The swaying, creaking, Boomville coach had at last reached the level
ridge, and sank forward upon its springs with a sigh of relief and the
slow precipitation of the red dust which had hung in clouds around
it. The whole coach, inside and out, was covered with this impalpable
powder; it had poured into the windows that gaped widely in the
insufferable heat; it lay thick upon the novel read by the passenger who
had for the third or fourth time during the ascent made a gutter of
the half-opened book and blown the dust away in a single puff, like the
smoke from a pistol. It lay in folds and creases over the yellow silk
duster of the handsome woman on the back seat, and when she endeavored
to shake it off enveloped her in a reddish nimbus. It grimed the
handkerchiefs of others, and left sanguinary streaks on their mopped
foreheads. But as the coach had slowly climbed the summit the sun
was also sinking behind the Black Spur Range, and with its ultimate
disappearance a delicious coolness spread itself like a wave across the
ridge. The passengers drew a long breath, the reader closed his book,
the lady lifted the edge of her veil and delicately wiped her
forehead, over which a few damp tendrils of hair were clinging. Even a
distinguished-looking man who had sat as impenetrable and remote as a
statue in one of the front seats moved and turned his abstracted face to
the window. His deeply tanned cheek and clearly cut features harmonized
with the red dust that lay in the curves of his brown linen dust-cloak,
and completed his resemblance to a bronze figure. Yet it was Demorest,
changed only in coloring. Now, as five years ago, his abstraction had a
certain quality which the most familiar stranger shrank from disturbing.
But in the general relaxation of relief the novel-reader addressed him.
“Well, we ain't far from Boomville now, and it's all down-grade the rest
of the way. I reckon you'll be as glad to get a 'wash up' and a 'shake'
as the rest of us.”
“I am afraid I won't have so early an opportunity,” said Demorest, with
a faint, grave smile, “for I get off at the cross-road to Heavy Tree
Hill.”
“Heavy Tree Hill!” repeated the other in surprise. “You ain't goin' to
Heavy Tree Hill? Why, you might have gone there direct by railroad,
and have been there four hours ago. You know there's a branch from the
Divide Railroad goes there straight to the hotel at Hymettus.”
“Where?” said Demorest, with a puzzled smile.
“Hymettus. That's the fancy name they've given to the watering-place on
the slope. But I reckon you're a stranger here?”
“For five years,” said Demorest. “I fancy I've heard of the railroad,
although I prefer to go to Heavy Tree this way. But I never heard of a
watering-place there before.”
“Why, it's the biggest boom of the year. Folks that are tired of the
fogs of 'Frisco and the heat of Sacramento all go there. It's four
thousand feet up, with a hotel like Saratoga, dancing, and a band plays
every night. And it all sprang out of the Divide Railroad and a crank
named George Barker, who bought up some old Ditch property and ran a
branch line along its levels, and made a junction with the Divide. You
can come all the way from 'Frisco or Sacramento by rail. It's a mighty
big thing!”
“Yet,” said Demorest, with some animation, “you call the man who
originated this success a crank. I should say he was a genius.”
The other passenger shook his head. “All sheer nigger luck. He bought
the Ditch plant afore there was a ghost of a chance for the Divide
Railroad, just out o' pure d----d foolishness. He expected so little
from it that he hadn't even got the agreement done in writin', and
hadn't paid for it, when the Divide Railroad passed the legislature, as
it never oughter done! For, you see, the blamedest cur'ous thing about
the whole affair was that this 'straw' road of a Divide, all pure
wildcat, was only gotten up to frighten the Pacific Railroad sharps into
buying it up. And the road that nobody ever calculated would ever have a
rail of it laid was pushed on as soon as folks knew that the Ditch plant
had been bought up, for they thought there was a big thing behind it.
Even the hotel was, at first, simply a kind of genteel alms-house that
this yer Barker had built for broken-down miners!”
“Nevertheless,” continued Demorest, smiling, “you admit that it is a
great success?”
“Yes,” said the other, a little irritated by some complacency in
Demorest's smile, “but the success isn't HIS'N. Fools has ideas, and
wise men profit by them, for that hotel now has Jim Stacy's bank behind
it, and is even a kind of country branch of the Brook House in 'Frisco.
Barker's out of it, I reckon. Anyhow, HE couldn't run a hotel, for all
that his wife--she that's one of the big 'Frisco swells now--used to
help serve in her father's. No, sir, it's just a fool's luck, gettin'
the first taste and leavin' the rest to others.”
“I'm not sure that it's the worst kind of luck,” returned Demorest,
with persistent gravity; “and I suppose he's satisfied with it.” But so
heterodox an opinion only irritated his antagonist the more, especially
as he noticed that the handsome woman in the back seat appeared to be
interested in the conversation, and even sympathetic with Demorest. The
man was in the main a good-natured fellow and loyal to his friends; but
this did not preclude any virulent criticism of others, and for a moment
he hated this bronze-faced stranger, and even saw blemishes in the
handsome woman's beauty. “That may be YOUR idea of an Eastern man,”
he said bluntly, “but I kin tell ye that Californy ain't run on those
lines. No, sir.” Nevertheless, his curiosity got the better of his ill
humor, and as the coach at last pulled up at the cross-road for Demorest
to descend he smiled affably at his departing companion.
“You allowed just now that you'd bin five years away. Whar mout ye have
bin?”
“In Europe,” said Demorest pleasantly.
“I reckoned ez much,” returned his interrogator, smiling significantly
at the other passengers. “But in what place?”
“Oh, many,” said Demorest, smiling also.
“But what place war ye last livin' at?”
“Well,” said Demorest, descending the steps, but lingering for a moment
with his hand on the door of the coach, “oddly enough, now you remind me
of it--at Hymettus!”
He closed the door, and the coach rolled on. The passenger reddened,
glanced indignantly after the departing figure of Demorest and
suspiciously at the others. The lady was looking from the window with a
faint smile on her face.
“He might hev given me a civil answer,” muttered the passenger, and
resumed his novel.
When the coach drew up before Carter's Hotel the lady got down, and the
curiosity of her susceptible companions was gratified to the extent of
learning from the register that her name was Horncastle.
She was shown to a private sitting-room, which chanced to be the one
which had belonged to Mrs. Barker in the days of her maidenhood, and
was the sacred, impenetrable bower to which she retired when her daily
duties of waiting upon her father's guests were over. But the breath of
custom had passed through it since then, and but little remained of its
former maiden glories, except a few schoolgirl crayon drawings on
the wall and an unrecognizable portrait of herself in oil, done by a
wandering artist and still preserved as a receipt for his unpaid
bill. Of these facts Mrs. Horncastle knew nothing; she was evidently
preoccupied, and after she had removed her outer duster and entered the
room, she glanced at the clock on the mantel-shelf and threw herself
with an air of resigned abstraction in an armchair in the corner. Her
traveling-dress, although unostentatious, was tasteful and well-fitting;
a slight pallor from her fatiguing journey, and, perhaps, from some
absorbing thought, made her beauty still more striking. She gave even an
air of elegance to the faded, worn adornments of the room, which it is
to be feared it never possessed in Miss Kitty's occupancy. Again she
glanced at the clock. There was a tap at the door.
“Come in.”
The door opened to a Chinese servant bearing a piece of torn paper with
a name written on it in lieu of a card.
Mrs. Horncastle took it, glanced at the name, and handed the paper back.
