Big Timber Part 27

"How do you know that I have?" Stella asked gravely.

Linda shrugged her shoulders expressively.

"I suppose it looks silly, if not worse, to you," Stella said. "But I can't help what you think. My reason has dictated every step I've taken since last fall. If I'd really given myself up to sentimentalism, the Lord only knows what might have happened."

"Exactly," Linda responded drily. "Now, there's no use beating around the bush. We get so in that habit as a matter of politeness,--our sort of people,--that we seldom say in plain English just what we really mean. Surely, you and I know each other well enough to be frank, even if it's painful. Very likely you'll say I'm a self-centered little beast, but I'm going to marry your brother, my dear, and I'm going to marry him in the face of considerable family opposition. I _am_ selfish. Can you show me any one who isn't largely swayed by motives of self-interest, if it comes to that? I want to be happy. I want to be on good terms with my own people, so that Charlie will have some of the opportunities dad can so easily put in his way. Charlie isn't rich. He hasn't done anything, according to the Abbey standard, but make a fair start. Dad's patronizing as sin, and mother merely tolerates the idea because she knows that I'll marry Charlie in any case, opposition or no opposition.

I came over expressly to warn you, Stella. Anything like scandal now would be--well, it would upset so many things."

"You needn't be uneasy," Stella answered coldly. "There isn't any foundation for scandal. There won't be."

"I don't know," Linda returned, "Walter Monohan came to Seattle a boat ahead of me. In fact, that's largely why I came."

Stella flushed angrily.

"Well, what of that?" she demanded. "His movements are nothing to me."

"I don't know," Linda rejoined. She had taken off her gloves and was rolling them nervously in a ball. Now she dropped them and impulsively grasped Stella's hands.

"Stella, Stella," she cried. "Don't get that hurt, angry look. I don't like to say these things to you, but I feel that I have to. I'm worried, and I'm afraid for you and your husband, for Charlie and myself, for all of us together. Walter Monohan is as dangerous as any man who's unscrupulous and rich and absolutely self-centered can possibly be. I know the glamour of the man. I used to feel it myself. It didn't go very far with me, because his attention wandered away from me before my feelings were much involved, and I had a chance to really fathom them and him. He has a queer gift of making women care for him, and he trades on it deliberately. He doesn't play fair; he doesn't mean to. Oh, I know so many cruel things, despicable things, he's done. Don't look at me like that, Stella. I'm not saying this just to wound you. I'm simply putting you on your guard. You can't play with fire and not get burned.

If you've been nursing any feeling for Walter Monohan, crush it, cut it out, just as you'd have a surgeon cut out a cancer. Entirely apart from any question of Jack Fyfe, don't let this man play any part whatever in your life. You'll be sorry if you do. There's not a man or woman whose relations with Monohan have been intimate enough to enable them to really know the man and his motives who doesn't either hate or fear or despise him, and sometimes all three."

"That's a sweeping indictment," Stella said stiffly. "And you're very earnest. Yet I can hardly take your word at its face value. If he's so impossible a person, how does it come that you and your people countenanced him socially? Besides, it's all rather unnecessary, Linda.

I'm not the least bit likely to do anything that will reflect on your prospective husband, which is what it simmers down to, isn't it? I've been pulled and hauled this way and that ever since I've been on the coast, simply because I was dependent on some one else--first Charlie and then Jack--for the bare necessities of life. When there's mutual affection, companions.h.i.+p, all those intimate interests that marriage is supposed to imply, I daresay a woman gives full measure for all she receives. If she doesn't, she's simply a sponge, clinging to a man for what's in it. I couldn't bear that. You've been rather painfully frank; so will I be. One unhappy marriage is quite enough for me. Looking back, I can see that even if Walter Monohan hadn't stirred a feeling in me which I don't deny,--but which I'm not nearly so sure of as I was some time ago,--I'd have come to just this stage, anyway. I was drifting all the time. My baby and the conventions, that reluctance most women have to make a clean sweep of all the ties they've been schooled to think unbreakable, kept me moving along the old grooves. It would have come about a little more gradually, that's all. But I have broken away, and I'm going to live my own life after a fas.h.i.+on, and I'm going to achieve independence of some sort. I'm never going to be any man's mate again until I'm sure of myself--and of him. There's my philosophy of life, as simply as I can put it. I don't think you need to worry about me. Right now I couldn't muster up the least shred of pa.s.sion of any sort. I seem to have felt so much since last summer, that I'm like a sponge that's been squeezed dry."

