BERTHA'S FLIGHT
Before she had fairly recovered her poise next day Lucius brought to her
a letter from Humiston--a suave, impudent note wherein he expressed the
hope that she was well, and went on to plead in veiled phrase: "I'm
sorry you did not stay to see the rest of my pictures. I meant it all as
a compliment to your innate good taste and purity of thought. I expected
you to see them as I painted them--in pure artistic delight. You
misunderstood me. I hope you will let me see you again. You must
remember you promised to let me make a portrait sketch of you."
Although not skilled in polite duplicity, Bertha was able to read
beneath the serene insolence of these lines something so diabolically
relentless that she turned cold with fear and repulsion. She had no
experience which fitted her to deal with such a pursuer, and she
shuddered at the rustling of the paper in her hand as she had once
quivered in breathless terror of a rattlesnake stirring in the leaves
near the door of her tent. Her first impulse was to lay the whole affair
before the Captain, but the knowledge of his deadly temper when roused
decided her to slip out at the other side of this fearsome thicket and
leave the serpent in possession. She longed to return to the West. The
little group of people in the Springs allured her; they were to be
trusted. Congdon and Crego and Ben--these men she knew and respected.
Her joy of the big outside Eastern world had begun to pass, and she
dreaded to encounter again the bold eyes and coarse compliments of the
men who loaf about the hotels and clubs.
She turned to Haney as he came into her room, and said: "Mart, I want to
go home--to-day."
"All right, Bertie, I'm ready--or will be, as soon as I pick up the old
father. But don't you want to see that show we've got tickets for?"
"No, I've had enough of this old town. I'm crazy to go home."
"Home it is, then." He called sharply; "Lucius!" The man appeared,
impassive, noiseless, unhurried. The Captain issued his orders: "Thrun
me garbage into a thrunk, and call some one to help the missus; we're
goin' to hit the sunset trail to-night. 'Phone me old dad besides, and
have him come over at wanst. Here we emigrate westward by the next
express."
The man quietly took control of the situation, and in a few moments the
Captain's commands were being carried out with the precision of a
military camp.
Bertha, alarmed by Humiston's letter, refused to go down to the public
dining-room. A fear that she might encounter the painter possessed her,
and the thought of him was at once a shame and torment; therefore, she
had her luncheon sent up, and Lucius himself found time to wait upon
them.
As they were in the midst of their meal, Haney remarked rather than
asked: "Of course, you're going back with us, Lucius."
"I have thought of it, sir, but it isn't in our contract."
"We can put it in," said Bertha.
"We can't do without you now," added Mart.
Lucius seemed pleased. "Thank you for that, Captain. I don't
particularly care for the West, but I find service with you agreeable."
Haney chuckled. "Service, do ye call it? Sure, man, 'tis you are in
command. I'm but a high private in the rear rank."
Lucius's yellow face flushed and his eyes wavered. "I hope I haven't
assumed--"
"Assumed! No, 'tis we who are obligated. We need you as bad as a
plainsman needs a guide in the green timber; and if you don't mind a
steady job of looking after us social tenderfeet, I'm willing to make it
right with you--and Mrs. Haney feels just the way I do."
"Sure, Mart--only trouble with Lucius is, he leaves so little for me to
do. He's _too_ handy--if anything."
"That'll wear off," replied Haney. "Well, then, it's all settled but the
price, and I reckon we can fix that. If I can't pay cash, I'll let you
in on the mine."
Lucius smiled. "Thank you, Captain; it's not entirely a question of pay
with me; my wants are few."
Bertha seized the moment to put a question she had been minded many
times to ask. "Lucius, what's your plan? You can't intend to do this all
your life? Tell us your ambition--maybe we can help you."
He looked away, and a deeper shadow fell over his face. "I had ambitions
once, Mrs. Haney, but my color was against me. Yes, I think I'll stay as
I am. There is a certain security in being valet. You white people know
exactly where to find me, and I know just how to meet you. In my
profession it was different--I was always being cursed for presumption."
"What was your profession?" asked Haney.
