That day Crane went to Brookfield.
In spirit he was like a man that had been cast into an angry sea, and
had battled his way through hungry waves to shore. Saved, the utter
weariness of fierce strife hung heavy over his soul, and exhaustion
deadened his joy of escape. Just saved, bereft of everything, he looked
back over the dark waters and shuddered. And before him a dreary waste
of desert shore-land stretched out interminably, and he must wander
alone over its vast expanse forever.
Crane in all things was strong. It was strength drawn to right by the
influence of the woman he loved that had saved him from the waters that
were worse than the broad sands of a desolate life. But he still had
something to do, the final act made possible by his redemption.
At Brookfield he went to the hotel, secured an isolated sitting room
upstairs, and with this as a hall of justice, followed out with his
usual carefulness a plan he had conceived. First he wrote a brief note
to Allis Porter asking her to come and see him at once. One line
he wrote made certain the girl's coming, “I have important news to
communicate concerning Mr. Mortimer.” Then he sent the note off with a
man. Next he despatched a messenger for David Cass. He pulled out his
watch and looked at it. It was three o'clock. “I think five will do,” he
muttered; “it should be all over by that time.” Another note addressed
to Mortimer, asking him to call at the hotel at five o'clock, went
forth.
The village hotel throbbed with the pressure of unwonted business.
The proprietor surmised that a financial matter of huge magnitude was
afloat--another farm was being mortgaged, most like; more money for
Ringwood probably, for had not a buggy gone out there to bring some one
in to the great financier. Those race horses were the devil to put a man
in a hole.
David Cass came, treading on the heels of a much-whiskied howler who had
summoned him.
“You sent for me, sir?” he asked of Crane. It may have been the
stairs--for he had come up hurriedly--that put a waver in his voice; or
it may have been a premonition of trouble.
“Take a seat, Mr. Cass,” Crane answered, arranging a chair so that a
strong light from the one window fell across the visitor's face.
The hostler who had shown Cass to where the big man awaited him
lingered, a jagged wobble of humanity, leaning against the door jamb. He
expected an order for “Red Eye,” as he had baptized strong drink since
it had grown familiarly into his being. “Oh!” exclaimed Crane, “I'd
forgotten; here's a quarter; much obliged. That's all.”
The hostler's unjointed legs, unstable because of recurrent debauchery,
carried him disconsolately to lower levels. The Banker must be sure
of his business, must have it well in hand, when he ignored the usual
diplomatic mollifying preparation of a drink.
The hostler had left the sitting-room door open; Crane closed it
carefully, and, sitting with his back to the window, said to the bank
clerk: “Mr. Cass, I am going to be very candid with you; I am going to
tell you that I have discovered you stole the thousand dollars Mortimer
has been accused of taking.”
Cass's face blanched a bluish white; his jaw dropped loosely like the
jaw of a man who had been suddenly struck a savage blow. His weak,
watery, blue eyes opened wide in terror; he gasped for breath; he
essayed to speak--to give even a cry of pain, but the muscles of his
tongue were paralyzed. His right hand resting on the arm of his chair,
as Crane ceased speaking, fell hopelessly by his side, where it dangled
like the cloth limb of a dummy.
Crane saw all this with fierce satisfaction. He had planned this sudden
accusation with subtle forethought. It even gave him relief to feel
his suffering shifted to another; he was no longer the assailed by evil
fortune, he was the assailant. Already the sustaining force of right was
on his side; what a dreadful thing it was to squirm and shrink in the
toils of crime. A thought that he might have been like this had he
allowed Mortimer to stand accused flashed through his mind. He waited
for his victim to speak.
At last Cass found strength to say: “Mr. Crane, this is a terrible
accusation; there is some dreadful mistake--I did not--”
The other interrupted him. The man's defense must be so abjectly
hopeless, such a cowardly weak string of lies, that out of pity, as he
might have ceased to beat a hound, Crane continued, speaking rapidly,
holding the guilty man tight in the grasp of his fierce denunciation.
“You stole that note. You sent it, with a quick-delivery stamp to your
brother, Billy Cass, in New York, and he bet it for you on my horse, The
Dutchman, on the 13th, and lost it. Mortimer, thinking that Alan Porter
had taken the money, replaced it, and you nearly committed a greater
crime than stealing when you allowed him to be dishonored, allowed him
to be accused and all but convicted of your foolish sin. It is useless
to deny it, all this can be proved in court. I have weighed the matter
carefully, and if you confess you will not be prosecuted; if you do not,
you will be sent to the penitentiary.”
