Black Rock Part 23

'Yes; it was rather considerate of me.'

'Oh, I don't mean that,' the flush deepening; 'I am glad you know.'

'I have known some time.'

'How could you? I only knew to-day myself.'

'I have eyes.' She flushed again.

'Do you mean that people--' she began anxiously.

'No; I am not "people." I have eyes, and my eyes have been opened.'

'Opened?'

'Yes, by love.'

Then I told her openly how, weeks ago, I struggled with my heart and mastered it, for I saw it was vain to love her, because she loved a better man who loved her in return. She looked at me shyly and said--

'I am sorry.'

'Don't worry,' I said cheerfully. 'I didn't break my heart, you know; I stopped it in time.'

'Oh!' she said, slightly disappointed; then her lips began to twitch, and she went off into a fit of hysterical laughter.

'Forgive me,' she said humbly; 'but you speak as if it had been a fever.'

'Fever is nothing to it,' I said solemnly. 'It was a near thing.' At which she went off again. I was glad to see her laugh. It gave me time to recover my equilibrium, and it relieved her intense emotional strain.

So I rattled on some nonsense about Craig and myself till I saw she was giving no heed, but thinking her own thoughts: and what these were it was not hard to guess.

Suddenly she broke in upon my talk--

'He will tell me that I must go from him.'

'I hope he is no such fool,' I said emphatically and somewhat rudely, I fear; for I confess I was impatient with the very possibility of separation for these two, to whom love meant so much. Some people take this sort of thing easily and some not so easily; but love for a woman like this comes once only to a man, and then he carries it with him through the length of his life, and warms his heart with it in death.

And when a man smiles or sneers at such love as this, I pity him, and say no word, for my speech would be in an unknown tongue. So my heart was sore as I sat looking up at this woman who stood before me, overflowing with the joy of her new love, and dully conscious of the coming pain. But I soon found it was vain to urge my opinion that she should remain and share the work and life of the man she loved. She only answered--

'You will help him all you can, for it will hurt him to have me go.'

The quiver in her voice took out all the anger from my heart, and before I knew I had pledged myself to do all I could to help him.

But when I came upon him that night, sitting in the light of his fire, I saw he must be let alone. Some battles we fight side by side, with comrades cheering us and being cheered to victory; but there are fights we may not share, and these are deadly fights where lives are lost and won. So I could only lay my hand upon his shoulder without a word. He looked up quickly, read my face, and said, with a groan--

'You know?'

'I could not help it. But why groan?'

'She will think it right to go,' he said despairingly.

'Then you must think for her; you must bring some common-sense to bear upon the question.'

'I cannot see clearly yet,' he said; 'the light will come.'

'May I show you how I see it?' I asked.

'Go on,' he said.

For an hour I talked; eloquently, even vehemently urging the reason and right of my opinion. She would be doing no more than every woman does, no more than she did before; her mother-in-law had a comfortable home, all that wealth could procure, good servants, and friends; the estates could be managed without her personal supervision; after a few years'

work here they would go east for little Majorie's education; why should two lives be broken?--and so I went on.

He listened carefully, even eagerly.

'You make a good case,' he said, with a slight smile. 'I will take time.

Perhaps you are right. The light will come. Surely it will come. But,'

and here he sprang up and stretched his arms to full length above his head, 'I am not sorry; whatever comes I am not sorry. It is great to have her love, but greater to love her as I do. Thank G.o.d! nothing can take that away. I am willing, glad to suffer for the joy of loving her.'

Next morning, before I was awake, he was gone, leaving a note for me:--

'MY DEAR CONNOR,--I am due at the Landing. When I see you again I think my way will be clear. Now all is dark. At times I am a coward, and often, as you sometimes kindly inform me, an a.s.s; but I hope I may never become a mule.

I am willing to be led, or want to be, at any rate. I must do the best--not second best--for her, for me. The best only is G.o.d's will. What else would you have? Be good to her these days, dear old fellow.--Yours, CRAIG.'

How often those words have braced me he will never know, but I am a better man for them: 'The best only is G.o.d's will. What else would you have?' I resolved I would rage and fret no more, and that I would worry Mrs. Mavor with no more argument or expostulation, but, as my friend had asked, 'Be good to her.'

CHAPTER XII

LOVE IS NOT ALL

Those days when we were waiting Craig's return we spent in the woods or on the mountain sides, or down in the canyon beside the stream that danced down to meet the Black Rock river, I talking and sketching and reading, and she listening and dreaming, with often a happy smile upon her face. But there were moments when a cloud of shuddering fear would sweep the smile away, and then I would talk of Craig till the smile came back again.

But the woods and the mountains and the river were her best, her wisest, friends during those days. How sweet the ministry of the woods to her!

The trees were in their new summer leaves, fresh and full of life. They swayed and rustled above us, flinging their interlacing shadows upon us, and their swaying and their rustling soothed and comforted like the voice and touch of a mother. And the mountains, too, in all the glory of their varying robes of blues and purples, stood calmly, solemnly about us, uplifting our souls into regions of rest. The changing lights and shadows flitted swiftly over their rugged fronts, but left them ever as before in their steadfast majesty. 'G.o.d's in His heaven.' What would you have? And ever the little river sang its cheerful courage, fearing not the great mountains that threatened to bar its pa.s.sage to the sea. Mrs.

Mavor heard the song and her courage rose.

'We too shall find our way,' she said, and I believed her.

But through these days I could not make her out, and I found myself studying her as I might a new acquaintance. Years had fallen from her; she was a girl again, full of young warm life. She was as sweet as before, but there was a soft shyness over her, a half-shamed, half-frank consciousness in her face, a glad light in her eyes that made her all new to me. Her perfect trust in Craig was touching to see.

'He will tell me what to do,' she would say, till I began to realise how impossible it would be for him to betray such trust, and be anything but true to the best.

So much did I dread Craig's home-coming, that I sent for Graeme and old man Nelson, who was more and more Graeme's trusted counsellor and friend. They were both highly excited by the story I had to tell, for I thought it best to tell them all; but I was not a little surprised and disgusted that they did not see the matter in my light. In vain I protested against the madness of allowing anything to send these two from each other. Graeme summed up the discussion in his own emphatic way, but with an earnestness in his words not usual with him.

'Craig will know better than any of us what is right to do, and he will do that, and no man can turn him from it; and,' he added, 'I should be sorry to try.'

Then my wrath rose, and I cried--