her, and as he pushed against her, clumsily trying to hook his arm about her waist, she struck him sharply with the full weight of her arm and shoulder, and he tottered and fell sprawling. With a curse in his teeth he caught at a chair, recovered his balance, and faced her with a look of fury that would have appalled one less experienced than she.
"You little fool," he snarled, "don't you do that again!"
"Stop!" She did not lift her voice, but the word arrested him. "Do you want to die?" The word die pierced the mist of his madness. "What do you think Mart will say to this?"
He shivered and grew pale under the force of his brother's name uttered in that tone. He began to melt, subsiding into a jelly-mass of fear.
"Don't tell Mart, for Christ's sake! I didn't mean nothing. Don't do it, I beg – I beg!"
She looked at him and seemed to grow in years as she searched his wretched body for its soul. "If you don't pull out of this house to-morrow I'll let him know just the kind of dead-head boarder you are. You haven't fooled me any – not for a minute. I've put up with you for his sake, but to-night settles it. You go! I've stood a lot from you, but your meal-ticket is no good after to-morrow morning – you sabe? It's you to the outside to-morrow. Now get out, or I call Mart."
He turned and shuffled from the room, leaving his battered hat at her feet.
She waited till she heard him close his door; then, with a look of disgust on her face, picked up his hat and coat, and hung them on the rack in the hall. "I'm sorry for Mart," she said to herself. "He was company for him, but I can't stand the loafer a day longer. I hope I never see him again."
He did not get down to breakfast, and for this she was glad; but he sought opportunity a little later to plead for clemency. "Give me another chance. I was drunk. I didn't mean it."
She remained inexorable. "Not for a second," she succinctly replied. "I don't care how you fix it with Mart. Smooth it up as best you can, but fly this coop." And her face expressed such contempt that he crept away, flabby and faltering, to his brother.
"I've been telegraphed for, and must go," he said. "And, by the way, I need a little ready mon to carry me to the little old town. As soon as I get to work I'll send you a check."
Mart handed him the money in silence, and waited till he had folded and put away the bills. Then he said: "Charles, you was always the smart one of the family, and ye'd be all right now if ye'd pass the booze and get down to hard work. It's time ye were off, for ye've done nothin' but loaf and drink here. I've enjoyed your talk – part of the time; but I can see ye'd grow onto me here like a wart, and that's bad for you and bad for me, and so I'm glad ye're going."
"Can't you – " He was going to ask for a position – something easy with big pay – when he saw that such a request would make his telegram a lie.
As he hesitated Mart continued: "No, I'll back no play for ye. I'm a gambler, but I take no chances of that kind. If you see the old father, write and tell me how he is."
Charles, though filled with rising fury, was sober enough to know in what danger he stood, and forcing a smile to his face, shook hands and went out to his carriage – alone.
As Mart met Bertha a few minutes later he remarked, with calm directness: "There goes a cheap rounder and a sponge. I've been a gambler and a saloon-keeper, but I never got the notion that I could live without doin' something. Charles was a smart lad, but the divil has him by the neck, and to give money is to give him drink."
Bertha remained silent, her own indictment was so much more severe.
CHAPTER VIII
BERTHA RECEIVES AN INVITATION
Colorado Springs lies in a shallow valley, under a genial sun, at almost the exact level of the summit of Mt. Washington. From the railway train, as it crawls over the hills to the east, it looks like a toy village, but is, in fact, a busy little city. To ride along its wide and leafy streets in summer, to breathe its crystalline airs in winter, is to lose belief in the necessity of disease. The grave seems afar off.
And yet it was built, and is now supported, by those who, fearing death, fled the lower, miasmatic levels of the world, and who, having abandoned all hope (or desire) of return, are loyally developing and adorning their adopted home. These fugitives are for the most part contented exiles – men as well as women – who have come to enjoy their enforced stay here beside the peaks; and their devotion to the town and its surroundings is unmistakably sincere, for they believe that the climate and the water have prolonged their lives.
Not all even of these seekers for health are ill, or even weakly, at present; on the contrary, many of them are stalwart hands at golf, and others are seasoned horsemen. In addition to those who are resident in their own behalf are many husbands attendant upon ailing wives, and blooming wives called to the care of weazened and querulous husbands, and parents who came bringing a son or daughter on whom the pale shadow of the White Death had fallen. But, after all, these Easterners color but they do not dominate the life of the town, which is a market-place for a wide region, and a place of comfort for well-to-do miners. It is, also, a Western town, with all a Western town's customary activities, and the traveller would hardly know it for a health resort, so cheerful and lively is the aspect of its streets, where everything denotes comfort and content.
In addition to the elements denoted above, it is also taken to be a desirable social centre and a charming place of residence for men like Marshall Haney, who, having made their pile in the mountain camps, have a reasonable desire to put their gold in evidence – "to get some good of their dust," as Williams might say. Here and there along the principal avenues are luxurious homes – absurdly pretentious in some instances – which are pointed out to visitors as the residences of the big miners. They are especially given to good horses also, and ride or drive industriously, mixing very little with the more cultured and sophisticated of their neighbors, for whom they furnish a never-ending comedy of manners. "A beautiful mixture for a novelist," Congdon often said.
Yes, the town has its restricted "Smart Set," in imitation of New York city, and its literary and artistic groups (small, of course), and its staid circle of wealth and privilege, and within defined limits and at certain formal civic functions these various elements meet and interfuse genially if not sincerely. However, the bitter fact remains that the microcosm is already divided into classes and masses in a way which would be humorous if it were not so deeply significant of a deplorable change in American life. Squire Crego, in discussing this very matter with Frank Congdon, the portrait-painter, put it thus: "This division of interest is inevitable. What can you do? The wife of the man who cobbles my shoes or the daughter of the grocer who supplies my sugar is, in the eyes of God, undoubtedly of the same value as my own wife, but they don't interest me. As a social democrat, I may wish sincerely to do them good, but, confound it, to wish to do them good is an impertinence. And when I've tried to bring these elements together in my house I have always failed. Mrs. Crego, while being most gracious and cordial, has, nevertheless, managed to make the upholsterer chilly, and to freeze the grocer's wife entirely out of the picture."
"There's one comfort: it isn't a matter of money. If it were, where would the Congdons be?"
"No, it isn't really a matter of money, and in a certain sense it isn't a matter of brains. It's a question of – "
"Savoir faire."
"Precisely. You haven't a cent, so you say frequently – " Congdon stopped him, gravely.
"I owe you fifty – I was just going down into my jeans to pay it, when I suddenly recalled – "
"Don't