"I don't blame you, dear," Linda said wistfully. "A woman's heart is a queer thing, though. When you compare the two men--Oh, well, I know Walter so thoroughly, and you don't. You couldn't ever have cared much for Jack."

"That hasn't any bearing on it now," Stella answered. "I'm still his wife, and I respect him, and I've got a stubborn sort of pride. There won't be any divorce proceedings or any scandal. I'm free personally to work out my own economic destiny. That, right now, is engrossing enough for me."

Linda sat a minute, thoughtful.

"So you think my word for Walter Monohan's deviltry isn't worth much,"

she said. "Well, I could furnish plenty of details. But I don't think I shall. Not because you'd be angry, but because I don't think you're quite as blind as I believed. And I'm not a natural gossip. Aside from that, he's quite too busy on Roaring Lake for it to mean any good. He never gets active like that unless he has some personal axe to grind. In this case, I can grasp his motive easily enough. Jack Fyfe may not have said a word to you, but he certainly knows Monohan. They've clashed before, so I've been told. Jack probably saw what was growing on you, and I don't think he'd hesitate to tell Monohan to walk away around. If he did,--or if you definitely turned Monohan down; you see I'm rather in the dark,--he'd go to any length to play even with. Fyfe. When Monohan wants anything, he looks upon it as his own; and when you wound his vanity, you've stabbed him in his most vital part. He never rests then until he's paid the score. Father was always a little afraid of him. I think that's the chief reason for selling out his Roaring Lake interests to Monohan. He didn't want to be involved in whatever Monohan contemplated doing. He has a wholesome respect for your husband's rather volcanic ability. Monohan has, too. But he has always hated Jack Fyfe.

To my knowledge for three years,--prior to pulling you out of the water that time,--he never spoke of Jack Fyfe without a sneer. He hates any one who beats him at anything. That ruction on the Tyee is a sample.

He'll spend money, risk lives, all but his own, do anything to satisfy a grudge. That's one of the things that worries me. Charlie will be into anything that Fyfe is, for Fyfe's his friend. I admire the spirit of the thing, but I don't want our little applecart upset in the sort of struggle Fyfe and Monohan may stage. I don't even know what form it will ultimately take, except that from certain indications he'll try to make Fyfe spend money faster than he can make it, perhaps in litigation over timber, over anything that offers, by making trouble in his camps, hara.s.sing him at every turn. He can, you know. He has immense resources.

Oh, well, I'm satisfied, Stella, that you're a much wiser girl than I thought when I knew you'd left Jack Fyfe. I'm quite sure now you aren't the sort of woman Monohan could wind around his little finger. But I'm sure he'll try. You'll see, and remember what I tell you. There, I think I'd better run along. You're not angry, are you, Stella?"

"You mean well enough, I suppose," Stella answered. "But as a matter of fact, you've made me feel rather nasty, Linda. I don't want to talk or even think of these things. The best thing you and Charlie and Jack Fyfe could do is to forget such a discontented pendulum as I ever existed."

"Oh, bos.h.!.+" Linda exclaimed, as she drew on her gloves. "That's sheer nonsense. You're going to be my big sister in three months. Things will work out. If you felt you had to take this step for your own good, no one can blame you. It needn't make any difference in our friends.h.i.+p."

On the threshold she turned on her heel. "Don't forget what I've said,"

she repeated. "Don't trust Monohan. Not an inch."

