Bruce of the Circle A Part 28

Surprise, dread, a mingling of many emotions was in the tone, and he waited at high tension for her to answer. His wife, a woman he had not seen in three years, standing there before him in the garb of this new country, beautiful, desirable, come as though from thin air! He thought this might be merely an hallucination, that it might be some uncanny creation of his unstable mind.

"Yes, Ned; it is I," she answered, with a catch in her voice.

On her words he stepped quickly forward, fear gone, eagerness about him.

He took her hands in his, fondling them nervously, and had she not swayed back from him to the slightest noticeable degree, he would have followed out his prompting to take her lips with as much matter-of-factness as he had clutched her hands.

"Ann, where did you come from?" he cried. "Why, I thought maybe you were a ... a ghost or something! Oh, I'm glad to see you!"

"Are you, Ned?"--almost plaintively, stroking the back of one of his hands as she looked into his lighted eyes, reading sadly the desire behind that shallow joy at sight of her. "Are you really glad?"

"Of course I'm glad! Who wouldn't be? Gad, Ann, you're in fine shape!"--stepping back from her, still holding her hands, and looking her up and down, greedily. "Oh, you're good to look at!"

He went close to her again and reached out one arm quickly to slip it about her waist, but she turned away from him quite casually and he stopped, disconcerted, hurt, humiliated, but covering the fact as well as he could.

An awkward fraction of a minute followed, which he broke by asking:

"But where did you come from, Ann? How did you get here? How did you know? What brought you?"

She smiled wanly.

"One at a time, Ned. You brought me. You should know that. I came out here to find you, to see what was happening, to help you if I could."

She allowed him to take her hands again and looked wistfully into his face as she talked. A change came into his expression with her words and his gaze s.h.i.+fted from hers while a show of petulance appeared in his slightly drawn brows.

"Well, I've needed help in one way," he muttered.

"You've been very ill, I know."

"You know?"--in surprise.

"Yes; I have been here through it all."

He dropped her hand and tilted his head incredulously.

"Through it all! What do you mean?"

"I've been here for a month."

"A month! You've been here a month and this is the first time you've come to see me?"

"I didn't think it best to come before."

"You've been here while I've been pa.s.sing through h.e.l.l itself? You've known about me, known how I've suffered? Have you?"

"Oh, Ned, I have...."

"And you didn't come to me when I needed help most! You've not even taken the trouble to find out about me--"

"You're wrong there," Ann broke in simply. With the return of his old, petulant, irritating manner, the wistfulness slipped from her and a little show of independence, of resentment, came over the woman. "I have known about you; I've kept track of you; I've waited and prayed for the time when it would be best for me to see you...."

He folded his arms theatrically and swung one leg over the corner of the table. Ann stopped talking on that, for his att.i.tude was one of open challenge.

"You've come out here to spy on me! Isn't that it? You've come to help me, you said, and yet you wouldn't even let me know you were here? Isn't it the same old game? Isn't it?"

She did not answer.

"Isn't it a fact that you've been waiting to see what I'd do when I got well? I suppose you've come out here to-day with a prayer-book and a lot of soft words, a lot of cant, to try to reform me?" He thrust his face close to hers as he asked the last.

"Is this the way you're going to greet me?" she asked. "Haven't you anything but the same old suspicion, the same old denunciation for me?"

He looked away from her and shrugged his shoulders.

"How have you known about me when you haven't been to see me?" he asked, evasively.

"Mr. Bayard has kept me informed."

He looked at her through a moment of silence, and she looked back as steadily, as intently as he.

"Bayard?" he asked. "Bayard? He's been telling you ... about me?"

"He's been as kind to me as he has to you, Ned,"--with a feeling of misgiving even as she uttered the words. "He has ... ridden to Yavapai many times just to tell me about you."

He looked at her again, and she saw the puzzlement in his face. He started as though to speak, checked himself and looked past her into Bayard's room.

"Where is he now?"

"He's gone to town; he left a few moments after I came. He asked me to--"

"Did he show you into that room?"

"Yes,"--turning to look. "He told me to use it."

Her husband eyed her calculatingly and rested his weight on the table once more. It was as though he had settled some important question for himself.

"Why haven't you been out before, Ann?" he asked her, eyes holding on her face to detect its slightest change of expression.

She felt herself flus.h.i.+ng at that; her conscience again!

"You were in an awful condition, Ned," she forced herself to say. "I saw you in Yavapai, the night I arrived. I--I helped Mr. Bayard fix your arm; I knew how ill you would be when you came to yourself. We agreed--Mr. Bayard and I--that it would needlessly excite you, if I were to come here, so I stayed away. I stayed as long as I could,"--with deadly honesty--"I had to come to-day."

"You and Bayard.... You both thought it best for me to stay here without knowing my wife was in Arizona?"

His att.i.tude had become that of a cross-examiner.

"Yes, Ned. You were in fearful shape. You know that for days after you--"

"And you've relied on him to give you news of me?"

He stood erect and moved nearer, watching her face closely as her eyes became less certain, her cheeks a deeper color.