The loneliness of the mountain pass, nearly three thousand feet above sea-level, the rigors of the wind sweeping up it, chill now, June not yet being ten days old, the frowning crags, the remote heads of other tall mountains peeping over their shoulders, the two green dots of girls on either side of a broken man, they took it all in, to the full, most dramatically too–and felt as if they were in the pictures.
A surpassing moving picture reel, more telling than any they had ever witnessed, in which–oh, queer double-headed feeling–they were both actors and spectators!
But pain–pain left no atmosphere of unreality about it for the suffering man, for the sufferer who monopolized both their soft sweaters, while they shivered convulsively, until if it came to a beauty contest between the two now, the old Man Killer, awarding the palm, would not have made it dependent on a mere matter of eyelashes, but on which little nose was the least blue bitten.
Pain released something in that sufferer too,–a fire that was not all wild-fire! For suddenly he dragged Una’s green sweater-roll from under his head and thrust it towards her with an imperious: “Put it on, child!”
“I shan’t!” replied that child of luxury, as arbitrarily, slipping it back under the pallid cheek, above which the stand of agony in the stony eye told that the man was suffering almost to a point of delirium now.
“Who ever thought Una would be such a brick?” Pem nibbled the words between her chattering teeth. “She’s shivering–yes! and frightened and trying to cry–but the brick in her won’t allow it!”
There was no doubt that the uncle of her blood was a brick, too, for he fought the groans reverberating behind his clenched teeth, like a bee in a bottle, only breaking out now and again in a yearning prayer for the coming of his son.
“If he were only here–here!” he moaned; it was evident that the youthful daredevil who liked excitement, but “knew where to stop”, was a tower of strength to the less balanced father.
Pem was longing uncontrollably for his appearance, also–for the rower whom she had robbed of his oars, while the sufferer seemed to find his only relief in talking about him.
“My son and I have been in bad scrapes before among–mountains,” he panted, feverishly. “Once high up in the Canadian Rockies, we missed our guide who had gone back for provisions. Bad plight then, but the boy didn’t ‘cave’! He was only fifteen when he shot his bear in Arizona. He loves the West. But the East’s in his blood. Just went wild over these Berkshire Hills, this spring, over his first sight of mayflowers! They seemed more of a treasure than the fortune he wanted to part with. Hiff-f!”