"I don't know," she said. "We may."
"If you do, don't fail to let me know. I would like to see you."
"All right," said Bertha, "I'll send you a line." And her frank smile made him sorry to say good-bye even for the day.
As Mart was going up the elevator he sighed and said: "It takes all kinds of people to make up a world—Mr. Hummockstone is wan of the t'others. He has a grouch agin the universe. Sure but he's been housin' a gnawin' serpent. How 'twill all end I dunno."
When alone in her room, Bertha's mind again reverted to Ben Fordyce. As she compared him with Humiston, he seemed handsomer and more boyishly frank than ever. What did Joe Moss mean by calling Mr. Humiston "blasé." She had seen that word in novels and it always meant something wicked. How could this weary, sick man be wicked? She pitied him and wished to help him. "Why should he take so much interest in me? He don't have to. Of course the Mosses are nice to me on Congdon's account, but why does this great artist want me to come to his studio in New York? He talks poor, so maybe he wants me to buy some of his pictures." That her money was a lure for wasps she did not yet realize. That the waiters and clerks buzzed round her because she was rich, she knew; but that these men, who talked of beauty and the higher life, could flatter her with attentions with a base motive was incredible.
She was shrewd as her Yankee forbears, but she was also an idealist, and these artist folk now seemed to her the highest types she had ever known or was likely to know. She felt the mystery and the power in Humiston's personality, and his bitter and rebellious, almost blasphemous, words were counterpoised by his paintings, which she acknowledged to be beautiful—too beautiful for her to comprehend. He looked like a man of sorrow and weary of battle, and she longed to know more about him. When he was not fierce he was melancholy; evidently his life had been a failure. "Why shouldn't I buy some of his pictures?" she asked herself.
Hitherto the answer to any such question had been, "Can we afford it?" but now another and deeper query came in answer, like an echo: "Is it right to spend Mart Haney's money? I am only his trained nurse, not his wife," and she now knew that she could not be his wife. She shrank from the weight of his hand, and each day made clearer the wide spaces of years, of family, of ideals, which lay between them. The kiss Ben Fordyce had pressed upon her lips had brought this revelation. But of this she was not yet aware; she was only conscious of a growing dread of the future. Her duties as his nurse were lightening. Lucius, indeed, now took many of her tasks upon himself, and she no longer helped him with his shoes or coat, and, what was still more significant, she could not calmly think of going back to these wifely services.
She dwelt treacherously on Haney's own admission: that she had been in a sense entrapped. He had believed himself a dying man at the time, and she had been too excited, too exalted by the lurid romance of the scene to be clear about anything save the wish and the will to save him; and now she knew that at bottom of all her willingness to serve him lay the consciousness that he was on his death-bed. Afterwards he had been to her only a big-hearted, generous friend, in need of love and companionship. This understanding had made it easy for her to prepare his meals, to help him, as a nurse would help him, to dress and undress. She had lost all of the fear and much of the admiration in which she used to greet him as he swung into the office of her little hotel. He had become to her an invalid, a child to be jollied and humored, and yet respected; for no one could have been kinder or more scrupulously just than he. And it was the recollection of all his acts of self-sacrifice and loving patience which gave her assurance that he would never require obedience, though he might sue for it.
Her danger lay in herself. "If hedoesask me to be his real wife—then I must either agree or leave. It won't be right for me to take all these benefits unless—"
And with this thought, the big house in the Springs, the sleek horses, their shining carriages, the auto-car, her dresses, the service of the big hotel, and the consideration her husband's money gave to her, all assumed a new and corrupting lustre. She was growing accustomed to luxury and the thought of giving it up made her shiver like one who faces a plunge into a dark night and an icy river. Besides, her sacrifice would involve others. Her mother, her brother, were already roundly ensnared in Mart's bounty.
Her head was aching with it all, when a comforting thought came to her. It was not necessary to decide it at that moment, and with a sigh of relief she threw it aside and sat down to write a letter to her mother.
"I ought to have written before, but I've been jumped right into the middle of things here. The letters Frank Congdon gave me took me into an artistic bunch about as gay and queer as Frank is, but they've been mighty nice to me. I've been setting for my bust to Mr. Moss, who is a sculptor. He has a big studio clear on the top of one of the tallest blocks here and has some dandy lamps and things. I've bought some to bring back. I met a Mr. Humiston there from New York, and he made a sketch of me—wants me to see his studio in New York. I don't know whether I'll go on or let Mart go with Lucius. Lucius is all right—I don't see how I got on without him. He knows everything. I wish I had half the education he's got. He's up on all the society ways and puts me on. For instance, he told me the nice thing would be to give a dinner to this artist push and to the people that Dorothy give me a letter to, and I'm going to do it. Lucius will look out for the whole thing. You should see the way the waiters tend. I reckon Lucius has told 'em we're made of money. I'm afraid we're getting spoilt, Muzz. It would be pretty tough to go back to the hotel now, wouldn't it?
"We went to see Mart's sister, Fanny. Her house was a sight. It was clean enough, but littered—well, litter is no name for it—but she's a good old thing and so is McArdle. He sat and looked at us the whole time like a turkey blind in one eye—never said a word the whole time but 'pass the p-taties.' I liked him though. He's a kind of sculptor, too—makes patterns for all these little acorns and leaves and do-funnies on stoves. They've got forty-'leven children and need help and I'm perfectly willing Mart should help 'em. We're looking up houses now. He's going to buy a place for 'em on the west side. Wednesday night I went to see the Doctor Brents, Dorothy's friends. They had a dinner—very nice, but they all kind o' sat 'round and waited for us to perform. I guess they thought we were mountain lions. But they didn't make much out o' me. They was one chap there with goggles who looked at Mart like an undertaker. He's a scientific doctor—one of these fellers that invent new ways of doing things. His name is Halliday. I liked Dr. Brent pretty well—but Mrs. Brent only so-so. The doctor wants to 'dagnose' Mart's case—says it won't cost a cent. We all went to a show at night and the Captain was just about petered to a point. He's better though. The lower altitude helps his circulation. I guess his heartisaffected. He's afraid now he won't ever be able to go back to the mines. He wants to slide on to New York and see his father and wants me to go—but I'd rather come home—I'm homesick for the hills. They're nice to me here—but I want to see the old Peak once more. Tell" (here she wrote "Ben" and blotted it) "tell Mr. Fordyce that we're all right and to keep us posted every day. We see by the papers that the mine-owners are going to throw the unions out of business. If they try that they'll be war again. We'll be home soon—or at least I will. I'm getting home-sicker every minute as I write."
She added a postscript. "Don't show my letters toany one. I wish I'd 'a' had a little more schooling."
Haney visibly brightened as the days went by, and took long rides in his auto, sometimes with Bertha, sometimes alone with Lucius, and now and then with some old acquaintance, who, having seen his name in the paper, ventured to call. They were not very savory characters, to tell the truth, and he did not always introduce them to Bertha, but as his health improved he called upon a few of the more reputable of them, billiard-table agents, and the like of that, and to these proudly exhibited his wife.
