The Way of the Wind | Page 4

tired ears words of infinite sweetness. He
forgave the wanton shrieks of it because of this sweetness, the
sweetness of a capricious woman, all the more sweet because of her
capriciousness.
He was silent from pure happiness at having Celia there beside him,
going over the same road with him in the old blue cart.
From time to time he glanced at her timidly as if half afraid if he
looked too hard the wind might blow her away.
And, indeed, there did appear to be some danger; for the wind that had
loved Seth from the first was apparently jealous of Celia. It tore at her
as though to toss her to unreachable distances in the way it ripped the
tumbleweeds from their small brittle stems and tossed them away.
Seth looked at her profile, white from the fatigue of the journey, but
beautiful as alabaster; at the blue of her eyes; at the delicate taper of her
small white hands that from her birth had done only the daintiest of
service; at the small feet that had never once walked the rough and

sordid pathway of toil.
Beautiful! Beautiful!
His eyes caressed her. Except that he must hold the reins both arms
would have encircled her. As it was, she rested in the strong and tender
half-circle of one.
All at once the wind became frantic. It blew and blew!
Finding it impossible to tear Celia from the tender circling of that arm,
it wreaked its vengeance upon the tumbleweeds, broke them fiercely
from their stems, and sent them pell-mell over the prairie before the tall
blue cart, about it, at the sides of it, a fantastic cortege, airily tumbling,
tumbling, tumbling!
Yes. The wind was jealous of Celia.
Strong as it was, it failed of accomplishing its will, which would have
been to snatch her from the cart and toss her to the horizon in company
with the tumbleweeds. It shrieked its despair, the despair of a jealous
woman balked of her vengeance, tumultuously wild.
At last at about twilight, at the time of day when the prairie skies are
mellow with tints fit for a Turner and the prairie winds sough with the
tenderness of lullabies, resting for a period, in order to prepare for the
fury of the night, they came upon the forks of the two rivers, sparsely
sheltered by a few straggling and wind-blown trees.
Seth reined in the animal, sprang down over the high wheel of the cart
and helped Celia out.
"Darling," he said, "let me welcome you home!"
"Home," she repeated. "Where is it?"
For she saw before her only a slight elevation in the earth's surface, a
mound enlarged.

Going down a few steps, Seth opened wide the door of their dugout,
looking gladly up at her, standing stilly there, a picture daintily
silhouetted by the pearl pink of the twilit sky.
"Heah!" he smiled.
Celia stared down into the darkness of it as into a grave.
"A hole in the ground," she cried.
Then, as the beflowered home she had left rose mirage-like in the
window of her memory, she sobbingly re-stammered the words:
"A ... hole ... in ... the ... ground!"
CHAPTER III.
[Illustration]
It was not yet June, but the winds blow cold on the prairie later than
June at nightfall. The moment the sun goes down, up come the chill
winds.
Sick at heart, Seth coaxed the shuddering Celia down the steps into the
cellar-like habitation dimly lighted by a single half window dug out
mansard fashion at the side.
He was silent, hurt in every fibre of his being. His manner was one of
profound apology. She was right. It was only a hole in the ground; but
he, accustomed to dugouts during the months he had spent on the
prairie preparing for the joy of her coming, had overlooked its
deficiencies and learned to think of it as home.
There were two chairs. He was glad of that. For a long time there had
been only one.
He placed her in the new one, bought in honor of her coming, seating
her deferentially as if she had been a Queen, and went hurriedly about,

building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs along the river
that the gay crackle of them might cheer her.
As she sat looking on, she saw in this humble service not his devotion,
but his humiliation, not his great love for her which glorified all service
humble or exalted, but the fact that he had so descended in the scale of
life as to put his hand to work that she had been used to see done only
by negroes.
Her pride, her only inheritance from haughty slave-holding ancestors,
was wounded. Not all Seth's devotion, not