With sincere sympathy, he said: "We all do wrong at times that good may come out of it. You could not foresee the future – the best of us can only guess at the effect of any action. You did the best you knew at the moment. The question you have to face now has only slight relation to the past. No one can enter wholly into another's perplexity – I'm not even sure of a single one of my inferences – but if you are thinking of – separation, I would say, meet this crisis as bravely as you met the other. But I don't believe we should decide any such question selfishly. I am not of those who always seek the side on which lies personal happiness, because a happiness that is essentially selfish won't last. The Captain lives only for you – any one can see that. What he does for you springs from deep affection. What would happen to him – if you left him?"
He paused a moment and watched her subduing her tears; then added: "I won't say I was unprepared for what you've said, for the entire relationship, from our first meeting, seemed too abnormal to be altogether happy. Money will buy a great many desirable things, but it has its limits. At the same time, it is too much to expect of you – If your feeling for him has changed – "
His delicacy, his sympathy for her, was made apparent by the unusual hesitation of his speech, and she would have broken down completely had not Julia Moss called out: "Joe, turn on the lights – it's getting dark."
Conscious of Bertha's emotion, he did not immediately do as he was bidden. "I wish you'd talk this over with Julia," he ended gently; "she's a very wise little woman."
Bertha shook her head. "I didn't intend to talk it over with you. I don't know what possessed me. I had no business to say what I did."
He reassured her. "All you've told me and the part I've guessed is quite safe. I will not even permit Julia to share your confidence till you are willing to speak to her yourself."
As he slowly lighted the studio Bertha was surprised and a little troubled to find that two or three other visitors had slipped in through the dusk, and were grouped about the tea-table, and that the Captain was again the centre of an eager-eyed group. "They treat him as if he were an Eskimo," she thought bitterly, and rose to join the circle and protect him from their inquisition.
Haney was feeling extremely well, and talked with so much of his old time vigor and slash of epithet that his little audience was quite entranced. He enlarged upon the experiences of a year he had spent in Alaska. "Mining up there in them days made gambling slow business," he said. (He had told Bertha that he had made an attempt to get out of "the trade," but she was content to have him put it on less self-righteous grounds.) He contrived to make his hearers feel very keenly the pitiless, long-drawn ferocity of that sunless winter. He made it plain why men in that far land came together in vile dens to drink and gamble, and Moss glowed with the wonder and delight of those great boys who could rush away to the arctic edge of the world and die with laughing curses on their lips.
"What did you all do it for?" he asked, bluntly. "For money?"
"Partly – but more for the love of doing something hard. No man but a miser punishes himself for love of gold – it's for love of what the stuff will buy, that men fight the snows."
While Haney talked of these things Bertha's eyes were musingly turned on the face of the sculptor, and her mind was far from the scenes which Mart so vividly described. This side of his life no longer amused her – on the contrary she shrank from any disclosure of his savage career. She was now as unjust in her criticism as she had been fond in her admiration, and when with darkening brow she cut short his garrulous flow of narrative Julia perceived her displeasure.
Haney apologized, handsomely. "It's natural for the ould bedraggled eagle in the cage with a club on his wrist to dream of the circles he used to cut and the fish he set claw to. In them days I feared no man's weight, and no night or stream. 'Twas all joyous battle to me, and now, as I sit here on velvet with only to snap me fingers for anything I want, I look back at thim fierce old times with a sneaking kind o' wish to live 'em all over again. Bertie knows me weakness. I would talk forever did she lave me go on; but 'tis no blame to her – it was a cruel, bad, careless life."
"When I come West," said Moss, sincerely, "we'll go camping together, and every night by the fire we'll smoke and you can tell me all about your journeys. I assure you they are epic to me."
Dr. Brent, a little later, put in a private word to Bertie. "Now you're going back into the high country and you'll find it necessary to watch the Captain pretty closely. I suspect he'll find his heart thumping briskly when he reaches the Springs. He may stand that altitude all right, but don't let him go higher. He will be taking chances if he goes above six thousand feet. You'd better have Steel of Denver come down and examine him to see how he stands the first few days. I mention Steel because I know him – I've no doubt there are plenty of good men in the Springs."
"What'll I do if he's worse?"
