She sat charily and evidently ill at ease.
“They’ve been eating out there,” he said, “and I thought you might like something, too. There’s some stuff over there in the corner if you’ll wait a moment.”
He went to the corner where the supplies were stored and rifled them for more ship’s biscuit and a wedge of cheese, a delicacy which Fletcher had brought from Hangtown on his last visit, and which he carefully refrained from offering to the hungry emigrants. Coming back with these he drew out another box and spread them on it before her. She looked on in heavy, silent surprise. When he had finished he said:
“Now—fall to. You want food as much as anything.”
She made no effort to eat, and he said, disappointed: “Don’t you want it? Oh, make a try.”
She “made a try,” and bit off a piece of cracker, while he again retired to the supply corner for the tin cup and the whisky. He tried to step softly so as not to wake the child, and there was something ludicrous in the sight of this vast, bearded man, with his mighty, half-bared arms and muscular throat, trying to be noiseless, with as much success as one might expect of a bear.
Suddenly, in the midst of her repast, the woman broke down completely; and, with bowed head, she was shaken by a tempest of some violent emotion. It was not like her tears of an hour before, which seemed merely an indication of physical exhaustion. This was an expression of spiritual tumult. Sobs rent her and she rocked back and forth struggling with some fierce paroxysm.
Moreau, cup in hand, gazed at her in distracted helplessness.
“Come now, eat a little,” he said coaxingly, not knowing what else to suggest, and then getting no response: “Suppose you lie down on the bunk? Rest is what you want.”
“Oh, I can’t go on,” she groaned. “I can’t. How can I? Oh, it’s too much! I can’t go on.”