Hidden Creek - Katharine Newlin Burt
"It's not likely even now," sly and twinkling Lander of the hotel told
Dickie, "that you can make it to Miss Blake's place. No, sir, nor to
Hilliard's neither. Hidden Creek's up. She's sure some flood this time of
the year. It's as much as your life's good for, stranger."
But Dickie merely smiled and got for himself a horse that was "good in
deep water." And he rode away from Rusty without looking back.
He rode along a lush, wet land of roaring streams, and, on the bank of
Hidden Creek, there was a roaring that drowned even the beating of his
heart. The flood straddled across his path like Apollyon.
A dozen times the horse refused the ford--at last with a desperate toss
of his head he made a plunge for it. Almost at once he was swept from the
cobbled bed. He swam sturdily, but the current whirled him down like a
straw--Dickie slipped from the saddle on the upper side so that the
water pressed him close to the horse, and, even when they both went
under, he held to the animal with hands like iron. This saved his life.
Five blind, black, gasping minutes later, the horse pulled him up on the
farther bank and they stood trembling together, dazed by life and the
warmth of the air.
It was growing dark. The heavy shadow of the mountain fell across them
and across the swollen yellow river they had just escaped. There began to
be a dappling light--the faint shining of that slim young moon. She was
just a silver curl there above the edge of the hill. In an hour she would
set. Her brightness was as shy and subtle as the brightness of a smile.
The messenger pulled his trembling body to the wet saddle and, looking
about for landmarks that had been described to him, he found the faint
trail to Hilliard's ranch. Presently he made out the low building under
its firs. He dropped down, freed the good swimmer and turned him loose,
then moved rapidly across the little clearing. It was all so still.
Hidden Creek alone made a threatening tumult. Dickie stopped before he
came to the door. He stood with his hands clenched at his sides and his
chin lifted. He seemed to be speaking to the sky. Then he stumbled to the
door and called,
"Sheila--"
She seemed to rise up from the floor and stand before him and put her
hands on his arms.
A sort of insanity of joy, of childish excitement came upon Sheila when
she had recognized her visitor. She flitted about the room, she laughed,
she talked half-wildly--it had been such a long silence--in broken,
ejaculatory sentences. It was Dickie's dumbness, as he leaned against the
door, looking at her, that sobered her at last. She came close to him
again and saw that he was shivering and that streams of water were
running from his clothes to the floor.
"Why, Dickie! How wet you are!"--Again she put her hands on his arms--he
was indeed drenched. She looked up into his face. It was gray and drawn
in the uncertain light.
"That dreadful river! How did you cross it!"
Dickie smiled.
"It would have taken more than a river to stop me," he said in his old,
half-demure, half-ironical fashion. And that was all Sheila ever heard of
that brief epic of his journey. He drew away from her now and went over
to the fire.
"Dickie"--she followed him--"tell me how you came here. How you
knew where I was. Wait--I'll get you some of Cosme's clothes--and a
cup of tea."
This time, exhausted as he was, Dickie did not fail to stand up to take
the cup she brought him. He shook his head at the dry clothes. He didn't
want Hilliard's things, thank you; he was drying out nicely by the fire.
He wasn't a bit cold. He sat and drank the tea, leaning forward, his
elbows on his knees. He was, after all, just the same, she decided--only
more so. His Dickie-ness had increased a hundredfold. There was still
that quaint look of having come in from the fairy doings of a midsummer
night. Only, now that his color had come back and the light of her lamp
shone on him, he had a firmer and more vital look. His sickly pallor had
gone, and the blue marks under his eyes--the eyes were fuller, deeper,
more brilliant. He was steadier, firmer. He had definitely shed the
pitifulness of his childhood. And Sheila did not remember that his mouth
had so sweet a firm line from sensitive end to end of the lips.
Her impatience was driving her heart faster at every beat.
"You _must_, please, tell me everything now, Dickie," she pleaded,
sitting on the arm of Hilliard's second chair. Her cheeks burned; her
hair, grown to an awkward length, had come loose from a ribbon and fallen
about her face and shoulders. She had made herself a frock of
orange-colored cotton stuff--something that Hilliard had bought for
curtains. It was a startling color enough, but it could not dim her gypsy
beauty of wild dark hair and browned skin with which the misty and
spiritual eyes and the slightly straightened and saddened lips made
exquisite disharmony.
Dickie looked up at her a minute. He put down his cup and got to his
feet. He went to stand by the shelf, half-turned from her.
"Tell me, at least," she begged in a cracked key of suspense, "do you
know anything about--_Hilliard_?"