"I studied law--and practised for a year or two in Washington; but I
didn't like my position; I was neither white nor colored, so when I got
a good chance I went out to service with a senator as body-servant." He
stopped abruptly as though that were all of his tale.
Haney said: "Well, if you can put up with an ignorant old hill-climber
like meself, I'll be grateful, and I'll try not rub your fur the wrong
way."
Lucius became very earnest for the first time. "There, sir, is one point
upon which I must insist. If I go with you, you are to treat me just as
you have been doing--as a trusted servant. I'm sorry I told you anything
about myself. My service thus far has been very pleasant, very
satisfactory, and unless we can go on in the same way, I must leave."
"Very well," replied Haney. "It's all settled--you're adjutant-general
of the Haneys' forces."
After Lucius went away Bertha said, thoughtfully: "I wish he hadn't told
us that; I can't order him around the way I've been doing."
Haney smiled. "Did ye order him around? I niver chanced to hear ye do
anything but ask him questions. 'Lucius, will ye do this?' 'Lucius,
won't ye do that?'"
Bertha was troubled, and found herself embarrassed by the mulatto's
services. She now perceived sadness beneath the quiet lines of his face
and hard-won culture in the tones of his voice. The essential tragedy of
his defeat grew more poignant to her as she watched him getting the
trunks strapped, surrounded by maids and porters. How could she have
misread his manner? He was performing his duties, not with quiet gusto,
but in the spirit of the trained nurse.
This mountain girl had always regarded Illinois as "the East," but after
a few weeks in New York City she now looked away to Chicago as a Western
town. She was glad to face the sunset sky again, and yet as she wheeled
away to the train she acknowledged a regret. Under the skilful guidance
of Lucius she had seen a great deal of the splendid and furious
Manhattan. She had gazed with unenvious admiration on the palaces of
upper Fifth Avenue and the Park. Together with Haney she had spun up
Riverside Drive, past Grant's Tomb, and on through Washington Heights,
with joy of the far-spreading panorama. She had visited the Battery and
sailed the shining way to Staten Island in silent awe of the ship-filled
bay. She had heard the sunset-guns thunder at Fort Hamilton, and had
threaded the mazes of the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, and each day the
mast-hemmed island widened in grandeur and thickened with threads of
human purpose, making the America she knew very simple, very quiet, and
very remote.
Night by night she had gone to the music-halls and theatres, and her
mind had been powerfully wrought upon by what she had seen and heard. In
all these trips Haney had heroically accompanied his wife, though he
frequently dropped asleep in his seat; and he, too, left the city with
regret, though he said, "Thank God, I'm out of it," as they settled into
their seats in the ferry. "'Tis not the night traffic that wears me
down--I'm used to being on the night shift; 'tis the wild pace Lucius
sets by day. Faith, 'twas the aquarium in the morning and the circus in
the afternoon. Me dreams have been wan long procession of misbegotten
fish, ballet-dancers, dirty monkeys, and big elephants the nights. 'Tis
a great city, but I am ready to return to me peaceful perch above the
faro-board; I think 'twould rest me soul to see a game of craps."
"Why didn't you order Lucius to let up on the sight-seeing business?"
Bertha said.
"And expose me weak knees to me nigger? No, no, Mike."
"I wanted you to let me rummage about alone."
"You did. But I could not allow that, neyther. So long as I can sit the
road-cart or run me arms into a biled shirt I'll stay by, darlin'. 'Tis
not safe for you to go about alone in the hell-broth of these Eastern
streets. Besides, while I'm losin' weight I'm lighter on me feet than
when I came. I've enjoyed me trip, but it does seem sinful to think of
our big house standing empty and the horses 'stockin'' in their stalls,
and I'm glad we're edgin' along homeward."
"So am I," Bertha heartily agreed, even as she looked lovingly back upon
the mighty walls and towers which filled the sky behind her. It was a
gloriously exciting place to live in, after all. "Some day I may come
back," she promised herself, but the thought of Humiston lurking like a
wolf in the shadow came to make her going more and more like an escape.
