“Dear Bart:—I’m goin’ away. I’m goin’ with him. I told you what wa’n’t so this mornin’. I do like him the best. I couldn’t have you after knowin’ him. I feel awful bad to treat you this a-way, but I haf to.“Laviny.”“P. S.—I want that you sh’u’d marry somebody else as soon as you can, an’ be happy.”
“Dear Bart:—I’m goin’ away. I’m goin’ with him. I told you what wa’n’t so this mornin’. I do like him the best. I couldn’t have you after knowin’ him. I feel awful bad to treat you this a-way, but I haf to.
“Laviny.”
“P. S.—I want that you sh’u’d marry somebody else as soon as you can, an’ be happy.”
A querulous call came from the hall below. He took the candle in one hand and the letter in the other and went down, stumbling clumsily on the stairs. A great many noises seemed to be ringing in his head, and the sober paper with which the walls of the hall were covered to havesuddenly taken on great scarlet spots. He felt helpless and uncertain in his movements, as if he had no will to guide him. He must have carried the candle very crookedly, for Mrs. Vaiden, who was watching him from below, cried out, petulantly: “There, youarespillin’ the sperm! Just look at you!” But she stopped abruptly when she saw his face.
“Why, whatever on this earth!” she exclaimed, solemnly. “What you got there? A letter?”
“Yes.” He set the candle on the table and held the letter toward her. “It’s from Laviny.”
“From Laviny! Why, what on earth did she write to you about?”
He burst into wild, terrible laughter. “She wants I sh’u’d marry somebody else as soon as I can, an’ be happy.” These words, at least, seemed to have written themselves on his brain. He groped about blindly for his hat, and went out into the shrill, whistling night. The last torch had burnt itself out, and everything was black save the electric lights, winking in the wind, and one strip of whitening sky above Mount Baker, where presently the moon would rise, silver and cool.
It was seven o’clock in the morning when he came back. He washed his hands and face at thesink on the porch, and combed his hair before a tiny mirror, in which a dozen reflections of himself danced. Mrs. Vaiden was frying ham. At sight of him she began to cry, weakly and noiselessly. “Where you been?” she sniffled. “You look forty year old. I set up till one o’clock, a-waitin’ for you.”
“Mrs. Vaiden,” said Bart, quietly, “I’m in great trouble. I’ve walked all night, tryin’ to make up my mind to ’t. I’ve done it at last; but I cu’dn’t ’a’ come back tell I did. I’m sorry you waited up.”
“Oh, I don’t mind that as long as you’re gettin’ reconciled to ’t, Bart.” Mrs. Vaiden spoke more hopefully. “You set right down an’ have a bite to eat.”
“I don’t want anything,” he replied; but he sat down and took a cup of coffee. It must have been very hot, for suddenly great tears came into his eyes and stood there. Mrs. Vaiden sat down opposite to him and leaned her elbow on the table and her head on her hand. “Bart,” she said, solemnly, “I don’t want you sh’u’d think I ever winked at this. It never entered my head. My heart’s just broke. To see a likely girl, that c’u’d ’a’ had her pick anywheres, up an’ run away with a no-account newspaper fello’—when she c’u’d ’a’ had you!” The man’s face contracted. “Whatever on earth the neighbors’ll say I don’t know.”
“Who cares what neighbors say?”
“Oh, that’s all very well for you to say; you ain’t her mother.”
“No,” said Bart, with a look that made her quail; “I ain’t. I wish to God I was! Mebbe ’twouldn’thurtso!”
“Well, it ’ad ort to hurt more!” retorted the lady, with spirit. “Just ’s if you felt any worse ’n I do!” He laid his head on his hand and groaned. “Oh, I know it’s gone deep, Bart”—her tone softened—“but ’s I say, you ain’t her mother. You’ll get over it an’ marry again—like Laviny wanted that you sh’u’d. It was good o’ her to think o’ that. I will say that much for her.”
“Yes,” said Bart; “it was good of her.” Then there came a little silence, broken finally by Mrs. Vaiden. Her voice held a note of peevish regret. “There’s that fine house o’ your’n ’most finished—two story an’ a ell! An’ that liberry across the front hall from the parlor! When I think how vain Laviny was o’ that liberry! What’ll you do with the house, now, Bart?”
“Sell it!” he answered, between his teeth.