“There must be some mistake,” she said, “it do not know Mr. Steptoe.”
“No, but you know ME all the same,” said a voice from the doorway as a
man entered, coolly took the Chinese servant by the elbows and thrust
him into the passage, closing the door upon him. “Steptoe and Horncastle
are the same man, only I prefer to call myself Steptoe HERE. And I see
YOU'RE down on the register as 'Horncastle.' Well, it's plucky of you,
and it's not a bad name to keep; you might be thankful that I have
always left it to you. And if I call myself Steptoe here it's a good
blind against any of your swell friends knowing you met your HUSBAND
here.”
In the half-scornful, half-resigned look she had given him when he
entered there was no doubt that she recognized him as the man she had
come to see. He had changed little in the five years that had elapsed
since he entered the three partners' cabin at Heavy Tree Hill. His short
hair and beard still clung to his head like curled moss or the crisp
flocculence of Astrakhan. He was dressed more pretentiously, but still
gave the same idea of vulgar strength. She listened to him without
emotion, but said, with even a deepening of scorn in her manner:--
“What new shame is this?”
“Nothing NEW,” he replied. “Only five years ago I was livin' over on the
Bar at Heavy Tree Hill under the name of Steptoe, and folks here might
recognize me. I was here when your particular friend, Jim Stacy,
who only knew me as Steptoe, and doesn't know me as Horncastle, your
HUSBAND,--for all he's bound up my property for you,--made his big
strike with his two partners. I was in his cabin that very night, and
drank his whiskey. Oh, I'm all right there! I left everything all right
behind me--only it's just as well he doesn't know I'm Horncastle. And
as the boy happened to be there with me”--He stopped, and looked at her
significantly.
The expression of her face changed. Eagerness, anxiety, and even fear
came into it in turn, but always mingling with some scorn that dominated
her. “The boy!” she said in a voice that had changed too; “well, what
about him? You promised to tell me all,--all!”
“Where's the money?” he said. “Husband and wife are ONE, I know,”
he went on with a coarse laugh, “but I don't trust MYSELF in these
matters.”
She took from a traveling-reticule that lay beside her a roll of notes
and a chamois leather bag of coin, and laid them on the table before
him. He examined both carefully.
“All right,” he said. “I see you've got the checks made out 'to bearer.'
Your head's level, Conny. Pity you and me can't agree.”
“I went to the bank across the way as soon as I arrived,” she said, with
contemptuous directness. “I told them I was going over to Hymettus and
might want money.”
He dropped into a chair before her with his broad heavy hands upon his
knees, and looked at her with an equal, though baser, contempt: for his
was mingled with a certain pride of mastery and possession.
“And, of course, you'll go to Hymettus and cut a splurge as you always
do. The beautiful Mrs. Horncastle! The helpless victim of a wretched,
dissipated, disgraced, gambling husband. So dreadfully sad, you know,
and so interesting! Could get a divorce from the brute if she wanted,
but won't, on account of her religious scruples. And so while the brute
is gambling, swindling, disgracing himself, and dodging a shot here
and a lynch committee there, two or three hundred miles away, you're
splurging round in first-class hotels and watering-places, doing the
injured and abused, and run after by a lot of men who are ready to take
my place, and, maybe, some of my reputation along with it.”
“Stop!” she said suddenly, in a voice that made the glass chandelier
ring. He had risen too, with a quick, uneasy glance towards the door.
But her outbreak passed as suddenly, and sinking back into her chair,
she said, with her previous scornful resignation, “Never mind. Go on.
You KNOW you're lying!”
He sat down again and looked at her critically. “Yes, as far as you're
concerned I WAS lying! I know your style. But as you know, too, that
I'd kill you and the first man I suspected, and there ain't a judge or
a jury in all Californy that wouldn't let me go free for it, and even
consider, too, that it had wiped off the whole slate agin me--it's to my
credit!”
“I know what you men call chivalry,” she said coldly, “but I did not
come here to buy a knowledge of that. So now about the child?” she ended
abruptly, leaning forward again with the same look of eager solicitude
in her eyes.
“Well, about the child--our child--though, perhaps, I prefer to say MY
child,” he began, with a certain brutal frankness. “I'll tell you. But
first, I don't want you to talk about BUYING your information of me.
If I haven't told you anything before, it's because I didn't think you
oughter know. If I didn't trust the child to YOU, it's because I didn't
think you could go shashaying about with a child that was three years
old when I”--he stopped and wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand--“made an honest woman of you--I think that's what they call it.”
“But,” she said eagerly, ignoring the insult, “I could have hidden it
where no one but myself would have known it. I could have sent it to
school and visited it as a relation.”
“Yes,” he said curtly, “like all women, and then blurted it out some day
and made it worse.”
“But,” she said desperately, “even THEN, suppose I had been willing to
take the shame of it! I have taken more!”
“But I didn't intend that you should,” he said roughly.
“You are very careful of my reputation,” she returned scornfully.
“Not by a d----d sight,” he burst out; “but I care for HIS! I'm not
goin' to let any man call him a bastard!”
Callous as she had become even under this last cruel blow, she could not
but see something in his coarse eyes she had never seen before; could
not but hear something in his brutal voice she had never heard before!
Was it possible that somewhere in the depths of his sordid nature he had
his own contemptible sense of honor? A hysterical feeling came over her
hitherto passive disgust and scorn, but it disappeared with his next
sentence in a haze of anxiety. “No!” he said hoarsely, “he had enough
wrong done him already.”
“What do you mean?” she said imploringly. “Or are you again lying? You
said, four years ago, that he had 'got into trouble;' that was your
excuse for keeping him from me. Or was that a lie, too?”
His manner changed and softened, but not for any pity for his companion,
but rather from some change in his own feelings. “Oh, that,” he said,
with a rough laugh, “that was only a kind o' trouble any sassy kid like
him was likely to get into. You ain't got no call to hear that, for,” he
added, with a momentary return to his previous manner, “the wrong that
was done him is MY lookout! You want to know what I did with him, how
he's been looked arter, and where he is? You want the worth of your
money. That's square enough. But first I want you to know, though you
mayn't believe it, that every red cent you've given me to-night goes to
HIM. And don't you forget it.”
For all his vulgar frankness she knew he had lied to her many times
before,--maliciously, wantonly, complacently, but never evasively; yet
there was again that something in his manner which told her he was now
telling the truth.
“Well,” he began, settling himself back in his chair, “I told you I
brought him to Heavy Tree Hill. After I left you I wasn't going to trust
him to no school; he knew enough for me; but when I left those parts
where nobody knew you, and got a little nearer 'Frisco, where people
might have known us both, I thought it better not to travel round with a
kid o' that size as his FATHER. So I got a young fellow here to pass him
off as HIS little brother, and look after him and board him; and I paid
him a big price for it, too, you bet! You wouldn't think it was a man
who's now swelling around here, the top o' the pile, that ever took
money from a brute like me, and for such schoolmaster work, too; but he
did, and his name was Van Loo, a clerk of the Ditch Company.”
“Van Loo!” said the woman, with a movement of disgust; “THAT man!”
“What's the matter with Van Loo?” he said, with a coarse laugh, enjoying
his wife's discomfiture. “He speaks French and Spanish, and you oughter
hear the kid roll off the lingo he's got from him. He's got style, and
knows how to dress, and you ought to see the kid bow and scrape, and how
he carries himself. Now, Van Loo wasn't exactly my style, and I reckon I
don't hanker after him much, but he served my purpose.”
