For a moment she felt the foundations of the moral and physical world sinking beneath her feet. Dizziness swept her senses. She gripped the table, leaning heavily against it, her eye watching the door with feverish terror for Jim's appearance.
She had never fainted in her life. It was absurd, but the room was swimming now in a dim blur. Again she gripped the table and set her teeth. She simply would not give up. Why should she leap to the worst possible explanation of the jewels? The hatred of old Ella for Jim and the furious antagonism of Jane Anderson had poisoned her mind, after all. It was infamous that she could suspect her husband of crime merely because two silly women didn't like him.
He could explain the jewels. He, of course, asked no questions of the pawn-broker. They were probably sold at auction and he bought them.
It seemed an eternity from the time Jim's foot step echoed on the little porch until he pushed the door open and hastily entered, his arms piled with lap-robes, coats and the dress-suit case in his hand.
He walked with quick, firm step, threw the coats and robes on the couch and placed the suit-case at its head. He hadn't turned toward her and his face was still in profile while he removed the gloves from his pockets, threw them on the robes, and drew the scarlet woolen neckpiece from his throat.
She was studying him now with new terror-stricken eyes. Never had she seen his jaw look so big and brutal. Never had the droop of his eyelids suggested such menace. Never had the contrast of his slender hands and feet suggested such hideous possibilities.
“Merciful God! No! No!” she kept repeating in her soul while her dilated eyes stared at him in sheer horror of the suggestion which the jewels had roused.
She drew a deep breath and strangled the idea by her will.
“I'll at least be as fair as a jury,” she thought grimly. “I'll not condemn him without a hearing.”
Jim suddenly became aware of the menace of her silence. She had not moved a muscle, spoken or made the slightest sound since he had entered. He had merely taken in the room at a glance and had seen her standing in precisely the same place beside the table.
He saw now that she was leaning heavily against it.
He raised his head and faced her with a sudden, bold stare, and his voice rang in tones of sharp command.
“Well?”
She tried to speak and failed. She had not yet sufficiently mastered her emotions.
“What's the matter?” he growled.
“Jim——” she gasped.
He took a step toward her with set teeth.
“You've been in that bag—Well?”
Her face was white, her voice husky.
“Those jewels, Jim——”
A cunning smile played about his mouth and he shook his head.
“I tried to keep my little secret from you till Christmas morning; but you're on to my curves now, Kiddo, and I'll have to 'fess up——”
“You bought them for me?” she asked with trembling eagerness.
“Who else do you reckon I'd buy 'em for? I was going to surprise you, too, tomorrow morning. You've spoiled the fun.”
She had slipped close to his side and he could hear her quick intake of breath.
“That's—so—sweet of you, Jim. I'm sorry—I—spoiled the surprise—you'd—planned——”
“Oh, what's the difference!” he broke in carelessly. “It's all the same five minutes after, anyhow. Well, don't you like 'em? Why don't you say something?”
“They're wonderful, Jim. Where—where—did you buy them?”
He held her gaze in silence for an instant and fenced.
“Isn't that a funny question, Kiddo?” he said in low tones. “I once heard the old man I worked with in the shop say that you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“I just want to know,” she insisted.
“I'm not going to tell you!” he said with a dry laugh.
“Why not?”
“Because you keep asking.”
“You wish to tease me?”
“Maybe.”
“Please!”
“Why do you want to know? Are you afraid they're fakes?”
“No, they're beautiful—they're wonderful.”
“Well, if you don't want them,” he broke in angrily, “I'll keep them. I'll sell them.”
“Don't tease me, Jim!” she begged. “I don't mind if you bought them at a pawn-shop—if that's why you won't tell me. That is the reason, isn't it? Honestly, isn't it?”
She asked the question with eager intensity. She had persuaded herself that it was so and the horror had been lifted. She pressed close with smiling, trembling lips:
“I don't mind that, Jim! You got them from a pawn-broker, of course, didn't you?”
He looked at her with a puzzled expression and hesitated.
“Didn't you?” she repeated.
“No—I didn't!” was the curt answer.
“You didn't?” she echoed feebly.
“No!”
With a quick breath she unconsciously drew back and he glared at her angrily.
“Say, what'ell's the matter with you, anyhow? Have you gone crazy?”
