Slowly it reached her confused mind, which was stupefied by the shock.
"I didn't want to know him," she answered, after a pause, and got to her feet, her eyes hard and bright. "He's a—an unspeakable cad. I can't bear to speak of him. You—you talked me over with him? Ah!" Her old disgust of the man choked her. She presented her back to Tony, and walked to the window.
"No, I didn't," he denied untruthfully. "And haven't I seen for myself—other things?"
She made no answer. Hope was by no means of an hysterical nature; but now she was fighting, to the last of her strength, to keep from losing self-control while he was near. She had been under a long, unacknowledged strain, and if she even tried to speak she knew not what frantic foolishness she might commit herself to. She wanted to fight for her happiness, to plead for it even; but could not. She wondered wildly what his last words meant, and to ask him was out of her power. And again, she did not want to know. Everything he had said had been so unbearable; to hear any more was beyond her. The others! Thus to cheapen her feeling for him, why, he was committing sacrilege. She had never thought so basely of him.
Unconsciously she pulled a leaf from the geranium, looking at it closely but without seeing it at all, still waiting until she could find some words that might be adequate, and not wild. She heard him cross the room—to the door. And he supplied the needed word.
"Good-bye—dear," he said, his voice singularly gentle. At the end remorse had overtaken him. And also, even at the very last, she remained a puzzle to him. She had explained nothing.
"Good-bye," she said, without turning. She heard the door close. She could not move, to go after him, where her heart went, and recapture her happiness, and her trust.
Mary found her, lying on the couch with the room darkened and a towel bound about her forehead and eyes, quite two hours later. She was sick with weeping, her face swollen and marred with tears, but still.
"It's all over, Mary, and the dead are counted," she said, sitting up as the light came on. "P-please don't tell me how beautiful I look." There was a catch in her voice, which was husky and toneless.
"You and Tony?" said Mary, shocked beyond words by the very thing she had always expected.
"Y-yes," said Hope. "I'll tell you—some time. Let's talk about something else. Something funny."
And Mary did. But that night she heard Hope sobbing in her sleep.
CHAPTER XIV
MARY knew Edgerton had something on his mind; he watched her furtively over his shoulder, and handled the papers on his desk in an aimless manner utterly foreign to him. But when he finally unburdened himself, she was utterly surprised.
"I don't know much about women," he began. '"At least," his brow contracted, "my wife says I don't."
There was a hidden meaning in that reference, for Edgerton's heart was sore and his pride raw from his wife's gentle ministrations. Her parting words to him had been inexpressibly cruel. He had gone to her, in great loneliness of soul, after his return from New York, and begged for a complete reconciliation. Perhaps he wanted to fortify himself against the imminent meeting with Hope; but chiefly, his divided home had always been a secret grief to him, and this was not the first effort he had made to close the breach.
It was her habit to put him in the wrong; to make him lose his temper ineffectually; always he found himself unable to say what he would; but even a stupider woman than she must have understood his blundering advances, and realised what he was offering her But the plain truth was she did not want it because she would not have known what to do with it. This time, when he had pleaded for a little love, like a beggar for a crust, she had told him—the remembrance of it would smart for years—that no woman could love him, except for his money. She had not spared to hint that even Emily's affection was held at a price. He did not realise it yet, but in fact she had at last broken his bonds by overstraining them; her hold on him was gone. He would never again ask her for anything. More, he would never again desire aught from her.
"Oh, well, who does know anything about women?" said Mary cheerfully. "They're exactly like men—all different."
"Are they?" He did not seem certain in his mind. "It's my girl I'm thinking of. You know, I want her to be happy. I want her to have everything she wants, if it's good for her."
"What does she want?" said Mary briskly, but touched by his turning to her in his perplexity.
"She's got a fancy for that young man—Yorke," said Edgerton.
Mary positively gaped at him.
"Do you mean that he has proposed to her?"
"Well, in a way. Emmy and I have always been chums, you know. She just hinted that he had hinted that she was the only girl in the world—oh, she just had to tell someone, you see, and I was the only one handy." He dissembled his pride that she had brought her unfolding little heart to him, her father. "She always does tell me, when any young sprig begins making up. She's had a dozen. But she says she likes this one."
