Part 5

This woman apparently gave tongue to no vain regrets, for her husband was exulting in the “grit” with which she had taken the fortunes of their life. “No whine about her,” was his way of expressing his conviction that the courage of the thoroughbred was in her.

“No, sir; there’s no whine about her. Un she’s never been sorry, un, s’help me, she sha’n’t never be,” concluded Wilson. There were maudlin tears in his eyes.

“Few men can say that of their wives,” said Forbes’s smooth, sympathetic voice. “You are indeed fortunate.”

While her husband was repeating the oft-told tale of their conjugal happiness, Ellen Wilson had done her after-supper work, and, slipping out of the door, climbed the short, rocky spur to the north of the station. Beyond the summit, completely out of sight and hearing, there was a little hollow that knew her well, but never had it seen her as it saw her now, when, throwing herself down, her face to the earth, she shed the most scalding tears of all her wretched years.

They were such little things this stranger had done--things so slight, so involuntary, so unconscious that they did not deserve the name of courtesies, but they were enough to open the flood-gates of an embittered heart. There was a world where all the men were deferential and all the women’s lives were wrapped about with the fine, small courtesies of life--formal, but not meaningless. It had been her world once and now was so no longer.

Good or bad, she knew little and cared less, this man had come from that lost world of hers, as she was made aware by a thousand small signs, whose very existence she had forgotten; and silently, fiercely she claimed him as an equal.

“I--I too was--” Slow tears drowned the rest.

She could have told him how a _déclassée_ grows used to it. She knew how the mind can adjust itself to any phase of experience, and had learned that what woman has undergone, woman can undergo--yes, and be strong about it. She knew how, under the impulse of necessity, the once impossible grows to be the accepted life, and the food that could not be swallowed becomes the daily bread.

When the struggle for existence becomes a hand-to-hand fight, traditions of one’s ancestry do not matter, except, possibly, that some traditions bind you to strength and silence, while others leave you free to scream. She knew what it was to forget the past and ignore the future, and survey the present with the single-hearted purpose of securing three meals a day, if possible; two, if it were not.

She had forgotten with what facility she might the faces and scenes that once were dear to her. She had nothing to do with them any longer, as she knew. She might, perhaps, have heard their names without emotion. But, even in this day and generation and among this democratic people, in the soul of a woman bred as she had been the feeling for her caste is the last feeling that dies. And to her anguish she found that in her it was not yet dead.

The color died from the sky, and the stars came swiftly out.

She rose at last. It was time that she should be going. She stretched out the tired arms upon which she had been lying, looked at the patient hands which had long lost the beauty her face still kept, and lifted her eyes to the solemn sky.

“I shall die some day,” she said, passionately. “No one can take that away from me. Thank Heaven, it is not one of the privileges a woman forfeits by marrying out of her station.”

Forbes stayed three days longer; restless, wretched days whenever he thought of himself and his position; sunlit and serene whenever his facile temperament permitted him to forget them. He felt that he should be moving on, yet, having stopped, was at a loss how to proceed. Staying or going seemed equally difficult and dangerous. He had no precedents to guide his action. Nothing in his previous life and training had ever fitted him to be a fugitive. He was, as he often reminded himself, not a fugitive from justice, but from injustice; which is quite another matter, but after all hardly more comfortable. He began to suspect that he might have been a fool to come away, but was too dazed to decide intelligently whether he should go forward or back. He was still in this undecided frame of mind on the morning of the third day.

Wilson and his wife performed by turns the duties of telegraph operator, with the difference that whereas she received by sound, he took the messages on paper. On the evening of the second day of Forbes’s stay, Wilson, sitting alone in the office, received a message from Pueblo that startled him.

“Great Scott!” he said, and looked around to see if his wife was in sight. She was not, and on reflection he felt thankful. It would be better not to have her know. There were some things women, even plucky ones, made a fuss about. They were not fond of seeing criminals taken, for instance. So he answered the message, and having made the requisite copy locked that in the office safe. The long strip of paper, with its lines of dots and dashes, he crumpled carelessly and dropped into the waste-basket.

The next afternoon Mrs. Wilson, in the process of sweeping out the room, upset the waste-basket, and the crumpled piece of paper fell out and rolled appealingly to her feet. There were a dozen messages on the strip, but the last one riveted her eyes. She read it, then read it again; returned it to the waste-basket and sat down to think with folded hands in lap, her white face as inscrutable as the Sphinx. What should she do? Should she do anything?

The man might be a criminal or he might not. The fact that he was followed by detectives with papers for his arrest, who might be expected to arrive on the afternoon train, proved nothing to her mind. At the same time, criminal or none, if she interfered it might prove a dangerous experiment for her, and was sure to be a troublesome one. Why, then, should she interfere?

