Moccasins?—She remembered when last she had moccasins on her feet—the day she rode the horse at the quick-set hedge, and nearly lost her life. How very distant that all was, and yet how near too! Suddenly she remembered also why she took that mad ride, and her heart hardened a little.
“You have been kind to my father since I left?” she asked.
He met her eyes steadily. “No, not always; not more than I have been kind to you. But at the last, yes.” Suddenly his voice became intensely direct and honest. “Lali,” he continued, “there is much that I want to say to you.” She waved her hand in a wearied fashion. “I want to tell you that I would do the hardest penance if I could wipe out these last four years.”
“Penance?” she said dreamily—“penance? What guarantee of happiness would that be? One would not wish another to do penance if—”
She paused.
“I understand,” he said—“if one cared—if one loved. Yes, I understand. But that does not alter the force or meaning of the wish. I swear to you that I repent with all my heart—the first wrong to you, the long absence—the neglect—everything.”
She turned slowly to him. “Everything-Everything?” she repeated after him. “Do you understand what that means? Do you know a woman’s heart? No. Do you know what a shameful neglect is at the most pitiful time in your life? No. How can a man know! He has a thousand things—the woman has nothing, nothing at all except the refuge of home, that for which she gave up everything!”
Presently she broke off, and something sprang up and caught her in the throat. Years of indignation were at work in her. “I have had a home,” she said, in a low, thrilling voice—“a good home; but what did that cost you? Not one honest sentiment of pity, kindness, or solicitude. You clothed me, fed me, abandoned me, as—how can one say it? Do I not know, if coming back you had found me as you expected to find me, what the result would have been? Do I not know? You would have endured me if I did not thrust myself upon you, for you have after all a sense of legal duty, a kind of stubborn honour. But you would have made my life such that some day one or both of us would have died suddenly. For”—she looked him with a hot clearness in the eyes—“for there is just so much that a woman can bear. I wish this talk had not come now, but, since it has come, it is better to speak plainly. You see, you misunderstand. A heathen has a heart as another—has a life to be spoiled or made happy as another. Had there been one honest passion in your treatment of me—in your marrying me—there would be something on which to base mutual respect, which is more or less necessary when one is expected to love. But—but I will not speak more of it, for it chokes me, the insult to me, not as I was, but as I am. Then it would probably have driven me mad, if I had known; now it eats into my life like rust.”
He made a motion as if to take her hands, but lifting them away quietly she said: “You forget that there are others present, as well as the fact that we can talk better without demonstration.”
He was about to speak, but she stopped him. “No, wait,” she said; “for I want to say a little more. I was only an Indian girl, but you must remember that I had also in my veins good white blood, Scotch blood. Perhaps it was that which drew me to you then—for Lali the Indian girl loved you. Life had been to me pleasant enough—without care, without misery, open, strong and free; our people were not as those others which had learned the white man’s vices. We loved the hunt, the camp-fires, the sacred feasts, the legends of the Mighty Men; and the earth was a good friend, whom we knew as the child knows its mother.”