At that Dickie was vividly a victim of remorse.
"Oh--Sheila--damn! I _am_ a beast. Of course--he's all right. Only, you
see, he's been hurt and is in the hospital. That's why I came."
"You?--Hilliard?--Dickie. I can't really understand." She pushed back her
hair with the same gesture she had used in the studio when Sylvester
Hudson's offer of "a job" had set her brain whirling.
"No, of course. You wouldn't." Dickie spoke slowly again, looking at the
rug. "I went East--"
"But--Hilliard?"
He looked up at her and flashed a queer, pained sort of smile. "I am
coming to him, Sheila. I've got to tell you _some_ about myself before I
get around to him or else you wouldn't savvy--"
"Oh." She couldn't meet the look that went with the queer smile, for it
was even queerer and more pained, and was, somehow, too old a look for
Dickie. So she said, "Oh," again, childishly, and waited, staring at
her fingers.
"I went to New York because I thought I'd find you there, Sheila. Pap's
hotel was on fire."
"Did you really burn it down, Dickie?"
He started violently. "_I_ burned it down? Good Lord! No. What made you
think such a thing?"
"Never mind. Your father thought so."
Dickie's face flushed. "I suppose he would." He thought it over, then
shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't. I don't know how it started ... I went
to New York and to that place you used to live in--the garret. I had the
address from the man who took Pap there."
"The studio? _Our_ studio?--_You_ there, Dickie?"
"Yes, ma'am. I lived there. I thought, at first, you might
come ... Well"--Dickie hurried as though he wanted to pass quickly over
this necessary history of his own experience--"I got a job at a hotel."
He smiled faintly. "I was a waiter. One night I went to look at a fire.
It was a big fire. I was trying to think out what it was like--you know
the way I always did. It used to drive Pap loco--I must have been talking
to myself. Anyway, there was a fellow standing near me with a notebook
and a pencil and he spoke up suddenly--kind of sharp, and said: 'Say that
again, will you?'--He was a newspaper reporter, Sheila ... That's how I
got into the job. But I'm only telling you because--"
Sheila hit the rung of her chair with an impatient foot. "Oh, Dickie! How
silly you are! As if I weren't _dying_ to hear all about it. How did you
get 'into the job'? What job?"
"Reporting," said Dickie. He was troubled by this urgency of hers. He
began to stammer a little. "Of course, the--the fellow helped me a lot.
He got me on the staff. He went round with me. He--he took down what I
said and later he--he kind of edited my copy before I handed it in.
He--he was almighty good to me. And I--I worked awfully hard. Like Hell.
Night classes when I wasn't on night duty, and books. Then, Sheila, I
began to get kind of crazy over words." His eyes kindled. And his face.
He straightened. He forgot himself, whatever it was that weighed upon
him. "Aren't they wonderful? They're like polished stones--each one a
different shape and color and feel. You fit 'em this way and that and
turn 'em and--all at once, they shine and sing. God! I never knowed what
was the matter with me till I began to work with words--and that _is_
work. Sheila! Lord! How you hate them, and love them, and curse them, and
worship them. I used to think I wanted _whiskey_." He laughed scorn at
that old desire; then came to self-consciousness again and was
shamefaced--"I guess you think I am plumb out of my head," he apologized.
"You see, it was because I was a--a reporter, Sheila, that I happened to
be there when Hilliard was hurt. I was coming home from the night courts.
It was downtown. At a street-corner there was a crowd. Somebody told me;
'Young Hilliard's car ran into a milk cart; turned turtle. He's hurt.'
Well, of course, I knew it'd be a good story--all that about Hilliard and
his millions and his coming from the West to get his inheritance--it had
just come out a couple of months before...."
"His millions?" repeated Sheila. She slipped off the arm of her chair
without turning her wide look from Dickie and sat down with an air of
deliberate sobriety. "His inheritance?" she repeated.
"Yes, ma'am. That's what took him East. He had news at Rusty. He wrote
you a letter and sent it by a man who was to fetch you to Rusty. You were
to stay there with his wife till Hilliard would be coming back for you.
But, Sheila, the man was caught in a trap and buried by a blizzard. They
found him only about a week ago--with Hilliard's letter in his pocket."
Dickie fumbled in his own steaming coat. "Here it is. I've got it."
"Don't give it to me yet," she said. "Go on."
