The next day Wilson paid his usual visit to the field where Grant was plowing, and again was he the bearer of a message. With much difficulty he managed to extricate the envelope from a pocket.
“Dear Mr. Grant,” it read, “I am so excited over a remark you dropped last night I must see you again as soon as possible. Can you drop in to-night, say at eight. Yours,—ZEN.”
Grant read the message a second time, wondering what remark of his could have occasioned it. As he recalled the evening’s conversation it had been most about his experiment, and he had a sense that he had occupied a little more of the stage than strictly good form would have suggested. However, it was HIS scheme that had been under discussion, and he did not propose to let it suffer for lack of a champion. But what had he said that could be of more than general interest to Zen Transley? For a moment he wondered if she had created a pretext upon which to bring him to the house by the river, and then instantly dismissed that thought as unworthy of him. At any rate it was evident that his addressing her by her Christian name in the last message had given no offence. This time she had not called him “The Man-on-the-Hill,” and there was no suggestion of playfulness in the note. Then the signature, “Yours, Zen”; that might mean everything, or it might mean nothing. Either it was purely formal or it implied a very great deal indeed. Grant reflected that it could hardly be interpreted anywhere between those two extremes, and was it reasonable to suppose that Zen would use it in an ENTIRELY formal sense? If it had been “yours truly,” or “yours sincerely,” or any such stereotyped conclusion, it would not have called for a second thought, but the simple word “yours”—
“If only she were,” thought Grant, and felt the color creeping to his face at the thought. It was the first time he had dared that much. He had not bothered to wonder much where or how this affair must end. Through all the years that had passed since that night when she had fallen asleep on his shoulder, and he had watched the ribbons of fire rising and falling in the valley, and the smell of grass-smoke had been strong in his nostrils, through all those years Zen had been to him a sweet, evasive memory to be dreamed over and idealized, a wild, daring, irresponsible incarnation of the spirit of the hills. Even in these last few days he had followed the path simply because it lay before him. He had not sought her out in all that great West; he had been content with his dream of the Zen of years gone by; if Fate had brought him once more within the orbit of his star surely Fate had a purpose in all its doings. One who has learned to believe that no bullet will find him unless “his name and number are on it” has little difficulty in excusing his own indiscretions by fatalistic reasoning.
He wrote on the back of the note, “Look for me at eight,” and then, observing that the boy had not brought teddy along, he inquired solicitously for the health of the little pet.
“He’s all right, but mother wouldn’t let me bring him. Said I might lose him.” The tone in which the last words were spoken implied just how impossible such a thing was. Lose teddy! No one but a mother could think such an absurdity.
“But I got a knife!” Wilson exclaimed, his mind darting to a happier subject. “Daddy gave it to me. Will you sharpen it? It is as dull as a pig.”
Grant was to learn during the day that all the boy’s figures of speech were now hung on the family pig. The knife was as dull as a pig; the plow was as rough as a pig; the horses, when they capered at a corner, were as wild as a pig; even Grant himself, while he held the little chap firmly on his knee, received the doubtful compliment of being as strong as a pig. He went through the form of sharpening the knife on the leather lines of the harness, and was pleased to discover that Wilson, with childish dexterity of imagination, now pronounced it as sharp as a pig.
The boy did not return to the field in the afternoon, and Grant spent the time in a strange admixture of happiness over the pleasant companionship he had found in this little son of the prairies and anticipation of his meeting with Zen that night. All his reflection had failed to suggest the subject so interesting to her as to bring forth her unconventional note, but it was enough for him that his presence was desired. As to the future—he would deal with that when he came to it. As evening approached the horses began their usual procedure of turning their heads homeward at the end of each furrow. Beginning about five o’clock, they had a habit of assuming that each furrow was obviously the last one for the day, and when the firm hand on the lines brought them sharply back to position they trudged on with an apologetic air which seemed to say that of course they were quite willing to work another hour or two but they supposed their master would want to be on his way home. Today, however, he surprised them, and the first time they turned their heads he unhitched, and, throwing himself lightly across Prince’s ample back, drove them to their stables.
