Shuddering a little, she turned to the cabin. Warm light showed through its chinks. She pushed at the rickety, half-opened door.
“What about the horses?” she said.
“My black, he won’t go away. And your mare will stay with him. You want to go to bed now?”
“I think I do.”
“All right. I feed the horses some oats.”
And he went out into the night.
He did not come back for some time. She was lying wrapped up tight in the bunk.
He blew out the lantern, and sat down on his bedding to take off his clothes. She lay with her back turned. And soon, in the silence, she was asleep.
She dreamed it was snowing, and the snow was falling on her through the roof, softly, softly, helplessly, and she was going to be buried alive. She was growing colder and colder, the snow was weighing down on her. The snow was going to absorb her.
She awoke with a sudden convulsion, like pain. She was really very cold; perhaps the heavy blankets had numbed her. Her heart seemed unable to beat, she felt she could not move.
With another convulsion she sat up. It was intensely dark. There was not even a spark of fire, the light wood had burned right away. She sat in thick oblivious darkness. Only through a chink she could see a star.
What did she want? Oh, what did she want? She sat in bed and rocked herself woefully. She could hear the steady breathing of the sleeping man. She was shivering with cold; her heart seemed as if it could not beat. She wanted warmth, protection, she wanted to be taken away from herself. And at the same time, perhaps more deeply than anything, she wanted to keep herself intact, intact, untouched, that no one should have any power over her, or rights to her. It was a wild necessity in her that no one, particularly no man, should have any rights or power over her, that no one and nothing should possess her.
Yet that other thing! And she was so cold, so shivering, and her heart could not beat. Oh, would not someone help her heart to beat?
She tried to speak, and could not. Then she cleared her throat.
“Romero,” she said strangely, “it is so cold.”
Where did her voice come from, and whose voice was it, in the dark?
She heard him at once sit up, and his voice, startled, with a resonance that seemed to vibrate against her, saying:
“You want me to make you warm?”
“Yes.”
As soon as he had lifted her in his arms, she wanted to scream to him not to touch her. She stiffened herself. Yet she was dumb.
And he was warm, but with a terrible animal warmth that seemed to annihilate her. He panted like an animal with desire. And she was given over to this thing.
She had never, never wanted to be given over to this. But she had willed that it should happen to her. And according to her will, she lay and let it happen. But she never wanted it. She never wanted to be thus assailed and handled, and mauled. She wanted to keep herself to herself.
However, she had willed it to happen, and it had happened. She panted with relief when it was over.
Yet even now she had to lie within the hard, powerful clasp of this other creature, this man. She dreaded to struggle to go away. She dreaded almost too much the icy cold of that other bunk.
“Do you want to go away from me?” asked his strange voice. Oh, if it could only have been a thousand miles away from her! Yet she had willed to have it thus close.
“No,” she said.
And she could feel a curious joy and pride surging up again in him: at her expense. Because he had got her. She felt like a victim there. And he was exulting in his power over her, his possession, his pleasure.
When dawn came, he was fast asleep. She sat up suddenly.
“I want a fire,” she said.
He opened his brown eyes wide, and smiled with a curious tender luxuriousness.
“I want you to make a fire,” she said.
He glanced at the chinks of light. His brown face hardened to the day.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll make it.”
She did her face while he dressed. She could not bear to look at him. He was so suffused with pride and luxury. She hid her face almost in despair. But feeling the cold blast of air as he opened the door, she wriggled down into the warm place where he had been. How soon the warmth ebbed, when he had gone!
He made a fire and went out, returning after a while with water.
“You stay in bed till the sun comes,” he said. “It very cold.”
“Hand me my cloak.”
She wrapped the cloak fast round her, and sat up among the blankets. The warmth was already spreading from the fire.
“I suppose we will start back as soon as we’ve had breakfast?”
He was crouching at his camp-stove making scrambled eggs. He looked up suddenly, transfixed, and his brown eyes, so soft and luxuriously widened, looked straight at her.
“You want to?” he said.
“We’d better get back as soon as possible,” she said, turning aside from his eyes.
“You want to get away from me?” he asked, repeating the question of the night in a sort of dread.
“I want to get away from here,” she said decisively. And it was true. She wanted supremely to get away, back to the world of people.
He rose slowly to his feet, holding the aluminium frying-pan.
“Don’t you like last night?” he asked.
“Not really,” she said. “Why? Do you?”
He put down the frying-pan and stood staring at the wall. She could see she had given him a cruel blow. But she did not relent. She was getting her own back. She wanted to regain possession of all herself, and in some mysterious way she felt that he possessed some part of her still.
He looked round at her slowly, his face greyish and heavy.
“You Americans,” he said, “you always want to do a man down.”
“I am not American,” she said. “I am British. And I don’t want to do any man down. I only want to go back now.”
“And what will you say about me, down there?”
“That you were very kind to me, and very good.”
He crouched down again, and went on turning the eggs. He gave her her plate, and her coffee, and sat down to his own food.
But again he seemed not to be able to swallow. He looked up at her.
