CHAPTER IX
THE DESTROYER
While the men were eating that night another rider had come to H.C. He entered slowly, tied his horse to the fence and walked down along the cottonwoods toward the house. He stood outside a time, looking through the window at Jane whose golden head was bowed in the mellow glow of the student lamp as she worked at her desk.
He stepped lightly across the veranda and rapped; at her bidding he entered.
"Dick!" she exclaimed.
"Undoubtedly," he said, with forced attempt at lightness.
"How did you get here? Why come at this time of day?"—rising and walking toward him.
"I rode a horse, and I came because I couldn't stay away from you any longer."
She looked at him, head tilted a bit to one side, and genuine regret was in her slow smile.
"Oh, Dick, don't look or feel like that! I'm glad to see you, but I wish you'd stop thinking and talking and looking like that. I don't like to have you so dreadfully determined ... when it's no use.
"All this way to see me! And did you eat? Of course you didn't!"
"I don't want anything," he protested glumly.
"But you must."
She seized on his need as welcome distraction from the love making, which undoubtedly was his purpose. She took his coat and hat, placed cigarettes for him and went to the kitchen to help Carlotta prepare a quick meal. She served it herself, going to pains to make it attractive, and finally seated herself across the table from Hilton, who made a pretense of eating.
She talked, a bit feverishly, perhaps, but compelled him to stick to matters far from personal and after he had finished his scant meal and lighted a cigarette he leaned back in his chair and smiled easily at her. It was a good smile, open and frank and gentle, but when it died that nasty light came back; as though the smile showed the man Jane Hunter had tolerated for long, masking the man she now tried to put from her.
"If your enthusiasm were for anything else, I'd like it," he said.
"But it isn't. Why can't you like it as it is?"
He ignored the question.
"Busy, Jane?"
"As the devil on Forty-Second street."
"And still think it's worth while?"
"The only worth-while thing I've ever done; more worth while every day. So much worth while that I'm made over from the heart out and I've been here less than a month!"
"After taking a bottle of your bitters I am now able to support my husband and children," he quoted ironically.
"Laugh if you must,"—with a lift of her shoulders. "I mean it."
"You get along with the men, Jane?"
"Very well so far. They're fine, real, honest men. I like them all. There are some things I don't quite understand yet," examining a finger nail closely. "I haven't made up my mind that my foreman can be trusted or that he's as honest as he seems to be."
"The fellow who was with you yesterday?"
"No; Dad Hepburn. An older man. He.... He seems to evade me some times."
Hilton watched her closely. She was one of the few women he knew who had been able to judge men; he made a mental note of the name she had mentioned.
The talk became desultory and Dick's eyes clung more closely to Jane's face, their hard, bright light accentuated. It began to rain and Jane, hearing, looked out.
"Raining! You can't go back tonight. You'll have to stay here. Mr. Hepburn can fix you up with the rest of the men."
He smiled peculiarly at that, for it cut. He made no comment beyond expressing the belief that a wetting, since it was not cold, would do no harm. She knew that he did not mean that and contrasted his evasion with Beck's quiet candor.
"What's the idea of the locket?" he asked and Jane looked down at the trinket with which she had been toying. "You never were much addicted to ornaments."
She laughed with an expression which he did not understand.
"Something is in there which is very dear to me," she said. "I don't wear it as an ornament; as a talisman, rather. I'm getting to be quite dependent on it." Her manner was outwardly light but at bottom was a seriousness which she did not wholly cover.
"Excuse me ... for intruding on privacies," he said bitterly. Then, after a moment: "The picture of some cow-puncher lover, perhaps?"
"No, though that wouldn't be unreasonable," she replied. "Such things have happened in—"
"Let's cut this!" he said savagely, breaking in on her and sitting forward. "Let's quit these absurd banalities.
"You know why I came here. You know what's in my mind. There's a job before me that gets bigger every day; the least you can do is to help me."
"In what?"
"Tell me what I must do to make you understand that I love you."
He leaned across the table intently. The girl laughed.
"Prove to me first that two and two make six!"
"Meaning?"
"That it can't be done."
"It's the first time you've ever been that certain."
"The first time I've ever expressed the certainty, perhaps. Things happen, Dick. I progress."
"Do you mean such an impossible thing as that there is someone else?"
"Another question which you have no right to ask."
"Jane, look at me! Are you wholly insane?"
"No, but as I look back I think I have been a little off, perhaps."
"But you're putting behind you everything that is of you,"—his color rising with his voice as her secure conviction maddened him. "The life that is yours by nature and training. You're going blindly ahead into something you don't know, among people who are not yours!"
He became suddenly tense, as though the passion which he had repressed until that moment swept through him with a mighty urge. His breath slipped out in a long sigh.
"You are repeatedly mistaken, Dick. I have just found my people."
"Your people!" he scoffed.
