PART III

CHAPTER IX

They were happier than ever, following that adjusting episode.

Harboro felt that his place had been assigned to him, and he was satisfied. He would have to think of ways of affording diversion for Sylvia, of course; but that could be managed, and in the meantime she seemed disposed to prolong the rapturous and sufficient joys of their honeymoon. He would be on the lookout, and when the moment of reaction came he would be ready with suggestions. She had spoken of riding. There would be places to go. Thebailesout at the Quemado; weddings far out in the chaparral. Many Americans attended these affairs in a spirit of adventure, and the ride was always delightful. There was a seduction in the desert winds, in the low-vaulted skies with their decorative schemes of constellations.

He was rather at a loss as to how to meet the people who had made a fellow of him. There was Dunwoodie, for example. He raninto Dunwoodie one morning on his way to work, and the good fellow had stopped him with an almost too patent friendliness.

“Come, stop long enough to have a drink,” said Dunwoodie, blushing without apparent cause and shaking Harboro awkwardly by the hand. And then, as if this blunt invitation might prove too transparent, he added: “I was in a game last night, and I’m needing one.”

There was no need for Dunwoodie to explain his desire for a drink—or his disinclination to drink alone. Harboro saw nothing out of the ordinary in the invitation; but unfortunately he responded before he had quite taken the situation into account.

“It’s pretty early for me,” he said. “Another time—if you’ll excuse me.”

It was to be regretted that Harboro’s manner seemed a trifle stiff; and Dunwoodie read uncomfortable meanings into that refusal. He never repeated the invitation; and others, hearing of the incident, concluded that Harboro was too deeply offended by what the town had done to him to care for anybody’s friendship any more. The thing that thetown had done to Harboro was like an open page to everybody. Indeed, the people of Eagle Pass knew that Harboro had been counted out of eligible circles considerably before Harboro knew it himself.

As for Sylvia, contentment overspread her like incense. She was to have Harboro all to herself, and she was not to be required to run the gantlet of the town’s too-knowing eyes. She felt safe in that house on the Quemado Road, and she hoped that she now need not emerge from it until old menaces were passed, and people had come and gone, and she could begin a new chapter.

She was somewhat annoyed by her father during those days. He sent messages by Antonia. Why didn’t she come to see him? She was happy, yes. But could she forget her old father? Was she that kind of a daughter? Such was the substance of the messages which reached her.

She would not go to see him. She could not bear to think of entering his house. She had been homesick occasionally—that she could not deny. There had been moments when the new home oppressed her by its orderliness,by its strangeness. And she was fond of her father. She supposed she ought not to be fond of him; he had always been a worthless creature. But such matters have little to do with the law of cause and effect. She loved him—there was the truth, and it could not be ignored. But with every passing day the house under the mesquite-tree assumed a more terrible aspect in her eyes, and the house on the Quemado Road became more familiar, dearer.

Unknown to Harboro, she sent money to her father. He had intimated that if she could not come there were certain needs ... there was no work to be obtained, seemingly.... And so the money which she might have used for her own pleasure went to her father. She was not unscrupulous in this matter. She did not deceive Harboro. She merely gave to her father the money which Harboro gave her, and which she was expected to use without explaining how it was spent.

With the passing of days she ceased to worry about those messages of her father—she ceased to regard them as reminders thatthe tie between her old life and the new was not entirely broken. And following the increased assurances of her safety in Harboro’s house and heart, she began to give rein to some of the coquetries of her nature.

She became an innocent siren, studying ways of bewitchment, of endearment. She became a bewildering revelation to him, amazing him, delighting him. After he had begun to conclude that he knew her she became not one woman, but a score of women: demure, elfin, pensive, childlike, sedate, aloof, laughing—but always with her delight in him unconcealed: the mask she wore always slipping from its place to reveal her eagerness to draw closer to him, and always closer.

The evenings were beginning to be cool, and occasionally she enticed him after nightfall into the room he had called her boudoir. She drew the blinds and played the infinitely varied game of love with him. She asked him to name some splendid lover, some famous courtier. Ingomar? Very well, he should be Ingomar. What sort of lover was he?... And forthwith her words, her gestures and touches became as chains of flowers to leadhim to do her bidding. Napoleon? She saluted him, and marched prettily before him—and halted to claim her reward in kisses. He was Antony and Leander.

When she climbed on his knees with kisses for Leander he pretended to be surprised. “More kisses?” he asked.

“But these are the first.”

“And those other kisses?”

“They? Oh, they were for Antony.”

“Ah, but if you have kissed Antony, Leander does not want your kisses.”

Her face seemed to fade slightly, as if certain lights had been extinguished. She withdrew a little from him and did not look at him. “Why?” she asked presently. The gladness had gone out of her voice.

“Well ... kisses should be for one lover; not for two.”

She pondered, and turned to him with an air of triumph. “But you see, these are new kisses for Leander. They are entirely different. They’ve never been given before. They’ve got nothing to do with the others.”

He pretended to be convinced. But thekisses she gave to Leander were less rapturous. She was thinking.

