Louis Dodge

CHAPTER VII

Peterson felt the dark shadow of Harboro immediately. He looked up into the gravely inquiring face above him, and then he gave voice to a new delight. “Hello!—Harboro!” He dropped Sylvia’s hand as if she no longer existed. An almost indefinable change of expression occurred in his ruddy, radiant face. It was as if his joy at seeing Sylvia had been that which we experience in the face of a beautiful illusion; and now, seeing Harboro, it was as if he stood in the presence of a cherished reality. He grasped Harboro’s hand and dragged him down from the step. “Old Harboro!” he exclaimed.

“You two appear to have met before,” remarked Harboro, looking with quiet inquiry from Sylvia to Peterson, and back to Sylvia.

“Yes, in San Antonio,” she explained. It had been in Eagle Pass, really, but she did not want Harboro to know.

The smile on Peterson’s face had become curiously fixed. “Yes, in San Antonio,” he echoed.

“He knew my father,” added Sylvia.

“A particular friend,” said Peterson. And then, the lines of mirth on his face becoming a little less rigid and the color a little less ruddy, he added to Sylvia: “Doesn’t your father occasionally talk about his old friend Peterson?”

Harboro interrupted. “At any rate, you probably don’t know that she is Mrs. Harboro now.”

Peterson appeared to be living entirely within himself for the moment. He might have made you think of the Trojan Horse—innocuous without, but teeming with belligerent activity within. He seemed to be laughing maliciously, though without movement or noise. Then he was all frank joyousness again. “Good!” he exclaimed. He smote Harboro on the shoulder. “Good!” He stood apart, vigorously erect, childishly pleased. “Enjoying a holiday?” he asked.

And when Harboro nodded he became animated again. “You’re both going to take dinner with me—over at the Internacional. We’ll celebrate. I’ve got to take my train out in an hour—I’ve got a train now, Harboro.” (Harboro had noted his conductor’s uniform.) “We’ll just have time. We can have a talk.”

Harboro recalled a score of fellows he had known up and down the line, with most of whom he had gotten out of touch. Peterson would know about some of them. He realized how far he had been removed from the spontaneous joys of the railroad career since he had been in the office. And Peterson had always been a friendly chap, with lots of good points.

“Should you like it, Sylvia?” he asked.

She had liked Peterson, too. He had always been good-natured and generous. He had seemed often almost to understand.... “I think it would be nice,” she replied. She was afraid there was a note of guilt in her voice. She wished Harboro had refused to go, without referring the matter to her.

“I could telephone to Antonia,” he said slowly. It seemed impossible to quicken his pulses in any way. “She needn’t get anything ready.”

“I could do it,” suggested Sylvia. She felt she’d rather not be left alone with Peterson. “I could use Madame Boucher’s telephone.”

But Harboro had already laid his hand on the door. “Better let me,” he said. “I can do it quicker.” He knew that Antonia would want to remonstrate, to ask questions, and he wanted Sylvia to enjoy the occasion whole-heartedly. He went back into the milliner’s shop.

“Peterson,” said the man who remained on the sidewalk with Sylvia.

“I remember,” she replied, her lips scarcely moving, her eyes avoiding his burning glance. “And ... in San Antonio.”

They were rather early for the midday meal when they reached the Internacional; indeed, they were the first to enter the dining-room. Nevertheless the attitudes of the Mexican waiters were sufficient assurance that they might expect to be served immediately.

Peterson looked at his watch and compared it with the clock in the dining-room. “The train from Spofford is late,” he said. “It’s due now.” He pitched his head up like a dog. “There she is!” he exclaimed. There was the rumble of a train crossing the bridge. “They’ll be coming in right away.” He indicated the empty tables by a glance.

Harboro knew all about the train schedules and such matters. He knew that American tourists bound for Mexico would be coming over on that train, and that they would have an hour for dinner while their baggage was passing through the hands of the customs officials.

They had given their orders and were still waiting when the train pulled in at the station, close at hand, and in a moment the dining-room became noisy.

“Travel seems pretty light,” commented Peterson. He appeared to be trying to make conversation; he was obviously under some sort of constraint. Still, he had the genuine interest of the railroader in the subjects he mentioned.