"But what do you want me to do?" asked Mary, absently tearing up an advertising layout she had been working at all the morning.
"Tell me if he's good enough," said Edgerton. "You know him, and I'd back your judgment. I don't know anything about him, and I haven't time to find out, if I want to act."
"He's not good enough," said Mary viciously.
Edgerton looked up sharply.
"Why not?"
"Because," she spoke carefully, her dark eyes narrowing like a cat's, "he jilted another girl within the week. And he hasn't a cent in the world. Neither had she. Put two and two together." Then she feared she might have struck him, instead of Tony, through his pride in his daughter. "But certainly," she said, "he is attracted by Emily—who wouldn't be? But I do know him, and he's not good enough, not for your daughter, anyway. Why," she added, with some sincerity, "Emily can pick and choose; she can have the best. She'd be throwing herself away. He's a lame duck," she finished Tony off with one of Edgerton's own phrases.
"All right," said Edgerton. "Thank you, awfully, Mary—I beg your pardon, I mean Miss Dark. I've heard you called by your first name so often. I wonder if you couldn't see Emily, and maybe show her the same thing? She thinks you're so clever, you know; and it takes a girl to talk to another girl."
"I'll try," said Mary rather doubtfully.
She telephoned to Emily for an appointment, and Emily insisted on lunching her, so it promised well. Edgerton fell to pondering again, and as the result of an hour's cogitation, scribbled a note, handed it to Mary hastily, and reached for his hat. At the door he turned.
"Who was the other girl?" he asked.
"Oh, now! That wouldn't be fair," said Mary. He nodded assent, and went out. The note was for Hope.
If Mary had thought twice, she might not have given Hope her news with the note. But she thought a desperate case required desperate remedies, and the girl was sick of a spiritual fever, sunk in a dreadful lassitude. Her eyes were ringed with black, her face looked pinched and ghostly, and she walked unseeing, like a somnambulist.
She twisted the note around her fingers while she listened, and seemed at first to make no sense of what Mary said. Then her head went up stiffly, with a gesture of a sort of direful pride.
"Are they engaged, then?" she only asked, at last.
"No," said Mary, telling nothing of her own part in the matter. "Her father will not have it; and I know he will prevent it. I am certain of that."
Hope stood up, her hand pressed to her side.
"Mary," she said piteously, "was he like that all the time—all the time? Was I really such a fool? Why didn't I see it?"
Mary knew she must be calm.
"Schopenhauer explains that much better than I can," she said lightly. "And we're all fools, all the time. Poor Tony is what he is; he can't help it. Circumstances cornered him, that's all. But he has all the qualities that attract; I believe I could love him myself, with my eyes wide open, if everything conspired against me. If you were ten years older, you'd have managed circum
stances, and been happy. Tony needs a woman of the world, not a gosling like you."
"What should I have done?" she asked again. "What did I do? He didn't believe Jim Sanderson; he only wanted an excuse."
"Well, child, don't we always believe our own excuses?" said Mary sensibly. And, thinking that later the lesson might be of use, she added, "Besides, you have behaved outrageously; you certainly have." Hope listened, with close and rather painful attention, while Mary explained very succinctly and as impartially as a mirror just what she had done and left undone. Mary could see the girl did not quite understand—but in time she would. She ended, "But that won't matter, if you really want him. Of course he's not worth breaking your heart over, but you can have him yet if you like."
"But I don't! I don't! I want what I thought he was. It's just because he isn't worth—Mary, I hate this place; it chokes me. I hate everybody in it. I suppose I was—an—an idiot—but I never hurt any one. Why...? I want to get away from here."
It did choke her. There flooded over her like a wave the feeling she had known the night she met Tony at the dance supper. It was all muddy, evil, hateful; and she felt herself sunk in it unaware, until she could scarcely breathe.
Then she found Edgerton's note in her hand, and began to laugh.
"Was Tony thinking of him?" she asked thoughtfully.
