166CHAPTER XIII
Northrup decided to turn back at once to his own place in life after that revealing afternoon with Mary-Clare. He was not in any sense deceived by conditions. He had, after twenty-four hours, been able to classify the situation and reduce it to its proper proportions. As it stood, it had, he acknowledged, been saved by the rare and unusual qualities of Mary-Clare. But it could not bear the stress and strain of repeated tests. Unless he meant to be a fool and fill his future with remorse, for he was decent and sane, he could do nothing but go away and let the incidents of King’s Forest bear sanctifying fruits, not draughts of wormwood.
Something rather big had happened to him––he must not permit it to become small. He recalled Mary-Clare’s words and face and a great tenderness swept over him.
“Poor little girl,” he thought, “part of a commonplace, dingy tragedy. What is there for her? But what could I have done for her, in God’s name, to better her lot? She saw it clear enough.”
No, there was nothing to do but turn his back on the whole thing and go home! Shorn of the spiritual and uplifting qualities, the situation was bald and dangerous. He must be practical and wise, but deciding to leave and actually leaving were different matters.
The weather jeered at him by its glorious warmth and colour. Itheldday after day with occasional sharp storms that ended in greater beauty. The thought of the city made Northrup shudder. He tried to work: it was still warm enough in the deserted chapel to write, but he knew that he was accomplishing nothing. There was a gap in the story––the woman part. Every time Northrup came to that he felt167as if he were laying a wet cloth over the soft clay until he had time finally to mould it. And he kept from any chance of meeting Mary-Clare.
“I’ll wait until this marvellous spell of weather breaks,” he compromised with his lesser––or better––self. “Then I’ll beat it!”
Looking to this he asked Uncle Peter what the chances were of a cold spell.
“There was a time”––Peter sniffed the air. He was husking golden corn by the kitchen fire––“when I could calculate about the weather, but since the weather man has got to meddling he’s messed things considerable. He’s put in the Middle States, and what-not, until it’s like doing subtraction and division––and by that time the change of weather is on you.”
Northrup laughed.
“Well,” he said, getting up and stretching, “I think I’ll take a turn before I go to bed. Bank the fire, Uncle Peter; I may prowl late.”
Heathcote asked no questions, but those prowls of Northrup’s were putting his simple faith to severe tests. Peter was above gossip, but when it swirled too near him he was bound to watch out.
“All right, son,” he muttered, and ran his hand through his bristling hair.
The night was a dark one. A soft darkness it was, that held no wind and only a hint of frost. Stepping quickly along the edge of the lake, Northrup felt that he was being absorbed by the still shadows and the sensation pleased and comforted him. He was not aware of thought, but thought was taking him into control, as the night was. There would be moments of seeming blank and then a conclusion! A vivid, final conclusion. Of course Mary-Clare occupied these moments of seeming mental inaction. Northrup now wanted to set her free from––what?
“That young beast of a husband!” So much for that conclusion. If the end had come between him and Mary-Clare, Northrup wondered if he could free her from Rivers.
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“What for?”
This brought a hurtling mass of conclusions.
“No man has a right to get a stranglehold on a woman. If she has, as the old darkey said, lost her taste for him, why in thunder should he want to cram himself down her throat?”
This was more common sense than moral or legal, and Northrup bent his head and plunged along. He walked on, believing that he was master of his soul and his actions at last, while, in reality, he was but part of the Scheme of Things and was acting under orders.
Presently, he imagined that he had decided all along to go to the Point and have a talk with Twombley. So he kept straight ahead.
Twombley delighted his idle hours. The man, apparently, never went to bed until daylight, and his quaint unmorality was as diverting as that of an impish boy.
“Now, sir,” he had confided to Northrup at a recent meeting, “there’s Peneluna Sniff. Good cook; good manager. I held off while she played up to old Sniff, womenarecurious! But now that woman ought to be utilized legitimate-like. She’s running to waste and throwing away her talents on that young Rivers as is giving this here Point the creeps. Peneluna and me together could find things out!”
Northrup, hurrying on, believed there was no better way to drive off the blue devils that were torturing him than to pass the evening with Twombley.
Just then he heard quick, light footsteps coming toward him. He hid behind some bushes by the path and waited.
