_ PART I. ENCHANTMENT CHAPTER XIV
"Arrived safe" was the laconic message delivered to Miss Camilla Van Arsdale by Banneker's substitute when, after a haggard night, she rode over in the morning for news.
Banneker himself returned on the second noon, after much and roundabout wayfaring. He had little to say of the night journey; nothing of the peril escaped. Miss Welland had caught a morning train for the East. She was none the worse for the adventurous trip. Camilla Van Arsdale, noting his rapt expression and his absent, questing eyes, wondered what underlay such reticence.... What had been the manner of their parting?
It had, indeed, been anti-climax. Both had been a little shy, a little furtive. Each, perhaps feeling a mutual strain, wanted the parting over, restlessly desiring the sedative of thought and quiet memory after that stress. The desperate peril from which they had been saved seemed a lesser crisis, leading from a greater and more significant one; leading to--what? For his part Banneker was content to "breathe and wait." When they should meet again, it would be determined. How and when the encounter might take place, he did not trouble himself to consider. The whole universe was moulded and set for that event. Meantime the glory was about him; he could remember, recall, repeat, interpret....
For the hundredth time--or was it the thousandth?--he reconstructed that last hour of theirs together in the station at Miradero, waiting for the train. What had they said to each other? Commonplaces, mostly, and at times with effort, as if they were making conversation. They two! After that passionate and revealing moment between life and death on the island. What should he have said to her? Begged her to stay? On what basis? How could he?.... As the distant roar of the train warned them that the time of parting was close, it was she who broke through that strange restraint, turning upon him her old-time limpid and resolute regard.
"Ban; promise me something."
"Anything."
"There may be a time coming for us when you won't understand."
"Understand what?"
"Me. Perhaps I shan't understand myself."
"You'll always understand yourself, Io."
"If that comes--when that comes--Ban, there's something in the book, _our_ book, that I've left you to read."
"'The Voices'?"
"Yes. I've fastened the pages together so that you can't read it too soon."
"When, then?"
"When I tell you ... No; not when I tell you. When--oh, when you must! You'll read it, and afterward, when you think of me, you'll think of that, too. Will you?"
"Yes."
"Always?"
"Always."
"No matter what happens?"
"No matter what happens."
"It's like a litany." She laughed tremulously.... "Here's the train. Good-bye, dear."
He felt the tips of slender fingers on his temples, the light, swift pressure of cold lips on his mouth.... While the train pulled out, she stood on the rear platform, looking, looking. She was very still. All motion, all expression seemed centered in the steady gaze which dwindled away from him, became vague ... featureless ... vanished in a lurch of the car.
Banneker, at home again, planted a garden of dreams, and lived in it, mechanically acceptant of the outer world, resentful of any intrusion upon that flowerful retreat. Even of Miss Van Arsdale's.
Not for days thereafter did the Hunger come. It began as a little gnawing doubt and disappointment. It grew to a devastating, ravening starvation of the heart, for sign or sight or word of Io Welland. It drove him out of his withered seclusion, to seek Miss Van Arsdale, in the hope of hearing Io's name spoken. But Miss Van Arsdale scarcely referred to Io. She watched Banneker with unconcealed anxiety.
... Why had there been no letter?...
Appeasement came in the form of a package addressed in her handwriting. Avidly he opened it. It was the promised Bible, mailed from New York City. On the fly-leaf was written "I.O.W. to E.B."--nothing more. He went through it page by page, seeking marked passages. There was none. The doubt settled down on him again. The Hunger bit into him more savagely.
... Why didn't she write? A word! Anything!
... Had she written Miss Van Arsdale?
At first it was intolerable that he should be driven to ask about her from any other person; about Io, who had clasped him in the Valley of the Shadow, whose lips had made the imminence of death seem a light thing! The Hunger drove him to it.
Yes; Miss Van Arsdale had heard. Io Welland was in New York, and well. That was all. But Banneker felt an undermining reserve.
Long days of changeless sunlight on the desert, an intolerable glare. From the doorway of the lonely station Banneker stared out over leagues of sand and cactus, arid, sterile, hopeless, promiseless. Life was like that. Four weeks now since Io had left him. And still, except for the Bible, no word from her. No sign. Silence.
Why that? Anything but that! It was too unbearable to his helpless masculine need of her. He could not understand it. He could not understand anything. Except the Hunger. That he understood well enough now....
At two o'clock of a savagely haunted night, Banneker staggered from his cot. For weeks he had not known sleep otherwise than in fitful passages. His brain was hot and blank. Although the room was pitch-dark, he crossed it unerringly to a shelf and look down his revolver. Slipping on overcoat and shoes, he dropped the weapon into his pocket and set out up the railroad track. A half-mile he covered before turning into the desert. There he wandered aimlessly for a few minutes, and after that groped his way, guarding with a stick against the surrounding threat of the cactus, for his eyes were tight closed. Still blind, he drew out the pistol, gripped it by the barrel, and threw it, whirling high and far, into the trackless waste. He passed on, feeling his uncertain way patiently.
It took him a quarter of an hour to find the railroad track and set a sure course for home, so effectually had he lost himself.... No chance of his recovering that old friend. It had been whispering to him, in the blackness of empty nights, counsels that were too persuasive.
