Part 9 (1/2)

”Where's the money?” he said. ”Husband and wife are ONE, I know,”

he went on with a coa.r.s.e laugh, ”but I don't trust MYSELF in these matters.”

She took from a traveling-reticule that lay beside her a roll of notes and a chamois leather bag of coin, and laid them on the table before him. He examined both carefully.

”All right,” he said. ”I see you've got the checks made out 'to bearer.'

Your head's level, Conny. Pity you and me can't agree.”

”I went to the bank across the way as soon as I arrived,” she said, with contemptuous directness. ”I told them I was going over to Hymettus and might want money.”

He dropped into a chair before her with his broad heavy hands upon his knees, and looked at her with an equal, though baser, contempt: for his was mingled with a certain pride of mastery and possession.

”And, of course, you'll go to Hymettus and cut a splurge as you always do. The beautiful Mrs. Horncastle! The helpless victim of a wretched, dissipated, disgraced, gambling husband. So dreadfully sad, you know, and so interesting! Could get a divorce from the brute if she wanted, but won't, on account of her religious scruples. And so while the brute is gambling, swindling, disgracing himself, and dodging a shot here and a lynch committee there, two or three hundred miles away, you're splurging round in first-cla.s.s hotels and watering-places, doing the injured and abused, and run after by a lot of men who are ready to take my place, and, maybe, some of my reputation along with it.”

”Stop!” she said suddenly, in a voice that made the gla.s.s chandelier ring. He had risen too, with a quick, uneasy glance towards the door.

But her outbreak pa.s.sed as suddenly, and sinking back into her chair, she said, with her previous scornful resignation, ”Never mind. Go on.

You KNOW you're lying!”

He sat down again and looked at her critically. ”Yes, as far as you're concerned I WAS lying! I know your style. But as you know, too, that I'd kill you and the first man I suspected, and there ain't a judge or a jury in all Californy that wouldn't let me go free for it, and even consider, too, that it had wiped off the whole slate agin me--it's to my credit!”

”I know what you men call chivalry,” she said coldly, ”but I did not come here to buy a knowledge of that. So now about the child?” she ended abruptly, leaning forward again with the same look of eager solicitude in her eyes.

”Well, about the child--our child--though, perhaps, I prefer to say MY child,” he began, with a certain brutal frankness. ”I'll tell you. But first, I don't want you to talk about BUYING your information of me.

If I haven't told you anything before, it's because I didn't think you oughter know. If I didn't trust the child to YOU, it's because I didn't think you could go shashaying about with a child that was three years old when I”--he stopped and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand--”made an honest woman of you--I think that's what they call it.”

”But,” she said eagerly, ignoring the insult, ”I could have hidden it where no one but myself would have known it. I could have sent it to school and visited it as a relation.”

”Yes,” he said curtly, ”like all women, and then blurted it out some day and made it worse.”

”But,” she said desperately, ”even THEN, suppose I had been willing to take the shame of it! I have taken more!”

”But I didn't intend that you should,” he said roughly.

”You are very careful of my reputation,” she returned scornfully.

”Not by a d----d sight,” he burst out; ”but I care for HIS! I'm not goin' to let any man call him a b.a.s.t.a.r.d!”

Callous as she had become even under this last cruel blow, she could not but see something in his coa.r.s.e eyes she had never seen before; could not but hear something in his brutal voice she had never heard before!

Was it possible that somewhere in the depths of his sordid nature he had his own contemptible sense of honor? A hysterical feeling came over her hitherto pa.s.sive disgust and scorn, but it disappeared with his next sentence in a haze of anxiety. ”No!” he said hoa.r.s.ely, ”he had enough wrong done him already.”

”What do you mean?” she said imploringly. ”Or are you again lying? You said, four years ago, that he had 'got into trouble;' that was your excuse for keeping him from me. Or was that a lie, too?”

His manner changed and softened, but not for any pity for his companion, but rather from some change in his own feelings. ”Oh, that,” he said, with a rough laugh, ”that was only a kind o' trouble any sa.s.sy kid like him was likely to get into. You ain't got no call to hear that, for,” he added, with a momentary return to his previous manner, ”the wrong that was done him is MY lookout! You want to know what I did with him, how he's been looked arter, and where he is? You want the worth of your money. That's square enough. But first I want you to know, though you mayn't believe it, that every red cent you've given me to-night goes to HIM. And don't you forget it.”

For all his vulgar frankness she knew he had lied to her many times before,--maliciously, wantonly, complacently, but never evasively; yet there was again that something in his manner which told her he was now telling the truth.

”Well,” he began, settling himself back in his chair, ”I told you I brought him to Heavy Tree Hill. After I left you I wasn't going to trust him to no school; he knew enough for me; but when I left those parts where n.o.body knew you, and got a little nearer 'Frisco, where people might have known us both, I thought it better not to travel round with a kid o' that size as his FATHER. So I got a young fellow here to pa.s.s him off as HIS little brother, and look after him and board him; and I paid him a big price for it, too, you bet! You wouldn't think it was a man who's now swelling around here, the top o' the pile, that ever took money from a brute like me, and for such schoolmaster work, too; but he did, and his name was Van Loo, a clerk of the Ditch Company.”

”Van Loo!” said the woman, with a movement of disgust; ”THAT man!”

”What's the matter with Van Loo?” he said, with a coa.r.s.e laugh, enjoying his wife's discomfiture. ”He speaks French and Spanish, and you oughter hear the kid roll off the lingo he's got from him. He's got style, and knows how to dress, and you ought to see the kid bow and sc.r.a.pe, and how he carries himself. Now, Van Loo wasn't exactly my style, and I reckon I don't hanker after him much, but he served my purpose.”

”And this man knows”--she said, with a shudder.