Children of the Desert Part 5

... Sylvia emerged from behind the thin part.i.tion, sighing and smiling.

"Did it seem very long?" she asked. "It's hard to make up your mind. It's like taking one color out of the rainbow and expecting it to look as pretty as the whole rainbow. But I'm ready now."

"Remember, a week from Wednesday," called Madame Boucher, as Harboro and Sylvia moved toward the door.

Harboro looked at Sylvia inquiringly.

"For the try-on," she explained. "Yes, I'll be here." She went out, Harboro holding the door open for her.

Out on the sidewalk she almost collided with a heavy man, an American--a gross, blond, good-natured creature who suddenly smiled with extreme gratification. "h.e.l.lo!--_Sylvia!_" he cried. He seized her by the hand and drew her close.

Harboro stood on the door-step and looked down--and recognized Peterson.

PART II.

THE TIME OF FLAME.

CHAPTER VII.

Peterson felt the dark shadow of Harboro immediately. He looked up into the gravely inquiring face above him, and then he gave voice to a new delight. "h.e.l.lo!--HARBORO!" He dropped Sylvia's hand as if she no longer existed. An almost indefinable change of expression occurred in his ruddy, radiant face. It was as if his joy at seeing Sylvia had been that which we experience in the face of a beautiful illusion; and now, seeing Harboro, it was as if he stood in the presence of a cherished reality. He grasped Harboro's hand and dragged him down from the step. "Old Harboro!" he exclaimed.

"You two appear to have met before," remarked Harboro, looking with quiet inquiry from Sylvia to Peterson, and back to Sylvia.

"Yes, in San Antonio," she explained. It had been in Eagle Pa.s.s, really, but she did not want Harboro to know.

The smile on Peterson's face had become curiously fixed. "Yes, in San Antonio," he echoed.

"He knew my father," added Sylvia.

"A particular friend," said Peterson. And then, the lines of mirth on his face becoming a little less rigid and the color a little less ruddy, he added to Sylvia: "Doesn't your father occasionally talk about his old friend _Peterson?_"

Harboro interrupted. "At any rate, you probably don't know that she is Mrs. Harboro now."

Peterson appeared to be living entirely within himself for the moment. He might have made you think of the Trojan Horse--innocuous without, but teeming with belligerent activity within. He seemed to be laughing maliciously, though without movement or noise. Then he was all frank joyousness again. "Good!" he exclaimed. He smote Harboro on the shoulder.

"Good!" He stood apart, vigorously erect, childishly pleased. "Enjoying a holiday?" he asked.

And when Harboro nodded he became animated again. "You're both going to take dinner with me--over at the _Internacional_. We'll celebrate. I've got to take my train out in an hour--I've got a train now, Harboro."

(Harboro had noted his conductor's uniform.) "We'll just have time. We can have a talk."

Harboro recalled a score of fellows he had known up and down the line, with most of whom he had gotten out of touch. Peterson would know about some of them. He realized how far he had been removed from the spontaneous joys of the railroad career since he had been in the office. And Peterson had always been a friendly chap, with lots of good points.

"Should you like it, Sylvia?" he asked.

She had liked Peterson, too. He had always been good-natured and generous.

He had seemed often almost to understand.... "I think it would be nice,"

she replied. She was afraid there was a note of guilt in her voice. She wished Harboro had refused to go, without referring the matter to her.

"I could telephone to Antonia," he said slowly. It seemed impossible to quicken his pulses in any way. "She needn't get anything ready."

"I could do it," suggested Sylvia. She felt she'd rather not be left alone with Peterson. "I could use Madame Boucher's telephone."

But Harboro had already laid his hand on the door. "Better let me," he said. "I can do it quicker." He knew that Antonia would want to remonstrate, to ask questions, and he wanted Sylvia to enjoy the occasion whole-heartedly. He went back into the milliner's shop.

"_Peterson_," said the man who remained on the sidewalk with Sylvia.

"I remember," she replied, her lips scarcely moving, her eyes avoiding his burning glance. "And ... in San Antonio."

They were rather early for the midday meal when they reached the _Internacional_; indeed, they were the first to enter the dining-room.

Nevertheless the att.i.tudes of the Mexican waiters were sufficient a.s.surance that they might expect to be served immediately.

Peterson looked at his watch and compared it with the clock in the dining-room. "The train from Spofford is late," he said. "It's due now."

He pitched his head up like a dog. "There she is!" he exclaimed. There was the rumble of a train crossing the bridge. "They'll be coming in right away." He indicated the empty tables by a glance.

Harboro knew all about the train schedules and such matters. He knew that American tourists bound for Mexico would be coming over on that train, and that they would have an hour for dinner while their baggage was pa.s.sing through the hands of the customs officials.