“And this man knows”--she said, with a shudder.
“He knows Steptoe and the boy, but he don't know Horncastle nor YOU.
Don't you be skeert. He's the last man in the world who would hanker to
see me or the kid again, or would dare to say that he ever had! Lord!
I'd like to see his fastidious mug if me and Eddy walked in upon him and
his high-toned mother and sister some arternoon.” He threw himself back
and laughed a derisive, spasmodic, choking laugh, which was so far from
being genial that it even seemed to indicate a lively appreciation of
pain in others rather than of pleasure in himself. He had often laughed
at her in the same way.
“And where is he now?” she said, with a compressed lip.
“At school. Where, I don't tell you. You know why. But he's looked after
by me, and d----d well looked after, too.”
She hesitated, composed her face with an effort, parted her lips, and
looked out of the window into the gathering darkness. Then after a
moment she said slowly, yet with a certain precision:--
“And his mother? Do you ever talk to him of HER? Does--does he ever
speak of ME?”
“What do you think?” he said comfortably, changing his position in the
chair, and trying to read her face in the shadow. “Come, now. You don't
know, eh? Well--no! NO! You understand. No! He's MY friend--MINE! He's
stood by me through thick and thin. Run at my heels when everybody else
fled me. Dodged vigilance committees with me, laid out in the brush with
me with his hand in mine when the sheriff's deputies were huntin' me;
shut his jaw close when, if he squealed, he'd have been called another
victim of the brute Horncastle, and been as petted and canoodled as
you.”
It would have been difficult for any one but the woman who knew the man
before her to have separated his brutish delight in paining her from
another feeling she had never dreamt him capable of,--an intense
and fierce pride in his affection for his child. And it was the more
hopeless to her that it was not the mere sentiment of reciprocation,
but the material instinct of paternity in its most animal form. And it
seemed horrible to her that the only outcome of what had been her own
wild, youthful passion for this brute was this love for the flesh of her
flesh, for she was more and more conscious as he spoke that her
yearning for the boy was the yearning of an equally dumb and unreasoning
maternity. They had met again as animals--in fear, contempt, and anger
of each other; but the animal had triumphed in both.
When she spoke again it was as the woman of the world,--the woman who
had laughed two years ago at the irrepressible Barker. “It's a new
thing,” she said, languidly turning her rings on her fingers, “to see
you in the role of a doting father. And may I ask how long you have had
this amiable weakness, and how long it is to last?”
To her surprise and the keen retaliating delight of her sex, a conscious
flush covered his face to the crisp edges of his black and matted beard.
For a moment she hoped that he had lied. But, to her greater surprise,
he stammered in equal frankness: “It's growed upon me for the last five
years--ever since I was alone with him.” He stopped, cleared his throat,
and then, standing up before her, said in his former voice, but with a
more settled and intense deliberation: “You wanter know how long it
will last, do ye? Well, you know your special friend, Jim Stacy--the big
millionaire--the great Jim of the Stock Exchange--the man that pinches
the money market of Californy between his finger and thumb and makes it
squeal in New York--the man who shakes the stock market when he sneezes?
Well, it will go on until that man is a beggar; until he has to borrow
a dime for his breakfast, and slump out of his lunch with a cent's
worth of rat poison or a bullet in his head! It'll go on until his old
partner--that softy George Barker--comes to the bottom of his d----d
fool luck and is a penny-a-liner for the papers and a hanger-round at
free lunches, and his scatter-brained wife runs away with another man!
It'll go on until the high-toned Demorest, the last of those three
little tin gods of Heavy Tree Hill, will have to climb down, and will
know what I feel and what he's made me feel, and will wish himself in
hell before he ever made the big strike on Heavy Tree! That's me! You
hear me! I'm shoutin'! It'll last till then! It may be next week, next
month, next year. But it'll come. And when it does come you'll see me
and Eddy just waltzin' in and takin' the chief seats in the synagogue!
And you'll have a free pass to the show!”
Either he was too intoxicated with his vengeful vision, or the shadows
of the room had deepened, but he did not see the quick flush that
had risen to his wife's face with this allusion to Barker, nor the
after-settling of her handsome features into a dogged determination
equal to his own. His blind fury against the three partners did not
touch her curiosity; she was only struck with the evident depth of his
emotion. He had never been a braggart; his hostility had always been
lazy and cynical. Remembering this, she had a faint stirring of respect
for the undoubted courage and consciousness of strength shown in
this wild but single-handed crusade against wealth and power; rather,
perhaps, it seemed to her to condone her own weakness in her youthful
and inexplicable passion for him. No wonder she had submitted.
“Then you have nothing more to tell me?” she said after a pause, rising
and going towards the mantel.
“You needn't light up for me,” he returned, rising also. “I am going.
Unless,” he added, with his coarse laugh, “you think it wouldn't look
well for Mrs. Horncastle to have been sitting in the dark with--a
stranger!” He paused as she contemptuously put down the candlestick and
threw the unlit match into the grate. “No, I've nothing more to tell.
He's a fancy-looking pup. You'd take him for twenty-one, though he's
only sixteen--clean-limbed and perfect--but for one thing”--He stopped.
He met her quick look of interrogation, however, with a lowering silence
that, nevertheless, changed again as he surveyed her erect figure by
the faint light of the window with a sardonic smile. “He favors you, I
think, and in all but one thing, too.”
“And that?” she queried coldly, as he seemed to hesitate.
“He ain't ashamed of ME,” he returned, with a laugh.
The door closed behind him; she heard his heavy step descend the
creaking stairs; he was gone. She went to the window and threw it
open, as if to get rid of the atmosphere charged with his presence,--a
presence still so potent that she now knew that for the last five
minutes she had been, to her horror, struggling against its magnetism.
She even recoiled now at the thought of her child, as if, in these new
confidences over it, it had revived the old intimacy in this link
of their common flesh. She looked down from her window on the square
shoulders, thick throat, and crisp matted hair of her husband as he
vanished in the darkness, and drew a breath of freedom,--a freedom not
so much from him as from her own weakness that he was bearing away with
him into the exonerating night.
She shut the window and sank down in her chair again, but in the
encompassing and compassionate obscurity of the room. And this was the
man she had loved and for whom she had wrecked her young life! Or WAS
it love? and, if NOT, how was she better than he? Worse; for he was
more loyal to that passion that had brought them together and its
responsibilities than she was. She had suffered the perils and pangs of
maternity, and yet had only the mere animal yearning for her offspring,
while he had taken over the toil and duty, and even the devotion, of
parentage himself. But then she remembered also how he had fascinated
her--a simple schoolgirl--by his sheer domineering strength, and how the
objections of her parents to this coarse and common man had forced her
into a clandestine intimacy that ended in her complete subjection to
him. She remembered the birth of an infant whose concealment from her
parents and friends was compassed by his low cunning; she remembered the
late atonement of marriage preferred by the man she had already begun
to loathe and fear, and who she now believed was eager only for her
inheritance. She remembered her abject compliance through the greater
fear of the world, the stormy scenes that followed their ill-omened
union, her final abandonment of her husband, and the efforts of her
friends and family who had rescued the last of her property from him.
