Children of the Desert Part 22

Her eyes swam in tears and she looked at him in agony. And in that moment it seemed to him that his heart must break. It was as if he looked on while Sylvia drowned, and could not put forth a hand to save her.

She conquered her emotion. She only hoped that Harboro would hear her to the end. She resumed: "And when I began to see that people are expected to shape their own lives, mine had already been shaped. I couldn't begin at a beginning, really; I had to begin in the middle. I had to go on weaving the threads that were already in my hands--the soiled threads. I met nice women after a while--women from the San Antonio missions, I think they were; and they were kind to me and gave me books to read. One of them took me to the chapel--where the clock ticked. But they couldn't really help me. I think they did influence me more than I realized, possibly; for my father began to tell them I wasn't at home ... and he brought me out here to Eagle Pa.s.s soon after they began to befriend me."

Harboro was staring at her with a vast incredulity. "And then--?" he asked.

"And then it went on out here--though it seemed different out here. I had the feeling of being shut out, here. In a little town people know. Life in a little town is like just one checker-board, with a game going on; but the big towns are like a lot of checkerboards, with the men on some of them in disorder, and not being watched at all."

Harboro was shaking his head slowly, and she made an effort to wipe some of the blackness from the picture. "You needn't believe I didn't have standards that I kept to. Some women of my kind would have lied or stolen, or they would have made mischief for people. And then there were the young fellows, the mere boys.... It's a real injury to them to find that a girl they like is--is not nice. They're so wonderfully ignorant. A woman is either entirely good or entirely bad in their eyes. You couldn't really do anything to destroy their faith, even when they pretended to be rather rough and wicked. I wasn't that kind of a bad woman, at least."

Harboro's brow had become furrowed, with impatience, seemingly. "But your marriage to me, Sylvia?" He put the question accusingly.

"I thought you knew--at first. I thought you _must_ know. There are men who will marry the kind of woman I was. And it isn't just the little or worthless men, either. Sometimes it is the big men, who can understand and be generous. Up to the time of our marriage I thought you knew and that you were forgiving everything. And at last I couldn't bear to tell you.

Not alone from fear of losing you, but I knew it would hurt you horribly, and I hoped ... I had made up my mind ... I _was_ truly loyal to you, Harboro, until they tricked me in my father's house."

Harboro continued to regard her, a judge unmoved. "And Runyon, Sylvia--Runyon?" he asked accusingly.

"I know that's the thing you couldn't possibly forgive, and yet that seems the slightest thing of all to me. You can't know what it is to be humbled, and so many innocent pleasures taken away from you. When Fectnor came back ... oh, it seemed to me that life itself mocked me and warned me coldly that I needn't expect to be any other than the old Sylvia, clear to the end. I had begun to have a little pride, and to have foolish dreams. And then I went back to my father's house. It wasn't my father; it wasn't even Fectnor. It was Life itself whipping me back into my place again.

"... And then Runyon came. He meant pleasure to me--nothing more. He seemed such a gay, s.h.i.+ning creature!" She looked at him in the agony of utter despair. "I know how it appears to you; but if you could only see how it seemed to me!"

"I'm trying," said Harboro, unmoved.

"If I'd been a little field of gra.s.s for the sheep to graze on, do you suppose I shouldn't have been happy if the birds pa.s.sed by, or that I shouldn't have been ready for the sheep when they came? If I'd been a little pool in the desert, do you suppose I wouldn't have been happier for the sunlight, and just as ready for the rains when they came?"

He frowned. "But you're neither gra.s.s nor water," he said.

"Ah, I think I am just that--gra.s.s and water. I think that is what we all are--with something of mystery added."

He seized upon that one tangible thought. "There you have it, that _something of mystery_," he said. "That's the thing that makes the world move--that keeps people clean."

"Yes," she conceded dully, "or makes people set up standards of their own and compel other people to accept them whether they understand them or believe in them or not."

When he again regarded her with dark disapproval she went on:

"What I wanted to tell you, Harboro, is that my heart has been like a br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup for you always. It was only that which ran over that I gave to another. Runyon never could have robbed the cup--a thousand Runyons couldn't. He was only like a flower to wear in my hair, a ribbon to put on for an outing. But you ... you were the hearth for me to sit down before at night, a wall to keep the wind away. What was it you said once about a man and woman becoming one? You have been my very body to me, Harboro; and any other could only have been a friendly wind to stir me for a moment and then pa.s.s on."

Harboro's face darkened. "I was the favorite lover," he said.

