“It’s true, Sevana, you can’t.” Once again he seemed to admire her insight. “It’s a place I never thought I’d be,” he confessed. “I’ve tried to stand against it. I know the right course of action, but I’m powerless to take it. In fact,” he got up and walked to the window beyond the desk to look out at the starlight, “I’ve been thinking since I’m unable to resist her, it’s time to do something about it.”
“What do you mean?” She was uneasy at the reckless tone that had crept into his voice.
“When I saw her in Cragmont we talked about marriage. It used to be out of the question in my mind. It’s against everything I know is right. Now as the years go by with no improvement, no way out of how I feel, I think what’s the use of it? If I am to be damned for my love, let me at least hold her for my own!”
He turned to face her, his eyes shining so fiercely out of the dark that she flinched at his changed countenance. “Why do you look so startled?” he demanded hoarsely. “You’re saner than I am. Tell me I’m a fool to talk so!”
She stood up, meaning to go put a hand on his arm to console him, but faltered in her intention and stayed where she was. “Joel, I don’t know if there is a right and wrong, when you love her so much. Maybe you will be damned if you don’t marry her…because maybe love is the highest law there is.”
“Those are beautiful words,” he said, looking at her absently, “—and I could believe them if there were not other laws set higher still—a certain unalterable order that can’t be violated without consequences. When you take something that is not yours to have, it can never bring the happiness it seems to offer.”
“But maybe she is yours to have. You fell in love with her when she was free to be yours. I think you must do what your heart says, and let everything else fall where it will.”
“Yes,” he said strangely, following her thought—even if it was the happy conviction of someone not yet twenty. “I’ve come to the place where all the philosophizing in the world can’t substitute for the reality of having her in my arms.”
He sat down at his desk and took a photograph from the center drawer. “She gave me this in Cragmont. A member of her crew took it.”
It was an unposed shot of an exceptionally beautiful girl with raven-dark tresses, sooty, impetuous eyes, and a full mouth curved in a laughing, self-possessed smile—a moment preserved out of real life with stunning effectiveness.
“I can see why the loggers wouldn’t let her alone.” Sevana, bending to see it by the candle’s light, felt a jolt to behold such true loveliness as she examined it from his hand. It only underscored her belief that the most beautiful girls had dark coloring.
“Yes,” he said distantly, staring at the picture as if even her likeness had the power to hypnotize him. “The time we spend together is so compelling it makes me willing to do anything I have to, to be with her.”
And because she lost him there, as surely as if he had gone into another world, Sevana left him in the room with his passion burning bright as the candleflame, and went unnoticed into her temporary sleeping quarters.
In the morning Joel was still preoccupied—or maybe he was just tired from his short night. He cooked buckwheat pancakes on a flat iron griddle with no more than the standard pleasantries of such an occasion, except to inquire about her arm. But Sevana didn’t notice his lack of conversation because she, too, was involved in thought. Despite the fact that Chantal was the entirety of Joel’s obsession, there was something about it that bothered her—something she wanted to examine more carefully when she was alone. It was a foolish thing—unaccountable, really. But it was she, Sevana, who had unwittingly stumbled across Joel on a walk up the mountain, a whole world away from anywhere, and she had always regarded him as exclusively her acquaintance; it had never occurred to her to think otherwise. And now to learn that the treasure she had found in the form of a shepherd named Joel Wilder was not only known outside that unfrequented valley, but had already been claimed by someone of prior association…it was funny how strongly she felt this peculiar covetousness, that she should rightfully have him all to herself.
After breakfast Joel said he was taking the flock up the hill, and asked if she was coming. But all Sevana wanted to do was get Trapper back on Fenn’s property as quickly as possible, by impetus of some obscure reasoning that the sooner she returned the horse, the more effectively she could atone for losing him.
As Joel stood to see her off, he mentioned casually that Chantal was telephoning him tomorrow night, so he was driving to town for the call. If Sevana would like to visit the thriving population center of Cragmont, she might consider coming along.
“I’d love to,” she said. “I’ll watch for you when you come by.”
Ready to direct the horse down the trail, she hesitated, holding back on the reins as she tried to thank Joel for coming to find her yesterday and taking care of her arm. But he cut her off, saying gruffly that knowing she hadn’t spent the night on the wrong side of the mountain was all the thanks he needed.
As Sevana rode homeward down the trail, thoughts of Joel came to her in a torrent, like the river at highwater. She contemplated his uncommon existence he lived with such strength, the beautiful music he played, his eyes so deep they were hard to understand. She still had things to ponder, but other things required no examination. Sometime, over the short course of the days she’d known him, he had become her friend.
CHAPTER 15
After Trapper had been treated to oats, a thorough brushing, and a stake in the best grass of the homestead, Sevana went to the river free of care because Fenn would never know she had almost lost his horse.