The elder Haney amused her by his frank comment on everything that was
strange to him. His new teeth, which did not fit him very securely,
troubled him greatly, and he spoke with one hand held alertly, ready to
catch them if they fell, but his smile was a radiant grin, and his
shrewd old face was good to look at as he faced the splendors of the
limited express.
"'Tis foine as a bar-room," said he. "To be whisked about over the world
like this is no hairdship. Bedad, if I'd known how aisy it was I'd a
visited McArdle befoore." He pretended to believe that everybody
travelled this way, and that Mart was merely doing the ordinary in the
matter of meals and state-room; and as he wandered from end to end of
the train and found only luxurious coaches, and people taking their
ease, he had all the best of the argument. Lucius he regarded as a man
of his own level, and they held long confabulations together--the
colored man accepting this comradeship in the spirit of democracy in
which it was given. Mart, for his part, sat looking out of the window,
dreaming of the past.
As she neared Chicago next day Bertha thought with pleasure of seeing
the Mosses again. Now that Humiston was eliminated, she had only the
pleasantest memories of the people she had met in the smoky city. It was
as if in a dark forest of lofty trees she had found a pleasant mead on
which the warm sunlight fell. The mellow charm of the studios was made
all the more appealing by reason of the drab and desolate waste through
which she was forced to pass to attain the light and laughter of those
high places.
Chicago had grown more gloomily impressive, and at the same time--by
reason of her knowledge of the larger plans and mightier enterprises of
New York--it seemed simpler, and Bertha re-entered the hotel which had
once dazzled her in confidence, finding it cheerful and familiar. She
liked it all the better because it was less pretentious. It gave her a
pleasant sense of getting back home to have the men in buttons smile and
say, "Glad to see you, Mrs. Haney." The head clerk was very cordial; he
even found time to come out and shake hands. "I can't give you precisely
your old quarters," he said, "but I can fix you out on the next floor.
I'm sure you'll be very comfortable." Thereupon she took up her quietly
luxurious life at the point where she had dropped it some weeks before.
There lay in this Western girl a strongly marked tendency towards the
culture and refinement of the East; and, though she had grown up far
from anything æsthetic in home-life, she instinctively knew and loved
the beautiful in nature, the right thing in art; and now that she was
about to leave the East for the West--perhaps to abandon the town for
the village--she found herself aching with a hunger which had hitherto
been unconscious. She was torn with desire to go and a longing to stay.
New York, Paris, the world, was open before her if only she were content
to take Marshall Haney's money and use it to these ends.
That night as she lay in her bed hearing the rumble and jar of the
city's traffic, her mind recalled and dwelt upon the wonderful scenes,
especially the beautiful pictures which her eyes had gleaned from the
East. The magical, glittering spread of Manhattan harbor, the silver
sweep of the Hudson at West Point, the mighty panorama from Grant's
Tomb, the silken sheen of Fifth Avenue on a rainy night, the crash and
glitter of upper Broadway, the splendid halls of art, literature, and
especially of music and the drama--all these came back one by one to
claim a place beside her peaks and cañons, sharing the glory of the
purple deeps and the snowy heights of the mountains she had hitherto
loved so single-heartedly and so well.
She saw Sibley now for what it was--a village almost barren of beauty--a
good, kindly, homey place, but so little and so dull! To go back there
to live was quite impossible. "If I quit Mart I must find something to
do here--in the East. I can't stand Sibley."
She longed for the Springs because of her home there and because of
Ben--but she realized that it possessed, after all, but very limited
opportunities for the purchase of culture. The great centres had begun
to exercise dominion over her. She had ever been a lonely little soul,
with no confidante of her own sex. Speech had never been fluent with
her, and she was still elliptical, curt, and in a sense inexpressive.
She had no chatter, and the ways of women were in many directions alien
to her. Miss Franklin had been her teacher, and yet, while respecting
her, she had never learned to love her. Next to Ben Fordyce she leaned
upon the judgment and sympathy of the sculptor, whose fine eyes were
aglow with a high purpose. She was certain that he was both good and
wise.