She was glad she remembered it; she dwelt upon it, upon his cruelty, his
coarseness and vulgarity, until she saw, as she honestly believed, the
hidden springs of his affection for their child. It was HIS child in
nature, however it might have favored her in looks; it was HIS own
brutal SELF he was worshiping in his brutal progeny. How else could it
have ignored HER--its own mother? She never doubted the truth of what
he had told her--she had seen it in his own triumphant eyes. And yet she
would have made a kind mother; she remembered with a smile and a slight
rising of color the affection of Barker's baby for her; she remembered
with a deepening of that color the thrill of satisfaction she had felt
in her husband's fulmination against Mrs. Barker, and, more than all,
she felt in his blind and foolish hatred of Barker himself a delicious
condonation of the strange feeling that had sprung up in her heart for
Barker's simple, straightforward nature. How could HE understand,
how could THEY understand (by the plural she meant Mrs. Barker and
Horncastle), a character so innately noble. In her strange attraction
towards him she had felt a charming sense of what she believed was a
superior and even matronly protection; in the utter isolation of her
life now--and with her husband's foolish abuse of him ringing in her
ears--it seemed a sacred duty. She had lost a son. Providence had sent
her an ideal friend to replace him. And this was quite consistent, too,
with a faint smile that began to play about her mouth as she recalled
some instances of Barker's delightful and irresistible youthfulness.
There was a clatter of hoofs and the sound of many voices from the
street. Mrs. Horncastle knew it was the down coach changing horses; it
would be off again in a few moments, and, no doubt, bearing her husband
away with it. A new feeling of relief came over her as she at last heard
the warning “All aboard!” and the great vehicle clattered and rolled
into the darkness, trailing its burning lights across her walls and
ceiling. But now she heard steps on the staircase, a pause before her
room, a whisper of voices, the opening of the door, the rustle of a
skirt, and a little feminine cry of protest as a man apparently tried to
follow the figure into the room. “No, no! I tell you NO!” remonstrated
the woman's voice in a hurried whisper. “It won't do. Everybody knows
me here. You must not come in now. You must wait to be announced by the
servant. Hush! Go!”
There was a slight struggle, the sound of a kiss, and the woman
succeeded in finally shutting the door. Then she walked slowly, but with
a certain familiarity towards the mantel, struck a match and lit the
candle. The light shone upon the bright eyes and slightly flushed face
of Mrs. Barker. But the motionless woman in the chair had recognized her
voice and the voice of her companion at once. And then their eyes met.
Mrs. Barker drew back, but did not utter a cry. Mrs. Horncastle, with
eyes even brighter than her companion's, smiled. The red deepened in
Mrs. Barker's cheek.
“This is my room!” she said indignantly, with a sweeping gesture around
the walls.
“I should judge so,” said Mrs. Horncastle, following the gesture; “but,”
she added quietly, “they put ME into it. It appears, however, they did
not expect you.”
Mrs. Barker saw her mistake. “No, no,” she said apologetically, “of
course not.” Then she added, with nervous volubility, sitting down and
tugging at her gloves, “You see, I just ran down from Marysville to take
a look at my father's old house on my way to Hymettus. I hope I haven't
disturbed you. Perhaps,” she said, with sudden eagerness, “you were
asleep when I came in!”
“No,” said Mrs. Horncastle, “I was not sleeping nor dreaming. I heard
you come in.”
“Some of these men are such idiots,” said Mrs. Barker, with a
half-hysterical laugh. “They seem to think if a woman accepts the least
courtesy from them they've a right to be familiar. But I fancy that
fellow was a little astonished when I shut the door in his face.”
“I fancy he WAS,” returned Mrs. Horncastle dryly. “But I shouldn't call
Mr. Van Loo an idiot. He has the reputation of being a cautious business
man.”
Mrs. Barker bit her lip. Her companion had been recognized. She rose
with a slight flirt of her skirt. “I suppose I must go and get a room;
there was nobody in the office when I came. Everything is badly managed
here since my father took away the best servants to Hymettus.” She
moved with affected carelessness towards the door, when Mrs. Horncastle,
without rising from her seat, said:--
“Why not stay here?”
Mrs. Barker brightened for a moment. “Oh,” she said, with polite
deprecation, “I couldn't think of turning you out.”
“I don't intend you shall,” said Mrs. Horncastle. “We will stay here
together until you go with me to Hymettus, or until Mr. Van Loo leaves
the hotel. He will hardly attempt to come in here again if I remain.”
Mrs. Barker, with a half-laugh, sat down irresolutely. Mrs. Horncastle
gazed at her curiously; she was evidently a novice in this sort of
thing. But, strange to say,--and I leave the ethics of this for the sex
to settle,--the fact did not soften Mrs. Horncastle's heart, nor in the
least qualify her attitude towards the younger woman. After an
awkward pause Mrs. Barker rose again. “Well, it's very good of you,
and--and---I'll just run out and wash my hands and get the dust off me,
and come back.”
“No, Mrs. Barker,” said Mrs. Horncastle, rising and approaching her,
“you will first wash your hands of this Mr. Van Loo, and get some of the
dust of the rendezvous off you before you do anything else. You CAN do
it by simply telling him, SHOULD YOU MEET HIM IN THE HALL, that I was
sitting here when he came in, and heard EVERYTHING! Depend upon it, he
won't trouble you again.”
But Mrs. Barker, though inexperienced in love, was a good fighter.
The best of the sex are. She dropped into the rocking-chair, and began
rocking backwards and forwards while still tugging at her gloves, and
said, in a gradually warming voice, “I certainly shall not magnify Mr.
Van Loo's silliness to that importance. And I have yet to learn what you
mean by talking about a rendezvous! And I want to know,” she continued,
suddenly stopping her rocking and tilting the rockers impertinently
behind her, as, with her elbows squared on the chair arms, she tilted
her own face defiantly up into Mrs. Horncastle's, “how a woman in your
position--who doesn't live with her husband--dares to talk to ME!”
There was a lull before the storm. Mrs. Horncastle approached nearer,
and, laying her hand on the back of the chair, leaned over her, and,
with a white face and a metallic ring in her voice, said: “It is just
because I am a woman IN MY POSITION that I do! It is because I don't
live with my husband that I can tell you what it will be when you no
longer live with yours--which will be the inevitable result of what you
are now doing. It is because I WAS in this position that the very man
who is pursuing you, because he thinks you are discontented with YOUR
husband, once thought he could pursue me because I had left MINE. You
are here with him alone, without the knowledge of your husband; call it
folly, caprice, vanity, or what you like, it can have but one end--to
put you in my place at last, to be considered the fair game afterwards
for any man who may succeed him. You can test him and the truth of what
I say by telling him now that I heard all.”
“Suppose he doesn't care what you have heard,” said Mrs. Barker sharply.
“Suppose he says nobody would believe you, if 'telling' is your game.
Suppose he is a friend of my husband and he thinks him a much better
guardian of my reputation than a woman like you. Suppose he should be
the first one to tell my husband of the foul slander invented by you!”
For an instant Mrs. Horncastle was taken aback by the audacity of the
woman before her. She knew the simple confidence and boyish trust of
Barker in his wife in spite of their sometimes strained relations, and
she knew how difficult it would be to shake it. And she had no idea of
betraying Mrs. Barker's secret to him, though she had made this scene
in his interest. She had wished to save Mrs. Barker from a compromising
situation, even if there was a certain vindictiveness in her exposing
her to herself. Yet she knew it was quite possible now, if Mrs. Barker
had immediate access to her husband, that she would convince him of her
perfect innocence. Nevertheless, she had still great confidence in Van
Loo's fear of scandal and his utter unmanliness. She knew he was not
in love with Mrs. Barker, and this puzzled her when she considered the
evident risk he was running now. Her face, however, betrayed nothing.