“You don’t like last night?” he asked.
“Not really,” she said, though with some difficulty. “I don’t care for that kind of thing.”
A blank sort of wonder spread over his face at these words, followed immediately by a black look of anger, and then a stony, sinister despair.
“You don’t?” he said, looking her in the eyes.
“Not really,” she replied, looking back with steady hostility into his eyes.
Then a dark flame seemed to come from his face.
“I make you,” he said, as if to himself.
He rose and reached her clothes, that hung on a peg: the fine linen underwear, the orange breeches, the fleecy jumper, the blue-and-bluff kerchief; then he took up her riding-boots and her bead moccasins. Crushing everything in his arms, he opened the door. Sitting up, she saw him stride down to the dark-green pool in the frozen shadow of that deep cup of a valley. He tossed the clothing and the boots out on the pool. Ice had formed. And on the pure, dark green mirror, in the slaty shadow, the Princess saw her things lying, the white linen, the orange breeches, the black boots, the blue moccasins, a tangled heap of colour. Romero picked up rocks and heaved them out at the ice, till the surface broke and the fluttering clothing disappeared in the rattling water, while the valley echoed and shouted again with the sound.
She sat in despair among the blankets, hugging tight her pale-blue cloak. Romero strode straight back to the cabin.
“Now you stay here with me,” he said.
She was furious. Her blue eyes met his. They were like two demons watching one another. In his face, beyond a sort of unrelieved gloom, was a demonish desire for de
ath.
He saw her looking round the cabin, scheming. He saw her eyes on his rifle. He took the gun and went out with it. Returning, he pulled out her saddle, carried it to the tarn, and threw it in. Then he fetched his own saddle, and did the same.
“Now will you go away?” he said, looking at her with a smile.
She debated within herself whether to coax him and wheedle him. But she knew he was already beyond it. She sat among her blankets in a frozen sort of despair, hard as hard ice with anger.
He did the chores, and disappeared with the gun. She got up in her blue pyjamas, huddled in her cloak, and stood in the doorway. The dark-green pool was motionless again, the stony slopes were pallid and frozen. Shadow still lay, like an after-death, deep in this valley. Always in the distance she saw the horses feeding. If she could catch one! The brilliant yellow sun was half-way down the mountain. It was nine o’clock.
All day she was alone, and she was frightened. What she was frightened of she didn’t know. Perhaps the crackling in the dark spruce wood. Perhaps just the savage, heartless wildness of the mountains. But all day she sat in the sun in the doorway of the cabin, watching, watching for hope. And all the time her bowels were cramped with fear.
She saw a dark spot that probably was a bear, roving across the pale grassy slope in the far distance, in the sun.
When, in the afternoon, she saw Romero approaching, with silent suddenness, carrying his gun and a dead deer, the cramp in her bowels relaxed, then became colder. She dreaded him with a cold dread.
“There is deer-meat,” he said, throwing the dead doe at her feet.
“You don’t want to go away from here,” he said. “This is a nice place.”
She shrank into the cabin.
“Come into the sun,” he said, following her. She looked up at him with hostile, frightened eyes.
“Come into the sun,” he repeated, taking her gently by the arm, in a powerful grasp.
She knew it was useless to rebel. Quietly he led her out, and seated himself in the doorway, holding her still by the arm.
“In the sun it is warm,” he said. “Look, this is a nice place. You are such a pretty white woman, why do you want to act mean to me? Isn’t this a nice place? Come! Come here! It is sure warm here.”
He drew her to him, and in spite of her stony resistance, he took her cloak from her, holding her in her thin blue pyjamas.
“You sure are a pretty little white woman, small and pretty,” he said. “You sure won’t act mean to me — you don’t want to, I know you don’t.”
She, stony and powerless, had to submit to him. The sun shone on her white, delicate skin.
“I sure don’t mind hell fire,” he said. “After this.”
A queer, luxurious good humour seemed to possess him again. But though outwardly she was powerless, inwardly she resisted him, absolutely and stonily.
When later he was leaving her again, she said to him suddenly:
“You think you can conquer me this way. But you can’t. You can never conquer me.”
He stood arrested, looking back at her, with many emotions conflicting in his face — wonder, surprise, a touch of horror, and an unconscious pain that crumpled his face till it was like a mask. Then he went out without saying a word, hung the dead deer on a bough, and started to flay it. While he was at this butcher’s work, the sun sank and cold night came on again.
“You see,” he said to her as he crouched, cooking the supper, “I ain’t going to let you go. I reckon you called to me in the night, and I’ve some right. If you want to fix it up right now with me, and say you want to be with me, we’ll fix it up now and go down to the ranch to-morrow and get married or whatever you want. But you’ve got to say you want to be with me. Else I shall stay right here, till something happens.”
She waited a while before she answered:
“I don’t want to be with anybody against my will. I don’t dislike you; at least, I didn’t, till you tried to put your will over mine. I won’t have anybody’s will put over me. You can’t succeed. Nobody could. You can never get me under your will. And you won’t have long to try, because soon they will send someone to look for me.”