"Bring him back here or go to sea level – only beware of high passes."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE HANEYS RETURN TO THE PEAKS
The forces that really move most men are the small, concrete, individual experiences of life. The death of a child is of more account to its parents than the fall of a republic. Napoleon did not forget Josephine in his Italian campaigns, and Grant, inflexible commander of a half-million men, never failed, even in the Wilderness, to remember the plain little woman whose fireside fortunes were so closely interwoven with his epoch-making wars.
As Ben Fordyce lost interest in the question of labor and capital and the political struggles of the state (because they were of less account than his own combat with the powers of darkness), so Bertha had little thought of the abstract, the sociologic, in her uneasiness – the strife was individual, the problems personal – and at last, weary of question, of doubt, she yielded once more to the protecting power which lay in Haney's gold and permitted herself to enjoy its use, its command of men. There was something like intoxication in this sense of supremacy, this freedom from ceaseless calculation, and to rise above the doubt in which she had been plunged was like suddenly acquiring wings.
She accepted any chance to penetrate the city's life, determined to secure all that she could of its light and luxury, and in return intrusted Lucius with plans for luncheons and dinners, which he carried out with lavish hand.
Mart seconded all her resolutions with hearty voice. "There's nothing too good for the Haneys!" he repeatedly chuckled.
In the midst of other gayeties she had the McArdles over to mid-day dinner one Saturday, and afterwards took them all, a noisy gang, to the theatre – Patrick Haney as much of a boy as his grandsons, McArdle alone being unhappy as well as uneasy.
She went about the shops, buying with reckless hand treasures for the house in the Springs, and this gave her husband more satisfaction than any other extravagance, for each article seemed a gage of the permanency of his home. In support of her mood he urged her to even larger expenditures. "Buy, buy like a queen," he often commanded, as she mused upon some choice. "Take the best!"
There was instruction as well as a guilty delight in all this conjuring with a magic check-book, and Bertha grew in grace and dignity in her rôle as hostess. Her circle of acquaintances widened, but the Mosses, her first friends in the city, were not displaced in her affections. To them she continued to play the generous fairy in as many pleasant ways as they would permit. The theatre continued to be her delight, as well as her school of life, and a box-party followed nearly every dinner. She was like a child in the catholicity of her appetite, for she devoured Shakespearian bread, Ibsen roasts, and comic opera cream-puffs with almost equal gusto – and mentally thrived upon the mixture. To the outsider she seemed one of the most fortunate women in the world.
And yet every day made her less tolerant of the crippled old man at her side. She did not pout or sulk or answer him shortly, but she often forgot him – failed to answer him – not out of petulance or disgust, but because her mind was busy with other people. Gradually, without realizing it, she got into the habit of leaving him to amuse himself, as he best could, for she knew he did not specially care for the pursuits which gave her the keenest joy. In consequence of this unintentional neglect he very naturally fell more and more into the hands of the bar-room spongers who loitered about the hotel corridors. He dreaded loneliness, and it was to keep his companions about him that he became a spendthrift in liquors. Sternly and deliberately temperate during his long career as a gambler, he fell at last into drinking to excess, and on one unhappy afternoon returned to Bertha quite plainly drunk.
She was both startled and disgusted by this sign of weakness, and he was not so blinded by the mist of his potations but that he perceived the shrinking reluctance of her touch as she aided Lucius in lifting him into the bed. His inert, lumpish form was at the moment hideously repulsive to her, and physical contact with him a dreaded thing. What was left if he lost that self-control which had made him admirable? She had always been able to qualify his other shortcomings by saying, "Well, anyhow, he don't drink." She could boast of this no longer.
It was a most miserable night for her. At dinner she was forced to lie about him (for the first time), and she did it so badly that Joe Moss divined her trouble and came generously to her aid with a long and amusing story about Whistler.
The play to which she took her guests did not help her to laughter, for it set forth with diabolic skill the life of a woman who loathed her husband, dreaded maternity, and hated herself – a baffling, marvellously intricate and searching play – meat for well people, not for those mentally ill at ease or morally unstable. Of a truth, Bertha saw but half of it and comprehended less, for she could not forget the leaden hands and flushed face of the man she called husband – and whom she had left in his bed to sleep away his hours of intoxication. She pitied him now – but in a new fashion. Her compassion was mixed with contempt, and that showed more clearly than any other feeling could the depth to which Marshall Haney had sunk.
