She did not sit there long. For a few minutes only she permitted
herself the luxury of tears. Then she rose, cleared away the remains of
the impromptu wedding feast, hastened out to the kitchen, bathed her
face in the cold water from the pump, dried it on the roller towel,
patted her hair into place, and returned to the sitting-room. There was
another interview in store for her that night, she was sure of it, and
it was likely to be the hardest trial of all. She must be ready. So she
sat down again in the rocker and tried to plan exactly what she should
say to Foster Townsend when he came, demanding his niece.
She had been sitting there for perhaps twenty minutes when she heard
his step upon the walk. She did not wait for him to knock, but opened
the door at once.
“Come in, Foster,” she said.
He did not bid her good evening, nor did he speak until he had crossed
the threshold. He glanced about him, strode to the door of the room
adjoining, looked in there, and turned back.
“Where is she?” he asked, sharply.
Reliance faced him bravely.
“She isn’t here, Foster,” she replied.
“Bosh! Of course she is here. Come, come! don’t fool with me. Where is
she?”
“I am not fooling, Foster. Esther isn’t here. She has been here, but
she has gone.”
He stared at her. The expression upon her face caught and held his
attention. He took a step toward her.
“Gone!” he repeated. “Gone where?... What do you mean?”
“I am goin’ to tell you what I mean. There is a lot to tell. Foster,
I-- Oh, dear!” desperately, “I don’t know where to begin. This is
harder even than I thought it was goin’ to be. Foster, you must be
patient.”
She had frightened him now. She heard him catch his breath.
“What is the matter with you?” he demanded. “What--!” Then his tone
changed. He leaned toward her, his hand upon the center table. “Say,
Reliance,” he whispered, anxiously, “you are fooling, aren’t you? She
is in this house, isn’t she? Look here, if she is hiding from me--if
she has got the idea that I am mad with her or anything like that--why,
she needn’t be. We had a row, she and I, up at the house this noon;
maybe she told you about it, I don’t know. Well, that’s all right. I--
Here! Why do you keep looking at me like that?... What is that thing?”
Reliance was proffering him an envelope which she had taken from the
bosom of her dress. He gazed at it, then snatched it from her hand.
“Eh?” he gasped. “It’s from her, isn’t it? What is she writing me
letters for?... Good God, woman, what has happened? Where is she? Why
don’t you tell me?”
Reliance shook her head.
“Read your letter first,” she said. “It will tell you almost
everything and I will try and tell you the rest.... Oh, Foster,” in an
irrepressible burst of agonized sympathy. “I am _so_ sorry for you.”
She did not wait to see him open the envelope, but ran into the
kitchen and closed the door behind her. She remained there for perhaps
ten minutes, it seemed much longer to her. When she reëntered the
sitting-room he was seated in the rocker, the letter which Esther had
written him dangling in his limp fingers, and upon his face a look
which wrung her heartstrings. She came toward him and laid her hand
upon his shoulder.
“I am _so_ sorry for you, Foster,” she said again.
He scarcely seemed to notice her presence. He did not speak.
“You have read the letter?” she faltered, after a moment.
He heard her then and straightened in the chair.
“I have read it,” he muttered. “Yes, I’ve read it.”
“Well--you see? It is done now and we can’t change it. So--”
He threw her hand from his shoulder and rose to his feet, crumpling the
letter in his fist as he did so. He snatched his hat from the floor
where it had fallen.
“Change it!” he growled, between his teeth. “We’ll see whether we can
change it or not. If that low-lived son of a skunk thinks he has got
me licked I’ll show him he is mistaken. He has made a fool of her with
his slick tongue, but he hasn’t married her yet, and it’s a long time
between now and morning.... Get out of my way!”
He would have pushed her aside but she clung to his arm.
“Wait--wait!” she begged. “You must wait. You don’t understand. He
_has_ married her. They were married an hour ago. She is his wife.”
He stopped short. She still clung to him, but, as he made no move to
go, she loosed her hold. When she looked up into his face she was
shocked and alarmed.
“Foster--Foster!” she urged. “Please--please! Come and sit down. Let me
tell you all about it. There is so much to tell. You can’t do anything.
It is too late. No one could have stopped it. I tried my best, but--
Oh, please sit down and listen!”
She led him toward the chair. He sat and, bending forward, leaned his
head upon his hands.
“Go ahead,” he groaned. “I’m listening.”
She told him the whole story, beginning with her learning from Millard
of his experience the night of the accident, of her early morning
call upon the Campton girl, of her long talk with Esther, at the big
house and afterward there at the cottage. Then she went on to tell how
Esther and Bob Griffin had come to say good-by, how she had argued
and pleaded to shake their determination to go away together that very
night. Then of the marriage.
“What could I do?” she pleaded, desperately. “They wouldn’t listen.
They would go. There was only one thing I saw that must be done and I
did it. I saw them married, legally married by a Harniss minister right
in this very room. We’ve got that to be thankful for--and it’s a lot.
There can’t be any gossip started, for I can nail it before it starts.
Foster, as I see it, all you can do--all any of us can do--is make the
best of it. Tell the whole town you think it is all right, even if you
are sure it is all wrong. And it isn’t all wrong. It is terribly hard
for you to give her up to somebody else, but you would have had to do
it sometime. And she has got a good husband; as sure as I stand here I
do believe that.”
She finished. Still he sat there, his head upon his hands. She ventured
once more to put her hand upon his shoulder.
