OCR Text |
Show The Crippled Lady 1(1 of Peribonka -By- ill ! I James Oliver Curwood A h I MXO Strvlce Vj (J), 1029, Duubledar Doran Co., Inc.) p CHAPTER XIII Continued 9 "Not now, Paul. Not nntil we have talked. Then, If you want to kiss me, you may." She was astonishingly free of the tension which he had anticipated, and as she stood with her Hngers clasped warmly about his, telling lilm how glad she was that he was alive, and how doomed to despair and onhappiness she would have been If he had not lived to return re-turn to her, he wondered If it were Claire, his wife, who was talking to him, or another Claire some one he had never known. For she seemed, all at once, to have drawn herself farther away from him than she had ever been, but In sucb a sweet and friendly way that the change in her seemed one which could not bring hurt with it. It was Claire's fight that was hardest. It was going to take a Joan of Arc courage to say what she had planned to say. She made him sit near her, so they were facing each other. "Paul, we are going to be honest. hon-est. You will promise me that?" He knew he was preparing to equivocate as he gave his word. A lie to save Clnlre from hurt was more creditable than truth. The impulse to shield her, to keep from lier all suspicion of his love for Carla, swept over him as he looked at her. She was like the flowers on the table. More easily crushed, he thought. More vividly than ever he saw the difference between her and Carla. Carla would fight on through tragedy, even to death. Claire, suffering more, would droop and fade like a petal In a . rose, shrinking from the quicker and more physical action which the other would find for himself. He was not analyzing himself, or her. The thought like a picture impressed im-pressed itself upon him, and Claire, gazing at him in these epic, introspective intro-spective moments, as If partly seeing see-ing the swift visioning In his mind, surprised him by saying: "Paul, I wonder If you know Just how much I honor, and respect you. I wonder If you realize how fine you are. I have failed to play my part as your wife. I have not let you know these things as I should. The fault In our lives is not yours. It Is mine. I think I could have made you love me. Yet I saw the unfairness of it unless I could make myself love you first. I hoped and prayed for that. "There wasn't love when we were married, on either side. You did not love me, not in the way you wanted to love a woman, and my feeling for you was an Immeasurable Immeasur-able respect and admiration for an honorable gentleman. It seems trite and superficial to say that the interests of our families brought us together, does it not? But it is true. I wanted to love you. But 1 discovered after a little while that something was in my way." "1 know," he found himself say- ing. "You couldn't love an animal, i Claire. I was that, until the day ' you came to the Mistassinl. I have been blind and brutal. God knows I am only half worthy of you 1" "And Carla?" : So softly did his wife speak Curia's name that for a moment it ' seemed as If he had not heard It. "We have promised ourselves to be honest," she continued. "Do you remember a letter I wrote you from Paris In which I was coming I to you and that I was sure a more y Important thing would happen for " us In your woods than any journey, like your promised one around the world, could give?" "Yes, I remember." "Do you know now why I told you that?" "I have only wondered." "It was because I had seen, because be-cause I had read between the lines of your letters, because 1 knew at last a great love had come Into your lire, and that Carla Haldan had brought It to you. You love Curia. And, loving her, you would sacrifice everything for my sake." His fabric of lies was gone, his soul laid bare under the gaze of his wile's eyes. J "I want to hear you say It, Paul.'' She was repeating Carta's words 3 whispered to him In the blackness ia of the earth. "That is why I came u- to you there. A woman may hide ,y her love from a man, but not from .y another woman, and It was Impossible Impos-sible for Carla to keep her secret from me. Yours was still more open, though 1 saw you making a magnificent fight. I know, Paul. Hut I want to hear it from your Hps. 1 must hear It Do you love Carla Haldan?" "Yes, I love her." '. "More than any other woman In the world?" "I could only love one woman In "J that way." ' lle was conscious of having struck a deadly blow, a hurt he would rather have died than inflict upon Claire. It had dragged Itself from him In spite of his determination, determina-tion, and he waited for his punishment. punish-ment. Its effect on her. Claire's eyes did not waver. She did not lunch. A starry, radiant light came "to her face, and she gave a breathless, half-articulate