Wings of the Wind Part 37

"That was a careless way of meaning something else," I tried to answer lightly.

"You shouldn't say evasive things. It leads to speaking with two tongues, which Echochee has taught me is wrong."

"Well, it couldn't be a direful prophecy, anyhow, when your mother and your throne are waiting just around the corner, as it were. The direful part of your life has pa.s.sed, and most appropriately your name has changed from Doloria to Princess--though, of the two, I prefer Doloria."

"When it means sorrow?"

"It only means sorrow to those you leave. You've paid dearly enough to find nothing but happiness now for the rest of your life. It's written in the sky."

"You're a comforting Chancellor," she was still looking at me calmly, "and I'm already beginning to forget." And gently she laid her hand on the back of my own which rested between us.

My blood bounded with an unreasoning pleasure, yet her movement had been neither temperamental nor sentimental; it was instinctive--one of those honest impulses that knows no s.e.x. Did she realize, by some divine insight, that this frankness, this absence of finical conventions, this whole-hearted camaraderie, would hold me more sternly to my path of duty than anything else she might have done? Did the instinct of her s.e.x whisper that each man's heart, however light and worldly, is the possessor of a trusty loadstone which draws the best of him to a woman's aid when her honor is placed unreservedly into his hands? This speaks, of course, of men and not of human beasts; still, a woman is not put to the peril of looking into the heart of a human beast to discover that he is a beast--she can read it, without gla.s.ses, in his face!

"Shall we look over the rest of your estate?" I asked. And I kept the hand until she had been helped up, then released it naturally as we started on the tour of inspection.

We finally came to my pool, and I asked her advice in choosing a nearby spot where I should build a lean-to; since our kitchen site, that until now had been the location of my bailiwick, was by right of conquest hers, a place where she should be able to approach without the precaution of whistling like a plover--a thing she couldn't do, anyway!

So we marked a spot and started on, taking some time to encircle the pool that, was rather large and, upon this side, densely fringed with a riot of tropical vines and jungle stuff. Yet, when we had gone but a little way, she stopped, looked vaguely troubled, and said:

"You won't be as near to me here as you were at the kitchen. I was so tired last night that I didn't think very much about those men, because our servants were leading them off. But don't you think it's possible that some of them might wander back here on their way home?"

"There's hardly one chance in a thousand," I a.s.sured her.

"I know. But that one chance would be dreadful if--if----" she stopped, and added wistfully: "I _would_ like to feel in the nights that you are nearer to me!"

I turned to look at something else--at anything but her! Yet if my eyes required a subterfuge my heart did not, and it thrilled as if some wild musicians were tugging at its strings making them sound impa.s.sioned harmonies. But, even as I stood swayed by the madness of the moment, I felt that a great, an unseen, presence had pinned a decoration upon my honor--not because it had already proved itself, but in order that it might do so.

We therefore stopped and chose a new place on the side nearer her spring, and that being settled--a most important selection, we pretended it to be--she looked up at me, crying happily:

"After luncheon I'll come and help you build it!--and then you'll cut a path straight from my tent to yours so, should there be any danger, I can run to you without stumbling!"

For another moment, with eyes closed, I visualized my new decoration.

Luncheon, I thought, was even an improvement over breakfast. Nor did I take so long to wash the dishes afterwards.

CHAPTER XX

SLEEPING BENEATH G.o.d'S TENT

That afternoon we built the lean-to. I had had some fair ideas about building a lean-to, but Doloria was in possession of a practical knowledge gathered on camping trips that she and Echochee had made--for these, I judged, const.i.tuted one of her chief recreations since childhood. She knew how to twist ropes of bark for tying the poles, and how to interlay the palm fronds so they would neither leak nor be lifted by the wind. She took the keenest pleasure in it, too, and I can safely say that never in my life have I enjoyed building anything as much as that lean-to. When it was finished I stepped back and, in a burst of admiration, cried:

"It's a palace? I can't ever get along without you!"

A wave of color came into her face, as instantaneous as I believe it was unexpected, though she said in a matter of fact tone:

"There are other little things to be done, but we'll finish them to-morrow."

