Chapter 12

There must have been much arguing after that. There must have; for she had not the slightest intention of being disposed of in this medieval fashion. But in the midst of some determined though shaky sentence of hers, he had said quite kindly and finally that they need not discuss the matter any further--besides, she had to have a good stiff lunch right off--and had piloted her carefully, but with no over-powering air of devotion, out of the empty lots, around the corner, and into an automobile.

"It was all the fault of that wretched beefsteak," mourned Ikey an hour or two later. "If I'd only had it before, it never would have happened--never. I shall always have a grudge against it. What am I to do now?"

The automobile had conveyed them smoothly, first, to a clergyman's, of all people; next, to a restaurant; then, to the boarding-house, where her few belongings had found their way into a telescope basket; and now it was conveying them through the bedraggled outskirts of the city into the country beyond.

A hatchet-faced chauffeur was manipulating things in front; while the unspeakable man in gray sat unemotionally beside her in the tonneau and looked the other way.

"What am I to do now?" The bewildered girl found no answer to the one question of her mind. "Why don't you faint?" she asked herself severely. "Why don't you faint? If you had an idea of helping me out of this pickle, you'd do it at once, and never come to at all, and then have brain fever. It's the only decent solution. Instead of that, here you are, feeling--actually comfortable."

She stared ahead of her with miserable eyes.

"It was all that miserable beefsteak. The thing must have been six inches thick. Beast; why couldn't he have taken me to the restaurant first? Then I'd never have gone to the clergyman's. And that license. Where did he get it? We never stopped for one--he just pulled it out of his pocket, as though it had been a handkerchief. Ikey, you're married, _married_--do you quite understand?--to a man who wears ready-made clothes and doesn't love you and lives in an attic boarding-house bed-room. And what is he doing with this automobile? And what is his business? Oh, he's probably a chauffeur; and he's borrowed his employer's bubble; and this other chauffeur in front's his best friend and ashamed of him on account of the beefsteak business. He'd better be. But what shall I say to him? What shall I _say_?--Oh--h"--heaven-sent inspiration--"I'll say nothing at all. I will be--so different."

On and on and on went the machine. The girl closed her eyes upon the dusty, dun-colored landscape.

"Serves me right for turning over my bank account to Cousin Mary and--and----"

She had fallen asleep, propped up in her corner of the machine--worn out by this climax to the weeks that had gone before.

The man at her side turned and looked at her. His face no longer wore its placidly and conventionally polite expression.

IV

"The thirteenth move. Didn't I _say_ it would be unlucky!"

Ikey had fled to the garden, letter in hand, to review the situation. The low clouds threatened rain. But what did that matter? The house stifled her with its large, low, mannish rooms and continued reminder of Arthur Hammond; and she had to think--think--think everything out from the very beginning.

That first evening--when she wakened in the dusk at his side in the automobile and stared bewildered at the dim outline of the low, rambling brown house tucked away among shrubbery under a load of vines--how quick he had been to reassure her, to explain that a friend of his, who had expected to come here with his bride, had had to go to Mexico instead and had asked him to occupy the bungalow until their return. A woman and a Chinaman went with the place; and she would have the run of a large garden. She could get rested there; and he could go to and from town every day.

And the days that followed--how careful he had been; how matter-of-fact and unemotional; never touching her; never making any sudden motion towards her; never referring to that short ten minutes at the clergyman's; never going near the two rooms the respectable English housekeeper had conducted her to that first evening.

"Almost as though he were trying to tame a bird," she had thought half whimsically, after the first days, when the feeling of weariness and fright had worn down and a great relief and great thankfulness had taken its place, that she should never see the boarding-house again with its sneering, insulting landlady, or the office where that man with the eager, shifty, cruel little eyes held rule.

And so she had set herself about it, resolutely, though bewildered, to be an anchor to this big, unemotional young man who had so suddenly come out of the background of her existence and was occupying all possible space immediately behind the footlights.

She did not at all know what an anchor did, or said, or how it acted. But the very perplexity for some reason or other sent her spirits sky-high. And she pottered about the garden with him, and whizzed about the country in the automobile,--it belonged to the same friend who wanted him to look after the place,--and poked about the queer, rambling house, content to see no one else and talk to no one else and amazed at herself that this should be so.

Only once had he made any reference to their situation, when he suggested that it might be as well under the circumstances for her to call him Arthur.

"I shall never call you Arthur. Never," she told him hotly. "I loathe the name. Always have. It sounds so deadly respectable."

"You don't care for respectability?" His tone was _so_ affable.

Ikey considered. "It may have advantages, in some cases. But----"

"Then what am I to be called?"

She might have retorted that she should call him nothing at all: he never addressed her by any name. Instead, she answered, "Boobles."

"Boobles?"

