"How is the Captain's health?" she asked, with the morbid interest of the invalid gossip.

"He feels the alt.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion 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.

"All she needs is contact with people of the right sort. She is capable of the highest culture," he concluded.

That she was more vital to him than any other woman in the world he now knew, but he acknowledged nothing base in this confession. He was not seeking ways to possess her of his love--on the contrary, he was resolved to conduct himself so n.o.bly that she would again trust and respect him. "My love is honorable," he said. "I will go forward as in the beginning--why should I not?--enjoying her companionship as any honest man may do."

The question of his relation to Alice was not so easily settled. She had come to irritate him now. Her changeable, swift-witted, moody, hysterical invalidism had begun to wear upon him intolerably. Everything she did was wrong. It was brutal even to admit this, but he could no longer conceal it either from himself or from her. It was deeply, sadly painful to recall the promise, the complete confidence and happiness with which they had both started towards the West. How sure of her recovery they had been, how gay and confident of purpose! Now she not only refused to listen to his demand for an early marriage, but hampered and annoyed him in a hundred ways. As he walked the silent night he was forced to acknowledge that she had been right in delaying their union.

And yet how dependent upon him she was. Her life was so tragically inwound with his that to think of shaking away her hand seemed the act of a sordid egoist.

"And even were I free, nothing is solved."

The situation took on the insoluble and the tragic. In the fashion of well-bred, soundly nurtured American youth he had thought of such complications only as subjects for novelists. "There must be concealment, but not duplicity, in my att.i.tude," he decided. He longed for the constant light of Bertha's face, the frequent touch of her hand.

Her laughter was so endlessly charming, her step so firm, so light, so graceful. The grace of her bosom--the sweeping line of her side--

He stopped there. In that direction lay danger. "She trusts me, and I will repay her trust. She has chosen me to be her adviser, putting her wealth in my hands!--Well, why not? We will see whether an honorable man cannot carry forward even so difficult a relationship as this. I will visit her every day, I will enjoy her hospitality as freely as Congdon, and I will fulfil my promise to Alice--if she asks it of me."

But deep under the sombre resolution lay an unuttered belief in his future, in his happiness--for this is the prerogative of youth. The dim mountains, the sinking crescent moon, and the silence of the plain all seemed somehow to prophesy both happiness and peace.

CHAPTER XXV

BERTHA'S DECISION

It was good to wake in her old room and see the morning light breaking in golden waves against the peaks, to hear her dogs bay and to listen to the murmuring voice of the fountains on the lawn. It was deliciously luxurious to sit at breakfast on the vine-clad porch with the shining new coffee-boiler before her, while Miss Franklin expressed her admiration of the napery and china which the Mosses had helped her to select.

It was glorious to go romping with the dogs about the garden, and most intoxicating to mount her horse and ride away upon the mesa, mad with speed and ecstatic of the wind. No one could have kept pace with her that first day at home. She ran from one thing to the other. She unpacked and spread out all her treasures. She telegraphed her mother and 'phoned her friends. She gave direction to the servants and examined every thing from the horses' hoofs to the sewing-machine. She went over the house from top to bottom to see that it was in order. She was crazy with desire of doing. Her mid-day meal was a mere touch-and-go lunch, but when at last she was seated in her carriage with Haney and Miss Franklin she fell back in her seat, saying, "I feel kind o' sleepy and tired."

"I should think you would!" exclaimed her teacher.

"Of all the galloping creatures you are the most wonderful. I hope you're not to keep this up."

Haney put in a quiet word. "She will _not_. Sure, she cannot. There'll be nothin' left for to-morrow."

Their ride was in the nature of a triumphal progress. Many people who had hesitated about bowing to them hitherto took this morning to unbend, and Mart observed, with a good deal of satisfaction: "The town seems powerful cordial. I think I'll launch me boom for the Senate."

At the bank-door, where the carriage waited while Bertha transacted some business within, he held a veritable reception, and the swarming tourists, looking upon the sleek and shining team and the gray mustached, dignified old man leaning from his seat to shake hands, wondered who the local magnate was, and those who chanced to look in at the window were still more interested in the handsome girl in whose honor the president of the bank left his mahogany den.

In truth, Bertha had won, almost without striving for it, the recognition of the town. Those who had never really established anything against her seized upon this return as the moment of capitulation. There was no mystery about her life. She was known now, and no one really knew anything evil of her--why should she be condemned?

In such wise the current of comment now set, and Mrs. Haney found herself approached by ladies who had hitherto pa.s.sed her without so much as a nod. She took it all composedly, and in answer to their invitations bluntly answered: "The Captain ain't up to going out much, and I don't like to leave him alone. Come and see us."

She was composed with all save Fordyce, who now produced in her a kind of breathlessness which frightened her. She longed for, yet dreaded, his coming, and for several days avoided direct conversation with him. He respected this reserve in her, but was eager to get her comment on the East.

"How did you like New York," he asked one night as they were all in the garden awaiting dinner.

