A CORNER OF HIS HEART
THE second evening after the closure Rickard was dining with the
Marshalls in their car. The _Palmyra_ was preparing to leave the
siding. She was to pull out the next day. Already Marshall was
restless. Tucson was calling him; Oaxaca was calling him! And he was
due in Chicago for a conference with Faraday.
Rickard had been protesting against his new orders. It hurt him to
curtail his force. “Not until the concrete gate is finished, and the
whole length of levee done, will I feel safe.”
“Faraday says to go slow,” repeated Marshall. “He’s got something up
his sleeve. It may be taken off his hands. If that’s the case, we’ve
done our part.”
“I like to leave my work finished, not hanging in mid-air,” grumbled
the engineer. “He’d hate to do this over again. I would! You will
advise him when you see him next week, Mr. Marshall? Don’t let him cut
down on the force we have now. Let us keep,” and then he smiled, “as
many as we can!”
For the hobo ranks were thinning as late snows beneath the sun. Up
North, a city was rebuilding. In Mexico, new mines were being opened
up. The west coast of Mexico was calling to those restless soldiers who
march without a captain.
“They are going out by way of Calexico,” Rickard was still smiling
over some memories of desertion. “They’ve learned that they can hoof
it to Cocopah, and from there sneak in on the work-trains. Work crews
are more vulnerable than regular brakemen; they have more imagination.
To them, these returning hoboes are heroes. It was they who saved the
valley, not you, Mr. Marshall! That’s their opinion.”
“I preferred my ‘snap’ myself!” returned Marshall. “Have you cut down
on the Indians?”
Rickard nodded, remembering how Hardin had opposed himself yesterday to
the number of men retained; as being twice too many! The same Hardin!
An awkward relationship swung toward the two men. Hardin, it was easy
to see, was striving to remember his gratitude to the man who had
stopped the river. He himself had different reasons for wishing to be
fair to Tom Hardin! His name was brought up by Tod Marshall. “She was
light potatoes,” he dismissed the woman. “But she’s broken the man’s
spirit.”
Rickard, it was discovered, had nothing to say on the subject of the
elopement.
“I’m sorry his sister is not here to-night,” began Marshall
mischievously.
“I did ask her, Tod,” Claudia hastened to interrupt her lord. “But she
would not leave her brother her last evening.”
“Her _last_ evening?” exclaimed Rickard. “Is she going away?”
Marshall subdued his twinkle. “We are carrying her off. She is to visit
Mrs. Marshall while I am on the road.”
“Just a few days,” put in his wife. “She feels that her brother wants
to be by himself. I think she is right.”
And the _Palmyra_ made early runs! He must see her that night. He would
leave as soon as he decently could. Tony’s dinner was endless to him.
Mrs. Marshall found opportunity in her guest’s abstraction to explain
to her husband that at last Mrs. Silent had consented to let her take
the boy, Jimmie, “out” with her.
“She’s not well herself. Another!” She arched her eyebrows meaningly.
Rickard gulped down his coffee, boiling. Tony was looking with tragic
concern at the untasted dessert on the engineer’s plate. “Mrs.
Marshall, will you let me run away early?” Why should he give any
excuse? They knew what he was running away for!
He made his way to the little white tent on the far side of the
trapezium. The door was open, the lamplight flaring through. He could
see Coronel struggling with the straps of a brass-bound trunk. Innes,
by the door, was bidding good-by to Señora Maldonado.
He could hear her voice as he drew near. “You’ll let me hear from you?
How you are getting on? And the children?”
He forgot to greet the Mexican. She stood waiting; her eyes full of
him. Surely, the kind señor had something to say to her? He had taken
the white girl’s hand. He was staring into the white girl’s eyes.
Something came to her, a memory like forgotten music. Silently, she
slipped away into the night.
Rickard would not release Innes’ hand; her eyes could not meet the look
in his.
“Wasn’t she good to come? She rode, horseback, all the way up here just
to say good-by to me. She is going to Nogales to live, taking the
children. She thinks she has a good chance there. She asked me to tell
you.” Her chatter, too, dropped before his silence. He kept her hand in
his.
“Come out and have a walk with me! It’s not too late?”
Her foolish, chattering speech all mute!
“The levee?” asked Rickard. Still holding her hand, he drew it through
the loop of his arm.
