Tears did not sit well on Hildegarde von Essen; one did not expect them of
her. Somehow it would have been more congruous to see her emotions using
some other outlet--swearing with intent, incisive daintiness or dashing
the bric-à-brac on the floor. Yet she was crying, not dismally, with
girlish abandon, but with a certain dynamic intensity, a clumsiness, if
you will, that bespoke neglect of practice in the accomplishment.
She had returned half an hour ago from Potter's hangar, from listening to
his claim upon her love, from feeling the demand of his arms about her,
from a glad moment of surrendering her lips to his lips, and from the
blind joy of translating her heart into words.... Thirsting on desert
sands, she had seen in mirage a green oasis where welled up a
never-failing spring of love; or, rather, it was as if she had seen a
veritable oasis, a living spring, and by her own black magic had
transformed it to mirage.... She had put away the man she loved and
declared herself defiled!
That Potter had put upon that word a construction far different from her
own she did not realize. Perhaps it would not have mattered if she had.
Could one choose between defilements? It would have been impossible for
her to comprehend an obscenity which would have befouled her more than her
father's treachery and treason had done.... And she wept.
It was not in her to love with reserve, mildly, sweetly, as it was not in
her to live calmly, staidly, circumspectly. When she gave her love it was
with fiery recklessness, holding back nothing, making no compromises ...
and that love had been caught in the ruthless spring trap of a horrid
reality, caught and tortured and restrained of its freedom. The fire-white
cruelty of it was her knowledge that her love could not die.
Hours slipped by, one upon the heels of another, and thwarted love took
for its companion _fear_.... Potter was in danger. She had warned him, but
would her warning not bring him within the grasp of a peril he would not
otherwise have approached? She knew it would. Potter was not one to leave
his battles to other champions; what was his own he would defend. When
those men came, bearing awful death in their hands, they would find him
there. She could see him waiting.
Then the massive house shuddered, windows rattled, bits of glass tinkled
to the floor, and a mighty roar swallowed up the voices of the earth....
Hildegarde uttered no cry, made no movement, but stood erect in the middle
of her room, eyes staring, fists clenched. She _knew_! They had succeeded,
the thing was done!... But Potter--had it touched him? Had it mangled,
torn, killed him? She had but one thought now--she must know.
She tore open her door, rushed down the stairs and burst into her father's
library. Herman von Essen was standing in the middle of the floor,
pasty-faced, unsteady, a man face to face with a vision of horror.
"What was that?" demanded Hildegarde.
Von Essen gulped, started, opened his mouth soundlessly, and then found
stammering speech. "I--don't--know," he said.
"You lie!" she said, in a voice brittle, metallic.
He stared at her, uncomprehending, and wagged his head vaguely.
"You lie!" she repeated. "You know what it was--you know it was murder!"
"Murder...." he repeated. "No...."
"He was there," she said. "If you've killed him--"
Von Essen shook himself together, peered at her dazedly, seemed to grasp a
sinister knowledge in her words. "Who was where?" he snarled. "What are
you talking about?"
"Potter Waite was there," she said.
"Potter Waite!... What do you know--" He stopped, stared at her as if he
had not seen her before, and his face grew livid with something
menacing--the expression of a rat driven into a corner. He sprang upon
her, caught her by the shoulders, shook her brutally. "What do you
know?... What do you know?" he repeated, again and again.
She tore herself free, backed away from him. "I know that you are a
traitor and a murderer," she said. "I know what that explosion was....
Don't touch me! Don't dare come near me!"
She could not hold him off. His heavy hands clutched her again and drew
her face close to his, and in his eyes she saw terror and rage glowing
side by side. His voice was a snarl. "You know, do you?... You've been
spying.... You've been listening." He broke into German, searching the
language for epithet and invective. Then, "You know.... Tell me what you
know--everything you know."
