THE HANEYS RETURN TO THE PEAKS
The forces that really move most men are the small, concrete, individual
experiences of life. The death of a child is of more account to its
parents than the fall of a republic. Napoleon did not forget Josephine
in his Italian campaigns, and Grant, inflexible commander of a
half-million men, never failed, even in the Wilderness, to remember the
plain little woman whose fireside fortunes were so closely interwoven
with his epoch-making wars.
As Ben Fordyce lost interest in the question of labor and capital and
the political struggles of the state (because they were of less account
than his own combat with the powers of darkness), so Bertha had little
thought of the abstract, the sociologic, in her uneasiness--the strife
was individual, the problems personal--and at last, weary of question,
of doubt, she yielded once more to the protecting power which lay in
Haney's gold and permitted herself to enjoy its use, its command of men.
There was something like intoxication in this sense of supremacy, this
freedom from ceaseless calculation, and to rise above the doubt in which
she had been plunged was like suddenly acquiring wings.
She accepted any chance to penetrate the city's life, determined to
secure all that she could of its light and luxury, and in return
intrusted Lucius with plans for luncheons and dinners, which he carried
out with lavish hand.
Mart seconded all her resolutions with hearty voice. "There's nothing
too good for the Haneys!" he repeatedly chuckled.
In the midst of other gayeties she had the McArdles over to mid-day
dinner one Saturday, and afterwards took them all, a noisy gang, to the
theatre--Patrick Haney as much of a boy as his grandsons, McArdle alone
being unhappy as well as uneasy.
She went about the shops, buying with reckless hand treasures for the
house in the Springs, and this gave her husband more satisfaction than
any other extravagance, for each article seemed a gage of the permanency
of his home. In support of her mood he urged her to even larger
expenditures. "Buy, buy like a queen," he often commanded, as she mused
upon some choice. "Take the best!"
There was instruction as well as a guilty delight in all this conjuring
with a magic check-book, and Bertha grew in grace and dignity in her
rôle as hostess. Her circle of acquaintances widened, but the Mosses,
her first friends in the city, were not displaced in her affections. To
them she continued to play the generous fairy in as many pleasant ways
as they would permit. The theatre continued to be her delight, as well
as her school of life, and a box-party followed nearly every dinner. She
was like a child in the catholicity of her appetite, for she devoured
Shakespearian bread, Ibsen roasts, and comic opera cream-puffs with
almost equal gusto--and mentally thrived upon the mixture. To the
outsider she seemed one of the most fortunate women in the world.
And yet every day made her less tolerant of the crippled old man at her
side. She did not pout or sulk or answer him shortly, but she often
forgot him--failed to answer him--not out of petulance or disgust, but
because her mind was busy with other people. Gradually, without
realizing it, she got into the habit of leaving him to amuse himself, as
he best could, for she knew he did not specially care for the pursuits
which gave her the keenest joy. In consequence of this unintentional
neglect he very naturally fell more and more into the hands of the
bar-room spongers who loitered about the hotel corridors. He dreaded
loneliness, and it was to keep his companions about him that he became a
spendthrift in liquors. Sternly and deliberately temperate during his
long career as a gambler, he fell at last into drinking to excess, and
on one unhappy afternoon returned to Bertha quite plainly drunk.
She was both startled and disgusted by this sign of weakness, and he was
not so blinded by the mist of his potations but that he perceived the
shrinking reluctance of her touch as she aided Lucius in lifting him
into the bed. His inert, lumpish form was at the moment hideously
repulsive to her, and physical contact with him a dreaded thing. What
was left if he lost that self-control which had made him admirable? She
had always been able to qualify his other shortcomings by saying, "Well,
anyhow, he don't drink." She could boast of this no longer.
It was a most miserable night for her. At dinner she was forced to lie
about him (for the first time), and she did it so badly that Joe Moss
divined her trouble and came generously to her aid with a long and
amusing story about Whistler.