"You won't understand," she said despairingly. And then as he arose and turned toward the door again she went to him abjectly, appealingly.

"Harboro!" she cried, "I know I haven't explained it right, but I want you to believe me! It is you I love, really; it is you I am grateful to and proud of. You're everything to me that you've thought of being. I couldn't live without you!" She sank to her knees and covered her eyes with one hand while with the other she reached out to him: "Harboro!" Her face was wet with tears, now; her body was shaken with sobs.

He looked down at her for an instant, his brows furrowed, his eyes filled with horror. He drew farther away, so that she could not touch him. "Great G.o.d!" he cried at last, and then she knew that he had gone, closing the door sharply after him.

She did not try to call him back. Some stoic quality in her stayed her. It would be useless to call him; it would only tear her own wounds wider open, it would distress him without moving him otherwise. It would alarm old Antonia.

If he willed to come back, he would come of his own accord. If he could reconcile the things she had done with any hope of future happiness he would come back to her again.

But she scarcely hoped for his return. She had always had a vague comprehension of those pragmatic qualities in his nature which placed him miles above her, or beneath her, or beyond her. She had drunk of the cup which had been offered her, and she must not rebel because a bitter sediment lay on her lips. She had always faintly realized that the hours she spent with Runyon might some day have to be paid for in loneliness and despair.

Yet now that Harboro was gone she stood at the closed door and stared at it as if it could never open again save to permit her to pa.s.s out upon ways of darkness. She leaned against it and laid her face against her arm and wept softly. And then she turned away and knelt by the chair he had occupied and hid her face in her hands.

She knew he would no longer be visible when she went to the window. She had spared herself the sight of him on his way out of her life. But now she took her place and began, with subconscious hope, the long vigil she was to keep. She stared out on the road over which he had pa.s.sed. If he came back he would be visible from this place by the window.

Hours pa.s.sed and her face became blank, as the desert became blank. The light seemed to die everywhere. The little home beacons abroad in the desert were blotted out one by one. Eagle Pa.s.s became a ghostly group of houses from which the last vestiges of life vanished. She became stiff and inert as she sat in her place with her eyes held dully on the road. Once she dozed lightly, to awaken with an intensified sense of tragedy. Had Harboro returned during that brief interval of unconsciousness? She knew he had not. But until the dawn came she sat by her place, steadfastly waiting.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

When Harboro went down the stairs and out of the house he had a purposeful air which vanished as soon as his feet were set on the highway. Where was he going? Where _could_ he go? That beginning he had made usually ended in the offices across the river. But he could not go to his office now. There was nothing there for him to do. And even if he were able to get in, and to find some unfinished task to which he could turn, his problem would not be solved. He could not go on working always. A man must have some interests other than his work.

He pulled himself together and set off down the road. He realized that his appearance must be such that he would attract attention and occasion comment. The foundations of his pride stiffened, as they had always done when he was required to face extraordinary difficulties. He must not allow casual pa.s.sers-by to perceive that things were not right with him. They would know that he and Sylvia were having difficulties. Doubtless they had been expecting something of the sort from the beginning.

He seemed quite himself but for a marked self-concentration as he walked through the town. Dunwoodie, emerging from the Maverick bar, hailed him as he pa.s.sed. He did not hear--or he was not immediately conscious of hearing. But half a dozen steps farther on he checked himself. Some one had spoken to him. He turned around. "Ah, Dunwoodie--good evening!" he said. But he did not go back, and Dunwoodie looked after him meditatively and then went back into the bar, shaking his head. He had always meant to make a friend of Harboro, but the thing evidently was not to be done.

Harboro was scarcely conscious of the fact that he crossed the river. If he encountered any one whom he knew--or any one at all--he pa.s.sed without noticing. And this realization troubled him. The customs guard, who was an old acquaintance, must have been in his place on the bridge. He tried to arouse himself anew. Surely his conduct must seem strange to those who chanced to observe him.

With an air of briskness he went into the _Internacional_ dining-room. He had had nothing to eat all day. He would order supper and then he would feel more like himself. He did not realize what it was that made his situation seem like a period of suspense, which kept in his mind the subconscious thought that he would come out of the dark into a clearing if he persevered.

The fact was that something of what Sylvia had said to him had touched his conscience, if it had not affected his sense of logic. She really could not be quite what she seemed to be--that was the unshaped thought in the back of his brain. There were explanations to make which had not yet been made. If he told himself that he had solved the problem by leaving the house, he knew in reality that he had not done so. He was benumbed, bewildered. He must get back his reasoning faculties, and then he would see more clearly, both as to what had been done and what he must set about doing.