“I’m afraid you don’t think so highly of ... Leander,” he suggested. “Suppose I be ... Samson?”

She leaned her head on his shoulder as if she had grown tired.

“Samson was a very strong man,” he explained. “He could push a house down.”

That interested her.

“Would you like to be Samson?” she asked.

“I think it might be nice ... but no—the woman who kissed Samson betrayed him. I think I won’t be Samson, after all.”

She had been nervously fingering the necklace of gold beads at her throat; and suddenly she uttered a distressed cry. The string had broken, and the beads fell in a yellow shower to the rug.

She climbed down on her knees beside him and picked up the beads, one by one.

“Let them go,” he urged cheerfully, noting her distress. “Come back. I’ll be anybody you choose. Even Samson.”

That extinguished light seemed to have been turned on again. She looked up at himsmiling. “No, I don’t want you to be Samson,” she said. “And I don’t want to lose my beads.”

He regarded her happily. She looked very little and soft there on the rug. “You look like a kitten,” he declared.

She picked up the last bead and looked at the unstable baubles in her pink left palm. She tilted her hand so that they rolled back and forth. “Could a kitten look at a king?” she asked with mock earnestness.

“I should think it could, if there happened to be any king about.”

She continued to make the beads roll about on her hand. “I’m going to be a kitten,” she declared with decision. “Would you like me to be a kitten?” She raised herself on her knees and propped her right hand behind her on the rug for support. She was looking earnestly into his eyes.

“If you’d like to be,” he replied.

“Hold your hand,” she commanded. She poured the beads into his immense, hard palm. “Don’t spill them.” She turned about on the rug on hands and knees, and crept away to the middle of the floor. Sheturned and arose to her knees, and rested both hands before her on the floor. She held her head high andmeowedtwice so realistically that Harboro leaned forward, regarding her with wonder. She lowered herself and turned and crept to the window. There she lifted herself a little and patted the tassel which hung from the blind. She continued this with a certain sedateness and concentration until the tassel went beyond her reach and caught in the curtain. Then she let herself down again, and crawled to the middle of the floor. Now she was on her knees, her hands on the floor before her, her body as erect as she could hold it. Again shemeowed—this time with a certain ennui; and finally she raised one arm and rubbed it slowly to and fro behind her ear.... She quickly assumed a defensive attitude, crouching fiercely. An imaginary dog had crossed her path. She made an explosive sound with her lips. She regained her tranquillity, staring with slowly returning complacency and contempt while the imaginary dog disappeared.

Harboro did not speak. He looked on in amazed silence to see what she would do next.His swarthy face was too sphinx-like to express pleasure, yet he was not displeased. He was thinking: She is a child—but what an extraordinary child!

She crawled toward him and leaned against his leg.She was purring!

Harboro stooped low to see how she did it, but her hair hid her lips from him.

He seized her beneath the arms and lifted her until her face was on a level with his. He regarded her almost uncomfortably.

“Don’t you like me to be a kitten?” She adjusted her knees on his lap and rested her hands on his shoulders. She regarded him gravely.

“Well ... a kitten gets to be a cat,” he suggested.

She pulled one end of his long mustache, regarding him intently. “Oh, a cat. But this is a different kind of a kitten entirely. It’s got nothing to do with cats.” She held her head on one side and pulled his mustache slowly through her fingers. “It won’t curl,” she said.

“No, I’m not the curly sort of man.”

She considered that. It seemed to presentan idea that was new to her. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re a big fellow.”

As he did not respond to this, she went on: “Those little shrimps—you couldn’t be a kitten with them. They would have to be puppies. That’s the only fun you could have.”

“Sylvia!” he remonstrated. He adjusted her so that she sat on his lap, with her face against his throat. He was recalling that other Sylvia: the Sylvia of the dining-room, of the balcony; the circumspect, sensible, comprehending Sylvia. But the discoveries he was making were not unwelcome. Folly wore for him a face of ecstasy, of beauty.

As she nestled against him, he whispered: “Is the sandman coming?”

And she responded, with her lips against his throat: “Yes—if you’ll carry me.”

Antonia was wrong. This was not the time of ashes. It was the time of flame.

PART IIIFECTNOR, THE PEOPLE’S ADVOCATE

CHAPTER X

And then Fectnor came.

The date of the election was drawing near, and a new sheriff was to be jockeyed into office by the traditional practice of corralling all the male adult Mexicans who could be reached, and making them vote just so. The voice of the people was about to be heard in the land.

It was a game which enjoyed the greatest popularity along the border in those years. Two played at it: the opposing candidates. And each built him a corral and began capturing Mexicans two or three days before the election.

The Mexicans were supposed to have their abodes (of a sort) in Maverick County; but there was nothing conservative in the rules under which the game was played. If you could get a consignment of voters from Mexico you might do so, resting assured that your opponent would not hesitate to fill his corral with citizens from the other side of the river.

