She cut wood and washed clothes, pulverized nuts and acorns for bread, cooked their meals, and watched the snow pile up about the Cave of Hypocritical Frogs, and when there was nothing to do she left her charge and sought the waterfall, unable to bear the pitiable sight of him. Not that there was solace in the roaring and croaking and murmuring of the water. Its icy sheets depressed her immeasurably. But below it played and sang the water ouzel, happy, bobbing up and down and nodding sidewise, singing as if there were no terrors upon the earth, while over him and about him dashed the freezing spray. He who could sing at the top of his voice and dance throughout days that were dull and dreary, in the very teeth of the raging waters, gave solace.
CHAPTER XXVII
ADRIFT ON LOST RIVER
HERE sat Charmian abreast the pounding waters, sobbing at times as if her heart would break, while up at the cave lolled the drivelling thing that once had been a man, young and handsome and pulsing with the thrill of life. The little water ouzel bowed and bobbed to her, perched on a stone in the frothy pool below. He was like a boy stripped for the first spring plunge into his favourite swimming hole, but jouncing on the spring-board, shivering in anticipation of the chilling dive, and thinking up excuses to postpone it. Yet always he dived, broke the surface of the water again, and perched himself once more on his aquatic throne. Here he bobbed his head to the girl and danced about, then lifted a voice attuned to the song of the dashing waters, but merging trills of gladness with their funeral dirge. He was always there; he never failed her. He feared her not at all, neither did he court her. The only jarring element in their companionship was his complete indifference to her presence. But she forgave him this when he sent forth his fluty notes in defiance of ice and snow and driving spray. Here she sat and wept, ofttimes trembling from the cold, and prayed for relief from this hideous thing that had come upon her.
Her brief dream of love had faded. At first she had striven bravely to keep the fires burning, devoting herself to sacrifices for him, trying to remember him as he had been only a few short days before. At times she hated herself for what she considered her inconstancy and lack of character. But her dream of love had gone—and now she realized that love never had existed. He had swept her off her feet, this once handsome, careless boy, and her youth had responded to his. Now she had time to think, and she knew that she had dreamed.
She remembered now how she had tried to draw him into serious discussion of various topics that interested her, and should have interested him, and how persistently he had evaded them. He had been a student of the law, but even upon that topic she had been unable to draw a thoughtful word from him. Light-hearted, boyish, shallow-minded, care-free he had always been, with never a thought for the morrow, his distant future, or hers. How bitterly she recalled all this now! How blind she had been! Never could they have been happy together. She had not loved Andy Jerome—the female in her had succumbed to the male attraction that his vigorous manhood offered; she had surrendered to that alone.
Dr. Shonto had been right. Dr. Shonto was always right. Andy Jerome was not for her. Now she saw that, with this dreadful thing constantly threatening him, his family had not urged him to mental performances which would strengthen his mind and character. Out of love for him they had let him go his way, well supplied with money, and with nothing to bother him. His schooling, she imagined, had been a mere pretence, designed to delude him and his friends into believing he was normal. In the end he would have turned out a failure, perhaps, but he would not have been the first failure in a rich man’s family. Nothing would have come of it, and he would have lived his life in blissful ignorance of the real cause of his failure. Dr. Inman Shonto, she believed, had counselled them to do this.
She was thinking of Inman Shonto hourly these days—of his grave, kindly smile, his tolerance of human shortcomings, his knowledge, success, liberal ideas, and lofty idealism. She never once thought of his ugliness of face. In her picture of him she saw only the magnetic smile and the power of that face.
It had occurred to her once—just once—that Shonto might have prolonged his return so that Andy would run out of his medicine, when he would be revealed to her in all his monstrousness. But she had put the ungenerous thought behind her instantly. Dr. Shonto never would stoop to such a thing as that.
No, something serious had detained him. He would come to her soon, if it was possible for an aeroplane to cope successfully with the mountain blizzards that raged over the Valley of Arcana. He would return to her. She heard it in the unceasing song of the little water ouzel.
She had lost track of the days. Andy now was helpless, insensible to cold and pain. At night she helped him to his blankets, made him lie down, and wrapped him up. She slept in the outer chamber of the cave now—slept fitfully, for she must needs be up every other hour to replenish the fire, lest her charge throw off his covering and freeze to death. Also her own covering was insufficient, for it was growing colder, and but for the cave and the leaping fire she surely would have suffered from the steadily lowering temperature.