by Zane Grey
“I’ll say this is some adventure,” soliloquized Georgiana. “I always wanted something to happen. . . . But hardly this!—If I didn’t hate him so—if he hadn’t turned out so low down! . . . Maybe it was coming to me.”
She did not quite understand herself. Why was she not in the fury of an outraged woman who had been attacked, kidnapped, beaten, and carried off into a forced marriage?
“Oh, I’m sore enough,” she mused, “but I don’t quite get myself. Maybe that knock in the head. I ought to kill Cal Thurman for that.”
There was then nothing to do but wait for somebody to come. Georgiana could not wait very well for anything. She must occupy herself, or a nervous restlessness would soon possess her.
“I suppose it’d be decent to wash his old dishes,” she muttered. “To give the devil his due, I’ve got to hand it to Cal Thurman as a housekeeper. He’s got me skinned to death—Well, men might as well learn that, and to take care of kids. For it’s certainly coming to them.”
Georgiana washed the dishes and utensils, and had just finished making the kitchen tidy when sound of voices and the pound of hooves made her heart beat quickly. Had Cal returned? She peeped out of the kitchen window, to see a number of packed burros, the very first of which was Jinny, and she had a trunk on her back. Georgiana stared. She recognized that trunk. It belonged to her. Then into her amazed sight came her sister Mary, riding Enoch’s bay pony, and after her Tuck Merry and another rider.
Georgiana fell back from the window. She felt at once delivered and cornered. She wanted to rush out, and realized that she could not.
“But it doesn’t cut any ice with me—because they packed my clothes up here,” she muttered. “I didn’t tell them to. And I’ll darn soon read the riot act to Mary.”
Footsteps on the porch!
“Ho, homesteaders!” called out Mary’s rich, happy voice. It struck deep to Georgiana’s heart. When had Mary spoken like that? Georgiana threw open the door.
Mary was right there, on the porch. She wore a short, heavy riding coat with furry collar turned up. There was frost on it. Her sweet face was rosy from cold and exercise. Her gray eyes were alight with love and happiness. And the smile that came so radiantly when she saw Georgiana was beautiful. It halted Georgiana’s speech, whatever that had been.
“Oh, Georgie—little sister!” cried Mary, with a half sob of joy, and she enfolded her, and hugged and kissed her until Georgiana had scarcely any breath left to talk with. More than that, Georgiana found herself with swelling heart and dimming eyes. Something was disarming her. Mary’s joy at sight of her had struck to the depths. Georgiana suddenly realized that she needed her mother, and that Mary stood in the place of mother. She clung to her sister, silently, passionately, and in that contact she bridged any estrangement which might have intervened. Then she wanted to burst out, before Mary misunderstood any more, but she seemed tongue-tied.
“Georgie—my dear, child—don’t cry,” Mary was saying, and squeezing her as she spoke. “I’m not angry. Do you understand? Your elopement made me the happiest woman in the world!”
“Made you—happy! . . . Mary?” faltered Georgiana, composed and astounded.
“Of course you don’t understand,” replied Mary, “but you will, dear, shortly.—Let us go inside. I’m nearly frozen.”
She drew Georgiana back from the threshold, and then called to the men outside: “Unpack and carry the things here on the porch.”
Closing the door, she once more enfolded Georgiana. “You darling! You sly little minx! You atrocious little flirt! All the time it was Cal! . . . Oh, Georgie, I’m so happy! I’m nearly out of my head!”
“You talk—sort of nutty,” replied Georgiana, tremulously.
“What a cozy fine kitchen!” exclaimed Mary, sweeping a woman’s keen eye all around. “I must see everything. But let’s talk first . . . Where’s Cal?”
“Gone off to work,” replied Georgiana, and she was nerving herself to blurt out Cal’s perfidy and her wretched situation when again she was silenced.
“Georgie, your marriage saved my happiness,” declared Mary, in sweet gravity.
“Oh, what—do you mean?” replied Georgiana.
