the ten days that followed were among the most important of dominick ryan’s life. looking back at them he wondered that he had been so blind to the transformation of his being which was taking place. great emotional crises are often not any more recognized, by the individuals, than great transitional epochs are known by the nations experiencing them. dominick did not realize that the most engrossing, compelling passion he had ever felt was slowly invading him. he did not argue that he was falling in love with a woman he could never own and of whom it was a sin to think. he did not argue or think about anything. he was as a vessel gradually filling with elemental forces, and like the vessel he was passive till some jar would shake it and the forces would run over. meantime he was held by a determination, mutinous and unreasoning as the determination of a child, to live in the present. he had the feeling of the desert traveler who has found the oasis. the desert lay behind him, burning and sinister with the agony of his transit, and the desert lay before him with its horrors to be faced, but for the moment he could lie still and rest and forget by the fountain under the cool of the trees.
he did not consciously think of rose. but if she were not there he was uneasy till she came again. his secret exhilaration at her approach, the dead blankness of his lack of her when she was absent, told him nothing. these were the feelings he had, and they filled him and left no cool residue of reason wherewith to watch and guard. he was taken unawares, so drearily confident of his allegiance to his particular private tragedy that he did not admit the possibility of a defection. a sense of rest was on him and he set it down—if he ever thought of it at all—to the relief of a temporary respite. poor dominick, with his inexperience of sweet things, did not argue that respite from pain should be a quiescent, contented condition of being, far removed from that state of secret, troubled gladness that thrilled him at the sound of a woman’s footstep.
no situation could have been invented better suited for the fostering of sentiment. his helpless state demanded her constant attention. the attitude of nurse to patient, the solicitude of the consoling woman for the disabled, suffering man, have been, since time immemorial, recognized aids to romance. rose, if an unawakened woman, was enough of one to enjoy richly this maternal office of alternate cossetting and ruling one, who, in the natural order of things, should have stood alone in his strength, dictating the law. perhaps the human female so delights in this particular opportunity for tyranny because it is one of her few chances for indulging her passion for authority.
rose, if she did not quite revel in it, discreetly enjoyed her period of dominance. in the beginning dominick had been not a man but a patient—about the same to her as the doll is to the little girl. then when he began to get better, and the man rose, tingling with renewed life, from the ashes of the patient, she quickly fell back into the old position. with the inherited, dainty deceptiveness of generations of women, who, while they were virtuous, were also charming, she relinquished her dominion and retreated into that enfolded maidenly reserve and docility which we feel quite sure was the manner adopted by the ladies of the stone age when they felt it necessary to manage their lords.
she was as unconscious of all this as dominick was of his growing absorption in her. if he was troubled she was not. the days saw her growing gayer, more blithe and light-hearted. she sang about the corridors, her smile grew more radiant, and every man in the hotel felt the power of her awakening womanhood. her boyish frankness of demeanor was still undimmed by the first blurring breath of passion. if dominick was not in the parlor her disappointment was as candid as a child’s whose mother has forgotten to bring home candy. all that she showed of consciousness was that when he was there and there was no disappointment, she concealed her satisfaction, wrapped herself in a sudden, shy quietness, as completely extinguishing of all beneath as a nun’s habit.
the continued, enforced intimacy into which their restricted quarters and indoor life threw them could not have been more effectual in fanning the growing flame if designed by a malicious fate. there was only one sitting-room, and, unable to go out, they sat side by side in it all day. they read together, they talked, they played cards. they were seldom alone, but the presence of bill cannon, groaning over the fire with a three-weeks-old newspaper for company, was not one that diverted their attention from each other; and cora and willoughby, as opponents in a game of euchre, only helped to accentuate the comradeship which leagued them together in defensive alliance.
the days that were so long to others were to them of a bright, surprising shortness. playing solitaire against each other on either side of the fireplace was a pastime at which hours slipped by. quite unexpectedly it would be midday, with cora putting her head round the door-post and calling them to dinner. in the euchre games of the afternoon the darkness crept upon them with the stealthy swiftness of an enemy. it would gather in the corners of the room while cora was still heated and flushed from her efforts to instruct willoughby in the intricacies of the game, and yet preserve that respectful attitude which she felt should be assumed in one’s relations with a lord.