"Boobles," she repeated firmly. And then came laughter. Ikey's rages had a way of breaking up in inconvenient bursts of hilarity these days.

But what difference did that make now? What difference did anything make?

"I don't see," Ikey said to herself desperately, "what makes me so stupid. I'm afflicted with chronic mental nearsightedness. Most distressing. This is really a tragedy I'm mixed up in--a tragedy. And tragedy's a thing I never cared for."

She collapsed miserably on a bench and stared at the letter.

"It's queer how tragedy and going to sea give you the same feeling."

It was not pity--oh, no--that had made him want to marry her. And it was not love. And it was not because he needed an anchor. Not he. He was not that kind. It was simply because she was his opportunity. Yes; that was the word. And she had never suspected.

Not that afternoon in the vacant lot, when he had inquired so exhaustingly as to her bank account.

Not the next week, when he appeared from town in the middle of the afternoon, all unheralded and paler than ordinary, with papers to sign, and the exhilarating news that the insurance companies had paid up, and a new bank-book with her name and comforting fat figures in it.

How desperately glad she had been over that. For hot shame possessed her at her appearance--shabby clothes and hardly any of them, when his ready-made dust-colored garments had immediately been replaced by the well-fitting blue serge that was her special weakness in masculine attire. She had invested heavily in frills and slowly regained her self-respect.

And not when he had appeared with a list of her property--how had he come by that list?--stating that he had made arrangements to lease certain pieces and rebuild at once on the others, and asking her approval of the final arrangements.

She had not suspected him then, either, idiot that she was. She had been too busy being rested, being thankful, being happy in the big garden, tucked away from the people who had failed her and the ghastly city and the memory of its great disaster.

She turned to the letter again. Bixler McFay had always written a good letter. This time he quite surpassed himself.

Heart-broken, unreconciled; his hopes shipwrecked; his faith destroyed. How could she have treated him so? She had been practically engaged to him; and she had left him a prey to every horrible emotion at a time when one word would have put his mind at rest. No clew as to her whereabouts by which he could trace her.

She passed that over with her little crooked, sarcastic smile. She had telegraphed and written both--and the second letter had been registered. He had probably forgotten that little fact. But it was of little consequence now. The sting lay in what followed.

And then what did he learn? the letter inquired. That a man he supposed to be his friend, a fellow he had met daily in Arizona for a couple of months at a time, had systematically pumped him about her; had taken means of ascertaining her financial status, and, recognizing her as his opportunity (that was where the word came from) had rushed off to San Francisco, married her hand over fist, and launched himself as a capitalist--on her capital. And she had allowed it.

The girl dropped the pages in her lap. Her little fist came down on top of them.

"It's a despicable letter," she told herself hotly. "And what he thinks to gain by it, I don't know. He just wants to make trouble.--And he has," she breathed with a downward sigh.

The question was, what to do now. And pride stood at her elbow and pointed out the only course.

This Arthur Hammond, this big, quiet, self-contained, efficient, indifferent young man--whose opportunity she was--must never know that she knew, or, knowing, cared.

That was the only solution. Pride forbade a scene--on his account; on hers; on Bixler McFay's; on everybody's, when it came to that. No one should know--anything.

"After a while I shall get quite old and pin-cushiony," she assured herself, "and pricks won't prick; and nothing will matter. I must be quite affable, and quite indifferent, and always polite--for women are only rude to men they care about." Her lips trembled. "It's all happened before, hundreds of times to hundreds of women--and money is very interesting to men--and there's no reason why this shouldn't happen to you, Ikey, dear--and a hundred of years from now it won't make any difference anyway.

"But I'll never tell him anything again----"

For latterly she had told him many things about herself--young lonesomenesses that nothing could dispel; family hunger for brothers and sisters and all the ramifications of a home; and, half unconsciously, her utter content with the present. She turned hot at the thought of it all.

"But one thing I won't stand." She jumped up and made for the house. "He shan't have my photograph on his dressing-table."

She had seen it there one day on passing his open door, and had wondered, wide-eyed, how he came by it--it was one she had had taken in the East--and had felt unaccountably shy at the thought of asking him about it.

She tore into the house, to get it, to destroy it, to tear it into tiny bits, and trample upon it--at once, without a moment to lose--when, rushing up the porch steps, she collided with the one person of all others she least expected to see.

V

Late afternoon. The house was very still. Outside, the rain was falling, falling, and the shrubs bent under their burden of shining drops. Inside, the fire crackled and whispered and the girl lay in the big armchair and looked around the room.

The fireplace; the big, rich rugs; the dark paneling; the fine, unemotional pictures--no wonder the whole place had reminded her of Arthur Hammond. She ought to have known. She ought to have known.

