Ewing's Lady

by Harry Leon Wilson

He had left the lady grateful for his going. She was in no mood for that artless lyric chant of youth in which he was so adept. Her brother that morning had accused her of waning enthusiasm for her protégé.

"I believe you're funking, Nell," he had said shrewdly. "You're discovering that mountain slumming is different from the city kind."

But she had protested that no discerning person of ordinary humanity could have done less for the prisoned youth. "Of course"—and she had sighed—"he's a mere bundle of untried eagerness, and we're responsible, in a way, for Heaven knows what, but we had to do it, didn't we?"

"Not 'we' had to! You had to. It's all yours, Nell—the credit and the glory and all the rest. I prefer to get up my own responsibilities, if you don't mind."

"But you agreed with me—you did—you advised when I asked you—-it's perfectly plain—you said, 'Of course!'"—But the train moved off in the midst of his laugh at this, and he had doffed his hat to her with a mocking gesture of freehanded relinquishment.

Now, as she closed her eyes again, her memory dived for some fairy tale or fragment of mythology in which an unsuspecting humanitarian rescued an insignificant woods thing, only to have it change on the instant into a creature troublesome in more ways than one. She was certain some primitive fabulist had foreseen this complication, but her mind was weary and shadowed, and the historic solution evaded her. "Mountain slumming" was truly more exigent than the town sort.

But this reflection aroused a defensive sympathy. The vision of Ewing as he had passed glowed before her shut eyes, the active, square-shouldered, slender figure, garbed in a decently fitting suit of gray (she was glad to remember that), the quick eyes, ardent for life, the thinned, brown face, the usual buoyance held down to an easy self-possession that was new to her, the wild, reliant expectancy of a boy tempered all at once by some heritage of insight. Outwardly, at least, he would fit his new life. So reflecting, she dozed on the look of the man in his eyes, and dreamed that she feared this and fled. But after mad flight through the windings of an interminable corridor she awoke to look squarely into his eyes, to cower instinctively under his touch on her arm. Her waking thought took the thread of the dream, her flight had been vain: he was there, and his voice throbbed fatefully within a secret chamber of her mind, even though his words rang little of portent.

"We are coming to the supper station."

She hastened to freshen herself with cold water, and they were presently eating a hasty meal at a crowded table. Then they were out side by side to pace the platform briskly.

There was green about the station, where water had taught the desert to relent, but beyond this oasis the sand sea stretched far and flat to murky foothills. Above these they could see a range of sharp-peaked mountains that still caught the sunlight, some crystal white with snow, others muffled by clouds turned to iris-hued scarfs of filmiest gauze.