Chapter XVI

Just before noon of the following day Pete—who was resting beside the camp fire—made out a moving speck on the distant, inland hills; and close scrutiny proved it to be Ivan, returning from his quest. In half an hour he would be at camp and Dorothy in his arms.

Pete understood perfectly the full significance of this return. It marked, indeed, the turning point in his own great adventure; his personal watch of the girl would be over, and a few hours thereafter she would sail away. His blue eyes were lightless, and the clouds swept over the sun.

The one joy that was left him was to carry the good news to Dorothy and to watch the dear, remembered kindling of her luminous eyes. Her happiness was his watchword now, his one theme; and if he could not find his own happiness in hers he must forego it forever. He made his way quietly to her tent.

“Mr. Ishmin is returning,” he told her simply, still in the character of Pete the guide. “He’s in plain sight already.”

The girl’s lips parted, but her face did not at once flush with pleasure. Yet her expression showed instant, unmistakable relief. It was all that was needed to convince Pete that the girl had found her happiness; and he was persuaded that her tenderness yesterday, after she had brought him home, was merely an instinctive reaction—an echo of her almost-forgotten love for Peter Newhall—of which her conscious self made no interpretation. It settled everything for him; somehow it relieved him too,—that the girl should be so sure of herself and thus her happiness itself assured.

The girl looked breathlessly into Pete’s haggard face. Fortunately he did not guess the full truth: that her genuine relief was not at having her lover come again, but only because it permitted her to escape from her own doubts and fears. She would accept Ivan’s love and give more and more of her own love in return; and thus her course would be immutably fixed. Then, for no less a reason than that all other gates would be closed, she could patiently learn to find contentment and peace. Such had been her fate from the first.

She left the camp and trudged up the hill to meet Ivan. He waved to her, a motion brimming with vitality and spirit; and he was graceful as a caribou as he hastened to join her. Evidently the hard trip had left him unscathed. He was slightly more brown, perhaps, not quite so well-groomed if for no other reason than he had left his shaving kit in camp, but there was no visible trace of fatigue in his dark, handsome face; no change in his easy, graceful carriage. Here was a man, beyond all hint of doubt. He had met the raw forces of the wild, he had conquered them and escaped their ambushes; and they had left no burden on his jubilant spirit. The rough crags and the steep trails had been impotent against him.

He held the girl close, and she felt the steel of his muscles. There was a world of reassurance here. When she returned to her native city, Ivan at her side, when all the witchery of this savage land had paled into dreams, she had every chance to find a full share of happiness in these strong arms.

“Was the trip a success?” she asked, radiant from his kiss.

“Do you think I’d come back if it weren’t? I had the best kind of luck. I didn’t even get clear to the Pacific shore. A few miles this side I ran into a squaw, laying out a trap line. I got her to go back to her cabin on the coast and get a load of supplies for us, and bring it over as fast as she can—hard bread and canned goods and things we can use on the trip. She may get here to-night—she’s certain to make it in by to-morrow morning. Then we can take the dory and start out—back to God’s country.”

“You started back as soon as you’d made arrangements with her?”

“Yes. There was no use to go on. She could bring all the grub she could spare without my help. Besides—I couldn’t bear to be away from you any longer.”

They walked arm-in-arm down to the camp, and Pavlof glowed at his master’s greeting. “You’ve been comfortable?” he asked the girl.

“Perfectly. Pete has taken the best possible care of me.”

“I’m glad to hear it. We’ll add something fancy to his check when we pay him off.” He followed Dorothy into her tent, and after she had told him of Pete’s accident, he caught her yielding hands. He was burning with a great idea, one that had thrilled him his lonely nights on the barrens. “Dear, I’ve come back successful, and now I’ve got something to ask. It’s the biggest thing in the world, but it’s for your happiness as well as mine.”

The girl tried to meet his vivid, magnetic eyes. By a supreme effort she shut from her mind the whisper of fear and the last lingering doubt, and opened her heart to his pleading. “I don’t think I can refuse you anything now,” she told him.

The slanting eyes glowed like great jewels in the eye sockets of a heathen idol. “We’ll be starting to-morrow,” he went on. “You and I and the two natives—Pete, I understand, is going to stay here and winter on the mainland. You say he isn’t injured, and we can leave him safely. Dear, we have a long, difficult trip before us. We will be tied up at various places on account of bad weather, we will have to fight storms and rough seas—it will be a cold, tough, severe experience the best we can do. Besides that, it’s really dangerous.”

“But why think of the danger? There isn’t any other course open.”

“That’s just it—there isn’t any other course. We can’t stay here much longer; winter is likely to break any day. We can’t wait any longer for the _Warrior_ to return. But I’ve got a special reason for pointing out the dangers—dangers that only a fool would deny. It’s wholly possible, Dorothy, that the trip will actually put an end to us. There will be constant danger of sudden storms—of being wrecked and lost on the reefs. It’s a perilous trip, at best.

“It’s best, on a trip like that, that I should be able to look after you and be responsible for you in a much greater degree than I have on this trip. But the main thing is—that if we are to go down to our deaths in the next few days, we want to find the greatest possible happiness first. If we only have a few days to live—perhaps only a single day—and it’s wholly possible, Dorothy—considering the perilous nature of the trip—we want to live them to the full. I know a way that we can be sure of at least a few hours of perfect happiness—that death can never cheat us out of.”

