‘No use starting up river,’ he pointed out. ‘All our gear is gone, and we’ll have to head downstream tomorrow, first thing, anyway. We could start tonight, but I’d as soon wait for Leick and Mrs. Harland. They’ll be coming, soon’s they can.’ Swirling smoke set him coughing, and the ground on which they stood was hot through their shoes, so that now and then they stepped into the water again. ‘We’ll be warm enough here,’ he promised grimly.
Harland asked: ‘Any chance camp wasn’t hit?’
‘Not a chance,’ Sime confessed. ‘Anyway, we can’t get to it.’
They decided to keep a watch for Leick and Ellen, in case the others elected to travel during the night; and soon after dusk the gravel on the bar had sufficiently cooled so that they could lie down in some comfort. Sime found a rift of sand tossed up by the flood currents in the spring, and in this he and Harland scooped a bed for Ruth, with deeper holes to receive her hips and shoulders; and when she relaxed in semi-comfort there, Harland lay down beside her. After a while she slept, deeply and dreamlessly in the completeness of her weariness; but once during the night she roused enough to know that she was cold, and she pressed nearer Harland, and in his sleep his arm came around her, drawing her body against his.
She woke to full daylight, and looked up to see Ellen standing over her, looking down at her with steely eyes. Ruth cried gladly: ‘Oh Ellen, darling!’ She moved, sitting up, thrusting aside Harland’s arm which still encircled her. Harland did not stir.
Ellen laughed in a brittle way. ‘You’d better wake Richard, too,’ she said. Ruth’s gladness faded in puzzled wonder at her tone.
10
HARLAND had felt no actual fear for Ellen, sure that Leick would keep her safe. These two had in fact been able to outrun the fire, and to camp at last, though without tent or blankets, beyond its flank. Leick reported that everything they owned — tents, food, gear — was destroyed, so there was left for them nothing but a return to civilization. A long day’s journey down river would bring them to the railroad; and after breakfast — Leick had saved a salmon killed by Ellen before the fire drove them into flight — they started downstream.
For seven or eight miles they ran through the burnt land, and thinning smoke clouds made them cough, and along the shore standing trees still burned feebly, flames like mice gnawing at their blackened trunks. Upon the charred slopes, great boulders that had been cracked and bleached by the fierce heat shone white as bones. The level tract which Harland and Ruth had happily explored was a waste of smoking embers, pricked over with blackened tree trunks as a cushion is pricked with scattered pins; and Harland saw it with a surprising sadness, astonished to discover how strongly that dream of turning it into a forest paradise had attracted him.
The canoes travelled in line, following the most useful current, and little conversation passed between them. Tom Pickett’s high spirits had survived the ordeal — once he said that a hill beside the river, where the fire had unaccountably left some scattered patches of timber untouched, looked like a man after his wife had cut his hair — and he was full of words; but Harland answered him little or not at all. He sat low in his seat, relaxed in a stupor of fatigue, dreading to return to the world again, dreading the necessity of resuming his life with Ellen, thinking that just as the fire had turned the wilderness into a desert, so was his life become a hopeless waste.
The death of his unborn son had been the end of any lingering tenderness in him toward Ellen. He might never of his own accord have blamed her for that second tragedy; but Mrs. Huston, the rattle-tongued old woman who had loved him since the days when as a child he came teasing for forbidden goodies in her pantry, in her sorrow at his grief viciously declared that Ellen had never wanted the baby, had tried to be rid of it.
‘Haven’t I seen her hating it; yes, and pounding at it too, when she didn’t know I was about,’ she told him hotly. ‘And walking herself into a lather, and running up and down the stairs when you weren’t at home, and painting all day in the pantry, as if any fool didn’t know the smell of turpentine was bad! Yes, and reaching up, and hanging from doorjambs, and dosing herself with castor oil, and I don’t know what all. Walk in her sleep, my foot! You can’t tell me!’
