Fidelia/Chapter 27
DAVID fumbled for the light switch; he pressed it and saw her plainly and as he stared upon her, she became florid with flushes of hot blood and her bosom swelled with her breath and was full. He held out his arms to her as he asked again, as though in the dark when he could not well see her he must have misunderstood. "What happened when I was away, Fidelia?"
"Sam," she said, "I told you about him before; you can't say I didn't tell you about him long ago, David—Sam, Sam Bolton, my husband."
"Your husband," David repeated, dropping his arms. There she was saying the same thing again and in the light. "Bolton your husband! He was your husband, you mean?"
"Yes; of course, David."
"You mean you married him?"
"Of course I married him, David. What did you think, after what I told you? I told you we'd been in camp; did you think after what I'd told you, I wasn't married to him?"
"Married!" repeated David. "Married! You were married and you never told me?"
"But I did or I practically did."
"Practically!" he repeated. "Practically!"
"And I thought he was dead. Any one would have thought he was dead, David! The court thought so."
"The court," said David in his daze. Above him, thunder crashed; the room lights went down but in a moment were bright. "The court thought he was dead, so you did. When did you find out he wasn't?"
"To-day, David."
"To-day. How'd you find out? What happened? What happened when I was away, Fidelia? Did he come here?"
"No, David; he couldn't come here. He's in the war."
She cast no comparison at him but David felt it. Sam Bolton whom she had loved before she knew David Herrick, Bolton with whom she had cooked that happy camp supper, which David could never forget, Sam Bolton, who she thought was dead but who was alive and was her husband, was not here in a safe, comfortable place; he was in the war! "He was in London, when he wrote me," she explained. "He'd just come to London from France where he's been fighting, David. He sent for me to come to London; he wants me with him there."
"You talk," said David, "as though you had an idea of going."
"Of course I'm going, David."
He did not set himself yet to combat her; he did not yet believe what she said. From among the thousand items of this affair which he needed to know before he could combat her, he chose one to ask.
"When was this, Fidelia?"
"What?"
"Your marriage to him."
"In the summer, David."
"What summer?"
"When I had my camp with him. I told you I had my camp with him: you know I told you about that, David."
"I thought it was one supper. You stayed in camp, then. You lived with him."
"Of course, David. I was his wife."
"How long were you?"
"Just eleven days, David."
"What?"
"That was all; just eleven days!"
"Then what happened?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know? Of course you do."
"I don't, David. I thought I did know but I didn't. I was wrong about him, you see. I'm trying to tell you, David; but I can't tell you all in a hurry."
David burst out: "My God, all in a hurry! You're talking about a hurry and we've been married three and a half years!"
"But I thought he'd been dead almost two years, when I married you, David. It was July, five years ago, I married Sam."
"The summer before you came to Northwestern?" David could not put his mind to counting the years.
"No; the summer before that. It was in Idaho, David; near Lakoon, a town named Lakoon, in Idaho. It's in the northern part. We were married there and we went down into the valley below Lakoon, where we camped."
Their bridal camp on the Wisconsin shore flashed into David's thought; so she had had another bridal camp before. With whom? Bolton was yet only a name. David challenged her: "Who was Sam Bolton?"
"Why, I've his picture here," Fidelia said; and she turned to the drawer of her writing desk and brought forth a small, square photograph which was an unmounted snap-shot of a tall, broad-shouldered man with black hair and heavy brows and with a strong, straight nose and vain, willful mouth and chin. He was a handsome man; no one could deny that; and he carried himself with the air of a dare-devil.
David took the picture from her but he held his shaking fingers from tearing it across. He demanded of her: "You've kept this with you all the time we've been married?"
"Oh, no, David. I got it only to-day."
He saw then that this picture was not of her husband of five years ago; the flannel shirt and khaki trousers which he wore were uniform, not camping clothes.
"How did you get it to-day?"
"It came in Sam's letter, which I got to-day."
"How did you get his letter to-day?"
"I went to the post office for it. When you didn't come home, I went to the post office and asked for it and there it was, David; it had been waiting for me almost a week."
"When I didn't come home—what in the world are you talking about?"