Bertha had hitherto accepted this with boyish tolerance, but now it irritated her. Some of these visitors presumed on her husband's past and treated her with a certain freedom of tone and looseness of tongue which made plain even to her unsuspecting nature that they put no high value on her virtue—in fact, one fellow went so far as to facetiously ask, "Where did Mart find you? Are there any more out there?" And she felt the insult, though she did not know how to resent it.
Haney, so astute in many things, saw nothing out of the way in this off-hand treatment of his wife. He would have killed the man who dared to touch her, and yet he stood smilingly by while some chance acquaintance treated her as if she had been picked out of a Denver gutter. This threw Bertha upon her own defence, and at last she made even impudence humble itself. She carried herself like a young warrior, sure of her power and quick of defence.
She refused to invite her husband's friends to lunch, and the first real argument she had thus far held with him came about in this way. She said, "Yes, you can ask Mr. Black or Mr. Brown to dinner, but I won't set at the same table with them."
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because they're not the kind of men I want to eat with," she bluntly replied. "They're just a little too coarse for me."
"They're good business men and have fine homes—"
"Do they invite you to their homes?"
"They do not," he admitted, "but they may—after our dinner."
"Lucius says it's their business to lead out—and he knows. I don't mind your lunching these dubs every day if you want to, but I keep clear of 'em. I tell you those!"
And so it fell out that while she was going about with the Mosses and their kind, Mart was explaining to Black and Brown that his wife "was a little shy." "You see she grew up in the hills like a doe antelope, and it's hard for her to get wonted to the noise of a great city," he laboriously set forth, but at heart he did not blame her. He was coming to find them a little "coarse" himself.
Humiston was deeply enthralled by Bertha's odd speech, her beauty, her calm use of money, and lingered on day by day, spending nearly all his time at Moss's studio or at the hotel, seeking Mrs. Haney's company. He had never met her like, and confessed as much to Moss, who jocularly retorted: "That's saying a good deal—for you've seen quite a few."
Humiston ignored this thrust. "She has beauty, imagination, and immense possibilities. She don't know herself. When she wakes up to her power, then look out! She can't go on long with this old, worn-out gambler."
"Oh, Haney isn't such a beast as you make him out. Bertha told me he had never crossed her will. He's really very kind and generous."
"That may be true, and yet he's a mill-stone about her neck. It's a shame—a waste of beauty—for the girl is a beauty."
It was with a sense of relief that Moss heard Bertha say to his wife: "I guess I've had enough of this. It's me to the high ground to-morrow."
"Aren't you going on to the metropolis?"
"I don't think it. I'm hungry for the peaks—and, besides, our horses need exercise. I think I'll pull out for the West to-morrow and leave the Captain and Lucius to go East together. I don't believe I need New York."
To this arrangement Haney reluctantly consented. "You're missin' a whole lot, Bertie. I don't feel right in goin' on to Babylon without ye. I reckon you'd better reconsider the motion. However, I'll not be gone long, and if I find the old Dad hearty I may bring him home with me. He's liable to be livin' with John Donahue. Charles said he was a shiffless whelp, and there's no telling how he's treating the old man. Anyhow, I'll let you know."
She relented a little. "Ma'be I ought to go. I hate to see you starting off alone."
"Sure now! don't ye worry, darling. Lucius is handy as a bootjack, and we'll get along fine. Besides, I may come back immegitly, for them mine-owners are cooking a hell-broth for us all. Havin' a governor on their side now, they must set out to show their power."
Ben kept them supplied with home papers, and as Bertha took up one of these journals she found herself played upon by familiar forms and faces. The very names of the streets were an appeal. She saw herself sporting with her hounds, riding with Fordyce over the flowery Mesa, or facing him in his sun-bright office discussing the world's events and deciding upon their own policies and expenditures. She grew very homesick as these pleasant, familiar pictures freshened in her vision, and her faith in Ben's honesty and essential goodness came back to her. Moreover her mind was not at rest regarding Haney; much as she longed to go home, she felt it her duty to remain with him, and as she lay in her bed she thought of him with much the same pity a daughter feels for a disabled father. "He's given me a whole lot—I ought to stay by him."
She admitted also a flutter of fear at thought of meeting Ben Fordyce alone, and this unformulated distrust of herself decided her at last to go on with Mart and to have him for shield and armor when she returned to the Springs.
There are certain ways in which books instruct women—and men, too, for that matter—but there are other and more vital processes in which only experience (individual or inherited) teaches. In her desultory reading, little Mrs. Haney, like every other citizen, had taken imaginative part in many murders, seductions, and marital infidelities; and yet the motives for such deeds had never before seemed human. Now the dark places in the divorce trials, the obscure charges in the testimony of deserted wives, were suddenly illumined. She realized how easy it would be to make trouble between Mart and herself. She understood the stain those strangers in the car could put upon her, and she trembled at the mere thought of Mart's inquiring eyes when he should know of it. Why should he know of it? It was all over and done with. There was only one thing to do—forget it.
Surely life was growing complex. With bewildering swiftness the experiences of a woman of the world were advancing upon her, and she, with no brother or father to be her guard, or friend to give her character, with a husband whose very name and face were injuries, was finding men in the centres of culture quite as predatory as among the hills, where Mart Haney's fame still made his glance a warning. These few weeks in Chicago had added a year to her development, but she dared not face Ben Fordyce alone—not just yet—not till her mind had cleared.
In the midst of her doubt of herself and of him a message came which made all other news of no account. He was on his way to Chicago to consult Mart (so the words ran), but in her soul she knew he was coming to see her. Was it to test her? Had he taken silence for consent? Was he about to try her faith in him and her loyalty to her husband?
His telegram read: "Coming on important business." That might mean concerning the mine—on the surface; but beneath ran something more vital to them both than any mine or labor war, something which developed in the girl both fear and wonder—fear of the power that came from his eyes, wonder of the world his love had already opened to her. What was the meaning of this mad, sweet riot of the blood—this forgetfulness of all the rest of the world—this longing which was both pleasure and pain, doubt and delight, which turned her face to the West as though through a long, shining vista she saw love's messenger speeding towards her?
Sleep kept afar, and she lay restlessly turning till long after midnight, and when she slept she dreamed, not of him, but of Sibley and her mother and the toil-filled, untroubled days of her girlhood. She rose early next morning and awaited his coming with more of physical weakness as well as of uncertainty of mind than she had ever known before.
Haney was also up and about, an hour ahead of his schedule, sure that Ben's business concerned the mine. "It's the labor war breaking out again," he repeated. "I feel it in my bones. If it is, back I go, for the boys will be nading me."
They went to the station in their auto-car, but, at Bertha's suggestion, Mart sent Lucius in to meet their attorney and to direct him where to find them. The young wife had a feeling that to await him at the gate might give him a false notion of her purpose. She grew faint and her throat contracted as if a strong hand clutched it as she saw his tall form advancing, but almost instantly his frank and eager face, his clear glance, his simple and cordial greeting disarmed her, transmuted her half-shaped doubts into golden faith. He was true and good—of that she was completely reassured. Her spirits soared, and the glow came back to her cheek.
Fordyce, looking up at her, was filled with astonishment at the picture of grace and ease which she presented, as she leaned to take his hand. She shone, unmistakable mistress of the car, while Haney filled the rôle of trusted Irish coachman.
