It was growing dusk when Frazier brought Mary back to the farm. He did
not stop, having some important business to attend to that evening, and
drove back to the village. Mary was very unhappy. From a window in the
parlor of the hotel she had seen Tobe Keith taken to the train, and the
silent awe of the bystanders, the grave looks of the doctors, the nurse,
and Mrs. Keith in her best dress induced a feeling of vast depression.
She had heard people on the pavement below saying that Keith would never
be cured--that no man in his condition could stand the operation that
was proposed. She thought, too, that Mrs. Quinby had failed to give her
much encouragement. Indeed, it was almost as if her good friend were
trying to prepare her for the worst.
Finding no one in sight about the house, Mary went straight to the barn
to acquaint her brothers with all that had taken place. She tried to
shake off the morbid feeling which clung to her so persistently, not
realizing that it was due to the fact of her still being, in a sense, in
the power of Albert Frazier. It was true that he had not paid for
Keith's expenses, but he had managed to make her feel her absolute
dependence on him for the safety of her brothers. She shuddered, and
fairly cringed, under the thought that she had not repulsed him when he
had put his arm around her in a secluded spot on the road home and
kissed her on the cheek. The spot stung now as if it were a wound which
her rising flush was irritating.
She had seen her brothers in their loft, and was entering the house,
when she met Charles descending from his room.
"You are late," he smiled. "We have had supper already."
"So have I," she answered. "I took it early with Mrs. Quinby at the
hotel. We drove rapidly, as Mr. Frazier had to hurry back to town."
She sat down on the veranda, and he stood, with an unusual air of
embarrassment, quite near to her.
"Sit down, please," she said. "I know you are tired from your work."
He obeyed willingly enough, but it seemed to her that there was a
certain undefinable restraint about him. They sat silent for several
minutes. She was watching his face attentively. At any other time she
might have been amused. Did he not realize that his failure to inquire
about Tobe Keith was an indirect confession of the part he had played
the night before?
"Well, they took Tobe to Atlanta to-day," she suddenly announced, still
eying him closely.
"Oh, did they?" he exclaimed.
She said nothing for another moment. "I suppose you think that Albert
furnished the money?" she continued. She smiled now at his look of
confusion, and as he made no reply she went on: "Well, he didn't. When I
got to Mrs. Keith's this morning I learned that some one else had given
her the necessary money. No one knows from whom it came."
"That's strange," Charles said, feebly.
"Yes, it was very strange. It seems that the man who brought it was an
absolute stranger. He turned it over to Mrs. Keith, but refused to say
who sent it. The whole town is talking about it."
"Very strange indeed," Charles said, still awkwardly. "I hope the poor
fellow will stand his journey well."
"Yes, sending money like that was very strange," Mary persisted. "Most
persons do their charity differently. They blow a horn, sound a trumpet,
or get it into the papers; but this is genuine charity. However, it will
leak out. You can't keep things like that hidden long."
"What do the doctors think--do they think that his chances are good for
recovery?"
Again Mary ignored his remark, smiling faintly through the dusk as she
watched his obvious floundering. "No, a deed like that is too rare and
fine for the author of it to keep hidden. Oh, if you could have been
there with me this morning and seen that poor mother's face and her
son's as they told about how the money came, you would have felt like
crying for joy. I did. I couldn't help it. I broke down. I think I know
now what heaven is like. It is like I felt at that moment. They were
like two happy children, and I was happy, too, and grateful." Here Mary
actually sobbed. "I was grateful to some unknown person who had saved me
from--from the most humiliating thing that ever threatened me. I was
willing to give my life rather than accept that aid from Albert Frazier,
and it had come in that mysterious way like a gift from God at the very
last moment. You must help me--help me find out who did it, Mr. Brown.
Will you?"
He stared like a man in a bewildered dream. "Yes, yes," he stammered, "I
will, but why bother about it now, anyway?"
"'Bother about it'! How can you use such words? You see, you are not in
my place. You can't realize how I feel. I want to see him. I want to
look into his face, as--as I am looking into yours now, and tell him
just how I feel and what he has done for me. I want to repay him. I want
to tell him that there is nothing--nothing under high heaven I would not
do for him. I want him to tell me what to do in all this darkness that
has gathered about me and is stifling hope and life out of me, young as
I am. I want to be his faithful friend till the end of time. I want to
serve him--to be his slave--anything."
Charles rose to his feet awkwardly. "I--I see how you feel, Miss
Rowland," he said. "But I am afraid I am keeping you from your duties.
By the way, your father has gone over to Dodd's. He came by the field
and asked me to tell you that he would not be back till about bedtime."
Mary got up also. She reached out and took his arm and walked with him
to the other end of the veranda. He felt her hand trembling. She pressed
his arm against her side. "You shall not go yet!" she cried,
passionately. "I have been beating about the bush. I know that you did
that thing. I've known it all day. No one else knows, but I do--and it
has made me so happy. I could not have taken it from any one else, but I
want to take it from you. I want to take it, because I know you wanted
to give it. I know how you feel about me, and I want you to know how I
feel about you."
