Читать книгу: «The Forbidden Way», страница 14

"I've left her – she's in love with Cort Bent. I have proof of it. We made a mistake, that's all."

"Of course you did," she said. "I'm glad that you acknowledge it. Are you going back to New York?"

"I haven't decided. That depends on many things. She thinks I'm in love with you."

They had come to a piece of rough ground sown with boulders and fallen trees, through which their horses picked their way carefully. Rita Cheyne watched the broad back of her companion with a new expression in her eyes. He had never seemed so difficult to read as at this moment, but she thought that she understood and she found something admirable in his reticence and in his loyalty to his wife. In a moment the trail widened again as they reached the levels, and her horse found its way alongside his.

"She thinks you're in love with me? What does she know about love? What do I know about it? or you? Love is a condition of mind, contagious in extreme youth, but only mildly infectious later in life. Why should any one risk his whole future on a condition of mind? You feel sick but you don't marry your doctor or your trained nurse because he helps to cure you. Why don't you? Simply because you get well and then discover that your doctor has a weak chin or disagreeable finger ends. When you get well of love, if you marry to cure it, there's nothing left but Reno. I don't believe in love. I simply deny its existence – just as I refuse to believe in ghosts or a personal Devil. I resent the idea that your wife should believe you're in love with me. You find pleasure in my society because I don't rub you the wrong way, and I like you because I find less trouble in getting on with you than with anybody else."

"You're a cold-blooded proposition, Rita," said Wray smiling.

"Yes – if it's cold-blooded to think – and to say what one thinks. But I'm not so cold-blooded that I could marry one man when I liked another – a man with whom I had no bond of sympathy. Cheyne was the nearest approach I could find to the expression of a youthful ideal – people told me I was in love with him – so I married him. Of course, if I had had any sense – but what's the use? I've learned something since then. To-day I would marry – not for love, but for something finer – not because of a condition of mind or a condition of body, but because of a stronger, more enduring relation, like that between the lime and sand that build a house. I'd marry a man because I wanted to give him my friendship and because I couldn't get on without his friendship, and if the house we built would not endure, then no marriage will endure."

"You mean, Rita," Wray interrupted with sober directness, "that you'd marry me if you could?"

She flushed mildly. "I didn't say so. I said I would marry for friendship because it's the biggest thing in the world. I don't mind saying I'd marry you. It's quite safe, because, obviously, I can't."

Jeff looked at her uncertainly and then laughed noisily.

"Rita, you're a queer one! I never know when the seriousness stops and the fun begins."

She smiled and frowned at the same time.

"The fun hasn't begun. I mean what I say. Why shouldn't a woman say what she thinks? A man does. I shock you?"

"No – it's part of you somehow. Speak out. I'll tell you whether I believe you or not when you're through."

"I suppose I'm what people call a modern woman. If I am, I'm glad of it. Most women fight hard for their independence. I've simply taken mine. I say and do and shall always say and do precisely what comes into my mind. I've no doubt that I'll make enemies. I've already succeeded in doing that. I'll also probably shock my friends – but I've thrown away my fetters and refuse to put them on again because some silly prig believes in living up to feminine traditions. I haven't any sympathy with tradition. Tradition has done more to hinder the enlightened development of the individual than any single force in history. Tradition means old fogyism, cant and hypocrisy. I never could see why, because our fathers and mothers were stupid, we have to be stupid, too. Imagine an age in which it was not proper to cross one's legs if one wanted to – an age of stiff-backed chairs, to sit in which was to be tortured – when every silly person denied himself a hundred harmless, innocent amusements simply because tradition demanded it! We live in an age of reason. If a woman loves a man, why shouldn't she tell him so?"

CHAPTER XXI
L'homme Dispose

Jeff Wray had listened in curiosity, then in amazement, his eyes turned toward the Saguache Peak, whose snow-cap caught a reflection of the setting sun. He had accustomed himself to unusual audacities on the part of his companion, but the frankness of her speech had outdone anything he could remember. When he turned his look in her direction it was with a shrewd glance of appraisement like the one she felt in the morning when she had first appeared in his office. As they reached an opening in the trees Jeff halted his horse and dismounted.

