Part 9

“Carter, he’s going to be a great lawyer! I’m as proud of him as if I’d hatched him myself.”

“Poor Dan!” Mr. Carter’s face softened while his eyes smiled. “He ought to have something to make up--I hate to see him so lame!”

“Nonsense! It doesn’t hurt his brains, man!” Jessup exclaimed hotly. “He only limps a little. He’s the smartest boy you have, Carter.”

Mr. Carter smiled broadly.

“Think so? I wouldn’t like to say that. William’s done well, Payson tells me; he said so a month or two ago. They’re all pleased with the way he handled things abroad.”

“Eh?” the judge cocked a humorous eyebrow. “I thought the most William did over there was--to get married!”

Mr. Carter met his eye, faltered, and groaned. The judge laughed.

“You don’t appreciate Dan. Now, as I was saying--”

He stopped with his mouth open. A horse came down the main street at a hard gallop. There was a distinct sensation. The drivers of passing vehicles sat sidewise; a string of little half-dressed pickaninnies streamed along the edge of the sidewalk in eager but hopeless pursuit. A street-car that had stopped at the crossing failed to go on because conductor and motorman were gaping after the vision.

Riding cross-saddle, in the latest extreme of fashion, was young Mrs. William Carter. The apparition would have startled them at any time, but the lady was already famous, and her progress might be viewed somewhat in the light of a Roman triumph.

Very pale, her dark eyes shining and her lips compressed, Fanchon struck her steed sharply with her riding-crop. The horse, a spirited young bay, came on at a gallop, with the clatter of maddened hoofs, followed by the stream of pursuing children and their wild shouts of applause. In this fashion Fanchon dashed past Judge Jessup and Mr. Carter and disappeared in a cloud of dust on the highroad.

A comet could scarcely have had a more startling effect. Mr. Carter said nothing, but his color became apoplectic. He stared after her for a minute, and then, with a set face, he turned to the judge.

“What were you saying? Oh, I remember--yes, yes, I’ll come in to-morrow and hear Dan address the jury,” he said hastily.

The judge smiled grimly.

“The verdict was reached to-day, Johnson. You’re a bit behindhand.” As he spoke he held out his hand. “Congratulations on Dan,” he said heartily. “I’m in a hurry. Want to walk back to my office with me?”

“No!” said Mr. Carter.

He knew what Jessup thought, he suspected him of shaking with suppressed laughter, but the judge looked innocent enough. They shook hands again absently, having forgotten that they had done so twice already, and Mr. Carter strode away. He knew that he was stared at, and he walked fast, his face still deeply red. At the door of his office--he was in the insurance business--he found his office-boy gaping down the street.

Mr. Carter stopped short.

“Here, you! Go into that office!” he said sharply. “What are you doing out there, you young ninny? You’ll be picked up for a street-corner loafer if you don’t mind your own business better!”

The alarmed youth retreated before him, apologizing. Mr. Carter, with his hat still on, strode past the clerks in the outer office, went into his own room, and slammed the door with such force that the glass rattled.

One of the young stenographers looked up from her work and laughed silently at the other.

“Seen his daughter-in-law?” she inquired in a whisper.

The other girl nodded.

“She’s awfully pretty and swell, anyway,” she murmured. “Oh, my--Minnie, look!”

Across the street was the old road-house where William and his wife had supped after the dance. As Mr. Carter’s stenographer looked out now she saw a hastily saddled horse led to the door. A tall man came out and swung himself into the saddle. It was Corwin.

The two girls across the street rose silently and leaned over their machines to watch him. He rode well, turning his horse around, starting at a quick trot, and breaking almost at once into a gallop.

“He’s gone after her, Minnie!”

Minnie nodded; then, hearing a noise in the inner room, they dropped into their places and worked furiously. Mr. Carter opened the door, looked in, and closed it sharply again. They heard him return to his desk.

Minnie pulled her companion’s sleeve.

“He saw him!” she whispered.

