Ewing's Lady

by Harry Leon Wilson

She had caused a man to be put to death; a vicious, mischievous fool, it was true, but still a man. That was sad and horrible. But of another man, one she had thought to guard and cherish and care for in all of woman's ways—she had made a murderer, and she had murdered him. For she knew that Ewing must die. It was as if he were already dead. Perhaps out there in the agonized void of the world he had already killed himself, his work being done. Or, if not, they would kill him. She felt a blind, hollow sickness, as if her heart had broken and was bleeding away inside her. She had made her beloved a slayer and had slain him. She could not live with it. She hungered for her own death with intolerable desire.

She arose with a despair-cleared mind the next morning, her resolve made. Only the smaller details were to be worked out. She walked by the lake, resolving these. Once she wept, from the very abundance and color of life about her. Life was so full, and she had taken it from him in his splendid youth. But she would not shirk the penalty of her blood-guiltiness. She looked out to the hills beyond the valley that fell away from the lake, studying headland and wooded slope and cañon opening, choked with green. Some spot far out there would be secret and gracious to her—welcome her with a finger on its lips—take her and keep. Death, to her, was no longer terrible. There had been a long intimacy with it. She rushed to the idea of it as to a home—a benignant succor from the unendurable thought.

Back in the cabin she lay counting the minutes as they rushed—thinking and counting. She must not let herself be prisoned by a mere body that exulted blindly, basely, in its vigor. She could make everything right. She could conform to the law of a life for a life.

"The hardest thing," she murmured. "I must do the hardest thing." That would be her expiation, though not a sufficing one; she recognized that. She longed for it too avidly, for the relief from thought, from torturing visions. Yet it was formally perfect as a punishment, according to the world's standards. She would be her own executioner, and it would satisfy the world if the world knew. And despite her longing for release, it was still, she thought, the hardest thing, although it saved—saved her from that old man and that young man slain: that young beloved one, lying dead with blood upon his hands. Poor sacrificed, poor betrayed, poor ruined one! Again, the hollow sickness, as if her heart were bleeding away inside her. To expiate—to do the hardest thing. She came back to that always. It was the hardest thing, although it saved.

When her brother rode up in the afternoon, she instantly saw her plan completed. There came an hour in which she walked and talked and laughed in a waking dream, without sensation, except as she could imagine it felt by a creature she seemed to watch from afar, a creature who had looked strangely like herself. She saw this woman greet the others and sit at table with them to laugh and talk with acceptable ease. Their voices were soundless as voices in a dream, their shapes and flittings as illogical. So benumbed was her spirit that she suffered little even at the moment of hurried parting from Virginia. Her rôle was played with flawless detachment. She studied herself coolly and guarded against wrong speeches.

"I shall go home with Clarence; I haven't seen that magnificent ranch yet," she remarked carelessly, and Virginia and her brother had applauded this.

"I'll show you a ranch that is a ranch," Bartell had answered.

Ben led Cooney around, saddled. She kissed Virginia lightly and was on the little horse. She turned to wave gayly as she fell in ahead of Bartell on the trail to the lake.

The moon had sailed up over the eastern hills with the going down of the sun, and the shadows were sharply cut in its light. They reined in at the lake, lingering there a moment in its charm. Under the slanting moon rays it shone like another moon, radiantly silver in its setting of cloudlike leafage. She drew a long breath as her brother started on, and called to him.

"Clarence!" He pulled up his horse, looking back at her.