"It's early yet. Let's sit for a while. Throw your bridle over his head. He'll stand."

Mrs. Cheyne got down, and they sat on a rock facing the slope, which dropped away gently to the valley. Jeff took out his tobacco and papers and deftly rolled a cigarette, while Rita Cheyne watched him. He offered to make her one, but she refused.

"You've got me guessing now, Rita," he said with a laugh. "More than once in New York I wondered what sort of a woman you really were. I thought I'd learned a thing or two before I came away, but I'll admit you've upset all my calculations. I've always known you were clever when it came to the real business of disguising your thoughts. I know you never mean what you say, but I can't understand anybody traveling two thousand miles to create a false impression. You know as well as I do that all this talk of yours about friendship is mere clever nonsense. I know what friendship means, and I guess I know what love means, too, but there isn't any way that you can mix them up so that I won't know one from the other."

"I'm not trying to mix them up."

"You're trying to mix me up then." He took her hand in his and made her look at him. "You've been playing with me for some time. I was a different kind of a breed from anything you'd been used to in New York, and you liked to wind me up so that you could see the wheels go 'round. You've had a lot of fun out of me in one way or another, and you still find me amusing."

She stopped indignantly.

"Don't you believe in me?"

"No. The things you say are too clever to be genuine for one thing. You're too cold-blooded for another."

"One can't think unless one is cold-blooded."

"When a woman's in love she doesn't want to think."

"I'm not in love – I simply say I'll marry you, that's all."

"You're talking nonsense."

"I never was saner in my life. I want you to believe in my kind of friendship."

"Eight hundred thousand dollars' worth of friendship is not to be sneezed at."

"Stop, Jeff, you're brutal. I won't listen."

"You've got to. I've listened to you. Now you must listen to me, and I'm going to make you play the game with your cards above the table. So far as I can understand, you hold the New York record for broken hearts to date, and I was warned that you had strewn your wrecks along the whole front of Central Park East. But I suppose I was too much flattered when you showed me attention to take to my heels. I liked you and I wanted you to like me. Perhaps we both liked each other for the same reason – with the same motive – curiosity. You put me in odd situations just to see what I'd do. I liked to be with you. You purred like a kitten in the sun, and I liked to hear you, so I was willing to perform for that privilege. You claimed me for a friend, but you tried your best to make me lose my head. That's true, you can't deny it. I didn't lose it, because – well, because I had made up my mind that I wouldn't. I don't know whether you were disappointed or not, but I know you were surprised, because you weren't in the habit of missing a trick when you played that game."

She withdrew her hand abruptly and turned her head away. "That isn't true," she murmured. "You must not speak to me so."

"I've got to. Every word of what I say is true – and you know it."

"It's not true now."

"Yes, it's true now. I know how much you really care about me. You've got so much in life that you're never really interested in anything except the things you can't get. You like me because you know I'm out of your reach and you can't have me even if I wanted you to. You're a great artist, but I don't think you really ever fooled me much. You like to run with a fast and Frenchy set just because it gives your cleverness a chance it couldn't have with the Dodos, but you don't mind being talked about, because your conscience is clear; you like the excitement of running into danger just to prove your cleverness in getting out of it. See here, Rita, this time you're going too far. I suppose I ought to feel very proud of the faith you put in me and your willingness to trust yourself so completely in my hands. I guess I do. But things are different with me somehow. I told you I was going to Hell pretty fast, and I'm not in a mood to be trifled with."

"I'm not trifling." She had caught a sinister note in his voice and looked up at him in alarm.

"There's a way to prove that."

"How?"

"This!"

He put his arms around her, turned her face to his, and held it there while he looked a moment into her eyes. But she struggled and held away from him, suddenly discovering something unfamiliar in the roughness of his touch and the expression in his eyes.

"Let me go!" she cried, struggling desperately to be free.

"You'll kiss me."

"No – never, not after that."

