Chapter 30

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_ CHAPTER XXX

Another week went by, and though it went swiftly, still at the end of the time it seemed long, as very happy and significant times do. Honora was still weak, but as every comfort had been provided for her journey, it seemed more than probable that she would be benefited in the long run by the change, however exhausting it might be temporarily.

"It's the morning of the last day," said Wander at breakfast. "Honora is to treat herself as if she were the finest and most highly decorated bohemian glass, and save herself up for her journey. All preparations, I am told, are completed. Very well, then. Do you and I ride to-day, Miss Barrington?"

"'Here we ride,'" quoted Kate. Then she flushed, remembering the reference.

Did Karl recognize it--or know it? She could not tell. He could, at will, show a superb inscrutability.

Whether he knew Browning's poem or not, Kate found to her irritation that she did. Lines she thought she had forgotten, trooped--galloped--back into her brain. The thud of them fell like rhythmic hoofs upon the road.

"Then we began to ride. My soul
Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
Past hopes already lay behind.
What need to strive with a life awry?
Had I said that, had I done this,
So might I gain, so might I miss."

She wove her braids about her head to the measure; buckled her boots and buttoned her habit; and then, veiled and gauntleted she went down the stairs, still keeping time to the inaudible tune:--

"So might I gain, so might I miss."

The mare Wander held for her was one which she had ridden several times before and with which she was already on terms of good feeling. That subtle, quick understanding which goes from horse to rider, when all is well in their relations, and when both are eager to face the wind, passed now from Lady Bel to Kate. She let the creature nose her for a moment, then accepted Wander's hand and mounted. The fine animal quivered delicately, shook herself, pawed the dust with a motion as graceful as any lady could have made, threw a pleasant, sociable look over her shoulder, and at Kate's vivacious lift of the rein was off. Wander was mounted magnificently on Nell, a mare of heavier build, a black animal, which made a good contrast to Lady Bel's shining roan coat.

The animals were too fresh and impatient to permit much conversation between their riders. They were answering to the call of the road as much as were the humans who rode them. Kate tried to think of the scenes which were flashing by, or of the village,--Wander's "rowdy" village, teeming with its human stories; but, after all, it was Browning's lines which had their way with her. They trumpeted themselves in her ear, changing a word here and there, impishly, to suit her case.

"We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,
Saw other regions, cities new,
As the world rushed by on either side.
I thought, All labor, yet no less
Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
Look at the end of work, contrast
The petty Done, the Undone vast,
This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
I hoped he would love me. Here we ride."

They were to the north of the village, heading for a canon. The road was good, the day not too warm, and the passionate mountain springtime was bursting into flower and leaf. Presently walls of rock began to rise about them. They were of innumerable, indefinable rock colors--grayish-yellows, dull olives, old rose, elusive purples, and browns as rich as prairie soil. Coiling like a cobra, the Little Williston raced singing through the midst of the chasm, sun-mottled and bright as the trout that hid in its cold shallows. Was all the world singing? Were the invisible stars of heaven rhyming with one another? Had a lost rhythm been recaptured, and did she hear the pulsations of a deep Earth-harmony--or was it, after all, only the insistent beat of the poet's line?

"What if we still ride on, we two,
With life forever old, yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity,--
And Heaven just prove that I and he
Ride, ride together, forever ride?"

What Wander said, when he spoke, was, "Walk," and the remark was made to his horse. Lady Bel slackened, too. They were in the midst of great beauty--complex, almost chaotic, beauty, such as the Rocky Mountains often display.

Wander drew his horse nearer to Kate's, and as a turning of the road shut them in a solitary paradise where alders and willows fringed the way with fresh-born green, he laid his hand on her saddle.

"Kate," he said, "can you make up your mind to stay here with me?"

Kate drew in her breath sharply. Then she laughed.

"Am I to understand that you are introducing or continuing a topic?" she asked.

He laughed, too. They were as willing to play with the subject as children are to play with flowers.

"I am continuing it," he affirmed.

"Really?"

"And you know it."

"Do I?"

"From the first moment that I laid eyes on you, all the time that I was writing to Honora and really was trying to snare your interest, and after she came here,--even when I absurdly commanded you not to write to me,--and now, every moment since you set foot in my wild country, what have I done but say: 'Kate, will you stay with me?'"

"And will I?" mused Kate. "What do you offer?"

She once had asked the same question of McCrea.

"A faulty man's unchanging love."

"What makes you think it will not change--especially since you are a faulty man?"

