The Way of a Man

  CHAPTER XXXII

  THE COVENANT

  She did not rebel or draw away, but there was that on her face, I say,which left me only reverent. Her hand fell into mine. We sat there,plighted, plighted in our rags and misery and want and solitude. ThoughI should live twice the allotted span of man, never should I forget whatcame into my soul that hour.

  After a time I turned from her, and from the hills, and from the sky,and looked about us at the poor belongings with which we were to beginour world. All at once my eye fell upon one of our lighter robes, nowfairly white with much working. I drew it toward me, and with her stillleaning against my shoulder, I took up a charred stick, and so,laboriously, I wrote upon the surface of the hide, these words of ourcovenant:

  "_I, John Cowles, take thee, Ellen Meriwether, to be my lawful, weddedwife, in sickness, and in health, for better of for worse, till death dous part._"

  And I signed it; and made a seal after my name.

  "Write," said I to her. "Write as I have written."

  She took a fresh brand, blackened at the end, and in lesser characterswrote slowly, letter by letter:

  "_I, Ellen Meriwether, take thee, John Cowles, to be my lawful, weddedhusband_--" She paused, but I would not urge her, and it was momentsbefore she resumed--"_in sickness and in health, for better or forworse_--" Again she paused, thinking, thinking--and so concluded, "_tilldeath do us part_."

  "It means," she said to me, simply as a child, "until we have both goneback into the flowers and the trees."

  I took her hand in mine. Mayhap book and bell and organ peal andvestured choir and high ceremony of the church may be more solemn; butI, who speak the truth from this very knowledge, think it could not be.

  "When you have signed that, Ellen," I said to her at last, "we two areman and wife, now and forever, here and any place in the world. That isa binding ceremony, and it endows you with your share of all myproperty, small or large as that may be. It is a legal wedding, and itholds us with all the powers the law can have. It is a contract."

  "Do not talk to me of contracts," she said. "I am thinking of nothingbut our--wedding."

  Still mystical, still enigma, still woman, she would have it that thestars, the mountains---the witnesses--and not ourselves, made thewedding. I left it so, sure of nothing so much as that, whatever her wayof thought might be, it was better than my own.

  "But if I do not sign this?" she asked at length.

  "Then we are not married."

  She sighed and laid down the pen. "Then I shall not sign it--yet," shesaid.

  I caught up her hand as though I would write for her.

  "No," she said, "it shall be only our engagement, our troth between us.This will be our way. I have not yet been sufficiently wooed, JohnCowles!"

  I looked into her eyes and it seemed to me I saw there something of thesame light I had seen when she was the masked coquette of the Armyball--the yearning, the melancholy, the mysticism, the challenge, theinvitation and the doubting--ah, who shall say what there is in awoman's eye! But I saw also what had been in her eyes each time I hadseen her since that hour. I left it so, knowing that her way would bebest.

  "When we have escaped," she went on, "if ever we do escape, then thiswill still be our troth, will it not, John Cowles?"

  "Yes, and our marriage, when you have signed, now or any other time."

  "But if you had ever signed words like these with any _other_ woman,then it would not be our marriage nor our troth, would it, John Cowles?"

  "No," I said. _And, then I felt my face grow ashy cold and pale in onesudden breath!_

  "But why do you look so sad?" she asked of me, suddenly. "Is it not wellto wait?"

  "Yes, it is well to wait," I said. She was so absorbed that she did notlook at me closely at that instant.

  Again she took up the charred stick in her little hand, and hesitated."See," she said, "I shall sign one letter of my name each week, untilall my name is written! Till that last letter we shall be engaged. Afterthe last letter, when I have signed it of my own free will, and clean,and solemn--clean and solemn, John Cowles--then we will be--Oh, take mehome--take me to my father, John Cowles! This is a hard place for a girlto be."

  Suddenly she dropped her face into her hands, sobbing.

  She hid her head on my breast, sore distressed now. She was glad thatshe might now be more free, needing some manner of friend; but she wasstill--what? Still woman! Poor Saxon I must have been had I not sworn tolove her fiercely and singly all my life. But yet--

  I looked at the robe, now fallen loose upon the ground, and saw that shehad affixed one letter of her name and stopped. She smiled wanly. "Yourname would be shorter to sign a little at a time," she said; "but a girlmust have time. She must wait. And see," she said, "I have no ring. Agirl always has a ring."

  This lack I could not solve, for I had none.

  "Take mine," she said, removing the ring with the rose seal. "Put it onthe other finger--the--the right one."

  I did so; and I kissed her. But yet--

  She was weary and strained now. A pathetic droop came to the corners ofher mouth. The palm of her little hand turned up loosely, as though shehad been tired and now was resting. "We must wait," she said, as thoughto herself.

  But what of me that night? When I had taken my own house and bed beyonda little thicket, that she might be alone, that night I found myselfbreathing hard in terror and dread, gazing up at the stars in agony,beating my hands on the ground at the thought of the ruin I had wrought,the crime that I had done in gaining this I had sought.

  I had written covenants before! I have said that I would tell simply thetruth in these pages, and this is the truth, the only extenuation I mayclaim. The strength and sweetness of all this strange new life with herhad utterly wiped out my past, had put away, as though forever, theworld I once had known. Until the moment Ellen Meriwether began thesigning of her name, I swear I had forgotten that ever in the world wasanother by name of Grace Sheraton! I may not be believed--I ought not tobe believed; but this is the truth and the truth by what measure my lovefor Ellen Meriwether was bright and fixed, as much as my promise to theother had been ill-advised and wrong.

  A forsworn man, I lay there, thinking of her, sweet, simple, serious andtrusting, who had promised to love me, an utterly unworthy man, until wetwo should go back into the flowers.

  Far rather had I been beneath the sod that moment; for I knew, since Iloved Ellen Meriwether, _she must not complete the signing of her nameupon the scroll of our covenant!_