Part 3

“Far better to have died than to have come back to this! What must this day have been for him?” All day she disputed with herself, loathing herself one moment, believing him innocent the next.

Her husband had come out to Waybrook early. He, as well as Cynthia Moore, thought that Mrs. Hereford had sent the young man away. Hereford came in to his wife’s room just before dinner.

“I’ll be glad when all this is over and you can rest.”

She looked at him gratefully. He seemed so true and honorable. She turned away that he might not see her tears.

“I am dog tired, Tommy, and I’ll be glad, too, when it’s all over.”

Mrs. Hereford was a true musician, and her husband loved her talent. When she came to Waybrook after her marriage she found the beautiful music room he had created waiting for her. Hereford had copied it from a villa near Cremona in Italy. The woodwork lining the walls had been brought to this American house from a music room whose traditions were hundreds of years old. Besides modern instruments--a phonograph, a harp, and two grand pianos looking at each other from the opposite ends of the room--rare instruments hung on the walls. Before the windows leading out on the porches, fell curtains of Renaissance brocade. The room was rich in tone and full of shadow and charm. The lady of the house had seen Captain Ramsay alone in this room for the first time one evening when a guest in the smoking room beyond had been telling a ghost story.

She and Captain Ramsay had played “Manon,” “Butterfly,” and Irish songs to make a thrilling accompaniment for a thrilling tale, but more sincerely to cover what Ramsay was saying to her in his young, eager voice with his young, eager feelings.

As Helen Hereford now came quickly in the music room past midnight she found it was still as death and it seemed to her as nearly ominous.

She walked softly over the thick rugs. The black paneling of the walls made a striking background for her figure in white evening dress. From one of the windows through which streamed October moonlight, the curtains were drawn; and the night, suggesting only beauty and peace, did not seem a proper setting for the story of a crime. During the war she had often stood in this window thinking of Jack Hereford and his friend flying over the enemy’s lines. She had looked forward with interest to seeing and knowing this brave man. How little she had imagined there would ever be a moment like this!

How cruel Ralph’s need of money must have been in order to have brought him so low as this! Jack had told her that Ramsay was as poor as a rat--with never a cent in his pocket--but Ralph himself had told her more that very afternoon when she had seen in the bitterness on his face a record of his cruel life.

Then he had acknowledged being a castaway and a vagabond. Had he not called himself an adventurer? The fact that he had rushed out of the house was against him. She did not believe that he would come here, and if he did not, she would keep his miserable secret as she would keep secret his kisses which she could not efface.

At the sound of steps on the veranda she went hurriedly to the window to open it herself. As she turned the handle of the French window, Ramsay came in, dressed just as he was when he had gone out that morning to fetch the grapes, in white flannel and white shoes. Her first expression was maternal as she saw him.

“You will catch a terrible cold. You must be frightfully cold! I am going to fetch you something to drink. There is whisky in the smoking room.”

Ramsay’s face was white and drawn. He came out in the room only a little beyond the window, his back against the red and gold Renaissance curtain. It framed him with its long lines falling behind him. He seemed to stand between in the folds.

“Please!” he said. “Don’t get me anything.”

He might have been embroidered on the satin of the curtains. He was moveless and beautiful in his pallor and silence; nevertheless he was only a modern figure, a modern man.

“How could you? How could you?” she breathed. “I did not think you would come to-night and yet I hoped you would”--and she felt her voice desert her--“and explain.”

He repeated the word “explain” with a laugh.

“I came back because I wanted to see you--for no other reason.”

She interrupted him with a passionate gesture as though she would dismiss her memories and his.

“To see _me_ again! _What_ can this matter?” In spite of herself she cried, “How horrible! How horrible!” and she covered her face.

He understood that she hated herself because he had taken her in his arms. He looked quietly at her from his greater height, and his expression did not indicate that all day he had been wandering like a hunted animal.

“This is the most dreadful thing that has ever come into my life! Oh! Why _did_ you come back?” she cried.

“To see _you_--just to see _you_.”

There was a silence between them for a second, and the clock in the hall outside struck one. Ramsay said:

“You are sick with disgust. You are full of regret at--_our love_.”

“You think of that first! You think of that first of all!”

“First--second--last and above everything.”

“After what I saw this morning every word like that is an insult,” Mrs. Hereford said.

Ramsay came forward and caught her hands, saying tensely:

“And the look I saw on your face to-day when you came in the gift room? You use the word insult. What was the look I saw on your face when you came into the room?”

She murmured: “Explain, you must explain, you _must_!”