As he climbed in, the young lawyer remarked merrily, "I don't know whether I approve of this extravagance or not." He tapped the car door.
"It's mighty handy for the Captain," she replied. "You see he can't get round in the street-cars very well, and he says this is cheaper than cabs in the long run."
"It has never proved economical to me; but itishandy," he answered, with admiration of her growing mastery of wealth.
And so with something fiercely beating in their hearts these youthful warriors struggled to be true to others—fighting against themselves as against domestic traitors, while they talked of the mine, the state judiciary, the operators, and the unions. Their words were impersonal, prosaic of association, but their eyes spoke of love as the diamond speaks of light. Ben's voice, carefully controlled, was vibrant with the poetry that comes but once in the life of a man, and she listened in that perfect content which makes gold and glory but the decorations of the palace where adoration dwells.
The great, smoky, thunderous city somehow added to the sweetness of the meeting—made it the more precious, like a song in a tempest. It seemed to Ben Fordyce as if he had never really lived before. The very need of concealment gave his unspoken passion a singular quality—a tang of the wilding, the danger-some, which his intimacy with Alice had never possessed.
The Haneys' suite of rooms at the hotel called for comment. "Surely Haney is feeling the power of money—but why not; who has a better right to lovely things than Bertha?" Then aloud he repeated: "How well you're looking—both of you! City life agrees with you. I never saw you look so well."
This remark, innocent on its surface, brought self-consciousness to Bertha, for the light of his glance expressed more than admiration; and even as they stood facing each other, alive to the same disturbing flush, Lucius called Haney from the room, leaving them alone together. The moment of Ben's trial had come.
For a few seconds the young wife waited in breathless silence for him to speak, a sense of her own wordlessness lying like a weight upon her. Into the cloud of her confusion his voice came bringing confidence and calm. "I feel that you have forgiven me—your eyes seem to say so. I couldn't blame you if you despised me. I won't say my feeling has changed, for it hasn't. It may be wrong to say so—it is wrong, but I can't help it. Please tell me that you forgive me. I will be happier if you do, and I will never offend again." His accent was at once softly pleading and manly, and, as she raised her eyes to his in restored self-confidence, she murmured a quaint, short, reassuring phrase: "Oh, that's all right!" Her glance, so shy, so appealing, united to the half-humorous words of her reply, were so surely of the Mountain-West that Ben was quite swept from the high ground of his resolution, and his hands leaped towards her with an almost irresistible embracing impulse. "You sweet girl!" he exclaimed.
"Don't!" she said, starting back in alarm—"don't!"
His face changed instantly, the clear candor of his voice reassured her. "Don't be afraid. I mean what I said. You need have no fear that I—that my offence will be repeated;" then, with intent to demonstrate his self-command, he abruptly changed the subject. "The Congdons sent their love to you, and Miss Franklin commissioned me to tell you that she will give you all her time next summer—if you wish her to do so."
She was glad of this message and added: "I need her, sure thing. Every day I spend here makes me seem like Mary Ann—I don't see how people can talk as smooth as they do. I'm crazy to get to school again and make up for lost time. Joe Moss makes me feel like a lead quarter. Being here with all these nice people and not able to talk with them is no fun. Couldn't I whirl in and go to school somewhere back here?"
"Oh no, that isn't necessary. You are getting your education by association—you are improving very fast."
Her face lighted up. "Am I? Do you mean it?"
"I do mean it. No one would know—to see you here—that you had not enjoyed all the advantages."
"Oh yes, but I'm such a bluff. When I open my mouth they all begin to grin. They're onto my game all right."
He smiled. "That's because of your picturesque phrases—they like to hear you speak. I assure you no one would think of calling you awkward or—or lacking in—in charm."
Haney's return cut short this defensive dialogue, and with a sense of relief Bertha retreated—almost fled to her room—leaving the two men to discuss their business.
At the moment she had no wish to participate in a labor controversy. She was entirely the woman at last, roused to the overpowering value of her own inheritance. Her desire to manage, to calculate, to plan her husband's affairs was gone, and in its place was a willingness to submit, a wish for protection which she had not hitherto acknowledged. She brooded for a time on Ben's words, then hurriedly began to dress—with illogical desire to make herself beautiful in his eyes. As she re-entered the room she caught Haney's repeated declaration—"I will be loyal to the men"—and Ben's reply.
"Very well, I'll go back and do the best I can to keep them in line, but Williams says the governor is entirely on the side of the mine-operators."
"Does he?" retorted Haney. "Well, you say to the governor that Mart Haney was a gambler and saloon-keeper during the other 'war,' and now that he's a mine-owner, with money to hire a regiment of deppyties, his heart is with the red-neckers—just where it was. Owning a paying mine has not changed me heart to a stone."
Ben, as well as Bertha, understood the pride he took in not whiffling with the shift of wind, but at the same time he considered it a foolish kind of loyalty. "Very well, I'll take the six-o'clock train to-night in order to be on hand."
"What's the rush?" said Haney; "stay on a day or two and see the town with us—'tis a great show."
Bertha, re-entering at this moment in her shining gown, put the young attorney's Spartan resolution to rout. He stammered: "I ought to be on the ground before the mine-owners begin to open fire, and, besides—Alice is not very well."
At the mention of Alice's name Bertha's glance wavered and her eyelids fell. She did not urge him to stay, and Haney spoke up, heartily: "I'm sorry to hear she's not well. She was pretty as a rose the night of the dinner."
"She lives on her nerves," Ben replied, falling into sadness. "One day she's up in the clouds and dancing, the next she's flat in her bed in a darkened room unwilling to see anybody."
"'Tis the way of the White Death," thought Haney, but he spoke hopefully: "Well, spring is here and a long summer before her—she'll be herself against October."
"I trust so," said Ben, but Bertha could see that he was losing hope and that his life was being darkened by the presence of the death angel.
Haney changed the current of all their thinking by saying to Bertha: "If you are minded to go home, now is your chance, acushla. You can return with Mr. Fordyce, while Lucius and I go on to New York the morning."
"No, no!" she cried out in a panic. "No, I am going with you—I want to see New York myself," she added, in justification. The thought of the long journey with Ben Fordyce filled her with a kind of terror, a feeling she had never known before. She needed protection against herself.
"Very well," said Haney, "that's settled. Now let's show Mr. Fordyce the town."
Ben put aside his doubt and went forth with them, resolute to make a merry day of it. He seemed to regain all his care-free temper, but Bertha remained uneasy and at times abnormally distraught. She spoke with effort and listened badly, so busily was she wrought upon by unbidden thoughts. The question of her lover's disloyalty to Alice Heath, strange to say, had not hitherto troubled her—so selfishly, so childishly had her own relationship to him filled her mind. She now saw that Alice Heath was as deeply concerned in Ben's relationship to her as Haney, and the picture of the poor, pale, despairing lady, worn with weeping, persistently came between her and the scenes Mart pointed out on their trips about the city. Did Alice know—did she suspect? Was that why she was sinking lower and lower into the shadow?
With these questions to be answered, as well as those she had already put to herself concerning Mart, she could not enjoy the day's outing. She rode through the parks with cold hands and white lips, and sat amid the color and bustle and light of the dining-room with only spasmodic return of her humorous, girlish self. The love which shone from Ben's admiring eyes only added to her uneasiness.