Mart was much amused at his father, who refused to sleep a second night
at the hotel. "It's too far from the street," said he. "I think I'll go
stay with Fan if ye'll lay out the course that leads to her dure." So
Lucius went with him, bearing a message from Haney: "Tell Fan I'll be
over to see her to-morrow. I'm too tired to go to-day," and the father
hurried away in joyous relief.
"'Tis unnatural to see a son of mine in such Babylonish splendor," he
confided to Lucius. "Faith, it gives me a turn every time I see him
unwind a bill from that big wad he carries in his pocket. 'Tis like
palin' a red onion to him--nothing more."
The Captain was up early next day, and eager to see how his sister was
getting along in her new house, and to please him Bertha went with him.
The transposition of the McArdles, like most charitable enterprises, had
not been entirely a success. The children had blubbered at being torn
away from their playmates and the alleys and runways which they
infested. They were like lusty rats suddenly let loose in a fine new
barn with no dark corners, no burrows, no rotten planks, chips, or
coal-heaps to dig into or hide beneath. The alleys in Glenwood were
leafy lanes, the streets parked and concreted, and the school-yard
unnaturally clean and shaded by fine young trees--which no one was
allowed to climb.
Furthermore, there was work to do in the garden--and this was onerous to
the boys. Then, too, they had to fight their battles all over again.
However, they did this with pleasure, establishing dreadful reputations
among the neat, knickerbocker "sissies" who were foolish enough to cross
them. Dress, Mrs. McArdle declared, was now a real trial. The girls had
to be "in trim all the time," and the boys were as violently in contrast
to their fellows as a litter of brindle barn-kits beside a well-groomed
tabby-cat's family. "I'm clean worn out with it, Mart," she confessed.
"We've been here two weeks the day, and the children howlin' the whole
time to go back and McArdle workin' himself to the figger of a spoon
with a mind to polish the lawn and get the garden into seed."
But Mart only smiled. "'Tis good discipline, Fan."
Haney senior was delighted with his daughter's household. "Faith, the
roar and tumble of the whelps brings back to me me own wife and childer.
Them was good days. 'Twas hard skirmishin' some weeks for bacon and
p'taties, but I got 'em someway, and you ate ivery flick of it--snappin'
and snarlin', but happy as a box of pups."
His son and daughter looked at each other and laughed; then Mart said:
"'Tis a sad memory the father has, a most inconvenient and embarrassing
mind."
They all stayed to dinner, and Bertha rolled up her sleeves and helped
in the kitchen while the Captain went to market with Lucius. McArdle
having got a half-day off, came home highly wrought up again at thought
of meeting Captain Haney and his handsome wife. He looked distinctly
less care-worn, though he confessed that it was hard to rise at the hour
necessary to reach his work at seven. Bertha's heart warmed to him. In a
certain dreamy, speculative turn of eye he was like her father--a man
inventing new forms as naturally as other minds copy worn models. He was
gaining in conversational powers, as he came to know Mart better, and
took occasion to lay before him the plans for several inventions, small
in themselves, but of possible value, so Lucius said.
There was something hearty, wholesome, and satisfying in this visit, and
Bertha went away with increased liking for the McArdles. "I'm glad you
gave them a boost, Mart," she said, as they left the house, "and you
fixed it fine. Mac talked to me a half-hour explaining that you hadn't
put it on a charity basis--just sold the house on long time."
"That was Lucius's idea. Wasn't it, Lucius?"
Lucius did not appear to hear.
They were whirring down an avenue bordered by elms in expanding leaf,
the sky was filled with big white clouds like those which come and go
over the great domes of the Rockies, and the air was warm and sweet, not
yet dusked by the city's chimneys. Bertha's heart rose on joyous wing.
"Let's call and take the Mosses for a ride," she suggested.
"With all the pleasure in the world," he replied; and when they drew up
before the side door of the huge block, Bertha sprang out and hurried in
without waiting for Lucius to accompany her.
Mrs. Moss came to the studio door, and Bertha's shining face so wrought
upon her that she seized her and kissed her with sincere pleasure. "Joe,
here's Mrs. Haney."
