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CHAPTER XIV

you got my message,” said Bob Hargraves, raising his face from his desk as Bruce walked into the store.

Sensing something wrong, he looked down quickly.

“Why, no, Bob. What is it?”

“I sent Dick after you. He must have missed you.” He lowered his eyes uneasily. “The boss has been whiskying himself blind at Point Curtis all day.”

“What!” Bruce fell back a pace, as if he had suddenly run into a wall. He stared back at Bob, who had made an effort to look up without recognition of the fact that Bruce himself had been back only a week since his own break. Every man about the place knew that Bruce's lapses were not a subject for comment or for joke. No one had ever hinted to him of any knowledge of them.

“Afraid it's true,” said Bob, trying to speak lightly.

“What struck him?” exclaimed Bruce, looking for a reason. It was a well-known fact that Roland was almost a teetotaller. “Anything happened? I was in the bush last night.”

“Yes. Some of the new machinery has been wrecked on the Three Kings. He got a telegram about it last night. He scared me. I thought he would go crazy.” Bob saw that Bruce's thoughts had turned from the cause of the boss's outburst to the probable effect of it upon his family.

“I tried to calm him down before he went home,” he went on, “but by the look of him this morning he had not had a restful night. He rode off about ten, I supposed to the bush, or I would have got word up to you. I knew nothing till Harold Brayton came along about four, and said he page 188 was down there and pretty mad. He had tried to get him away, but couldn't. He thought you had better get down there as soon as you could.”

With a groan Bruce walked a step or two to the door, where he stood looking out unseeing upon the river. The knock-off horn had just sounded at the kitchen, and along the tramway and the spit and on the booms the men were gathering up their tools, and tidying up things for the night. Bruce was vaguely conscious of their movements as he tried to think how this last disaster was to be faced. This blow had fallen out of a clear sky, and there was more to think about than its effect upon Alice, though that had been his first concern. Bruce knew even better than she did how deeply the boss was involved, and what risks he had taken, and how many men would suffer if he broke down. He knew, also, how greatly he had been trusted because he was believed to be absolutely reliable. One of the first things to be done was to see if it could not be kept quiet.

Then, realizing the need for prompt action in various directions, he swung round.

“Do they know at the house, Bob?”

“I don't know. But Brayton would hardly tell them.”

“We must keep it from them. Get round the men this evening, Bob, and tell them to keep it dark. I'll go up to the house before I go after him, and I'll think out something when I see what he's like. And hang around, in case Mrs. Roland wants you. And remember, you don't know anything.” Without waiting for Bob to reply, he swung out and up the path.

Mingled with his anxiety for Roland and his concern for Alice was a numbing sense of humiliation. He wondered if the boss had flown to whisky because his own recent breakdown had pointed the way. He felt that if Alice got to know she would think so, and it made him feel like an accessory to the deed. It was impossible to think of Roland's orgy without thinking of his own. He dreaded now above all things that Alice should learn of it.

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Bruce had seen Alice twice in the past week, but only for a few minutes at a time. Though Roland had always covered up his tracks by saying he was away on business somewhere, he was sure she knew, and he had been particularly sensitive this last time because he had a horrible conviction that he had failed her by going away as he had after their revelation of feeling, and he felt she thought so too, and that she did not in the least understand the nature of his problem. It made him sick to think that she grieved over him in secret, or that she condemned his weakness. It was the one thing about which he could not be humorous. And he knew, as he went up the slope, that her attitude of mind would be much more uncompromising toward her husband, not only because she both feared and loathed drunkenness, but because she would resent it fiercely as something she had not bargained for in her relations with him.

As he approached the front gate the door opened, and he knew she had been watching for him. Before he reached her he saw what the night had done to her, that she had had no sleep, and that her eyes burned with fear. In her relief at seeing him she forgot all about his recent absence or the cause for it.

“Oh, David, where is Tom?”

He took the hands she held out to him.

“God!” he groaned. “Was he as bad as that?”

She moved her head, unable to speak. He closed the door behind them. He could hear Asia giving the children their tea in the kitchen. Alice motioned him into the bedroom so that they could talk without being heard.

