He did not leave the house that afternoon. He kept his post on the
veranda, watching the valley. With an iron kind of calmness he was
facing a strange event. It was full of the element of chance, and he had
been taking chances all his life. With the chances of fortune he had
won; with the chances of love and happiness he had lost. He knew that
the horseman on the mountain-side was Cayley; he knew that Cayley would
not be near his home without a purpose. Besides, Cayley had said he
would come--he had said it in half banter, half threat. Houghton had had
too many experiences backward and forward in the world, to be afflicted
with littleness of mind. He had never looked to get an immense amount of
happiness out of life, but he thought that love and marriage would give
him a possible approach to content. He had chanced it, and he had lost.
At first he had taken it with a dreadful bitterness; now he regarded it
with a quiet, unimpassioned despair. He regarded his wife, himself, and
Cayley, as an impartial judge would view the extraordinary claims of
three desperate litigants. He thought it all over as he sat there
smoking. When the servants came to him to ask him questions or his men
ventured upon matters of business, he answered them directly, decisively,
and went on thinking. His wife had come to take coffee with him at
the usual hour of the afternoon. There was no special strain of manner
or of speech. The voices were a little lower, the tones a little more
decided, their eyes did not meet; that was all. When coffee-drinking was
over the wife retired to her room. Still Houghton smoked on. At length
he saw the horseman entering into the grove of palms before the door. He
rose deliberately from his seat and walked down the pathway.
"Good day to you, Houghton," the horseman said; "we meet again, you see."
"I see."
"You are not overjoyed."
"There's no reason why I should be glad. Why have you come?"
"You remember our last meeting five years ago. You were on your way to
be married. Marriage is a beautiful thing, Houghton, when everything is
right and square, and there's love both sides. Well, everything was
right and square with you and the woman you were going to marry; but
there was not love both sides."
While they had been talking thus, Houghton had, of purpose, led his
companion far into the shade of the palms. He now wheeled upon Cayley,
and said sternly: "I warn you to speak with less insolence; we had better
talk simply."
Cayley was perfectly cool. "We will talk simply. As I said, you had
marriage without love. The woman loved another man. That other man
loved the woman--that good woman. In youthful days at college he had
married, neither wisely nor well, a beggar-maid without those virtues
usually credited to beggar-maidens who marry gentlemen. Well, Houghton,
the beggar-maid was supposed to have died. She hadn't died; she had
shammed. Meanwhile, between her death and her resurrection, the man came
to love that good woman. And so, lines got crossed; things went wrong.
Houghton, I loved Alice before she was your wife. I should have married
her but for the beggar-maid."
"You left her without telling her why."
"I told her that things must end, and I went away."
"Like a coward," rejoined Houghton. "You should have told her all."
"What difference has it made?" asked Cayley gloomily.
"My happiness and hers. If you had told her all, there had been an end
of mystery. Mystery is dear to a woman's heart. She was not different
in that respect from others. You took the surest way to be remembered."
Cayley's fingers played with his horse's mane; his eyes ran over the
ground debatingly; then he lifted them suddenly, and said: "Houghton, you
are remarkably frank with me; what do you mean by it?"
"I'll tell you if you will answer me this question: Why have you come
here?"
The eyes of both men crossed like swords, played with each other for a
moment, and then fixed to absolute determination. Cayley answered
doggedly: "I came to see your wife, because I'm not likely ever to see
her or you again. I wanted one look of her before I went away. There,
I'm open with you."
"It is well to be open with me," Houghton replied. He drew Cayley aside
to an opening in the trees, where the mountain and the White Bluff road
could be seen, and pointed. "That would make a wonderful leap," he said,
"from the top of the hill down to the cliff edge--and over!"
"A dreadful steeplechase," said Cayley.