She drew back from Mrs. Barker, and, with an indifferent and graceful
gesture towards the door, said, as she leaned against the mantel, “Go,
then, and see this much-abused gentleman, and then go together with him
and make peace with your husband--even on those terms. If I have saved
you from the consequences of your folly I shall be willing to bear even
HIS blame.”
“Whatever I do,” said Mrs. Barker, rising hotly, “I shall not stay here
any longer to be insulted.” She flounced out of the room and swept down
the staircase into the office. Here she found an overworked clerk, and
with crimson cheeks and flashing eyes wanted to know why in her own
father's hotel she had found her own sitting-room engaged, and had been
obliged to wait half an hour before she could be shown into a decent
apartment to remove her hat and cloak in; and how it was that even
the gentleman who had kindly escorted her had evidently been unable
to procure her any assistance. She said this in a somewhat high voice,
which might have reached the ears of that gentleman had he been in the
vicinity. But he was not, and she was forced to meet the somewhat dazed
apologies of the clerk alone, and to accompany the chambermaid to a room
only a few paces distant from the one she had quitted. Here she hastily
removed her outer duster and hat, washed her hands, and consulted her
excited face in the mirror, with the door ajar and an ear sensitively
attuned to any step in the corridor. But all this was effected so
rapidly that she was at last obliged to sit down in a chair near the
half-opened door, and wait. She waited five minutes--ten--but still no
footstep. Then she went out into the corridor and listened, and then,
smoothing her face, she slipped downstairs, past the door of that
hateful room, and reappeared before the clerk with a smiling but
somewhat pale and languid face. She had found the room very comfortable,
but it was doubtful whether she would stay over night or go on to
Hymettus. Had anybody been inquiring for her? She expected to meet
friends. No! And her escort--the gentleman who came with her--was
possibly in the billiard-room or the bar?
“Oh no! He was gone,” said the clerk.
“Gone!” echoed Mrs. Barker. “Impossible! He was--he was here only a
moment ago.”
The clerk rang a bell sharply. The stableman appeared.
“That tall, smooth-faced man, in a high hat, who came with the lady,”
said the clerk severely and concisely,--“didn't you tell me he was
gone?”
“Yes, sir,” said the stableman.
“Are you sure?” interrupted Mrs. Barker, with a dazzling smile that,
however, masked a sudden tightening round her heart.
“Quite sure, miss,” said the stableman, “for he was in the yard when
Steptoe came, after missing the coach. He wanted a buggy to take him
over to the Divide. We hadn't one, so he went over to the other stables,
and he didn't come back, so I reckon he's gone. I remember it, because
Steptoe came by a minute after he'd gone, in another buggy, and as he
was going to the Divide, too, I wondered why the gentleman hadn't gone
with him.”
“And he left no message for me? He said nothing?” asked Mrs. Barker,
quite breathless, but still smiling.
“He said nothin' to me but 'Isn't that Steptoe over there?' when Steptoe
came in. And I remember he said it kinder suddent--as if he was reminded
o' suthin' he'd forgot; and then he asked for a buggy. Ye see,
miss,” added the man, with a certain rough consideration for her
disappointment, “that's mebbe why he clean forgot to leave a message.”
Mrs. Barker turned away, and ascended the stairs. Selfishness is quick
to recognize selfishness, and she saw in a flash the reason of Van Loo's
abandonment of her. Some fear of discovery had alarmed him; perhaps
Steptoe knew her husband; perhaps he had heard of Mrs. Horncastle's
possession of the sitting-room; perhaps--for she had not seen him since
their playful struggle at the door--he had recognized the woman who was
there, and the selfish coward had run away. Yes; Mrs. Horncastle was
right: she had been only a miserable dupe.
Her cheeks blazed as she entered the room she had just quitted,
and threw herself in a chair by the window. She bit her lip as she
remembered how for the last three months she had been slowly yielding
to Van Loo's cautious but insinuating solicitation, from a flirtation in
the San Francisco hotel to a clandestine meeting in the street; from a
ride in the suburbs to a supper in a fast restaurant after the theatre.
Other women did it who were fashionable and rich, as Van Loo had pointed
out to her. Other fashionable women also gambled in stocks, and had
their private broker in a “Charley” or a “Jack.” Why should not Mrs.
Barker have business with a “Paul” Van Loo, particularly as this fast
craze permitted secret meetings?--for business of this kind could not be
conducted in public, and permitted the fair gambler to call at private
offices without fear and without reproach. Mrs. Barker's vanity, Mrs.
Barker's love of ceremony and form, Mrs. Barker's snobbishness, were
flattered by the attentions of this polished gentleman with a foreign
name, which even had the flavor of nobility, who never picked up her fan
and handed it to her without bowing, and always rose when she entered
the room. Mrs. Barker's scant schoolgirl knowledge was touched by this
gentleman, who spoke French fluently, and delicately explained to her
the libretto of a risky opera bouffe. And now she had finally yielded
to a meeting out of San Francisco--and an ostensible visit--still as a
speculator--to one or two mining districts--with HER BROKER. This
was the boldest of her steps--an original idea of the fashionable Van
Loo--which, no doubt, in time would become a craze, too. But it was a
long step--and there was a streak of rustic decorum in Mrs. Barker's
nature--the instinct that made Kitty Carter keep a perfectly secluded
and distinct sitting-room in the days when she served her father's
guests--that now had impelled her to make it a proviso that the first
step of her journey should be from her old home in her father's hotel.
It was this instinct of the proprieties that had revived in her suddenly
at the door of the old sitting-room.
Then a new phase of the situation flashed upon her. It was hard for her
vanity to accept Van Loo's desertion as voluntary and final. What if
that hateful woman had lured him away by some trick or artfully designed
message? She was capable of such meanness to insure the fulfillment of
her prophecy. Or, more dreadful thought, what if she had some hold on
his affections--she had said that he had pursued her; or, more infamous
still, there were some secret understanding between them, and that
she--Mrs. Barker--was the dupe of them both! What was she doing in the
hotel at such a moment? What was her story of going to Hymettus but a
lie as transparent as her own? The tortures of jealousy, which is as
often the incentive as it is the result of passion, began to rack her.
She had probably yet known no real passion for this man; but with the
thought of his abandoning her, and the conception of his faithlessness,
came the wish to hold and keep him that was dangerously near it. What
if he were even then in that room, the room where she had said she would
not stay to be insulted, and they, thus secured against her intrusion,
were laughing at her now? She half rose at the thought, but a sound of
a horse's hoofs in the stable-yard arrested her. She ran to the window
which gave upon it, and, crouching down beside it, listened eagerly. The
clatter of hoofs ceased; the stableman was talking to some one;
suddenly she heard the stableman say, “Mrs. Barker is here.” Her heart
leaped,--Van Loo had returned.
But here the voice of the other man which she had not yet heard arose
for the first time clear and distinct. “Are you quite sure? I didn't
know she left San Francisco.”
The room reeled around her. The voice was George Barker's, her husband!
“Very well,” he continued. “You needn't put up my horse for the night. I
may take her back a little later in the buggy.”
