At first, in her desire to find a way to meet the needs of Ingolby, Fleda had listened to him with fort.i.tude and even without revolt. But as he began to speak of women, and to refer to herself with a look of gloating which men of his breed cannot hide, her angry pulses beat hard.
She did not quite know where he was leading, but she was sure he meant to say something which would vex her beyond bearing. At one moment she meant to cut short his narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last he ended, she was almost choking with agitation. It had been borne in upon her as his monologue proceeded, that she would rather die than accept anything from this man--anything of any kind. To fight him was the only thing. Nothing else could prevail in the end. His was the service of the unpenitent thief.
"And what is it you want to buy from me?" she asked evenly.
He did not notice, and he could not realize that ominous thing in her voice and face. "I want to be friends with you. I want to see you here in the woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby. I want to talk with you, to hear you talk; to learn things from you I never learned before; to--"
She interrupted him with a swift gesture. "And then--after that? What do you want at the end of it all? One cannot spend one"s time talking and wandering in the woods and teaching and learning. After that, what?"
"I have a house in Montreal," he said evasively. "I don"t want to live there alone." He laughed. "It"s big enough for two, and at the end it might be us two, if--"
With sharp anger, yet with coolness and dignity, she broke in on his words. "Might be us two!" she exclaimed. "I have never thought of making my home in a sewer. Do you think--but, no, it isn"t any use talking! You don"t know how to deal with man or woman. You are perverted."
"I did not mean what you mean; I meant that I should want to marry you,"
he protested. "You think the worst of me. Someone has poisoned your mind against me."
"Everyone has poisoned my mind against you," she returned, "and yourself most of all. I know you will try to injure Mr. Ingolby; and I know that you will try to injure me; but you will not succeed."
She turned and moved away from him quickly, taking the path towards her own front door. He called something after her, but she did not or would not hear.
As she entered the open s.p.a.ce in front of the house, she heard footsteps behind her and turned quickly, not without apprehension. A woman came hurrying towards her. She was pale, agitated, haggard with fatigue.
"May I speak with you?" she asked in French. "Surely," replied Fleda.
CHAPTER XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER
"What is it?" asked Fleda, opening the door of the house.
"I want to speak to you about m"sieu"," replied the sad-faced woman.
She made a motion of her head backwards towards the wood. "About M"sieu"
Marchand."
Fleda"s face hardened; she had had more than enough of "M"sieu"
Marchand." She was bitterly ashamed that she had, even for a moment, thought of using diplomacy with him. But this woman"s face was so forlorn, apart, and lonely, that the old spirit of the Open Road worked its will. In far-off days she had never seen a human being turned away from a Romany tent, or driven from a Romany camp. She opened the door and stood aside to admit the wayfarer.
A few moments later, the woman, tidied and freshened, sat at the ample breakfast which was characteristic of Romany home-life. The woman"s plate was bountifully supplied by Fleda, and her cup filled more than once by Madame Bulteel, while old Gabriel Druse bulked friendly over all. His face now showed none of the pa.s.sion and sternness which had been present when he pa.s.sed the Sentence of the Patrin upon Jethro Fawe; nothing of the gloom filling his eyes as he left Ingolby"s house. The gracious, bountiful look of the patriarch, of the head of the clan, was upon him.
The husband of one wife, the father of one child, yet the Ry of Rys had still the overlooking, protective sense of one who had the care of great numbers of people. His keen eyes foresaw more of the story the woman was to tell presently than either of the women of his household. He had seen many such women as this, and had inflexibly judged between them and those who had wronged them.
"Where have you come from?" he asked, as the meal drew to a close.
"From Wind River and under Elk Mountain," the woman answered with a look of relief. Her face was of those who no longer can bear the soul"s secrets.
There was silence while the breakfast things were cleared away, and the window was thrown wide to the full morning sun. It broke through the branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves of the maples; it shimmered on Fleda"s brown hair as she pulled a rose from the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the grey "linsey-woolsey" dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose skin was coa.r.s.ened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty in the intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very comely figure in her best days, for her waist was small, her bosom gently and firmly rounded, and her hands were finer than those of most who live and work much in the open air.
"You said there was something you wished to tell me," said Fleda, at last.
The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as though with puzzled appeal. There was the look of the Outlander in her face; of one who had been exiled from familiar things and places. In manner she was like a child. Her glance wandered over the faces of the two women, then her eyes met those of the Ry, and stayed there.
"I am old and I have seen many sorrows," said Gabriel Druse, divining what was in her mind. "I will try to understand."
"I have known all the bitterness of life," interposed the low, soft voice of Madame Bulteel.
"All ears are the same here," Fleda added, looking the woman in the eyes.
"I will tell everything," was the instant reply. Her fingers twined and untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body.
Her face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an upright courage.
She sighed heavily and began.
"My name is Arabella Stone. I was married from my home over against Wind River by the Jumping Sandhills.
"My father was a lumberman. He was always captain of the gang in the woods, and captain of the river in the summer. My mother was deaf and dumb. It was very lonely at times when my father was away. I loved a boy--a good boy, and he was killed breaking horses. When I was twenty-one years old my mother died. It was not good for me to be alone, my father said, so he must either give up the woods and the river, or he or I must marry. Well, I saw he would not marry, for my mother"s face was one a man could not forget."
The old man stirred in his seat. "I have seen such," he said in his deep voice.