The oncomer was Larry Rivers on his way from the Point. His hat was pulled down over his face and his hands were plunged in his pockets. A lighted cigar in his mouth illumined his features––Larry rarely needed his hands to manipulate his cigar; a shift seemed to be all that was essential, until the ashes fell and the cigar was almost finished.
Larry walked on, and when he was beyond sound Northrup proceeded on his way.
The Point seemed wrapped in decent slumber. A light169frankly burned in Twombley’s hovel, but for the rest, darkness!
Oddly enough, Northrup passed Twombley’s place without halting, and presently found himself nearing Rivers’s. This did not surprise him. He had quite forgotten his plan.
It was seeing Larry that had suggested this new move, probably; at any rate, Northrup was curiously interested in the fact that Larry was headed away from the Point and toward the yellow house.
The loose rubbish and garbage presently got into Northrup’s consciousness and made him think, as they always did, of Maclin’s determination to get possession of the ugly place.
“It is the very devil!” he muttered, almost tumbling over a smelly pile. “What’s that?” He crouched in the darkness. His eyes were so accustomed to the gloom now that he saw quite distinctly the door of Peneluna’s shack open, close softly, and someone tiptoeing toward Rivers’s shanty. Keeping at a distance, Northrup followed and when he was about twenty feet behind the other prowler, he saw that it was Jan-an and that she was cautiously going from window to window of Larry’s empty house, peeping, listening, and then finally muttering and whimpering.
“Well, what in thunder!” Northrup decided to investigate but keep silent as long as he could.
A baby in the distance broke into a cry; a man’s rough voice stilled it with a threat and then all was quiet once more.
The next thing that occurred was the amazing sight of Jan-an nimbly climbing into the window of Larry’s kitchen! Jan-an had either pried the sash up or Larry had been careless. Northrup went up to the house and listened. Jan-an was moving rapidly about inside and presently she lighted a lamp, and through the slit between the shade and the window ledge Northrup could watch the girl’s movements.
Jan-an wore an old coat, a man’s, over a coarse nightgown; her hair straggled down her back; her vacant face was twitching and worried, but a decent kind of dignity touched it, too. She was bent upon a definite course, but was confused and uncertain as to details.
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Over the papers scattered on the table Jan-an bent like a hungry beast of prey. Her long fingers clutched the loose sheets; her devouring eyes scanned them, compared them with others, while over and again a muttered curse escaped the girl’s lips.
Northrup took a big chance. He went to the door and tapped.
He heard a quick, frightened move toward the window––Jan-an was escaping as she had entered. As the sash was raised, Northrup was close to the window and the girl reeled back as she saw him.
“Jan-an,” he said quietly, controllingly, “let me in. You can trust me. Let me in.”
Poor Jan-an was in sore need of someone in whom she might trust and she could not afford to waste time. She raised the sash again, climbed in, and then opened the door. Northrup entered and locked the door after him.
“Now, then,” he said, sitting opposite to the girl who dropped, rather than seated herself, in her old place. “Jan-an, what are you up to?”
To his surprise, the girl burst into tears.
“My God,” she moaned, “what did I have feelin’s for––and no sense? I can’t read!” she blurted. “I can’t read.”
This was puzzling, but Northrup saw that the girl had confidence in him––a desperate, unknowing confidence that had grown slowly.
“Why do you want to read, Jan-an?” he asked in a low, kindly tone.
“I know you ain’t his friend, are you?” The wet, pitiful face was lifted. Old fears and distrust rose grimly.
“Whose?”
“Maclin’s, ole divil-man Maclin?”
“Certainly not! You know better than to ask that, Jan-an.”
“Nor his––Larry Rivers?”
“No, I am not his friend.”
Thus reassured once more, Jan-an ventured nearer:
“You don’t aim to hurt––her?”
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“Whom do you mean?” Northrup was perplexed by the growing intelligence in the face across the table. It was like a slow revealing of a groping power.
“I mean them––Mary-Clare and Noreen.”
“Hurt them? Why, Jan-an, I’d do anything to help them, make them safe and happy.” Northrup felt as if he and the girl opposite were rapidly becoming accomplices in a tense plot. “What does all this mean?”
“As God seeing yer, yer mean that?” Jan-an leaned forward.
“God seeing me! Yes, Jan-an.”
“Yer ain’t hanging around her to do her––dirt?”
“Good Lord, no!” Northrup recoiled. Apparently new anxiety was overcoming the girl.