“You—won't—tell me—where you bought them?” she asked slowly.
He faced her squarely and spoke with deliberate contempt:
“It's—none—of your business!”
She held his gaze with steady determination.
“That string of pearls belongs to the man who once lived in the front room of my old building in New York. He moved uptown with my landlady. A few months ago a burglar robbed and shot him——”
She stopped, seized his arm and cried with strangling horror:
“Jim! Jim! Where did you get them?”
“Now I know you've gone crazy! You don't suppose that's the only string of pearls in the world, do you? Did you count 'em? Did you weigh 'em?”
“Where did you get them?” she demanded.
“What put it into your head that that string of pearls belonged to your old boarder?”
“I saw him write the stanza of poetry on the satin lining of that case. I've heard him recite it over and over again in his piping voice: `Each bead a pearl—my rosary!' I KNOW that they belonged to him!”
His mouth twitched angrily and he faced her, speaking with cold, brutal frankness.
“I might keep on lying to you, Kiddo, and get away with it. But what's the use? You've got to know. It's just as well now—I did that job——Yes!”
Her face blanched.
“You—a—burglar—a murderer!”
Jim followed her with quick, angry gestures.
“All I wanted was his money! He fought—it was his life or mine——”
“A murderer!”
“I just went after his money—I tell you—besides, he didn't die; he got well. If he'd kept still he wouldn't have lost his pearls and he wouldn't have been hurt——”
“And I stood up for you against them all!” she answered in a dazed whisper. “They told me—Jane Anderson with brutal frankness, Ella with the heart-rending, timid confession of her own tragic life—they told me that you were bad. I said they were liars. I said that they envied our happiness. I believed that you were big and brave and fine. I stood by you and married you!”
She paused and looked at him steadily. In a rush of suppressed passion she seized his arm with a violence that caused his heavy eyelids to lift in amused surprise.
“Oh, Jim—it's not true! It's not true—it's not true! For God's sake, tell me that you're joking!—that you're teasing me! You can't mean it! I won't believe it—I won't believe it!”
Her head sank until it rested piteously against his breast. He stood with his face turned awkwardly away and then moved his body until she was forced to stand erect.
He touched her shoulder gently and spoke soothingly:
“Come, now, Kid, don't take on so. I'll quit the business when I make my pile.”
She drew back instinctively and he followed:
“I'll never touch another penny of yours. There's blood on it!”
“Rot!” he went on soothingly. “It's good Wall Street cash—got it exactly like they got theirs—got it because I was quicker and smarter than the fellow that had it. I use a jimmy, they use a ticker—that's all the difference.”
She drew her figure to its full height.
“I'm going—Jim——”
“Where?”
His voice rasped like a file against steel.
“Home!”
“Your home's with me.”
“I won't live with a thief!”
He stepped squarely before her and spoke with deliberate menace.
“You're—not—going!”
“Get out of my way!” she cried defiantly.
His big jaw closed with a snap and his figure became rigid. The candle's yellow light threw a strange glare on his face, convulsed. The blue flames of hell were in the glitter of his steel eyes.
Her heart sank in a dull wave of terror. She tried to gauge the depth of his brutal rage. There was no standard by which to measure it. She had never seen that look in his face before. His whole being was transformed by some sinister power.
She was afraid to move, but her mind was alert in this moment of supreme trial. She hadn't used her last weapon yet. The fact that he held her with such terrible determination was proof of the spell she had cast over him. She might save him. He couldn't have been a criminal long. She formed her new battle-line with quick decision.
How long she gazed into the convulsed face of the man who had squared himself before her, mattered little measured by the tick of the watch in her belt. Into the mental anguish endured a life's agony had been pressed. It could not have been more than twenty seconds, and yet it marked the birth of a new being within the soul of a woman. She had been searching only for her own happiness. The search had entangled another in the meshes of her life. Too much had been lived in the past two weeks to be undone by a word and forgotten in a day. She had attempted, coward-like, to run.
She saw now in the consuming flame of a great sorrow that the man before her had some rights which the purest woman must reckon with. He might be a burglar. At least it was her duty to try to save him from himself. Her surrender of the past weeks was a tie that would bind them through all eternity. There was no chemistry of earth or heaven or hell that could erase its memories. Her life was no longer her own—this man's was bound with hers. She must face the facts. She would make one honest, brave effort to save him. To do this she would give all without reservation—pride must be cast to the winds.