In another moment she had swept down the passage, and burst into the
other room. Mrs. Horncastle was sitting by the table with a book in her
hand. She started as the half-maddened woman closed the door, locked it
behind her, and cast herself on her knees at her feet.
“My husband is here,” she gasped. “What shall I do? In heaven's name
help me!”
“Is Van Loo still here?” said Mrs. Horncastle quickly.
“No; gone. He went when I came.”
Mrs. Horncastle caught her hand and looked intently into her frightened
face. “Then what have you to fear from your husband?” she said abruptly.
“You don't understand. He didn't know I was here. He thought me in San
Francisco.”
“Does he know it now?”
“Yes. I heard the stableman tell him. Couldn't you say I came here with
you; that we were here together; that it was just a little freak of
ours? Oh, do!”
Mrs. Horncastle thought a moment. “Yes,” she said, “we'll see him here
together.”
“Oh no! no!” said Mrs. Barker suddenly, clinging to her dress and
looking fearfully towards the door. “I couldn't, COULDN'T see him now.
Say I'm sick, tired out, gone to my room.”
“But you'll have to see him later,” said Mrs. Horncastle wonderingly.
“Yes, but he may go first. I heard him tell them not to put up his
horse.”
“Good!” said Mrs. Horncastle suddenly. “Go to your room and lock the
door, and I'll come to you later. Stop! Would Mr. Barker be likely to
disturb you if I told him you would like to be alone?”
“No, he never does. I often tell him that.”
Mrs. Horncastle smiled faintly. “Come, quick, then,” she said, “for he
may come HERE first.”
Opening the door she passed into the half-dark and empty hall. “Now
run!” She heard the quick rustle of Mrs. Barker's skirt die away in the
distance, the opening and shutting of a door--silence--and then turned
back into her own room.
She was none too soon. Presently she heard Barker's voice saying, “Thank
you, I can find the way,” his still buoyant step on the staircase, and
then saw his brown curls rising above the railing. The light streaming
through the open door of the sitting room into the half-lit hall had
partially dazzled him, and, already bewildered, he was still more
dazzled at the unexpected apparition of the smiling face and bright eyes
of Mrs. Horncastle standing in the doorway.
“You have fairly caught us,” she said, with charming composure; “but I
had half a mind to let you wander round the hotel a little longer. Come
in.” Barker followed her in mechanically, and she closed the door. “Now,
sit down,” she said gayly, “and tell me how you knew we were here, and
what you mean by surprising us at this hour.”
Barker's ready color always rose on meeting Mrs. Horncastle, for whom
he entertained a respectful admiration, not without some fear of her
worldly superiority. He flushed, bowed, and stared somewhat blankly
around the room, at the familiar walls, at the chair from which Mrs.
Horncastle had just risen, and finally at his wife's glove, which Mrs.
Horncastle had a moment before ostentatiously thrown on the table.
Seeing which she pounced upon it with assumed archness, and pretended to
conceal it.
“I had no idea my wife was here,” he said at last, “and I was quite
surprised when the man told me, for she had not written to me about it.”
As his face was brightening, she for the first time noticed that his
frank gray eyes had an abstracted look, and there was a faint line of
contraction on his youthful forehead. “Still less,” he added, “did I
look for the pleasure of meeting you. For I only came here to inquire
about my old partner, Demorest, who arrived from Europe a few days ago,
and who should have reached Hymettus early this afternoon. But now I
hear he came all the way by coach instead of by rail, and got off at the
cross-road, and we must have passed each other on the different trails.
So my journey would have gone for nothing, only that I now shall have
the pleasure of going back with you and Kitty. It will be a lovely drive
by moonlight.”
Relieved by this revelation, it was easy work for Mrs. Horncastle to
launch out into a playful, tantalizing, witty--but, I grieve to say,
entirely imaginative--account of her escapade with Mrs. Barker. How,
left alone at the San Francisco hotel while their gentlemen friends
were enjoying themselves at Hymettus, they resolved upon a little trip,
partly for the purpose of looking into some small investments of their
own, and partly for the fun of the thing. What funny experiences they
had! How, in particular, one horrid inquisitive, vulgar wretch had been
boring a European fellow passenger who was going to Hymettus, finally
asking him where he had come from last, and when he answered “Hymettus,”
thought the man was insulting him--
“But,” interrupted the laughing Barker, “that passenger may have been
Demorest, who has just come from Greece, and surely Kitty would have
recognized him.”
Mrs. Horncastle instantly saw her blunder, and not only retrieved it,
but turned it to account. Ah, yes! but by that time poor Kitty, unused
to long journeys and the heat, was utterly fagged out, was asleep, and
perfectly unrecognizable in veils and dusters on the back seat of the
coach. And this brought her to the point--which was, that she was sorry
to say, on arriving, the poor child was nearly wild with a headache from
fatigue and had gone to bed, and she had promised not to disturb her.
The undisguised amusement, mingled with relief, that had overspread
Barker's face during this lively recital might have pricked the
conscience of Mrs. Horncastle, but for some reason I fear it did not.
But it emboldened her to go on. “I said I promised her that I would see
she wasn't disturbed; but, of course, now that YOU, her HUSBAND, have
come, if”--
“Not for worlds,” interrupted Barker earnestly. “I know poor Kitty's
headaches, and I never disturb her, poor child, except when I'm
thoughtless.” And here one of the most thoughtful men in the world in
his sensitive consideration of others beamed at her with such frank
and wonderful eyes that the arch hypocrite before him with difficulty
suppressed a hysterical desire to laugh, and felt the conscious blood
flush her to the root of her hair. “You know,” he went on, with a sigh,
half of relief and half of reminiscence, “that I often think I'm a great
bother to a clear-headed, sensible girl like Kitty. She knows people so
much better than I do. She's wonderfully equipped for the world, and,
you see, I'm only 'lucky,' as everybody says, and I dare say part of
my luck was to have got her. I'm very glad she's a friend of yours, you
know, for somehow I fancied always that you were not interested in her,
or that you didn't understand each other until now. It's odd that nice
women don't always like nice women, isn't it? I'm glad she was with you;
I was quite startled to learn she was here, and couldn't make it out. I
thought at first she might have got anxious about our little Sta, who
is with me and the nurse at Hymettus. But I'm glad it was only a lark. I
shouldn't wonder,” he added, with a laugh, “although she always declares
she isn't one of those 'doting, idiotic mothers,' that she found it a
little dull without the boy, for all she thought it was better for ME to
take him somewhere for a change of air.”
The situation was becoming more difficult for Mrs. Horncastle than she
had conceived. There had been a certain excitement in its first direct
appeal to her tact and courage, and even, she believed, an unselfish
desire to save the relations between husband and wife if she could. But
she had not calculated upon his unconscious revelations, nor upon their
effect upon herself. She had concluded to believe that Kitty had, in a
moment of folly, lent herself to this hare-brained escapade, but it now
might be possible that it had been deliberately planned. Kitty had sent
her husband and child away three weeks before. Had she told the whole
truth? How long had this been going on? And if the soulless Van Loo
had deserted her now, was it not, perhaps, the miserable ending of an
intrigue rather than its beginning? Had she been as great a dupe of this
woman as the husband before her? A new and double consciousness came
over her that for a moment prevented her from meeting his honest eyes.