“An’ there’s all that fine furnitur’ that Laviny an’ you picked out. She fairly danced when she told me about it. All covered with satin—robin-egg green, wa’n’t it?”
“Blue.” The word dropped mechanically from his white lips.
“Well, blue, then. What’ll you do with it?”
“I guess they’ll take it back by my losin’ my first payment,” he answered, with a kind of ghastly humor.
“Well, there’s your new buggy—all paid for. They won’t take that back.”
“I’ll give that to you,” he said, with a bitter smile.
“Oh, you!” exclaimed Mrs. Vaiden, throwing out her large hand at him in a gesture of mingled embarrassment and delight. “As if I’d take it, after Laviny’s actin’ up this a-way!”
He did not reply, and presently she broke out, angrily, with:
“The huzzy! The ungrateful, deceitful jade! To treat a body so. How do we know whether he’s got anything to keep a wife on? I’ll admit, though, he was alwus genteel-dressed. I do think, Bart, you might ’a’ took pattern ’n that. ’Twa’n’t like as if you wa’n’t able to wear good clo’es—an’ Laviny liked such things.”
“I wish you’d ’a’ told me a good spell ago what she liked, Mrs. Vaiden.”
“Well, that’s so. There ain’t much use ’n lockin’ the stable door after the horse ’s gone. Oh, that makes me think about your offerin’ me that buggy—’s if I w’u’d!”
“I guess you’ll have to. I’m goin’ to leave on the train, an’ I’ll order it sent to you.”
“Oh, you! Why, where you goin’, Bart?”
“I’m goin’ to followhim!” he thundered, bringing his fist down on the table in a way that made every dish leap out of its place. “I ain’t goin’ to hurt him—unless talk hurts—but I’m goin’ to say somethingsto him. I ain’t had a thought for three year that that girl ain’t b’en in! I ain’t made a plan that she ain’t b’en in. I’ve laid awake night after night just too happy to sleep. An’ now to have a—athinglike him take her from me in one month. But that ain’t the worst!” he burst out, passionately. “We don’t know how he’ll treat her, an’ she’ll be too proud to complain—”
“I can’t see why you care how he treats her,” said Mrs. Vaiden, “after the way she’s treated you.”
“No,” he answered, with a look that ought to have crushed her, “I didn’t s’pose you c’u’d see. I didn’t expect you to see that, or anything else but your own feelin’s—the way the thing affex you. But that’s what I’m goin’ to follow him for, Mrs. Vaiden. An’ when I find him—I’m goin’ to tell him”—there was an awful calm in his tone now—“that if he ever misuses her, now that he’s married her, I’ll kill him. I’ll shoot him down like a dawg!”
“My Lord!” broke in Mrs. Vaiden, with a new thought. “What if he ain’t married her! She never said so ’n her letter. Oh, Bart!” beginning to weep hysterically. “Mebbe you c’u’d get her back.”
He leaped to his feet panting like an animal; his great breast swelled in and out swiftly, his hands clenched, his eyes burned at her.
“What!” he said. “Do youdare?Her mother!Oh, you—you—God! but I wish you was a man!”
The whistle of a coming train broke across the morning stillness. He turned, seized his hat and crushed it on his head. Then he came back and took up the chair in which he had been sitting.
“Mrs. Vaiden,” he said, quietly, “d’ you see this chair? Well, if he ain’t married her—”
With two or three movements of his powerful wrists he wrenched the chair into as many pieces and dropped them on the floor.
After a while Mrs. Vaiden emerged from the stupefaction into which his last words had thrown her, and resumed her breakfast.
“Well,” she said, stirring her coffee until it swam round and round in a smooth eddy in the cup, “if I ever see his beat! Whoever’d ’a’ thought he’d take his cuttin’-out that a-way? I never ’d’a’ thought it. Worryin’ about her, after the way she’s up and used him! A body ’d think he’d be glad if she was treated shameful, and hatto lead a mis’rable life a-realizin’ what she’d threw away. But not him. Well, they say still water runs deep. Mebbe it’s ungrateful to think it after his givin’ me that fine buggy—(How Mis’ Bentley will stare when I drive roun’ to see her!” she interjected with a smile of anticipation.) “But after seein’ how he showed up his temper just now I ain’t sure but Laviny’s head was level when she took the other ’n. ’Fonlyhe had a donation claim!”