The play to which she took her guests did not help her to laughter, for
it set forth with diabolic skill the life of a woman who loathed her
husband, dreaded maternity, and hated herself--a baffling, marvellously
intricate and searching play--meat for well people, not for those
mentally ill at ease or morally unstable. Of a truth, Bertha saw but
half of it and comprehended less, for she could not forget the leaden
hands and flushed face of the man she called husband--and whom she had
left in his bed to sleep away his hours of intoxication. She pitied him
now--but in a new fashion. Her compassion was mixed with contempt, and
that showed more clearly than any other feeling could the depth to which
Marshall Haney had sunk.
When she came home at midnight she listened at his door, but did not
enter, for Lucius--skilled in all such matters--reported the Captain to
be "all right."
She went to her own room in a more darkly tragic mood than she had ever
known before. Her punishment, her time for trouble, had begun. "I reckon
I'm due to pay for my fun," she said to herself, "but not in the way
I've been figuring on." Haney seemed at the moment a complete physical
ruin, and the change which his helplessness wrought in her was most
radical.
His deeply penitent mood next morning hurt and repelled her almost as
much as his maudlin jocularity of the night before. She would have
preferred a brazen levity to this humble confession. "'Twas me boast,"
he sadly asserted, "that no man ever caught me with me eyes full of sand
and me tongue twisted--and now look at me! 'Tis what comes of having
nothing to do but trade lies with a lot of flat-bottomed loafers in a
gaudy bar-room. But don't worry, darlin', right here old Mart pulls up.
You'll not see anny more of this. Forget it, dear-heart--won't you now?"
She promised, of course, but the chasm between them was widened, and a
fear of his again yielding to temptation cut short her stay in the city,
for Lucius warningly explained: "The Captain is settling into a corner
of the bar-room with a gang of sponging blackguards around him, and
every day makes it less easy for him to break away. I'd advise going
home," he ended, quietly. "The Springs is a safer place for him now."
The hyenas were beginning to prowl around the disabled lion, and this
the faithful servant knew even better than the wife.
"All right, home we go," she replied, and the thought of "home" was both
sweet and perilous.
Haney met her decision with pathetic, instant joy. "I'm ready, I was
only waitin'," he said. "After all, your own shack is better than a
pearl palace in anny town, and it's gettin' hot besides."
Bertha parted from the Mosses with keen sorrow. Joe had come to be like
an elder brother to her--a brother and a teacher, and, next to Ben
Fordyce, was more often in her thought than any other human being. She
had lost part of her awe of him, but her affection had deepened as she
came to understand the essential manliness and simplicity of his
character. He redeemed the artist-world from the shame men like Humiston
had put upon it.
As she entered for the last time the studio in which she had spent so
many happy hours and from whose atmosphere of work and high endeavor she
had derived so much mental and moral development she was sad, and this
sadness lent a beauty to her face that it had never before attained. She
looked older, too; and contrasting her with the girl who had first
looked in at his door, Moss could scarcely believe that less than half a
year had affected this change in her. He was too keen an observer not to
know that part of this was due to a refining taste in hats and gowns,
but beneath all these superficial traits she had grown swiftly in the
expression of security and power.
He greeted her as usual with a frank nod and (his hands being free from
clay) advanced to shake hands. "Don't tell me you've come to say
good-bye."
"That's what," she curtly said. "It's up to me to take the Captain home.
He's getting into bad habits lying around this hotel."
His face clouded. "I've been afraid of that," he answered, gently. "Yes,
you'd better go home. It's harder for a man to have a good, easy time
than it is for a woman. But sit down, Julia will be in soon; you mustn't
go without seeing her."
After some further talk on trains and other common-places she became
abruptly personal. "I've been having a whole lot of fun buying things
and planting dollars, but I'm beginning to see an end to that kind of
business. After you've got your house filled up with furniture and
jimcracks, what you going to do then?"
"Burn 'em."
"And begin all over again? You can't buy out the town. It's a real
circus for a while, but I can see there's a limit to it. Once you find
out you can just go down here to one of these jewelry-stores and order
anything you want--you don't want anything. Here I am with a lot of
money that ain't mine, having a gay whirl spending it, but I can see my
finish right now. To go on in this line would take all the fun out of
life. What am I to do?"