Cass, stricken beyond the hope of defense, rose from his chair,
steadying himself with his hands on the table, leaned far over it, as
though he were drawn physically by the fierce magnetism of his accuser,
and spoke in a voice scarce stronger than the treble of a child's: “My
God! Mr. Crane! Do you mean it, that you won't prosecute me? Did you say
that?”
“Not if you confess.”
“Thank God--thank you, sir. I'm glad, I'm glad; I've been in hell for
days. I haven't slept. Mortimer's eyes have stared at me all through the
night, for I liked him--everybody liked him--he was good to me. Oh, God!
I should have gone out of my mind with more of it. I didn't steal the
money--no, no! I didn't mean to steal it; the Devil put it into my
hands. Before God, I never stole a dollar in my life. But it wasn't
that--it wasn't the money--it was to think that an innocent man was to
suffer--to have his life wrecked because of my folly.”
How it was coming home to Crane. Had he not dabbled his hands in the
same sin, almost committed it?
“You have never known what it is to suffer in that way. But let me tell
you all. I must. Then perhaps you will understand how I was tempted. For
years I have been ground in poverty. My mother and my sister, even my
brother have all looked to me. My brother should have supported them,
but all his money went on the race course, gambling. When I heard Alan
Porter tell Mortimer that your horse was sure to win, for the first time
in my life I felt a desire to get money that way. But I had no money to
bet. That day as I went into the vault I saw under a lower shelf--the
Devil drew my eyes that way--a bank note. I hardly knew it was a bank
note, for I saw but a piece of paper indistinctly in the dim light. I
picked it up. Oh, God! if I hadn't touched it! I looked at it. My heart
jumped in my throat and choked me; my head swam. In my ears were strange
voices, saying: 'Take it! Put it in your pocket!' Perhaps it was because
it was so large--a thousand dollars--perhaps it was because it seemed
lost, out of place, I don't know. I had handled thousands and thousands
before, and never felt that way.
“The devil voices that were in my ears said: 'This is your chance. Take
it, borrow it, no one will know. Bet it on the horse that will surely
win, and you will get many thousands; then you can replace it, and for
once in your life you will know what it is to have something of your
own.'”
“I tried to put it back. I couldn't. The voices called me a fool, a
coward. I thought of my mother, my sister, what I could do if I had the
courage. I tried to take it in to Mr. Lane and say that I had found it.
I couldn't. Oh, my God! you don't know what it is to be tempted! You
have been successful, and don't know how miserably weak ill-fortune
makes a man. I yielded--I took it; then when its loss was discovered,
and Mortimer was accused, I tried to confess--I couldn't; I was a
coward, a traitor, a Judas. Oh, God!”
The overwrought man threw himself face down on the table in front of his
grim accuser, like a child's broken doll, and wept with great sobs that
shook his frame as the wind lashes the waters into turmoil.
An exultation of righteous victory swept through Crane's soul. He might
have been like that; he had been saved from it by his love for a good
woman. He could not despise the poor broken creature who confessed so
abjectly, because all but in deed he also had sinned. The deepest cry
of despair from Cass was because of the sin he had committed against his
friend--against Mortimer.
Crane waited until Cass's misery had exhausted itself a little, and when
he spoke his voice was soft in pity.
“I understand. Sit in your chair there and be a man. Half an hour ago I
thought you a thief--I don't now. You had your time of weakness, perhaps
all men have that; you fell by the wayside. I don't think you'll do it
again.”
“No, no, no! I wouldn't go through the hell I've lived in again for
all the money in the world. And I'm so glad that it is known; I feel
relief.”
“Well, it is better that the truth has come out, because everything can
be put right. I was going to make you pay back the thousand dollars to
Mortimer--I was going to drive you from the bank--I was going to let it
be known that you had stolen the money, but now, I must think. You must
have another chance. It's a dangerous thing to wreck lives--”
“My God! it is; that's what haunted me night and day. I felt as though
I had murdered a man who had been my friend. I knew he thought young
Porter had taken it and was shielding him. The memory of the misery in
Mortimer's face at being counted a thief would have stuck to me if I had
lived a hundred years.”
Cass had interrupted Crane. When he ceased again out of exhaustion,
Crane proceeded, “Mortimer must be paid back the money.”
“I'll save and work my fingers off till I do it.”
“You can't. Those dependent upon you would starve. I'll attend to that
myself.”
