Louis Dodge

CHAPTER XXV

It was remarked in the offices of the Mexican International Railroad about this time that something had gone wrong with Harboro. He made mistakes in his work. He answered questions at random—or he did not answer them at all. He passed people in the office and on the street without seeing them. But worse than all this, he was to be observed occasionally staring darkly into the faces of his associates, as if he would read something that had been concealed from him. He came into one room or another abruptly, as if he expected to hear his name spoken.

His associates spoke of his strange behavior—being careful only to wait until he had closed his desk for the day. They were men of different minds from Harboro’s. He considered their social positions matters which concerned them only; but they had duly noted the fact that he had been taken up in high places and then dropped without ceremony. They knew of his marriage. Certain rumors touching it had reached them from the American side.

They were rather thrilled at the prospect of a dÉnouement to the story of Harboro’s eccentricity. They used no harsher word than that. They liked him and they would have deplored anything in the nature of a misfortune overtaking him. But human beings are all very much alike in one respect—they find life a tedious thing as a rule and they derive a stimulus from the tale of downfall, even of their friends. They are not pleased that such things happen; they are merely interested, and they welcome the break in the monotony of events.

As for Harboro, he was a far more deeply changed man than they suspected. He was making a heroic effort in those days to maintain a normal bearing. It was only the little interstices of forgetfulness which enabled any one to read even a part of what was taking place in his thoughts.

He seemed unchanged to Sylvia, save that he admitted being tired or having a headache, when she sought to enliven him, to draw him up to her own plane of merriment. He was reminding himself every hour of the night and day that he must make no irretrievable blunder, that he must do nothing to injure his wife needlessly. Appearances were against her, but possibly that was all.

Yet revelations were being made to him. Facts were arraying themselves and marching before him for review. Suspicion was pounding at him like a body blow that is repeated accurately and relentlessly in the same vulnerable spot.

Why had Sylvia prevented him from knowing anything about her home life? Why had she kept him and her father apart? Why had Eagle Pass ceased to know him, immediately after his marriage? And Peterson, that day they had gone across the river together—why had Peterson behaved so clownishly, following his familiar greeting of Sylvia? Peterson hadn’t behaved like himself at all. And why had she been so reluctant to tell him about the thing that had happened in her father’s house? Was that the course an innocent woman would have pursued?

What was the explanation of these things? Was the world cruel by choice to a girl against whom nothing more serious could be charged than that she was obscure and poor?

These reflections seemed to rob Harboro of the very marrow in his bones. He would have fought uncomplainingly to the end against injustice. He would cheerfully have watched the whole world depart from him, if he had had the consciousness of righting in a good cause. He had thought scornfully of the people who had betrayed their littleness by ignoring him. But what if they had been right, and his had been the offense against them?

He found it almost unbearably difficult to walk through the streets of Eagle Pass and on across the river. What had been his strength was now his weakness. His loyalty to a good woman had been his armor; but what would right-thinking people say of his loyalty to a woman who had deceived him, and who felt no shame in continuing to deceive him, despite his efforts to surround her with protection and love?

And yet ... what did he know against Sylvia? She had gone riding—that was all. That, and the fact that she had made a secret of the matter, and had perhaps given him a false account of the manner in which she had paid for her outings.

He must make sure of much more than he already knew. Again and again he clinched his hands in the office and on the street. He would not wrong the woman he loved. He would not accept the verdict of other people. He would have positive knowledge of his own before he acted.

Harboro had admitted a drop of poison to his veins and it was rapidly spreading to every fibre of his being. He was losing the power to think clearly where Sylvia was concerned. Even the most innocent acts of hers assumed new aspects; and countless circumstances which in the past had seemed merely puzzling to him arose before him now charged with deadly significance.

