Bred of the Desert Part 10

"I suppose," he rejoined, "that the one decent course for me would be to drop all this. But somehow I can't. I love you that way, Helen! Don't you understand? I cannot let go! I seem to be forced repeatedly to make--make a boor of myself!" There was a moment's silence. "Yet I have resisted it," he went on. "I have fought it--fought it with all the power I have! But I--I somehow--cannot let go!"

Helen said nothing. She herself was coming to realize fully the depths of this man's pa.s.sion. She knew--knew as few women have known--that here was a man who wanted her; but she knew also, and she was sorry to know it, that she could not conscientiously give herself to him. She regretted it not alone for his sake, but for her own as well. She liked him, liked him better than any other man she had ever known. But she knew that she could not marry him, and believed in her heart that her reasons for refusing him were just reasons. But she remained silent, true to her decision.

When Stephen spoke again it was not to plead with her; he seemed at last to have accepted her refusal for all time. But he asked her reason for absolutely refusing him--not that it mattered much now, since he faced the inevitable, but thought the knowledge might in future guide and strengthen him. He talked rapidly, hinting at beliefs and idolatries, comparing West with East, and East with West, while he stood motionless, one hand upon the fence--earnest, sincere, strong in his request. When he had uttered his last sad word, Helen found herself, as she searched his drawn profile pityingly, no more able to deny him an answer than at the time of their first chance meeting she could have controlled the fate which had brought it about.

"Stephen," she burst out, "I will tell you--though I don't want to tell you--remember! And if in the telling," she hurried on, "I prove rather too candid--please stop me! You will, won't you?"

He nodded listlessly.

"To begin with," she began, quietly, dreading her task, "we as a people are selfish. We are isolated here--are far from the center of things--but only certain things. We are quite our own center in certain other ways. But we are selfish as regards advancement, and being selfish in this way--being what we are and where we are--we live solely for that advancement--for the privilege of doing what we will, and of knowing! It is the first law of the country down here--of my people! We have aims and aspirations and courage all peculiar to ourselves. And when we meet your type, as I met you, we come--(Now, stop me when I get too severe!)--we come to know our own values a little better--to respect ourselves, perhaps--though perhaps, too, I shouldn't say it--a little more. Not that you lack virtues, you Easterners, but they differ from ours--and probably only in kind. And exactly what your type is you yourself have made plain to me during our many little trips together in the saddle. And--and now I fear I must become even more personal," she broke off. "And I am very sorry that I must. Though I know you will forgive me. You will, won't you?" And she looked up at him wistfully.

"You thought it might benefit you to know. This is only my opinion.

Others may not see it this way. But I am giving it for what it is, and I am giving it only because you asked it and have asked it repeatedly."

He roused himself. "Go on," he said, with evident forced lightness. "I see your viewpoint perfectly."

"Well," she resumed, hurriedly, "you lack ambition--a real ambition. You have ridden horses, played tennis, idled about clubs. You were a coddled and petted child, a pampered and spoiled youth. You attended a dozen schools, and, to use your own language, were 'canned' out of all of them. Which about sums up your activities. You have idled your time away, and you give every promise of continuing. I regret that I must say that, but I regret more deeply that it is true. You have many admirable qualities. You have the greatest of all qualities--power for sincere love. But in the qualities which make one acceptable down here--Wait!

I'll change that. In the qualities which would make one acceptable to me you are lacking to a very considerable degree. And it is just there that you fill me with the greatest doubt--doubt so grave, indeed, that I cannot--and I use the verb advisedly--cannot permit myself to like you in the way you want me to like you."

Again he bestirred himself. "What is that, please? What is that quality?"

"I have tried to tell you," she rejoined, patiently. "It is a really worth-while ambition. You lack the desire to do something, the desire to be something--a desire that ought to have been yours, should have been yours, years ago--the thing part and parcel of our blood down here. It may take shape in any one of a hundred different things--business ventures; personal prospectings; pursuit of art, science; raising cattle--anything, Stephen! But something, something which will develop a real value, both to yourself and to your fellow-man. We have it. We have inherited it. We got it from our grandfathers--our great-grandfathers, in a few cases--men who wanted to know--to learn--to learn by doing. It is a powerful force. It must be a powerful force, it must have been strong within them, for it dragged them out of the comforts of civilization and led them into the desert. But they found what they sought; and in finding what they sought they found themselves also. And what they found--"

"Was something which, having drawn them forward to the frontier, filled them with dislike for those who remained behind?"

"If you wish to put it that way--yes." Her answer was straight and clean-cut.

"But what of those who remained behind?" asked Stephen, alert now.

