The Land of Promise Part 21

Gertie struck her hands violently together and sprang from her chair.

"Oh, don't go on patronizing me. I shall go crazy!"

"Patronizing you?"

"You talk to me as if I were a naughty child. You might be a school teacher." Nora wrung her hands. "It seems perfectly hopeless!"

"Even when you're begging my pardon," Gertie went on, "you put on airs.

You ask me to forgive you as if you was doing _me_ a favor!"

"I must have a most unfortunate manner." Nora laughed hysterically.

"Don't you dare laugh at me," said Gertie furiously.

"Don't make yourself ridiculous, then."

"Did you think I would ever forget what you wrote to Ed before I married him?"

"What I wrote? I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, don't you? You told him it would be a disgrace if he married me.

He was a gentleman and I---- Oh, you spread yourself out!"

"And he showed you that letter," said Nora slowly. "Now I understand,"

she added to herself. "Still," she went on, looking Gertie directly in the face, "I had a perfect right to try and prevent the marriage before it took place. But after it happened, I only wanted to make the best of it. If you had _this_ grudge against me, why did you let me come here!"

"Oh," said Gertie moodily, "Ed wanted it, and it was lonely enough sometimes with the men away all day and no one to say a word to. But I can't bear it," she almost screamed, "when Ed talks to you about the old country and all the people I don't know anything about!"

"Then you _are_ jealous?"

"It's my house and I'm mistress here. I won't be put upon. What did you want to come here for, upsetting everybody? Till you came, I never had a word with Ed. Oh, I hate you, I hate you!" she finished in a sort of ecstasy.

"Gertie!"

"You've given me my chance," said Gertie with set teeth; "I'm going to take it. I'm going to take you down a peg or two, young woman."

"You're doing all you can to drive me away from here."

"You don't think it's any very wonderful thing to have you, do you? You talk of getting a job," she went on scornfully. "You! You couldn't get one. I know something about that, my girl. You! What can you do?

Nothing."

Suddenly, from outside, they heard Frank Taylor's laugh. Nora winced as if she had been struck. Gertie's face was distorted with an evil smile.

She seated herself once more in the rocking chair and folded her arms across her heaving breast.

"Here they come: now take your punishment," she said harshly.

CHAPTER X

Nora could never after think of what followed with any feeling of reality so far as her personal partic.i.p.ation in the scene was concerned.

It was like watching a play in which one is interested, without being in any degree emotionally stirred.

She saw Gertie, erect and stern in her big chair; she saw herself, standing behind the ironing-board, as if at a Bar of Justice, her hands resting loosely upon it; and she saw the door open to admit her brother, followed by Taylor and Trotter; noted that the former had discarded the familiar overalls and was wearing a sort of pea-jacket with a fur collar, and that her brother's face was once more sad and a little stern.

She had been obliged to press her handkerchief to her mouth to hide the crooked smile that the thought: '_he_ is the executioner,' had brought to her lips.

Then the figures which were Gertie and her brother had exchanged some words.

"Where's Hornby?"

"He's just coming."

"Do they know what they're here for!"

"No, I didn't tell them."

Then the figure which was Reggie had come in with some laughing remark about being torn away from his work, but, stopping so suddenly in the midst of his laughter at the sight of Gertie's face that it was comical; once more she had had to press her handkerchief to her lips.

And all the time she knew that this Nora whom she seemed to be watching had flushed a cruel red clear to her temples and that a funny little pulse was beating,--oh, so fast, so fast!--way up by her cheek-bone. It couldn't have been her heart. Her heart had never gone as fast as that.

Then she had heard Gertie say: "Nora insulted me a while ago before all of you and I guess she wants to apologize."

And then Frank had said: "If you told me it was that, Ed, you wanted me to come here for, I reckon I'd have told you to go to h.e.l.l."

"Why?"

It must have been she who had asked the question, although she was not conscious that her lips had moved and the voice did not seem like her own. Her own voice was rather deep. This voice was curiously thin and high.

"I've got other things to do besides bothering my head about women's quarrels."

"Oh, I beg your pardon," still in the same high tone. "I thought it might be some kindly feeling in you."

"Go on, Nora, we're waiting," came the voice from the big chair.

Sour-dough! That's what those coats, such as Frank had on, were called.

She had been wondering all the time what the name was. It was only the other day that Gertie had used the word in saying that she wished Eddie--no, Ed--could afford a new one. What a ridiculous name for a garment.

"I'm sorry I was rude to you, Gertie. I apologize to you for what I said."

"If there's nothing more to be said, we'd better go back to our work."

While her brother was speaking to his wife, Frank had taken a step forward. Somehow, the smile on his face had lost all of its ordinary mockery.

"You didn't find that very easy to say, I reckon."

"I'm quite satisfied." And then Gertie had dared to add: "Let this be a lesson to you, my girl!"