His days became a torture to him. He could not lose himself in a crowd, and draw something of recuperation from a sense of obscurity, a feeling that he was not observed. He seemed now to be cruelly visible to every man and woman on both sides of the river. Strangers who gave more than the most indifferent glance to his massive strength and romantic, swarthy face, with its fine dark eyes and strong lines and the luxuriant black mustache, became to him furtive witnesses to his shame—secret commentators upon his weakness. He recalled pictures of men held in pillories for communities to gibe at—and he felt that his position was not unlike theirs. He had at times a frantic realization that he had unconquerable strength, but that by some ironic circumstance he could not use it.

If his days were sapping his vigor and driving him to the verge of madness, his nights were periods of a far more destructive torture. He had resolved that Sylvia should see no change in him; he was trying to persuade himself that there was no change in him. Yet at every tenderly inquiring glance of hers he felt that the blood must start forth on his forehead, that body and skull must burst from the tumult going on within them.

It was she who brought matters to a climax.

“Harboro, you’re not well,” she said one evening when her hand about his neck had won no response beyond a heavy, despairing gesture of his arm. His eyes were fixed on vacancy and were not to be won away from their unseeing stare.

“You’re right, Sylvia,” he said, trying to arouse himself. “I’ve been trying to fight against it, but I’m all out of sorts.”

“You must go away for a while,” she said. She climbed on his knee and assumed a prettily tyrannical manner. “You’ve been working too hard. They must give you a vacation, and you must go entirely away. For two weeks at least.”

The insidious poison that was destroying him spread still further with a swift rush at that suggestion. She would be glad to have him out of the way for a while. Were not unfaithful wives always eager to send their husbands away? He closed his eyes resolutely and his hands gripped the arms of his chair. Then a plan which he had been vaguely shaping took definite form. She was really helping him to do the thing he felt he must do.

He turned to her heavily like a man under the influence of a drug. “Yes, I’ll go away for a while,” he agreed. “I’ll make arrangements right away—to-morrow.”

“And I’ll go with you,” she said with decision, “and help to drive the evil hours away.” She had his face between her hands and was smiling encouragingly.

The words were like a dagger thrust. Surely, they were proof of fidelity, of affection, and in his heart he had condemned her.

“Would you like to go with me, Sylvia?” he asked. His voice had become husky.

She drew back from him as if she were performing a little rite. Her eyes filled with tears. “Harboro!” she cried, “do you need to ask me that?” Her fingers sought his face and traveled with ineffable tenderness from line to line. It was as if she were playing a little love-lyric of her own upon a beautiful harp. And then she fell upon his breast and pressed her cheek to his. “Harboro!” she cried again. She had seen only the suffering in his eyes.

He held her in his arms and leaned back with closed eyes. A hymn of praise was singing through all his being. She loved him! she loved him! And then that hymn of praise sank to pianissimo notes and was transformed by some sort of evil magic to something shockingly different. It was as if a skillful yet unscrupulous musician were constructing a revolting medley, placing the sacred song in juxtaposition with the obscene ditty. And the words of the revolting thing were “Runyon and Sylvia! Runyon and Sylvia!”

He opened his eyes resolutely. “We’re making too much over a little matter,” he said with an obvious briskness which hid the cunning in his mind. “I suppose I’ve been sticking to things too close. I’ll take a run down the line and hunt up some of the old fellows—down as far as Torreon at least. I’ll rough it a little. I suspect things have been a little too soft for me here. Maybe some of the old-timers will let me climb up into a cab and run an engine again. That’s the career for a man—with the distance rushing upon you, and your engine swaying like a bird in the air! That will fix me!”

He got up with an air of vigor, helping Sylvia to her feet. “It wouldn’t be the sort of experience a woman could share,” he added. “You’ll stay here at home and get a little rest yourself. I must have been spoiling things for you, too.” He looked at her shrewdly.

“Oh, no,” she said honestly. “I’m only sorry I didn’t realize earlier that you need to get away.”

She went out of the room with something of the regal industry of the queen bee, as if she were the natural source of those agencies which sustain and heal. He heard her as she busied herself in their bedroom. He knew that she was already making preparations for that journey of his. She was singing a soft, wordless song in her throat as she worked.

And Harboro, with an effect of listening with his eyes, stood in his place for a long interval, and then shook his head slowly.