She felt the shame of being an accomplice mingled with a fierce joy at
the idea of a climax that might separate him from his wife forever.
Luckily he did not notice it, but with a continued sense of relief threw
himself back in his chair, and glancing familiarly round the walls broke
into his youthful laugh. “Lord! how I remember this room in the old
days. It was Kitty's own private sitting-room, you know, and I used to
think it looked just as fresh and pretty as she. I used to think her
crayon drawing wonderful, and still more wonderful that she should have
that unnecessary talent when it was quite enough for her to be just
'Kitty.' You know, don't you, how you feel at those times when you're
quite happy in being inferior”--He stopped a moment with a sudden
recollection that Mrs. Horncastle's marriage had been notoriously
unhappy. “I mean,” he went on with a shy little laugh and an innocent
attempt at gallantry which the very directness of his simple nature made
atrociously obvious,--“I mean what you've made lots of young fellows
feel. There used to be a picture of Colonel Brigg on the mantelpiece, in
full uniform, and signed by himself 'for Kitty;' and Lord! how jealous I
was of it, for Kitty never took presents from gentlemen, and nobody even
was allowed in here, though she helped her father all over the
hotel. She was awfully strict in those days,” he interpolated, with
a thoughtful look and a half-sigh; “but then she wasn't married. I
proposed to her in this very room! Lord! I remember how frightened I
was.” He stopped for an instant, and then said with a certain timidity,
“Do you mind my telling you something about it?”
Mrs. Horncastle was hardly prepared to hear these ingenuous domestic
details, but she smiled vaguely, although she could not suppress a
somewhat impatient movement with her hands. Even Barker noticed it, but
to her surprise moved a little nearer to her, and in a half-entreating
way said, “I hope I don't bore you, but it's something confidential. Do
you know that she first REFUSED me?”
Mrs. Horncastle smiled, but could not resist a slight toss of her head.
“I believe they all do when they are sure of a man.”
“No!” said Barker eagerly, “you don't understand. I proposed to her
because I thought I was rich. In a foolish moment I thought I had
discovered that some old stocks I had had acquired a fabulous value. She
believed it, too, but because she thought I was now a rich man and she
only a poor girl--a mere servant to her father's guests--she refused me.
Refused me because she thought I might regret it in the future, because
she would not have it said that she had taken advantage of my proposal
only when I was rich enough to make it.”
“Well?” said Mrs. Horncastle incredulously, gazing straight before her;
“and then?”
“In about an hour I discovered my error, that my stocks were worthless,
that I was still a poor man. I thought it only honest to return to her
and tell her, even though I had no hope. And then she pitied me, and
cried, and accepted me. I tell it to you as her friend.” He drew a
little nearer and quite fraternally laid his hand upon her own. “I know
you won't betray me, though you may think it wrong for me to have told
it; but I wanted you to know how good she was and true.”
For a moment Mrs. Horncastle was amazed and discomfited, although she
saw, with the inscrutable instinct of her sex, no inconsistency between
the Kitty of those days and the Kitty now shamefully hiding from her
husband in the same hotel. No doubt Kitty had some good reason for her
chivalrous act. But she could see the unmistakable effect of that act
upon the more logically reasoning husband, and that it might lead him to
be more merciful to the later wrong. And there was a keener irony that
his first movement of unconscious kindliness towards her was the outcome
of his affection for his undeserving wife.
“You said just now she was more practical than you,” she said dryly.
“Apart from this evidence of it, what other reasons have you for
thinking so? Do you refer to her independence or her dealings in the
stock market?” she added, with a laugh.
“No,” said Barker seriously, “for I do not think her quite practical
there; indeed, I'm afraid she is about as bad as I am. But I'm glad you
have spoken, for I can now talk confidentially with you, and as you
and she are both in the same ventures, perhaps she will feel less
compunction in hearing from you--as your own opinion--what I have
to tell you than if I spoke to her myself. I am afraid she trusts
implicitly to Van Loo's judgment as her broker. I believe he is strictly
honorable, but the general opinion of his business insight is not high.
They--perhaps I ought to say HE--have been at least so unlucky that
they might have learned prudence. The loss of twenty thousand dollars in
three months”--
“Twenty thousand!” echoed Mrs. Horncastle.
“Yes. Why, you knew that; it was in the mine you and she visited; or,
perhaps,” he added hastily, as he flushed at his indiscretion, “she
didn't tell you that.”
But Mrs. Horncastle as hastily said, “Yes--yes--of course, only I had
forgotten the amount;” and he continued:--
“That loss would have frightened any man; but you women are more daring.
Only Van Loo ought to have withdrawn. Don't you think so? Of course I
couldn't say anything to him without seeming to condemn my own wife; I
couldn't say anything to HER because it's her own money.”
“I didn't know that Mrs. Barker had any money of her own,” said Mrs.
Horncastle.
“Well, I gave it to her,” said Barker, with sublime simplicity, “and
that would make it all the worse for me to speak about it.”
Mrs. Horncastle was silent. A new theory flashed upon her which seemed
to reconcile all the previous inconsistencies of the situation. Van
Loo, under the guise of a lover, was really possessing himself of Mrs.
Barker's money. This accounted for the risks he was running in this
escapade, which were so incongruous to the rascal's nature. He was
calculating that the scandal of an intrigue would relieve him of
the perils of criminal defalcation. It was compatible with Kitty's
innocence, though it did not relieve her vanity of the part it played in
this despicable comedy of passion. All that Mrs. Horncastle thought of
now was the effect of its eventful revelation upon the man before
her. Of course, he would overlook his wife's trustfulness and business
ignorance--it would seem so like his own unselfish faith! That was the
fault of all unselfish goodness; it even took the color of adjacent
evil, without altering the nature of either. Mrs. Horncastle set her
teeth tightly together, but her beautiful mouth smiled upon Barker,
though her eyes were bent upon the tablecloth before her.
“I shall do all I can to impress your views upon her,” she said at last,
“though I fear they will have little weight if given as my own. And you
overrate my general influence with her.”
Her handsome head drooped in such a thoughtful humility that Barker
instinctively drew nearer to her. Besides, she had not lifted her dark
lashes for some moments, and he had the still youthful habit of looking
frankly into the eyes of those he addressed.
“No,” he said eagerly; “how could I? She could not help but love you
and do as you would wish. I can't tell you how glad and relieved I am
to find that you and she have become such friends. You know I always
thought you beautiful, I always thought you so clever--I was even a
little frightened of you; but I never until now knew you were so GOOD.
No, stop! Yes, I DID know it. Do you remember once in San Francisco,
when I found you with Sta in your lap in the drawing-room? I knew it
then. You tried to make me think it was a whim--the fancy of a bored
and worried woman. But I knew better. And I knew what you were thinking
then. Shall I tell you?”
As her eyes were still cast down, although her mouth was still smiling,
in his endeavors to look into them his face was quite near hers. He
fancied that it bore the look she had worn once before.
“You were thinking,” he said in a voice which had grown suddenly quite
hesitating and tremulous,--he did not know why,--“that the poor little
baby was quite friendless and alone. You were pitying it--you know you
were--because there was no one to give it the loving care that was its
due, and because it was intrusted to that hired nurse in that great
hotel. You were thinking how you would love it if it were yours, and how
cruel it was that Love was sent without an object to waste itself upon.
You were: I saw it in your face.”
