Part 56 (1/2)

The old bay horse that crawled back to Ringwood with Allis Porter after her interview with Crane must have thought that the millennium for driving horses had surely come. Even the ambition to urge the patriarch beyond his complacent, irritating dog trot was crushed out of her by the terrible new evidence the banker had brought in testimony against her lover.

”I didn't need this,” the girl moaned to herself. In her intensity of grief her thoughts became audible in expressed words. ”Oh, G.o.d!” she pleaded to the fields that lay in the silent rapture of summer content, ”strengthen me against all this falseness. You didn't do it, George--you couldn't--you couldn't! And Alan! my poor, weak brother; why can't you have courage and clear your friend?”

Her heart rose in angry rebellion against her brother, against Crane, against Providence, even against the man she loved. Why should he sacrifice both their lives, become an outcast himself to s.h.i.+eld a boy, who in a moment of weakness had committed an act which might surely be forgiven if he would but admit his mistake? yes, it might even be called a mistake. The punishment accepted in heroic silence by Mortimer was out of all proportion to the wrong-doing. It meant the utter ruin of two lives. Firmly as she believed in his innocence, a conviction was forced upon her that unless Alan stood forth and boldly proclaimed the truth the acc.u.mulated guilt--proof would cloud Mortimer's name, perhaps until his death. Even after that his memory might linger as that of a thief.

The evening before Alan had been at Ringwood and Allis had made a final endeavor to get him to clear the other's name by confessing the truth to Crane. On her knees she had pleaded with her brother. The boy had fiercely disclaimed all complicity, protested his own innocence with vehemence, and denounced Mortimer as worse than a thief in having poisoned her mind against him.

In anger Alan had disclosed Mortimer's treachery--as he called it--and crime to their mother. Small wonder that Allis's hour of trial was a dark one. The courage that had enabled her to carry Lauzanne to victory was now tried a thousandfold more severely. It seemed all that was left her, just her courage and faith; they had stood out successfully against all denunciation of Lauzanne, and, with G.o.d's help, they would hold her true to the man she loved.

Even the pace of a snail lands him somewhere finally, and the una.s.sailed Bay, with a premonition of supper hovering obscurely in his lazy mind, at last consented to arrive at Ringwood.

Allis crept to her father like a fearsome child avoiding goblins.

Providentially he had not been initiated into the moral crusade against the iniquitous Mortimer, so the girl clung to him as a drowning person might to a plank of salvation. She longed to tell him everything--of her love for Mortimer, perhaps he had guessed it, for he spoke brave words often of the st.u.r.dy young man who had saved her from Diablo. Perhaps she would tell him if she felt her spirit giving way--it was cruel to stand quite alone--and beseech him, as he had faith in her, to believe in her lover.

Allis went to the tea table by her father's side, fearing to get beyond his hearing; she dreaded her mother's questioning eyes. What could be said in the accused man's defense, or in her own? Nothing; she could only wait.

A square old-fas.h.i.+oned wooden clock on the mantelpiece of the sitting room had just droned off seven mellow hours, when the faint echo of its music was drowned by the crunch of gravel; there was the quick step of somebody coming up the drive; then the wooden steps gave hollow notice.

The visitor's advent was announced again by the bra.s.s knocker on the front door.

”I'll go,” said Allis, as her mother rose. The girl knew who it was that knocked, not because of any sane reason; she simply knew it was Mortimer.

When she opened the door he stepped back hesitatingly. Was he not a criminal--was he not about to leave his position because of theft?

”Come in,” she said, quietly; ”I am glad you have come.”

”Shall I? I just want to speak to you for a minute. I said I would come.

But I can't see anybody--just you, alone.”

”I understand,” she answered. ”Come inside.”

”I am going away,” he began; ”I can't stand it here.”

”You have done nothing--nothing to clear yourself?”

”Nothing.”

”And you won't?”

”No.”

”Is this wise?”

”It is the inevitable.”

They were silent for a little; they were both standing. The girl broke the stillness.

”I am glad you have come, because I can tell you again that I know you are innocent. I know it, because my heart repeats it a thousand times a day. I listen to the small voice and I hear nothing else.”