"Sure," replied Shefford, laughing. "I have to get up early to keep Joe from doing all the camp ch.o.r.es."
She smiled, and then to Shefford she seemed to gleam, to be radiant.
"It"d be a lovely morning to climb--"way high."
"Why--yes--it would," replied Shefford, awkwardly. "I wish I didn"t have my work."
"Joe, will YOU climb with me some day?"
"I should smile I will," declared Joe.
"But I can run right up the walls."
"I reckon. Mary, it wouldn"t surprise me to see you fly."
"Do you mean I"m like a canon swallow or an angel?"
Then, as Joe stared speechlessly, she said good-by and, taking up the bucket, went on with her swift, graceful step.
"She"s perked up," said the Mormon, staring after her. "Never heard her say more "n yes or no till now."
"She did seem--bright," replied Shefford.
He was stunned. What had happened to her? To-day this girl had not been Mary, the sealed wife, or the Sago Lily, alien among Mormon women. Then it flashed upon him--she was Fay Larkin. She who had regarded herself as dead had come back to life. In one short night what had transformed her--what had taken place in her heart? Shefford dared not accept, nor allow lodgment in his mind, a thrilling idea that he had made her forget her misery.
"Shefford, did you ever see her like that?" asked Joe.
"Never."
"Haven"t you--something to do with it?"
"Maybe I have. I--I hope so."
"Reckon you"ve seen how she"s faded--since the trial?"
"No," replied Shefford, swiftly. "But I"ve not seen her face in daylight since then."
"Well, take my hunch," said Joe, soberly. "She"s begun to fade like the canon lily when it"s broken. And she"s going to die unless--"
"Why man!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Shefford. "Didn"t you see--"
"Sure I see," interrupted the Mormon. "I see a lot you don"t. She"s so white you can look through her. She"s grown thin, all in a week. She doesn"t eat. Oh, I know, because I"ve made it my business to find out.
It"s no news to the women. But they"d like to see her die. And she will die unless--"
"My G.o.d!" exclaimed Shefford, huskily. "I never noticed--I never thought.... Joe, hasn"t she any friends?"
"Sure. You and Ruth--and me. Maybe Nas Ta Bega, too. He watches her a good deal."
"We can do so little, when she needs so much."
"n.o.body can help her, unless it"s you," went on the Mormon. "That"s plain talk. She seemed different this morning. Why, she was alive--she talked--she smiled.... Shefford, if you cheer her up I"ll go to h.e.l.l for you!"
The big Mormon, on his knees, with his hands in a pan of dough, and his shirt all covered with flour, presented an incongruous figure of a man actuated by pathos and pa.s.sion. Yet the contrast made his emotion all the simpler and stronger. Shefford grew closer to Joe in that moment.
"Why do you think _I_ can cheer her, help her?" queried Shefford.
"I don"t know. But she"s different with you. It"s not that you"re a Gentile, though, for all the women are crazy about you. You talk to her.
You have power over her, Shefford. I feel that. She"s only a kid."
"Who is she, Joe? Where did she come from?" asked Shefford, very low, with his eyes cast down.
"I don"t know. I can"t find out. n.o.body knows. It"s a mystery--to all the younger Mormons, anyway."
Shefford burned to ask questions about the Mormon whose sealed wife the girl was, but he respected Joe too much to take advantage of him in a poignant moment like this. Besides, it was only jealousy that made him burn to know the Mormon"s ident.i.ty, and jealousy had become a creeping, insidious, growing fire. He would be wise not to add fuel to it. He rejected many things before he thought of one that he could voice to his friend.
"Joe, it"s only her body that belongs to--to.... Her soul is lost to--"
"John Shefford, let that go. My mind"s tired. I"ve been taught so and so, and I"m not bright.... But, after all, men are much alike. The thing with you and me is this--we don"t want to see HER grave!"
Love spoke there. The Mormon had seized upon the single elemental point that concerned him and his friend in their relation to this unfortunate girl. His simple, powerful statement united them; it gave the lie to his hint of denseness; it stripped the truth naked. It was such a wonderful thought-provoking statement that Shefford needed time to ponder how deep the Mormon was. To what limit would he go? Did he mean that here, between two men who loved the same girl, cla.s.s, duty, honor, creed were nothing if they stood in the way of her deliverance and her life?
"Joe Lake, you Mormons are impossible," said Shefford, deliberately.
"You don"t want to see her grave. So long as she lives--remains on the earth--white and gold like the flower you call her, that"s enough for you. It"s her body you think of. And that"s the great and horrible error in your religion.... But death of the soul is infinitely worse than death of the body. I have been thinking of her soul.... So here we stand, you and I. You to save her life--I to save her soul! What will you do?"
"Why, John, I"d turn Gentile," he said, with terrible softness. It was a softness that scorned Shefford for asking, and likewise it flung defiance at his creed and into the face of h.e.l.l.
Shefford felt the sting and the exaltation.
"And I"d be a Mormon," he said.
"All right. We understand each other. Reckon there won"t be any call for such extremes. I haven"t an idea what you mean--what can be done. But I say, go slow, so we won"t all find graves. First cheer her up somehow.
Make her want to live. But go slow, John. AND DON"T BE WITH HER LATE!"
That night Shefford found her waiting for him in the moonlight--a girl who was as transparent as crystal-clear water, who had left off the somber gloom with the black hood, who tremulously embraced happiness without knowing it, who was one moment timid and wild like a half-frightened fawn, and the next, exquisitely half-conscious of what it meant to be thought dead, but to be alive, to be awakening, wondering, palpitating, and to be loved.
Shefford lived the hour as a dream and went back to the quiet darkness under the cedars to lie wide-eyed, trying to recall all that she had said. For she had talked as if utterance had long been dammed behind a barrier of silence.
There followed other hours like that one, indescribable hours, so sweet they stung, and in which, keeping pace with his love, was the n.o.bler stride of a spirit that more every day lightened her burden.
The thing he had to do, sooner or later, was to tell her he knew she was Fay Larkin, not dead, but alive, and that, not love nor religion, but sacrifice, nailed her down to her martyrdom. Many and many a time he had tried to force himself to tell her, only to fail. He hated to risk ending this sweet, strange, thoughtless, girlish mood of hers. It might not be soon won back--perhaps never. How could he tell what chains bound her? And so as he vacillated between Joe"s cautious advice to go slow and his own pity the days and weeks slipped by.
One haunting fear kept him sleepless half the nights and sick even in his dreams, and it was that the Mormon whose sealed wife she was might come, surely would come, some night. Shefford could bear it. But what would that visit do to Fay Larkin? Shefford instinctively feared the awakening in the girl of womanhood, of deeper insight, of a spiritual realization of what she was, of a physical dawn.
He might have spared himself needless torture. One day Joe Lake eyed him with penetrating glance.
"Reckon you don"t have to sleep right on that Stonebridge trail," said the Mormon, significantly.