She was very lovely in a new gown that disclosed her firm, rounded young bosom, like a rosebud within its calyx—the distraction upon her brow somehow adding to the charm of her face—and Ben thought her the most wonderful girl he had ever known, so outwardly at ease and in command was she. "Could any one," he thought, "be more swiftly adaptable?"
They went to the theatre, and her beauty and her curiously unsmiling face aroused the admiration and curiosity of many others of those who saw her. At last, under the influence of the music, her eyes lost their shadow and grew tender and wistful. She ceased to question herself and gave herself up to the joy of the moment. The play and the melody—hackneyed to many of those present—appealed to her imagination, liberating her from the earth and all its concerns. She turned to Ben with eyes of rapture, saying, "Isn't it lovely!"
And he, to whom the music was outworn and a little shoddy, instantly agreed. "Yes, it is very beautiful," and he meant it, for her pleasure in it brought back a knowledge of the charm it had once possessed.
They dined together at the hotel, but the thought of Ben's departure brought a pang into Bertha's heart, and she fell back into her uneasy, distracted musing. She was being tempted, through her husband, who repeated with the half-forgetfulness of age and weakness, "You'd better go back with Mr. Fordyce, Bertie," but there was something stronger than her individual will in her reply—some racial resolution which came down the line of her good ancestry, and with almost angry outcry she answered:
"There's no use talking that! I'm going with you," and with this she ended the outward siege, but the inward battle was not closed till she had taken and dropped the hand her lover held out in parting next morning, and even then she turned away, with his eyes and the tender cadences of his voice imprinted so vividly on her memory that she could not banish them, and she set face towards the farther East with the contest of duty and desire still going forward in her blood.
It was a green land in which she woke. The leaves were just putting forth their feathery fronds of foliage, and the shorn lawns, the waving floods of growing wheat, and the smooth slopes of pastures presented pleasant pictures to the mountain-born girl. These thickly peopled farm-lands, the almost contiguous villages, the constant passing of trains roused in her a surprise and wonder which left her silent. Such weight of human life, such swarming populations, appalled her. How did they all live?
At breakfast Haney was in unusual flow of spirits. "'Twas here I rode the trucks of a freight-car," he said once and again. "In this town I slept all night on a bench in the depot.... I know every tie from here to Syracuse. I wonder is the station agent living yet. 'Twould warm me heart to toss him out ten dollars for that night's lodging. Them was the great days! In Syracuse I worked for a livery-stableman as hostler, and I would have gone hungry but for the scullion Maggie. Cross-eyed was Maggie, but her heart beat warm for the lad in the loft, and many's the plates of beef and bowls of hot soup she handed to me—poor girl! I'd like to know where she is; had I the power of locomotion I'd look her up, too."
Again Bertha was brought face to face with the great sacrifice she was obscurely contemplating. The magic potency of money was brought before her eyes as she contrasted the ragged, homeless boy with the man who sat beside her. The fact that he had not earned the money only made its magic the more clearly inherent in the gold itself. It panoplied the thief's carriage. It made dwarfs admirable, and gave dignity and honor to the lowly. It made it possible for Marshall Haney to retrace in royal splendor the perilous and painful journey he had made into the West some thirty years ago—rewarding with regal generosity those who threw him a broken steak or a half-eaten roll—and she could imaginatively enter into the exquisite pleasure this largess gave the man.
"And there was Father McBreen," he resumed, with a chuckle—"'sure the mark of Satan is on the b'y,' he used to say every time my mother told him of one of my divilments. And he was right. All the same, I'd like to drop in on him and surprise him with a check"—at the moment he forgot that he was old and a cripple—"just to let him know the divil hadn't claimed me yet. I'd like to show him me wife." He put his hand on her arm and smiled. "Sure the old man would revise his prediction could he see you; he might say the divil had gotyou—but he couldn't pity me."
She turned him aside from this by saying: "I reckon New York is a great deal bigger than Chicago. Mr. Moss says it makes any other town seem like a county seat. I'm dead leery of it. I want to see it, but it just naturally locoes me to think of it."
"'Tis the only place to spend money—so the boys tell me. I've never been there but once, and then only for three days. I went on to get a man when I was sheriff in San Juan. I saw it then mostly as a wonderful fine swamp to lose a thief in."
"Did you get your man?" she asked, with formal interest.
"I did so—and nearly died for want of sleep on the way home; he was a desprit character, was black Hosay; but I linked him to me arm and tuck chances."
Once she had listened to these stories with eager interest; now they were but empty boasting—so deeply inwrought was her soul with matters that more nearly concerned her woman's need and woman's nature. The potency of gold!—could any magic be greater? They lived like folk in a flying palace (with books and papers, easy-chairs and card-tables), eating carefully cooked meals, served by attendants as considerate and as constant as those at their own fireside. The broad windows gave streaming panorama of town and country, hill and river, and the young wife accepted it all with the haughty air of one who is wearied with splendor, but inwardly the knowledge that it all came to Haney (as to her) unearned troubled her. Luck was his God, but she, while accepting from him these marvellous, shining gifts, had another God—one derived from her Saxon ancestors, one to whom luxury was akin to harlotry.
They left the train at Albany and went to the best hotel in the city to spend the night. "To-morrow I'll see if I can find anybody who knows where the old dad is," said Haney. "'Tis too late, and I'm too weary to do it to-night."
Bertha was tired, too—mentally wearied, and glad of a chance to be alone. She went at once to her room, leaving the Captain and Lucius busy with the Troy directory.
Haney set about his search next day with the eager zeal of a lad. He took an almost childish pleasure in displaying his good-fortune. Through Lucius he hired an auto-car as good as the one he had left in Chicago, and together he and Bertha rode into his native town, up into the bleak, brick-paved ward through which he had roamed when a cub. It had changed, of course, as all things American must, but it was so much the same, after all, that he could point out the alleys where he used to toss pennies and play cards and fight. Every corner was historic to him. "Phil O'Brien used to keep saloon here—and I've earned many a dime sweepin' out for his barkeeper. I was never a drunken lad," he gravely said; "I don't know why—I had all the chance there was. I've been moderate of drink all me life. No, I won't say that—I'll say I tuck it as it came, with no fear and no favor. When playin', I always let it alone—it spiled me nerve—I let the other felly do the drinkin'."
Some of the signs were unchanged, and he sent Lucius in to ask the proprietor of the "Hoosac Market" to step out; and when he appeared, a plump man with close-clipped gray hair and smoothly shaven face, he shouted, "'Tis old Otto—just the man I nade. Howdy, Otto Siegel?"
Siegel shaded his eyes and looked up at Haney. "You haff the edventege off me alretty."
"I'm Mart Haney—you remember Mart Haney."
Siegel grasped the situation. "Sure! Vy, how you vass dis dime, eh! Vell, vell—you gome pack in style, ain't it? Your daughter—yes?"
"My wife," said Haney.
Siegel raised a fat arm, which a dirty blue undershirt imperfectly draped, and Bertha shook hands with curt politeness. "Vell, vell, Mart, you must haff struck a cold-mine by now, hah?"
"That's what."
"Vell, vell! and I licked you fer hookin' apples off me vonce—aind dot right?"
