Under the Tonto Rim (1991) (36 page)

The Denmeades welcomed her as one of the family; and their unstinted delight did not make her task any easier. They all had some characteristic remark to thrill and yet hurt her. Denmeade grinned and said: "Wal, I reckon you're back for good. It shore, looks like a go between Joe an' your sister."

Meeting Clara was torturing. "Well, old mysterious, get it off your chest," said her sister, with a shrewd bright look. "Something's killing you. Is it me or Edd?"

"Goodness! Do I show my troubles as plainly as that?" replied Lucy pathetically.

"You're white and almost thin," returned Clara solicitously. "You ought to stay here and rest--ride around--go to school with me."

"Perhaps I do need a change...And you, Clara--how are you? Have you found it hard to go down there--to be in that schoolroom every day?"

"Me? Oh, I'm fine. It bothered me some at first--especially that--that big stain on the floor. I couldn't scrub it out. So I took down a rug. I'm not so squeamish as I was. But I go late, and you bet I don't keep any of my scholars in after school hours."

"Don't you ever think of--of--" faltered Lucy, hardly knowing what she meant.

"Of course, you ninny," retorted Clara. "Am I a clod? I think too much. I have my fight...But, Lucy, I'm happy. Every day I find more in Joe to love. I'm going to pull out and make a success of life. First I thought it was for Joe's sake--then yours. But I guess I've begun to think of myself a little."

"Have you heard from Mrs. Gerald?" queried Lucy finally.

"Yes. As soon as she got my letter. Evidently it was all right again. But she never mentioned writing to Jim."

"She would be glad to get rid of her charge--I imagine?" went on Lucy casually.

"I've guessed that, myself," rejoined Clara soberly. "It worries me some, yet I--"

She did not conclude her remark, and Lucy did not press the subject any further at the moment, though she knew this was the time to do it. But Lucy rather feared a scene with Clara and did not want it to occur during the waking hours of the Denmeades.

"Have you and Joe told your secret?" queried Lucy.

"Not yet," replied Clara briefly.

"Where is Joe now?"

"He's working at his homestead. Has twenty acres planted, and more cleared. They're all helping him. Edd has taken a great interest in Joe's place since he lost interest in his own."

"Then Edd has given up work on his own farm. Since when?"

"I don't know. But it was lately. I heard his father talking about it. Edd's not the same since he--since that accident. Joe comes home here every night and he tells me how Edd's changed. Hasn't he been to see you, Lucy?"

"No."

"Of course Edd's down in the mouth about you. I don't think killing that cowboy worries him. I heard him say he was sorry he hadn't done for Bud Sprall, too, and that if he'd known the job those two put up on him there'd have been a different story to tell...No. It's just that Edd's horribly in love with you."

"Poor--Edd, if it's so!" murmured Lucy. "But maybe you take too much for granted, just because Joe feels that way about you."

"Maybe," replied her sister mockingly. "Edd will probably come home to-day with Joe, as he hasn't been here lately. Take the trouble to look at him and see what you think."

"Are you trying to awaken my sympathies?" queried Lucy satirically.

"I wish to goodness I could," returned Clara under her breath.

Lucy realised that she was not her old self, and this had affected Clara vexatiously, perhaps distressingly. Lucy strove against the bitterness and sorrow which in spite of her will influenced her thought and speech. She would not let another day go by without telling Clara what she had taken upon herself. That would be destroying her last bridge behind her; she could go forth free to meet new life somewhere else, knowing she had done the last faithful service to her family.

The Denmeade boys came home early, but Lucy did not see Edd until at supper, which, as usual, was eaten on the porch between the cabins. He did seem changed, and the difference was not physical. He was as big and brawny and brown as ever. Sight of him reopened a wound she thought had healed.

"Come down an' see my bees," he invited her after supper.

The time was near sunset and the green gully seemed full of murmuring of bees and stream and wind. Edd had added several new hives to his collection, all of which were sections of trees that he had sawed out and packed home.

