Dr. Brent was not connected with the university, but his wife's brother had been a student there, and was now an instructor in one of the scientific departments. And Mrs. Brent's charm of manner and the Doctor's easy-going hospitality made their fine little Kenwood home the centre of a certain intellectual Bohemia on the borders of the institution, and the "artistic gang" occasionally met and genially interfused with the professors round the big Brent fireplace. Being rich in his own right, Brent took his practice in such moderation as to be of the highest effectiveness when he consented to operate, and was in demand for difficult surgical cases. He was slender, blond, and languid of movement—not in the least suggestive of the Western hustle of Chicago, and yet he was born within twenty miles of the court-house. Indeed, it was the spread of the city which had enriched his father's estate, and which now permitted him to work when he felt like it, and to assemble round his hearthstone—an actual stone, by the way—the people he liked best. The amount of hickory wood he burned was stupendous.
Mrs. Brent was known as "the audacious hostess," because she was not afraid to invite anybody who interested her. "You take your reputation in your hand," her friends often said to those about to make their first call. "You may meet an actor from New York or a stone-mason from the West Side—one never knows." Their house was an adaptation of the "mission style" of California and possessed one big room on the first floor which their friends called Congress Hall.
Miss Franklin was certain that this circle would enjoy the Captain once he became at ease, and she really hoped Mrs. Brent would "advise the girl," and, as she put it, "Help her to get at the pleasant side of Chicago. She's very rich and she's intelligent, but she is very raw! She's very like a boy, but she's worth while. She wanted me to come with her, but I could have done so only by giving up here and going as her companion, and that I'm not ready to do—at present."
After carefully considering all these points, Mrs. Brent 'phoned her friends, being careful to explain that Dorothy Franklin had sent her "some fleecy specimens of Colorado society," and that she was asking a few of "the bold and fearless" among her set to meet them.
"Who are the guests of honor?" she was asked by each favored one.
Each received the same reply: "Marshall Haney, the gambler prince of Cripple Creek, and his bride, Dead-shot Nell, biscuit-shooter, from Honey Gulch."
"Honest?"
"Hope to die!"
"It's too good to be true! Of course I'll come. Do we have a quiet game after dinner?"
"Ah, no, that would be too cruel—to Captain Haney. No; we go to the theatre. So be on hand at 7 p.m., sharp."
In this way she had prepared her friends to be surprised by Bertha's good looks and the Captain's tame and courteous manner, but was herself soundly jarred when her "wild-West people" came up to the door in an auto-car that must have cost five or six thousand dollars, and when a colored footman, in bottle-green uniform, leaped out to open the door for them (it was Lucius in his new suit—he was playing all the parts). Brent, with a comical look at his wife, remarked: "I suppose this is in lieu of broncos?"
"They are branching out!" she gasped. "And see her clothes!"
She might well exclaim, for Bertha, in her long cloak, her head bare, and her pretty dress showing, did not in the least resemble the picture Miss Franklin had drawn; neither did she resemble the demure, almost sullen girl Mrs. Brent had met in the hotel. The Captain, too, for the second time in his life, wore evening dress, but citing to his sombrero; so that he resembled a Tennessee congressman at the Inaugural Ball as he came slowly up the short walk, and Mrs. Brent deeply regretted that no one was present to take the shock with herself and the doctor.
The maid at the door, who knew nothing of the wild reputation of the Haneys, guided them up-stairs to their respective dressing-rooms, and helped to remove their wraps so expeditiously that they were on their way back to the first floor before any other guests arrived. Bertha was delighted but not awed by the fine room into which they were ushered, for was not her own house larger and more splendid? She had grown accustomed to big things—it was the tasteful beauty of the room that moved her.
In the side of the room a big plain brick fireplace was filled with a crackling fire, and in the light of it stood her host and hostess. Bertha was glad to find them alone—she had expected to face a room full of people. She was not specially attracted to Dr. Brent, and remained so coldly restrained that he was quite baffled and turned away to the Captain, who sought the fire, saying: "This looks good. I feel the cold now—I don't know why I should."
This opened the way to a very confidential talk on wounds and diet.
