A HEART SPEAKS
With forebodings Bruce Bayard went to Ann Lytton the next day. She saw
trouble on his face as he entered her room.
"What is it?" she asked, quietly, steadying herself, for she was ever
ready for the worst.
He only continued to look gravely at her.
"Don't be afraid to tell me, Mr. Bayard. I can stand it; you can't hide
it."
He looked at her, until he made sure that she was not speculating, that
she was certain that he brought her bad news.
"Yesterday, while I was here, your husband ransacked my house an' found a
quart of whiskey I had...."
"Oh! After he sent you away, making you feel..."
"You know him right well, ma'am," he interrupted. "Yes, I guess all his
show of bein' himself in th' mornin' was to get me to move out so he
could look for th' booze. He knew it was there; he'd been waitin' this
chance, I expect."
"How awful! What a way to treat you."
He smiled. "Don't mind me, ma'am; I'm thinkin' about you."
She looked back at him bravely.
"And the other day ... when you left, you tried to make me stop thinking
these kind things about you," she challenged. "You suggested that your
interest in Ned and in me might not be fine."
It did not occur to either of them that at such a moment, under those
conditions which they told themselves prevailed, talk and thought of
their own special relations was out of place.
"I'm only doin' what I can ... for you," he assured her. "An' I guess it
ain't much I can do. I'm kind of a failure at reformin' men, I guess. I
want to keep on tryin', though. I,"--he moistened his lips--"I don't
like to think of givin' up an' I don't like to think of turnin' him over
to you like he is."
She smiled appreciatively, downing her misery for the moment, and
hastened to say:
"Don't you think it would be better, if I were there now? You see, I
could be with him all the time, watch him, help him over the worst days.
It surely wouldn't set him back to see me now."
"And might it not be that living alone with you, away from the things he
needs: good care, the comforts he's been brought up to know, the right
food...."
So confused was Bayard before the conviction that he must meet this
argument, that he proceeded without caution, without thought of the
foundation of lies on which his separation of husband and wife rested,
he burst out:
"But he has them there! Here, ma'am, he'd been seein' an' hearin' folks,
he'd be tempted continually. Out there ... why, ma'am, he don't see
nobody, hear nothin'. He couldn't be more comfortable. There ain't a
house in Yavapai, not one this side o' Prescott, that's better fixed up.
I brought out a bed for him into th' kitchen so 't would be lighter,
easier for him to be watched. He ... I have sheets for him an' good
beddin'. I got eggs an' fruit an' ..."
The perplexity on her face stopped him.
"But you said, you said it was too rough for a woman, that it wasn't
much of a house, that it only had one room, that it ..."
One hand extended, leaning toward him, brows raised, accusing, she
sought for explanation and she saw his face flood with flush, saw his
chest fill.
"Well, I lied to you," he said, the lines of his body going suddenly lax
as he half turned from her. "It ain't rough. It's a pretty fair outfit."
She dropped her hands until they met before her and a look of offended
trust, came into her face, settling the lines about her mouth into an
expression of determination.
"But why?" she asked him. "Why should you lie to me and keep me from
Ned, my husband? I trusted you; I believed what you said. Why was it,
Mr. Bayard?"
He turned on her, eyes burning, color running from his face.
"I'll tell you why, ma'am," he said, chokingly, as though his lungs were
too full of air. "I'll tell you: It's because I didn't dare trust myself
under th' same roof with you, that's why; it's because I know that if
you're around me you'll be ... you'll be in danger."
"No man should tempt himself too far an' 'twould be temptin', if I was
to let you come there. You don't know this country. You don't know us
men ... men like I am. I don't know your kind of men myself; but we're
rough, we're not nice when we want a thing. We haven't got nice manners.
I tell you, ma'am, I want to help you all I can, but I've got to look
out for myself, you see! Do you see that, ma'am? I thought I could see
you now an' then safe enough, but I can't I guess.... This had to come
out; it had to!"
A forearm half raised she stepped back from him, settling her weight to
one foot. He breathed heavily twice to relieve the congestion that
strained his voice.