He could not believe in her; he would not believe in her. At least he would not believe in her until she had been put to the test and met the test triumphantly. He could not believe in her; and yet it seemed equally impossible for him to hold with assurance to his unbelief.

Returning from the office the next forenoon, Harboro stopped at the head of the short street on which the chief stable of Eagle Pass was situated.

He had had no difficulty in obtaining a leave of absence, which was to be for one week with the privilege of having it extended to twice that time if he felt he needed it. In truth, his immediate superior had heartily approved of the plan of his going for an outing. He had noticed, he admitted, that Harboro hadn’t been altogether fit of late. He was glad he had decided to go away for a few days. He good-naturedly insisted upon the leave of absence taking effect immediately.

And Harboro had turned back toward Eagle Pass pondering darkly.

He scanned the street in the direction of the stable. A stable-boy was exercising a young horse in the street, leading it back and forth, but otherwise the thoroughfare seemed somnolently quiet.

He sauntered along until he came to the stable entrance. He had the thought of entering into a casual conversation with the proprietor. He would try to get at the actual facts touching that mistake the stable people had made. He would not question them too pointedly. He would not betray the fact that he believed something was wrong. He would put his questions casually, innocently.

The boy was just turning in with the horse he had been exercising. He regarded Harboro expectantly. He was the boy who had brought the horses on the night of that ride to the Quemado.

“I didn’t want anything,” said Harboro; “that is, nothing in particular. I’ll be likely to need a horse in a day or two, that’s all.”

He walked leisurely into the shady, cool place of pungent odors. He had just ascertained that the proprietor was out when his attention was attracted by a dog which lay with perfect complacency under a rather good-looking horse.

“A pretty dangerous place, isn’t it?” he asked of the stable-boy.

“You would think so, wouldn’t you? But it isn’t. They’re friends. You’ll always find them together when they can get together. When Prince—that’s the horse—is out anywhere, we have to pen old Mose up to keep him from following. Once when a fellow hired Prince to make a trip over to Spofford, old Mose got out, two or three hours later, and followed him all the way over. He came back with him the next day, grinning as if he’d done something great. We never could figure out how old Mose knew where he had gone. Might have smelled out his trail. Or he might have heard them talking about going to Spofford, and understood. The more you know about dogs the less you know about them—same as humans.”

He went back farther into the stable and busied himself with a harness that needed mending.

Harboro was looking after him with peculiar intensity. He looked at the horse, which stood sentinel-like, above the drowsing dog. Then he engaged the stable-boy in further conversation.

“A pretty good-looking horse, too,” he said. And when the boy nodded without enthusiasm, he added: “By the way, I suppose it’s usually your job to get horses ready when people want them?”

“Yes, mostly.”

Harboro put a new note of purposefulness into his voice. “I believe you send a horse around for Mrs. Harboro occasionally?”

“Oh, yes; every week or so, or oftener.”

Harboro walked to the boy’s side and drew his wallet from his pocket deliberately. “I wish,” he said, “that the next time Mrs. Harboro needs a horse you’d send this fine animal to her. I have an idea it would please her. Will you remember?” He produced a bank-note and placed it slowly in the boy’s hand.

The boy looked up at him dubiously, and then understood. “I’ll remember,” he said.

Harboro turned away, but at the entrance he stopped. “You’d understand, of course, that the dog wouldn’t be allowed to go along,” he called back.

“Oh, yes. Old Mose would be penned up. I’d see to it.”

“And I suppose,” said Harboro finally, “that if I’d telephone to you any day it wouldn’t take you long to get a horse ready for me, would it? I’ve been thinking of using a horse a little myself.”

He was paying little attention to the boy’s assurances as he went away. His step had become a little firmer as he turned toward home. He seemed more like himself when he entered the house and smiled into his wife’s alertly questioning eyes.

“It’s all right, I’m to get away,” he explained. “I’m away now, strictly speaking. I want to pack up a few things some time to-day and get the early morning train for Torreon.”

