The Flaming Jewel
Page 13
downstairs to the kitchen. There was hot water inthe kettle. He fetched it back, bathed her feet, drew out from the cutand scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points that stillremained there.
From his first-aid packet he took a capsule, dissolved it, sterilizedthe torn skin, then bandaged both feet with a deliciously cool salve,and drew the sheets into place.
Eve had not stirred nor spoken. He washed and dried his hands and cameback, drawing his chair nearer to the bedside.
"Sleep, if you feel like it," he said pleasantly.
As she made no sound or movement he bent over to see if she had alreadyfallen asleep. And noticed that her flushed cheeks were wet with tears.
"Are you suffering?" he asked gently.
"No. ... You are so wonderfully kind. ..."
"Why shouldn't I be kind?" he said, amused and touched by the girl'semotion.
"I tried to shoot you once. That is why you ought to hate me."
He began to laugh: "Is _that_ what you're thinking about?"
"I -- never can -- forget----"
"Nonsense. We're quits anyway. Do you remember what I did to _you?_"
He was thinking of the handcuffs. Then, in her vivid blush he read whatshe was thinking. And he remembered his lips on her palms.
He, too, now was blushing brilliantly at the memory of that swift,sudden rush of romantic tenderness which this girl had witnessed thatmemorable day on Owl Marsh.
In the hot, uncomfortable silence, neither spoke. He seated himselfafter a while. And, after a while, she turned on her pillow part waytoward him.
Somehow they both understood that it was friendship which had subtlyfilled the interval that separated them since that amazing day.
"I've often thought of you," he said, -- as though they had beendiscussing his absence.
No hour of the waking day that she had not thought of him. But she didnot say so now. After a little while:
"Is yours a lonely life?" she asked in a low voice.
"Sometimes. But I love the forest."
"Sometimes," she said, "the forest seems like a trap that I can'tescape. Sometimes I hate it."
"Are you lonely, Eve?"
"As you are. You see I know what the outside world is. I miss it."
"You were in boarding school and college."
"Yes."
"It must be hard for you here at Star Pond."
The girl sighed, unconsciously:
"There are days when I -- can scarcely -- stand it. ... The wildernesswould be more endurable if dad and I were all alone. ... Bu eventhen----"
"You need young people of your own age, -- educated companions----"
"I need the city, Mr. Stormont. I need all it can give: I'm starvingfor it. That's all."
She turned on her pillow, and he saw that she was smiling faintly. Herface bore no trace of the tragic truth she had uttered. But the tragedywas plain enough to him, even without her passionless words of revolt.The situation of this young, educated girl, aglow with youth, bettered,body and mind, to the squalor of Clinch's dump, was perfectly plain toanybody.
She said, seeing his troubled expression: "I'm sorry I spoke that way."
"I knew how you must feel, anyway."
"It seems ungrateful," she murmured. "I love my step-father."
"You've proven that," he remarked with a dry humour that brought the hotflush to her face again.
"I must have been crazy that day," she said. "It scares me to rememberwhat I tried to do. ... What a frightful thing -- if I had killed you --How _can_ you forgive me?"
"How can you forgive _me,_ Eve?"
She turned her head: "I do."
"Entirely?"
"Yes."
He said, -- a slight emotion noticeable in his voice: "Well, I forgaveyou before the darned gun exploded in our hands."
"How _could_ you?" she protested.
"I was thinking all the while that you were acting as I'd have acted ifanything threatened _my_ father."
"Were you thinking of _that?_"
"Yes, -- and also how to get hold of you before you shot me." He beganto laugh.
After a moment she turned her head to look at him, and her smileglimmered, responsive to his amusement. But she shivered slightly, too.
"How about that egg?" he inquired.
"I can get up----"
"Better keep off your feet. What is there in the pantry? You must bestarved."
"I could eat a little before supper time," she admitted. "I forgot totake my lunch with me this morning. It is still there in the pantry onthe bread box, wrapped up in brown paper, just as I left it----"
She half rose in bed, supported on one arm, her curly brown-gold hairframing her face:
"-- Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate in a flat brown packet tied with astring," she explained, smiling at his amusement.
So he went down to the pantry and discovered the parcel on the bread boxwhere she had left it that morning before starting for the cache on OwlMarsh.
He brought it to her, placed both pillows upright behind her, steppedback gaily to admire the effect. Eve, with her parcel in her hands,laughed shyly at his comedy.
"Begin on your chocolate," he said. "I'm going back to fix you somebread and butter and a cup of tea."
When again he had disappeared, the girl, still smiling, began to untieher packet, unhurriedly, slowly loosening string and wrapping.
Her attention was not fixed on what her slender fingers were about.
She drew from the parcel a flat morocco case with a coat of arms andcrest stamped on it in gold, black, and scarlet.
For a few moments she stared at the object stupidly. The next momentshe heard Stormont's spurred tread on the stairs; and she thrust themorocco case and the wrapping under the pillows behind her.
She looked up at him in a dazed way when he came in with the tea andbread. He set the tin tray on her bureau an came over to the bedside.
"Eve," he said, "you look very white and ill. Have you been hurtsomewhere, and haven't you admitted it?"
She seemed unable to speak, and he took both her hands and lookedanxiously into her lovely, pallid features.
After a moment she turned her head and buried her face in the pillow,trembling now in overwhelming realization of what she had endured forthe sake of two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate hidden under a bush in theforest.
* * * * *
For a long while the girl lay there, the feverish flush of tears on herpartly hidden face, her nervous hands tremulous, restless, now seekinghis, convulsively, now striving to escape his clasp -- eloquent,uncertain little hands that seemed to tell so much and yet were tellinghim nothing he could understand.
"Eve, dear," he said, "are you in pain? What is it that has happened toyou? I thought you were all right. You seemed all right----"
"I am," she said in a smothered voice. "You'll stay here with me, won'tyou?"
"Of course I will. It's just the reaction. It's all over. You'rerelaxing. That's all, dear. You're safe. Nothing can harm younow----"
"Please don' leave me."
After a moment: "I won't leave you. ... I wish I might never leave you."
In the tense silence that followed her trembling ceased. Then hisheart, heavy, irregular, began beating so that the startled pulses inher body awoke, wildly responsive.
Deep emotions, new, unfamiliar, were stirring, awaking, confusing themboth. In a sudden instinct to escape, she turned and partly rose on oneelbow, gazing blindly about her out of tear-marred eyes.
"I want my room to myself," she murmured in a breathless sort of way,"-- I want you to go out, please----"
A boyish flush burnt his face. He got up slowly, took his rifle fromthe corner, went out, closing the door, and seated himself on thestairs.
And there, on guard, sat Trooper Stormont, rigid, unstirring, hour afterhour, facing the first great passion of his life, and stunned by theimpact of its swift and unexpected blow.
* * * * *
In her chamber, on the bed's edge, sat Eve Strayer, her deep eyes fixedon space. Vague emotions, exquisitely recurrent, new born, possessedher. The whole world, too, all around her seemed to have become mistyand golden and all pulsating with a faint, still rhythm that indefinablythrilled her pulses to response.
Passion, full-armed, springs flaming from the heart of man. Woman isslow to burn. And it was the delicate phantom of passion that Eve gazedupon, there in her unpainted chamber, her sun-tanned fingers linkinglistlessly in her lap, her little feet like bruised white flowersdrooping above the floor.
Hour after hour she sat there dreaming, staring at the tinted ghost ofEros, rose-hued, near-smiling, unreal,