Her voice suddenly changed to tears.
“Oh, Jim, you do love me, don't you?”
His body slowly relaxed, his eyes shifted, and he shrugged his square shoulders.
“What'ell did I marry you for?”
“Tell me—do you?” she demanded.
“You know that I love you. What do you ask me such a fool question for? I love you with a love that can kill. Do you hear me? That's why you're not going anywhere without me.”
There was no mistaking the depth of his passion. She trembled to realize its power and yet it was the lever by which she must move him.
“Then you've got to give this life up. You're young and brave and strong. You can earn an honest living. You haven't been in this long—I feel it, I know it. Have you?”
“No!”
“How long?”
“Eight months.”
“Oh, Jim, dear, you must give it up now for my sake. I'll work with you and work for you. I'll teach, I'll sew, I'll scrub, I'll slave for you day and night—if you're only clean and honest.”
He turned on her fiercely.
“Cut it, Kid—cut it! I'm out for the stuff now. I'm going to get rich and I'm going to get rich QUICK—that's all that's the matter with me!”
“But, Jim,” she broke in tenderly—“you did earn an honest living. Your workshop proves that.”
“I've used that to improve my tools and melt the swag the past year. The shop's all right.”
“But you did make a successful invention?”
“You bet I did,” he answered savagely, “and that's why I quit the business. Three years ago I took down a big automobile and worked out an improvement in the transmission that settled the question of heavy draft machines. I took it to a lawyer in Wall Street and he took it to a man that had money. Between the two of 'em, they didn't do a thing to me! They were going to put my patent on the market and make me a millionaire. God, I was crazy——”
He paused and squared his shoulders with a deep breath.
“They put it on the market all right and they made some millionaires—but I wasn't one of 'em, Kiddo! They got me to sign a paper that skinned me out of every dollar as slick as you can pull an eel through your fingers. I hired another lawyer and gave him half he could get to beat 'em. He fought like a tiger and two days before I met you he got his verdict and they paid it—just ten thousand dollars. Think of it—ten thousand dollars! And each of them got a million cash. They sold it outright for two millions and a half. My lawyer got five thousand dollars, and I got five thousand dollars. That's mine, anyhow. It's in that bag there. I'm working on a new set of tools now in my shop. I'm going to get that money back from the two thieves who stole it from me by law. I'll take it by force, the way they took it. If I can croak them both in the fight—well, there'll be two thieves less to rob honest men and women, that's all.”
“Oh, Jim!” Mary gasped, lifting a trembling hand to her throat as if to tear open her collar. “You're mad. You don't know what you're saying——”
“Don't fool yourself, Kiddo,” he interrupted fiercely. “My eyes are open now, and I've got a level head back of 'em, too. I've doped it all out. You ought to 'a' heard that lawyer give me a few lessons in business when he'd skinned me and salted my hide. He was good-natured and confidential. He seemed to love me. `Business is war, sonny,' he piped, between the puffs of the big Havana cigar he was smoking—`war! war to the knife! We got you off your guard and put the knife into you at the right minute—that's all. Don't take it so hard! Invent something else and keep your eyes peeled. You ought to love us for giving you an education in business early in life. You're young. You won't have to learn your lesson again. Go to work, sonny, in your shop, and turn out another new tool for the advancement of trade!'”
He paused and smiled grimly.
“I've done it, too! I've just finished a little invention that'll crack any safe in New York in twenty minutes after I touch it.”
He broke into a dry laugh, sat down and deliberately lighted a fresh cigarette.
She studied his face with beating heart. Was he lost beyond all hope of reformation? Or was this the boyish bravado of an amateur criminal poisoned by the consciousness of wrong? She tried to think. She felt the red blood pounding through her heart and beating against her brain in suffocating waves of despair.
In vivid flashes the scene of her marriage but two weeks ago, came back in tormenting memories. The solemn words she had spoken kept ringing like the throb of a funeral bell far up in the star-lit heavens——
“I, MARY ADAMS, TAKE THEE, JAMES ANTHONY, TO MY WEDDED HUSBAND, TO HAVE AND TO HOLD... FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH, AND TO OBEY, TILL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE; AND THERETO I GIVE THEE MY TROTH.”
