"Hell!"
Grasping her hand, he had almost kissed it when she jerked it suddenly
away. "There's Karl--and Jenny--standing in the door." Noting his
sudden discomposure, she added: "Never mind, she didn't see you. Won't
you come in?"
"Can't--put me late for the choring."
This was only one of a dozen times that he had refused the invitation.
A little surprised, she watched him turn and drive away, then she saw
Nels coming up from the stable, and the thought was lost in wonder as to
whether or no he had seen Molyneux take her hand.
Now, as a matter of fact, Nels had; moreover, he mentioned it to Jenny
as he helped her wipe the supper dishes, and thereby earned much
trouble. "I tank," he observed, "something is doings. Cappan he taken
the mistress hand. Pratty soon the boss no have womans."
His chuckle died under her wrathful stare. "Mention that to any one,
Nels, an' Mr. Bender 'll break every bone in your body."
It was not so easy to dispose of her own misgivings. As, that evening,
she arranged the dishes in the homemade plate-rack, she turned sombre
eyes on Helen, musing by the stove. Often her lips opened, but sound
trembled on its thresholds. She kept her own counsel till Bender
dropped in on his next visit.
It was perfectly natural for her to turn to him for counsel. Coming to
her as he did, in the moment of her sore trouble, her girl's heart had
opened and vented on him the love that had been prisoned since the death
of her mother; and ever since a perfect understanding of kindred natures
had obtained between them.
"They're talking about her in the settlements something scan'lous," she
told him. "Tongues is clacking from here to Lone Tree. Why _don't_ Mr.
Carter come home? Kain't you persuade him?"
But Bender shook his head. "No, he's stiffer'n all he-- Beg your
pardon! I mean he's dreadful sot in his mind. I wouldn't envy the one
that went to advise him."
Before going away Bender touched on a matter that was now old history in
their intercourse. "Changed your mind yet, little girl?"
It was now Jenny's turn to sorrowfully shake her head. "It would be my
an' pleasure to be wife to a big, good man like you. But I just kain't
bring myself to put you where any man could cast my shame in your face."
"Oh, shore!" he protested. "You was that little--a teeny bit of a
thing, jes' seventeen--on'y a baby. Who'd be holding it agin you?
Besides--he's in England."
"Yes--he's in England," Jenny slowly repeated. "But--"
He did not see the queer look she sent after him as he rode away.
*XVI*
*A HOUSE-PARTY*
One morning, some three weeks after Molyneux's departure, Helen sat in
her doorway reading, as certain an indication of coming spring as the
honk of the wild geese speeding northward on the back of the amorous
south wind. As yet the prairie sloughs wore mail of ice, but from dizzy
heights those keen-eyed voyagers discerned tricklings and wee pools
under sheltered forest banks, sufficient till the laggard sun should
smite the snows and fill the air with tinklings and gurglings, loose the
strange sound of running waters on the frozen silence. Another month
would do it. Already the drifts were packing, and the hard trails
traversed the sinking snows like mountain chains on a relief map. In
Helen's door-yard stratas of yellow chips, debris of the winter's
furious firing, were beginning to appear; with them, lost articles;
indeed, Nels was gobbling joyously over the retrieval of an axe, when
Leslie's team and cutter came swinging into the yard.
Mrs. Leslie was driving, and, seeing Helen, she screamed from a hundred
yards: "They are coming! All of 'em!"
"Who?" Helen asked, when the ponies stopped at the door.
"Why, Edith Newton, Mrs. Jack Charters, Sinclair Rhodes--you remember?
I told you that I should give a house-party for the Regis folks when the
frosts let up. Hurry and pack up your war-paint! They'll be here
to-morrow, and I need your help. No refusal! Fred is going in to Lone
Tree to-morrow and Jenny can go down with him. Nels will cook for
himself, won't you, Nels?"
"I tank I can cook, yes." Nels ceased his jubilations over the axe long
enough to season his assent with a bleached grin.
"There! It's all fixed." Bustling inside, she talked volubly while
assisting in Helen's selections. "Yes, take that; you look your
sweetest in it; and I imported Captain Chapman especially for you. That
also; you'll need it evenings. No, Captain Charters isn't coming. Some
Indian trouble called him west. Oh, Mrs. Jack won't care--I'm the
loser, for he was always my cavalier."