Harboro had not observed that there was not even one woman among the travellers who entered; but Peterson noted the fact, mentioning it in the tone of one who has been deprived of a natural right. And Harboro wondered what was the matter with a man who saw the whole world, always, solely in relation to women. He sensed the fact that Peterson was not entirely comfortable. “He’s probably never grown accustomed to being in the company of a decent woman,” he concluded. He tried to launch the subject of old associates. It seemed that Peterson had been out in Durango for some time, but he had kept in touch with most of the fellows on the line to the City. He began to talk easily, and Harboro was enjoying the meeting even before the waiter came back with their food.

Sylvia was ill at ease. She was glad that Harboro and Peterson had found something to talk about. She began to eat the amber-colored grapes the waiter had placed before her. She seemed absent-minded, absorbed in her own thoughts. And then she forgot self in the contemplation of a man and a child who had come in and taken a table at the other end of the dining-room. The man wore a band of crape around his arm. The child, a little girl of five or six, had plainly sobbed herself into a condition verging upon stupor. She was not eating the dinner which had been brought to her, though she occasionally glanced with miserable eyes at one dish or another. She seemed unable to help herself, and at intervals a dry sob shook her tiny body.

Sylvia forgot the grapes beside her plate; she was looking with womanly pity at that little girl, and at the man, who seemed sunk into the depths of despair.

Peterson followed her compassionate glance. “Ah,” he explained, “it’s a chap who came up from Paila a little while back. He had his wife with him. She was dying, and she wanted to be buried in Texas. I believe he’s in some sort of business down in Paila.”

The spirit of compassion surrounded Sylvia like a halo. She had just noted that the little girl was making a stupendous effort to conquer her sobs, to “be good,” as children say. With a heroic resolve which would have been creditable to a Joan of Arc, the little thing suddenly began to try to eat from one of the dishes, but her hands trembled so that she was quite helpless. Her efforts seemed about to suffer a final collapse.

And then Sylvia pushed her chair back and arose. There was a tremulous smile on her lips as she crossed the room. She paused by that man with crape on his sleeve. “I wonder if you won’t let me help,” she said. Her voice would have made you think of rue, or of April rain. She knelt beside the child’s chair and possessed herself of a tiny hand with a persuasive gentleness that would have worked miracles. Her face was uplifted, soft, beaming, bright. She was scarcely prepared for the passionate outburst of the child, who suddenly flung forth eager hands with a cry of surrender. Sylvia held the convulsed body against her breast, tucking the distorted face up under her chin. “There!” she soothed, “there!” She carried her charge out of the room without wasting words. She had observed that when the child came to her the man had seemed on the point of surrender, too. With an effort he had kept himself inert, with a wan face. He had the dubious, sounding expression of one who stands at a door with his back to the light and looks out into the dark.

Before she had brought the child back, washed and comforted, to help her with her food, Peterson had forgotten the interruption entirely. Taking advantage of Sylvia’s absence (as if she had been an interfering factor in the meeting, but scarcely a third person), he turned keen eyes upon Harboro. “Old Harboro!” he said affectionately and musingly. Then he seemed to be swelling up, as if he were a mobile vessel filled with water that had begun to boil. He became as red as a victim of apoplexy. His eyes filled with an unholy mirth, his teeth glistened. His voice was a mere wheeze, issuing from a cataclysm of agonized mirth.

“And so you’ve come to it at last!” he managed to articulate.

“Come to what?” inquired Harboro. His level glance was disconcerting.

Peterson was on the defensive immediately. “You used not to care for women—or you claimed you didn’t.”

“Oh! I didn’t understand. I used not to care for—a certain class of women. I don’t yet.”

The threatened boiling-over process was abruptly checked, as if a lid had been lifted. “Oh!” said Peterson weakly. He gazed at a fragment of roast beef on his plate. It might have been some sort of strange insect. He frowned at it. And then his eyes blazed steadily and brightly. He did not look at Harboro again for a long time.

Sylvia came back, moving a little shyly, and pushing a strand of hair back into its place. She looked across the dining-room to where the child was talking with old-fashioned sedateness to her father. She had forgotten her tragedy—for the moment. The man appeared to have forgotten, too.

