_ PART V. THE FOLLOWING OF THE TRAIL
CHAPTER LVIII
The few moments of Thorpe's tears eased the emotional strain under which, perhaps unconsciously, he had been laboring for nearly a year past. The tenseness of his nerves relaxed. He was able to look on the things about him from a broader standpoint than that of the specialist, to front life with saving humor. The deep breath after striving could at last be taken.
In this new attitude there was nothing strenuous, nothing demanding haste; only a deep glow of content and happiness. He savored deliberately the joy of a luxurious couch, rich hangings, polished floor, subdued light, warmed atmosphere. He watched with soul-deep gratitude the soft girlish curves of Hilda's body, the poise of her flower head, the piquant, half-wistful, half-childish set of her red lips, the clear starlike glimmer of her dusky eyes. It was all near to him; his.
"Kiss me, dear," he said.
She swayed to him again, deliciously graceful, deliciously unselfconscious, trusting, adorable. Already in the little nothingnesses of manner, the trifles of mental and bodily attitude, she had assumed that faint trace of the maternal which to the observant tells so plainly that a woman has given herself to a man.
She leaned her cheek against her hand, and her hand against his shoulder.
"I have been reading a story lately," said she, "that has interested me very much. It was about a man who renounced all he held most dear to shield a friend."
"Yes," said Thorpe.
"Then he renounced all his most valuable possessions because a poor common man needed the sacrifice."
"Sounds like a medieval story," said he with unconscious humor.
"It happened recently," rejoined Hilda. "I read it in the papers."
"Well, he blazed a good trail," was Thorpe's sighing comment. "Probably he had his chance. We don't all of us get that. Things go crooked and get tangled up, so we have to do the best we can. I don't believe I'd have done it."
"Oh, you are delicious!" she cried.
After a time she said very humbly: "I want to beg your pardon for misunderstanding you and causing you so much suffering. I was very stupid, and didn't see why you could not do as I wanted you to."
"That is nothing to forgive. I acted like a fool."
"I have known about you," she went on. "It has all come out in the Telegram. It has been very exciting. Poor boy, you look tired."
He straightened himself suddenly. "I have forgotten,--actually forgotten," he cried a little bitterly. "Why, I am a pauper, a bankrupt, I--"
"Harry," she interrupted gently, but very firmly, "you must not say what you were going to say. I cannot allow it. Money came between us before. It must not do so again. Am I not right, dear?"
She smiled at him with the lips of a child and the eyes of a woman.
"Yes," he agreed after a struggle, "you are right. But now I must begin all over again. It will be a long time before I shall be able to claim you. I have my way to make."
"Yes," said she diplomatically.
"But you!" he cried suddenly. "The papers remind me. How about that Morton?"
"What about him?" asked the girl, astonished. "He is very happily engaged."
Thorpe's face slowly filled with blood.
"You'll break the engagement at once," he commanded a little harshly.
"Why should I break the engagement?" demanded Hilda, eying him with some alarm.
"I should think it was obvious enough."
"But it isn't," she insisted. "Why?"
Thorpe was silent--as he always had been in emergencies, and as he was destined always to be. His was not a nature of expression, but of action. A crisis always brought him, like a bull-dog, silently to the grip.
Hilda watched him puzzled, with bright eyes, like a squirrel. Her quick brain glanced here and there among the possibilities, seeking the explanation. Already she knew better than to demand it of him.
"You actually don't think he's engaged to ME!" she burst out finally.
"Isn't he?" asked Thorpe.
"Why no, stupid! He's engaged to Elizabeth Carpenter, Wallace's sister. Now WHERE did you get that silly idea?"
"I saw it in the paper."
"And you believe all you see! Why didn't you ask Wallace--but of course you wouldn't! Harry, you are the most incoherent dumb old brute I ever saw! I could shake you! Why don't you say something occasionally when it's needed, instead of sitting dumb as a sphinx and getting into all sorts of trouble? But you never will. I know you. You dear old bear! You NEED a wife to interpret things for you. You speak a different language from most people." She said this between laughing and crying; between a sense of the ridiculous uselessness of withholding a single timely word, and a tender pathetic intuition of the suffering such a nature must endure. In the prospect of the future she saw her use. It gladdened her and filled her with a serene happiness possible only to those who feel themselves a necessary and integral part in the lives of the ones they love. Dimly she perceived this truth. Dimly beyond it she glimpsed that other great truth of nature, that the human being is rarely completely efficient alone, that in obedience to his greater use he must take to himself a mate before he can succeed.
Suddenly she jumped to her feet with an exclamation.
"Oh, Harry! I'd forgotten utterly!" she cried in laughing consternation. "I have a luncheon here at half-past one! It's almost that now. I must run and dress. Just look at me; just LOOK! YOU did that!"
"I'll wait here until the confounded thing is over," said Thorpe.
"Oh, no, you won't," replied Hilda decidedly. "You are going down town right now and get something to put on. Then you are coming back here to stay."
Thorpe glanced in surprise at his driver's clothes, and his spiked boots.
"Heavens and earth!" he exclaimed, "I should think so! How am I to get out without ruining the floor?"
Hilda laughed and drew aside the portiere.
"Don't you think you have done that pretty well already?" she asked. "There, don't look so solemn. We're not going to be sorry for a single thing we've done today, are we?" She stood close to him holding the lapels of his jacket in either hand, searching his face wistfully with her fathomless dusky eyes.
"No, sweetheart, we are not," replied Thorpe soberly. _