"After what?"

"The way you speak to me. You're rough – "

"I'll not let you go until you tell me why you came here. If you love me, you'll look in my eyes and tell me so."

"I don't love you," she panted, still struggling. "I never shall. Let me go, I say!"

He laughed at her. Her struggles were so futile. Art could not avail her here. She realized it at last and lay quietly in his arms, her eyes closed, her figure relaxed, while he kissed her as he pleased.

"Will you tell me you love me?"

"No. I loathe you."

Then she began struggling again; he released her, and she flung away and stood facing him, her hat off, hair in disorder, cheeks flaming, her body trembling with rage and dismay.

"Oh, that you could have touched me so!"

"Why, Rita – " he began.

"Don't speak to me – " She moved toward the horses. "I'm going," she asserted.

"Where?"

"To Mesa City."

"How can you? You don't know the way."

"I'll find the way. Oh – " She stamped her foot in rage and then, without other warning, sank on a rock near by and burst into tears.

Jeff Wray rose uncertainly and stared at her, wide-eyed, like other more practiced men in similar situations, unaccountably at a loss. He had acted on impulse with a sense of fitting capably into a situation. He watched her in amazement, for her tears were genuine. No woman was clever enough to be able to cry like that. There was no feminine artistry here. She was only a child who had made the discovery that her doll is stuffed with sawdust. He realized that perhaps for the first time he saw her divested of her artifice, the polite mummery of the world, the real Rita Cheyne, who all her life had wanted to want something and, now that she had found what it was, could not have it just as she wanted it. It was real woe, there was no doubt of that, the pathetic woe of childhood. He went over to her and laid his hand gently on her shoulder. But she would not raise her head, and it almost seemed as though she had forgotten him. He stood beside her for some moments, looking down at her with a changing expression. The hard lines she had discovered in his face were softened, the frown relaxed, and at his lips there came the flicker of a smile.

"I – I'm sorry," he said at last. "I – I made a mistake, Rita. I made a mistake."

The sobs began anew.

"How – how could you – treat me so?"

There was no reply to that, so he stood silently and waited for the storm to pass. Meanwhile he had the good taste not to touch her again. But as the sobs diminished he repeated:

"I made a mistake, Rita. You made me think – "

"Oh!" only. Her face appeared for a moment above her arms and then instantly disappeared. "You're odious!"

"Why, Rita," he said with warm frankness, "how could I believe anything else? All your talk of friendship; why, you asked me to marry you. What did you expect of me?"

"Not that – not what you did – the way you did it."

"You forgave me once."

She raised her head, careless of the tears which still coursed.

"Yes, I forgave you then. But not now. I can't forgive you now. No man ever kissed a woman the way you kissed me unless he is mad about her – or despises her."

"Despises – "

"Yes. You might as well ask me to forgive you for murdering my brother. You've killed something inside me – my pride, I think. I can never – never forget that."

She got up and turned her back to him, fingering for her handkerchief. She had none. He slowly undid the kerchief from around his own neck and put it in her hand.

"Don't cry, Rita."

"Cry?" She wheeled around, still staunching her tears. "No, I'll not cry. I was a fool to cry. I'll not cry any more. I cried because – because I was disappointed – that any one I trusted could be so base."

"I'm not so dreadful as all that. You must admit – "

"I'll admit nothing – except that I made a mistake, too. It hasn't been a pleasant awakening. I know now what those kisses meant."

Wray's incomprehension was deeper.

"I wish I did," he said. "I was sure they wouldn't do you any harm. You wouldn't have been so frank with me if you hadn't been pretty sure of yourself."

"That was my mistake. I was so sure of myself that I didn't think it necessary to be sure of you." And while Jeff was trying to understand what she meant, she went on:

"Those were not my kisses. They were impersonal – and might have been given to any woman – that is, any woman who would allow them. Each of them a separate insult – Judas kisses – treacherous kisses – kisses of retaliation – of revenge – "

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"You've been using me to square your accounts with your wife – that's all," scornfully. "As if you didn't know."