Stella flung herself angrily into a chair when the door closed on Linda Abbey. Her eyes snapped. She resented being warned and cautioned, as if she were some moral weakling who could not be trusted to make the most obvious distinctions. Particularly did she resent having Monohan flung in her teeth, when she was in a way to forget him, to thrust the strange charm of the man forever out of her thoughts. Why, she asked bitterly, couldn't other people do as Jack Fyfe had done: cut the Gordian knot at one stroke and let it rest at that?

So Monohan was in Seattle? Would he try to see her?

Stella had not minced matters with herself when she left Roaring Lake.

Dazed and shaken by suffering, nevertheless she knew that she would not always suffer, that in time she would get back to that normal state in which the human ego diligently pursues happiness. In time the legal tie between herself and Jack Fyfe would cease to exist. If Monohan cared for her as she thought he cared, a year or two more or less mattered little.

They had all their lives before them. In the long run, the errors and mistakes of that upheaval would grow dim, be as nothing. Jack Fyfe would shrug his shoulders and forget, and in due time he would find a fitter mate, one as loyal as he deserved. And why might not she, who had never loved him, whose marriage to him had been only a climbing out of the fire into the frying-pan?

So that with all her determination to make the most of her gift of song, so that she would never again be buffeted by material urgencies in a material world, Stella had nevertheless been listening with the ear of her mind, so to speak, for a word from Monohan to say that he understood, and that all was well.

Paradoxically, she had not expected to hear that word. Once in Seattle, away from it all, there slowly grew upon her the conviction that in Monohan's fine avowal and renunciation he had only followed the cue she had given. In all else he had played his own hand. She couldn't forget Billy Dale. If the motive behind that b.l.o.o.d.y culmination were thwarted love, it was a thing to shrink from. It seemed to her now, forcing herself to reason with cold-blooded logic, that Monohan desired her less than he hated Fyfe's possession of her; that she was merely an added factor in the breaking out of a struggle for mastery between two diverse and dominant men. Every sign and token went to show that the pot of hate had long been simmering. She had only contributed to its boiling over.

"Oh, well," she sighed, "it's out of my hands altogether now. I'm sorry, but being sorry doesn't make any difference. I'm the least factor, it seems, in the whole muddle. A woman isn't much more than an incident in a man's life, after all."

She dressed to go to the Charteris, for her day's work was about to begin. As so often happens in life's uneasy flow, periods of calm are succeeded by events in close sequence. Howard and his wife insisted that Stella join them at supper after the show. They were decent folk who accorded frank admiration to her voice and her personality. They had been kind to her in many little ways, and she was glad to accept.

At eleven a taxi deposited them at the door of Wain's. The Seattle of yesterday needs no introduction to Wain's, and its counterpart can be found in any cosmopolitan, seaport city. It is a place of subtle distinction, tucked away on one of the lower hill streets, where after-theater parties and nighthawks with an eye for pretty women, an ear for sensuous music, and a taste for good food, go when they have money to spend.

Ensconced behind a potted palm, with a waiter taking Howard's order, Stella let her gaze travel over the diners. She brought up with a repressed start at a table but four removes from her own, her eyes resting upon the unmistakable profile of Walter Monohan. He was dining vis-a-vis with a young woman chiefly remarkable for a profusion of yellow hair and a blazing diamond in the lobe of each ear,--a plump, blond, vivacious person of a type that Stella, even with her limited experience, found herself instantly cla.s.sifying.

A bottle of wine rested in an iced dish between them. Monohan was toying with the stem of a half-emptied gla.s.s, smiling at his companion. The girl leaned toward him, speaking rapidly, pouting. Monohan nodded, drained his gla.s.s, signaled a waiter. When she got into an elaborate opera cloak and Monohan into his Inverness, they went out, the plump, jeweled hand resting familiarly on Monohan's arm. Stella breathed a sigh of relief as they pa.s.sed, looking straight ahead. She watched through the upper half of the cafe window and saw a machine draw against the curb, saw the be-scarfed yellow head enter and Monohan's silk hat follow. Then she relaxed, but she had little appet.i.te for her food. A hot wave of shamed disgust kept coming over her. She felt sick, physically revolted. Very likely Monohan had put her in _that_ cla.s.s, in his secret thought. She was glad when the evening ended, and the Howards left her at her own doorstep.

