felipa sat up in bed, and leaning over to the window beside it drew up the shade and looked out. the cold, gray world of breaking day was battling furiously with a storm of rain. the huddling flowers in the garden bent to the ground before the rush of wind from the mountains across the prairie. the windmill sent out raucous cries as it flew madly around, the great dense clouds, black with rain, dawn-edged, charged through the sky, and the shining-leaved cottonwoods bent their branches almost to the earth. the figures of cairness and a couple of cow-boys, wrapped in rubber coats, passed, fighting their way through the blur,—vague, dark shadows in the vague, dark mist.
the storm passed, with all the suddenness it had come on, and felipa rose, and dressing herself quickly went out upon the porch. three drenched kittens were mewing there piteously. she gathered them up in her hands and warmed them against her breast as she stood watching the earth and sky sob themselves to rest. all the petunias in the bed by the steps were full of rain, the crowfoot and madeira vines of the porch were stirring with the dripping water. many great trees had had their branches snapped off and tossed several[pg 307] yards away, and part of the windmill had been blown to the top of the stable, some distance off. she wondered if cairness had been able to get the cut alfalfa covered. then she took the kittens with her to the house and went into the kitchen, where the chinese cook already had a fire in the stove. she ordered coffee and toast to be made at once, and leaving the kittens in the woodbox near the fire, went back to the sitting room.
it was a luxurious place. as much for his own artistic satisfaction as for her, cairness had planned the interior of the house to be a background in keeping with felipa, a fit setting for her, and she led the life of an orient queen behind the walls of sun-baked clay. there was a wide couch almost in front of the roaring fire. she sank down in a heap of cushions, and taking up a book that lay open where her husband had put it down the night before, she tried to read by the flickering of the flame light over the pages.
she was drowsy, however, for it was still very early, and she was almost dropping off to sleep when the chinaman brought the coffee and set it down upon a table near her, with a deference of manner not common to the celestial when serving the occidental woman, who, he believes, has lost the right to it directly she shows the inclination to do work herself. but felipa was a mistress to his taste. as he bowed himself abjectly from her presence, cairness came in. he had taken off his rubber coat and big hat, and was full of the vigor of life which makes the strong and [pg 308]healthy-minded so good to look upon at the beginning of a day.
felipa, from her place on the couch, smiled lazily, with a light which was not all from the fire in her half-closed eyes. she put out her hand, and he took it in both his own and held it against his cold cheek as he dropped down beside her. she laid her head on his shoulder, and for a while neither of them spoke.
then there came a chuckling scream of baby laughter and a soft reproach, spoken in spanish, from across the hall. she stood up and poured the coffee, but before she took her own she went out of the room and came back in a moment, carrying her small son high upon her shoulder.
cairness watched how strong and erect and how sure of every muscle she was, and how well the blond little head looked against the dull blackness of the mother's hair. the child was in no way like felipa, and it had never taken her place in its father's love. he was fond of it and proud, too; but, had he been put to the test, he would have sacrificed its life for that of its mother, with a sort of fanatical joy.
she put the baby between them, and it sat looking into the fire in the way she herself so often did, until her husband had called her the high priestess of the flames. then she sank down among the cushions again and stirred her coffee indolently, drowsily, steeped in the contentment of perfect well-being. cairness followed her movements with sharp pleasure.
[pg 309]
later, when the sun was well up in the jewel-blue sky, and the world was all ashine, they began the real routine of the day. and it would have been much like that of any of the other days that had gone before it for two years, had not cairness come in a little before the noon hour, bringing with him a guest. it was an englishman, whom he presented to felipa as a friend of his youth, and named forbes.
he did not see that there was just the faintest shadow of pausing upon forbes's part, just the quickest passing hesitation and narrowing of the eyes with felipa. she came forward with unquestioning welcome, accustomed to take it as a matter of course that any traveller, minded to stop for a time, should go into the first ranch house at hand.
he told her, directly, that he was passing through arizona to hunt and to look to certain mining interests he held there. and he stayed, talking with her and her husband about the country and the towns and posts he had visited, until long after luncheon. then cairness, having to ride to the salt lick at the other end of the ranch, up in the huachuca foot-hills, suggested that forbes go with him.