The last solemn prayer kept ringing its deep-toned message over all——
“GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON, GOD THE HOLY GHOST, BLESS, PRESERVE, AND KEEP YOU; THE LORD MERCIFULLY WITH HIS FAVOR LOOK UPON YOU, AND FILL YOU WITH ALL SPIRITUAL BENEDICTION AND GRACE; THAT YE MAY SO LIVE TOGETHER IN THIS LIFE, THAT IN THE WORLD TO COME YE MAY HAVE LIFE EVERLASTING. AMEN.”
In a sudden rush of desperate pity for herself and the man to whom she was bound, she dropped on her knees by his side, slipped her arms about his neck and clung to him, sobbing.
“Oh, Jim, Jim, man,” she whispered hoarsely. “I can't see you sink into hell like this! Have you no real love in your heart for the woman who has given all? Have mercy on me! Have mercy! You can't mean the hideous things you've just said! You've been crazed by your losses. You're just a boy yet. Life is all before you. You're only twenty-four. I'm just twenty-four. We can both begin anew. I've never lived until these past weeks—neither have you. You couldn't drag me down into a life of crime——”
Her head sank and her voice choked into silence. He made no movement of his hand to soothe her. His voice was not persuasive. It was hard and cold.
“I'm not asking you to help me on any of my jobs,” he said. “I'm the financier of the family. You can say the prayers and keep house.”
“Knowing that you are a criminal? That your hands are stained with human blood?”
“Why not?” he snapped, the blue blaze flashing again in his eyes. “Suppose you were the wife of the gentlemanly lawyer-thief who robbed me, using the law instead of a jimmy—would you bother your little head about my business? Does his wife ask him where he got it? Does anybody know or care? He lives on Fifth Avenue now. He bought a palace up there the day after he got my money. We passed it on the way to the Park the day I met you. A line of carriages was standing in front and finely dressed women were running up the red carpet that led down the stoop and under the canopy to the curb. Did any of the gay dames who smiled and smirked at that thief's wife ask how he got the money to buy the house? Not much. Would they have cared if they had known? They'd have called him a shrewd lawyer—that's all! Do you reckon his wife worries about such tricks of trade? Why should mine worry?”
She gripped his hand with desperate pleading.
“Oh, Jim, dear, you can't be a criminal at heart! I wouldn't have loved you if it had been true. I can't believe it! I won't believe it. You're posing. You don't mean this. You can't mean it. You're going to return every dishonest dollar that you've taken.”
“You don't know what you're talking about!”
He closed his jaw with a snap and leaned close in eager, tense excitement.
“Do you know how much junk I've piled into a little box in my shop the past three months?”
“I don't care—I don't want to know!”
“You've got to care—you've got to know now! It's worth a hundred thousand dollars, do you hear? A hundred thousand dollars! It would take me a life-time to earn that on a salary. In two weeks after we get back to New York with my new invention that lawyer advised me to make, I'll go through his house—I'll open his safe, I'll take every diamond, every pearl and every scrap of stolen jewelry his wife's wearing. And I won't leave a fingerprint on the window sill. I've got two of his servants working for me.
“In six months I'll be worth half a million. In a year I'll pull off the big haul I'm planning and I'll be a millionaire. We'll retire from business then—just like they did. We'll build our marble palace down at Bay Ridge and our yacht will nod in the harbor. We'll spend our summers in Europe when we like and every snob and fool in New York will fall over himself to meet me. And every woman will envy my wife. I'm young, Kiddo, but I've cut my eye teeth. You've just been born. I'm running the business end of this thing. You think you can reform me. You can—AFTER I'VE MADE OUR PILE. I'll join the church then and sing louder than that lawyer. But if you think you're going to stop my business career at this stage of the game—forget it, forget it!”
He sprang up with a quick movement of his tense body and threw her off. She rose and watched his restless steps as he paced the floor. Her mind was numb as if from a mortal blow. She brushed the tangled ringlets of brown hair back from her forehead, drew the handkerchief from her belt and wiped the perspiration from her brow.
Before she could gather the strength to speak, he wheeled suddenly and confronted her:
“I've known from the first, Kiddo, that you're not the kind to help in this business. I don't expect it. I don't ask it. I need a ranch like this down here for storage. I'm going to take the old woman into partnership with me.”