“And you will let me go without--”
“No, you can't go.”
“My God! I'm to be prosecuted?”
“No, you can stay in the bank. I don't think you'll ever listen to the
voices again; it's bad business.”
Cass sat and stared at the strange man who said these things out of
silly expressionless eyes that were blurred full of tears.
“Yes, you can go right on as you have been. It will be understood
that the money was found, had been mislaid; I'll think that out. It's
nobody's business just now; I run the bank and you take orders from me.
Go back to your desk and stay there. I've got to tell Mortimer and Miss
Porter that you made this mistake, and Lane, too, I suppose, but nobody
else will ever know of it. I was going to make you sign a confession,
but it's not needed. You may go now.”
Cass rose, his thin legs seeming hopelessly inadequate to the task of
carrying his body, and said, “Will you take my hand, sir?”
“Of course I will. Just do right from this on, and forget-no, better not
forget; remember that there is no crime like weakness; all crime comes
from weakness. Be strong, and listen to no more voices. But I needn't
tell you. I know from this out I can trust you further than a man who
has never been tried.”
At the door Cass turned and looked back at the man who had reached down
into the abyss, pulled him up, and stood him on his feet. The man was
sitting quite still, his back to the light, his head drooped, and Cass
could not see his face. He strove futilely for some adequate expression
of gratitude, but his senses were numb from the shock of what he had
escaped; he simply nodded twice toward the sitting figure, turned, and
passed out into the street, where the sunlight baptized him with warmth
as though he had been born again.
“Poor, weak devil!” muttered Crane; then he shivered. Had the imbecile's
talk of voices got on to his nerves? Surely a voice had whispered
derisively in his ear, “Which one is the poor, weak devil?” And
in answer within his soul Crane knew that the margin was indeed of
infinitesimal narrowness. Cass, hastened in his temptation, yielding
to the first insane impulse, not knowing that the damnation of a friend
hung on his act, had fallen. He, Crane, in full knowledge that two
innocent lives might be wrecked by his doing, had been kept to the
right only after hours of struggle, and by the supporting influence of
a supreme love. To have gained Allis Porter by the strategy of a villain
could not be the method of holy passion. To sacrifice his desire and
give her back her lover was love, love worthy of the girl.
For an hour he waited; then there was turmoil on the stairway;
horses were surely coming up. At the door a thick voice explained the
diversion. The hostler had again arrived, with an hour of increased
drunkenness pulling mercilessly at his erratic legs.
“John Porter's gal 'sh here, an'--an'--” the hostler wrestled with the
mental exercise that had been entrusted to his muddled brain. He'd swear
that she was there, for his eyes had seen her, two of her; and also he
had a hazy idea that when he essayed the stairs she had entrusted to
him some message. He groped fitfully among the wheels that buzzed in his
skull for the elusive something connected with her advent. The heredity
of habit came to his assistance.
“D'ye want a drink?” he asked, with a sudden brightening.
“Drink!” a voice cried. “I don't want any drink” A strong hand had him
by the collar, and the house was rocking violently to and fro; he could
scarcely keep his feet.
“Wake up, you're drunk. Is Miss Porter down stairs?”
“Porter, Porter, yesh, Portersh gal; thatsh what I said. Whatsh matter
with you?--leg-go. Keep cool, don't get excited.”
“Here, get out--go down stairs!” And he did, hurriedly.
Crane had followed him down. Allis was standing just within the hall
door.
“Good afternoon, Miss Porter,” he said. “It was good of you to come.
I've got something very important to tell you, and it's better that we
have quiet--it doesn't seem quite the usual order of things here.
Should you mind coming upstairs to the sitting room, where we shall be
undisturbed?”
“I don't mind,” answered the girl, simply.
“Have a chair,” he said, motioning to the one Cass had lately sat in.
Crane did not take the other seat, but paced restlessly up and down the
room; it cooled the fever of his mind.
“I hope it isn't more bad news, Mr. Crane,” Allis said; for her
companion seemed indisposed to break the silence.
“It is--” the girl started--“for me,” Crane added, after a little pause;
“and yet I am glad.”
“That sounds strange,” Allis commented, wonderingly.
“What I am going to say to you means the destruction of the dearest hope
I have in life, but it can't be helped. Now I wouldn't have it any other
way.”
Suddenly he stopped in his swift pace, faced the girl, and asked, “You
are quite sure you can't love me?” He was waiting for an answer.