Bertha's new gown of pale blue made her look very young and very sweet, and the eager guests were sadly disappointed in her—that is to say, the ladies were; the men seemed quite content with her as she was. They took the "biscuit-shooter" description to be a piece of fooling on Mrs. Brent's part, and as they had no time after dinner to get the Captain started they remained quite convinced that he, too, had been maligned in their hostess's description.
As a result, Mrs. Brent and her other guests were forced to do the talking, for Bertha had not only warned Mart against reminiscence, but had determined to keep a tight hold on her own tongue; and though she listened with the alertness of a bird, she answered only in curt phrase, making "yes" and "no" do their full duty. She perceived that the people round her were of intellectual companionship to the Crego and Congdon circles, and these young men, so easy and graceful of manner, reminded her of Ben. None of them were entirely strange to her now, and yet she dimly apprehended something uncomplimentary veiled beneath their polite regard. She did not entirely trust any of them—not even her host. Indeed, she liked Mrs. Brent less than at their first meeting in the hotel.
The dinner was rather hurried, and they would have been late had it not been for Haney's new auto-car, which carried six, and made two trips to the station unnecessary. It was fine to see the Captain put his machine at the disposal of his hostess. "I told Lucius to wait," he boasted, "I thought we might need him."
Dr. Brent succeeded at last in drawing his pretty guest into conversation by remarking on the Captain's color. "He's feeding improperly, if you don't mind my saying so. He's putting on weight, he tells me, but feels cold and nerveless. Cut him down on starchy foods. How long is it since he was hurt?"
"About eight months."
"Must have been a tearing beast of an accident to wing a man of his frame."
"It was. Tore his whole side to pieces."
"Who put him together—Steele, of Denver?"
"No, a man in Cripple."
"Sure he was the right man?"
"He was the best I could get."
"You arouse my professional egotism. I'd like to examine the Captain if you don't object—not for any fee, you understand. But a fellow of his build and years—he tells me he's only forty-five—"
"Only forty-five," thought the girl. "What strange ideas these older people have! And Ben was twenty-six." Just what the doctor said afterwards she didn't hear, for she was thinking of the swift, wide arc of change through which her mind had swung from the time when Marshall Haney first came to Sibley—so grand of stride, so erect, so powerful. He, too, seemed young then; now he was old—old and feeble—a man to be advised, protected, humored. She dimly understood, too, that corresponding change had come to her; that she was far away from the girl who had stood behind the counter defending herself against the love-making of the bummers and drummers among her patrons—and yet she was the same, after all. "I've not changed as much as he has," was her conclusion. And she enjoyed the gayety and beauty of her companions, but she said little to express it.
The play that night appalled her by its fury of passion, its mockery of woman, its cynical disbelief in man. With startling abruptness and in most colloquial method it delineated the beginning of a young wife's wrong-doing, and when the lover caught the innocent, ensnared woman to his bosom a flaming sword seemed t
o have been plunged into Bertha's own breast. She quivered and flushed. And when the actress displayed the awakened conscience of the erring one, putting into words as well as into facial expression her feeling of guilt and remorse, the girl-wife in the box shrank and whitened, her big eyes fixed upon the sobbing, suffering character before her, defending herself against the dramatist as against an enemy. He was a liar! There was no wrong in Ben's kiss and no remorse in her own heart as she remembered the caress. "Even if he loves me, that doesn't make him horrible!"
The dramatist went remorselessly on. He showed the husband—old, coarse, brutal. He put him in sharpest relief in order that the woman should be tempted to her ruin, and in the end the lover—virile, handsome and unscrupulous—wins the tortured woman's soul—and they flee, leaving the usual note behind.
"What can you expect?" remarked the cynical friend of the injured husband. "Given a young and lovely wife like Rose and an old limping warrior like you, and an elopement follows as a matter of course, Q. E. D." And so the curtain fell.
