"Is it nothing to you," he cried in a rush, "that when the time came I couldn't do it? The yacht's breaking down had nothing in the world to do with it. I had already decided to turn back, to break my promise. That the—accident happened just then was only a wretched chance. I was going to put about at that moment."
She hesitated almost imperceptibly, seemed for a brief second to waver. But perhaps she dared not let herself believe him now: perhaps the strongest wish of her heart was to hurt him as deeply as she could.
"To say the least," she said with a little deliberate movement of distaste, "your coincidences are unfortunate. You—won't mind if I go on being grateful to the—gear?"
Under that crowning taunt, his self-restraint snapped like an overstretched bow-string.
"You shall not say that. You shall not. Miss Carstairs, youknowI could have kept you on the yacht if I had wanted to. Youknowhow I gave the order to put about and bring you back to Hunston. Did I look in the least then like a man whose hopes and plans had been ruined? You know I did not. You know I said to you that I—I was the happiest man in America. Will you tell me what on earth that could mean—except that I had decided to give up a thing that has been a millstone around my neck ever since—I met you?"
She made no reply, did not look at him. The dusk shadowed her eyes; and whether her silence meant good or ill he could not tell.
"You cannot answer, you see. We both know why. You will not be fair to me, Miss Carstairs. It is that night in the Academy box-office over again. Because Ihadto deceive you once—not for my own sake—you will not look at the plain facts. But in your heart—just like that other night—I know you believe me."
Of course she could not let that pass now. "I do not!" she said. "I do not. I must ask you, please, not to keep me here any longer."
Varney's face went a shade paler. Arguing about his own veracity was even less bearable than he had thought; his manner all at once became singularly quiet.
"The merest moment, if you will. I can prove what I say," he answered slowly, "but of course I won't do that. You must believe whatIsay, believeme. Nothing else matters but that…. Don't you know that it took a very strong reason to make me break faith with my old friend, your father—to make me stand here begging to be believed, like this? You have only to look at me, I think. Don't you know that I couldn't possibly deceive you now … after what has happened to me?"
"I don't know what you mean. I don't understand. Don't tell me. Nothing has happened …"
"Everything has happened," he said still more quietly. "I've fallen crazily in love with you."
She did not lift her eyes; neither moved nor spoke; gave no sign that she had heard. He went on slowly:
"This—might be hard to believe, except that it must be so easy to see. I've known you less than three days, and I never wanted to—even like you. My one idea was to think of you as my enemy. That was what Maginnis and I agreed—plotting together like a pair of nihilists. It all seems so preposterous now. Everything was against me from the beginning. I wouldn't face it till to-day, this afternoon. Then it all came over me in a rush, and, of course, your happiness became a great deal more to me than your father's. So we turned around, and it was then that I told you how happy I was. Didn't you know then what I meant? Of course it was because I had just found out … how you were the one person in the world who mattered to me."
There was a long silence. It deepened, grew harder to break. Little Jenny Thurston, watching these two through an upstairs shutter, marveled what adults found to say to each other in these interminable colloquies. A young cock-sparrow, piqued by their stillness, alighted on the fence near by and studied them, eye cocked inquisitively.
"Of course, I'm not—asking anything," said Varney. "About this, I mean. I am answered, and over-answered, already. But … do you believe now that I—voluntarily gave it up?"
"Oh," said Mary, "you—you must not ask me that. You must not talk to me like this. I did trust you once—fully—when you were almost a stranger; last night—and then this afternoon—"
"Do you believe me," said Varney, "or do you not?"
Her lower lip was trembling very slightly, and she set her white teeth upon it. The sudden knowledge that she was near to tears terrified her, goaded her to lengths. She gathered all her pride of opinion and young sense of wrong and frightened feminine instinct, for a final desperate stand; and so flung at him more passionately than she knew: "How many times must I tell you?I do not! I do not!"
Varney gave her a last look, stamping her face upon his mind, and took a step backward from the gate.
"Then," said he … "this is good-bye, indeed."
Presently Mary raised her eyes. He had turned southward, toward the town, but at a pace so swift that he was already far down the road. A jutting curve came soon, and he vanished behind it, out of her sight.
Dusk was falling fast on the wood now. The green of the trees deepened and blackened, turning into a crooked smudge upon the sky-line. The road fell between them like a long gray ribbon. Nothing was to be seen upon it; nothing was to be heard but the rustle of the early night wind and the pleasant sounds of the open road.
Varney's mind as he walked, was a blank white wall. He had forgotten Elbert Carstairs, forgotten the train he was to take, forgotten even the unendurable injury that Higginson had put upon him. His one blind instinct had been to get away as quickly and completely as possible. But now, slowly, it was borne in upon him that he knew this road, that he had walked it once before like this, at the end of the day. His first night in Hunston—he remembered it all very well. It must have been just here—or here—that the rain had caught him, and he had gone on to meether.
The cottage which had sheltered them that night must be close at hand. His eyes, which had been upon the ground, lifted and went off down the road. They fell upon the dark figure of a man, shuffling slowly along in the gloom, not twenty yards ahead of him.
He was an old man, shambling and gray-whiskered, and stooped as he walked. If he was aware that another wayfarer followed close behind, he gave no sign. Suddenly he stopped short with a feeble exclamation, and began peering about the ground at his feet. The young man was up with him directly, and his vague impression of recognition suddenly became fitted to a name.
"Orrick?"
The bowed form straightened and turned. Through the thickening twilight the two men looked at each other.
"You were not by any chance waiting for me?"
The darkness hid old Orrick's eyes; he shook his head slowly a number of times. "I passed you when you was at Miz Thurston's, sir. I can' walk fas' like you can." And he bent down over the road again.
"What's the matter with you?" asked Varney. "Have you lost something?"
"Los' my luck-piece," said the other, slowly, not looking up. "I was carryin' it in my hand 's I come along an' it jounced out. A 1812 penny it was an' vallyble."
He cut rather a pitiful figure, squatting down in the dirt and squinting about with short-sighted old eyes; and Varney felt unaccountably sorry for him.
"I wouldn' los' my luck-piece for nothin'," he added, dropping to his knees. "I'm a kind of a stoop'sitious man, an' I allus was."
"Perhaps I can help you; my eyes are good."
He went back a step or two, bending down and scrutinizing the brown earth. Orrick, presently announcing that the coin might have rolled, made a slow way across the road on his knees, patting the ground with his hand as he moved. Near the edge of it, half in the woods, lay a thick piece of split firewood, long as a man's arm and stouter. The knotted old fingers stealthily closed on it.
"It could n't have rolled far on this soft road," said Varney presently."Just where do you think you dropped it?"
Sam Orrick rose behind his stooping figure with upraised club, a blaze of triumph in his sodden old eyes.