Driving home, she rattled steadily, entertaining Helen with descriptions
of her expected guests, giving their pedigrees, aristocratic
connections, while she spiced her discourse with malicious fact.
Sinclair Rhodes had secured his appointment as land agent at Regis
through distant cousinship to the governor-general. And why not? The
offices ought to go to well-bred people! He had money, must have, for
his salary and expenses were out of all proportion--so much so as to
cause comment by malicious people, envious souls! What if he did make a
little, as they said, on the side? The government could afford it; and
every one knew what Canadians were in office! People who live in glass
houses, and so forth! It was simply racial envy! She was also
becomingly indignant over the action of certain Canadians who had made
trouble for Captain Chapman in the matter of mounted-police supplies.
What figure did a few tons of provisions cut in a gentleman's accounts?
These commercial intellects, with their mathematical exactness, were
horrid. Newton? He was an appointee of Rhodes. No, no relation. She
waived further description of the Newtons, omitted the pregnant fact
that Charles Newton's presence cut as little figure in his wife's social
calculations as Captain Charters' absence did in those of Mrs. Jack.
Caution, doubtless, counselled the omission. The quail is not flushed
till the net be spread. Yet the reservation was hardly necessary in the
light of Helen's condition. Judgment of another's action is colored by
one's own mental state, and she was not so likely to be shocked by one
who had defied the conventions against which she herself was in open
mutiny. Anyway, she liked Mrs. Jack at first sight, despite the
scandalous manner in which she flirted with Charles Newton the first
night at table. Big, tall, and fair, large eyes expressed her saving
grace, an unparalleled frankness that seemed to sterilize her
flirtations and rob them of impropriety. Twice during the meal she
retailed Newton's tender asides to his wife, asking, laughingly, if she
recognized the vintage.
However, being as yet in happy ignorance of many things that would soon
cause her serious disquiet, Helen thoroughly enjoyed that first evening.
The well-appointed table, with its sparkling glass, silver, snowy
napery; the well-groomed people and their correct speech alike fed her
starved aesthetic senses while they aroused dormant social qualities.
She laughed, chattered, capped Mrs. Jack's sallies, displaying animation
and wit that simply astonished Mrs. Leslie. Her wonder, indeed, caused
Edith Newton to whisper in Mrs. Jack's ear:
"Elinor looks as though she had imported a swan in mistake for a
duckling. Look at Sinclair--positively smitten. Giving her all his
attention, though he took Elinor in. The girl seems to like him, too."
Mrs. Jack's big eyes turned to the laughing face that was raised up to
Rhodes. "Don't believe a word he says, my dear," she suddenly called
across the table. "And look out for him. He's dangerous."
Though she laughed, Rhodes must have sensed a serious motive, for he
glanced up in quick annoyance. "Do I look it?" he asked, turning again
to Helen.
Nature does not lie. His narrowly spaced eyes, salient facial angles,
dull skin, heavy lips carried her certificate of degeneracy. A
physiognomist would have pronounced him dangerous to innocence as a wild
beast on less evidence, but to Helen's inexperience he appeared as a man
unusually handsome, profile or front face. The significant angles did
not alter the good modelling of his nose and chin or affect the
regularity of his features. Tall, slim, irreproachable in manner and
dress, there was no scratch to reveal the base metal beneath his
electroplate refinement.
"You certainly don't," she answered, laughing.
"Then," he said, with mock gravity, "I can patiently suffer the sting of
calumny."
"Calumny?" Mrs. Jack echoed, teasingly. "_Calumny_? What's that?"
"Synonyme for conscience," Edith Newton put in, with a spice of malice.
For though the conquest of Rhodes--to which Regis gossip wickedly laid
Newton's presence in the land office--was now stale with age and
tiresome to herself, she was selfish enough to resent his defection.
"Sinclair found it while rummaging Fred's coat for matches," her husband
added. Leslie's simplicity was as much of a joke to them as it was with
the Canadian settlers, and, under cover of the laugh, Chapman--a big
blond of that cavalry, mustached type which wins England's cricket
matches while losing all her wars--leaned over and whispered in Newton's
ear: "Leslie will lose more than his conscience if he doesn't look out.
