Part 38 (2/2)

obliged to a.s.soom control on his said demise at Chattanoogy, I naturally found out all about his affairs. To be short, Mrs. Whately, he never had the property he said he had. n.o.body could find the money. There was an awful shortage. You can't understand, but in a word, he was a disgraced, dishonest man--a thief--that's it.”

Mrs. Whately buried her face in her hands and groaned aloud.

”Now, Mrs. Whately, you mustn't take on and you must forget the past.

It's the present day we're livin' in, and the future that's a-comin'.

n.o.body can control what's comin', but me.” He rose up to his five feet and three inches, and swelled to the extent of his power. ”Me.” He tapped his small chest. ”I'll come straight to the end of this thing.

Phil Baronet's been quite a friend here, quite a friend. I've explained to you all about him. Now you know he's left town to keep from bein'

mixed up in some things. They's some business of his father's he was runnin' crooked. You know they say, I heard it out at Fingal's Creek, that he left here on account of a girl he wanted to get rid of. And if they'd talk that way about one girl, they'll say Marjie was doin' wrong to go with him. You've all been friends of the Baronets. I never could see why; but now--well, you know Phil left. Now, it rests with me”--more tapping on that little quart-measure chest--”with me to keep things quiet and save his name from further talk, and save Marjie, too. Many a man, a business man, now, wouldn't have done as I'm doin'. I'll marry Marjie. That saves you from poverty. It saves Irving Whately's name from lastin' disgrace, and it saves Baronet's boy. I can control the men that's against Baronet, in the business matter--some land case--and I know the girl that the talk's all about; and it saves Marjory's name bein' mixed up with this boy of Judge Baronet's.”

Had Judson been before Aunt Candace, she would have thrust him from the door with one lifting of her strong, shapely hand. Dollie Gentry would have cracked his head with her rolling pin before she let him go. Cris Mead's wife would have chased him clear to the Neosho; she was Bill Mead's own mother when it came to whooping things; but poor, gentle Mrs.

Whately sat dumb and dazed in a grief-stricken silence.

”Give me your consent, and the thing's done. Marjie's only twenty.

She'll come to me for safety soon as she knows what you do. She'll have to, to save them that's dearest to her. You and her father and her friends.h.i.+p for the Baronets ought to do somethin'; besides, Marjie needs somebody to look after her. She's a pretty girl and everybody runs after her. She'd be spoiled. And she's fond of me, always was fond of me. I don't know what it is about some men makes girls act so; but now, there's Lettie Conlow, she's just real fond of me.” (Oh, the popinjay!) ”You'll say yes, and say it now.” There was a ring of authority in his last words, to which Mrs. Whately had insensibly come to yield.

She sat for a long time trying to see a way out of all this tangled web of her days. At last, she said slowly: ”Marjie isn't twenty-one, but she's old for her years. I won't command her. If she will consent, so will I, and I'll do all I can.”

Judson was jubilant. He clapped his hands and giggled hysterically.

”Good enough, good enough! I'll let it be quietly understood we are engaged, and I'll manage the rest. You must use all the influence you can with her. Leave nothing undid that you can do. Oh, joy! You'll excuse my pleasure, Mrs. Whately. The prize is as good as mine right now, though it may take a few months even to get it all completely settled. I'll go slow and quiet and careful. But I've won.”

Could Mrs. Whately have seen clear into the man's cruel, cunning little mind, she would have been unutterably shocked at the ugly motives contending there. But she couldn't see. She was made for suns.h.i.+ne and quiet ways. She could never fathom the gloom. It was from her father that Marjie inherited all that strong will and courage and power to walk as bravely in the shadows as in the light, trusting and surefooted always.

Judson waited only until some minor affairs had been considered, and then he rose to go.

”I'm so sure of the outcome now,” he said gleefully, ”I'll put a crimp in some stories right away; and I'll just let it be known quietly at once that the matter's settled, then Marjie can't change it,” he added mentally. ”And you're to use all your influence. Good-evening, my dear Mrs. W. It'll soon be another name I may have for you.”

Meanwhile, Marjie sat up on ”Rockport,” looking out over the landscape, wrapped in the autumn peace. Every inch of the cliff-side was sacred to her. The remembrance of happy childhood and the sweet and tender memories of love's young dream had hallowed all the ground and made the view of the whole valley a part of the life of the days gone by. The woodland along the Neosho was yellow and bronze and purple in the afternoon suns.h.i.+ne, the waters swept along by verdant banks, for the fall rains had given life to the brown gra.s.ses of August. Far up the river, the shapely old cottonwood stood in the pride of its autumn gold, outlined against a clear blue sky, while all the prairie lay in seas of golden haze about it. On the gray, jagged rocks of the cliff, the blood-red leaves of the vines made a rich warmth of color.

For a long time Marjie sat looking out over the valley. Its beauty appealed to her now as it had done in the gladsome days, only the appeal touched other depths of her nature and fitted her sadder mood. At last the thought of what might have been filled her eyes with tears.

”I'll go down to our post-office, as O'mie suggested,” she declared to herself. ”Oh, anything to break away from this hungry longing for what can never be!”

The little hidden cleft was vine-covered now, and the scarlet leaves clung in a lacework about the gray stone under which the crevice ran back clean and dry for an arm's length. It was a reflex action, and not a choice of will, that led Marjie to thrust her hand in as she had done so often before. Only cold stone received her touch. She recalled O'mie's picture of Lettie, short-necked, stubby Lettie, down there in the dark trying to stretch her fat arm to the limit of the crevice, and as she thought, Marjie slipped her own arm to its full length, down the cleft. Something touched her hand. She turned it in her fingers. It was paper--a letter--and she drew it out. A letter--my letter--the long, loving message I had penned to her on the night of the party at Anderson's. Clear and white, as when I put it there that moonlit midsummer night, when I thrust it in too far for my little girl to find without an effort.

Marjie carried it up to ”Rockport” and sat down. She had no notion of when it was put there. She only knew it was from my pen.

”It's his good-bye for old times' sake,” she mused.

And then she read it, slowly at first, as one would drink a last cup of water on the edge of a desert, for this was a voice from the old happy life she had put all away now. I had done better than I dreamed of doing in that writing. Here was Rachel Melrose set in her true light, the possibility of a visit, and the possibility of her words and actions, just as direct as a prophecy of what had really happened. Oh! it cleared away every reason for doubt. Even the Rockport of Rachel's rapturous memory, I declared I detested because only our ”Rockport” meant anything to me. And then she read of her father's dying message. It was the first time she had known of that, and the letter in her trembling hands pulsed visibly with her strong heart-throbs. Then came the closing words:

”Good-night, my dear, dear girl, my wife that is to be, and know now and always there is for me only one love. In sunny ways or shadow-checkered paths, whatever may come, I cannot think other than as I do now. You are life of my life; and so again, good-night.”

The sun was getting low in the west when Marjie with s.h.i.+ning face came slowly down Cliff Street toward her home. Near the gate she met my father. His keen eyes caught something of the Marjie he had loved to see. Something must have happened, he knew, and his heartbeats quickened at the thought. Down the street he had met Judson with head erect walking with a c.o.c.ksure step.

The next day the word was brought directly to him that Amos Judson and Marjory Whately were engaged to be married.

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