"How'd you ever keep the bees in?" she asked wonderingly.

"I stuffed the hole up an' then cut out the piece," he replied. "It can't be done with every bee tree, by a long shot."

For once he seemed not to be keen to talk about his beloved bees, nor, for that matter, about anything. He sat down ponderingly, as a man weighted by cares beyond his comprehension. But the stubborn strength of him was manifest. Lucy had at first to revert to the thought that the flying bees were harmless. With them humming round her, alighting on her, this association of safety did not come at once. She walked to and fro over the green grass and by the sturdy pines, trying to bring back a self that had gone for ever. The sun sank behind purple silver-edged clouds, and the golden rim stood up to catch the last bright flare of dying day.

"Wal, you're leavin' us soon?" queried Edd presently.

"Yes. How did you know?" replied Lucy, halting before him.

"Reckon I guessed it...I'm awful sorry. We're shore goin' to miss you."

That was all. He did not put queries Lucy feared she could not answer. He showed no sign of thoughts that pried into her secret affairs. Somehow he gave Lucy the impression of a faithful animal which had been beaten. He was dumb. Yet she imagined his apparent stolidity came from her aloofness. Lucy, in her misery, essayed to talk commonplaces. But this failed, and she was forced to choose between falling on her knees before him and flying back to the tent. So she left him sitting there, and then from the bench above she spied down through the foliage upon him until dusk hid him from view.

Was she a traitor to the best in herself? Had she not betrayed this backwoods boy who had responded so nobly to every good impulse she had fostered in him? But blood ties were stronger than love. How terribly remorse flayed her! And doubts flew thick as leaves in a storm. Nevertheless, she could not weaken, could never depart in any degree from the course she had prescribed for herself. That was a dark hour. Her deepest emotions were augmented to passion. She was reaching a crisis, the effect of which she could not see.

Later the moon arose and blanched the lofty Rim and the surrounding forest. Black shadows of trees fell across the trail and lane. The air had a delicious mountain coolness, and the silence was impressive. Lucy drank it all in, passionately loath to make the move that must of its very momentum end these wilderness joys for her. But at last she dragged herself away from the moonlit, black-barred trail.

She found Clara and Joe sitting in lover-like, proximity on the rustic bench near the tent. As she approached them she did not espy any sign of their embarrassment.

"Joe. I want to have a serious talk with Clara. Would you oblige me by letting me have her alone for a while?" said Lucy.

"If it's serious, why can't I hear it?" queried Joe.

"I can't discuss a purely family matter before you," returned Lucy. "I'm going away soon. And this matter concerns us--me---and things back home."

"Lucy, I belong to your family now," said Joe, as slowly he disengaged himself from Clara and stood up.

"So you do," replied Lucy, labouring to keep composed. "What of it?"

"I've a hunch you haven't figured us Denmeades," he rejoined rather curtly, and strode away.

"What'd he mean?" asked Lucy, as she stared down at Clara, whose big eyes looked black in the moonlight.

"I'm pretty sure he meant the Denmeades are not fair-weather friends," said Clara thoughtfully. "He's been trying to pump me. Wants to know why you're here and going away--why you look so troubled...I told him, and Edd, too, that I wasn't in your confidence. It's no lie. And here I've been scared stiff at the look of you."

"If you're not more than scared you're lucky. Come in the tent," said Lucy.

Inside, the light was a pale radiance, filtering through the canvas. Lucy shut the door and locked it, poignantly aware of Clara's lingering close to her. Her eyes seemed like great staring gulfs.

Lucy drew a deep breath and cast off the fetters that bound her.

"Clara, do you remember the day of the fight in the school-house--that you were unconscious when Edd arrived?" queried Lucy in low, forceful voice.

"Yes," whispered Clara.

"Then of course you could not have heard what Jim Middleton said. He was about to leap upon me to get the letter I had snatched. He threatened to tear my clothes off. Then he said it was his proof about the baby...Edd ran into the schoolroom just in time to hear the last few words...Later he said he'd heard--and he asked me--whose it was. I told him--mine!"

