Maddening, too, that Rickard would not see that he had hurt her. His bow was just as friendly as before. Friendly! Was that all it had ever been? At the mess-table, she caught his eyes turning toward, resting on, Innes Hardin. The girl herself did not seem to notice—artful, subterranean, such stalking! That was why she had come running back to the Heading! That the reason of her anger when she had hinted of the Maldonado. She learned to hate Innes. Before the girl’s return, she had had a chance; she knew she had had a chance. He had been caught by youth, ah, that the truth that seared! Youth! Youth that need not fear the morning light, the swift passing months! She had no time to lose. Her heart felt old.
The mess-meals grew intolerable to her. She would watch for the shock of those conscious glances that she felt every one must see. She, Gerty Hardin, cast aside for a hoyden in khakis! The girl’s play at unconsciousness infuriated her. Deep! Ah, she knew now her game! Riding fifteen miles down the levee to pay a pretended visit to a laborer’s wife, Mrs. Parrish! As if she were interested in Mrs. Parrish! Jolting in a box-car to see the concrete head-gate with MacLean; walking with Estrada, meeting Rickard, of course, everywhere; her yellow khakis in every corner of the camp. A promiscuous coquette, she changed the word to “careful”; playing her cards slowly; waiting for victory to make a hero of Rickard; pretending to take issue with Tom—ha, she knew her, at last!
Her first call at the Palmyra discovered the mistress in a wash gown of obscure cut and color, with a white apron a serving maid might wear. Knitting her pale-colored wools, Mrs. Marshall had little to give out but monosyllables. Gerty was forced to carry the conversation. Mrs. Marshall did not appear to see her visitor’s correctness, the harmony of color, the good lines. Time thrown away, that laundering!
That avenue dull, time again hung heavily. The gay evenings on the Delta were abandoned; the men coming back from the river too tired, too warm to dance. She began to discover it was hideously hot. Perhaps, she might go out, after all—
She decided to tell her family that it was too warm to continue the commissary activity; Rickard was enough of a gentleman to let her cover her hurt; she could safely assume that! Yet it stung her to think what Innes might be thinking, what, perhaps, he had told her! Every one must be wondering, speculating! In her life, Gerty had felt keenly but twice; each time Rickard it was who had hurt her. That mocking superior eye of his! Bitterly she hated him.
“Tom,” she said one night. He turned with a swift thrill of expectation, for her voice sounded kind; like the Gerty of old. “I have always heard that Mr. Marshall has terribly strict ideas—for every one but himself, I mean!”
“That’s a good one.” It was the first laugh in weeks of moodiness. Hardin was thinking of the poker games.
“I’m serious. I think he ought to hear of that Mexican woman.”
“Have you heard anything else?”
There was no new thread in her fabric of suspicions. To Hardin, it brought a memory of time past to be sitting thus familiarly together, Gerty in her negligee, her hair disarranged, looking up into his face. He did not suspect he was a pawn in her scheme of retribution.