The fire sulked and smoked a trifle with its brands apart. Doctor Fleming leaned forward upon his knees and regarded it thoughtfully. The colonel sat fondling the tongs. In a deep chair Mrs. Creve lay back and shaded her face with the end of her lace scarf. By her manner she might have been alone in the room, yet she was keenly observant of the men, for she felt that developments were taking place.

"What is the matter with your patient upstairs, Doctor?" the colonel began his cross-examination. Doctor Fleming raised his eyebrows.

"He's had nothing to eat to speak of for six weeks, at an alt.i.tude"--

"Yes; we know all that. But he's twenty-four years old. They made an easy trip back, and he has been here a week, nearly. He's not as strong as he was when they brought him in, is he?"

"That was excitement. You have to allow for the reaction. He has had a shock to the entire system,--nerves, digestion,--must give him time.

Very nervous temperament too much controlled."

"Make it as you like. But I'm disappointed in his rallying powers, unless you are keeping something back. A boy with the grit to do what he did, and stand it as he did--why isn't he standing it better now?"

"We are all suffering from reaction, I think," said Mrs. Creve diplomatically; "and we show it by making too much of little things.

Tom, we oughtn't to keep the doctor up here talking nonsense. He wants to go to bed."

"_I_'m not talking nonsense," said the doctor. "I should be if I pretended there was anything mysterious about that boy's case upstairs.

He has had a tremendous experience, say what you will; and it's pulled him down nervously, and every other way. He isn't ready or able to talk of it yet. And he knows as soon as he comes down there'll be forty people waiting to congratulate him and ask him how it was. I don't wonder he fights shy. If he could take his bride by the hand and walk out of the house with her I believe he could start to-morrow; but if there must be a wedding and a lot of fuss"--

Mrs. Creve nodded her head approvingly. The three had risen and stood around the hearth, while the colonel put the brands delicately together with the skill of an old campaigner. The flames breathed again.

"I don't offer this as a professional opinion," said the doctor. "But a case like his is not a disease, it's a condition"--

"Of the mind, perhaps?" the colonel added significantly. He glanced at Mrs. Creve. "You've thought about that, Doctor? The letter his mother consulted you about?"

"Have you been worrying about that, Colonel? Why didn't you say so?

There is nothing in it whatever. Why, it's so plain a case the other way--any one can see where the animus comes from!"

"Now you _are_ getting mysterious, and I'm going to bed!" said Mrs.

Creve.

"No; we're coming to the point now," said the colonel.

"What is it you want Bogardus to do?" asked Doctor Fleming. "Want him to get up and walk out of the house as my patient did at the hospital? Dare say he could do it, but what then? Will you let me speak out, Colonel?

No regard to anybody's feelings? Now, this may be gossip, but I think it has a bearing on the case upstairs. I'm going to have it off my mind anyhow! When Mrs. Bogardus came to see the guide,--Packer John,--day before yesterday, was it?--he asked to see her alone. Said he had something particular to say to her about her son. We thought it a queer start, but she was willing to humor him. Well, she wasn't in there above ten minutes, but in that time something pa.s.sed between them that hit her very hard, no doubt of that! Now, Bogardus holds his tongue like a gentleman as to what happened in the woods. He doesn't mention his comrades' names. And the packer has disappeared; so he can't be questioned. Seems to me a little bird told me there was an attachment between one of those Bowen boys and Miss Christine?

"Now we, who know what brutes brute fear will make of men, are not going to deny that those boys behaved badly. There are some things that can't be acknowledged among men, you know, if there is a hole to crawl out of.

Cowardice is one of them. Well then, they lied, that's the whole of it. The little boys lied. They wrote Mrs. Bogardus a long letter from Lemhi,"--the doctor was reviewing now for Mrs. Creve's benefit,--"when they first got out. They probably judged, by the time they had had, that Paul and the packer would never tell their own story. Very well: it couldn't hurt Paul, it might be the saving of them, if they could show that something had queered him in the woods. They asked his mother if she had heard of the effects of alt.i.tude upon highly sensitive organizations. They recounted some instances--I will mention them later.

One of the boys is a lawyer, isn't he? They are a pair of ingenious youths. Bogardus, they claim, avoided them almost from the time they entered the woods,--almost lived with the packer, behaved like a crank about the shooting. Whereas they had gone there to kill things, he made it a personal matter whenever they pursued this intention in a natural and undisguised manner. He had pangs, like a girl, when the creatures expired. He hated the carcases, the blood--forgive me, Mrs. Creve. In short, he called the whole business butchery."

"Do you make _that_ a sign of lunacy?" Mrs. Creve flung in.

"I am quoting, you know." The doctor smiled indulgently. "They declare that they offered--even begged--to stay behind with him, one of them, at least, but he rejected their company in a manner so unpleasant that they saw it would only be courting a quarrel to remain. And so, treating him perforce like a child _or_ a lunatic _pro tem._, and having but little time to decide in, they cut loose and hurried back for help. This is the tale, composed on reflection. They said nothing of this to Winslow--to save publicity, of course! Mrs. Bogardus's lips are doubly sealed, for her son's sake and for the sake of the young scamp who is to be her son, by and by! I saw she winced at my opinion, which I gave her plainly--brutally, perhaps. And she asked me particularly to say nothing, which I am particularly not doing.