There was only one reason, but it was a reason rooted in the dumb depths of her being--the depths that this man’s bearing had so disturbed. He was of her people; on her side--though it was the side that had cast her off. The faint, sweet memories of her earliest years pleaded for him; the enduring bitterness of that later life which she had lived sometimes forgetfully, sometimes--but this was rare--prayerfully, sometimes with long-drawn sighs, seldom with tears, always in silence, fought for him; the inextinguishable class-spirit fought for him--and fought successfully.

She looked at the clock. It lacked an hour of train-time. What she did must be done quickly.

She went out to her husband, loafing on the platform.

“I’ve got to go to Connor’s, Jim. There’s no butter and no eggs.”

Wilson looked up carelessly. “All right,” he said.

She went into the back room which served as kitchen and store-room and provided herself with a basket, into which she put meat and bread. As she left the station, Wilson came around to the side and called to her:

“You’ll be back by supper-time, Ellen?”

The woman nodded, not looking back, and plunged on up the rocky spur.

When she found him, an hour later, Forbes was lying on a sunny slope indulging in the luxury of a day-dream. He was stretched out at full length, his arms under his head, the sketch-book that he had not used lying by his side unopened. For the life of him he could not feel that his position was serious, and the mountain-air and the sunshine intoxicated him.

“Once I get clear of this thing,” he was saying to himself, “I’ll come back here and buy me a ranch. Why should anybody who can live here want to live anywhere else?”

To him in this pastoral mood appeared the woman. There was that in her face which made him spring to his feet in vague alarm before she opened her lips.

“They’re after you,” she said. “You must be moving. Do you know what you want to do? What was your idea in stopping here? Have you any plans?”

He shook his head helplessly. “I thought perhaps--Mexico?”

“Mexico! But what you want just now is a place to hide in till they have given you up and gone along. After that you can think about Mexico. Come! I’ve heard the whistle. The train is in. You’re all right if they don’t start to look for you before supper-time, and I hardly think they will, for they’ll expect you to come in. But if anybody should stroll out to look over the country, this place is in sight from the knoll beside the station. Come!”

Stumbling, he ran along beside her.

“I swear to you,” he said between his labored breaths, “I did not do it. I am not unworthy of your help. But the evidence was damning and my friends told me to clear out. I may have been a fool to come--but it is done.”

Her calm face did not change.

“You must not waste your breath,” she warned. “We have two miles to go, and then I must walk to Connor’s and get back by six o’clock, or there’ll be trouble.”

They were working their way back toward the station, but going farther to the east. She explained briefly that their objective point was the nearest canyon. She knew a place there where any one would be invisible both from above and below. It was fairly accessible--“if you are sure-footed,” she warned. Here he might hide himself in safety for a day or two. She had brought him food. It would not be comfortable, but it was hardly a question of his comfort.

“You are very good,” said Forbes, simply. “I don’t want to give myself up now. You are very good,” he repeated, wondering a little why she should take the pains.

She made no answer, only hastened on.

To Forbes the way seemed long. His feet grew heavy and his head bewildered. Was this really he, this man who was in flight from justice and dependent on the chance kindness of a stranger for shelter from the clutches of the law?

They reached the canyon and began to make their way slowly down and along its side. The woman led fearlessly over the twistings of a trail imperceptible to him. He followed dizzily. Suddenly she turned.

“It is just around this rock that juts out in front. Is your head steady? It falls off sheer below and the path is narrow.”

“Go on,” he said, and set his teeth.

The path was steep as well as narrow, and the descent below was sheer and far. Mid-way around the rocks a mist came over his eyes. He put up his hand, stumbled, fell forward and out, was dimly aware that he had fallen against his guide.

A crash and cry awoke the echoes of the canyon. Then silence settled over it again--dead silence--and the night came down.

Their bodies were not found until three days later. When the Eastern detectives had identified their man they proposed his burial, but Wilson turned from the place with the muscles of his throat working with impotent emotion, and a grim look about his mouth that lifted his lips like those of a snarling beast.

“Carrion! Let it lie,” he said, with so dark a face that the men followed him silently, saying nothing more, and the two were left lying upon the ground which had drunk with impartial thirst the current that oozed from their jagged wounds.

The suspicions of primitive men are of a primitive nature. Those three days in which nothing had been seen or heard of his wife or Forbes had been a long agony to Wilson. And now that the end had come it seemed to him that his basest suspicions were confirmed. To his restricted apprehension there was but one passion in the world that could have sent his wife to this stranger’s side, to guard and save him at her cost. So thinking, it seemed to him that swift justice had been done.

And that he might not forget, nor let his fierce thoughts of her grow more tender, the next day when the train had gone eastward and he was left alone to his desolation he took his brush and laboriously wrote across the end of the high platform, in great letters for all men to see and wonder at, the phrase he thought her fitting epitaph:

THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH.

