Children of the Desert Part 11

Much of her strength and pride returned to her at this. Whatever the truth was, she knew that Fectnor had no right to bring such a charge against her. "Your language is very quaint at times," she said. A curve of disdain hovered about her lips. "I'm not aware of being, or of ever having been, loose in any way. I can't think where such a word originated."

"You know what I mean well enough. And some of those young fellows--the soldiers and railroaders--I don't suppose any of them have got anything on you, either?"

"They haven't, Fectnor!" she exclaimed hotly. She resolved to have nothing more to say to him. She felt that his brutality gave her the right to have done with him. And then her glance was arrested by his powerful hand, where it lay on the table beside him. It was blunt-fingered and broad and red, with the back covered by yellow hairs which extended down to the dabs of finger-nails.

He seemed to read her mind, and in answer he took up a heavy pewter cup and held it toward her. For an instant he permitted her to scrutinize the cup, and then his fingers closed. He opened his hand and the shapeless ma.s.s of pewter fell to the floor. He threw his head back with the ecstasy of perfect physical fitness. His laughter arose, almost hysterically.

"Fectnor!" she cried, standing tense and white before him, "I think you're all brute--just common, hopeless brute."

He became perfectly serious; but presently he regarded her with a flicker of humor in his eyes, she thought. "You didn't say that as if you meant it, Sylvia," he declared. "You didn't say it as if you quite believed it.

But I'm going to show you that you're right. What we've been together, Sylvia, you and I, we're going to continue to be until we both agree to quit. That's what you may call justice. And so far I'm not agreeing to quit."

He came toward her then, and she perceived that his bearing had altered completely. He seemed moved by some impulse stronger than himself--as if it were quite outside himself.

She felt that her heart had suddenly ceased to beat. A leopard crouching before her on a limb could not have seemed more pitiless, more terrible.

She had sprung to the door opening into her father's room before he could reach her. Her fingers shot the bolt and the door was open. And then she knew she had made a fatal mistake in holding that long and quiet parley with the beast that had trapped her. She had led her father, doubtless, to believe that it was an amicable talk that had been going on behind the closed door. She knew now that at the first instant of Fectnor's appearance she should have given battle and cried for help.

Now, looking into the adjoining room, while Fectnor's grip closed upon her wrist, she saw the front door quietly close. Her father had gone out.

CHAPTER XIV.

Sylvia climbed the hill in the dusk.

A casual observer would have remarked that all was not right with her.

Beneath a calm exterior something brooded. You might have supposed that some of the trivial things of existence had gone wrong: that a favorite servant had left her, or that the dressmaker had failed to keep an appointment. Sylvia was not an unschooled creature who would let down the scroll of her life's story to be read by every idle eye.

But the G.o.ds of the desert, if any such there be--the spirit of the yucca and the cactus and the sage--must have known by the lines of that immobile face, by the unseeing stare in those weary eyes, that some fundamental change had come over the woman who pa.s.sed along that road. Sylvia had seemed almost like a happy child when she descended the hill an hour before. It was a woman who fashioned a new philosophy of life who now returned.

It was her own father who had bade her come; it was the man she loved--for whom she had meant to create her life anew--who had bade her go; and it was one to whom she had never told an untruth, for whose pleasure she had been beautiful and gay, who had destroyed her.

She had not fully realized how beautiful a thing her new security had been; how deeply in her nature the roots of a new hope, of a decent orderliness had taken hold. But the transplanted blossom which had seemed to thrive naturally under the fostering care of Harboro--as if it had never bloomed elsewhere than in his heart--had been ruthlessly torn up again. The seeming gain had been turned into a hideous loss.

And so over that road where a woman with illusions had pa.s.sed, a philosopher who no longer dreamed returned.

Harboro, from his seat on the balcony, saw her coming. And something which surrounded her like an aura of evil startled him. He dropped his newspaper to the floor and leaned forward, his pulse disturbed, his muscles tense.

As she drew nearer he arose with the thought of hurrying down-stairs to meet her; and then it occurred to him that she would wish to see him alone, away from the averted eyes of old Antonia, which saw everything.