"This, I think, you will find is the bitter drop in the cup of rejoicing upstairs. And they are swallowing it in silence, those two, for the sake of the little girl and the old friends in New York. Of course she has kept from Paul that last shot in the back from those sweet boys! The packer had some unruly testimony he was bursting with, which he had sense enough to keep for her alone, and she doesn't want the case to spread. It is singular how a man in his condition could get out of the way as suddenly as he did. You might think he'd been taken up in a cloud."

"Doctor, what do you mean by such an insinuation as that?"

"Colonel, have I insinuated anything? Did I say she had oiled the wheels of his departure?"

"Come, come! You go too far!"

"Not at all. That's your own construction. I merely say that I am not concerned about that man's disappearance. I think he'll be looked after, as a valuable witness should be."

"Well," the colonel grumbled uneasily, "I don't like mysteries myself, and I don't like family quarrels nor skeletons at the feasts of old friends. But I suppose there must be a drop in every cup. What were your alt.i.tude cases, Doctor?"

"The same old ones; poor Addison, you know. All those stories they tell an Easterner. As I pointed out to Mrs. Bogardus, in every case there was some predisposing cause. Addison had been too long in the mountains, and he was frightfully overworked; short of company officers. He came to me about an insect he said had got into his ear; buzzed, and bothered him day and night. The story got to the men's quarters. They joked about the colonel's 'bug.' I knew it was no joke. I condemned him for duty, but the Sioux were out. They thought at Washington no one but Addison could handle an Indian campaign. He was on the ground, too. So they sent him up higher where it was dry, with a thousand men in his hands. I knew he'd be a madman or a dead man in a month! There were a good many of the dead! By Jove! The boys who took his orders and loved the old fellow and knew he was sending them to their death! Well for him that he'll never know."

"The 'alt.i.tude of heartbreak,'" sighed Mrs. Creve. The phrase was her own, for many a reason deeply known unto herself, but she gave it the effect of a quotation before the men.

"Then you think there is no 'alt.i.tude' in ours?"

"No; nor 'heartbreak' either," said the doctor, helping himself to one of the colonel's cigars. "But I don't say there isn't enough to keep a woman awake nights, and to make those young men avoid the sight of each other for a time. Thanks, I won't smoke now. I'm going to take a look at Mrs. Bogardus as I go out."

XV

A BRIDEGROOM OF SNOW

The doctor had taken his look, feeling a trifle guilty under his patient's counter gaze, yet glad to have relieved the good colonel's anxiety. If he loved to gossip, at least he was particular as to whom he gossiped with.

Moya closed the door after him and silently resumed her seat. Mrs.

Bogardus helped herself to a sip of water. She was struggling with a dry constriction of the throat, and Moya protested a little, seeing the effort that it cost her to speak, even in the hoa.r.s.e, unnatural tone which was all the voice she had left.

"I want to finish now," she said, "and never speak of this again. It was I who accused them first--and then I asked him:--if there was anything he could say in their defense, to say it, for Chrissy's sake! 'I will never break bread with them again,' said he,--'either Banks or Horace.

I will not eat with them, or drink with them, or speak with them again!'

Think of it! How are we to live? How are they to inhabit the same city? He thinks I have been weak. I am weak! The only power I have is through--the property. Banks will never marry a poor girl. But that would be a dear-bought victory. Let her keep what faith in him she can.

No; in families, the ones who can control themselves have to give in--to those who can't. If you argue with Christine she simply gives way, and then she gets hysterical, and then she is ill. It's a disease. Mothers know how their children--Christine was marked--marked with trouble! I am thankful she has any mind at all. She needs me more than Paul does. I cannot be parted from my power to help her--such as it is."

"When she is Banks Bowen's wife she will need you more than ever!" said Moya.

"She will. I could prevent the marriage, but I am afraid to. I am afraid! So, as the family is cut in two--in three, for I--" Mrs. Bogardus stopped and moistened her lips again. "So--I think you and Paul had better make your arrangements and go as soon as you can wherever it suits you, without minding about the rest of us."

Moya gave a little sobbing laugh. "You don't expect me to make the first move!"

"Doesn't he say anything to you--anything at all?"

"He is too ill."

"He is not ill!" Mrs. Bogardus denied it fiercely. "Who says he is ill?

He is starved and frozen. He is just out of the grave. You must be good to him, Moya. Warm him, comfort him! You can give him the life he needs.

Your hands are as soft as little birds. They comfort even me. Oh, don't you understand!"

"Of course I understand!" Moya answered, her face aflame. "But I cannot marry Paul. He has got to marry me."

"What nonsense that is! People say to a girl: 'You can't be too cold before you are married or too kind after!' That does not mean you and Paul. If you are not kind to him _now_, you will make a great mistake."