It was on that very afternoon when Sheila rode down the trail with her flowers tied before her on the saddle, singing to keep up her heart. It was that very afternoon when she had cried out half-consciously for "Dickie—Dickie—Dickie"—and now it was, as though the cry had traveled, that a memory of her leapt upon his mind; a memory of Sheila singing. She had come into the chocolate-colored lobby from one of her rides with Jim Greely. She had held a handful of cactus flowers. She had stopped over there by one of the windows to put them in a glass. And to show Dickie, a prisoner at his desk, that she did not consider his presence—it was during the period of their estrangement—she had sung softly as a girl sings when she knows herself to be alone: a little tender, sad chanting song, that seemed made to fit her mouth. The pain her singing had given him that afternoon had cut a picture of her on Dickie's brain. Just because he had tried so hard not to look at her. Now it jumped out at him against his closed, wet lids. The very motions of her mouth came back, the positive dear curve of her chin, the throat there slim against the light. Hard work had driven her image a little from his mind lately; it returned now to revenge his self-absorption—returned with a song.
Dickie got up and wandered about the room. He tried to hum the air, but his throat contracted. He tried to whistle, but his lips turned stiff. He bent over his book—no use, she still sang. All night he was tormented by that chanting, hurting song. He sobbed with the hurt of it. He tossed about on his bed. He could not but remember how little she had loved him. All at once there came to him a mysterious and beautiful release. It seemed that the cool spirit, detached, winged, drew him to itself or became itself entirely possessed of him. He was taken out of his pain and yet he understood it. And he began suddenly, easily, to put it into words. The misery was ecstasy, the hurt was inspiration, the song sang sweetly as though it had been sung to soothe and not to make him suffer.
"Oh, little song you sang to me"—
Ah, yes, at heart she had been singing to him—
"A hundred, hundred days ago,
Oh, little song, whose melody
Walks in my heart and stumbles so;
I cannot bear the level nights,
And all the days are over-long,
And all the hours from dark to dark
Turn to a little song …"
Dickie, not knowing how he got there, was at his table again. He was writing. He was happy beyond any conception he had ever had of happiness. That there was agony in his happiness only intensified it. The leader of the wolf-pack, beast with a god's face, the noblest of man's desires, that passionate and humble craving for beauty, had him by the throat.
So it was that Dickie wrote his first poem.
CHAPTER X
WINTER
Winter snapped at Hidden Creek as a wolf snaps, but held its grip as a bulldog holds his. There came a few November days when all the air and sky and tree-tops were filled with summer again, but the snow that had poured itself down so steadily in that October storm did not give way. It sank a trifle at noon and covered itself at night with a glare of ice. It was impossible to go anywhere except on snow-shoes. Sheila quickly learned the trick and plodded with bent knees, limber ankles, and wide-apart feet through the winter miracle of the woods. It was another revelation of pure beauty, but her heart was too sore to hold the splendor as it had held the gentler beauty of summer and autumn. Besides, little by little she was aware of a vague, encompassing uneasiness. Since the winter jaws had snapped them in, setting its teeth between them and all other life, Miss Blake had subtly and gradually changed. It was as though her stature had increased, her color deepened. Sometimes to Sheila that square, strong body seemed to fill the world. She was more and more masterful, quicker with her orders, charier of her smiles, shorter of speech and temper. Her eyes seemed to grow redder, the sparks closer to flame, as though the intense cold fanned them.