The corrals were amazing places. Dispensers of creature comforts were engaged. Barbecued meat and double rations ofmezcalwere provided. Your Mexican voters, held rigorously as prisoners, were in a state of collapse before the day of the election. They were conveyed in carryalls to the polls, and heads were counted, and the candidate got credit for the full number of constituents he had dumped out into the sunshine.

And then your voter disappeared back into the chaparral, or over the Rio Grande bridge, and pondered over the insanity of thegringos.

It will be seen that the process touched upon was less pleasant than simple. Among the constituents in the corrals there was often a tendency to fight, and occasionally a stubborn fellow had a clear idea that he wanted to be in a different corral from the one in which he found himself. There was needed a strong-handed henchman in these cases. Jesus Mendoza was the henchman for one faction, but the other faction needed a henchman, too.

And so Fectnor came.

He had the reputation of knowing everyMexican in Maverick County and in the territory immediately contiguous thereto. Many of them had been members of his gangs when he had contracts in the neighborhood of Eagle Pass. He knew precisely which of them could be depended upon to remain docile under all manner of indignity, and which of them had a bad habit of placing a sudden check on their laughter and lunging forward with a knife. They knew him, too. They feared him. They knew he could be coldly brutal—an art which no Mexican has ever mastered. The politicians knew that getting Fectnor was almost equivalent to getting the office. It was more economical to pay him his price than to employ uncertain aids who would have sold their services much more cheaply.

Harboro and Sylvia were sitting on their balcony the second night before the election. A warm wind had been blowing and it was quite pleasant out of doors.

One of the corrals lay not far from the house on the Quemado Road. Mounted Mexicans had been riding past the house and on into the town all day, and, contrary to usualcustom, they were not to be seen later in the day returning to the chaparral. They were being prepared to exercise their suffrage privileges.

As Harboro and Sylvia listened it was to be noted that over in the corral the several noises were beginning to be blended in one note. The barbecue fires were burning down; the evening meal had been served, with reserved supplies for late comers.Mezcaland cheap whiskey were being dispensed. A low hum of voices arose, with the occasional uplifting of a drunken song or a shout of anger.

Suddenly Harboro sat more erect. A shout had arisen over in the corral, and a murmur higher and more sinister than the dominant note of the place grew steadily in intensity. It came to a full stop when a pistol-shot arose above the lesser noises like a sky-rocket.

“He’s getting his work in,” commented Harboro. He spoke to himself. He had forgotten Sylvia for the moment.

“He? Who?” inquired Sylvia.

He turned toward her in the dusk and replied—with indifference in his tone now—“Fectnor.”

She shrank back so that her face would be out of his line of vision. “Fectnor!” she echoed.

“A fellow they’ve brought up from the interior to help with the election. A famous bad man, I believe.”

There was silence for a long interval. Harboro supposed the matter did not interest her; but she asked at length: “You know him, then?”

“Only by reputation. A fellow with a lot of bluff, I think. I don’t believe very much in bad men. He’s managed to terrify the Mexicans somehow or other.” He had not noticed that her voice had become dull and low.

“Fectnor!” she breathed to herself. She rocked to and fro, and after a long interval, “Fectnor!” she repeated.

He hitched his chair so that he could look at her. Her prolonged silence was unusual. “Are you getting chilly?” he asked solicitously.

“It does seem chilly, doesn’t it?” she responded.

They arose and went into the house.

CHAPTER XI

Antonia went marketing the next morning, and when she came back Sylvia met her with fearful, inquiring eyes. She was terribly uneasy, and she was one of those creatures who must go more than half-way to meet impending danger. She was not at all surprised when Antonia handed her a sealed envelope.

The old servant did not linger to witness the reading of that written message. She possessed the discretion of her race, of her age. The señora had been married quite a time now. Doubtless there were old friends....

And Sylvia stood alone, reading the sprawling lines which her father had written:

“Fectnor’s here. He wants to see you. Better come down to the house. You know he’s likely to make trouble if he doesn’t have his way.”

She spelled out the words with contracted brows; and then for the moment she becamestill another Sylvia. She tore the missive into bits. She was pale with rage—rage which was none the less obsessing because it had in it the element of terror. Her father dared to suggest such a thing! It would have been bad enough if Fectnor had sent the summons himself; but for her father to unite with him against her in such an affair!

She tried to calm herself, succeeding but illy. “Antonia!” she called. “Antonia!” For once her voice was unlovely, her expression was harsh.

The startled old woman came with quite unprecedented alacrity.

“Antonia, where did you see my father?”

“On the street. He seemed to have waited for me.”

“Very well. You must find him again. It doesn’t matter how long you search. I want you to find him.”

She hurriedly framed a response to that note of her father’s:

“I will not come. Tell Fectnor I never will see him again. He will not dare to harm me.”

As she placed this cry of defiance into an envelope and sealed and addressed it certainwords of Harboro’s came back to her. That night of their wedding he had lifted her in his powerful arms and had given her a man’s assurance: “I mean that you’re to have all the help you want—that you’re to look to me for your strength.”

She reasoned shrewdly: Harboro wasn’t the sort of man people would tell things to—about her. They would know what to expect: intense passion, swift punishment.