“Where is he?” she asked again.

He saw from the mixed expression in her eyes that she sensed something, and he wondered what it was. But he lied quickly.

“In the bush. I've drugged him. We will look after him up there.”

He thought he detected a flicker of suspicion in her eyes, page 190 but it was instantly swamped out by relief. She sank into her chair, pressing her closed hands into her eyeballs in a dazed sort of way.

“I couldn't have stood another night,” she said wildly.

For a moment he wanted to tell her that she didn't have to stand that, he wanted to tell her many things he had looked for opportunity to say, but he knew she could hear nothing then, so he merely took her hands and gripped them. Then he remembered Roland.

“There is something I have to do,” he said. “But I expect to be back by nine o'clock. Now lie down, and stop thinking. Send for Bob if you want anything. I will stay with you to-night. There is nothing more to worry about. Leave the future alone.” He knew that his short sentences, shot at her, had a curious hypnotic effect upon her, but he was anxious about her as he looked down at her. He was afraid she could not stand more without a break-down herself. And all this was a very bad beginning for another child. But he had no time to stay longer, and with another grip of her hands he left her.

When he got to Point Curtis he found Roland raging like a wild beast. He had laid out two men, and it had taken four of them to get him tied down. He tried to spring at Bruce, thinking he was a log about to fall upon him. The public house was full of men who had taken a hand at trying to calm him. Curiously enough, nobody seemed to regard it as a joke.

When Bruce heard how much whisky Roland was said to have consumed he treated the proprietor to much language unbecoming to an English gentleman, and scared him with the prospect of losing his license, and a period in gaol. After drugging the boss and leaving careful instructions to cover any emergency, he rode back to the bay, and sent down Shiny and another man to help with the nursing, and to bring him up in the morning if he was well enough. Then he went round the cottages, reassuring the men, and asking them to keep the story in the place.

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He found Alice lying on the front room sofa, with Asia bathing her head. She asked him no questions, and made no attempt to talk. He was a bit perplexed by her indifference to her husband's state, for he knew she must guess that he was really ill. It showed, he thought, how bad was her reaction from her own fear and suffering.

From Asia, after her mother was asleep, he heard the story of the night before, when Roland had paced the floor hour after hour, muttering and delirious, declaring at intervals that he was done, and that he would kill himself. He gathered that Alice had been unable to do anything with him, but that she had probably made him worse by suggesting things that inflamed him to irritable rage.

“It was dreadful, Uncle David.” Asia shuddered at the memory of it. “And we did not know where to find you in the bush, and Mother said you were wanted up there anyway. But it was awful! I have never been so frightened. And I did wish you were here. I am never frightened when you are near.”

As she looked up into his face he felt he was indeed the deus ex machina of their troubled lives. To distract her attention from his god-like qualities, which he knew absorbed too much of her thoughts, he turned to lessons, which had been lately neglected. He found that she was well ahead of all that he had set her, and after an hour's fresh work he was glad to see that her mind was diverted from personal problems by the insistent vagaries of French verbs.

When he told her to go to bed she was too tired to make any protest, or to linger as she usually tried to do.

Bruce sat on for some time smoking by the kitchen fire before turning in on the stretcher bed that had been prepared for him. Exactly how they were all going to emerge from the present mess he could not see, but the first thing to be done was to get Roland restored to health and sanity. He thought curiously about him as he sat there, wondering if he realized how much of an outsider he was in his own house. But it was impossible to guess what the boss saw, page 192 or suspected, or thought. He had never given a sign to show that he recognized the possibility of more than met the eye in his home. Bruce had little clue to the processes of his mind except in relation to business transactions and to men in connection with work.

In certain ways Roland seemed to have come into the world ready made; in others it looked as if he would never learn and never grow. It had always interested Bruce that he should accept people without question as he found them; that, with the one exception of his wife, he tolerated with good humour all sorts of idiosyncrasies, all kinds of manners, all varieties of moods, all species of sins. The only kind of criticism Bruce had ever seen him pass had been a shrug of the shoulders or an amused twinkle of the eye. Still pondering over his unique power over men and his curious inconsistencies, Bruce went to bed.

