More than anything he wanted to be fair to this girl. He saw that she was warming to his influence. Her shadowy eyes were fixed upon him. The starlight, growing brighter, shone on her golden hair and white face.
"I"ll tell you presently," he said. "I"ve trusted you. I"ll trust you with all.... But let me have my own time. This is so strange a thing, my wanting to confide in you. It"s selfish, perhaps. I have my own ax to grind. I hope I won"t wrong you. That"s why I"m going to be perfectly frank. I might wait for days to get better acquainted. But the impulse is on me. I"ve been so interested in all you Mormon women. The fact--the meaning of this hidden village is so--so terrible to me. But that"s none of my business. I have spent my afternoons and evenings with these women at the different cottages. You do not mingle with them. They are lonely, but have not such loneliness as yours. I have pa.s.sed here every night.
No light--no sound. I can"t help thinking. Don"t censure me or be afraid or draw within yourself just because I must think. I may be all wrong.
But I"m curious. I wonder about you. Who are you? Mary--Mary what? Maybe I really don"t want to know. I came with selfish motive and now I"d like to--to--what shall I say? Make your life a little less lonely for the while I"m here. That"s all. It needn"t offend. And if you accept it, how much easier I can tell you my secret. You are a Mormon and I--well, I am only a wanderer in these wilds. But--we might help each other.... Have I made a mistake?"
"No--no," she cried, almost wildly.
"We can be friends then. You will trust me, help me?"
"Yes, if I dare."
"Surely you may dare what the other women would?"
She was silent.
And the wistfulness of her silence touched him. He felt contrition. He did not stop to a.n.a.lyze his own emotions, but he had an inkling that once this strange situation was ended he would have food for reflection.
What struck him most now was the girl"s blanched face, the strong, nervous clasp of her hands, the visible tumult of her bosom. Excitement alone could not be accountable for this. He had not divined the cause for such agitation. He was puzzled, troubled, and drawn irresistibly. He had not said what he had planned to say. The moment had given birth to his speech, and it had flowed. What was guiding him?
"Mary," he said, earnestly, "tell me--have you mother, father, sister, brother? Something prompts me to ask that."
"All dead--gone--years ago," she answered.
"How old are you?"
"Eighteen, I think. I"m not sure."
"You ARE lonely."
His words were gentle and divining.
"O G.o.d!" she cried. "Lonely!"
Then as a man in a dream he beheld her weeping. There was in her the unconsciousness of a child and the pa.s.sion of a woman. He gazed out into the dark shadows and up at the white stars, and then at the bowed head with its ma.s.s of glinting hair. But her agitation was no longer strange to him. A few gentle and kind words had proved her undoing. He knew then that whatever her life was, no kindness or sympathy entered it.
Presently she recovered, and sat as before, only whiter of face it seemed, and with something tragic in her dark eyes. She was growing cold and still again, aloof, more like those other Mormon women.
"I understand," he said. "I"m not sorry I spoke. I felt your trouble, whatever it is.... Do not retreat into your cold sh.e.l.l, I beg of you....
Let me trust you with my secret."
He saw her shake out of the cold apathy. She wavered. He felt an inexplicable sweetness in the power his voice seemed to have upon her.
She bowed her head in acquiescence. And Shefford began his story. Did she grow still, like stone, or was that only his vivid imagination?
He told her of Venters and Bess--of La.s.siter and Jane--of little Fay Larkin--of the romance, and then the tragedy of Surprise Valley.
"So, when my Church disowned me," he concluded, "I conceived the idea of wandering into the wilds of Utah to save Fay Larkin from that canon prison. It grew to be the best and strongest desire of my life. I think if I could save her that it would save me. I never loved any girl.
I can"t say that I love Fay Larkin. How could I when I"ve never seen her--when she"s only a dream girl? But I believe if she were to become a reality--a flesh-and-blood girl--that I would love her."
That was more than Shefford had ever confessed to any one, and it stirred him to his depths. Mary bent her head on her hands in strange, stonelike rigidity.
"So here I am in the canon country," he continued. "Withers tells me it is a country of rainbows, both in the evanescent air and in the changeless stone. Always as a boy there had been for me some haunting promise, some treasure at the foot of the rainbow. I shall expect the curve of a rainbow to lead me down into Surprise Valley. A dreamer, you will call me. But I have had strange dreams come true.... Mary, do you think THIS dream will come true?"
She was silent so long that he repeated his question.
"Only--in heaven," she whispered.
He took her reply strangely and a chill crept over him.
"You think my plan to seek to strive, to find--you think that idle, vain?"
"I think it n.o.ble.... Thank G.o.d I"ve met a man like you!"
"Don"t praise me!" he exclaimed, hastily. "Only help me.... Mary, will you answer a few little questions, if I swear by my honor I"ll never reveal what you tell me?"
"I"ll try."
He moistened his lips. Why did she seem so strange, so far away? The hovering shadows made him nervous. Always he had been afraid of the dark. His mood now admitted of unreal fancies.
"Have you ever heard of Fay Larkin?" he asked, very low.
"Yes."
"Was there only one Fay Larkin?"
"Only one."
"Did you--ever see her?"
"Yes," came the faint reply.
He was grateful. How she might be breaking faith with creed or duty!
He had not dared to hope so much. All his inner being trembled at the portent of his next query. He had not dreamed it would be so hard to put, or would affect him so powerfully. A warmth, a glow, a happiness pervaded his spirit; and the chill, the gloom were as if they had never been.
"Where is Fay Larkin now?" he asked, huskily.
He bent over her, touched her, leaned close to catch her whisper.
"She is--dead!"
Slowly Shefford rose, with a sickening shock, and then in bitter pain he strode away into the starlight.
VII. SAGO-LILIES
The Indian returned to camp that night, and early the next day, which was Sunday, Withers rode in, accompanied by a stout, gray-bearded personage wearing a long black coat.
"Bishop Kane, this is my new man, John Shefford," said the trader.
Shefford acknowledged the introduction with the respectful courtesy evidently in order, and found himself being studied intently by clear blue eyes. The bishop appeared old, dry, and absorbed in thought; he spoke quaintly, using in every speech some Biblical word or phrase; and he had an air of authority. He asked Shefford to hear him preach at the morning service, and then he went off into the village.