West Wind Drift Part 36

"Openly advertising the fact that he preferred to have no part in any entertainment you were arranging," was Landover's comment. "I don't believe it was because of any particular delicacy of feeling on his part, my dear. In any case, the fact remains that he let you go ahead with the affair, and then, bang! right in the middle of it he stages his cheap, melodramatic, moving-picture act. Bos.h.!.+"

She turned on him with blazing eyes.

"You will not see anything good in him, will you? You can't be fair, can you? Well, I can be,--and I am. He has been fair with both of us,--and I am ashamed of the way I have treated him. We deserved his rebuke that morning, and he did not hesitate to turn us back,--although he realized what it would mean. He loves me, Abel Landover,--he loves me a thousand times more than you do, in spite of all your protestations. He--"

"Why, Ruth,--I--I--"

"Yes,--I know,--I know you are shocked. And I don't care,--do you understand? I don't care that! You want your answer, Mr. Landover. Well, you shall have it now. I cannot marry you. This is final."

The blood left his face. "You don't know what you are saying, Ruth," he exclaimed. "You are angry. When you have had time to--"

"I've had all the time I need," she interrupted shortly. "I don't want to be disagreeable,--but it's no use, Mr. Landover. I do not love you.

I am sorry if I have misled you into hoping. There is nothing more to be said."

"You have misled me," he cried out bitterly.

"I am to blame, I suppose, for not giving you your answer before this. I have temporized. It is a woman's trick,--and a horrid one, I'll admit. I have never even thought of marrying you."

"Are you in love with Percival?" he demanded.

"Yes,--I think I am," she replied, looking him straight in the eye. She spoke with a sort of gasp, as if releasing a confession that surprised even herself.

"My G.o.d, Ruth,--I can't believe it," he groaned.

"I have denied it to myself--oh, a thousand times,--I've fought against it. I've tried to hate him. I've done everything in my power to make him believe that I despise him. But it's no use,--it's no use. I--I can't think of anything else. I can't think of any one else. Oh, I know I am quite mad to say this, but I sometimes find myself praying that we may never be rescued. It might mean--well, you can see what it might mean.

Thank G.o.d, you have driven me to this confession. It is the first time I have been really honest with myself. I have lied to myself over and over again about my feeling toward him. I have lain awake for hours at night lying to myself--telling myself that I hate him and always will hate him. Now, it's out,--the truth is out. I have never hated him,--I have cared for him from the very beginning."

She spoke rapidly, the words rus.h.i.+ng forth like a flood suddenly released after breaking through the dam, sweeping everything before it,--resistless, devastating, cruelly rapturous. She thought nothing of the hurt she was inflicting upon the man beside her; he was an atom in the path of the torrent, a thing that went down and was left behind as the flood swept over and by him. As suddenly as it began the torrent was checked. A hot flush seared her neck, her cheeks, her brow.

"What a fool you must think me!" she cried in dire chagrin. "What a stupid fool!"

He had not taken his eyes from her transfigured face. He had listened with his jaw set, his lips tightly pressed, his brow dark with anger.

"I don't think that," he said shortly. "You have merely lost your head, as any woman might, over a picturesque, good-looking soldier of fortune.

Perhaps I should not be surprised, nor even shocked by what you've just told me. He is the sort that women do fall in love with,--and I suppose they are not to be blamed for it. No, I do not think you are a fool.

When one reflects that such experienced heads as those possessed by the irreproachable Obosky, the immaculate Amori,--to say nothing of the estimable lady we are pleased to call the 'Empress of Brazil,'--when such heads as theirs are turned by a man it is high time to admit that he has something more than personal magnetism. I am wondering how far the contagion has really spread. There is a difference between contagion and infection, you know. Infection is the result of personal contact,--contagion is something in the air. This epidemic of infatuation very plainly is in two forms. It appears to be both infectious and contagious. I rather fancy the amiable Obosky has selected the former type of the prevailing malady. Percivalitis, I believe, is the name it goes by."

There was no mistaking the significance of his words. The implication was clear, even though veiled in the heaviest sarcasm. He had the satisfaction of seeing the colour ebb from her cheek. Her face being averted, he missed the swift flicker of pain that rushed to her eyes and, departing, took away with it the soft light that had glowed in them the instant before. He had touched a concealed canker,--the sensitive spot that had been the real cause of her sleepless, troubled nights,--the thing she had refused in her pride to accept as the real source of discomfort.