When she stepped onto the grassy bank and saw the river stones catching the sunlight in colors of rust and sage and cocoa and goldenrod beneath the amber water, she knew she had found her next picture. For that day, though, she settled on the bank and wrote her father a letter to mail in Cragmont. But so much of the life she described sounded so new and foreign, even to her, that it made her feel self-conscious when she imagined him reading it. It sounded like a different person than the one who had written him all those years from the four colorless walls of her room at school. However the thought did not disturb her sufficiently to keep her from stretching out in the grass, where she catnapped off and on with the river music running drowsily through her consciousness. She went home only when the afternoon was far gone, filled with a quiet happiness over the peaceful day she’d just spent, and a joyful, winging anticipation for the upcoming trip to town with Joel in the morning.
But as the sun dipped below the mountain, Sevana discovered that before tomorrow could arrive, she had a night to get through first. For with the lengthening shadows came the sharp-edged realization that Fenn was in another town many hours distant. The shadowy house seemed more strange than familiar, and the silence crouched within it like an unseen occupant.
Attempting to ignore the black curtainless windows staring at her like unblinking eyes, but remembering the time the loggers had skulked out in the night watching her,—feeling a little jittery, too, because she’d just seen a mouse scuttle along the wall,—she lit the lantern and tried to lose herself in the book of mythology Fenn had left on the table. Unfortunately, it proved not to contain the harmless myths she’d studied in World Literature, but a much more depraved collection. She grew horrified over the ghastly tales, and shut the book with a shudder. She could never hope to go to sleep now, with such images in her head. In desperation she picked up the other book set there, the discourse of a German philosopher. It was difficult and not at all interesting, but happily it served a purpose: after struggling through just one chapter, she was so wearied by it she was willing to brave the unlit upstairs for bed.
Once in her sleeping bag, though, she lay tense and alert, unable to stop thinking about the dark, empty house around her, and the dark, empty wildlands around the house. Her eyes were closed, but she was listening to the silence with all her concentration, afraid that at an
y second something might break it. Nothing did—and still she waited, in the grip of a paralyzing fear from which she couldn’t get away.
As the night wore on, a far-off howl of a coyote chilled her blood; later there was an eerie hoot of what she could only hope was an owl. Then she remembered the Indian legend and hoped it wasn’t an owl. Even the river slipping through the canyon whispered in strange and disturbing voices at her window. Deep into the night, she heard weird stomping noises that went unexplained until she looked out and saw three deer milling in the yard. Finally she lit the candle, deciding it wouldn’t be a fire hazard to leave it burning in such a large can, and lay down feeling more at ease with the room visible around her. She was just drifting off into her first real sleep of the night when something scampered lightly across her head. She jerked upright and screamed at the sight of a mouse scurrying away from her over the floorboards. That scream frightened her worse than anything. It’s a terrible thing to hear a scream in the middle of the night—even if it is yours, over nothing at all.
That shrill shriek set off a chain reaction in the night world outside. There were hollow pounding sounds as the panicked deer charged out of the yard, and some ravens startled from their roosting in the nearby trees cawed loudly and confusedly at the deer—all of which raucous noises were not immediately identifiable to Sevana, and scared her all over again.
After that fright wore off, she lay calmer but wide-awake, no longer even attempting to sleep. The hours dragged on with no perceptible progress toward dawn. Alone and night weary, she felt a desperate isolation. She was alone not just for the night, but alone in life. There was no one to lean on, no one to help her find her way. And not only she, but Fenn was alone—living in the alienation of his mind where no one could find him. And Joel was alone far up the mountain, unable to share his joys and sorrows with the one he would choose to have at his side. They were all estranged, each in his own life, with nothing to help or bring light.
A thin stiletto moon made a late appearance in the sky, its reflection too limited to drive back the reigning powers of the night. Not until dawn crept into the sky with summer-brushed hues of peach and raspberry did she fall asleep and sleep hard—while the sun appeared with better success than the moon, in full glory.
When she woke again, birds were singing and trees stirring in a warm breeze; the day had started without her. The night terrors were vanished, ludicrous in the bright sunshine. Why had she let them trouble her so? she wondered impatiently—and went to rescue Trapper from the gloom of the barn.
She worked hard that day getting ready for Fenn’s return. By the time the red truck pulled into the yard, laundry was drying on the line, a reasonable likeness of Joel’s potato soup simmered in the kettle, brown rolls were baking, and she was on the front porch trying to work out a splinter she had rammed into her finger while stoking the stove.
“Welcome home, Fenn,” she cried joyfully, running to meet him as he emerged tanned and brawny from the truck, his hair bleached lighter than ever from the summer sun.
“Hello, Sevana,” he said carelessly, leaving her to trail after him as he strode to the house. He dropped his overnight bag on a chair. “I’m going fishing.”
“But dinner—”
“Don’t wait dinner on my account.” He got his pole and crossed the road in straight paces toward the creek.
Mystified, Sevana watched him go—but something in the speed with which he went, told her he’d been cooped up in town too long and had to get away from it. She pushed the soup to the back of the stove, and when the rolls were done she put them in the warming oven.
In an hour’s time Fenn returned with no fish in hand, only a bottle from the springbox. He sat hard and remote, oblivious to her as she set the meal before him. “How was Trail?” she asked, timid in the face of his stonelike silence.
