CHAPTER LIX
The Heart Hunger
When the flood rushes over the meadow and tears the surface smoothness, it exposes the unmoved rock foundation; when the fire burns down the flimsy woodwork, it shows in double force the unchanged girders of steel. Storm and fire in double power and heat had been Jim's lot for weeks and, in less degree, for months. Now there was a breathing spell, a time to stop and look at the things beneath.
It was a little thing that gave Belle the real key to a puzzle. It occurred one afternoon in the apartment and Belle saw it from the inner room. Jim thought he was alone; he did not know she had returned. He stood before the picture of Blazing Star, and lifting down the bunch of sage he smelt it a long time, then sighed a little and put it back. Belle saw and understood. The rock foundation was unchanged; he loved and longed for the things he had always loved, and the experiences of these months had but exposed the granite beneath. The thought that had been in her heart since the day he put the ring on her finger, rose up with appalling strength. "He gave up everything for me. I taught him that his duty lay through college and then made him give that up for me." She had been quick enough to mark the little turnings of his spirit toward the West when there were times of relaxation or unguardedness. But she had hitherto set them down to a general wish to visit former scenes rather than to a deep, persistent, fundamental craving.
Many little things which she had noted in him came up before her now, not as accidental fragments, but as surface outcroppings of the deep, continuous, everlasting granite rock, the real longing of his nature; and the strength of its fixity appalled her. As she watched from the outer room on that epochal afternoon, she saw him kneel with his face to the western sky and pray that the way might be opened, that he yet might fulfil the vow he made to devote his life to bearing the message of the Gospel. "Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done."
He sat long facing the glowing West which filled his window and then rose and walked into the inner room. He was greatly astonished to find Belle there, lying on the bed, apparently asleep. He sat down beside her and took her hand. She opened her eyes slowly as though awakening—gentle hypocrite.
"I didn't know you were back," he said. She closed her eyes again as though they were heavy with sleep. It was a small fraud, but it set his mind at ease, as she meant it should.
After a time, she roused herself and began with enthusiasm: "Oh, Jim, I have had such a clear and lovely dream. I thought we were back at Cedar Mountain, riding again in the sagebrush, with the prairie wind blowing through our very souls."
She watched his face eagerly and saw the response she expected. It came in larger measure than she had looked for. "I felt as though I could do anything," she went on, "go anywhere or take any jump; and just as I was riding full tilt at the Yellowbank Canyon, you took me by the hand and held me back; then I awoke and you did have my hand. Isn't it queer the way dreams melt into reality?" She laughed happily and went on as if he were opposing the project: "Why not, Jim? You need a holiday; why shouldn't we go and drink a long deep draught of life in the hills and sage? I know we'll get a clearer vision of life from the top of Cedar Mountain than we can anywhere else."