Then, by a sudden dash, Jan-an swept the untidy mass of papers over to him; she abdicated her last stronghold.
“What’s them?” she demanded huskily. Northrup brought the smelly kerosene lamp nearer and as he read he was conscious of Jan-an’s mutterings.
“Stealing her letters––what is letters, anyway? And I’ve counted and watched––he’s took one to her to-night. Just one. One he has made. Writing day in and out––tearing up writing––sneaking and lying. God! And new letters looking like old ones, till I’m fair crazy.”
For a few moments Northrup lost the sound of Jan-an’s guttural whimpers, then he caught the words:
“And her crying and wanting the letters. Just letters!” Northrup again became absorbed.
He placed certain old sheets on one side of the table; newer sheets on the other; some half sheets in the middle. It was like an intricate puzzle, and the same one that Maclin had recently tackled.
That he was meddling with another’s property and reading another’s letters did not seem to occur to Northrup. He was held by a determined force that was driving him on and an intense interest that justified any means at his disposal.
“Some day I will read my old doctor’s letters to you––I have kept them all!”
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Northrup looked up. Almost he believed Jan-an had voiced the words, but they had been spoken days ago by Mary-Clare during one of those illuminating talks of theirs and hereweresome old letters of the doctor’s. Were these Mary-Clare’s letters? Why were they here and in this state?
Suddenly Northrup’s face stiffened. The old, yellowed letters were, apparently, from Doctor Rivers to his son! But there were other letters on bits of fresh paper, the handwriting identical, or nearly so. Northrup’s more intelligent eye saw differences. The more recent letters were, evidently, exercises; one improved on the other; in some cases parts of the letters were repeated. All these Northrup sorted and laid in neat piles.
“She set a store by them old letters,” Jan-an was rambling along. “I’d have taken them back to her, but I ’clar, ’fore God, I don’t know which is which, I’m that cluttered. Why did he want to pest her by taking them and then making more and more?”
“I’m trying to find out.” Northrup spoke almost harshly. He wanted to quiet the girl.
The last scrap of paper had been torn from an old, greasy bag and bore clever imitation. It was the last copy, Northrup believed, of what Jan-an said he had just carried away with him.
Northrup grew hot and cold. He read the words and his brain reeled. It was an appeal, or supposed to be one, from a dead man to one whom he trusted in a last emergency.
“So he’s this kind of a scoundrel!” muttered Northrup, dazed by the blinding shock of the fear that became, moment by moment, more definite. “And he’s taken the thing to her in order to get money.”
Northrup could grope along, but he could not see clearly. By temperament and training he had evolved a peculiar sensitiveness in relation to inanimate things. If he became receptive and passive, articles which he handled or fixed his eyes upon often transmitted messages for him.
So, now, disregarding poor Jan-an, who rambled on, Northrup gazed at the letters near him, and held close the brown-paper173scrap which was, he believed, the final copy before the finished production which was undoubtedly being borne to Mary-Clare now. Rivers would have a scene with his wife in the yellow house. With no one to interfere! Northrup started affrightedly, then realized that before he could get to the crossroads whatever was to occur would have occurred.
Larry would return to the shack. There was every evidence that he had not departed finally. Believing that no one would disturb his place so late at night he had taken a chance and––been caught by the last person in the world one would have suspected.
As an unconscious sleuth Jan-an was dramatic. Northrup let his eyes fall upon the girl with new significance. She had given him the power to set Mary-Clare free!
Her dull, tear-stained face was turned hopefully to him; her straight, coarse hair hung limply on her shoulders––the old coat had slipped away and the ugly nightgown but partly hid the thin, scraggy body. Lost to all self-consciousness, the poor creature was but an evidence of faith and devotion to them who had been kind to her. Something of nobility crowned the girl. Northrup went around to her and pulled the old coat close under her chin.
“It’s all right, Jan-an,” he comforted, patting the unkempt head.
“Are them the letters he stole?”
“Some of them, yes, Jan-an.”
“Kin I take ’em back to her?”
“Not to-night. I think Rivers will take them back.”
“S’pose he won’t.”
“He will.”
“You, you’re going to fetch him one?” The instinct of the savage rose in the girl.
“If necessary, yes!” Northrup shared the primitive instinct at that moment. “And now you trot along home, my girl, and don’t open your lips to any one.”
“And you?”
“I’ll wait for Mr. Larry Rivers here!”