He let her hands fall.

“I have nothing to explain.

“You knew I was poor. A poor man has debts--gambling debts perhaps. Then there are women in men’s lives who make dreadful scandals--there is blackmail. A chap does things in desperation and is not all bad. I have known men to do such things. But from the moment I saw that look on your face to-day, the look which said you thought I was a thief, the world stopped for me.” He threw back his head and gave a little laugh. “It will never go on as it was before.”

Here she put out her hand as if about to take his, but let it fall.

“I’ve nothing to explain. The fact that for the tenth of a second you believed me a thief makes everything else of no value. Of course now”--there was a break in his voice--“you don’t even believe in my love!” His voice was low, but there was a ring in it that she never forgot. “It doesn’t make any difference any more. I’ve tramped with that horror all day.

“Ever since I was a kid I have had a hard time. I have gone to all lengths in time of stress. I have been in all parts of the globe after adventures, but this is the saddest adventure of them all. My heart stopped when I saw that look on your face.”

He stood straight as an arrow, fine as a lance; his figure once more was immovable against the curtain, and he looked like the picture up in her room, but the smile was gone.

“My things are all in the station. Before your clock strikes again I shall be gone. Think of me as you will, but you can’t believe that I did not love you. _That you can’t believe!_”

She would have given much to think him innocent. She covered her face with her hands, murmuring:

“_Oh_--you better just go--you better just go.”

He looked around the dark, paneled room where the shadows gathered like ghosts ready, when he should go, to haunt Waybrook; and as she stood with her hands across her eyes, he took her in his arms and kissed her upon her hair, upon the hand covering her eyes, and upon her lips. He opened the window and she heard him say, “Good-by! Good-by!” and only stirred when she felt the cold night air rushing in upon her.

* * * * *

She found herself clinging to the curtain, her face buried in its folds. She might have been a night moth blown there as she clung and shook, the heavy curtain wrapping her round. Ramsay had drawn her toward the window as if he wanted to take her with him into a world which had treated him not any too well! She came to herself as the clock struck, realizing that she was part of a household whose conventions would not stand for the lady of the house wandering about at dawn through the lower rooms without excuse!

She passed her hands over her face to wipe away not the kisses of an hour before, but the marks of tears; and drew the curtains to shut out with the moonlight the figure of the man who had disappeared into the night. Then she left the music room, intending to go upstairs. She remembered what Cynthia Moore had said that morning about the Earl of Moray and the line of the Persian proverb: “Honor and Dishonor are in the hands of the Beloved.”

On the first step of the staircase she stopped to look toward the smoking room at the far end of the hall, and she saw a line of light under the doorway. Her first thought was that Ramsay had hidden there, and as she crossed the hall she realized that she wanted him to be there--_she wanted him to be there!_

In one of the entirely comfortable chairs, his hand shading his eyes, an open book on his knee, unconscious of midnight rendezvous, her husband was sitting. He turned round and rose as his wife came in, and she saw, although grave and stern, he was impersonal as far as _she_ was concerned.

“Hello, Nell! Couldn’t sleep, just as I couldn’t, I suppose?”

She wondered if it was possible that he had heard her in the music room at the end of the hall.

She came over to him.

“Two o’clock, Tommy; terribly late!”

Hereford drew over the other big chair.

“Since you are up, Nell, sit out a bit longer with me, will you?”

He would think she had been weeping at losing Patricia, no doubt imagine that she had come directly from Patricia’s room. He said:

“The little girl _will_ leave an empty place and we are going to be awfully lonely. We’ll have to go on a new honeymoon trip, Nell!”

Mrs. Hereford sank down in her chair and tried to smile.

“Have you been mourning here all the evening for Patricia, Tommy?”

“No, only been down about half an hour.”

He smoked without looking at her, and again she wondered whether it were possible that he knew she had been in the other room with Ralph.

“I’ve been in the music room for some time. It was full of memories of our jolly times, of dances, of Patricia’s coming-out ball.”

But Hereford did not appear to have heard what she said. His face had settled into the harsh gravity and look of displeasure that she always connected with his son.

“What is the matter, Tommy, tell me?”

“The old story--Jack!”

Mrs. Hereford, with a breath of keen relief, put her hand on his knees, and sat back in her chair.

“Poor Tommy! It must be something perfectly terrible for you to look as you look and to sit here like this half the night.”

“It is the worst.”

“What is it? Tell me.”

“Blackmail!”