She suddenly lifted her eyes and looked full into his with a look that
held and possessed him. For a moment his whole soul seemed to tremble
on the verge of their lustrous depths, and he drew back dizzy and
frightened. What he saw there he never clearly knew; but, whatever it
was, it seemed to suddenly change his relations to her, to the room, to
his wife, to the world without. It was a glimpse of a world of which
he knew nothing. He had looked frankly and admiringly into the eyes of
other pretty women; he had even gazed into her own before, but never
with this feeling. A sudden sense that what he had seen there he had
himself evoked, that it was an answer to some question he had scarcely
yet formulated, and that they were both now linked by an understanding
and consciousness that was irretrievable, came over him. He rose
awkwardly and went to the window. She rose also, but more leisurely and
easily, moved one of the books on the table, smoothed out her skirts,
and changed her seat to a little sofa. It is the woman who always comes
out of these crucial moments unruffled.
“I suppose you will be glad to see your friend Mr. Demorest when you
go back,” she said pleasantly; “for of course he will be at Hymettus
awaiting you.”
He turned eagerly, as he always did at the name. But even then he felt
that Demorest was no longer of such importance to him. He felt, too,
that he was not yet quite sure of his voice or even what to say. As he
hesitated she went on half playfully: “It seems hard that you had to
come all the way here on such a bootless errand. You haven't even seen
your wife yet.”
The mention of his wife recalled him to himself, oddly enough, when
Demorest's name had failed. But very differently. Out of his whirling
consciousness came the instinctive feeling that he could not see her
now. He turned, crossed the room, sat down on the sofa beside Mrs.
Horncastle, and without, however, looking at her, said, with his eyes on
the floor, “No; and I've been thinking that it's hardly worth while to
disturb her so early to-morrow as I should have to go. So I think it's
a good deal better to let her have a good night's rest, remain here
quietly with you to-morrow until the stage leaves, and that both of you
come over together. My horse is still saddled, and I will be back at
Hymettus before Demorest has gone to bed.”
He was obliged to look up at her as he rose. Mrs. Horncastle was sitting
erect, beautiful and dazzling as even he had never seen her before.
For his resolution had suddenly lifted a great weight from her
shoulders,--the dangerous meeting of husband and wife the next morning,
and its results, whatever they might be, had been quietly averted. She
felt, too, a half-frightened joy even in the constrained manner in which
he had imparted his determination. That frankness which even she had
sometimes found so crushing was gone.
“I really think you are quite right,” she said, rising also, “and,
besides, you see, it will give me a chance to talk to her as you
wished.”
“To talk to her as I wished?” echoed Barker abstractedly.
“Yes, about Van Loo, you know,” said Mrs. Horncastle, smiling.
“Oh, certainly--about Van Loo, of course,” he returned hurriedly.
“And then,” said Mrs. Horncastle brightly, “I'll tell her. Stay!” she
interrupted herself hurriedly. “Why need I say anything about your
having been here AT ALL? It might only annoy her, as you yourself
suggest.” She stopped breathlessly with parted lips.
“Why, indeed?” said Barker vaguely. Yet all this was so unlike his usual
truthfulness that he slightly hesitated.
“Besides,” continued Mrs. Horncastle, noticing it, “you know you can
always tell her later, if necessary.” And she added with a charming
mischievousness, “As she didn't tell you she was coming, I really don't
see why you are bound to tell her that you were here.”
The sophistry pleased Barker, even though it put him into a certain
retaliating attitude towards his wife which he was not aware of feeling.
But, as Mrs. Horncastle put it, it was only a playful attitude.
“Certainly,” he said. “Don't say anything about it.”
He moved to the door with his soft, broad-brimmed hat swinging between
his fingers. She noticed for the first time that he looked taller in his
long black serape and riding-boots, and, oddly enough, much more like
the hero of an amorous tryst than Van Loo. “I know,” she said brightly,
“you are eager to get back to your old friend, and it would be selfish
for me to try to keep you longer. You have had a stupid evening, but you
have made it pleasant to me by telling me what you thought of me. And
before you go I want you to believe that I shall try to keep that good
opinion.” She spoke frankly in contrast to the slight worldly constraint
of Barker's manner; it seemed as if they had changed characters. And
then she extended her hand.
With a low bow, and without looking up, he took it. Again their
pulses seemed to leap together with one accord and the same mysterious
understanding. He could not tell if he had unconsciously pressed her
hand or if she had returned the pressure. But when their hands unclasped
it seemed as if it were the division of one flesh and spirit.
She remained standing by the open door until his footsteps passed down
the staircase. Then she suddenly closed and locked the door with an
instinct that Mrs. Barker might at once return now that he was gone, and
she wished to be a moment alone to recover herself. But she presently
opened it again and listened. There was a noise in the courtyard, but it
sounded like the rattle of wheels more than the clatter of a horseman.
Then she was overcome--a sudden sense of pity for the unfortunate
woman still hiding from her husband--and felt a momentary chivalrous
exaltation of spirit. Certainly she had done “good” to that wretched
“Kitty;” perhaps she had earned the epithet that Barker had applied to
her. Perhaps that was the meaning of all this happiness to her, and the
result was to be only the happiness and reconciliation of the wife and
husband. This was to be her reward. I grieve to say that the tears had
come into her beautiful eyes at this satisfactory conclusion, but she
dashed them away and ran out into the hall. It was quite dark, but there
was a faint glimmer on the opposite wall as if the door of Mrs. Barker's
bedroom were ajar to an eager listener. She flew towards the glimmer,
and pushed the door open: the room was empty. Empty of Mrs. Barker,
empty of her dressing-box, her reticule and shawl. She was gone.
Still, Mrs. Horncastle lingered; the woman might have got frightened and
retreated to some further room at the opening of the door and the coming
out of her husband. She walked along the passage, calling her name
softly. She even penetrated the dreary, half-lit public parlor,
expecting to find her crouching there. Then a sudden wild idea took
possession of her: the miserable wife had repented of her act and of
her concealment, and had crept downstairs to await her husband in the
office. She had told him some new lie, had begged him to take her with
him, and Barker, of course, had assented. Yes, she now knew why she
had heard the rattling wheels instead of the clattering hoofs she had
listened for. They had gone together, as he first proposed, in the
buggy.
She ran swiftly down the stairs and entered the office. The overworked
clerk was busy and querulously curt. These women were always asking such
idiotic questions. Yes, Mr. Barker had just gone.
“With Mrs. Barker in the buggy?” asked Mrs. Horncastle.
“No, as he came--on horseback. Mrs. Barker left HALF AN HOUR AGO.”
“Alone?”
This was apparently too much for the long-suffering clerk. He lifted
his eyes to the ceiling, and then, with painful precision, and accenting
every word with his pencil on the desk before him, said deliberately,
“Mrs. George Barker--left--here--with her--escort--the--man
she--was--always--asking--for--in--the--buggy--at exactly--9.35.” And he
plunged into his work again.
Mrs. Horncastle turned, ran up the staircase, re-entered the
sitting-room, and slamming the door behind her, halted in the centre of
the room, panting, erect, beautiful, and menacing. And she was alone in
this empty room--this deserted hotel. From this very room her husband
had left her with a brutality on his lips. From this room the fool
and liar she had tried to warn had gone to her ruin with a swindling
hypocrite. And from this room the only man in the world she ever cared
for had gone forth bewildered, wronged, and abused, and she knew now she
could have kept and comforted him.