Harland hushed her, sure she spoke not from any real conviction but out of her love for him and her grief at his bereavement. But when on their return to Boston she took Ellen jealously under her wing — though he knew this was no more than the instinctive tenderness to which weakness in others always could provoke her — he felt an unreasonable resentment. The newspapers had reported their adventure, and as she opened the door of the Chestnut Street house to them Mrs. Huston swept Ellen into her capacious arms.
‘My dear, my dear,’ she cried. ‘You must just be worn to a frazzle, to be sure! You come right along till I put you to bed!’ She glared at Harland. ‘I said all the time no one with any sense would take you off into the woods, as weak as you were, to sleep on the ground with snakes and frogs and I don’t know what all!’
Harland protested: ‘Nonsense! We’d have been fine if it hadn’t been for the fire.’
‘Fire indeed!’ she retorted. ‘If it hadn’t been a fire it would have been something else!’
He saw the twinkling mirth in Ellen’s eyes, and she said in an elaborately helpless tone: ‘You’re so good to me, Mrs. Huston! I don’t think I could even get my clothes off without you to help me!’ They disappeared together, leaving Harland feeling angrily at fault and ashamed.
Ellen kept her bed for three days, and by allowing the older woman to serve her won Mrs. Huston completely. When Harland moved around the house, Mrs. Huston was apt to hush him with fierce whispers, bidding him let the poor dear sleep while she could; but if he went out, she reproached him as bitterly, accusing him of heartlessness in thus going off to have his own good times while his sweet wife lay weak and suffering! He saw a certain humor in the situation, but he was not amused. Rather he was angered by Ellen’s willingness to play invalid in order to win this simple loyalty.
When in the end he told her so, the result was to precipitate the utterance, by both of them, of words Harland had hoped would never be spoken. The third evening after their homecoming, Ellen smilingly insisted that he have his dinner on a card table in her room while she had hers in bed. Mrs. Huston served them, bustling contentedly up the stairs with laden trays, bidding Ellen ring if there was anything else she wanted. When they were above, Ellen said with mischievous delight:
‘She’s having the best time, taking care of me.’
‘Why do you let her?’
‘Why not, Richard?’ she drawled teasingly. ‘You surely don’t want me going up and down stairs in my weakened condition!’
‘You’re a damned sight better able to take care of her than she is to wait on you! The poor old thing can’t climb the stairs without panting like a horse with the heaves.’ He met her eyes. ‘And you’re perfectly strong and well. You’re simply imposing on her.’
She nodded. ‘I know it,’ she assented. Her eyes were mocking. ‘ But she loves it!’
‘I’m going to put a stop to it!’
Ellen shook her head. ‘Better not try, darling. She already thinks you’re rather a brute, you know. You don’t want her to think you a monster!’ He looked at her with hard appraisal, and she said: ‘There, let’s change the subject. How’s work going, Richard?’
‘I haven’t written a line since — in months.’
‘Really? Oh well, you’ll get back into your stride when we settle down to normal again.’ And she said smilingly: ‘When I’m well enough, we’ll have your bed put back in here, darling.’ They had had separate rooms for long now. ‘You need me, Richard,’ she assured him. ‘I want to help you, so much.’
Her tone was light, so that he might if he chose read in it mockery; yet he felt too that she was pleading with him, begging him to help her rebuild their broken lives. He took a cigarette, uncertain what to say, wishing to cry out the truth, to tell her tha
t even to sit near her now was almost intolerable. But Mrs. Huston’s return to clear away their used dishes made it impossible for him to speak; and in the old woman’s presence Ellen asked, politely making conversation, what he had done that day, where he had gone.
‘You missed seeing Ruth,’ she told him. ‘She came in for tea. She’s planning to go to Bar Harbor for August and September. She’s found an apartment, and she’s getting it settled before she goes away.’ He made no comment and she added: ‘Or perhaps you’ve seen it?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. I went to look at it before she decided. She wanted me to pass judgment on it.’
‘She didn’t tell me that,’ Ellen remarked in a level tone. ‘Nor consult me, nor ask my opinion.’
