“Oh, Will!”
“Oh, don’t start that game!” the man retorted savagely. “We’ve got to live, I s’pose. You’ll earn the money. That sort of thing is done in every business. You make me sick.” He lit his pipe and blew great clouds of smoke across the table. “I tell you what it is, 155 we can’t afford to keep your brother doing nothing all the time. If you insist on keeping him you must find the money––somewhere. It’s no use being proud. We’re hard up, and if people owe you money, well––dun ’em for it. I don’t know how it is, but this darned business of yours seems to have gone to pieces.”
“It’s not gone to pieces, Will,” Eve protested. “I’ve made more money this last four months than ever before.” The girl’s manner had a patience in it that came from her brief but bitter experiences.
“Then what’s become of the money?”
But Eve’s patience had its limits. The cruel injustice of his sneering question drove her beyond endurance.
“Oh, Will,” she cried, “and you can sit there and ask such a question! Where has it gone?” She laughed without any mirth. “It’s gone with the rest, down at the saloon, where you’ve gambled it away. It’s gone because I’ve been a weak fool and listened to your talk of gambling schemes which have never once come off. Oh, Will, I don’t want to throw this all up at you. Indeed, indeed, I don’t. But you drive me to it with your unkindness, which––which I can’t understand. Don’t you see, dear, that I want to make you happy, that I want to help you? You must see it, and yet you treat me worse––oh, worse than a nigger! Why is it? What have I done? God knows you can have all, everything I possess in the world. I would do anything for you, but––but––you––– Sometimes I think you have learned to hate me. Sometimes I think the very sight of me rouses all that is worst in you. What is it, dear? What is it that has come between us? What have I done to make you like this?”
She paused, her eyes full of that pain and misery which her tongue could never adequately express. She wanted to open her heart to him, to let him see all the gold of her feelings for him, but his moody unresponsiveness set her tongue faltering and left her groping blindly for the cause of the trouble between them.
It was some moments before Will answered her. He sat glaring at the table, the smoke of his pipe clouding the still air of the neat kitchen. He knew he was facing a critical moment in their lives. He saw dimly that he had, for his own interests, gone a shade too far. Eve was not a weakling, she was a woman of distinct character, and even in his dull, besotted way he detected at last that note of rebellion underlying her appeal. Suddenly he looked up and smiled. But it was not altogether a pleasant smile. It was against his inclination, and was ready to vanish on the smallest provocation.
“You’re taking things wrong, Eve,” he said, and the strain of attempting a conciliatory attitude made the words come sharply. “What do I want your money for, but to try and make more with it? Do you think I want you to keep me? I haven’t come to that yet.” His tone was rapidly losing its veneer of restraint. “Guess I can work all right. No, no, my girl, you haven’t got to keep me yet. But money gets money, and you ought to realize it. I admit my luck at ‘draw’ has been bad––rotten!” He violently knocked his pipe out on a plate. “But it’s got to change. I can play with the best of ’em, an’ they play a straight game. What’s losing a few nights, if, in the end, I get a big stake? Why Restless helped himself to a hundred dollars last night. And I’m going to to-night.”