the twilight hour that followed was to dominick’s mind the most delightful of these days of fleeting enchantment. the curtains were drawn, a new log rolled on the fire, and the lamp lit. then their fellow prisoners began dropping in—the old judge stowing himself away in one of the horsehair arm-chairs, willoughby and buford lounging in from the bar, mrs. perley with a basket of the family mending, and the doctor all snowy from his rounds. the audience for rose’s readings had expanded from the original listener to this choice circle of antelope’s elect. the book chosen had been great expectations, and the spell of that greatest tale of a great romancer fell on the snow-bound group and held them entranced and motionless round the friendly hearth.
the young man’s eyes passed from face to face, avoiding only that of the reader bent over the lamp-illumined page. the old judge, sunk comfortably into the depths of his arm-chair, listened, and cracked the joints of his lean, dry fingers. willoughby, his dogs crouched about his feet, looked into the fire, his attentive gravity broken now and then by a slow smile. mrs. perley, after hearing the chapter which describes mrs. gargery’s methods of bringing up pip “by hand,” attended regularly with the remark that “it was a queer sort of book, but some way or other she liked it.” when cora was forced to leave to attend to her duties in the dining-room, she tore herself away with murmurous reluctance. the doctor slipped in at the third reading and asked rose if she would lend him the book in the morning “to read up what he had missed.” even perley’s boy, in his worn corduroys, his dirty, chapped hands rubbing his cap against his nose, was wont to sidle noiselessly in and slip into a seat near the door.
the climax of the day was the long evening round the fire. there was no reading then. it was the men’s hour, and the smoke of their pipes and cigars lay thick in the air. cut off from the world in this cranny of the mountains, with the hotel shaking to the buffets of the wind and the snow blanket pressing on the pane, their memories swept back to the wild days of their youth, to the epic times of frontiersman and pioneer.
the judge told of his crossing of the plains in forty-seven and the first mormon settlement on the barren shores of salt lake. he had had encounters with the indians, had heard the story of olive oatman from one who had known her, and listened to the sinister tale of the donner party from a survivor. bill cannon had “come by the isthmus” in forty-eight, a half-starved, ragged lad who had run away from uncongenial drudgery on a new york farm. his reminiscences went back to the san francisco that started up around portsmouth square, to the days when the banks of the american river swarmed with miners, and the gold lay yellow in the prospector’s pan. he had worked there shoulder to shoulder with men who afterwards made the history of the state and men who died with their names unknown. he had been an eye witness of that blackest of californian tragedies, the lynching of a spanish girl at downieville, had stood pallid and sick under a pine tree and watched her boldly face her murderers and meet her death.
the younger men, warmed to emulation, contributed their stories. perley had reminiscences bequeathed to him by his father who had been an alcalde in that transition year, when california was neither state nor territory and stood in unadministered neglect, waiting for congress to take some notice of her. buford had stories of the vicissitudes of a strolling player’s life. he had been in the klondike during the first gold rush and told tales of mining in the north to match those of mining on the “mother lode.” willoughby, thawed out of his original shyness, added to the nights’ entertainments stories of the australian bush, grim legends of the days of the penal settlements at botany bay. young ryan was the only man of the group who contributed nothing to these sierran nights’ entertainments. he sat silent in his chair, apparently listening, and, under the shadow of the hand arched over his eyes, looking at the girl opposite.
but the idyl had to end. their captivity passed into its third week, and signs that release was at hand cheered them. they could go out. the streets of antelope were beaten into footpaths, and the prisoners, with the enthusiasm of children liberated from school, rushed into open-air diversions and athletic exercise. the first word from the outside world came by restored telegraphic communication. consolatory messages poured in from san francisco. mrs. ryan, the elder, sent telegrams as long as letters and showered them with the prodigality of an impassioned gratitude on the camp. perley had one that he could not speak of without growing husky. willoughby had one that made him blush. dominick had several. none, however, had come from his wife and he guessed that none had been sent her, his remark to rose to “let her alone” having been taken as a wish to spare her anxiety. it was thought that the mail would be in now in a day or two. that would be the end of the fairy tale. they sat about the fire on these last evenings discussing their letters, what they expected, and whom they would be from. no one told any more stories; the thought of news from “outside” was too absorbing.
it came in the early dusk of an afternoon near the end of the third week. dominick, who was still unable to walk, was standing by the parlor window, when he saw rose cannon run past outside. she looked in at him as she ran by, her face full of a joyous excitement, and held up to his gaze a small white packet. a moment later the hall door banged, her foot sounded in the passage, and she entered the room with a rush of cold air and a triumphant cry of:
“the mail’s come!”
he limped forward to meet her and take from her hand the letter she held toward him. for the first moment he looked at her, not at the letter, which dwindled to a thing of no importance when their eyes met over it. her face was nipped by the keen outside air into a bright, beaming rosiness. she wore on her head a man’s fur cap which was pulled well down, and pressed wisps of fair hair against her forehead and cheeks. a loose fur-lined coat enveloped her to her feet, and after she had handed him his letter she pulled off the mittens she wore and began unfastening the clasps of the coat, with fingers that were purplish and cramped from the cold.