The other girl assented, touching her lips with her finger. They could hear earthquakelike sounds within, and they rattled away at their typewriters, demurely silent; but through the open window they could see, far in the distance, the furious horseman disappearing down the turnpike.

His horse was a powerful animal, a far better traveler than the young bay that had carried Fanchon. The two girls in the office speculated in silence, and worked rapturously. Young Mrs. Carter was the most exciting thing in a dull town at a dull time of the year, and they were grateful to her.

Mr. Carter kept them late that day and worked them hard. Usually an easy taskmaster, he called them in during the afternoon and gave them page after page of dictation. It was half past six when he slammed down the top of his desk, locked it, and went home.

He walked, and it was a long way. It was seven o’clock when he opened the front door with his latch-key.

The family were already at dinner--all but William, who was walking up and down the hall, looking haggard. Mr. Carter came in and hung his hat upon the rack.

“Waiting for any one?” he asked his son dryly.

William raised his head.

“Yes, Fanchon. She hasn’t come in yet. I’m expecting her any moment.”

“You needn’t,” his father retorted grimly. “She’s out riding with that fellow--Caraffi’s manager.”

William said nothing, but he stopped short. Mr. Carter, after eying him for an instant, went on into the dining-room. His wife, Daniel, Emily, and Leigh were sitting around the table, eating the second course disconsolately.

“I thought you’d never come--and we were hungry,” Mrs. Carter said apologetically. “Miranda, go and get the soup for Mr. Carter. I had it kept hot,” she added, glancing anxiously toward the hall door.

They could hear William walking to and fro again. As Miranda disappeared for the soup, Mr. Carter looked up. He glanced at his wife meaningly.

“She’s out riding with that man,” he said in an undertone.

“Johnson!”

His wife’s dismay only brought a grim smile to Carter’s face. He unfolded his napkin without further comment. Before Miranda returned with the soup-tureen, Mrs. Carter rallied sufficiently to lean over and murmur across the table:

“I’ve got a lot to tell you--that dreadful girl was with that man this morning--behind the Methodist Church! I saw--”

She stopped, for Leigh had risen suddenly. He flung his napkin on the table and stalked out of the room with a white face. Mr. Carter stared after him.

“What the--” he began.

Emily touched his hand warningly. Miranda was returning.

“Leigh’s awfully mashed on Fanchon,” Emily whispered irrelevantly, returning to her dinner.

Mr. Carter shut his mouth hard, and the conversation languished. Daniel spoke once about the weather, and his father nodded.

“Judge Jessup handed out a lot of compliments for you to-day, Dan,” he remembered suddenly.

Mrs. Carter looked pleased, but even this fell flat. They could hear William’s tramp continuing after Leigh went up-stairs. Mr. Carter rose once and went to the door.

“Aren’t you coming in to eat your dinner, William?” he demanded.

“I’ve dined,” William replied shortly.

“Then I think you’d better go into the library and sit down,” said his father meaningly.

William, halting in his walk, stared for a moment, puzzled. Then he understood, and a deep red went up to his forehead. Without a word, he turned, went into the library, and shut the door.

Miranda had brought on the dessert, but only Emily and Daniel ate it. There was a heavy silence. Mr. Carter sat moodily, apparently listening, and Mrs. Carter could think of nothing to say. She tried two or three times and stopped, aghast at her own temerity. The three vacant chairs--William’s, Fanchon’s, and Leigh’s--seemed to gape at them. Daniel finally rose.

“I’ve got to prepare a paper for Judge Jessup,” he remarked quietly, and left the room.

They heard him light his cigar and go up-stairs. It was then that Mr. Carter rose also and went as usual into the library. Emily and her mother, left alone, gaped at each other in a startled way. They heard voices in the library, and then a heavy silence, filled with the odor of tobacco. Emily began to be a little frightened.

“Mama, do you suppose she’s run away?” she whispered in an awed tone.