it was plain, even to felipa, how thoroughly he enjoyed being with one who could talk of the past and of the present, from his own point of view. his coventry had been almost complete since the day that the entire army, impersonated in crook, had turned disapproving eyes upon him once, and had then looked away from him for good and all. it had been too bitter[pg 310] a humiliation for him ever to subject himself to the chance of it again.
the better class of citizens did not roam over the country much, and no officers had stopped at his ranch in almost two years, though they had often passed by. and he knew well enough that they would have let their canteens go unfilled, and their horses without fodder, for a long time, rather than have accepted water from his wells or alfalfa from his land. he could understand their feeling, too,—that was the worst of it; but though his love and his loyalty toward felipa never for one moment wavered, he was learning surely day by day that a woman, be she never so much beloved, cannot make up to a man for long for the companionship of his own kind; and, least of all,—he was forced to admit it in the depths of his consciousness now,—one whose interests were circumscribed.
they had lived an idyl for two years apast, and he begrudged nothing; yet now that the splendor was fading, as he knew that it was, the future was a little dreary before them both, before him the more, for he meant that, cost him what it might, felipa should never know that the glamour was going for himself. it would be the easier that she was not subtle of perception, not quick to grasp the unexpressed. as for him, he had wondered from the first what price the gods would put upon the unflawed jewel of their happiness, and had said in himself that none could be too high.
[pg 311]
forbes and her husband having gone away, felipa lay in the hammock upon the porch and looked up into the vines. she thought hard, and remembered many things as she swayed to and fro. she remembered that one return to nature long ago of which landor had not known.
there had been an afternoon in washington when, on her road to some reception of a half-official kind, she had crossed the opening of an alleyway and had come upon three boys who were torturing a small, blind kitten; and almost without knowing what she did, because her maternal grandfather had done to the children of his enemies as the young civilized savages were doing to the kitten there, she stopped and watched them, not enjoying the sight perhaps, but not recoiling from it either. so intent had she been that she had not heard footsteps crossing the street toward her, and had not known that some one stopped beside her with an exclamation of wrath and dismay. she had turned suddenly and looked up, the pupils of her eyes contracted curiously as they had been when she had watched the tarantula-vinagrone fight years before.
the man beside her was an attaché of the british legation, who had been one of her greatest admirers to that time, but thereafter he sought her out no more. he had driven the boys off, and taking the kitten, which mewed piteously all the way, had gone with her to her destination and left her.
she had been sufficiently ashamed of herself thereafter, and totally unable to understand her own evil[pg 312] impulse. as she lay swinging in the hammock, she remembered this and many other things connected with that abhorred period of compulsory civilization and of success. the hot, close, dead, sweet smell of the petunias, wilting in the august sun, and the surface-baked earth came up to her. it made her vaguely heartsick and depressed. the mood was unusual with her. she wished intensely that her husband would come back.
after a time she roused herself and went into the house, and directly she came back with the baby in her arms. the younger of the two children that she had taken under her care at stanton, the little girl, followed after her.
it was a long way to the salt lick, and the chances were that the two men would be gone the whole afternoon. the day was very hot, and she had put on a long, white wrapper, letting her heavy hair fall down over her shoulders, as she did upon every excuse now, and always when her husband was out of the way. there was a sunbonnet hanging across the porch railing. she put it on her head and went down the steps, carrying the child.
back of her, a score or more of miles away, were the iron-gray mountains; beyond those, others of blue; and still beyond, others of yet fainter blue, melting into the sky and the massed white clouds upon the horizon edge. but in front of her the flat stretched away and away, a waste of white-patched soil and glaring sand flecked with scrubs. the pungency of greasewood and sage[pg 313] was thick in the air, which seemed to reverberate with heat. a crow was flying above in the blue; its shadow darted over the ground, now here, now far off.