Mart grinned. "I reckon that's so. I said I'd cut you in two when I grew up; all boys say such things, but I reckon your whalin' did me good. But what I want to know is this, can you tell me where to find the old man?"
"Your fader? He's in Brooklyn—so I heart. I don't know. My, my! he'll be clad to see you—"
"You don't know his address?"
"No, I heart he was livin' mit your sister Kate."
"Donahue's in a saloon, I reckon."
"Always. He tondt know nodding else. You can fint him in the directory—Chon Donahue, barkeep."
"All right. Much obleeged." Haney looked around. "I don't suppose any of the boys are livin' here now?"
"Von or two. Chake Schmidt iss a boliceman, Harry Sullivan iss in te vater-vorks department, ant a few oders. Mostly dey are scattered; some are teadt—many are teadt," he added, on second thought.
"Well, good-luck," and Haney reached down to shake hands again, and the machine began to whiz. "Tell all the boys 'How.'"
For half an hour they ran about the streets at his direction, while he talked on about his youthful joys and sorrows. "You wouldn't suppose a lad could have any fun in such a place as this," he said, musingly, "but I did. I was a careless, go-divil pup, and had a power of friends, and these alleys and bare brick walls were the only play-ground we had. You can't cheat a boy—he's goin' to have a good time if he has three grains of corn in his belly and a place to sleep when he's tired. I was all right till me old dad started to put me into the factory to work; then I broke loose. I could work for an hour or two as hard as anny one; but a whole long day—not for Mart! Right there I decided to emigrate and grow up with the Injuns."
Bertha listened to his musing comment with a new light upon his life. She had little cause for the feeling of disgust which came to her while studying the scenes of his boyhood—her own childhood had been almost as humble, almost as cheerless—and yet she could not prevent a sinking at the heart. The gambler, so picturesque in his wickedness, was becoming commonplace. He rose from such petty conditions, after all.
Thus far the question of his family relations had not troubled her very much, for, aside from the chance coming of Charles, she had had little opportunity of knowing anything about the Haneys, and they had seemed a very long way off; but now, as she was rushing down upon New York City, with the promise of not only finding the father, but of taking him back with them to live, she began to doubt. His character was of the greatest importance, in view of his taking a seat beside their fire.
It was singular, it was bewildering, this change in her estimate of Marshall Haney. The deeper he sank in reminiscent meditation the farther he withdrew from the bold and splendid freebooter he had once seemed to her. She was now unjust to him for he was still capable of what his kind call "standing pat." The rough-and-ready borderman was still housed under the same thatch of hair with the sentimental old Irishman, and yet it would have sorely puzzled the keenest observer to discover the relationship of that handsome, rather serious-browed, richly clothed young woman and her big, elderly, garrulous companion. Bertha was not easy to classify, in herself, for she gave out an air of reserve not readily accounted for. She looked to be the well-clothed, carefully reared American girl, but her gestures, the silent, unsmiling way in which she received what was said to her—something indefinably alert and self-masterful without being self-conscious—gave her a mysterious charm.
She was profoundly absorbed in the great, historic river on her right, and yet she did not cry out as other girls of her age would have done. She read her folder and kept vigilant eyes upon all the passing points of interest—even as Haney rumbled on about Charles and his father and Kate—more than half distraught by the vague recollections she had of her school histories and geographies. How little she knew! "I must buckle down to some kind of study," she repeatedly said to herself, as if it helped her to a more inflexible resolution.
Soon the mighty city and its fabled sea-shore began to scare her soul with vague alarms and exultations. Manhattan was as remote to her as London, and as splendidly alien as Paris. It was, indeed, both London and Paris to her. Its millions of people appalled her. How could so many folk live in one place?
Again the magic power of money bucklered her. It was good to think that they were to go to the best hotels, and that she had no need to trouble herself about anything, for Lucius settled everything. He telegraphed for rooms, he assembled all their baggage and tipped their porters: and when they rushed into the long tunnel in Harlem he was free to take the Captain by the arm and help him to the forward end of the car ready to alight, leaving Bertha to follow without so much as a satchel to burden her arm. Haney had accepted Lucius' assurance that the Park Palace was the smart hostelry, and to this they drove as to some unknown inn in a foreign capital.
It was gorgeous enough to belong in the tale of Aladdin's lamp—a palace, in very truth, with entrance-hall in keeping with the glittering, roaring Avenue through which they drove, and which was to Bertha quite as strange as a boulevard in Berlin would have been. Lucius conducted them into the reception-room with an air of proprietorship, and soon had waiters, maids and bell-boys "jumping." His management was masterful. He knew just what time to give each man, and just how much to say concerning his master and mistress. He conveyed to the clerk that while Captain Haney didn't want any foolish display, he liked things comfortable round him, and the colored man's tone, as he spoke that word "comfortable," was far-reaching in effect. The best available places were put at his command.
Bertha accepted it all with cold impassivity; it was only a little higher gloss, a little more glitter than they had suffered in Chicago; and she was getting used to seeing men in braid and buttons "hustle" when she came near. The suite of rooms to which they were conducted looked out on Fifth Avenue, as Lucius proudly explained; and from their windows he designated some of the houses of the millionaires who receive the homage of the less rich (and of the very poor) which only nobility can command in Europe. Bertha betrayed no eager interest in these notables, but she was very deeply impressed by the far-famed Avenue, which was already thickening with the daily five-o'clock parade of carriages, auto-cars, and pedestrians.
Lucius explained this custom, and said: "If you'd like to go out I'll get a car."
"Let's do it!" she exclaimed to Haney.
"Sure! get one. These smell-wagons must have been invented for cripples like me."
Bertha took that ride in the spirit of one who never expects to do it again, and so deeply did the city print itself upon her memory that she was able to recall years afterwards a hundred of its glittering points, angles, and facets. She felt herself up-borne by money. Without Haney's bank-book she would have been merely one of those minute insects who timidly sought to cross the street, and yet philosophers marvel at the race men make for gold! So long as silken parasols and automobiles mad with pride are keenly enjoyed, so long will Americans—and all others who have them not—struggle for them; for they are not only the signs of distinction and luxury, they are delights. A private car is not merely display; it is comfort. To have a suite of rooms at the Park Palace is not all show; it makes for homely ease, cleanliness, repose. And these people riding imperiously to and fro in Fifth Avenue buy not merely diamonds, but well-cooked food, warm and shining raiment, and freedom from the scramble on the pave.
Some understanding of all this was beating home to Bertha's head and heart. She had as yet no keen desire for the glitter of wealth, but its grateful shelter, its power to defend and nurture, were qualities which had begun to make its lure almost irresistible. Haney liked the auto-car, not for its red and gold (which delighted Lucius), but for its handiness in taking him about the city. It saved him from climbing in and out of a high car door; it was swifter and safer than a carriage; therefore, he was ready to purchase its speed and convenience. He cared little for the sensation he would create in riding up to his sister's door in Brooklyn, though he chuckled mightily at the thought of what his old dad would say; and as they claimed a place among the millionaires he broke into a sly smile. "If ever a bog-trotter landed at Castle Garden, me father was wan o' them. I can remember the hat he wore. 'Twas a 'stovepipe,' sure enough. It had no rim at all at all! It was fuzzy as a cat. If he didn't have a green vest it was a wonder. He took me to see a play once just to show me how he did look. He was onto his own curves, was old dad. I hope he's livin' yet. I'd like to take him up the Avenue in this car and hear the speel he'd put up."
