BERTHA REPULSES AN ENEMY
Charles Haney had no scruples. From the moment of his first meeting with
his brother's young wife he determined to make himself "solid" with her.
Convinced that Mart was not long for this world, he set to work to win
Bertha's favor, for this was the only way to harvest the golden fortune
she controlled.
"Mart is just fool enough and contrary enough to leave every cent of his
money to her." Here he placed one finger against his brow. "Carlos, here
is where you get busy. It's us to the haberdasher. We shine."
Notwithstanding all his boasting, he was not only an actor out of an
engagement, but flat broke, badly dressed, and in sorry disrepute with
managers. "I've been playing in a stock company in San Francisco," he
had explained, "and I'm now on my way to New York to produce a play of
my own. Hence these tears. I need an 'angel.'"
He distinctly said "the first of the month" in this announcement, but as
the days went by he only settled deeper into the snug corners of the
Haney home, making no further mention of his triumphal eastward
progress. On the contrary, he had the air of a regular boarder, and
turned up promptly for meals, rotund and glowing in the opulence of his
brother's hospitality.
On the strength of his name he found favor with the tailors, and
bourgeoned forth a few days later in the best cloth the shops afforded,
and strutted and plumed himself like a turkey-cock before Bertha,
keeping up meanwhile a pretension of sympathy and good-fellowship with
Mart.
In this he miscalculated; for Bertha, youthful as she seemed, was
accustomed, as she would say, to "standing off mashers," and her
impassive face and keen, steady eyes fairly disconcerted the libertine.
"For Mart's sake, we'll put up with him," she said to her mother. "He's
a loafer; but I can see the Captain kind o' likes to have him
around--for old times' sake, I reckon."
This was true. When alone with his brother, Charles dropped his
egotistic brag and dramatic bluster, and touched craftily upon the
dare-devil, boyish life they had led together. He was shrewd enough to
see and understand that this was his most ingratiating rôle, and he
played it "to the limit," as Bertha would have said.
And yet no one in the house realized how his presence reacted against
Bertha.
"What are we to think of a girl so obtuse that she permits a man like
this fat, disgusting actor to dangle about her?" asked Mrs. Crego of her
husband, who was Haney's legal adviser.
"He's her husband's brother, you know," argued Crego.
"All the same, I can't understand her. She looks nice and sweet, and you
say she is so; and yet here she is married to a notorious gambler, and
associating with mountebanks and all sorts of malodorous people. Why,
I've seen her riding down the street with the upholsterer, and Mrs.
Congdon told me that she saw her stop her carriage in front of a cigar
store and talk with a barber in a white jacket for at least ten
minutes."
Crego laughed. "What infamy! However, I can't believe even the
upholsterer will finally corrupt her. The fact is, my dear, we're all
getting to be what some of my clients call 'too a-ristocratic.' Bertha
Haney is sprung from good average American stock, and has associated
with the kind of people you abhor all her life. She hasn't begun to draw
any of your artificial distinctions. I hope she never will. Her barber
friend is on the same level with the clerks and grocery-men of the town.
They're all human, you know. She's the true democrat. I confess I like
the girl. Her ability is astonishing. Williams and Haney both take her
opinion quite as weightily as my own."
Mrs. Crego was impressed. "Well, I'll call on her if you really think I
_ought_ to do so."
"I don't. I withdraw my suggestion. I deprecate your calling--in that
spirit. I doubt if she expects you to call. I hardly think she has
awakened to any slights put upon her by your set. Indeed, she seems
quite happy in the society of Thomas, Richard, and Harry."
"Don't be brutal, Allen."
"I'm not. The girl is now serene--that's the main thing; and you might
raise up doubts and discontents in her mind."
"I certainly shall not go near her so long as that odious actor is
hanging about. His smirk at me the other day made me ill."
This conversation was typical of many others in homes of equal culture,
for Bertha's position as well as her face and manner piqued curiosity.
After all, the town was a small place--just large enough to give gossip
room to play in--and the sheen of Mrs. Haney's wealth made her
conspicuous from afar, while her youth and boyish beauty had been the
subject of admiring club talk from the very first. Haney was only an old
and wounded animal, whose mate was free to choose anew.