“My God!” Jan-an burst forth. Then: “There’s a sizable174log back of the stove. Yer can fetch a good one with that.”
“Thanks, Jan-an. Go now.”
Jan-an rose stiffly and shuffled to the door, unlocked it, and went into the blackness outside.
Then Northrup sat down and prepared to wait.
The stove was rusty and cold, but Rivers had evidently had a huge fire on the hearth during the day. Now that he noticed, Northrup saw that there were scraps of burned paper fluttering like wings of evil omens stricken in their flight.
He went over to the hearth, poked the ashes, and discovered life. He laid on wood, slowly feeding the hungry sparks, then he took his old place by the table, blew out the light of the lamp and in the dark room, shot by the flares of the igniting logs, he resigned himself to what lay before.
Rivers might return with Maclin. This was a new possibility and disconcerting; still it must be met.
“I may kill a flock of birds by one interview,” Northrup grimly thought and then drifted off on Maclin’s trail. The ever-recurring wonder about the Point was intensified; he must leave that still in doubt.
“I’ll get the damned thing in my own control, if I can,” he concluded at length. “Buy it up for safety; keep still about it and watch how Maclin reacts when he knocks against the fact, eventually. That will make things safe for the present.”
But to own the Point meant to hold on to King’s Forest just when he had decided to turn from it forever––after setting Mary-Clare free.
The sense of a spiritual overlord for an instant daunted Northrup. It was humiliating to realize how he had been treading, all along, one course while believing he was going another. And then––it was close upon midnight and vitality ran sluggish––Northrup became part of one of those curious mental experiences that go far to prove how narrow the boundary is that lies between the things we understand and those that are yet to be understood.
For some moments––or was it hours?––Northrup was not conscious of time or place; not even conscious of himself as175a body; he seemed to be a condition, over which a contest of emotions swept. He was not asleep. He recalled later, that he had kept his eyes on the fire; had once attended to it, casting on a heavy log that dimmed its ferocious ardour.
Where Jan-an had recently sat, struggling with her doubts and fears, Mary-Clare seemed to be. And yet it was not so much Mary-Clare, visually imagined, as that which had gone into the making of the woman.
The black, fierce night of her birth; her isolated up-bringing with a man whose mentality had overpowered his wisdom; the contact with Larry Rivers; the forced marriage and the determined effort to live up to a bargain made in the dark, endured in the dark. It came to Northrup, drifting as he was, that a man or woman can go through slime and torment and really escape harm. The old, fiery furnace legend was based on an eternal truth; that and the lions’ den! It put a new light on that peculiar quality of Mary-Clare. She had never been burnt or wounded––not the real woman of her. That explained the maddening thing about her––her aloofness. What would she be now when she stood alone? For she was going to stand alone! Then Northrup felt new sensations driving across that state which really was himself shorn of prejudice and limitations. His relation to Mary-Clare was changed!
There were primitive forces battling for expression in his lax hour. Setting the woman free from bondage––what for?
That was the world-old call. Not free for herself, but free that another might claim her. He, sitting there, wanted her. She had not altered that by her heroism. Who would help her free herself, for herself? Who would cut her loose and make no claims? Would it be possible to help her and not put her under obligation? Could any one trust a higher Power and go one’s way unasking, refusing everything? Was there such a thing as freedom for a woman when two men were so welded into her life?
Northrup set his teeth hard together. In the stillness he had his fight! And just then a shuffling outside brought him back to reality.
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Rivers came in, not noticing the unlocked door; he had been drinking. Northrup’s eyes, accustomed to the gloom, marked his unsteady gait; smiled as Larry, unconscious of his presence, sank into a chair––the one in which Jan-an had sat––reached out toward the lamp, struck a match, lighted the wick and then, appalled, fixed his eyes upon Northrup!
177CHAPTER XIV
“Hello, Rivers! I’m something of a surprise, eh?”
“Hell!” The word escaped Rivers as might a cry that followed a stunning blow.
A guilty person, taken by surprise, always imagines the worst. Rivers knew what he believed the man before him knew, he also believed much that Maclin had insinuated, or stated as fact, and he was thoroughly frightened and at a disadvantage.
His nerve was shattered by the recent interview with Mary-Clare; the earlier one with Maclin. Drink was befuddling him. It was like being in quicksand. He dared not move, but he felt himself sinking.