And clear as ice came to her the remembrance of Ramsay’s words: “_There are women in men’s lives who make dreadful scandals for them. There is blackmail--_”

“It is a relief to speak to you, Nell. When Jack was at Cambridge he got mixed up with the worst kind of woman and made some sort of marriage with her. Drunk, of course. She has trailed him ever since, followed him even to France; been bleeding him to death. The money you and I have given him has gone to her. He’s been keeping her quiet until now. He told me this last night, here in this room, and he asked for money to shut her up, as she threatened on Patricia’s wedding day to give out a flashy story to the newspapers and drag us all in.”

Mrs. Hereford never stirred.

“I fairly kicked him out of the house,” her husband said. He heard her ask:

“But you refused to give him money?”

“Yes, and I told him all the newspapers in the United States could print his story if they liked. It was his own life!”

Mrs. Hereford half rose, murmuring:

“Oh, and he needed money like _that_! Tommy, like _that_, and you didn’t give it to him?”

“I told him if he went to you or Patricia I would disinherit him. I told him to get his lawyer. It was up to him. If you begin to give to blackmail you are lost. Let him take what is coming to him--he has made his own life!”

She gave a cry, sank more deeply into her chair, and burst into tears, her head on the arm of the chair. Her husband bent over, reassuring her, telling her not to worry; Jack would get a lawyer and he had been a brute to tell her when she was so utterly done up and tired.

But she had broken down under the strain of fatigue, emotion, and passion greater, at last, than her control.

She tried to pull herself together, to control her grief. She would wire Ramsay to-morrow, she would ask his pardon. To her now it was clear as day. Oh, it was clear! But Ralph would never forgive her--never in the world. She heard her husband go over to a little cupboard in the wall where drinks were kept; she heard the snap of the soda-bottle cork like a little shot.

There was nothing she could say to her husband. Her passion for Ramsay had protected his son. Hereford would never know anything of the theft or anything of her false suspicion.

“Honor and dishonor had been in her hands!”

Her husband came back with a refreshing drink for her, and sat down on the arm of the chair, made her swallow it, and then he drew her up with great gentleness.

“It is nearly morning,” he said, “and we have a busy day before us. Brace up, old girl!” He kissed her on her hair.

Mrs. Hereford looked up at him through her tears. First of all, her husband’s honor had been given to her for keeping. How ruthlessly she had torn it and thrown it away!

Hereford put his arm around her. She needed his support, and they went out, side by side, past the music room, where the ghostly shadows gathered in the four corners, only waiting to take possession.

_The American Magazine_

THE TERRIBLE CHARGE AGAINST JEFF POTTER

BY

SAMUEL A. DERIEUX

THE TERRIBLE CHARGE AGAINST JEFF POTTER[2]

By SAMUEL A. DERIEUX

It was Saturday night and raining hard when Frank Blainey pushed through the group of farmers gathered about Jeff Potter and ordered the old man out of the store. There were three indictments according to Frank’s angry arraignment: First, that old Jeff hadn’t spent twenty dollars in the store in the last two years; second, that he tracked in mud and whittled shavings on the floor; and, third, that women didn’t like to come where he was.

As for the first, well, old Jeff didn’t have much money to spend, and consequently didn’t spend it; as for the second, having no women at home, and putting in a good share of his time in the river swamp, Jeff wasn’t as careful about mud and shavings as he might have been; as for the third--that started him stuttering so he could hardly get the question out.

“W-w-what women?”

It was Frank Blainey who flushed now, but he went on. He was a lanky young fellow, his face a bit narrow, his eyes set a trifle close together. Having started the row he was just the kind of man to see it through, especially where Jeff was concerned, for who minded old Jeff Potter?

“It don’t make any difference what women!” he cried, face white now, eyes blazing. “I don’t want to argue this case and I don’t propose to. This is my store, and I tell you to get out and stay out. That’s all I’ve got to say, and all I’m going to say!”

* * * * *

Then old Jeff went crazy, saw red. You see, it was all so sudden. For twenty years he had been loafing in here--ever since his wife died. This had been his place when Sam Blainey, father of Frank, was alive and ran the store. Here, with a twinkle in his eyes, he had slipped, secretly, many a stick of candy, yellow candy with red stripes, to the youngsters who stood about while parents shopped. Here, out of the soft pine of dry-goods boxes, he had carved many an Indian, while the children crowded about, then gone out in the woods, children following, and colored the Indians red with pokeberry juice. Here, at nights, he had told those bigger children, the fathers, about where fish were biting now in the river, about how wild turkeys were moving from one section of the swamp to another, about the best kind of caller to get them in range. For that was the only kind of thing old Jeff knew, except that children loved candy and carved Indians, and that in a general way folks ought to tote fair with one another.

