He was appalled by the change in her. Her interview with Haney had profoundly weakened her, chilled her. She was like some exquisite lamp whose golden flame had grown suddenly dim, and Fordyce was filled with instant, remorseful tenderness. His sense of duty sprang to arms, and without waiting for her to begin he said: "I hate to think of you as a pensioner in this house. You should be in your own home--our home--where I could take care of you. Come, let me take you out of this private hospital--that's what it is."

She struggled piteously to a.s.sure him that she would be back to par in a few days, but he was thoroughly alarmed and refused to listen to further delay.

"Your surroundings are bad, you need a change."

She read him to the soul, knew that this argument sprang not from love, but from pity and self-accusation; therefore, forcing a light tone, she answered: "I don't feel able to take command of a cook and second girl just yet, Bennie dear; besides, you're all wrong about this being a bad atmosphere for me. I'm horribly comfortable here, my own sister couldn't be kinder than Julia is. No, no, wait a few months longer till you get settled a little more securely in business; I may pick up a volt or two more of electricity by that time." Then as she saw his face darken and a tremor run over his flesh, she lost her self-control and broke forth with sudden, bitter intensity: "Why don't you throw me over and marry some nice girl with a healthy body and sane mind? Why cheat yourself and me?"

He recoiled before her question, too amazed to do more than exclaim against her going on.

She was not to be checked. "Let us be honest with ourselves. You know perfectly well I'm never going to get better--I do, if you don't. I may linger on in this way for years, but I will never be anything but a querulous invalid. Now that's the bitter truth. You mustn't marry me--I won't let you!" Then her mood changed. "And yet it's so hard to go on alone--even for a little way."

Her eyes closed on her hot tears, her head drooped, and Ben, putting his arm about her neck and pressing her quivering face against his breast, reproached her very tenderly: "I won't let you say such things, dearest--you must not! You're not yourself to-day."

"Oh yes, I am! My mind is very clear, too horribly clear. Ben dear, I mean all I say--you shall not link yourself to me. I have no delusions now. I'll never be well again--and you must know it."

"Oh yes, you will! Don't give up! You're only tired to-day. You're really much better than you were last week."

"No, I'm not! Let us not deceive ourselves any longer. The change of climate has not done me good. We waited too long. It has all been a mistake. Let me go back to Chester--I'm afraid to die out here. I can't bear the thought of being buried in this soil. It's so bleak and lonely and alien. I want to go back to the sweet, kindly hills--perhaps I can reconcile myself to death there--to sink into the earth on this plain is too dreadful."

He struggled against the weight of her sorrowful pleadings. "This is only a mood, dearest; you are over-tired and things look black to you--I have such days--everybody has these hours of depression, but we must fight them. It would be so much better for us both if I were your husband, then I could be with you and watch over you every hour. I could help you fight these dismal moods. It would be my hourly care. Come, let's go out and seriously set to work to find a cottage."

She was silenced for the moment, but when he had finished his counter-plea she looked up at him with deep-set glance and quietly said: "Ben, it's all wrong. It was wrong from the very beginning. You are lashing yourself into uttering these beautiful words, and you do not realize what you are saying. I am too old for you--Now listen--it's true! I'm twenty years older in spirit. I haven't been really well for ten years. You talk of fighting this. Haven't I fought? I've danced when I should have been in bed. I've had a premonition of early decay for years--that's why I've been so reckless of my strength. I couldn't bear to let my youth pa.s.s dully--and now it's gone! Wait!--I've deceived you in other ways. I've been full of black thoughts, I've been jealous and selfish all along. You deserve the loveliest girl in the world, and it is a cruel shame for me to stand in the way of your happiness just to have you light my darkness for a few hours. I know what you want to say--you think you can be happy with me. Ben, it's only your foolish sense of honor that keeps you loyal to me--I don't want that--I won't have it! Take back your pledge." She pushed away from him and twisted a ring from her finger. "Take this, dear boy, you are absolutely free. Go and be happy."

He drew back from her hand in pain and bewilderment. "Alice, you are crazy to say such things to me." He studied her with suffering in his eyes. "You are delirious. I am going to send the doctor to you at once."

"No, I'm not delirious. I know only too well what I'm saying--I have made my decision. I will never wear this ring again." She turned his words against himself. "You must not marry a crazy woman."

"I didn't mean that--you know what I meant. All you say is morbid and unreasonable, and I will not listen to it. You are clouded by some sick fancy to-day, and I will go away and send a physician to cure you of your madness."

She thrust the ring into his hand and rose, her face tense, her eyes wonderfully big and luminous. She seemed at the moment to renew her health and to recover the imperious grace of her radiant youth as she exaltedly said: "Now I am free! You must ask me all over again--and when you do, I will say _no_."

He sat looking up at her, too bewildered, too much alarmed to find words for reply. He really thought that she had gone suddenly mad--and yet all that she said was frightfully reasonable. In his heart he knew that she was uttering the truth. Their marriage was now impossible--a bridal veil over that face was horrifying to think upon.

She went on: "Now run away--I'm going to cry in a moment and I don't want you to see me do it. Please go!"

He rose stiffly, and when he spoke his voice was quivering with anxiety.

"I am going to send Julia to you instantly."

"No, you're not. I won't see her if you do. She can't help me--n.o.body can, but you--and I won't let you even see me any more. I'm going home to Chester to-morrow; so kiss me good-bye--and go."