Had the heavens split above him, dropping flames of celestial fire, he
could not have felt more ecstatic. She had suddenly paused and lifted
her wondrous face to his. Her beautiful lips hung quivering like
drooping flowers. He was a man of remarkable restraint, but sometimes
acted under impulse. He took her face between his hands, he bent to kiss
her unresisting lips; then suddenly he checked himself. A picture of his
whole past flashed before him. He was a man with a price on his head and
liable to exposure at any moment. What right had he to the heart of such
a girl as this--to win it under her father's kindly roof through the
agency of a just act to a suffering man. He dropped his hands. With his
face full of deepening agony he simply looked at her fixedly and
remained mute.
"What is the matter?" she asked. "You are troubled about something; I
see it. I've known it a long time."
"Miss Rowland--" he began.
"_Miss Rowland!_" she cried, impatiently. "Charlie--don't you see I call
you Charlie! I have called you that a hundred times to myself since
finding out what you did. I used it when I prayed to you--actually
prayed to you this afternoon to forgive me for allowing that man to kiss
me on the way home."
"To kiss you!" She saw him start and stand quivering under her earnest
upward stare. She saw him lower his head as a slave being scourged with
thongs of steel--a slave who was determined to show no signs of
suffering. "He kissed you! Then--then--my God! you are engaged to him!
After all, you are engaged to him!"
"No, not quite that!" she cried, in almost piteous appeal, "but I was
afraid, from the way he talked--Oh, Charlie, you can't understand! It is
true that I did not have to take his money to-day, but I am still at his
mercy."
"Still at his mercy!" Charles groaned, his eyes ablaze with blended
lights of fury and despair.
Falteringly she explained Frazier's veiled threats. As she ended she put
her hands on his shoulders and again she lifted her face to his. Again
he was swept by the flames of desire; again he held himself in check;
again the shackles of his hopeless condition bit into the flesh of his
memory, sinking to the very bones of his consciousness. What could he
do? He might tell her of the blight on his life which had isolated him
from all others, but what good would that do? And had he not promised
William that the truth should never be known? No, his fate was sealed.
He had won her, but he must lose her. No honorable man could ask such a
woman to share such a precarious fate. She would be less unfortunate
even as the wife of a man like Frazier. Charles was a social outcast who
had crept into the shelter of unsuspecting hospitality. One loophole,
and one only, flashed before his eyes on the screen of temptation, and
that was to go back to Boston and demand his moral rights. But that
would mean that he was failing to make good those sacred obligations.
That would mean the degradation of William, and the terrible blight upon
his family whom till now he had saved from humiliation and pain. No,
that course would rouse condemnation even in the heart of the girl
before him. Was there anything she would not do or suffer to save her
brothers? Could such a selfless creature approve of a man less selfless?
Her wondrous face, the all but visible halo about it, was his answer.
"What is the matter, Charlie?" she asked. "Have you lost respect for me
for allowing him to kiss me? I could have died when he did it--I hated
myself so, for I was thinking of what you would think if you knew. But I
was afraid--afraid of him. If he were to become angry and turn against
me, he would give my brothers up at once. He would lead in the search
for them, and if he knew or suspected--"
"Suspected what?" he interrupted, as she paused and stood shuddering,
her eyes filling with shadows.
"If he suspected that I--if he suspected how I feel to you--he would try
to kill you. Already he is your enemy, already he suspects you of--"
"Suspects me of what?"
"--of being a fugitive from the law who left the circus to avoid being
arrested. It is absurd, ridiculous! Only such a man as he is would dream
of such a thing. If ten thousand persons testified under oath that such
was the case I'd not believe them."
"You'd not believe them?" he echoed, and he hugged to himself his
inherent right to her faith in him as an honest man, for dishonest he
had never been.
"No, I'd not believe them. It seems to me now that I believe only in
you. In all humanity I know of no one I trust so much--my father, my
brothers, even my sweet dead--" She hesitated, then finished, fervently:
"Yes, even my mother. She would forgive me if she were here and
understood."
Again the infinite yearning to take her to his breast swept over him. He
put his arm about her; he was drawing her to him, when, with a groan of
tortured resolution, he released her. His face was white in the dusk as
he stood grimly silent.
"I can't understand you, Charlie," she whispered, tenderly, and yet in a
groping, bewildered tone. "Somehow I know--I'm _sure_ that you--love me.
"Oh, I _do_!" he said, quickly, "but I have no right to do so. I can't
explain. It would do no good, anyway. I am bound by honor not to reveal
certain things, even to you."
"I see, I see; now I begin to understand _a little_," she said,
wistfully. "And I won't press you to tell me, either. It may be that you
are bound to others, as I am bound. Though I have the sweet comfort of
talking to you about it. I couldn't bear it all but for you, but I shall
be braver, less complaining, from now on."
She lowered her head; she stood back from him. An overwhelming sense of
losing her pressed down on him like a pall. He wondered if in her mute
attitude lay any touch of womanly resentment against him for the stand
he had taken. He held out his hands to her, but she simply sighed and
slowly shook her head.
"What is it?" he asked, tremblingly.
"It must be as you say," she answered. "I wonder why God brought us
together like this. It is strange--strange--strange!"
He could not answer. His arms sank to his sides. She turned and left
him.