by Grey, Zane
Later the moon arose and blanched the lofty Rim and the surrounding forest. Black shadows of trees fell across the trail and lane. The air had a delicious mountain coolness, and the silence was impressive. Lucy drank it all in, passionately loath to make the move that must of its very momentum end these wilderness joys for her. But at last she dragged herself away from the moonlit, black-barred trail.
She found Clara and Joe sitting in lover-like, proximity on the rustic bench near the tent. As she approached them she did not espy any sign of their embarrassment.
"Joe. I want to have a serious talk with Clara. Would you oblige me by letting me have her alone for a while?" said Lucy.
"If it's serious, why can't I hear it?" queried Joe.
"I can't discuss a purely family matter before you," returned Lucy. "I'm going away soon. And this matter concerns us--me---and things back home."
"Lucy, I belong to your family now," said Joe, as slowly he disengaged himself from Clara and stood up.
"So you do," replied Lucy, labouring to keep composed. "What of it?"
"I've a hunch you haven't figured us Denmeades," he rejoined rather curtly, and strode away.
"What'd he mean?" asked Lucy, as she stared down at Clara, whose big eyes looked black in the moonlight.
"I'm pretty sure he meant the Denmeades are not fair-weather friends," said Clara thoughtfully. "He's been trying to pump me. Wants to know why you're here and going away--why you look so troubled...I told him, and Edd, too, that I wasn't in your confidence. It's no lie. And here I've been scared stiff at the look of you."
"If you're not more than scared you're lucky. Come in the tent," said Lucy.
Inside, the light was a pale radiance, filtering through the canvas. Lucy shut the door and locked it, poignantly aware of Clara's lingering close to her. Her eyes seemed like great staring gulfs.
Lucy drew a deep breath and cast off the fetters that bound her.
"Clara, do you remember the day of the fight in the school-house--that you were unconscious when Edd arrived?" queried Lucy in low, forceful voice.
"Yes," whispered Clara.
"Then of course you could not have heard what Jim Middleton said. He was about to leap upon me to get the letter I had snatched. He threatened to tear my clothes off. Then he said it was his proof about the baby...Edd ran into the schoolroom just in time to hear the last few words...Later he said he'd heard--and he asked me--whose it was. I told him--mine!"
"Good--God!" cried Clara faintly, and sat down upon the bed as if strength to stand had left her.
"I spoke impulsively, yet it was the same as if I had thought for hours," went on Lucy hurriedly. "I never could have given you away...and I couldn't lie--by saying it--it was somebody's else."
"Lie! It's a--terrible lie!" burst out Clara hoarsely. "It's horrible...You've ruined your good name...You've broken Edd's heart. Now I know what ails him...But I won't stand for your taking my shame--my burden on your shoulders."
"The thing is done," declared Lucy with finality.
"I won't--I won't!" flashed her sister passionately. "What do you take me for? I've done enough."
"Yes, you have. And since you've shirked your responsibilities--cast off your own flesh and blood to be brought up by a greedy, callous woman--I intend to do what is right by that poor, unfortunate child."
Her cutting words wrought Clara into a frenzy of grief, shame, rage and despair. For a while she was beside herself, and Lucy let her rave, sometimes holding her forcibly from wrecking the tent and crying out too loud. She even found a grain of consolation in Clara's breakdown. What manner of woman would her sister have been if she had not shown terrible agitation?
At length Clara became coherent and less violent, and she begged Lucy to abandon this idea. Lucy answered as gently and kindly as was possible for her, under the circumstances, but she could not be changed. Clara was wildly importunate. Her conscience had stricken her as never before. She loved Lucy and could not bear this added catastrophe. Thus it was that Clara's weak though impassioned pleas and Lucy's efforts to be kind yet firm, to control her own temper, now at white heat, finally led to a terrible quarrel. Once before, as girls, they had quarrelled bitterly over an escapade of Clara's. Now, as women, they clinched again in such passion as could only be born of blood ties, of years of sacrifice on the part of one, of realisation of ignominy on the part of the other. And the battle went to Lucy, gradually, because of the might of her will and right of her cause.