Mrs. Carter cast a frightened look toward Miranda’s retreating figure, and shook her head.

“I don’t know, Emily. Suppose we go and sit in the parlor? I don’t think papa wants us in the library.”

They spent the evening sitting in the little unused parlor that Fanchon hated. It was full of heavy stuffed furniture and old-fashioned cabinets. Accustomed to a family gathering in the library, they languished there, watching the clock.

“It’s getting awfully late,” said Emily finally, after an interminable hour. “Where can she be?”

“Emily,” said Mrs. Carter irrelevantly, “I wish you wouldn’t say that Leigh is ‘mashed’ on her. In the first place it’s absurd, and in the second it’s vulgar.”

“But he is,” insisted Emily. “He’d get down in the mud and let her walk on him--like Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak. He says so.”

“Nonsense!” Mrs. Carter, trembling with nervousness, discovered that it was half past ten. “You go to bed,” she ordered shortly.

After her daughter went up-stairs, she sat for a long time, waiting. She was puzzled by the silence in the library. From time to time she went to the window and looked out anxiously; yet she had no real hope that her daughter-in-law would appear. She felt sure that Fanchon had run away, and the disgrace of it made her face burn. She turned the gas down and sat in semi-darkness, ashamed to look at her own image in the long mirror between the windows.

The Carters had always had such good wives, such loyal, faithful women. She had not failed herself, she had done her best, and William, her first-born, the pride of her heart--must he be disgraced?

She sat there watching and listening until nearly twelve o’clock. Still she heard occasional sounds from the library. Finally, worn out, she crept up-stairs to her room; but even there she continued to listen and tremble at intervals.

At last she heard the sounds of locking up the house and her husband’s heavy step on the stairs.

Mr. Carter came into the room and slammed the door. His wife had crept hastily into bed, and she lay there, shivering a little with dread.

“What did you say to him, papa?”

“Say? Not a blamed word!” Mr. Carter sat down and pulled off his boots, flinging one down with violence. “I guess I don’t have to say anything,” he remarked grimly. “I reckon the fool’s got about enough. Marrying a French ballet-dancer!”

Mrs. Carter drew a long breath.

“Where do you s’pose she is, Johnson?”

“How do I know? He’ll have to get a divorce--that’s as plain as the nose on your face. Then I suppose the donkey’ll want to marry Rosamond Silvertree, or Bloomie Bloomingkitten, or some other actress.”

“Oh, hush!” groaned Mrs. Carter, burying her head in her pillow with a sob. “I can’t bear it! Poor Willie!”

Mr. Carter restrained his tongue, but he flung the other boot into the corner with a bang more eloquent than words.

XIV

DOWN in the library William Carter waited alone. He was glad to be alone. Aware of his father’s attitude, he had dragged through a fearful evening. Mr. Carter had sat at the table, smoking and reading his newspaper. He had said nothing about the one subject that was uppermost in both minds; but at intervals he had lowered his paper sufficiently to fix a fierce eye on the clock and then to turn it significantly upon his son. Without meeting his glance, William felt it. With the tide of rage and grief rising in his own heart, that hostile eye--which seemed to say, “I told you so!” was intolerable.

He was thankful when his father’s stout figure disappeared into the front part of the house. He heard the vigorous locking-up without protest. It was evident that Mr. Carter had decided that Fanchon wouldn’t return that night, and he was bound to lock up as usual. In fact, he did it a little more violently than usual. It was an overt act which relieved his feelings. Then, carrying a pitcher of iced water, he went heavily up-stairs, and his son heard the sharp closing of his bedroom door.

It took no very vigorous imagination, either, to fancy his mother’s anxious inquiry for the truant, and the subsequent comment on the situation. Even in the solitude of the library William’s face burned. He was bewildered, too. He knew that he had reached a crisis, and he did not know how to deal with it. To do anything seemed only to publish his own misery. He had telephoned twice to the livery-stable already, and been assured that Mrs. Carter’s horse was still out.