Back in his room over the station he lighted the lamp and stood before the few books which he kept with him there; among them Io's Bible and "The Undying Voices," with the two pages still joined as her fingers had left them. He was summoning his courage to face what might be the final solution. When he must, she had said, he was to open and read. Well ... he must. He could bear it no longer, the wordless uncertainty. He lifted down the volume, gently parted the fastened pages and read. From out the still, ordered lines, there rose to him the passionate cry of protest and bereavement:
"............................Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore--Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine And sees within my eyes the tears of two."
Over and over he read it with increasing bewilderment, with increasing fear, with slow-developing comprehension. If that was to be her farewell ... but why! Io, the straightforward, the intrepid, the exponent of fair play and the rules of the game!... Had it been only a game? No; at least he knew better than that.
What could it all mean? Why that medium for her message? Should he write and ask her? But what was there to ask or say, in the face of her silence? Besides, he had not even her address. Miss Camilla could doubtless give him that. But would she? How much did she understand? Why had she turned so unhelpful?
Banneker sat with his problem half through a searing night; and the other half of the night he spent in writing. But not to Io.
At noon Camilla Van Arsdale rode up to the station.
"Are you ill, Ban?" was her greeting, as soon as she saw his face.
"No, Miss Camilla. I'm going away."
She nodded, confirming not so much what he said as a fulfilled suspicion of her own. "New York is a very big city," she said.
"I haven't said that I was going to New York."
"No; there is much you haven't said."
"I haven't felt much like talking. Even to you."
"Don't go, Ban."
"I've got to. I've got to get away from here."
"And your position with the railroad?"
"I've resigned. It's all arranged." He pointed to the pile of letters, his night's work.
"What are you going to do?"
"How do I know! I beg your pardon, Miss Camilla. Write, I suppose."
"Write here."
"There's nothing to write about."
The exile, who had spent her years weaving exquisite music from the rhythm of desert winds and the overtones of the forest silence, looked about her, over the long, yellow-gray stretches pricked out with hints of brightness, to the peaceful refuge of the pines, and again to the naked and impudent meanness of the town. Across to her ears, borne on the air heavy with rain still unshed, came the rollicking, ragging jangle of the piano at the Sick Coyote.
"Aren't there people to write about there?" she said. "Tragedies and comedies and the human drama? Barrie found it in a duller place."
"Not until he had seen the world first," he retorted quickly. "And I'm not a Barrie.... I can't stay here, Miss Camilla."
"Poor Ban! Youth is always expecting life to fulfill itself. It doesn't."
"No; it doesn't--unless you make it."
"And how will you make it?"
"I'm going to get on a newspaper."
"It isn't so easy as all that, Ban."
"I've been writing."
In the joyous flush of energy, evoked under the spell of Io's enchantment, he had filled his spare hours with work, happy, exuberant, overflowing with a quaint vitality. A description of the desert in spate, thumb-nail sketches from a station-agent's window, queer little flavorous stories of crime and adventure and petty intrigue in the town; all done with a deftness and brevity that was saved from being too abrupt only by broad touches of color and light. And he had had a letter. He told Miss Van Arsdale of it.
"Oh, if you've a promise, or even a fair expectation of a place. But, Ban, I wouldn't go to New York, anyway."
"Why not?"
"It's no use."
His strong eyebrows went up. "Use?"
"You won't find her there."
"She's not in New York?"
"No."
"You've heard from her, then? Where is she?"
"Gone abroad."
Upon that he meditated. "She'll come back, though."
"Not to you."
He waited, silent, attentive, incredulous.
"Ban; she's married."
"Married!"
The telegraph instrument clicked in the tiny rhythm of an elfin bass-drum. "O.S. O.S." Click. Click. Click-click-click. Mechanically responsive to his office he answered, and for a moment was concerned with some message about a local freight. When he raised his face again, Miss Van Arsdale read there a sick and floundering skepticism.
"Married!" he repeated. "Io! She couldn't."
The woman, startled by the conviction in his tone, wondered how much that might imply.
"She wrote me," said she presently.
"That she was married?"
"That she would be by the time the letter reached me."
("You will think me a fool," the girl had written impetuously, "and perhaps a cruel fool. But it is the wise thing, really. Del Eyre is so safe! He is safety itself for a girl like me. And I have discovered that I can't wholly trust myself.... Be gentle with him, and make him do something worth while.")
"Ah!" said Ban. "But that--"
"And I have the newspaper since with an account of the wedding.... Ban! Don't look like that!"
"Like what?" said he stupidly.
"You look like Pretty Willie as I saw him when he was working himself up for the killing." Pretty Willie was the soft-eyed young desperado who had cleaned out the Sick Coyote.
"Oh, I'm not going to kill anybody," he said with a touch of grim amusement for her fears. "Not even myself." He rose and went to the door. "Do you mind, Miss Camilla?" he added appealingly.
"You want me to leave you now?"
He nodded. "I've got to think."
"When would you leave, Ban, if you do go?"
"I don't know."
On the following morning he went, after a night spent in arranging, destroying, and burning. The last thing to go into the stove, 67 S 4230, was a lock of hair, once glossy, but now stiffened and stained a dull brown, which he had cut from the wound on Io's head that first, strange night of theirs, the stain of her blood that had beaten in her heart, and given life to the sure, sweet motion of her limbs, and flushed in her cheeks, and pulsed in the warm lips that she had pressed to his--Why could they not have died together on their dissolving island, with the night about them, and their last, failing sentience for each other!
The flame of the greedy stove licked up the memento, but not the memory.
"You must not worry about me," he wrote in the note left with his successor for Miss Van Arsdale. "I shall be all right. I am going to succeed." _