The Short Cut Part 44

She did not answer. She had no time to answer, she was so busy trying the two chairs, inhaling the fragrance of the flowers, admiring the fireplace, examining the reading lamp which hung over the table and which he had constructed of wood, chosen for beauty of natural colour and grain, the opaque sides shutting out the light which fell straight down upon an open book.

Only now did she realise that the cave seemed smaller. There was a part.i.tion running across it, a wide door standing ajar. He followed her as she ran to it.

"My bedroom," he warned her. "I won't swear to its tidiness."

Here again was the soft glow of electric lights cunningly concealed with nowhere a hint of the wires that ran in deeply chiseled grooves; here was a wide couch, a bit of the woodland, as were the chairs and table, the rough bark still upon the woodwork, cus.h.i.+ons and coverlet of bearskin; here a smaller table, a smaller chair.

"It's wonderful, you wonderful Wayne!" she cried delightedly.

But he had his arm about her again and was leading her toward the fireplace, to it, through another door which opened to the pa.s.sage leading to the chasm where the water leaped down toward the bowels of the earth. The door flung open, the pa.s.sage filled with light and a fresh surprise.

Across the chasm were logs as large as one man could handle, hewn so that they lay close together, so that their upper surface made a level floor. Wanda and Shandon crossed, hearing the water shouting under them. And here, where Wanda had never been before, they came upon--

"The kitchen!" she cried. "A real kitchen!"

With a real stove, only that it was made of slabs and squares of granite, a real kitchen table only that it was made from rough pine and cedar, with the bark still on it; and very real dishes. Most of all the real fragrance of coffee just boiling over. Wanda ran to retrieve it and Wayne went on ahead of her. In a moment he called.

All new to her, the short climb upward along a flight of steps cut in the rock, the little winding way up which she ran eagerly, the narrow rock platform, the door against which he stood.

"First," he commanded gaily, "turn and look back."

She turned. Looking down she saw the kitchen; looking outward she saw a great cut through the cliffs where they seemed to fall apart in a steep sided ravine, and through this she looked out and down over her forests.

"The view from My Lady's bedroom," he laughed. "And now My Lady's bedroom, itself."

He threw open the door, standing aside to watch her pa.s.s.

A tiny rudely squared chamber, all in white. Countless warm, furry pelts of the snowshoe rabbits he had trapped during the winter, made a white carpet underfoot; a couch unlike the other in that this was fas.h.i.+oned entirely of white pine, the smooth surfaces polished and glistening under their many coats of sh.e.l.lac, a coverlet of countless other white rabbit skins st.i.tched together; a little dressing table of glistening white pine, with a real mirror reflecting two flushed happy faces, and on the floor a big white bearskin.

"And you did it all, every bit, yourself!"

That was the thought that flooded the caves for her with a light more softly radiant than the glow of innumerable electric bulbs; the thought which hid the little flaws in stone and woodwork and gave a gleam to them that no mere sh.e.l.lac and white wood could have done.

They went back to the living room to stand, silent for a little, before the fireplace. They watched the flames shoot upward through little sprays and cl.u.s.ters of fiery sparks. Their hands crept together, clinging close. Slowly their eyes came away from the fire and sought each the other's. And she saw what he saw, a love that is eternal and that understands.