“If you knew how I have been dreadin’ your comin’ here to-night,” she
said, wearily. “If you only knew! If only somebody else could have told
you. But there wasn’t any one else; I had to do it. You _poor_ man!
I--I-- Oh, dear! What a world this is! Foster, you _will_ believe I am
sorry, won’t you?”
He drew a deep breath. Then, placing his hands upon the chair arm, he
slowly lifted his big body and stood erect. His face was haggard, his
eyes heavy, he looked, so she thought, as if he had been through a long
sickness. And the tone in which he spoke was hollowed and, at first,
listless.
“Sorry!” he repeated. “Sorry! Humph!... Yes, I guess so. You are sorry
and so is she--she says so in her letter. I suppose that damned cub she
has run away with is sorry, too. Yes, you are all sorry, but not so
sorry but what you could do the thing, play the dirty trick you meant
to play all along.... All right! All right!” with sudden savageness.
“She will be sorrier by and by. Let her go to the devil. She has
started that way already. Let her go. And you, and the gang who will
come tiptoeing around to-morrow telling me how sorry they are, may go
with her.... Well, you have said all you wanted to, haven’t you? I can
go home now, I suppose--eh?”
She stepped back. “Yes,” she agreed, sadly. “I guess you can, if you
want to. I was afraid you would take it this way; it is natural you
should, I guess. I hope, though, by and by, when you have had time to
think it all over, you may be a little more reconciled and, maybe, not
quite so bitter. What has happened isn’t really any one’s fault. You
must see that; you will by and by. You couldn’t have stopped it; I
couldn’t; nobody could. It just happened, same as lots of things happen
to us poor humans. Whether we like ’em or not doesn’t seem to make a
bit of difference. They happen, just the same.”
He turned on her, looked her over from head to foot. “Good Lord
A’mighty!” he sneered. “Good Lord! I have lived a good many years and
I thought I had run afoul of about every kind of cussedness there was,
but this beats ’em all. Isn’t there _any_ limit? Wasn’t it bad enough
to play the hypocrite when there was something to be gained by it, when
it helped me to keep my eyes shut to what was going on behind my back?
Wasn’t that enough, without playing it now? Nobody’s fault! Huh! It was
somebody’s fault--oh, yes! It was mine for being such a blind, innocent
jackass as to trust her--and you. Ah-h!... There, that is enough.”
It was more than enough, it was a little too much. Reliance stepped
between him and the door.
“Foster Townsend,” she cried, “you shan’t go until you take that
back, or at least hear what I have to say about it. You know I’m not
a hypocrite. That is one thing I never have been. And, since you said
it yourself first, you are right, partly right, when you say it was
your fault. If you hadn’t been just what you always have been, so set
on drivin’ everybody along the road you wanted ’em to travel, you and
Esther might not have come to this pass. You couldn’t have stopped her
marryin’ the Griffin boy--I don’t believe all creation could have done
that--but you might have held it off for a while, and saved all this
dreadful business. You couldn’t drive her. Every time you tried it you
got into trouble. And now this! She is a Townsend, just as you are
yourself.”
“Townsend! Bah! She is a Clark, that’s what she is. Her father was a
Townsend and he was a soft-headed fool; but he wasn’t a hypocrite.
She’s a Clark, that’s where the hypocrisy comes from.”
“_Stop!_ You shan’t say that! There wasn’t any hypocrisy at all, on
my part or hers. You know it. I have been honest with you from the
very beginnin’. That day, years ago, when she went to live with you,
I warned you to be careful. I knew you, and I knew her, and I warned
you that you couldn’t force her to draw her every breath just at the
second when you told her to. I had seen you drive and drive her poor
father, and I saw that road end in smash, just as this one has ended.
And you mustn’t call her a hypocrite, either. She has been honest
with you always--except perhaps for those few days when she let Bob
Griffin paint her picture without tellin’ you about it. But have you
played straight and aboveboard with her? You can answer that yourself,
but I tell you she doesn’t think you have. And I tell you the plain
truth when I say that nobody, short of the Almighty himself, could
have stopped what has happened to-night. You be thankful it happened
as it did--here in this house, with a friend--yes, a good friend, and
there’s no hypocrisy about that either--to see it done and keep every
mean mouth in Harniss shut tight. You can be thankful for that, Foster
Townsend, I give you my word _I_ am.”
He was standing there, his hand upon the latch. Now, as she paused,
breathless, the fires of righteous indignation still burning in her
eyes, he carried that hand to his face. A sob shook him.
“Oh, don’t!” he groaned. “For God’s sake, don’t! Let me out of here!
Let me get away--somewhere.”
And then, of all inopportune times, Fate chose that moment to bring
Millard Fillmore Clark upon the scene. The door opened and he came into
the room. He looked at his sister, then at her visitor. His backbone
suppled; his hat was removed with a flourish.
“Well, well!” he exclaimed, in polite surprise. “It is you, ain’t it,
Cap’n Foster. How do you do, sir?” Then, as the possibilities of the
situation crossed his mind, he added, a little more anxiously: “You and
Reliance been havin’ a little talk about--about what you and me talked
about yesterday? I--I thought it was best to tell her, you understand.”
He might have said more, probably would had the opportunity been given
him. It was not. Foster Townsend’s big hand shot forward, seized him by
the shoulder and threw him headlong from the doorway. He spun across
the room, tripped over the hassock, and fell sprawling. Before he could
rise, or even understand what had happened to him, Townsend had gone.