The Naulahka | Page 5

where she strengthened so many
sufferers for the last parting, where she lived with death and dealt with
it, where she went about softly, soothing unspeakable pain, learning the
note of human anguish, hearing no sound but the murmur of suffering
or relief, she sounded one night the depths of her own nature, and
received from -an inward monitor the confirmation of her mission. She
consecrated herself to it afresh with a joy beyond her first joy of
discovery.
And now, every night at half-past eight, Tarvin's hat hung on the

hat-rack in the hall-way of her home. He removed it gloomily at a little
after eleven, spending the interval in talking over her mission with her
persuasively, commandingly, imploringly, indignantly. His indignation
was for her plan, but it would sometimes irrepressibly transfer itself to
Kate. She was capable not only of defending her plan, but of defending
herself and keeping her temper; and as this last was an art beyond Nick,
these sessions often came to an end suddenly, and early in the evening.
But the next night he would come and sit before her in penitence, and
with his elbows on his knees, and his head supported moodily in his
hands, would entreat her submissively to have some sense. This never
lasted long, and evenings of this kind usually ended in his trying to
pound sense into her by hammering his chair-arm with a convinced fist.
No tenderness could leave Tarvin without the need to try to make
others believe as he did; but it was a good-humoured need, and Kate
did not dislike it. She liked so many things about him, that often as they
sat thus, facing each other, she let her fancy wander where it had
wandered in her school-girl vacations--in a possible future spent by his
side. She brought her fancy back again sharply. She had other things to
think of now; but there must always be something between her and
Tarvin different from her relation to any other man. They had lived in
the same house on the prairie at the end of the section, and had risen to
take up the same desolate life together morning after morning. The sun
brought the morning greyly up over the sad grey plain, and at night left
them alone together in the midst of the terrible spaces of silence. They
broke the ice together in the muddy river near the section-house, and
Tarvin carried her pail back for her. A score of other men lived under
the same roof, but it was Tarvin who was kind. The others ran to do
what she asked them to do. Tarvin found things to do, and did them
while she slept. There was plenty to do. Her mother had a family of
twenty-five, twenty of whom were boarders--the men working in one
capacity or another directly under Sheriff. The hands engaged in the
actual work of building the railroad lived in huge barracks near by, or
in temporary cabins or tents. The Sheriffs had a house; that is, they
lived in a structure with projecting eaves, windows that could be raised
or lowered, and a verandah. But this was the sum of their conveniences,
and the mother and daughter did their work alone with the assistance of

two Swedes, whose muscles were firm but whose cookery was vague.
Tarvin helped her, and she learned to lean on him; she let him help her,
and Tarvin loved her for it. The bond of work shared, of a mutual
dependence, of isolation, drew them to each other; and when Kate left
the section-house for school there was a tacit understanding between
them. The essence of such an understanding, of course, lies in the
woman's recognition of it. When she came back from school for the
first holiday, Kate's manner did not deny her obligation, but did not
confirm the understanding, and Tarvin, restless and insistent as he was
about other things, did not like to force his claim upon her. It wasn't a
claim he could take into court.
This kind of forbearance was well enough while he expected to have
her always within reach, while he imagined for her the ordinary future
of an unmarried girl. But when she said she was going to India she
changed the case. He was not thinking of courtesy or forbearance, or of
the propriety of waiting to be formally accepted as he talked to her on
the bridge, and afterward in the evenings. He ached with his need for
her, and with the desire to keep her.
But it looked as if she were going--going in spite of everything he
could say, in spite of his love. He had made her believe in that, if it was
any comfort; and it was real enough