"You can't see what you've done," concluded Lucy in spent passion. "You're like our father. Poor weak thing that you are, I can't blame you. It's in the family...If only you'd had the sense and the honour to tell me the truth!--before you married this clean simple-minded boy! Somehow we might have escaped the worst of it. But you married him, you selfish, callous little egotist! And now it's too late. Go on. Find what happiness you can. Be a good wife to this boy and let that make what little amends is possible for you...I'll shoulder your disgrace. I'll be a mother to your child. I'll fight the taint in the Watson blood--the thing that made you what you are. To my mind your failure to make such fight yourself is the crime. I don't hold your love, your weakness against you. But you abandoned part of yourself to go abroad in the world to grow up as you did. To do the same thing over!...You are little, miserable, wicked. But you are my sister--all I have left to love. And I'll do what you cannot!"
Clara fell back upon the pillow, dishevelled, white as death under the pale moonlit tent. Her nerveless hands loosened their clutch on her breast. She shrank as if burned, and her tragic eyes closed to hide her accuser.
"Oh, Lucy--Lucy!" she moaned. "God help me!"
Lucy walked alone in the dark lane, and two hours were but as moments. Upon her return to the tent she found Clara asleep. Lucy did not light the lamp or fully undress, so loath was she to awaken her sister. And, exhausted herself, in a few moments she sank into slumber. Morning found her refreshed in strength and spirit.
She expected an ordeal almost as trying as the conflict of wills the night before--that she would have to face a cringing, miserable girl, wrung by remorse and shame. But Clara awoke in strange mood, proud, tragic-eyed and aloof, reminding Lucy of their youthful days when her sister had been reproved for some misdemeanour. Lucy accepted this as a welcome surprise, and, deep in her own perturbation, she did not dwell seriously upon it. The great fact of her crisis crowded out aught else--she must leave the Denmeade ranch that day, and the wilderness home which was really the only home she had ever loved, Delay would be only a cruelty to herself. Still, the ordeal was past and she had consolation in her victory. At least she would not fail. This was her supreme and last debt to her family.
Never before had the forest been so enchanting as on that summer morning. She punished herself ruthlessly by going to the fragrant glade where she had learned her first lessons from the wilderness. Weeks had passed, yet every pine needle seemed in its place. Woodpeckers hammered on the dead trunks; sap suckers glided head downward round the brown-barked trees; woodland butterflies fluttered across the sunlit spaces; blue jays swooped screechin' from bough to bough; red squirrels tore scratchingly in chattering pursuit of one another. Crows and hawks and eagles sailed the sunny world between the forest tips and the lofty Rim. It was hot in the sun; cool in the shade. The scent of pine was overpoweringly sweet. A hot, drowsy summer breeze stirred through the foliage. And the golden aisle near Lucy's retreat seemed a stream for myriads of Edd's homing bees, humming by to the hives.
Lucy tried to convince herself that all forests possessed the same qualities as this one--that the beauty and charm and strength of it came from her eye and heart--that wherever she went to work she now could take this precious knowledge with her. Trees and creatures of the wild were ministers to a harmony with nature.
A forest was a thing of infinite mystery, a multiple detail, of immeasurable design. Trees, rocks, brush, brook could not explain the home instinct engendered in the wild coverts, the shaded dell
s, the dark caverns, the lonely aisles, the magnificent archways. The green leaves of the trees brought the rain from the sea and created what they lived upon. The crystal springs under the mossy cliffs were born of thirsty foliage, of the pulse in the roots of the trees. These springs were the sources of rivers. They were the fountains of all life. If the forests perished, there would be left only desert, desolate and dead.
Lucy sat under her favourite pine, her back against the rough bark, and she could reach her hand out of the shade into the sun. She thought for what seemed a long time. Then the forgot herself in a moment of abandon. She kissed and smelled the fragrant bark; she crushed handfuls of the brown pine needles, pricking her fingers till they bled; she gathered the pine cones to her, soiling her hands with the hot pitch. And suddenly overcome by these physical sensations, she lifted face and arms to the green canopy above and uttered an inarticulate cry, poignant and wild.
