"Have you, indeed? Very well, I"ve nothing to do but listen--"tis not for me to boss the gardener."
She looked about with uneasy eyes, finding it very difficult to begin her attack. "How much you"ve improved the place," she remarked, irrelevantly, her voice betraying the deepest agitation.
He looked at her white face in astonishment. "How are ye, the day, miss?"
"I"m better, thank you, but a little out of breath--I walked too fast, I think."
"Does the alt.i.tude make your heart jump, too?" he asked, solicitously.
"No, my trouble is all in my mind--I mean my lungs," she answered. Then, with a ghastly attempt at sprightliness, she added: "Now let"s have a nice long talk about symptoms--it"s so comforting. How are _you_ feeling these days?"
Haney answered with unwonted dejection. "I"m not so well to-day, worse luck. This is me day for thinkin" the doctors are right. They all agree that me heart"s overworked up here." His dejection was really due to Bertha"s moody silence.
"I"m sorry to hear that. Do they think you may live safely at sea-level?"
"They say so. Me own feeling is that the climate is not to blame. "Tis age. I"m like a hollow-hearted tree, ready to fall with the first puff of ill wind. I"ve never been a man since that devil blew me to pieces."
She put her right hand upon his arm. "Is it not a shame that you and I should stand in the way of two fine, wholesome, young people--shutting them off from happiness?"
He turned a glance upon her quite too penetrating to be borne. "You mane--what?--who?"
"I mean Bertha."
"Do I stand in the way of her happiness?"
She met the question squarely, speaking with tense, drawn lips. "Yes, just as I do in Ben"s way. We"re neither of us fit to be married, and they are."
His eyes wavered. "That"s true. I"m no mate for her--and yet I think I"ve made her happy." He was silent a moment, then faltered: "Ye lay your hand on a sore spot--ye do, surely. "Tis true I"ve tried to have the money make up for me other shortcomings." He ended almost humbly.
"Money can do much, but it can"t buy happiness."
"That"s true, too--but "tis able to buy comfort, and that"s next door to happiness in the long-run, I"m thinkin". But I"m watchin" her, and I don"t intend to stand in her way, miss. I"ve told her so, and when the conquering lad comes along I mane to get out of the road."
"Have you said that?" Her face reached towards his with sudden intensity, and a snakelike brilliancy glittered in her eyes. "You"ve gone as far as that?"
"I have."
"Then act, for the time has come to make your promise good. Bertha already loves a man as every girl should love who marries happily, and the gossips are even now busy with her name."
He was hard hit, and slowly said: "I don"t believe it! Who is the man?--tell me!" He demanded this in a tone that was not to be denied.
She delivered her sentence quickly. "She loves Ben. Haven"t you seen it?
She has loved him from their first meeting. I have known it for a long time, almost from the first; now everybody knows it, and the society reporters are beginning their innuendoes. The next thing will be her picture in the sensational press, and a scandal. Don"t you know this? It must not happen! We must make way for them--you and I. We c.u.mber the path."
He sank back into his seat and studied her from beneath his overhanging eyebrows as intently, as alertly, as silently as he was wont to do when watching the faces of his opponents in a game of high hazard. There was something uncanny, almost elfish, in the woman"s voice and eyes, and yet even before her words were fully uttered the truth stood revealed to him. His eyes lost their stern glare, his hands, which had clutched the arms of his chair, relaxed. "Are you sure?" he asked again, but more gently. "You"ve got to be sure," he ended, almost in menace.
"You may trust a jealous woman," she answered. "I don"t blame them--observe that. We are the ones to blame--we who are crippled and in the way, and it is our duty to take ourselves off. What is the use of spoiling their lives just for a few years of selfish gratification of our own miserable selves?"
He felt about for comfort. "They are young; they can wait," he stammered, huskily.
"But they _won"t_ wait!" she replied. "Love like theirs can"t wait.
Don"t you understand? They are in danger of forgetting themselves? Can"t you see it? Ben talks of nothing else, dreams of nothing else but her, and she is fighting temptation every day, and shows it. It"s all so plain to me that I can"t bear to see them together. They have loved each other from the very first night they met--I felt it that day we first rode together. I"ve watched her grow into Ben"s life till she absorbs his every thought. He"s a good boy, and I want to keep him so. He respects your claim, and he is trying to be loyal to me, but he can"t hold out. I am ready to sacrifice myself, but that would not save him.
He loves your wife, and until you free her he is in danger of wronging her and himself and you. I"ve given up. There is nothing more on this earth for me! What do _you_ expect to gain by holding to a wife"s garment when she--the woman--is gone?"