“Oh! don’t take it too seriously, Rivers.” Northrup felt a decent sympathy for the fellow across the table; his fear was agonizing. “We might as well get to an understanding without a preamble. I reckon there are a lot of things we can pass over while we tackle the main job.”
“You damned–––” Larry spluttered the words, but Northrup raised his hand as if staying further waste of time. He hated to take too great an advantage of a caged man.
“Of course, Rivers,” he said, “I wouldn’t have broken into your house and read your letters if there wasn’t something rather big-sized at stake. So do not switch off on a siding––let’s get through with this.”
The tone and words were like a dash of icy water; Rivers moistened his lips and sank, mentally, into that position he loathed and yet could not escape. Someone was again getting control of him. He might writhe and strain, but he was caught once more––caught! caught!
“In God’s name,” he whispered, “who are you, anyway? What are you after?”
“That’s what I’m here to tell you, Rivers.”
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“Go ahead then, go ahead!” Larry again moistened his dry lips––he felt that he was choking. He was ready to turn state’s evidence as soon as he saw an opportunity. Debonair and clever, crafty and unfaithful, Larry had but one clear thought––he would not go behind bars again if one avenue of escape remained open!
Maclin––Maclin’s secret business, loomed high, but at that moment Mary-Clare held no part in his desperate fear.
“What do you want?”
Then, as if falling into his mood, Northrup said calmly:
“First, I want the Point.”
Larry’s jaw dropped; but he felt convinced that it was Maclin or he who faced destruction and he meant to let Maclin suffer now as Maclin had once permitted him to suffer. If there was dirty work at the mines Maclin should pay. That was justice––Maclin had made a tool of him.
“I don’t own the Point.” Rivers heard his own voice as if from a distance. He had Mary-Clare’s word that she would help him; the letter had done its overpowering work, but he had left confession and detail until later. Mary-Clare had pleaded for time, and he had come from her with his business unsettled.
“I think after we’ve finished with our talk you can prevail upon your wife to sell the Point to me and say nothing about it.”
Rivers clutched the edge of the table. To his inflamed brain Northrup seemed to know all and everything––he dared not haggle.
“Who are you?” he repeated stammeringly. “What right have you to break into my place and read my papers? All I want to know is, what right have you? I cannot be expected to––to come to terms unless I know that. I should think you might see that.” The bravado was so pitiful and weak that Northrup barely repressed a laugh.
“I don’t want to turn the screws, Rivers,” he said; “and of course you have a right to an answer to your question. I want the Point because I don’t want Maclin to have it. Why he wants it, I’ll find out after. I’m illegally demanding179things from you, but there are times when I believe such a course is justifiable in order to save everybody trouble. You could kick me out, or try to, but you won’t. You could have the law on me––but I don’t believe you will want it. Of course you know thatIknow pretty well what I am about or I would not put myself in your power. So let’s cut out the theatricals. Rivers, this Maclin isn’t any good. Just how rotten he is can be decided later. He’s making a fool of you and you’ll get a fool’s pay. You know this. I’m going to help you, Rivers, if I can. You need all the time there is for––getting away!”
Larry’s face was livid. He was prepared to betray Maclin, but the old power held him captive.
“I dare not!” he groaned.
“Oh! yes, you dare. Brace up, Rivers. There is more than one way to tackle a bad job.” Then, so suddenly that it took Rivers’s breath, Northrup swept everything from sight by asking calmly: “What did you do with that letter you manufactured?”
So utterly unexpected was this attack, so completely aside from what seemed to be at stake, that Rivers concluded everything was known; that the very secrets of his innermost thoughts were in this man’s knowledge. The quicksands all but engulfed him. With unblinking eyes he regarded Northrup as though hypnotized.
“I took it to her,” he gasped.
“Your wife?”
“Yes.”
“She does not suspect?”
“No.”
“What did your wife say when she read the letter?”
“She’s going to help me out.”
“I see. All right, you’re going to tell her that you want the Point and then you’re going to sell it to me. Heathcote can fix this up in a few days––the money I pay you will get you out of Maclin’s reach. If he makes a break for you, I’ll grab him. I guess he’s susceptible to scare, too, if the truth were known.”
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“My God! I want a drink.” Larry looked as if he did; he rose and reeled over to the closet.
Northrup regarded his man closely and his fingers reached out and drew the scattered papers nearer.
