CHAPTER XX
If events had been moving rapidly with Lewis, they had by no means beenat a standstill at Nadir since that troubled day on which he hadrebelled, quarreled, and fled, leaving behind him wrath and tears andawakened hearts where all had been apathy and somnolence.
Many happenings at Nadir were dated from the day that Lewis went away.Late that night mammy and Mrs. Leighton, aided by trembling Natalie, hadhad to carry the Reverend Orme from his chair in the school-room to hisbed. The left side of his face was drawn grotesquely out of line, butdespite the disfigurement, there was a look of peace in his ravagedcountenance, as of one who welcomes night joyfully and calmly after along battle.
Perhaps it was this look of peace that made Ann Leighton regard thislatest as the lightest of all the calamities that had fallen upon herfrail shoulders. She felt that in a measure the catastrophe had broughtthe Reverend Orme back--nearer to her heart. Her heart, which had seemedto atrophy and shrivel from disuse since the poignant fullness of thelast days of Shenton, was suddenly revivified. Love, pity, tendercare,--all the discarded emotions,--returned to light up her witheredface and give it beauty. Night and day she stayed beside the ReverendOrme, reading aright his slightest movement.
To Natalie one need stood out above all others--the need for Lewis. Atfirst she waited for news of him, but none came; then she sought out DomFrancisco. Word was passed to the cattlemen. They said Lewis had beenbound for Oeiras. A messenger was sent to Oeiras. He came back with thenews that Lewis had never arrived there. He had been traced half-way.After that no one on the long straight trail had seen the boy. Thewilderness had swallowed him.
Dom Francisco came almost daily to see the Reverend Orme. "Behold him!"he cried at his first visit, aghast at the havoc the stroke had playedwith the tall frame. "He is but a boy, he has fathered but twochildren--and yet--behold him! He is broken!" The sight of the ReverendOrme, suddenly grown pitifully old, seemed to work on the white-haired,but sturdy, cattle-king by reflection. He, too, grew old suddenly.
Natalie was the first to notice it. She began to nurse the old man asshe nursed her father,--to treat him as she would a child. When one dayhe spoke almost tremulously of the marriage that was to be, she did noteven answer him, contenting herself with the smile with which one humorsextreme youth clamoring for the moon. Gradually, without any discussionor open refusal on the part of Natalie, it became understood not only toDom Francisco, but to all the circle at Nadir, that she would nevermarry the old cattle-king.
The sudden departure of Lewis, the Reverend Orme's breakdown, with itsintimate worry displacing all lesser cares, the absorption of AnnLeighton as her husband's constant attendant--these things made ofNatalie a woman in a night. She assumed direction of the house, andcalmly ordered mammy around in a way that warmed that old soul, born tocheerful servitude. She hired a goatherd and rigidly oversaw hishandiwork. Then she approached Dom Francisco one evening as he sat ather father's bedside and told him that he must find a purchaser for thegoats--all of them.
The Reverend Orme, although he heard, took no interest in any temporalaffair. Mrs. Leighton looked up and asked mildly:
"Why, dear?"
"Because we need money," said Natalie. "No doctor would come here. Wemust take father away."
No one recoiled from the idea; but it was new to them all exceptNatalie. It took days and days for it to sink in. It was on DomFrancisco that Natalie most exerted herself. He had aged, and age hadmade him weak. He fell a slow, but easy, prey to her youth, grownsweetly dominant. He himself would arrange to buy the enormous herd ofgoats, the greatest in the country-side. And, finally, with a greatshrinking from the definite implication, he agreed to buy back Nadir aswell.
No mere argument could have led the old man to such a concession. It waslove--love for these strangers that he had cherished within his gates,love for the gloomy man whom he had seen young and then old, love forAnn and Natalie and mammy, with their quiet ways, love for the very wayof life of all of them--a way distantly above anything he had everdreamed before their coming, that drove him, almost against his will, tospeed their parting. He sent for money. He himself spent long, wistfulhours preparing the ox-wagon, the litter, and the horses that were tobear them away.
Then one night the Reverend Orme slept and awoke no more. In the morningNatalie went into the room and found her mother sitting very stillbeside the bed, one of the Reverend Orme's hands in both of hers. Tearsfollowed each other slowly down her cheeks. She did not brush them away.
"Mother!" cried Natalie, in the first grip of premonition.
"Hush, dear!" said Mrs. Leighton. "He is gone."
They buried him at the very top of the valley, where the eye, guided bythe parallel hills, sought ever and again the great mountain thirtymiles away. In that clear air the distant mountain seemed very near.There were those who said they could see the holy cross upon its brow.
That night Mrs. Leighton and mammy sat idle and staring in the house.Suddenly they had realized that for them the years of tears had passed.They looked at each other and wondered by what long road calm had cometo them. Not so Natalie. Natalie was out in the night, out upon thehills.
She climbed the highest of them all. As she stumbled up the rise, shelifted her eyes to the stars. The stars were very high, very far, verycold. They struck at her sight like needles.
Natalie covered her eyes. She stood on the crest of the hill. Herglorious hair had fallen and wrapped her with its still mantle. Herslight breast was heaving. She could hear her struggling heart poundingat its cage. She drew a long breath. With all the strength: of her younglungs she called: "Lew, where are you? O, Lew, you _must_ come! O, Lew,I _need_ you!"
The low hills gave back no echo. It was not silence that swallowed herdesperate cry, but distance, overwhelming distance. She stared wide-eyedacross the plain. Suddenly faith left her. She knew that Lewis, couldnot hear. She knew that she was alone. She crumpled into a little heapon the top of the highest hill, buried her face in her soft hair, andsobbed.
The conviction that their wilderness held Lewis no longer brought acertain strength to Natalie's sudden womanhood. It was as though Fatehad cried to her, "The burden is all thine; take it up," and with thesame breath had given her the sure courage that comes with renunciation.She answered Dom Francisco's wistful questioning before it could takeshape in words.
"We cannot stay," she said. "We must go. You will still help us to go."
Nature's long silences breed silence in man. Dom Francisco ceased toquestion even with his eyes. He made all ready, delivered them into thehands of trusted henchmen, and bade them God's speed. They struck outfor the sea, but not by the long road that Lewis and the stranger hadfollowed. There was a nearer Northern port. Toward it they set theirfaces, Consolation Cottage their goal.