The Last Straw Part 20

The talk became desultory and d.i.c.k's eyes clung more closely to Jane's face, their hard, bright light accentuated. It began to rain and Jane, hearing, looked out.

"Raining! You can't go back tonight. You'll have to stay here. Mr.

Hepburn can fix you up with the rest of the men."

He smiled peculiarly at that, for it cut. He made no comment beyond expressing the belief that a wetting, since it was not cold, would do no harm. She knew that he did not mean that and contrasted his evasion with Beck's quiet candor.

"What's the idea of the locket?" he asked and Jane looked down at the trinket with which she had been toying. "You never were much addicted to ornaments."

She laughed with an expression which he did not understand.

"Something is in there which is very dear to me," she said. "I don't wear it as an ornament; as a talisman, rather. I'm getting to be quite dependent on it." Her manner was outwardly light but at bottom was a seriousness which she did not wholly cover.

"Excuse me ... for intruding on privacies," he said bitterly. Then, after a moment: "The picture of some cow-puncher lover, perhaps?"

"No, though that wouldn't be unreasonable," she replied. "Such things have happened in--"

"Let's cut this!" he said savagely, breaking in on her and sitting forward. "Let's quit these absurd ba.n.a.lities.

"You know why I came here. You know what's in my mind. There's a job before me that gets bigger every day; the least you can do is to help me."

"In what?"

"Tell me what I must do to make you understand that I love you."

He leaned across the table intently. The girl laughed.

"Prove to me first that two and two make six!"

"Meaning?"

"That it can't be done."

"It's the first time you've ever been that certain."

"The first time I've ever expressed the certainty, perhaps. Things happen, d.i.c.k. I progress."

"Do you mean such an impossible thing as that there is someone else?"

"Another question which you have no right to ask."

"Jane, look at me! Are you wholly insane?"

"No, but as I look back I think I have been a little off, perhaps."

"But you're putting behind you everything that is of you,"--his color rising with his voice as her secure conviction maddened him. "The life that is yours by nature and training. You're going blindly ahead into something you don't know, among people who are not yours!"

He became suddenly tense, as though the pa.s.sion which he had repressed until that moment swept through him with a mighty urge. His breath slipped out in a long sigh.

"You are repeatedly mistaken, d.i.c.k. I have just found my people."

"_Your_ people!" he scoffed.

She nodded.

"'East is East and West is West,' you know, and the two shall never meet. It must be true, and, if so, I have never been of the east. I never felt comfortable there, with the lies and the shams and the hypocrisies that were all about us. Out here, I do.

"Perhaps that is why you and I...." She shrugged her shoulders again.

"You see, d.i.c.k, I have cast my lot here. The East is gone, for me; it never can pa.s.s for you. I have found my people; they are my people, their G.o.ds are my G.o.ds. I have a strength, a peace of mind, self respect, ambitions and natural, real impulses that I never knew before.

I feel that I have come home!"

He laughed dryly, but she went on as though she had not heard:

"You have never understood me; you never can hope to now. There's a gulf between us, d.i.c.k, that will never be bridged. I am sorry, in a way. I never can love you and I hate to see you wasting your desires on me.

"I have thought about you a great deal lately. You are missing all that is fine in life and because of that I am sorry for you. We used to have one thing in common: the lack of worthy ideals. I have wiped out that lack and I wish you might; I truly wish that, d.i.c.k! And it seems possible to me that you may, just because you are here where realities count. There's an incentive in the atmosphere and I do hope it gets into your blood.

"It is all so nonsensical, the thing you are doing, so foolish. I suppose I am the only thing you have ever wanted that you couldn't get and that's what stimulates your want. It's not love, d.i.c.k."

"How do you know?"

"I have learned things in these weeks," with a wistful smile. "I have learned about ... men, for one thing. I have found an honesty, an honor, a simple directness, which I have never known before."

He rose and leaned his fists on the table.

"You mean you've found a lover?"

She met his eyes frankly.

"Again I say, you have no right to ask that question. In the second place, I am not yet sure."

His mouth drew down in a leer.

"So that's it, eh? So you would turn me away for some rough-neck who murders the English language and smells of horse. You'd let a thing like that overwhelm you in a few days when a civilized human has failed after years of trying!

"I've tried to treat you with respect. I've tried to be gentle and honorable. Now if you don't want that, if you want this he-man sort of wooing, by G.o.d you'll get it!"

He kicked his chair back angrily and advanced about the table. A big blue vein which ran down over his forehead stood out in knots. Jane rose.

"d.i.c.k!" she cried and in the one word was disappointment, anger, appeal, reproach, query.

"Oh, I'm through," he muttered. "I used to think you were a different sort; used to think you were fine and finished. But if you're a woman in the raw ... then I'll treat you as such. You've got me, either way; I can't get you out of my mind an hour.

"I'm through holding myself back, now. You've driven me mad and you prove by your own insinuations that the lover you want is not the one who will dally with you. You want the primitive, go-and-get-it kind, the kind that takes and keeps. Well, mine can be that kind!"

She backed from him slowly and he kept on advancing with a menacing a.s.surance, his face contorted with jealousy and desire.

"The other day,"--stopping a moment, "when I took your hands and felt your body here in this room I was almost beside myself. You haven't been out of my thoughts an hour since then! I tried to kill it with reason and then with drink. I've tried to be patient and wait among the ... the cattle in that little town." He walked on toward her.