With my wash bowl on my knee.'”
It was undoubtedly Eddie, his partner, but he had never seen him so
white and--why, he had a hole over his eye! Eddie Lukens was dead; it
wasn't decent for him to be standing up, flapping his hands and singing.
Jason bent forward to remonstrate, to persuade him to go back--back to
where the dead belonged. Then he remembered, but it was too late: Eddie
had him in an iron clutch, he was dragging him, too, down.
Jason made a convulsive effort to escape, he threw back his head,
gasping; and saw Honora, his wife, bending over him. The tormenting
illusion slowly perished--this was Cottarsport and not California, he
was back again in the East, the present, married to Honora Canderay. An
astounding fact, but so. Through the window of his room he could see the
foliage of a great horse-chestnut tree that stood by the side walk; it
was swelling into flower. Full memory now flooded back upon him, and
with it the realization that probably his happiness was destroyed.
It was impossible to tell how much Honora knew of the cause of the
assault upon him. She was always like that--enigmatic. But, whatever she
knew now, soon she would have to hear all. Even if he wished to lie, it
would be impossible to fabricate, maintain, a convincing cover for what
had happened. The most superficial, necessary investigation would expose
the story brought home by Thomas Gast.
The time had come when he must confide everything to Honora; perhaps
she would overlook his cowardice. About to address her, he fell into
a bottomless coma, and a day passed before he had gathered himself
sufficiently to undertake his task. She was sitting facing him, her
chair by a window, where her fingers were swiftly and smoothly
occupied. Her features were a little blurred against the light, and--her
disconcerting scrutiny veiled--he felt this to be an assistance.
“Those men who broke me up,” he began dis-jointedly, surprised at the
thin uncertainty of his voice, “I know pretty well who they are. Ought
to get most of them.”
“We thought you could say,” she rejoined in an even tone. “Some guesses
were made, but it was better to wait till you could give a statement.”
“Am I badly hurt, Honora?” he asked suddenly. “Not dangerously,” she
assured him. “You have splendid powers of recuperation.”
“I'll have to go on,” he added hurriedly, “and tell you the rest--why I
was beaten.”
“It would be better not,” she stated. “You ought to be as calm as
possible. It may quiet you, Jason, to hear that I know now.”
“You know what the town has been saying,” he cried in bitter revolt,
“what lies Thomas Gast spread. You've heard all the envy and malice
and drunken vileness of sots. It isn't right for you to think you know
before I could speak a word of defense.”
“Not only what the town says, Jason,” she replied simply, “but the
truth. Olive Stanes told me.”
“Then----.” An excited weakness broke his voice in a sob, and Honora
rose, crossing the room to his bed. “You must positively stop talking of
this now,” she directed. “If you attempt it I shall go away and send a
nurse.”
He was helpless against her will, and sank into semi-slumberous wonder.
Honora knew all: Olive Stanes had told her. She was as noncommittal, he
complained to himself, as a wooden Indian. She might have excused him
without a second thought, and it might be that she had finished with him
entirely, that she was merely dispensing a charity and duty; and, moving
uneasily, or lying propped up in a temporary release from suffering, he
would study her every movement in an endeavor to gain her all-important
opinion of him as he had been lately revealed. It was useless; he was
always, Jason felt, in a state of disturbing suspense.
He determined to end it, however, in spite of what Honora had said, on
an afternoon when he was supported down to the street and the carriage.
His wife took her place at his side, and they rolled forward into the
expansive warmth of summer. Jason was impressed by the sheer repetition
of life; and it seemed to him that this was the greatest happiness
possible--such a procession of days and drives, with Honora.
Her throat rose delicately from ruffled lace, circled by a narrow black
velvet band with a clasp of remarkable diamonds; and he smiled at the
memory of how he had once thought she was marrying him for money. That
seemed years ago, but he was no nearer the solution of her motive now
than then. Her slim hands were folded in her lap--how beautifully they
were joined at the wrists; her tapering fingers were like ivory. As he
studied them he was startled at their suddenly meeting in a rigid
clasp, the knuckles white and sharp. He looked up and saw that they were
drawing near a small group of men outside the apothecary's shop.
A curious silence fell upon these as the carriage approached: there were
the two Radlaws, one saturnine and bleak, the other greenish, shattered
by drugs; Thomas Gast; Vleet, the fishing schooner's master, and a
casual, familiar passerby. Jason Burrage stared at them with a stony
ominous countenance, at which Gast made a gesture of combined insolence
and uncertainty. Jason had sunk back on the cushions when he was
astonished by Honora's commanding the coachman to stop. It was evident
that she was about to descend; he put out a hand to restrain her, but
she disregarded him. His astonishment increased to incredulity and then
fear; he rose hurriedly, but relaxed with a mutter of pain.
Honora, a Canderay, had taken the carriage whip from its holder, and was
walking, direct and composed, toward Thomas Gast. She stopped a short
distance away: before an exclamation, a movement, was possible she had
swept the thong of the whip across Gast's face. The blow was swung
with force, and the man faltered, a burning welt on the pallor of his
countenance. The coachman and Jason Burrage in the carriage, the men
together on the sidewalk, seemed part of an inanimate group of which the
only thing endowed with life was the whip flickering again, cutting and
wrapping, about a face.
There was a curiously ruthless impersonality about Honora's erect
presence, her icy cold profile. Memories of old stories of Ithiel
Canderay, the necessary salt cruelness of punishment in ships, flashed
through Jason's mind. An intolerable weight of time seemed to drag
upon him. Thomas Gast gave a hoarse gurgle and lurched forward, but the
relentless lash drove him back.
“You whisperer!” Honora said in her ringing voice, “you liar and
slabbering coward! It's necessary to cut the truth out of you. When you
talk again about Mr. Burrage and the man he shot in California don't
leave out the smallest detail of his exoneration. Say that he had been
robbed, the other broke one of the first laws of miners and should have
been killed. You'd not have done it--a knife in the back would be your
thought--but a man would!”
She flung the whip down on the bricks.
Thomas Gast pressed his hands to his face, and slow red stains widened
through his fingers. The apothecary stood transfixed; his brother
was shaking in a febrile and congested horror. The woman turned
disdainfully, moving to the carriage; the coachman descended and offered
his arm as she mounted to the seat. The reins were drawn and the horses
started forward in a walk.
Honora's gaze was set, looking directly ahead; her hands, in her lap of
flowered muslin, were now relaxed; they gave an impression of crushing
weariness. Jason's heart pounded like a forge hammer; a tremendous
realization was forced into his brain--he need never again question why
Honora had married him; his doubts were answered, stopped, for ever.
He turned to her to speak an insignificant part of his measureless
gratitude, but he was choked, blinded, by a passion of honor and homage.
Her gaze sought him, and there was a faint tremor of her lips; it grew
into the shadow of an ironic smile. Suddenly it was borne upon his new,
acquiescent serenity that Honora would always be a Canderay for him, he
must perpetually think of her in the terms of his early habit; she would
eternally be a little beyond him, a being to approach, to attend, with
ceremony. The memory and sweep of all California, the pageant of life
he had seen on the way, his own boasted success and importance, faded
before the solid fact of Honora's commanding heritage in life, in
Cottarsport.