"I know," she panted, "that you're a traitor to your country, and a
murderer.... I know you're a plotter, a German spy.... I know this house
is full of plots--and treason.... Your chauffeur--everybody here is in
it.... That watchman at the Waite Motor Company--Philip killed him.... I
know that sound was an explosion--_your_ explosion.... And Potter Waite
was there." Her voice rose shrilly, "If you've killed him--"
"If I've killed him--what?" he said, hoarsely. "What?" He did not wait for
her to answer. "What else do you know? Who else do you know?"
"I know you and I know Philip." Her eyes defied him.
"Who else?"
"No one."
"Are you lying?... If you lie to me--"
She laughed. "I'd lie to you till I choked with lies," she said. "I hate
you.... I despise you--my own father.... You have done this thing ... this
horrible thing.... Benedict Arnold.... And you've defiled me--I'm of your
blood ... your daughter.... Thank God mother is dead.... Yes, I'd lie to
you if I had a reason. If I could only tell the world the lie that you're
not my father! You abominable, squalid traitor.... But I'm not lying to
you now.... Oh, I wish I knew more of your kind."
He roared incoherently and shook her as if she were without weight. "You
know, eh?... Well, what do you intend to do about it? I'll shut your
mouth--"
"If--you've--killed--Potter--" she gasped.
"I'll shut your mouth," he repeated, and flung her into a chair. Then he
pulled shut the lofty doors and paced up and down before her, muttering.
She did not cower, did not show fear, but crouched there, glaring at him
with burning eyes.... Ten minutes passed--fifteen.... Footsteps, unsteady,
staggering, sounded in the hall. Knuckles rapped on the door.
"Who's there?" demanded von Essen, with the catch of awakened terror in
his voice.
"Me--Philip."
Von Essen strode to the doors and flung them open. "Come in," he snarled.
"Come in...."
Philip, face blackened and bloody, stumbled into the room and stood
panting.
"What is it?" von Essen demanded in German. "What's the matter?"
Philip stared at Hildegarde and motioned. Her father turned and scowled at
her. "Never mind her. She's been spying. She knows. We'll have to shut her
mouth.... What's wrong?"
"We set the bomb--I lighted the fuse.... They were watching the place.
Somebody jumped on me. Young Waite. Weimer jumped in and we broke away.
The place was full of men.... We ran. Somebody grabbed the bomb and threw
it.... Weimer was fifty feet away from me--and it struck right behind
him." Philip shut his eyes and shivered. "They'll never find a trace of
him," he said, shakily.
Hildegarde sprang toward him. "Was anybody else hurt?... Any of Potter's
men?... Potter?"
"No," he said. "They chased us--but I got away."
"Were you followed?" von Essen shouted. "What made you come here?"
"It was safe enough. Nobody saw me.... I couldn't go far. When I saw that
thing land I threw myself flat--but it shook me up bad.... I'll have to
lay up." He sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.
Hildegarde closed her eyes. "Potter's safe!... Potter's safe!" her heart
was singing.
"We'll get you to bed in a minute," von Essen said, "but we've got to
settle with this--this daughter of mine--this _spy_."
Philip raised his head. "What about her?"
"She's found out things.... We've got to shut her mouth."
He caught his daughter roughly by the arm and dragged her to her feet.
"You've meddled in something--" he began.
"Hold on," Philip said. "You're going at it wrong." He turned to
Hildegarde. "Miss von Essen," he said, "you wouldn't give your father
away, would you? You wouldn't do that?... How'd you look in court swearing
away your own father's life, eh? Think of that.... And you've got friends
here? How'd you like to have them know? Get the idea?... We'd be tried for
murder, most likely.... Want to go through life with folks pointing at you
as a murderer's daughter?"
"Traitor's daughter!" she said, between her teeth. Then, "Are you sure
Potter Waite is safe--are you sure?"