They had given their orders and were still waiting when the train pulled in at the station, close at hand, and in a moment the dining-room became noisy.

"Travel seems pretty light," commented Peterson. He appeared to be trying to make conversation; he was obviously under some sort of constraint.

Still, he had the genuine interest of the railroader in the subjects he mentioned.

Harboro had not observed that there was not even one woman among the travellers who entered; but Peterson noted the fact, mentioning it in the tone of one who has been deprived of a natural right. And Harboro wondered what was the matter with a man who saw the whole world, always, solely in relation to women. He sensed the fact that Peterson was not entirely comfortable. "He's probably never grown accustomed to being in the company of a decent woman," he concluded. He tried to launch the subject of old a.s.sociates. It seemed that Peterson had been out in Durango for some time, but he had kept in touch with most of the fellows on the line to the City.

He began to talk easily, and Harboro was enjoying the meeting even before the waiter came back with their food.

Sylvia was ill at ease. She was glad that Harboro and Peterson had found something to talk about. She began to eat the amber-colored grapes the waiter had placed before her. She seemed absent-minded, absorbed in her own thoughts. And then she forgot self in the contemplation of a man and a child who had come in and taken a table at the other end of the dining-room. The man wore a band of c.r.a.pe around his arm. The child, a little girl of five or six, had plainly sobbed herself into a condition verging upon stupor. She was not eating the dinner which had been brought to her, though she occasionally glanced with miserable eyes at one dish or another. She seemed unable to help herself, and at intervals a dry sob shook her tiny body.

Sylvia forgot the grapes beside her plate; she was looking with womanly pity at that little girl, and at the man, who seemed sunk into the depths of despair.

Peterson followed her compa.s.sionate glance. "Ah," he explained, "it's a chap who came up from Paila a little while back. He had his wife with him.

She was dying, and she wanted to be buried in Texas. I believe he's in some sort of business down in Paila."

The spirit of compa.s.sion surrounded Sylvia like a halo. She had just noted that the little girl was making a stupendous effort to conquer her sobs, to "be good," as children say. With a heroic resolve which would have been creditable to a Joan of Arc, the little thing suddenly began to try to eat from one of the dishes, but her hands trembled so that she was quite helpless. Her efforts seemed about to suffer a final collapse.

And then Sylvia pushed her chair back and arose. There was a tremulous smile on her lips as she crossed the room. She paused by that man with c.r.a.pe on his sleeve. "I wonder if you won't let me help," she said. Her voice would have made you think of rue, or of April rain. She knelt beside the child's chair and possessed herself of a tiny hand with a persuasive gentleness that would have worked miracles. Her face was uplifted, soft, beaming, bright. She was scarcely prepared for the pa.s.sionate outburst of the child, who suddenly flung forth eager hands with a cry of surrender.

Sylvia held the convulsed body against her breast, tucking the distorted face up under her chin. "There!" she soothed, "there!" She carried her charge out of the room without wasting words. She had observed that when the child came to her the man had seemed on the point of surrender, too.

With an effort he had kept himself inert, with a wan face. He had the dubious, _sounding_ expression of one who stands at a door with his back to the light and looks out into the dark.

Before she had brought the child back, washed and comforted, to help her with her food, Peterson had forgotten the interruption entirely. Taking advantage of Sylvia's absence (as if she had been an interfering factor in the meeting, but scarcely a third person), he turned keen eyes upon Harboro. "Old Harboro!" he said affectionately and musingly. Then he seemed to be swelling up, as if he were a mobile vessel filled with water that had begun to boil. He became as red as a victim of apoplexy. His eyes filled with an unholy mirth, his teeth glistened. His voice was a mere wheeze, issuing from a cataclysm of agonized mirth.

"_And so you've come to it at last!_" he managed to articulate.

"Come to what?" inquired Harboro. His level glance was disconcerting.

Peterson was on the defensive immediately. "You used not to care for women--or you claimed you didn't."

"Oh! I didn't understand. I used not to care for--a certain cla.s.s of women. I don't yet."

The threatened boiling-over process was abruptly checked, as if a lid had been lifted. "Oh!" said Peterson weakly. He gazed at a fragment of roast beef on his plate. It might have been some sort of strange insect. He frowned at it. And then his eyes blazed steadily and brightly. He did not look at Harboro again for a long time.

Sylvia came back, moving a little shyly, and pus.h.i.+ng a strand of hair back into its place. She looked across the dining-room to where the child was talking with old-fas.h.i.+oned sedateness to her father. She had forgotten her tragedy--for the moment. The man appeared to have forgotten, too.