“there’s only one for you,” she said. “i waited till the postmaster looked all through them twice. then i made him give it to me and ran back here with it. the entire population of antelope’s in the post-office and there’s the greatest excitement.”
her coat was unfastened and she threw back its long fronts, her figure outlined against the gray fur lining. she snatched off her cap and tossed it to an adjacent chair and with a quick hand brushed away the hair it had pressed down on her forehead.
“i got seven,” she said, turning to the fire, “and papa a whole bunch, and the judge, quantities, and willoughby, three. but only one for you—poor, neglected man!”
spreading her hands wide to the blaze she looked at him over her shoulder, laughing teasingly. he had the letter in his hands still unopened.
“why,” she cried, “what an extraordinary sight! you haven’t opened it!”
“no,” he answered, turning it over, “i haven’t.”
“i’ve always heard that curiosity was a feminine weakness but i never knew it till now,” she said. “please go on and read it, because if you don’t i’ll feel that i’m preventing you and i’ll have to go up stairs to my own room, which is as cold as a refrigerator. don’t make me polite and considerate against my will.”
without answering her he tore open the letter and, moving to the light of the window, held the sheet up and began to read.
there was silence for some minutes. the fire sputtered and snapped, and once or twice the crisp paper rustled in dominick’s hands. rose held her fingers out to the warmth, studying them with her head on one side as if she had never seen them before. presently she slid noiselessly out of her coat, and dropped it, a heap of silky fur, on a chair beside her. the movement made it convenient to steal a glance at the young man. he was reading the letter, his body close against the window-pane, his face full of frowning, almost fierce concentration. she turned back to the fire and made small, surreptitious smoothings and jerks of arrangement at her collar, her belt, her skirt. dominick turned the paper and there was something aggressive in the crackling of the thin, dry sheet.
“perley got a letter from your mother,” she said suddenly, “that he was reading in a corner of the post-office, and it nearly made him cry.”
there was no answer. she waited for a space and then said, projecting the remark into the heart of the fire,
“yours must be a most interesting letter.”
she heard him move and looked quickly back at him, her face all gay challenge. it was met by a look so somber that her expression changed as if she had received a check to her gaiety as unexpected and effectual as a blow. she shrank a little as he came toward her, the letter in his hand.
“it is an interesting letter,” he said. “it’s from my wife.”
since those first days of his illness, his wife’s name had been rarely mentioned. rose thought it was because young mrs. ryan was a delicate subject best left alone; dominick, because anything that reminded him of berny was painful. but the truth was that, from the first, the wife had loomed before them as a figure of dread, a specter whose presence congealed the something exquisite and uplifting each felt in the other’s heart. now, love awakened, forcing itself upon their recognition, her name came up between them, chilling and grim as the image of death intruding suddenly into the joyous presence of the living.
the change that had come over the interview all in a moment was startling. suddenly it seemed lifted from the plane of every-day converse to a level where the truth was an obligation and the language of polite subterfuge could not exist. but the woman, who hides and protects herself with these shields, made an effort to keep it in the old accustomed place.
“is—is—she well?” she stammered, framing the regulation words almost unconsciously.
“she’s well,” he answered, “she’s very well. she wants me to come home.”
he suddenly looked away from her and, turning to the chimneypiece, rested one hand upon it and gazed down at the logs. a charred end projected and he pushed it in with his slippered foot, his down-bent face, the lips set and brows wrinkled, looking like the face of a sullen boy who has been unjustly punished. an icy, invading chill of depression made rose’s heart sink down into bottomless depths. she faltered in faint tones,
“well, you’ll be there soon now.”
“i don’t know,” he answered without moving. “i don’t know whether i shall.”
“you don’t know whether you’ll be home soon? the roads are open; the postman has come in.”