Bertha was in growing uneasiness, and when alone at the close of her wonderful ride through this marvellous city, so clean, so vast, so packed with stores of all things rich and beautiful, she went to her room in a blur of doubt. Now that an unspoken, half-formed resolution to free herself was in her mind, she realized that every extravagance like this ride, these gorgeous rooms, sank her deeper into helpless indebtedness to Marshall Haney. And this knowledge now took away the keen edge of her delight, making her food bitter and her pillow hot.
In the midst of her troubled thinking, Lucius knocked at the door to ask: "Will you go down to dinner or shall I have it sent up?"
"Oh no, I'll go down."
"They dress for dinner, ma'am."
"Do they? What'll I wear?"
He considered a moment. "Any light silk—semi-dress will do. I'll send a maid in to help you."
"No, I don't need a maid. They're a nuisance," she quickly answered.
Lucius' attitude towards her was more than respectful—it was paternal; for she made no more secret of her early condition than Haney, and the colored man enjoyed serving them. He seemed perfectly happy in advising, cautioning, directing them, and was deeply impressed with their powers of adaptability—was, in truth, developing a genuine affection for them both. He was a lonely little man, Bertha had learned, with no near kin in the States, and the fact that he came from an Island in the sea made him less of a "nigger" to the Captain, who had the usual amount of prejudice against both black and red men.
The high-keyed, sumptuous dining-hall was filled with small tables exquisitely furnished, and the carpets underfoot, thick-piled and deep-toned, gave a singular solemnity to the function of eating. It was a temple raised to the glory of terrapin and "alligator pears"; and as the Captain moved slowly across the aisles, closely attended by a zealous waiter he smiled and said to his wife: "This is a long ways from Sibley and the Golden Eagle, Bertie, don't you think?"
"It sure is," she replied, and her laughing lips and big pansy-purple eyes made her seem very young and very gay again.
Around her men and women in evening dress were feeding subduedly, while bevies of hawklike waiters swooped and circled, bearing platters, tureens, and baskets of iced wine-bottles. It made the hotel at Chicago appear like a plain, old-fashioned tavern, so remote, so European, so lavish, and yet so exaggeratedly quiet, was this service. Some of the women at the tables were spangled like the queens of the stage; mainly they were not only gloriously gowned, but in harmony with the sumptuous beauty around them. Their adornments made Bertha feel very rural and very shy.
"I wish I was younger," the Captain said, "I'd take ye to the theatre to-night, but I'm too tired. I could go for a couple of hours, but—to miss me sleep—"
"Don't think of it," she hastened to command. "I don't want to go. I'm just about all in, myself."
"'Tis a shame, darlin', surely it is, to keep you from havin' a good time just because I am an old helpless side o' beef. 'Tis not in me heart to play dog in the manger, Bertie. If ye'd like to go, do so. Lucius will take ye."
"Nit," she curtly replied; "you rest up, and we'll go to-morrow night. We might take another turn and see the town by electric light; you could kind o' lean back in the car and take it easy."
This they did; and it was more moving, more appalling, to the girl than by day. The fury of traffic on Broadway, the crowds of people, the endless strings of brilliantly lighted street-cars, the floods of 'busses, auto-cars, cabs, and carriages poured in upon the girl's receptive brain a tide of perceptions of the city's wealth, power, and complexity of social life which amazed while it exalted her. The idea that she might share in all this dazzled her. "We could live here," she thought; "the Captain's income would keep us just anyway we wanted to live." But a vision of her own beautiful house under the shadow of the great peak came back to reproach her. Her horses and dogs awaited her. This tumultuous island was only a place to visit, after all.
"Do you suppose this goes on every night?" she said to Haney, as they turned off Broadway.
"I reckon it does," he said. "How is that, Lucius?" he asked. "Is this a special performance, or does the old town do this every night?"
"In the season, yes, sir. It's the last week of the Opera, and it'll be quieter now till November."
They returned to their hotel with a sense of having touched the ultimate in civic splendor, human pride, and social complexity. New York had met most of their ideals. They were glad it was on American soil and in the nation's metropolis; but, after all, it remained alien and mysterious, of a rank with Paris and London—the gateway city of the nation, where the Old World meets and mingles with the New.
As for Marshall Haney, as he went about New York and Brooklyn in search of his relations, he was astounded at the translation of the Irish laborer into something else. "In my time, when I left Troy, all the work in the streets was done by 'micks,' as they called 'em. Now they're gone—whisked away as ye'd sweep away a swarm of red ants, and here's these black Dagos in their places. Where's the Irishman gone—up or down? That's what's eatin' me. Is he dead or translated to a higher speer? 'Tis a mysterious dispensation, and troubles me much."
He found a good many Donahues in Brooklyn, and plenty of them barkeepers; and after he'd pulled up half a dozen times at these "joints" Bertha began to pout. She didn't like such places; and as they were riding in a showy auto-car (the grandest Lucius could secure), they were pretty middling noticeable. At last she said, more sharply than she had ever spoken to him before: "Mart, I don't want any more of this. If you want to visit all the saloons in Brooklyn, I don't. Here's where I get out."
He was instantly remorseful. "I was thinkin' of that myself, Bertie. Lucius and I will go on alone. We'll send you back to the hotel in the 'mobile whilst we take a hack."
Half doubting, half glad, she consented to this arrangement, and was soon whirling back towards the ferry, her guilty feeling giving place to a sense of relief, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders—for a moment. She began to understand that half the pleasure she had taken in her hours with Moss and Humiston lay in the freedom from her husband's over-shadowing presence. He was not a man to be ignored, as she had seen wives ignore and put aside their meek partners. Marshall Haney even yet was a dominating personality, even though his family affairs were so insistent and so difficult to manage or explain. If the father came her joy in her home would be gone, and yet she had no right to refuse him shelter.
At the same time she was less sure of her place in the world, now that she was alone. She had the feeling that if anything were to happen—if the motorman should demand his pay at the door, or the hotel-keeper refuse to go her bond, she would be helpless. The Captain, for all his shortcomings and physical disability, was master of every situation. He had been schooled by stern powers, and his capabilities of defence were still equal to almost any need.
On the ferry-boat she found herself surrounded by the swarms of people who are forever calculating expenditures, who never desert a garment, and who finger a nickel lovingly; and she caught them looking at her as upon one of those who enjoy without earning it the product of their toil. They made way for her, as she got down and walked to the railing, as they would have done for a millionaire's daughter, a little surlily, and she divined without understanding this enmity, but was too exalted by the glittering bay, with its romance of ship and sea and shore and town, to very much mind what her threadbare fellow-passengers thought of her. These dark-hulled, ocean-going vessels, these alien flags, widened her horizon—deepened her sense of the earth's wonder and the wide-flung nerves of national interest. From this sea-level she looked up in fancy to her brother's ranch near Sibley as at a cabin on a mountain-side. How still and faint and far it seemed at the moment!