Relentless realist in the first act, the dramatist in the second act began to hedge. He made the life of the erring woman conventionally miserable. Her lover beat her, neglected her, and finally deserted her. And in the last act she crawled back into her husband's home like a starved cat to die, while he, scarred old beast, cried out: "The wages of sin is death!" Whether the writer intended this scene to be ironical or not, the effect was to awaken a murmur of laughter among the ill-restrained of the auditors. But Bertha, hot with anger towards both author and players, could not join in Mrs. Brent's smiling comment: "Isn't that comical!"
The doctor coolly said: "A good conventional British ending. Why didn't he clap a pair of wings on the old reprobate and run him up on a wire, the way they used to do in translating little Eva in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'?"
Afterwards Mrs. Brent proposed that they go to a German restaurant and have some beer and skittles; but this struck harshly on Bertha, who still palpitated with the passion of the play. "I reckon we'd better not. The Captain is pretty tired, and, if you don't mind, we'll quit now."
Without saying "I've had a lovely time," she shook hands all round, and, taking her husband's arm, moved off into the street, leaving her hostess a little uneasy and wholly perplexed. Mrs. Brent's joke about the Captain and his wife had, as the doctor expressed it, "queered the whole affair."
"But how did she know?"
"She's a good deal sharper than you gave her credit for being," he replied. "You Easterners never can learn to take diamonds in the rough."
Bertha's mind was in tumult, and she wished to be alone. Mart irritated her. She refused to talk to him about the play or the dinner, and, turning him over to Lucius, went at once to her own bed. Thus far she had not attempted to closely analyze her relationship to Marshall Haney. He had been to her a good friend rather than a husband, a companion who needed her, and who had given her everything she asked for. Keenly forward, almost precocious on the calculative side, she had remained singularly untroubled on the emotional side. She knew that certain problems of sex existed in the world, and she was only mentally aware of temptations—she had never really felt them. Now all at once her whole nature awoke. Her mind engaged a legion of vaguely defined enemies. Out of the shadow stepped words of no weight, of no significance hitherto, encircling her, panoplied with meaning. The half-heard comment of the camp, the dimly perceived gossip of the Springs, the flattering looks of the artists—all helped her to see herself as she was: a handsome young girl, like that on the stage, married to a crippled middle-aged man of evil history.
"But he is good to me," she argued against her new self. "I was poor, and he has made me rich; and all I've done is to nurse him and keep house for him." With this thought came a realization that she had never been a full and complete wife to him. And with a flush of shame and repulsion she added: "And now I never can be. No matter if he were to become as straight, as strong, and as handsome as he was in those days, I cannot love him as a wife should."
Once having admitted this feeling of repulsion, once having clearly perceived the vast distance between herself and her husband, the repulsion deepened, the separating space widened. He seemed ten years older as they met next morning, and his face was heavy and his frame lax. Her pity had not lessened, but it was mixed now with a qualifying emotion which she had not yet acknowledged to be disgust. His skin was waxy white and his jowls drooping. "I'm not at all up to the work," he said, with a return of his humor. "'Tis a killing pace we've struck, Bertie, and the old man must take the flag if you keep it up."
"I don't intend to keep it up," she answered, shortly. "I think we'd better go home." At the word "home" a little thrill went through her. It was so bright and big and desirable, that mansion under the purple peaks.
"No; I must go trail up me old dad, and leave him provided for. Fan doesn't even know his address (the more shame to her), but I'll find him. If ye're tired and would rather go home, I'll go on alone."
"Oh no, you mustn't do that!" she exclaimed instantly, feeling the sincerity of his desire to please her. "I'll go, but we mustn't stay long." And she took up the direction of his life again. The mood of the night had passed away, leaving only a clearer perception of his growing age and helplessness.
"You must let Dr. Brent examine you," she said, a little later. "He don't think your lameness is caused by your wound. He says you're out of condition."
He looked at her with shadowed face and sorrowful eyes. "I'm only a poor old skate, wind-broken and lazy. Ye have the right to cut me loose any time."
"You mustn't talk like that," she said, sharply. "When I want to cut loose I'll let you know."
"I hold ye to that," he answered, with intent look.
