“It’s only an excuse; you want to get rid of me. You do! And I have come all this way just to see you, just to bring you that letter. Just to be with you! Oh, I hate myself! I hate you! I wish I were dead!”
Her eyes strayed to the revolver which lay upon the table. She made a quick movement towards it, but he caught her wrist and held it firmly.
“That’ll do, Myra,” he said firmly. “Just listen to me. If I am brutal it is your own fault—so here goes. You came to me of your own free will—ay, of your own accord. Is it not so? I met you in Josi’s cafi at San Francisco, whilst I was idling about waiting for—you know what. Well, you came and kept house with me for a month or two. I was not the first. You told me so yourself. The thing was common enough. I never made you any promises. I never gave you to understand that it would be likely to last. When I heard that the man for whom I was lying in wait had left the city, I gave you notice that I was off. Well, you were sorry, and I was sorry. I shared up all that I had in the world, and I left you. I may have made you some sort of promise about coming back again, but never as a permanency, you understand. I’m as fond of you now as I ever was—fonder, if anything, after what you’ve done for me—but you must take this little affair with me as you took the others—see? Now I’ve made you feel badly. I’m sorry, but I’d got to do it.”
The changing shades in the girl’s countenance had been a study for which many an eastern painter would willingly have bartered every model in his studio. At first her dusky face had darkened, and her eyes had blazed with all the wild free fury of a woman whose vanity, or love, or both, are deeply wounded. But as he went on, as the whole bitter meaning of his words, winged with a kindness which seemed to her like the poison on the arrow’s tip, sank into her understanding, the anger seemed to die away. When he had finished she was crouched upon the ground with her back to him. She did not answer him or address him in any way; only he knew that she was sobbing her heart out, and, being by no means a stone, he began to relent.
“Myra,” he said kindly, stretching out his hand and laying it upon her shoulder, “come and sit with me for a minute or two before I go! I must be off to work again directly, and I can’t leave you like this.”
She got up meekly, dried her eyes, and sat at the extreme end of the form, with her hands folded in her lap, and gazing listlessly out of the open doorway. Alas! the music of the winds and the deep, soft colouring of the hills and far-off mountains were nothing to her now! All the buoyancy of life seemed crushed and nerveless. Even that sudden strong, sweet joy in these glories of nature which had leaped up in her breast, a new-born and joyous thing, was dead. Watching her as she sat there, the Englishman felt like a guilty man. He had made some clumsy attempt at doing the thing which seemed to his limited vision right and kind. He was not accustomed to women or their ways, but he felt instinctively that he had made a mistake somehow. A sense almost of awe came upon him. He felt like a man who has destroyed something immeasurably greater than himself; something so grand that no power in this world could build it up again. He was penitent and remorseful, even sorrowful, without any very clear idea as to what this evil thing was that he had done. Only he looked into this girl’s downcast face, and he felt like some wanton schoolboy who has dashed to the ground one of those dainty, brilliant butterflies with peach-coloured wings, and a bloom so beautiful that a single touch from coarse fingers must mar it for ever. A moment before it was one of God’s own creatures, a dream of soft elegance and refined colouring. Now it lies upon the ground bruised and shapeless, fluttering its broken wings for the last time, and breathing out its sad little life. In a minute or two some passer-by will kick it into the dust. That will be the end of it. The Englishman looked at the girl by his side, and his eyes twitched convulsively. There was an odd lump in his throat.
“Myra, I don’t want to be a brute!” he said softly. “I want to act squarely to you. That’s what makes me seem unkind, perhaps. I’m quite unsettled here! I’ve heard nothing of the man I’m in search of, but directly I have found him, I shall be leaving the country for good. It wouldn’t be fair to take up with you again, would it? You’re not like the others. I wouldn’t mind if you were!”
She shuddered and looked up at him, dry-eyed and callous. “You are quite right! I do not want to be a burden upon any one!” she said slowly. “I am ready to do just what you think best. If you like, I’ll go back the same way I came. I dare say I could find it all right. If not, it wouldn’t much matter!”
The dull despair of her tone, and the mute abandonment of herself to his wishes, moved him strangely. For the first time he hesitated. He had been prepared for reproaches, he had steeled his heart even against her tears, her caressings, her beseechings; but this was something quite different. From feeling altogether in the right, he began to wonder vaguely whether he was not attempting something singularly brutal and unmanly. He hesitated, and every moment the words which he desired to say became more impossible. He turned to her abruptly.
“Aren’t you just a little rough on me, Myra?” he said softly. “Don’t you see that it is for your sake I wanted to go!”
She looked at him, and his eyes fell before hers. “For my sake!” she repeated bitterly.
He began to feel absolutely conscience-stricken. After all, the reproach in her tone was just. It was as much for his own sake as hers that he had wanted to be rid of her. There was an element of Puritanism in the man which rebelled against all the irregularities of this wild western life. He liked to be his own man and live his own life! Well, he should have been consistent! Here was a harvest of his own sowing. If his heart had not been moved by the wild, beseeching pathos of this girl’s dark eyes shining at him through a cloud of thick tobacco smoke in Josi’s saloon, he would never have found himself in such a quandary. Bah! it was useless to waste time on empty regrets, to rail at the past while the girl’s heart was breaking. He got up, and bent over her.
“Look here, Myra,” lie said kindly. “I guess I’m not so sure about being right after all. I’ll think it over whilst I’m at work. See? Don’t fret! We’ll see if we can’t fix up something.”
“Very well.”
He relit his pipe, and kissed her hesitatingly upon the forehead, a salute which she accepted with perfect impassiveness. Then he strode out of the cottage, and down the gorge to the river-bed.
IV. THE LAUGH OF MR. JAMES HAMILTON
Three men, the last to leave their claims after the day’s work, climbed up the gorge in the heavy twilight. The Englishman and his partner were a little in front, Mr. James Hamilton brought up the rear.
At the parting of the ways they were separating, as usual, without a word, when the Englishman looked back over his shoulder.
“No cards to-night, you chaps—not at my shanty, anyhow!” he said briefly. “Do you hear, Jim?”
“Yes, I hear!” Mr. Hamilton repeated surlily. “You want me to sit and get the miserables in this cussed hole! I’ll see myself d—d first. If you chaps ain’t playing I’m off to Dan Cooper’s saloon. Who the hell’s that dodging about your hut?” he added, peering upwards through the brambles. “Here goes for them, at any rate! I’d shoot anything to-day, from a dog to a Christian!”
He raised his gun to his shoulder with a savage scowl. The Englishman stooped down quickly and knocked the barrel into the air, where it exploded harmlessly.
“I’ll
