MARCIA HADDON

DAVID JOSLIN wished nothing so much as to be quite alone. He did not rejoin his companions on the hill. Pleading his errand at Windsor, he set out at once down stream with no companion other than his own bitter thoughts. It seemed to him he never had known a longer or more terrible day, nor had the future ever appeared to him so hopeless and foredoomed.

It was yet daylight when he arrived at the little town, and he turned once more to the boarding house of the Widow Dunham. As he reached the gate he caught the fragrance of a cigar whose aroma was unusual in these parts. Unwilling to meet strangers, he halted an instant; but finding no way out of it, he advanced, an odd sort of conviction suddenly in his mind. Sitting there, almost as they had sat two years ago, he saw two figures, both familiar to him.

“Well, well,” growled the raucous voice of James Haddon as he turned. “What, what? We meet again! How’s this happen, stranger? Where you been all the while?”

Joslin shook the hand of each simply, without a word.

Haddon was heavier, redder, yet more coarsened by his manner of life, than when he last had seen him. The flesh hung puffily on his cheeks, drooped from his folded neck above his collar. His prominent eyes were yet more prominent and bulging.

As for his wife, it seemed more than ever as though she did not belong with him, as though she degraded herself by sitting even thus close to him.

“We didn’t expect to see you here, Mr. Joslin,” said Marcia Haddon—“nor anywhere else,” with a faint smile.

“I always planned one day to explain to you, Ma’am,” said Joslin. “I didn’t want you to think me ungrateful. I may have seemed so.”

Marcia Haddon’s quick senses caught the increased dignity about the man. She noted also, keenly, womanlike, the new shade of sadness on his unsmiling face, and wondered what was the cause.

But Haddon himself had no interest in these matters. “Well,” he growled, “I’m not going to say I was tickled to death at the way you treated us. You double-crossed me—you threw me down, that’s all.”

“Mr. Haddon,” said David Joslin quietly. “I did not double-cross you. I never did that in my life to anyone. You can’t call that to me.”

“Well, you didn’t go along,” rejoined Haddon testily. “I hate above all things the man that won’t go along with the bunch. It knocks to pieces any sort of business—big men go in front and plan things, and some little fellow comes along and knocks it all out I’ve got no patience with that sort of thing.”

Joslin’s pale face suddenly went white.

“I’ve not a dollar in my pocket now, Mr. Haddon,” said he at last. “I didn’t have when I was in your country. I didn’t know the ways of your country—I was ignorant. But you don’t know the ways of my country, and you’re ignorant, or you’d not speak that way to me.”

“Don’t bring it all up again, Jim,” interposed Marcia Haddon quickly, and raised an arm of intervention, although Joslin had not moved. She tried to catch her husband’s eye, for she herself knew it was not far to trouble now. “Why, Mr. Joslin,” she went on, “we were just talking of you and wishing we had someone to take us in. We’re here just as we were two years ago; and, as you say, we’re ignorant. We don’t know this country any better now than we did then. You say you’re not ungrateful—won’t you let us be grateful too?”

“He knows what I want now,” interrupted her husband testily. “It’s time I knew something absolute and sure about my company’s investments in there. Well, are you going to take me in this time, young fellow?” he demanded brusquely of Joslin. “Let me tell you, I’m not going to turn back again. Are you going to try to square it now a little by helping the man that helped you?”

“If it’s any help to Mrs. Haddon to have me go in with you, I’ll be glad,” said Joslin directly. “She has been very good to me. I’m going back up river tomorrow as far as the Forks.

“But I’ve got to be going now,” he added, and so turned away to the street gate, so shaken with white anger that he scarce cared where he went.

Haddon, mumbling, rose and went into the house, leaving his wife alone. Not long later she heard a giggle, a protest, a chuckle of low laughter. James Haddon had chucked the comely Widow Dunham under the chin, had cast an arm across her somewhat ample shoulders.

“Who was that talkin’ outside?” queried the widow.

“Oh, that? It was that long-legged chambermaid you had working here last year—Jucklin—Joslin—— What’s his name? Never mind him—won’t I do? At least I used to.”

The widow replied in such fashion as was obvious. Their joint murmured, low-laughing conversation became unescapable for the single auditor on the gallery. At length Marcia Haddon rose. Something came upon her on the instant, some swift, unappointed revolt, an unspeakable disgust with the married bondage she had so long borne unwillingly. She could not speak with her husband—quietly she passed the two and went into her own room.

He followed her, after a time, and there she turned upon him suddenly, her cheeks burning in two red spots.

“Jim, I can’t stand this sort of thing any longer. I can’t—I can’t—and I will not!”

He stood suddenly crestfallen at this sudden revolt of one long thought so passive. She went on hurriedly.

“It’s gone too far. If it’s not one woman, it’s another. It’s in your blood now—you’ve been at this sort of thing so long you can’t stop. I’ve been ashamed for years. How can I help knowing?”

“If I did, who’s to blame?” he rejoined surlily. “A woman as cold as you——”

“Yes, that’s true now, that’s true! But why should you care? Only, I’ll not go on this way any farther.”

Hands in pockets, he only turned away, growling.

“Oh, yes, back home,” she went on, her hands at the sides of her temples, “I seemed to be able to stand it. But here—things seem plainer, some way.”

His sneer had the sullen anger of a man who knows the indefensibility of his position. “That long-legged lout has taught you to cheek me too. Damn him!”

“Jim,” said she, “I don’t like to hear such things of you. It’s not worthy of the man you used to be. When we get back to the city we’ll have to get on some other way. I’ll go on through with you now, because I know your business interests are in real danger. I won’t say anything now. But that’s all. I’m done. This is good-by for you and me.”

Dumfounded, Haddon left her and went out again into the darkness. He sat moodily, his cigar hanging from his flabby lips. Mutiny such as this he had never suspected as a possible thing from a woman like his wife. There came to him, sternly facing him now, two influences—new in his life of bluffing and jollying and pretending and evading and deceiving—the indomitableness of a real man and the immutability of a real woman.