CHAPTER XXXSMUDGE
FROM her tent, where she was writing a letter that lagged somehow, Innes Hardin had seen Rickard go to her sister’s tent. She did not need to analyze the sickness of sight that watched the dancing step acknowledge its intention. It meant wretchedness, forTom. At a time when he most needed gentleness and sympathy, rasped as he was by his humiliations and disappointments—how could any woman be so cruel? As for Rickard, he was beneath contempt—if it were true, Gerty’s story, told in shrugs and dashes. She had jilted him for Tom; and this his revenge? Did it hang together, if he still loved her? Loved Gerty? How was it that those clear-sighted, quizzical eyes had not at once penetrated her flimsy evasions, her deviousness? Could he ever have cared, or was the story a web of vanity? Still caring, what would be the end of it all?
She had not known that she had such feeling as the thought roused in her. It proved what the blood tie is, this tigerish passion sweeping through her, as her eyes watched that closed tent—it was love for Tom, pity for Tom. Sex honor, why, Gerty did not know the meaning of the words! Were she not a harem woman, a cheap little vain thing, she would not be flirting in a time like this—getting on the track with her coquetries.
She pulled herself away from her wire-netting window, and took up her pen. What had she been writing about? “They are working steadily on the permanent concrete gate, and pushing the wooden gate to control the autumn floods—” How long would it be before Tom would see what every one else was seeing? What would he do when he knew? Hating Rickard already, bitter as he was—
She was not so biased as he. She could see why Marshall had had to reorganize, or Faraday, whoever it was who had done it. Estrada had shown her; and MacLean. Her sense of justice had done the rest. Rickard had proved his efficiency; the levee, the camp, the military discipline all showed the general. Whether he were anything of an engineer, time would tell that. MacLean thought so, and Eduardo, but the others did not, the older engineers, hot-headed for Tom. It was a long call he was making!
Where had she left off? “The wooden gate—” her letter as wooden! And how could she vitalize it without telling the personal history which was animating the endeavor into drama? Her brother, Mr. Marshall, the new manager— Suppose Tom were to come back? She must watch for him—make some excuse to pull him in if he should come back before that other went— Hateful, such eavesdropping! A prisoner to that man’s gallivanting!
For an instant she did not recognize the figure outside Gerty’s tent. Her fears saw Tom. She reached the screen door in time to see Rickard lift his hat to a disappearing flurry of ruffles.
She had seen the ruffles, but she could not see the distress behind that swiftly shut door. Angry eyes watchedRickard’s step swing him toward Ling’s mesquits. She was still standing, her brown hands tightly laced, when he emerged, and swung toward his ramada.
How much later was it that he came out again into that wash of sunlight, followed by MacLean, who had his absorbed look on that was almost adoration? How long had she been standing there? After they had gone, she would take a walk. The letter could wait till the morning.
From the levee that day, she had a glimpse of the Mexican woman on her knees by the river, rubbing clothes against a smooth stone. A pile of tight-wrung socks lay on the bank. Innes stood and watched her.
“I must remember to speak of her to Gerty,” she determined. “She probably does not know that there is a washerwoman in camp.”
Then she speedily forgot about it; forgot even her anger of the afternoon. The skinners driving their mules over the hot sands, the mattress weavers twisting willows through the steel cables, the pile-drivers pinning down the gigantic carpet as it was woven to the treacherous bed of that river, the Indians cutting arrow-weed, that dredge-arm swinging low—the diversified panorama caught her as it always did.
It was so big, the man-work! Behind the big fight lay its purpose. Not only to save the homes of that far-reaching valley, but to make room for the homes of the future. Always a thrill in that, the work for those yet unborn!
Still sleeping that land was, land that would feed a nation. Stretching north to the strange new sea, that made this one with the age of fable, reaching over into Mexico, its lateral boundaries the distant unreal mountains,here was a magic soil that piratical rains had not filched of its wonders. Here tired out men, from their tired out farms, would find homes, here the sick would find healing in its breath, safety and succor in its spaces—that dredge-arm swinging across the channel would make all that come true!
