The Magpies Nest (16 page)

"Why are you driving?" asked Hope. "Where is Allen? I tried to find him on the telephone to-day."

"Did you?" said Edgerton, in a tone of dry humour. "I thought so. That's why I sent him away. You'll never see him again, little girl. Unless you order me to bring him back for you. Can't I fill his place?"

"Oh, just as well," she said lightly. "You did know we used to steal your old car, then?"

"I did," said Edgerton. "And it's a brand new car."

"Were you jealous of him?" She asked it idly.

"Horribly," said Edgerton.

Astounded, she detected the note of truth in his voice. He had been jealous, too! And he had done what one should do: he had calmly removed the cause. She admired him, in a queerly impersonal way. He commanded circumstances. Once she had thought Tony capable of that!

"Oh, never mind," she said. "I just wanted someone to worry. Con, I must do something. I'm going away. This town is full of emptiness."

"I'm going away, too," he remarked. "Want to come along?"

Now he was patently jesting, and she sent his head spinning with her answer:

"Yes. Please take me."

"My God," he said, forgetting the wheel a moment "Don't say things like that, dear."

"Oh, well," she sighed, "of course you don't need me. You have everything, or can get it."

"You mean I'm rich," he returned. He felt the necessity of seeing himself truly for once, and to do that he must see through the eyes of another. The barrenness of inanimate possessions was plain to him; his wife's taunt had stripped him bare in his own sight, and when he had sent Allen Kirby away he had known that as one man to another he feared the contest. "When I die," he said grimly, "I'd like to have all my money brought to me, in paper, piled up—and I'll set a match to it. Half my life's gone into the making of it. I don't see why anyone else should have it."

His secret bitterness welled up; he spoke as an injured man, cheated, defrauded, by a world that set up such false values before ignorant youth. The ring of his tone was unmistakable. Hope leaned forward and peered at him through the dark.

"Then," she said slowly, "after all, you're really no cleverer than I. You didn't get anything out of it all, either. And I was envying you!"

Well, it was true. He had sold twenty years of his life for money, and now it came to him with a veritable shock of horror that he could not repurchase those busy, empty years for ten thousand times the sum he had sold them for. Probably never again would he have this vision, reach the bottom of the cup he had filled for himself.

"No," he said, "I didn't... What are you talking about? You've got it all yet."

"Mine," she said, "was another kind of soap-bubble."

"You mean..." His mind was not quick, but it had a sure reach. Slowly, now, he pieced together many little things. "Were you the girl? The girl Tony Yorke threw over?" He had not meant to put it quite so brutally.

She grew hot, and visibly shrank into her cocoonlike wrappings, but the necessity for honesty overcame her also.

"How did you guess? Yes, it was me."

Edgerton muttered something indistinguishable and angry.

"Why?" he asked heavily.

"Oh, why not?" she retorted, and tried to turn it into a sorry joke. "Weren't you frightened yourself a minute ago?"

"I?" He reached round and drew her chin up clumsily. Her cheek was wet to touch. "You didn't mean it... It wouldn't be fair—and it isn't fair of you. Would you?"

"Oh, yes, I would," she said calmly, but remembrance sent her mind off at a tangent. "No. There's your wife; of course, it would be a rotten thing to do."

"My wife!" He laughed. "You needn't worry about her; she never wants to see me again, and I mean to oblige her. If that's all... Oh, don't say any more. I give in; you know you can twist me around your finger; but don't; not to-night. I'd go through hell for you. You didn't mean it, did you?"

"I did," she reiterated wildly, for they were both bewildered and lost in the Land of Last Things, and could not stop telling the truth. She tried to qualify and explain, but his mood had caught fire now.

"All right," he said. "Come. I'm going to-morrow afternoon. Emily's leaving for the East just before; going to visit Mary's aunt in Ottawa. I go West. I'll wait for you at Laggan; you take the next train. We'll go anywhere you say. If my wife gets a divorce—I think she will—I'll marry you as soon as you like; or I'll let you go when you're tired. I'll buy the world for you, and you can kick it around. Is that all right?"

Now she was adrift in space, indeed, and filled with the dazed contentment of one who has finally made a choice. She tried to say something, and then noticed they were slowing to a halt.

"What is it?" was all she found.