La belle Elinor is madly smitten." Aloud, he said, "Sinclair would
hardly know what to do with it, Mrs. Newton."
"Hearken not to the tongue of envy, Mrs. Carter," Rhodes retaliated upon
his tormentors. "I'm a very responsible person, I assure you."
She laughed at his mock seriousness, and, believing it all fooling, gave
him so much of her attention that evening as to cause more than one
comment. "Rhodes is making heavy running," Newton remarked once to
Chapman, who replied, conceitedly stroking his mustache, "Wait till I
get in my innings."
"After me," Newton answered. "I come next at the bat."
Ignorant of this and other by-play, however, Helen thoroughly enjoyed
the first days of the party. On the frontier, amusement is a home-made
product, and shares the superiority of domestic jams, jellies, and
pickles over the article of commerce. They caught the fickle damsel
Pleasure coming and going, reaping the satisfaction of both spectator
and entertainer. By day they skated, drove, or curled on a rink which
the male guests laid out; nights, they sang, danced, played games, and
romped like children.
Apart from a certain freedom in their intercourse, which she attributed
to long acquaintance, Helen found nothing objectionable in the demeanor
of her new friends during those first few days. On the contrary, she
thought them a trifle dull. Their preglacial and ponderous humor
excited her risibility; she laughed as often at as with them. At other
times she could not but feel that they regarded her as alien, a pretty
pagan without their social pale, and she would revolt against their
enormous egotism, insolent national conceit. She broke many a lance on
that impregnable shield.
"You English," she flashed back when, one evening, Newton reflected on
American pronunciation of certain English family names--"you English
remind me of the Jews, with their sibboleth and shibboleth. Is your
aristocracy so doubtful of its own identity that it is compelled to
hedge itself against intrusion by the use of passwords. You may call
'Cholmondeley' 'Chumley,' if you choose, but we commit no crime in
pronouncing it as spelled."
Again, when Edith Newton rallied her on some crude custom which she
maintained was peculiarly American, Helen delivered a sharp _riposte_.
"No, I never saw it done at home; but I have heard that it is quite
common among English emigrants on transatlantic liners." Such tiffs
were, however, rare; and, to do them justice, men and women hastened to
sacrifice national conceit on the altars of her wounded
susceptibilities.
Offence came later, and on quite another score. At first she liked the
attentions paid her; the gallantry of the men put her on better terms
with herself, renewed the confidence which had diminished to the
vanishing-point during her months of loneliness. But when constant
association thawed the reserve natural to first acquaintance, and
freedom evolved into familiarity, her instincts took alarm. Distressed,
she observed the other women to see if she had been singled out. But
no, they seemed quite comfortable under similar attentions, and they
rallied her when she unfolded her misgivings at afternoon tea.
"You shouldn't be so pretty, my dear," Mrs. Jack said, laughing. "What
can the poor men do?" Then they made fun of her scruples, satirizing
conventions and institutions which she had always regarded as necessary,
if not God-ordained.
"Marriage," Edith Newton once cynically exclaimed, "is merely a badge of
respectability, useful as a shield from the slings and arrows." Then,
from the depths of her own degeneracy, she evolved the utterance: "Men
are all beasts beneath the skin. Wise women use them for pleasure or
profit."
Helen revolted at that; it transcended her mutiny. But few people are
made of martyr stuff--perhaps fortunately so; martyrs are uncomfortable
folk, and, wise in her eternal generation, nature sprinkles them lightly
over the mass of common clay. The average person easily takes the color
of environment, so why not Helen? Thinking that perhaps she was a little
prudish, she stifled her fears, tried to imitate the nonchalance of the
others. She even made a few tentative attempts at daring. Alas! as
well expect a rabbit to ruffle it with wolves. Such immediate and
unwelcome results followed that she retired precipitously behind
ramparts of blushing reserve. But the damage was done. Thereafter
Chapman, Newton, Rhodes, one or another, was constantly at her elbow;
she was unpleasantly conscious that, having let down her fences, they
looked upon her as free game.
