University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
A LOVER.

Two long hours I had kept Mr. Clitheroe in
talk. For my friend's sake I would have prolonged
the interview indefinitely. For my own,
too. He was a new character to me, this gentle
soul, so sadly astray. My filial feeling for him
deepened momently. And as my pity grew more
exquisitely painful, I shrank still from quitting
him, and so acknowledging that the pity was
hopeless.

We approached the fort. The fiddlers three
were dragging their last grumbling notes out of
drowsy strings. The saints began to stream by
toward their wagons. We turned away to avoid
recognition.

Miss Clitheroe and Brent joined us, — a sadder
pair than we. The stars showed me the glimmer
of tears in her eyes. But her look was
brave and steady. She left my friend, and laid
her hand on her father's arm. A marked likeness,
and yet a contrast more marked, between
these two. He had given her his refinement, a

quality so in him and of him that he colored
whatever came near him with an emanation from
himself, and so was blinded to its real crude
tints. By this medium he made in his description
that black hole of a coal mine, where so
many of his years had been buried, a grotto of
enchantment. He filled the world with illusions.
Whatever was future and whatever was past,
seen through his poetic imagination, seemed to
him so beautiful, or so strange and interesting,
that he lost all care for the discomforts of the
present. And this same refinement of nature
deluded him in judging character. Bad and
base motives seemed to him so ugly, that he
refused to see them, shrank from belief in
them, and insisted upon trusting that men were
as honorable as himself. He was a man for
prosperity. What did fate mean by maltreating
him with the manifold adversities of his life?
To what end was this sad error?

A strange contrast, with all the likeness, between
his daughter and him. A more vigorous
being had mingled its life with hers. Or perhaps
the stern history of her early days had taught
her to forge the armor of self-protection. She
seemed to have all her father's refinement, but
she used it to surround and seclude herself, not
to change and glorify others. Godiva was not
more delicately hidden from the vulgar world by

the mantle of her own golden hair, than this
sweet lady by her veil of gentle breeding.

As she took her father's arm to lead him away
to the camp, I could read in her look that there
were no illusions for her. But she clave to her
father, — the blinder and more hopelessly errant
he might be, the closer she clave. He might
reject her guidance; she still stood by to protect
him, to sweeten his life, and when the darkness
came, which she could not but foresee, to be a
light to him. However adversity had thus far
failed to teach him self-possession, it had made
her a heroine and a martyr, — a noble and unselfish
soul, such as, one among the myriads,
God educates to shame the base and the trifling,
and to hearten and inspire the true.

“Now, dear father,” she said, “we must bid
these kind friends good night. We start early.
We need rest.”

She held out her hand to me.

“Dear lady,” said I, taking her aside a moment
while Brent spoke to Mr. Clitheroe, “we
are acquaintances of to-day; but campaigners
must despise ceremony. Your father has told
me much of your history. I infer your feelings.
Consider me as a brother. Nothing can
be done to aid you?”

“Your kindness and your friend's kindness
touch me greatly. Nothing can be done.”

She sobbed a little. I still held her hand.

“Nothing!” said I, “nothing! Will you go
on with these people? you, a lady! with your
fate staring you in the face!”

She withdrew her hand and looked at me
steadily with her large gray eyes. What a
woman to follow into the jaws of death!

“My fate,” she said, “can be no worse than
the old common fate of death. That I accept,
any other I defy. God does not leave the worthy
to shame.”

“We say so, when we hope.”

“I say it and believe.”

“Come, Ellen dear,” called her father.

There was always between them, whenever
they spoke, by finer gentleness of tone and words
of endearment, a recognition of how old and close
and exclusive was their union. Only when Sizzum
was present at tea, the tenderness, under
that coarsening influence, passed away from the
father's voice and manner, making the daughter's
more and more tender, that she might win
him back to her.

“Good bye!” she said. “We shall remember
each other kindly.”

“Yes, gentlemen,” said Mr. Clitheroe. “This
has been quite the pleasantest episode of our
journey. You must not forget us when you are
roaming through this region again.”

He said this with his light, cheerful manner.
They turned away. It seemed as if Death arose
and parted us. We followed at a distance and
watched them safe to their wagon. The night
wind had risen, and went sighing over the desert
reaches, bringing with it the distant howling of
wolves.

“Do not speak to me,” said Brent, “I will
talk to you by and by.”

He left me and went toward our horses. It
had been imprudent to leave them so long at
night, with bad spirits about.

I looked into the fort again. The dancers
had gone. Bottery was fumbling drunkenly
over his fiddle. A score of men were within
the house carousing. Old Bridger's whiskey
had evidently flowed freely. In one corner
Larrap had unrolled a greasy faro-cloth and
was dealing. Murker backed him. They were
winning largely. They bagged their winnings
out of sight, as fast as they fell in. Sizzum,
rather to my surprise, was a little excited with
liquor, and playing recklessly, losing sovereigns
by the handful. As he lost, he became furious.
He struck Larrap in the face and called him
cheat. Larrap gave him an ugly look, and then,
assuming a boozy indifference, caught Sizzum
by the hand and vowed he was his best friend.
Murker kept aloof from the dispute. The game

began again. Again Sizzum and the Mormons
lost. Again Sizzum slapped the dealer, and,
catching the faro-cloth, tore it in two. The two
gamblers saw that they were in danger. They
had kept themselves sober and got the others
drunk for such a crisis. They hurried out of
the way. Sizzum and his brother saints chased
them; but presently, losing sight of them in the
dusk, they staggered off toward camp, singing
uproariously. Their leader on this festival had
somewhat forgotten the dignity of the apostle
and captain.