And there it still stands, remaining in its stupid, brutal accusation the sole monument on earth of a woman’s ended life.

HARDESTY’S COWARDICE

I

Straight on before them stretched the street, a wide and unobstructed way at first, but narrowing a little farther on, where there were, besides, buildings going up, and great piles of lumber standing far out in the road, and heaps of sand, and mortar-beds. Could he possibly get the horses under control before they reached those cruel lumber piles, where to be thrown meant death or worse? They were running wildly, and it was down hill all the way. She did not believe that human strength could do it, not even Neil’s, and he was as strong as he was tender. She looked down at his hands and noticed how white the knuckles were, and how the veins stood out, and then she bent her head that she might not see those fatal obstructions in their way, and clasped her hands as tightly as her lips. She found herself senselessly repeating, over and over, as if it were a charm, “_Broad is the way ... that leadeth to destruction._”

It was a June morning, cool and sweet. If ever, life is dear in June. Her eyes fell on the great bunch of white roses in her lap. He had put them in her hands just as they were starting, and then had bent suddenly and left a quick kiss on the hands. It was only the other day he had told her that he had never, from the very first hour they met, seen her hands without longing to fill them with flowers. Would she be pleased to take notice, now that he possessed the right, he meant to exercise it?

Poor roses! Must they be crushed and mangled, too? She did not like the thought of scarlet stains upon their whiteness, and with some wild thought of saving them--for were they not his roses?--she flung them with a sudden gesture into the street.

“Oh, Christ!” she cried, voicelessly, “spare both of us--or neither!”

It was just then that the horses swerved and reared, the carriage struck something in the road and tilted sharply to the right. She clutched the side involuntarily and kept her seat. When, a second later, the carriage had righted itself, and the horses, more terrified still and now wholly uncontrolled, were dashing forward again, the place beside her was vacant, and the reins were dragging on the ground.

She shut her eyes and waited. It was not long to wait. There came a crash, a whirl, and then unconsciousness.

The evening papers contained an account of the fortunate escape from serious disaster of Mr. Neil Hardesty and Miss Mildred Fabian, who were on their way to a field meeting of the Hambeth Historical Society when the young blooded horses Mr. Hardesty was driving took fright at a bonfire at the corner of State and Market Streets, and started to run. Owing to the sharp down-grade at this point, their driver was unable to control them. After keeping their course in a mad gallop down State Street for a quarter of a mile, the carriage struck an obstruction, tipped, and Mr. Hardesty was thrown out, being severely bruised, but sustaining no serious injuries. The horses continued running wildly for two blocks more, when one of them ran against a lamp-post and was knocked down, upsetting the carriage and throwing Miss Fabian out. She was picked up unconscious, but beyond a cut on the head was also fortunately uninjured. Mr. Hardesty and Miss Fabian were to be congratulated upon the results of the runaway, as such an accident could hardly occur once in a hundred times without more serious, and probably fatal, consequences.

It was some two weeks later that the family physician, consulting with Mrs. Fabian in the hall, shook his head and said he did not understand it; there was no apparent reason why Miss Mildred should not have rallied immediately from the accident. The shock to her nervous system had doubtless been greater than he had at first supposed. Still, she had been in sound health, and there seemed no sufficient cause for her marked weakness and depression. He would prepare a tonic and send it up.

Meeting Neil Hardesty, himself an unfledged medical student, entering the house, the doctor stopped to observe:

“You must try to rouse your fiancée a little. Can’t you cheer her up, Hardesty? She seems very much depressed nervously. Perhaps it is only natural after such a close shave as you had. I did not care to look death in the face at that age. It sometimes startles young people and happy ones.”

Neil shook his head with an anxious look.

“It is not that,” he said, “for she is half an angel already. But I will do my best,” and he passed on through the broad, airy, darkened hall to the high veranda at the back of the house, where he knew he should find her at that hour.

The veranda overlooked the garden, blazing just then with the flowers of early July. She was lying languidly in her sea-chair; there were books around her, but she had not been reading; and work, but she had not been sewing. One hand was lifted shading her face. The lines around her mouth were fixed as if she were in pain.

He came forward quickly and knelt beside the chair. He was carrying some brilliant clusters of scarlet lilies, and he caught the small and rather chilly hand, and held it over them as if to warm it in their splendid flame.

“Do you know that you look cold?” he demanded. “I want you to look at these and hold them till you are warmed through and through. What an absurd child it is to look so chilly in July!”

She raised her eyes and let them rest on him with a sudden radiant expression of satisfaction.

“It is because you are so unkind as to go away--occasionally,” she remarked. “Do I ever look cold or unhappy or dissatisfied while you are here?”

“Once or twice in the last two weeks you have been all of that. Sweetheart, I must know what it means. Don’t you see you must tell me? How can one do anything for you when one doesn’t know what is the matter? And I am under orders to see that you get well forthwith. The doctor has given you up--to me!”