When she came home at midnight she listened at his door, but did not enter, for Lucius – skilled in all such matters – reported the Captain to be "all right."
She went to her own room in a more darkly tragic mood than she had ever known before. Her punishment, her time for trouble, had begun. "I reckon I'm due to pay for my fun," she said to herself, "but not in the way I've been figuring on." Haney seemed at the moment a complete physical ruin, and the change which his helplessness wrought in her was most radical.
His deeply penitent mood next morning hurt and repelled her almost as much as his maudlin jocularity of the night before. She would have preferred a brazen levity to this humble confession. "'Twas me boast," he sadly asserted, "that no man ever caught me with me eyes full of sand and me tongue twisted – and now look at me! 'Tis what comes of having nothing to do but trade lies with a lot of flat-bottomed loafers in a gaudy bar-room. But don't worry, darlin', right here old Mart pulls up. You'll not see anny more of this. Forget it, dear-heart – won't you now?"
She promised, of course, but the chasm between them was widened, and a fear of his again yielding to temptation cut short her stay in the city, for Lucius warningly explained: "The Captain is settling into a corner of the bar-room with a gang of sponging blackguards around him, and every day makes it less easy for him to break away. I'd advise going home," he ended, quietly. "The Springs is a safer place for him now."
The hyenas were beginning to prowl around the disabled lion, and this the faithful servant knew even better than the wife.
"All right, home we go," she replied, and the thought of "home" was both sweet and perilous.
Haney met her decision with pathetic, instant joy. "I'm ready, I was only waitin'," he said. "After all, your own shack is better than a pearl palace in anny town, and it's gettin' hot besides."
Bertha parted from the Mosses with keen sorrow. Joe had come to be like an elder brother to her – a brother and a teacher, and, next to Ben Fordyce, was more often in her thought than any other human being. She had lost part of her awe of him, but her affection had deepened as she came to understand the essential manliness and simplicity of his character. He redeemed the artist-world from the shame men like Humiston had put upon it.
As she entered for the last time the studio in which she had spent so many happy hours and from whose atmosphere of work and high endeavor she had derived so much mental and moral development she was sad, and this sadness lent a beauty to her face that it had never before attained. She looked older, too; and contrasting her with the girl who had first looked in at his door, Moss could scarcely believe that less than half a year had affected this change in her. He was too keen an observer not to know that part of this was due to a refining taste in hats and gowns, but beneath all these superficial traits she had grown swiftly in the expression of security and power.
He greeted her as usual with a frank nod and (his hands being free from clay) advanced to shake hands. "Don't tell me you've come to say good-bye."
"That's what," she curtly said. "It's up to me to take the Captain home. He's getting into bad habits lying around this hotel."
His face clouded. "I've been afraid of that," he answered, gently. "Yes, you'd better go home. It's harder for a man to have a good, easy time than it is for a woman. But sit down, Julia will be in soon; you mustn't go without seeing her."
After some further talk on trains and other common-places she became abruptly personal. "I've been having a whole lot of fun buying things and planting dollars, but I'm beginning to see an end to that kind of business. After you've got your house filled up with furniture and jimcracks, what you going to do then?"
"Burn 'em."
"And begin all over again? You can't buy out the town. It's a real circus for a while, but I can see there's a limit to it. Once you find out you can just go down here to one of these jewelry-stores and order anything you want – you don't want anything. Here I am with a lot of money that ain't mine, having a gay whirl spending it, but I can see my finish right now. To go on in this line would take all the fun out of life. What am I to do?"
Moss took a seat and looked at her thoughtfully. "I don't know. I used to think if I had money I'd start out and 'do good to people,' but I'm not at all sure that charity isn't all a damned impertinence. A couple of years ago I would have said go in for 'Neighborhood Settlements,' free libraries, 'Noonday Rests,' 'Open-air Funds,' and all the rest of it, but now I ask, 'Why?' We've had our wave of altruism, and I'm inclined to think a wave of selfishness would do us all good – but you're too young to be bothered with these problems. Go home and be happy while you can. Enjoy your gold while it glitters. Work is my only fun – real, enduring fun – and I'm not a bit sure that will last. Whatever you do, be yourself. Don't try to be what you think I or some one else would like to have you. I like you because you are so straight-forwardly yourself; I shall be heart-broken if you take on the disease of the age and begin to prate of your duty."