He pondered this last, and she regretted having said it. Then, sombre, he bent to the cooking again.
He could not conquer her, however much he violated her. Because her spirit was hard and flawless as a diamond. But he could shatter her. This she knew. Much more, and she would be shattered.
In a sombre, violent excess he tried to expend his desire for her. And she was racked with an agony, and felt each time she would die. Because, in some peculiar way, he had got hold of her, some unrealised part of her which she never wished to realise. Racked with a burning, tearing anguish, she felt that the thread of her being would break, and she would die. The burning heat that racked her inwardly.
If only, only she could be alone again, cool and intact! If only she could recover herself again, cool and intact! Would she ever, ever, ever be able to bear herself again?
Even now she did not hate him. It was beyond that. Like some racking, hot doom. Personally he hardly existed.
The next day he would not let her have any fire, because of attracting attention with the smoke. It was a grey day, and she was cold. He stayed round, and heated soup on the petrol stove. She lay motionless in the blankets.
And in the afternoon she pulled the clothes over her head and broke into tears. She had never really cried in her life. He dragged the blankets away and looked to see what was shaking her. She sobbed in helpless hysterics. He covered her over again and went outside, looking at the mountains, where clouds were dragging and leaving a little snow. It was a violent, windy, horrible day, the evil of winter rushing down.
She cried for hours. And after this a great silence came between them. They were two people who had died. He did not touch her any more. In the night she lay and shivered like a dying dog. She felt that her very shivering would rupture something in her body, and she would die.
At last she had to speak.
“Could you make a fire? I am so cold,” she said, with chattering teeth.
“Want to come over here?” came his voice.
“I would rather you made me a fire,” she said, her teeth knocking together and chopping the words in two.
He got up and kindled a fire. At last the warmth spread, and she could sleep.
The next day was still chilly, with some wind. But the sun shone. He went about in silence, with a dead-looking face. It was now so dreary and so like death she wished he would do anything rather than continue in this negation. If now he asked her to go down with him to the world and marry him, she would do it. What did it matter? Nothing mattered any more.
But he would not ask her. His desire was dead and heavy like ice within him. He kept watch around the house.
On the fourth day as she sat huddled in the doorway in the sun, hugged in a blanket, she saw two horsemen come over the crest of the grassy slope — small figures. She gave a cry. He looked up quickly and saw the figures. The men had dismounted. They were looking for the trail.
“They are looking for me,” she said.
“Muy bien,” he answered in Spanish.
He went and fetched his gun, and sat with it across his knees.
“Oh!” she said. “Don’t shoot!”
He looked across at her.
“Why?” he said. “You like staying with me?”
“No,” she said. “But don’t shoot.”
“I ain’t going to Pen,” he said.
“You won’t have to go to Pen,” she said. “Don’t shoot!”
“I’m going to shoot,” he muttered.
And straightaway he kneeled and took very careful aim. The Princess sat on in an agony of helplessness and hopelessness.
The shot rang out. In an instant she saw one of the horses on the pale grassy slope rear and go rolling down. The man had dropped in the grass, and was invisible. The second man clambered on his horse, and
on that precipitous place went at a gallop in a long swerve towards the nearest spruce tree cover. Bang! Bang! went Romero’s shots. But each time he missed, and the running horse leaped like a kangaroo towards cover.
It was hidden. Romero now got behind a rock; tense silence, in the brilliant sunshine. The Princess sat on the bunk inside the cabin, crouching, paralysed. For hours, it seemed, Romero knelt behind this rock, in his black shirt, bare-headed, watching. He had a beautiful, alert figure. The Princess wondered why she did not feel sorry for him. But her spirit was hard and cold, her heart could not melt. Though now she would have called him to her, with love.
But no, she did not love him. She would never love any man. Never! It was fixed and sealed in her, almost vindictively.
Suddenly she was so startled she almost fell from the bunk. A shot rang out quite close from behind the cabin. Romero leaped straight into the air, his arms fell outstretched, turning as he leaped. And even while he was in the air, a second shot rang out, and he fell with a crash, squirming, his hands clutching the earth towards the cabin door.
The Princess sat absolutely motionless, transfixed, staring at the prostrate figure. In a few moments the figure of a man in the Forest Service appeared close to the house; a young man in a broad-brimmed Stetson hat, dark flannel shirt, and riding-boots, carrying a gun. He strode over to the prostrate figure.
“Got you, Romero!” he said aloud. And he turned the dead man over. There was already a little pool of blood where Romero’s breast had been.
“H’m!” said the Forest Service man. “Guess I got you nearer than I thought.”
And he squatted there, staring at the dead man.
The distant calling of his comrade aroused him. He stood up.
“Hullo, Bill!” he shouted. “Yep! Got him! Yep! Done him in, apparently.”
The second man rode out of the forest on a grey horse. He had a ruddy, kind face, and round brown eyes, dilated with dismay.
“He’s not passed out?” he asked anxiously.
“Looks like it,” said the first young man coolly.
The second dismounted and bent over the body. Then he stood up again, and nodded.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 652