BORN THAT WAY
It was impossible for Betty to escape the emotions that flooded her,
but she was the last girl to sit down and accept defeat with folded
hands. There was in her a certain vigor of the spirit that craved
expression, that held her head up in the face of disaster.
At the Quarter Circle D E she was so briskly businesslike that none
of the men would have guessed that she was passing through a crisis.
Except for moments of abstraction, she gave no evidence of the waves
of emotion that inundated her while she was giving orders about the
fencing of the northwest forty or the moving of the pigpens.
When she was alone, it was worse. Her longing for Hollister became
acute. If she could see him, talk with him, his point of view would
be changed. New arguments marshaled themselves in her mind. It was
ridiculous to suppose that a man’s past--one not of his own choosing,
but forced on him--could determine his future so greatly as to make
happiness impossible. She would not believe it. Every instinct of her
virile young personality rebelled against the acceptance of such a law.
Tug’s persistence in renouncing joy had wounded her vanity. But at
bottom she did not doubt him. He had stood out because he thought it
right, not because he did not love her. In spite of her distress of
mind, she was not quite unhappy. A warm hope nestled in her bosom. She
loved and was loved. The barrier between them would be torn down.
Again they would be fused into that oneness which for a blessed ten
minutes had absorbed them.
Her father drove over in the rattletrap car. Ostensibly he had come
to discuss with her plans for fertilization and crops of the Quarter
Circle D E for the coming season.
“I took Hollister to town this morning. He wouldn’t stay any longer,”
Reed presently mentioned, as though casually.
“Oh! Why wouldn’t he stay?” Betty was rather proud of the indifference
she contrived to convey in her voice.
“Said he didn’t want to keep you away from home.”
“Was he keeping me away?” she asked.
“Seemed to think so. Wasn’t he?”
“I see you know all about it, Dad. What did he tell you?”
“I asked him point-blank what the trouble was between you and him. He
told me.”
A faint crimson streamed into her cheeks. “What did he say it was?”
“He’s afraid. Not for himself, but for you.”
“I think that’s awf’ly silly of him.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Bettykins. If there’s any doubt whatever,
he’d better wait till he’s certain.” He let his arm fall across her
shoulders with a gentleness she knew to be a caress. “Have you found
the man you want, dear? Sure about it?”
She smiled ruefully. “I’m sure enough, Dad. He’s the one that seems in
doubt.” To this she added a reply to a sentence earlier in his period.
“He didn’t say anything to me about waiting. His ‘No, thank you,’ was
quite definite, I thought.”
Clint’s wrath began to simmer. “If he’s got a notion that he can take
or leave you as he pleases--”
Betty put a hand on his arm. “Please, Dad. I don’t mean what I said.
It’s not fair to him. He doesn’t think that at all.”
“There’s no man in the Rockies good enough for you--”
“Are you taking in enough territory?” she teased, her face bubbling to
mirth. “I don’t even know whether you’re including Denver. Justin came
from there, and he’s too good for me.”
“Who says he’s too good?”
“Too perfect, then. I couldn’t live up to him. Never in the world.” Her
eyes fixed on something in the distance. She watched for a moment or
two. “Talking about angels, Dad. There’s the flutter of his engine fan.”
Reed turned.
Merrick was killing the engine of his runabout. He came across to them,
ruddy, strong, well-kept. Every stride expressed the self-reliant and
complacent quality of his force.
The girl’s heart beat faster. She had not seen him since that moment,
more than two weeks ago, when they had parted in anger. Her resentment
against him had long since died. He had not been to blame because
they were incompatible in point of view and temperament. It was
characteristic of her that she had written to ask him to forgive her if
she had in any way done him a wrong. If she could, she wanted to keep
him for a friend.
He shook hands with them. Reed asked about the work.
“We’ve finished the tunnel and are laying the line of the main canal
between it and the draw where it runs into Elk Creek Cañon. Soon as
the ground is thawed out, I’ll have dirt flying on it,” the engineer
said.
“Lots of water in the dam?” asked the cowman.
“Full up. The mild weather this last week has raised it a lot. There’s
a great deal of snow in the hills. We’ll have no difficulty about a
sufficient supply.”
“Good. You’ve got old Jake Prowers beat.”
“Justin has done a big thing for this part of the country. That’s more
important than beating Mr. Prowers,” Betty said.
“Yes,” agreed Merrick impersonally. “By the way, the old fellow is
still nursing his fancied injuries. He was hanging around the dam
yesterday. I warned him off.”
“Say anything?” asked Clint.
“Tittered the way he does and congratulated me on the good job I had
done. He’s a venomous old snake, but I don’t see that he can do us any
harm. There’s nothing left to do now but the detail work of putting in
the ditches.”
They talked for a few minutes about the irrigation project. The
engineer did not betray the least self-consciousness, but his mind,
too, was running on the last time he had seen Betty and the break
between them.
Reed was called away by one of the men to look at a sick horse.
Merrick’s steady gaze at once challenged Betty. “I got your letter.”
She was a good deal less composed than he. It disconcerted her to know
that she was blushing. That was a silly way to do, she told herself. It
annoyed her to give an exhibition of gaucherie.
“Yes,” she murmured.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that we made a mistake,” he said. “We
rushed into a decision too hastily.”
“Yes,” Betty agreed.
“You’re young. I hadn’t given enough consideration to that. Shall we
forget our differences and be as we were, Betty?”