But Peterson’s dinner turned out to be a failure, after all. Conversation became desultory, listless.

They arose from their places at last and left the room. On the street they stood for a moment, but nothing was said about another meeting. Harboro thought of inviting Peterson over to the house; but he fancied Sylvia wouldn’t like it; and besides, the man’s grossness was there, more patent than ever, and it stood between them.

“Well, good-by,” said Peterson. He shook hands with Harboro and with Sylvia. But while he shook hands with Sylvia he was looking at Harboro. All that was substantial in the man’s nature was educed by men, not by women; and he was fond of Harboro. To him Sylvia was an incident, while Harboro was an episode. Harboro typified work and planning and the rebuffs of the day. Sylvia meant to him only a passing pleasure and the relaxation of the night or of a holiday.

As he went away he seemed eager to get around a corner somewhere. He seemed to be swelling up again. You might have supposed he was about to explode.

Sylvia’s dress made its appearance in due course in the house on the Quemado Road.

Sylvia could not understand why Harboro should have arranged to have it delivered according to routine, paying the duty on it. It seemed to her a waste of money, a willingness to be a victim of extortion. Why should the fact that the river was there make any difference? It was some scheme of the merchants of Eagle Pass, probably, the purpose of which was to compel you to buy from them, and pay higher prices, and take what you didn’t want.

The dress was a wonderful affair: a triumph of artful simplicity. It was white, with a suggestion of warmth: an effect produced by a second fabric underlying the visible silk. It made Sylvia look like a gentle queen of marionettes. A set of jewelry of silver filigree had been bought to go with it: circles of butterflies of infinite delicacy for bracelets, and a necklace. You would have said there was only wanting a star to bind in her hair and a wand for her to carry.

But the Mesquite Club ball came and went, and the Harboros were not invited.

Harboro was stunned. The ball was on a Friday night: and on Saturday he went up to the balcony of his house with a copy of the Guide clutched in his hand. He did not turn to the railroad news. He was interested only in the full-column, first-page account of the ball at the Mesquite Club. There was the customary amount of fine writing, including a patent straining for new adjectives to apply to familiar decorations. And then there was a list of the names of the guests. Possibly Piedras Negras hadn’t been included—and possibly he was still regarded as belonging to the railroad offices, and the people across the river.

But no, there were the names: heads of departments and the usual presentable clerks—young Englishmen with an air. The General Manager, as Harboro knew, was on a trip to Torreon; but otherwise the list of names was sufficient evidence that this first ball of the season had been a particularly ambitious affair.

Sylvia was standing alone in the dining-room while Harboro frowned darkly over the list of names before him. The physical Sylvia was in the dining-room; but her mind was up on the balcony with Harboro. She was watching him as he scowled at the first page of the Guide. But if chagrin was the essence of the thing that bothered Harboro, something far deeper caused Sylvia to stand like a slim, slumbering tree. She was frightened. Harboro would begin to ask why? And he was a man. He would guess the reason. He would begin to realize that mere obscurity on the part of his wife was not enough to explain the fact that the town refused to recognize her existence. And then...?

Antonia spoke to her once and again without being heard. Would the seÑora have the roast put on the table now, or would she wait until the seÑor came down-stairs? She decided for herself, bringing in the roast with an entirely erroneous belief that she was moving briskly. An ancient Mexican woman knows very well what the early months of marriage are. There is a flame, and then there are ashes. Then the ashes must be removed by mutual effort and embers are discovered. Then life is good and may run along without any annoyances.

When the seÑor went up-stairs with scarcely a word to the seÑora, Antonia looked within, seeming to notice nothing. But to herself she was saying: “The time of ashes.” The bustle of the domestic life was good at such a time. She brought in the roast.

Harboro, with the keen senses of a healthy man who is hungry, knew that the roast had been placed on the table, but he did not stir. The Guide had slipped from his knee to the floor, and he was looking away to the darkening tide of the Rio Grande. He had looked at his problem from every angle, and now he was coming to a conclusion which did him credit.

