Leave Her to Heaven

by Ben Ames Williams

  At sunset he had not come, nor at dark; but the waxing moon made night as light as day, and still she waited, at first surely, then half-angrily, then in deep self-pity, telling herself none cared, not even he, whether she returned. She decided stubbornly to wait here till he came. Sweater and slicker were scant protection against the chill, frosty night, and she built a small fire and huddled near it. Night had no terrors for her, and she began wistfully to enjoy the part she played, thinking of herself as a bereft daughter mourning here on the heights the whole night long. When her horse, tethered to an oak sapling, became restless, she unsaddled him and secured him in such a way that he had more freedom. The saddle blanket, unfolded, served as a ground sheet on which she sat and which when she grew chilly she drew over her shoulders. The horse was cold and uneasy, stamping and blowing; but she kept the blanket, let him endure the penetrating chill.

  She stayed there stubbornly till dawn, at once hungry for Harland to come and furious because he did not. If he had from the first revealed an eagerness as great as hers, she might before this have been ready to forget him; but since he had not, and since any denial of her wishes was always a spur to her determination, this night alone fused her vague dreams into a hot resolution. The fact that, returning, she met him on the trail seemed to promise the victory she coveted; but to whet his appetite she devoted herself that evening to Lin and Tess, and next morning she rode away with Lin and Charlie Yates and one of the cowboys who had ranch business to do. Because she was an overflowing vessel full of tenderness which must find some outlet, she was that day extravagantly sweet to Lin; and after lunch they left the others and rode home alone, and in a charming fashion she made laughing love to the youngster till his head was whirling, giving him all the smiles, the winning glances, the affectionate words, the entrancing laughter she was ready to offer Harland.

  That evening after dinner, since he still held aloof, she sum moned Harland to walk down the brook with her in the moon light; and when she came back to the cabin which she and Ruth and her mother shared, Mrs. Berent demanded:

  ‘Ellen, are you trying to start a flirtation with that young man?’

  Ellen answered quietly: ‘No, Mother.’ ‘Flirtation’ was not the word for the passionate certainty which filled her.

  Mrs. Berent tossed her head. ‘You act mighty like it to me!’ she declared. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth! But you’re engaged to another man, and I’m going to see to it that Mr. Harland knows it! You’ll have your trouble for your pains!’

  Ellen smiled icily. ‘You ought at least to ask what his intentions are before you warn him off,’ she said, and went to her room. But next day at the branding, remembering that their stay here was almost done, something like panic seized her. She had so little time! Recalling her mother’s threat, that night before dinner she laid aside Quinton’s ring, and when Harland noticed this and spoke of it, she looked at him, meaning him to read her eyes, meaning him to know she was his if he would have her. When his eyes fell, she knew he had understood.

  After dinner he excused himself and disappeared, and she was sure that when the others had retired he would come to her, and she stayed on the lodge veranda to wait for him. But he did not come, and she wished to go to him and could find no pretext to do so. The longing in her was almost unbearable, and she went to her room at last, her lips dry, her heart wrung, her breath coming shakenly.

  Next morning before breakfast, making her decision irrevocable, she packed Quinton’s ring and addressed it and put it in the mail pouch. She told herself Harland would surely turn to her that day, but he did not, and tomorrow they would ride out to the ranch, and the day after or the day after he would go his way and she must go hers! That night she lay long awake, considering — and discarding — a thousand devices by which she might draw Harland to her side, sure only that in the few hours which remained she must somehow win him to be hers forever.

  When she came to breakfast on the last morning, Harland was not there. At her carefully casual question, Robie explained that he had made an early start, that he meant to fish down through the canyon below the lodge, following the brook to where a horse would meet him in the late afternoon and fetch him to the ranch.

  Her hands, hidden under the table, clenched hard. ‘I shall go after him,’ she said, half to herself. Then, realizing that her tone and her words suggested open pursuit, and willing to dissemble, she added quickly: ‘I’ve always wanted to make that trip. You can send a horse to meet me, too.’