"I think it will not change because I am so faulty that I must have something perfect to which to cling."

"Nonsense! A Clarinda dream! There's nothing perfect about me! The whole truth is that you don't know whether you'll change or not!"

"Well, say that I change! Say that I pass from shimmering moonlight to common sunlight love! Say that we walk a heavy road and carry burdens and that our throats are so parched we forget to turn our eyes toward each other. Still we shall be side by side, and in the end the dust of us shall mingle in one earth. As for our spirits--if they have triumphed together, where is the logic in supposing that they will know separation?"

"You will give me love," said Kate, "changing, faulty, human love! I ask no better--in the way of love. I can match you in faultiness and in changefulness and in hope. But now what else can you give me--what work--what chance to justify myself, what exercise for my powers? You have your work laid out for you. Where is mine?"

Wander stared at her a moment with a bewildered expression. Then he leaped from his horse and caught Kate's bridle.

"Where is your work, woman?" he thundered. "Are you teasing me still or are you in earnest? Your work is in your home! With all your wisdom, don't you know that yet? It is in your home, bearing and rearing your sons and your daughters, and adding to my sum of joy and your own. It is in learning secrets of happiness which only experience can teach. Listen to me: If my back ached and my face dripped sweat because I was toiling for you and your children, I would count it a privilege. It would be the crown of my life. Justify yourself? How can you justify yourself except by being of the Earth, learning of her; her obedient and happy child? Justify yourself? Kate Barrington, you'll have to justify yourself to me."

"How dare you?" asked Kate under her breath. "Who has given you a right to take me to task?"

"Our love," he said, and looked her unflinchingly in the eye. "My love for you and your love for me. I demand the truth of you,--the deepest truth of your deepest soul,--because we are mates and can never escape each other as long as we live, though half the earth divides us and all our years. Wherever we go, our thoughts will turn toward each other. When we meet, though we have striven to hate each other, yet our hands will long to clasp. We may be at war, but we will love it better than peace with others. I tell you, I march to the tune of your piping; you keep step to my drum-beats. What is the use of theorizing? I speak of a fact."

"I am going to turn my horse," she said. "Will you please stand aside?"

He dropped her bridle.

"Is that all you have to say?"

She looked at him haughtily for a moment and whirled her horse. Then she drew the mare up.

"Karl!" she called.

No answer.

"I say--Karl!"

He came to her.

"I am not angry. I know quite well what you mean. You were speaking of the fundamentals."

"I was."

"But how about me? Am I to have no importance save in my relation to you?"

"You cannot have your greatest importance save in your relation to me."

She looked at him long. Her eyes underwent a dozen changes. They taunted him, tempted him, comforted him, bade him hope, bade him fear.

"We must ride home," she said at length.

"And my question? I asked you if you were willing to stay here with me?"

"The question," she said with a dry little smile, "is laid very respectfully on the knees of the gods."

He turned from her and swung into his saddle. They pounded home in silence. The lines of "The Last Ride" were besetting her still.

"Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate
Proposed bliss here should sublimate
My being; had I signed the bond--
Still one must lead some life beyond,--
Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.
This foot once planted on the goal,
This glory-garland round my soul,
Could I descry such? Try and test?"

She gave him no chance to help her dismount, but leaping to the ground, turned the good mare's head stableward, and ran to her room. He did not see her till dinner-time. Honora was at the table, and occupied their care and thought.

Afterward there was the ten-mile ride to the station, but Kate sat beside Honora. There was a full moon--and the world ached for lovers. But if any touched lips, Karl Wander and Kate Barrington knew nothing of it. At the station they shook hands.

"Are you coming back?" asked Wander. "Will you bring Honora back home?"

In the moonlight Kate turned a sudden smile on him.

"Of course I'm coming back," she said. "I always put a period to my sentences."

"Good!" he said. "But that's a very different matter from writing a 'Finis' to your book."

"I shall conclude on an interrupted sentence," laughed Kate, "and I'll let some one else write 'Finis.'"

The great train labored in, paused for no more than a moment, and was off again. It left Wander's world well denuded. The sense of aching loneliness was like an agony. She had evaded him. She belonged to him, and he had somehow let her go! What had he said, or failed to say? What had she desired that he had not given? He tried to assure himself that he had been guiltless, but as he passed his sleeping village and glimpsed the ever-increasing dumps before his mines, he knew in his heart that he had been asking her to play his game. Of course, on the other hand--

But what was the use of running around in a squirrel cage! She was gone. He was alone. _

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