And it
seemed horrible to her that the only outcome of what had been her own
wild, youthful passion for this brute was this love for the flesh of her
flesh, for she was more and more conscious as he spoke that her
yearning for the boy was the yearning of an equally dumb and unreasoning
maternity. They had met again as animals--in fear, contempt, and anger
of each other; but the animal had triumphed in both.
When she spoke again it was as the woman of the world,--the woman who
had laughed two years ago at the irrepressible Barker. "It's a new
thing," she said, languidly turning her rings on her fingers, "to see
you in the role of a doting father. And may I ask how long you have had
this amiable weakness, and how long it is to last?"
To her surprise and the keen retaliating delight of her sex, a conscious
flush covered his face to the crisp edges of his black and matted beard.
For a moment she hoped that he had lied. But, to her greater surprise,
he stammered in equal frankness: "It's growed upon me for the last five
years--ever since I was alone with him." He stopped, cleared his throat,
and then, standing up before her, said in his former voice, but with a
more settled and intense deliberation: "You wanter know how long it
will last, do ye? Well, you know your special friend, Jim Stacy--the big
millionaire--the great Jim of the Stock Exchange--the man that pinches
the money market of Californy between his finger and thumb and makes it
squeal in New York--the man who shakes the stock market when he sneezes?
Well, it will go on until that man is a beggar; until he has to borrow
a dime for his breakfast, and slump out of his lunch with a cent's
worth of rat poison or a bullet in his head! It'll go on until his old
partner--that softy George Barker--comes to the bottom of his d----d
fool luck and is a penny-a-liner for the papers and a hanger-round at
free lunches, and his scatter-brained wife runs away with another man!
It'll go on until the high-toned Demorest, the last of those three
little tin gods of Heavy Tree Hill, will have to climb down, and will
know what I feel and what he's made me feel, and will wish himself in
hell before he ever made the big strike on Heavy Tree! That's me! You
hear me! I'm shoutin'! It'll last till then! It may be next week, next
month, next year.
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