"When I stood down there th' other night,"--gesturing toward the
entrance of the hotel--"an' looked into the darkness an' saw your face
there, it was like an angel ... or somethin'. It caught me in th'
throat, it made my knees shake--an' they've never shook from fear or
anythin' else in my life. When we set in that next room washin' out that
wound, bindin' it up, I didn't give a damn if that man lived or died--"
"Oh!" she cried, and drew away another step, but he followed close,
bound that she should hear, should understand.
"--If he lived or died," he repeated. "I wanted to be near you, to watch
your fingers, to see th' move of your shoulders, to look at th'--th'
pink of your neck through your waist, to see your lips an' your eyes an'
your hair ... ma'am. I didn't give a damn about that man. It was you;
your strangeness, your nerve, your sand, I wanted to see, to know
about ... an' your looks. Then you said, you said he was your husband
an' for a minute I wanted him to die, I did! That was a black minute,
ma'am; things went round, I didn't know what was happenin'. Then, I come
out of it and I realized; realized what kind of a woman you are, if
you'd come clear from th' East on th' trail of a ... a ... your husband,
an' speak of him as a cripple an' be as ... as wrought up over him as
you was--
"I thought then, like a fool I was, that I'd be doin' somethin' fine if
I took that ... that ... your husband an' made a man of him an' sent him
back to you, a man!"
He gulped and breathed and his hands fell to his sides. He moved back an
awkward pace.
"Well, it would,"--averting his face. The resonance had gone from his
voice. "It would have been fine. It ... it _will_ be fine,"--in a
whisper.
"But I can't stand you around," he muttered, the tone rallying some of
its strength. "I can't; I can't! I couldn't have you in th' same room
in my sight. I'd keep thinkin' what he is an' what you are; comparin'
you. It'd tear my heart out!
"Ma'am don't think I ain't tried to fight against this!" extending his
palms pleadingly. "I've thought about you every minute since I first saw
you down there 'n th' hallway. I've lied to myself, I've tried to make
myself think different but I can't! I can't help it, ma'am ... an' I
don't know as I would if I could, 'cause it's somethin' I never knew
could be before!"
He was talking through clenched teeth now, swiftly, words running
together, and the woman, a hand on her lips, gave evidence of a queer,
fascinating fright.
He had said that she did not know his sort of man. He had spoken truth
there. And because she did not know his breed, she did not know how to
judge him now. Would he really harm her? Was he possessed of desires and
urgings of which he had no control? She put those questions to herself
and yet she could not make her own heart believe the very things he had
told her about himself. She feared, yes; but about the quality she
feared was a strong fascination. He caused her to sense his own uncurbed
vitality, yet about the danger of which he talked was a compelling
quality that urged her on, that made her want to know that danger
intimately ... to suffer, perhaps, but to know!
"You'll let me alone, won't you, ma'am?" he continued. "You'll stay
away? You'll stay right here an' give me a chance to play my hand? I'll
make him or break him, ma'am! I'll send him back to you, if there's a
spark of man left in him, I will; I promise you that! I will because
you're th' only woman--"
"Don't!" She threw up a hand as she cried sharply, "Don't say it!"
"I will say it!" he declared, moving to her again. "I will!
"I love you, I love you! I love that lock of hair blowin' across your
cheek; I love that scared look in your eyes now; I love th' way th'
blood's pumpin' in your veins; I love you ... all of you. But you told
me th' other night, you loved your husband. I asked you. You said you
did. 'I do,' that's what you said. I know how you looked, how it
sounded, when you said it, 'I do.' That's why I'm workin' with him;
that's why I want to make him a man. You can't waste your lovin', ma'am;
you can't!"
He stepped even closer.
"That's why you've got to keep away from me! You can't handle him alone.
You can't come to my ranch to handle him because of _me_. Nobody else
will take him in around here. It's me or nobody. It's my way or th' old
way he's been goin' until he comes to th' end.
"I promise you this. I'll watch over him an' care for him an' guard him
in every way. I'll put the best I've got into bringin' him back.... An'
all th' time I'll be wishin'--prayin', if I could--that a thunderbolt
'uld strike him dead! He ain't fit for you, ma'am! He's no more fit for
you than ... than ...