She listened to him with only partial comprehension of his meaning, but she answered: "I was brought up to think duty was the whole works."
"Yes, and your teacher meant duty to God, duty to others. Well, there's duty to one's self. The war of money and duty is the biggest mix of our day. It's simpler to be poor; then all you've got to worry about is bread and shoes and shingles."
"That's just it. Sometimes I wish I was back in the Golden Eagle, where I – " she ended in mid-sentence.
He laughed. "You sound like a middle-aged financier who mourns (tattooed with dollar-marks) for the days when he used to husk corn at seventy cents a day." She saw the humor of this, but was aware that without a knowledge of Ben Fordyce Joe could not understand her problem, therefore she abandoned her search for light and leading. "Well, anyhow, right here I quit what you fellows call civilization. I hate to lose you and Julia and the rest of the folks, but it's me to the high hills. You'll never know how much you've helped me."
"I hope you'll never know how thoroughly we've done you. An evil-minded person would say we'd worked you for dinners and drives most shameful. However, if you have enjoyed our company as thoroughly as we've delighted in your champagne and birds, we'll cry quits. All my theories of art and life I advance gratis. I ought to do something handsome for you – you've listened so divinely."
Underneath his banter Moss was sincerely moved. It was hard to say good-bye to this curious, earnest, seeking mind, this unspoiled child in whose face the world was being reflected as in a magical mirror. He loved her with frank affection – a pure passion that was more intimate than fraternal love and more exalted, in a sense, than the selfish, devouring passion of the suitor. It would have been difficult for him to say what his relationship to her at the moment was. It was more than friendship, more than brotherly care, and yet it was definably less than that of the lover.
Julia came in and was quite as outspoken in her regret, and both refused to say good-bye at the moment. "We'll see you at the station," they said, and Bertha went away, feeling the pain of parting less keen by reason of this promise.
Afterwards, as the hour for departure came near, she hoped they would not come. It was less difficult to say "I'll see you again" than to utter the curt "good-bye" which means so much in Anglo-Saxon life.
They came, however, together with several others of her friends, but in the bustle and confusion of the depot not much of sentiment could be uttered, and, though she felt that she was going for a long stay, she was prodigal of promises to return soon.
Patrick Haney was there, but refused to go with them. "Sure I'm at the jumpin'-off place now, and to immigrate furder would be to put meself in the hands of the murtherin' redskins." His talk was the touch of comedy which the situation needed. "Av ye don't mind I'll stay wid Fan," he said, a little more seriously, to Haney, who replied:
"All right, 'tis as Fan says," and so they entered the train for the upward climb.
Haney himself had only joy of the return. He sat at one of the windows of the library car and studied the prairie swells with a faint, musing smile, till the darkness fell, and was up early next morning, eager and curious, to see how the increasing altitude would affect him. Only towards the end of the second day after eating his dinner did he begin to feel oppressed.
"I smell the altitude," he confessed – "me breath is shortenin' a bit, but 'tis good to see the peaks again."
In this long ride the girl-wife dwelt dangerously on the bright face of Ben Fordyce. It was the thought of seeing him again that came at last to steal away her regret at parting from her Eastern friends. The splendor of the Eastern world faded at last, and she, too, soared gladly towards the mountains. Every doubt was swallowed up in a pleasure which was at once pure and beyond her control.
Ben would be at the station, she was certain, for Lucius had wired to him the time of their arrival, and he had instantly replied. "I'll be there, and very glad to see you" – these words, few and simple, were addressed to Marshall Haney, but they thrilled her almost as if Ben had spoken them to her. Was he as glad to have her return as she was to meet him again?
"A fine lad," remarked Haney, as he pocketed the envelope. "I wonder does he marry soon? He'd better decide now. I reckon Alice is not long for this climate – poor girl!"