He had no idea where she had gone, and to follow, even in a motor, would be senseless enough. It was a fine night; a full moon lighted the roads. If she meant to return, she could get home so easily that he could not believe she intended to do so.

As for Corwin, William had only seen the man two or three times, and was cognizant of the gossip only through his father. People didn’t talk to him.

His father had seen Corwin follow Fanchon, but had Fanchon planned it all? Or had the man--a hard, coarse-looking brute--pursued her without any invitation, without her consent? William Carter did not know; he only felt a blind rage that he had suddenly been forced to doubt his wife. It was hideous--simply hideous!

They had been quarreling lately nearly all the time--petty quarrels. Fanchon evidently hated the place, she seemed to hate even her husband’s people, and he had found her becoming wilder and stranger every day. He knew she longed to go back to Paris, or at least to New York; but William had never brought his mind to consider even the possibility that she was disloyal, or could be. He could not believe it now, but he found that the conviction was deep-rooted in his father’s mind, and he saw it in his mother’s kind, worried eyes.

What had they heard? He did not know--at least he was sure he did not know it all. He saw something of it in Leigh’s white face to-night. The boy was fond of Fanchon. William felt relief to think that at least one member of his family liked her.

He watched the clock until the hands indicated midnight. Where could she be? He walked the floor again.

Unobserved, he could give way to his agony of mind. Had there been an accident? Had Fanchon been hurt?

The suspense was fast becoming a deep and keen agony. He was shaken. He knew that his thoughts had wandered to Virginia, to the peace he might have had. Had Fanchon seen it? Was she tormenting him in a wild fit of jealousy, or--intolerable and monstrous thought!--his wife in flight with a man who looked to him to be no more than a common gamester?

How still it was! Through the open window the soft night air poured in; and now it had a difference, a perceptible quickening, the keenness of the morning. It was nearly one o’clock.

He flung himself into a chair and waited, burying his head in his hands. He tried to think coherently, but he could not. Then a thrill ran through him as the telephone-bell rang at his elbow. He snatched up the receiver. A man’s voice called for Mr. William Carter--a gruff, half-drowsy negro voice.

“Yes, yes! What is it?” he questioned.

“De boss tol’ me to watch out fo’ dat horse Miz Carter hired, suh. I’s been up all night--dat horse jes’ come in dis minute. He’s drippin’, an’ he ain’t got no rider, suh.”

William dropped the receiver and stood motionless, as if turned to stone. Good God, how he had wronged her! There had been an accident!

A vision of Fanchon lying by the wayside, her lovely face cold in the moonlight, her helpless, pretty, idle hands flung out, pierced his heart. He groaned aloud. Then his sickened brain cleared and he roused himself. He must get help, hire a motor, and go out to search.

He raised his head sharply. His strained ear caught a sound at the front door. He crossed the room almost at a stride, switched on the light in the hall, threw back his father’s elaborate chains and bolts with a shaking hand, and flung the door open. On the threshold, deadly pale and dripping wet, stood his wife.

“Fanchon!”

His first impulse of wild relief was lost in another and a stronger feeling. The look on her face checked the words on his lips.

She came in slowly, reluctantly, putting out a small, groping hand. As the light from the hall lamp fell full upon her, he saw that she had lost her hat, and that her pretty hair clung in wet curls to her forehead. All the gaiety and frivolity of that Parisian habit was gone. It was torn and muddy and wet. But she did not go to him, she did not exclaim that she had been hurt and half drowned. She walked past him, a little unsteadily, and went into the library.

William shut the door and followed her. She had dropped into a chair and lay there, half reclining, her arm across the back and her face hidden on it. Her husband stood looking down at her in silence for a moment; then he turned without a word and went into the dining-room, poured some brandy into a glass, and brought it.

“Drink this!” he said peremptorily.

She lifted the glass slowly, and, without raising her eyes, tasted the liquor and then thrust it aside.