She started back in an instinctive recoil of horror.
“Your MOTHER?”
He nodded.
“Yep!”
She drew a step nearer and peered into his set face.
“YOU WILL MAKE YOUR OWN MOTHER A CRIMINAL?”
“Sure!” he growled. “That's what I came down here for.”
“She won't do it!”
“She won't, eh?” he sneered. “Look at this hog pen!”
He swept the bare, wretched cabin with a gesture of contempt and shrugged his shoulders.
“Look at the rags she's wearing,” he went on savagely. “When we talk it over tonight with that five thousand dollars in gold shining in her eyes—I'm going to show her a lot o' things she never saw before, Kiddo—take it from me!”
She answered in slow, even tones:
“I can't live with you, Jim.”
The blue flames beneath the drooping eyelids were leaping now in the yellow glare of the candle's rays. The muscles of his body were knotted. His voice came from his throat a low growl.
“Do you know who you're fooling with?”
The blood of a clean life flamed in her cheeks and nerved her with reckless daring. Her figure stiffened and her voice rang with defiant scorn:
“Yes. I know at last—a thief who would drag his own mother down to hell with him!”
Not a muscle of his powerful body moved; his face was a stolid mask. He threw his words slowly through his teeth:
“Now you listen to me. You're my wife. I didn't invent this marriage game. I played it as I found it. And that's the way you're going to play it. You're good and sweet and clean—I like that kind, and I won't have no other. You're mine. MINE, do you hear! Mine for life—body and soul—`FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH'——”
He paused and thrust his massive jaw squarely into her face:
“`——AND OBEY!'” he hissed, “`UNTIL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE'—you said it, didn't you?”
“Yes——”
“Well?”
She turned from him with sudden aversion:
“I didn't know what you were——”
“Nobody ever knows BEFORE they're married!” he broke in savagely. “You took your chances. I took mine—`FOR BETTER FOR WORSE.' We'll just say now it's for worse and let it go at that!”
The little body stiffened.
“I'll die first!”
He held her gaze without words, searching the depths of her being with the cold, blue flame in his drooping eyes. If she were bluffing, it was easy. She could talk her head off for all he cared. If she meant it, he might have his hands full unless he mastered the situation at once and for all time.
There was no sign of yielding to his iron will. An indomitable soul had risen in her frail body and defied him. His decision was instantaneous.
“Oh, you'll die sooner than live with me—eh?”
There was something hideous in the cold venom with which he drawled the words. Her heart fairly stopped its beating. With the last ounce of courage left, she held her place and answered:
“Yes!”
With the sudden crouch of a tiger he drew his clenched fist to strike.
“Forget it!”
She sprang back with terror, her body trembling in pitiful weakness.
“You snivelling little coward!” he growled.
“Oh, Jim, Jim,” she faltered,—“you—you—couldn't strike me!”
A step nearer and he stood over her, his big, flat head thrust forward, his eyes gleaming, his muscles knotted in blind rage.
“No—I won't STRIKE you,” he whispered. “I'll just KILL you—that's all!”
With the leap of an infuriated beast he sprang on her and his sharp fingers gripped her throat.
The world went black and she felt herself sinking into a bottomless abyss. With maniac energy she tore his hands from her throat and the warm blood streamed from the gash his nails had torn.
“Jim! Jim! For God's sake!” she moaned in abject terror.
With a sullen growl, his fingers, sharp as a leopard's claw, found her neck again and closed with a grip that sent the blood surging to her brain and her eyes starting from their sockets.
The one hideous thought that flashed through her mind was that he was going to plunge his claws into her eyes and blind her for life. He could hold her his prisoner then. She made a last desperate struggle for breath, her hands relaxed, she drooped and sank to the couch toward which he had hurled her in the first rush of his assault.
He lifted her and choked the slender neck again to make sure, loosed his hands and the limp body dropped on the couch and was still.
He stood watching her in silence, his arms at his side.
“Damned little fool!” he muttered. “I had to give you that lesson. The sooner the better!”
He waited with contemptuous indifference until she slowly recovered consciousness. She lay motionless for a long time and then slowly opened her eyes.