Moss was modelling a small figure on a stand near one of the windows,
but left his work and came towards her with beaming smile. "What a
coincidence! We were just discussing you. How do you do? Shake my
arm--my hands are muddy." She took his outbent wrist and shook it with
frank heartiness. He explained: "I said you'd come back; Julia declared,
'No. Once she tastes the glories of New York, good-bye to Chicago and
the West.'"
Bertha interrupted: "I want you to lay off and go out for a whirl in our
machine."
"How gay!" cried Moss. "I ought to be working, for my rent is coming
due; but what's the diff? Here goes! Come on, Julia, we'll shut up shop
and let art wag."
Julia was doubtful. "You know you promised--"
"Of course I did--that's the prerogative of the artist. Come on, now;
I'll work to-night."
"To-night is the Hall's circus party."
"So it is! Well, no matter. I'm hungry for some whizzing, lashing, cool,
clear air."
Dodging behind a screen in the corner, like an actor "doing a stunt," he
reappeared a few moments later with clean hands, wearing a gray jacket
and cap. "Hurry, hurry!" he called. He was like a lad invited to go
fishing or swimming.
"I've been all 'balled up' since you went away," he explained--"took a
contract to produce a certain line of ornamental reliefs; it never pays
to be mercenary. But there it is! I was greedy, I went out for
money--now behold me in the grasp of a business agreement. Can't sleep,
can't breathe country air--had to work all day Sunday."
"It'll pay some of our debts, though," explained Mrs. Moss, "and buy the
children's summer suits."
"Summer suits! Why summer suits? I only had one complete suit a year
when I was a child--and that was a buff."
All the way down the elevator he gazed admiringly at Bertha. "My, my!
how fit you look. Julia, why don't you get a hat and cloak like that?"
"Why don't I? Do you know why?" Then as they came out in sight of the
'mobile she said, "Why don't you furnish me an auto-car like this?"
"I will," he said, as though the notion had just risen in his mind.
"I'll secure one this week."
Mart, who had taken a seat with Lucius, was touched and warmed by their
hearty greeting, and they rolled away up the street as merry as
school-children--even the self-contained Lucius smiled at Joe's odd
turns of speech. Bertha's heart swelled with the keen delight of giving
pleasure to her friends. This was, indeed, the chief of all the wondrous
powers of money--it enabled one to be hospitable, to possess a home
wherein visitors were always welcome, to own a car in which dear friends
could ride; for the moment her resolution to give it all up weakened.
Moss was delirious with joy as they went sweeping up the Lake Shore
Drive. He took off his cap and stood up in the car in order to drink
deep of the wind that came over the water, crisp and clean and
crystalline.
On the park mead the boys were playing ball, and the combination of
green grass and soft and feathery foliage was very beautiful. The
water-fowl were out, the captive cranes crying, and the drives were full
of carriages and cars. It was all very cheering, with death and winter
far away.
Moss, sobering somewhat, began to set forth his plan for making Chicago
a new and greater Venice by bringing the lake into all the city
boulevards and spanning these waterways with stately bridges of a new
type, "designed by Joe Moss, of course," he added; "'twould make Venice
look like a faded print in a lovely old song-book."
His talk took hold of Bertha's imagination--not because she cared to see
Chicago adorned, but because he was so singularly altruistic in his
concernments. That a man should live to make the world more beautiful
was a wondrous discovery for her. He was not specially troubled about
the physical welfare or the morals of the average citizen, but the
city's grossness, its willingness to perpetuate ugly forms, rasped him,
angered him.
She was eager to tell him of her own change of view, but waited till
their ride was over and they were seated in the studio and a moment's
private conversation was possible. Tingling with the stimulus of his
fragmentary exclamations, she impulsively began: "If I were a poor girl
who wanted to earn a living in the world, what would you advise me to
do?"
"Get married!" His answer was jocular, but, observing her displeasure,
he added: "I'm sorry I said that in just that tone, but at the same time
I really mean it. A woman can do other things, but marry she must if she
is to fulfil her place in the world--and be happy."