"I heard his voice shouting behind me.... Nothing touched him." He watched
her face intently, trying to read its expression, to catch some clue. "Now
be reasonable.... You don't want the world to know, eh?... Or Potter Waite
to know? How'd you like for him to know your father tried to blow up his
place? Wouldn't like it, would you?" he finished, as he saw her wince.
She fixed her eyes upon her father's lowering face. "Father," she said,
"if you'll give it up--if you'll promise to stop this sort of thing--and
be loyal ... or, if you can't be loyal, to stop helping Germany...."
"Sure he will," said Philip, winking at von Essen. "We all will, Miss.
Tickled to death to promise. We're about filled up with the business,
anyhow."
"If you had killed Potter--" she said to her father.
"But we didn't," Philip said, quickly.
"No--you didn't.... And _he's_ my father. I've thought of that ... night
after night and day after day.... I can't expose him.... I despise him,
but even my country couldn't ask me to expose him."
"Huh!..." snorted von Essen.
She drooped pitifully. His brutality, the stress of the moments she had
passed through, left her weak, trembling.
"Your mother used to believe in a God," said von Essen, and there was the
hint of a sneer in his voice. "Do you take it from her?"
"I believe," she said, simply.
He strode to a bookcase, drew out a Bible, over which himself and fellow
German dabblers in materialistic philosophy had wrangled, and thrust it
before her. "Put your hand on it," he ordered. "Put your hand on it and
swear that you will never repeat to a human being what you know about this
business.... Swear!"
She drew back from her father, recoiling from the thing he demanded of
her. To her it seemed impious that her father's hands should touch that
book; blackly impious that he should drag it down into the mire of his own
unholy purposes.
"No," she whispered, "not that.... No."
"Yes, I say.... Swear."
Philip stepped a pace forward. "Wait," he said. "You're going at this like
a bull. Have a little sense about it, von Essen.... Listen, Miss von
Essen, this thing's no joke to your father. You've scared him, and he
ain't acting right. You listen to me a minute. Here's how we stand: If you
blow on us it's more 'n likely we dangle at the end of a rope. Just stop a
minute and see if you want your father dangling from a rope.... Not so
much on account of _him_, you understand, but on account of--your
mother...." He had seen the look on Hildegarde's face when Herman von
Essen had mentioned his wife, and a keen brain lay back of his sharp eyes.
"It's her you got to think of.... If she was alive it would kill her,
likely, to know her husband was hung for a spy. Now wouldn't it? She was a
good woman like you...."
"She was good ... good."
"To be sure.... And folks thinks of her as good. You got her memory to
look after, hain't you? Well?... Wouldn't folks begin to think things
about her if the man she picked out to marry was hung, public-like, and
the papers was full of him?"
She moaned and shut her eyes. She saw those papers with their screaming
headlines.
"And think of _you_. After all, he's your father. Nobody expects a
daughter to betray her father, and nobody thinks any better of her if she
does.... They'd say your father was a traitor to the country, but that you
was a traitor to your own flesh and blood. I know folks, Miss von Essen,
and that's how they'd look at it. They'd point to you and say, 'There's
the girl that got her father hung.' And you couldn't never bear that....
It's a bad mess any way you look at it, and there hain't any way out of it
for you but to keep quiet.... Jest make believe you don't know anything.
You'd catch it double, Miss. Once for givin' away your father, and once
for bein' the daughter of a spy that was hung.... Your mother would 'a'
stood by him like it was her duty to do. Bein' as she's gone, you're sort
of in her place...."
"Mother," Hildegarde said, in a voice so low there was almost no sound
above a breath. She bowed and touched her lips to the cold leather. "I
swear," she said.... "And now may I go? I'm--so--tired."
"Let me help you to your room, Miss," said Philip, but she would not let
him touch her, and tottered up the stairs alone.
When she was gone von Essen turned apprehensive eyes upon his chauffeur.
Philip shrugged his shoulders.
"Don't need to worry about her," he said. "That sort of thing means a heap
to a woman.... She's safe."