Lonesome Land

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER XI. VAL'S AWAKENING

  Val stood just inside the door of the hotel parlor and glanced swiftlyaround at the place of unpleasant memory.

  "No, I must see Manley before I can tell you whether we shall want to stayor not," she replied to Arline's insistence that she "go right up to aroom" and lie down. "I feel quite well, and you must not bother about me atall. If Mr. Burnett will be good enough to send Manley to me--I must seehim first of all." It was Val in her most unapproachable mood, and Arlinesubsided before it.

  "Well, then, I'll go and send word to Man, and see about some supper forus. I feel as if _I_ could eat ten-penny nails!" She went out into thehall, hesitated a moment, and then boldly invaded the "office."

  "Say! have you got Man rounded up yit?" she demanded of her husband. "Andhow is he, anyhow? That girl ain't got the first idea of what ails him--howanybody with the brains and education she's got can be so thick-headed gitsme. Jim told me Man's been packing a bottle or two home with him every triphe's made for the last month--and she don't know a thing about it. I'd liketo know what 'n time they learn folks back East, anyhow; to put their eyesand their sense in their pockets, I guess, and go along blind as bats.Where's Kent at? Did he go after him? She won't do nothing till she seesMan--"

  At that moment Kent came in, and his disgust needed no words. He answeredMrs. Hawley's inquiring look with a shake of the head.

  "I can't do anything with him," he said morosely. "He's so full he don'tknow he's got a wife, hardly. You better go and tell her, Mrs. Hawley.Somebody's got to."

  "Oh, my heavens!" Arline clutched at the doorknob for moral support. "Icould no more face them yellow eyes of hern when they blaze up--you go tellher yourself, if you want her told. I've got to see about some supper forus. I ain't had a bite since dinner, and Min's off gadding somewheres--"She hurried away, mentally washing her hands of the affair. "Women's got tolearn some time what men is," she soliloquized, "and I guess she ain'tno better than any of the rest of us, that she can't learn to take hermedicine--but _I_ ain't goin' to be the one to tell her what kinda fellowshe's tied to. My stunt'll be helpin' her pick up the pieces and make thebest of it after she's told."

  She stopped, just inside the dining room, and listened until she heard Kentcross the hall from the office and open the parlor door. "Gee! It's like ahangin'," she sighed. "If she wasn't so plumb innocent--" She startedfor the door which opened into the parlor from the dining room, stronglytempted to eavesdrop. She did yield so far as to put her ear to thekeyhole, but the silence within impressed her strangely, and she retreatedto the kitchen and closed the door tightly behind her as the most practicalmethod of bidding Satan begone.

  The silence in the parlor lasted while Kent, standing with his back againstthe door, faced Val and meditated swiftly upon the manner of his telling.

  "Well?" she demanded at last. "I am still waiting to see Manley. I am notquite a child, Mr. Burnett. I know something is the matter, and you--if youhave any pity, or any feeling of friendship, you will tell me the truth.Don't you suppose I know that Arline was--_lying_ to me all the time aboutManley? You helped her to lie. So did that other man. I waited until Ireached town, where I could do something, and now you must tell me thetruth. Manley is badly hurt, or he is dead. Tell me which it is, and takeme to him." She spoke fast, as if she was afraid she might not be able tofinish, though her voice was even and low, it was also flat and tonelesswith her effort to seem perfectly calm and self-controlled.

  Kent looked at her, forgot all about leading up to the truth by easystages, as he had intended to do, and gave it to her straight. "He ain'teither one," he said. "He's drunk!"

  Val stared at him. "Drunk!" He could see how even her lips shrank from theword. She threw up her head. "That," she declared icily, "I know to beimpossible!"

  "Oh, do you? Let me tell you that's _never_ impossible with a man, not whenthere's whisky handy."