"There!" he cried with a senseless laugh. "It'sthere, Stanhope!"
The club fell with a thud; and Varney, meeting it as he straightened up, toppled over like a log, face downward.
Old Orrick stared down at the prostrate figure, and presently touched it with his tattered foot. It did not stir. His fierce joy died. He looked about him apprehensively, and his eye fell at once upon a dim-lit cottage off the road just back of him.Hiscottage—how had he forgotten that? Was that dark thing—a man—standing there at the gate? Suddenly a great terror seized the old man. He threw his stick into the woods and slunk away, toward the town. A loud yell from behind brought his heart to his throat, and he broke into a wild, lumbering run.
In the new-made study of his Remsen road cottage, Ferris Stanhope, Hunston's returned celebrity, sat under a green-shaded lamp and frowned down at a sheaf of his own neat manuscript. Behind him, in a corner, books and various knick-knacks lay spilled over the floor around an open trunk. The room was, in fact, in the litter incident to getting to rights. But this did not act as a stay on the great man's habit of industry, which happened to be of the most persistent variety.
The study blinds were drawn, and the rest of the house was in darkness. The author noted three emendations upon his manuscript, made three more. Then, with a muttered exclamation, he stripped off the interlined sheet altogether, tore it into shreds, threw the shreds on the floor and reached for a pad of white paper. At that moment he became aware of footsteps and heavy breathing in the hall, and looked up inquiringly.
His man-servant, Henry, was standing in the doorway, the long limp body of a man in his arms.
Mr. Stanhope sprang hurriedly to his feet. In his face the servant saw that same odd look of fleeting anxiety which he had noted there when they descended from the train that morning.
"In the name of heaven—what have you there?"
"Harskin' your pardon, sir," gasped Henry, staggering into the room, "I'm honcertain whether 'e 's kilt or not. Struck down from behind by an old codger with long 'air and gray whiskers. Hi was at the gate—"
"But what do you mean by hauling the carcass in here? Do you think I'm running a private morgue?"
Henry, who had been in his present employment a bare month, came to a wobbly pause, surprised. The body grew very heavy in his stout arms. Now the man's head slid off Henry's shoulder and tumbled backwards, hanging down in the full glow of the lamp.
"Hi thought, sir—" began the servant with panting dignity.
"O my God!" said the author suddenly.
Henry, who had not had a look at his burden, misunderstood.
"Ghastly sight, hain't it, sir—that bloody gash on 'is 'ead?"
"Quick! Put him on the sofa.—Now some water."
The servant, whose limbs were numb from the long carry, obeyed with alacrity. But returning hurriedly with the water, he was met at the door by his perverse master, who took the glass from his hands with the curt announcement that that would do.
Henry looked as displeased as his subservient position made advisable."Hif you please, sir, I have quite a 'and with the hinjured and—"
"He's only stunned," said his master impatiently. "I 'll attend to him myself."
And he banged the door in the servant's face.
The man lay on the lounge precisely as Henry had happened to place him, his averted face half buried in the pillows. Investigation showed that he had no bloody gash on his head: that was Henry's imagination. There did not, in fact, seem to be a mark on him beyond three small scratches on his forehead.
Stanhope put his hand under the chin and turned it toward him, none too gently. For a full moment he stood motionless, staring down at that white face so like his own. Then he dipped his hand in the glass, and splashed a handful of water upon the closed eyes.
At the first touch of it, the still figure of the injured man stirred with faint signs of returning consciousness. Far down in a black and utter void, he sensed the first glimmer of distant light. Slowly, slowly, the glimmer grew. The silence within gave place to a vast roaring in his ears and indescribable pain in his head; and the dull glow which had seemed to him the shining frontier of some far new world whither he was gratefully journeying, resolved itself into a circle of greenish light.
"Drink this," said a soft but peremptory voice.
He drank, incuriously; and the fiery liquid ran to his head and heart and shot new life into his dead limbs. But the more his lost strength came back to his body, the more he was aware of the terrible pain in his head. It occurred to him vaguely that when once he opened his eyes, which he would have to do some time, there would be a horrible explosion and his head would go off like a sky-rocket.
"You feel better now," asserted rather than inquired the voice.
"Much. Thanks to you. It's only—my head. Something seems to be wrong with it, a little."
"Somebody hit you there with a club, from behind. You remember now, don't you? Who was it?"
"I don't know," said Varney wearily.
"Oh, come! Your head isn't as bad as all that—there's not even a bump on it. Think a moment. An old man, with long hair and gray whiskers. You must know who it was."
Varney pressed his hand upon his racking forehead. "Oh! So it was he—then. Poor old Orrick."
The author's face lost something of its color. "Orrick!… What—what has this fellow got against you?"
Varney did not answer. The name had started remote memories to working, and, very slowly, returning comprehension advanced to meet them. He and old Orrick had been standing together on a woodland road. They were hunting for something. An 1812 penny and valuable. That was it. Before that, he had stood a long time near a green gate somewhere, looking at a pair of dark-blue eyes. He remembered distinctly what merciless eyes they were, though something in a far corner of his mind recalled that he had once, oddly enough, associated them with pleasant things. Then, like one rounding a sharp corner in a driveway, his memory came face to face with everything; and he turned his head to the wall.
But there was no escape from that insistent voice, so eager for an explanation. A hand fell upon his shoulder, shook it almost roughly. "Don't let yourself drop off again. Here! You want another drink?"
"No, I'm quite all right now—thank you."
To prove it, and to make ready to get away where he could be quiet, he performed the herculean task of opening his eyes. A tall man was bending over him, an anxious expression on his handsome face. More than the liquor, more even than the jostling hand upon his shoulder, the look of that face, so strange yet so familiar, braced Varney to action.
The two pairs of gray-blue eyes, so oddly matched in tint and shape, stared into each other steadily. Presently Varney dragged his feet around to the floor, with difficulty, as was natural to their thousand tons of weight, and taking hold of a chair pulled himself up on them. He raised his hands, slowly and cautiously, to his head. Good! It was still there. The impression that it had left his shoulders and was floating around in the air a foot or two above them thus turned out to be an illusion.
"There!" he heard the author saying briskly. "A little effort was all you needed, as I thought."
"That was all. Thank you. You must have pulled me in from the road, didn't you? It was very kind. You have just arrived in Hunston—I believe?"
"I came only this morning," his good Samaritan replied. "In the nick of time, it seems, to be of assistance. And you?" he added, with a slight bow. "You are a native here, perhaps?"
"Do you remember me," asked Varney quietly, "when you were here twelve years ago?"
Mr. Stanhope selected a cigarette from a large open box on the table, lit it carefully, took several long inhalations. "No," he said easily. "But for that matter, I fear that I remember few of my boyhood acquaintances in Hunston. But—this man—Orrick, you said?—has there been bad blood between you two for some time then?"