"So it was I said to myself I would marry," she continued, "though I had loved the Boy that died under the hoofs of the black stallion. There weren"t many girls at the Jumping Sandhills, and so there were men, now one, now another, to say things to me which did not touch my heart; but I did not laugh, because I understood that they were lonely. Yet I liked one of them more than all the others.
"So, for my father"s sake, I came nearer to Dennis, and at last it seemed I could bear to look at him any time of the day or night he came to me. He was built like a pine-tree, and had a playful tongue, and also he was a ranchman like the Boy that was gone. It all came about on the day he rode in from the range the wild wicked black stallion which all range-riders had tried for years to capture. It was like a brother of the horse which had killed my Boy, only bigger. When Dennis mastered him and rode him to my door I made up my mind, and when he whispered to me over the dipper of b.u.t.termilk I gave him, I said, "Yes." I was proud of him. He did things that a woman likes, and said the things a woman loves to hear, though they be the same thing said over and over again."
Madame Bulteel nodded her head as though in a dream, and the Ry of Rys sat with his two great hands on the chair-arm and his chin dropped on his chest. Fleda"s hands were clasped in her lap, and her big eyes never left the woman"s face.
"Before a month was gone I had married him," the low, tired voice went on. "It was a gay wedding; and my father was very happy, for he thought I had got the desire of a woman"s life--a home of her own. For a time all went well. Dennis was gay and careless and wilful, but he was easy to live with, too, except when he came back from the town where he sold his horses. Then he was different, because of the drink, and he was quarrelsome with me--and cruel, too.
"At last when he came home with the drink upon him, he would sleep on the floor and not beside me. This wore upon my heart. I thought that if I could only put my hand on his shoulder and whisper in his ear, he would get better of his bad feeling; but he was sulky, and he would not bear with me. Though I never loved him as I loved my Boy, still I tried to be a good wife to him, and never turned my eyes to any other man."
Suddenly she stopped as though the pain of speaking was too great.
Madame Bulteel murmured something, but the only word that reached the ears of the others was the Arabic word "mafish". Her pale face was suffused as she said it.
Two or three times the woman essayed to speak again, but could not.
At last, however, she overcame her emotion and said: "So it was when M"sieu" Felix Marchand came up from the Sagalac."
The old man started and muttered harshly, but Fleda had foreseen the entrance of the dissolute Frenchman into the tale, and gave no sign of surprise.
"M"sieu" Marchand bought horses," the sad voice trailed on. "One day he bought the mining-claims Dennis had been holding till he could develop them or sell them for good money. When Dennis went to town again he brought me back a present of a belt with silver clasps; but yet again that night he slept upon the floor alone. So it went on. M. Marchand, he goes on to the mountains and comes back; and he buys more horses, and Dennis takes them to Yargo, and M. Marchand goes with him, but comes back before Dennis does. It was then M"sieu" begun to talk to me; to say things that soothe a woman when she is hurt. I knew now Dennis did not want me as when he first married me. He was that kind of man--quick to care and quicker to forget. He was weak, he could not fasten where he stood. It pleased him to be gay and friendly with me when he was sober, but there was nothing behind it--nothing, nothing at all. At last I began to cry when I thought of it, for it went on and on, and I was too much alone. I looked at myself in the gla.s.s, and I saw I was not old or lean. I sang in the trees beside the brook, and my voice was even a little better than in the days when Dennis first came to my father"s house. I looked to my cooking, and I knew that it was as good as ever. I thought of my clothes, and how I did my hair, and asked myself if I was as fresh to see as when Dennis first came to me. I could see no difference. There was a clear pool not far away under the little hills where the springs came together. I used to bathe in it every morning and dry myself in the sun; and my body was like a child"s. That being so, should my own man turn his head away from me day or night? What had I done to be used so, less than two years after I had married!"
She paused and hung her head, weeping gently. "Shame stings a woman like nothing else," Madame Bulteel said with a sigh.
"It was so with me," continued Dennis"s wife. "Then at last the thought came that there was another woman. And all the time M. Marchand kept coming and going, at first when Dennis was there, and always with some good reason for coming--horses, cattle, shooting, or furs bought of the Indians. When Dennis was not there, he came at first for an hour or two, as if by chance, then for a whole day, because he said he knew I was lonely. One day, I was sitting by the pool--it was in the evening. I was crying because of the thought that followed me of another woman somewhere, who made Dennis turn from me. Then it was M"sieu" came and put a hand on my shoulder--he came so quietly that I did not hear him till he touched me. He said he knew why I cried, and it saddened his soul."
"His soul--the jackal!" growled the old man in his beard.
The woman nodded wearily and went on. "For all of ten days I had been alone, except for the cattlemen camping a mile away and an old Indian helper who slept in his tepee within call. Loneliness makes you weak when there"s something tearing at the heart. So I let M"sieu" Marchand talk to me. At last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo--that Dennis did not go there for business, but to her. Everyone knew it except me, he said. He told me to ask old Throw Hard, the Indian helper, if he had spoken the truth. I was shamed, and angry and crazy, too, I think, so I went to old Throw Hard and asked him. He said he could not tell the truth, and that he would not lie to me. So I knew it was all true.
"How do I know what was in my mind? Is a woman not mad at such a time!
There I was, tossed aside for a flyaway, who was for any man that would come her way. Yes, I think I was mad. The pride in me was hurt--as only a woman can understand." She paused and looked at the two women who listened to her. Fleda"s eyes were on the world beyond the window of the room.