“i don’t know whether i’ll go home,” he repeated.
the snapping of the fire sounded loud upon the silence that followed. the thrill of strong emotions rising toward expression held them in a breathless, immovable quietude.
“don’t you want to go home?” said the young girl. her voice was low and she cleared her throat. in this interchange of commonplace sentences her heart had begun to beat so violently that it interfered with the ease of her speech.
dominick leaned forward and dropped the crumpled letter into the fire.
“no, i don’t want to. i hate to.”
to this she did not reply at all, and after a moment he continued: “my home is unbearable to me. it isn’t a home. it’s a place where i eat and sleep, and i’d prefer doing that anywhere else, in any dirty boarding-house or fourth-rate hotel—i’d rather——”
he stopped abruptly and pushed the log farther in. the letter was caught up the chimney in a swirl of blackened scraps.
“but your wife?” said rose.
this time her voice was hoarse but she did not know it. she had lost the consciousness of herself. it was a profound moment, the deepest she had so far known, and all the forces of her being were concentrated upon it. the young man answered with deliberation, still not moving.
“i don’t want to see my wife. we are—we are—uncongenial. there is nothing but unhappiness between us.”
“don’t you love her?” said the girl.
“no. i never did,” he answered.
for a moment neither dared speak. they did not look at each other or stir. they hardly seemed to breathe. a movement, a touch, would have rent the last thin crust of reserve that covered what were no longer unsuspected fires. dominick knew it, but the girl did not. she was seized by what to her was a sudden, inexplicable fear, and the increased, suffocating beating of her heart made her feel dizzy. she suddenly wished to fly, to escape from the room, and him, and herself. she turned to go and was arrested by cora’s voice in the hall:
“say, you folks, are you in there?”
cora’s visage followed her voice. she thrust it round the door-post, beamingly smiling under a recently-applied coat of powder.
“do you want to tackle a game of euchre? mr. willoughby and i’ll lay you out cold unless that british memory of his has gone back on him and he’s forgot all i taught him last time.”
they were too bewildered to make any response. rose gathered up her coat and dropped it again, looking stupidly from it to the intruder. cora turned back to the passage, calling,
“here they are, mr. willoughby, all ready and waiting for us. now we’ll show them how to play euchre.”
before willoughby appeared, responsive to this cheerful hail, cora had pulled the chairs round the table and brought out the cards. a few moments later, they were seated and the game had begun. cora and her partner were soon jubilant. not only did they hold the cards, but their adversaries played so badly that the tale of many old scores was wiped off.
the next day the first movements of departure began. early in the afternoon buford and judge washburne started for rocky bar in perley’s sleigh. the road had been broken by the mail-carrier, but was still so deeply drifted that the drive was reckoned a toilsome undertaking not without danger. perley’s two powerful horses were harnessed in tandem, and perley himself, a mere pillar of wrappings, drove them, squatted on a soap box in front of the two passengers. there were cries of farewell from the porch and tappings on the windows as the sleigh started and sped away to the diminishing jingle of bells. a sadness fell on those who watched it. the little idyl of isolation was over.
on the following day bill cannon and his daughter were to leave. a telegram had been sent to rocky bar for a sleigh and horses of the proper excellence to be the equipage of a bonanza princess. rose had spent the morning packing the valises, and late in the afternoon began a down-stairs search for possessions left in the parlor.
the dusk was gathering as she entered the room, the corners of which were already full of darkness, the fire playing on them with a warm, varying light. waves of radiance quivered and ran up the ceiling, here and there touching the glaze on a picture glass or china ornament. the crude ugliness of the place was hidden in this unsteady, transforming combination of shadow and glow. it seemed a rich, romantic spot, flushed with fire that pulsed on an outer edge of mysterious obscurity, a center of familiar, intimate life, round which coldness and the dark pressed.
she thought the room was unoccupied and advanced toward the table, then started before the uprising of dominick’s tall figure from a chair in a shadowed corner. it was the first time they had seen each other alone since their conversation of the day before. rose was startled and agitated, and her brusk backward movement showed it. her voice, however, was natural, almost easy to casualness as she said,
“i thought there was no one here, you’ve hidden yourself in such a dark corner. i came to gather up my books and things.”
he advanced into the light, looking somberly at her.
“it’s true that you’re going to-morrow?” he said almost gruffly.