  Robie courteously assented; but when they rose from the table Mrs. Berent drew Ellen aside and said sharply: ‘You’re not going chasing after Mr. Harland! You’re coming along with us! You’re making a perfect fool of yourself over that young man!’

  Ellen said recklessly: ‘I love him. I’m going to marry him, Mother.’

  ‘Marry him! Don’t be absurd! You’re engaged to Mr. Quinton.’

  Ellen looked at her ringless hand. ‘I’m not engaged to Russ, not now,’ she said, and Mrs. Berent made a startled sound. ‘I mailed his ring back to him yesterday.’

  ‘You’re making a mistake,’ her mother urged. ‘Mr. Quinton isn’t the sort of man with whom you can play fast and loose! Heaven knows I can’t imagine what you ever saw in him, but I’ll tell you one thing. He won’t submit easily to being jilted!’

  Ellen remembered that Quinton was by repute a dangerous enemy, but she shook her head. ‘I’ll not be frightened into marrying him, Mother,’ she insisted. ‘If that’s what you’re trying to do.’ And she repeated: ‘I’m going to marry Mr. Harland.’

  Mrs. Berent wrung her hands, defeated; she tried pleading. ‘Ellen, don’t do this. Ride out to the lodge with us, please. I want you to.’

  Ellen looked at her in a sort of wonder, astonished that her mother should persist in this attempted interference with her plans. ‘But I want to be with Mr. Harland,’ she said, and giving the older woman no chance for a further word she turned away.

  One of Robie’s men rode with her down the canyon as far as horses could comfortably go, and she went on afoot. She had dressed this morning for the ride out to the ranch, discarding dungarees for a divided skirt and a light silk shirt of many colors like a Scotch plaid, and knotting a yellow handkerchief loosely around her throat; and since before she made her new plans the pack horses had already departed with her luggage, it had been impossible to change. So her movements were somewhat hampered, and her riding shoes were ill suited to this clambering over boulders, their soles slippery, forever threatening to betray her. Yet she proceeded in a heedless haste.

  But when she saw Harland — he was intently fishing a little pool — she was content to watch him for a while, scanning every line of his body, delighting in the set of his head upon his shoulders, in the way his waist narrowed to slender hips. Only when at last he caught a great trout did she reveal herself. Her shadow lay across the rock where he stood and she moved so that her shadow moved and he looked up and saw her there.

  – IV –

  When Harland’s startled eyes met hers, they were empty of welcome, and Ellen saw this and her breath caught; but — she would somehow make him glad of her company. She climbed down to stand beside him, and cried admiringly: ‘Oh what a beauty!’

  ‘Why did you come?’ he asked in sharp challenge.

  Something thudded in her throat and her cheeks burned and at his tone her heart contracted in a knot of pain; but she spoke lightly.

  ‘I asked where you’d gone,’ she explained, ‘and Mr. Robie told me. I’ve never fished down through here, so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I came along.’ Her answer was matter-of-fact and reassuring; and she spoke quickly of the trout again, exclaiming at its size, exerting herself to make Harland glad she was here She succeeded, felt his resentment abate. He wrapped the trout in cheesecloth and packed it away in the big game pocket of his vest, and they went on down the canyon.

  Ellen was full of a singing triumph because he had accepted her companionship. It wa
s enough, for the moment, that they should be together. For the first hours, she fished as earnestly as if it were for this she had come. They caught many trout smaller than his big one and threw them back, enjoying the sport together.

  Toward one o’clock, he proposed that they eat lunch. She had neglected to bring sandwiches. He was sure he had enough for both of them, but when he opened his packet she said laughingly:

  ‘Heavens, I’d eat all that and cry for more. I’m famished. We’ll catch some little trout and cook them.’