"Sam's letter, David. You see, I wrote him—I mean I wrote his brother's wife, Flora Bolton, after your father was here last August because I wanted to be sure I could have children, now, David. I thought Sam was dead; I had good reason to think so; but before you and I had children, didn't I have to be absolutely sure about it, David?"
"What've children to do with this?"
"Why, everything, David. They were all the trouble with your father, weren't they—because I wasn't having them? That was why he stopped taking your money, wasn't it? So I thought I'd have them, David; but I had to make sure then—didn't I?—that Sam was dead. So I wrote Flora Bolton way back in August to find out if the family had ever heard anything of Sam since he was lost. She didn't write back to me, as I thought she would; she didn't answer me at all, though I went and went to the post office to get her letter. She'd sent my letter to Sam in England for him to answer; but I didn't know that, I kept on going to the post office for her letter for weeks, David, until that day I saw Alice in Evanston. I went down to the post office on that day, too; and there was nothing for me then. So I decided it must be all right then about children, David; I decided I wouldn't go again. I didn't go again until this morning; I wouldn't have then, but you'd been away three days. You went to Rock Island to Alice, David, and you were sure you were coming back to have lunch with me the next day; but you didn't. You went home after you'd been with Alice and you just telegraphed me; not a line, not a word about me, David. 'I'll stay another day,' you said, and 'explain later.' So this morning I went down to the post office again to see if there was anything there for me; and there it was, David, with Sam's writing on the envelope and the English stamp and his picture inside."
Now she had in her hand a pale blue envelope with black, bold handwriting displaying characters formed with broad, sweeping flourishes which was addressed, "Mrs. Fidelia Netley, care General Delivery, Chicago." She said, "You see, I signed myself Fidelia Netley to Flora."
"Why not Fidelia Herrick?"
"I didn't tell her I was married. She didn't know I'd been married even to Sam."
"What?"
"So Sam wrote me, as I signed myself to Flora; only he added 'Mrs.' Here's his letter, David."
He took it and snatched out the enclosure.
"Dear Fida," he read the bold flourish of the words. "Who set you to asking about me? What sort is he? Not much mine, I'll wager. A much more proper person, I imagine; your letter reeks of solidarity. You're after the steady years now, aren't you? I gave you days; and you gave me days; but, my God, they were days and nights. Eleven of them, weren't they? They rise like eleven mountains over a plain of mole hills in my memory. Memory! It doesn't seem like memory at all when I dream of you; you are—"
David could read no more. Eleven days they had had together. He thought of the days of Fidelia and himself in camp and how, before their eleventh day, she wanted to break camp. He understood that better now. "What happened," he demanded, "on the eleventh day between you and Bolton?"
"I'll tell you. You see, David, he used to see me at Palo Alto."
"When was this?"
"This was the start. He wanted me to marry him then; he said I must."
"He was in college with you?"
"No; he just lived in California. He wasn't a college man; he wasn't that sort. I liked him, David."
"Liked? That all?"
"He scared off everybody else."
"How?"
"He did. If you knew him, you'd understand."
"Never mind. What did you do with him?"
"Do? In Palo Alto? Nothing, except tell him I wouldn't marry him. Then college was out and I went up into Idaho."
"Why?"
"Why, I had to go somewhere to get away from Sam. I had an invitation to visit a ranch from a girl I knew at Palo Alto. Sam guessed I'd gone with her; and he came after me."
"You mean," said David bitterly, "you went to your friend in Idaho like you went to Dorothy Hess's; then Bolton called for you like I did. You'd done all that before?"
"That's not true, David. I married him but I had no idea of marrying him when I went up to Mondora. The house party was all over before I thought of it. I was going off by myself—"
"Where?"
"I didn't care much. I had no invitation; and I certainly wasn't going back to White Falls. I'd some money sent me from the bank and I was thinking of taking a trip when Sam came. He asked me to ride with him; and I did it. He had a horse for me. It was a wonderful day, David; I mean the weather. But there'd been a lot of rain just before."
"Never mind the weather."
"You don't understand, David; the rain did it. The river was up."