She nodded.
"'East is East and West is West,' you know, and the two shall never meet. It must be true, and, if so, I have never been of the east. I never felt comfortable there, with the lies and the shams and the hypocrisies that were all about us. Out here, I do.
"Perhaps that is why you and I...." She shrugged her shoulders again. "You see, Dick, I have cast my lot here. The East is gone, for me; it never can pass for you. I have found my people; they are my people, their Gods are my Gods. I have a strength, a peace of mind, self respect, ambitions and natural, real impulses that I never knew before. I feel that I have come home!"
He laughed dryly, but she went on as though she had not heard:
"You have never understood me; you never can hope to now. There's a gulf between us, Dick, that will never be bridged. I am sorry, in a way. I never can love you and I hate to see you wasting your desires on me.
"I have thought about you a great deal lately. You are missing all that is fine in life and because of that I am sorry for you. We used to have one thing in common: the lack of worthy ideals. I have wiped out that lack and I wish you might; I truly wish that, Dick! And it seems possible to me that you may, just because you are here where realities count. There's an incentive in the atmosphere and I do hope it gets into your blood.
"It is all so nonsensical, the thing you are doing, so foolish. I suppose I am the only thing you have ever wanted that you couldn't get and that's what stimulates your want. It's not love, Dick."
"How do you know?"
"I have learned things in these weeks," with a wistful smile. "I have learned about ... men, for one thing. I have found an honesty, an honor, a simple directness, which I have never known before."
He rose and leaned his fists on the table.
"You mean you've found a lover?"
She met his eyes frankly.
"Again I say, you have no right to ask that question. In the second place, I am not yet sure."
His mouth drew down in a leer.
"So that's it, eh? So you would turn me away for some rough-neck who murders the English language and smells of horse. You'd let a thing like that overwhelm you in a few days when a civilized human has failed after years of trying!
"I've tried to treat you with respect. I've tried to be gentle and honorable. Now if you don't want that, if you want this he-man sort of wooing, by God you'll get it!"
He kicked his chair back angrily and advanced about the table. A big blue vein which ran down over his forehead stood out in knots. Jane rose.
"Dick!" she cried and in the one word was disappointment, anger, appeal, reproach, query.
"Oh, I'm through," he muttered. "I used to think you were a different sort; used to think you were fine and finished. But if you're a woman in the raw ... then I'll treat you as such. You've got me, either way; I can't get you out of my mind an hour.
"I'm through holding myself back, now. You've driven me mad and you prove by your own insinuations that the lover you want is not the one who will dally with you. You want the primitive, go-and-get-it kind, the kind that takes and keeps. Well, mine can be that kind!"
She backed from him slowly and he kept on advancing with a menacing assurance, his face contorted with jealousy and desire.
"The other day,"—stopping a moment, "when I took your hands and felt your body here in this room I was almost beside myself. You haven't been out of my thoughts an hour since then! I tried to kill it with reason and then with drink. I've tried to be patient and wait among the ... the cattle in that little town." He walked on toward
her.
"Dick, are you mad?" she challenged, trying to summon her assurance through the fright which he had given her. "It's not what you think.... It's none of your affair—
"Dick!"
He grasped her wrists roughly.
"Am I mad?" he repeated, looking down at her, his jaw clenched. "Yes, I'm mad. Mad from want of you ... your eyes, your lips, your hair, your very breath drives me mad and when I hear you tell me that you've found the flesh that calls to your flesh among these men it drives me wild! I can offer you more than any of them can a thousand times over....
"Great God, I love you!"
But his snarl was not the snarl of devotion, of affection. It was the lust cry of the destroyer, he who would possess hungrily, unthinkingly, without sympathy or understanding ... even without respect.
He drew her to him roughly and she struggled, too frightened to cry out, face white and lips closed. He imprisoned both her hands in his one and with the other arm about her body crushed it against his, her breast to his breast, her limbs to his limbs. He lowered his lips toward her face and she bent backward, crying out lowly, but the touch of her lithe torso, tense in the struggle to be free, made his strength greater, swept away the last barrier of caution and his body was aflame with desire.
"Dick ... stop...." she panted and managed to free one hand.
She struck him on the mouth and struck again, blindly. He gave her efforts no notice but, releasing her hands, crushed her to him with both arms and she could feel the quick come and go of his breath through her hair as he buried his face in it.
And at that she became possessed of fresh strength. She turned and half slipped, half fought her way through his clutch, running down the room to the fireplace where she stood with the davenport between them breathing irregularly, a hand clenched at her breast.
"You ... you beast!" she said, slowly, unsteadily as he came toward her again.
"Yes, beast!" he echoed. "We're all beasts, every one of us who sees and feels and I've seen you and I've felt you and the beast is hungry!"