And yet as she watched Antonia go away down the road, suggesting supine submission rather than a friend in need, her heart failed her. Had she done wisely? Fectnor had never stepped aside for any man. He seemed actually to believe that none must deny him the things he wanted. He seemed an insane creature when you thwarted him. There was something terrible about his rages.

She imagined seemingly impossible things: that Fectnor would come to the house—perhaps while Harboro was there. He might kill Harboro.

Alas, the evil she had done in those other days loomed before her now in its true light: not merely as evil deeds, definitely endedwith their commission, but as fearful forces that went on existing, to visit her again and destroy her.

She began to hope that Fectnor would actually come to her—now, before Harboro came home. At the worst she might save Harboro, and there was even a chance that she could make Fectnor see her position as she saw it—that she could persuade him to be merciful to her. Surely for the sake of security and peace in all the years that lay before her.... A definite purpose dawned in her eyes. She went to her room and began deliberately to choose her most becoming street costume.

She was ready to go out when Antonia returned.

“Did you find him?” she asked.

Yes, the old woman had found him and delivered the message. He had sent no word in return; he had only glared at the bearer of the message and had cursed her.

“Well, never mind,” said Sylvia soothingly. It occurred to her that it must be a sad thing to be an old woman, and a Mexican, and to have to serve as the wire over which theelectric current flowed—and to feel only the violence of the current without comprehending the words it carried.

And now to find Fectnor—for this was what she meant to do.

She would see him on the street, where publicity would protect her, even if there were no friends to take her part. She would see him on the street and explain why she could not meet him any more, why he must not ask it. Certainly it would not look very well for her to be seen talking to him; but she could not help that. She would be going out to do a little shopping, ostensibly, and she would hope to encounter him on the street, either coming or going.

However, her earnest planning proved to be of no avail. Fectnor was nowhere to be seen.

She walked rather leisurely through the town—moving barely fast enough to avoid the appearance of loitering. She walked circumspectly enough, seemingly taking little interest in events or individuals. That she was keenly on the alert for one familiar face no one would have guessed.

She got quite to the end of the main street, and then she halted in painful uncertainty. If she turned back now she would have to go on steadily back to her home, save for a brief stop at one of the stores, or else betray the fact to any who might be curiously observing her that she was on the street on some secret mission.

She stood for a space, trying to decide what to do. Often before she had stood on that very spot to view the picture which men and the desert had painted on a vast canvas down toward the river. She occupied a point of vantage at the top of a long flight of stone steps, broken and ancient, leading down to the Rio Grande and its basin. Along the water’s edge in the distance, down in the depths below her, ancient Mexican women were washing garments by a process which must have been old in Pharaoh’s time: by spreading them on clean rocks and kneading them or applying brushes. The river flowed placidly; the sunlight enveloped water and rock and shore and the patient women bending over their tasks. Nineveh or Tyre might have presented just such a picture of burdenedwomen, concealing no one might say what passions and fires under an exterior which suggested docility or the unkind pressure of tradition’s hand or even hopelessness.

But Sylvia scarcely saw the picture now. She was recalling the words she had written in that message to her father. If only she had not defied Fectnor; if only she had made a plea for pity, or suggested a fear of her husband—or if she hadn’t sent any answer at all!

It occurred to her that the exposure which menaced her was as nothing to the perils to which she had subjected Harboro. She knew instinctively that Harboro was not a man to submit to deliberate injury from any source. He would defend himself in the face of any danger; he would defend that which belonged to him. And Fectnor was cruel and unscrupulous and cunning. He knew how to provoke quarrels and to gain advantages.

She grew cold at the thought of losing Harboro. The inevitable consequences of such a loss occurred to her. She would have to submit always to Fectnor as long as he willed it. And afterward.... Ah, she must find Fectnor!

She retraced her steps. At a shop where silks were sold she entered. She asked for a piece of ribbon. A particular shade of blue; she could not describe it. She sat on a stool at the counter and kept an eye on the street.... No, something darker than that, something less lustrous. She examined bolt after bolt, and when at length it appeared that she was quite unwilling to be pleased she made a choice. And always she watched the street, hoping that Fectnor would pass.

At last she went up the Quemado Road, walking disconsolately. The withered immensity of the world broke her spirit. The vast stricken spaces were but a material manifestation of those cruelties of nature which had broken her long ago, and which could not be expected to withdraw their spell now that the time had come for her destruction.

She looked far before her and saw where the Quemado Road attained its highest point and disappeared on the other side of a ridge. A house stood there, lonely and serene. She had known it was a convent; but now she observed it with eyes which really saw it for the first time. It had looked cool even duringthe period of midsummer. There was shade—a friendly garden. She had seen the Mother Superior once or twice: a large, elderly woman who wore but lightly the sedate mien which concealed a gentle humanity.

What if she, Sylvia, were to go on past her own house, on up to the ridge, and appeal to that unworldly woman for succor? Was there a refuge there for such as she?