The wildness in her eyes and voice profoundly affected Haney, who was without subtlety in affairs of the heart. The women he had known had been mainly coa.r.s.e-fibred or of brutish directness of pa.s.sion and purpose, and this woman"s words and tone at once confused and appalled him. All she said of his unworthiness as a husband was true. He had gone to Sibley at first to win Bertha at less cost than making her his wife--but of that he had repented, and on his death-bed (as he thought) he had sought to endow her with his gold. Since then he had lived, but only as half a man. Up to this moment he had hoped to regain his health, but now every hope died within him.
Part of this he admitted at once, but he ended brokenly: ""Tis a hard task you set for me. She"s the vein of me bosom. "Tis easy talkin", but the doin" is like takin" y"r heart in your two hands and throwin" it away. I knew she liked the lad--I had no doubt the lad liked her--but I did not believe she"d go to him so. I can"t believe it yet--but I will not stand in her way. As I told her, I did not expect to tie her to an old hulk; I thought I was dying when I married her, and I only had the ceremony then to make sure that me money should feed her and protect her from the storms of the world. I wanted to take her out of a hole where she was sore pressed, and I wanted to make her people comfortable. I"ve brought her to this house. Me money has always been to her hand. It rejoices me to see her spend it, and I"ve been hoping that these things--me money--would make up for me poor, old, crippled body. I"ve been a rough man. I lived as men who have no ties have always lived--till I met her, then I quit the game. I put aside everything that could make her ashamed. I"m no toad, miss--I know she has that in her soul that can take her out of my level. Were I twenty years younger and a well man I could folly her--but "tis no use debating now. I"ll talk with her this night--" He paused abruptly and turned upon her with piercing inquiry: "Have you discussed this with Ben?"
She was beginning to tremble in face of the storm which she foresaw looming before her. "No--I lacked the courage."
A faintly bitter smile stirred his upper lip. "Shall I tell him what you have said to me?"
"No, no!" she exclaimed, in sudden affright, "I will tell him."
"Be sure ye do. As for these editors, I have me own way of dealing with them. I will soon know whether you are right or wrong. Ye"re a sick woman, and such, they say, have queer fancies. You admit you"re jealous, and I"ve heard that jealous women are built of h.e.l.l-fire and vitriol.
Anyhow, you"ve not shaken me faith in me girl--but ye have in Ben, for I know the heart of man. We"re all alike when it comes to the question of women."
"Please don"t misunderstand me--it is to keep them both what they are, good and true, that I come to you--we must not tempt them to evil."
"I understand what you say, miss, and I think you"re honest, but you may be mistaken. I saw her meet-up with fine young fellies in the East; I could see they admired her--but she turned them down easily. She"s no weak-minded chippy, as I know on me own account--the more shame to me."
"Of course she turns others down, for the reason that Ben fills her heart." She began to weary of her self-imposed task.
He, too, was tired. "We"ll see, we"ll see," he repeated musingly, and gazed away towards the cloud-enshrouded peaks in sombre silence--the lines of his lips as sorrowful as those of an old lion dying in the desert, arrow-smitten and alone. He had forgotten the hand that pierced his heart.
Thus dismissed, she rose, her eyes burning like deep opals in the parchment setting of her skin.
"Life is so cruel!" she said. "I have wished a thousand times that love had never come to me. Love means only sorrow at the end. Ben has been my life, my only interest--and now--as he begins to forget--Oh, I can"t bear it! It will kill me!" She sank back into her chair, and, burying her face, sobbed with such pa.s.sion that her slight frame shook in the tempest of it.
Haney turned and looked at her in silence--profoundly stirred to pity by her sobs, no longer doubting the reality of her despair. When he spoke his voice was brokenly sweet and very tender.
""Tis a bitter world, miss, and me heart bleeds for such as you. "Tis well ye have a hope of paradise, for, if all you say is true, ye must go from this world cheated and hungry like meself. Ye have one comfort that I have not--"tis not your own doing. Ye"ve not misspent your life as I have done. What does it all show but that life is a game where each man, good or bad, takes his chance. The cards fall against you and against me without care of what we are. I can only say I take me chances as I take the rain and the sun."
Her paroxysm pa.s.sed and she rose again, drawing her veil closely over her face. "Good-bye. We will never meet again."
"Don"t say that," he said, struggling painfully to his feet. "Never is a long time, and good-bye a cruel, sad word to say. Let"s call it "so long" and better luck."
"You are not angry with me?" she turned to ask.
"Not at all, miss--I thank ye fer opening me eyes to me selfishness."
"Good-bye."
"So long! And may ye have better luck in the new deal, miss."
As she turned at the gate she saw him standing as she had left him, his brow white and sad and stern, his shoulders drooping as if his strength and love of life had suddenly been withdrawn.
While still in this mood she sent word to Ben that she wished to see him at once, and he responded without delay.