"What river?"
"The one by Lakoon. It wasn't much of a river, usually; you could ride through it; but this day it certainly was up with the water coming down from the mountains. Sam said we could ford it anyway; but we couldn't. We didn't find it out till we were in the middle of it and our horses lost their feet. We were carried down, David."
She caught breath and told on. "There was a sort of canyon there, David. We got carried into it and lost our horses. They drowned. We almost drowned. I told you about that; I know, I told you something about this once."
"You did," said David. This, of course, was the time when she had to fight water to live and which she had mentioned to him on that morning they saw the sunrise together.
"David, I had no idea of marrying Sam when we rode into that river. I'd just been riding with him; then, there we were in the water, and our horses drowned and we—we had to fight for our lives—I'll tell you! He'd help me and then I'd have a chance to help him when the water was whirling us about. It took you under, David; and there wasn't any use trying to land. You couldn't, the way the rocks went up. You've seen a canyon, David. You just had to go with the water and beat and beat with all your strength till you could get to the top and suck in a breath.
"Then all of a sudden it stopped, when it looked like it never would. The canyon, I mean. We weren't in the water; we were ashore. We were lying side by side on some rocks and we were holding on to each other laughing; and I wasn't tired at all. Sam wasn't tired."
She stopped with her bosom rising and falling not from her effort in speaking; she was living again that moment on the rock in Sam Bolton's arms and David saw her eyes agleam.
"I felt wonderful, David. I thought I'd have to fight the water maybe an hour more; I didn't know; then it was all over and I had all that strength left. Sam felt the same way. It was just about noon and he said: 'We can be married this afternoon and come back here and camp beside this damned river.'
"That's what he said, David. We'd beaten the river, you see; we'd beaten it together. But he didn't feel through; I didn't. I felt just sort of only started. I wanted to do something else hard and risky that I'd never done before. I said, 'All right, Sam.' I was lying on a rock, I remember; it was in the sun and hot. He'd let go of me and I sat up in the sun with my hair down to get it dry."
"Damn!" cried David and saw her in the sun with her hair down and Bolton's arms about her.
"That's the way it was! We walked to the nearest place where Sam bought horses and we rode to Mondora and bought things and got married in Lakoon by the minister there and we rode down to the river, near where we went in, and we camped there. I was his wife for eleven days. Then Sam went away."
"At the end of eleven days?"
"No; fourteen. I mean we got along for eleven days; we got along all right for a while."
"Yes," said David. "He says so in his letter."
"Then we had a terrible time."
"Why?"
"It was terrible, David. It went on three days and then I woke up in the morning and Sam was gone. He'd taken his horse and a few things and gone. There was a paper pinned to my blanket. 'Fida,' it said. He called me 'Fida.'"
"I saw that."
"He always did, David. I didn't like it, as I do Fidel from you. He knew I didn't like it so he always called me 'Fida' to tease me. 'I'm going off to give you time to get me straight in your head,' he said. This is the note, David. 'I'll be back by night and if you're here, you mean you'll be a good girl. If you're gone, don't fear that I'll follow you.' I stayed in camp till noon, David. Then I went up to the town, to Lakoon."
"You mean you left him?"
"I went up to the town."
"What did he do?"
"I don't know but he didn't follow me to Lakoon. But he did come back to camp and stay there two days."
"How do you know that?"
"I saw the smoke of our fire."
"'Our,'" David repeated. "You weren't in camp then?"
"His fire, I mean, where ours used to be."
"How did you know it was his?"
"I saw him about the camp."
"Then you went back to camp!"
"I didn't; I almost did; but I didn't. I never spoke with him again and I don't think he saw me. I'm sure he didn't. Then he was gone, David. I heard he sold the horse he bought for himself the day we got married; he sold it to a man near Mondora and he took the train from there."
"What did you do?"
"I went to Portland. It just happened to be Portland. I didn't go to anybody I knew. I didn't mention to anybody that I'd been married. It turned out that I didn't have to."
"You mean you had no baby."