But to come back--it was all sudden and Jeff saw red. Bill Carson, a farmer, burly and powerful, grabbed him and shoved him back. He wouldn’t have had any show, anyway, with Frank Blainey. His old heart was far stouter than his biceps. All this Bill Carson knew.

“Come on, Jeff,” he was saying. “Yes, that’s all right now, you come with me. We’ll talk about it out here in the road.”

And so it was that Jeff found himself out in the road, with the rain beating in his face, and Bill Carson towering above him.

“Let me go, Bill,” he was pleading. “Let me go back an’ smash his face. Just once, Bill, just once. That wife of hisn is the ‘women’ he’s talkin’ about. I know, Bill. Once in the ol’ days, when Sam Blainey was livin’ an’ runnin’ the sto’, befo’ her an’ Frank married, she come in. I didn’t know there was any lady aroun’, an’ I said ‘damn’ or somethin’. She heerd me an’ went out, head high, an’ said she never would come back agin. She tol’ all the women about what I had said. She’s pizen pious, Bill; you know her. She brought hit up in the ladies’ missionary society--said there was heathens livin’ right around ’em. Meanin’ me. Bill, listen, let me go back!”

“No,” said Carson, “you better go home now, Jeff. He’ll be sorry he done it.”

“He’ll be enough sight sorrier if I smash his face! Who is he, anyhow? A scrub pup from his fine ol’ daddy’s breed! He was fired from college--for cheatin’, too. He’s a sneak now. You know as well as me that ever’ Saturday he sends that wife of hisn to visit her folks across the river, then sneaks off to town hisself an’ has a good time on the sly. Only las’ Sunday, when that poker club in town was pulled, he was one of the men they caught. Oh, he hushed it up, him an’ his town friends, but he was one. I know, Bill. Jim Ryan, he’s my friend, he’s one of the cops that done it. He come out here to hunt with me las’ Tuesday, an’ he tol’ me about it. I never opened my mouth about it to nobody--I never would have, either. But let me go now, an’ I’ll face him with it. I’ll tell him--”

“No, no,” said Carson kindly, with the indulgence of the strong. “There’s a woman in there, Sam Raine’s wife. You don’t want to raise a row befo’ her, do you? You’ll be justifyin’ what Frank said. Go on home now, ol’ man, an’ go to bed.”

* * * * *

And in humiliation and sorrow old Jeff went--went because there wasn’t anything else for him to do. Anger is a violent intoxicant: you forget your troubles while the rage lasts, you do not care for past or future. Old Jeff Potter would have been happier this night if he could have stayed angry.

But sitting late into the night by the smoky lamp on the table, he had forgotten his anger, he had forgotten everything except that he couldn’t go to the store any more. He had loved it in the old days when Sam Blainey, dead now, ran it, and the lazier men of a lazier era gathered around the rusty, pot-bellied stove. Then he had come to love the new régime, after Frank painted the store all over inside and out; he had loved the bright acetylene lights and the shiny new base-burner, and the Saturday night crowds. He didn’t ask much of life, he never had--just a roof over his head, a place to hunt, a store to loaf in, where he could see men and women and children and hear them talk. And now one of these, the one that was growing dearer as he grew older, had been taken away.

For a moment the old man’s helpless anger flared up like an echo.

“I ought to have smashed his face!” he muttered.

But when he rose and fumbled about on the mantelpiece, among bits of soft pine and half carved Indians, for his pipe, his hands were trembling, and so was the match he held to the bowl; while outside the rain, ever increasing, splashed from the eaves and dashed against the window, as if his cabin were some sub-sea shelter in the midst of a roaring ocean.

It was this continued deluge that waked him up two hours later with the thought that the river would rise and with the fear that the herd of blooded cattle ranging in the swamp--the cattle belonging to Squire Kirby, his landlord--would drown. It brought him thumping suddenly out of bed and made him light the lamp. Twelve, declared the hands of a gingerbread clock on the mantel.

“I better see about them cattle,” he said.

Now, tending cattle wasn’t part of his contract with Squire Kirby. A bale of cotton a year rent for the little farm he lived on _was_. But the bale was seldom forthcoming. It was such a long way to the end of a cotton row, and what excitement was there waiting for you when you got there? You just had to turn round and hoe to the end of another row.

“All right,” Kirby had said, over and over; “if you can’t pay, you can’t, Jeff. You just bring me an Injun or two to send to my grandchildren for Christmas an’ we’ll call it squar’.”