"Good--God!" cried Clara faintly, and sat down upon the bed as if strength to stand had left her.

"I spoke impulsively, yet it was the same as if I had thought for hours," went on Lucy hurriedly. "I never could have given you away...and I couldn't lie--by saying it--it was somebody's else."

"Lie! It's a--terrible lie!" burst out Clara hoarsely. "It's horrible...You've ruined your good name...You've broken Edd's heart. Now I know what ails him...But I won't stand for your taking my shame--my burden on your shoulders."

"The thing is done," declared Lucy with finality.

"I won't--I won't!" flashed her sister passionately. "What do you take me for? I've done enough."

"Yes, you have. And since you've shirked your responsibilities--cast off your own flesh and blood to be brought up by a greedy, callous woman--I intend to do what is right by that poor, unfortunate child."

Her cutting words wrought Clara into a frenzy of grief, shame, rage and despair. For a while she was beside herself, and Lucy let her rave, sometimes holding her forcibly from wrecking the tent and crying out too loud. She even found a grain of consolation in Clara's breakdown. What manner of woman would her sister have been if she had not shown terrible agitation?

At length Clara became coherent and less violent, and she begged Lucy to abandon this idea. Lucy answered as gently and kindly as was possible for her, under the circumstances, but she could not be changed. Clara was wildly importunate. Her conscience had stricken her as never before. She loved Lucy and could not bear this added catastrophe. Thus it was that Clara's weak though impassioned pleas and Lucy's efforts to be kind yet firm, to control her own temper, now at white heat, finally led to a terrible quarrel. Once before, as girls, they had quarrelled bitterly over an escapade of Clara's. Now, as women, they clinched again in such passion as could only be born of blood ties, of years of sacrifice on the part of one, of realisation of ignominy on the part of the other. And the battle went to Lucy, gradually, because of the might of her will and right of her cause.

"You can't see what you've done," concluded Lucy in spent passion. "You're like our father. Poor weak thing that you are, I can't blame you. It's in the family...If only you'd had the sense and the honour to tell me the truth!--before you married this clean simple-minded boy! Somehow we might have escaped the worst of it. But you married him, you selfish, callous little egotist! And now it's too late. Go on. Find what happiness you can. Be a good wife to this boy and let that make what little amends is possible for you...I'll shoulder your disgrace. I'll be a mother to your child. I'll fight the taint in the Watson blood--the thing that made you what you are. To my mind your failure to make such fight yourself is the crime. I don't hold your love, your weakness against you. But you abandoned part of yourself to go abroad in the world to grow up as you did. To do the same thing over!...You are little, miserable, wicked. But you are my sister--all I have left to love. And I'll do what you cannot!"

Clara fell back upon the pillow, dishevelled, white as death under the pale moonlit tent. Her nerveless hands loosened their clutch on her breast. She shrank as if burned, and her tragic eyes closed to hide her accuser.

"Oh, Lucy--Lucy!" she moaned. "God help me!"

Lucy walked alone in the dark lane, and two hours were but as moments. Upon her return to the tent she found Clara asleep. Lucy did not light the lamp or fully undress, so loath was she to awaken her sister. And, exhausted herself, in a few moments she sank into slumber. Morning found her refreshed in strength and spirit.

She expected an ordeal almost as trying as the conflict of wills the night before--that she would have to face a cringing, miserable girl, wrung by remorse and shame. But Clara awoke in strange mood, proud, tragic-eyed and aloof, reminding Lucy of their youthful days when her sister had been reproved for some misdemeanour. Lucy accepted this as a welcome surprise, and, deep in her own perturbation, she did not dwell seriously upon it. The great fact of her crisis crowded out aught else--she must leave the Denmeade ranch that day, and the wilderness home which was really the only home she had ever loved, Delay would be only a cruelty to herself. Still, the ordeal was past and she had consolation in her victory. At least she would not fail. This was her supreme and last debt to her family.