The thought stirred her to fight. Chapman she disposed of with a single
rebuff that sent him back to Mrs. Jack's side. But Newton proved
unmanageable. Impervious to snubs, his manner conveyed his idea that her
modesty was simply a blind for the others. His familiarities bordered
on license. A good singer, he always asked her to play his
accompaniments of evenings, and she would sicken as he used the pretence
of turning a leaf to lean heavily upon her shoulder. At other times he
made occasion to touch her--would pick threads from her jacket; lean
across her to speak to her neighbor at table.
By such tactics he brought her, one morning, to great confusion. A Cree
Indian had driven in from the Assiniboin reserve with bead-work,
moccasins, and badger-skin mittens which he wished to trade for flour or
bacon. With the other women Helen was bending over to examine his
wares, when Newton entered the kitchen. Stepping quietly up from
behind, he laid a hand on Helen's hair. Taking him for one of the other
women, she suffered his fondling till Mrs. Leslie, who knew he was
there, asked his opinion on a tobacco-pouch. Then, before she could
move, speak, cast off his hand, he pressed her head against his wife's
dark curls.
"Just look at the contrast!" he admiringly exclaimed, and so robbed her
anger.
Yet so evident was the intent behind the excuse that even the Cree
detected the sham. From Helen his dark glance travelled to Newton and
back again. "He your man?" he asked.
Vexed to the point of tears, she shook her head and bent over the
bead-work to hide her embarrassment. But the Cree's rude notions of
etiquette had been jarred. "He touch your hair!"
So simple, his comment yet pierced to the heart of the matter. Newton
had fondled her hair, crown and symbol of her womanhood, a privilege of
marriage. In an Indian tribe the offence would have loosed the slipping
knife; a settler would have resented it with knarled fist. But here the
women tittered, while Chapman, who just then sauntered in, laughed.
Emboldened, perhaps, by immunity, the man's offensiveness developed into
actual insult the evening of that same day. They had all been pulling
taffy in the kitchen, and, passing through a dark passage to the
living-room, Helen felt an arm slip about her waist. Newton's face was
still tingling from a vigorous slap when she confronted him before them
all in the living-room. Even his hardihood quailed before her flushed
and contemptuous anger; he was not quite so ready with his excuse.
"I _beg_ your _pardon_, Mrs. Carter! Really, I mistook you for my
wife."
It was a lie on the face of it, and, barbed with stinging truth, her
retort drew a peal of laughter from the others. "Indeed? Your excuse is
more remarkable than your mistake."
Offended as much by the laugh as the insult, she seated herself on a
lounge by Leslie, the one man with whom she always felt safe. In him
the stigma of degeneracy took another form; the tired blood expressed
itself in a prodigious simplicity. He lacked even the elements of vice.
As his wife put it, "Fred is too stupid to be wicked." Yet, withal, he
was very much of a man as far as his chuckleheadedness permitted, and
now he offered real sympathy.
"It was a caddish trick, Mrs. Carter, and I mean to tell him so."
"Oh no!" she pleaded. "It wouldn't improve matters to make a scene, and
he's not likely to offend again. Please don't? Stay here--with me."
"But I'm your host. Really, he deserves a thrashing."
"No, no! Stay here! I don't feel equal to the others."
"I never do." Sitting again, he turned on her a look of beaming
fellowship. "The girls all yawn and look terribly bored when I try to
amuse them--except you. They don't seem to care for horses and dogs, the
things that interest me."
If, as a conversationalist, he did not shine, he at least brought her
the first easy moments she had known that day, and she turned a
sympathetic ear to some of his prattle. Indicating Rhodes, who was
leaning over Mrs. Leslie, he said: "You know I don't like that sort of
thing. Elinor says I'm old-fashioned, and I suppose she knows. Of
course she wouldn't do anything that wasn't proper, but a fellow has his
feelings, and it doesn't take a crime to hurt them, does it? She's up
on the conventions; but it does seem to me that if a fellow has anything
to say to another fellow's wife he ought to say it aloud."