“oh, yes, we’re really going. everything’s been arranged. horses and a sleigh are expected any moment now from rocky bar. they rest here all night and take us down in the afternoon. i think papa’d go crazy if we had to stay twenty-four hours longer.”
“i’ll follow in a day or two,” he said, “probably go down on tuesday, the doctor says.”
she began gathering up the books, reading the titles, and putting aside those that were not hers.
“i’m so sorry it’s over,” she said in a preoccupied voice without any particular regret in it. “the mill on the floss is mrs. perley’s, i think.”
“i’m sorry, too,” he commented, very low.
she made no reply, selected another book, and as she held it up looking at the back, said,
“but it’s not like a regular good-by. it’s not as if you were going in one direction and we in another. we’ll see you in san francisco, of course.”
“i don’t think so,” he answered.
she laid the book on the table and turned her face toward him. he stood looking into the fire, not seeing the face, but conscious of it, of its expression, of its every line.
“do you mean that we’re not going to see you down there at all?”
“yes, that’s just about what i meant,” he replied.
“mr. ryan!” it was hardly more than a breath of protest, but it was as stirring to the man as the whisper of love.
he made no comment on it, and she said, with a little more of insistence and volume,
“but why?”
“it’s best not,” he answered, and turned toward her.
his shoulders were squared and he held his head as a man does who prepares himself for a blow. his eyes, looking straight into hers, enveloped her in a glance soft and burning, not a savage glance, but the enfolding, possessive glance, caressing and ardent, pleading and masterful, of a lover.
the books that she was holding fell to the table, and they looked at each other while the clock ticked.
“it’s best for me not to come,” he said huskily, “never to come.”
“very well,” she faltered.
he came a little nearer to her and said,
“you know what i mean.”
she turned away, very pale, her lips trembling.
“and you’d like me to come if i could—if i were free?”
he was close to her and looked down to see her face, his own hard, the bones of the jaw showing through the thin cheeks.
“you’d like me to?” he urged.
she nodded, her lips too dry to speak.
“o rose!” he whispered, a whisper that seemed to melt the strength of her heart and make her unvanquished, maiden pride dissolve into feebleness.
he leaned nearer and, taking her by the arms just above the elbows, drew her to himself, into an embrace, close and impassioned, that crushed her against him. she submitted passively, in a dizzy dream that was neither joy nor pain, but was like a moment of drugged unreality, fearful and beautiful. she was unconscious of his lips pressed on her hair, but she felt the beating of his heart beneath her cheek.
they stood thus for a moment, rising above time and space. they seemed to have been caught up to a pinnacle of life where the familiar world lay far beneath them. a joy, divine and dreamy, held them clasped together, motionless and mute, for a single point of time beyond and outside the limitations that had heretofore bound them.
bill cannon had a question to ask his daughter and he came down stairs to the parlor where she had told him she was going. he had dressed himself for supper, the most important item of his toilet being a pair of brown leather slippers. they were soft and made no sound, and stepping briskly in them he advanced to the half-open parlor door, pushed it open and entered the quiet room. on the hearth-rug before the fire stood a woman clasped in the arms of dominick ryan.
though the face was hidden, the first glance told him it was his daughter. the young man’s head was bowed on hers, his brown hair rising above the gleaming blondness of hers. they were absolutely motionless and silent. for an amazed moment the father stared at them, then turned and tiptoed out of the room.
he mounted several steps of the staircase and then descended, stepping as heavily as he could, and, as he advanced on the parlor, coughed with aggressive loudness. he was on the threshold when he encountered his daughter, her head lowered, her gait quick, almost a run. without a word he stepped aside and let her pass, the rustling of her skirt diminishing as she ran up the hall and mounted the stairs.
dominick was standing on the hearth-rug, his head raised like a stag’s; his eyes, wide and gleaming, on the doorway through which she had passed. cannon stopped directly in front of him and fixed a stony, menacing glare on him.
“well, dominick ryan,” he said in a low voice, “i saw that. i came in here a moment ago and saw that. what have you got to say about it?”
the young man turned his eyes slowly from vacancy to the angry face before him. for a moment he looked slightly dazed, staring blankly at cannon. then wrath gathered thunderously on his brow.
“let me alone!” he said fiercely, thrusting him aside. “get out of my way and let me alone! i can’t talk to you now.”
he swept the elder man out of his path, and, lurching and staggering on his wounded feet, hurled himself out of the room.