Grant prepared his supper of bacon and eggs and fried potatoes, bread and jam and black tea, and ate it from the kitchen table as was his habit except on state occasions. Sometimes a touch of the absurdity of his behavior would tickle his imagination—he, who might dine in the midst of wealth and splendor, with soft lights beating down upon him, soft music swelling through arching corridors, soft-handed waiters moving about on deep, silent carpetings, perhaps round white shoulders across the table and the faint smell of delicate perfumes—that he should prefer to eat from the white oilcloth of his kitchen table was a riddle far beyond any ordinary intellect. And yet he was happy in this life; happy in his escape from the tragic routine of being decently civilized; happier, he knew, than he ever could be among all the artificial pleasures that wealth could buy him. Sometimes, as a concession to this absurdity, he would set his table in the dining-room with his best dishes, and eat his silent meal very grandly, until the ridiculousness of it all would overcome him and he would jump up with a boyish whoop and sweep everything into the kitchen.
But to-night he had no time for make-belief. Supper ended, he put a basin of water on the stove and went out to give his horses their evening attention, after which he had a wash and a careful shave and dressed himself in a light grey suit appropriate to an autumn evening. And then he noticed that he had just time to walk to Transley’s house before eight o’clock.
Zen received him at the door; the maid had gone to a neighbor’s, she said, and Wilson was in bed. It was still bright outside, but the sheltered living-room, to which she showed him, was wrapped in a soft twilight.
“Shall we have a lamp, or the fireplace?” she asked, then inferentially answered by saying that a cool wind was blowing down from the mountains. “I had the maid build the fire,” she continued, and he could see the outline of her form bending over the grate. She struck a match; its glow lit up her cheeks and hair; in a moment the dry wood was crackling and ribbons of blue smoke were curling into the chimney.
“I have been so anxious to see you—again,” she said, drawing a chair not far from his. “A chance remark of yours last night brought to memory many things—things I have been trying to forget.” Then, abruptly, “Did you ever kill a man?”
“You know I was in the war,” he returned, evading her question.
“Yes, and you do not care to dwell on that phase of it. I should not have asked you, but you will be the better able to understand. For years I have lived under the cloud of having killed a man.”
“You!”
“Yes. The day of the fire—you remember?”
Grant had started from his chair. “I can’t believe it!” he exclaimed. “There must have been justification!”
“YOU had justification at the Front, but it doesn’t make the memory pleasant. I had justification, but it has haunted me night and day. And then, last night you said he was still alive, and my soul seemed to rise up again and say, ‘I am free!’”
“Who?”
“Drazk.”
“DRAZK!”
“Yes. I thought I had killed him that day of the fire. It is rather an unpleasant story, and you will excuse me repeating the details, I know. He attacked me—we were both on horseback, in the river—I suppose he was crazed with his wild deed, and less responsible than usual. He dragged me from my horse and I fought with him in the water, but he was much too strong. I had concluded that to drown myself, and perhaps him, was the only way out, when I saw a leather thong floating in the water from the saddle. By a ruse I managed to flip it around his neck, and the next moment he was at my mercy. I had no mercy then. I understand how it might be possible to kill prisoners. I pulled it tight, tight—pulled till I saw his face blacken and his eyes stand out. He went down, but still I pulled. And then after a little I found myself on shore.
“I suppose it was the excitement of the fire that carried me on through the day, but at night—you remember?—there came a reaction, and I couldn’t keep awake. I suddenly seemed to feel that I was safe, and I could sleep.”
Grant had resumed his seat. He was deeply moved by this strange confidence; he bent his eyes intently upon her face, now shining in the ruddy light from the fire-place. Her frank reference to the event that night seemed to create a new bond between them; he knew now, if ever he had doubted it, that Zen Transley had treasured that incident in her heart even as he had treasured it.
“I was so embarrassed after the—the accident, you know,” she continued. “I knew you must know I had been in the water. For days and weeks I expected every hour to hear of the finding of the body. I expected to hear the remark dropped casually by every new visitor at the ranch, ‘Drazk’s body was found to-day in the river. The Mounted Police are investigating.’ But time went on and nothing was heard of it. It would almost have been a relief to me if it had been discovered. If I had reported the affair at once, as I should have done, all would have been different, but having kept my secret for a while I found it impossible to confess it later. It was the first time I ever felt my self-reliance severely shaken.... But what was his message, and why did you not tell me before?”
“Because I attached no value to it; because I was, perhaps, a little ashamed of it. I learned something of his weaknesses at the Front. According to Drazk’s statement of it he won the war, and could as easily win another, if occasion presented itself, so when he said, ‘If ever you see Y.D.‘s daughter tell her I’m well; she’ll be glad to hear it,’ I put it down to his usual boasting and thought no more about it. I thought he was trying to impress me with the idea that you were interested in him, which was a very absurd supposition, as I saw it.”
“Well, now you know,” she said, with a little laugh. “I’m glad it’s off my mind.”
“Of course your husband knows?”