The household was asleep in the morning when he went out, leaving a note to say he would be back later. When he got to Point Curtis, Shiny, who had been up with Roland all night, told him they had had a lurid time, but Bruce found the boss a whining, nauseated wreck, as feeble as a baby, his delirium gone, his mind in a stupor of depression. They carried him to a boat on a mattress, and rowed him up to the bay, where he was landed by the men's kitchen, and taken to Bruce's shanty, to be carefully nursed under his directions.

When he called later in the morning at the boss's house, Bruce was relieved to see that neither Alice nor Asia disputed his story that Roland was getting better, but would have to stay in the bush another day or two. He could see they were only too glad to shelve the responsibility of looking after him. This made him feel a great pity for the sick man, though he understood well enough the reason for Alice's relief.

That evening his story fell to pieces.

As he sat down by the sitting-room fire with Asia, who had worn an air of suppressed worry during tea, he saw page 193 she had something to say. Alice had hardly left the room for a minute before she burst out with it.

“Is he really drunk?” she asked anxiously.

“Sh! What do you mean?” Bruce looked quickly over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen door.

“I heard the men talking about it down by the store.” She looked fearfully at him, seeing he was angry.

“You'd no business to listen,” he said sternly. “Have you said anything about it? Have you told your mother?”

“No.” She felt her heart jump with fright.

“Then don't speak of it, to her or to any one.”

“Then it's true,” she said, unconsciously raising her voice, “he was drunk.”

“Sh!” commanded Bruce harshly.

But it was too late. Alice stood in the doorway staring at them with hard and startled eyes.

“Drunk!” she repeated. “So that's the matter with him!”

As he rose to his feet he was gripped by a resentment of her attitude, the blind superiority of a “good woman” for weaknesses that were not her weaknesses.

“I think I'll go and get drunk now,” she said slowly. “It is certainly my turn.”

For a second he looked into her passionately scornful face as if he had not understood her, while the bitter truth of her words burned into his brain, and the hard contempt of her tone stunned his ears.

As she did not consciously mean her words to apply to him, and did not for the moment see that she had included him in her condemnation, she was surprised to see him shrink and then turn from her without a word toward the front door. As he closed it after him, she started forward.

“David,” she called hoarsely.

Then she remembered Asia, who now stood up sick with the realization that another dreadful thing was about to happen.

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“Don't you move from this room,” cried Alice, as she rushed out of the front door.

Bruce was turning the corner, going towards the back gate.

“David,” she called again.

As he neither stopped nor turned, she began to run after him. Stumbling, though the night was clear with brilliant stars, she followed, her mind blistered by the scalding thought that she had hurt him in a way he would never forget. All that she had recently suffered, all the fears of the immediate present, even the shock she had just received, vanished as she ran and called after the man who would not turn or answer.

When she seized his arm she had forgotten that she was a Christian wife and mother, forgotten that she was a lady.

“David, you shall not go. Forgive me—I didn't see what I was saying. I didn't, David. I can't bear to think I hurt you. I don't care what you do—you know I don't. Oh, say you forgive me and forget that I said it. I can't have you misunderstand me—I'd rather die. Forgive me—”

Her voice broke as she flung herself upon him.

Coming out of his nightmare of pain, he found her arms gripped round his neck, her eyes wild with a fear that startled him. Mechanically he clutched at her to keep himself and her from falling. That fierce precipitated embrace had not lasted a minute before they were both infected by the fever of it. He could not look into her eyes and see what he saw there and remain unmoved. The fence against which they leaned, and the stars, and the night, and all sense of time and place were blotted out by the mist that covered his sight, a mist wherein he saw only her lips as they inevitably drew his own to them.