“Come, let us sit here,” replied Mary, drawing Georgiana to the couch and still keeping her in a close embrace. “I can tell you now. For you’re married and out of danger, thank God! Oh, Georgie, that boy Cal Thurman saved you, and me, too . . . Listen, and please do not be hurt now at anything I say. You never realized just what the true situation was here. I tried to make you see long ago how dangerous it was for you to—to trifle with these boys. You never saw how your accepting Cal’s attentions and making him crazy about you was a most serious matter with all the Thurmans. They took to you at first, in spite of your immodest dresses and your slang. But when you began to flirt with other boys and poor Cal showed his misery—then they began to grow cold. There’s no need to tell you all I know about that. But after the October dance, and your cool indifference to Cal when you should have appreciated his loyalty, then even Enoch turned against you. He wanted me to send you home. I couldn’t do that, for then you hadn’t any home except with me . . . Well, day before yesterday the climax came.—Dear, I hate to tell you.”
“Go on,” said Georgiana, in smothered voice. She was smarting as under a lash. “Don’t mind me.”
“Enoch came home from town, perfectly furious about something he had heard about you—remarks credited to Bid Hatfield, according to the gossip. Enoch said you would have to get out. You had made Cal the laughingstock of the Tonto. Worse, if that gossip got to Cal’s ears he would kill Hatfield. I—I was shocked . . . Well, I told Enoch I was going to stand by you, come what might. You were not so well and I considered it my duty to keep you with me. Then we quarreled.—Whew!—I didn’t know Enoch could be so—so—I don’t know what. Don’t you ever make Cal really mad. I told Enoch pretty plainly where to get off, as you would say. Then he raved and swore it was all on account of that damned little huzzy of a sister.’ I shut him up pronto and I told him I would give him a couple of days to reconsider, then if he did not I would break our engagement and take you with me—away from the Tonto.”
“Oh—Mary!” cried Georgiana.
“It was hard, Georgie dear,” went on her sister. “But I could not see any other way. I grew more wretched. Enoch kept away from me, and I know he never would have weakened. It’s strange you didn’t see something was wrong. But then your mind was full of your own love affair. Only, if you had guessed how my heart was breaking, you would have told me . . . I didn’t get home until late last night. Enoch met me. He didn’t explain. He just hugged me—like—like a bear. Right before everybody. Then I saw that he seemed tremendously happy. So were all the Thurmans, especially old Henry. He beamed upon me. ‘That air boy Cal shore is a smart one. Reckon he knowed what he was about, drivin’ us near crazy runnin’ up his cabin.’
“I asked what it all meant, especially Enoch’s disgraceful conduct, and everybody shouted at me. ‘Cal and Georgie are married!’ You could have knocked me over with a feather. But when I realized it was true I was the happiest one there. Tuck Merry had brought the news. He was a hero. Anyone who can participate in an elopement in this country earns distinction. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Tuck then, but I had it out with Enoch. He was simply beside himself with joy. ‘Aw, Mary, it’s for Cal’s sake an’ yours that I’m so glad.’ How he loves Cal! . . . Well, I was not disposed to fall into Enoch’s arms because he was satisfied—that is, I mean I didn’t want him to see it. So I had a few things to say. I just scared him good. Made him think I couldn’t forgive his mulishness. He pleaded with me. It was very, very nice after the way he had talked and acted when we quarreled. He said he was awfully sorry he hadn’t waited a few days, then we need never have had the quarrel . . . Well, to make a long story short, we made up, and we are going to celebrate your marriage by getting married ourselves.”
“When, Mary?” whispered Geor
giana, huskily.
“Enoch begged to make it a week from your wedding day, but I held out for a month . . . and so, darling, you’ve made us all happy. You have saved Cal in the very nick of time, not to mention poor me and yourself! I met old Gard Thurman this morning at Green Valley. I was a little afraid of him. But he was fine. ‘Wal, I reckon gals will be gals, an’ them Eastern ones don’t take the bridle easy. But all’s well that ends well. She’s a Thurman now.’ . . . And, Georgie, that means everything to these simple-minded people.”
“Mary, tell me, did Cal know you quarreled with Enoch?” asked Georgiana, feeling the rising tide of an irresistible flood in her breast.