She was balked and disappointed, he perceived, and he was forced to go
further: "I certainly wouldn't advise any girl to study painting or
sculpture in the hope of making a living by it. The only side of art
that isn't hopelessly out of the running is the decorative--home
decoration is a sure and worthy profession. People don't feel keen need
of sculpture, but they do like pretty walls and nice furniture. I know
several highly successful women decorators--but I wouldn't advise that
work for any one as an easy way to make a living, for the decorative
sense is either a gift at birth or acquired after hard study."
"Do they teach it over there?" She nodded towards the lake. "I liked it
over there," she said, wistfully. "You see I didn't get much of a show
at school. I began to stay out to help mother when I was fourteen. I
missed a whole lot. I'd kind o' like to make it up now if I could."
Moss was eager to probe a little deeper. "Your life is thrillingly
romantic to us--the kind of thing we read of. Congdon writes that you
have a superb home. I should think you'd hate to leave it, even for a
visit."
Her hands strained together as if in resistance to an impulse of
pleading; then she answered: "Yes--but then, you see, it isn't really
mine--it's the Captain's."
"Yours by marriage."
"That's what people say--but I don't know. Sometimes I think I have no
right to any part of it. You have to earn what you own, don't you?"
What was this doubt at her heart? The unexplained emotion in her voice
moved him profoundly. He cautiously approached. "Of course, we know
Frank Congdon--he likes to 'string' us Easterners and we take his yarns
with due discount. I suppose Captain Haney, like many other Western men,
is ready to try his luck now and again, and in that sense really is a
gambler."
She faced him squarely. "No, he has been the real thing. He kept a
saloon--when I first knew him, but he gave it all up for me. I wouldn't
promise to marry him till he did. Everybody out there knows his career,
and most people think he got his money underhand, but he tells me he
didn't, and I take his word. Every dollar he spends on me or on our home
comes out of some mines he owns. I told him I wouldn't touch a dollar of
the saloon money--and I won't. Some folks think I don't care, but I do.
I don't like the saloon business, and he got out and he's livin'
straight now, as straight as any man. It's pretty hard on him, too,
though he won't admit it. He must get awful sick of sittin' round the
way he does. I tell him he needn't cut out all his old cronies on my
account. He says he ain't sufferin', but it's like shuttin' a bronco up
in the corral and lettin' the herd go back into the hills."
"Perhaps he thinks you're better fun than any of his cronies."
She ignored the implied compliment and went on:
"All the same, it's drawin' mighty close lines on him. You can't take a
man living a free-and-easy life the way he was and wing him all at once
and tie him down to a chair without seein' some suffering. Don't you
know it?"
"Does he complain?"
"Not a whimper. Sometimes I wish he would. No, he just waits--but I'm
afraid he'll get lonesome some day and break loose and go back to the
game."
In this way the sculptor had come very close to her secret, and she was
trembling to deeper confidence, when he said, very gently: "Of course,
it does seem a little strange to me that one so young and charming as
you are should be married to a man of his type, but I suppose he was a
handsome figure before his--accident."
Her eyes glowed. "He was one of the grandest-looking men! I never liked
his trade--and I mistrusted him, at first; but when he cut himself out
of the whole business--for me--I couldn't help likin' him; he was so
big-hearted and free-handed. We needed his help, all right. Mother was
sick, and my brother's ranch was playing to hard luck. But don't think I
married him for his money--I liked him then, and, besides--well, I
_thought_ I was doing the right thing--but now--well, I'm guessing." She
ended abruptly, and in the tremor of that final word Moss read her
secret. She had never loved her husband. Pity and a kind of loyalty to
her word had carried her to his side, and now a sense of duty bound her
there.
With sincere sympathy, he said: "We all do wrong at times that good may
come out of it. You could not foresee the future--the best of us can
_only guess_ at the effect of any action. You did the best you knew at
the moment. The question you have to face now has only slight relation
to the past. No one can enter wholly into another's perplexity--I'm not
even sure of a single one of my inferences--but if you are thinking
of--separation, I would say, meet this crisis as bravely as you met the
other. But I don't believe we should decide any such question selfishly.
