Tramping on Life Part 118

A night of wind, s.h.i.+fting into rain. Hildreth I knew would be afraid, alone.

I stepped into her cottage, in my bath-robe. She almost screamed at my sudden appearance. For I came in at the door like a shadow, the wind and rain making such a tumult that a running horse would not have been heard.

"Dearest ... you're all wringing wet ... you're dripping all over the floor. Throw off that robe. Dry yourself--there's a towel there!"

She flung me her kimono. "Here, put this on, till you're comfortable again."

I came out in her kimono, which I was bursting through ... my arms sticking out to my elbow.

She laughed herself almost into hysteria at my funny appearance.

"It will be quite safe to-night. I don't think he'd venture out. This is a hurricane, not a rainstorm ... besides, I believe he's a little afraid of you, Johnnie ... I was watching him rather closely, while I handled him, the other night ... he kept an uneasy eye on you all the time."

"G.o.d, but you were superb, Hildreth ... if you could only act that way on the stage!--"

"I _could_ act that way on the stage," she replied unexpectedly, a trifle put out....

Then--

"A woman has to do many things to save herself--"

"Oh, I swear that you are the most marvellous, the most beautiful woman in the world ... I love you ... I adore you ... I'd die for you ...

right here ... now!"

As we lay there in the dark the storm pulled and tugged and battered as if with great, sinister hands, striving to get in at us.

Hildreth trembled in my arms, shaking afresh at each shock of the wind and the rain.

"Don't be afraid, my little woman!"

"I wonder if he'd dare come down to-night?"

"If he did, and caught us, I'd kill him."

"He knows that, if he knows anything, I'm sure ... that's why I think we're all right!"

And she came up closer into my arms with a sigh of content.

I had been asleep....

The sudden madness and saturnalia of love into which I had these few weeks been plunged tapped, it seemed, my subliminal consciousness, maybe my memory of former incarnations....

I never had such a vision in my life....

I was fully aware of my surroundings, yet through them shone another, a far reality that belonged to me, too.

I described it to Hildreth, as she lay, thrilled, beside me.

A cave ... high up on the hill-crest ... our cave, that we had imagined, now come true....

I was a huge chap, with a girdle of leaves about my waist ... strange, tropic leaves ... there was black hair all over my body ... there was a little, red fire back in the cave's obscurity....

I had come in, casting a dead fawn down from my shoulder....

Hildreth came forward ... it was plainly she ... though with fine red hair like down on her legs....

"But your name is Naa ... my name is Kaa, the hunter, the slayer of good, red meat."

"Johnnie, do you really see that,--_all_ that!"

She was enthralled like a child, as I described the landscape that lay, spread immense, beneath us ... and the wide ocean, great and blue, that tossed to the east.

Though I was genuinely possessed by this strange vision, though it was no make-believe, I could not help injecting a little Kansas horse-play into it....

I sank my teeth in "Naa's" shoulder, till she cried aloud. I seized her by the hair and dragged her till she lay p.r.o.ne on the floor.

I stood over her, making guttural noises, which I did so realistically that it made s.h.i.+vers run up and down my back while doing it....

I was almost as frightened as she was.

Before I knew it, she was thinking I had suddenly gone mad. She was shouting "Mubby" for help--her husband's pet name....

The little fool! I caught her over the mouth with a grim hand.

"Don't do that ... can't a fellow play once in a while?"

"But it wasn't _all_ play, was it?"

"No, I really saw the cave, and the primeval landscape.

"Shall I tell you some more?"

"No, it frightens me too much ... it seems too real. And you've bruised me, and my head feels as if you've torn half my hair out."

"Why did you call out your husband's pet name?"

"I don't know ... did I?"

"Yes!"

"After a pause in the dark.