"No," said Varney, simply. "He struck me, I believe, because he thoughtI was you?"
"What!" cried the author with overdone surprise.
"I am glad—to meet you so soon after your arrival," continued Varney. "Some one should tell you that your boyhood acquaintances have longer memories. You came here for your health, I believe? I think you might do well to leave for the same reason."
Stanhope's eyes became little slits behind his trim glasses. "What do you mean by these extraordinary remarks?"
Varney, whose brain seemed to have changed into a ball of shooting pains and brilliant fireworks, endeavored to think out clearly just what he had meant by his extraordinary remarks.
"Possibly you think that I resemble you somewhat?" he said, slowly. "A number of people here seem to hold that view. In fact, they have mistaken me for you—everybody has. Doubtless you know why they should feel unkindly towards you. I make myself perfectly clear, do I not? Only this afternoon I heard that a little party was being gotten together for my benefit."
The author dropped his nervous-looking eyes; he tugged uncertainly at his wisp of a mustache.
"This thump on the head from poor old Orrick may satisfy them," continued Varney. "But my idea is that it won't. I think Orrick was acting independently this afternoon. A kind of free lance, you know. I think he met me by accident. There's a train to New York at eight-ten," he added, looking about for his hat. "I believe I'd clear out if I were you."
"Something's back of this!" broke out Stanhope suddenly. "Some dirty scheme—some infamous plot—"
"Yes, you are right," said Varney with an effort. "There is a plot back of it. But I don't know that that makes it any better for you—"
"I insist that you explain yourself at once!"
"I was just about to. I came here three days ago, a stranger—on a little stay. A friend who is with me got interested in a reform movement here. Politics, you understand. The other side to injure him, published the story that I was you, under analias. Naturally we didn't like that. We bought the paper just to say that I wasn't. I supposed that had settled it. It seems I was wrong. You see, a good deal of feeling had been worked up meantime—"
"Hello!" exclaimed Stanhope suddenly raising his hand. "What's that?"
Varney listened. "Men's voices," he said slowly.
The door flew open and a man whose ordinary impassivity was touched with a pleasurable excitement stood on the threshold.
"If you please, sir, there's some rough-looking men just sneaked up on the lawn. Ten or twelve—sort of a mob-like, Hi should say—"
"What do they want?" demanded Stanhope in a high voice.
"No good, sir, I'm thinking," said the servant shaking his head. "I was at an upstairs window and saw 'em come sneaking up one by one, hentering at different places. I made a noise not honlike the click of a 'ammer of a gun, and they took alarm and scattered back. But they hain't gone away, sir. Not by a long shot they hain't."
Henry's master leaned against his handsome writing table, his face white as a sheet. It appeared to be a moment when quick action was rather important.
"They'll try the bell first," said Varney. "Lock all the doors and windows downstairs, my man. Quick! When they ring, open a window upstairs, and ask what they want."
Henry recognized the note of competent authority. He assumed, anyway, that it was the strange gentleman's quarrel they had so fortunately been let into, and it was only fair that he should manage it. "Very good, sir," he said and flew.
"But I'm afraid," added Varney to Stanhope, "there is no doubt what they want."
A single quiet footfall sounded on the porch and the door-bell pealed. In the silence that followed, the noise of the turning of locks and the drawing of bolts was distinctly audible in the study.
"Damn you!" cried Stanhope, pale with the sudden white-hot passion of the unstable. "This is your doing—you—you masquerader!"
The two men stood facing each other, hardly a yard apart. They were almost exactly of a figure, Stanhope being if anything a shade the taller. Each was conscious as he regarded the other that he might be looking at himself, intangibly altered, in a mirror; and the fancy was pleasing to neither.
"I suppose I might as reasonably call you that," said Varney quietly. "I might as reasonably say that this knock on the head from Sam Orrick was your doing. The fact is that you were a fool to come back here. But as for those poor fellows out there—"
The door-bell rang again, insistently, and he broke off. A window upstairs rattled open, and they heard a man's steady voice:
"'I there on the piazza! What do you want?"
"I want to see Mr. Stanhope a minute," called a thicker voice from below. "On important business."
"'E's not 'ere," said faithful Henry. "'E's expected to arrive to-morrow."
"You're a —— —— liar!"
Immediately a general yelling arose, from farther back in the darkness.Diplomacy, it seemed, was about to be abandoned for immediate action.But over the sudden hubbub, that cool voice at the window rang outagain:
"Hif it's fight you want, Hi'll say we were expectin' you. There's ten of us 'ere, hall armed—"
A derisive voice was heard in answer. "We'll see about that, my buck, pretty—soon—"
"Men! Hi've got a brace of six-shooters 'ere in my 'and. The first of you as comes into the light gets a couple of 'oles drilled into 'is hinside, neat and clean."
Having launched this threat from his inky window to gain a little time, Henry silently withdrew, flung downstairs and broke into the study, his scrape and bow forgotten, to inquire whether either of the gentlemen had, in Gawd's mercy, hanythink that would shoot.
His master, whose well-kept hands were opening and shutting by his side, did not answer.
"No," said Varney, "I am unarmed."
"Heven without a gun, sir," said Henry to Stanhope, and his look was not such as a servant wears to his master, "we could lick a harmy of them chaps."
"We could never do it!" cried Mr. Stanhope shrilly.
The shouting outside, though still a discreet distance back, grew more articulate. Very fearful were their menaces.
"Come out, Stanhope! Your time's come!"
"We'll string yer to a tree, yer——"
"Fellers, let's burn the damn rat out!"
Stanhope's face went from white to pale green. He steadied himself against the table with a hand that quivered, and looked at Varney.
"It's—it's you they want," he said.
"O my Gawd," cried Henry and put his face into his hands.
"Yes," said Varney, averting his eyes also, "it's I they want." And he started for the door.
But Henry, who had noted the marked resemblance between the two men and had caught faint glimmerings of what these strange things meant, barred his way with an immortal rejoinder.
"Hif you please, sir, Stanhope was the name they called."
Varney gave a tired laugh. His terrible headache made him chafe at any prolonging of the scene. Moreover, it made rational thought difficult, twisting common-sense into fanciful shapes. It seemed to him an unendurable thing that he should protect himself under the wing of such a man as Stanhope; and the thought of fierce action drew him like a lodestone.
"You're a good fellow, Henry," he said quietly. "However, your master and I agree perfectly."
But at that moment, the small window at the back of the room, which no one had thought to fasten, flew open and a man slipped nimbly through it—a big, hard-breathing, iron-faced man, with perspiration streaming rivers down his sun-tanned cheeks.
Mr. Stanhope, with a weak exclamation, moved so as to bring the table between himself and the intruder. Varney's eyes grew suddenly anxious.