"Oh, probably," said Mary. "Don't bother about it any more now. Will you come and see Emily tomorrow with me?"
"Oh, yes," said Hope. "I'll play the game now. That's what I should have done before, isn't it?"
Then her self-control gave way, and she wept again. And then she laughed, and wrote an answer to Edgerton. Mary went to bed exhausted from sheer sympathy, but Hope sat up half the night reading. Once Mrs. Hamilton tapped at the door to inquire unobtrusively if the light meant someone ill, and Mary heard Hope joking with her for a moment. When she woke again it was day, and Hope lay beside her in a sleep as deep as death, white and quiet.
Edgerton only came to the corner with the motor, but Hope heard the muffled down engine as he stopped, and ran to meet him with a sensation of escape. Mary was away for the evening, but Mrs. Hamilton, according to custom, was at home. Little Bobby galloped after her unsteadily; she turned on him with mock ferocity, and he fled, shrieking with delicious fright. Then she shut the door on him and came up to Edgerton, out of breath. There was something of that air of breathlessness, of going too quickly to think, about her all the evening. They went straight away from the town, very fast at first; and in the close air of a still and clouded night they seemed to skim the earth, to lose identity with reality. It was thickly dark. When Edgerton slowed down, miles away, they seemed adrift in space, detached from the living world.
"Why are you driving?" asked Hope. "Where is Allen? I tried to find him on the telephone to-day."
"Did you?" said Edgerton, in a tone of dry humour. "I thought so. That's why I sent him away. You'll never see him again, little girl. Unless you order me to bring him back for you. Can't I fill his place?"
"Oh, just as well," she said lightly. "You did know we used to steal your old car, then?"
"I did," said Edgerton. "And it's a brand new car."
"Were you jealous of him?" She asked it idly.
"Horribly," said Edgerton.
Astounded, she detected the note of truth in his voice. He had been jealous, too! And he had done what one should do: he had calmly removed the cause. She admired him, in a queerly impersonal way. He commanded circumstances. Once she had thought Tony capable of that!
"Oh, never mind," she said. "I just wanted someone to worry. Con, I must do something. I'm going away. This town is full of emptiness."
"I'm going away, too," he remarked. "Want to come along?"
Now he was patently jesting, and she sent his head spinning with her answer:
"Yes. Please take me."
"My God," he said, forgetting the wheel a moment "Don't say things like that, dear."
"Oh, well," she sighed, "of course you don't need me. You have everything, or can get it."
"You mean I'm rich," he returned. He felt the necessity of seeing himself truly for once, and to do that he must see through the eyes of another. The barrenness of inanimate possessions was plain to him; his wife's taunt had stripped him bare in his own sight, and when he had sent Allen Kirby away he had known that as one man to another he feared the contest. "When I die," he said grimly, "I'd like to have all my money brought to me, in paper, piled up—and I'll set a match to it. Half my life's gone into the making of it. I don't see why anyone else should have it."
His secret bitterness welled up; he spoke as an injured man, cheated, defrauded, by a world that set up such false values before ignorant youth. The ring of his tone was unmistakable. Hope leaned forward and peered at him through the dark.
"Then," she said slowly, "after all, you're really no cleverer than I. You didn't get anything out of it all, either. And I was envying you!"
Well, it was true. He had sold twenty years of his life for money, and now it came to him with a veritable shock of horror that he could not repurchase those busy, empty years for ten thousand times the sum he had sold them for. Probably never again would he have this vision, reach the bottom of the cup he had filled for himself.
"No," he said, "I didn't... What are you talking about? You've got it all yet."
"Mine," she said, "was another kind of soap-bubble."
"You mean..." His mind was not quick, but it had a sure reach. Slowly, now, he pieced together many little things. "Were you the girl? The girl Tony Yorke threw over?" He had not meant to put it quite so brutally.
She grew hot, and visibly shrank into her cocoonlike wrappings, but the necessity for honesty overcame her also.
"How did you guess? Yes, it was me."
Edgerton muttered something indistinguishable and angry.
"Why?" he asked heavily.