“You don’t mean--be engaged?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Oh, Justin, I can’t. I thought you meant we’d made a mistake in ever
being engaged. We did. We’re not suited to each other.”
“I don’t agree with you. Your letter convinced me that we are.”
“I didn’t mean it that way at all,” she said unhappily. “We’re not,
Justin. Not a bit. I’m too--too kinda wild for you. You don’t want a
wife like me. If you knew, you wouldn’t want me a bit.”
“I’m the best judge of that,” he answered, smiling a little.
“But you don’t. I’d always be troubling you with my crazy ways.”
“No. It’s just that you’re young,” he insisted.
“It isn’t. I’m born that way. I’ll always be like that. Besides--” She
stopped, searching for a way to put it gently. “Besides, I’d want a
husband--if I ever marry at all--who needs me, who has to have me, who
can’t get along without me.”
“I need you,” he said.
“Oh no, you don’t. Not really. You think you do, maybe, but not in the
way I mean. You’re strong--self-sufficient. Please, I don’t mean it
in an uncomplimentary way. But you _are_ big, you know. A wife would
have to fit into you--be just a--an important detail of your life. I
couldn’t do that. I’ve got to be everything to a man--help him--talk
over his difficulties with him--be just the biggest thing in the world
to him. I couldn’t really _do_ anything for you. You’re complete. You
don’t need anything done for you. With or without me, you’re going to
be awf’ly successful. Oh, I know it sounds silly, but it isn’t.”
“Do you mean you like me less because I’m reliable and efficient
and--well, I take your own word--on the road to success? Would you want
to marry an irresponsible failure?”
The allusion was plain, and she did not like him better for it. None
the less, she recognized that this man, standing there in the quiet
arrogance of strength, had qualities admirable and worthy of great
respect. He was master of himself and, so far as one can be, of his
destinies. The cleft chin, the square jaw, the cold gray eyes so keen
and steady, expressed character, and of a kind that would take him far.
But it was a road she would not travel with him.
“No. But I’d like to know that I was a help to my husband in making
his success. You can’t understand, Justin. I’m not what you want--not
at all. If you saw me as I am, you’d know it. I’d always be affronting
your sense of the fitting thing. The right wife for you is one who
would sit at the head of your table well-dressed, handsome, and
charming, an evidence of your standing in the community. You know--a
gracious hostess, good at teas and bridge and that sort of thing.
You’re really a city man. I’m not a city woman and never shall be.”
To Merrick, clear-eyed in spite of his fondness for her, came a flash
of insight that told him she had been wiser than he. He could never
mould this wildling to his heart’s desire. Some day he would look
back on this episode and smile at it. But he had not reached that
state of philosophy yet. His vanity was still engaged, and more than
that--the last passionate flame of the boy in him that was being
sacrificed to ambition. He craved inordinately the willful charm of
this devastatingly sweet girl with the quick, disturbing eyes. She
represented to him certain values he was deliberately trampling down,
not because they did not seem to him good, but because they warred with
something that he wanted more. He had impossibly dreamed that she might
stay what she was and yet become something different.
“Are you going to marry Hollister?” he asked.
She might reasonably have told him this was a private matter of her
own. She might have evaded the question. Instead, she told him the
truth.
“I don’t know.”
“Has he asked you?”
“No.”
“But you will if he does.”
“Yes.”
“Knowing what he has been, what he may be again?”
“Knowing what he is,” she corrected.
“Will girls never get over the folly of marrying men to reform them?”
he flung out impatiently.
“I’m not marrying him to reform him--that is, if I’m marrying him at
all, which isn’t likely. He does not need reforming.”
“How do you know he won’t slide back into his vice?” He answered his
own query. “You can’t know. There’s no way of knowing.”
“He won’t.” She said it quietly, with absolute conviction.
Her attitude tremendously irritated him. It was a reflection on all the
copybook virtues that had made him what he was. “Are you waiting for
this tramp, this drug fiend, to make up his mind whether he wants to
marry you or not?”
There was a spark of anger in her eye. She would not modify even his
phrasing. It could stand as he put it.
“Yes.”
“Sheer perversity.”
“Isn’t it?” she agreed, with dangerous sweetness.
He knew he was being punished for having indulged himself, as he rarely
did, in a display of temper. At once he took himself in hand.
“I’m serious about this, Betty. A girl has no right to take chances of
this sort. I grant you Hollister has qualities--splendid ones. But the
damning fact remains.”
Betty relented. He was human. He had cried out because he was hurt.
“I don’t think it remains, Justin. I’m absolutely convinced that it’s
conquered--what you call his vice.”
“What I call his vice! Wouldn’t every sane person call it that?”
“Not if they knew the circumstances. He was left with terrible pains
in the head after he was wounded. They gave him morphine--a lot of it.
He got to depending on it. The habit grew on him. Then he woke up and
shook it off. It’s to his credit rather than the reverse.”
“Even so. There’s a danger that he’ll go back to it.”
And again she denied it, with the certainty of one who does not need
evidence to bulwark an absolute assurance. “No danger at all.”
They were standing in front of the porch. Reed came toward them from
the stable. Both knew that the last word had been said.
Justin Merrick struggled with himself a moment, then held out his hand.
He did not want to be a poor loser.
“The best of luck, Betty,” he said.
Gladness gleamed in the soft eyes through which the eager spirit seemed
to yearn to comfort him.
“You, too, Justin,” she whispered.