Astonished that his dulness should have sensed the pervading sensualism,
she studied him while he watched his wife, in his eyes something of that
pitiful pleading one sees in those of a beaten dog. His words banished
her doubts as to whether her own misgivings did not root in
hypercritical standards--restored her viewpoint. All week the atmosphere
had thickened, as constant association banished reserve, and to-day
freedom had attained its meridian. It was not the matter but the manner
of conversation that filled her with a great uneasiness--the whispers,
asides, smiling stares, conscious laughter. The vitiated atmosphere
caused her a feeling of suffocation, and in the midst of her sick
revulsion Leslie dropped a remark that came to her like a breath of
ozone.
"I was awfully sorry to hear of the trouble between you and Carter. I
always thought him _such_ a fine fellow. He hadn't much use for me--any
of us--still I liked him. He was a bit on the rough, of course; but, I
tell you, character counts more than culture, strength than refinement."
Character counts more than culture, strength than refinement? To his
simplicity had been vouched wisdom worthy of a philosopher. The phrase
stabbed her. Before her rose a vision of her husband as she had seen him
that last miserable night, cold, stern, inexorable, in the loom of the
moonlight. In view of that colossal memory, the Englishmen about her
dwarfed to effeminate insignificance. Vividly her own doubting
recurred. And she had traded him--for this! The thought brought
wretchedness too great for concealment. Her uneasiness was so manifest
as to form the theme of a bedroom conversation.
Though comfortable--the one frame house in the settlements, a palace to
Canadian eyes--Leslie's house boasted only two bedrooms; so while the
men made shift on shake-downs, Helen shared Mrs. Leslie's rooms, Edith
Newton and Mrs. Jack the other.
As she braided her hair for the night, the latter lady opened the
conversation. "Did you notice how uncomfortable little Carter was this
evening? She is a nice little thing, but she doesn't mix. I don't see
why Elinor invited her."
"You don't, eh?" Edith Newton mumbled a mouthful of pins. "You are
slow, Maud."
"No--only lazy. Why should I puzzle over things when you are here?
I'll bet you have pumped everybody dry long ago. Now--dispense!"
"I don't go round with my eyes shut," the other calmly answered. "To
begin: Calvert Molyneux is completely gone on little Carter, whose
husband, it seems, left her because of some slight."
"Hum!" Mrs. Jack elevated her straight brows. "Foolish man to leave her
to Calvert. So that is why he went home! Exits till the tarnished
pearl be regulped by the conjugal oyster? Clever!"
"On the contrary"--she curled a full red lip--"he contemplates
_honorable_ marriage--dalliance, Dakota, divorce, everything that begins
with D, down to eventual desertion, if I know anything of Calvert. But
fancy--HE!"
"'The devil in love, the devil a husband would be,'" Mrs. Jack
misquoted.
"'The devil married, the devil a husband was he,'" Edith Newton
finished. "But he is not married yet. She holds him off--foolishly.
For you know Calvert, good in streaks, but ruled by his emotions and
ruthless when they command. If she turns him down--"
"She'll need to keep him at longer distance than this house affords.
But Elinor?--this doesn't explain her. She's beastly selfish under her
jolly little skin. Why is she posing as aid and advocate of love?"
"In love with Carter hubby--or was would be more correct, in view of her
carryings-on with Sinclair. But the Carter attack, I understand, was
very severe while it lasted. Think of it, Maud, Elinor to fall in love
with a settler!"
Mrs. Jack elevated naked shoulders. "Not at all surprising. Just the
itch of her rotten blood for a few sound corpuscles. I've felt it
myself at times. Don't look so shocked--you know we are rotten."
"Maud! Maud!"
Humming a bar of "La Boheme," Mrs. Jack regarded her companion through
narrowed lids. "I believe, Edith, you keep up appearances with
yourself. Why not be natural for a change? But, as you say, Elinor
seems to have made a complete convalescence. Did you _ever_ see a woman
make _such_ a projectile of herself? Positively hurls herself at
Sinclair. But tell me more about the Carter man. How did he treat her
rabies?"
"Cold-water cure. Turned her down--flat."
"So in revenge she's trying to besmirch the wife? The little devil! I
call that pretty raw, Edith."
The other shrugged. "Oh, well, it is her pie, and if she prefers it
uncooked it is none of our business. Better keep your fingers out of it,
Maud. Struggle with your good intentions."