“No, I can't--I hate to cause you misery, but I must speak the truth;
you have asked for it.”
“And you've answered honestly. I know it was foolish in me to ask
the impossible. Just one more question and then I will tell you why I
brought you here. Do you still believe in Mortimer's innocence--do you
love Mortimer?”
“Yes.”
“If I were to tell you that he is innocent, that I have discovered the
guilty one.”
“Oh, my God!” It was a cry of sudden joy, incapable of exact expression,
irrelevant in its naming of the Deity, but full in its exultation of
soul. Then, in quick transformation, the girl collapsed, as Cass had
done, and huddled in her chair, stricken by the sudden conviction that
the crime had been brought home to her brother. Her lover was guiltless;
but to joy over it was a sin, inhuman, for was not Alan the thief, if
Mortimer were innocent?
Crane understood. He had forgotten. He stepped quickly to the girl's
side, put his hand tenderly on her head; her big gray eyes stared up at
him full of a shrinking horror.
“Poor little woman!” he said, “your big, tender heart will be the death
of you yet. But I've got only good news for you this time. Neither
Mortimer nor Alan took the money--it was Cass.”
“They are both innocent?”
“Yes, both.”
“Oh, my God, I thank Thee.” She pulled herself up from the chair,
holding to Crane's arm, and looking in his face, said, “You did this;
you found the guilty man for me?”
Crane nodded his head; and it came to the girl as she looked, that
the eyes she had thought narrow in evil grew big and round and full of
honesty, and soft with gentleness for her.
“How can I thank you--what can I do or say to repay you?” She knew what
it must have cost the man to clear his rival's name.
“It was your doing, Miss Allis; it is I who must thank you. You made a
man of me, brought more good into my life than had been there for forty
years. I will be honest. I did not do this of myself, my own free will.
In my love for you, and desire to have you with me always, I almost
committed a crime. I was tempted to conceal the discovery I had made;
I knew that if I cleared Mortimer you were lost to me. I struggled
with temptation and fell asleep still not conquering it. In my sleep I
dreamed--I don't think it was a dream--it was like a vision--you came
to me, and when I said that Mortimer was innocent, you kissed me on the
forehead. I woke then, and the struggle had ceased--the temptation
had passed. I came down here, and Cass has confessed that he took the
money.”
“Would you like it--would you think it wrong--it seems so little for me
to do--may I kiss you now, as I did in your dream, and thank you from
the bottom of my heart for making me so happy? It all seems like a dream
to me now.”
For answer Crane inclined his head, and Allis, putting her hand upon his
shoulder, kissed him on the forehead, and through him went a thrill of
great thankfulness, of joy such as he knew would never have come to him
had he gained through treachery even this small token of conquest.
“There,” he said, taking Allis by the arm, and gently drawing her back
to the chair; “now I am repaid a thousandfold for not doing a great
wrong. You have beaten me twice within a few days. I fancy I should
almost be afraid to be your husband, you master me so easily.”
“That's Mortimer coming,” Crane said, suddenly, as a step with more
consistency in its endeavor than pertained to the hostler's, sounded,
coming up the stairs. “I sent for him,” he added, seeing the look of
happy confusion in Allis's face.
“Come in,” he called cheerily, in answer to a knock on the door.
“You sent for me--” Then Mortimer stopped suddenly, and stood staring
first at Allis, then at Crane, alternately, back and forth from one to
the other.
Crane turned his back upon the younger man and busied himself wondrously
over the manipulation of a chair. A strange dread crept into Mortimer's
heart; it smothered him; he felt dizzy. Why did Allis look so happy--why
were there smiles on her lips when she must know there were ashes
of gloom in his soul? Why was she alone there with Crane? Was it but
another devilish trick of the misfortune that pursued him?
“Good afternoon, Miss” the words stuck in Mortimer's throat, and he
completed his greeting with a most dreadfully formal bow.
The girl laughed outright; how droll it was to see a man trying to
make himself unhappy when there was nothing but happiness in the world.
Through the open window she could hear the birds singing, and through
it came the perfume of clover-buried fields; across the floor streamed
warm, bright sunlight from a blue sky in which was no cloud. And from
their lives, Mortimer's and her own, had been swept the dark cloud--and
here, in the midst of all this joy was her lover with a long, sad face,
trying to reproach her with a stiff, awkward bow.