"Hell, ma'am, there's no use talkin'! He's your husband, you've said you
loved him, that's enough. But if he, if he wasn't your husband, if he
..."
He jerked open the front of his shirt, reached in and drew out his flat,
blue automatic pistol.
She started back with a cry.
"Don't you be afraid of me," he cried fiercely, grasping her wrist.
"Don't you ever!
"You take this gun; you keep it. It's mine. I don't want to be able to
hurt him, if I should ever lose my head. Sometimes when I set there an'
look at him an' hear him cussin' me, I get hot in th' head; hot an'
heavy an' it buzzes. I ... I thought maybe sometime I might go crazy an'
shoot him,"--with deadly seriousness. "An' I wouldn't do that, ma'am,
not to yours, no matter what he might do or say to me. I brought my
rifle in to-day to have th' sights fixed; they needed it an' 't would
get it out of th' house. You'll keep this gun, won't you, please,
ma'am?"
His pleading was as direct as that of a child and, eyes on his with a
mingling of emotions, Ann Lytton reached a groping hand for the weapon.
She was stunned. Her nervous weakness, his strength, the putting into
words of that great love he bore for her, the suggested picture of
contrast with the man between them, the conflict it all aroused in her
conscience, the reasonless surging of her deepest emotions, combined to
bewilder the woman. She reached out slowly to take his weapon and do his
bidding, moved by a subconscious desire to obey, and all the while her
eyes grew wider, her breath faster in its slipping between her parted
lips.
Her fingers touched the metal, warmed by his body heat, closed on it and
her hand, holding the pistol, fell back to her side. She turned her face
from him and, with a palm hard against one cheek, whispered,
"Oh, this is horrible!"
The man made a wry smile.
"I presume it is, ma'am,"--drearily, "but I can't help it, lovin' you."
"No, no, not that!" she cried. "I didn't mean _that_ was horrible.
It ... it isn't. The horrible thing is the rest, the whole situation."
"I know it is," he went on, heedless of her explanation, moving toward
the window and looking into the street as he talked, his back to her. "I
know it is, but it had to be. If I had kept from talkin' it would sort
of festered in me. When a horse runs somethin' in his foot, you've got
to cut th' hoof away, got to hurt him for a while, or it'll go bad with
him. Let what's in there out an' gettin' along will be simple.
"That's how it was with me, you see. If I'd kept still, I'd 'a' gone
sort of _loco_, I might have hurt him. But now ...
"Why, now, I can just remember that you know how I feel, that you
wouldn't want a man who's said he loves you to be anythin' but kind to
your ... to Ned Lytton."
When he finished, the woman took just one step forward. It was an
impulsive movement, as if she would run to him, throw herself on him;
and her lips were parted, her throat ready to cry out and ask him to
take her and forget all else but that love he had declared for her. In a
flash the madness was past; she remembered that she must not forget
anything because of his confession of love, rather that she must keep
more firmly than ever in mind those other factors of her life, that she
must stifle and throttle this yearning for the man before her which had
been latent, the existence of which she had denied to herself until this
hour, and which was consuming her strength now with its desire for
expression.
She walked slowly to the dresser and laid his gun there, as though even
its slight weight were a burden.
"I'm so sorry," she said, as though physically weak, "I'm so sorry." He
turned away from the window with a helpless smile. "I don't feel right,
now, in letting you do this for me. I feel ..."
"Why don't you feel right?"
"Because ... because it means that you are giving me everything and I'm
giving nothing in return."
"Don't think that, ma'am," with a slow, convinced shaking of his head,
"I'm doin' little enough for what I get."
"For what _you_ get!"
"What I get, ma'am, is this. I can come to see you. I can look at your
face, I can see your hair, I can watch you move an' hear you talk an' be
near you now an' then, even if I ain't any right, even if ..."
He threw out his arms and let them fall back to his thighs as he turned
from her again.
"That's what I get in exchange," he continued a moment later. "That's my
pay, an' for it, I'd go through anything, thirst or hunger or cold ...
anythin', ma'am. That's how much I think of you: that's why carin'
for ... for that man out home ain't any job even if he is ... if you are
his!"