At the word of the chauffeur she climbed back into her car, returning to the isolation which money now provided for her. And so, girt about with velvet and costly wood and gilding, she rode up through the tearing throngs of the wharf, whirling past cars and trucks, outspeeding cabs and carriages, protected by a gambler's name, royally isolated and defensible by his money. As she spun through Fifth Avenue, so smooth of pave, so crowded, so sparkling, so far-reaching in its suggestions of security and power, the girl's soul entered upon a new and fierce phase of its struggle.
It was a larger and more absorbing fairy story than any in theArabian Nights. Without Marshall Haney, without the gold he brought, she could never have even looked upon this scene. She would at this moment have been standing inside her little counter at the Golden Eagle, selling cigars to some brakeman or cowboy. Ed Winchell would be coming to ask her, as usual, to marry him, and her mother would still be toiling in the hot kitchen or be at rest in her grave. Did ever Aladdin's lamp translate its owner farther or lift him higher? Was not her refusal to be Marshall Haney's wife the basest ingratitude?
Not merely so, but the girl felt in herself potentialities not yet drawn upon, unlimited capabilities leading towards the accomplishment of good. Money had not merely the magic of exalting, educating, refining, and ennobling the individual (herself); it had radiating, transforming power for others. It could diffuse warmth like a flame, and send forth joy like a bell. "With it I am safe, strong: I can help the poor. Without it I am only a struggling girl, like millions of others, with no chance and no power to aid those who suffer." But at this point her love re-entered and her sense of right was confused. After all the heart ruled.
At the hotel entrance the head porter was waiting to help her out, and the chauffeur, without a word or look of reminder, puffed away, secure in the reputation Lucius had given to Haney. As she went to her room the maid met her with gentle solicitude, and, after attending to her needs, considerately withdrew, leaving her deep-sunk in troubled musing.
Up to the coming of Ben Fordyce she had accepted all that Haney gave her as from one good friend to another. Once having satisfied herself that the money was clean of any taint from gambling-hall and saloon, she had not hesitated to use it. But now something was rising within her which changed the current of her purpose. Haney was no longer before the bar of her conscience; the soul under question was her own. Dimly, yet with ever-growing definiteness, she saw the moment of decision approach. She must soon decide whether to continue on the smooth, broad highway with Haney, or to return to the mountain-trail from which he had taken her.
While still she sat sombrely looking out over the city's roofs, Humiston's card was brought to her, and at the moment, in her loneliness and doubt, he seemed like an old friend. "Tell him to come up," she said, with instant cordiality, and her face shone with innocent pleasure when she met him. "I'm mighty glad to see you," she frankly said, in greeting.
He misconceived her feeling, and took advantage of it to retain her hand. "I assure you I am delighted to findyouagain."
"I thought you'd forgot us."
His eyes expressed a bold admiration as he answered: "I have done nothing but remember you. I've been in Pittsburg (only got back to town yesterday), and here I am." He looked about. "Where is the Captain?"
She withdrew her hand. "He's out looking for his father. He'll return soon. He's liable to look in any minute now."
"You are lovelier than ever. How is the Captain?"
"Pretty well. He gets tired fairly easy, but he feels better than he did."
His look of eager intensity embarrassed her. After a little pause, he remarked: "I am holding you to your promise. Can't you come over to my studio this afternoon?"
"No, not to-day. I must be here when the Captain comes. He may bring the old father along, and he'd feel lost if I should be gone. Maybe I could come to-morrow."
"Don't bring the Captain unless you have to—he'll be bored," he said, in the hope that she would get his full meaning. "I want to introduce you to some friends of mine."
"Oh, don't do that!" she protested. "I'm afraid of your friends—they're all so way-wised while I am hardly bridle-broke."
"You need not fear," he replied; "you are most to be envied. No one can have more than health, wealth, and youth and beauty. I would not hesitate to introduce you anywhere." His admiration was so outspoken, so choicely worded, that she could not distrust him, though Mrs. Moss had more than once hinted to her that he was not to be entirely honored. "He isn't a man to be careless with," she had once said, and yet he seemed so high-minded, so profoundly concerned with the beautiful world of art. How could a single-hearted Western girl believe ill of him? He could not be evil in the ways in which men were wicked in Sibley. His sensitive face was too weary and his eyes too sad.
He was adroit enough to make his call short, and withdrew, leaving a very pleasant impression in her mind. She felt distinctly less lonely, now that she knew he was in the city, and she was still at the window musing about him when Haney returned, bringing his father with him.
The elder Haney interested and amused her in spite of her perplexities—he was so quaintly of the old type of Irishman and so absurdly small to be the father of a giant. He carried a shrewd and kindly face, withered and toothless, yet not without a certain charm of line. Mart's fine profile was like his sire's, only larger, bolder, and calmer.
With a chuckle he introduced him. "Bertie, this is me worthless old dad." And Patrick, though he was sidling and side-stepping with the awkwardness of a cat on wet ice, still retained his Celtic self-possession.
"Lave Mart to slander the soorce av aal his good qualities," he retorted. "He was iver an uncivil divil to me—after the day he first thrun me down, the big gawk."
Mart took the little man by the collar and twirled him about. "Luk at 'im! Did he ever feel the like of such cloes in his life?"
Patrick grinned a wide, silent, mirthful grimace. "Sure me heart is warmed wid 'em. I feel as well trussed as me lady's footman."
It was plain that every thread on the old man was new. Mart explained. "I stripped him to the buff and built him up plumb to his necktie, which is green—the wan thing he would have to his own taste. To-morrow we go to the tooth-factory."
"'Tis a waste of good money," interjected Patrick. "I ate soup."
"Soup be damned! Ye've many a steak to eat with me, ye contrary little baboon. 'Tis a pity if I can't do as I like with me own. Do as I say, and be gay."
Patrick cackled again, and his little twinkling eyes were half hid. "Ye may load me with jewels and goold, me lad, but divil a once do I allow a man wid a feet-lathe boring-machine to enter me head."
"Ye have nothing to bore, ye old jackass! Divil a rock is left to prospect in—so don't fuss."
Bertha interjected a question. "Where did you find him?"
"Marking up in a pool-room. Nice place for the father of Captain Haney! 'Come out o' that,' I says, 'or fight me.' And the old fox showed gooms at me, and says he: 'I notice ye're crippled, Mart. I think I'll jest take what ye owe me out of yer hide.'" They both chuckled at the recollection of it. Then Mart went on: "I'll not disgrace me wife by telling what the old tramp had on. I tuck him by the shoulder and I said: 'Have ye anny Sunday clothes?' I said. 'Narry a thread,' says he. 'Come along with me,' I says. 'You can't visit my wife in the hotel till every thread on yer corpus is changed,' for Donahue keeps a dirty place. So here he is—scrubbed, fumigated, barbered, and tailored; and when he gets his cellulide teeth he'll make as slick a little Irishman as ever left the old sod." Here his face became sadly tender. "I wish the mother was alive, too; I'd make her rustle in silks, so I would. Heaven rest her!"
The father's face grew suddenly accusing in line. "Ye waited too long, ye vagabond. Yer change of heart comes too late."
"I know it—I know it! But I could never find time till a man with a shotgun pointed the way to it. Now I have all the time there is, and she's gone."