But the very intensity of the abandonment contained the seeds of its rapid disintegration. Only a few hot minutes had raced by when Bruce raised his head and looked over page 195 her shoulder into the night. He felt her eyes fixed for some seconds upon his face, then her head nestling into his neck. He felt her body, hot and trembling, against his, moving, how consciously he could not tell, with a seductive ebb and flow of pressure. Even while he was inflamed by her unmasking of her feelings, he realized that he could not encourage her, because she lacked the courage of her emotions.

Partly realizing his growing detachment, and partly seeing independently the madness of this, she drew herself up a little, prepared to excuse her emotion or minimize it, as his attitude might require.

When he turned his face to her she could not read the complex mystery of his expression, but she did see that there was no dominant light of fierce joy or conquest in his eyes, but more than anything else a troubled questioning. She looked back at him helplessly, leaving him to take the initiative. As he did not take it, she nervously stammered a question that had nothing to do with the real thoughts of either of them at that moment.

“Do you forgive me?”

“Forgive—” he repeated absently. “Oh, yes. Please don't mention that again.”

He still had his arms about her, and he made no attempt to remove them. As he spoke, he drew her even a little closer, but held her steadily and dispassionately. She tried to realize every second of this contact, knowing that it could not last. As he continued to be silent and to look away from her, it dawned upon her that her lack of control had only added to his problems. Suddenly demoralized by this thought, she staggered blindly away from him, beginning to sob.

Divining the reason for her movement and her tears, he caught her back to him, and held her more firmly than before, stroking her head, and pressing it into his neck, but still saying nothing. It was not long before he had comforted her back to control.

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Still forgetting everything but their own immediate problem, she looked up at him.

“David, I am sorry for this,” she began with a tragic calmness that was comic.

She was surprised to see that his eyes smiled at her in the starlight.

“Why should you be?” he asked. As he saw she did not know what to say he went on, “Are you really sorry?”

When she turned her face away he took it between his hands, looked calmly into it, and repeated his question.

“You are not sorry,” he answered himself, “and neither am I.”

As her eyes flashed at him he leaned down and kissed her deliberately on the forehead, on her hair, and then on her mouth.

“You know that I love you,” he said quietly, saying the words he knew she craved to hear. “And now that we have come to this, there is a great deal more to say.”

Again he looked past her into the night, marvelling at the psychology of women, in whom love could swamp out so much more thoroughly than in man all other considerations. He knew she was saying to herself that nothing mattered now that he had told her he loved her, while to him everything mattered just the same.

As a background to his feeling for her there was the picture of Tom Roland lying ill in his shanty, the picture of a fine enterprise on the point of wreckage, the picture of a number of dependent people loyally trusting the man who had made them promises.

“Let's go in,” he said simply.

It was not till they opened the front door that they remembered Asia, who was sitting where her mother had left her, half crazed by misery. Bruce groaned when he saw her. Nothing hurt him so much as the overwhelming sorrows of children. He turned from Alice to restoring her to peace of mind, and for half an hour he devoted himself page 197 to putting her to bed, and to comforting her so that she would sleep.

And while he did this Alice sat by the sitting-room fire, waiting for him, and coming back by degrees to a realization of the hard cold facts of life that faced them both. At first she was stunned by the complexity of them, but she attempted no solution of them. Her mind balked at what seemed to her the impossibility of fitting them in to any scheme of life that she could face. She was proceeding on the assumption that the scene she had just gone through would alter everything, not outwardly, but in her own mind.

When Bruce came in and closed the door behind him she saw that he was thinking of something else.

“Look here, my dear, we shall really have to keep our troubles away from that child.”

Then he saw that she had expected something very different from him. He stood on the mat looking down at her, the enigma of her strength and her weakness puzzling him afresh. Even though her face was pinched for lack of sleep it had lost none of its power to attract him. Now, as she looked back at him, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes brilliant. He knew she was waiting for a lead. He wondered if she knew what she really wanted, whether she had faced any other kind of future, and actually how far he dominated her.

Without attempting to kiss or caress her, he dropped into the chair opposite. Then, drawing it nearer to her, he leaned forward and took one of her hands.

“What are we to do now?” he asked, his eyes upon hers.

“Why, David, we can't do anything.”