“Take only enough to stiffen you up, a swallow or two, Rivers.”
Larry obeyed mechanically and when he returned to his chair he was firmer.
“Rivers, I’m going to give you a chance by way of the only decent course open to you––or to me. God knows, it’s smudgy enough at the best and crooked, but it’s all I can muster. I don’t expect you to understand me, or my motives––I’m going to talk as man to man, stripped bare. In the future you can work it out any way you’re able to. What I want at the present is to clear the rubbish away that’s cluttering the soul of a woman. That’s enough and you can draw what damned conclusions you want to.”
There was an ugly gleam in Larry’s eyes. Men stripped bare show brutish traits, but he felt the straps that were binding him close.
“Go on!” he growled.
“You are to get your wife to give you this Point, Rivers. She may not want to, but you must force her a bit there by confessing to her the whole damned truth from start to finish about––these!”
Both men looked at the mass of papers.
“What all these things represent, you know.” Larry did not move; he believed that Northrup knew, too. Knew of that year back in the past when his trick had been his ruin. “And your simply getting out of sight won’t do. Your wife has got to be free––free, do you understand? So long as she doesn’t know the truth she’d have pity for you––women are like that––she’s going to know all there is to know, and then she’ll fling you off!”
In the hidden depths of Rivers’s nature there heaved and roared something that, had Northrup not held the reins, would have meant battle to the death. It was not outraged honour, love, or justice that blinded and deafened Larry; it181was simply the brutish resentment of the savage who, bound and gagged, watches a strong foe take all that he had believed was his by right of conquest. At that moment he hated Mary-Clare as he hated Northrup.
“You damned scoundrel!” he gasped. “And if I do what you suggest, what then?” He meant to force Northrup as far as he dared.
A look that Rivers was never to forget spread over Northrup’s face; it was the look of one who had lived through experiences he knew he could not make clear. The impossibility of making Rivers comprehend him presently overcame Northrup. He spread his hands wide and said hopelessly:
“Nothing!”
“Like hell, nothing!” Larry was desperate and brutal. Under all his bravado rang the note of defeat; terror, and a barren hope of escape that he loathed while he clung to it. “I don’t know what Maclin’s game is––I’ve played fair. Whatever you’ve got on him can’t touch me, when the truth’s out.” Rivers was breathing hard; the sweat stood on his forehead. “But when it comes to selling your wife for hush money–––”
“Stop that!” Northrup’s face was livid. He wanted to throttle Rivers but he could not shake off the feeling of pity for the man he had so tragically in his grip.
There was a heavy pause. It seemed weighted with tangible things. Hate; pity; distrust; helpless truth. They became alive and fluttering. Then truth alone was supreme.
“I told you, Rivers, that I knew you couldn’t believe me––you cannot. Partly this is due to life, as we men know it; partly to your interpretation of it, but at least I owe it to you and myself to speak the truth and let truth take care of itself. By the code that is current in the world, I might claim all that you believe I am after, for I think your wife might learn to love me––I know I love her. If I set her free from you, permit her to see you as you are, in her shock and relief she might turn to me and I might take her and, God helping me, make a safe place for her; give her what her hungry soul craves, and still feel myself a good sort. That would be the182common story––the thing that might once have happened. But, Rivers, you don’t know me and you don’t know––your wife. I’ve only caught the glimmer of her, but that has caused me to grow––humble. She’s got to be free, because that is justice, and you and I must give it to her. When you free her––it’s up to me not to cage her!” Northrup found expression difficult––it all sounded so utterly hopeless with that doubting, sneering face confronting him; and his late distrust of himself––menacing.
“Besides, your wife has her own ideals. That’s hard for us men to understand. Ideals quite detached from us; from all that we might like to believe is good for us. I have my own life, Rivers. Frankly, I was tempted to turn my back on it and with courage set sail for a new port. I had contemplated that, but I’m going back to it and, by God’s help, live it!”
And now Northrup’s face twitched. He waited a moment and then went hopelessly on:
“What the future holds––who knows? Life is a thundering big thing, Rivers, if we play it square, and I’m going to play it square as it’s given me to see it. You don’t believe me?” Almost a wistfulness rang in the words. Larry leaned back and laughed a hollow, ugly laugh.
“Believe you?” he said. “Hell, no!”
“I thought you couldn’t.” Northrup got up.