"Thank God, you're safe, Larry!" gasped Peter, looking hurriedly about him, and characteristically asking no questions. "Four of us! Magnificent! We can hold this room for a year against those drunken sheep…."
The din outside grew deafening. One man, braving Henry's threat, had made a bolt across the star-lit space to the house, and no shot had rung out from the upstairs window. Others had instantly followed, and the little front porch now echoed under many feet. Yet, boisterous as they were, the mobbers seemed to hesitate at taking the front door at a rush, as though fearful of what reception might await them in the dark and silent hall beyond.
But now a stone crashed through a front window downstairs, and a man's voice rang out suddenly so close that it seemed to be inside the parlor:
"One minute to come out fair in the open, Stanhope, or we'll set a light to this house, so help us God!"
Mr. Stanhope gave a low cry. "Call to them, Henry!" he ordered, wildly."Quick! Tell them I'm coming out this minute."
Henry, his back against the door, did not stir.
"Hareyou goin' out, sir?"
"No," said Varney, "he isn't. But I am."
Peter came further into the pretty room, impatient eyes fixed on Varney."What fool's talk is this?" he demanded roughly. "Nobody is going out.We four—"
Another loud crash of broken glass drowned him out. In Varney's eye the look of anxiety had deepened. He understood everything at a glance. Adroit proddings of a few poor Hackleys, some cheap liquor, the word passed to Maginnis as from a friend—this was how the boss of Hunston had plotted to set his heel upon Reform and stamp it out forever. He came three steps back into the room, sternly.
"You were a monumental fool to let them send you here, Peter—"
But the swelling tumult without made parley out of the question.
"No time for talk!" roared Peter. "It's fight now—before they are in on us! Lights out—and to the front, all of us!"
"Right hoh!" cried Henry, man to man, and ran out the door.
"No, no!" protested Mr. Stanhope thickly, "it is n't fair—"
Peter wheeled and looked at him, personally, for the first time. He had recognized him instantly, and now when he saw what he saw on that sickly green face, his fine eyes hardened.
"Four, I said? I see there are only three men here. No matter—three good ones are more than enough. Larry, stay here! I'll take the front door—the man the front windows—"
But Varney blocked his way to the door with a face more resolute than his own.
"Stand back, Peter. We'll do nothing of the sort. Those are Ryan's men out there. They don't want Mr. Stanhope—you know that. I don't like this place anyhow—I'm going to get out—"
"I'll sizzle in hell if you do!" bellowed Peter, and violently pinioned his arms.
But Stanhope, clutching at the chance, struck again for the safety of his skin. "He ought to go," he cried swiftly. "It is n't my quarrel—don't you see? Let go his arm there—you bully!—let him go!"
The shock of that, curiously, surprised Peter into complying. He dropped Varney's arms, turned swiftly to the author and fixed him with a look for which, alone, another man would have cried for his blood. "Did I hear you aright?" he said in an oddly still voice. "Do I understand you to suggest that he be sent out there alone?"
Mr. Stanhope shrank before that look, but this was the utmost concession to it.
"It's not my quarrel," he said moistening his lips—and suddenly, glancing over Peter's shoulder, his eyes lit with a frightened gleam of triumph. "It's he they—"
Over the shouting a single hoarse cry rang out very close at hand.
"Curse you for the cowardliest dog God ever made!" cried Peter, his passion breaking its thin veil of calmness like a bullet. "If you interfere in this, you'll not hide afterward where I'll not find you. Larry! You'll—" Peter turned and broke off short with an exclamation which was a good deal like a groan.
Varney was not there. Taking advantage of Peter's momentary distraction, he had slipped through the door and fled down the hall.
Shaken with the rushing sense of his friend's danger, Peter started wildly for the door. But in that fraction of a second, the lamp on the center table was blown suddenly out and he found himself in inky darkness. At the same moment something thrust itself dexterously between his moving legs and he fell heavily to the floor. Falling he struck out blindly, and his whirling fist collided with something warm and soft. The next instant he was up and groping madly for the door, his sense of direction all gone from him. But the author lay where he had fallen, quite still, and, for the moment, afraid no longer.
The moment's gain, however, was all that Stanhope needed, though it was no more. In the dark hall where a single candle burned, Varney had met Henry. The instant before, a man's head and shoulders had protruded suddenly through the broken-in parlor window, and Henry, waiting patiently in the shadow of the wall had flatted him to the floor with a heavy chair, which broke in his hands. Then he heard swift footsteps in the hall, and divining what had happened, bounded out.
"Stand clear, man!" cried Varney loudly. "I'm going out."
A prolonged shouting indicated that the promise was heard with approval outside. But not so with Henry, who closed in on him fiercely, crying: "Not hon your bloomin' life, you don't—harskin' your pardon, sir!"
Varney, however, was a thing of nerves and passion now, all energy and muscle and concentrated purpose. He shook the man off like a rat, and the next moment burst open the front door.
All this had happened far more quickly than it can be set down. Five minutes had hardly passed since Henry's first challenge had rung from the upstairs window. This would have been ample time to carry the house by storm, front and back, had the invaders had the leadership and wit; but these things they lacked. They were still massed on the front porch, pell-mell, in a turbulent group, ramping, raging, thirsty for action, but as yet ineffective; though one of them had at that moment set a match to a torch of newspapers and kindling wood. Delay had loosed the hunter's instinct in the half-drunken band: it broke into flame at sight of the quarry. Varney had scarcely shown himself in the half-opened door when some one struck him a savage blow on the chin that sent him reeling backwards.
He had come out to them with no plan, no sense of hostility, and only because, in his disturbed mood, he despised Stanhope so utterly that he would take no protection from him, or give him any share in his own troubles. But at that blow, a demon sprang to life in him which knew no law but an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. His left arm shot out like a piston at the dim flushed face before him, and the face bobbed downward out of sight.
At the same moment, the heavy back of a chair in supple hands descended out of space behind him with a thud; and a great tall fellow, staggering backward with the unexpected pain of that stroke, for the moment obstructed his comrades. For Henry had followed where he could not lead, and now ranged himself joyously at Varney's side in the narrow threshold.
The setback, however, was trivial. In the next breath, they closed round him with a great shout, thrusting Henry violently to one side. Three men were required for this latter task, who so missed the real sport of the night. Another was caught when the front porch fell in with a crash, and was pulled out with a broken leg an hour later. But enough remained. Varney was instantly lost in a struggling and kicking hurly-burly of arms and legs, and was borne with them in a rush down the short flight of steps to the lawn. All, of course, could not reach him. So it happened that two or three, on the outskirts of the tossing group, heard the feet of reinforcements in the hallway and wheeled at that sound. Even in the faint light, Peter's great size made him easily recognizable; and a young man of Hare's party named Bud Spinks, who admired him intensely and had partaken of his hospitality in the town, was still enough himself to cry out:
"Keep away, Mr. Maginnis! This ain't your fuss!"
