye-lashes. "Then we'll walk straight into Heaven." He played with the dog's rough mane. "She'll keep on looking at the stars," he murmured. "But I'll keep on looking at her—Sheila."

But Sheila, having made her choice, had shut her eyes to the world and to the stars and slept like a good and happy child.