"It's already the coziest place in the world," I insisted. "Now I'm going to cut that path, and then we'll have----" but I checked myself and looked at her in some concern. She had worked over hard for me--I had not realized it while we were busy; so now I begged: "Won't you let me cook the dinner? I'm afraid you're about dead!"

"Oh, really I'm not. But I'm hungry and so are you, and----" a little curve came into the corners of her mouth that was very tantalizing, "I think I'd better cook it."

"I was hoping you would," I admitted shamelessly, "even if you are tired."

"Purely a selfish decision on my part, I a.s.sure you," she smiled. "I haven't forgotten the breakfast you attempted."

"Very well. I'll cut you a nice straight path for a nice big feed!"

"And don't leave anything in it, will you, Chancellor! It would be dreadful to come running to you in the dark, and stumble and--and b.u.mp my nose!"

"Dreadful!" I cried. "It would be the end of the world!"

"Or the end of you," she laughed. "Now get to work, and then you can build the kitchen fire. Don't you think we might have dinner a little earlier to-night?"

With this she left me; but how sweetly confidential and domestic that had sounded: "Don't you think we might have dinner a little earlier to-night?"

I found her again, sitting on a fallen log and gazing wistfully across the prairie toward the east, not back in the direction of Efaw Kotee's den, and I felt that she was thinking of Azuria--her Azuria. What visions its existence must have opened to her, whose life had been always pa.s.sionate after dreams and utterly bored with realities! Yet what were her dreams?

She saw me and arose slowly, pa.s.sing one hand across her eyes as if brus.h.i.+ng away the fancies; then I watched an expression almost of tenderness as she came up to me.

"It isn't quite fair to interrupt," I said, "when you were having such a peaceful time of it; but the fire's ready, and our supply of b.u.t.tonwood shrinks."

"Was I having such a peaceful time of it?" she asked, wonderingly.

"Perhaps it might have been if I knew Echochee and your man are safe.

Anyway, I'm glad the fire's ready; I've been expecting you to call me."

"I wish I could give you the same a.s.surance about them that I feel myself. Try to think I'm right, won't you?"

"Yes, really I will, good Chancellor," she smiled.

On the way back we pa.s.sed my pool, where she kneeled ingenuously to bathe her hands and arms, as chastely innocent as a mermaid.

"Have you such a thing as a towel?" she laughed. "Mine are in the tent!"

I got it, and walked slowly on. And I realized again, what I had once before noted, that overly refined proprieties--I do not mean proprieties of the essential kind--cannot endure between man and maid cast alone in a wilderness. They become frail, insipid; and mar, rather than perfect, the harmony of existence. Contraversely, their absence adds a deeper l.u.s.ter, strikes the tuning-fork that hums with the true note of life.

Sorry the man who does not feel a sympathetic vibration! A woman is not exactly at her best when bathing her face above a porcelain bowl, and to be the constant, daily witness of such ablutions would, in my limited experience, engender a slight unrest among the tuneful Nine. Yet let her gracefully lean above a woodland pool, roll back her sleeves and open the collar of her shooting s.h.i.+rt, and she becomes a personification of glory to him who waits near the fire he has built for their evening meal. But she must have looked danger in the face with him, slept near him beneath the stars; knowing, should she be affrighted in the night, that her call will bring his rea.s.suring answer, but also knowing that the voice is all that will ever come unbidden to her side. And thus is the Cave-man in him gloriously aroused to guard her from Nature's wild, while the poetry of their intercourse guards her from himself. What more beautiful existence than to live alone in a forest with the girl you love!

I thought that after dinner it might be well to sit again beside the fort where we could watch the prairie. There is a comforting sense of security that comes to one at nightfall when one has looked in all directions and found all things well. So for a while she left me to the orgy of was.h.i.+ng dishes, but when I had turned the last plate top down upon our kitchen log to dry, I saw her returning.

She came humming a tune, a catchy tune--I recognized it at once--that the mandolins had tinkled in the Havana cafe, and from the mischievous curves about the corners of her mouth I knew that her mood was adorable.

So I caught up the tune, whistling softly, and crossed to her holding out my hands.

"It's a corking fox-trot," I said, for the moment stopping our orchestra. "Let's dance it!"

But she drew back, laughing outright.

"I don't know how!"