But this was the merest passing fancy. Where the tides of life ran high she had been moulded; here in the open she would meet her end, whatever the end might be.

She sat inside her house throughout that long day. Beside an open window she kept her place, staring toward Eagle Pass, her eyes widening whenever a figure appeared on the highway.

But the individual she feared—Fectnor, her father, a furtive messenger—did not appear.

Harboro came at last: Harboro, bringing power and placidity.

She ran out to the gate to meet him. Inside the house she flung herself into his arms.

He marvelled at her intensity. He heldher a long moment in his embrace. Then he gazed into her eyes searchingly. “Everything is all right,” he said—the words being an affirmation rather than a question. He had read an expression of dread in her eyes.

“Yes, everything is all right,” she echoed. Everythingwasright now. She seemed to awaken from a horrible nightmare. Harboro’s presence put to flight an army of fears. She could scarcely understand why she had been so greatly disturbed. No harm could come to him, or to her. He was too strong, too self-contained, to be menaced by little creatures. The bigness of him, the penetrating, kindly candor of his eyes, would paralyze base minds and violent hands seeking to do him an injury. The law had sanctioned their union, too—and the law was powerful.

She held to that supporting thought, and during the rest of the evening she was untroubled by the instinctive knowledge that even the law cannot make right what the individual has made wrong.

She was as light-hearted as a child that night, and Harboro, after the irksome restraints of the day, rejoiced in her. Theyplayed at the game of love again; and old Antonia, in her place down-stairs, thought of that exchange of letters and darkly pondered.

CHAPTER XII

The election came and went; the voice of the people had been heard, and Maverick County had a new sheriff. In the house on the Quemado Road Fectnor’s name was heard no more.

On the Saturday night following the election Harboro came home and found a letter waiting for him on the table in the hall. He found also a disquieted Sylvia, who looked at him with brooding and a question in her eyes.

He stopped where he stood and read the letter, and Sylvia watched with parted lips—for she had recognized the handwriting on the envelope.

Harboro’s brows lowered into a frown. “It’s from your father,” he said finally, lifting his eyes from the letter and regarding Sylvia.

She tried to achieve an effect of only mild interest. “What can he have to write to you about?” she asked.

“Poor fellow—it seems he’s been ill. Sylvia,how long has it been since you visited your father?”

“Does he want me to come to see him?”

“He hints at that pretty strongly. Yes, that’s really the substance of his letter.”

“I’ve never been back since we were married.”

She led the way into the dining-room. Her manner was not quite responsive. She made Harboro feel that this was a matter which did not concern him.

“But isn’t that—doesn’t that seem rather neglectful?”

She drew a chair away from the table and sat down facing him. “Yes, it does seem so. I think I’ve hinted that I wasn’t happy in my old home life; but I’ve never talked very much about it. I ought to tell you, I think, that I want to forget all about it. I want the old relationship broken off completely.”

Harboro shook his head with decision. “That won’t do,” he declared. “Believe me, you’re making a mistake. You’re a good deal younger than I, Sylvia, and it’s the way of the young to believe that for every old tie broken a new one can be formed. At yourage life seems to have an abundance of everything. But you’ll be dismayed, in a few years, to discover that most things come to us but once, and that nearly all the best things come to us in our youth.”

He stood before her with an air of such quiet conviction, of such tranquil certainty of the truth of what he said that she could not meet his glance. She had placed an elbow on the table, and was supporting her face in her hand. Her expression was strangely inscrutable to the man who looked down at her.

“Your father must be getting old. If you shouldn’t see him for a year or so, you’d be fearfully grieved to note the evidences of failure: a slight stoop, perhaps; a slower gait; a more troubled look in his eyes. I want to help you to see this thing clearly. And some day you’ll get word that he is dead—and then you’ll remember, too late, how you might have carried little joys to him, how you might have been a better daughter....”

She sprang up, shaking the tears from her eyes. “I’ll go,” she said. She startled Harboroby that note of despair in her voice. “When does he wish me to come?”

“He says he is ill and alone. I think he would be glad if I could persuade you to go this evening. Why not this evening?”

Unfortunately, Harboro concealed a part of the truth in this. Her father had quite definitely asked to have her come this evening. But Harboro wished her to feel that she was acting voluntarily, that she was choosing for herself, both as to the deed and as to the time of its doing.

And Sylvia felt a wave of relief at the assurance that her father had not set a definite time. Oh, surely the letter was just what it purported to be—a cry of loneliness and an honest desire to see her. And Sylvia really loved her father. There was that in her nature which made it impossible for her to judge him.

“I could go with you,” ventured Harboro, “though he doesn’t say anything about my coming. I’ve felt we must both go soon. Of course, I need not wait for an invitation.”

But Sylvia opposed this. “If he’s ill,”she said, “I think I ought to go alone this time.” She added to herself: “I don’t want him ever to go. I must make him believe that enough has been done if I go myself. I must convince him that my father doesn’t care to have him come.”

