At the Crossroads Part 9

"You wedged your way into my father's good graces and crowded me out; you had enough decency, when you knew his wishes, to carry them out as long as you cared to, and now you're going to end the job in your own way, eh?

"Name the one particular way in which you're not going to break your vows," Larry asked, and sneered. "What's your nice little plan?" He got up and walked about. "I suppose you have cut and dried some little compromise."

"Oh! Larry, I wish you could be a little kind; a little understanding."

"Wish I could think as you think; that's what you mean. Well, by G.o.d, I'm a man and your husband and I'm going to stand on my rights. You can't make a silly a.s.s of me as you did of my father. Fathers and husbands are a shade different. Come, now, out with your plan."

"I will not have any more children! I'll do everything I can, Larry; make the home a real home. Noreen and I will love you. We'll try to find some things we all want to do together; you and I can sort of plan for Noreen and there are all kinds of things to do around the Forest, Larry. Really, you and I ought to--ought to carry out your father's work. We could! There are other things in marriage, Larry, but just--the one." Breathlessly Mary-Clare came to a pause, but Larry's amused look drove her on. "I'm not the kind of a woman, Larry, that can live a lie!"

A tone of horror shook Mary-Clare's voice; she choked and Larry came closer, his lips were smiling.

"What in thunder!" he muttered. Then: "You plan to have us live on here in this house; you and I, a man and woman--and----!" Larry stopped short, then laughed. "A h.e.l.l of a home that would be, all right!"

Mary-Clare gazed dully at him.

"Well, then," she whispered, and her lips grew deadly white, "I do not know what to do."

"Do? You'll forget it!" thundered Larry. "And pretty d.a.m.ned quick, too!"

But Mary-Clare did not answer. There was nothing more to say. She was thinking of the birth-night and death-night of her last child.

On and on the burning thoughts rushed in Mary-Clare's brain while she sat near Larry without seeing him. As surely as if death had taken him, he, the husband, the father of Noreen, had gone from her life. It did not seem now as if anything she had said, or done, had had anything to do with it. It was like an accident that had overtaken them, killing Larry and leaving her to readjust her life alone.

"Why don't you answer?" Larry laid a hand upon Mary-Clare's shoulder.

"Getting sleepy? Come on, then, we'll have this out to-morrow." He looked toward the door behind which stood Noreen's cot and that other one beside it.

"I've fixed the room upstairs for you, Larry."

The simple statement had power to accomplish all that was left to be done. There was a finality about it, and the look on Mary-Clare's face, that convinced Larry he had come to the point of conquest or defeat.

"The devil you have!" was what he said to gain time.

For a moment he again contemplated force--the primitive male always hesitates to compromise where his codes are threatened. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes; a ferocious curl of his lips--it would be such a simple matter and it would end for ever the nonsense that he could not tolerate.

Mary-Clare leaned back in her chair. She was so absolutely unafraid that she quelled Larry's brute instinct and aroused in him a dread of the unknown. What would Mary-Clare do in the last struggle? Larry was not prepared to take what he recognized as a desperate chance. The familiar and obvious were deep-rooted in his nature--if, in the end, he lost with this calm, cool woman whom he could not frighten, where could he turn for certain things to which his weakness--or was it his strength--clung?

A place to come to; someone peculiarly his own; his without effort to be worthy of. Larry resorted to new tactics with Mary-Clare at this critical moment. The smile faded from his sneering lips; he leaned forward and the manner that made him valuable to Maclin fell upon him like a disguise. So startling was the change, that Mary-Clare looked at him in surprise.

"Mary-Clare, you've got me guessing"--there was almost surrender in the tone--"a woman like you doesn't take the stand you have without reason. I know that. Naturally, I was upset, I spoke too quick. Tell me now in your own way. I'll try to understand."

Mary-Clare was taken off guard. Her desire and sore need rushed past caution and carried her to Larry.

She, too, leaned forward, and her lovely eyes were s.h.i.+ning. "Oh! I hoped you would try, Larry," she said. "I know I'm trying and put things in a way that you resent, but I have a great, a true reason, if I could only make you see it."

"Now, you're talking sense, Mary-Clare," Larry spoke boyishly. "Just over-tired, I guess you were; seeing things in the dark. Men know the world better than women; that's why some things are _as_ they are. I'm not going to press you, Mary-Clare, I'm going to try and help you. You _are_ my wife, aren't you?"

"Yes, oh! yes, Larry."

"Well, I'm a man and you're a woman."

