Part 33 (2/2)
Bill had divested himself of the scowl. He smiled as a man who has solved some knotty problem to his entire satisfaction. Moreover, he bore no mark of conflict, none of the conventional scars of a rough-and-tumble fight. His clothing was in perfect order, his tie and collar properly arranged, as a gentleman's tie and collar should be.
For a moment Hazel found herself believing the _Herald_ story a pure canard. But as he walked across the room her searching gaze discovered that the knuckles of both his hands were bruised and b.l.o.o.d.y, the skin broken. She picked up the paper.
”Is this true?” she asked tremulously, pointing to the offending headlines.
Bill frowned.
”Substantially correct,” he answered coolly.
”Bill, how could you?” she cried. ”It's simply disgraceful. Brawling in public like any saloon loafer, and getting in jail and all. Haven't you any consideration for me--any pride?”
His eyes narrowed with an angry glint.
”Yes,” he said deliberately. ”I have. Pride in my word as a man. A sort of pride that won't allow any bunch of lily-fingered crooks to make me a party to any dirty deal. I don't propose to get the worst of it in that way. I won't allow myself to be tarred with their stick.”
”But they're not trying to give you the worst of it,” she burst out.
Visions of utter humiliation arose to confront and madden her. ”You've insulted and abused our best friends--to say nothing of giving us all the benefit of newspaper scandal. We'll be notorious!”
”Best friends? G.o.d save the mark!” he snorted contemptuously. ”Our best friends, as you please to call them, are crooks, thieves, and liars. They're rotten. They stink with their moral rottenness. And they have the gall to call it good business.”
”Just because their business methods don't agree with your peculiar ideas is no reason why you should call names,” she flared. ”Mr. Brooks called just after you left at noon. _He_ told me something about this, and a.s.sured me that you would find yourself mistaken if you'd only take pains to think it over. I don't believe such men as they are would stoop to anything crooked. Even if the opportunity offered, they have too much at stake in this community. They couldn't afford to be crooked.”
”So Brooks came around to talk it over with you, eh?” Bill sneered.
”Told you it was all on the square, did he? Explained it all very plausibly, I suppose. Probably suggested that you try smoothing me down, too. It would be like 'em.”
”He did explain about this stock-selling business,” Hazel replied defensively. ”And I can't see why you find it necessary to make a fuss. I don't see where the cheating and crookedness comes in.
Everybody who buys stock gets their money's worth, don't they? But I don't care anything about your old mining deal. It's this fighting and quarreling with people who are not used to that sort of brute action--and the horrid things they'll say and think about us.”
”About you, you mean--as the wife of such a boor--that's what's rubbing you raw,” Bill flung out pa.s.sionately. ”You're acquiring the cla.s.s psychology good and fast. Did you ever think of anybody but yourself?
Have I ever betrayed symptoms of idiocy? Do you think it natural or even likely for me to raise the devil in a business affair like this out of sheer malice? Don't I generally have a logical basis for any position I take? Yet you don't wait or ask for any explanation from _me_. You stand instinctively with the crowd that has swept you off your feet in the last six months. You take another man's word that it's all right and I'm all wrong, without waiting to hear my side of it. And the petty-larceny incident of my knocking down two or three men and being under arrest as much as thirty minutes looms up before you as the utter depths of disgrace. Disgrace to you! It's all you--you! How do you suppose it strikes me to have my wife take sides against me on snap judgment like that? It shows a heap of faith and trust and loyalty, doesn't it? Oh, it makes me real proud and glad of my mate. It does. By thunder, if Granville had ever treated me as it tried to treat you one time, according to your own account, I'd wipe my feet on them at every opportunity.”
”If you'd explain,” Hazel began hesitatingly. She was thoroughly startled at the smoldering wrath that flared out in this speech of his.
She bitterly resented being talked to in that fas.h.i.+on. It was unjust.
Particularly that last fling. And she was not taking sides. She refused to admit that--even though she had a disturbing consciousness that her att.i.tude could scarcely be construed otherwise.
”I'll explain nothing,” Bill flashed stormily. ”Not at this stage of the game. I'm through explaining. I'm going to act. I refuse to be raked over the coals like a naughty child, and then asked to tell why I did it. I'm right, and when I know I'm right I'll go the limit. I'm going to take the kinks out of this Free Gold deal inside of forty-eight hours. Then I'm through with Granville. Hereafter I intend to fight shy of a breed of dogs who lose every sense of square dealing when there is a bunch of money in sight. I shall be ready to leave here within a week. And I want you to be ready, too.”
”I won't,” she cried, on the verge of hysterics. ”I won't go back to that cursed silence and loneliness. You made this trouble here, not I.
I won't go back to Pine River, or the Klappan. I won't, I tell you!”
Bill stared at her moodily for a second.
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