Moss took a seat and looked at her thoughtfully. "I don't know. I used
to think if I had money I'd start out and 'do good to people,' but I'm
not at all sure that charity isn't all a damned impertinence. A couple
of years ago I would have said go in for 'Neighborhood Settlements,'
free libraries, 'Noonday Rests,' 'Open-air Funds,' and all the rest of
it, but now I ask, 'Why?' We've had our wave of altruism, and I'm
inclined to think a wave of selfishness would do us all good--but you're
too young to be bothered with these problems. Go home and be happy while
you can. Enjoy your gold while it glitters. Work is my only fun--real,
enduring fun--and I'm not a bit sure _that_ will last. Whatever you do,
be yourself. Don't try to be what you think I or some one else would
like to have you. I like you because you are so straight-forwardly
yourself; I shall be heart-broken if you take on the disease of the age
and begin to prate of your duty."
She listened to him with only partial comprehension of his meaning, but
she answered: "I was brought up to think duty was the whole works."
"Yes, and your teacher meant duty to God, duty to others. Well, there's
duty to one's self. The war of money and duty is the biggest mix of our
day. It's simpler to be poor; then all you've got to worry about is
bread and shoes and shingles."
"That's just it. Sometimes I wish I was back in the Golden Eagle, where
I--" she ended in mid-sentence.
He laughed. "You sound like a middle-aged financier who mourns (tattooed
with dollar-marks) for the days when he used to husk corn at seventy
cents a day." She saw the humor of this, but was aware that without a
knowledge of Ben Fordyce Joe could not understand her problem, therefore
she abandoned her search for light and leading. "Well, anyhow, right
here I quit what you fellows call civilization. I hate to lose you and
Julia and the rest of the folks, but it's me to the high hills. You'll
never know how much you've helped me."
"I hope you'll never know how thoroughly we've _done_ you. An
evil-minded person would say we'd worked you for dinners and drives most
shameful. However, if you have enjoyed our company as thoroughly as
we've delighted in your champagne and birds, we'll cry quits. All my
theories of art and life I advance _gratis_. I ought to do something
handsome for you--you've listened so divinely."
Underneath his banter Moss was sincerely moved. It was hard to say
good-bye to this curious, earnest, seeking mind, this unspoiled child in
whose face the world was being reflected as in a magical mirror. He
loved her with frank affection--a pure passion that was more intimate
than fraternal love and more exalted, in a sense, than the selfish,
devouring passion of the suitor. It would have been difficult for him to
say what his relationship to her at the moment was. It was more than
friendship, more than brotherly care, and yet it was definably less than
that of the lover.
Julia came in and was quite as outspoken in her regret, and both refused
to say good-bye at the moment. "We'll see you at the station," they
said, and Bertha went away, feeling the pain of parting less keen by
reason of this promise.
Afterwards, as the hour for departure came near, she hoped they would
not come. It was less difficult to say "I'll see you again" than to
utter the curt "good-bye" which means so much in Anglo-Saxon life.
They came, however, together with several others of her friends, but in
the bustle and confusion of the depot not much of sentiment could be
uttered, and, though she felt that she was going for a long stay, she
was prodigal of promises to return soon.
Patrick Haney was there, but refused to go with them. "Sure I'm at the
jumpin'-off place now, and to immigrate furder would be to put meself in
the hands of the murtherin' redskins." His talk was the touch of comedy
which the situation needed. "Av ye don't mind I'll stay wid Fan," he
said, a little more seriously, to Haney, who replied:
"All right, 'tis as Fan says," and so they entered the train for the
upward climb.
Haney himself had only joy of the return. He sat at one of the windows
of the library car and studied the prairie swells with a faint, musing
smile, till the darkness fell, and was up early next morning, eager and
curious, to see how the increasing altitude would affect him. Only
towards the end of the second day after eating his dinner did he begin
to feel oppressed.
"I smell the altitude," he confessed--"me breath is shortenin' a bit,
but 'tis good to see the peaks again."