cry, not of shock or of pain, but of joy. lle saw the blood flushing her cheeks, ;.. the tenseness leaving her bndv, "J unu "'ey sat for a time in silence, neither making an effort to speak, itf Ihen he said: 3 "I thought I would hurt you. And you are glad !" "Yes, I am glad. I thank God you love Carla." xt She rose to her feet, and took a C.e Je,,er frni the table. She was trying to keep from crying as she gave it to biro. "I want you to read It and then come back to me," she said. "This evening. If you will, Paul. I lack the courage to tell you things. You will understand when you open It. alone." He went to the Kirke-Durand building and lost himself In the human stream going up with the elevators. On one of the floors was an ofllce, always ready for him. He shut himself In and locked the door. He opened the letter. There were many pages, closely written In Claire's hand. With almost childish candor they began to tell him of a woman's fight to triumph over herself. Like an indestructible indestructi-ble redolence they breathed the sureness of Claire's faitb In herself. her-self. WitnoLt emotional effort she told him that unless Carla had come Into his life she would never have let him know what she was about to reveal. There was no man In the world more worthy of a woman's love than he, she said. Yet, from the beginning, she had been unable to build her respect and admiration into greater things she should have given him. That was one reason why, repelling the thought of making him care greatly great-ly for her when she could not love him, she had kept herself away from him so much. One's passion for another, in its holiest form, was No Shadow Is Cast Over Their Happiness Because Carla Cannot Walk. guided by a single force. One might stem that and hold it back, but it was impossible to make It die. Such a love was Carla's for him. Then she spoke of another man. It was of Jimmy Ennerdale, the sculptor, who was driving his way so persistently to success. She had accepted Jimmy almost as a brother during her girlhood, but very soon after her marriage the truth had come to htr, she said, and' had grown stronger with each year. She cared for Ennerdale just as Carla cared for him. It was Paul who might have been her brother, with such frank and unembarrassed un-embarrassed simplicity did she confide con-fide in him. She knew that Ennerdale Enner-dale loved her, and repeated that a man could not conceal that fact from a woman, though he did not express It In words, and she was sure Jimmy had no idea of her sentiment toward him. This love for Jimmy was the other reason, the more vital- of the two, which had held her aloof from Paul. She loved Jimmy's work and wanted to become a part of it. She had never held it to he possible, and had not thought of it in that way until she knew that he loved Carla. Paul finished, and it seemed as though tiny raindrops were falling in his brain, so clearly could he hear and feel the beating of his pulse. In a few moments the meaning of life came to him in a distant wave. It struck nearer in the slamming of an elevator door. Indistinct voices passed down the hall. From another street, blocks away, the hammering of rivet drivers on new steel rose above the rush and roar of trallie. Paul looked from his window, as If he might see the pit, out of which the same sound had come night ami day for three years. His eyes fell upon gloomy, sooty walls. Under Un-der him lay an unending fabric of men's toil, a great sea of roofs strung with wires, craggy with ugly architectural warts, broken with chimneys, streaked with tarred gutters, and with the gaping, gap-ing, shifting mouths of ventilating funnels sucking air Into their artificial ar-tificial lungs. He looked down and saw a thousand moving things. In a stream, like ants, every hurrying particle a human soul struggling In the furious Twentieth century effort ef-fort to make Itself greater than God. From all this Claire had ; freed him. She had given him new I life, and with It love and happiness. happi-ness. He crushed her letter In his hand as If some pitiful breath might wrench its precious pages from him. Thou he turned to the telephone. It was impossible for him to wait, lle wanted to tell her there was one other woman in the world as wonderful as Carla. In Claire's voice was a trembling note of happiness when he said this. "Dear old Paul," she cried softly. soft-ly. "But you mustn't come to me until evening. I have something which must do before I see yon again." That night, when he went to his home, Claire was not there. She had left a note for him. "I have gone to see Carla," it said. Only a womaD can make another woman like Carla uu derstand." CHAPTER XIV AND here we find ourselves where we began wllb the lovely Crippled Lady on her porch at Perlbonka. There