"Surely the quality was there! It must be there yet! Those of the old-timers who remained behind must have stayed simply because of circ.u.mstances. Good men often curb the adventurous spirit out of sheer conscientious regard for others who--"

"It is you, Stephen!" interrupted Helen, quietly. "It is you, yourself.

All Easterners are not like you, I well know. Yet you and your type are found in all parts of the East."

Stephen stood for a long moment, his eyes fixed on the mystic skyline.

Then he turned to her as if about to speak. But there was only the silent message of his longing eyes. Finally he turned away and, as if unconsciously, fell to stroking the horse.

He had nothing to say, and he knew it. The girl was right, and he knew that. She had pointed out to him only what others at different times had mildly tried to make him see. He was a rich young man, or would be after a death or two in his family. But that in itself was no excuse for his inertia. Many had told him that. But he had never taken it seriously. It had remained for the little woman beside him to make him fully realize it. She alone had driven it home so that it hurt. Yet between this girl and the others who had taken him mildly to task there was the difference between day and darkness. For he loved this girl, and if she would not marry him for reasons which he knew he could remedy, then it was up to him to accept her criticism, which was perhaps a challenge, and go forth and do something and be something, and reveal his love to her through that effort. What it would be he did not know. He did know he must get out of the town--get out of the Territory, if needs be--but he must go somewhere in this country of worthy aspiration and live as he knew she would have him live, do something, be something, something that for its very worth to her as well as to all mankind would awaken her ready response. Such a move he realized, as he stood beside her, would be as decent in him as she in her criticism had been eloquently truthful. The vigor, the relentless certainty, with which she had pointed out his weakness--no one before had had the courage to deal with him like this.

And reviewing it all, and then casting grimly forward into his future, he suddenly awoke, as he gently stroked this mettled horse, to a strange likeness between the spirit of horse and mistress. He turned to Helen.

"You are very much alike," he declared--"you and your horse." Then he paused as if in thought. "The spirit of the desert," he went on, absently, "shows itself through all the phases of its life."

Helen brightened "I am glad you think that of us, Stephen," she answered, as if relieved by this unexpected turn. "Pat is truly of the desert. He was born and bred in this land of _amole_ and cactus."

"And you?" he asked.

"I also," she replied, gravely. "I too was born and bred in this land of _amole_ and cactus." Suddenly she turned her head. "I am afraid they are looking for us."

They returned to the house. Helen's guests were preparing to depart.

There was much high humor, and when the last but one was gone, and this one, Stephen, standing on the porch with hat in hand, Helen found that for the moment she had forgotten her distress. At sight of him, however, it all returned to her, and she faced him with earnest solicitude.

"Tell me, Stephen," she burst out, "that you forgive me my unkind words, and that you will try to forget them. But whether you succeed in that or not, Stephen," she hastily added, her voice breaking, "tell me that you will continue to be friendly. We want you, all of us--I want you! I have enjoyed our rides together so much! They have meant much to me, and I hope they have been enjoyable to you. So let us go on, on this accepted basis, and be friends. Tell me you will, Stephen!"

He was silent a long time. Then he told her of his hastily made plans.

He was going away from town, of course. He could not remain, under the circ.u.mstances. Yet where he was going he didn't know. He would go farther West, probably--go somewhere and try to make good--try to do something worth while, to be something worth while. Saying which, he then thanked her fervently for everything--for her society, for her frank criticism, for having awakened him to an understanding of himself.

Helen stood speechless. She had not antic.i.p.ated this, that he would go away, that he would leave her. A deep-surging bitterness gripped her, and for a moment she almost relented. But only for a moment. The spell pa.s.sed, and she looked at him with frank, level eyes.

"I am sorry to hear that, Stephen," she declared, quietly. "We want you with us--all of us. But--but tell me," she concluded, finding the words coming with difficulty--"tell me that you feel no--no antagonism toward me, Stephen, because I can't--can't love you as you want me to love you, and that you understand that--that in deciding as I have I--I only wanted to be true--true to both of us!"

For answer he seized both her hands in his. He gazed straight down into her eyes. "I love you, Helen," he murmured, and then slowly released her fingers.

He left her so quietly that she hardly knew that he was gone. A step on the trail aroused her, and, lifting her eyes, she saw him striding away with shoulders back and head erect, as if awakened to a new manhood. And watching him go, as she felt, for the last time, she could no more control a sob than he at the moment could turn back. For a while she followed him with wistful eyes, then, finding sudden need for consolation, she hurried off the porch and across to the corral. Pat was there to receive her, and she flung her arms around his neck and gave way to sudden tears.