“Indeed he did! Enoch told him. I didn’t know this till last night. Cal was fighting mad, Enoch said. He swore if Enoch drove you and me away he was through with the Thurmans. Oh, they had it hot and heavy. Honestly, I believe Enoch was as happy to have all right between him and Cal again as he was to get me back.”
Suddenly Georgiana collapsed against her sister’s breast, and clinging to her she sobbed out, incoherently, “Oh—Mary—Ma—ry!—I’ve been—just what Enoch—called me . . . and oh, I—I want to die.”
“Why, Georgie!” exclaimed Mary, in distress, as she folded her sister in a close embrace and bent over her tenderly. “What are you saying? You poor child!—Oh, I hope I haven’t failed as a mother to you! But, dear, you just wouldn’t be mothered. You had to have your fling . . . and that’s over now, thank goodness!—I’m glad you can cry. Just let go and cry all you want. Oh, Georgie, I was worried sick about you.—But never mind. I won’t say any more. I’ll just hold you and remember how you used to come to me, years ago, with your baby troubles.”
Georgiana did not soon wear out that spasm of weeping. The dammed-up flood burst, and for a good while she was in the physical throes of collapse. When at length she began to recover somewhat she seemed to be the victim of an enormous dread.
“Mary, you still—love me?” she asked, brokenly.
“Georgiana, what a question? You haven’t given me a chance to love you. Oh, maybe all this trouble will be good in the end. It must bring us closer, Sister dear.”
Then Georgiana lay silent, her head pillowed on that loving, heaving breast. She had sustained a terrible shock. It seemed that Mary’s revelation had transformed her very life. But how she could not tell. Only two things took concrete shape in her whirling mind—her lips were locked, and there seemed just reason why she should despise herself. For an hour all she could do was to force herself to be woman enough to spare her sister, to hide her shame and misery, to accept her strange destiny for the present, and for the sake of others put aside her own selfish wants until a more favorable time. She stood alone now. There was no one to help her, no one to get her out of this muddle.
“Sister, all I can say is I begin to see—and if I had the last few months to live over I’d do different.”
Mary kissed her with most earnest warmth. “Georgie, that is all I needed today to make my happiness perfect. Oh, I never lost my faith in you.”
Georgiana veiled her eyes. Blurred as they were with tears, she felt they would betray what she was beginning to think of herself. Here she realized she was called upon to find in that self, if it were possible, courage and loyalty and intelligence enough to be true to her sister. How wonderfully true that sister had been! Georgiana fought for her vaunted pride. What a miserable, vain, heartless, soulless creature she had been! But scorn of herself could wait, as also the hour to face her problem. Just now she must force herself to pretend to be what Mary believed her. So she braved it out. She submerged herself. She dried her tears, and wrought the miracle of a smile when her self-abasement and wretchedness were exceedingly poignant.
CHAPTER
15
I
T WAS five o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was tipping the distant mountain range. Mary had been gone two hours. Two whole hours Georgiana had sat motionless, racked between emotion and thought!
“What can I do—what must I do?” she whispered, rising out of that cramped inactivity. She paced the room, sweeping her eyes over the vast improvement Mary had wrought. What an ordeal she had endured in helping Mary drag her trunk and bags and boxes, all her possessions, into this living room, in watching her and listening while she unpacked everything, and hung and arranged and draped until the cabin interior was transformed! Here all of Georgiana’s pictures and pennants and trifles, so dear to her heart, and which had no place down at Green Valley, were united in making a colorful and beautiful room.
Georgiana gazed around in her extremity, as if these belongings of hers could speak in wisdom that would enlighten her. But they spoke of pleasure, happy memories, the comforts of home, all of which seemed mockery here.
The fire she and Mary had kindled shone red and warm on the hearthstone; and it likewise seemed a lie.
“I’m here. I haven’t gone away. He’ll return soon . . . And I’m his wife!” She cried out in her distraction.
It came to her then that she had to stay now. Her one hope of escape had failed. She might have courage enough to run off, anywhere away from this hateful homestead. But she was afraid of the forest at night. Of what avail would it be to starve and freeze? Besides, she was compelled to stay for Mary’s sake, at least until Mary was safely married to that iron-jawed Enoch.