“You were not going to tell me you were going?”
No answer to that either! How could she tell him she was going when she
knew what she knew!
“You were running away from me?” He leaned down to her face.
If she dared, she would be pert with him; she would not have to _run_
away from him!
“You know that I love you! I have been waiting for this minute, this
woman, all these lonely years.”
Her head she kept turned from him. He could not see the little maternal
smile that ran around the curves of her mouth. Those years, filled to
the brim with stern work, had not been lonely. Lonely moments he had
had, that was all. She could understand how a man like Rickard would
find those moments lonely. There, he and Tom stood together. He was
asking her to fill those minutes; those only. But he did not know that.
He would not know what she meant if she told him that he was asking her
to fill a corner of his heart!
“Nothing for me?” He stopped, and made her face him, by taking both of
her hands in his.
She would not look at him yet, would not meet the look which always
compelled her will, stultified her speech. She had something to say
first.
“We don’t know each other; that is, you don’t know me!” She was not
going to let them make that mistake, let him make that mistake!
“Is that all?” There was relief in his voice. For a bad moment he had
wondered if it was possible, if Estrada--“I don’t know you? Haven’t
I seen you day by day? Haven’t I seen your self-control tried,
proved--haven’t I seen your justice, when you could not understand--
Look at me!”
She shook her head, her eyes on the sand under her feet. He could
scarcely catch her words. They did not know each other. He did not know
her!
“Dear! I don’t know whether you love red or blue, that’s a fact; Ibsen
or Rostand; heat or cold. Does that matter? I know you!”
An upward glance had caught him smiling. Her speech was routed.
“I’m--the--only girl here!”
“Do you think that’s why I love you?”
“Ah, but you loved Gerty!” That slipped from her. She had not meant to
say that!
“Does that hurt?” Abashed by her own daring, yet she was glad she had
dared. She wanted him to deny it. For he would deny it? She wondered if
he were angry, but she could not look at him.
The minutes, dragging like weighted hours, told her that he was not
going to answer her. It came to her then that she would never know
whether Gerty’s story were wholly false, or partly true. She knew,
then, that no wheedling, wife’s or sweetheart’s, would tease that story
from him. It did not belong to him.
His silence frightened her into articulateness. He must not think
that she was foolish! It was not that, in itself, she meant. The
words jostled one another in their soft swift rush. He--he had made
a mistake once before. He had liked the sort of woman he had thought
Gerty was. She herself was not like the real Gerty any more than she
was like the other, the woman that did not exist. He would find that
they did not think alike, believe alike, that there were differences--
“Aren’t you making something out of nothing, Innes?”
That voice could always chide her into silence! Her speech lay
cluttered in ruins, her words like useless broken bricks falling from
the wall she was building.
He took her hand and led her to a pile of rock the river had not eaten.
He pulled her down beside him.
“Isn’t it true, with us?”
“It is, with me,” breathed Innes. Their voices were low as though they
were in church.
“And you think it isn’t, with me!” Rickard stood before her. “Is it
because I trust you, I wonder? That I, loving you, love to have the
others love you, too? Don’t you suppose I know how it is with the rest,
MacLean; how it was with Estrada? Should I be jealous? Why, I’m not.
I’m proud! Isn’t that because I _know_ you, know the fine steady heart
of you? You hated me at first--and I am proud of that. I don’t love you
enough?” He knelt at her feet, not listening to her pleading. He bent
down and kissed one foot; then the other. “I love them!” The face he
raised to her Innes had never seen before. He pressed a kiss against
her knee. “That, too! It’s mine. I’ve not said my prayers since I was a
boy. I shall say them again, here, you teaching me.” His kisses ran up
her arm, from the tips of her limp fingers. His mouth, close to hers,
stopped there. He whispered:
“You--kiss me, my girl!”
Slowly, unseeingly, as though drawn by an external will, her face
raised to his; slowly, their lips met. His arms were around her; the
world was blotted out.
Innes, minutes later, put her mouth against his ear. It was the Innes
he did not know, that he had seen with others, mischievous, whimsical,
romping as a young boy with MacLean on the _Delta_.
“I love--red,” she whispered. “And heat and sunshine. But I love
blue, on you; and cold, if it were with you,--and the rest of the
differences--”
He caught her to him. “There are not going to be any differences!”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.