A SACRIFICE AND ITS PUNISHMENT
Salazar was not on hand at breakfast, having contracted a sickness in
the head during a dispute at the ball. Paula brought in the dishes. She
fixed her solemn, round eyes on Mrs. MacFarlane and Johnson could read a
questioning in their limpid steadiness. Once she spoke sharply. He gave
a curt answer and appeared perturbed.
"What does she want?" asked Hughie's widow.
"Nothing, ma'am. It ain't anything."
"She looks angry," Mrs. MacFarlane persisted.
"No-oo. She says the toast is burned. That's all."
"Nonsense. The toast's delicious," said the widow.
They went on with the meal. Hanging above the sideboard was a portrait
of Hughie. It was a wretched thing in crayon, framed in wide gilt of
sumptuous design, but the drawing had been a gift to MacFarlane from a
friend in the cow business, and accordingly he had allotted it a place
of honor. The widow saw this at breakfast for the first time. Hughie's
face wore a simper, but the likeness must have recalled him in tender
moods, for two large tears gathered on her cheeks and slid slowly
downward.
Paula, entering with fried eggs, noted the direction of her gaze and
saw, also, the tears splash on the widow's plate. Mrs. MacFarlane was
extracting a handkerchief from her sleeve and she smiled wanly at the
girl to intimate that the matter of the toast really did not weigh in
the least. It was kindly meant, but Paula failed altogether to
understand. She dropped the platter and began to jabber. It is of no
importance what she said. At her first words Johnson jumped up, but she
pushed him back into his seat and cried names at Hughie's widow it was
lucky that good lady knew not the meaning of. She crooked her fingers
under Mrs. MacFarlane's nose, and when the widow tried, in her
astonishment and indignation, to rise from the table, Paula seized a
plate. Lafe pinned her arms. There was a tremendous to-do for a few
minutes, with Paula shrilling and tugging.
After the first shock, the widow regarded the girl's struggles without
apprehension. Lafe contrived to drag Paula from the room. In the
kitchen, her access of rage evaporated swiftly, and she sobbed, her face
buried in her arms against the wall. Johnson returned, panting.
"Now," Mrs. MacFarlane said steadily, "I want to know what this means."
This was natural enough, and Lafe had been thinking faster than he had
ever thought in his life. He began an elaborate dissertation on
standards along the Border--how different they were to those back east.
It was in his mind to persuade the widow that men were apt to depart
from the charted paths when removed from the compelling force of an
established moral sentiment. That would give him a chance to lead up to
Hughie's backsliding by easy stages.
Such was his plan. It might have worked smoothly with any other woman,
or done by a man of readier wit. But as he looked into Mrs. MacFarlane's
face, the affair assumed a different aspect to Lafe. He could not tear
down the image of Hughie she had builded and kneeled to during eleven
years. There came a tremor in his voice and his speech trailed off into
weak incoherencies. He paused, braced himself and started again.
"That's better," said Mrs. MacFarlane, very white, and deadly quiet.
"That sounds more manly."
Once squared away to his task, Johnson did it well. He showed an amazing
aptitude for lying. Looking the outraged widow straight in the eye, he
lied--lied gloriously--so that, as she heard him, Mrs. MacFarlane
gradually shrank back. She appeared to expand and grow taller in her
contempt--to Lafe she seemed to fill the room--but when he deftly added
a picturesque touch about Paula deluding herself with the suspicion that
Mrs. MacFarlane and himself were much too friendly--he told her this
with a savage zest--the widow exclaimed, "The very idea! Oh, the
creature!"
"And you were Hughie's friend?" she remarked when he had ended. Of
course, that was the monstrous side of this affair.
"Well, you see, ma'am, him and me--"
"And Hetty Ferrier!"
Now, Lafe had forgotten Hetty in all this. Had Mrs. MacFarlane been a
wiser woman, she might have read a different story from his eyes in that
instant.
"It's my duty to tell her, Mr. Johnson," Mrs. MacFarlane went on,
sustained by that sense of moral obligation which overtakes us all in
dealing with our friends' private affairs.
"It ain't right, ma'am," said Lafe. "It ain't proper that a girl should
hear such things."
"Ho, indeed!" the widow sniffed. "It isn't, hey? We'll see about that. I
suppose Hetty's a baby? And let a sweet girl like her marry a man like
you?"
"You aim to tell her, Miz MacFarlane?"
"I certainly shall."
"Wait. Hold on a minute," he begged.
"There's nothing you can say, Mr. Johnson. I won't listen. Good-by. It
won't be necessary for you to drive me back. I will get Salazar. No, I
don't want to hear anything more. I won't listen. I've heard too much
already. That will do, please. Let me by."
She swept past him as though marching on a citadel, and Johnson
withdrew, limp and wretched. Indeed, he looked and felt, at the moment,
the thing Mrs. MacFarlane thought he was. There obtains a notion that an
innocent man's innocence will shine from his face like the sun breaking
through clouds. It is a comfortable thought. The facts, however, are
that he is very likely to show much bewilderment under sudden
accusation, whereas the hardy scoundrel will summon up the most
blighting wrath when brought face to face with his misdoings.
Hughie's widow retired to her room, where, with a photograph of Hughie
on the table in front of her, she had a long cry. Then she sat down and
wrote to Hetty Ferrier, lest she be swerved from her high purpose by
subsequent happenings, or neglect it through bad memory. Salazar
received orders to hitch the team to take her back to town, and the
majordomo promised that Paula would be sent back to her mother, who
lived on the far side of Tepitate. Her conscience serene, Mrs.
MacFarlane gave the majordomo some money for the girl, which the
majordomo pocketed against a holiday in the city. As he intended to
marry Paula some day, it may be that he regarded this as dowry and
consequently his own. Then the widow drove back to the Hotel Carmen, and
a week later boarded the train for the homeward journey.