Bruce of the Circle A Part 13

She walked slowly to the dresser and laid his gun there, as though even its slight weight were a burden.

"I'm so sorry," she said, as though physically weak, "I'm so sorry." He turned away from the window with a helpless smile. "I don't feel right, now, in letting you do this for me. I feel ..."

"Why don't you feel right?"

"Because ... because it means that you are giving me everything and I'm giving nothing in return."

"Don't think that, ma'am," with a slow, convinced shaking of his head, "I'm doin' little enough for what I get."

"For what _you_ get!"

"What I get, ma'am, is this. I can come to see you. I can look at your face, I can see your hair, I can watch you move an' hear you talk an' be near you now an' then, even if I ain't any right, even if ..."

He threw out his arms and let them fall back to his thighs as he turned from her again.

"That's what I get in exchange," he continued a moment later. "That's my pay, an' for it, I'd go through anything, thirst or hunger or cold ...

anythin', ma'am. That's how much I think of you: that's why carin'

for ... for that man out home ain't any job even if he is ... if you are his!"

On that, doubt, desire, again overrode her training, her traditional manner of thought. She struggled to find words, but she could not even clarify her ideas. Impressions came to her in hot, pa.s.sing flashes. A dozen times she was on the point of crying out, of telling him one thing or another, but each time the thought was gone before she could seize upon and crystallize it. All she fully realized was that this thing was love, big, clean, sanctified; that this man was a natural lover of women, with a body as great, as fine as the heart which could so reveal itself to her; and that in spite of that love's quality she was helpless, bound, gagged even, by the circ.u.mstances that life had thrown about her. She would have cried out against them, denouncing it all ...

Only for the fact that that thing, conscience, handed down to her through strict-living generations, kept her still, binding her to silence, to pa.s.sivity.

"I won't bother you again this way," she heard him saying, his voice sounding unreal as it forced its way through the roaring in her head. "I had to get it out of my system, or it'd have gone in some other direction; reaction, they call it, I guess. Then, somebody'd have been hurt or somethin' broken, maybe your heart,"--looking at her with his patient smile.

"I'll go back home; I'll work with him. Sometimes, I'll come to see you, if you don't mind, to tell you about ... him. You don't mind, do you?"

With an obvious effort, she shook her head. "No, I don't mind. I'll be glad to see you," she muttered, holding her self-possession doggedly.

An awkward pause followed in which Bayard fussed with the ends of the gay silk scarf that hung about his neck and shoulders.

"I guess I'd better go now," he mumbled, and picked up his hat.

"You see, I don't know what to say to you," Ann confessed, drawing a hand across her eyes. "It has all overwhelmed me so. I ... perhaps another time I can talk it over with you."

"If you think it's best to mention it again, ma'am," he said.

She extended her hand to him and he clasped it. On the contact, his arm trembled as though he would crush the small fingers in his, but the grasp went no further than a formal shake.

"In a day or two ... Ann," he said, using her given name for the first time.

He bowed low, turned quickly and half stumbled into the hall, closing the door behind him as he went.

The woman sat down on the edge of the bed weakly.

In the dining room Nora Brewster was dusting and she looked up quickly at Bayard's entrance.

"h.e.l.lo, Bruce," she said, eyes fastening on him eagerly. "You're gettin'

to be a frequent caller, ain't you?"

He tried to smile when he answered,

"Hardly a caller; kind of an errand boy, between bein' a nurse an'

jailer."

He could not deceive the girl. She dropped her dustcloth to a chair, scanning his face intently.

"What's wrong, Bruce? You look all frazzled out."

He could not know how she feared his answer.

"Nothin'," he evaded. "He's been pretty bad an' I've missed sleep lately; that's all."

But that explanation did not satisfy Nora. She knew it was not the whole truth. She searched his face suspiciously.

"She ... his wife," he went on, steadying his voice. "It's hard on her, Nora."

"I know it is, poor thing," she replied, almost mechanically. "I talk to her every time I can, but she, she ain't my kind, Bruce. You know that. The' ain't much I can say to her. Besides, I dasn't let on that I know who she is or that you've got her husband."

Her eyes still held on his inquiringly.

"You might get her outdoors," he ventured. "Keepin' in that room day an'

night, worryin' as she does, is worse 'n jail. You ... You ride a lot.

Why don't you get her some ridin' clothes an' take her along? I'll tell Nate to give you an extra horse. You see...."

The girl did see. She saw his anxiety for the woman upstairs. She knew the truth then, and the thing which she had feared through those days rang in her head like a sullen tocsin. She had felt an uneasiness come into her heart with the arrival of this eastern woman, this product of another civilization with her sweetness, her charm for both her own s.e.x and for men. And that uneasiness had grown to apprehension, had mounted as she watched the change in Bayard under Ann's influence until now, when she realized that the thing which she had hoped against for months, which she had felt impending for days, had become reality; and that she, Bayard, Ned Lytton, Ann, were fast in the meshes of circ.u.mstances that bound and shut down upon them like a net, forecasting tragedy and the destruction of hopes. Nora feared, she feared with that groundless, intuitive fear peculiar to her kind; almost an animal instinct, and she felt her heart leaping, her head becoming giddy as that warning note struck and reverberated through her consciousness. Her gaze left the man's face slowly, her shoulders slackened and almost impatiently she turned back to her work that he might not see the foreboding about her.

"You see, th' open air would help her, an' bein' with you, another woman, even if you an' she don't talk th' same language, would help too," he ended.

"I see," Nora answered after a moment, as she tilted a chair to one leg and stooped low to rub the dust from its spindles. "I understand, Bruce.

I'll take her to ride ... every day, if you think it's best."

Something about her made Bayard pause, and the moment of silence which followed was an uneasy one for him. The girl kept on with her task, eyes averted, and he did not notice that she next commenced working on a chair that she had already dusted.

"That's a good girl, Nora," he said. "That'll help her."

He left then and, when the ring of his spurs had been lost in the lazy afternoon, the girl sat suddenly in the chair on which she had busied herself and pressed the dustcloth hard against her eyes. She drew a long, sharp breath. Then, she stood erect and muttered,

"Oh, G.o.d, has it come?"

Then, stolidly, with set mouth, she went on with her work, movements a little slower, perhaps, a bit lethargic, surely, bungling now and then.

Something had gone from her ... a hope, a sustaining spark, a leaven that had lightened the drudgery.

Upstairs in her room Ann Lytton lay face down on her bed, hands gripping the coa.r.s.e coverlet, eyes pressed shut, breath swift and irregular, heart racing. What had gone from the girl below--the hope, the spark, the leaven which makes life itself palatable--had come to her after those years of nightmare, and Ann was resisting, driving it back, telling herself that it must not be, that it could not be, not in the face of all that had happened; not now, when ethical, moral, legal ties bound her to another! Oh, she was bound, no mistaking that; but it was not Ann's heart that wrenched at the bonds. It was her conscience, her trained sense of right and wrong, the traditions that had moulded her.

No, her heart was gone, utterly, to the man who crossed the hard, beaten street of Yavapai, head down, dejection in the swing of his shoulders, for her heart knew no right, no wrong ... only beauty and ugliness.