V
He very nearly found something else that night. He lost his way entirely. He went on, as in a dream, along muddy roads, up hills so steep that he thought his weary heart would burst. He would not admit his intolerable fatigue, and the frightful ravages made by passion and bitterness. He wished to continue, inexorably, until he had accomplished his object.
The country was unfamiliar and hostile to this denizen of cities. When at last his strength was wholly gone, he did not know where to turn. He dared not wake any of the people in the dark farmhouses he passed. He crept up to a barn once, but a dog drove him away.
At last, at very last, he found an open shed behind a church, used as a shelter for the buggies and the Fords of the worshipers; and he crouched in there, relieved for a time from the unendurable confusion of the dark and the wind. His cigars and matches were dry and safe in an inside pocket, and he began to smoke. He hadn’t the slightest wish to sleep. He didn’t even feel tired. He only wanted to stop for a moment, to secure a pause in his superhuman exertions. He knew very well that if he hadn’t found this refuge, he would have been defeated.
Wide-eyed and reflective, he sat in his corner until he observed that the stormy dark was changing its aspect, that it was growing faintly and drearily gray. It surprised him. He had forgotten that morning was ever coming again. He got up and set out on his way once more.
An extraordinary thought occurred to him. It would have been better, he said to himself, if he had died. He had lost Kathleen; why was he to live? What had he left?
He had no longer any heart for revenge. He was sorry he had to see it through; but, according to his queer code, it was absolutely necessary to vindicate himself. Otherwise his self-respect would be gone, and he could neither live nor die in peace.
It was nearly eight o’clock when he approached the house of Charley Sands, which an early stirring laborer had pointed out to him. He had planned that hour. He[Pg 49] had also looked up the time of the train he meant to take—when he had finished. It was due to his self-respect to make a valiant effort to escape, although he didn’t really care.
It was a trim white house surrounded by placid lawns. He went up to it with careless audacity, his hand grasping the revolver in his pocket. What did he care? Let Sands see him, let him ask what he wanted; he would soon find out!
Brecky had made himself neater, after his horrible night, than almost any other man could have done; but at best he looked haggard and menacing. He knew it, and was glad.
The weather had cleared, but he was still wet to the skin and cold, although he was not aware of it. He walked along the gravel path, which crunched under his firm tread. He was making no effort to conceal his presence. He wished to be observed, to bring this thing to its climax, to be done with it.
He ran up on the veranda, and, with one of those queer impulses of an abstracted mind, instead of ringing the bell, he knocked sharply on the door. He heard some one coming down the stairs, and he smiled. If it was Charley—
But it was not. It was an entirely strange young woman, who looked at him with distrust. He was so taken aback that he could not speak. He stared and stared at her.
“Well?” she demanded impatiently.
“Sands here?” he managed to ask.
“What do you want with him?”
Brecky hesitated. His tired brain, flung loose from the pivot of his fixed idea, spun round helplessly. He couldn’t really think at all. Another woman here!
He was roused by the sight of her preparing to shut the door in his face. He set his foot against it.
“I want to see him,” he said. “You call him!”
She was alarmed then, and began to call “Charley!” in a shrill voice.
Down the stairs came bounding the fat and owlish young man.
“Well!” he cried. “Brecky!”
The young woman frowned.
“He didn’t say who he was,” she said. “I didn’t know. Come in!”
Brecky entered, still dazed. They didn’t seem at all surprised to see him, even at that hour of the morning, and in the lamentable state he was in. He sat down uninvited, threw off his cap, and lighted a cigar.
“This is my wife, Brecky,” said Sands, in a tone of severe rebuke. “Kathleen’s second cousin, you know.”
“All right!” said Brecky.
His manners, usually punctilious, had deserted him entirely. What he wanted was for these people to clear out of their own room, and let him think for a moment; but the young woman sat down opposite him. She was rather nice-looking, in a shrewish way, but obviously hostile.
“She’s here,” she said.
Brecky sprang up.
“Let me see her!” he cried.
“I don’t think she wants to see you,” said the young woman. “I don’t blame her. If she takes my advice, she’ll never go back to you!”
Brecky looked at her steadily. He felt, however, that it was better not to say what he thought just then.
“You’re just making a drudge out of her,” the other went on. “It’s a shame—a pretty, lively young girl like Kathleen shut up in that awful place! All you care about is getting your meals cooked. I wouldn’t do it for any man. She’s sick and tired of it, I can tell you—being your cook. If she takes my advice, she’ll go back to her old job, where she’ll have a little money to spend and see a little life.”
“All right!” said Brecky again. “But maybe she doesn’t want to take your advice. Anyway, I’d like to ask her.”
“Well, I hope she won’t see you. I know what you’ll do—make all sorts of promises, till you get her back there again, and then she can go right on cooking!”
“Do I see her, or don’t I?” asked Brecky, still quite calm.
“I’ll see,” said the peppery young woman, and went off and left him alone.
He had a new idea to contend against, and one for which there was in his experience no precedent. He could comprehend an elopement, but any subtler reason for his wife’s leaving him was extremely hard for him to grasp. It was his habit, though, to face facts, and he tried now.
He tried to imagine Kathleen as a human being, and not as his wife; but he failed. What more could the girl want? He was filled with rage at her ingratitude, and at the humiliating position she had got him into. He was certainly being made a[Pg 50] fool of, for the first time. He had done his best, had worked for her, had been sober, kind, loyal. What more could the girl want?
Whatever it was, she wouldn’t get it—that she wouldn’t! She had left him, and she could come back, if she wished; but he wasn’t going to ask her.
“That’s not my way!” he said to himself, with a grimace. “I won’t crawl for any one. I haven’t done anything. It’s all her fault!”
He was half inclined to walk out of the house then and there, but if by any chance Kathleen was going to be sorry, he didn’t want to miss it. He discovered that he was extremely anxious for her to be sorry, and that if she were, he might perhaps not be so very angry. She needn’t even say it. One nice smile, and the thing would be over.
“I don’t know,” he thought. “Maybe it has been hard for her. She’s only a kid. Of course, it doesn’t excuse her running away like that, and making such a fool of me, but—well, I don’t know. Maybe, later on, I’ll get a servant for her. I could afford it.”