She heard his step in the hall. His door banged, once; twice; again. Then, his voice, asking Eliza some question, and the murmur of the housekeeper's reply.

Then he came in.

She did not speak or move, and his, "Good-evening" was presently followed by the easy question: "What's the matter?"

Then she turned on him.

"Is it true that this house belongs to you?"

A pause. Then he answered slowly,

"Yes."

"And the grounds?"

"Yes."

"And the automobile--is yours?"

"Yes."

He stood quietly watching her. She knew it, though she did not look at him. She took a deep breath.

"Those insurance companies have not paid," she said in a stifled voice. "You told me they had. You--you gave me--Where did all that money come from I've been spending?"

"Well, I suppose originally it was mine."

"Then it's true you are a millionaire?"

"Ye-es. Just about, I guess."

"And my property--all those buildings that burnt up were mortgaged and--and I couldn't have rebuilt--and everybody knew it--except me. The money that's putting them up again----"

"I arranged about that. But what difference does it make?"

"What did you do it for?"

"I thought you'd feel better to have an income again--and on account of other people, too. It made me hot to have you treated as though you were--just anybody at all--simply because your income happened to be short for a time. And--and I thought you'd rather have it that way than take it from me--at the first," he ended lamely.

She jumped up and confronted him, white with rage.

"How dared you do that? How dared you? How do you suppose I feel, being in this position--to you?"

"I hope you don't feel at all. And besides--But how did you find out about this?"

"Cousin Mary has been here," the girl burst out, losing all idea of keeping anything back. "She had all sorts of things to say: how badly she'd been treated--how she was shipped off East, and I never wrote to her, nothing about my affairs, or that I was married, or anything. She couldn't talk enough. She said everybody sympathized with her, because her prospects were ruined, because the companies I'd insured in wouldn't pay and my land was mortgaged so I couldn't rebuild. She knew that--and she'd never told me. And then she spoke a piece about my conduct in getting married and never telling her a word about it beforehand. She said she was mortified to death to have to learn about my marriage from strangers--strangers--just accidentally. But there wasn't anything she didn't know: that you were a millionaire, but very eccentric and not given to going around like a rational being--in society; and that you had places around in different States and always made it a point not to know your neighbors, so you wouldn't have them come dropping in interfering with you; and that you were amusing yourself now with putting my affairs on their legs again; and how lucky it was for me; and how strange it was, when I was making a brilliant marriage, not to make it, at least, in a dignified, even if not in a brilliant manner, with a church wedding and all. There wasn't anything she didn't know. I believe she used detectives to find out. And she ended up by saying that she had a lovely disposition and would forgive me--I could have killed her--I was her only first cousin's only child--and she was coming here to live."

"The deuce she did!"

"But what did you do it for?" She turned on him furiously. "What did you do it for?"

"Yes--but where's this Cousin Mary?"

"We had a scene--at least, part of one: we didn't either of us say half we wanted to--and she's left. She'll probably decide in the end, though, that her disposition's lovely enough to overlook it, and insist on making her home with her eccentric millionaire cousin-in-law--What did you do this for?"

He stood there, frowning in perplexity. Then with a sigh of relief, "Supposing we sit down," he said, as one who has a happy inspiration. "I don't know as I can explain this to your satisfaction--exactly. But I'll try. It seemed to me--Don't you know, I thought--Hang it all, that King Cophetua business--was that the chap's name?--never did appeal to me a little bit. I'm dead sure that Beggar Maid had it in for him from the start for his beastly condescending ways to her. And I was afraid you might think--you see, it seemed to me that when your affairs were back in the position they ought to be, perhaps you'd feel better towards me."

He looked at her with boyish entreaty in his eyes. It was as though she were suddenly in the room with a new person. The expression of his face left her breathless.

"Then you came to that boarding-house deliberately to----"

"I did. Deliberately to let you get a bit used to me. It might have upset you to have a perfect stranger come up and marry you offhand."

"But--but"--she gasped.

She was flushed to the eyes. Suddenly he turned and switched on the electric lights. Then he turned back and looked at her--hard. The rose deepened.

"Surely, you're not pretending to tell me," he said slowly, as one thoroughly bedazed, "that you don't know I'm so looney about you my hand shakes whenever you come into the room?"

The girl looked away.

"You said that day--that day--that day, you know----"

"Well?"

"You said most distinctly that--you didn't love me."

He turned an exasperated face toward her.

"Said that? Of _course_ I said it. What did you expect me to say? How apt would you have been to have taken me----"

"_Taken_ you!"

