“I bring you greeting from my brother,” she said. “He has gone on a long journey.”
Henderson started. Through the still room ran the murmur, “Rodney’s outwitted them; he’s played a joke on the rope!” And Judith, his dare-devil sister, had come with his greetings to Henderson, leader of the faction against him! The tide had turned. The applause that is ever the meed of the winner was hers to command. The cattle faction were ready to sing the praises of her splendid audacity. In their hearts they were glad in the thought that Jim had outwitted them.
Miguel’s bow dashed across the strings, and he drew from the little brown fiddle music that again made them merry and glowing. The magic came back to the dance, the blood leaped again with the merry madness, and they swept to the bowing like leaves when the first faint wail of winter cries in the trees.
Hamilton, standing apart with Kitty Colebrooke, had been a dazed witness of the scene. With the rest he had watched the entrance of Judith, had been stunned by the change in her appearance, had seen her triumph and heard the rumor of Jim’s escape, and his heart had warmed with the good word. She had probably managed the plan, and had come to-night, in the joy of her triumph, to hurl in their faces that she had outwitted them. And she had paid the penalty of her courage—her face told that. What a woman she was! Her heart would pay the penalty to the last throb, and yet she could dance with the merriest of them. And as she danced she seemed to Peter Hamilton, in her white draperies, like a cloud of whirling snow-flakes drifting across the silence of the desert night. She was the one woman in all the world for him, though his blind eyes had faced the light for years and had not known it. He had squandered the strength of his youth in the pursuit of a little wax light, and had not marked the serene shining of the moon.
“And a man there was and he made his prayer—” he quoted to himself. Well, thank God that it had not been answered. He would take her away from here. She could take her place in his family and reflect credit on his choice. His family, his friends—he winced at the thought of their possible reception of the news. But Judith’s presence would adjust these difficulties. He would present her to Kitty now, that his old friend might see what manner of woman she was. Kitty, he felt, would be kind in memory of the old days. She would give to them both in friendship what she had denied him in love. And as he warmed to the thought he turned to the woman of his youth. And she read a look in his face that had not been there in a long time. Had he, then, come back to her? Was the distance from bark to shore lessening as the sea of misunderstanding diminished?
“Kitty, we were speaking a moment ago of Miss Rodney. You would like to know her, I’m sure. We’ve been such good friends all these years while you were deciding that what I wanted was not good for us—and deciding wisely, as I know now. Look at her! You’ll understand how she has helped me keep the balance of things. When she’s finished dancing you’ll let me bring her to you, won’t you?”
And Kitty, who had expected much different words, struggled with the meaning of these unexpected ones. The strangeness of the pain bewildered her. Her dazed consciousness refused to accept that Peter was asking permission to present to her a woman whom she thought should not have been permitted to enter her presence. There was about her a white flame of anger that seemed to lick up the red blood in her veins as she turned to answer:
“She is undeniably handsome, Peter, but I do not care to meet your mistress.”
He bowed low to her as Lieutenant Swift, of Fort Washakie, who was of the Wetmore party, came to claim Kitty’s hand for the next dance. Judith and Henderson were leading the last figure, their hands clasped high in an arch through which the dancers trooped in couples. Again and again he tried to catch Judith’s eye, but her glance never once met his. Her great, wide eyes had a far-away look as if they saw some tragedy, the shadow of which would never fall from her. She was, indeed, the tragic muse in her floating white drapery, the tragic muse whose grief is too deep for tears. He watched her as she swept towards him in the figure of the dance, the head thrown back, slightly foreshortened, the mouth smiling with the smile that knows all things, the eyes holy wells of truth. He saw in her something of the tenderness of Eve, for all the blending of the calm modern woman, capable in affairs, equal to emergency. It was like her to contrive her brother’s escape and then to dance with the very men who had knotted the noose for his hanging. Henderson was bowing to her, the dance was over, and the next moment she was alone.
“Is it you, Peter?” She thrust a strand of hair back from her temple. Her eyes rested on him for a moment, then wandered, till in their absent look was the rapt expression of the sleep-walker. The dark-rimmed eyes had in their depths the quiet of a conflagration, and Peter, seeing these things, and knowing the gamut of all her moods, saw that he had been mistaken. She had not come, to dance in triumph, in the face of her brother’s enemies. There was no triumph in her face, but white, consuming despair.