"You'll see!" shouted Peter, and cleared the wrecked porch at a bound.
In his dash through the darkness for the door he had stumbled over the fragments of Henry's broken chair. One stout leg of it remained in his hand now. Peter's prowess with that weapon has passed into legend in Hunston. They tell to this day of a great giant, eight feet tall, watchful eyes in all parts of him, impervious to all blows, hundred-handed and every hand like the kick of a mule, who met ten men almost single-handed that night and routed them utterly.
He was the biggest man in Hunston, the strongest and the most terrible in anger. Bud Spinks, because he did not know whose fuss that was, felt the bite of that anger, and toppled beneath it like a sapling under the woodman's axe. So did poor old Orrick, who had met the others on the road and returned with them, and who was the only man of them all that Peter recognized. Two of those who were looking after Henry, having laid him to rest by this time, rushed Peter from behind. One of them struck him heavily on the point of the jaw as he swung around, and was astonished that he did not appear to notice it. The next instant he fell senseless under a blow that crushed through his upraised fists as a hammer might go through a drumhead. One Peter hit a glancing blow upon the shoulder, and as long as he lived he could never raise that arm above his head again.
Thus Peter was free to fling himself on that violently swaying mass which he knew held Varney. Even those on the further side knew precisely the moment he struck it. The whole body quivered with the shock of that impact. Those nearer that chair leg and that equally terrible fist had more personal testimony to his presence. There was no resisting either. They got in many blows upon him, as his bruised body and discolored face showed next morning. But he never once faltered. To himself, with a precious moment lost back in the study and a heart afire to know if he were yet in time, his progress seemed desperately slow; yet he cleft a path for himself as by magic.
Knocking some down, thrusting others aside or frightening them away, he found his answer at last with sudden directness. A big raw-boned fellow, fiercely drunk and working with his feet at something on the ground, wheeled and struck passionately at Peter's face. A blow like a cannon shot was his reply, and, for the second time under the impact of that fist, Jim Hackley (though Peter did not know him) measured his length upon the ground. Two or three scattering ones, still up, were hovering in Peter's rear with a discreetness which, it chanced was now quite superfluous. For at that instant, he caught sight of his friend, and immediately all the fight went out of him and his knees shook.
Varney lay anyhow on the trodden grass, dappled with blood, his head curved fantastically beneath his shoulders. Another had gone down with him and lay half over him, a long arm locked about him in a curious gesture that oddly suggested protection. This one lay face downward, but Varney, as it happened, was on his back, and his upturned face looked in the dusky night the image of death.
Peter dropped his club with a strangled cry, and went down on his hands and knees. No reassuring flutter met the hand which he thrust inside the trampled bosom. That heart seemed stilled. He gathered the limp form in his arms like a child's and turned a dreadful face upon the beaten fragments of the mobbing-party.
"By God!" he shouted passionately. "You've killed him!"
They faded away into the darkness, such of them as could walk, sobered by the horror of that cry, frightened more at that face than at all the blows which had gone before.
So Peter stood alone in the little lawn, dark figures of his enemies stretched here and there about him, his great arms clutching the inert body of his friend, groaning his pain to the four winds. But the next instant, flying hoof-beats sounded on the road, raced near, and a two-horse buggy, overloaded with men, pulled up sharply at the gate. A very small pale man, in a frock-coat plastered with dirt, and stuttering violently as he shouted Peter's name, tore up the path.
"You're too late, Hare!" cried Peter wildly. "They've killed him!"
Thus it happened that the southbound local, which went through at eight-ten, did not acquire Varney as a passenger that night; and his old friend, Elbert Carstairs, did not meet his emissary at nine-thirty, or indeed at any hour that evening. But two travelers for New York did board the local at Hunston, and both of them, as it chanced, repaired to the car provided for smokers, each for his own reasons.
One of them straightway lighted a long cigar, which a gentleman had given him that morning, doubtless unwisely, for he was not above twelve years old. The other, who happened to sit in the seat just before him, did not smoke. He was rendered conspicuous by the fact that he wore no hat, and by the deadly pallor of his face, relieved only by a reddening bump beneath the right eye. His clothes also were dirty and disheveled till he seemed scarcely the superior in elegance of the little ragamuffin behind him.
So that it was not surprising that the amiable conductor, standing by for the tickets and struck by the obvious likeness, should have observed:
"Your son's pretty young to be a-smokin' seegars, ain't he?"
Mr. Stanhope, not knowing what this remark meant, and caring less, answered with a cold stare, though inwardly he cursed the man for his fatuous impertinence. That done, he relapsed dully into his own thoughts, which were all of the house he had scurried from, terrified by Peter's cry, half an hour before….
In that house, in Mr. Stanhope's own deserted bed, Varney lay at his ease, as quiet as a statued man. Over the bed, industriously at work, hung the keen-faced town doctor, whom Hare had gotten with a speed which passed all understanding. At the foot of the bed stood Peter Maginnis, his face like the face of a carven image.
At the very moment when the garrulous conductor was trying to foist off poor little Tommy Orrick upon Mr. Stanhope, the old doctor raised his head.
"He's not deadyet. An excellent chance I should say."
Peter's face did not change. His hand tightened on the foot-board till his nails whitened. It was as though he had pulled a signal cord which ran unseen under the bed-clothes and rung a mysterious bell in some remote corner of his friend's head. Varney immediately opened one eye, let it rest on Peter and said in a clear voice:
"You all right, Peter?"
That done he relapsed immediately into unconsciousness again. The doctor took out a large handkerchief, wiped his brow and smiled. Peter, his quick relief like a storm of joy, went downstairs to tell his friends of the Reform Committee, and do a thousand other things.
By nine o'clock the town was ringing with the wild story, and in the still watches of the later night the telegraph flung it to far places, to be read in wonder next morning in a million homes. Overnight, the great eye of the country turned like an unwinking searchlight upon the dingy town by the Hudson where happened to dwell Mrs. Elbert Carstairs and her only daughter, Mary. And all the world read how two men who were doubles had strangely met in a lonely house with a drunken mob outside; how one of them, who had earned the mob, turned the other out to face it; how the son of a famous captain of industry had shamed the Berserkers in his passionate muscularity: how one "double" had fled to save his skin and how the other, battered almost beyond recognition, now lay trembling between life and death.