Her laugh twirled Crane about like a top. He saw the odd situation;
there was something incongruous in Mortimer's stiff attitude. Crane
had a big cloud of his own not quite driven from his sky, but a smile
hovered on his thin lips. This happiness was worth catching.
Mortimer noticed the distasteful mirth reflected in the other man's
face, and he repeated with asperity, “You sent for me, sir--may I ask--”
“Will you take a chair,” said Crane, and he pushed the one he had been
toying with toward Mortimer. The latter remained standing.
Allis sprang forward and caught him by the arm--Crane turned away,
suddenly discovering that from the window the main street of Brookfield
was a most absorbing study.
“I'm so happy,” began Allis. Mortimer shivered in apprehension. Why had
Crane turned his face away--what was coming? How could she be happy, how
could anyone in the world be happy? But evidently she was. She stole
a quick look at Crane--to be exact, Crane's back, for his head and
shoulders were through the window.
Then the girl--she had to raise on her tiptoes--kissed the sad man on
the cheek. I'm ashamed to say that he stared. Were they all mad--was he
not standing with one foot in the penitentiary?
She drew him toward the chair, calling to Crane: “Will you please tell
Mr. Mortimer the good news. I am too happy; I can't.”
A fierce anger surged in Mortimer's heart; it was true, then--his
disgrace had been too much for Allis. The other had won; but it was too
cruel to kiss him.
Crane faced about, and coming forward, held out his hand to the man of
distrust. “I hope you'll forgive me.”
Mortimer sprang to his feet, shoving back his chair violently, and stood
erect, drawn to his full height, his right hand clenched fiercely at his
side. “Shake hands? No, a thousand times no!” he muttered to himself.
Crane saw the action, and his own hand dropped. “Perhaps I ask too
much,” he said, quietly; “I wronged you--”
Mortimer set his teeth and waited. There were great beads of
perspiration on his forehead, and his broad chest set his breath
whistling through contracted nostrils. A pretty misdirected passion was
playing him. This was why they had sent for him--the girl he would have
staked his life on had been brought to believe in his guilt, and had
been won over to his rival. Ah--a new thought; his mind, almost diseased
by unjust accusation, prompted it--perhaps it was to save him from
punishment that Allis had consented to become Crane's wife.
“But I believed you guilty--” Mortimer started as Crane said this “now I
know that you are innocent, I ask--”
Mortimer staggered back a step and caught at the chair to steady
himself. He repeated mechanically the other's words: “You know I'm
innocent?”
“Yes, I've found the guilty man.”
“Then Alan--oh, the poor lad! It's a mistake--you are wrong. The boy
didn't take the money--I took it.”
Crane looked at him in admiration, an indulgent smile on his lips.
“Nonsense, my dear sir!” he exclaimed, dryly; “Alan did not take the
money--neither did you. Cass took it, and you wasted a day of the bank's
time covering the crime for him.”
“Cass took it?” asked Mortimer in a dazed way, looking from Crane to
Allis.
“Yes; he has confessed, so you see he's ahead of you in that line”
He went on, speaking hurriedly: “I ask you to forgive me now for my
suspicions. Your innocence is completely established. You acted like a
hero in trying to shield Alan Porter, and I like men of that stamp. The
thousand dollars you paid in will be restored to you; it is yours. We
will devise some scheme for clearing up the matter as far as your good
name is concerned that will shield poor Cass from people who have no
business in this affair.”
“But how did Cass manage to get the note?”
“Found it on the floor of the vault, he says.”
“I don't see how it could have fallen out of the box, because the three
bills were pinned to the note.”
Crane drew forth a pocket book, and opening it took out the bill that
had been stolen. He examined it closely, holding it up in front of the
window.
“I think you are mistaken,” he said, “there are no pin holes in this
bill; I see,” he continued, “the pin had not gone through this one;
being detached, in handling the box, it has slipped out.”
“It must have,” concurred Mortimer. “I remember in putting the box in
the compartment once I had to turn it on its edge; the bill being loose,
as you say, has slipped to the floor, and as the vault was dark I did
not notice it.”
“It doesn't matter,” added Crane. “I must go now. Good-bye, Miss Allis.”
Turning to Mortimer he held out his hand.
“Good-bye, and long happiness to you both,” he said; “I trust you will
think kindly of me and poor Cass. I am sure we are sorry for what has
been done.”
As Crane went down the stairs he wondered why he had coupled himself
with Cass. Was the difference so slight--had they been together in the
same boat up to the point of that silly, fantastic dream. Perhaps they
had.