In this long ride the girl-wife dwelt dangerously on the bright face of
Ben Fordyce. It was the thought of seeing him again that came at last to
steal away her regret at parting from her Eastern friends. The splendor
of the Eastern world faded at last, and she, too, soared gladly towards
the mountains. Every doubt was swallowed up in a pleasure which was at
once pure and beyond her control.
Ben would be at the station, she was certain, for Lucius had wired to
him the time of their arrival, and he had instantly replied. "I'll be
there, and very glad to see you"--these words, few and simple, were
addressed to Marshall Haney, but they thrilled her almost as if Ben had
spoken them to her. Was he as glad to have her return as she was to meet
him again?
"A fine lad," remarked Haney, as he pocketed the envelope. "I wonder
does he marry soon? He'd better decide now. I reckon Alice is not long
for this climate--poor girl!"
His remark, so simple in itself, pierced to the centre of Bertha's
momentary self-deception. "I have no right to think of him. He belongs
to Alice Heath!" But the feeling that she herself belonged to Marshall
Haney was gone. That she owed him service was true, but since the night
of his drunkenness she had definitely and finally abandoned all thought
of being his wife, soul to soul, in the rite that sanctifies law. True,
he had kept his word, he had not offended again, but the mischief was
done. To return to the plane on which they had stood when she gave her
promise was impossible.
The day and the hour were such as make the plain lover content with his
world. The earth, a mighty robe of closely woven velvet, mottled softly
in variant greens, swept away to the west, under a soaring convexity of
saffron sky, towards a cloudy altar whereon small wisps of vapor were
burning down to golden embers, while beneath lay the dark-blue Rampart
range. It was a world for horsemen, for free rovers, and for swift and
tireless desert-kine. The course of winds, it lay, a play-ground for
tempests that formed along the great divide and swept down over the
antlike homes of men, acknowledging no barrier, exultant of their
strength of wing and the weight of their horizon-touching armament.
Bertha loved this land, but only because it was an approach to the
hills. She would have shuddered at its desolate, limitless sweep,
treeless, shelterless, had not the dim forms of the distant peaks she
loved so well rose just beyond. She lost her doubt as they approached,
welcoming them as the gates of home. She forgot all save the swelling
tide of longing in her heart.
As the train drew slowly in she caught sight of Ben's intent face among
the throng, and was moved to the point of beating upon the window. He
seemed care-worn and older in this glimpse, but at sight of her his
sunny smile came back radiantly to his lips and glinted like sunshine
from his eyes. In tremulous voice she called: "_There he is!_"
Self-revelation lay in this ecstatic cry and in the glad haste which
kept her on her feet; but Haney, unsuspicious, content, found no cause
for jealousy in her innocent and unrestrained delight at getting home.
Progress down the aisle seemed intolerably slow, for the passengers
ahead of her, stubbornly sluggish, barred her way, but at last she stood
looking into her lover's face, her eager hand pressed between his palms.
"Welcome home!" he called, and drew her to him as if moved almost beyond
his control with desire to clasp her to his bosom. In that instant they
forgot all their doubts and scruples--overpowered by the sense of each
other's nearness.
She was the first to recover her self-command, and, pushing him away
with a quick, decisive gesture, turned to aid Mart, whom Lucius was
bringing slowly down the step.
Her heart was still laboring painfully as she faced Congdon, but she
contrived to return his greeting as he remarked with quizzical glance,
"I hope you'll not find our little town dull, Mrs. Haney."
Dull! She wanted to scream out her joy. She felt like racing to the big
black team to throw her arms about their necks. Dull! There was no other
spot in all the world so exalting as this small town and its
over-peering peaks.
"Where is Mrs. Congdon?" she succeeded in asking at last.
"She has visitors and couldn't come," he answered. "But where's that
'mobile we've heard so much about?"
"Coming by fast freight."
"Freight! From all I've heard of your doings in Chicago I expected it to
come as excess baggage."