"No; and I found out that Sam never told anybody, not even his own people. Neither of us wrote a letter from camp. Nobody knew, except people in Lakoon who never saw either of us before or since. Then in Portland, more than a year afterwards, I heard Sam was dead. He'd been killed in Alaska, they said."
"Who said?"
"His own family. They'd been trying to locate him because of some trouble over a land title. His brother wanted to sell some land that Sam owned a share of; so Hartley had to trace Sam and they found he'd gone to Alaska and they got evidence that he'd died there. Anyway, they brought it into court and it was good enough to let Hartley sell the land."
"What did you do about it?"
"Me? I just found out what I could, David. I hadn't told Hartley that Sam married me; and I certainly wouldn't tell then. It would look like I was after a share of their land. I didn't want any land."
"But why didn't you tell me?"
"I'm telling you now, David, now that I know Sam's alive. He's my husband; he's never married any one else; he's always wanted me. No one'll say they won't touch his money because he's married to me. I'm going to him, David; I'm going." And David realized that she wanted to go.
He realized part, at least, of the hurt to her from his father; he realized part of the hurt to her from his own conduct in the last three days when he had left her alone to her own imaginings and interpretations. This hurt would have healed; he could have healed it by now with his explanation of what he had done, if that letter from Bolton had not arrived and she had not called for it. But that letter, with its fact that Bolton was alive, made this irremediable. For it did not merely bear the news that her husband lived; reaching her when it did, under the circumstances, it regained for Bolton something, at least, of his old domination over her. And David, confronting her, felt it.
He felt that that man who had cooked with her the camp supper which had tasted "the best ever," though it was burnt to a crisp—that man who had been vague before and who, besides, had been dead and yet who had been the one of whom David never wanted to think—he felt that that man was drawing his wife away.
David Herrick's wife but also Sam Bolton's; for Bolton had possessed her; he not merely had cooked one camp supper with her; he had been her husband and made her happy for eleven days, so happy that, after she had left him, she almost returned to Bolton; almost, but not quite. Now she would go back to him.
David said, "This is why I stayed away from you, Fidelia. I went from Rock Island early in the morning to Itanaca. I found my mother very sick."
"Why, David! Why, David, what was the matter?"
"I couldn't find out at once; that was one of the reasons I had to stay. It wasn't the sort of a sickness a person admits, Fidelia. I'm not telling you this to have you pity me. I don't want pity, Fidelia; but I won't have you have any wrong idea about what I meant by staying away. I found my mother dying."
"Oh, David, she's—dead?"
He shook his head. "They give her a year, Fidelia." And he told her the trouble.
"Oh, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you send for me?"
He thought, "If I had, she'd not have got that letter. It would be lying in the post office without power over her."
"I couldn't send for you," he said. "No one else knows the truth but the doctor and mother and me and you, now. The one thing to do was not to make a fuss over it."
"I'd not make a fuss over her. But I could have done something. I love her so, David. Oh, I love her so."
"She doesn't want anything done."
Fidelia touched him; her fingers closed on his wrist as she appealed, "But now, now they're using your money, David!" And at this, he had to shake his head.
Her hand unclasped and drew from him. "Now they will, David. I can do that for her; now he'll take your money, for I'm going away."
She half turned from him, with her hand at the bosom of her dress and he saw that she was pulling at the snaps. For an instant, he imagined that she meant to dress for the street and to go at once; but when she dropped off her dress she went on preparing for bed. She offered no physical act for him to oppose; she merely prepared for bed in their room, as she had always done; and when she had braided her hair and was in her nightdress, she stepped to him and kissed him: "Good night, David," she said and she got into her own bed.
He did not undress. He sat on his bed and gazed sometimes at Bolton's wife; after she was in bed, he switched off the light and raised the blind and the window.
A cool, damp wind blew in off the lake. The rain was over and the lightning had become faint and distant; it flashed very far away and the thunder was merely an echo out of the blackness over the water but it reminded David Herrick how tremendous could be the might of God, call him God or Nature or All-Being or whatever he wished.
David was thinking of him as God, the God of the Eternity which he had defied and which had made him tired, who had dealt with David Herrick this day.
It was upon the following day, in the afternoon, that Fidelia left him.