In Hunston, there followed next day a whirl of police activity, of which the net results were tame in the extreme. Of all the fierce band which had stormed the house of Mr. Stanhope, only poor old Orrick and Mr. British, the bookseller—he who had been pulled out senseless from under the beams of the porch—were identified. Mr. British flatly and resolutely declined to testify as to who his comrades were, and old Sam Orrick, terrified though he was by prospective horrors of the law, loyally perjured his immortal soul by swearing that the men were all strangers to him and that he believed them to be visitors from another city.
The count against these two proved to be only assault and battery, though for three days and nights it was a toss of the coin whether they would not have to answer for a graver charge. Peter's joy had soon proved premature and the doctor's smile faded in unexpected bewilderment. The sick man did not improve in the least. Delirium followed hard upon deadly stupor and there seemed no rousing him from either.
The yellow cottage with the trampled flower-beds and smashed windows, which looked so bare-faced with its front porch shaved away, had passed to Peter for the moment by right of conquest. In it everything that conducted to the comfort of ill man had been quickly and lavishly installed. Everybody was wonderfully kind and thoughtful. Mrs. Marne, who reached the cottage with Mrs. Carstairs half an hour after the doctor the first night, and had done wonders before the nurses arrived, was simply invaluable. Hare came night and morning, horribly formal and ill at ease, begging for something to do. Flowers and inquiries from total strangers were an hourly occurrence. From Charlie Hammerton came a quart of magnificent Scotch, followed on the second day by a pile of clippings from theGazette'sexchanges which must have gratified the injured man extremely if only he had been able to read them. His own leading article, headed "Laurence Varney, Hero," Editor Hammerton modestly suppressed. By the hand of sad-faced McTosh came a hideous floral piece, in fact, a red, white, and blue star, bearing the label "From the sorrowing crew of theCypriani." Mrs. Carstairs, whose emotions at the time were hardly fully understood in the yellow cottage, called daily and sent beautiful roses and chicken jelly. The roses faded and the chicken jelly was considerably enjoyed by the nurses. But from Mrs. Carstairs's daughter, whose filial relations had invoked all these things, there came neither flower nor word.
The fight had taken place upon a Thursday night. On Friday, the Hunston doctor, at his wits' end, had asked for a consultation. On Saturday, the great doctor from the city had spent an hour in the sick-room, first examining the patient in a bodily way, and then prodding him with a tireless stream of questions, however futile—anything to make him talk. At the end of that time he had whispered awhile with the town doctor and drawn Peter into the study downstairs.
"What's the matter with him, Mr. Maginnis?" he asked abruptly.
"Matter?" echoed Peter. "Wasn't he beaten to a pulp?"
"Kicks don't kill a man with that kind of physique. What has he got on his mind?"
"I don't know," said Peter, miserably. "The last time I saw him—"
"Find out," said the great doctor, briefly. "If you don't, he may die. He seems to have had a shock of some kind. You must work upon that line. There is nothing the matter with his body that he can't throw off. But he will not get well unless you put the idea into his head that hemust."
And glancing at his watch, he bowed stiffly, and was whirled away to the station.
Peter was utterly at a loss. He had no idea what had taken Varney up the road to Stanhope's that afternoon, much less of any shock that could conceivably have come to him. But he set himself to find out. By the next morning, partly through inquiry, partly through patching two and two together, he had worked out a theory. Guesswork, of course, was rather dangerous in a delicate matter such as this; but the doctor's report after breakfast had been the very worst yet. Peter never faltered. He picked up his hat from the study table, in front of which he had been figuring these things out, and started down the hall.
Mrs. Marne was sitting quietly on the bottom step of the stairway, her dark head in her hands; and Peter was glad to see her.
"I've found out a little about that," said Peter, in a low voice. "I believe it was—to see Miss Carstairs that he came up the road that day."
"Yes," said Mrs. Marne. "I have heard that too."
"She struck me," said Peter, "as a nice little girl. Probably she doesn't understand the situation. I am going to see her now."
"She won't see you," said Mrs. Marne.
"Yes, she will," said Peter quietly, and started for the door.
But Mrs. Marne caught him by the hand, protectingly, like an elder sister, and drew him into the parlor and shut the door.
Half an hour later Peter came out and went up the stairs. At the landing he paused to take off his shoes, and went on up in his stocking feet.
It was Sunday morning, near eleven o'clock, a brilliant morning all sun and wind. The far church bells of Hunston were ringing on the clear air like chimes from another world. Never afterward could Peter hear the Sunday bells without thinking of that moment. At the door, he met Miss Nevin, the day-nurse, coming out. She said she was going to telephone the doctor.
Peter slipped into the darkened room and shut the door noiselessly behind him. After a moment, he tipped over to the bed and sat down in the nurse's chair, silently. The bed looked very fresh and white and unrumpled, and that was because the injured man had for two days lain almost wholly quiet. The thin coverlet defined his long frame perfectly. Many bandages about the limbs and trunk made it look grotesquely bumpy and misshapen. One arm, wrapped from shoulder to finger-tip was outside the coverlet; now and then the hand, which was muffled large as a boxing-glove, moved a little. Cloths ran slantwise about chin, brow, and head, leaving only breathing space and one eye uncovered.
Presently, as he became more used to the darkness, Peter observed that the eye was open and regarding him incuriously: and he started in some confusion. "Do you feel much pain now, old chap?" he began rather huskily.
"Pain?" repeated Varney, vaguely. "No, I don't feel any pain."
"No pain! That's fine!" said Peter with lying cheerfulness, for he knew that this deadness to sensation was the worst feature in the case. "That—left leg is rather badly bruised, it seems. I was a little afraidthatmight be troubling you some."
Silence.
"Did Miss Nevin show you all your flowers? They 've just been pouring in all day every day. We could turn florists to-day without spending a penny for stock. Couldn't we, Larry, eh?"
"Yes," said Varney laboriously. "We could."
"Everybody has been so kind," continued Peter, desperately, "that upon my word it's hard to pick and choose. If I were asked to say who had really been kindest—let me see—yes, I'd name—Mrs. Carstairs. Flowers and something to eat, some little dainty or delicacy, twice a day. The fact is, old chap, to put it plainly, though I don't want to distress you, you know—she is blaming herself about this. Blaming herself greatly."
"She oughtn't to do that," said Varney after a time.
"Of course she ought n't to. Yet it's natural enough in a way. Of course, I'm blaming myself, too—like the mischief—I'd had so many warnings, you know. Little Hare is blaming himself. And Mr. Carstairs—poor old fellow! I'll show you his letters when—the light's a little better for reading. They're fine, honestly. Of course, he wanted to come on right away, but I wouldn't let him."
Silence again.
"So you see how many of us," continued Peter, nearing his awkward climax, "have been worried,personally, about this—trouble. And how much, well—how much—happiness is bound up in your getting well. And by the way—I declare I nearly forgot Miss Carstairs—I declare!"