“I’ve got to stay,” Georgiana admitted, and in the admission her hand covered her mouth, a gesture almost of despair. “If I run off now they’ll say I deserted my husband a day after the marriage. My Heavens! That would ruin Mary. I’m stuck here. I’ve got to pay for my—my cussedness.”
It seemed then that the decision to stay did not make the situation any easier. As a matter of fact, no decision had been needful, simply because there was no alternative. What distracted Georgiana then was the dire necessity of finding some way to save her pride. It was vanity and she knew it.
“What can I say to him—when he finds me still here?” she asked. “I’ve got to dope out some plan.”
Making believe had been Georgiana’s pastime as a child, and as a girl it had become a dominant characteristic. All at once a flash of divination seemed to illumine the dark perplexity of her mind. Why not try honesty? In less than a day she had come to fear Cal Thurman more than she had ever feared anything. Here she was racking her brain to find some means to deceive him—to show she was not afraid—to save her pride. To realize it sickened her.
“No! I’ll be on the level,” she muttered. “I’m scared to death of him and I’ll not try to hide it . . . He struck me! I might have forgiven a slap. But he struck me as a man strikes another man. I hate him, and if he ever does it again I’ll kill him.”
Then at that precise moment of Georgiana’s abandonment to fear and passion a voice seemed to say, accusingly, to her—she deserved that blow, brutal as it had been. But instant repudiation silenced this monitor. She was a long way yet from humility. Still, her conscience smarted, and when she thought of Mary’s loyalty her heart swelled with love and gratitude, and her egotism momentarily dwindled to nothing.
But she had been faced with the havoc caused by her unwitting dishonesty. And she could never again be a liar and a cheat.
“I’ll be on the level,” she decided, “and I’ll take my medicine.”
Whereupon she resolutely went into the kitchen and put her mind upon the considerable task of getting supper. The short winter day had ended and twilight had mantled the mesa. She lighted the lamp. Then she bethought herself of her pretty aprons. Running back to the living room, she found one and donned it, tarrying a moment to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Upon returning to the kitchen, she rekindled the fire in the stove, and then busied herself in preparations for the meal. Busy with hands, preoccupied in mind, she forgot what she dreaded until she heard a step on the porch and a knock on the door.
“Who’s there?” she called.
“It’s Cal,” came the reply, in a weary voice.
He entered, haggard and dirty, covered with brush dust, and he limped as he walked. His clothes gave forth the odor of the dry pine woods.
“I met Mary down at the schoolhouse. You didn’t tell her,” he said.
“No,” she replied, simply.
“Why?”
“You know the trouble she and Enoch had on my account?”
“Ahuh! Enoch is an old porcupine. Did they make up?”
“Yes. And I—I just couldn’t tell her.”
“Reckon it would have been tough . . . An’ that’s why you’re still here?”
“Mostly.—But I—I’ve no great desire to be handled as I was yesterday.”
He studied her with sad, knowing dark eyes. It seemed the hours of that day had worked a change in him, as they had in her. Without more words he turned away to the bench, and filling the washbasin with water he stooped over it. Georgiana watched him out of the corner of her eye, while bustling round table and stove. When at length he turned again to the light she glanced concernedly at his face. His ablutions had removed the stains of labor, but had rather augmented the haggard intensity. Cal showed the inroads of mental distress. All in a day he seemed years older. The boy had gone. Yet there was something proven about him.
“Can I help you?” he asked, as if suddenly becoming aware of her work.
“It’s about done,” she replied, and now that she was aware of his scrutiny she no longer looked at him. Presently the supper was ready, and they sat opposite each other, silent except for the fewest of words necessary at the table. Cal ate rather methodically without his former gusto, and his brow was wrinkled with ponderings.
When they had finished this strange meal Cal said he would do the rest of the work. Georgiana was glad enough to get out of it. This hour was a strain. She left Cal sitting at the table, his head bowed on his hand. Once safely barred in her room, Georgiana fell victim to remorse.