Tramping on Life Part 117

"Well, Penton?" acted Hildreth languidly....

The look of defeat and bewilderment on the husband's face would have been comic if it had not been pitiable.

I rose, laying the book down carefully.

"I think I'll go now, Hildreth ... you wish to see Penton alone." I put all the calm casual deference in my voice possible. I started to walk easily to the door.

"No! stop! I wish you to stay here, John Gregory ... since you've got yourself into this--"

"I'd like to know what you mean by 'got yourself into this'?"

"Oh, Gregory, let's not talk nonsense any longer."

"You don't believe what I a.s.sured you this morning?"

"Johnnie, it's not human ... I can't make myself, and I've tried and tried, G.o.d knows!"

"I'd like to know, for my part, just what you mean, Penton Baxter, spying on me this way--bursting in on poor Johnnie Gregory and me like a maniac, while we were only reading poetry together."

"--reading poetry together!" he echoed bitterly, almost collapsing, as he went into a chair.

Again I tried to make my exit.

"Johnnie, I want you to stay. I want to have all this out right here and now," snapped Baxter decisively.

"Very well ... if you put it that way."

"--a nice way to treat your guest," Hildreth interposed, "the way you've been raving about him, too. 'Johnnie Gregory' this, and 'Johnnie Gregory' that!--and the minute he arrives, first you try to make him put up at the community inn; and now you accuse him of--of--"

Hildreth began to weep softly....

And then began a performance at which I stood aside, mentally, in admiration ... the way that little woman handled her husband!

She wept, she laughed, she upbraided, she cajoled ... at one moment swore she wanted nothing better than to die, at the other, vowed eternal fidelity till old age overtook them both....

"I _must_ go," I cried, quite ashamed of myself in my heart. Baxter's credulity had expanded again, in the sun of Hildreth's _forgiveness_ of him for his unjust suspicions!...

For the first time in my life I perceived how a desperate woman can twist a man any way she wants.

"No, you must not go! it is I who am going--to show that I trust you."

"Good G.o.d!" I protested--this was too much! "no, no ... good-night, both of you ... good-night, Penton! good-night, Hildreth!"

Penton Baxter stepped in my way, took hold of one of my hands in both of his....

"Please, Johnnie, please, dear friend ... I wish you to stay while I myself go. Finish reading the poem to Hildreth ... I think I have been too harsh in my judgment of both of you ... only please do be more discreet, if only for appearance's sake, in the future....

"Sit down where you were. I wish to show that I trust you both....

"Good-night, Hildreth!" and he kissed his wife in fond contrition.

"Good-night, Johnnie ... forgive me!"

And he wavered out at the door, his face set in pain.

As soon as he had gone I rose swiftly.

"And now I must go."

"If you men aren't the funniest things!" she caught me by the hand, detaining me ... "not yet ... wait a minute. Read more of that poem you began, if only for a blind."

I picked up the book, started reading again ... strangely a rush of tears flooded my eyes and blurred the type....

I began to sob, heart-sick. I did love the absurd little man. My heart ached, broken over my lies....

"Oh! Oh!" I sobbed, "Hildreth, my woman, my sweetheart--he trusted me, Hildreth ... he trusted me!"

I knelt by the bed, thrusting my head into the lap of my First Woman.

She kissed me on top of the head.

"You're both two big, silly babies, that's all you are."

It was dawn when I returned to my tent, pulled the flap aside, fell, exhausted, on my cot in dreamless sleep....

How was it all going to end?

It seemed to me that I had tapped violent, subterranean currents in life and pa.s.sion, that I had not hitherto known existed....

Free Love, Marriage, Polygamy, Polyandry, Varietism, Promiscuity--these were but tossing chips of nomenclature, bits of verbal welter, upborne by deep terrible human currents that appalled the imagination!

The man who prated glibly of any ready solution, orthodox or heterodox, radical or conventional, of the problem of the relations.h.i.+ps between men and women was worse than a fool, he was a dangerous madman!

Hildreth and I, a-field, had found a bed of that exceptionally poisonous mushroom named _Pallida_ something or other ... the book said its poison was kin to that of the poison in the rattlesnake's bite. My eyes met with Hildreth's ... we needed say no word, both thinking the same thought that frightened us!... "how easy it would be--!"

Now we were plumbing the darker side of pa.s.sion. Something that Carpenter does not write of in his _Love's Coming of Age_.