half a mile beyond, within the same barbed-wire enclosure as the home buildings and corrals, was a spring-house surrounded by cottonwoods, just then the only patch of vivid green on the clay-colored waste. there were benches under the cottonwoods, and the ground was cool, and thither felipa took her way, in no wise oppressed by the heat. her step was as firm and as quick as it had been the day she had come so noiselessly along the parade, across the path of the private who was going to the barracks. it was as quiet, too, for she had on a pair of old red satin slippers, badly run down at the heel.
cairness started for the salt lick, then changed his mind and his destination, and merely rode with forbes around the parts of the ranch which were under more or less cultivation, and to one of the water troughs beneath a knot of live oaks in the direction of the foot-hills. so they returned to the home place earlier than they otherwise would have done, and that, too, by way of the spring-house.
they caught sight of felipa, and both drew rein simultaneously. she was leaning against a post of the wire fence. the baby was carried on her hip, tucked under her arm, the sunbonnet was hanging by the strings around her neck, and her head, with its straight loose hair, was uncovered. the little girl stood beside her, clutching the white wrapper which had trailed in[pg 314] the spring-house acequia, and from under which a muddy red slipper showed. that she was imposing still, said much for the quality of her beauty. she did not hear the tramp of the two horses, sharp as her ears were, for she was too intent upon watching a fight between two steers.
one had gone mad with loco-weed, and they gored each other's sides until the blood ran, while only a low, moaning bellow came from their dried throats. a cloud of fine dust, that threw back the sun in glitters, hung over them, and a flock of crows, circling above in the steel-blue sky, waited.
"felipa!" shouted cairness. he was angry—almost as angry as forbes had been when he had come upon mrs. landor watching the boys and the kitten in the alleyway.
she heard, and again her eyes met forbes's. there was a flash of comprehension in them. she knew what he was thinking very well. but she left the fence, and, pushing the sunbonnet over her head, joined them, not in the least put out, and they dismounted and walked beside her, back to the house.
cairness was taciturn. it was some moments before he could control his annoyance, by the main strength of his sense of justice, by telling himself once again that he had no right to blame felipa for the manifestations of that nature he had known her to possess from the first. it was not she who was changing.
forbes explained their early return, and spoke of the ranch. "it might be a garden, this territory, if[pg 315] only it had water enough," he said; "it has a future, possibly, but its present is just a little dismal, i think. are you greatly attached to the life here, mrs. cairness?" he was studying her, and she knew it, though his glance swept the outlook comprehensively, and she was watching the mail-carrier riding toward them along the road. it was the brother of the little girl who followed along behind them, and who ran off now to meet him, calling and waving her hand.
"yes," she said, "i am very much attached to it. i was born to it."
"do you care for it so much that you would not be happy in any other?"
"that would depend," she answered with her enigmatical, slow smile; "i could be happy almost anywhere with mr. cairness."
"of course," he laughed tolerantly, "i dare say any wilderness were paradise with him."
felipa smiled again. "i might be happy," she went on, "but i probably should not live very long. i have indian blood in my veins; and we die easily in a too much civilization."
that evening they sat talking together long after the late dinner. but a little before midnight felipa left them upon the porch, smoking and still going over the past. they had so much to say of matters that she in no way understood. the world they spoke of and its language were quite foreign to her. she knew that her husband was where she could never follow him, and she felt the first utter dreariness of jealousy—the[pg 316] jealousy of the intellectual, so much more unendurable than that of the material.
with the things of the flesh there can be the vindictive hope, the certainty indeed, that they will lose their charm with time, that the gold will tarnish and the gray come above the green, but a thought is dearer for every year that it is held, and its beauty does not fade away. the things of the flesh we may even mar ourselves, if the rage overpowers us, but those of the intellect are not to be reached or destroyed; and felipa felt it as she turned from them and went into the house.
there was a big moon, already on the wane, floating very high in the heavens, and the plain was a silvery sheen.
"this is all very beautiful," said forbes, after a silence.
cairness did not see that it called for a reply, and he made none.
"but it is doing mrs. cairness an injustice, if you don't mind my saying so."