There was a long silence, which Peter resolved not to break. Through the shuttered window, the distant bells chimed faintly into the room. The sick man's stray arm moved restlessly on the coverlet, but otherwise he lay quite still.
At length Varney said: "When did you see Miss Carstairs? She hasn't—been here—?"
But poor Peter's errand was not so easy as that. He had no glad shaft of promise with which to pierce that deadly Nessus-coat of apathy.
"She couldn't come here, old chap," said Peter, very gravely. "You hadn't heard, of course. Miss Carstairs is very ill."
"Miss Carstairs is very ill," repeated Varney, not inquiringly, but like a child saying over a lesson.
"Awfully ill," said Peter encouragingly. "It seems that she came home Thursday night a little after seven, looking very pale and badly, but insisting that there was nothing the matter. She sat upstairs with her mother until about eight, when somebody called her down to the telephone. Well, she didn't come back. So after a while Mrs. Carstairs sent down to find out why. The maid found her in the hall—in fact, on the floor, I believe. She had fainted, you know. Yes—that was it. Fainted dead away—poor little girl."
After what seemed an eternity of waiting, Varney asked: "What was it—do you know? At the telephone?"
"Yes. It was Mrs. Marne. She called up Miss Carstairs in the first excitement of—of your accident, it seems, and I'm afraid she gave a very exaggerated and alarming account, you know. They put her to bed," continued Peter clearing his throat, "and there she's been ever since. The great shock, you know. Mrs. Marne saw her this morning—the first time she had been admitted. It's all quite sad. Quite sad. We'll talk of it again when—you're feeling a bit stronger."
Varney, who had lain like a statue for two days and nights, had begun moving a little under the coverlet, stirring first one swathed leg, then the other, as though seeking vainly to shift his position. Now he said at once: "I want to hear now."
Peter gave a deep sigh. He thought, and rightly, that this was the best thing that had happened yet.
"Well, it's all very strange, Larry. When I said that it was the shock of the accident that had made her ill, I did not tell the whole truth. It seems that she is suffering from a terrible hallucination about it. She feels in some strange way that the responsibility for all this—is hers. She told Mrs. Marne that she was responsible for your being on the road that night, and that she had been unfair about something or other, and that but for that the—trouble would never have happened. I don't pretend to understand it. But feeling as she does now—if anything were to—to go wrong, the poor child would count herself—she would count herself—"
"Don't!" said Varney very clearly and distinctly.
His face looked all at once so ghastly that Peter's heart stopped beating. He thought in a horrible flash that the end had come, and that he, Peter Maginnis, had brought it by tearing at the worst wound his friend had. His clumsy diplomacy fell from him as at the last trump. He dropped on his knees beside the bed with a groan.
"For God's sake, Larry, don't leavethatmark to a child like her.Don't give us allthatsorrow to carry to our graves—"
But Varney had pulled his arms free and was clutching wildly at his head-bandages with heavily swathed fingers.
"You needn't worry about me," he said in a sharp anguished voice. "GreatScott! What's—what's wrong with myhead! It's killing me."
He recovered with a speed which puzzled the old Hunston doctor even more than his previous lethargy had done. Five days later he was well enough to be lifted downstairs to the small back piazza, and here he lay blanketed up in a reclining chair for half the sunny afternoon.
A bundle of letters and telegrams lay on his covered knees; and going slowly through them, he came presently to one from Elbert Carstairs, arrived only that morning:
Words are feeble things at their best, and I know of none that would convey to you my great joy at the news that you are out of danger. By the same mail, I have learned that my other dear sick one in Hunston is quite herself again, and I say to God in gratitude upon my knees that my cup is full."
A pause in the reading here. The long hand of the nurse's clock on the window-sill had crawled half around the dial before Varney raised the letter again from his blanketed lap:
"There is much in my heart to tell you, much to beg your forgiveness for, but I shall keep it to say to you face to face. Just now the keenest point in my grief is that all this suffering I have brought upon you has been worse than unnecessary. Light has come to me in these sleepless nights, and I see now that there was a much better way to seek what I sought, a far happier path."
The letter slipped down upon the swathed knees again, and he lay staring at the blown and sunny tree-tops. Presently the door at his side opened; a man started to come through it, stopped short, and stood motionless on the threshold.
Varney slowly turned his head. In the doorway, to his dim surprise, stood Mr. Stanhope's man, Henry, bowing, unobtrusive, apologetic, ready to efface himself at a gesture like the well-trained servant he was.
"Why—is that you, Henry?"
"Harskin' your pardon for the hintrusion, sir," said Henry with a wooden face. "I didn't know you were 'ere, sir. 'Opin' you are feeling improved to-day, sir—if you please, Hi'll withdraw—"
"Henry," said Varney, "that is no way for you to speak to me—after the way you stood up for me that night. Come here."
And he disentangled from his covers and held out a rather maimed-looking hand.
Then he saw the soul of the man whip through the livery of the menial like a knife, and Henry, stumbling forward with a working face, clasped that hand proudly in his strong white one: only he dropped on one knee to do it, as if to show that, though gentlemen might be pleased to show him kindness now and then, he perfectly understood that he was not as they.
"Ho, sir," he broke out in a tone very different from his well-controlled voice of service, "I never seen a pluckier thing done, nor a gamer fight put up. You make me too proud, sir, with your 'and—man to man … I was shamed, sir, till I couldn't bear it when I came to and learned that I 'ad not stayed with you, sir, to the end. Three of them closed in on me, sir, and harskin' your pardon, sir, I was whippin' hof 'em to standstill when one of them tripped me from be'ind, sir,—"
"Stand up, Henry," said Varney, rather agitated, "like the man you are."
Henry stood up, with a jerky "Thank you, sir," striving with momentary ill-success to get a lackey's mask back upon that quivering face.
"I'll always remember you," said Varney with some difficulty, "as a good and brave man. I don't think I'll ever forget how you disobeyed an order—to try to save me. And now tell me—what became of your master?"
"'E's in the village, sir," said Henry rather bothered by his throat"I'm expecting 'im in any moment, sir—"
"In the village?" repeated Varney, surprised. "Mr. Stanhope is inHunston?"
"Mr. Stanhope!" said Henry with an insufferable contemptuousness for which he at once apologized. "Harskin' your pardon, sir—I thought you inquired for my master. Mr. Stanhope, I 'ave 'eard, sir, has sailed for Europe."
"Well, who's your master, then?"
"Mr. Maginnis is my master, sir."
Varney deliberated on this, and slowly smiled. "Well, you've got a good one, Henry."
"Thank you, sir. That's 'im now, sir. I 'ear 'is motor in the road. If you'll excuse me, sir—I'll go and let 'im in."
And he bowed and went away, only pausing in the entry to attend a moment to his blurred eyes with the back of a supple hand.