"It makes me ache to see the girl go wrong," said Mrs. Frank Congdon,
wife of a resident portrait-painter, also in delicate health (she was
speaking to Mrs. Crego). "Think of that great house--Frank says she runs
it admirably--filled with tinkers and tailors and candlestick-makers,
not to mention touts and gamblers--when she might be entertaining--well,
us, for example!" She laughed at the unbending face of her friend; then
went on: "Dr. Cronk says the mother is a sweet old lady and of good New
England family--a constitutional Methodist, he calls her. I wish she
kept better company."
"But what can you expect of a girl brought up in a pigsty. Her mother
was mistress of a little miners' hotel in Junction City, Allen says, and
the girl boasts of it."
Mrs. Congdon smiled. "I'm dying to talk with her. She's far and away the
most interesting of our newly rich, and I like her face. Frank has
called, you know?"
"Has he?"
"On business, of course. She has decided to have him paint her husband's
picture. She's taken her first step upward, you see."
"I should think she'd be content to have her saloon-keeper husband's
face fade out of her memory."
"Frank is enthusiastic. I'm not a bit sure that he didn't suggest the
portrait. He is shameless when he takes a fancy to a face. He's wild to
paint them both and call it 'The Lion Tamer and the Lion.' He considers
Haney a great character. It seems he saw him in Cripple Creek once, and
was vastly taken by his pose. His being old and sad now--his face is one
of the saddest I ever saw--makes it all the more interesting to Frank.
So I'm going to call--in fact, we're going to lunch there soon."
"Oh, well, yes. You artists can do anything, and it's all right. You
must come over immediately afterwards and tell me all about it, won't
you?"
At this Mrs. Congdon laughed, but, being of generous mind, consented.
Crego was right. Bertha had not yet begun to take on trouble about her
social position. She had carried to her big house in the Springs all the
ideas and usages of Sibley Junction--that was all. She acknowledged her
obligations as a householder, carrying forward the New England
democratic traditions. To be next door made any one a neighbor, with the
right to run in to inspect your house and furniture and to give advice.
The fact that near-at-hand residents did not avail themselves of this
privilege troubled her very little at first, so busy was she with her
own affairs; but it was inevitable that the talk of her mother's church
associates should sooner or later open her eyes to the truth that the
distinctions which she had read about as existing in New York and
Chicago were present in her own little city. "Mrs. Crego and her set are
too stuck up to associate with common folks," was the form in which the
revelation came to her.
From one loose-tongued sister she learned, also, that she and the
Captain were subjects of earnest prayer in the sewing-circle, and that
her husband's Catholicism was a source of deep anxiety, not to say
proselyting hostility, on the part of the pastor and his wife, while
from another of these officious souls she learned that the Springs,
beautiful as it was, so sunlit, so pure of air, was a centre of marital
infelicity, wherein the devil reigned supreme.
Her mother's pastor called, and was very outspoken as to Mart and
Charles--both of whom needed the Lord's grace badly. He expressed great
concern for Bertha's spiritual welfare, and openly prayed for her
husband, whose nominal submission to the Catholic Church seemed not
merely blindness to his own sin, but a danger to the young wife.
Haney, however, though wounded and suffering, was still a lion in
resolution, and his glance checked the exhortation which the minister
one day nerved himself to utter. "I do not interfere with any man's
faith," said he, "and I do not intend to be put to school by you nor any
other livin'. I was raised a Catholic, and for the sake of me mother I
call meself wan to this day, and as I am so I shall die." And the
finality of his voice won him freedom from further molestation.
Bertha's concern for her creed was hardly more poignant than Haney's,
and they never argued; but she did begin to give puzzled thought to the
social complications which opened out day by day before her. Charles,
embittered by his failures, enlightened her still more profoundly. He
had a certain shrewdness of comment at times which bit. "Wouldn't it jar
you," said he one day, "to see this little town sporting a 'Smart Set'
and quoting _Town Topics_ like a Bible? Why, some of these dinky little
two-spot four-flushers draw the line on me because I'm an actor! What
d'ye think o' that? I don't mind your Methodist sistern walking wide of
me, but it's another punch when these dubs who are smoking my cigars at
the club fail to invite me to their houses."