Nevertheless, she was quite resigned to the arrangement that had been made for her. She helped Antonia make the final preparations for supper, and she set off down the road quite cheerfully after they arose from the table. Harboro watched her with a new depth of tenderness. This sweet submission, the quick recognition of a filial duty once it was pointed out to her—here were qualities which were of the essence of that childlike beauty which is the highest charm in women.

And Sylvia felt a strange eagerness of body and mind as she went on her way. She had put all thought of the house under the mesquite-tree out of mind, as far as possible. Becoming a closed book to her, the place and certain things which had been dear to her had become indistinct in her memory. Now that she was about to reopen the book various little familiar things came back to her andfilled her mind with eagerness. The tiny canary in its cage—it would remember her. It would wish to take a bath, to win her praise. There had been a few potted plants, too; and there would be the familiar pictures—even the furniture she had known from childhood would have eloquent messages for her.

This was the frame of mind she was in as she opened her father’s gate, and paused for an instant to recall the fact that here she had stood when Harboro appeared before her for the first time. It was near sundown now, just as it had been then; and—yes, the goatherd was there away out on the trail, driving his flock home.

She turned toward the house; she opened the door eagerly. Her eyes were beaming with happiness.

But she was chilled a little by the sight of her father. Something Harboro had said about her father changing came back to her. Hehadchanged—just in the little while that had elapsed since her marriage. But the realization of what that change was hurt her cruelly. He looked mean and base as he hadnever looked before. The old amiable submission to adversities had given place to an expression of petulance, of resentment, of cunning, of cowardice. Or was it that Sylvia was looking at him with new eyes?

He sat just inside the door, by a window. He was in a rocking-chair, and his hands lay heavily against the back of it. He had a blanket about him, as if he were cold. He looked at her with a strange lack of responsiveness when she entered the room.

“I got your message,” she said affectionately. “I am glad you let me know you weren’t feeling very well.” She touched his cheeks with her hands and kissed him. “Youarecold,” she added, as if she were answering the question that had occurred to her at sight of the blanket.

She sat down near him, waiting for him to speak. He would have a great many things to say to her, she thought. But he regarded her almost stolidly.

“Your marriage seems to have changed you,” he said finally.

“For the better, I hope!”

“Well, that’s according to the way youlook at it. Cutting your old father cold isn’t for the better, as far as I can see.”

She did not resent the ungenerous use of that phrase, “old father,” though she could not help remembering that he was still under fifty, and that he looked young for his years. It was just one of his mannerisms in speaking.

“I didn’t do that, you know,” she said. “Being married seems a wonderful adventure. There is so much that is strange for you to get used to. But I didn’t forget you. You’ve seen Antonia—occasionally...?”

The man moved his head so that it lay on one side against the chair-back. “I thought you’d throw that up to me,” he complained.

“Father!” she remonstrated. She was deeply wounded. It had not been her father’s way to make baseless, unjust charges against her. Shiftless and blind he had been; but there had been a geniality about him which had softened his faults to one who loved him.

“Well, never mind,” he said, in a less bitter tone. And she waited, hoping he would think of friendlier words to speak, now that his resentment had been voiced.

But he seemed ill at ease in her presencenow. She might have been a stranger to him. She looked about her with a certain fond expression which speedily faded. Somehow the old things reminded her only of unhappiness. They were meaner than she had supposed them to be. Their influence over her was gone.

She brought her gaze back to her father. He had closed his eyes as if he were weary; yet she discerned in the lines of his face a hard fixity which troubled her, alarmed her. Though his eyes were closed he did not present a reposeful aspect. There was something really sinister about that alert face with its closed eyes—as there is about a house with its blinds drawn to hide evil enterprises.

So she sat for interminable minutes, and it seemed to Sylvia that she was not surprised when she heard the sound of tapping at the back door.

She was not surprised, yet a feeling of engulfing horror came over her at the sound.

Her father opened his eyes now; and it seemed really that he had been resting. “The boy from the drug-store,” he said. “They were to send me some medicine.”

He seemed to be gathering his energies to get up and admit the boy from the drug-store, but Sylvia sprang to her feet and placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Let me go,” she said.

There was an expression of pity and concern for her father in her eyes when she got to the door and laid her hand on the latch. She was too absent-minded to observe at first that the bolt had been moved into its place, and that the door was locked. Her hand had become strange to the mechanism before her, and she was a little awkward in getting the bolt out of the way. But the expression of pity and concern was still in her eyes when she finally pulled the door toward her.

And then she seemed to have known all the time that it was Fectnor who stood there.

CHAPTER XIII

He slipped past her into the room, and when she uttered a forlorn cry of defeat and shrank back he gripped her by the wrist. Holding her so, he turned where he stood and locked the door again. Then he crossed the room, and closed and bolted that other door which opened into the room where Sylvia’s father sat.

Then he released her and stood his ground stolidly while she shrank away from him, regarding him with incredulous questioning, with black terror. She got the impression that he believed himself to have achieved a victory; that there was no further occasion for him to feel anxious or wary. It was as if the disagreeable beginning to a profitable enterprise had been gotten over with. And that look of callous complacence was scarcely more terrifying than his silence, for as yet he had not uttered a word.