"what do you mean?" asked cairness, rather more than a trifle coldly. he had all but forgotten the matter of that afternoon. felipa had redeemed herself through the evening, so that he had reason to be proud of her.
"i used to know mrs. cairness in washington," forbes went on, undisturbed; "she has probably told you so."
cairness was surprised almost into showing his surprise. felipa had said nothing of it to him. and he[pg 317] knew well enough that she never forgot a face. he felt that he was in a false position, but he answered "yes?" non-committally.
"yes," answered forbes, "she was very much admired." he looked a little unhappy. but his mind was evidently made up, and he went on doggedly: "look here, morely, old chap, i am going to tell you what i think, and you may do as you jolly well please about it afterward—kick me off the ranch, if you like. but i can see these things with a clearer eye than yours, because i am not in love, and you are, dreadfully so, you know, not to say infatuated. i came near to being once upon a time, and with your wife, too. i thought her the most beautiful woman i had ever known, and i do yet. i thought, too, that she was a good deal unhappier with landor than she herself realized; in which i was perfectly right. it's plainer than ever, by contrast. of course i understand that she is part indian, though i've only known it recently. and it's because i've seen a good deal of your apaches of late that i appreciate the injustice you are doing her and cairness junior, keeping them here. she is far and away too good for all this," he swept the scene comprehensively with his pipe. "she'd be a sensation, even in london. do you see what i mean, or are you too vexed to see anything?"
cairness did not answer at once. he pushed the tobacco down in his brier and sat looking into the bowl. "no," he said at last, "i'm not too vexed. the fact is, i have seen what you mean for a long time. but what[pg 318] would you suggest by way of remedy, if i may ask?" they were both talking too low for their voices to reach felipa through the open window of her bedroom.
"that you take them to civilization—the missus and the kid. it's the only salvation for all three of you—for you as well as them."
"you heard what mrs. cairness said this afternoon. she was very ill in school when she was a young girl, and still more so in washington afterward." he shook his head. "no, forbes, you may think you know something about the apache, but you don't know him as i do, who have been with him for years. i've seen too much of the melting away of half and quarter breeds. they die without the shadow of an excuse, in civilization."
but forbes persisted, carried away by his idea and the determination to make events fit in with it. "she was ill in washington because she wasn't happy. she'd be happy anywhere with you; she said so this afternoon, you remember."
"she also said that it would kill her."
forbes went on without noticing the interruption. "you are a great influence in her life, but you aren't the only one. her surroundings act powerfully upon her. when i knew her before, she was like any other beautiful woman—"
"i am far from being sure that that is entirely to be desired, very far," said cairness, with conviction. he had never ceased to feel a certain annoyance at[pg 319] the memory of that year and a half of felipa's life in which he had had no part.
forbes shrugged his shoulders. "you'll pardon me if i say that here she is a luxurious semi-barbarian." it was on his tongue's tip to add, "and this afternoon, by the spring-house, she was nearly an apache," but he checked it. "it's very picturesque and poetical and all that,—from the romantic point of view it's perfect,—but it isn't feasible. you can't live on honeycomb for more than a month or twain. i can't imagine a greater misfortune than for you two to grow contented here, and that's what you'll do. it will be a criminal waste of good material."
cairness knew that it was true, too true to refute.
"i am speaking about mrs. cairness," forbes went on earnestly, "because she is more of an argument for you than the child is, which is un-english too, isn't it? but the child is a fine boy, nevertheless, and there will be other children probably. i don't need to paint their future to you, if you let them grow up here. you owe it to them and to your wife and to yourself—to society for that matter—not to retrograde. oh! i say, i'm out and out lecturing on sociology. you're good-tempered to put up with it, but i mean well—like most meddlers."