Mrs. Jack smiled sweetly. "My dear, am I in the habit of messing alien
pies?"
"Not unless you covet the meat."
"Well, I'm not hankering after either Calvert or Carter hubby, though I
must say that I like his specifications. Showed awfully good taste both
in selecting his wife and rejecting Elinor. Fancy! a virtuous man--in
this day!"
By this time Edith Newton was disposed in bed. A sleepy answer came
from under the clothing. "Proves he hadn't the honor of your
acquaintance."
"Nor yours," Mrs. Jack retorted.
Her flippancy masked a disquiet so grave as to drive away the desire for
sleep. Clad only in her bed-gown, she drew a chair up to the stove,
which returned her thoughtful gaze through two red monocles of
isinglass. In her fair-play was associated with its companion virtue
frankness, and in no wise could she read a mite of the former quality
into Elinor Leslie's intent towards Helen. After many uneasy
shruggings, she rose, took the lamp, and walked into the other bedroom.
"Misplaced my comb," she answered Mrs. Leslie's sleepy inquiry. "Lend
me yours." Then she paused at the foot of the bed.
Helen had coiled her hair for the night, but its unruly masses had
loosened and ran, a perfect cataract of gold, over her pillow. Against
that auriferous background lay her head and face, with its delicate
creams and pinks sinking into the plumpness of one white arm. The other
was folded over the softness of her bosom. Mrs. Jack thought her asleep
till her eyes opened, then, returning the girl's smile, she tiptoed back
to her fire.
"It's a damned shame," she told herself, profanely, but truly, and with
such vigor that Edith Newton sleepily asked: "What's the matter? Aren't
you ever coming to bed, Maud?"
"Saying my prayers. Go to sleep."
"Put in a word for me," the other murmured.
"The Lord knows that you need it." Mrs. Jack glanced at the bed, then
returned to her musings. "Of course she's a little fool. If she goes
back to her husband she will have to settle down to the humdrum of
settler life--raise calves, chickens, pigs, and children in the fear of
the Lord, with only a church picnic or some such wild dissipation to
break the deadly monotony. A pleasing prospect, I must say. But if it
suits her--well, I'm not going to see her delivered, bound and bleating,
into the hands of the devil, _alias_ Calvert Molyneux. It seems a shame,
either way, but she undoubtedly loves her settler hubby, and she's just
the kind to eat her heart out through remorse and shame. And here is
Elinor blackening her reputation with the pig settlers to whom she must
look for a living, making reconciliation impossible! Well, I'm going to
speak to the little fool to-morrow."
This she did, making her opportunity by carrying Helen off to her
bedroom, where, having disposed her victim in a comfortable chair, she
herself snuggled down upon the bed and went with customary frankness
straight to the heart of her subject. "I want to know, Helen Carter,
why you are here?"
Puzzled, Helen stared; then, interpreting by the smile, she answered,
"I--really, I--don't know."
"A--pretty--poor--reason!" She shook her finger in affected anger.
"Don't you _know_ that you don't belong? Now don't flare up! If I were
Edith Newton, or Elinor, the cat, you might suspect a reflection. It
isn't that you are below grade--just the opposite. Frankly, my dear, we
are a rotten lot. A sweet girl, with conscience and morality has no
business among us. We couldn't scrape up enough of either article to
outfit a respectable cat. Don't blush. I'm not envying you your
conscience. It is a most uncomfortable asset, and, given choice of two
evils, I'd take a harelip. But, as you have one--well, you'd better
mizzle--go home, you know."
Having eased herself by this delivery, Mrs. Jack sighed, sat up, rolled
herself a cigarette, and went on, after a contented puff: "Don't tell on
me, my dear. Not that I care a whoop--that's American, isn't it? I
love your slang; it is so expressive and comfortable to the feelings.
But, you see, rakishness has no attractions for the fool male of our
species. He resents any infringement of his monopoly. Even such a
degenerate ass as Charles Newton prefers school-girl simplicity. So one
must needs simulate virgin innocence, however painful. That's more of
your delightful slang. Now--when are you going?"
