by Bret Harte
CHAPTER V.
OUT OF THE WOODS--INTO THE SHADOW.
Happily Grace was wrong. Her ankle was severely sprained, and she couldnot stand. Philip tore up his shirt, and, with bandages dipped in snowwater, wrapped up the swollen limb. Then he knocked over a quail in thebushes and another duck, and clearing away the brush for a camping spot,built a fire, and tempted the young girl with a hot supper. The peril ofstarvation passed, their greatest danger was over--a few days longer ofenforced rest and inactivity was the worst to be feared.
The air had grown singularly milder with the last few hours. At midnighta damp breeze stirred the pine needles above their heads, and anominous muffled beating was heard upon the snow-packed vault. It wasrain.
"It is the reveille of spring!" whispered Philip.
But Grace was in no mood for poetry--even a lover's. She let her headdrop upon his shoulder, and then said--
"You must go on, dear, and leave me here."
"Grace!"
"Yes, Philip! I can live till you come back. I fear no danger now. I amso much better off than _they_ are!"
A few tears dropped on his hand. Philip winced. Perhaps it was hisconscience; perhaps there was something in the girl's tone, perhapsbecause she had once before spoken in the same way, but it jarred upon acertain quality in his nature which he was pleased to call his "commonsense." Philip really believed himself a high-souled, thoughtless,ardent, impetuous temperament, saved only from destruction by theoccasional dominance of this quality.
For a moment he did not speak. He thought how, at the risk of his ownsafety, he had snatched this girl from terrible death; he thought how hehad guarded her through their perilous journey, taking all the burdensupon himself; he thought how happy he had made her--how she had evenadmitted her happiness to him; he thought of her present helplessness,and how willing he was to delay the journey on her account; he dwelteven upon a certain mysterious, ill-defined but blissful future with himto which he was taking her; and yet here, at the moment of theirpossible deliverance, she was fretting about two dying people, who,without miraculous interference, would be dead before she could reachthem. It was part of Philip's equitable self-examination--a fact ofwhich he was very proud--that he always put himself in the position ofthe person with whom he differed, and imagined how _he_ would act underthe like circumstances. Perhaps it is hardly necessary to say thatPhilip always found that his conduct under those conditions would betotally different. In the present instance, putting himself in Grace'sposition, he felt that he would have abandoned all and everything for alove and future like hers. That she did not was evidence of a moraldeficiency or a blood taint. Logic of this kind is easy and irrefutable.It has been known to obtain even beyond the Sierras, and with people whowere not physically exhausted. After a pause he said to Grace, in achanged voice--
"Let us talk plainly for a few moments, Grace, and understand each otherbefore we go forward or backward. It is five days since we left the hut;were we even certain of finding our wandering way back again, we couldnot reach them before another five days had elapsed; by that time allwill be over. They have either been saved or are beyond the reach ofhelp. This sounds harsh, Grace, but it is no harsher than the fact. Hadwe stayed, we would, without helping them, have only shared their fate.I might have been in your brother's place, you in your sister's. It isour fortune, not our fault, that we are not dying with them. It has beenwilled that you and I should be saved. It might have been willed that weshould have perished in our attempts to succour them, and that reliefwhich came to _them_ would have never reached _us_."
Grace was no logician, and could not help thinking that if Philip hadsaid this before, she would not have left the hut. But the masculinereader will, I trust, at once detect the irrelevance of the femininesuggestion, and observe that it did not refute Philip's argument. Shelooked at him with a half frightened air. Perhaps it was the tears thatdimmed her eyes, but his few words seemed to have removed him to a greatdistance, and for the first time a strange sense of loneliness came overher. She longed to reach her yearning arms to him again, but with thisfeeling came a sense of shame that she had not felt before.
Philip noticed her hesitation, and half interpreted it. He let herpassive head fall.
"Perhaps we had better wait until we are ourselves out of danger beforewe talk of helping others," he said with something of his oldbitterness. "This accident may keep us here some days, and we know notas yet where we are. Go to sleep now," he said more kindly, "and in themorning we will see what can be done."