Mrs. Huston had left them alone again, and he rose. ‘Well, you’ll be wanting to settle down for the night,’ he said. ‘And I promised to sit in on a bridge game. See you in the morning.’
‘Will you look in when you come home?’
‘Oh, I may be late,’ he said evasively, moving toward the door.
She extended her arms to him. ‘Then — kiss me good night,’ she suggested, and he returned toward her, hating this necessity he could not easily avoid. When he leaned over her, her arms locked around his neck, and she insisted: ‘Put your arms around me, Richard! Lift me up! Hold me close!’ His posture was strained and awkward, and her arms, tugging his head down, made his neck muscles ache. She whispered: ‘Remember that night you first kissed me, when we’d come through the canyon, Richard?’ He did not answer, and she insisted: ‘Do you? Do you remember?’
‘Of course!’
‘Remember I told you I’d never let you go?’ In sudden passion her arms tightened and her lips pressed his, and he was pulled off balance and down atop her, entangled in her arms, till the sense of being trapped ran through him like fire through dry grass, and in a rough, desperate haste he wrestled free and backed away, angry and revolted and half-afraid.
She lay relaxed, with half-closed eyes, smiling up at him. ‘Scared, darling?’ she murmured. ‘It’s all right! I’ll have your bed moved back in here tomorrow.’
He cried out hoarsely: ‘No, don’t do that! It’s no use, Ellen. Don’t do it!’
‘I want you to come back to me.’
‘I’m not coming back to you!’ That shrinking terror which had run through him a moment ago was in his tones now. ‘Never!’ he cried, his voice almost shrill.
Still lying half on her side, exactly as she had fallen when he flung free of her, she watched him with eyes that now were clear and hard and still. ‘Never?’ she echoed softly. There was no hint of any emotion in her tone.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, feeling the sticky waxiness of her lipstick there, taking out his handkerchief to scrub it away. ‘It’s no use, Ellen!’
‘No use?’ She was still an echo, nothing more, lying there like a woman asleep, yet with open eyes.
He tried to escape. ‘Good night,’ he muttered, and turned toward the door and reached it before she spoke again. Then her clear, soft voice cut him like a whiplash on his cheek.
‘You’ve fallen in love with Ruth,’ she said.
That word stopped him stone-still. His back was toward her, and at first he did not turn, and after a minute she said, with no heat or passion in her tones at all: ‘Oh, I think I’ve known from the first. Perhaps I even knew before you and Ruth did, Richard; but I tried to play ostrich, pretended not to see. Yet — that’s why I took Ruth on our river trip, my dear; so I could watch you together, so I could be sure.’ He swung sharply toward her, and she said: ‘I was sure long before I found you in each other’s arms that morning on the gravel bar.’
Harland did not hear the word. The impact of her original accusation had set a ringing of great bells in his ears, so clamourous and deafening that he was thrown near madness. He strode back to her, forgetting everything except that which he could never forget; and when he came to her bedside now there was such anger in him that she saw it and was silenced, and he spoke in a quick rush of low words.
‘Listen,’ he told her breathlessly. ‘I can’t ever be near you again. I saw you let Danny drown.’
His lips still moved, yet made no sound; his torrential thoughts would not form words — or the words could not be uttered. She lay so passive, and so altogether beautiful, and so completely to be desired; yet all her inwardness was black corruption, from the thought of which he shrank as from an unbearable stench. But he could not tell her so, could not tell her — whom once he had promised forever to cherish and to protect and to defend — that he abhorred her utterly.
She spoke quietly. ‘Yes, I know.’
‘Know I saw you?’ His senses were off balance, his ears not to be trusted. ’Saw you let him drown?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said calmly, and she asked in an impersonal tone: ‘Why didn’t you kill me, Richard? Why don’t you now? You could, so easily, you know.’ He felt as though he were himself on the defensive, and she went pitilessly on: ‘It was you who lied to Leick, you know. It was not I. It was you who protected me.’
‘I had to.’