She seemed quite gleeful over this cheerful information. She helped him make selection of the things he would need, and she was ready with many helpful suggestions. It seemed that his train left the Eagle Pass station at five o’clock in the morning—a rather awkward hour; but he did not mind, he said.

They spent the day together without any restraints, seemingly. There were a good many things to do, and Sylvia was happy in the thought of serving him. If he regarded her now and again with an expression of smouldering fire in his eyes she was unaware of the fact. She sang as she worked, interrupting her song at frequent intervals to admonish him against this forgetfulness or that.

She seemed to be asleep when, an hour before daybreak, he stirred and left her side. But she was awake immediately.

“Is it time to go?” she asked sleepily.

“I hoped I needn’t disturb you,” he said. “Yes, I ought to be getting on my way to the station.”

She lay as if she were under a spell while he dressed and made ready to go out. Her eyes were wide open, though she seemed to see nothing. Perhaps she was merely stupid as a result of being awakened; or it may be that indefinable, foreboding thoughts filled her mind.

When he came to say good-by to her she put her arms around his neck. “Try to have a good time,” she said, “and come back to me your old self again.”

She felt fearfully alone as she heard him descend the stairs. She held her head away from the pillow until she heard the sharp closing of the street-door. “He’s gone,” she said. She shivered a little and drew the covers more closely about her.

Runyon rode out past Harboro’s house that afternoon.

Sylvia, in her place by the window, watched him come. In the distance he assumed a new aspect in her eyes. She thought of him impersonally—as a thrilling picture. She rejoiced in the sight of him as one may in the spectacle of an army marching with banners and music.

And then he became to her a glorious troubadour, having no relationship with prosaic affairs and common standards, but a care-free creature to be loved and praised because of his song; to be heard gladly and sped on his way with a sigh.

The golden notes of his songs out at the Quemado echoed in her ears like the mournful sound of bells across lonely fields. Her heart ached again at the beauty of the songs he had sung.

... She went down-stairs and stood by the gate, waiting for him.

They talked for a little while, Runyon bending down toward her. She thought of him as an incomparably gay and happy creature. His musical powers gave him a mystic quality to her. She caressed his horse’s mane and thrilled as she touched it, as if she were caressing the man—as if he were some new and splendid type of centaur. And Runyon seemed to read her mind. His face became more ruddy with delight. His flashing eyes suggested sound rather than color—they were laughing.

Their conference ended and Runyon rode on up the hill. Sylvia carried herself circumspectly enough as she went back into the house, but she was almost giddy with joy over the final words of that conference. Runyon had lowered his voice almost to a whisper, and had spoken with intensity as one sometimes speaks to children.

She did not ride that afternoon. It appeared that all her interests for the time being were indoors. She spent much of her time among the things which reminded her most strongly of Harboro; she sought out little services she could perform for him, to delight him when he returned. She talked with more than common interest with Antonia, following the old woman from kitchen to dining-room and back again. She seemed particularly in need of human companionship, of sympathy. She trusted the old servant without reserve. She knew that here was a woman who would neither see nor speak nor hear evil where either she or Harboro was concerned. Not that her fidelity to either of them was particular; it was the home itself that was sacred. The flame that warmed the house and made the pot boil was the thing to be guarded at any cost. Any winds that caused this flame to waver were evil winds and must not be permitted to blow. The old woman was covertly discerning; but she had the discretion common to those who know that homes are built only by a slow and patient process—though they may be destroyed easily.

When it came time to light the lamps Sylvia went up into her boudoir. She liberated the imprisoned currents up in the little mediÆval lanterns. She drew the blinds so that she should feel quite alone. She had put on one of the dresses which made her look specially slim and soft and childlike. She knew the garment became her, because it always brought a tender expression to Harboro’s eyes.

And then she sat down and waited.

At eight o’clock Runyon came. So faint was his summons at the door that it might have been a lost bird fluttering in the dark. But Sylvia heard it. She descended and opened the door for him. In the dimly lighted hall she whispered: “Are you sure nobody saw you come?”

