XXVI
AND HAS TO GO TO WORK
From that moment Graham ceased to be an integral factor in the girl'shistory. His only hold on her imagination had been his moralsuperiority, and it was now gone. She treated him thenceforth as anadmirer whose sincerity deserves the consideration which his insistencemakes difficult to give ungrudgingly. He was not discouraged orfrowned on. He was forgiven promptly as a child is forgiven. But hewas kept always scrupulously to his place. The girl now held the whiphand. After a little, when he became too insistent, she cut himcruelly in punishment and only deigned to smile on him again when, tosue forgiveness, he had quite abandoned his attitude of fault-finding.
As for him, the girl's actions soon became hateful. He saw them allwrong, yet he felt his powerlessness to alter them in even theslightest degree. This aroused so powerful but so impotent a rage thatshortly he came to react irritably against everything Molly did whetherright or wrong. He instinctively arraigned himself in the opposition.He did not want to do this, and his common sense accused him stronglyof unreasonableness, but he could not help it. It was greater than he.No matter what the plan, discussion or even conversation, his morbidlysensitive consciousness of the girl's error impelled him to object.
"Let's go over to Rockerville to-day," she would suggest.
"The horses aren't here."
"But it's no great matter to get them. Let's send the Kid."
"I don't know where the Kid is."
"Well, Frosty then."
"Frosty's busy."
"It wouldn't hurt you any to get them yourself."
"One of the saddles is broken."
"You know very well it's only a cinch ring. It can be fixed in fiveminutes."
"We'll---- Don't you think it is going to be pretty hot?"
"No, I don't; and if I can stand it, I should think you could."
"And----"
"Heavens and earth! It's harder than climbing trees to get you to doanything. Never mind! _I_ don't want to go to Rockerville or anywhereelse if it's all that trouble!"
And then Graham would wonder at his stubborn fit. Why shouldn't theyhave gone to Rockerville? In five minutes he could have got thehorses, fixed the saddle. And the day was beautiful. What real reasondid he have? He did not know; only he felt an irresistible impulse toobject. This was because he loved her, disapproved of her, and wasquite powerless over her.
When he was not merely contrary, he was urging strong advice on anunwilling recipient. It was offered in either the pleading or theblustering spirit. If in the former, Molly merely teased him. If inthe latter, she became very angry. It was always on the same subject.The girl was wearied with it.
And yet, if it were any consolation, Jack Graham could have comfortedhimself with the truth that, next to Cheyenne Harry, he claimed agreater share of her thoughts than any other in camp. His offices wereungrateful, but they had a certain sincerity which prevented theirbeing ignored; and, not forgotten, their acid-like drop of truth ateinto that conscience of which she did not yet realize the existence.Her horizon was becoming banked with thunderclouds, looming huge andblack and heavy with portent. Graham, as an ideal, had stood for ahigher existence. Now, however shrunken his image appeared, the idealitself remained as something tangible in her collection of moralstandards. She acknowledged to herself fiercely that she had fallenfrom it. She told herself that she did not care.
She was dreadfully alone. Lafond was always kind to her, but she neverfelt that she knew him. Graham, in spite of his frequent presence, wasin reality quite estranged. The Kid and Peter and Kelly and Houstonand even old Bill Martin had fallen away from her somehow. She did notknow that the reason the older men were less intimate was because shewas supposed to be Cheyenne Harry's mistress, and the rule of suchcases is "hands off!" And then there was always the stifling formlessweight at her heart which she did not understand. She was veryunhappy. That with her meant that she was reckless. She threw herselfpassionately into her affair with Cheyenne Harry as the one tangiblehuman relation left to her in its entirety.
The days followed each other in a succession of passionate exaltationsand dumb despairs. Harry kissed her whenever he pleased now. She hadlong since got beyond mere coquetry. It meant much to her hereditaryinstincts so to yield, but she gave herself up to it with the abandonof a lost soul delivering itself to degrading wickedness. For in spiteof her life and companions she was intrinsically pure, so pure thateven Cheyenne Harry, with all his extraordinary influence, did notsomehow care to go too far. He kissed her, and at the first, when thelong resistance had enhanced her value, he was persuaded that he lovedher--that these interviews meant to him what lovers' meetings mean--andso he responded to her passionate devotion with what seemed to becorresponding ecstasy.
But then after a little insensibly the flood ebbed. In the old daysshe had amused him with her bright laughter, her gay speech, hermocking superiorities, her little coquetries of manner or mannerism.Now she had thrown these weapons away. Her surrender was complete.Her life had simplified to one phase, that of dewy-eyed pleadingadoration. At first it pleased his masculine vanity. After a time itcloyed ever so little; Cheyenne Harry missed the "comic relief" in allthese heroics. He would have liked occasionally to have climbed hills;or taken long walks; or even run a short race, say to the bend of theroad; or to have had played on him a small practical joke; orexperienced some other such indication that man is a laughing animal.The girl seemed capable of enjoying nothing but slow and aimlesssaunterings. In the beginning he had experienced the nameless ecstasyand thrill inherent in the personal contact of the kiss. Now he missedsomething of those qualities. It seemed no longer strange to him tofeel her body near his, to watch her wide eyes half-closed, to presshis lips against hers, half-parted. It was still delightful aboveeverything in the world, but there had been one thing better--the kissof yesterday. In a word Cheyenne Harry's experience was beginningdimly to trace the word "satiety."
Not that either he or the girl realized it. To their thinking mindseverything was as usual. But their subconsciousness appreciated it,and interpreted it according to its value. Cheyenne Harry, as has beenpointed out, turned instinctively toward a desire for lighter phases intheir relationship. Molly Lafond clung the more blindly to herpassion. Her only excuse to herself for her abandonment of the betterideal was the reality of that passion. When it should go, herself-respect would vanish with it.
Harry found a certain amusement, too, in seeing Graham jumping aroundthe outer circle like corn in a popper. Graham was usually possessedof so much innate dignity. Now his self-abandonment to the essentiallyundignified attitude of begging for the petty favor of a quarrellessten minutes or even a little good-humored smile tickled the other'ssense of the incongruous and pleased his vanity. To an extent he washeld to the girl now by his pride. A man likes to have a rival whenperfectly secure himself, especially when the girl tells him what therival says to her. This may not be honorable in her, but it is veryhuman. So amusing was it that Harry did not get angry over the reportsof Graham's repeated warnings against him.
The latter seemed unable to keep off the subject. He knew that hissuspicions only strengthened the girl's obstinate opposition, but hecould not help their expression for all that. Sometimes he pleaded,sometimes he threatened, sometimes he assumed the prophet's mantle andforetold all sorts of dire disasters. The girl laughed, or becameangry. It would have puzzled Graham to tell which of these moods hepreferred: perhaps it would have depended on which of them he wasexperiencing at the moment.
His saving grace was a sturdy sense of his duty to himself. He feltthat sense to be sadly shaken in many ways; but he clung to his worktenaciously, perhaps a little feverishly.
"Nuthin' like a woman to make a man work," observed Bill Martin sagely,"whether she's _fur_ him, or agin' him."
"How about Billy?" inquired Old Mizzou.
Bill Martin laughed. "Billy? Oh, he's _playin'_," he replied
.