He kissed her and went blindly out, their engagement ring tightly clinched in his hand. It seemed as if a wide, cold, gray cloud had (for the first time) entirely covered his sunny, youthful world.

CHAPTER XXVII

MARSHALL HANEY'S SENTENCE

After Alice Heath's carriage had driven away, Haney returned to his chair, and with eyes fixed upon the distant peaks gave himself up to a review of all that the sick woman had said, and entered also upon a forecast of the game.

He was not entirely unprepared for her revelation. He was, indeed, too wise not to know that Bertha must sometime surely find in another and younger man her heart's hunger, but his wish had set that dark day far away in the future. Moreover, he had relied on her promise to confide in him, and it hurt him to think that she had not fulfilled her pledge; yet even in this he sought excuses for her.

"She may love him without knowing it. Anyhow, he's a fine young lad, far better for her than an old shoulder-shot cayuse like meself." His sense of unworthiness became the solvent of other and sweeter emotions. His wealth no longer seemed capable of bridging the deep chasm widening between them.

This day had shown a black sky to him, even before Alice Heath's disturbing call, for Bertha had been darkly brooding at breakfast, and silent at lunch, and immediately after rising from the table had gone away alone, without a word of explanation to any member of her household. She had not even taken her dogs with her, and her face was set and almost sullen as she pa.s.sed out of the door and down the walk.

All this was so unlike her that Mart was greatly troubled. It gave weight and significance to every word of Alice Heath's warning.

Bertha was gone till nearly six o'clock, and her mood seemed no whit lightened as she entered the gate and came slowly up the walk. To Mart's humbly spoken query, "What troubles ye, darlin'?" she made no reply, but went at once to her room.

The old gambler seemed pitiably helpless and forlorn as he sat there in his accustomed chair waiting her return. The bees and birds were busy among the vines, and all the well-oiled machinery of his splendid home was going forward to the end that his sweet girl-wife should be served.

If she were unhappy, of what value were these soft rugs, these savory dishes, this shining silver? There was, in truth, something mocking and terrifying in the swift, well-trained action of the servants, who went about their tasks unmoved and apparently unacquainted with any change in the mind of their young mistress.

In the kitchen the cook was carefully compounding the soup while watching the roast. Lucius, deft and absorbed, was preparing the table, arranging the coffee service and deciding upon the china. On the seat under the pear-trees Miss Franklin was chatting with Mrs. Gilman, and in the barn the coachman could be heard giving the horses their evening taste of green gra.s.s--"and yet how empty, aimless, and foolish it all is if Bertha is unhappy," thought the master.

He grew alarmed for fear she would not come down; but at last he heard her light step on the stairs, and when she came in view his dim eyes were startled by the transformation in her. She had put on the plainest of her gowns, and she wore no jewels. By other ways which he felt but could not a.n.a.lyze she expressed some portentous shift of mood. He could not define why, but her step scared him, so measured and resolute it seemed.

She called to her mother and Miss Franklin and then asked, "Has dinner been announced?"

Her tone was quiet and natural, and Mart was relieved. He answered with attempt at jocularity, "Lucius is this minute winkin' at me over the soup-tureen."

As they took seats at the table Mrs. Gilman exclaimed, "Why, dearie, where did you dig up that old waist?"

"Will it do to visit Sibley in?"

"No indeed! I should say not. When you go back there I want you to wear the best you've got. They'll consider it an insult if you don't."

A faint smile lighted Bertha's pale face. "I don't think they'll take it so hard as all that."

"Are you goin' to Sibley?" asked Mart, an anxious tone in his voice.

"I thought of it. Mother is going over to-night, and I rather guess I'll run over with her. I've never been back, you see, since that night."

There was something ominous in her restraint, in her abstraction of glance, and especially in her lack of appet.i.te. She took little account of her guests and seemed profoundly engaged upon some inward calculation. The beautifully spread table, which would have thrilled her a few short weeks ago, was powerless to even hold her gaze, and it was Lucius (deft and watchful) who brought the meal to a successful conclusion--for the mother was awed and helpless in the presence of the queenly daughter whom wealth had translated into something almost too high and shining for her to lay hand upon.

Miss Franklin did her best, but she was not a person of light and dancing intellectual feet, and she had never understood Haney, anyhow.

Altogether it was a dismal and difficult half-hour.

When the coffee came on Bertha rose abruptly, saying, "Come out into the garden, Mart, I've got something to say to you."

He obeyed with a sense of being called to account, and as they walked slowly across the gra.s.s, which the light of a vivid orange sunset had made transcendently green, he glanced to the west with foreboding that this was the last time he should look upon the kingly peak at sunset time. A flaming helmet of cloud shone upon the chief, and all the lesser heights were a deep, purple bank out of which each serrate summit rose without perspective, sharply set against the other like a monstrous silhouette of cardboard.

It should have been indeed a very sweet and odorous and peaceful hour.

The murmur of the water from the fountain had the lulling sound of a hive of bees as they settle to rest, and to the suffering man it seemed impossible that this, his cherished world, could change to the black chaos which the loss of his adorable wife would bring upon it.

The settee was of wire, and curved so that when they had taken seats they faced each other, and the sight of her, so slender, so graceful, so womanly, filled him with a fury of hate against the a.s.sa.s.sin who had torn him to pieces, making him old before his time, a cripple, impotent, inert, and scarred.

Bertha did not wait for him to begin, and her first words smote like bullets. "Mart, I'm going back to Sibley."