And yet Sylvia could not regard herself as being really helpless. That door into her father’s room: while it held, her father couldnot come to her, but she could go to her father. She had only to wait until Fectnor was off his guard, and touch the bolt and make her escape. Yet she perceived now, that for all Fectnor’s seeming complacence, he remained between her and that door.

She looked about for other means of escape; but she knew immediately that there was none. Her own bedroom opened off the room in which she was now trapped; but it was a mere cubby-hole without an outer door or even a window. On the other side of the room there was a window looking out toward the desert; but even as her glance sought relief in that direction she remembered that this window, of only half-sash dimensions, was nailed into its place and was immovable. Against the dusty panes a bird-cage hung, and she realized with an oddly ill-timed pang of sorrow that it was empty. It was plain that the canary had died during her absence; and she wondered if anything in all the world could seem so empty as a bird-cage which had once had an occupant and had lost it. The sunset sky beyond that empty cage and the uncleaned window-panes caught her glance:an infinitely far-off drift of saffron with never a moving figure between it and the window through which she looked.

Then all her terrors were renewed by Fectnor’s voice. He had sauntered to a small table near the middle of the room and sat down on the end of it, after shoving a chair in Sylvia’s direction.

“What’s the matter with you, Sylvia?” he demanded. He scarcely seemed angry: impatient would be the word, perhaps.

Something in his manner, rather than his words, wiped out that chasm of time that had been placed between them. It was as if she had talked with him yesterday. She felt hideously familiar with him—on the same mental and moral plane with him.

“I am married,” she said shortly. If she had thought she would resort to parleying and evasions, she now had no intention of doing so. It seemed inevitable that she should talk to Fectnor in his own language.

“I don’t care anything about your marriage,” he said. “A bit of church flummery. Use your brains, Sylvia. You know that couldn’t make any difference.”

“I’m not thinking about the flummery. That isn’t it. It’s the fact that I love the man I married.”

“All very well and good. But you know you used to love me.”

“No, I never did.”

“Oh, yes you did. You just forget. At any rate, you was as much to me as you could ever be to a husband. You know you can’t drop me just because it’s convenient for you to take up with somebody else. You know that’s not the way I’m built.”

She had refused to use the chair he had shoved toward her. She stood beside it a little defiantly. Now she looked into his eyes with a kind of imperious reasonableness. “Whatever I was to you, Fectnor,” she said, “I became because I was forced into it.”

“I never forced you,” he responded stoutly.

“In one way, you didn’t; but just the same ... you had both hands reached out to seize me when I fell. You never tried to help me; you were always digging the pitfall under my feet. You were forever holding out your hand with money in it; and there was you on one side of me with your money,and my father on the other with his never-ending talk about poverty and debts and his fear of you—and you know you took pains to make him fear you—and his saying always that it wouldn’t make any difference in what people thought of me, whether I stood out against you or....” Her glance shifted and fell. There were some things she could not put into words.

“That’s book talk, Sylvia. Come out into the open. I know what the female nature is. You’re all alike. You all know when to lower your eyes and lift your fan and back into a corner. That’s the female’s job, just as it’s the male’s job to be bold and rough. But you all know to a hair how far to carry that sort of thing. You always stop in plenty of time to get caught.”

She looked at him curiously. “I suppose,” she said after a pause, “that roughly describes certain love-making processes. But it really wasn’t love-making between you and me, Fectnor. It was a kind of barter.”

His eyes seemed to snare hers relentlessly. “You’re not doing yourself justice, Sylvia,” he said. “You’re not one of the barteringkind. You’d have killed me—you’d have killed yourself—before you’d have let me touch you, if you hadn’t liked me. You know that’s a fact.”

The shadow of a frown darkened her brow. “There was a time when you had a kind of fascination for me. The way you had of making other men seem little and dumb, when you came in and spoke. You seemed so much alive. I noticed once that you didn’t count your change when you’d paid for some drinks. That was the way in everything you did. You seemed lavish with everything that was in you; you let the big things go and didn’t worry about the change. You were a big man in some ways, Fectnor. A girl needn’t have been ashamed of admiring you. But Fectnor ... I’ve come to see what a low life it was I was leading. In cases like that, what the woman yields is ... is of every possible importance to her, while the man parts only with his money.”

He smote the table with his fist. “I’m glad you said that,” he cried triumphantly. “There’s a lie in that, and I want to nail it. The man gives only his money, you say.Do you understand what that means where a hard-working devil is concerned? What has he got besides the few pennies he earns? When he gives his money, isn’t he giving his strength and his youth? Isn’t he giving his manhood? Isn’t he giving the things that are his for only a few years, and that he can’t get back again? I’m not talking about the dandies who have a lot of money they never earned. I should think a woman with as much as one bone in her body would take a shotgun to that sort whenever they came around. I’m talking about the fellows that sweat for what they get. A lot of mollycoddles and virtuous damn fools have built up that Sunday-school junk about the woman giving everything, and the man giving nothing. But I want to tell you it’s nip and tuck as to who gives the most. A woman takes a man’s money as if it grew on bushes. Go and watch him earn it, if you want to know what his part of the bargain is.”