He swore. “Almost lost it sitting in town for two days.” He wedged butter into a roll and devoured it without further comment. But after his second bowl of soup, as he was reaching for another roll, he asked: “How’d things go here?”
“Fine,” she said, but finding it harder than she’d thought to meet his eyes.
“How’d you get that scratch?”
She paled visibly. She’d worn a long-sleeved shirt to hide the healing cut on her forearm, but had never thought he would regard the light scratch across her cheek as a thing of consequence. He usually ignored her as much as he could. “I just got into a little brush,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as faint as she felt.
His eyes were on her narrowly. “Trapper throw you?”
All at once Sevana felt sorry for the mere mortals on his crew who had to work alongside him, their inferior mental powers continually matched against his brilliance. Her face was pleading. “Well, not exactly—that is, he didn’t mean to. A grouse startled him a little and he—”
Fenn was already out the door. Sevana saw him pass the north window on his way to the barn. Even though she knew he wouldn’t find so much as a scratch on Trapper, she still was afraid of what he would say to her when he came back.
When Fenn reappeared, she was busily poking at the stubborn sliver in her finger with a flushed countenance. “Sevana,” he said sternly as he sat down to finish his dinner, “if you can’t handle my horse, you’d better not ride him.”
She winced at the dreaded words. She wanted to plead her case, but wasn’t sure it was the best time. The silence between them was loud. She got up and began to heat water for dishes. That was when she saw the mousetraps on the counter.
The truth was, she was beginning to feel sorry for the mouse she had frightened by her scream—which had been a reflex reaction to being startled rather than real fear. But the mouse had been terrified: she had seen it in the quiver of his whiskers and the speed with which he’d frantically raced to get away from her. Then, too, the very fact that another living thing had shared that lonely night with her, endeared her to it. He was an innocent creature not meaning any harm, and didn’t deserve to be scared out of his wits—much less caught in a cruel trap. “These aren’t live traps, are they?” she ventured, willing to speak up if it would save her mouse.
“No,” said Fenn.
“Isn’t there some way we can move the mice outside without hurting them?” she asked hopefully.
Fenn walked out on her, saving himself all the bother of a reply.
Sevana joined him later on the bench as he carved the deerhorn handle. She looked over the deepening blues and greens of the valley while she waited for Joel to come, noticing that all the dots of snow had finally disappeared from the avalanche chutes. But she was at a loss for something to do until, on a whim, she went in and fetched the book of philosophy she’d started the night before.
“There’s a book that’ll give you a thought or two,” Fenn mocked her as she sat down. “Read it and better your mind.” He plainly regarded her incapable of scholarly occupation.
She lifted her chin a fraction. “The first chapter was fascinating,” she said loftily, and opened the book to chapter two.
Luckily for Sevana, she was able to comprehend the main idea of what was being said, though she had to let many of the particulars go by. But what she did understand she didn’t like, for it portrayed man as an impersonal being in an impersonal universe, and left very little room for any kind of meaning for his existence. When she closed the book quietly, Fenn looked over. “Agree with him?” he asked, still mocking.
“No, I don’t,” she said, glad to show she had understood it. “He sees things so darkly. How can he say we have no purpose? Doesn’t he have any dreams? Perhaps he has none, but he shouldn’t speak for anyone but himself.”
“So you think your life has purpose?” he confronted her. “Do tell, what is it?”
“I have plenty of dreams,” she said confidently. “I’m going to be the best artist I can be.”
“Dreams!” Fenn scoffed. “He’s not talking about the pursuits of life, but life itself. What good
is your existence? What significance does it have?”
Sevana opened her mouth to tell him, then shut it as she realized she had no good answer. She sat silent, pondering that startling discovery. Then, more humbly now, she asked confidingly, “Fenn, you don’t think life is meaningless, do you?”
“No one has given me any reason to say it isn’t,” he retorted. “Can you?”
“No,” she almost whispered. “But Fenn—how can you bear to think life has no hope?”
He snapped the blade shut, and his eyes were hard. “Better to face it as it is, than pretend it isn’t so.”
And when she only stared at him with a look full of questioning and doubt, he said impatiently: “Come on, Sevana, get the stars out of your eyes long enough to see the only reason you exist is for the hell in your own mind.”
He took sandpaper to the deerhorn, and Sevana took up her earlier occupation of watching the evening shadows overrun the landscape; but now her head was filled with disquieting thoughts. She wanted to tell Fenn not to entertain such fatalistic ideas, but she had nothing to offer in their stead. It disturbed her, for she had no way of knowing what was true, and didn’t know but that he might be right.
Joel drove into the yard at that critical moment, causing Fenn to vanish into the house with a muttered oath. Leaving the engine running, he came across the yard in his woodsman’s agile gait. His hair was tamer than usual, sleek and almost straight, and though he wore a coarse hickory-stripe shirt and canvas work trousers, he wore them with a nearly elegant ease. Sevana smiled unconsciously at the sight of him. He was a man all his own…confident, yet without arrogance—sure of himself not through any airs he put on, but simply in who he was. He was someone she would be proud to be seen with anywhere.
He came up on the steps. “Evening, Sevana. Still want to go?”
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