Part 3 (2/2)

Nothing really mattered much. She lay back in her chair with the little wistful smile, the somber light in her eyes that had become habitual to her.

After dinner was finished Katherine led the way to the living-room. To his unspeakable pride, Rhoda took Billy Porter's arm and he guided her listless footsteps carefully, casting pitying glances on his less favored friends. Jack wheeled a Morris chair before the fireplace--desert nights are cool--and John DeWitt hurried for a shawl, while Katherine gave every one orders that no one heeded in the least.

Cartwell followed after the others, slowly lighted a cigarette, then seated himself at the piano. For the rest of the evening he made no attempt to join in the fragmentary conversation. Instead he sang softly, as if to himself, touching the keys so gently that their notes seemed only the echo of his mellow voice. He sang bits of Spanish love-songs, of Mexican lullabies. But for the most part he kept to Indian melodies--wistful love-songs and chants that touched the listener with strange poignancy.

There was little talk among the group around the fire. The three men smoked peacefully. Katherine and Jack sat close to each other, on the davenport, content to be together. DeWitt lounged where he could watch Rhoda, as did Billy Porter, the latter hanging on every word and movement of this lovely, fragile being, as if he would carry forever in his heart the memory of her charm.

Rhoda herself watched the fire. She was tired, tired to the inmost fiber of her being. The only real desire left her was that she might crawl off somewhere and die in peace. But these good friends of hers had set their faces against the inevitable and it was only decency to humor them.

Once, quite unconscious that the others were watching her, she lifted her hands and eyed them idly. They were almost transparent and shook a little. The group about the fire stirred pityingly. John and Katherine and Jack remembered those shadowy hands when they had been rosy and full of warmth and tenderness. Billy Porter leaned across and with his hard brown palms pressed the trembling fingers down into Rhoda's lap. She looked up in astonishment.

”Don't hold 'em so!” said Billy hoa.r.s.ely. ”I can't stand to see 'em!”

”They _are_ pretty bad,” said Rhoda, smiling. It was her rare, slow, unforgetable smile. Porter swallowed audibly. Cartwell at the piano drifted from a Mohave lament to _La Paloma_.

”The day that I left my home for the rolling sea, I said, 'Mother dear, O pray to thy G.o.d for me!'

But e'er I set sail I went a fond leave to take Of Nina, who wept as if her poor heart would break!”

The mellow, haunting melody caught Rhoda's fancy at once, as Cartwell knew it would. She turned to the sinewy figure at the piano. DeWitt was wholesome and strong, but this young Indian seemed vitality itself.

”Nina, if I should die and o'er ocean's foam Softly at dusk a fair dove should come, Open thy window, Nina, for it would be My faithful soul come back to thee----”

Something in Cartwell's voice stirred Rhoda as had his eyes. For the first time in months Rhoda felt poignantly that it would be hard to be cut down with all her life unlived. The mellow voice ceased and Cartwell, rising, lighted a fresh cigarette.

”I am going to get up with the rabbits, tomorrow,” he said, ”so I'll trot to bed now.”

DeWitt, impelled by that curious sense of liking for the young Indian that fought down his aversion, said, ”The music was bully, Cartwell!” but Cartwell only smiled as if at the hint of patronage in the voice and strolled to his own room.

Rhoda slept late the following morning. She had not, in her three nights in the desert country, become accustomed to the silence that is not the least of the desert's splendors. It seemed to her that the nameless unknown Mystery toward which her life was drifting was embodied in this infinite silence. So sleep would not come to her until dawn. Then the stir of the wind in the trees, the bleat of sheep, the trill of mocking-birds lulled her to sleep.

As the brilliancy of the light in her room increased there drifted across her uneasy dreams the lilting notes of a whistled call. Pure and liquidly sweet they persisted until there came to Rhoda that faint stir of hope and longing that she had experienced the day before. She opened her eyes and finally, as the call continued, she crept languidly from her bed and peered from behind the window-shade. Cartwell, in his khaki suit, his handsome head bared to the hot sun, leaned against a peach-tree while he watched Rhoda's window.

”I wonder what he wakened me for?” she thought half resentfully. ”I can't go to sleep again, so I may as well dress and have breakfast.”

Hardly had she seated herself at her solitary meal when Cartwell appeared.

”Dear me!” he exclaimed. ”The birds and Mr. DeWitt have been up this long time.”

”What is John doing?” asked Rhoda carelessly.

”He's gone up on the first mesa for the wildcats I spoke of last night.

I thought perhaps you might care to take a drive before it got too hot.

You didn't sleep well last night, did you?”

Rhoda answered whimsically.

”It's the silence. It thunders at me so! I will get used to it soon.

<script>