Peter stepped out into the porch with a cheery greeting and dropped into a rocking-chair, looking worn and tired. The instant his heavy anxiety over Varney was relieved, he had thrown himself back into the fight for reform with a desperate vigor which entirely eclipsed all his previous efforts.
"We-ell," he said in answer to Varney's question, "we're humping along—just humping along. Time's so confoundedly short, though. You know, Larry, this business the other night is proving the best card we've got. Fact. I haven't tried to tell you how worked up the people have been about your—accident, and how most of them don't stand for it for a minute. It's pretty well understood around town that politics was back of it all in some way, though nobody can state a single fact, and I've scoured the town for evidence without finding a scrap. Anyway, it's the solemn fact, and the committee can prove it, that that feeling is bringing over a lot of votes that we never could have reached otherwise with a long distance 'phone."
"Praise be that they're coming over, anyhow."
"This fight," continued Peter, absorbedly, "is confoundedly interesting because it is typical of what's going on all over the country. Hunston is just a dingy little microcosm of the whole United States of America. You can't blame these poor beggars here much, afraid of their jobs as they are. It takes courage to make a break for virtue when the devil's holding you by your bread and meat. But—well, I'd hate like the mischief to lose, particularly since we've managed to come in for such a beautiful lot of lime-light. You know this fight is being watched all over the country, since that trouble? And hang it, it does make a difference when the Associated Press carries half a column about you every night. Do you remember that first night in Hunston, Larry," he continued, "when you said that our part in the town's affairs must be that of quiet onlookers only? Quiet onlookers! And now everybody in the country is playing quiet onlookers on us. Our names are household words in California, and I'm credibly informed that they're naming babies after you all through the middle West. Funny, isn't it?"
Varney assented with a laugh. Presently he said rather constrainedly: "Peter—I want you to tell me a little about that night. Who was caught?"
Peter named the two. "They wouldn't testify," he explained, "and I couldn't. Old Orrick was the only man I spotted. He will get punished for assault. I don't see that they've got a case against British. He was knocked out when the porch fell, and he hadn't done a thing then, except yell probably. You can't hang a man for yelling in this State."
"No. Did you—you—was anybody killed?"
"Bless your heart, no!" cried Peter. "Why, it was only a little old kicking-match and hair-pulling, you know, hardly worse than a college rush."
Varney looked suddenly and strangely relieved.
"I'm mighty glad to hear that," he said, and presently added: "Have you seen—Smith?"
"Smith! He went to New York some days ago. I remember—it was the very day you pulled up and got well. Why, what about him?"
"Didn't you know? He was there that night," said Varney. "Right in the thick of it, helping me."
"Helpingyou! Smith!"
Varney nodded. "The minute they closed in on me," he said after a moment, "and we all bunched together, I felt that there was somebody in there fighting on my side. Pretty soon I heard a voice in my ear, it said: 'Keep on your pins as long as you can: these dogs'll trample you if they get you down.' I said, 'Is that you, Smith?' and he laughed and said, 'Still on my studies.' Then somebody hit me over the head with something, and I went down and he went with me. He had one arm around me, I remember. I've been thinking, ever since I could think at all, that they might—might have finished him. I believe he saved my life, Smith did."
"Well—bully for him!" said Peter slowly, much impressed. "What on earth struck him to do that, do you suppose? Well, well! I'll certainly look that old boy up in New York and shake him by the hand."
There was a considerable silence. At just the moment when Varney was about to put another question, Peter opened his mouth and answered it.
"However," he said, an irrepressible note of irritation creeping into his honest voice, "even that was not the strangest thing that happened that night. Not by a long shot."
Varney's gaze fixed with sudden interest. "Higginson? You don't mean to say that he turned up?"
"I do. And got away with it again—confound his soul!"
"What happened? Any more dirty work? Did anything get into the papers?"
"No—oh, no! You've got that sized up wrong, Larry. He's no yellow journalist or anything like that. He's only the slickest underground worker this town ever saw—with his confounded apologetic, worried-looking mask of a face. As for more dirty work—well, I guess the bloodshed the other night scared him up so—"
"But go on and tell me! Where'd you see him? What did you say and—"
"Sitting in our front parlor, if you please, like a dear old friend of the family."
The remembrance of the way he had been affronted and outwitted chafed Peter's spirit uncontrollably. He rose and began pacing up and down the little porch, hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets.
"About an hour after we put you to bed," he exploded, "I slipped downstairs to tell Hare to keep everybody off the place. However, a lot of people had already come in. I glanced in at the parlor and it seemed full of them—Mrs. Carstairs and Mrs. Marne—they were the first to get here after Hare's delegation—Hammerton and another man from theGazette, the committeemen, and several I'd never laid eyes on before. Well, there in a corner, looking like a hired mourner at a nigger funeral, sat that fellow Higginson. You could have knocked me flat with a pin feather. I'm as sure as I stand here that it was he who worked up that mob for Ryan, and the whole dirty scheme—and then coming around with his tongue in his cheek to inquire after the victim! Can you beat that gall?"
"Not easily. What happened?"
"They asked me how you were. I told'em. Then I said before the room-full: 'I was very sorry to find you out this afternoon, Mr. Higginson, when I called at your hotel.' The fellow looked white as a sheet and mumbled something I couldn't catch. Well—I couldn't smash him there before all the women, so I said: 'Please don't go away this time until I see you. I'm most anxious to have a little private conversation with you.' Oh, of course that was a mistake—I hate to think about it! But—well, I was a good deal worried just then," he explained, rather sheepishly, "and fact is, for the minute I wasn't thinking very much about Higginson. I needn't add that he had sneaked when I came down again. Had the cheek to leave behind a message with Hare saying he regretted to miss me, but felt it his duty to escort the ladies home."
Varney, though he had grounds for animosity which Peter never even guessed, laughed aloud. But it was a brief laugh, which quickly faded.
"And he's never been seen or heard of from that day to this? Well, for my part," he went on, rather constrainedly, "I'm almost ready to believe the man's a myth—a mere personification of evil—an allegorical name for the powers of darkness—"
"Myth!" cried Peter. "You'll see! Why, he's certain to turn up again, Larry—absolutely certain. You couldn't keep him away with a flock of cannon. If he doesn't come before, it's dead sure that he'll appear among us again on election day—four days from now—just to see the results of his pretty work. And when he does—"
"Well?" said Varney, amused through his own heartsoreness by Peter's vehemence. "When he does?"
"I've got two men watching every train, day and night," said Peter. "When Higginson sets foot in this town again, one man trails him, and the other runs for me…. Well, I'm a generous and forbearing man, Larry, and I recall that you havn't had much fun here. I'll—yes, hang it all!—I'll bring the old rogue to you, dead or alive, and stand by in silence while you speak him your little piece."