  "Manley is not that sort of a man. When he left me, three years ago, hepromised me never to frequent places where liquor is sold. He never hadtouched liquor; he never was tempted to touch it. But, just to be doublysure, he promised me, on his honor. He has never broken that promise; Iknow, because he told me so." She made the explanation scornfully, asif her pride and her belief in Manley almost forbade the indignity ofexplaining. "I don't know why you should come here and insult me," sheadded, with a lofty charity for his sin.

  "I don't see how it can insult you," he contended. "You're got a differentway of looking at things, but that won't help you to dodge facts. Man'sdrunk. I said it, and I mean it. It ain't the first time, nor the second.He was drunk the day you came, and couldn't meet the train. That's why Imet you. I ought to've told you, I guess, but I hated to make you feel bad.So I went to work and sobered him up, and sent him over to get married.I've always been kinda sorry for that. It was a low-down trick to play onyou, and that's a fact. You ought to've had a chance to draw outa the game,but I didn't think about it at the time. Man and I have always been prettygood friends, and I was thinking of _his_ side of the case. I thought he'dstraighten up after he got married; he wasn't such a hard drinker--onlyhe'd go on a toot when he got into town, like lots of men. I didn't thinkit had such a strong hold on him. And I knew he thought a lot of you, andif you went back on him it'd hit him pretty hard. Man ain't a bad fellow,only for that. And he's liable to do better when he finds out you knowabout it. A man will do 'most anything for a woman he thinks a lot of."

  "Indeed!" Val was sitting now upon the red plush chair. Her face wasperfectly colorless, her manner frozen. The word seemed to speak itself,without having any relation whatever to her thoughts and her emotions.

  Kent waited. It seemed to him that she took it harder than she would havetaken the news that Manley was dead. He had no means of gauging the horrorof a young woman who has all her life been familiar with such terms as "thedemon rum," and who has been taught that "intemperance is the doorway toperdition"; a young woman whose life has been sheltered jealously from allcontact with the ugly things of the world, and who believes that she mightbetter die than marry a drunkard. He watched her unobtrusively.

  "Anyway, it was worrying over you that made him get off wrong to-day," heventured at last, as a sort of palliative. "They say he was going to starthome right in the face of the fire, and when they wouldn't let him, heheaded straight for a saloon and commenced to pour whisky down him. Hethought sure you--he thought the fire would--"

  "I see," Val interrupted stonily. "For the very doubtful honor of shakingthe hand of a politician, he left me alone to face as best I mightthe possibility of burning alive; and when it seemed likely that thepossibility had become a certainty, he must celebrate his bereavement bybecoming a beast. Is that what you would have me believe of my husband?"

  "That's about the size of it," Kent admitted reluctantly. "Only I wouldn'thave put it just that way, maybe."

  "Indeed! And how would you pit it, then?"

  Kent leaned harder against the door, and looked at her curiously. Women, itseemed to him, were always going to extremes; they were either too soft andmeek, or else they were too hard and unmerciful.

  "How would you put it? I am rather curious to know your point of view."

  "Well, I know men better than you do, Mrs. Fleetwood. I know they can dosome things that look pretty rotten on the surface, and yet be fairlydecent underneath. You don't know how a habit like that gets a fellow justwhere he's weakest. Man ain't a beast. He's selfish and careless, and hegives way too easy, but he thinks the world of you. Jim says he cried likea baby when he came into the saloon, and acted like a crazy man. You don'twant to be too hard on him. I've an idea this will learn him a lesson. Ifyou take him the right way, Mrs. Fleetwood, the chances are he'll quitdrinking."

  Val smiled. Kent thought he had never before seen a smile like that, andhoped he never would see another. There was in it neither mercy nor mirth,but only the hard judgment of a woman who does not understand.

  "Will you bring him to me here, Mr. B
urnett? I do not feel quite equalto invading a saloon and begging him, on my knees, to come--after theconventional manner of drunkards' wives. But I should like to see him."

  Kent stared. "He ain't in any shape to argue with," he remonstrated. "Youbetter wait a while."

  She rested her chin upon her hands, folded upon the high chair back, andgazed at him with her tawny eyes, that somehow reminded Kent of a lionessin a cage. He thought swiftly that a lioness would have as much mercy asshe had in that mood.

  "Mr. Burnett," she began quietly, when Kent's nerves were beginning to feelthe strain of her silent stare, "I want to see Manley _as he is now_. Iwill tell you why. You aren't a woman, and you never will understand, but Ishall tell you; I want to tell _somebody_.

  "I was raised well--that sounds queer, but modesty forbids more. At anyrate, my mother was very careful about me. She believed in a girl marryingand becoming a good wife to a good man, and to that end she taught me andtrained me. A woman must give her all--her life, her past, present, andfuture--to the man she marries. For three years I thought how unworthy Iwas to be Manley's wife. _Unworthy_, do you hear? I slept with his lettersunder my pillow." The self-contempt in her tone! "I studied the things Ithought would make me a better companion out here in the wilderness. Ipracticed hours and hours every day upon my violin, because Manley hadadmired my playing, and I thought it would please him to have me play inthe firelight on winter evenings, when the blizzards were howling about thehouse! I learned to cook, to wash clothes, to iron, to sweep, and to scrub,and to make my own clothes, because Manley's wife would live whereshe could not hire servants to do these things. I lived a beautiful,picturesque dream of domestic happiness.

  "I left my friends, my home, all the things I had been accustomed to all mylife, and I came out here to live that dream!" She laughed bitterly.

  "You can easily guess how much of it has come true, Mr. Burnett. But youdon't know what it costs a girl to come down from the clouds and find thatreality is hard and ugly--from dreaming of a cozy little nest of a home,and the love and care of--of Manley, to the reality--to carrying water andchopping wood and being left alone, day after day, and to find that hislove only meant--Oh, you don't know how a woman clings to her ideals! Youdon't know how I have dung to mine. They have become rather tattered, and Ihave had to mend them often, but I have clung to them, even though they donot resemble much the dreams I brought with me to this horrible country.

  "But if it's true, what you tell me--if Manley himself is anotherdisillusionment--if beyond his selfishness and his carelessness he is adrunken brute whom I can't even respect, then I'm done with my ideals. Iwant to see him just as he is. I want to see him once without the halo Ihave kept shining all these months. I've got my life to live--but I want toface facts and live facts. I can't go on dreaming and making believe, afterthis." She stopped and looked at him speculatively, absolutely withoutemotion.

  "Just before I left home," she went on in the same calm quiet, "a girlshowed me some verses written by a very wicked man. At least, they say heis very wicked--at any rate, he is in jail. I thought the verses horribleand brutal; but now I think the man must be very wise. I remember a fewlines, and they seem to me to mean Manley.

  "For each man kills the thing he loves-- Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word; The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword.

  "I don't remember all of it, but there was another line or two:

  "The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold.

  "I wish I had that poem now--I think I could understand it. I think--"

  "I think you've got talking hysterics, if there is such a thing," Kentinterrupted harshly. "You don't know half what you're saying. You've hada hard day, and you're all tired out, and everything looks outa focus. Iknow--I've seen men like that sometimes when some trouble hit 'em hard andunexpected. What you want is sleep; not poetry about killing people. Aman, in the shape you are in, takes to whisky. You're taking to graveyardpoetry--and, if you ask _me_, that's worse than whisky. You ain't normal.What you want to do is go straight to bed. When you wake up in the morningyou won't feel so bad. You won't have half as many troubles as you've gotnow."

  "I knew you wouldn't understand it," Val remarked coldly, still staring athim with her chin on her hands.

  "You won't yourself, to-morrow morning," Kent declared unsympathetically,and called Mrs. Hawley from the kitchen. "You better put Mrs. Fleetwoodto bed," he advised gruffly. "And if you've got anything that'll make hersleep, give her a dose of it. She's so tired she can't see straight." Hewas nearly to the outside door when Val recovered her speech.

  "You men are all alike," she said contemptuously. "You give orders and youconsider yourselves above all the laws of morality or decency; in realityyou are beneath them. We shouldn't expect anything of the lower animals!How I _despise_ men!"

  "Now you're _talking_," grinned Kent, quite unmoved. "Whack us in a bunchall you like--but don't make one poor devil take it all. Men as a class areused to it and can stand it." He was laughing as he left the room, but hisamusement lasted only until the door was closed behind him. "Lord!" heexclaimed, and drew a deep breath. "I'd sure hate to have that littlewoman say all them things about _me!_" and glanced involuntarily over hisshoulder to where a crack of light showed under the faded green shade ofone of the parlor windows.

  He crossed the street and entered the saloon where Manley was stilldrinking heavily, his face crimson and blear-eyed and brutalized, hisspeech thickened disgustingly. He was sprawled in an armchair, waving anempty glass in an erratic attempt to mark the time of a college ditty sixor seven years out of date, which he was trying to sing. He leered up atKent.

  "Wife 'sall righ'," he informed him solemnly. "Knew she would be--fineguards's got out there. 'Sall righ'--somebody shaid sho. Have a drink."

  Kent glowered down at him, made a swift, mental decision, and pipped himby the shoulder. "You come with me," he commanded. "I've got somethingimportant I want to tell you. Come on--if you can walk."

  "'Course I c'n walk all righ'. Shertainly I can walk. Wha's makes you thinkI can't walk? Want to inshult me? 'Sall my friends here--no secrets from myfriends. Wha's want tell me? Shay it here."

  Kent was a big man; that is to say, he was tall, well-muscled and active.But so was Manley. Kent tried the power of persuasion, leaving force as alast, doubtful result. In fifteen minutes or thereabouts he had succeededin getting Manley outside the door, and there he balked.

  "Wha's matter wish you?" he complained, pulling back. "C'm on back 'n' havedrink. Wha's wanna tell me?"

  "You wait. I'll tell you all about it in a minute. I've got something toshow you, and I don't want the bunch to get next. Savvy?"

  He had a sickening sense that the subterfuge would not have deceived afive-year-old child, but it was accepted without question.

  He led Manley stumbling up the street, evading a direct statement as to hisdestination, pulled him off the board walk, and took him across a vacantlot well sprinkled with old shoes and tin cans. Here Manley fell down, andKent's patience was well tested before he got him up and going again.

  "Where y' goin'?" Manley inquired pettishly, as often as he could bring histongue to the labor of articulation.

  "You wait and I'll show you," was Kent's unvaried reply.

  At last he pushed open a door and led his victim into the darkness of asmall, windowless building. "It's in here--back against the wall, there,"he said, pulling Manley after him. By feeling, and by a good sense oflocation, he arrived at a rough bunk built against the farther wall, with ablanket or two upon it.

  "There you are," he announced grimly. "You'll have a sweet time gettinganything to drink here, old boy. When you're sober enough to face your wifeand have some show of squaring yourself with her, I'll come and let youout." He had pushed Manley down upon the bunk, and had reached the doorbefore the other could get up and come at him. He pulled the door shutwith a
slam, slipped a padlock into the staple, and snapped it just beforeManley lurched heavily against it. He was cursing as well as he could--wasManley, and he began kicking like an unruly child shut into a closet.

  "Aw, let up," Kent advised him, through a crack in the wall. "Want to knowwhere you are? Well, you're in Hawley's ice house; you know it's a fineplace for drunks to sober up in; it's awful popular for that purpose. Aw,you can't do any business kicking--that's been tried lots of times. Thisis sure well built, for an ice house. No, I can't let you out. Couldn'tpossibly, you know. I haven't got the key--old lady Hawley has got it, andshe's gone to bed hours ago. You go to sleep and forget about it. I'll talkto you in the morning. Good night, and pleasant dreams!"

  The last thing Kent heard as he walked away was Manley's profane promise tocut Kent's heart out very early the next day.

  "The darned fool," Kent commented, as he stopped in the first patch oflamplight to roll a cigarette. "He ain't got another friend in town that'dgo to the trouble I've gone to for him. He'll realize it, too, when allthat whisky quits stewing inside him."