The question anticipated the conclusion of Helen's midnight tossings;
but, if unchanged in substance, this had nevertheless been modified by
cooler morning reflections. She stated the qualifications--Jenny was
visiting in Lone Tree, and would not return till Saturday. Only two more
days! Her visit would then come to a natural end, so why offend by
abrupt departure?
Mrs. Jack laughed. "I don't think Elinor would be so very dreadfully
offended. Why? Well, it is ungracious to criticise one's hostess,
but--you have trapped her rabbit."
"Her--rabbit?"
"Yes--Sinclair Rhodes."
"Why, he paid me less attention than any of the others; was less--you'll
pardon me--offensive. I even thought he tried to keep them away."
"As the lion drives the jackals. Avoid him, my dear. Well, I suppose
that a couple more days won't hurt. We are to stay a week longer, and if
Elinor asks you--which she won't--you _must_ refuse. Now let us go out
before they begin to suspect a conspiracy."
"But first let me thank you. I have been so miserable, and you have
done me _so_ much good."
Mrs. Jack gently patted the hand that caught her arm, an action totally
at variance with her answer. "Self-interest, I assure you. Elinor is
not the only sufferer. You have depleted the entire preserve. Not a man
has looked at me the last three days. There, there! You needn't
believe it if you don't want to."
Could Mrs. Jack's frank eyes have pierced the immediate future, she
would have made her warning against Rhodes more specific. On Thursday
of that week Leslie drove his heavy team and bobs into Lone Tree for
supplies, and, what of the thawing trails, could not possibly be back
till all hours Saturday night. Not knowing this, Mrs. Jack made no
objection when, Saturday morning, Danvers drove over with Molyneux's
double cutter and carried off herself and the Newtons to visit a friend
west of the Assiniboin.
"You'll be here till after supper," she said to Helen, leaving. "So I
won't say good-bye."
But she miscalculated both the warmth of the friend's welcome and the
heavy sledding. When she returned, long after dark, she found Mrs.
Leslie reading a novel by her bedroom stove. In a loose wrapper,
crossed feet comfortably propped on the plated stove-rail, a plate of
red apples at her elbow, and the light comfortably adjusted on the table
behind her, she was the picture of comfort. "Having a jolly good time
all by myself," she explained. "Fred's not home yet, and Captain
Chapman went over to win a little from Ernest Poole at poker. Helen?
Just gone. She waited and waited and waited, but you were so late that
we both thought you had concluded to stay the night. Didn't you pass
her at the Forks--or hear the bells? That double string of Fred's can
be heard to heaven on a still night."
"Oh, was that she? Hired man came for her, I suppose?" Mrs. Jack
indifferently inquired, as she laid off her furs.
"No. Sinclair drove her with our ponies. What's the matter?"
Eyes dark and dilated with fear, Mrs. Jack faced her. "Do you mean to
tell me--" Breaking hastily off, she ran through bed and living rooms,
almost upsetting Newton on her way to the outer door. "Mr. Danvers! Oh,
Mr. Danvers! Mr. Danvers! Mr.--Danvers!" she called.
But the night returned only the clash of his bells.
Sweeping back in, she faced Mrs. Leslie, flushed with the one righteous
emotion of her fast life. "You let her go out--alone--with that--"
Choking, she ran into her own room and slammed the door, leaving the
other two women staring.
Edith Newton answered the lift of the other's eyebrows. "Another of
Maud's raves."
*XVII*
*--AND ITS FINALE*
But for the bells and groan of runners, which drowned sound for them
even as it did for Danvers, Helen and Rhodes were near enough to have
heard Mrs. Jack's call. Interpreting the latter's warning morally,
Helen had accepted Rhodes's escort as the lesser of two evils, or, if
she had speculated on tentative attempts at flirtation, had not doubted
her own ability to snub them.
A sudden frost, winter's last desperate clutch at the throat of spring,
had hardened the sun-rotted trails; and as the cutter sped swiftly over
the first mile, she chatted freely, without thought of danger. Of the
three male guests, Rhodes had, as aforeseen, pestered her least, so,
ignorant of the pitiless brutality masked by his reserve, she was
paralyzed--almost fainted--when his arm suddenly dropped from the
cutter-rail to her waist.