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’.”
So the Indian or two, or half a dozen of them, had come to be his rent.
For the rest, he did look after the cattle whenever he happened to be
in the swamp, and Kirby always had the pick of his string of fish and
bag of game.
Now, listening shrewdly to the ever-increasing rain, he dressed and
picked up his lantern. Then he blew out the lamp and plunged into the
storm. Bent double against wind and rain, lantern unlighted, because he
loved to find his way in the dark, he hurried across the field. Just
before he reached the main road he stopped. Along that road splashed
three or four negroes, a lantern between them.
“Dat you, Mr. Jeff Potter?” one of them called.
But he did not answer. They were Kirby’s hands; they might want to go
with him; they would be more trouble than they were worth; he would
have to be pulling them, instead of cattle, out of the swamp before he
got through. They hesitated a moment, then went on, mumbling to one
another. Old Jeff grinned.
“When they git home,” he chuckled, “they’ll be tellin’ folks they seen
a ha’nt.”
* * * * *
An eighth of a mile before he came to Blainey’s store he turned off
into a narrow wood road seldom used. He could see pretty well in the
dark, old Jeff could, but he wasn’t looking for anything like this--he
almost ran into the car that stood there in the road!
He lit his lantern now and glanced all around. There was no one in the
streaming woods. He went to the car, pulled aside the curtains that
were fastened down, and peered in. The seats were empty. All excited,
he went back to the rear and squatted down. The lantern light shone on
the number and lettering of the license. It was a city car. He got out
of his inside breastpocket a frazzled notebook, a sort of diary, in
which he jotted down bits of wood lore and queer things he saw as he
went about. From inside the leaves he took a stub pencil, and set down
the number of that car, and the date on which he had seen it.
After he had gone away he looked back. There it was, big and long and
silent. He hurried along through the thicket, across the field, and
into the big woods of the swamp. Yes, the river was up. The lantern
glistened on water where no water ought to be. Into it he splashed,
up to his ankles, up to his knees, the trunks of trees coming forward
toward him, then slipping back in silent procession, the shadows cast
by the lantern darting here and there in the flooded woods, or moving
about like enormous black clubs above his head.
He was thoroughly alarmed now--alarmed for Kirby’s cattle. A mile ahead
was a high bit of ground, which they would make for and be safe if
they sensed the danger of rising water and started in time. If they
hadn’t--well, he would just have to round up as many as he could and
drive them that way. The water was up to his waist now; still he kept
on, holding the lantern high. If he had not known by heart every inch
of the ground he would have stepped off into water over his head. But
he knew how to keep to the ridges; he could even feel his way across a
footlog covered by water; and after a while, all out of breath, he made
out the high ground through the trees. The shine of the lantern long
before he reached this haven showed the sleek sides and gleaming eyes
of cattle huddled together.
“That’s it, boys an’ gals!” he yelled. “You knowed more’n I ’lowed you
did! You still got some brains lef’ in yo’ thick flat heads!”
He was among them now, slapping their flanks, calling them by name,
shoving them about familiarly to see if they were all here. Off to the
side was a shed built by fishermen with a rough fireplace and chimney
at one end. Here he built a fire, pulled off his wet trousers and socks
and hung them up to dry. Then he raked together for a bed some straw
which fishermen had used to sit on. His eyes in the firelight were
bright now. This was the kind of thing he liked.
It was a deep sleep he fell into, so deep that he did not see through
the forest an ever expanding glow in the sky; he did not hear the
restless animals moving about as in vague terror; he did not hear out
in the farm lands that bordered the swamp the excited crowing of cocks,
as if some strange day had dawned.
It was four o’clock when he woke, got into his damp trousers and
shoes and started back. It was pitch black. The waters had gone down
somewhat, still he had to wade out. Clear of the swamp, he blew out the
lantern.
When he came to the patch of woods where he had seen the car he
stopped--there was no car here now! He struck a match and held it close
to the ground to make sure it had not been a vision. There were the
tracks where it had entered the woods, and others where it had been
driven out again. He raised his head and sniffed the air. There was a
strange smell abroad, as if the woods had been burned off in the night.
Wondering what it could mean, he started on home.
* * * * *
Day was dawning as he passed Squire Kirby’s, and Jake, Kirby’s negro
hand who fed the mules and horses, was just entering the yard. In the
dim light Jake looked quickly at him, then stopped.
“Dat you, Mr. Jeff Potter?” he demanded.
There was something strange in Jake’s voice, and in his face too. Old
Jeff thought about it as he splashed along the road home.
“Jake must ’a’ thought I was a ha’nt too,” he chuckled.
He did not hear the news until nearly midday. Worn out, he had fallen
asleep across the bed on reaching home and had not waked until after
nine. Then he had wound up the clock, got his lonely breakfast, and
made a shift of tidying up his room. After that, he went outside. The
weather had cleared; it was a bland winter day of the South, with the
drenched straw fields and woods sparkling in the sun. He wandered
aimlessly around his yard a while, and finally sat down on a bench
in front of his cabin, and lit his pipe. He did not notice that the
negroes in front of that other cabin across the field were looking
curiously his way.
He was very lonely now. The excitement of the night had passed. Usually
on Sunday mornings like this he went to Blainey’s store, where others
gathered--except when there was preaching--out in front and on the
porch. They would be gathering there now, talking about him, and about
the row last night. As for him, so long as he lived, he could never go
there again.
And so he was brooding when Bill Carson came along the old field road.
Bill’s face was grave and he was hurrying. As he turned into the yard
Jeff rose, his heart suddenly pounding.
“Jeff, ain’t you heard, man?”
“Heerd what, Bill?”
“Frank Blainey’s store burned down at two o’clock las’ night!”
Off yonder across the field old Jeff was suddenly conscious that the
negroes were looking his way; and in Carson’s eyes he saw a close,
narrow, searching scrutiny.
“Come on inside,” said Carson.
And inside, half dazed, Jeff heard. Folks--some folks--said he did it.
The Blaineys especially. Frank was telling everybody.
“You see, Jeff,” said Carson, gravely, “some niggers up here say they
saw you goin’ toward the store at midnight. You didn’t have any lantern
lit. Jake saw you comin’ back at daylight. They all spoke to you, but
you didn’t speak to them. An’, Jeff, every other man aroun’ here was at
that fire but you!”
“Bill!” The old man’s voice was rising, “Bill, tell me as man to
man--do you believe I done it?”
Then Carson tried to quiet him, tried to evade the question, too. One
thing was certain anyhow--the woman and children didn’t believe it. “I
just left home, Jeff,” he said. “My wife an’ the kids had heard about
it. They say they know you never done it. They made me come. I left
little Ella cryin’. She wouldn’t go to Sunday-school this mornin’.”
But the old man was not to be put off. He was leaning across the table
now, eyes dilated. The fear of all wild and half-wild creatures--the
fear of the trap--was upon him. “Bill!” he cried. “Does Squire Kirby
believe I done it? Tell me the truth, man, for God-A’mighty’s sake!”
“He don’t say, Jeff.”
Over and over, while Carson listened, old Jeff described his movements
in the swamp the night before. At last Carson rose to go; there was
pity in his eyes now in the presence of the old man’s excitement.
“You just stick aroun’ the house to-day,” he said kindly. “If you go
where folks are they’ll start you talkin’.”