Around the edges of the lowered shades, a gray, drear light gave warning of coming day. The effect of Larry’s last drink was wearing off––he looked near the breaking point.
“Rivers, I’ll make a pact with you. Set your wife free––in my way. If you do that, I’ll leave the place; never see her again unless a higher power than yours or mine decrees otherwise in the years on ahead. Take your last chance, man, to do the only decent thing left you to do: start afresh somewhere else. Forget it all. I know this sounds devilish easy and I know it’s devilish hard, but”––and here the iron was driven into Rivers’s consciousness––“either you or I set Mary-Clare free before”––he hesitated; he wanted to give all that he humanly could––“before another forty-eight hours.”
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Larry felt the cold perspiration start on his forehead; his stomach grew sick.
Faint and fear-filled, he seemed to feel Maclin after him; Mary-Clare confronting him, smileless, terrifying. On the other hand he saw freedom; money; a place in which he could breathe, once more, with Maclin’s hands off his throat and Mary-Clare’s coldness forgotten.
“I’ll go to her; I’ll do your hell-work, but give me another day.” He gritted his teeth.
“Rivers, this is Tuesday. On Friday you must be gone, and remember this: I’ve got it in my power to set your wife free and imprison you and I’ll not hesitate to do it if you try any tricks. I’d advise you to keep clear of Maclin and leave whiskey alone. You’ll need all the power of concentration you can summon.” Then Northrup turned to the table and gathered up the scattered papers.
“What–––” Larry put out a trembling hand.
“I’ll take charge of these,” Northrup said. “I am going to give them to the Heathcotes. They’ll keep them with the other papers belonging to your wife.”
“Curse you!”
“Good morning, Rivers! I mean it, good morning! You won’t believe this either, but it’s so. For the sake of your wife and your little girl, I wish you well. When you send word to the inn that you are ready for the business deal I’ll have the money for you.”
Then Northrup opened the door and stepped out into the chill light of the coming day. He shivered and stumbled over a mass of rubbish. A clock struck in a quiet house.
“Five o’clock,” counted Northrup, and plunging his hands in his pockets he made his way to Twombley’s shack.
184CHAPTER XV
Kathryn Morris had her plans completed, and if the truth were known she had never felt better pleased with herself––and she was not utterly depraved, either.
She was far more the primitive female than was Mary-Clare. She was simply claiming what she devoutly believed was her own; reclaiming it, rather, for she sagely concluded that on this runaway trip Northrup was in great danger and only the faith and love of a good woman could save him! Kathryn believed herself good and noble.
Mary-Clare had her Place in which she had been fed through many lonely, yearning years, but Kathryn had no such sanctuary. The dwelling-places of her fellow creatures were good enough for her and she never questioned the codes that governed them––though sometimes she evaded them!
After her talk with Helen Northrup, Kathryn did a deal of thinking, but she moved cautiously. She had never forgotten the address on Northrup’s letter to his mother and she believed he was still there. She again looked up road maps, located King’s Forest, and made some clever calculations. She could go in the motor. The autumn was just the time for such a trip. It would be easy to satisfy her aunt, Kathryn very well knew. The mere statement that she was going to meet Northrup and return with him would account for everything and relieve the situation existing at present with Sandy Arnold in daily evidence. “And if Brace is not playing in some messy puddle in his old Forest, I can get on his trail from there,” she reasoned secretly.
But, for some uncanny cause, Kathryn was confident that Northrupwasat his first address. It was so like him to creep into a hole and be very dramatic and secretive. It was his185temperament, Kathryn felt, and she steeled herself against him.
On the morning that Northrup staggered over the rubbish of Hunter’s Point toward Twombley’s, Kathryn took her place in her limousine––her nice little travelling bag at her feet––and viewed with complacency the back of her Japanese chauffeur who had absorbed and digested all her directions and would be, henceforth, a well-oiled, safe-running part of the machinery, without curiosity or opinions.
They stopped for luncheon at a comfortable road-house, rested for an hour, and then went on. It was mid-afternoon when the yellow house at the crossroads made its appeal to be questioned.
“I’ll run in and ask the way,” Kathryn explained, and slowly went up to the door that once opened so humorously to Northrup’s touch. Again the door responded, and a bit startled, Kathryn found herself in the presence of a dull-faced girl seated by the table apparently doing nothing.
