THE AFTERMATH
They exchanged only bare civilities at the breakfast table, and Bill at
once went downtown. When he was gone, Hazel fidgeted uneasily about
the rooms. She had only a vague idea of legal processes, having never
seen the inside of a courtroom. She wondered what penalty would be
inflicted on Bill, whether he would be fined or sent to prison. Surely
it was a dreadful thing to batter men like Brooks and Lorimer and
Parkinson. They might even make it appear that Bill had tried to
murder them. Her imagination magnified and distorted the incident out
of all proportion.
And brooding over these things, she decided to go and talk it over with
Kitty Brooks. Kitty would not blame her for these horrid man troubles.
But she was mistaken there. Kitty was all up in arms. She was doubly
injured. Her husband had suffered insult and brutal injury. Moreover,
he was threatened with financial loss. Perhaps that threatened wound
in the pocketbook loomed larger than the physical hurt. At any rate,
she vented some of her spleen on Hazel.
"Your husband started this mining thing," she declared heatedly.
"Jimmie says that if he persists in trying to turn things upside down
it will mean a loss of thousands. And we haven't any money to
lose--I'm sure Jimmie has worked hard for what he's got. I'm simply
sick over it. It's bad enough to have one's husband brought home
looking as if he'd been slugged by footpads, and to have the papers go
on about it so. But to have a big loss inflicted on us just when we
were really beginning to get ahead, is too much. I wish you'd never
introduced your miner to us."
That speech, of course, obliterated friendship on the spot, as far as
Hazel was concerned. Even though she was quite prepared to have Bill
blamed for the trouble, did in fact so blame him herself, she could not
stomach Kitty's language nor attitude. But the humiliation of the
interview she chalked up against Bill. She went home with a red spot
glowing on either cheekbone. A rather incoherent telephone
conversation with Mrs. Allen T. Bray, in which that worthy matron
declared her husband prostrated from his injuries, and in the same
breath intimated that Mr. Wagstaff would be compelled to make ample
reparation for his ruffianly act, did not tend to soothe her.
Bill failed to appear at luncheon. During the afternoon an uncommon
number other acquaintances dropped in. In the tactful manner of their
kind they buzzed with the one absorbing topic. Some were vastly
amused. Some were sympathetic. One and all they were consumed with
curiosity for detailed inside information on the Free Gold squabble.
One note rang consistently in their gossipy song: The Free Gold Company
was going to lose a pot of money in some manner, as a consequence of
the affair. Mr. Wagstaff had put some surprising sort of spoke in the
company's wheel. They had that from their husbands who trafficked on
Broad Street. By what power he had accomplished this remained a
mystery to the ladies. Singly and collectively they drove Hazel to the
verge of distraction. When the house was at last clear of them she
could have wept. Through no fault of her own she had given Granville
another choice morsel to roll under its gossipy tongue.
So that when six o'clock brought Bill home, she was coldly disapproving
of him and his affairs in their entirety, and at no pains to hide her
feelings. He followed her into the living-room when the uncomfortable
meal--uncomfortable by reason of the surcharged atmosphere--was at an
end.
"Let's get down to bed rock, Hazel," he said gently. "Doesn't it seem
rather foolish to let a bundle of outside troubles set up so much
friction between us two? I don't want to stir anything up; I don't
want to quarrel. But I can't stand this coldness and reproach from
you. It's unjust, for one thing. And it's so unwise--if we value our
happiness as a thing worth making some effort to save."
"I don't care to discuss it at all," she flared up. "I've heard
nothing else all day but this miserable mining business and your
ruffianly method of settling a dispute. I'd rather not talk about it."
"But we must talk about it," he persisted patiently. "I've got to show
you how the thing stands, so that you can see for yourself where your
misunderstanding comes in. You can't get to the bottom of anything
without more or less talk."
"Talk to yourself, then," she retorted ungraciously. And with that she
ran out of the room.
But she had forgotten or underestimated the catlike quickness of her
man. He caught her in the doorway, and the grip of his fingers on her
arm brought a cry of pain.
"Forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt," he said contritely. "Be a good
girl, Hazel, and let's get our feet on earth again. Sit down and put
your arm around my neck and be my pal, like you used to be. We've got
no business nursing these hard feelings. It's folly. I haven't
committed any crime. I've only stood for a square deal. Come on; bury
the hatchet, little person."
"Let me go," she sobbed, struggling to be free. "I h-hate you!"
"Please, little person. I can't eat humble pie more than once or
twice."
"Let me go," she panted. "I don't want you to touch me."