  While he started a fire, she landed four small fish and — proud to display her capacities — borrowed his knife to clean them, and spitted them on sharpened twigs, and salted them well and set the twigs upright beside the fire. When they were cooked through, she toasted them briefly above the coals till they were crisp and curling. She and Harland ate them like small ears of corn, holding them crosswise, plucking off the sweet pink flesh with their teeth. They sat together on a warm ledge on the sunny side of the stream; and Ellen was merry, laughing easily, sure he was happy with her now. A strong exhilaration ran through her like the fumes of wine, and to feel him by her side gave her a keener pleasure than she had ever known. When they were done, he lighted her cigarette and his own, and seeing his strong hands cup the match so near her lips made her heart beat against her ribs. She filled her lungs with a long inhalation and expelled the smoke, her eyes meeting his as he flipped the burned match into the stream. Then she spoke quickly, at random, saying anything at all to end this moment’s silence — for which she wished only one ending.

  ‘I’m sorry for the poor little fish here,’ she said, in mock sympathy. ‘The falls are so many and so steep that they can’t get upstream, and down below the brook just sinks into the desert and disappears. There’s nowhere they can go. I expect it’s a relief, really, when someone like us comes along and catches them!’

  ‘They don’t act relieved,’ he reminded her, and they laughed together for no reason except that the day was fine, and they were young and well-content. He stirred a little, as though to rise and go on; and she felt time slipping through her fingers, dreading the end of this day they would spend together. She might devise some accident which would delay them, keep them overnight here in the canyon, and she thought, smiling inwardly at the notion: ‘If that happened, Mother’s sufficiently Victorian so she’d think I was compromised and that he’d have to marry me!’

  At the same time she felt, rather than heard, a deeper rumble like thunder. The small segment of sky which they could see was clear and cloudless, and she thought rain might be near; and if they were caught by one of the drenching mountain downpours, it might raise the brook and make this canyon impassable. So she spoke quickly, to delay him here as long as possible, ingeniously dilating upon the hard fate of the trout imprisoned in these rushing waters, knowing only this constricted and unchanging world. ‘They’ve such narrow horizons,’ she said, and he argued, amused by her foolery:

  ‘But aren’t all our horizons limited? We’re no better off than the trout! Not so well off, perhaps! Certainly they couldn’t ask a lovelier spot in which to live.’

  ‘All the same, I’m sure a lot of them are dissatisfied,’ she gaily insisted. ‘Probably the young gentlemen trout want to go off and see the world, and the young husbands, I’m sure they love to wander, and their wives complain. I can just hear them. “It’s all right for you, John, traipsing away up and down brook Heaven knows where, while I have to stay at home drudging from daylight till dark.”’

  He chuckled and — as though he were the husband thus reproached — retorted: ‘Nonsense, my dear! I’ve given you a charming home here. Deep, cool water, and rocks under which to hide, and a nice hatch of flies every day all summer. What more can any self-respecting trout-wife want?’

  ‘Well, I want to travel, for one thing,’ she declared, delighted to have won him to this foolery, hoping he would not heed the distant thunder sounds. ‘I never thought when I got married that it meant just settling down with my nose rubbing the same gravel bar for the rest of my life!’

  ‘All right, come along with me, then,’ he proposed. ‘If you think you’d like it.’ He coughed importantly. ‘As a matter of fact, it’s just a business trip I’m taking today. Old Bill Cutthroat up in the falls pool has worked out a new way of trapping grasshoppers, and if it’s as good as he says it is, I want to get in on the ground floor.’

  Ellen put on an affectedly querulous tone, keeping up the play. ‘How can I travel? With my figure, I’m just a public laughingstock! Having fifty thousand children every fall is no fun, I can tell you. Try it yourself some time!’

  ‘They’re my children too,’ he reminded her, and added with an exaggerated leer: ‘And — I always thought having them was fun!’ Then, with ponderous tenderness: ‘Seriously, my dear, you know I’d spare you all that if I could!’

  She found it hard to control her breathing. This idle make-believe with which they amused themselves carried overtones which rang like great bells deep within her; but she tossed her head, continuing the play. ‘I’ll remind you of that, next spring; but a lot of good it will do! You’ll start talking about our duty to the race! I know you!’

