“Perfectly,” she answered, in a voice the control of which was in amazing contrast to the anger that blazed in the face she turned aside so that Haythorne might not see.
The latter was again on the verge of asking his name, when Messner remarked:
“This Dr. Womble, I’ve heard he was very handsome, and – er – quite a success, so to say, with the ladies.”
“Well, if he was, he finished himself off by that affair,” Haythorne grumbled.
“And the woman was a termagant – at least so I’ve been told. It was generally accepted in Berkeley that she made life – er – not exactly paradise for her husband.”
“I never heard that,” Haythorne rejoined. “In San Francisco the talk was all the other way.”
“Woman sort of a martyr, eh? – crucified on the cross of matrimony?”
The doctor nodded. Messner’s gray eyes were mildly curious as he went on:
“That was to be expected – two sides to the shield. Living in Berkeley I only got the one side. She was a great deal in San Francisco, it seems.”
“Some coffee, please,” Haythorne said.
The woman refilled his mug, at the same time breaking into light laughter.
“You’re gossiping like a pair of beldames,” she chided them.
“It’s so interesting,” Messner smiled at her, then returned to the doctor. “The husband seems then to have had a not very savory reputation in San Francisco?”
“On the contrary, he was a moral prig,” Haythorne blurted out, with apparently undue warmth. “He was a little scholastic shrimp without a drop of red blood in his body.”
“Did you know him?”
“Never laid eyes on him. I never knocked about in university circles.”
“One side of the shield again,” Messner said, with an air of weighing the matter judicially. While he did not amount to much, it is true – that is, physically – I’d hardly say he was as bad as all that. He did take an active interest in student athletics. And he had some talent. He once wrote a Nativity play that brought him quite a bit of local appreciation. I have heard, also, that he was slated for the head of the English department, only the affair happened and he resigned and went away. It quite broke his career, or so it seemed. At any rate, on our side the shield, it was considered a knock-out blow to him. It was thought he cared a great deal for his wife.”
Haythorne, finishing his mug of coffee, grunted uninterestedly and lighted his pipe.
“It was fortunate they had no children,” Messner continued.
But Haythorne, with a glance at the stove, pulled on his cap and mittens.
“I’m going out to get some wood,” he said. “Then I can take off my moccasins and he comfortable.”
The door slammed behind him. For a long minute there was silence. The man continued in the same position on the bed. The woman sat on the grub-box, facing him.
“What are you going to do?” she asked abruptly.
Messner looked at her with lazy indecision. “What do you think I ought to do? Nothing scenic, I hope. You see I am stiff and trail-sore, and this bunk is so restful.”
She gnawed her lower lip and fumed dumbly.
“But – ” she began vehemently, then clenched her hands and stopped.
“I hope you don’t want me to kill Mr. -er – Haythorne,” he said gently, almost pleadingly. “It would be most distressing, and, I assure you, really it is unnecessary.”
“But you must do something,” she cried.
“On the contrary, it is quite conceivable that I do not have to do anything.”
“You would stay here?”
He nodded.
She glanced desperately around the cabin and at the bed unrolled on the other bunk. “Night is coming on. You can’t stop here. You can’t! I tell you, you simply can’t!”
“Of course I can. I might remind you that I found this cabin first and that you are my guests.”
Again her eyes travelled around the room, and the terror in them leaped up at sight of the other bunk.
“Then we’ll have to go,” she announced decisively.
“Impossible. You have a dry, hacking cough – the sort Mr. – er – Haythorne so aptly described. You’ve already slightly chilled your lungs. Besides, he is a physician and knows. He would never permit it.”
“Then what are you going to do?” she demanded again, with a tense, quiet utterance that boded an outbreak.
Messner regarded her in a way that was almost paternal, what of the profundity of pity and patience with which he contrived to suffuse it.
“My dear Theresa, as I told you before, I don’t know. I really haven’t thought about it.”
“Oh! You drive me mad!” She sprang to her feet, wringing her hands in impotent wrath. “You never used to be this way.”
“I used to be all softness and gentleness,” he nodded concurrence. “Was that why you left me?”
“You are so different, so dreadfully calm. You frighten me. I feel you have something terrible planned all the while. But whatever you do, don’t do anything rash. Don’t get excited – “
“I don’t get excited any more,” he interrupted. “Not since you went away.”
“You have improved – remarkably,” she retorted.
He smiled acknowledgment. “While I am thinking about what I shall do, I’ll tell you what you will have to do – tell Mr. – er – Haythorne who I am. It may make our stay in this cabin more – may I say, sociable?”
“Why have you followed me into this frightful country?” she asked irrelevantly.
“Don’t think I came here looking for you, Theresa. Your vanity shall not be tickled by any such misapprehension. Our meeting is wholly fortuitous. I broke with the life academic and I had to go somewhere. To be honest, I came into the Klondike because I thought it the place you were least liable to be in.”
There was a fumbling at the latch, then the door swung in and Haythorne entered with an armful of firewood. At the first warning, Theresa began casually to clear away the dishes. Haythorne went out again after more wood.
“Why didn’t you introduce us?” Messner queried.
“I’ll tell him,” she replied, with a toss of her head. “Don’t think I’m afraid.”
“I never knew you to be afraid, very much, of anything.”
“And I’m not afraid of confession, either,” she said, with softening face and voice.
“In your case, I fear, confession is exploitation by indirection, profit-making by ruse, self-aggrandizement at the expense of God.”
“Don’t be literary,” she pouted, with growing tenderness. “I never did like epigrammatic discussion. Besides, I’m not afraid to ask you to forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive, Theresa. I really should thank you. True, at first I suffered; and then, with all the graciousness of spring, it dawned upon me that I was happy, very happy. It was a most amazing discovery.”
“But what if I should return to you?” she asked.
“I should” (he looked at her whimsically), “be greatly perturbed.”
“I am your wife. You know you have never got a divorce.”
“I see,” he meditated. “I have been careless. It will be one of the first things I attend to.”
She came over to his side, resting her hand on his arm. “You don’t want me, John?” Her voice was soft and caressing, her hand rested like a lure. “If I told you I had made a mistake? If I told you that I was very unhappy? – and I am. And I did make a mistake.”
Fear began to grow on Messner. He felt himself wilting under the lightly laid hand. The situation was slipping away from him, all his beautiful calmness was going. She looked at him with melting eyes, and he, too, seemed all dew and melting. He felt himself on the edge of an abyss, powerless to withstand the force that was drawing him over.
“I am coming back to you, John. I am coming back to-day … now.”
As in a nightmare, he strove under the hand. While she talked, he seemed to hear, rippling softly, the song of the Lorelei. It was as though, somewhere, a piano were playing and the actual notes were impinging on his ear-drums.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet, thrust her from him as her arms attempted to clasp him, and retreated backward to the door. He was in a panic.
“I’ll do something desperate!” he cried.
“I warned you not to get excited.” She laughed mockingly, and went about washing the dishes. “Nobody wants you. I was just playing with you. I am happier where I am.”
But Messner did not believe. He remembered her facility in changing front. She had changed front now. It was exploitation by indirection. She was not happy with the other man. She had discovered her mistake. The flame of his ego flared up at the thought. She wanted to come back to him, which was the one thing he did not want. Unwittingly, his hand rattled the door-latch.