He flushed crimson and bit his lips. "That's not true," he muttered. "What does it matter to my wife? Why should she care who I kiss – or why?"

"It doesn't matter to her, I suppose," she said, slightly ironical; "she is her own mistress again, but it does to you. Curiously enough you're still in love with your wife. She's in love with somebody else. Naturally it wounds your self-esteem – that precious self-esteem of yours that's more stupendous than the mountain above you. She hurts you, and you come running to me for the liniment. Thanks! You've come to the wrong shop, Mr. Wray."

Jeff's brows darkened. He opened his mouth as though to speak, but thought better of it. As Rita Cheyne took up the bridle of her horse and led him to a rock that she might mount, Jeff interfered.

"One moment, Rita. I think we'd better have this thing out. I'm beginning to understand better the width of the breach between us – it's widened some to-day – and I don't believe you're going to try to make it up to-morrow. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to have any more misunderstandings, either. I want you to forgive me if you can. I've cared for you a good deal – enough to make me sorry you were only fooling. Things don't seem to be going my way, and I've had lot of thinking to do that hasn't made me any too cheerful. I don't seem to see things just the way I did. This fight has made me bitter. I've got everything against me —your world, the organized forces of your world against a rank outsider. I belong to the people who work with their hands. I've always been pretty proud of that. I went East and mixed up with a lot of your kind of people. I had a good time. They asked me to their houses, gave me their wine and food. They knew what they were about. They had need of me, but no matter what they said or did they never for a moment let me forget what I'd come from. You were the only one of all that crowd who tried to make me feel differently. Was it any wonder that I was grateful for it?"

"Your gratitude takes a curious form."

He held up a hand in protest.

"Then you – you liked me because I said just what I thought whenever I thought it, but even with you I never forgot it wasn't possible for us ever to reach an understanding of perfect equality. You played with life – you had been taught to. Life is a kind of joke to you. People are incidents, only important when they give you amusement. I've been more important than others for that reason – because I gave you more amusement than others, but there's never been any doubt that I was only an incident. To me life is a grim problem – I've felt its weight, and I know. To-day you talked of making a marriage as I would speak of making a cigarette. It was too cold-blooded even for humour – "

"You refuse me then, do you, Jeff?" she laughed. But he made no reply to her banter.

"I've done with marriage," he went on. "I tried it and I failed, just as you tried it and failed, but I'm not ready, as you are, to make a joke of it. Failures are not the kind of things I like to joke about. You joke because joking makes you forget. I'm not trying to forget. I couldn't if I wanted to. I've learned that out here. My wife can do as she likes. If she wants to marry Cort Bent I'll give her a divorce, but as for me, I've done with it – for good."

Jeff had sunk to the rock beside her, his head in his hands, while she stood a little way off looking down at him. Their relative attitudes seemed somehow to make a difference in her way of thinking of him. In spite of the light bitterness of her mood, she, too, felt the weight of his thoughts.

"Do you mean to say," she murmured, half in pity, half in contempt, "that you still love your wife as much as this?"

But he made no reply.

"It's really quite extraordinary," she went on with a manner which seemed to go with upraised brows and a lorgnon. "You're really the most wonderful person I've ever known. This is the kind of fidelity one usually associates with the noble house-dog. I'm sure she'd be flattered. But why will you give her a divorce? Since you're not going to marry – what's the use?"

He rose and went to the horses. "Come," he said, "it's getting late. Let's get back."

She refused his help, mounted alone, and silently they rode down the slope through the underbrush, where after a while Jeff found a trail in the open.

"Does this lead to Mesa City?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Good-by, then." She flourished her hand and, before he realized it, was off and had soon disappeared from sight. He urged his horse forward into a full gallop, but saw that he could not catch her. Apache was the faster horse, and his own animal carried too much weight. So after a few miles he gave up the race, walked his winded horse, and gave himself up to his thoughts.