"Listen to me," he said sternly. "I've stood about all of your
nonsense I'm able to stand. I've had to fight a pack of business
wolves to keep them from picking my carcass, and, what's more important
to me, to keep them from handing a raw deal to five men who wallowed
through snow and frost and all kinds of hardship to make these sharks a
fortune. I've got down to their level and fought them with their own
weapons--and the thing is settled. I said last night I'd be through
here inside a week. I'm through now--through here. I have business in
the Klappan; to complete this thing I've set my hand to. Then I'm
going to the ranch and try to get the bad taste out of my mouth. I'm
going to-morrow. I've no desire or intention to coerce you. You're my
wife, and your place is with me, if you care anything about me. And I
want you. You know that, don't you? I wouldn't be begging you like
this if I didn't. I haven't changed, nor had my eyes dazzled by any
false gods. But it's up to you. I don't bluff. I'm going, and if I
have to go without you I won't come back. Think it over, and just ask
yourself honestly if it's worth while."
He drew her up close to him and kissed her on one anger-flushed cheek,
and then, as he had done the night before, walked straight away to the
bedroom and closed the door behind him.
Hazel slept little that night. A horrid weight seemed to rest
suffocatingly upon her. More than once she had an impulse to creep in
there where Bill lay and forget it all in the sweep of that strong arm.
But she choked back the impulse angrily. She would not forgive him.
He had made her suffer. For his high-handedness she would make him
suffer in kind. At least, she would not crawl to him begging
forgiveness.
When sunrise laid a yellow beam, all full of dancing motes, across her
bed, she heard Bill stir, heard him moving about the apartment with
restless steps. After a time she also heard the unmistakable sound of
a trunk lid thrown back, and the movements of him as he gathered his
clothes--so she surmised. But she did not rise till the maid rapped on
her door with the eight-o'clock salutation:
"Breakfast, ma'am."
They made a pretense of eating. Hazel sought a chair in the
living-room. A book lay open in her lap. But the print ran into
blurred lines. She could not follow the sense of the words. An
incessant turmoil of thought harassed her. Bill passed through the
room once or twice. Determinedly she ignored him. The final snap of
the lock on his trunk came to her at last, the bumping sounds of its
passage to the hall. Then a burly expressman shouldered it into his
wagon and drove away.
A few minutes after that Bill came in and took a seat facing her.
"What are you going to do, Hazel?" he asked soberly.
"Nothing," she curtly replied.
"Are you going to sit down and fold your hands and let our air castles
come tumbling about our ears, without making the least effort to
prevent?" he continued gently. "Seems to me that's not like you at
all. I never thought you were a quitter."
"I'm not a quitter," she flung back resentfully. "I refuse to be
browbeaten, that's all. There appears to be only one choice--to follow
you like a lamb. And I'm not lamblike. I'd say that you are the
quitter. You have stirred up all this trouble here between us. Now
you're running away from it. That's how it looks to me. Go on! I can
get along."
"I dare say you can," he commented wearily. "Most of us can muddle
along somehow, no matter what happens. But it seems a pity, little
person. We had all the chance in the world. You've developed an
abnormal streak lately. If you'd just break away and come back with
me. You don't know what good medicine those old woods are. Won't you
try it a while?"
"I am not by nature fitted to lead the hermit existence," she returned
sarcastically.
And even while her lips were uttering these various unworthy little
bitternesses she inwardly wondered at her own words. It was not what
she would have said, not at all what she was half minded to say. But a
devil of perverseness spurred her. She was full of protest against
everything.
"I wish we'd had a baby," Bill murmured softly. "You'd be different.
You'd have something to live for besides this frothy, neurotic
existence that has poisoned you against the good, clean, healthy way of
life. I wish we'd had a kiddie. We'd have a fighting chance for
happiness now; something to keep us sane, something outside of our own
ego to influence us."
"Thank God there isn't one!" she muttered.
"Ah, well," Bill sighed, "I guess there is no use. I guess we can't
get together on anything. There doesn't seem to be any give-and-take
between us any longer."
He rose and walked to the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned.
"I have fixed things at the bank for you," he said abruptly.
Then he walked out, without waiting for an answer.
She heard the soft whir of the elevator. A minute later she saw him on
the sidewalk. He had an overcoat on his arm, a suit case in his hand.
She saw him lift a finger to halt a passing car.
It seemed incredible that he should go like that. Surely he would come
back at noon or at dinner time. She had always felt that under his
gentleness there was iron. But deep in her heart she had never
believed him so implacable of purpose where she was concerned.
She waited wearily, stirring with nervous restlessness from room to
room.
Luncheon passed. The afternoon dragged by to a close. Dusk fell. And
when the night wrapped Granville in its velvet mantle, and the street
lights blinked away in shining rows, she cowered, sobbing, in the big
chair by the window.
He was gone.
Gone, without even saying good-by!