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Read Ebook: Colorado Jim by Goodchild George
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Ebook has 1403 lines and 40273 words, and 29 pages
him. Since that day in Devonshire, when Claude had endeavored to intervene, the latter had spoken scarcely a dozen words to him. He shook hands with Jim at the station and with Angela, but his congratulations sounded weak and insincere.
Jim speedily forgot him in the thrill of the moment. Nice was their destination--Nice in all her October glory. He was actually on honeymoon with the object of his dreams and ambitions!
He found himself very much alone. In Nice Angela met scores of familiar faces. She spent most of her time with these friends, leaving Jim to the terrible naked truth--to wrestle with it as best he might. He had kissed her at Little Badholme, had apparently thawed for ever the chilly heart of her. But here it was again--the frigid exterior that no kisses could melt. What had happened to her? Was it that she had never cared at all--that her acceptance of his marriage offer was dictated by ulterior motives?
Before it was time for them to return to England the last scrap of illusion was knocked out of him. More miserable than ever he had been in his life, he sought for some solution. It was so obvious she didn't care for him. He saw that, in the company of her "high-browed" friends, she despised him. He found himself sitting down under this contempt--meekly accepting the r?le of enslaved husband, hand-servant to a beautiful and presumably soulless woman.
On the night before they left she came back to the hotel very late, to find him sitting in a brown study. He watched her, furtively, discarding the expensive cloak, and taking off the heavy pearl necklace he had been fool enough to buy. He stood up and stared for a moment, in silence, out over the moonlit sea. When he turned she was going to her room.
"Angela!"
She stopped, not liking the imperative note in his voice.
"What's wrong?"
"Wrong?"
"Yep--with us?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I wasn't aware that anything was wrong."
He leaned across the table.
"Angela. Why did you marry me?"
"Because you asked me."
"No other reason, eh?"
"Isn't that reason enough?"
His mouth set in a grim smile.
"I thought that when wimmen married men there was usually another reason. To take a man and not to tell him the truth ain't 'xactly on the level."
"Don't begin recriminations," she retorted.
She shivered a little as his intense gaze searched her face.
She flared up in an instant.
"Wal, put it how you wish, it comes to the same thing in the end. I fell to it all right, and I ain't squealing. If I was the sort o' man you, no doubt, take me for, I might want value for money, and I'm big enough to get it.... No need to get scared. Though you love me like you might a rattlesnake, I happen to love you. You might as well know it."
His calmness amazed her. She had half expected a furious onslaught. On one point she wanted to put him right.
"You think I despise you, but that's not true," she said. "I couldn't have married you had I despised you. But I can't love you--I can't. Can't you see that our ways lie far apart? All your life, your very mode of thought and speech, are the direct antithesis of mine. Isn't it plain--wasn't it plain at first that it was a mere bargain? You and I can be nothing to each other but--friends."
"No, it wasn't," he growled. "If you'd have told me that, I'd have seen you to hell before I married you, or even kissed you. Blood is blood, and nature's nature, and passion's passion, and gew-gaws don't count--no, nor polite chin-music either. You were my woman, and I wanted you before all the other wimmen on God's earth. It's the little things that don't matter that fills your mind. If men were all tea-slopping, thin-spined, haw-hawing creatures like some I seen here, with never a darned notion of how to dig for their daily bread, though they talked like angels and acted like cardboard saints, this world 'ud be a darned poor show.... Anyway, you've got to learn that.... We're going back to-morrow, and I guess we'd better finish this play-acting. Devonshire's good enough for me if you'll take the London house."
She nodded. That had been her own innermost desire. She was glad he made the suggestion himself. Before coming away he had leased a house in Maida Vale, and had given instructions to Liberty's to furnish it. It would be pleasanter there, in the midst of friends, than planted away in the wilds of Devonshire with a "cowpuncher."
The months that followed were purgatory to Jim. Once or twice he ran up to the club, where he heard things that were not conducive to a happy state of mind. Angela was entertaining on a lavish scale. Cholmondeley told him of the extraordinary "success" of his wife's parties. According to Cholmondeley every other hostess was completely outshone by the beautiful Angela, whose photograph was now an almost permanent feature in the daily press.
It was on one of these visits that he met Claude. The latter shook hands with him heartily, but seemed ill at ease.
"What's wrong, young feller?" queried Jim.
Claude passed off the question with a laugh. Later, however he came to Jim.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Jim looked at him from under his eyebrows.
"Look here, Jim," said Claude impetuously, "can't you make it up with Angela? It seems silly to prolong a quarrel."
"Eh!"
The ejaculation made Claude start.
"Well, whatever you quarreled about, it can't be much. Come along and see her now."
His frank smile dissipated any suspicions in Jim's mind. Claude actually didn't know what was wrong with the Conlans! He believed it to be a mere marital squabble, that would blow over sooner or later.
"Kid," gasped Jim, "you are the pink limit! I guess there ain't nothing that would stop Angela from regarding me as unsifted muck, just as she has since the first time I saw her."
"What!"
"And you didn't know. Wal, it's all in the family, and you may as well git wise to it."
"Yep.... Don't hurry, youngster. Get it right back and masticate it well. They've fine heads for business in your family, not to mention play-acting."
Claude flushed. He stood up and gripped a chair by the back.
"Steady," said Jim. "I'm telling you the truth.... But I thought you knew."
Claude was realizing it fast enough.
"Then there was no quarrel?" he gasped. "She--she simply left you?"
"I told her she might--and she did. But you needn't worry none, I've staked bad claims afore."
Claude came over to him, much affected by the deep emotion that had crept into his voice.
"Jim, I didn't know. I swear I didn't know. I warned you because I didn't believe she could love and respect you as you deserve. But when I heard you were engaged I believed you had melted her in a strange way.... I see now where the money came from.... God! and she was mean enough to do that--to my--my friend."
Jim took him by the shoulder and steadied him.
"She saved your people from a big financial crash, anyway--remember that."
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