His remark, so simple in itself, pierced to the centre of Bertha's momentary self-deception. "I have no right to think of him. He belongs to Alice Heath!" But the feeling that she herself belonged to Marshall Haney was gone. That she owed him service was true, but since the night of his drunkenness she had definitely and finally abandoned all thought of being his wife, soul to soul, in the rite that sanctifies law. True, he had kept his word, he had not offended again, but the mischief was done. To return to the plane on which they had stood when she gave her promise was impossible.
The day and the hour were such as make the plain lover content with his world. The earth, a mighty robe of closely woven velvet, mottled softly in variant greens, swept away to the west, under a soaring convexity of saffron sky, towards a cloudy altar whereon small wisps of vapor were burning down to golden embers, while beneath lay the dark-blue Rampart range. It was a world for horsemen, for free rovers, and for swift and tireless desert-kine. The course of winds, it lay, a play-ground for tempests that formed along the great divide and swept down over the antlike homes of men, acknowledging no barrier, exultant of their strength of wing and the weight of their horizon-touching armament.
Bertha loved this land, but only because it was an approach to the hills. She would have shuddered at its desolate, limitless sweep, treeless, shelterless, had not the dim forms of the distant peaks she loved so well rose just beyond. She lost her doubt as they approached, welcoming them as the gates of home. She forgot all save the swelling tide of longing in her heart.
As the train drew slowly in she caught sight of Ben's intent face among the throng, and was moved to the point of beating upon the window. He seemed care-worn and older in this glimpse, but at sight of her his sunny smile came back radiantly to his lips and glinted like sunshine from his eyes. In tremulous voice she called: "There he is!"
Self-revelation lay in this ecstatic cry and in the glad haste which kept her on her feet; but Haney, unsuspicious, content, found no cause for jealousy in her innocent and unrestrained delight at getting home.
Progress down the aisle seemed intolerably slow, for the passengers ahead of her, stubbornly sluggish, barred her way, but at last she stood looking into her lover's face, her eager hand pressed between his palms.
"Welcome home!" he called, and drew her to him as if moved almost beyond his control with desire to clasp her to his bosom. In that instant they forgot all their doubts and scruples – overpowered by the sense of each other's nearness.
She was the first to recover her self-command, and, pushing him away with a quick, decisive gesture, turned to aid Mart, whom Lucius was bringing slowly down the step.
Her heart was still laboring painfully as she faced Congdon, but she contrived to return his greeting as he remarked with quizzical glance, "I hope you'll not find our little town dull, Mrs. Haney."
Dull! She wanted to scream out her joy. She felt like racing to the big black team to throw her arms about their necks. Dull! There was no other spot in all the world so exalting as this small town and its over-peering peaks.
"Where is Mrs. Congdon?" she succeeded in asking at last.
"She has visitors and couldn't come," he answered. "But where's that 'mobile we've heard so much about?"
"Coming by fast freight."
"Freight! From all I've heard of your doings in Chicago I expected it to come as excess baggage."
It was cool, delicious green dusk – not dark – with a small sickle of moon in the west, and as they drove up the broad avenue towards home the town, the universe, was strangely sweet and satisfying. It seemed as though she had been gone an age – so much had come to her – so thick was the crowd of new experiences standing between her going and her return – so swiftly had her mind expanded in these months of vivid city life. "I'll never go away again," she said to Ben. "This country suits me."
"I'm glad to hear you say that," he answered, softly. In the most natural way he had put Congdon with Haney in the rear seat and had taken the place beside Bertha, and this nearness filled her with pleasure and an unwonted confusion. How big he was! and how splendid his clear, youthful profile seemed as it gleamed silver-white in the light of the big street-lamps. Never had his magnetic young body acted upon her so powerfully, so dangerously. His firm arm touching her own was at once a delight and a dread. She was all woman at last, awake, palpitant with love's full-flooding tide – bewildered, dizzy with rapture. Speech was difficult and her thought had neither sequence nor design.
Fordyce was under restraint also, and the burden of the talk fell upon Congdon, who proceeded in his amusingly hit-or-miss way to detail the important or humorous happenings, of the town, and so they rolled along up the wide avenue to the big stone steps before the looming, lamp-lit palace which they called home.
Ben sprang out first, glad of another opportunity to take Bertha's hand, a clasp that put the throbbing pain back in her bosom – filling her with a kind of fear of him as well as of herself – and without waiting for the Captain she ran up the walk towards the wide doorway where Miss Franklin stood in smiling welcome.