I am not of those who always seek the side on which lies personal
happiness, because a happiness that is essentially selfish won't last.
The Captain lives only for you--any one can see that. What he does for
you springs from deep affection. What would happen to him--if you left
him?"
He paused a moment and watched her subduing her tears; then added: "I
won't say I was unprepared for what you've said, for the entire
relationship, from our first meeting, seemed too abnormal to be
altogether happy. Money will buy a great many desirable things, but it
has its limits. At the same time, it is too much to expect of you--If
your feeling for him has changed--"
His delicacy, his sympathy for her, was made apparent by the unusual
hesitation of his speech, and she would have broken down completely had
not Julia Moss called out: "Joe, turn on the lights--it's getting dark."
Conscious of Bertha's emotion, he did not immediately do as he was
bidden. "I wish you'd talk this over with Julia," he ended gently;
"she's a very wise little woman."
Bertha shook her head. "I didn't intend to talk it over with you. I
don't know what possessed me. I had no business to say what I did."
He reassured her. "All you've told me and the part I've guessed is quite
safe. I will not even permit Julia to share your confidence till you are
willing to speak to her yourself."
As he slowly lighted the studio Bertha was surprised and a little
troubled to find that two or three other visitors had slipped in through
the dusk, and were grouped about the tea-table, and that the Captain was
again the centre of an eager-eyed group. "They treat him as if he were
an Eskimo," she thought bitterly, and rose to join the circle and
protect him from their inquisition.
Haney was feeling extremely well, and talked with so much of his old
time vigor and slash of epithet that his little audience was quite
entranced. He enlarged upon the experiences of a year he had spent in
Alaska. "Mining up there in them days made gambling slow business," he
said. (He had told Bertha that he had made an attempt to get out of "the
trade," but she was content to have him put it on less self-righteous
grounds.) He contrived to make his hearers feel very keenly the
pitiless, long-drawn ferocity of that sunless winter. He made it plain
why men in that far land came together in vile dens to drink and gamble,
and Moss glowed with the wonder and delight of those great boys who
could rush away to the arctic edge of the world and die with laughing
curses on their lips.
"What did you all do it for?" he asked, bluntly. "For money?"
"Partly--but more for the love of doing something hard. No man but a
miser punishes himself for love of gold--it's for love of what the stuff
will buy, that men fight the snows."
While Haney talked of these things Bertha's eyes were musingly turned on
the face of the sculptor, and her mind was far from the scenes which
Mart so vividly described. This side of his life no longer amused
her--on the contrary she shrank from any disclosure of his savage
career. She was now as unjust in her criticism as she had been fond in
her admiration, and when with darkening brow she cut short his garrulous
flow of narrative Julia perceived her displeasure.
Haney apologized, handsomely. "It's natural for the ould bedraggled
eagle in the cage with a club on his wrist to dream of the circles he
used to cut and the fish he set claw to. In them days I feared no man's
weight, and no night or stream. 'Twas all joyous battle to me, and now,
as I sit here on velvet with only to snap me fingers for anything I
want, I look back at thim fierce old times with a sneaking kind o' wish
to live 'em all over again. Bertie knows me weakness. I would talk
forever did she lave me go on; but 'tis no blame to her--it was a cruel,
bad, careless life."
"When I come West," said Moss, sincerely, "we'll go camping together,
and every night by the fire we'll smoke and you can tell me all about
your journeys. I assure you they are epic to me."
Dr. Brent, a little later, put in a private word to Bertie. "Now you're
going back into the high country and you'll find it necessary to watch
the Captain pretty closely. I suspect he'll find his heart thumping
briskly when he reaches the Springs. He may stand that altitude all
right, but don't let him go higher. He will be taking chances if he goes
above six thousand feet. You'd better have Steel of Denver come down and
examine him to see how he stands the first few days. I mention Steel
because I know him--I've no doubt there are plenty of good men in the
Springs."
"What'll I do if he's worse?"
"Bring him back here or go to sea level--only beware of high passes."