She stiffened--Carter felt her stiffen as in a mortal rigor--but she
answered, in level tones: "Oh, nothing much. My saddle-girth burst and
Mr. Carter kindly drove me home. Won't you come in? Well--I'm ever so
much obliged. Good-night."
Whirling homeward through the soft dusk, the tumult which had confused
Carter resolved into its elements, shame, chagrin, wonder, and disgust.
Each swayed him in turn, then faded, leaving pity. Flaring up in his
cabin, his match revealed only concern on his sunburned face. Taking a
packet from under the pillow of his bunk, he unfolded it upon the table,
exposing a glove, a ribbon, and some half-dozen hairs that gleamed,
threads of gold, under the lamplight. One by one he had gleaned them,
picking the first from the back of Helen's coat one day coming out of
Lone Tree.
As he leaned over the trove there was no mawkish sentimentality in his
look, rather it expressed wonder, wonder at himself. For his life had
not always jibed with the canons. To him in their appointed seasons had
come the heats of youth; and if now they had merged in the deeper
instinct which centres on a single mate, the change had been
sub-conscious. The house he had built, the land he tilled, the herds he
had gathered about him were all products of this instinct, provision
against mating, for the one--when he should find her. Yet, though found,
he wondered; wondered at the powerful grip which that small hand had
wound into his heart-strings, that those golden threads should be able
to bind with the strength of cables.
He did not puzzle long. Presently concern again darkened his
countenance, and he murmured, "Poor little woman! poor little thing!"
Could he have seen her just then! Leslie was out talking horse with
Molyneux at the stables, so no eye saw her when, in the privacy of her
bedroom, she snatched the mask from her soul. At first stupefied, she
stared dully at familiar objects until her glance touched a portrait of
Helen on the dresser. That fired her passion, started the wheels of
torture. Dashing it to the floor, she ground her heel into the smiling
face, raving in passionate whispers; then flinging at length on the bed
she writhed like a hurt snake, struck her clinched fists into the
pillows, bit them, her own hands, soft arms. She agonized under the
scorn that belittles hell's fury. Truly, out of her indulgences, her
pleasant mental vices, the gods had twisted whips for her scourging!
But if whips, as claimed, are deterrents of physical crimes, they
stimulate moral diseases; and whereas, previously, Mrs. Leslie had been
merely good-naturedly frivolous, she came from under the lashes a
dangerous woman--the more dangerous because there was no outward
indication of the inward change. With Helen, whom Molyneux brought up
at the next week-end, she was, if anything, kinder in manner, loving her
with gentle pats that gave no suggestion of steel claws beneath the
velvet. These, however, protruded, when the girl borrowed her horse to
pay a visit to Carter.
Mrs. Leslie and Molyneux watched her away from the door. The lady had
plead a headache in excuse for staying at home, but her eyes were devoid
of weary languor. They had flashed as she averted them from the mended
saddle-girth. They glittered as she now turned them on Molyneux.
"Calvert, you amuse me."
"Why?" he asked, flushing.
"Such devotion in that last lingering glance. It was worthy of a boy in
a spasm of calf-love rather than the dashing cavalryman who has tried to
add my reputation to the dozen that hang at his belt."
Molyneux shrugged denial. "That's not true, Elinor. I'm too good a
hunter to stalk the unattainable."