* * *
CHAPTER XVII
BERTHA BECOMES A PATRON OF ART
Bertha, deeply engrossed in the conceptions called up by this visit, did not feel like calling upon the Mosses, even though they were almost next door. She was troubled, too, with a feeling of helplessness in the use of a pen. She wanted to write to Fordyce, but was afraid to do so, knowing that a letter would disclose her ignorance of polite forms; but this, instead of discouraging her, roused her to a determination to learn. This was the saving clause in her character. She acknowledged shortcomings, but not defeats. Here again she was of the spirit that lifts the self-made man.
The Congdons had been most generous of letters of introduction, and in addition to those to Mrs. Brent and the Mosses, Bertha was in possession of two or three envelopes addressed to people in New York City, presumably artists also, as they bore the names of certain studios. The note to Moss was unaffected and simple in itself, quite innocent of any qualification, but the letter which had privately preceded it was in the true Congdon vein, and Moss, like Mrs. Brent, did not delay his call. His card was in the Haney box when they returned. "Sorry to miss you. Come into my studio at five if you can," he had pencilled on the back.
"Your artistic bunch," Congdon had written, "won't mind meeting one of the most successful and picturesque of our gamblers, Marshall Haney, especially as the walls of his big house are bare and his wife is pretty. They are ripping types, old man; not in the 'best society,' you understand, but I know you'll like 'em. Be as good to 'em as you can without involving anybody. Little Mrs. Haney is a corker. Good start on a self-made career. They're both unsophisticated in a way, and a little real sympathy will drag their secret history to the light. Do a sketch of her for me. She's likely to be famous. Haney is rolling in dough these days—(miner)—and she's bound for some whooping big thing, I don't know what, but she's like a country boy with a stirring ambition. It wouldn't surprise me to see her on Fifth Avenue one of these days. With these few burning words I commend them into your plastic hands. Don't let Sammy paint her, for God's sake. Oh yes, I worked 'em for a couple of canvases. What do you think. In this buoyant climate we all move. Yours in the velvet."
With such a letter before him Joe Moss awaited his amazing
guests with impatience, cautioning the few who were in the secret not to dodge when the Captain reached for his pocket-handkerchief. "And, above all, you are to praise Colorado and condemn the East as a place of residence." Joe prided himself on his savoir faire and on his apparel, which had nothing about it to distinguish the sculptor. "In fact," he often said, "there are people who say I'm not a sculptor. Be that as it may, I manage by daily care to look like a clerk in a hardware store."
And he did. He customarily wore a suit of pepper and salt, neat and trig, a "bowler hat" (as they say in London), a ready-made four-in-hand tie, and a small pearl scarf-pin. "No more fuzzy hair for me, no red tie, no dandruff," he had said on his return from Paris. "Right here we melt into the undistinguishable ocean of the millions, unless we can be distinguished by reason of our sculpture." He always included Julia, his wife, in this way (although she never "modelled a lick"), for she wrote all his letters, made out all his checks, and took charge of him generally. Some said his success was due to her management. She was a dark-eyed, smiling little woman, exquisite in her dress and brisk in her manner.
Their studio occupied the whole north side of the attic of a big office building in the heart of the city's traffic. "We want to be in the midst of trade, but above it," Moss explained to those who wondered at his choice of location. "Sculpture, as I see it, is a part of architecture. I'm not above modelling a door-knocker if they'll only let me do it my way. Sculpture was a part of life in the old days, and we don't want to make it a thing too 'precious' now. I want to get close to the business men, not to avoid them. I like the roar of trade."
The Haneys, therefore, led by the sagacious Lucius, soon found themselves in the Wisconsin Block, and shooting aloft in a bronze elevator that seemed fired from a cannon ("express to the 10th floor"), with nothing to suggest art in the men or in the signs about them. On the thirteenth story they alighted, and, walking up one flight of stairs, found themselves at the end of a bright hall, before a door which bore, in simple gold letters, "Jos. Moss, Sculptor." Bertha heard laughter within, and her heart misgave her. It was not easy for her to meet these artist folk. Of business men, miners, railway managers she was unafraid, but these people who joke and bully-rag each other and talk high philosophy one minute and gossip the next, like the Congdons, were "pretty swift" for her. After a moment's pause she said to the Captain, "They can't kill us; here goes!" and knocked gently.
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