Bertha looked at him reflectively throughout this speech, putting a
different interpretation on the neglect he complained of. She had gone
beyond disliking him, she despised him (for he was growing bolder each
day in his addresses), and took every precaution that he should not be
alone with her; and she rose one morning with the determination to tell
Mart that she would not endure his brother's presence another day. But
his pleasure in Charles' company was too genuine to be disturbed, and so
she endured.
The actor's talk was largely concerned with the scandal-mongery of the
town, and very soon the young wife knew that Mrs. May, whose husband was
"in the last stages," was in love with young Mr. June, and that Mr.
Frost, whose wife was "weakly," was going about shamelessly with Miss
Bloom, and all this comment came to her ears freighted with its worst
significance. Vile suggestion dripped from Charles Haney's reckless
tongue.
This was deep-laid policy with him. His purpose was to undermine her
loyalty as a wife. His approaches had no charm, no finesse. Presuming on
his relationship, he caught at her hand as she passed, or took a seat
beside her if he found her alone on a sofa. At such moments she was
furious with him, and once she struck his hand away with such violence
that she suffered acute pain for several hours afterwards.
His attentions--which were almost assaults--came at last to destroy a
large part of her joy in her new home. Her drives, when he sat beside
her, were a torture, and yet she could not bring herself to accuse him
before the crippled man, who really suffered from loneliness whenever
she was out of the house or busy in her household work. He had never
been given to reading, and was therefore pathetically dependent upon
conversation for news and amusement. He was much at home, too, for his
maiming was still so fresh upon him that he shrank from exhibiting
himself on the street or at the clubs (there are no saloons in the
Springs). Crego, whom he liked exceedingly, was very busy, and Williams
was away at the mines for the most part, and so, in spite of Bertha's
care, he often sat alone on the porch, a pitiful shadow of the man who
paid court to the clerk of the Golden Eagle.
Sometimes he followed the women around the house like a dog, watching
them at their dusting and polishing. "You'll strain yourself, Captain,"
Bertha warningly cried out whenever he laid hold of a chair or brush.
And so each time he went back to his library to smoke, and wait until
his wife's duties were ended. At such hours his brother was a comfort.
He was not a fastidious man, even with the refinement which had come
from his sickness and his marriage, and the actor (so long as he cast no
imputations on any friend) could talk as freely as he pleased.
Slowly, day by day, Charles regained Mart's interest and a measure of
his confidence. Having learned what to avoid and what to emphasize, he
now deplored the drink habits of his brothers, and gently suggested that
the old father needed help. They played cards occasionally during such
times as household cares drew Bertha away, and held much discussion of
mines and mining--though here Mart was singularly reticent, and afforded
little information about his own affairs. His trust in Charles did not
go so far as that. With Crego, however, he freely discussed his
condition, for the lawyer had written his new will, and was in
possession of it.
"I'm like a battered old tin can," he said once. "Did ye ever try to put
a tin can back into shape? Ye cannot. If ye push it back here, it bulges
there. The doctors are tryin' hard to take the kinks out o' me, but 'tis
impossible--I see that--but I may live on for a long time. Already me
mind misgives me about Bertie--she's too young to be tied up to a
shoulder-shotten old plug like mesilf."
To this Crego soothingly responded. "I don't think you need to worry.
She's as happy as a blackbird in spring."
Once he said to Bertha: "I niver intended to limp around like this. I
niver thought to be the skate I am this day," and his despondency
darkened his face as he spoke. "I could not blame you if you threw me
out. I'm only a big nuisance."
"You will be if you talk like that," she briskly answered, and that is
all she seemed to make of his protest. She had indeed been reared in an
atmosphere of loyalty to marriage as well as of chastity, and she never
for a moment considered her vows weakened by her husband's broken frame.
This fidelity Charles discovered to his own confusion one night as he
came home inflamed by liquor and reckless of hand, to find her sitting
alone in the library writing a letter. It was not late, but Mart,
feeling tired, had gone to bed, and Mrs. Gilman was in Sibley.