"Well," Dickie turned the shriveled and stained paper lightly in restless
fingers. "That morning in New York I got up close to the car and had my
notebook out. Hilliard was waiting for the ambulance. His ribs were
smashed and his arm broken. He was conscious. He was laughing and talking
and smoking cigarettes. I asked him some questions and he took a notion
to question _me_. 'You're from the West,' he said; and when I told him
'Millings,' he kind of gasped and sat up. That turned him faint. But when
they were carrying him off, he got a-holt of my hand and whispered, 'Come
see me at the hospital.' I was willing enough--I went. And they took me
to him--private room. And a nice-looking nurse. And flowers. He has lots
of friends in New York--Hilliard, you bet you--" It was irony again and
Sheila stirred nervously. That changed his tone. He moved abruptly and
came and sat down near her, locking his hands and bending his head to
study them in the old way. "He found out who I was and he told me about
you, Sheila, and, because he was too much hurt to travel or even to
write, he asked me to go out and carry a message for him. Nothing would
have kept me from going, anyway," Dickie added quaintly. "When I learned
what had been happening and how you were left and no letters coming from
Rusty to answer his--well, sir, I could hardly sit still to hear about
all that, Sheila. But, anyway--" Dickie moved his hands. They sought the
arms of his chair and the fingers tightened. He looked past Sheila. "He
told me then how it was with you and him. That you were planning to be
married. And I promised to find you and tell you what he said."
"What did he say?"
Dickie spoke carefully, using his strange gift. With every word his
face grew a trifle whiter, but that had no effect upon his eloquence.
He painted a vivid and touching picture of the shattered and wistful
youth. He repeated the shaken words of remorse and love. "I want her to
come East and marry me. I love her. Tell her I love her. Tell her I can
give her everything she wants in all the world. Tell her to come--" And
far more skillfully than ever Hilliard himself could have done, Dickie
pleaded the intoxication of that sudden shower of gold, the
bewildering change in the young waif's life, the necessity he was under
to go and see and touch the miracle. There was a long silence after
Dickie had delivered himself of the burden of his promise. The fire
leapt and crackled on Hilliard's forsaken hearth. It threw shadows and
gleams across Dickie's thin, exhausted face and Sheila's inscrutably
thoughtful one.
She held out her hand.
"Give me the letters now, Dickie."
He handed her the bundle that had accumulated in Rusty and the little
withered one taken from the body of the trapper. Sheila took them and
held them on her knee. She pressed both her hands against her eyes; then,
leaning toward the fire, she read the letters, beginning with that one
that had spent so many months under the dumb snow.
Berg, who had investigated Dickie, leaned against her knee while she
read, his eyes fixed upon her. She read and laid the pile by on the table
behind her. She sat for a long while, elbows on the arms of her chair,
fingers laced beneath her chin. She seemed to be looking at the fire, but
she was watching Dickie through her eyelashes. There was no ease in his
attitude. He had his arms folded, his hands gripped the damp sleeves of
his coat. When she spoke, he jumped as though she had fired a gun.
"It is not true, Dickie, that things were--were that way between Cosme
and me ... We had not settled to be married ..." She paused and saw that
he forced himself to sit quiet. "Do you really think," she said, "that
the man that wrote those letters, loves me?" Dickie was silent. He would
not meet her look. "So you promised Hilliard that you would take me back
to marry him?" There was an edge to her voice.
Dickie's face burned cruelly. "No," he said with shortness. "I was going
to take you to the train and then come back here. I am going to take up
this claim of Hilliard's--he's through with it. He likes the East. You
see, Sheila, he's got the whole world to play with. It's quite true." He
said this gravely, insistently. "He can give you everything--"
"And you?"
Dickie stared at her with parted lips. He seemed afraid to breathe lest
he startle away some hesitant hope. "I?" he whispered.
"I mean--_you_ don't like the East?--You will give up your work?"
"Oh--" He dropped back. The hope had flown and he was able to breathe
again, though breathing seemed to hurt. "Yes, ma'am. I'll give up
newspaper reporting. I don't like New York."
"But, Dickie--your--words? I'd like to see something you've written."
Dickie's hand went to an inner pocket.
"I wanted you to see this, Sheila," His eyes were lowered to hide a
flaming pride. "My _poems_."
Sheila felt a shock of dread. Dickie's _poems_! She was afraid to read
them. She could not help but think of his life at Millings, of that
sordid hotel lobby ... Newspaper stories--yes--that was imaginable.
But--poetry? Sheila had been brought up on verse. There was hardly a
beautiful line that had not sung itself into the fabric of her brain.
