The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

  CHAPTER XII

  ON THE TWO SIDES OF THE DOOR

  The cabin contained a large and a small room. In the wall between themthere was a doorway closed by an ordinary batten door with a woodenlatch and no lock. Closed it served to hide the occupant of one roomfrom the view of the other, otherwise it was but a feeble barrier. Evenhad it possessed a lock, a vigorous man could have burst it through in amoment.

  These thoughts did not come very clearly to Enid Maitland. Few thoughtsof any kind came to her. Where she lay she could see plainly the dancinglight of the glorious fire. She was warm; the deftly wrapped bandage,the healing lotion upon her foot, had greatly relieved the pain in thatwounded member. The bed was hard but comfortable, much more so than thesleeping bags to which of late she had been accustomed.

  Few women had gone through such experiences mental and physical as hadbefallen her within the last few hours and lived to tell the story. Hadit not been for the exhaustive strains of body and spirit to which shehad been subjected, her mental faculties would have been on the alertand the strangeness of her unique position would have made her sonervous that she could not have slept.

  For the time being, however, the physical demands upon her entity wereparamount. She was dry, she was warm, she was fed, she was free fromanxiety and she was absolutely unutterably weary. Her thoughts werevague, inchoate, unconcentrated. The fire wavered before her eyes, sheclosed them in a few moments and did not open them.

  Without a thought, without a care, she fell asleep. Her repose wascomplete, not a dream even disturbed the profound slumber into which shesank. Pretty picture she made; her head thrown backward, her golden hairroughly dried and quickly plaited in long braids, one of which fellalong the pillow while the other curled lovingly around her neck. Herface in the natural light would have looked pallid from what she hadgone through, but the fire cast red glows upon it; the fitful lightflickered across her countenance and sometimes the color wavered, itcame and went as if in consciousness; and sometimes deep shadowsunrelieved accentuated the paleness born of her sufferings.

  There is no light that plays so many tricks with the imagination, orthat so stimulates the fancy as the light of an open fire. In its suddenoutbursts it sometimes seems to add life touches to the sleeping and thedead. Had there been any eye to see this girl, she would have made adelightful picture in the warm glow from the stone hearth. There were noeyes to look, however, save those which belonged to the man on the otherside of the door.

  On the hither side of that door in the room where the fire burned on thehearth, there was rest in the heart of the woman, on the farther sidewhere the fire only burned in the heart of the man, there was tumult.Not outward and visible, but inward and spiritual, and yet there was nolack of apparent manifestation of the turmoil in the man's soul.

  Albeit the room was smaller than the other, it was still of a good size.He walked nervously up and down from one end to the other as ceaselesslyas a wild animal impatient of captivity stalks the narrow limits of hiscontracted cage. The even tenor of his life had suddenly been diverted.The ordinary sequence of his days had been abruptly changed. The privacyof five years, which he had hoped and dreamed might exist as long as he,had been rudely broken in upon. Humanity, which he had avoided, fromwhich he had fled, which he had cast away forever, had found him._Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit!_ And, lo, his departures were all invain! The world, with all its grandeur and its insignificance, with allits powers and its weaknesses, with all its opportunities and itsobligations, with all its joys and its sorrows, had knocked at his door;and that the knocking hand was that of a woman, but added to hisperplexity and to his dismay.

  He had cherished a dream that he could live to himself alone with but amemory to bear him company, and from that dream he had been thunderouslyawakened. Everything was changed. What had once been easy had now becomeimpossible. He might send her away, but though he swore her to secrecyshe would have to tell her story and something of his; the world wouldlearn some of it and seek him out with insatiable curiosity to know therest.

  Eyes as keen as his would presently search and scrutinize the mountainswhere he had roamed alone. They would see what he had seen, find what hehad found. Mankind, gold-lusting, would swarm and hive upon the hillsand fight and love and breed and die.

  He would of course move on, but where? And went he whithersoever hemight, he would now of necessity carry with him another memory whichwould not dwell within his mind in harmony with the memory which untilthat day had been paramount there alone.

  Slowly, laboriously, painfully, he had built his house upon the sand,and the winds had blown and the floods had come, not only in a literalbut in a spiritual significance, and in one day that house had fallen.He stood amid the wrecked remains of it trying to recreate it, to endowonce more with the fitted precision of the past the shapeless brokenunits of the fabric of his fond imagination.