In her tone he read finality and renunciation. He knew perfectly well she wanted no scandal, no exposure, that she would never consider running away with him, but he wondered if she had thought about it or faced it, and he was curious to know.

“You have not thought of going away with me,” he asked lightly.

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Even as the startled light flashed across her face she saw he was not serious.

“Don't be alarmed,” he smiled back. “I am not going to ask you to. I never shall. But just what have you thought about it? You knew we were coming to this, didn't you?”

“I—I—yes—I thought, perhaps—”

To her surprise he laughed.

“Oh, woman,” he said, shaking his head at her. How he could laugh with all that volume of a situation hanging about their ears she did not know. “My dear, you hoped we were coming to this, you meant us to come to this. Yes, you did—you are just like every other woman. And I did, too, just like every other man. And now that we are here the question is, do we stay as we have been, or do we go on? Because we have to do one thing or the other.” He gripped her hand more firmly as he went on. “There's one thing I must tell you. I cannot go on making love to you in any form here in Tom Roland's house while I take Tom Roland's money. It was inevitable, I think, that we should come to a confession of our feeling for each other”—he carefully ignored the fact that she had made the advances—“but now we have to make a decision as to action. I can only go on making love to you on one of two conditions. Either I tell your husband and have his consent to go on, which he is hardly likely to give, or we go away. I will not deceive Tom Roland. Even if I don't go round recruiting for the front ranks in heaven I do have a standard of decency for this earth.”

He felt her stiffen as she drew herself up.

“David, I have never thought that I could leave Tom. I—you misunderstand me—I did want to know that you loved me, but I know it can't alter anything—” Her voice broke.

“I know, my dear,” he said gently, “but we have to be very clear as to exactly what we can do without being disloyal to Tom. Now, I'm no saint, but I cannot go on kissing you as we kissed to-night, I cannot go on telling page 199 you I love you, except in a light and dispassionate way, we cannot go on having emotional scenes—all these things will have a physical effect on me—I am not made of ether. If we are to go on safely, we must shut down at once on all thought of drifting. Now the Lord knows how we are going to do it. I don't. But we have to. If we can't, I shall go away.”

“Go away!” He saw how her face whitened at the mere suggestion of it. “David, you would go away!”

“Oh, my dear.” He dropped forward onto his knees, putting his hands into her lap. “I do not want to go away. Will you understand me? Will you help me to keep the friendship what it was a year ago? Later, when we have beaten the fever out of it, we can be more expressive. Will you understand that I love you, even if I can't go on telling you so as long as you live with Tom? Will you understand that I am like every other man, that your loving me does not turn me into an ascetic, that I can't stand sex provocation any more than other men can, and that, because I love you, you will stimulate me if you are not careful? I have to be frank, my dear. Women like you don't see these things, or won't admit them till they are thrown at them. Now, are you going to help me?”

Though he had purposely turned his words into an appeal for assistance, as if he were one of the weaker brethren, she was stung by the implied indictment of herself, at the same time that she was moved to heights of renunciation as she looked down into his questioning face.

“David, I can go on,” she answered proudly. “I shall never ask you to be any different. I don't want you to be any different. I only want to know you love me. I understand quite well that we can only be the friends we have been. You will never need to appeal to me again.” Unconsciously her attitude was one of self-defence.

He did not dare to smile at her, but took her assurance soberly as he drew himself up and sat back in his chair. Then his manner changed.

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“I want to talk to you about Tom,” he began gravely, knowing that he was treading on thin ice.

She looked away from him into the fire, realizing with some surprise how completely her husband's last offence had been blotted from her mind, and that now that it was brought back to her consciousness the force of the shock was broken. She was even ready to suspend judgment until Bruce had spoken.

So far David Bruce had ignored phases of her married life about which he knew she had tremendous reserves, even when, as her doctor, he might have spoken without presumption. Though he had nursed her on several occasions, he had never entered her room save as a professional man, with a manner the more impersonal because he was so privileged. Only once or twice, and that very lightly, had he advised her as to how to deal with her husband. Many times he had wanted to speak, but had not found the occasion right. Now he saw that Alice did not resent the fact that he was likely to speak plainly.