"Poems?" she repeated, just a trifle blankly; then, seeing the hurt in
his face, about the sensitive and delicate lips, she put out a quick,
penitent hand. "Let me see them--at once!"
He handed a few folded papers to her. They were damp. He put his face
down to his hands and looked at the floor as though he could not bear to
watch her face. Sheila saw that he was shaking. It meant so much to him,
then--? She unfolded the papers shrinkingly and read. As she read, the
blood rushed to her checks for shame. She ought never to have doubted
him. Never after the first look into his face, never after hearing him
speak of the "cold, white flame" of an unforgotten winter night. Dickie's
words, so greatly loved and groped for, so tirelessly pursued in the face
of his world's scorn and injury, came to him, when they did come, on
wings. In the four short poems, there was not a word outside of his inner
experience, and yet she felt that those words had blown through him
mysteriously on a wind--the wind that fans such flame--
"Oh, little song you sang to me
A hundred, hundred days ago,
Oh, little song whose melody
Walks in my heart and stumbles so;
I cannot bear the level nights,
And all the days are over-long,
And all the hours from dark to dark
Turn to a little song--"
"Like the beat of the falling rain,
Until there seems no roof at all,
And my heart is washed with pain--"
"Why is a woman's throat a bird,
White in the thicket of the years?--"
Sheila suddenly thrust back the leaves at him, hid her face and fell to
crying bitterly. Dickie let fall his poems; he hovered over her, utterly
bewildered, utterly distressed.
"Sheila--h-how could they possibly hurt you so? It was your song--your
song--Are you angry with me--? I couldn't help it. It kept singing in
me--It--it hurt."
She thrust his hand away.
"Don't be kind to me! Oh--I am ashamed! I've treated you _so_! And--and
snubbed you. And--and condescended to you, Dickie. And shamed you.
You--! And you can write such lines--and you are great--you will be very
great--a poet! Dickie, why couldn't I see? Father would have seen. Don't
touch me, please! I can't bear it. Oh, my dear, you must have been
through such long, long misery--there in Millings, behind that desk--all
stifled and cramped and shut in. And when I came, I might have helped
you. I might have understood ... But I hurt you more."
"Please don't, Sheila--it isn't true. Oh,--_damn_ my poems!"
This made her laugh a little, and she got up and dried her eyes and sat
before him like a humbled child. It was quite terrible for Dickie. His
face was drawn with the discomfort of it. He moved about the room,
miserable and restless.
Sheila recovered herself and looked up at him with a sort of wan
resolution.
"And you will stay here and work the ranch and write, Dickie?"
"Yes, ma'am." He managed a smile. "If you think a fellow can push a
plough and write poetry with the same hand."
"It's been done before. And--and you will send me back to Hilliard
and--the good old world?"
Dickie's artificial smile left him. He stood, white and stiff, looking
down at her. He tried to speak and put his hand to his throat.
"And I must leave you here," Sheila went on softly, "with my stars?"
She got up and walked over to the door and stood, half-turned from him,
her fingers playing with the latch.
Dickie found part of his voice.
"What do you mean, Sheila, about your stars?"
"You told me," she said carefully, "that you would go and work and then
come back--But, I suppose--"
That was as far as she got. Dickie flung himself across the room. A chair
crashed. He had his arms about her. He was shaking. That pale and tender
light was in his face. The whiteness of a full moon, the whiteness of a
dawn seemed to fall over Sheila.
"He--he can give you everything--" Dickie said shakily.
"I've been waiting"--she said--"I didn't know it until lately. But I've
been waiting, so long now, for--for--" She closed her eyes and lifted her
soft sad mouth. It was no longer patient.
That night Dickie and Berg lay together on the hide before the fire,
wrapped in a blanket. Dickie did not sleep. He looked through the
uncurtained, horizontal window, at the stars.
"You've got everything else, Hilliard," he muttered. "You've got the
whole world to play with. After all, it was your own choice. I told you
how it was with me. I promised I'd play fair. I did play fair." He sighed
deeply and turned with his head on his arm and looked toward the door of
the inner room. "It's like sleeping just outside the gate of Heaven,
Berg," he said. "I never thought I'd get as close as that--" He listened
to the roar of Hidden Creek. "It won't be long, old fellow, before we
take her down to Rusty and bring her back." Tears stood on Dickie's
eye-lashes. "Then we'll walk straight into Heaven." He played with the
dog's rough mane. "She'll keep on looking at the stars," he murmured.
"But I'll keep on looking at her--_Sheila_."
But Sheila, having made her choice, had shut her eyes to the world and to
the stars and slept like a good and happy child.