Her greeting over, the young wife danced about the hall, crying: "Oh, isn't it big and fine! And aren't you glad it's our own!" She appeared overborne by a returning sense of security and ownership, and ran from room to room with all the ecstasy and abandon of a child – but she stopped suddenly in the middle of her own chamber as if a remorseless hand were clutching at her heart. "But it is not mine! – I must give it all up!"
Thrusting this intruding thought away, she hurried back to the library, where the men were seated at ease, sipping some iced liquor in gross content.
Haney was beaming. "It makes me over new to sniff this air again," he was saying. "'Tis a bad plan to let go your hold on mountain air. Me lungs have contracted a trifle, but they'll expand again. I'll be riding a horse in a month."
Ben was sympathetic, but had eyes only for Bertha, whose improvement (in mind as in bearing) astonished and delighted him. Her trip, coming just at the period when her observation was keenest and her memory most tenacious, had subtly, swiftly ripened her. Wrought upon by a thousand pictures, moved by strange words and faces, unconsciously changing to the color of each new conception, deriving sweetness and charm from every chance-heard strain of music and poetry, she had opened like a rose.
The middle-aged are prone to go about the world carrying their habits, their prejudices, and their ailments with them to return as they went forth; but youth like Bertha's adventures out into the world eager to be built upon, ready to be transformed from child to adult, as it would seem, in a day.
"She has achieved new distinction!" Ben exulted as he watched her moving about the room, so supple, so powerful, and so graceful, but, though he was careful not to utter one word of praise, he could not keep the glow of admiration from his eyes.
An hour later as he said good-night and went away with Congdon, his heart burned with secret, rebellious fire. "Was it not hateful that this glorious girl should be doomed to live out the sweetest, most alluring of her years with a gross and crippled old man?" To leave her under the same roof with Mart Haney seemed like exposing her to profanation and despair.
They were hardly out of the gate before Congdon broke forth in open praise of her. "When Mart dies, what a witching morsel for some man!"
Fordyce did not answer on the instant, and when he did his voice was constrained. "You don't think he's in immediate danger of it – do you?"
"Quite the contrary. He looks to be on the upgrade; but it's a safe bet she outlives him, and then think of her with a hundred thousand dollars a year to spend! Talk about honey-pots! – and flies!" After a moment's silence he added, musingly: "Funny how one's ideas change. A year ago I thought she was deeply indebted to him; now I feel that with all his money he can't possibly repay her for what she's giving up on his account. And yet his chink has made her what she is. Money is a weird power when applied to a woman. Tiled bath-rooms, silk stockings and bonnets work wonders with the sex. She's improved mightily on this trip."
After leaving Congdon, Ben went to his apartment and telephoned Alice to say that the Haneys had arrived and that he had left them under their own roof in good repair.
"How is the Captain's health?" she asked, with the morbid interest of the invalid gossip.
"He feels the altitude a little, but that is probably only temporary. They both seem very glad to get home."
"He's made a mistake. He can't live here – I am perfectly sure of it. How is she?"
"Very well – and beautifully dressed, which is the main thing," he added, with a slight return of his humor. "They asked after you very particularly."
Unable to sleep, he went out to walk the night, blind envy in his brain and a hot hunger in his heart, moved as he had never been moved before at thought of Haney's nearness to that glowing girl. Their union was monstrous, incredible.
He no longer attempted to deceive himself. He loved this young wife whose expanding personality had enthralled him from their first meeting. It was not alone that she was possessed of bodily charm – she called to him through the mysterious ways which lead the one man to the predestined woman. The affection he had borne towards Alice Heath was but the violet ray of friendship compared to the lambent, leaping, red flame of his passion for Bertha Haney. She represented to him the mysterious potency and romance of the West – typifying its amazing resiliency, its limitless capability of adaptation. In a way that seemed roundabout and strange, but which was, after all, very simple and very direct, she had lifted her family as well as herself out of poverty back into the comfort which was their right. Odd, masculine, unexpected of phrase, she had never been awkward or cheap. Congdon was right, she was capable of high things. She made mistakes, of course, but they were not those which a shallow personality would make – they sprang rather from the overflow of a vigorous and abounding imagination.