She felt as if she were being crowded against a wall. She could not look at him. She groped for a weapon—for any weapon—with which to fight him. “That wouldsound a little more impressive, Fectnor,” she said, “if I didn’t know what brought you to Eagle Pass just now, and how you sweat for the pay you got.”

This was unfortunately said, for there was malice in it, and a measure of injustice. He heard her calmly.

“This election business is only a side-line of mine,” he replied. “I enjoy it. There’s nothing like knowing you can make a lot of so-called men roll over and play dead. If a man wants to find out where he stands, let him get out and try to make a crowd do something. Let him try to pull any prunes-and-prism stuff, either with his pocketbook or his opinions, and see where he gets off at. No, Sylvia, you played the wrong card. Eleven months out of the year I work like a nigger, and if you don’t know it, you’d better not say anything more about it.”

He clasped his hands about his knee and regarded her darkly, yet with a kind of joyousness. There was no end of admiration in his glance, but of kindness there was never a suggestion.

She gathered new energy from that look in his eyes. After all, they had been arguingabout things which did not matter now. “Fectnor,” she said, “I’m sure there must be a good deal of justice in what you say. But I know you’re forgetting that when the man and the woman are through with youth there is a reckoning which gives the man all the best of it. His wrong-doing isn’t stamped upon him. He is respected. He may be poor, but he isn’t shunned.”

“That’s more of the same lie. Did you ever see a poor man—a really poor man—who was respected? There may be two or three of the people who know him best who will give him credit for certain things—if he denies himself to pay a debt, or forfeits his rest to sit up with a sick neighbor. But take the world as a whole, doesn’t it ride over the man who’s got nothing? Isn’t he dreaded like a plague? Isn’t he a kill-joy? I don’t care what a woman’s been, she’s as well off. A few people will give her credit for the good she does, and that’s all a man can hope for, if he’s been generous enough or enough alive to let his money go. No, you can’t build up any fences, Sylvia. We’re all in the same herd.”

She felt oppressed by the hardness, therelentlessness, of his words, his manner. She could not respond to him. But she knew that everything this man said, and everything he was, left out of the account all those qualities which make for hope and aspirations and faith.

Her glance, resting upon him as from a great distance, seemed to irritate him. “After all, Sylvia,” he said, “you’re putting on an awful lot of silk that don’t belong to you. Suppose we say that you’d have kept away from me if you hadn’t been too much influenced. There are other things to be remembered. Peterson, for example. Remember Peterson? I watched you and him together a good bit. You’ll never tell me you wasn’t loose with him.”

Much of her strength and pride returned to her at this. Whatever the truth was, she knew that Fectnor had no right to bring such a charge against her. “Your language is very quaint at times,” she said. A curve of disdain hovered about her lips. “I’m not aware of being, or of ever having been, loose in any way. I can’t think where such a word originated.”

“You know what I mean well enough. And some of those young fellows—the soldiers and railroaders—I don’t suppose any of them have got anything on you, either?”

“They haven’t, Fectnor!” she exclaimed hotly. She resolved to have nothing more to say to him. She felt that his brutality gave her the right to have done with him. And then her glance was arrested by his powerful hand, where it lay on the table beside him. It was blunt-fingered and broad and red, with the back covered by yellow hairs which extended down to the dabs of finger-nails.

He seemed to read her mind, and in answer he took up a heavy pewter cup and held it toward her. For an instant he permitted her to scrutinize the cup, and then his fingers closed. He opened his hand and the shapeless mass of pewter fell to the floor. He threw his head back with the ecstasy of perfect physical fitness. His laughter arose, almost hysterically.

“Fectnor!” she cried, standing tense and white before him, “I think you’re all brute—just common, hopeless brute.”

He became perfectly serious; but presently he regarded her with a flicker of humor in his eyes, she thought. “You didn’t say that as if you meant it, Sylvia,” he declared. “You didn’t say it as if you quite believed it. But I’m going to show you that you’re right. What we’ve been together, Sylvia, you and I, we’re going to continue to be until we both agree to quit. That’s what you may call justice. And so far I’m not agreeing to quit.”

He came toward her then, and she perceived that his bearing had altered completely. He seemed moved by some impulse stronger than himself—as if it were quite outside himself.

She felt that her heart had suddenly ceased to beat. A leopard crouching before her on a limb could not have seemed more pitiless, more terrible. She had sprung to the door opening into her father’s room before he could reach her. Her fingers shot the bolt and the door was open. And then she knew she had made a fatal mistake in holding that long and quiet parley with the beast that had trapped her. She had ledher father, doubtless, to believe that it was an amicable talk that had been going on behind the closed door. She knew now that at the first instant of Fectnor’s appearance she should have given battle and cried for help.

Now, looking into the adjoining room, while Fectnor’s grip closed upon her wrist, she saw the front door quietly close. Her father had gone out.

Back to Index Next