Grace sobbed herself to sleep! Poor, poor Grace! She had been lookingfor this opportunity of speaking about herself--about their future. Thiswas to have been the beginning of her confidence about Dr. Devarges'ssecret; she would have told him frankly all the doctor had said, evenhis suspicions of Philip himself. And then Philip would have been sureto have told her his plans, and they would have gone back with help, andPhilip would have been a hero whom Gabriel would have instantlyrecognised as the proper husband for Grace, and they would have all beenvery happy. And now they were all dead, and had died, perhaps, cursingher, and--Philip--Philip had not kissed her good-night, and was sittinggloomily under a tree!
The dim light of a leaden morning broke through the snow vault abovetheir heads. It was raining heavily, the river had risen, and was stillrising. It was filled with drift and branches, and snow and ice, thewaste and ware of many a mile. Occasionally a large uprooted tree with agaunt forked root like a mast sailed by. Suddenly Philip, who had beensitting with his chin upon his hands, rose with a shout. Grace looked uplanguidly. He pointed to a tree that, floating by, had struck the bankwhere they sat, and then drifted broadside against it, where for amoment it lay motionless.
"Grace," he said, with his old spirits, "Nature has taken us in handherself. If we are to be saved, it is by her methods. She brought ushere to the water's edge, and now she sends a boat to take us off again.Come!"
Before Grace could reply, Philip had lifted her gaily in his arms, anddeposited her between two upright roots of the tree. Then he placedbeside her his rifle and provisions, and leaping himself on the bow ofthis strange craft, shoved it off with a broken branch that he hadfound. For a moment it still clung to the bank, and then suddenlycatching the impulse of the current, darted away like a living creature.
The river was very narrow and rapid where they had embarked, and for afew moments it took all of Philip's energy and undivided attention tokeep the tree in the centre of the current. Grace sat silent, admiringher lover, alert, forceful, and glowing with excitement. PresentlyPhilip called to her--
"Do you see that log? We are near a settlement."
A freshly-hewn log of pine was floating in the current beside them. Aray of hope shot through Grace's sad fancies; if they were so near help,might not it have already reached the sufferers? But she forbore tospeak to Philip again upon that subject, and in his new occupation heseemed to have forgotten her. It was with a little thrill of joy that atlast she saw him turn, and balancing himself with his bough upon theircrank craft, walk down slowly toward her. When he reached her side hesat down, and, taking her hand in his, for the first time since theprevious night, he said gently--
"Grace, my child, I have something to tell you."
Grace's little heart throbbed quickly; for a moment she did not dare tolift her long lashes toward his. Without noticing her embarrassment hewent on--
"In a few hours we shall be no longer in the wilderness, but in theworld again--in a settlement perhaps, among men and--perhaps women.Strangers certainly--not the relatives you have known, and who knowyou--not the people with whom we have been familiar for so many weeksand days--but people who know nothing of us, or our sufferings."
Grace looked at him, but did not speak.
"You understand, Grace, that, not knowing this, they might put their ownconstruction upon our flight.
"To speak plainly, my child, you are a young woman, and I am a youngman. Your beauty, dear Grace, offers an expl
anation of our companionshipthat the world will accept more readily than any other, and the truth tomany would seem scarcely as natural. For this reason it must not betold. I will go back alone with relief, and leave you here in some safehands until I return. But I leave you here not as Grace Conroy--youshall take my own name!"
A hot flush mounted to Grace's throat and cheek, and for an instant,with parted lips, she hung breathless upon his next word. He continuedquietly--
"You shall be my sister--Grace Ashley."
The blood fell from her cheek, her eyelids dropped, and she buried herface in her hands. Philip waited patiently for her reply. When shelifted her face again, it was quiet and calm--there was even a slightflush of proud colour in her cheek as she met his gaze, and with thefaintest curl of her upper lip said--
"You are right!"
At the same moment there was a sudden breaking of light and warmth andsunshine over their heads; the tree swiftly swung round a sharp curve inthe river, and then drifted slowly into a broad, overflowed valley,sparkling with the emerald of gently sloping hillsides, and dazzlingwith the glow of the noonday sun. And beyond, from a cluster of willowsscarcely a mile away, the smoke of a cabin chimney curled in the stillair.