“I know what you think!” she said in a low voice. “It isn’t true--I’ve done nothing--nothing at all!”

His face hardened.

“Why do you say that, Fanchon? I haven’t accused you.”

She turned with a gesture of impatience.

“I know they have--your father and your mother!”

William, who had taken the glass from her, set it down on the table.

“You’re wet through,” he said coldly. “Go up-stairs and change. You can talk afterward--if you want to.”

“I don’t care if I’m wet!” she answered a little wildly. “I’d rather bear wet than your face!”

“I’m sorry my face is so unbearable. I had no thought when I saw you but anxiety. There’s been an accident. You haven’t even told me whether you’re hurt!”

“It wasn’t an accident,” said Fanchon. “The horse got down in the stream and wallowed. I had to get off to save myself, and when he came out he ran off.”

William lifted his eyes reluctantly to hers.

“That horse has just come in, Fanchon. I got a telephone as you came up the porch steps.”

She did not seem to grasp the significance of this. She put up a wandering hand and pushed back her damp hair.

“I can’t help it!” she said sharply. “It’s so--I never would have got here but for a motor. Some people--perfect strangers, too--were coming this way, and they brought me. We came faster than any horse could go.”

“Where were you? Where did the horse roll?”

“At Fanshawe’s Creek--you know, half-way to the Mountain Inn.”

William turned abruptly and walked across the room and back again.

“That wouldn’t take an hour and a half for a horse,” he remarked dryly. “It’s one o’clock, Fanchon.”

A flame of red shot up in her white cheeks.

“I think he got into the water at about eleven o’clock. I tried to make him ford the stream, and he--he just got down and wallowed in the water. I had to get off.”

“You went out just after luncheon--while mother was at lunch, in fact--and you were coming home on those lonely roads at eleven o’clock at night, alone?”

She sat up in her chair at that, her flushed face turned fully toward him, and something like a flame kindling in her fawn-like eyes.

“Of course your mother told you!”

“Told me what?”

“About my talk with Corwin in the lane.”

William stared at her.

“My mother told me nothing. I didn’t mean to tell you, I didn’t mean to say anything,” he added grimly; “but since you’ve said so much, I will. I heard from father that Corwin followed you out on the turnpike to-day--to the edification of the town! Was he with you at the creek?”

Fanchon sat quite still, looking at him, her large eyes seeming to grow larger and darker in her white face. He returned the look as steadily, not in anger, but with a kind of grimness new in her experience with him. Neither of them moved, and the stillness in the room was so deep that they both heard the familiar sounds outside. The church clock struck in the distance, and some cocks crowed. The fresh breeze stirred the curtains in the window while the shaded lamp on the table flared up with the little gust. In the flare William saw the misery on his wife’s face.

“Fanchon, that man’s pursuing you--he’s a villain! What has happened? Tell me--I have a right to know!”

Something in his changed tone touched her. She sank back in her chair, covering her face with her hands.

“_Mon Dieu!_” she murmured brokenly, and then, as her emotions swept her away, she burst into wild and uncontrollable weeping, her sobs shaking her from head to foot.

Something in the passion of her tears, and in the crumpled helplessness of the small figure in the chair, touched William in his turn. He stood looking at her without moving, thinking unhappily. He had made a mess of it; but after all it wasn’t all her fault. It was his, and he still loved her. From what he had suffered to-night he knew that he loved her. Suddenly he bent over the small, writhing figure and spoke.

“Tell me, Fanchon,” he said hoarsely. “Must I thrash that villain?”

Very slowly she raised her head, very slowly and reluctantly she raised her tear-drenched eyes to his.

“I--I didn’t go with him, I didn’t want to see him--he followed me.” She hesitated, trembling. “I don’t know how to tell you. He overtook me and he made me come back. I’d lost my way. He made me go back to the inn--we ate dinner together.”

“You dined at a public road-house with that man--a man I wouldn’t ask to my father’s house?”

She nodded, biting her lips.