It was a week later before she remembered to speak of the Mexican woman “who could wash.” The two women were on their way to their tents from the mess-breakfast. Señora Maldonado was leaving MacLean’s tent with a large bundle of used clothes held under her arm.
“She washes for the men. I’m going to ask her to do my khakis for me. It’s too much to keep asking those busy men to see that my bundle of wash is sent out and brought back.”
“More impossible,” she added, following Gerty into her tent, “is it to do it myself. It’s too hot. And khakis are stiff rubbing. Perhaps this woman would be willing to do all our laundry?”
Gerty had been wondering what she would say to Innes. The speech which needed only an introduction was stirred into the open.
“You must not,” her voice trembled with anger, “you must not ask that woman.”
Innes was staring out of the tent door, watching the arm of the dredge as it dipped and rose from the river. She did not see the flag of rage flung in her sister’s cheeks.
“I don’t care at all how she mangles them, so they are clean, andIdo not have to make them so!” She interpreted the counsel from experience. She knew the fastidiousness of Mrs. Hardin. She had no ruffles tocare about. “It’s a blessed miracle to find some one who will wash for you.”
“I don’t mean that.” Each word was curt and icy. “She is not to be spoken to.”
The girl asked her bluntly what she meant.
“You must not give her your washing—must not speak to her. I’ve not mentioned it before. I—I hoped it would not be necessary. Tom told me not to speak of it.”
“Tomtold you not to speak of it? Not to speak of what?”
Gerty hesitated. Her husband, having relieved himself of his scorn, had made her see the necessity for not repeating that scene in Rickard’s tent. That did not prevent her speaking of what she herself had seen, what she surmised. But Innes must not speak of it; their position practically depended on him, now.
Innes, bewildered, asked her what in the world she was talking about?
“You must have observed—Mr. Rickard?”
The girl’s ear did not catch the short pause. “Observed Mr. Rickard?”
“The coolness between us. I scarcely speak to him. I don’t wish to speak to him.”
When had all this happened, Innes demanded of herself? Had she been asleep, throwing pity from outdated dreams?
“I won’t countenance a common affair like that.” Her eyes, sparkling with anger, suggested jealous wrath to Innes, who had her first hint of the story. She had learned never to take the face value of her sister’s verbal coin; it was only a symbol of value; it stood for something else.
Gerty had been suffering with abscessed pride, inflamed vanity. This was the first relief; the angry venom spent itself.
The yellow eyes were on the dredge bucket as it swung across the channel, but they did not register. She was angry, outraged; she did not know with whom. With Gerty for telling her, with Rickard, with life that lets such things be. If Gerty would only stop talking! Why would she string it out, tell it all over again? She hated the hints which the accented voice was making. She jumped up. “Oh, stop it!” She rushed out of the tent, followed by a strange bitter smile that brought age to the face of Gerty Hardin.
In her own tent, Innes found excuse for her lack of self-control. She did not like the color of scandal; she hated smudge. Gerty hadtoldher nothing, only hinted, hinted! What was it Tom did not want her to know? She would not think of it. She would be glad that something had occurred to check the foolish little woman’s folly. Gerty had said the whole camp knew it; knew why the Mexican woman was in camp! She did not trust Gerty in anything else; why should she trust her in that? She would not think of it.
True or not, it was better for Tom. She assured herself that she was glad that something, anything, had happened before her brother learned the drift of things. There was nothing now to worry about. She would forget Gerty’s gossip.
But she remembered it vividly that week as she washed her own khakis; as she bent over the ironing-board in Gerty’s sweltering “kitchenette.” She thought of it as she returned Rickard’s bow in the mess-tent the nextmorning; each time they met she thought of it. And it was in her mind when she met Señora Maldonado by the river one day, and made a sudden wide curve to avoid having to speak to her.