On the carpet where it had been thrust by the postman under the door, a white square caught her eye, and she picked it up before she switched on the light. And she got a queer little shock when the light fell on the envelope, for it was addressed in Jack Fyfe's angular handwriting.

She tore it open. It was little enough in the way of a letter, a couple of lines scrawled across a sheet of note-paper.

"_Dear Girl:_

"I was in Seattle a few days ago and heard you sing. Here's hoping good luck rides with you.

"JACK."

Stella sat down by the window. Outside, the ever-present Puget Sound rain drove against wall and roof and sidewalk, gathered in wet, glistening pools in the street. Through that same window she had watched Jack Fyfe walk out of her life three months ago without a backward look, st.u.r.dily, silently, uncomplaining. He hadn't whined, he wasn't whining now,--only flinging a cheerful word out of the blank s.p.a.ces of his own life into the blank s.p.a.ces of hers. Stella felt something warm and wet steal down her cheeks.

She crumpled the letter with a sudden, spasmodic clenching of her hand.

A lump rose chokingly in her throat. She stabbed at the light switch and threw herself on the bed, sobbing her heart's cry in the dusky quiet.

And she could not have told why, except that she had been overcome by a miserably forlorn feeling; all the mental props she relied upon were knocked out from under her. Somehow those few scrawled words had flung swiftly before her, like a picture on a screen, a vision of her baby toddling uncertainly across the porch of the white bungalow. And she could not bear to think of that!

When the elm before her window broke into leaf, and the sodden winter skies were transformed into a warm spring vista of blue, Stella was singing a special engagement in a local vaudeville house that boasted a "big time" bill. She had stepped up. The silvery richness of her voice had carried her name already beyond local boundaries, as the singing master under whom she studied prophesied it would. In proof thereof she received during April a feminine committee of two from Vancouver bearing an offer of three hundred dollars for her appearance in a series of three concerts under the auspices of the Woman's Musical Club, to be given in the ballroom of Vancouver's new million-dollar hostelry, the Granada. The date was mid-July. She took the offer under advis.e.m.e.nt, promising a decision in ten days.

The money tempted her; that was her greatest need now,--not for her daily bread, but for an acc.u.mulated fund that would enable her to reach New York and ultimately Europe, if that seemed the most direct route to her goal. She had no doubts about reaching it now. Confidence came to abide with her. She throve on work; and with increasing salary, her fund grew. Coming from any other source, she would have accepted this further augmentation of it without hesitation, since for a comparative beginner, it was a liberal offer.

But Vancouver was Fyfe's home town; it had been hers. Many people knew her; the local papers would feature her. She did not know how Fyfe would take it; she did not even know if there had been any open talk of their separation. Money, she felt, was a small thing beside opening old sores.

For herself, she was tolerably indifferent to Vancouver's social estimate of her or her acts. Nevertheless, so long as she bore Fyfe's name, she did not feel free to make herself a public figure there without his sanction. So she wrote to him in some detail concerning the offer and asked point-blank if it mattered to him.

His answer came with uncanny promptness, as if every mail connection had been made on the minute.

"If it is to your advantage to sing here," he wrote, "by all means accept. Why should it matter to me? I would even be glad to come and hear you sing if I could do so without stirring up vain longings and useless regrets. As for the other considerations you mention, they are of no weight at all. I never wanted to keep you in a gla.s.s case.

Even if all were well between us, I wouldn't have any feeling about your singing in public other than pride in your ability to command public favor with your voice. It's a wonderful voice, too big and fine a thing to remain obscure.

"JACK."

He added, evidently as an afterthought, a somewhat lengthy postscript: