“Well, old-timer, how you coming? You sure do sleep sound--this is the third time I've come to tell you breakfast is ready and then some. You'll get the bottom of the coffeepot, for fair, if you don't hustle.” Kent left the door of the ice house wide open behind him, so that the warmth of mid-morning swept in to do battle with the chill and damp of wet sawdust and buried ice.
Manley rolled over so that he faced his visitor, and his reply was abusive in the extreme. Kent waited, with an air of impersonal interest, until he was done and had turned his face away as though the subject was quite exhausted.
“Well, now you've got that load off your mind, come on over and get a cup of coffee. But while you're thinking about whether you want anything but my heart's blood, I'm going to speak right up and tell you a few things that commonly ain't none of my business.
“Do you know your wife came within an ace of burning to death yesterday?” Manley sat up with a jerk and glared at him. “Do you know you're burned out, slick and clean--all except the shack? Hay, stables, corral, wagons, chickens--” Kent spread his hands in a gesture including all minor details. “I rode over there when I saw the fire coming, and it's lucky I did, old-timer. I back-fired and saved the house--and your wife--from going up in smoke. But everything else went. Let that sink into your system, will you? And just see if you can draw a picture of what woulda happened if nobody had showed up--if that fire had hit the coulee with nobody there but your wife. Why, I run onto her half-way up the bluff, packing a wet sack, to fight it at the fire guards I Now, Man, it ain't any credit to, you that the worst didn't happen. I'd sure like to tell you what I think of a fellow that will leave a woman out there, twenty miles from town and ten from the nearest neighbor--and them not at home--to take a chance on a thing like that; but I can't. I never learned words enough.
“There's another thing. Old lady Hawley took more interest in her than you did; she drove out there to see how about it, as soon as the fire had burned on past and left the trail safe. And it didn't look good to her--that little woman stuck out there all by herself. She made her pack up some clothes, and brought her to town with her. She didn't want to come; she had an idea that she ought to stay with it till you showed up. But the only original Hawley is sure all right! She talked your wife plumb outa the house and into the rig, and brought her to town. She's over to the hotel now.”
“Val at the hotel? How long has she been there?” Manley began smoothing his hair and his crumpled clothes with his hands, “Good heavens! You told her I'd gone on out, and had missed her on the trail, didn't you, Kent? She doesn't know I'm in town, does she? You always were a good fellow--I haven't forgotten how you--”
“Well, you can forget it now. I didn't tell her anything like that. I didn't think of it, for one thing. She knew all the time that you were in town. I'm tired of lying to her. I told her the truth. I told her you were drunk.”
Manley's jaw dropped. “You--you told her--”
“Ex-actly. I told her you were drunk.” Kent nodded gravely, and his lips curled as he watched the other cringe. “She called me a liar,” he added, with a certain reminiscent amusement.
Manley brightened. “That's Val--once she believes in a person she's loyal as--”
“She ain't now,” Kent interposed dryly. “When I let up she was plumb convinced. She knows now what ailed you the day she came and you didn't meet her.”
“You dirty cur! And I thought you were a friend. You--”
“You thought right--until you got to rooting a little too deep in the mud, old-timer. And let me tell you something. I was your friend when I told her. She's got to know--you couldn't go on like this much longer without having her get wise; she ain't a fool. The thing for you to do now is to buck up and let her reform you. I've always heard that women are tickled plumb to death when they can reform a man. You go on over there and make your little talk, and then buckle down and live up to it. Savvy? That's your only chance now. It'll work, too.
“You ought to straighten up, Man, and act white! Not just to square yourself with her, but because you're going downhill pretty fast, if you only knew it. You ain't anything like you were two years ago, when we bached together. You've got to brace up pretty sudden, or you'll be so far gone you can't climb back. And when a man has got a wife to look after, it seems to me he ought to be the best it's in him to be. You were a fine fellow when you first hit the country--and she thought she was getting that same fine fellow when she came away out here to marry you. It ain't any of my business--but do you think you're giving her a square deal?” He waited a minute, and spoke the next sentence with a certain diffidence. “I'll gamble you haven't been disappointed in her.”
“She's an angel--and I'm a beast!” groaned Manley, with the exaggerated self-abasement which so frequently follows close upon the heels of intoxication. “She'll never forgive a thing like that--the best thing I can do is to blow my brains out!”
“Like Walt. And have your picture enlarged and put in a gold frame, and hubby number two learning his morals from your awful example,” elaborated Kent, in much the same tone he had employed when Val, only the day before, had rashly expressed a wish for a speedy death.
Manley sat up straighter and sent a look of resentment toward the man who bantered when he should have sympathized. “It's all a big joke with you, of course,” he flared weakly. “You're not married--to a perfect woman; a woman who never did anything wrong in her life, and can't understand how anybody should want to, and can't forgive him when he does. She expects a man to be a saint. Why, I don't even smoke in the house--and she doesn't dream I'd ever swear, under any circumstances.
“Why, Kent, a fellow's got to go to town and turn himself loose sometimes, when he lives in a rarified atmosphere of refined morality, and listens to Songs Without Words and weepy classics on the violin, and never a thing to make your feet tingle. She doesn't believe in public dances, either. Nor cards. She reads 'The Ring and the Book' evenings, and wants to discuss it and read passages of it to me. I used to take some interest in those things, and she doesn't seem to see I've changed. Why, hang it, Kent, Cold Spring Coulee's no place for Browning--he doesn't fit in. All that sort of thing is a thousand miles behind me--and I've got to--” He stopped short and brooded, his eyes upon the dank sawdust at his feet.
“I'm a beast,” he repeated rather lugubriously. “She's an angel--an Eastern-bred angel. And let me tell you, Kent, all that's pretty hard to live up to!”
Kent looked down at him meditatively, wondering if there was not a good deal of truth and justice in Manley's argument. But his sympathies had already gone to the other side, and Kent was not the man to make an emotional pendulum of himself.
“Well, what you going to do about it?” he asked, after a short silence.
For answer Manley rose to his feet with a certain air of determination, which flamed up oddly above his general weakness, like the last sputter of a candle burned down. “I'm going over and take my medicine--face the music,” he said almost sullenly, “She's too good for me--I always knew it. And I haven't treated her right--I've left her out there alone too much. But she wouldn't come to town with me--she said she couldn't endure the sight of it. What could I do? I couldn't stay out there all the time; there were times when I had to come. She didn't seem to mind staying alone. She never objected. She was always sweet sad good-natured--and shut up inside of herself. She just gives you what she pleases of her mind, and the rest she hides--”
Kent laughed suddenly. “You married men sure do have all kinds of trouble,” he remarked. “A fellow like me can go on a jamboree any time he likes, and as long as he likes, and it don't concern anybody but himself--and maybe the man he's working for; and look at you, scared plumb silly thinking of what your wife's going to say about it. If you ask me, I'm going to trot alone; I'd rather be lonesome than good, any old time.”
That, however, did not tend to raise Manley's spirits any. He entered the hotel with visible reluctance, looked into the parlor, and heaved a sigh of relief when he saw that it was empty, wavered at the foot of the steep, narrow stairs, and retreated to the dining room, with Kent at his heels knowing that the matter had passed quite beyond his help or hindrance and had entered that mysterious realm of matrimony where no unwedded man or woman may follow and yet is curious enough to linger.
Just inside the door Manley stopped so suddenly that Kent bumped against him. Val, sweet and calm and cool, was sitting just where the smoke-dimmed sunlight poured in through a window upon her, and a breeze came with it and stirred her hair. She had those purple shadows under her eyes which betray us after long, sleepless hours when we live with our troubles and the world dreams around us; she had no color at all in her cheeks, and she had that aloofness of manner which Manley, in his outburst, had described as being shut up inside herself. She glanced up at them, just as she would have done had they both been strangers, and went on sugaring her coffee with a dainty exactness which, under the circumstances, seemed altogether too elaborate to be unconscious.
“Good morning,” she greeted them quietly. “I think we must be the laziest people in town; at any rate, we seem to be the latest risers.”
Kent stared at her frankly, so that she flushed a little under the scrutiny. Manley consciously avoided looking at her, and muttered something unintelligible while he pulled out a chair three places distant from her.
Val stole a sidelong, measuring look at her husband while she took a sip of coffee, and then her eyes turned upon Kent. More than ever, it seemed to him, they resembled the eyes of a lioness watching you quietly from the corner of her cage. You could look at them, but you could not look into them. Always they met your gaze with a baffling veil of inscrutability. But they were darker than the eyes of a lioness; they were human eyes; woman eyes--alluring eyes. She did not say a word, and, after a brief stare which might have meant almost anything, she turned to her plate of toast and broke away the burned edges of a slice and nibbled at the passable center as if she had no trouble beyond a rather unsatisfactory breakfast.
It was foolish, it was childish for three people who knew one another very well, to sit and pretend to eat, and to speak no word; so Kent thought, and tried to break the silence with some remark which would not sound constrained.
“It's going to storm,” he flung into the silence, like chucking a rock into a pond.
“Do you think so?” Val asked languidly, just grazing him with a glance, in that inattentive way she sometimes had. “Are you going out home--or to what's left of it--to-day, Manley?” She did not look at him at all, Kent observed.
“I don't know--I'll have to hire a team--I'll see what--”
“Mrs. Hawley thinks we ought to stay here for a few days--or that I ought--while you make arrangements for building a new stable, and all that.”
“If you want to stay,” Manley agreed rather eagerly, “why, of course, you can. There's nothing out there to--”
“Oh, it doesn't matter in the slightest degree where I stay. I only mentioned it because I promised her I would speak to you about it.” There was more than languor in her tone.
“They're going to start the fireworks pretty quick,” Kent mentally diagnosed the situation and rose hurriedly. “Well, I've got to hunt a horse, myself, and pull out for the Wishbone,” he explained gratuitously. “Ought to've gone last night. Good-bye.” He closed the door behind him and shrugged his shoulders. “Now they can fight it out,” he told himself. “Glad I ain't a married man!”
