His plan, when at last she pieced together his distorted idea, was so sullen, so determined, that her slight weapons could not cope with it. He had promised to protect Gerty, he kept repeating. Well, he would keep his vows, if she didn’t. He drew, she could see, a grim satisfaction from that antithesis. He would keep his vows. He would make that scoundrel promise on oath to divorce the other woman and marry the woman whom he had dishonored. Unless he got that promise, Hardin swore to kill him. Pacing up and down the canvased cage of a tent, he delivered himself of his fury.
Innes shrank from him, the man she did not know. The coarse streak was uncovered in all its repulsiveness. Old Jasper Gingg’s face leered through the features of his descendant. Dementia and atavism glared through his eyes. His hate was disfiguring. “I’ll protect my wife. I’ll keep my vows.”
He turned on Innes suddenly. She was crying, a huddled heap on the couch. “I’ve had enough crying—between you and Gerty. Will you get out? I’ve got to have some sleep.”
Through her sobs, he could make out that she was afraid to leave him. He stood staring at her, frowning at her fright, her intrusion.
“Well, then, I’ll go. I’m used to having to leave my own tent. A dog’s life.” He flung out into the night.
She cried to him to come back, that she would go. “Don’t, Tom! Tom!” Her voice rang through the encampment. The echo warned her. She saw questioning slits of light from tents across the trapezium. She shut the door.
She stood in the room he had left; the desecrated home of Tom Hardin. It was the wreck she had foreseen. She would sit up for him. She could not sit there watching that hateful, leering mandarin skirt, daubed with candle-drippings; those sketches; everything recalled Gerty Hardin’s wistful baby smile. She could not bring herself to lie on that couch. She thrust her arms into Tom’s overcoat, buttoning it around her, and went out to wait for him. His own cot was there.
A light shone from Rickard’s window. The peace of the stars, the light from the window, smoothed out her terrors. She could picture Tom walking out his trouble, crying out his hurt to those same distant stars.
How fierce the resentment against pain! The atom beating his head in revolt against the universe! That particular sting, Tom’s; another kind of sorrow the next man’s heritage! But the stars know it, those worlds of burned-out griefs; to them how tenderly humorous, she thought, must be each individual resistance. A short span, a little joy, perhaps; a little sorrow; rebellion;—and then the stars again.
To-night, it was all sorrow. Down there, under the rocks, lay Estrada. Tripped to his end by the prophecy of the general, the son the corner-stone of his undertaking! In the river of his plan the best of them lay sleeping!