Then a rustling in the brush startled her; and as if in answer to her cry Edd Denmeade strode out of the green wall of thicket, right upon her.
"Reckon you was callin' me," he said, in his cool, easy drawl.
"Oh-h!...You frightened me!" she exclaimed, staring up at him. He wore his bee-hunting garb, ragged from service and redolent of the woods. His brown, brawny shoulder bulged through a rent. In one hand he carried a short-handled axe. His clean-shaven, tanned face shone almost golden, and his clear grey eyes held a singular piercing softness. How tall and lithe and strong he looked! A wild-bee hunter! But that was only a name. Lucy would not have had him different.
"Where'd you come from?" she asked, suddenly realising the imminence of some question that dwarfed all other problems.
"Wal, I trailed you," he replied.
"You saw me come here?...You've been watching me?"
"Shore. I was standin' in that thicket of pines, peepin' through at you."
"Was that--nice of you--Edd?" she faltered.
"Reckon I don't know. All I wanted to find out was how you really felt about leavin' us all--an' my woods."
"Well, did you learn?" she asked, very low.
"I shore did."
"And what is it?"
"Wal, I reckon you feel pretty bad," he answered simply. "First off I thought it was only your old trouble. But after a while I could see you hated to leave our woods. An' shore we're all part of the woods. If I hadn't seen that I'd never have let you know I was there watchin' you."
"Edd, I do hate to leave your woods--and all your folks--and you--more than I can tell," she said sadly.
"Wal, then, what're you leavin' for?" he asked bluntly.
"I must."
"Reckon that don't mean much to me. Why must you?"
"It won't do any good to talk about it. You wouldn't understand--and I'll be upset. Please don't ask me."
"But, Lucy, is it fair not to tell me anythin'?" he queried ponderingly. "You know I love you like you told me a man does when he thinks of a girl before himself."
"Oh no--it isn't!" burst out Lucy poignantly, suddenly, strangely overcome by his unexpected declaration.
"Wal, then, tell me all about it," he entreated.
Lucy stared hard at the clusters of fragrant pine needles she had gathered in her lap. Alarming symptoms in her breast gave her pause. She was not mistress of her emotions. She could be taken unawares. This boy had supreme power over her, if he knew how to employ it. Lucy struggled with a new and untried situation.
"Edd, I owe a duty to--to myself--and to my family," she said, and tried bravely to look at him.
"An' to somebody else?" he demanded, with sudden passion. He dropped on his knees and reached for Lucy. His hands were like iron. They lifted her to her knees and drew her close. He was rough. His clasp hurt. But these things were nothing to the expression she caught in his eyes--a terrible flash that could mean only jealousy.
"Let me go!" she cried wildly, trying to get away. Her gaze drooped. It seemed she had no anger. Her heart swelled as if bursting. Weakness of will and muscle attacked her.
"Be still an' listen," he ordered, shaking her. He need not have employed violence. "Reckon you've had your own way too much...I lied to you about how I killed that cowboy."
"Oh, Edd--then it wasn't an accident?" cried Lucy, sinking limp against him. All force within her seemed to coalesce.
"It shore wasn't," he replied grimly. "But I let you an' everybody think so. That damned skunk! He was tryin' his best to murder me. I had no gun...I told him I wouldn't hurt him...Then what'd he do? He was cunnin' as hell. He whispered things--hissed them at me like a snake--vile words about you--what you were. It was a trick. Shore he meant to surprise me--make me lose my nerve...so he could get the gun. An' all the time he pulled only the harder. He could feel I loved you. An' his trick near worked. But I seen through it--an I turned the gun against him."
"Oh, my God! you killed him--intentionally!" exclaimed Lucy.
"Yes. An' it wasn't self-defence. I killed him because of what he called you."
"Me!...Oh, of course," cried Lucy hysterically. A deadly sweetness of emotion was fast taking the remnant of her sense and strength. In another moment she would betray herself--her love, bursting at its dam--and what was infinitely worse, her sister.
"Lucy, it don't make no difference what that cowboy said--even if it was true," he went on, now huskily. "But--were you his wife or anybody's?"