“You needn't be afraid about Tom's taking to drink,” wincing as he used the phrase and not looking at her. “He may never do it again. He was temporarily crazed. It's a pity you did not send for Bob that night.”

“Why, David! I can't let outsiders know how he behaves—”

“Behaves! Good Lord, my dear girl!” He sat up suddenly, his eyes alight with a rare impatience. “Do you suppose he went on like that for fun, or to annoy you, or what? He was facing ruin. He was temporarily maddened, and really there are excuses for him. Do get out of your head the idea that he meant to be a brute to you. Don't be any more hostile to him because he was ill. You know you don't help yourself or him by that attitude.”

She merely looked helplessly at him and back into the fire. He wanted to get up and shake her out of her extraordinary dumb control.

“My dear, I'm going to be very frank with you now. You page 201 judge Tom too harshly. Your life with him would be more bearable if you realized better the difficulties he has with life. I know he is a trial, and that one has to learn how not to be hurt by a man of his irritable type. You can only learn that by realizing his difficulties. Now you know less about Tom than any one else. All you can see about him is that he makes you suffer. You think he does it purposely, and for that you almost hate him. He is not rude to you on purpose at all. His irritation is a reaction from strain. He has no idea how much you suffer from it. He would be astonished to find out. If you could grasp that fact you'd feel less badly about him.”

He leaned down to put more wood on the fire.

“And, my dear, he has his troubles like the rest of us, and, like the rest of us, his worst trouble is himself. A man driven by his fever of vitality is a victim of his inheritance. But you could resist his pressure if you tried. You don't have to produce his slippers in two seconds when he demands them. Make him wait your time, or go and get them himself occasionally. The whole house doesn't have to hold its breath when he comes in. What do you suppose he could do to you if it didn't? Why, if you turned on him he would be just as helpless with you as you apparently are with him. You would ruin the best man in the world on the treatment you've given Tom the last two years. It will be hard work to undo it, but it is what you have to do if you are ever to be at peace with him. And he isn't enjoying the present state of things. He would like it to be different, only he doesn't know how.”

As he saw she was crying silently he went down on to his knees again, this time putting his arms round her.

“My dear, you must stop being hostile to him. That is not fair. If your marriage was a mistake, it is just as hard on him as it is on you. And, if you mean to go on with it, you might as well try to make some adjustments. Tom is not rough on purpose. Few people are. You feel so badly about Tom's manners that you are apt to overlook his page 202 great qualities. You know, we British are too damned superior about our culture and our refinement, too intolerant of differences. We forget that the pioneers and the sons of pioneers made the world possible for us. If you could get away from Tom a little, and see him as other people see him, and get some independent estimate of him as a character, it might help you.”

Alice made no attempt to reply to him, but cried on quietly while he soothed her by stroking her hands and putting them against his cheek.

After some time she recovered her control.

“Where is he, David?” she asked tragically.

“In my shanty. We brought him up from Point Curtis this morning.”

“You will bring him home to-morrow, please.”

“He may not be well enough. He is likely to be pretty sick for some days.”

She looked down questioningly, he thought.

“Well, just as soon as he is well enough, will you bring him home?”

“I will.”

They sat on for some time without another word. With his arms still about her, David Bruce put his head down on her lap, and she put one hand on his hair, and kept it there steady. She knew it might be a long while before they would allow themselves the luxury of this amount of intimacy again, so she concentrated her attention upon it that she might carry the memory forward to help her to ward off the menace of the future.

At last Bruce moved and looked at his watch, remembering Roland. Getting up, he drew her with him, and holding her face near to his looked steadily into her eyes. Still silent, he kissed her on the forehead and then firmly on her lips, before he stood up away from her.

“I must go and look after him for an hour or two. It will be late when I get back. You go to bed. And remember that you need only live one minute at a time.”

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With the smile that always warmed her and eliminated the fear of evil moments, he turned and left her to piece together for herself once more the puzzle of a fresh beginning.