“No. That made it harder. I never told Frank.”
She arose and walked to the fire-place, pretending to stir the logs. When she had seated herself again she continued.
“It has not been easy for me to tell all things to Frank. Don’t misunderstand me; he has been a model husband, according to my standards.”
“According to your standards?”
“According to my standards—when I married him. If standards were permanent I suppose happy matings would be less unusual. A young couple must have something in common in order to respond at all to each other’s attractions, but as they grow older they set up different standards, and they drift apart.”
She paused, and Grant sat in silence, watching the glow of the firelight upon her cheek.
“Why don’t you smoke?” she exclaimed, suddenly springing up. “Let me find you some of Frank’s cigars.”
Grant protested that he smoked too much. She produced a box of cigars and extended them to him. Then she held a match while he got his light.
“Your standards have changed?” said Grant, taking up the thread when she had sat down again.
“They have. They have changed more than Frank’s, which makes me feel rather at fault in the matter. How could he know that I would change my ideal of what a husband should be?”
“Why shouldn’t he know? That is the course of development. Without changing ideals there would be stagnation.”
“Perhaps,” she returned, and he thought he caught a note of weariness in her voice. “But I don’t blame Frank—now. I rather blame him then. He swept me off my feet; stampeded me. My parents helped him, and I was only half disposed to resist. You see, I had this other matter on my mind, and for the first time in my life I felt the need of protection. Besides, I took a matter-of-fact view of marriage. I thought that sentiment—love, if you like—was a thing of books, an invention of poets and fiction writers. Practical people would be practical in their marriages, as in their other undertakings. To marry Frank seemed a very practical course. My father assured me that Frank had in him qualities of large success. He would make money; he would be a prominent man in circles of those who do things. These predictions he has fulfilled. Frank has been all I expected—then.”
“But you have changed your opinion of marriage—of the essentials of marriage?”
“Do YOU need to ask that? I was beginning to see the light—beginning to know myself—even before I married him, but I didn’t stop to analyze. I plunged ahead, as I have always done, trusting not to get into any position from which I could not find a way out. But there are some positions from which there is no way out.”
Grant reflected that possibly his experience had been somewhat like hers in that respect. He, too, had been following a path, unconcerned about its end.... Possibly for him, too, there would be no way out.
“Frank has been all I expected of him,” she repeated, as though anxious to do her husband justice. “He has made money. He spends it generously. If I live here modestly, with but one maid, it is because of a preference which I have developed for simplicity. I might have a dozen if I asked it, and I think Frank is somewhat surprised, and, it may be, disappointed, that I don’t ask it. Although not a man for display himself, he likes to see me make display. It’s a strange thing, isn’t it, that a husband should wish his wife to be admired by other men?”
“Some are successful in that,” Grant remarked.
“Some are more successful than they intend to be.”
“Frank, for instance?” he queried, pointedly.
“I have not sought any man’s admiration,” she went on, with her astonishing frankness. “I am too independent for that. What do I care for their admiration? But every woman wants love.”
Grant had changed his position, and sat with his elbows upon his knees, his chin resting upon his hands. “You know, Zen,” he said, using her Christian name deliberately, “the picture I drew that day by the river? That is the picture I have carried in my mind ever since—shall carry to the end. Perhaps it has led me to be imprudent—”
“Imprudent?”
“Has brought me here to-night, for example.”
“You had my invitation.”
“True. But why develop another situation which, as you say, has no way out?”
“Do you want to go?”
“No, Zen, no! I want to stay—with you—always! But organized society must respect its own conventions.”
She arose and stood by his chair, letting her hand fall beside his cheek.
“You silly boy!” she said. “You didn’t organize society, nor subscribe to its conventions. Still, I suppose there must be a code of some kind, and we shall respect it. You had your chance, Denny, and you passed it up.”
“Had my chance?”
“Yes. I refused you in words, I know, but actions speak louder—”
“But when you told me you were engaged what could I honorably do?”
“More—very much more—than you can do now. You could have shown me my mistake. How much better to have learned it then, from you, than later, by my own experience! You could have swept me off my feet, just as Frank did. You did nothing. If I had sought evidence to prove how impractical you are, as compared with my super-practical husband, I would have found it in the way you handled, or rather failed to handle, that situation.”
“What would your super-practical husband do now if he were in my position?” he said, drawing her hands into his.
“I don’t know.”
“You do! He says that any man worth his salt takes what he wants in this world. Am I worth my salt?”
“There are different standards of value.... Goodness! how late it is! You must go now, and don’t come back before, let us say, Wednesday.”
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