"Oh, hush, dear--hush, my darling! This isn't thinking. We must think for our lives. I must take care of you, precious. We don't know where this search may take us, or where it will end, or what the end will be."

He kissed the sleeve of her dress, and put her gently from him, so that he could look her in the eyes. She gave him her full pure gaze.

"It is the poor man again. You said he would spoil our lives."

"He is _our_ poor man. You didn't go out of your way to find him. And your way is mine."

"It is so heavenly to be convinced! Who taught you to see things at a glance,--things I have toiled and bungled over and don't know now if I am right! _Who_ taught you?"

"Do you think I stood still while you were away! Oh, my heart was sifted out by little pieces."

"You shall sift mine. You shall tell me what to do. For I know nothing!

Not even if I may dare to take this angel at her word!"

"I knew you would not take me!" the girl whispered wildly. "But I shall go."

XVI

THE NATURE OF AN OATH

"Your tray! It is after ten o'clock. Your 'angel' is a bad nurse." Moya brought the tray and set it on a little stand beside Paul's chair. He watched her shy, excited preparations as she moved about, conscious of his eyes. The saucepan staggered upon the coals and they both sprang to save the broth, and pouring it she burnt her thumb a little, and he behaved quite like any ordinary young man. They were ecstatic to find themselves at ease with each other once more. Moya became disrespectful to her charge; such sweet daring looked from her eyes into his as made him riotous with joy.

"Won't you take some with me?" He turned the cup towards her and watched her as she sipped.

"'It was roast with fire,'" he p.r.o.nounced softly and dreamily, 'because of the dreadful pains. It was to be eaten with bitter herbs'"--

"What _are_ you saying?"--

"'To remind them of their bondage.'"

"I object to your talking about bondage and bitter herbs when you are eating aunt Annie's delicious consomme."

He gravely sipped in turn, still with his eyes in hers. "Can you remember what you were doing on the second of November?"

"Can I remember!"

"Yes; tell me. I have a reason for asking."

"Tell _me_ the reason first."

"May we have a little more fire, darling? It gives me chills to think of that day. It was the last of my wretched pot-hunting. There was nothing to hunt for--the game had all gone down, but I did not know that.

Somewhere in the woods, a long way from the cabin, it began to occur to me that I should not make shelter that night. A fool and his strength are soon parted. It was a little hollow with trees all around so deep that in the distance their trunks closed in like a wall. Snow can make a wonderful silence in the woods. I seemed to hear the thoughts of everybody I loved in the world outside. There had been a dullness over me for weeks. I could not make it true that I had ever been happy--that you really loved me. All that part of my life was a dream. Now, in that silence suddenly I felt you! I knew that you cared. It was cruel to die so if you did love me! It brought the 'pang and spur'! I fought the drowsiness that was taking away my pain. I had begun to lean on it as a comfortable breast. I woke up and tore myself away from that siren sleep. It was my darling,--her love that saved me. Without that thought of you, I never would have stirred again. Where were you, what were you thinking that brought you so close to me?"

"Ah," said Moya in a whisper. "I was in that room across the hall, alone. They were good to me that day; they made excuses and left me to myself. In the afternoon a box came,--from poor father,--white roses, oh, sweet and cold as snow! I took them up to that room and forced myself to go in. It was where my things were kept, the trunks half packed, all the drawers and closets full. And my wedding dress laid out on the bed. We girls used to go up there at first and look at the things, and there was laughing and joking. Sometimes I went up alone and tried on my hats before the gla.s.s, and thought where I should be when I wore them, and--Well! all that stopped. I dreaded to pa.s.s the door.

Everything was left just as it was; the shutters open, the poor dress covered with a sheet on the bed. The room was a death-chamber. I went in. I carried the roses to my dead. I drew down the sheet and put my face in that empty dress. It was my selfish self laid out there--the girl who knew just what she wanted and was going to get it if she could.

Happiness I dared not even pray for--only remembrance--everlasting remembrance. That we might know each other again when no more life was left to part us--_my_ life. It seemed long to wait, but that was my--marriage vow. I gave you all I could, remembrance, faith till death."

"Then you are my own!" said Paul, his face transformed. "G.o.d was our witness. Life of my life--for life and death!" Solemnly he took a bridegroom's kiss from her lips.

"How do _you_ know that it is life that parts?"

"Speak so I can understand you!" Moya cried. "Ah, if I might! A man must not have secrets from his wife. Secrets are destruction, don't you think?"

Moya waited in silence.

"Now we come to this bondage!" He let the words fall like a load from his breast. "This is a hideous thing to tell you, but it will cut us apart unless you know it. It compels me to do things." He paused, and they heard a door down the pa.s.sage open,--the door of his mother's room.

A step came forward a few paces. Silence; it retreated, and the door closed again stealthily.

"She has not slept," Paul murmured. "Poor soul, poor soul! Now, in what I am going to say, please listen to the facts, Moya dear. Try not to infer anything from my way of putting things. I shall contradict myself, but the facts do that.

"The--the guide--John, we will call him, had a long fever in the woods.

It would come on worse at night, and then--he talked--words, of a shocking intimacy. They say that nothing the mind has come in contact with under strong emotion is ever lost, no matter how long in the past.