"----if I'd come up with the confession that your eyes set me crazy and the impudent tilt of your little nose was very much on my nerves? Supposing I'd told you that you bowled me over the moment I saw you--It's God's truth. I saw you at the theater in New York just before you left for Fort Leavenworth. I followed you there, but nothing that wasn't brass buttons seemed to be having an inning; and I didn't care to meet you at all, unless I could win out. So I left and went down to Arizona, where there was some land business I had to look after. Then McFay came down there and talked a good deal with his mouth; and I was sure it was all off and was doubly glad I hadn't met you. Then came the news of the earthquake and the fire; and I kept waiting for the beggar to get leave and go to you--and he didn't go. And then one night he--well, he was drunk, or he wouldn't have done it--but he talked some more with his mouth; and so I knew what to expect from him and--er, removed your photograph from his rooms--he hadn't any business having it around for men to stare at, anyway--and then I came here to find you; and--and that's about all, I guess."

He laughed an embarrassed laugh.

"I was pretty well done for before--it seems to me everybody I met kept talking about you--but the boarding-house business finished me completely. There were you--you'd lost more than all that trash put together, and had been badly treated, and all--but you held your head high and never peeped and made that dining-table a thing to look forward to beyond everything. No wonder the landlady hated you. I could have kneeled down and kissed your little boots--not that you'd have cared about it especially."

He laughed his boyish, embarrassed laugh again.

"But to go back a bit--how apt would you have been to have taken me--after your experiences and that cur down at your office, besides--if I'd have trotted up and told you how I felt and asked you please to have me? How apt would you have been? I got the license and kept it dark and bided my time. There was nothing else to do--then."

They were standing again, facing one another, wide-eyed, and both rather breathless.

The girl turned away.

"I won't be humble," she whispered to herself tremulously. "I won't. It's a wretched policy for women, and the effects are dreadful on men."

She trailed away towards the other end of the room.

"I'm not Ikey any more. I'm not the Wandering Jew. The thirteenth move is a glorious move, and I've come home--to a man in a million."

Aloud she observed disdainfully, "The whole performance from beginning to end has been unspeakable--simply unspeakable; and I insist----"

She had reached the bay-window and pressed her little nose tight against the window-pane.

"I insist you're no gentleman," came her muffled, shaky voice from behind the curtains, "or I wouldn't have to be standing here quite by myself, waiting for you to come over here and--and kiss me."

GIFFORD PINCHOT, FORESTER

BY WILL C. BARNES

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

For almost a century the unoccupied government lands of the West have been used as a public commons. The stockmen have used the grass and water; the mining, sawmill, and railroad men the timber; until--simply because no one made it his business to object to the spoliation that was going on--what had been done wholly on the suffrance of the national government had come to be regarded and most lustily defended as an inherent privilege and right.

And so when, a decade ago, the tall, pleasant-voiced young man from the far East, now known throughout the United States as Gifford Pinchot, the national forester, appeared in the West, and suggested to the stockmen that they were ruining the country by over-grazing, they laughed him to scorn.

He told the mining and sawmill men that through reckless and extravagant methods of lumbering they were bringing on a timber famine by great strides; he characterized their whole policy as one of utter disregard for the future of the country; and he demanded forcible and immediate action on the part of the Federal authorities. These pioneers had seen uncounted millions of buffalo melt away because no one took enough interest in the matter to stop the wanton waste. They had seen great billowy prairies, once knee-deep in the most splendid covering of grass and vegetation, grazed down until they were hardly more than dust heaps; and mountains that were clothed with magnificent forests swept bare--first by the woodsman's ax and later by forest fires that burned each year millions and millions of feet of the finest timber a country ever possessed, while no one raised a hand even to quench the fire because "it was only government land."

_The Fight against the "Pinchot Policies"_

These hard-headed, adventurous Western pioneers, indignant at the thought of any curtailment of their freedom; resentful of interference in what they were pleased to call their "inalienable right" to do as they pleased with the country they had conquered; utterly regardless of its future, and thinking but of the present and their own selfish interests, arose in their wrath and protested vigorously against what they called the "Pinchot policies" of the government.

That the writer, then a range cattle-raiser in Arizona, was one of the first to feel the effects of the new forest policy gives him all the more right to speak as he does of these things; that he joined with loud tongue and bitter pen in the general denunciation of the "Pinchot policies" makes it all the more a pleasure to him now to defend and explain them in so far as he can.

Although there had been a small start toward forest preservation, it was not until Mr. Pinchot was placed at the head of the movement in 1898 (six years after the first reserve was made), and organized and reconstructed the force of officials, that we really had any national forest policies worth mentioning.

His enemies first attacked his motives. He was a "notoriety seeker," a "political adventurer" looking for personal advancement. To their surprise they found that he showed not the slightest disposition to exploit himself; that, having millions at his command, he could expect to gain nothing financially by his course; and that he was absolutely devoid of any political ambitions.

They then took another point of attack. "He is an Eastern swell who knows nothing of forests, or the West and its needs. By what right does he tell us how to use the public lands?"