  Whiles he resented with fierce, savage, passionate intensity theinterruption of this woman into his life. Whiles he throbbed with equalintensity and almost as much passion at the thought of her.

  Have you ever climbed a mountain early in the morning while it was yetdark and having gained some dominant crest stood staring at the farhorizon, the empurpled east, while the "dawn came up like thunder?" Or,better still, have you ever stood within the cold dark recesses of somedeep valley of river or pass and watched the clear light spread its barsathwart the heavens, like nebulous mighty pinions, along the lighttouched crest of a towering range until all of a sudden, with a leapalmost of joy, the great sun blazed in the high horizon?

  You might be born a child of the dark, and light might sear and burnyour eyeballs accustomed to cooler, deeper shades, yet you could no moreturn away from this glory, though you might hate it, than by mere effortof will you could cease to breathe the air. The shock that you mightfeel, the sudden surprise, is only faintly suggestive of the emotions inthe breast of this man.

  Once long ago the gentlest and tenderest of voices called from the darkto the light, the blind. And it is given to modern science and to modernskill sometimes to emulate that godlike achievement. Perhaps thesurprise, the amazement, the bewilderment, of him who having been blinddoth now see, if we can imagine it, not having been in the caseourselves, will be a better guide to the understanding of this man'semotion when this woman came suddenly into his lonely orbit. His eyeswere opened although he would not know it. He fought down his newconsciousness and would have none of it. Yet it was there. He loved her!

  With what joy did Selkirk welcome the savage sharer of his solitude!Suppose she had been a woman of his own race; had she been old,withered, hideous, he must have loved her on the instant, much more ifshe were young and beautiful. The thing was inevitable. Such passionsare born. God forbid that we should deny it. Even in the busy haunts ofmen where women are as plenty as blackberries, to use Falstaff's simile,and where a man may sometimes choose between a hundred, or a thousand,often such loves are born, forever.

  A voice in the night, a face in the street, a whispered word, the touchof a hand, the answering throb of another heart--and behold! two walktogether where before each walked alone. Sometimes the man or the womanwho is born again of love knows it not, declines to admit it, refuses torecognize it. Some birth pain must awake the consciousness of the newlife.

  If those things are true and possible under every day conditions and toordinary men and women, how much more to this solitary. He had seen thiswoman, white breasted like the foam, rising as the ancient goddess fromthe Paphian Sea. Over that recollection, as he was a gentleman and aChristian, he would fain draw a curtain, before it erect a wall. He mustnot dwell upon that fact, he would not linger over that moment. Yet hecould not forget it.

  Then he had seen her lying prone, yet unconsciously graceful in herabandonment, on the sward; he had caught a glimpse of her white facedesperately up-tossed by the rolling water; he had looked into theunfathomable depths of her eyes at that moment when she had awakened inhis arms after such a s
truggle as had taxed his manhood and almostbroken his heart; he had carried her unconsciously, ghastly white withher pain-drawn face, stumbling desperately over the rocks in the beatingrain to this his home. There he had held that poor, bruised slenderlittle foot in his hand, gently, skillfully treating it, when he longedto press his lips passionately upon it. Last of all he had looked intoher face warmed with the red light of the fire, searched her weary eyesalmost like blue pools, in whose depths there yet lurked life and light,while her golden hair tinged crimson by the blaze lay on the whitepillow--and he loved her. God pity him, fighting against fact andadmission of it, yet how could he help it?

  He had loved once before in his life with the fire of youth and spring,but it was not like this; he did not recognize this new passion in anylight from the past, therefore he would not admit it, hence he did notunderstand it. But he saw and admitted and understood enough to knowthat the past was no longer the supreme subject in his life, that thepresent rose higher, bulked larger and hid more and more of his far-offhorizon.

  He felt like a knave and a traitor, as if he had been base, disloyal,false to his ideal, recreant to his remembrance. Was he indeed a trueman? Did he have that rugged strength, that abiding faith, that eternalconsciousness, that lasting affection beside which the rocky paths heoften trod were things transient, perishable, evanescent? Was he aweakling that he fell at the first sight of another woman?

  He stopped his ceaseless pace forward and backward, and stopped nearthat frail and futile door. She was there and there was none to prevent.His hand sought the latch.

