Bud had escaped. That was the meaning of the flickering lamp. And Roxie
understood well the danger to Allston of standing exposed, after this,
in a lighted room. Bud’s gun was here, to be sure, but he might have
another hidden about the place--in the barn or the spring-house.
Allston had run into the hall and, finding his man gone, had promptly
closed and locked the door through which he had escaped. The problem no
longer was to keep Bud in, but to keep him out. Cursing his stupidity
in not having maintained a closer watch, he struck a match in order to
search both side rooms. Roxie, running to his side, warned him of the
danger.
“He’ll shoot through the winder!” she cried.
This was a chance he had to take. Remembering his own ruse which had
gained him admission in the first place, he did not care to see it
repeated by another. He found both rooms empty. Bud had sought the open
where he would be able to secure another gun and ammunition.
It was uncanny how in the space of less than a minute the whole
situation had changed for all three of them. Roxie was quicker to
realize this fact than Allston. She was quicker because for her the
change meant more. Bud was now completely out of her power. As long as
he had lain there in the hall, she was still in control of him. She had
within herself the tribute price for Allston’s ransom. But with Bud
gone this opportunity had been snatched away from her. She was left
quite helpless--pitifully helpless.
And yet for a moment she felt as though suddenly soaring into the
clouds like a released bird. If she had lost her power over Bud, he
in turn had lost his power over her. For her this meant, for the time
being, freedom--a wild, unnatural sort of freedom. She was a prisoner
here with the man she loved. Their interests now, instead of being
opposed, were mutual. Bud was against them both. And there was nothing
she could do to prevent this; nothing Allston could do--until morning,
anyway. They were as isolated as on a desert island.
Allston himself did not see this, at first, quite as clearly. He was
for immediate action.
“We must get out of here quick!” he snapped.
“But we can’t,” she broke in eagerly. “He--he’ll kill us both. Bud’ll
kill us both.”
“You forget I’ve got his gun.”
“You’ve gut _one_ gun.”
“It’s the only one he had.”
“In his pocket. But outside he mought have others, an’ long’s ye don’
know, it’s jest as bad.”
“But when you don’t know you always have a chance.”
“If he ain’t gut a gun, he’s gut sticks and stones. He’d kill with
somethin’ afore yuh could git through the door.”
“There are two doors. He can’t watch them both.”
“Only yuh can’t tell which. An’ after what yuh done ter him--Oh, you
don’ know Bud like I do.”
“I know he’s killing mad,” admitted Allston.
And yet, had it not been for Roxie, he would have taken his chance and
made a dash for it. Once through the door it would be a fair fight. It
maddened him--even as it had maddened Bud--to be held in check like
this. He began to pace the room--keeping out of range of the glow from
the dying fire.
Then a new thought flashed into his mind. If what this girl had told
him was true--if she were really in love with Bud--then there would be
no harm in leaving her here.
She was standing in the shadows over by the table. He strode to her
side and she crowded close to him. She acted afraid, and that under
the circumstances was not natural. She ought to be glad that her lover
had escaped. And it made his own course obvious and simple. If he went
out, Bud would come in and this would end the whole affair. A moment
ago Roxie had refused absolutely to return with him. If that was her
position before Bud escaped, it was still her position. Had he gone
away and left her to free Bud--and he had seen no alternative--she
would have been exactly where she would be if he went now. Bud had only
forced by a few minutes the inevitable.
With only himself to consider, then, Allston did not propose to spend
the rest of the night up here. It was both humiliating and unnecessary.
It might easily turn out to be something worse. If he were not back at
the Howe bungalow by morning, the house would be in a turmoil. With
Roxie gone, too, his absence might be misinterpreted.
Here was a fair argument, and yet he was not altogether convinced that
it would hold. It did not explain fully Roxie’s present attitude. Well,
then his suggestion might force that explanation.
“Roxie,” he said quietly, “a moment ago you told me you came here
because you wished to come.”
“Yes, sir,” she admitted with a start.
“You said you were going to stay.”
“Yes, sir, I ’lowed I was goin’ ter stay with Bud.”
“Did you mean that?”
Her senses were acute. She felt he was leading her into some sort of
trap. She did not answer. Frantically she tried to guess the meaning of
it.
“Were you telling the truth?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir,” she answered because she was forced to answer.
“It’s hard to believe--somehow,” he said. “And yet I don’t know why it
should be. In time you were bound to marry, if not with Bud--then with
some other Bud. Perhaps I’ve been thinking of you as younger than you
are.”
“I’m eighteen,” she replied as a statement of fact.
“And that’s young or old according as you’ve lived. I saw men of
eighteen in France who were fifty.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There are moments when you seem older than that and moments when you
seem younger. That’s the trouble. What are you now?”
“I’m eighteen.”
“And you’re sure you know your own mind?”
“’Bout how I come to come up hyar with Bud?” she asked suspiciously.
“Yes.”
“Yes, sir, I know my own mind ’bout thet.”
“And about staying?”
“Yes, sir, I know my own mind ’bout stayin’. We--we gotter stay till
mornin’ now.”
“We?” he frowned.
“Bud, he--he’ll kill us certain.”
He spoke more sharply. He was only going around in a circle and he was
tired of circles.
“Listen, Roxie,” he said. “What you’ve told me about Bud changes
everything. It’s evident enough now that I butted in where I don’t
belong. If Bud loves you, and you love him, you’re safe enough here,
and the quicker I get out the better. What I want you to do is to make
what in the army we called a diversion. You stand out of danger and
swing open the back door and I’ll cut out the front. Bud ought to be
glad enough to see you to forgive your part in it.”
The girl cowered away. She did not speak. The silence became tense.
“That’s all there is to it,” he went on. “You’re game?”