"The head-light's gone out." he said. "Wait till
I
light it." He left her side and stepped down, fumbling for a match. The glare of it lighted his ruddy smooth face for a moment. There was something kind and strong about him. She felt secure. He threw away the match. "Oil's out," he explained, as if he had few words now for material things, and went to the toolbox. She still sat tranced, but for a moment only.

"Oh, look!" she cried urgently. A little tongue of flame darted out from the road-side, flickered and raced in the old grass, spreading like oil on placid water. Edgerton stood staring. "Idiot!" shrieked Hope, springing over the back of the seat into the tonneau and seizing an armful of rugs. "Beat it out!"

The rugs alighted neatly over Edgerton's head, Hope went after them, and salvaged one without ceremony. Edgerton collected himself and another rug. The flames ran and fluttered in a little wind: they fought them in an obscure, hot glare, working breathlessly and wordlessly. For an awful five minutes they feared to see the whole country-side aflame. At the end of half an hour they leaned wearily against the rotund tire of the front wheel and took breath. The fire was out, and they felt they could have done no more.

"Light another match," said Hope. "I want to see if I have any hair left. My gloves saved my hands." The match spurted up; they looked into each other's smeared and blackened faces, and simultaneously showed two rows of startlingly white teeth in uncontrollable mirth. "You won't want to run away with me now," Hope gasped. "Do you always celebrate an elopement by setting the prairie afire? Oh, oh!" She clutched his arm weakly.

"Well, we started something, didn't we?" he said. "Come; I've got some things to attend to in town." He swung her up again, and kissed her cheek, but seemed fearful of encroaching further on her favour. He would take her gifts, but they must be given freely.

"I say, how did you get out of the tonneau? The door is shut."

"Guess," she said. "Now, show me how fast you can drive... No, let me!" She hardly stopped laughing all the way back, and risked his neck a dozen times.

In his own rooms Edgerton did not wait to remove the soot and grime from his face, but went straight to the telephone. Long distance answered sleepily, but acted with despatch. If she had listened later, she might have been interested. And she might not if business bored her. It was her business to call Edmonton, and she did.

"Hello! hello! That you, Comerford? This is Edgerton. Edgerton. . . . No, I've changed my mind; don't want the charter renewed. I want it killed. I know it lapses to-morrow; I want it
killed.
I like my charters brand new ... I want a new one. . . . Yes, I know it'll cost a little more than to extend the old one; never mind. . . . Shane's crowd had their chance. There'll be more room for you now. Get action with the bunch to-night; call me up in the morning. I'll leave full instructions here with Tennant; he's honest if he is a lawyer. Lawyer honest, sure. You understand?"

Evidently Comerford understood presently, and Edgerton rang off and called his lawyer.

". . . I'm leaving to-morrow. . . . Organise a new company on that Kenatchee Falls deal . . . say, come and see me to-morrow morning at eight. I'll explain in detail. . . . Hell, no; don't get Shane; his crowd is out of it . . . business is business." He was not conscious of any irony. "To-morrow at eight. Good night."

So Tony's house of cards came down, blown upon by his own breath. And the irony of it was that he would never know the truth of how it happened.

CHAPTER XV

THERE was a foreign atmosphere about the familiar rooms; Mary put her hand to her forehead with a gesture of fatigue, and looked about her, almost petulantly, endeavouring to name the impression she had received. "It looks empty; yes, deserted," she thought. "Poor Hope seems able to have made a wilderness merely by thinking one. But I don't believe she calls it peace!" Mary would jest to her grave. But the rooms did look forlorn. There were things missing. She went into the bedroom and snapped on the light. Hope's brushes and mirror were gone! And in the sitting-room the drawing-board had been cleared; that was what she had felt. Mary turned about slowly, as if orienting herself, and went straight to the wardrobe. A battered leather suit-case should have been there. It also was gone!

Mary went back to the sitting-room and dropped limply into a chair, with a mental jerk at her clogged and distrait mind. She had been very busy all day; she had congratulated herself on being rid of a great deal of pressing business, and had come home to rest, to relapse temporarily into nothingness. Edgerton had taken himself off to the West; that was one relief. He had left death and destruction behind him, in a sense; Mary had seen him calmly tear down all the hopes of the men who had built on the Kenatchee Falls transaction, and had gathered from his manner that he felt a certain satisfaction in it. His demeanour had not invited comment, but they had just once exchanged a glance that said enough. And Mary had shrugged her shoulders, and gone to work on the new company organisation.