"Pat," she sobbed, "I--perhaps I do love him! Perhaps I have done wrong!

I--I--" She interrupted herself. "What shall I do, Pat?" she burst out, bitterly. "Oh, what shall I do?"

Pat could not advise her. But he remained very still, supporting her weight with dumb patience, until she turned away, going slowly back into the house. Then he pressed close into his corner and sounded a shrill, protracted nicker.

That was all.

He saw the door close. He waited, pursuing his old habit, for all the lights to go out. And directly they began to disappear, one by one, first in the lower half of the house, then in the upper half, until all save one were extinguished. This one, as he knew from long experience, was in the room of his mistress. But though he waited and watched till the moon slanted behind the western hills, and the stars to the east dimmed and faded, and the gray of dawn stole across the sky above the mountains--though he waited and watched till his legs ached from long standing, and his eyes smarted from their steady vigil, and the Mexican appeared yawning from the depths of the stable, and from over toward town rose sounds of worldly activity--yet the light in her room burned on. Then the Mexican drove him into the stable. But not even now did he abandon his vigil. He entered his box-stall, with its tiny square window, and fixed his troubled gaze again upon the house. The sky was bright with coming day. From somewhere arose the crow of a rooster. Out on the river trail a team plodded slowly to market.

But the light in the room was still burning.

CHAPTER XII

ADVENTURE

It was late afternoon when Helen came down from her room. She had regained her calm. The Judge had gone about his affairs, her aunt was deep in her siesta, the Mexican woman was bustling about in the kitchen.

Refusing this kindly soul's offer of food, she walked listlessly into the library and sank into a huge chair. Spring was well advanced, yet there was an open fire. Elbows upon the arms of her chair, hands clasped under her chin, she turned unseeing eyes upon the flickering flames.

Motionless, barely breathing, she was a picture of hopeless grief.

Yet her thoughts were active. One after another the swift-moving events of the night before came to her--a night of delightful happenings and torturing surprises. She recalled that the crowd had been unusually gay, but that Stephen had been unusually quiet and absorbed. She remembered the games, and the story-telling, and the toasting of marshmallows in the grate. But over against these simple pleasures there had been Stephen, entering into the gaiety only because he must, now forcing a smile, now drawing back within himself, until a chorus of laughter would again force him to smile. Yet she had understood, and she had excused him. She had thought him resigned and content to be merely one of the crowd. And then had come that opportunity which evidently he had sought.

It had come as a surprise. But with it had come also a sudden desire to be alone with him, and to impress upon him her convictions. So they had gone out into the moonlight, to the corral fence, and to Pat, where she had endeavored to make everything clear. And then their return, and the departure of her guests, and his lingering on the porch, and his decision to go away, to leave her for ever. He hadn't put it in just that way! But that was what he was doing--that was what he had done. He had gone from her for ever.

The thought hurt. It hurt because she knew what part she had taken in it. She knew that she herself had sent him away. And when he had left her she knew, as she knew now, that in her heart she did not want it.

For she liked him--liked his society. She liked his care-free manner, his whimsical outlook upon her country, his many natural talents--his playing, and the navete of his singing, while he often admitted that his voice hurt him, and so must hurt others. No, she had not wanted him to go away. And somehow it had never occurred to her that he would go for ever. But he was gone, and she could not resign herself. Yet there was no calling him back. She had made a decision, had forced him to understand certain things. So she must accept it. But it hurt. It was slowly dawning upon her that she would never forget him.

Then another thought came to her. Since he was going, and since she had sent him away, it occurred to her that she ought to help him. It seemed to be her duty. Yet she could not determine how. He was going forth to prove himself. He would go where men only could go, and she was but a woman. And she wanted him to prove himself--she knew that--knew it more with every moment that pa.s.sed. She believed he had it in him. Yet she might help in some way. She wanted to be of some use to him in his undertaking. What could she do?

Suddenly, as she sat there, seemingly powerless, there came a shrill nicker whipping across from the corral--the voice of Pat.

Like a flash she had it! Stephen would go into the cattle country--she believed that. And in the cattle country he would need a horse, a good horse, such a horse as Pat. She would present the horse to Stephen! She would send Pat with him because she herself could not go with him. This she could do. Thus she would help Stephen to find himself, as her ancestors had found themselves. She would help him to become what she wanted him to become--a man--a _man_! Yes, she would give Pat to Stephen. She would send the horse as she had sent the man--forth into the world of deeds--deeds denied her s.e.x.

She rose hurriedly and ascended to her room. At her desk she drew paper and pen toward her.