“Be merry,” she quoted quietly, “for to-morrow ye may die!”

“That is the philosophy—the only possible philosophy. Not only to be merry, but to take all that life offers—and not let foolish conventionality or propriety stand in the way. Dorothy, we love each other. We belong to each other. And there is no reason on earth why we should be kept apart any more.

“Pavlof is a native priest, as you already know. The marriages he performs are legal in all this end of the world. Licenses, as I’ve told you before, are just a legal record; they don’t add one whit to the sanctity of the marriage vow. A marriage performed when a license is not procurable stands forever just the same, and all the legal end of it could be straightened up when we get to Seward. As for conventionalities—it is much more conventional to take that trip as my wife, even taking into consideration the character of the wedding service and everything else, than to go unchaperoned with three men. But that’s just a detail. Ordinarily I would prefer to be married in old St. Paul’s, as we have often talked of—with the flowers, and the music, and the beauty, and all that goes with it—yet you won’t feel any lack of solemnity. The sea behind you and the winter clouds above, and those gray cliffs in front will thrill you as much as any vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. I don’t know but that there will be something here that no church can supply; I’m not sure but that it will get home to me as no church wedding could possibly do. The sky and the sea and the hills—all the essentials—and the cross over Peter’s grave!”

His face was stark white. Evidently the idea of this marriage in the wilderness had fired Ivan’s imagination. It appealed to some primitive part of him that she had never fully understood, and to which she could not reach. His hands tightened on hers until her wrists were lashed with pain.

“I’d be willing to wait, for your sake, Dorothy—except for the fact we’d be running the risk of never having each other at all. No one knows what lies on the other side of death. The only happiness we can be sure of is that which we take now. I want you, the living warmth and beauty, and I know you want me too; and there’s only one way to be sure of having each other. Dorothy, I want you to marry me—to-night.”

His voice trembled with earnestness. He had put his case very well. Even in the beginning Dorothy was not a conventional type, and lately, on this rugged shore, she had come face to face with realities. Many things which she had regarded as essentials had been shown as froth, and she knew that vows plighted under this white sky could be just as holy as those taken before the altar in her own church. It made no real difference that the priest should be an unlettered native, immersed in superstition that was all he had left of a great religion; their marriage would be hallowed only by the piety that dwelt in their own hearts. The marriage would be legal; nothing else really mattered. The ceremony was at most but a symbol; and where and by whom it was performed she found she absolutely did not care. And all the time he had pleaded with her she had been biased in his behalf.

He had shown her a swift way out from her own doubts and fears. Once in his arms, bound to him by vows, she could shut away the misgivings that haunted her. He would shape the life of which heretofore she had made such tragic use; and because she would be wholly his, all other roads would be closed. He would hold her heart, and keep it from wandering back to this stormy shore.

She was pale too, now, from the violence of her mingled emotions; but already he could see the nearing glory of his victory. He was winning; he read the truth in the clear, welling light in her eyes, in her trembling lips, in the hands that grew limp in his. His face, white as if with a great light, was close to hers.

“Yes—yes,” she breathed at last.

“To-night?” he asked. “Or right now——”

“This evening—just after dinner. Just as night falls. We’ll make it as respectable as we can—preserve at least some of the conventionalities. We’ll be glad later that we did.”

He sought her lips, already with an air of unquestioned ownership. His eyes were no longer vivid; they were strange and dark and inscrutable, and his voice was moving and deep. “Then you are mine—only mine. I’ve won you at last. Dorothy—it is part of the knowledge of our eastern women that the greatest happiness they ever know is in yielding utterly to the man they love. Tell me—aren’t you catching an echo of that happiness now?”

She smiled soberly,—a wan, mirthless smile that was not without tenderness. “At least—I’m glad to know what I am going to do,” she told him.

Acting on a hilarious impulse Ivan seized her arm and walked with her to the mouth of Pete’s dugout. The head guide, still not wholly recuperated from the shock of yesterday’s accident, got slowly to his feet.

“I want you to supervise the cooking of an extra special meal to-night, Pete,” he said. “The best of all the perishable things we can’t take with us, and some of the others besides, if you need them. I want you to work all afternoon to get everything perfect. There is going to be a celebration to-night.”

He was not aware that the girl’s hand fluttered like a captive bird in his, and that she was pale as a ghost. Pete looked from one to the other; and there was no expression that man could read on his homely, bronzed face. “What—what is going to happen?” he asked.

He spoke rather softly, without emphasis, yet the sound moved Dorothy more than great music. She was instantly estranged, mystified; and no reality was left in the smoking, sullen fire, the white sky and the moaning sea. Pete seemed to be struggling for breath.

“There’s going to be a wedding,” Ivan announced easily. “Mrs. Newhall and I have just come to that decision.”

Watching closely in spite of herself, Dorothy thought that the man recoiled, almost imperceptibly, and for one hushed instant his face was darkened by a queer, unearthly shadow such as she had never seen before. She had the weird feeling that some way that shadow was like death,—that it spread across the faces of men as their souls passed from the clay. It was a trick of the fancy surely; likely only an image of her own strange, dark thoughts; yet she was profoundly moved and she fought back bitter, blinding tears.

“You look solemn, considering the good news,” Ivan reproached her lightly. “My God, Dorothy——”

But she caught herself with a visible effort, and smiled into his eyes. She must try to fall into his happy mood. Pete had turned away and had gone stolidly back to his bunk.