THE RIFT WIDENS
ACROSS the breakfast table next morning Rowan faced a hostile young stranger. The gay comrade who was so dear to him, the eager, impulsive girl all fire and flame and dewy softness, had vanished to give place to a cold and flinty critic. Abruptly and without notice she had withdrawn her friendship. Why? Was it that she had grown tired of him and what he had to offer? Or had he done something to displease her?
Manlike, he tried gifts.
“I’ve decided to have that conservatory built for you off the living room as soon as I can get the glass. Better draw up your plans right away.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want it.”
Her voice was like icy water.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently, and presently he finished his breakfast and left the room.
Ruth bit her lip and looked out of the window. Tears began to film her eyes. She went to her room, locked the door, and flung herself down on the bed in a passion of weeping.
Ever since the first days of her acquaintance with Rowan she had known the story of how Norma Davis had jilted him. Mrs. Flanders, of the Dude Ranch, was a gossip by nature and had told Ruth the history of the affair with gusto. The girl had been merely interested. She had had too many transient affairs herself to object to any dead and buried ones of Rowan. But yesterday afternoon she had ridden over to the summer resort and asked Mrs. Flanders some insistent questions. The mistress of the Dude Ranch was a reluctant witness, but a damning one. It was true that Mrs. Tait had run away with McCoy in his car and that they had taken the train together. There were witnesses to prove that he had paid for the sleeper berth she used and that it was in his name. For once Joe Tait had told the truth.
The thing which hit Ruth like a sudden slap in the face from a friend was that this escapade had taken place while McCoy had been on his way to marry her. It was not an episode of the past, but a poisonous canker that ate into the joy of her life. If he could do a thing so vile there was no truth in him.
All the golden hours they had spent together were tainted by his infidelity. Never in all her life had she met a man who had seemed so genuine, so wholly true. She had offered him her friendship and love, had given her young life into his keeping. His reverence for her had touched her deeply. Now she knew there was nothing but hypocrisy to it.
She must leave him, of course. She must crawl away like a wounded wild creature of the forest and suffer her hurts alone. The sooner she left the better.
On the very heel of this resolution came Mrs. Stovall with bad news about their patient.
“His fever’s mighty high. Looks like someone will have to nurse that boy regular for quite a while,” she said.
“I’ll look after him—anyhow till the doctor comes,” Ruth volunteered in swift compunction because she had not been in to see him that morning.
“H’mp! Been crying her eyes out. What’s she got to worry about—with the best man in the Fryingpan country crazy about her?” wondered the housekeeper. “Trouble with her is that Rowan’s too good to her. She needs to bump up against real grief before she’ll know how well off she is.”
Once installed in the sick room, Ruth did not find it easy to get away. For three days Silcott needed pretty constant attention. After the delirium had passed he lay and watched her, too weak to wait upon himself.
“You’ll not leave me,” he whispered to her once, and there was something so helpless and boyish about his dependence upon her that Ruth felt a queer little lump in her throat. Just now at least there could be no doubt of the genuineness of his need of her.
“Not till you’re better,” she promised.
And if there were tears in her eyes they were less for him than for herself. She was thinking of another man who had told her how greatly he needed her and how her coming had filled his life with sunshine, of another man whose whole relation to her had been a lie.
It was like Larry to take her emotion and her kindness as evidence of her special interest in him, just as it had been characteristic of him a few days before to jump to the conclusion that her worry was on his account. He was a debonair young fellow, picturesque and good-looking. Nor did Ruth resent it that he claimed it as a privilege of his invalidism to pass into immediate friendship with her. His open admiration of her was balm to the sick heart of the girl.
In the days that followed Rowan caught only glimpses of his wife. She was never up now in time for his early breakfast. All day he was away, and she contrived to be busy with her patient while Mrs. Stovall served his supper.
Whenever they did meet Ruth incased herself instantly in a still white armour of reserve. She treated him to no more of her winsome vagaries, never now mocked him with her dear impudence. He noticed that she never called him by name and that her manner was one of formal politeness. In his presence her joy was struck dead.
A less sensitive man might have come to grips with her and fought the thing out. Once or twice Rowan tried in a halting fashion to discover the cause of the change in her, but she made it plain to him that she would not discuss the matter. At the bottom of his heart he had no doubt as to the reason. She had found out that his ways were not hers. He held no resentment. It was natural that her eager youth should weary of the humdrum life he offered.
Sometimes, as he passed Silcott’s room, Rowan heard the gay laughter of the young people. Later, when Larry was strong enough, McCoy met them driving, on their way to a picnic for two. If the sight of their merriment was a knife in his heart, Rowan gave no sign of it. His friendly smile did not fail.
“Better come along, Mac. You’ll live only once, and then you’ll be dead a long time,” suggested Larry.
McCoy shook his head. “Can’t—business.”
He noticed that Ruth had not seconded the invitation of her companion.
Though he never intruded, it was impossible for Rowan to live in the same house without running into them occasionally. Sometimes she would be accompanying Larry on the piano while he sang “Mandalay.” Or they would be quarrelling over a verse in a volume of recent poems. Rowan was not of a jealous disposition, but their good-fellowship stabbed him. He neither sang nor read poems. What was worse, he was not on good enough terms with Ruth for her to quarrel with him. The most he could get from her was frigid politeness.
Ruth was in the grip of one of the swift friendships to which she was subject. She liked Larry a lot. They had many common interests. But she plunged into her little affair with him only because misery made her reckless. Quite well she knew that Larry’s coaxing smile, his dancing eyes, his boyish winsomeness, cloaked a purpose of making love to her as much as he dared. She felt no resentment on that account. Indeed she was grateful to him for distracting her from her woe. To her husband she owed nothing. If she could hurt him by playing his own game so much the better. For conventions she never cared. As for Larry, when the time came, she told herself, she would know how to protect her heart. She was willing to flirt desperately with him, but she had no intention of really caring for him.
Because she was such a child of impulse, so candid and so frank, Rowan worried lest her indiscretions should be noticed. He did not like to interfere, but he considered dropping a hint to Larry that he was needed at the Open A N C.
It was not necessary. Over the telephone one morning came the news that Miss Morgan, who was still stopping at the Dude Ranch, had suffered a relapse and was not expected to live. Ruth fled at once to join her and Larry discovered a few hours later that he was well enough to go home.
As Ruth nursed her aunt through the silent hours of the night her mind was busy with her own shattered romance. She confessed to herself that she had not really been having a good time with Larry. She had turned to him as an escape and to punish her husband. But all the while her heart had been full of bitterness and desolation. It was unthinkable that Rowan could have treated her so. Her young, clean pride had been dreadfully humiliated. It seemed to her that her heart was frozen, that she never again could pulse with warm life. The thing that had fallen upon her was a degradation. In her thoughts she held herself soiled irretrievably.
Miss Morgan died the third day after the arrival of her niece. In accord with a desire she had once expressed, she was buried in a grove back of the pasture at the ranch.
Ruth accepted the invitation of Mrs. Flanders to stay a few days at the Dude Ranch as her guest. The days lengthened into weeks, and still she did not return to the Circle Diamond. Larry made occasions to come to the hotel to see Ruth. Sometimes Rowan came, but not often. The gulf between him and his young wife had widened until he despaired of bridging it. He felt that the kindest thing he could do was to stay away. The whole passionate urge of his heart swept him toward her, but his iron will schooled his impulses to obedience.
But as Rowan rode the range he carried with him the memory of a white face, fragile as a flower, out of which dark eyes looked at him defiantly. His heart ached for her. In his own breast he carried a block of ice that never melted, but he would gladly have taken her grief, too, if that had been possible.