... They had not been invited to the ball. Well, what had he done that people who formerly had gone out of their way to be kind to him should ignore him? (It did not occur to him for an instant that the cause lay with Sylvia.) He was not a conceited man, but ... an eligible bachelor must, certainly, be regarded more interestedly than a man with a wife, particularly in a community where the young women were blooming and eligible men were scarce. They had drawn him into their circle because they had regarded him as a desirable husband for one of their young women. He remembered now how the processes of the social mill had brought him up before this young woman and that until he had met them all: how, often, he had found himself having a tÊte-À-tÊte with some kindly disposed girl whom he never would have thought of singling out for special attention. He hadn’t played their game. He might have remained a bachelor and all would have been well. There would always have been the chance of something happening. But he had found a wife outside their circle. He had, in effect, snubbed them before they had snubbed him. He remembered now how entirely absorbed he had been in his affair with Sylvia, and how the entire community had become a mere indistinct background during those days when he walked with her and planned their future. There wasn’t any occasion for him to feel offended. He had ignored the town—and the town had paid him back in his own coin.

He had conquered his black mood entirely when Sylvia came up to him. She regarded him a moment timidly, and then she put her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her with the alert kindliness which she had learned to prize.

“I’m afraid you’re fearfully disappointed,” she said.

“I was. But I’m not now.” He told her what his theory was, putting it into a few detached words. But she understood and brightened immediately.

“Do you suppose that’s it?” she asked.

“What else could it be?” He arose. “Isn’t Antonia ready?”

“I think so. And there are so many ways for us to be happy without going to their silly affairs. Imagine getting any pleasure out of sitting around watching a girl trying to get a man! That’s all they amount to, those things. We’ll get horses and ride. It’s ever so much more sensible.”

She felt like a culprit let out of prison as she followed him down into the dining-room. For the moment she was no longer the fatalist, foreseeing inevitable exposure and punishment. Nothing had come of their meeting with Peterson—an incident which had taken her wholly by surprise, and which had threatened for an instant to result disastrously. She had spent wakeful hours as a result of that meeting; but the cloud of apprehension had passed, leaving her sky serene again. And now Harboro had put aside the incident of the Mesquite Club ball as if it did not involve anything more than a question of pique.

She took her place at the end of the table, and propped her face up in her hands while Harboro carved the roast. Why shouldn’t she hope that the future was hers, to do with as she would—or, at least, as she could? That her fate now lay in her own hands, and not in every passing wind of circumstance, seemed possible, even probable. If only....

A name came into her mind suddenly; a name carved in jagged, sinister characters. If only Fectnor would stay away off there in the City.

She did not know why that name should have occurred to her just now to plague her. Fectnor was an evil bird of passage who had come and gone. Such creatures had no fixed course. He had once told her that only a fool ever came back the way he had gone. He belonged to the States, somewhere, but he would come back by way of El Paso, if he ever came back; or he would drift over toward Vera Cruz or Tampico.

Fectnor was one of those who had trod that path through the mesquite to Sylvia’s back door in the days which were ended. But he was different from the others. He was a man who was lavish with money—but he expected you to pick it up out of the dust. He was of violent moods; and he had that audacity—that taint of insanity, perhaps—which enables some men to maintain the reputation of bad men, of “killers,” in every frontier. When Fectnor had come he had seemed to assume the right of prior possession, and others had yielded to him without question. Indeed, it was usually known when the man was in town, and during these periods none came to Sylvia’s door save one. He even created the impression that all others were poachers, and that they had better be wary of him. She had been afraid of him from the first; and it had seemed to her that her only cross was removed when she heard that Fectnor had got a contract down in the interior and had gone away. That had happened a good many months ago; and Sylvia remembered now, with a feeling as of an icy hand on her heart, that if her relationships with many of the others in those old days were innocent enough—or at best marred only by a kindly folly—there had been that in her encounters with Fectnor which would forever damn her in Harboro’s eyes, if the truth ever reached him. He would have the right to call her a bad woman; and if the word seemed fantastic and unreal to her, she knew that it would not seem so to Harboro.

If only Fectnor....

She winked quickly two or three times, as if she had been dreaming. Antonia had set her plate before her, and the aroma of the roast was in her nostrils. Harboro was regarding her serenely, affectionately.

CHAPTER IX