Plain Mary Smith Part 14

And so help me! He would have struck! Never tell me a man is this and that. A man is everything. In his right mind, nothing an Apache invented would have forced Arthur Saxton to do such a thing--no fear on earth, nor no profit on earth would have tempted him for an instant. But now he would have struck.

I grabbed his wrist.

"You fool!" I cried, "what are you doing?" He clipped me bang in the eye. Saxton was a strong man, weakened by whisky. I was twice as strong and braced with rage.

I whirled him around and slammed him on the floor.

Something cold pressed against my temple. It was a revolver in the hands of Perez. "Your life for it, if you hurt him," said he.

For a second, I meant to quit that place in disgust. Then the size of it took hold of me. It doesn't matter whether a thing is wise or not--in fact, you never can tell whether a thing is wise or not--but if it has a size to it, it suits me.

I thought for a minute. There we stood, me holding Saxton, Perez holding me--just that little, cold touch, you'd think might be pleasant on a hot day.

"I hope you ain't nervous, Mr. Perez?" says I, to gain time.

"What?" says he, kind of befuzzled. "No, I am not nervous."

"That's right," says I, hearty. "Don't try to see how hard that trigger pulls, or you'll disturb my thoughts." Then I made up my mind.

"Saxton," says I, "if there's a remnant in you of the man you once was, get your friend to leave, and take the licking you deserve."

I looked down at him--the man was back again! Talk about your moral suasion, I tell you there's a time when only one thing counts. I'd done more for Arthur Saxton by slamming him down on the floor than the doctors and preachers could have brought about in ten years. He went down _hard_, mind you. Yes, sir, there was the old Saxton, with his forehead frowned up because his head hurt, but the old, kindly, funny little smile on his lips.

"Perez," he said, "run away and let the bad little boy get his spanking--although, Bill," he went on, "if it's reformation you're after, I don't need it." He laughed up at me. "You think I'm trying to dodge payment, but, so help me, I'm not, Billy boy."

To see him like that, his laughing self again, after the nightmare we'd just been through, set me to sniveling--darn it, I was excited and only a kid, but I cried--yes, I cried. And Perez, he cried.

"N-nice way for you to act," says I, "and s-spoil all a poor boy's got to respect."

The awful slush of that struck us all, and we broke out into a laugh together--a wibbly kind of laugh, but it served.

Arthur got up and dusted his clothes. He shook fearfully. I never saw a man in worse shape and still be able to stand. Two weeks of a steady diet of French brandy on top of trouble will put a man outside the ordinary run, or inside his long home.

It was fine, the way he gathered himself. He brought something like what he ought to be out of the wreck in two minutes.

"Now," he says steady, "I owe you fellows something--I owe you a great deal, Perez--I'd started to finish on the alcohol route. I don't like the company I keep. If I'm going to die I'll die with a better man than you stopped, Bill. In fact, I think my kid fit is over. I reckon I'll try to live like a man, and as a start I'm going to tell you both what ails me--to have it out for once. So help me, it isn't for myself--it's for you, Henry. You've invested time and money in me, and you sha'n't lose it. If you know what you're up against, you may be able to help me help myself. I'm sick of myself. All my life I have kept my mouth shut, out of a foolish pride. The little sacrifice will be something on the altar of friendship, Henry, old man. Come along to my room."

XI

SAXTON'S STORY

We seated ourselves around the table in Saxton's bedroom.

"Perez," said Saxton, "you know from the beginning the boy and girl love affair between me and Mary Smith. It was no small thing for me. I cared then and I care now. I think the one thing which stood between Mary and myself as the greatest point of difference was my trick of stripping things to the bare facts. She liked romance, whether fact or not; I liked the romance that lay in fact. She cared for me--that is certain, but some reports when I was about nineteen to the effect that I was raising the devil, and had led a weak-headed fellow astray with me, seemed to give the girl a permanent twist against me. Now here's the truth. In our little town we had a number of men who earned comfortable fortunes and then laid back. Their boys, with nothing to do and nothing in their heads, acted as one might suppose. They took to drinking and gambling, not because they were bad but simply to pa.s.s the time; the town was dull enough, G.o.d knows. Pretty soon the wilder crowd became an open scandal. Among them were some of my best friends, and I went with 'em, with as sincere a desire to line 'em up with decency again as any long-faced deacon in the town; but instead of spouting piety, I thought I would play their game until I could get 'em to play mine, that is, I took a drink with 'em, and I played some poker with 'em, all the while trying to show the strongest head and the most checks when it came to 'cash-up' in the poker game. I felt that if I could beat 'em, what I said would go.

"There was one mean scoundrel in the bunch--a hypocrite to the marrow.

He really was to blame for the worst outbreaks, but he pulled the long face when among respectable people. I wanted to get the best of that lad. If you're going to lead drinking men and gamblers, you've got to be the best drinker and the best card player in the bunch. The rest were empty-headed boys, who'd have taken up religion as quickly as faro bank, if some one led 'em to it. Well, I think I'd won out, if my friend the hypocrite, who was foxy enough in his way, hadn't back-capped me, by telling the town the evil of my ways. The first break was with my father. The news came to him carefully prepared. When I tried to explain my side, the disgusted incredulity of his face stopped me almost before I began. Father gave me my choice: to leave his house or to leave the company I kept. I cannot bear to be doubted. I made a choice. I left both the house and the company I kept. Father had been good to me; knowing how he felt, I would not disgrace him. Then I made my living with my fiddle.