"No!" flashed Lucy passionately, and she spoke the truth in a fierce pride that had nothing to do with her situation, or the duty she had assumed.
"Aw--now!" he panted, and let go of her. Rising, he seemed to be throwing off an evil spell.
Lucy fell back against the pine tree, unable even to attempt to fly from him. Staring at Edd, she yet saw the green and blue canopy overhead, and the golden gleam of the great wall. Was that the summer wind thundering in her ears? How strangely Edd's grimness had fled; Then--there he was looming over her again--eager now, rapt with some overwhelming thought. He fell beside her, close, and took her hand in an action that was a caress.
"Lucy--will you let me talk--an' listen close?" he asked, in a tone she had never heard.
She could not see his face now and dared not move.
"Yes," she whispered, her head sinking a little, drooping away from his eyes.
"Wal, it all come to me like lightnin'," he began, in a swift, full voice, singularly rich. And he smoothed her hand as if to soothe a child. "I've saved up near a thousand dollars. Reckon it's not much, but it'll help us start. An' I can work at anythin'. Shore you must have a little money, too...Wal, we'll get your baby an' then go far off some place where nobody knows you, same as when you come here. We'll work an' make a home for it. Ever since you told me I've been findin' out I was goin' to love your baby...It'll be the same as if it was mine. We can come back here to live, after a few years. I'd hate never to come back. I've set my heart on that mesa homestead...Wal, no one will ever know. I'll forget your--your trouble, an' so will you. I don't want to know any more than you've told me. I don't hold that against you. It might have happened to me. But for you it would have happened to my sister Mertie...Life is a good deal like bee-huntin'. You get stung a lot. But the honey is only the sweeter...All this seems to have come round for the best, an' I'm not sorry, if only I can make you happy."
Lucy sac as if in a vice, shocked through and through with some tremendous current.
"Edd Denmeade," she whispered, "are you asking me--to--to marry you?"
"I'm more than askin', Lucy darlin'."
"After what I confessed?" she added unbelievingly.
"Shore. But for that I'd never had the courage to ask again...I've come to hope maybe you'll love me some day."
This moment seemed the climax of the strain under which Lucy had long kept up. It had the shocking power of complete surprise and unhoped-for rapture. It quite broke down her weakened reserve.
"I--love you now--you big--big--" she burst out, choking at the last, and blinded by tears she turned her face to Edd's an
d, kissing his cheek, she sank on his shoulder. But she was not so close to fainting that she failed to feel the effect of her declaration upon him. He gave a wild start, and for a second Lucy felt as if she were in the arms of a giant. Then he let go of her, and sat rigidly against the tree, supporting her head on his shoulder. She could hear the thump of his heart. Backwoodsman though he was, he divined that this was not the time to forget her surrender and her weakness. In the quiet of the succeeding moments Lucy came wholly into a realisation of the splendour of her love.
It was late in the day when they returned to the clearing. Hours had flown on the wings of happiness and the thrill of plans. Lucy forgot the dark shadow. And not until they emerged from the forest to see Clara standing in the tent door, with intent gaze upon them, did Lucy remember the bitter drops in her cup. Clara beckoned imperiously, with something in her look or action that struck Lucy singularly. She let go of Edd's hand, which she had been holding almost unconsciously.
"Wal, I reckon your sharp-eyed sister is on to us," drawled Edd.
"It seems so. But, Edd--she'll be glad, I know."
"Shore. An' so will Joe an' all the Denmeades. It's a mighty good day for us."
"The good fortune is all on my side," whispered Lucy, as they approached the tent.
Clara stood on the threshold, holding the door wide. Her face had the pearly pallor and her eyes the purple blackness usual to them in moments of agitation. She did not seem a girl any longer. Her beauty was something to strike the heart.
"Lucy--come in--you and your gentleman friend," she said, her voice trembling with emotion. Yet there was a faint note of pride or mockery of self or of them in it.
"Wal, Clara, you may as well kiss me an' be done with it," drawled Edd, as he entered behind Lucy. "For you're goin' to be my sister two ways."