“I beg your pardon. Really, I did knock––the door just opened.” Kathryn was confused and stepped back.
In all her dun-coloured life Jan-an had never seen anything so wonderful as the girl on the doorstep. She was not at all sure but that she was one of Noreen’s fiction creatures. There was a story that Northrup had told Noreen about Eve’s Other Children, and for an instant Jan-an estimated the likelihood of the stranger being one––she wasn’t altogether wrong, either!
“What you want?” she asked cautiously. Jan-an was, as she put it, “all skew-y,” for the work of the evening before had brought her to a more confused state than usual.
The world was widening––she included Northrup now in her circle of protection and she wasn’t sure what Eve’s Other Children were capable of doing.
“I want to find out the way to the inn, Heathcote Inn.” Kathryn smiled alluringly.
“Why don’t you look at the sign?” There was witchery about that sign, certainly.
“I did not see the sign. Please excuse me.” Then, “Do186you happen to know if there is a Mr. Northrup at the inn?”
“He sleeps there!” Jan-an looked stupid but honest. “Days, he takes to the woods.”
Jan-an meant, as soon as the unearthly visitor departed, to find Northrup and give the alarm. Kathryn thanked the girl sweetly and returned to her car. As she did so she saw the sign-board as Northrup had before her, and felt a bit foolish, but she also recalled that Northrup might be in the woods!
“You may go on to the inn,” she said to her man, “and make arrangements. I am going to remain over night and start back early to-morrow morning. Explain that I am walking and will be there shortly.”
The quiet man at the door of the car touched his cap and took his place at the wheel.
This was to Kathryn a thrilling adventure. The silence and beauty were as novel as any experience she had ever known, and her pulses quickened. The solitude of the woods was not restful to her, but it stimulated every sense. The leaves were dropping from the trees; the sunlight slanted through the lacy boughs in exquisite design, and the sky was as blue as midsummer. There was a smell of wood smoke in the crisp air; the feel of the sweet leaves, underfoot, was delightful. Kathryn “scruffed” along, unmindful of her high heels and thin silk stockings. She did not know that shecouldbe so excited.
She crossed the road and turned to the hill. An impish impulse swayed her. If she came upon Northrup! Well, how romantic and thrilling it would be! She fancied his surprise; his–––Here she paused. Would it be joy or consternation that would betray Northrup?
Now, as it happened, Mary-Clare had given her morning up to the business of the Point and she was worn and super-sensitive. An underlying sense of hurry was upon her. When she had done all that she could do, she meant to go to her Place and lay her tired soul open to the influence that flooded the quiet sanctuary. All day this had sustained her.187She would leave Noreen at the inn; send Jan-an back there, and would, after her hour in the cabin, seek Larry out and give him what he asked––the Point.
Through the hours at the inn she had feared Northrup’s appearance, but when she learned that he had been away all night, she fearedforhim. Her uneventful days seemed gone forever, and yet Mary-Clare knew that soon––oh, very soon––there would be to-morrows, just plain to-morrows running one into another.
She was distressed, too, that Larry was to have the Point. Aunt Polly had shaken her head over it and remarked that it seemed like dropping the Pointers into Maclin’s mouth. But Peter reassured her.
“I see your side, child,” he comforted. “What the old doc saidgoeswith you.”
“But it was Larry, not the doctor, as specified the Point,” Polly insisted.
“All right, all right,” Peter patted Polly’s shoulder. “Have it your own way, but I see it atthisangle. Give Larry what he wants; Maclin has Larry, anyway, but if he keeps him here where we can watch what’s going on, I’ll feel easier. He’ll show his hand on the Point, take my word for it. Larry gallivanting is one thing, Larry with Twombley and Peneluna, not to mention us all, is another. You let go, Mary-Clare, and see what happens.”
“Well, I hold”––Aunt Polly was curiously stubborn––“that Larry Rivers don’t want that Point any more than a toad wants a pocket.”
“All right, all right!” Peter grew red and his hair sprang up. “Put it as you choose. This may bring things to a head. I swear the whole world is like a throbbing and thundering boil––it’s got to bust, the world and King’s Forest. I say, then, let ’em bust and have done with it.”
At four o’clock the business of the day was over and Mary-Clare was ready to start. Then Noreen, with the perversity of children, complicated matters.
“Motherly, let me go, too,” she pleaded.
“Childie, Mother wants to be alone.”