Down in her soul lay the poison of jealousy, a cruel and malignant influence that until now had been subdued by a mind stubbornly unwilling to recognize its existence.

In the eagerness to supply herself with additional reasons for hating Percival, she had given her imagination a rather free rein in regard to his relations with Olga Obosky. While she was without actual proof, she nevertheless tortured herself with suspicions that came almost to the same thing; in any case, they had the desired effect in that they created a very positive sense of irritation, and nothing seemed to please her more in the dead hour of night than the feeling that she had a right to be disgusted with him.

And now, Landover, in his sly arraignment, prodded a very live, raw spot, and she knew that it was bleak unhappiness and not rancour that had kept her awake.

"Is it necessary to beat about the bush, Mr. Land-over? If you have anything definite to tell me about Mr. Percival and Madame Obosky, I grant you permission to say all you have to say in the plainest language. Call a spade a spade. I am quite old enough to hear things called by their right names."

"Since you have been so quick to get my meaning, I don't consider it necessary to go into details. I daresay you have ears and eyes of your own. You can see and hear as well as I,--unless you are resolved to be both blind and deaf."

"Did you not hear me say that I know he loves me?"

"Yes,--I heard you quite distinctly."

"As a rule, do men love two women at the same time?" she inquired, patiently.

"I have never said that he loves Obosky. It is barely possible, however, that he may not choose to resist her,--if that conveys anything to your intelligence."

"It does and it does not," she replied steadily. "You see, I believe in him. I trust him."

"And I suppose you trust Olga Obosky," he said, with a sneer.

"I understand Olga Obosky far better than you do, Mr. Landover."

"I doubt it," said he drily.

"She is my friend."

"Ah! That measurably simplifies the situation. She will no doubt prove her friends.h.i.+p by delivering Mr. Percival to you, slightly damaged but guaranteed to--"

"Please be good enough to remember, Mr. Land-over, that you are not speaking to Manuel Crust," she exclaimed haughtily, and, with flaming cheeks, swept past him.

He hesitated a moment, and then started to follow her. She stopped short and, facing him, cried out: "Don't follow me! I do not want to hear another word. Stop! I can see by your eyes that you are ashamed,--you want to apologize. I do not want to hear it. I am hurt,--terribly hurt.

Nothing you can say will help matters now, Mr. Landover."

"Just a second, Ruth," he cried, now thoroughly dismayed. "Give me a chance to explain. It was my mad, unreasoning love that--"

But, with an exclamation of sheer disgust, she put her fingers to her ears and sped rapidly down the walk. He stood still, watching her until she entered the cabin door and closed it behind her. Then he completed the broken sentence, but not in the voice of humility nor with the words that he had intended to utter.

CHAPTER XI.

Shay, coming up the walk, distinctly heard what he said.

"What's the matter, Bill?" he inquired, pausing. "Did she throw the hooks into you?"

Landover glared at him balefully. "You go to h.e.l.l, d.a.m.n you," he snarled, and walked away.

"Soapy" rubbed his chin dubiously as he watched the retreating figure.

Pursing his thin lips, he turned his attention to an unoffending stump six or eight feet away and scowled at it vindictively. He was turning something over in his mind, and he was manifestly in a state of indecision. Ruminating, he spoke aloud, perhaps for the benefit of a Portuguese farm-hand who happened to be approaching from the opposite direction, but who still had some rods to cover before he was within hearing distance.

"Gee, he's getting to be as decent and democratic as any of us. Shows what a.s.sociation will do for a man. Two months ago he would have been too high and mighty to tell me to go to h.e.l.l. If he keeps on at this rate, he'll be worth payin' attention to in a couple of months more.

Won't he, Bill?" This to the farmhand, who obligingly halted.

Mr. Shay made constant and impartial use of the name Bill. Except in a very few instances, he applied it to all males over the age of two, and he did it so genially that resentment was rare. Americans, Britons, Irishmen, Portuguese, Spaniards, Indians, Swedes,--all races, in fact, except the Hebrew,--came under the sweeping appellation. His Hebrew acquaintances were addressed by the name of Ike.