"And you call that love!" She spoke rapidly, breathlessly. "An hour ago if anyone would have said that Dick Hilton, sober, would have displayed this, this thing which is his true self, I'd have come to your defense! But now ... you ... you!"
Her face was flaming, her voice shook with outraged pride.
"Stop!" she cried, drawing herself up, no longer afraid. She emerged from fear commanding, impressive, and Hilton hesitated, putting one hand to a chair back and eyeing her calculatingly as though scheming. The vein on his forehead still stood out like an uneven seam.
"For shame!" she cried again. "Shame on you, Dick Hilton, and shame on me for having tolerated, for having believed in you ... little as I did! Oh, I loathe it all, you and myself—that was—because if it had not been for that other self which tolerated you, which gave you the opening, this ... this insult would never have been. You, who failing to buy a woman's love, would take it by strength! You would do this, and talk of your desire as love. You, who scoff at men whose respect for women is as real as the lives they lead. You ... you beast!"
She hissed the word.
"Yes, beast!" he repeated again. "Like all these other beasts, these others who are blinding you as you say I have blinded you, who have—"
"Stop it!" she demanded again. "There is nothing more to be said ... ever. We understand one another now and there is but one thing left for you to do."
"And that?"
"Go."
He laughed bitterly and ran a hand over his sleek hair.
"If I go, you go with me," he said evenly.
"Leave this house," the girl commanded, but instead of obeying he moved toward her again menacingly, a disgusting smile on his lips.
He passed the end of the davenport and she, in turn, retreated to the far side.
"When I go, two of—"
"I take it that you heard what was said to you, sir."
At the sound of the intruding voice Hilton wheeled sharply. He faced Tom Beck, who stood in the doorway, framed against the black night, arms limp and rather awkwardly hanging at his sides, eyes dangerously luminous; still, playing across them was that half amused look, as though this were not in reality so serious a matter.
For an interval there was no sound except Hilton's breathing: a sort of hoarse gasp. The two men eyed each other and Jane, supporting her suddenly weakened limbs by a hand on the table, looked from one to the other.
"What the devil are you doing here?" Dick asked heavily.
"Just standin' quiet, waiting to open the gate for you when you ride out."
The Easterner braced his shoulders backward and sniffed.
"And if I don't choose to ride out? What will you do then?"
Beck looked at Jane slowly and his eyes danced.
"It ain't necessary to talk about things that won't happen. You're going to go."
"Who the hell are you to be so certain?"
"My name's Beck, sir. I'm just workin' here."
"And playing the role of a protector?"
"Well, nothing much ever comes up that I don't try to do."
Hilton made as if to speak again but checked himself, walked down the room in long strides, seized his coat, thrust his arms into the sleeves viciously and stood buttoning the garment. Beck looked away into the night as though nothing within interested him and Jane stood clutching the locket at her throat, caressing it with her slim, nervous fingers.
"Under the circumstances, making my farewells must be to the point," Hilton said. He spoke sharply, belligerently. "I have just this to say: I am not through."
"Oh, go!" moaned Jane, dropping into a chair and covering her face with her hands.
She heard the men leave the veranda, heard a gruff, low word from Hilton and knew that he went on alone. After the outer gate had closed she heard Tom walk slowly up the path toward the bunk house. He had left her without comment, without any attempt at an expression of concern or sympathy. She knew it was no oversight, but only a delicacy which would not have been shown by many men.
Her loathing was gone, her anger dead; the near past was a numb memory and she looked up and about the room as though it were a strange place. There, within those walls, she had experienced the rebirth, she had felt ambition to stand alone come into full being, she had shaken off the fetters with which the past had sought to hamper her....
And now she was free, wholly free. The tentacle that had been reached out to draw her back had been cast away. Tonight's renunciation had burned the last bridge to that which had been; Dick Hilton, she believed, would never again be an active influence in her life.
She could not—perhaps fortunately—foretell how mistaken this belief actually would prove to be. She did not know the intensity of a man's jealousy, particularly when Fate has tricked him of his most valued prize. Nor could she foresee those events which would impell her to send for Hilton, to call him back, and the wells of misery which that action would tap!
To-night he was gone, and she was even strong enough to rise above loathing and pity him for the failure he was. Just one fact of him remained. Again she heard his ominous prediction, pronounced on his first visit there: You cannot stand alone! You will fail! You will come back to me!
She knew, now, that she would never return to him, but there were other possibilities as disastrous. Could she meet this new life and beat it and make in it a place for herself? Was her faith in herself strong enough to outride the defeat which very possibly confronted her?
She did not know....
Outside the rain drummed and the cottonwoods, now in full leaf, sighed as the wind bowed their water weighted branches. She went to the window and looked out, searching the darkness for movement. There was none but he was not far away she knew....
Her fingers again sought the locket and she lifted it quickly, holding it pressed tightly against her mouth.
"It's all there, locked up in a little gold disc!"