He had an idea that he could now understand the sensations of people who had indulged too freely in some sort of drug. He had temporarily lost the power to feel. Here was Sylvia, a self-confessed wanton--and yet here was Sylvia as deeply intrenched in his heart as ever. This was a monstrous contradiction. One of these things must be a fact, the other a fantastic hallucination.

The waiter brought food which he looked at with distaste. It was a typical frontier meal--stereotyped, uninviting. There were meat and eggs and coffee, and various heavy little dishes containing dabs of things which were never eaten. He drank the coffee and realized that he had been almost peris.h.i.+ng from thirst. He called for a second cup; and then he tried to eat the meat and eggs; but they were like dust--it seemed they might choke him. He tried the grapes which had got hidden under the cruet, and the acid of these pleased him for an instant, but the pulp was tasteless, unpalatable.

He finished the second cup of coffee and sat listlessly regarding the things he had not touched. He had hoped he might prolong the supper hour, since he could think of nothing else to engage his attention. But he was through, and he had consumed only a few minutes.

His glance wandered to a railroad poster in the dining-room, and this interested him for an instant. Attractive names caught his eye: Torreon, Tampico, Vera Cruz, the City, Durango. They were all waiting for him, the old towns. There was the old work to be done, the old life to resume....

Yes, but there was Sylvia. Sylvia, who had said with the intentness of a child, "I love you," and again, "I love you." She did not want Runyon. She wanted him, Harboro. And he wanted her--good G.o.d, how he wanted her! Had he been mad to wander away from her? His problem lay with her, not elsewhere.

And then he jerked his head in denial of that conclusion. No, he did not want her. She had laid a path of pitch for his feet, and the things he might have grasped with his hands, to draw himself out of the path which befouled his feet--they too were smeared with pitch. She did not love him, certainly. He clung tenaciously to that one clear point. There lay the whole situation, perfectly plain. She did not love him. She had betrayed him, had turned the face of the whole community against him, had permitted him to affront the gentle people who had unselfishly aided him and given him their affection.

He wandered about the streets until nearly midnight, and then he engaged a room in the _Internacional_ and a.s.sured himself that it was time to go to bed. He needed a good rest. To-morrow he would know what to do.

But the sight of the room a.s.signed to him surprised him in some odd way--as if every article of furniture in it were mocking him. It was not a room really to be used, he thought. At least, it was not a room for him to use. He did not belong in that bed; he had a bed of his own, in the house he had built on the Quemado Road. And then he remembered the time when he had been able to hang his hat anywhere and consider himself at home, and how he had always been grateful for a comfortable bed, no matter where.

That was the feeling which he must get back again. He must get used to the strangeness of things, so that such a room as this would seem his natural resting-place, and that other house which had been destroyed for him would seem a place of shame, to be avoided and forgotten.

He slept fitfully. The movements of trains in the night comforted him in a mournful fas.h.i.+on. They reminded him of that other life, which might be his again. But even in his waking moments he reached out to the s.p.a.ce beside him to find Sylvia, and the returning full realization of all that had happened brought a groan to his throat.

He dressed in the morning with a feeling of guilt, mingled with a sense of relief. He had slept where he had had no business to sleep. He had been idle at a time when he should have been active. He had done nothing, and there was much to be done. He had not even rested.

He put on an air of briskness, as one will don a garment, as he ordered coffee and rolls in the dining-room. There were things to be attended to.

He must go over to the offices and write out his resignation. He must see the General Manager and ask him for work on the road elsewhere. He must transfer his holdings--his house and bank-account--to Sylvia. He had no need of house or money, and she would need them badly now. And then ...

then he must begin life anew.

It was all plain; yet his feet refused to bear him in the direction of the railroad offices; his mind refused to grapple with the details of the task of transferring to Sylvia the things he owned. Something constructive, static, in the man's nature stayed him.

He wandered away from the town during the day, an aimless impulse carrying him quite out into the desert. He paused to inspect little irrigated spots where humble gardens grew. He paused at mean _adobe_ huts and talked to old people and to children. Again and again he came into contact with conditions which annoyed and bewildered him. People were all bearing their crosses. Some were hopelessly ill, waiting for death to relieve them, or they were old and quite useless. And all were horribly poor, casting about for meagre food and simple clothing which seemed beyond their reach. They were lonely, overburdened, despondent, darkly philosophical.

What was the meaning of human life, he wondered? Were men and women created to suffer, to bear crosses which were not of their own making, to suffer injustices which seemed pointless?...