"It scared me," she answered. "Made me feel like a lady-bug in a clover-huller; but it never phased the Captain," she added, with a smile. "'There's nothin' too good for the Haneys,' says he, and we sure went the pace. We turned Lucius loose. We spent money wicked--enough to buy out a full-sized hotel."

Her quaint, shrewd comment on her extravagances amused Ben exceedingly, and by keeping to a line of questioning he drew from her nearly all her salient experiences--excepting, of course, her grapple with the degenerate artist.

"Lucius turned out the jewel they said he was?"

She responded with enthusiasm. "I should say he did! He knew everything we wanted to know and more too. We'd have wandered around like a couple of Utes if it hadn't been for him. _When in doubt ask Lucius_, was our motto."

She told stories of the elder Haney and the McArdles, and described the trials of the children in their new home till Ben laughingly said: "It's hard to run somebody else's life--I've found that out."

And Haney admitted with a chuckle that Mac was "a little bewildered, like a hen with a red rag on her tail--divided in his mind like. As for Dad, he still thinks me a burglar on an improved plan."

They also talked of Bertha's studies, for Miss Franklin began at once to give her daily instruction in certain arts which she considered necessary to women of Mrs. Haney's position, and always at the moment of meeting they spoke of Alice--that is to say, Haney with invariable politeness asked after her health, and quite as regularly Ben replied: "Not very well." Once he added: "I can hardly get her out any more. She seems more and more despondent."

This report profoundly troubled Bertha, and the sight of Alice's drawn and tragic face made her miserable. There was something in the sick woman's gaze which awed her, and she was careful not to be left alone with her. The thought of her suffering and its effect on Ben threw a dark shadow over the brightness of her world. She was filled, also, with a growing uneasiness by reason of Mart's change of att.i.tude towards herself. In the excitement of his home-coming he seemed about to regain a large part of his former health and spirits. His eyes brightened, his smile became more frequent, the appealing lines of his brow smoothed out, and save for an occasional shortening of the breath his condition appeared to be improving.

This access of vitality was apparent to Bertha, and should have brought joy to her as to him; but it did not, for with returning vitality his att.i.tude towards her became less of the invalid and more of the lover.

He said nothing directly--at first--but she was able to interpret all too well the meaning of his jocular remarks and his wistful glances.

Once he called her attention to the returning strength in his arm. "The ould man is not dead yet," he exulted, lifting his disabled arm and clinching his fist. "I feel younger than at any time since me accident,"

and as he spoke she perceived something of the lion in the light of his eyes.

One night as she was pa.s.sing his chair he reached for her and caught her and drew her down upon his knee. "Sit ye down a wink. Ye're always on the move like a flibberty-bidget."

She struggled free of his embrace, her face clouded with alarm and anger. "Don't be a fool," she said, harshly.

He released her, saying, humbly: "Don't be angry, darlin', 'tis foolish of me, an ould crippled wolf, to be thinking of matin' with a fawn like y'rself. I don't blame ye. Go your ways."

She went to her room, with his voice--so humbly penitent and resigned--lingering in her ears, trembling with the weight of the burden which his amorous mood had laid upon her.

She resented his action the more because life at the moment was so full of joy. Each morning was filled with pleasant duties, and each afternoon they drove to the office to discuss the mines with Ben, and in the evening he called to sit for an hour or two on the porch, smoking, talking, till Mart grew sleepy and yawned. These meetings were deliciously, calmly delightful, for Mrs. Gilman or Miss Franklin was always present, and, though the talk was general, Ben talked for her ears at times, but always impersonally, and she honored him for his delicacy, his reserve, his respect for her position as a married woman, recognizing the care with which he avoided everything which might embarra.s.s her.

And now, by force of Mart's humble suing, her half-forgotten scruples were revived. Her uneasiness began again. A decision was finally and definitely thrust upon her. Instantly she was beset by all her doubts and desires, and the sky darkened with clouds of trouble.

To make Mart happy was still her wish, but the way was not so easy of choice, nor so simple to follow as it had once seemed. The briers were thick before her feet. There was so much of personal gratification, so much of selfish pleasure, in remaining his companion, warmed and defended by all the comfort and dignity which his wealth had brought to her, that it seemed a kind of treachery to halt with her duty half done.

To be his spouse, to become the mother of his children, this alone would ent.i.tle her to his bounty. "I can't do it!" she cried out--"I can't, I can't!" And yet not to do his will was to remain a pensioner and to be under indictment as an adventuress.

She had read somewhere these words from a great philosopher: "The woman who bears a child to any man should instantly be lawfully seized of one-half his goods, for by that sublime act she takes her life in her hand as truly as the soldier who charges upon an invading host. The anguish of maternity should sanctify every woman."

On the other side of her hedge lay enticing freedom. It seemed at times as though to be again in the little office of the Golden Eagle Hotel would be a more perfect happiness than this she now enjoyed--but that, too, was illusory. How could she repay the money she had used? The moment she left Marshall Haney she would not only be poor, she would be profoundly in his debt. Where could she find the money to repay him and to make her schooling possible?