He took both her hands into his and replied: “Nobody!”

They mounted the steps like two children, playing a slightly hazardous game. “The cat’s away,” she said, her eyes beaming with joy.

He did not respond in words but his eyes completed the old saying.

They went up into the boudoir, and he put away his coat and hat.

They tried to talk, each seeking to create the impression that what was being said was quite important. But neither heard what the other said. They were like people talking in a storm or in a house that is burning down.

He took his place at the piano after a while. It seemed that he had promised to sing for her—for her alone. He glanced apprehensively toward the windows, as if to estimate the distance which separated him from the highway. It was no part of their plan that he should be heard singing in Sylvia’s room by casual passers-by on the Quemado Road.

He touched the keys lightly and when he sang his voice seemed scarcely to carry across the room. There was a rapid passage on the keyboard, like the patter of a pony’s hoofs in the distance, and then the words came:

It was a work of art in miniature. The crescendo passages were sung relatively with that introductory golden whisper as a standard. For the moment Sylvia forgot that the singer’s shoulders were beautifully compact and vigorous. She was visualizing the Bedouin who came on his horse to declare his passion.

She stood near him, spellbound by the animation of his face, the seeming reality of his plea. He was not a singer; he was the Bedouin lover.

There was a fanatic ardor in the last phrase:

He turned lightly away from the piano. He was smiling radiantly. He threw out his arms with an air of inviting approval; but the gesture was to her an invitation, a call. She was instantly on her knees beside him, drawing his face down to hers. His low laughter rippled against her face as he put his arms around her and drew her closer to him.

They were rejoicing in an atmosphere of dusky gold. The light from the mediÆval lanterns fell on her hair and on his laughing face which glowed as with a kind of universal good-will. A cloud of delicate incense seemed to envelop them as their lips met.

And then the shadow fell. It fell when the door opened quietly and Harboro came into the room.

He closed the door behind him and regarded them strangely—as if his face had died, but as if his eyes retained the power of seeing.

Sylvia drew away from Runyon, not spasmodically, but as if she were moving in her sleep. She left one hand on Runyon’s sleeve. She was regarding Harboro with an expression of hopeless bewilderment. She seemed incapable of speaking. You would not have said she was frightened. You would have thought: “She has been slain.”

Harboro’s lips were moving, but he seemed unable to speak immediately.

It was Sylvia who broke the silence.

“You shouldn’t have tricked me, Harboro!” she said. Her voice had the mournful quality of a dove’s.

He seemed bewildered anew by that. The monstrous inadequacy of it was too much for him. He had tricked her, certainly, and that wasn’t a manly thing to do. He seemed to be trying to get his faculties adjusted. Yet the words he uttered finally were pathetically irrelevant, it would have seemed. He addressed Runyon.

“Are you the sort of man who would talk about—about this sort of thing?” he asked.

Runyon had not ceased to regard him alertly with an expression which can be described only as one of infinite distaste—with the acute discomfort of an irrepressible creature who shrinks from serious things.

“I am not,” he said, as if his integrity were being unwarrantably questioned.

Harboro’s voice had been strained like that of a man who is dying of thirst. He went on with a disconcerting change of tone. He was trying to speak more vigorously, more firmly; but the result was like some talking mechanism uttering words without shading them properly. “I suppose you are willing to marry her?” he asked.

It was Sylvia who answered this. “He does not wish to marry me,” she said.

Harboro seemed staggered again. “I want his answer to that,” he insisted.

“Well, then, I don’t want to marry him,” continued Sylvia.

Harboro ignored her. “What do you say, Runyon?”

“In view of her unwillingness, and the fact that she is already married——”

“Runyon!” The word was pronounced almost like a snarl. Runyon had adopted a facetious tone which had stirred Harboro’s fury.

Something of the resiliency of Runyon’s being vanished at that tone in the other man’s voice. He looked at Harboro ponderingly, as a child may look at an unreasoning parent. And then he became alert again as Harboro threw at him contemptuously: “Go on; get out!”