This low rioting was doubly disgusting to me,
after the sad evening with our friends. I found
Sizzum more offensive as a man of the world
than as a saint. I say man of the world, because
the gambling scenes of nominal gentlemen
are often just as hateful, if more decorous,
than those of that night. I walked slowly off
toward camp, sorrowful and sick at heart. Baseness
and vulgarity had never seemed to me so
base and vulgar till now.

I suddenly heard a voice in the bushes. It
was Larrap. He was evidently persuading his
comrade to some villany. I caught a suspicious
word or two.

“Ah!” thought I, “you want our horses.
We will see to that.”

I walked softly by. Brent was seated by the

embers of a camp-fire, cowered in a heap, like
a cold Indian. He raised his face. All the
light had gone out of him. This trouble had
suddenly worn into his being, like the shirt
of Nessus, and poisoned his life.

“John,” said I, “I never knew you despondent
before.”

“This is not despondency.”

“What then?”

“Despair.”

“I cannot offer to cheer you.”

“It is bitter, Wade. I have yearned to be
a lover for years. All at once I find the woman
I have seen and thought of, and known from my
first conscious moment. The circumstances
crowded my love into sudden intensity. I
made the observations and did the work of
months of acquaintance in those few moments
while we were at tea. My mind always acts
quick. I seem always to have been discussing
my decisions with myself, years before the subject
of decision comes to me. Whatever happens,
falls on me with the force of a doom. I
loved Miss Clitheroe's voice the instant I heard
its brave tenderness answering her father. I
loved her unseen, and would have died for her
that moment. When she appeared, and I saw
her face and read her heart, I knew that it was
the old dream, — the old dream that I never

thought would be other than a dream. The
ancient hope and expectation, coeval with my
life, was fulfilled. She is the other self I have
been waiting for and seeking for.”

“Have you told her so?”

“Can a man stop the beating of his heart?
Can a man not breathe? Not in words, perhaps.
I did not use the lover words. But she understood
me. She did not seem surprised. She
recognizes such a passion as her right and
desert.”

“A great-hearted woman can see how a man
worthy of her can nullify time and space, and
meet her, soul to soul, in eternity from the first.”

“So I meet her; but circumstances here are
stronger than love.”

“Can she do nothing with her father?”

“Nothing. She failed in England when this
delusion first fell upon him.”

“Did she know what it meant for her and
him?”

“Hardly. She even fancied that they would
be happier in America than at home, where she
saw that his old grandeur was always reproaching
him.”

“Did he conceal from her the goal and object
of his emigration?”

“She knew he was, or supposed himself to be,
a Mormon. But Mormonism was little more

than a name to her. She believed his perversion
only a transitory folly. It is but recently, only
since they were away from succor, off in the
desert, that she has perceived her own risk.
She hoped that the voyage from England would
disenchant her father, and that she could keep
him in the States. No; he was committed; he
was impracticable. You have seen yourself how
far his faith is shaken. Just so far that his
crazy cheerfulness has given place to moping;
but he will hear nothing of reason.”

“What does she anticipate?”

“She says she only dares to endure. Day by
day they both wear away. Day by day her
father's bright hope dwindles away. Day by day
she perceives the moment of her own danger
approaching. She could not speak to me of it;
but I could feel by her tone her disgust and disdain
of Sizzum. O, how steady and noble she
is! All for her father! All to guide him with
the fewest pangs to that desolate death she knows
must come! She gave me a few touches of their
past history, so that I could see how much closer
and tenderer than the common bond of parent
and child theirs had been.”

“That I saw, from the old gentleman's story.
Sorrow and poverty ennoble love.”

“She thanked me and you so sweetly for our
society, and the kind words we had given them.

She had not seen her father so cheerful, so like
himself, since they had left England.”

“What a weary pilgrimage they must have
had, poor errant souls!”

“O Wade, Wade! how this tragedy of theirs
cures me forever of any rebellion against my
own destiny. A helpless woman's tragedy is so
much bitterer than anything that can befall a
man.”

“Must we say helpless, John?”

“Are we two an army, that we can take them
by force? She has definitely closed any further
communication on our part. She said that I
could not have failed to notice how Elder Sizzum
disliked our presence. I must promise her not
to be seen with them in the morning. Sizzum
would find some means to punish her father, and
that would be torture to her. It seems that villain
plays on the old man's religious superstitions,
and can terrify him almost to madness.”

“The villain! And yet how far back of him
lies the blame, that such terrors can exist in any
man's mind, when God is Love.”

