The blue eyes turned away. Had Shea been able to see them, he might have read in them a look that did not correspond to Mrs. Crump’s spoken word. But he did not see them.
He turned away from the woman. The carven lines of his face deepened, aged, as from him was rent the veil of his posturing. A weary and hopeless sadness welled in his eyes; the sadness of one who beholds around him the wreckage of all his little world, brought down to ruin by his own faults. When he spoke, it was with the same sonorous voice, yet lacking the fine rolling accent.
“You are right, Mrs. Crump, you are right. God help me! I, who was once a man, am now less than the very dust. Your harshness is justified. At this time yesterday, madam, I was a wretched drunken fool, spouting lines of rhetoric in Albuquerque.”
“I’m surprised at that,” said Mrs. Crump. “How’d ye get the liquor, since this here state an’ nation ain’t particularly wet no more? And how ye got here from Albuquerque I don’t figger.”
“It is simply told.” From the miserable Shea was stripped the last vestige of his punctured pose. “Twenty years ago my young wife died, and I started upon the whiskey trail; it has led me—here. Yesterday I came into Albuquerque, starving. At the railroad station, amid some—er—confusion, I encountered a company of those motion picture men who dare to call themselves actors. So far was my pride broken that I begged of them help in the name and memory of The Profession.”
Shea emphatically capitalized these last two words.
“They took me aboard their train,” he pursued, “and I was given drink. Some controversy arose, I know not how; I found myself ignominiously ejected from the train. I walked, not knowing nor caring whither. Nor is that all, madam. I am a fugitive from justice!”
“Broke jail?” queried Mrs. Crump, betraying signs of interest.
“No, madam. In Albuquerque I was starving and desperate. I—I stole fruit and—sandwiches—from a railroad stand.”
His voice failed. He turned away, staring at the snowy peaks as though awaiting a verdict.