In this moment of passing shadow Bertha caught a glimpse of the significance of the scene—of the wonder, almost alarm, which filled the old man's heart as he stood there scared of the flaming splendor of the room into which the sunlight fell, exaggerating its gold and pink and green, but bringing out the excellence of the furnishing, the richness of the silk tapestry.
The old man touched a gilded chair tenderly, and Mart cried out: "Lay hold, man, 'twill not rub off! Sit down and look about ye! Out with your new pipe and smoke up!"
He took a seat with forced confidence, and looked about him. "I wish Donahue and Kate could see this."
Mart turned a quietly humorous eye on Bertha. "Not this trip. I couldn't manage Kate," he explained. "She looks like Fan—only more so; and she has a litter o' young Donahues would make ye wonder could the world have room for them all."
Haney the elder had something more than the bog-trotter in him, for as he grew towards a little more assurance that Mart would not be thrown out of his hotel for non-payment of bills, he settled down to enjoy his glass of rare whiskey and a costly cigar with an assumption of ease that almost deceived the maid, though Lucius, being in the secret, watched him anxiously for fear he might expectorate on the rug.
Mart had some "p'otographs" of his house in the Springs, and showed them to Patrick. "Do ye see yerself smokin' a pipe on that porch?"
"I do not," the father energetically replied. "I see meself goin' the rounds of that garden with a waterin'-pot and a pair of shears."
"I thought ye was a bricklayer, or is it a billiard-marker?" asked Mart, with quizzical look.
"I can turn me hand to anny honest work," he replied, with dignity. "An' can ye say as much?"
"I cannot," confessed Mart. "Had ye put a club to me back and foorced me to a trade, sure I'd be layin' brick in Troy this day."
This retort fairly blinded the sturdy little father. The charge was false, and yet here sat Mart—a gentleman. While still he puzzled over the dangerous acknowledgment involved in his son's accusation, Mart turned to Bertha. "Do ye mind the old man's spendin' the rest of his days with us, darlin'?"
"You're the doctor, Mart. It's your house, not mine."
He felt the change in her. "Oh no, it isn't; it'sourhouse. I never would have had it only for you." He paused a moment. "The dad is a well-meaning old rascal, and I'll go bail he don't do mischief."
Patrick took this up. "He is so, and he means to kape to his own way of life. If I go West, me b'y, 'tis on wages as a gardener—and, bedad, I'll draw 'em reg'ler, too. I'd like well to go West ('twould rejice me to see Fan and McArdle), and I don't object to spendin' a year with you in Coloraydo, but don't think Patrick Haney is to be pinsioner on anny one, not even his son."
Bertha's heart vibrated in sympathy with this note of independence, and she heartily said: "I hope you will come, Mr. Haney. The Captain is alone a good deal, and you'd be a comfort to him."
"I'll consider," the old man said. "I must have time to rea-lize it," he quaintly added. "I must smoke me pipe in me own garret once more, and talk it all over with Kate and the Donahues." He refused to stay to dinner with them (which was a relief to Lucius), and went away jaunty as a bucko from County Clare.
He was no sooner gone from the room than Bertha turned to her husband, and said: "Mart, I want to talk things over with you."
Something in her voice, as well as in the words, made him turn quickly and regard her anxiously.
"What about? What is it, darlin'?"
"I have something on my mind, and I've got to spit it out before I can rest to-night. I've just about decided to leave you. I don't feel right livin' with you."
He looked at her steadily, but a gray pallor began to show on his face. He asked, quietly: "Do ye mean to go fer good?"
Her heart was beating fast, but she bravely faced him. "Yes, Mart, I don't feel right living with you, and spending your money the way I've been doing."
"Why not? It isn't mine—it's yours. Ye airn every cent ye spend."
"No, I don't!" she cried, passionately. "Now that you're getting better and Lucius has come, I'm not even a nurse."
"I'll send him away."
"No, no; he's worth more than I am."
"I'll not listen to such talk, Bertie. Ye well know you're the thing most precious to me. I can't live without ye." His voice thickened. "For God A'mighty's sake, don't say such things; they make me heart shake! Me teeth are chatterin' this minute! Ye're jokin'; say you don't mean it."
"But I do. Don't you see that I can't stay and let you do things for me like this"—she indicated their apartment—"when I do so little to earn it all? Mart, I've got to be honest about it. I can't let you spend any more money on me. Help your own people, and let me go. I do nothing to pay for what you do for me. It's better for me to go."
She could not bring herself to be as explicit as she should have been, but he was not far from understanding her real meaning, as he brokenly replied: "I've been afraid of this, my girl. I've thought of it all. The money I spend fer ye is but a small part of my debt. You say you do nothing for me. Why, darlin', every time you come into the room or smile at me you do much for me! I'm a selfish old wolf, but I'm not so bad as you think I am. If anny nice young felly comes along—a good square man—I'll get off the track; but I want you to let me stay near you as long as I live." His voice was hoarse with pleading. "Ye're all I have in the world; all I live for now is to make you happy. Don't pull away now, when me old heart has grown all round ye. I can't live and I daren't die without ye—now that's the eternal truth. Darlin', promise ye won't go—yet awhile."
Wordless, as full of pain as he, she sat silently weeping, unable to carry out her resolution—unable to express the change which had come into her life.
He went on. "I mark the difference between us. I see ye goin' up while I am goin' down. My heart is big with pride in ye. You belong with people like the Congdons and the Mosses—whilst I am only an old broken-down skate. I'm worse than you know. I went down to Sibley first with hell in me heart towards you, but that soon passed away—I loved ye as a man should love the girl he marries—and I love ye now as I love the saints. I wouldn't mar your young life fer anything in this world—'tis me wish to lave you as beautiful and fresh as I found you, and to give you all I have besides—so stay with me, if you can, till the other man comes." Here a new thought intruded. "Has he come now? Tell me if he has. Did ye find him in Chicago? Be honest, darlin'."
"No, no!" she answered. "It isn't that. It's just because—because it don't seem right."
"Then ye must stay with me," he said, "and don't worry about not doing things for me. You do things for me every minute—just by being in the world. If I can see ye or hear ye I'm satisfied. An' don't cut me off from spending money for ye, for that's half me fun. How else can I pay ye for your help to me? I've been troubled by your face ever since we left home. You don't smile as ye used to do. Don't ye like it here? If ye don't we'll go back. Shall we do that?"
She, overwhelmed by his generosity, could only nod.
His face cleared. "Very well, the procession will head west whenever you say the word. I hope you don't object to the old father. If ye do—"
"Oh no; I like him."
"Then we'll take him; but, remember, I'll let no one come into our home that will trouble you. I'd as soon have a cinder in me eye as a man I don't like sitting beside me fire; and if the old man is a burden to ye, out he goes." He rose, and came painfully to where she sat, and in a voice of humble sorrow, slowly said: "I don't ask ye to love me—now—I'm not worth it; and once I thought I'd like a son to bear my name, but 'tis better not. I'll never lay that burden upon ye. All I ask is the touch of yer hand now and then, and your presence when I come to die—I'm scared to die alone. 'Twill be a dark, long journey for old Mart, and he wants your face to remember when he sets forth."