A little later he heard her coming up the stairs with heavy, measured steps. And in that moment he warned himself to be calm, to discount the nameless fears--surely baseless fears--which a.s.sailed him.

She appeared in the doorway and stood, inert, looking at him as from a great distance.

"Well, Sylvia?" he said gently. He was seated now, and one arm was stretched out over the arm of his chair invitingly. He tried to smile calmly.

She did not draw any nearer to him. Her face was almost expressionless, save that her eyes seemed slowly to darken as she regarded him. And then he saw that certain muscles in her face twitched, and that this tendency swiftly strengthened.

"Sylvia!" he exclaimed, alarmed. He arose and took a step toward her.

She staggered toward him and rested her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were averted, and Harboro realized with a pang that she did not touch him with the familiar touch which seemed to call to something within him to respond, to make itself manifest. She was merely seeking for support such as a wall or a gate might afford to one who is faint.

He touched her face with his hand and brought it about so that he could read her eyes; but this movement she resisted--not irritably, but hopelessly. He slipped an arm around her yearningly, and then the storm within her broke.

He thought she must be suffocating. She gasped for breath, lifting her chin high. She was shaken with sobs. She clasped his head in her hands and placed her face against it--but the movement was despairing, not loving.

He tried again to look into her eyes; and presently he discovered that they were quite dry. It seemed she had lost the power to weep; yet her sobs became rhythmic, even--like those of any woman who grieves deeply and is still uncomforted.

He held her tenderly and spoke her name over and over. The tears would come soon, and when she had wept he could ask her to tell him what it was that had wounded her. He was suffering cruelly; he was in despair. But he admonished himself firmly to bear with her, to comfort her, to wait.

And at last, as if indeed she had been leaning against a wall for support until she could recover herself, she drew away from him. She was almost calm again; but Harboro realized that she was no nearer to him than she had been when first she had climbed the stairs and stood before him.

He placed a firm hand on her shoulder and guided her to a chair. He sat down and pulled her gently down to him. "Now, Sylvia!" he said with firmness.

She was kneeling beside him, her elbows on his knees, her face in her hands. But the strange remoteness was still there. She would not look at him.

"Come!" he admonished. "I am waiting."

She looked at him then; but she wore the expression of one who does not understand.

"Something has gone wrong," he said. "You see, I've not been impatient with you. But you ought to tell me now."

"You mean I ought to tell you what's gone wrong?"

He was startled by the even, lifeless quality of her voice. "Of course!"

"In just a word or two, I suppose?"

"If you can."

She knelt where she could look away toward the west--toward Mexico; and she noted, with mild surprise, that a new moon hung low in the sky, sinking slowly into the desert. It seemed to her that years had pa.s.sed since she had seen the moon--a full moon, swinging, at this hour of the evening, in the eastern sky.

"Come, Sylvia!" It was Harboro's urgent voice again.

"If I only could!" she said, moving a little in token of her discomfort.

"Why not?"

"I mean, if any of us could ever say what it is that has gone wrong.

Everything has gone wrong. From the very beginning. And now you ask me: 'What's gone wrong?' just as you might ask, 'What time is it, Sylvia?' or, 'Who is it coming up the road?' I can't tell you what's gone wrong. If I talked to you a week--a month--I couldn't tell you half of it. I don't believe I ever could. I don't believe I know."

These vagaries might have touched Harboro at another time; they might have alarmed him. But for the moment wrath stirred in him. He arose almost roughly. "Very well," he said, "I shall go to your father. I shall have the facts."

This angry reference to her father--or perhaps it was the roughness of his withdrawal from her--affected her in a new way.

"No, you must not do that!" she cried despairingly, and then the tears came suddenly--the tears which had stubbornly refused to flow.

"There," he said, instantly tender again, "you'll feel better soon. I won't be impatient with you."

But Sylvia's tears were only incidental to some lesser fear or grief. They did not spring from the wrong she had suffered, or from the depths of her nature, which had been dwarfed and darkened. She listlessly pulled a chair into a better position and sat down where she need not look at Harboro.