  Their eyes held for a moment and then they broke into laughter, and she thought this shared mirth drew them closer; and then the sunlight where they sat suddenly faded and was gone. Harland looked up.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said, surprised. ‘There’s a cloud! You know that’s almost the first cloud I’ve seen since we came out here!’

  She spoke in casual reassurance: ‘Oh, there are always thundershowers somewhere in the mountains.’ But he rose, and she saw that he too was conscious now of an ominous tingling in the air, a quickening in the breeze that drew down the canyon.

  ‘We’d better move,’ he suggested. ‘We don’t want to get caught in a cloudburst up here.’

  She knew better than Harland how serious this might be; nevertheless perversely she delayed to clean up their picnic ground, prolonging in every possible fashion these pregnant hours. She gathered the paper in which his lunch had been wrapped, burning it in the embers of the little fire, wetting down the ashes till not even steam arose.

  Below the great pool, the stream snaked its way through a narrow gorge, pinnacles rising straight up a hundred feet or more on one side or the other; and they had to pick a careful way, sometimes wading in the shallow border of the brook, sometimes stepping from one rock to another, sometimes clambering along the slopes above the stream. The sky was darker, and once there was a flicker of lightning, and Harland instinctively made haste; but Ellen would not be hurried. Looking up, she saw a churning, wind-torn mass of cloud which seemed to be descending, falling straight down upon them smotheringly. She paused to watch it, but Harland pushed on till he was well ahead, not knowing she had stopped, so that she had to scramble after him; and when they emerged from the narrow reach of the gorge, she was panting.

  Within half an hour after the sun was first obscured, the rain caught them. It came down the canyon on their heels, slowly, so that they saw the solid wall of falling water two hundred yards-away; and they could see, as the rain came nearer, individual drops as big as buck shot which struck the sunwarmed ledges and exploded, quickly turning to steam, till the rain wetted and cooled the stones. When the first downpour overtook them they found shelter under an overhang to wait for it to pass. The rain fell with a frightening violence, the drops pelting into the brook and turning the opposite wall of the canyon into a sluicing cascade of muddy water. The din was deafening, and they had to shout to be heard. Harland brought his lips close to her ear to say:

  ‘I never thought rain could fall so hard.’

  She nodded, leaning so that her cheek brushed his. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve seen it like this often, up here. Remember there was a washout on the branch line of the railroad, the day we came. These mountain streams become rivers, rushing out across the desert plain.’

  The brook at their feet had already begun to
rise; and Ellen watched the water on a slanting stone which was sheltered as they were from the direct downpour. The flood crept up its sloping surface, visibly higher minute by minute. There was, she guessed, almost three miles of canyon which they must still traverse; but rain fell harder, and it was darker all the time, and she thought, half-frightened now, that the rain would not relent till night came down and caught them here. Yet — it would be bliss to huddle with him beside a little fire, finding warmth and shelter in his arms, whispering together the long night through; and her eyes softened at the thought. Harland looked at his watch uneasily, but she did not ask the hour. The rain fell as though it would persist forever, and she said:

  ‘Isn’t it curious that when it rains we always think it’s never going to stop?’

  ‘We ought to move on.’

  ‘Oh, this will be over soon.’

  The brook boiled past, yellow with mud brought down from the canyon walls, rising steadily, and after a little Harland grasped her arm. ‘Come along. It will be waist-deep here in half an hour.’ He drew her to her feet so forcibly that she was thrown against him; and for a moment, as though he had snatched her into a swift embrace, all the strength drained out of her so that she hung heavy on his arm.

  ‘All right?’ he asked.

  She hid her eyes from him. ‘Perfectly,’ she said.

  They had to wade to their knees to pass the end of the overhang which sheltered them, and the current was strong against their legs, and Harland gripped her hand to steady her. As they took the first steps, the brook seemed to reach up for them. It rose six inches in a single hungry surge, a solid wall of water like a tidal bore plunging down the canyon as though somewhere above them a dam had let go. It swirled about their knees before they reached the end of the overhang and scrambled out on firm ground.