Bertha looked up as he entered, and without observing that he was drunk,
went on with her writing, which was ever a painful ceremony with her.
Dropping his coat where he stood, and with his hat awry on the red globe
of his head, the dastard staggered towards her, his eyes lit with a
glare of reckless desire.
"Say," he began, "this is luck. I want 'o talk with you, Bertie. I want
'o find out why you run away from me? What's the matter with me,
anyhow?"
She realized now the foul, satyr-like mood of the man, and sprang up
tense and strong, silently confronting him.
He mumbled with a grin: "You're a peach! What's the matter? Why don't
you like me? Ain't I all right? I'm a gentleman."
His words were babble, but the look in his eyes, the loose slaver of his
lips, both scared and angered her, and as he pushed against her,
clumsily trying to hook his arm about her waist, she struck him sharply
with the full weight of her arm and shoulder, and he tottered and fell
sprawling. With a curse in his teeth he caught at a chair, recovered his
balance, and faced her with a look of fury that would have appalled one
less experienced than she.
"You little fool," he snarled, "don't you do that again!"
"_Stop!_" She did not lift her voice, but the word arrested him. "Do you
want to die?" The word _die_ pierced the mist of his madness. "What do
you think Mart will say to this?"
He shivered and grew pale under the force of his brother's name uttered
in that tone. He began to melt, subsiding into a jelly-mass of fear.
"Don't tell Mart, for Christ's sake! I didn't mean nothing. Don't do it,
I beg--I beg!"
She looked at him and seemed to grow in years as she searched his
wretched body for its soul. "If you don't pull out of this house
to-morrow I'll let him know just the kind of dead-head boarder you are.
You haven't fooled me any--not for a minute. I've put up with you for
his sake, but to-night settles it. You go! I've stood a lot from you,
but your meal-ticket is no good after to-morrow morning--you _sabe_?
It's you to the outside to-morrow. Now get out, or I call Mart."
He turned and shuffled from the room, leaving his battered hat at her
feet.
She waited till she heard him close his door; then, with a look of
disgust on her face, picked up his hat and coat, and hung them on the
rack in the hall. "I'm sorry for Mart," she said to herself. "He _was_
company for him, but I can't stand the loafer a day longer. I hope I
never see him again."
* * * * *
He did not get down to breakfast, and for this she was glad; but he
sought opportunity a little later to plead for clemency. "Give me
another chance. I was drunk. I didn't mean it."
She remained inexorable. "Not for a second," she succinctly replied. "I
don't care how you fix it with Mart. Smooth it up as best you can, but
fly this coop." And her face expressed such contempt that he crept away,
flabby and faltering, to his brother.
"I've been telegraphed for, and must go," he said. "And, by the way, I
need a little ready mon to carry me to the little old town. As soon as I
get to work I'll send you a check."
Mart handed him the money in silence, and waited till he had folded and
put away the bills. Then he said: "Charles, you was always the smart one
of the family, and ye'd be all right now if ye'd pass the booze and get
down to hard work. It's _time_ ye were off, for ye've done nothin' but
loaf and drink here. I've enjoyed your talk--part of the time; but I can
see ye'd grow onto me here like a wart, and that's bad for you and bad
for me, and so I'm glad ye're going."
"Can't you--" He was going to ask for a position--something easy with
big pay--when he saw that such a request would make his telegram a lie.
As he hesitated Mart continued: "No, I'll back no play for ye. I'm a
gambler, but I take no chances of that kind. If you see the old father,
write and tell me how he is."
Charles, though filled with rising fury, was sober enough to know in
what danger he stood, and forcing a smile to his face, shook hands and
went out to his carriage--alone.
As Mart met Bertha a few minutes later he remarked, with calm
directness: "There goes a cheap rounder and a sponge. I've been a
gambler and a saloon-keeper, but I never got the notion that I could
live without doin' something. Charles was a smart lad, but the divil has
him by the neck, and to give money is to give him drink."
Bertha remained silent, her own indictment was so much more severe.