On that, doubt, desire, again overrode her training, her traditional
manner of thought. She struggled to find words, but she could not even
clarify her ideas. Impressions came to her in hot, passing flashes. A
dozen times she was on the point of crying out, of telling him one thing
or another, but each time the thought was gone before she could seize
upon and crystallize it. All she fully realized was that this thing was
love, big, clean, sanctified; that this man was a natural lover of
women, with a body as great, as fine as the heart which could so reveal
itself to her; and that in spite of that love's quality she was
helpless, bound, gagged even, by the circumstances that life had thrown
about her. She would have cried out against them, denouncing it all ...
Only for the fact that that thing, conscience, handed down to her
through strict-living generations, kept her still, binding her to
silence, to passivity.
"I won't bother you again this way," she heard him saying, his voice
sounding unreal as it forced its way through the roaring in her head. "I
had to get it out of my system, or it'd have gone in some other
direction; reaction, they call it, I guess. Then, somebody'd have been
hurt or somethin' broken, maybe your heart,"--looking at her with his
patient smile.
"I'll go back home; I'll work with him. Sometimes, I'll come to see you,
if you don't mind, to tell you about ... him. You don't mind, do you?"
With an obvious effort, she shook her head. "No, I don't mind. I'll be
glad to see you," she muttered, holding her self-possession doggedly.
An awkward pause followed in which Bayard fussed with the ends of the
gay silk scarf that hung about his neck and shoulders.
"I guess I'd better go now," he mumbled, and picked up his hat.
"You see, I don't know what to say to you," Ann confessed, drawing a
hand across her eyes. "It has all overwhelmed me so. I ... perhaps
another time I can talk it over with you."
"If you think it's best to mention it again, ma'am," he said.
She extended her hand to him and he clasped it. On the contact, his arm
trembled as though he would crush the small fingers in his, but the
grasp went no further than a formal shake.
"In a day or two ... Ann," he said, using her given name for the first
time.
He bowed low, turned quickly and half stumbled into the hall, closing
the door behind him as he went.
The woman sat down on the edge of the bed weakly.
* * * * *
In the dining room Nora Brewster was dusting and she looked up quickly
at Bayard's entrance.
"Hello, Bruce," she said, eyes fastening on him eagerly. "You're gettin'
to be a frequent caller, ain't you?"
He tried to smile when he answered,
"Hardly a caller; kind of an errand boy, between bein' a nurse an'
jailer."
He could not deceive the girl. She dropped her dustcloth to a chair,
scanning his face intently.
"What's wrong, Bruce? You look all frazzled out."
He could not know how she feared his answer.
"Nothin'," he evaded. "He's been pretty bad an' I've missed sleep
lately; that's all."
But that explanation did not satisfy Nora. She knew it was not the whole
truth. She searched his face suspiciously.
"She ... his wife," he went on, steadying his voice. "It's hard on her,
Nora."
"I know it is, poor thing," she replied, almost mechanically. "I talk
to her every time I can, but she, she ain't my kind, Bruce. You know
that. The' ain't much I can say to her. Besides, I dasn't let on that I
know who she is or that you've got her husband."
Her eyes still held on his inquiringly.
"You might get her outdoors," he ventured. "Keepin' in that room day an'
night, worryin' as she does, is worse 'n jail. You ... You ride a lot.
Why don't you get her some ridin' clothes an' take her along? I'll tell
Nate to give you an extra horse. You see...."
The girl did see. She saw his anxiety for the woman upstairs. She knew
the truth then, and the thing which she had feared through those days
rang in her head like a sullen tocsin. She had felt an uneasiness come
into her heart with the arrival of this eastern woman, this product of
another civilization with her sweetness, her charm for both her own sex
and for men. And that uneasiness had grown to apprehension, had mounted
as she watched the change in Bayard under Ann's influence until now,
when she realized that the thing which she had hoped against for months,
which she had felt impending for days, had become reality; and that she,
Bayard, Ned Lytton, Ann, were fast in the meshes of circumstances that
bound and shut down upon them like a net, forecasting tragedy and the
destruction of hopes. Nora feared, she feared with that groundless,
intuitive fear peculiar to her kind; almost an animal instinct, and she
felt her heart leaping, her head becoming giddy as that warning note
struck and reverberated through her consciousness. Her gaze left the
man's face slowly, her shoulders slackened and almost impatiently she
turned back to her work that he might not see the foreboding about her.
