"Until I was too old to hunt, you too weak to sew the robes or cook the food."
"What would happen then?"
"We would die," said I. "The world would end, would have to begin all over again and wait twice ten million years until man again was evolved from the amoeba, the reptile, the ape. When we died, this dog here would be the only hope of the world."
She looked at the eternal hills in their snow, and made no answer.
Presently we turned to our duties about the camp.
It was understood that we should stay here for at least two days, to mend our clothing and prepare food for the southern journey. I have said I was not happy at the thought of turning toward that world which I had missed so little. Could the wild freedom of this life have worked a similar spell on her? The next day she came to me as I sat by our meager fireside. Without leading of mine she began a manner of speech until now foreign to her.
"What is marriage, John Cowles?" she asked of me, abruptly, with no preface.
"It is the Plan," I answered, apathetically. She pondered for a time.
"Are we, then, only creatures, puppets, toys?"
"Yes," I said to her. "A man is a toy. Love was born before man was created, before animals or plants. Atom, ran to atom, seeking. It was love." She pondered yet a while.
"And what is it, then, John Cowles, that women call "wrong"?"
"Very often what is right," I said to her, apathetically. "When two love the crime is that they shall not wed. When they do not love, the crime is when they do wed."
"But without marriage," she hesitated, "the home--"
"It is the old question," I said. "The home is built on woman"s virtue; but virtue is not the same where there is no tome, no property, where there is no society--it is an artificial thing, born of compromise, and grown stronger by custom of the ages of property-owning man."
I saw a horror come across her eyes.
"What do you say to me, John Cowles? That what a woman prizes is not right, is not good? No, that I shall _not_ think!" She drew apart from me.
"Because you think just as you do, I love you," I said.
"Yet you say so many things. I have taken life as it came, just as other girls do, not thinking. It is not nice, it is not _clean_, that girls should study over these things. That is not right."
"No, that is not right," said I, dully.
"Then tell me, what is marriage--that one thing a girl dreams of all her life. Is it of the church?"
"It is not of the church," I said.
"Then it is the law."
"It is not the law," I said.
"Then what is it?" she asked. "John Cowles, tell me, what makes a wedding between two who really and truly love. Can marriage be of but two?"
"Yes," said I.
"But there must be witnesses--there must be ceremony--else there is no marriage," she went on. Her woman"s brain clung to the safe, sane groove which alone can guide progress and civilization and society--that great, cruel, kind, imperative compromise of marriage, without which all the advancement of the world would be as naught. I loved her for it. But for me, I say I had gone savage. I was at the beginning of all this, whereas it remained with her as she had left it.
"Witnesses?" I said. "Look at those!" I pointed to the mountains.
"Marriages, many of them, have been made with no better witnesses than those."
My heart stopped when I saw how far she had jumped to her next speech.
"Then we two are all the people left in the world, John Cowles? When I am old, will you cast me off? When another woman comes into this valley, when I am bent and old, and cannot see, will you cast me off, and, being stronger than I am, will you go and leave me?"
I could not speak at first. "We have talked too much," I said to her presently. But now it was she who would not desist.
"You see, with a woman it is for better, for worse--but with a man--"
"With a Saxon man," I said, "it is also for better, for worse. It is one woman."
She sat and thought for a long time. "Suppose," she said, "that no one ever came."
Now with swift remorse I could see that in her own courage she was feeling her way, haltingly, slowly, toward solution of problems which most women take ready solved from others. But, as I thank G.o.d, a filmy veil, softening, refining, always lay between her and reality. In her intentness she laid hold upon my arm, her two hands clasping.
"Suppose two were here, a man and a woman, and he swore before those eternal witnesses that he would not go away any time until she was dead and laid away up in the trees, to dry away and blow off into the air, and go back--"
"Into the flowers," I added, choking.
"Yes, into the trees and the flowers--so that when she was dead and he was dead, and they were both gone back into the flowers, they would still know each other for ever and ever and never be ashamed--would that be a marriage before G.o.d, John Cowles?"
What had I brought to this girl"s creed of life, heretofore always so sweet and usual? I did not answer. She shook at my arm. "Tell me!" she said. But I would not tell her.
"Suppose they did not come," she said once more. "It is true, they may not find us. Suppose we two were to live here alone, all this winter--just as we are now--none of my people or yours near us. Could we go on?"
"G.o.d! Woman, have you no mercy!"
She sat and pondered for yet a time, as though seriously weighing some question in her mind.
"But you have taught me to think, John Cowles. It is you who have begun my thinking, so now I must think. I know we cannot tell what may happen.
I ask you, "John Cowles, if we were brought to that state which we both know might happen--if we were here all alone and no one came, and if you loved me--ah, then would you promise, forever and forever, to love me till death did us part--till I was gone back into the flowers? I remember what they say at weddings. They cling one to the other, forsaking all others, till death do them part. Could you promise me--in that way? Could you promise me, clean and solemn? Because, I would not promise you unless it was solemn, and clean, and unless it was forever."
Strange, indeed, these few days in the desert, which had so drawn apart the veil of things and left us both ready to see so far. She had not seen so far as I, but, womanlike, had reasoned more quickly.
As for me, it seemed that I saw into her heart. I dropped my hands from my eyes and looked at her strangely, my own brain in a whirl, my logic gone. All I knew was that then or elsewhere, whether or not rescue ever came for us, whether we died now or later, there or anywhere in all the world, I would, indeed, love her and her only, forsaking all others until, indeed, we were gone back into the sky and flowers, until we whispered again in the trees, one unto the other! Marriage or no marriage, together or apart, in sickness or in health--so there came to me the stern conviction--love could knock no more at my heart, where once she had stood in her courage and her cleanness. Reverence, I say, was now the one thing left in my heart. Still we sat, and watched the sun shine on the distant white-topped peaks. I turned to her slowly at length.
"Ellen," I said, "do you indeed love me?"
"How can I help it, John Cowles," she answered bravely. My heart stopped short, then raced on, bursting all control. It was long before I could be calm as she.
"You have helped it very long," I said at last, quietly. "But now I must know--would you love me anywhere, in any circ.u.mstances, in spite of all?
I love you because you are You, not because you are here. I must be loved in the same way, always."
She looked at me now silently, and I leaned and kissed her full on the mouth.