However, they did not fight it out then. Kent had no more than reached the office when Val rose, hoped that Manley would please excuse her, and left the room also. Manley heard her go up-stairs, found out from Arline what was the number of Val's room, and followed her. The door was locked, but when he rapped upon it Val opened it an inch and held it so.
“Val, let me in. I want to talk with you. I--God knows how sorry I am--”
“If He does, that ought to be sufficient,” she answered coldly. “I don't feel like talking now--especially upon the subject you would choose. You're a man, supposedly. You must know what it is your duty to do. Please let us not discuss it--now or ever.
“But, Val--”
“I don't want to talk about it, I tell you! I won't--I can't. You must do without the conventional confession and absolution. You must have some sort of conscience--let that receive your penitence.” She started to close the door, but he caught it with his hand.
“Val--do you hate me?”
She looked at him for a moment, as if she were trying to decide. “No,” she said at last, “I don't think I do; I'm quite sure that I do not. But I'm terribly hurt and disappointed.” She closed the door then and turned the key.
Manley stood for a moment rather blankly before it, then put his hands as deep in his pockets as they would go, and went slowly down the stairs. At that moment he did not feel particularly penitent. She would not listen to “the conventional confession!”
“That girl can be hard as nails!” he muttered, under his breath.
He went into the office, got a cigar, and lighted it moodily. He glanced at the bottles ranged upon the shelves behind the bar, drew in his breath for speech, let it go in a sigh, and walked out. He knew perfectly well what Val had meant. She had deliberately thrown him back upon his own strength. He had fallen by himself, he must pick himself up; and she would stand back and watch the struggle, and judge him according to his failure or his success. He had a dim sense that it was a dangerous experiment.
He looked for Kent, found him just as he was mounting at the stables, and let him go almost without a word. After all, no one could help him. He stood there smoking after Kent had gone, and when his cigar was finished he wandered back to the hotel. As was always the case after hard drinking, he had a splitting headache. He got a room as close to Val's as he could, shut himself into it, and gave himself up to his headache and to gloomy meditation. All day he lay upon the bed, and part of the time he slept. At supper time he rapped upon Val's door, got no answer, and went down alone, to find her in the dining room. There was an empty chair beside her, and he took it as his right. She talked a little--about the fire and the damage it had done. She said she was worried because she had forgotten to bring the cat, and what would it find to eat out there?
“Everything's burned perfectly black for miles and miles, you know,” she reminded him.
They left the room together, and he followed her upstairs and to her door. This time she did not shut him out, and he went in and sat down by the window, and looked out upon the meager little street. Never, in the years he had known her, had she been so far from him. He watched her covertly while she searched for something in her suit case.
“I'm afraid I didn't bring enough clothes to last more than a day or two,” she remarked. “I couldn't seem to think of anything that night. Arline did most of the packing for me. I'm afraid I misjudged that woman, Manley; there's a good deal to her, after all. But she is funny.”
“Val, I want to tell you I'm going to--to be different. I've been a beast, but I'm going to--” So much he had rushed out before she could freeze him to silence again.
“I hope so,” she cut in, as he hesitated, “That is something you must judge for yourself, and do by yourself. Do you think you will be able to get a team tomorrow?”
“Oh--to hell with a team!” Manley exploded.
Val dropped her hairbrush upon the floor. “Manley Fleetwood! Has it come to that, also? Isn't it enough to--” She choked. “Manley, you can be a--a drunken sot, if you choose--I've no power to prevent you; but you shall not swear in my presence. I thought you had some of the instincts of a gentleman, but--” She set her teeth hard together. She was white around the mouth, and her whole, slim body was aquiver with outraged dignity.
There was something queer in Manley's eyes as he looked at her, the length of the tiny room between them.
“Oh, I beg your pardon. I remember, now, your Fern Hill ethics. I may go to hell, for all of you--you will simply hold back your immaculate, moral skirts so that I may pass without smirching them; but I must not mention my destination--that is so unrefined!” He got up from the chair, with a laugh that was almost a snort. “You refuse to discuss a certain subject, though it's almost a matter of life and death with me; at least, it was. Your happiness and my own was at stake, I thought. But it's all right--I needn't have worried about it. I still have some of the instincts of a gentleman, and your pure ears shall not be offended by any profanity or any disagreeable 'conventional confessions.' The absolution, let me say, I expected to do without.” He started, full of some secret intent, for the door.
Val humanized suddenly. By the time his fingers touched the door knob she had read his purpose, had readied his side, and was clutching his arm with both her hands.
“Manley Fleetwood, what are you going to do?” She was actually panting with the jump of her heart.
He turned the knob, so that the latch clicked. “Get drunk. Be the drunken sot you expect me to be. Go to that vulgar place which I must not mention in your presence. Let go my arm, Val.”
She was all woman, then. She pulled him away from the door and the unnamed horror which lay outside. She was not the crying sort, but she cried, just the same--heartbrokenly, her head against his shoulder, as if she herself were the sinner. She clung to him, she begged him to forgive her hardness.
She learned something which every woman must learn if she would keep a little happiness in her life: she learned how to forgive the man she loved, and to trust him afterward.