It will return under similar excitement. This man had kept stored away in his mind, under some such pressure, the words of a woman's message, a woman in great distress. Over and over, as his pulse rose, countless times he would repeat that message. I went out of the hut at night and stood outside in the snow not to hear it, but I knew it as well as he did before we got through. Now, this was what he said, word for word.

"'Do not blame me, my dear husband. I have held out in this place as long as I can. Don't wait for anything. Don't worry about anything. Come back to me with your bare hands. Come!--to your loving Emmy!'

"'Come, come!' he would shout out loud. Then in another voice he would whisper, 'Come back to me with your bare hands!' And he would stare at his hands and his face would grow awful."

Moya drew a long sigh of scared attention.

"Those words were all over the cabin walls. I heard them and saw them everywhere. There was no rest from them. I could have torn the roof down to stop his talking, but the words it was not possible to forget. And where was the horror of it? Was not this what we had asked, for years, to know?"

"You need not explain to me," said Moya, shuddering.

"Yes; but all one's meanest motives were unearthed in a place like that.

Would I have felt so with a different man? Some one less uncouth? Was it the man himself, or his"--

"Paul, if anything could make you a sn.o.b, it would be your deadly fear of being one!"

"Well, if they had found us then, G.o.d knows how that fight would have ended. But I won it--when there was nothing left to fight for. I owned him--in the grave. We owned each other and took a bashful sort of comfort in it, after we had shuffled off the 'Mister' and 'John.' I grew quite fond of him, when we were so near death that his English didn't matter, or his way of eating. I thought him a very remarkable man, you remember, when he was just material for description. He was, he is remarkable. Most remarkable in this, he was not ashamed of his son."

"Do please let that part alone. I want to know what he was doing, hiding away by himself all these years? I believe he is an impostor!"

"We came to that, of course; though somehow I forgave him before he could answer the question. In the long watch beside him I got very close to him. It was not possible to believe him a deserter, a sneak. Can you take my word for his answer? It was given as a death-bed confession and he is living."

"I would take your word for anything except yourself!" Moya did not smile, or think what she was saying.

"That answer cleared him, in my mind, with something over to the credit of blind, stupid heroism. He is not a clever man. But, speaking as one who has teen face to face with the end of things, I can say that I know of no act of his that should prevent his returning to his family--if he had a family--not even his deserting them for twenty years. _If_, I say!

"When the soldiers found us we were too far gone to realize the issue that was upon us. He was the first to take it in. It was on the march home, at night, he touched me and began speaking low in our corner of the tent. 'As we came in here, so we go out again, and so we stay,' he said. I told him it could not be. To suppress what I had learned would make the whole of life a lie, a coward's lie. That knowledge belonged to my mother. I must render it up to her. To do otherwise would be to treat her like a child and to meddle with the purposes of G.o.d. 'No honest man robs another of his secrets,' he said. He was very much excited. She was the only one now to be considered--and what did I know about G.o.d's purposes? He refused to take my scruples into consideration, except such as concerned her. But, after a long argument, very painful, weak as we were and whispering in the dark, he yielded this much. If I were bent on digging up the dead, as he called it, it must be done in such a way as to leave her free. Free she was in law, and she must be given a chance to claim her freedom without talk or publicity. Absolute secrecy he demanded of me in the mean time. I begged him to see how unfair it was to her to bring her face to face with such a discovery without one word of preparation, of excuse for him. She would condemn him on the very fact of his being alive. So she would, he said, if she were going to judge him; not if she felt towards him as--as a wife feels to her husband. It was that he wanted to know. It was that or nothing he would have from her. 'Bring me face to face with her alone, and as sudden as you like. If she knows me, I am the man. And if she wants me back, she will know me--and that way I'll come and no other way.' Was not that wonderful? A gentleman could hardly have improved on that. Whatever feeling he might be supposed to have towards her in the matter we could never touch upon. But I think he had his hopes. That decision was hanging over us--and I trembled for her. Day before yesterday, was it, I persuaded her to see the sick guide. She wondered why I was faint as she kissed me good-by. I ought to have prepared her. It was a horrible snare. And yet he meant it all in delicacy, a pa.s.sionate consideration for her. Poor fool. How could I prepare _him!_ How could he keep pace with the changes in her! After all, it is externals that make us,--habits, clothes. Great G.o.d! Things you could not speak of to a naked soul like him. But he would have it 'straight,' he said--and straight he got it. And he is gone; broke away like an animal out of a trap. And I am going to find him, to see at least that he has a roof over his head. G.o.d knows, he may not die for years!"

"She has got years before her too."

"She!--What am I saying! We have plunged into those d.a.m.nable inferences and I haven't given you the facts. Wait. I shall contradict all this in a moment. I thought, she must have done this for her children. She must be given another chance. And I approached the thing on my very knees--not to let her know that I knew, only to hint that I was not unprepared, had guessed--could meet it, and help her to meet the problems it would bring into our lives. Help her! She stood and faced me as if I had insulted her. 'I have been your father's widow for twenty-two years. If that fact is not sacred to you, it is to me. Never dare to speak of this to me again!'"