It was cool, delicious green dusk--not dark--with a small sickle of moon
in the west, and as they drove up the broad avenue towards home the
town, the universe, was strangely sweet and satisfying. It seemed as
though she had been gone an age--so much had come to her--so thick was
the crowd of new experiences standing between her going and her
return--so swiftly had her mind expanded in these months of vivid city
life. "I'll never go away again," she said to Ben. "This country suits
me."
"I'm glad to hear you say that," he answered, softly. In the most
natural way he had put Congdon with Haney in the rear seat and had taken
the place beside Bertha, and this nearness filled her with pleasure and
an unwonted confusion. How big he was! and how splendid his clear,
youthful profile seemed as it gleamed silver-white in the light of the
big street-lamps. Never had his magnetic young body acted upon her so
powerfully, so dangerously. His firm arm touching her own was at once a
delight and a dread. She was all woman at last, awake, palpitant with
love's full-flooding tide--bewildered, dizzy with rapture. Speech was
difficult and her thought had neither sequence nor design.
Fordyce was under restraint also, and the burden of the talk fell upon
Congdon, who proceeded in his amusingly hit-or-miss way to detail the
important or humorous happenings, of the town, and so they rolled along
up the wide avenue to the big stone steps before the looming, lamp-lit
palace which they called home.
Ben sprang out first, glad of another opportunity to take Bertha's hand,
a clasp that put the throbbing pain back in her bosom--filling her with
a kind of fear of him as well as of herself--and without waiting for the
Captain she ran up the walk towards the wide doorway where Miss Franklin
stood in smiling welcome.
Her greeting over, the young wife danced about the hall, crying: "Oh,
isn't it big and fine! And aren't you glad it's our own!" She appeared
overborne by a returning sense of security and ownership, and ran from
room to room with all the ecstasy and abandon of a child--but she
stopped suddenly in the middle of her own chamber as if a remorseless
hand were clutching at her heart. "But it is _not_ mine!--I must give it
all up!"
Thrusting this intruding thought away, she hurried back to the library,
where the men were seated at ease, sipping some iced liquor in gross
content.
Haney was beaming. "It makes me over new to sniff this air again," he
was saying. "'Tis a bad plan to let go your hold on mountain air. Me
lungs have contracted a trifle, but they'll expand again. I'll be riding
a horse in a month."
Ben was sympathetic, but had eyes only for Bertha, whose improvement (in
mind as in bearing) astonished and delighted him. Her trip, coming just
at the period when her observation was keenest and her memory most
tenacious, had subtly, swiftly ripened her. Wrought upon by a thousand
pictures, moved by strange words and faces, unconsciously changing to
the color of each new conception, deriving sweetness and charm from
every chance-heard strain of music and poetry, she had opened like a
rose.
The middle-aged are prone to go about the world carrying their habits,
their prejudices, and their ailments with them to return as they went
forth; but youth like Bertha's adventures out into the world eager to be
built upon, ready to be transformed from child to adult, as it would
seem, in a day.
"She has achieved new distinction!" Ben exulted as he watched her moving
about the room, so supple, so powerful, and so graceful, but, though he
was careful not to utter one word of praise, he could not keep the glow
of admiration from his eyes.
An hour later as he said good-night and went away with Congdon, his
heart burned with secret, rebellious fire. "Was it not hateful that this
glorious girl should be doomed to live out the sweetest, most alluring
of her years with a gross and crippled old man?" To leave her under the
same roof with Mart Haney seemed like exposing her to profanation and
despair.
They were hardly out of the gate before Congdon broke forth in open
praise of her. "When Mart dies, what a witching morsel for some man!"
Fordyce did not answer on the instant, and when he did his voice was
constrained. "You don't think he's in immediate danger of it--do you?"
"Quite the contrary. He looks to be on the upgrade; but it's a safe bet
she outlives him, and then think of her with a hundred thousand dollars
a year to spend! Talk about honey-pots!--and flies!" After a moment's
silence he added, musingly: "Funny how one's ideas change. A year ago I
thought she was deeply indebted to him; now I feel that with all his
money he can't possibly repay her for what she's giving up on his
account. And yet his chink has made her what she is. Money is a weird
power when applied to a woman. Tiled bath-rooms, silk stockings and
bonnets work wonders with the sex. She's improved mightily on this
trip."