"You see, th' open air would help her, an' bein' with you, another
woman, even if you an' she don't talk th' same language, would help
too," he ended.
"I see," Nora answered after a moment, as she tilted a chair to one leg
and stooped low to rub the dust from its spindles. "I understand, Bruce.
I'll take her to ride ... every day, if you think it's best."
Something about her made Bayard pause, and the moment of silence which
followed was an uneasy one for him. The girl kept on with her task, eyes
averted, and he did not notice that she next commenced working on a
chair that she had already dusted.
"That's a good girl, Nora," he said. "That'll help her."
He left then and, when the ring of his spurs had been lost in the lazy
afternoon, the girl sat suddenly in the chair on which she had busied
herself and pressed the dustcloth hard against her eyes. She drew a
long, sharp breath. Then, she stood erect and muttered,
"Oh, God, has it come?"
Then, stolidly, with set mouth, she went on with her work, movements a
little slower, perhaps, a bit lethargic, surely, bungling now and then.
Something had gone from her ... a hope, a sustaining spark, a leaven
that had lightened the drudgery.
* * * * *
Upstairs in her room Ann Lytton lay face down on her bed, hands gripping
the coarse coverlet, eyes pressed shut, breath swift and irregular,
heart racing. What had gone from the girl below--the hope, the spark,
the leaven which makes life itself palatable--had come to her after
those years of nightmare, and Ann was resisting, driving it back,
telling herself that it must not be, that it could not be, not in the
face of all that had happened; not now, when ethical, moral, legal ties
bound her to another! Oh, she was bound, no mistaking that; but it was
not Ann's heart that wrenched at the bonds. It was her conscience, her
trained sense of right and wrong, the traditions that had moulded her.
No, her heart was gone, utterly, to the man who crossed the hard, beaten
street of Yavapai, head down, dejection in the swing of his shoulders,
for her heart knew no right, no wrong ... only beauty and ugliness.
Bayard, too, fought his bitter fight. The urge in him was to take her,
to bear her away, to defy the laws that men had made to hurt her and to
devil him; but something behind, something deep in him, forbade. He must
go on, nursing back to strength that mockery of manhood who could lift
his fuddled, obscene head and, with the blessing of society, claim Ann
Lytton as his--her body, her soul! He must go on, though he wanted to
strangle all life from the drunken ruin, because in him was the same
rigid adherence to things that have been which held the woman there on
her bed, face down, even though her limbs twitched to race after him and
her arms yearned to twine about his neck, to pull herself close to his
good chest, within which the great heart pumped.
And Nora? Was she conscienceless? Indeed, not. She had promised to
befriend this strange woman because Bruce Bayard had asked it. It was
not for Ann's sake she dully planned diversion; it was because of her
love for the owner of the Circle A that she stifled her sorrow, her
natural jealousy. She knew that to refuse him, to follow her first
impulses, would hurt him; and that would react, would hurt her, for her
devotion was that sort which would go to any length to make the man of
her heart happier.
To Ann's ears came Bruce's sharp little whistle, and she could no longer
lie still. She rose, half staggered to the window and stood holding the
curtains the least bit apart, watching him stand motionless in the
middle of the thoroughfare. Again, his whistle sounded and from a
distance she heard the high call of the sorrel horse who had moved along
the strip of grass that grew close beside the buildings, nibbling here
and there. The animal approached his master at a swinging trot, holding
his head far to the right, nose high in the air, that the trailing reins
might not dangle under his feet. All the time he nickered his
reassurance and, when he drew to a halt beside his master, Abe's voice
retreated down into his long throat until it was only a guttural murmur
of affection.
"Old Timer, if I was as good a man as you are horse, I'd find a way,"
Bruce said half aloud as he gathered the reins.
He mounted with a rhythmical swing of shoulder and limb, and gave the
stallion his head, trotting out of town with never a look about.