"Yes, that's so, Larry."

Step by step, ridiculous as it might seem, Mary-Clare meant, even now, to keep as close to Larry as she could. He misunderstood; he thought he was winning against her folly.

"Marriage was meant for one thing between man and woman!"

This came out triumphantly. Then Mary-Clare threw back her head and spiritually retreated to her vantage of safety.

"No, it wasn't," she said, taking to her own hard-won trail desperately. "No, it wasn't! I cannot accept that Larry--why, I have seen where such reasoning would lead. I saw the night our last baby came--and went. I'd grow old and broken--you'd hate me; there would be children--many of them, poor, sad little things--looking at me with dreadful eyes, accusing me. If marriage means only one thing--it means that to me and you, and no woman has the right to--to become like that."

"Wanting to defy the laws of G.o.d, eh?" Larry grew virtuous. "We all grow old, don't we? Men work for women; women do their share. Children are natural, ain't they? What's the inst.i.tution of marriage for, anyway?" And now Larry's mouth was again hardening.

"Larry, oh! Larry, please don't make me laugh! If I should laugh there would never be any hope of our getting together."

For some reason this almost hysterical appeal roused the worst in Larry. The things Maclin had told him that day again took fire and spread where Maclin could never have dreamed of their spreading. The liquor was losing its sustaining effect--it was leaving Larry to flounder in his weak will, and he abandoned his futile tactics.

"Who's that man at the inn?" he asked.

The suddenness of the question, its irrelevancy, made Mary-Clare start. For a moment the words meant absolutely nothing to her and then because she was bared, nervously, to every attack, she flushed--recalling with absurd clearness Northrup's look and tone.

"I don't know," she said.

"That's a lie. How long has he been here, snooping around?"

"I haven't the slightest idea, Larry." This was not true, and Larry caught the quiver in the tones.

Again he got up and became the masterful male; the injured husband; the protector of his home. There were still tactics to be tested.

"See here, Mary-Clare, I've caught on. You never cared for me. You married me from what you called duty; your sense of decency held until your own comfort and pleasure got in between--then you were ready to fling me off like an old mit and term it by high-sounding names. Now comes along this stranger, from G.o.d knows where, looking about for the devil knows what--and taking what lies about in order to pa.s.s the time. I haven't lived in the world for nothing, Mary-Clare. Now lay this along with the other woman-thoughts you're so fond of. I'm going upstairs, for I'm tired and all-fired disgusted, but remember, what I can't hold, no other man is going to get, not even for a little time while he hangs about. Folks are going to see just what is going on, believe me! I'm going to leave all the doors and windows open. I'm going to give you your head, but I'll keep hold of the reins."

And then, because it was all so hideously wrong and twisted and comical, Mary-Clare laughed! She laughed noiselessly, until the tears dimmed her eyes. Larry watched her uneasily.

"Oh, Larry," she managed her voice at last, "I never knew that anything so dreadfully wrong could be made of nothing. You've created a terrible something, and I wonder if you know it?"

"That's enough!" Larry strode toward the stairway. "Your husband's no fool, my girl, and the cheap, little, old tricks are plain enough to him."

Mary-Clare watched her husband pa.s.s from view; heard him tramp heavily in the room above. She sat by the dead fire and thought of him as she first knew him--knew him? Then her eyes widened. She had never known him; she had taken him as she had taken all that her doctor had left to her, and she had failed; failed because she had not thought her woman's thought until it was too late.

After all her high aims and earnest endeavour to meet this critical moment in her life Mary-Clare acknowledged, as she sat by the ash-strewn hearth, that it had degenerated into a cheap and almost comic farce. To her narrow vision her problem seemed never to have been confronted before; her world of the Forest would have no sympathy for it, or her; Larry had reduced it to the ugliest aspect, and by so doing had turned her thoughts where they might never have turned and upon the stranger who might always have remained a stranger.

Alone in the deadly quiet room, the girl of Mary-Clare pa.s.sed from sight and the woman was supreme; a little hard, in order to combat the future: quickened to a futile sense of injustice, but young enough, even at that moment, to demand of life something vital; something better than the cruel thing that might evolve unless she bore herself courageously.

Unconsciously she was planning her course. She would go her way with her old smile, her old outward bearing. A promise was a promise--she would never forget that, and as far as she could pay with that which was hers to give, she would pay, but outside of that she would not let life cheat her.

Bending toward the dead fire on the hearth, Mary-Clare made her silent covenant.