The Best Short Stories of 1915 | Page 9

people? It's a sensation
that never loses its freshness. Mrs. Whitney was like that. I wouldn't
have called her beautiful; she was better; you knew she was good and
clean-cut and a thoroughbred the minute you saw her. She was lovely,
too; don't misunderstand me, but you had more important things to
think about when you were talking to her. Just at the moment I was
wondering how any one who so evidently had been crying could all at
once greet a stranger with so cordial a smile. But she was all that--all
nerve; I don't think I ever met a woman quite like her--so fine, you
understand."
Hardy paused. "Have any of you chaps got a cigarette?" he asked; and I
noticed that his hand, usually the steadiest hand imaginable, trembled
ever so slightly. "Well," he began again, "there you are! I had tumbled
into about as rotten a little, pitiful a little tragedy as you can imagine,
there in a God-forsaken desert of Arizona, with not a soul about but a
Chinaman, a couple of Scotch stationary engineers, an Irish foreman,
two or three young mining men, and a score of Mexicans. Of course,
my first impulse was to get out the next morning, to cut it--it was none

of my business--although I determined to drop a line to Henry Martin;
but I didn't go. I had a talk with Mrs. Whitney that night, after her
attractive husband had taken himself off to bed, and somehow I
couldn't leave just then. You know how it is, you drop into a place
where nothing in the world seems likely to happen, and all of a sudden
you realize that something is going to happen, and for the life of you
you can't go away. That situation up on top of the hill couldn't last
forever, could it? So I stayed on. I hunted out the big Irish foreman and
shared his cabin. The Whitneys asked me to visit them, but I didn't
exactly feel like doing so. The Irishman was a fine specimen of his race,
ten years out from Dublin, and everywhere else since that time;
generous, irascible, given to great fits of gayety and equally unexpected
fits of gloom. He would sit in the evenings, a short pipe in his mouth,
and stare up at the Whitney bungalow on the hill above.
"'That Jim Whitney's a divvle,' he confided to me once. 'Wan of these
days I'll hit him over th' head with a pick and be hung for murther. Now,
what in hell d'ye suppose a nice girl like that sticks by him for? If it
weren't for her I'd 'a' reported him long ago. The scut!' And I remember
that he spat gloomily.
"But I got to know the answer to that question sooner than I had
expected. You see, I went up to the Whitneys' often, in the afternoon,
or for dinner, or in the evening, and I talked to Mrs. Whitney a great
deal; although sometimes I just sat and smoked and listened to her play
the piano. She played beautifully. It was a treat to a man who hadn't
heard music for two years. There was a little thing of Grieg's--a spring
song, or something of the sort--and you've no idea how quaint and sad
and appealing it was, and incongruous, with all its freshness and
murmuring about water-falls and pine-trees, there, in those hot,
breathless Arizona nights. Mrs. Whitney didn't talk much; she wasn't
what you'd call a particularly communicative woman, but bit by bit I
pieced together something continuous. It seems that she had run away
with Whitney ten years before--Oh, yes! Henry Martin! That had been
a schoolgirl affair. Nothing serious, you understand. But the Whitney
matter had been different. She was greatly in love with him. And the
family had disapproved. Some rich, stuffy Boston people, I gathered.

But she had made up her mind and taken matters in her own hands.
That was her way--a clean-cut sort of person--like a gold-and-white
arrow; and now she was going to stick by her choice no matter what
happened; owed it to Whitney. There was the quirk in her brain; we all
have a quirk somewhere, and that was hers. She felt that she had ruined
his career; he had been a brilliant young engineer, but her family had
kicked up the devil of a row, and, as they were powerful enough, and
nasty enough, had more or less hounded him out of the East. Of course,
personally, I never thought he showed any of the essentials of brilliancy,
but that's neither here nor there; she did, and she was satisfied that she
owed him all she had. I suppose, too, there was some trace of a Puritan
conscience back of it,