"Oh, why not?" she retorted, and tried to turn it into a sorry joke. "Weren't you frightened yourself a minute ago?"
"I?" He reached round and drew her chin up clumsily. Her cheek was wet to touch. "You didn't mean it... It wouldn't be fair—and it isn't fair of you. Would you?"
"Oh, yes, I would," she said calmly, but remembrance sent her mind off at a tangent. "No. There's your wife; of course, it would be a rotten thing to do."
"My wife!" He laughed. "You needn't worry about her; she never wants to see me again, and I mean to oblige her. If that's all... Oh, don't say any more. I give in; you know you can twist me around your finger; but don't; not to-night. I'd go through hell for you. You didn't mean it, did you?"
"I did," she reiterated wildly, for they were both bewildered and lost in the Land of Last Things, and could not stop telling the truth. She tried to qualify and explain, but his mood had caught fire now.
"All right," he said. "Come. I'm going to-morrow afternoon. Emily's leaving for the East just before; going to visit Mary's aunt in Ottawa. I go West. I'll wait for you at Laggan; you take the next train. We'll go anywhere you say. If my wife gets a divorce—I think she will—I'll marry you as soon as you like; or I'll let you go when you're tired. I'll buy the world for you, and you can kick it around. Is that all right?"
Now she was adrift in space, indeed, and filled with the dazed contentment of one who has finally made a choice. She tried to say something, and then noticed they were slowing to a halt.
"What is it?" was all she found.
"The head-light's gone out." he said. "Wait till I light it." He left her side and stepped down, fumbling for a match. The glare of it lighted his ruddy smooth face for a moment. There was something kind and strong about him. She felt secure. He threw away the match. "Oil's out," he explained, as if he had few words now for material things, and went to the toolbox. She still sat tranced, but for a moment only.
"Oh, look!" she cried urgently. A little tongue of flame darted out from the road-side, flickered and raced in the old grass, spreading like oil on placid water. Edger
ton stood staring. "Idiot!" shrieked Hope, springing over the back of the seat into the tonneau and seizing an armful of rugs. "Beat it out!"
The rugs alighted neatly over Edgerton's head, Hope went after them, and salvaged one without ceremony. Edgerton collected himself and another rug. The flames ran and fluttered in a little wind: they fought them in an obscure, hot glare, working breathlessly and wordlessly. For an awful five minutes they feared to see the whole country-side aflame. At the end of half an hour they leaned wearily against the rotund tire of the front wheel and took breath. The fire was out, and they felt they could have done no more.
"Light another match," said Hope. "I want to see if I have any hair left. My gloves saved my hands." The match spurted up; they looked into each other's smeared and blackened faces, and simultaneously showed two rows of startlingly white teeth in uncontrollable mirth. "You won't want to run away with me now," Hope gasped. "Do you always celebrate an elopement by setting the prairie afire? Oh, oh!" She clutched his arm weakly.
"Well, we started something, didn't we?" he said. "Come; I've got some things to attend to in town." He swung her up again, and kissed her cheek, but seemed fearful of encroaching further on her favour. He would take her gifts, but they must be given freely.
"I say, how did you get out of the tonneau? The door is shut."
"Guess," she said. "Now, show me how fast you can drive... No, let me!" She hardly stopped laughing all the way back, and risked his neck a dozen times.
In his own rooms Edgerton did not wait to remove the soot and grime from his face, but went straight to the telephone. Long distance answered sleepily, but acted with despatch. If she had listened later, she might have been interested. And she might not if business bored her. It was her business to call Edmonton, and she did.
"Hello! hello! That you, Comerford? This is Edgerton. Edgerton. . . . No, I've changed my mind; don't want the charter renewed. I want it killed. I know it lapses to-morrow; I want it killed. I like my charters brand new ... I want a new one. . . . Yes, I know it'll cost a little more than to extend the old one; never mind. . . . Shane's crowd had their chance. There'll be more room for you now. Get action with the bunch to-night; call me up in the morning. I'll leave full instructions here with Tennant; he's honest if he is a lawyer. Lawyer honest, sure. You understand?"
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