"i have the ranch; how could i get away?" cairness opposed.
but the argument was weak. forbes paid small heed to it. "you've a great deal besides. every one in the country knows your mines have made you a[pg 320] rich man. and you are better than that. you are a talented man, though you've frittered away your abilities too long to amount to anything much, now. you ought to get as far off from this kind of thing as you can."
he did not even hint that he knew of the isolation of their lives, but cairness was fully aware that he must, and that it was what he meant now. "you ought to go to another country. not back to australia, either; it is too much this sort, but somewhere where the very air is civilizing, where it's in the atmosphere and you can't get away from it. i'll tell you what you do." he stood up and knocked the ashes from his pipe against the porch rail. "you've plenty of friends at home. sell the ranch, or keep it to come back to once in a way if you like. i'm going back in the autumn, in october. you come with me, you and mrs. cairness and the boy."
cairness clasped his hands about one knee and bent back, looking up at the stars,—and far beyond them into the infinity of that cause of which they and he and all the perplexing problems were but the mere effects. "you mustn't think i haven't thought it over, time and again," he said, after a while. "it's more vital to me than to you; but my way isn't clear. i loved mrs. cairness for more than ten years before i could marry her. i should lose her in less than that, i am absolutely certain, if i did as you suggest. she is not so strong a woman as you might suppose. this dry air, this climate, are necessary to her." he hesitated a[pg 321] little, rather loath to speak of his sentiments, and yet glad of the chance to put his arguments in words, for his own greater satisfaction. "you call it picturesque and poetical and all that," he said, "but you only half mean it after all. it is picturesque. it has been absolutely satisfactory. i'm not given to talking about this kind of thing, you know; but most men who have been married two years couldn't say truthfully that they have nothing to regret; that if they had had to buy that time with eternity of damnation and the lake of fire, it would not have come too dear. and i have had no price to pay—" he stopped short, the ring of conviction cut off, as the sound of a bell is when a hand is laid upon it. the hand was that of a fact, of the fact that had confronted him in the ca?on de los embudos, and that very day by the cottonwoods of the spring-house.
"mrs. cairness would go where i wished gladly," he added, more evenly; "but if it were to a life very different from this, it would end in death—and i should be the cause of it. there it is." he too rose, impatiently.
"think it over, in any case," urged forbes; "i am going in, good night."
"i have thought it over," said cairness; "good night."
cairness sat for a long time, smoking and thinking. then felipa's voice called to him and he went in to her. she was by the window in a flood of moonlight, herself all in flowing white, with the mantle of black hair upon her shoulders.
[pg 322]
he put his arm about her and she laid her head against his breast. "i am jealous of him," she said, without any manner of preface.
he made no pretence of not understanding. "you have no need to be, dear," he said simply.
"he gives you what i can't give," she said.
"you give me what no one else could give—the best things in life."
"better than the—other things?" she asked, and he answered, unhesitating, "yes."
there was another silence, and this time he broke it.
"why did you not tell me you had known forbes, felipa?" if it had not been that she was commonly and often unaccountably reticent, there might have been some suspicion in the question. but there was only a slight annoyance. nor was there hesitation in her reply.
"it brought back too much that was unpleasant for me. i did not want to talk about it. he saw that i did not, too, and i can't understand why he should have spoken of it. i should have told you after he had gone." she was not disconcerted in the slightest, only a little vindictive toward forbes, and he thought it would hardly be worth his while to point out the curious position her silence put him in.
he gathered his courage for what he was going to say next, with a feeling almost of guilt. "forbes says that i am doing you an injustice, keeping you here; that it is no life for you."
"it is the only one i can live," she said indifferently[pg 323] enough, stating it as an accepted, incontrovertible fact, "and it's the one you like best."
he had told her that many times. it had been true; perhaps it was true still.
"he does not understand," she continued; "he was always a society man, forever at receptions and dances and teas. he doesn't see how we can make up to each other for all the world."
she moved away from him and out of the ray of moonlight, into the shadow of the other side of the window, and spoke thoughtfully, with more depth to her voice than usual. "so few people have been as happy as we have. if we went hunting for more happiness somewhere else, we should be throwing away the gifts of the gods, i think."
cairness looked over at her in some surprise, but her face was in the shadow. he wondered that she had picked up the phrase. it was a common one with him, a sort of catchword he had the habit of using. but she was not given to philosophy. it was oddly in line with his own previous train of thought.
he laughed, a little falsely, and turned back into the room.
"the gods sell their gifts," he said.