She smiled a little. ‘You thought you had to, darling.’ Her tone mocked him. ‘Because I was to become a mother!’ And she said: ‘I lied to you about that, but we made my lie true.’
He pressed his hands to his eyes, trying to clear them; and his knees let go and he sat down weakly, and rubbed his eyes and took his hands away and stared at them.
‘I didn’t mean to let Danny drown, Richard,’ she said, not defensively but as though anxious to set the record straight. ‘I didn’t plan it. But when the cramp caught him and he went under, I thought that if he never came up, I’d have you all to myself.’ She smiled again. ‘I’m a jealous lover, Richard,’ she said. ‘I thought if he were gone you’d love only me, and suddenly, while I was thinking that — he was gone! I was sorry then, and frightened, and I tried to find him, tried honestly, tried hard; but we were too late. That’s all.’
And she said in serene and level tones: ‘But you lied to protect me, so — we share the guilt. That binds us together. We can never escape that now.’ After a moment she added: ‘So we must go on together, wearing a mask for the world, being honest only with ourselves.’
He whispered a word that was half oath, half prayer.
‘If we don’t, there will be wondering and questioning,’ she reminded him. ‘We must pretend all’s well with us, Richard.’ When he did not speak she added, her lips twisting in a derisive smile: ‘It’s too bad about you and Ruth, but you’ll see her often. She’s invited us to dinner Friday evening, in the new apartment. For both your sakes, I’m going to make an effort to be well enough to go.’
He rose and came to stand above her and to speak. ‘If you ever link Ruth’s name and mine again,’ he said in a low tone, ‘I’ll leave you forever!’
Her eyes met his for a moment in long question, and then her eyes filled with tears and she buried her head in her arms. ‘So it’s true!’ she wailed, in muffled despair. ‘You do! It’s true! It’s true!’
– II –
Ruth’s pleasant, small apartment overlooked the river; and when Harland and Ellen arrived she had cocktails ready for the ice. ‘I’ve made a curry, Ellen,’ she explained. ‘With plenty of rice. Dick, I hope you like curry.’
He said he did. He had not seen Ruth since Ellen’s accusation, and he wondered if there were any least truth in what Ellen had said. Just now, her hair a little disordered and her cheeks flushed from her activities over the stove, Ruth was as pretty — or at least as nice looking — as he had ever seen her. But there was nothing in her to awake that hot madness, that longing at once to bruise and to defend, that tempestuous hunger which Ellen had inspired in him. Love — if he had ever loved Ellen — was a continually suppressed excitement; it was a hunger which could never be satisfied. But — if that were love, why, then certainly he did not love Ruth, and never would.
While he watched h
er, she and Ellen chattered together, and she served them the dinner she had prepared, refusing any help; and she was jolly and gay as Harland had never seen her, leading them both to be merry with her. The curry was perfection, and Harland and Ellen too accepted second servings, and Ruth beamed with pleasure as good cooks do when their viands are appreciated; till at last they could eat no more, and she let them help clear the table away. A maid would come to do the rest. Then they had to admire her new quarters here in detail, and finally they sat a while in her pleasant living room.
She said she meant to go in a few days to Bar Harbor. ‘I’ve lots to do there,’ she explained. ‘I suppose we’ll sell the big house, Ellen, if we get a good offer; but what would you think if I remodelled Father’s study and made it into a little summer place for me? It really doesn’t have to go with the big house, stuck away in the woods on the point as it is, and I’d buy your share of it from you.’
Ellen said Ruth was welcome to do this. ‘I used to work with Father there, but I’ll never want to go into the place again,’ she confessed, and she asked: ‘What did you do with the things out or nis workshop in the house here in town?’
Ruth said the Museum of Natural History had been delighted to have his skins and sets and his notebooks. ‘And the rest — the instruments and things — I packed into a barrel for Morgan Memorial. There was nothing of any value.’
Ellen laughed faintly. ‘Mercy, I hope you didn’t send the arsenic to them. They might not know what it was.’
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