“I promised her not to see her again — for
you and myself; to see her no more. That
good-bye was final. Now let me alone for a
while, my dear old boy; I am worn out and
heart-broken.”

He mummied himself in his blankets, and lay

on the grass, motionless as a dead man. It was
not his way to shirk camp duties. Indeed, his
volunteer services had left me in arrears.

I put our fire-arms in order in case of attack,
and extinguished our fire. Our horses, too, I
drove in and tethered close by. My old suspicion
of Murker and Larrap had revived from their
mutterings. I thought that, after their great
winnings of to-night, they would feel that they
could make nothing more of the mail party, and
might seize the chance to stampede or steal some
of the Mormon horses or ours. It was a capital
chance in the sleepy hours after the revel. Horse-stealing,
since the bad example of Diomed, has
never gone out of fashion. Fulano and Pumps
were great prizes. I knew that Larrap hated
Brent for his undisguised abhorrence and the
ugly words and collision of to-day. The pair
bore good-will to neither of us. Their brutality
had jarred with us from the beginning. I knew
they would take personal pleasure in serving us
a shabby trick out of their dixonary. On the
whole, I determined to watch all night.

Easy to purpose; hard to perform. I leaned
against my saddle and thought over the day.
How I pitied poor Brent! Pitied him the more
thoroughly, since I was hardly less a lover than
he. Long afterwards, long after the misery of
love dead in despair, comes the time when one

can say, “Ich habe gelebt und geliebet; can
know, “'T is better to have loved and lost, than
never to have loved at all.” But no such soothing
poetry could sing resignation to my friend
in his unselfish misery. All he could do — all
I could do — was to bear the agony of this sudden
cruel wrong; to curse the chances of life
that had so weakened the soul of our new friend
and so darkened his sight that he could not know
truth from falsehood. Doubly to curse the falsehood.
Before, it had only been something to
scorn. Here tragedy entered. The mean, miserable,
ludicrous invention of Mormonism, the foolish
fable of an idler, had grown to be a great
masterly tyranny. These two souls were clutched
by this foul ogre, and locked up in an impregnable
prison. And we two were baffled. Of what
use was our loyalty to woman? What vain
words those unuttered words of our knightly vow
to succor all distressed damsels, — the vow that
every gentleman takes upon himself, as earnestly
now, and wills to keep as faithfully, as any Artegall
in the days gone by, when wrong took cruder
and more monstrous form! More monstrous
form! Could any wrong be more detestable!
Did knight, who loved God and honored his
lady, ever encounter more paynim-like horde
than this, — the ignorant misled by the base?

In such dreary protest and pity I passed an

hour. The evening breeze had strengthened into
a great gusty wind, blowing from the mountains
to the southward. I drowsed a little. A
perturbed slumber overcame me. The roaring
night-wind aroused me at intervals with a blast
more furious, and I woke to perceive ominous
and turbulent dreams flitting from my brain, —
dreams of violence, tyranny, and infamous outrage.

Suddenly another sensation went creeping
along my nerves. I sat bolt upright. There
was a feeling of human presence, of stealthy approach
coming up against the night-wind and
crushing its roar with a sound more penetrating.

Brent, too, was on the alert.

“Some one at our horses,” he whispered.

We dashed forward. There was a rustle of
flight through the bushes. We each fired a
shot. The noise ceased.

“Stop!” said my friend, as I was giving
chase. “We must not leave the horses. They
will stampede them while we are off.”

“They? perhaps it was only a cayote or a
wolf. Why, Fulano! old fellow!”

Fulano trotted up, neighing, and licked my
hand. His lariat had been cut, — a clean cut
with a knife. We were only just in time.

“We must keep watch till morning,” said I.

“I have been drowsing. I will take the first
hour.”

Brent, with a moan of weariness, threw himself
down again on the grass. I sat watchful.

The night-wind went roaring on. It loves
those sweeps and surges of untenanted plain,
as it loves the lifts and levels of the barren
sea. The fitful gale rushed down as if it boiled
over the edge of some great hollow in the mountains,
and then stayed to gather force for another
overflow. In its pauses I could hear the
stir and murmur of the Mormon cattle, a thousand
and more. But once there came a larger
pause; the air grew silent, as if it had never
known a breeze, or as if all life and motion
between earth and sky were utterly and forever
quelled.

In that one instant of dead stillness, when the
noise of the cattle was hushed, and our horses
ceased champing to listen, I seemed to hear the
clang of galloping hoofs, not far away to the
southward.

Galloping hoofs, surely I heard them. Or
was it only the charge of a fresh blast down
the mountain-side, uprooting ancient pines, and
flinging great rocks from crag to chasm?

And that strange, terrible, human, inhuman
sound, outringing the noise of the hoofs, and
making the silence a ghastly horror, — was it
a woman's scream?

No; it could only be my fevered imagination,
that found familiar sounds in the inarticulate
voices of the wilderness. I listened
long and intently. The wind sighed, and raved,
and threatened again. I heard the dismal howling
of wolves far away in the darkness.

I kept a double watch of two hours, and then,
calling Brent to do his share, threw myself on
the grass and slept soundly.