Part 53 (1/2)

”You have, Asa,” came the chorused response. ”We're hearkenin' ter ye, Asa.”

”All right,” snapped back the new arrival. ”What I have need to say I kin say right speedily. Quit it! Go home and leave me to pay off my own scores!” He crossed to Boone and laid a hand on his shoulder, and standing that way, he added: ”The man that says this boy lays down is a liar. As for me, I stands by what _he_ says! Ef our own folks don't know who their strong men are, our enemies know--an' seek to hire 'em kilt.

Go home an' wait till we calls on ye!”

An hour later Boone stood alone with Anne in the room where he had been overthrown and rehabilitated.

”I ought to take you across to Aunt Judy's house,” he told her in a weary voice. ”I don't suppose you should be left here--with me--like this--for what's left of the night. Until now there's been company enough.”

The girl shook her head wearily. ”I'd fall off of a horse,” she said.

”I'm too tired to ride. I'm going back up those stairs--”

The man moved a step forward.

”Joe Gregory is coming back,” he explained, ”but it will probably be near to dawn before he gets here.”

As she reached the stairway she halted impulsively with her hand on the latch, and stood poised there with an expression of baffling, half-eager expectancy. The sensitive beauty of her face and the slender grace of her body seemed for a moment to cast aside their fatigue and to invite him, but Boone stood resolutely the width of the room away.

Had he known it, that was a moment in which he might have grasped a more vital rehabilitation. Had he then offered again the explanation for which he had once been denied opportunity, her readiness to hear him would have been eager. At that moment she was once more his for the taking. He need only have extended his arms and said, ”Come!” and she would have responded instantly and gladly. She was receptive, stirred, but one thing her pride still inhibited. She could not make the advances.

Boone let his moment pa.s.s; let it pa.s.s unrecognized with the blindness of life's perverse coincidence. At that precise instant, a mood was upon him which was no intrinsic reflection of his own spirit, but rather the reflection of all the stormy transitions of the night.

She had seen him at a crisis when he had been on the verge of collapse like a bridge whose centre rests upon a span of flawed steel. True, he had not actually collapsed, but, save for her intervention, he would have done so. Now his mortification withered him and perversely expressed itself in resentment against her--for having witnessed his shame.

He owed her everything--so much that his self-respect was bankrupted--and if he could have hated her, he would have hated her just then. He even fancied that he did. He saw in her a cold, impersonal deity, consciously superior to himself and secretly triumphant over his weakness. So he not only let the moment pa.s.s, but he rebuffed its unspoken invitation.

”I owe you everything,” he said with the cold ungraciousness of a grudging confession. ”If you hadn't come, I'd have had a h.e.l.l in my conscience tomorrow. I'd have been a murderer. I even tried to force you to admit that it was for me, myself, that you cared enough to do it. I'm ashamed of that.... It won't happen again.” He paused and his voice was bitterly edged when he went on. ”I begged for the chance to explain things--when there was still time. You refused to hear me. Now I wouldn't explain if _you_ begged _me_ to--That's over, but I acknowledge the debt I owe you--for tonight. It's a heavier debt than any man can stand in and keep his self-respect.”

Morgan and Anne had been to the theatre, and when they came back to the house the lawyer had drawn from his pocket a small package, and while Anne opened it he looked on. It was an engagement ring, and quite worthy of his connoisseur's selection. But when he put out his hand to take hers, she drew it back and spoke impulsively:

”Before you put that on--Morgan--there's something I must tell you.”

He smiled his acquiescence and waited with the emerald set emblem in his fingers, while, in the manner of one who has determined upon a recital that does not flow easily, she began. She filled in for him the events of the two days of her recent and somewhat mysterious absence, and its cause.

Morgan had learned to accept with a certain philosophy the impulse-governed life of the girl who had promised to marry him. If Anne had been less uniquely her own unstereotyped self, she would not have been the fascinating person who had captured his fastidious admiration.

While she talked, his face grew sober, but he refrained from any interruption, and at last she looked up and said simply: ”I thought it was best to tell you all about it now. I went--and that's where I was--and for hours of that ghastly night--there was no one else there--but just the two of us.”

”I see,” said Morgan slowly. She waited for him to supplement the two words, and when he failed to do so, she went on:

”I thought maybe that--knowing about that--you might not want to--” She broke off, and her eyes falling on the ring, finished the sentence.

Morgan shook his head. His usual self-possession was a shade shaken, but he responded definitely, ”I do.”

”Of course,” she conscientiously explained, ”when I went, I didn't know what lay ahead, but I took the chances and--that's what it's important for you to understand, Morgan--even if it were to do over--and I knew it all, I'd go again.”

”Yes,” said her fiance slowly, ”I suppose so.” He paused a moment before he finished. ”Naturally, it's not a thing that I'd have chosen to have occur, but it was the only thing you could do--and be yourself.”