“Next to himself Jerry Barclay cares for money. That’s what he was after, and he didn’t get it the way he expected. He’s got the smoothest tongue any man ever had in his head, and he’s used it right along to get money with. How long was Mrs. Newbury dead when he got engaged to Mercedes Gracey? And do you suppose he’d have ever asked her if they hadn’t struck one of the biggest ore-bodies in Virginia on the fifteen-hundred-foot level of the Cresta Plata? But they’ve got him by the leg up here now,”—with an exultant laugh—“the whole three of ’em’s on to him. They give him a big salary and don’t they make him work for it—oh, my! There ain’t no drones in the Gracey boys’ hive, you can bet, and Jerry Barclay’s got to hustle for every cent he earns. No San Francisco and good times for him! If Mercedes was to cry and do the loving wife act to Black Dan and say she couldn’t live without her husband I wouldn’t bet but what she’d get him. But she ain’t done it. She don’t want him, Junie. That’s what’s the matter in that shebang. Neither one of ’em wants the other.”
“Why did she marry him?” said June. “Why did she—”
The baby here interrupted by giving vent to a loud exclamation, and at the same time disdainfully casting her rubber rabbit on the floor. Then she leaned over the arm of her high chair, staring with motionless intentness at the discarded rabbit, as if expecting to see it get up and walk away.
“That’s the thing that gets me,” said Mitty thoughtfully. “Why did she marry him? She could have got a better man than Jerry, though I suppose he was about the best in sight at the time. But she’s like the baby here—always cryin’ and stretchin’ out for toys she can’t reach. Then you give her the toy and she looks it all over and suddenly gives a sort er disgusted snort, and throws it on the floor. She ain’t got no more use for it, and the first thing you know she’ll be stretchin’ out for another one.”
June made no answer to this and Mitty, big with her subject, for her dislike of Mercedes was an absorbing sentiment, went on:
“She treated him like dirt. Barney was up there one night while they were at dinner. He was just in the room in front with the curtains down between and they didn’t know he was there. He said he could hear her pickin’ at Jerry because he’d been half an hour late for dinner. He said she kep’ on pickin’ and pickin’ and Jerry not saying a word. Barney says to me when he got home, ‘Jerry’s paid high for his position.’ And I says to him when he told me, ‘That woman’s goin’ to make every one pay high for anything they get out er her. She’s not givin’ things away free gratis.’”
The baby’s contemplation of the fallen rabbit had by this time lost its charm. She threw herself back in her chair and raised her voice in a wail distinctly suggestive of weariness of spirit and ennui. Mitty lifted her, a formless, weeping bundle, from her chair, and June’s offer of the rabbit was met by an angrily repulsing hand and a writhing movement of irritated disgust.
“She’s tired, poor lamb!” said Mitty, rocking her gently to and fro and slapping on her back with a comforting, maternal hand. “We try to keep her awake till Barney gets in. He just thinks there’s nothing in the world like his baby.”
The dusk was beginning to subdue the brilliancy of sunset, and June, buttoning herself into her jacket, bade mother and child good night. Mitty’s cheerful good-bys followed her down the passageway, the baby’s now lusty cries drowning the last messages which usually delay feminine farewells.
Once outside, she walked rapidly toward home, avoiding the crowds on C Street, and flitting, a small, dark figure, through less frequented byways. Tumult was in her heart, also the sense of dread that had been with her ever since she came to Virginia and knew her old lover was so near.