Emily also had gone, eastward. Mary made a wry face at the recollection of that luncheon party, deferred a day, where Hope had actually appeared, with a spot of colour on each cheek and a devil in her eye She had not spoken much, but there was something oddly different about her; she was abnormally self-possessed, ate nothing, and watched Emily with a look of impish humour. She was witty, too, with a kind of mad and topsy-turvy gaiety. She had left early. And then Mary, in the half-hour remaining, had done what she had to do. When she ended, there was no more Tony. They left the debris of him on the luncheon table, with the cold coffee cups.

It was cleverly done; neither Emily nor Tony ever knew what had really happened. His epitaph wrote him a small-town Lothario; the flowers Emily handed to the Pullman porter when her train drew out. And Mrs. Shane had sent her some of them! The rest Mary brought, a conscious tribute to her own work. Part of them were devoted mentally to the other hapless victims of her prowess, for Tony went down unhonourably in the wreck of a dozen local characters. She was far from wishing to fix him in Emily's mind by singling him out or bidding for a confidence. It was well done indeed.

And she deserved a breathing space, and now Hope, for whose sake she had laboured... Where was Hope? When she found her she would—she would beat her! Ruefully Mary admitted it would do herself good, whether it helped Hope or not.

Panic fell on her suddenly, like the unexpected contact of icy water; her lethargy departed.

So Mrs. Hamilton found her, gazing about the room with a look of bewilderment and alarm, as if she thought to discover someone concealed under the sofa.

"I've been looking for you, Mary," said Mrs. Hamilton, who was always calm, as a mother of four must be if she would escape shrewishness. "My, you look done up; you've been working late again."

"No, I've been dining with Mrs. Shane," said Mary. "Worse. Where is Hope?"

"She went out, with a suit-case, at seven o'clock. Just in time for the West train. Mary, I don't think that child looks well lately, and she ought not to be running around so. No sleep this week; out with that Kirby boy last night, and sitting up half the night before with a book. Don't say I said so; I know you girls can manage your own affairs. But I didn't like to see her going off that way without any dinner. I was bringing her some, but she'd gone. You get her to rest up." Probably she said more, but Mary did not hear.

Once Mary opened her mouth to say: "But Allen Kirby left days ago."

"I
will
beat her," she remarked instead. "She should have waited for me. That train's a local; it only goes to Banff. Mrs. Hamilton, be a darling, and help me pack. I've got to catch the Limited."

No doubt, Mary reflected afterwards, she made other explanation, but she could not remember what. Mrs. Hamilton never asked questions. She did not even look a question, but, thanks to her, Mary found herself aboard the Limited with the half of a split second to spare.

She had three hours to reassure herself that there had been no other train than the Banff local for Hope to take. As a side issue, she could reflect on the fact that Edgerton might be in Banff, rather than Laggan, where he had said he was going. And all the world goes to Banff. It is to Canada—to America almost—what Port Said is to the East. Wait there long enough and
tout
le monde
comes to you. So all the world might already be apprised of what Mary hoped to avert. Of course none would guess except her own little world —but there it was. Everyone from their own town spent week-ends at Banff. Though eighty miles distant, it amounted to a suburb. It was their one playground.

Edgerton was in Laggan, however. There was nothing for Hope to do but wait for the Limited, anathematising her own stupidity. She was eager to go on. Simply, she had to do something, the nearest thing, anything, but immediately. If she stopped she would want to die; that is, if she stopped to consider doing nothing at all. The three hours did not go so slowly. All the time her mind projected itself ahead, fixed itself still on doing something. The small, brightly lighted, lonely station, the smell of the pines, the feeling of the great calm mountains shrouding themselves in the neighbouring dark, became afterward a component part of her wild thoughts. Around the shoulder of the foot-hill was a little town, and great hive-like hotels, but she could not realise them. They meant people, and certainly she could not realise people just then, only Edgerton and herself. Fellow-travellers passed her, waiting in the station, or pacing the platform like herself. Some of them recognised her. She did not recognise them. They were isolated from her in that strange air of impermanence with which her mood invested time and place. When the Limited drew in, with a great discord of bells and whistles, and the platform filled with yet more and more people, coming or going, these were still unreal. Then Mary came towards her out of the crowd, vividly alive among all these ghosts, and she saw and seized on Hope with a sort of angry affection and a great relief.