In the Dwellings of the Wilderness. Charlotte Bryson Taylor
waiting for us, just us three from the other end of the world, to lay it open to the light once more."
Abruptly his voice ceased. In the darkness neither could see the other's face. Deane sat and listened silently, immeasurably surprised. Merritt the hardheaded, Merritt the practical, who would sneer at sentimentality, to rhapsodise thus? Deane knew that it is precisely the man most reserved and self-contained, who, when he speaks at all, will go to greater lengths even than the habitually confiding, and lay bare the deep, shy heart of him to its very roots. Deane also knew that when this rare mood fastens on such an one it is to be marvelled at and its tale held sacred; for always it will mark some crisis in the man's life, the outward sign of a stress which perhaps none but himself may know. And because Deane's every nerve thrilled in response to the suggestion in Merritt's words, and because that might be said in darkness, between men, which daylight would show up pitilessly and render commonplace and futilely inane, Deane said slowly, staring up at the great stars that blazed above them:
"I didn't know you felt like that about it too."
Merritt countered with quick eagerness.
"Do you? Can you put yourself back in that old vanished life when you come upon the broken corpse of it here, and reverence it? Can you build these ruined walls again, and see, instead of mounds and trenches, a city with tower-capped walls, and groves of trees, and gardens, teeming with human life whose very ashes have dissolved? That's what I do, every time. It began when I was a little shaver, back home. They wanted to make an engineer of me, but I said I'd rather dig up things that other people had built than spend my time building things for other people to dig up. It sort of took a grip on me—and it never let go."
Deane nodded sympathetically in the darkness.
"I know what you mean, all right. But—well, I had no idea that you felt—er—this way about it."
Merritt laughed.
"I don't know what made it all ooze out to-night," he confessed. "But I've been thinking about it a lot. It '11 be a big thing, Deane. It will mean a good deal to all of us, if we can put it through."
"Why shouldn't we put it through?" Deane questioned.
Merritt sat up and felt himself for matches.
"I don't know!" he answered somewhat dubiously. "No reason, I suppose. But somehow, all along, I haven't been able to see us getting to the end of it. I can plan out to a certain point with a reasonable certainty, barring accidents and the will of God, that things will fall out as I intended. But beyond that point, in a way it is as though I had an inkling that it was the unexpected which would happen. Of course, it is merely nonsense. By the way, hasn't Holloway got back yet?"
"I presume so," Deane answered. "His boy left those rolls of films he insisted on bringing, in the sun yesterday, and they've melted. I told him films would be a good deal of a nuisance in a climate like this."
"He'll come out all right, I guess," Merritt said easily. "It's his first trip, and he's green, but he's a forehanded youngster, and he surely knows how to get good pictures."
The two fell into silence, conscious subtly of a new sympathy between them. Each had penetrated the other's shell, had touched the hidden spring of a feeling which both shared; and without more words it became a bond between them. They smoked quietly, at peace with themselves, with each other, with all the world.
A black figure grew out of the night and came over to them, with the faint glow of a cigarette stabbing a hole in the darkness.
"Apparatus all right?" Deane asked. "Get any views this afternoon?"
"Yes," Holloway answered. "I've been prowling. This place is great. Awfully lonesome sort of feeling it gives a fellow, though, to look into the holes we've dug and think what the old chaps would say if they could see us." Deane and Merritt, unseen, grinned in sympathy. "That brute of a boy got all my films sunstruck—four dozen rolls. I didn't expect to use them much, but I hate to have 'em go, on principle. I believe I'll turn in. Good-night, everybody."
"'Night!" they chorused solemnly.
Holloway disappeared. Soon Deane followed him, and Merritt was left sitting alone in the night, with his hard, weather-worn face and his dream-woven fancies.
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