have been changes since the Crippled Lady was borne from the hospital to the place, near he mother, where she wants to live The pit Is no longer a pit, hut a mighty force driving Its energy In unending streams through high ten skm wires. The Mistassinl may rumble and roar and growl, but It Is a slave securely shackled, and will probably go ou laboring foilts human hu-man masters for all time. This change or development was en peeled, anticipated by experts al most to the day and hour. But others were not. The world, for in stance, accepting a very small corner cor-ner of It as the whole, could not understand why a man like Paul Kirke should deliberately sever himself from the huge prestige and wealth built by his father's success, and, as the story went, bear away with him all his personal possessions posses-sions in a trunk and a handbag. It could understand, quite easily, how a husband and wife end their mar Ital relationship, but It was puzzled puz-zled and shocked that a woman like Claire Kirke should throw herself away, soon afterward, on a stoop-shouldered, stoop-shouldered, prematurely ageing man who was possessed of nothing on earth hut an admirable passion for shaping things out of marble. Carla always sits on her porch so that she Is looking up the river to ward the north. Paul is there, working work-ing out a part of the dream which absorbs them both. Thirty miles beyond the green and blue-black edge of wilderness which she can see Paul has a timber concession, and fifteen men working with him, where a little while before he might have had fifteen thousand. But these fifteen men, and what they are planning to do with the concession, conces-sion, mean more to Paul than all the millions In the world. "it Is not necessary to (slaughter (slaugh-ter Nature, or even harm her. In order or-der to possess for ourselves some of her products," Paul says in a paper pa-per he is writing for a pulp-wood journal.- "There is such a thing as harvesting lumber and having a better forest each year Instead of a diminishing one. Nature wants to fraternize with us, and will when we cease to sack and plunder her like vandals." Next year the fifteen men will be increased to fifty, but now camps are being built and just enough timber harvested to cover the expense ex-pense of the work. Paul labors with his ax, along with the others, from morning until night. Every Friday he comes down the river to Carla. And every day he sends her messages. mes-sages. This Is what happens. As the Peribonka descends between its sandbars it turns at the head of an Island not far from the village, and in a gently sweeping curve forms a big pocket near Carla's home, which has a habit of gathering and holding hold-ing quantities of driftage which comes down with the stream. This driftage, in the form of wood, the village boys gather for their homes, and now, whenever they find a freshly peeled stick or log, they look for notches in it, which proclaim pro-claim It a message from Paul. It is an exciting game, as thrilling for Carla as for the children. The river seems to enjoy it, too, for in one month It brought to Carla five of the hundred or so "messages" which Paul had given to its care, a conclusive proof of its unusual friendship and co-operation. At least Carla and Paul think so. Carla knows that she Is going to get strong and well. This mental attitude, her sureness and optlm ism, together with her great happl ness, has overcome the doubt ol physicians. . She is beginning to stand a little, with Paul's arms about her, and their two precious days a week together are filled with wonderful plans of what she Is going to do in another year Wherever Paul is, there she will also be. That is the point from which they always start in build ing their castles. No shadow is cast over their hap piness because Carla cannot walk Paul wheels her about the village in the big chair, and not a cottage Is missed in-their visits They go as far as the little picturesque oir" cheese factory and down the hi 11 to the still older wharf where the boat comes in from across the lake Doctor Derwent, who Is at Mistassinl, Mistas-sinl, has allowed Carla to go twice to the monastery, in Paul's launch, and If October is fine she will make her first trip to his concession during dur-ing that month. Paul takes her over the soft, soggy roads to the edge of the blueberry plains In a buggy, nnd then carries her In his arms to a place where she can help him pick fruit for their Sunday dinner. He will never give up carrying car-rying her like that, he says, even when she Is strong again. Peribonka has grown happier with them. Even Maria ('hap delaine Is younger, and Samuel has forgotten his financial losses. So ('aria wrote to Claire: "It is glorious here. I love September." Sep-tember." THE END. |