Unheeding, she passed on down the trail, and the underbrush hid her from his sight.
CHAPTER IV
The burden upon the man’s soul grew heavier with every step homeward. He was going to meet his wife, the woman he had wronged, the woman who was to him the very centre of his being, the dearest of all he possessed in life, without whose respect and love life would lose its meaning and value. As to the Indian woman and her wrong, truth to tell, though he pitied her, he felt no very acute concern. True enough, the astonishing advance she had made during the past five years in the white man’s civilisation and culture had given her a new place in his consideration. She was no longer an ignorant squaw whose rights and wrongs could be estimated in terms purely materialistic. She had developed a mind and a soul. The memory of that appeal of hers for her son, for his son, calm, dignified, pungent, still shook him. But his chief concern now was how to bury this whole wretched business from the knowledge of his wife beyond possibility of resurrection.
The picture of his wife’s face following the possible revelation of his sin halted him in his stride and wrung from his soul’s depths a groan.
“My God! My God!” he cried aloud, lifting his hands heavenward. “Let that never come! Let that never come!”
Sooner death to her, to him, and, as for the Indian and her child, to them death a thousand times. He wiped the sweat from his face and stood gazing about him. How changed the whole world was within a brief two hours’ space! The same mountains, trees, river, sun and sky, yet to him all seemed flooded with a new light, lurid and awesome. Yet it was not his sin, but the dread terror of detection, of its consequences, that had wrought this change in his world. He could not keep his wife’s face out of his mind. Her dark blue reproachful eyes, sad and horror-stricken, were holding him in relentless grip. He dreaded facing her. His artistic and highly emotional temperament, his power of vivid imagination, gave living reality to the picture. He flung his hands again high above his head.
“God in Heaven, this is madness!” he exclaimed. “Madness, sheer, fool madness! She will never know. How can she know?”
He shivered and stamped, as if smitten with mid-winter cold. He glanced about him. A warm and sunny ledge of rock carpeted with moss and pine needles invited him. He threw himself down upon it, pulled out his pipe, deliberately filled it from his pouch and struck a match. The flame shook in his fingers. He cursed himself for a fool. He was acting like a frightened child. He raged at himself and his weak folly. He must take a grip of himself. His pipe helped him to a more normal mood. The mere performance of the familiar physical act of sucking in and exhaling the smoke helped him. He held up his hand before him. The discovery that his hand was no longer shaking helped him. He stretched himself at full length upon the sunny ledge and let his eyes wander over the scene spread out before him. Unconsciously, the wild, wide, lonely beauty of the landscape reached his soul and quieted him. His artist’s eye began to select, group, compose into a picture, the elements in this wonder world before him. The very tensity of his nervous condition aided him. His mind was working with swift constructive power.
“Lord! What a light! What colour!” he said, as his eye rested upon the rich deep purple in the hollows of the hills on the far side of the valley. He longed for his brushes. His fingers dived into the pocket of his jacket for his sketch book, without which he never walked abroad. In another moment he was deep in his work, sketching with swift, sure fingers, filling in the outlines, noting the colours, the lights, the shadows, the fall of foothills from the great mountain peaks, the serried lines of the pines at the horizon, the broad silver ribbon of the river, the tawny gold of the grassy levels. He had an hour of absorbing delight in his work.
“There! Never did anything finer!” he exulted. He rapidly reviewed his work, re-touching, emphasising, correcting.