George Gibbs - The Silent Battle

He was awake now, and blundered forward eagerly to take the branch which she had lifted from the wood-pile. But she yielded grudgingly.

“I’m to do my share—that we agreed–”

“No—you’re a woman. You shall do nothing—go into the hut and rest.”

“I’m not tired.”

Her appearance belied her words. He looked down at her tenderly and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.

“You have not slept?”

“Oh, yes, I slept,” looking away.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“It wasn’t necessary.”

She smiled, but did not meet his gaze, which she felt was bent eagerly in search of her own.

“Where did you sleep?” he asked again.

“In the shelter—beside you.”

“And I did not know! Do you think you can forgive me?”

She put her hand to her shoulder and gently removed his fingers. But his own seized hers firmly and would not let them go.

“Listen, please,” he pleaded, “won’t you? I want you to understand—many things. I want you to know that I wouldn’t willingly have slept there for anything in the world. It’s a matter of pride with me to make you comfortable. I’m under a moral obligation to myself—it goes deeper than you can ever guess—to bring you safely out of this, and give you to your people. You don’t know how I’ve blessed the chance that threw you in my way—here—since I’ve been in the woods—that it happened to be my opportunity instead of some one else’s who didn’t need it as I did. I did need it. I can’t tell you how or why, but I did. It doesn’t matter who I am, but I want you to appreciate this much, at least, that I never knew anything of the joy of living until I found it here, the delight of the struggle to satisfy the mere pangs of healthy hunger—yours and mine, the wonderful ache of muscles stretched to the snapping point.” He stopped, with a sharp sigh.

“Oh, I know you can’t understand all this. I don’t think I want you to—or why it hurts me to know that for one night at least you have suffered–”

“I do understand, I think,” she murmured slowly. She had not looked at him, and her gaze sought the distant trees. “I did not suffer, though,” she added.

“You had been crying—they hurt me, too, those anxious eyes of yours.”

“I was afraid you might not come back, that was all,” she said frankly. “I’m rather useless, you see.”

He took her other hand and made her look at him.

“You felt the need of me?” he queried.

“Yes, of course,” she said simply. “What would I have done without you?”

He laughed happily, “What wouldn’t you have done—if you hadn’t cut your finger?”

She colored and her eyes, in some confusion, sought the two trees which still bore the evidence of her ill-fated building operation.

“Yesterday, when I was away you started to build a shack for me,” he went on. “It was your right, of course–”

“No, no,” she protested, lowering her head. “I thought you’d like it so, I–”

“I understand,” gently. “But it seems–”

“It was a selfish motive after all,” she broke in again. “Your strength is more important than mine–”

He smiled and shook his head.

“You can’t mislead me. Last night I learned something of what you are—gentle, courageous, motherly, self-effacing. I’ll remember you so—always.”

She disengaged her hands abruptly and took up the saucepan.

“Meanwhile, the breakfast is to be cooked—” she said coolly. There was no reproof in her tone, only good fellowship, a deliberate confirmation of her promises of the night before.

With a smile he took the saucepan from her hand and went about his work. It seemed that his failure yesterday to find a way out meant more to him this morning than it did to her. His limbs were heavy, too, and his body ached from top to toe; but he went to the brook and washed, then searched the woods for the blueberries that she liked and silently cooked the meal.

As he did not eat she asked him, “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Not very.”

He took up a fish and turned it over in his fingers. “I think I’ll wait for the venison pasty.”

“Don’t you feel well?”

“Just a little loggy,” that’s all. “I think I slept too long.”

She looked up at him suddenly, and then with friendly solicitude, laid her fingers lightly along his brow. The gesture was natural, gentle, so exquisitely feminine, that he closed his eyes delightedly, conscious of the agreeable softness of her fingers and the coolness of their touch.

“Your brow is hot,” she said quickly.

“Is it?” he asked. “That’s queer, I feel chilly.”

“You’ve caught a bad cold, I’m afraid,” she said, removing her fingers. “It’s very—very imprudent of you.”

Not satisfied with the rapidity of her diagnosis, he thrust his hand toward her for confirmation.

“I haven’t any fever, have I?”

Her fingers lightly touched his wrist.

“I’m afraid so. Your pulse is thumping pretty fast.”

“ Very fast?”

“Yes.”

“You must be mistaken.”

“No, you have fever. You’ll have to rest to-day.”

“I don’t want to rest. I couldn’t if I wanted to.”

“You must !” she said peremptorily. “There’s nothing but the firewood. I can get that.”

“There’s the shack to build,” he said.

“The shack must wait,” she replied.

“And the deer to be butchered?”

She looked at the carcass and then put her fingers over her eyes. But she looked up at him resolutely.

“Yes,” she persisted, “I’ll do that, too—if you’ll show me how.”

He looked at her a moment with a soft light in his deep-set eyes and then rose heavily to his feet.

“It’s very kind of you to want to make me an invalid,” he said, “but that can’t be. There’s nothing wrong with me. What I want is work. The more I have the better I’ll feel. I’m going to skin the deer.” And disregarding her protests, he leaned over and caught up the hind-legs of the creature, dragging it into the bushes.

The effort cost him a violent throbbing in the head and pains like little needle pricks through his body. His eyes swam and the hand that held his knife was trembling; but after a while he finished his work, and cutting a strong young twig, thrust it through the tendons of the hind legs and carried the meat back to camp, hanging it high on a projecting branch near the fire.

She watched him moving slowly about, but covered her eyes at the sight of his red hands and the erubescent carcass.

“Don’t you feel like a murderer?” she asked.

“Yes,” he admitted, “I think I do; half of me does—but the hunter, the primitive man in me is rejoicing. There’s an instinct in all of us that belongs to a lower order of creation.”

“But it—it’s unclean–”

“Then all meat is unclean. The reproach is on the race—not on us. After all we are only first cousins to the South-Sea gentlemen who eat one another,” he laughed.

“I don’t believe I can eat it,” she shuddered.

“Oh, yes, you will—when you’re hungry.”

“I’ll never eat meat again,” she insisted. “Never! The brutality of it!”

“What’s the difference?” he laughed. “In town we pay a butcher to do our dirty work—here we do it ourselves. Our responsibilities are just as great there as here.”

“That’s true—I never thought of that, but I can’t forget that creature’s eyes.” And while she looked soberly into the fire, he went down to the stream and cleansed himself, washing away all traces of his unpleasant task. When he returned she still sat as before.

“Why is it?” she asked thoughtfully, “that the animal appetites are so repellent, since we ourselves are animals? And yet we tolerate gluttony—drunkenness among our kind? We’re only in a larva state after all.”