"Mary at first believed in me, but they talked her out of it. If she'd doubted of her own mind, I wouldn't have cared so much, but to know me as she did, and then prefer the word of outsiders--well, I roared at her like a maniac; it was much like now, as sweetly reasonable and all. No wonder the girl was frightened. I haven't a doubt she felt that entertaining an interest for me was little better than criminal. At the same time the interest was there, and, like myself, she took a middle course by plunging with what heart she could into a dreary and hide-bound church. I drove her to it, and I paid the bill. If I could bring one half the sense into my own affairs that I can into some outside thing, I suppose I should sometime succeed. A little coaxing, an appeal for sympathy,--any show of gentleness on my part might have brought her round.--As we are, we are. I demanded, and here am I.

"I made it up with father afterwards; he didn't understand, but he believed. You see I wouldn't take a cent from him. He offered me money, but I said flat that as I didn't please him, I wouldn't take it. Father had been a business man all his days, and money had become his measure.

If I refused money I meant business. That's no sneer--a good old man was my father. But Mary stood me off. When I'm not despairing, I know she cares. I have learned how much conventions mean to a woman--well, I don't blame 'em. I wish I had a few conventions against which I could lean and rest this minute. Then comes a man named Belknap--"

"Why, I have just met him, Saxton," said I.

"Did you, Bill? I am thankful for it. I have gotten so my heart aches for facts to back me. What is your judgment on the gentleman?"

"Smooth as a sausage skin," says I.

"All of that," says Saxton; "he is one subtle scoundrel."

"But he isn't so hard to get on to, neither!"

"For a man, no," says Saxton; "but Belknap has information that you, nor Perez, nor I, nor any man who is a man has, and that is the difference between a woman's thinking and a man's thinking. We know a man will swallow all manner of guff in politics; he'll buy a gold brick from a cheap blatherskite. That sort of thing is man's folly. I don't pretend to understand women's follies, but Belknap does. He can talk such nonsense to a seemingly sensible woman that you fancy she's laughing at him, and behold! when you look to see the smile, you find the lady in tears.

"When he came into the game he was young. He took an instant interest in Mary, and at once used his smooth tongue, and his perfect knowledge of a woman's character, to win her. He worked through her vanity, through her virtues, and through all the avenues his peculiar intelligence opened to him. He gained her attention from the first, and now his power over her is something horrible to me. Again, had it not been my own affair, how easily I could have beaten him! If only my head and not my heart were in it--yet, I do not care for the game when my heart isn't in it, so where I don't care, I don't even try. This makes a jolly life.

"Our friend, Belknap, has a great work to do, converting these heathen Catholics to the Protestant faith, for which he has schools and missions, and for which also he needs teachers, and later, a wife, so Mary leaves home for here. Of course, he hasn't breathed a word of anything but the Great Work, and his lonely struggle, and queer as it is, and scoundrel that he is, I know he partly believes in himself.

Sentimental advances would frighten her off. He bides his time, does Mr.

Spider, and lets habit of mind crush out all the girl's natural instincts until she has no resource but him."

"I thought you said he was of a deep understanding in regard to the women?" said Perez.

"He is."

"And he will suppress the natural feelings?"

"Yes."

"Mine has been a lonely life, Arthur, of reality," said Perez; "_you_ are my affection--but when the Senor Belknap has suppressed the natural feelings of any woman, he has but to ask, and my store, and my ranches, and my cattle are his."

Saxton shook his head wearily. "You don't know him, Enrique."

"I have interrupt," said Perez; "pardon!"

"There is this much more," said Saxton. "On the trip across I saw I had regained some of my standing in Mary's eyes, enough, at least, to send me up into cloudland. My heart went out to every creature I saw, and I certainly was a fool not to know I'd do something idiotic. I did it. One night, walking from the store, a woman stopped and spoke to me.

Ordinarily I would have pushed on as easily as might be, but in this woman a hint of delicacy still lingered. There was something in her face that shone like the last of day, in the way she carried herself, in the way she held her head, there was still womanly pride; in short, she was the one out of a thousand for whom there is hope. She came straight to me out of the crowd, with the same faith a dog has often shown me. That is the kind of thing against which I am defenseless, and I am glad of it. Her story was short, plain, honest. She excused nothing, she made no attempt to put herself in a better light. No man could have talked squarer or more to the point; she was tired of the life she led, she had an impulse to change, she did not know whether the impulse would last or not, she had not a cent, but if I would help her she would make an effort. No man with a heart in his body is going to refuse an appeal like that. You know I am not quite a boy to be fooled by whining. I realized the chances against her lasting out, and so did she. The thing was genuine, whatever the result. It appeared to me that to hand her money as you'd throw a plate of cold fodder to a tramp, was not just the proper course of a man who thought of himself as a gentleman. Also I admit that I fancied myself standing as somewhat of a hero in Mary's eyes. So I treated my poor new friend as though she were a decent woman.

I never preached at her,--I had had enough of preaching,--but simply gave her a 'good day,' and if a kind word once in a while had any weight, she got it. There was nothing in all this I could not have explained to Mary to my own credit. I did not like the kind of thing that woman stood for. She had no attraction for me in any way, shape, or manner, but Mr. Belknap saw his opportunity. He has this town plastered with spies; your house is no safeguard against his meddling. When he found out, he gave Mary a revised edition of my conduct. I can imagine him doing it--his sorrowfully deploring my fall; the insinuations more damaging than any bald statement; the sighs and half-finished sentences.

He had the start and he used it well. When I next went to see Mary I got a queer reception; among other pleasant things, she said my coming was an insult, and for the soft answer that turneth away wrath she replied that I had degraded myself beyond hope, when I asked her what in the world was the matter. Of course, I went crazy on the instant; the surprise of it took away what little sense I had. A minute's time and I might have gathered wits to present my case--"

Here old Sax got excited again. He looked at both of us, as if he thought that we doubted him.

"I tell you again," he said, "that that other woman was nothing to me at all, except a poor pitiful creature that I would have been a brute not to help. I am speaking honestly as a man to his two friends--"