After leaving Congdon, Ben went to his apartment and telephoned Alice to
say that the Haneys had arrived and that he had left them under their
own roof in good repair.
"How is the Captain's health?" she asked, with the morbid interest of
the invalid gossip.
"He feels the altitude a little, but that is probably only temporary.
They both seem very glad to get home."
"He's made a mistake. He can't live here--I am perfectly sure of it. How
is she?"
"Very well--and beautifully dressed, which is the main thing," he added,
with a slight return of his humor. "They asked after you very
particularly."
Unable to sleep, he went out to walk the night, blind envy in his brain
and a hot hunger in his heart, moved as he had never been moved before
at thought of Haney's nearness to that glowing girl. Their union was
monstrous, incredible.
He no longer attempted to deceive himself. He loved this young wife
whose expanding personality had enthralled him from their first meeting.
It was not alone that she was possessed of bodily charm--she called to
him through the mysterious ways which lead the one man to the
predestined woman. The affection he had borne towards Alice Heath was
but the violet ray of friendship compared to the lambent, leaping, red
flame of his passion for Bertha Haney. She represented to him the
mysterious potency and romance of the West--typifying its amazing
resiliency, its limitless capability of adaptation. In a way that seemed
roundabout and strange, but which was, after all, very simple and very
direct, she had lifted her family as well as herself out of poverty back
into the comfort which was their right. Odd, masculine, unexpected of
phrase, she had never been awkward or cheap. Congdon was right, she was
capable of high things. She made mistakes, of course, but they were not
those which a shallow personality would make--they sprang rather from
the overflow of a vigorous and abounding imagination.
"All she needs is contact with people of the right sort. She is capable
of the highest culture," he concluded.
That she was more vital to him than any other woman in the world he now
knew, but he acknowledged nothing base in this confession. He was not
seeking ways to possess her of his love--on the contrary, he was
resolved to conduct himself so nobly that she would again trust and
respect him. "My love is honorable," he said. "I will go forward as in
the beginning--why should I not?--enjoying her companionship as any
honest man may do."
The question of his relation to Alice was not so easily settled. She had
come to irritate him now. Her changeable, swift-witted, moody,
hysterical invalidism had begun to wear upon him intolerably. Everything
she did was wrong. It was brutal even to admit this, but he could no
longer conceal it either from himself or from her. It was deeply, sadly
painful to recall the promise, the complete confidence and happiness
with which they had both started towards the West. How sure of her
recovery they had been, how gay and confident of purpose! Now she not
only refused to listen to his demand for an early marriage, but hampered
and annoyed him in a hundred ways. As he walked the silent night he was
forced to acknowledge that she had been right in delaying their union.
And yet how dependent upon him she was. Her life was so tragically
inwound with his that to think of shaking away her hand seemed the act
of a sordid egoist.
"And even were I free, nothing is solved."
The situation took on the insoluble and the tragic. In the fashion of
well-bred, soundly nurtured American youth he had thought of such
complications only as subjects for novelists. "There must be
concealment, but not duplicity, in my attitude," he decided. He longed
for the constant light of Bertha's face, the frequent touch of her hand.
Her laughter was so endlessly charming, her step so firm, so light, so
graceful. The grace of her bosom--the sweeping line of her side--
He stopped there. In that direction lay danger. "She trusts me, and I
will repay her trust. She has chosen me to be her adviser, putting her
wealth in my hands!--Well, why not? We will see whether an honorable man
cannot carry forward even so difficult a relationship as this. I will
visit her every day, I will enjoy her hospitality as freely as Congdon,
and I will fulfil my promise to Alice--if she asks it of me."
But deep under the sombre resolution lay an unuttered belief in his
future, in his happiness--for this is the prerogative of youth. The dim
mountains, the sinking crescent moon, and the silence of the plain all
seemed somehow to prophesy both happiness and peace.