  What was he about to do? God forbid that a thought he could not freelyshare with humanity should enter his brain then. He held all womensacred, and so he had ever done, and this woman in her loveliness, inher helplessness, in her weakness, trebly appealed to him. But he wouldlook upon her, he would fain see if she were there, if it were all not adream, the creation of his disordered imagination.

  Men had gone mad in hermitages in the mountains, they had been driveninsane in lonely oases in vast deserts; and they had peopled theirsolitudes with men and women. Was this same working of a disorderedbrain too much turned upon itself and with too tremendous a pressureupon it producing an illusion? Was there in truth any woman there? Hewould raise the latch and open the door and look. Once more the handwent stealthily to the latch.

  The woman slept quietly on. No thin barricade easily unlocked or easilybroken protected her. Something intangible yet stronger than thethickest, the most rigid, bars of steel guarded her; something unseen,indescribable, but so unmistakable when it throbs in the breast thatthose who depend on it feel that their dependence is not in vain,watched over her.

  Cherishing no evil thought, the man had power to gratify his desirewhich might yet bear a sinister construction should his action beobserved. It was her privacy he was invading; she had trusted to him,she had said so, to his honor and that stood her in good stead. Hishonor! Not in five years had he heard the word or thought the thing, buthe had not forgotten it. She had not appealed to an unreal thing. Upon arock her trust was based. His hand left the latch, it fell gently, hedrew back and turned away trembling, a conqueror who mastered himself.He was awake to the truth again.

  What had he been about to do? Profane, uninvited, the sanctity of herchamber, violate the hospitality of his own house. Even with a propermotive imperil his self-respect, shatter her trust, endanger that honorwhich so suddenly became a part of him on demand. She would not probablyknow, she could never know unless she awoke. What of that? That ancienthonor of his life and race rose like a mountain whose scarped facecannot be scaled.

  He fell back with a swift turn, a feeling almost womanly--and more menperhaps if they lived in feminine isolation, as self-centered as womenare so often by necessity, would be as feminine as theirsisters--influenced him, overcame him. His hand went to his huntingshirt; nervously he tore it open, he grasped a bright object that hungagainst his breast; as he did so, the thought came to him that notbefore in five years had he been for a moment unconscious of thepressure of that locket over his heart, but now that this other hadcome, he had to seek for it to find it.

  The man dragged it out, held it in his hand and opened it. He held it sotightly that it almost gave beneath the strong grasp of his strong hand.From a near-by box he drew another object with his other hand; he tookthe two to the light, the soft light of the candle upon the table, andstared from one to the other with eyes brimming.

  Like crystal gazers he saw other things than those presented to thecasual vision, he heard other sounds than the beat of the rain upon theroof, the roar of the wind down the canyon. A voice that he had sworn hewould never forget, but which, God forgive him, had not now theclearness that it might have had yesterday, whispered awful words tohim.

  Anon he looked into another face, red too, but with no hue from thehearth or leaping flame, but red with the blood of ghastly wounds. Heheard again that report, the roar louder and more terrible than any pealof thunder that rived the clouds above his head and made the mountainsquake and tremble. He was conscious again of the awful stillness ofdeath that supervened. He dropped on his knees, buried his face in hishands where they rested on picture and locket on the rude table.

  Ah, the past died hard; for a moment he was the lover of old--remorse,passionate expiation, solitude--he and the dead together--the world andthe living forgot! He would not be false, he would be true; there was nopower in any feeble woman's tender hand to drive him off his course, toshake his purpose, to make him a new, another man. _O, Vanitas,Vanitatum!_

  On the other side of the door the unconscious woman slept quietly on.The red fire light died away, the glowing coals sank into gray ash.Within the smaller room the cold dawn stealing through the unshadedwindow looked upon a field of battle--deaths, wounds, triumphs,defeats--portrayed upon one poor human face, upturned as sometimesvictors and vanquished alike upturn stark faces from the field to theGod above who may pity but who has not intervened.

  So Jacob may have looked after that awful night when he wrestled untilthe day broke with the angel and would not let him go until he blessedhim, walking, forever after, with halting step as memorial but with hisblessing earned. Hath, this man blessing won or not? And must he pay forit if he hath achieved it?

  And all the while the woman slept quietly on upon the other side of thatdoor.