He was startled when, instead of the laughing answer for which he looked, she caught her breath with half a sob.

“Must I tell you?” she said. “Neil, I do not dare! When you are here I know it is not so. It is only when you are away from me that the hideous thought comes. And I fight it so! It is only because I am tired with fighting it that I do not get strong.”

“Dear, what can you mean?”

She shook her head.

“It is too horrible, and you would never forgive me, though I know it cannot be true. Oh, Neil, Neil, _Neil_!”

“Mildred, this is folly. I insist that you tell me at once.” His tone had lost its tender playfulness and was peremptory now. “Don’t you see that you are torturing me?” he said.

She looked at him helplessly.

“That day,” she said, reluctantly, “when the carriage tipped and you went out, I thought--I thought you jumped. Neil, don’t look so; I knew you could not have done it, and yet I can’t get rid of the thought, and it tortures me that I can think it--of you. Oh, I have hurt you!”

He was no longer kneeling beside her, but had risen and was leaning against one of the pillars of the veranda, looking down at her with an expression she had never dreamed of seeing in his eyes when they rested on her face. He was white to the lips.

“You thought that? You have thought it these two weeks?”

“I tell you it is torture. Neil, say you did not, and let me be at rest.”

“And you ask me to _deny_ it? You?” His voice was very bitter. “I wonder if you know what you are saying?”

“Neil, Neil, say you did not!”

He set his teeth.

“Never!”

He broke the silence which followed by asking, wearily, at last:

“What was your idea in telling me this, Mildred? Of course you knew it was the sort of thing that is irrevocable.”

“I knew nothing except that I must get rid of the thought.”

“Can’t you imagine what it is to a man to be charged with cowardice?”

“I charge nothing. But if you would only deny it!”

“Oh, this is hopeless!” he said, with an impatient groan. “It is irremediable. If I denied it, you would still doubt; but even if you did not, I could never forget that you had once thought me a coward. There are some things one may not forgive.”

Silence again.

“And my--my wife must never have doubted me.”

She raised her eyes at last.

“If you are going, pray go at once,” she said. “I am too weak for this.”

She said it, but she did not mean it. After all, it was the one impossible thing on earth that anything should come between them. Surely she could not alter the course of two lives by five minutes of unguarded hysterical speech or a week or two of unfounded fretting.

But he took up his hat, and turned it in his hands.

“As you wish,” he said, coldly, and then “Good-morning,” and was gone.

II

“I think that is all,” said the hurried, jaded doctor to the Northern nurse. “The child is convalescent--you understand about the nourishment?--and you know what to do for Mrs. Leroy? I shall bring some one who will stay with her husband within the hour.”

Outside was the glare of sun upon white sand--a pitiless sun, whose rising and setting seemed the only things done in due order in all the hushed and fever-smitten city. Within was a shaded green gloom and the anguished moaning of a sick woman.

Mildred Fabian, alone with her patients and the one servant who had not deserted the house, faced her work and felt her heart rise with exultation--a singular, sustaining joy that never yet had failed her in the hour of need. The certainty of hard work, the consciousness of danger, the proximity of death--these acted always upon her like some subtle stimulant. If she had tried to explain this, which she did not, she would perhaps have said that at no other time did she have such an overwhelming conviction of the soul’s supremacy as in the hours of human extremity. And this conviction, strongest in the teeth of all that would seem most vehemently to deny it, was to her nothing less than intoxicating.

She was not one of the women to whom there still seems much left in life when love is gone. To be sure, she had the consolations of religion and a certain sweet reasonableness of temperament which prompted her to pick up the pieces after a crash, and make the most of what might be left. But she was obliged to do this in her own way. She was sorry, but she could not do it in her mother’s way.

When she told her family that her engagement was at an end, that she did not care to explain how the break came, and that if they meant to be kind they would please not bother her about it, she knew that her mother would have been pleased to have her take up her old life with a little more apparent enthusiasm for it than she had ever shown before. To be a little gayer, a little more occupied, a little prettier if possible, and certainly a little more fascinating--that was her mother’s idea of saving the pieces. But Mildred’s way was different, and after dutifully endeavoring to carry out her mother’s conception of the conduct proper to the circumstances with a dismal lack of success, she took her own path, which led her through a training school for nurses first, and so, ultimately, to Jacksonville.

The long day wore slowly into night. The doctor had returned very shortly with a man, whether physician or nurse she did not know, whom he left with Mr. Leroy. The little maid, who had been dozing in the upper hall, received some orders concerning the preparation of food which she proceeded to execute. The convalescent child rested well. The sick woman passed from the first to the second stage of the disease and was more quiet. The doctor came again after nightfall. He looked at her charges wearily, and told Mildred that the master of the house would not rally.

“He is my friend, and I can do no more for him,” he said, almost with apathy.