The exercise had refreshed his mind, and he was able to think with calm amusement of the little comedy in which he had just been an actor. What a spoiled child she was! He couldn't understand why he had ever been afraid of her. It was only pity he felt now, the pity of those tears, the only really inartistic thing Rita had ever been guilty of, for her face had not been so pretty when she cried. And yet they appealed to him more strongly than any token she had ever given him. What did they mean? He had hurt her pride, of course – he had had to do that, but somehow his conscience didn't seem to trouble him much about the state of Rita's heart. Love meant something different to him from the kind of cold, analytical thing Rita Cheyne was capable of. If it hadn't been for those tears! They worried him.

As he reached the edge of a wood he caught a glimpse of her just disappearing over the brow of a hill, half a mile away. So he urged his horse forward. It wouldn't do to have her ride into Mesa without him. He rode hard and suddenly came upon her kneeling at the border of a stream, dipping his bandana into the water and touching her eyes. When she saw him she looked up pertly, and he saw that she was only a child washing its face.

"Hello!" she said. "I was waiting for you. Do you see what I'm doing? It's a rite. Do I look like Niobe? I'm washing my hands – of you."

Jeff got down and stood beside her.

"Do be sensible, Rita."

"I am – am I clean? You haven't a powder puff about you – have you?"

"You're going to tell me you forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive. If you think there's anything to forgive, I'll forgive – of course." She got up from her knees, wiping her face, sat down on a tree trunk, and motioned him to sit beside her.

"Jeff," she said, "I've a confession to make. You know what it is, because you're cleverer than you have any right to be. I don't love you really, you know, and I'm pretty sure it isn't in me to love any one – except myself. It has always made me furious to think that I couldn't do anything with you. From the first I set my heart on having you for myself, not because I wanted to laugh at you – I couldn't have done that – but because you were in love with your wife."

"Why – do you hate her so?"

"I don't. I don't hate any one. But she irritated me. She was so self-satisfied, so genuine, so handsome – three things which I am not." She waited for him to contradict her, but Jeff was frowning at vacancy.

"Just to satisfy my self-esteem – which is almost as great as yours, Jeff Wray – I would have moved mountains to win, and I even let you drag my pride in the dust before I discovered that I couldn't. I die pretty hard, but I know when I'm dead."

"Don't, Rita; you and I are going to be better friends than ever."

"No, Jeff, I'm going East to-morrow. I don't want to see you. To see you would be to remind me of my insufficiencies."

"You've made a friend."

"No," shaking her head, "that won't do. It never does. I may have tried to deceive you, but I know better. Friendship is masculine – or it's feminine. It can't be both. I'm going away at once. I'm not going to see you again."

"Oh, yes, you are. To-morrow we'll – "

"No. I'd go to-night if there was a train. I want you to do one thing for me, though. Will you?"

"If I can."

"That money – the money for that stock. I want to leave it with you – to use or not to use as you think best. I've got a great deal of money – much more than is good for me."

Jeff shook his head.

"No, Rita, no. I can't do that. If I'm going to lose, I'll lose alone."

"But if you win?" she turned and gave him her hand. "You will. I've sworn you will. And here's luck on it." Instead of clasping her hand, as she intended he should, he raised it to his lips and kissed it gently – as under different conditions he might have kissed her lips. She looked down at the top of his head and closed her eyes a moment, but when he looked up she was smiling gaily.

"You're a good sport, Rita," he said.

"Yes," she said coolly, "I believe I am."

They rode into Mesa City slowly. The valley was already wrapped in shadow, but above them the upper half of Saguache Peak was afire with the sunset. The evening train was in and had puffed its way up to the yard. There was a crowd at the post-office waiting for mail, and scattered groups here and there were chatting with the arrivals. Wray and Mrs. Cheyne climbed the slope to the Kinney House, where a cowboy from the Home Ranch was waiting for their horses. They dismounted and went indoors to the office, where a solitary lady in a dark dress was signing her name to the hotel register. At the sound of their voices she turned and straightened, suddenly very pale and tense. And then, before Jeff could speak, turned again quickly to the clerk and said quietly:

"If you'll show me the way up at once, please, I'd like to go to my room."