Slowly the full irony of her fate made itself manifest to her. She did
not know it as irony. It seemed to her more like some cruelly righteous
form of retributive justice. The lie she had told to save the man she
loved had been turned against her to threaten his life. She had lied to
drive him out of this house away from Bud Childers and this same lie
was still working to drive him out--but this time into the clutch of
Bud. She did not believe for a moment that he had a chance to escape as
he proposed. He did not know Bud. Even if he got through the door, he
would not be allowed a hundred yards down the road. If he took to the
woods, he would be a stranger there against Bud who knew every foot
even by night. Bud would make sure and she could not stop him. The one
and only chance she had of protecting Allston now was to keep him here
until he was missed at home--until Miss Wilmer and Mr. Howe roused the
village and sent out help to him.
She had lost her power over Bud by staying without a struggle with
Allston. Her one opportunity for regaining her influence had been to
send Allston away and release Bud with her own hands. That would have
meant something to the man; it would have been a tangible proof of
her friendliness that he could have understood. To bring about this
opportunity she had deliberately sacrificed whatever good opinion of
her Allston may have had. And now Bud, by escaping, had spoiled all
those plans just as Allston, by coming, had spoiled all her other plans.
It was pitiful. She was stripped of her last vestige of influence over
either man. And this at a time when she needed it most; when she had
made each an even greater menace to the other.
That was because she had lied. It was wrong to lie. God hated a liar.
His punishment was terrible and swift. She saw that now as vividly as
though it were expressed in some flaming sign in the sky.
Trembling the girl clasped her two hands. She wanted to get down on her
weak knees and pray for forgiveness.
“Why don’t you answer, Roxie?” Allston questioned sharply.
She did not answer because she felt as helpless as a mere onlooker;
because she could no more think of what to say or do than a baby in
arms before some awful catastrophe about to envelop her. She found
herself repeating silently that little prayer which had been once
before her last refuge this fearful night. The second line she said
over and over again:
“I pray the Lord my soul to take. I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
That other time the steel-bladed knife which she had brought to the
shack as protection against Bud was the answer to her prayer. And now
the prayer--or a certain temporary poise resulting from reliance on
it--furnished her with another solution. In reality this answer sounded
more like the voice of God than had the other. If the suggestion was
daring, it was the sort of daring of which the Lord might be supposed
to approve. And it was both simple and logical like most of the acts of
God.
Swiftly Roxie looked up and met Allston’s blue eyes. She could not in
the shadows see much of them, but she felt them. They were steady and
honest--of that she was sure. They were the sort of eyes that made it
easier to tell the truth than to lie. And that was what the still,
small voice advised. If she were being punished now for not having been
honest, the only way she could redeem herself was from this moment on
to tell the truth. God might not forgive altogether her first offense,
but if the truth did not expiate it nothing would. No matter at what
cost to her pride, to her instincts as a maiden, she must tell the
truth.
“Speak,” he commanded.
So she spoke--her lips quivering.
“It--it ain’t Bud I love, it’s--it’s you,” she stammered.
“What?” he cried.
“It’s you,” she stumbled on. “Oh, it’s allers been you. I couldn’ help
it. I’m sorry.”
Queer, feeble, jerky little sentences these through which to express as
deep an emotion as that now shaking her--racking her. But they were the
best she could do.
And feeble though they were, they struck home to Allston like
knife-thrusts. He felt weak after them. For he believed--at least
that she believed. This explained a dozen facts that had been vague;
a dozen facts that he had allowed to remain vague even when they
aroused his suspicions, because he in his turn had refused to face the
truth. It was clear to him now why she had come here; it was because
of this love, to save him. No other explanation was big enough to make
plausible her willingness to risk her honor on this night alone with
Bud. And all the incidents that followed fitted in accurately and
convincingly.
Not for a second did Allston doubt her sincerity. And his big heart
flamed up in response to the nobleness and heroism and idealism of the
act--foolish as it was and as unworthy of it as he knew himself to be.
“God!” he breathed. “What a wonderful woman you are!”
“I couldn’ help it,” she moaned. “Bud--he said he’d kill yuh an’ he’d
’a’ done it too. An’ I thought--”
She looked so abject, so pitiful, so alone in her misery that
Allston could no more refrain from what he did next than he could
have refrained from picking up an outcast kitten mewing in the
cold. He stepped nearer and gathered her into his arms. She came
unresisting--weak from the continued tension of these last hours. She
buried her face on his shoulder, trying hard at first to stifle her
sobs, but finally letting herself go completely.
Allston held her tenderly and in silence. That seemed to be the only
thing to do. Words were quite useless; reason, unavailing. Whether she
was right or wrong or he right or wrong was not, in such a crisis,
important. This was some isolated moment to be handled by itself.
If he could not respond with the deep emotion that stirred her, he felt
his cheeks burning in answer to the clinging appeal of her warm arms,
to the clean incense of her hair, to the feverish eagerness of her
rapid breathing. He would have been either less or more than man had he
remained insensible. Lightly he brushed her flaxen hair with his lips.
He felt as though he had been swept back a hundred years--a thousand,
for all he knew; back to some time when the world was made up of
nothing but stars and trees and men and women. This mountain shack of
hewn logs might have been his own. And all he saw and all he knew was
what it contained and what the forest roundabout contained. The rest of
the world counted for no more than it did before the days of maps. Life
must be lived and its problems, as far as they concerned him, settled
right here.
Unconsciously his arms tightened about her lithe young body. In
response she raised her flushed face a little--shyly, but with new
confidence.
“You won’t go--now?” she whispered.
Her words startled him back to the present. His arms fell to his side.
“Now I _ought_ to go!” he cried.
A shattered pane of glass followed the report of a gun. Some one
outside was beginning to probe the shadows.