Thank God! They had not been gouged out as poor Ella's. She didn't mind the warm blood that soaked her collar and ran down her neck. If he would only spare her eyes. Blindness had been her one unspeakable terror. She closed her eyes again and silently prayed for strength. Her strength was gone. Wave after wave of sickening, cowardly terror swept her prostrate soul. She could feel his sullen presence—his body with its merciless strength towering above her. She dared not look. She knew that he was watching her with cruel indifference. A single cry, a single word and he might thrust his claw into her eyes and the light of the world would go out forever.
Her terror was too hideous; she could endure it no longer. She must move. She must try to save herself. She lifted her head and caught his steady, venomous gaze.
A quick, sliding movement of abject fear and she was erect, facing him and backing away silently.
He followed with even step, his gaze holding her as the eyes of a snake its victim. She would not let him know her terror of blindness. She preferred death a thousand times. If he would only kill her outright it was all the mercy she would ask.
“You—won't—kill—me—Jim!” she sobbed. “Please—please, don't kill me!”
He lifted his sharp finger and followed her toward the shed-room door, his voice the triumphant cry of an eagle above his prey.
“`FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE—UNTIL DEATH DO US PART!'”
Her heart gave a bound of cowardly joy. He had relented. He would not blind her. She could live. She was young and life was sweet.
She tried to smile her surrender through her tears as she backed slowly away from his ominous finger.
“Yes, I'll try—Jim. I'll try—`UNTIL DEATH DO US PART—UNTIL DEATH—UNTIL DEATH——'”
Her voice broke into a flood of tears as she blindly felt her way through the door and into the darkened room.
He paused on the threshold, held the creaking board shutter in his hand and broke into a laugh.
“The world ain't big enough for you to get away from me, Kiddo. Good night—a good little wife now and it's all right!”
Jim closed the door of the little shed-room with a bang, and stood listening a moment to the sobs inside.
“`UNTIL DEATH DO US PART,' Kiddo!” he laughed grimly.
He turned back into the room and saw Nance standing at the opposite entrance between the calico curtains, an old, battered, flickering lantern in her hand. A white wool shawl was thrown over the gray head and fell in long, filmy waves about her thin figure. Her deep-sunken eyes were exaggerated in the dim light of lantern and candle. She smiled wanly.
He stopped short at the apparition; a queer shiver of superstitious fear shook him. The white form of Death suddenly and noiselessly appearing from the darkness could not have been more uncanny. He had wondered vaguely while the quarrel with his wife was progressing, what had become of his mother. As the fight had reached its height, he had forgotten her.
She looked at him, blinking her eyes and trying to smile.
“Where the devil have you been, old gal?” he asked nervously.
“Nowhere,” she answered evasively.
“You've been mighty quiet on the trip anyhow. I see you've brought something back from nowhere.”
Nance glanced down at the jug she carried in her left hand and laughed.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothin'——”
“Nothin' from nowhere sounds pretty good to me when I see it in a brown jug on Christmas Eve. You're all right, old gal! I was just going to ask if you had a little mountain dew. You're a mind reader. I'll bet the warehouse you keep that stored in is some snug harbor—eh?”
“They ain't never found it yit!” she giggled.
“And I'll bet they won't—bully for you!”
She took down a tin cup from a shelf and placed it beside the jug.
“Another glass, sweetheart——”
The old woman stared at him in surprise, walked to the shelf and brought another tin cup.
“What do ye want with two?” she asked in surprise.
Jim moved toward the stool beside the table.
“Sit down.”
“Me?”
“Sure. Let's be sociable. It's Christmas Eve, isn't it?”
“Yeah!” Nance answered cheerfully, taking her seat and glancing timidly at her guest.
Jim seized the jug, poured out two drinks of corn whiskey, handed her one and raised his:
“Well, here's lookin' at you, old girl.”
He paused, lowered his cup and smiled.
“But say, give me a toast.” He nodded toward the shed-room. “I'm on my honeymoon, you know.”
His hostess laughed timidly and glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. She wished to be sociable and make up as best she could for her rudeness on their arrival.
“I ain't never heard but one fur honeymooners,” she said softly.
“Let's have it. I've never heard a toast for honeymooners in my life. It'll be new to me—fire away!”
Nance fumbled her faded dress with her left hand and laughed again.
“'May ye live long and prosper an' all yer troubles be LITTLE ONES!'”
She laughed aloud at the old, worm-eaten joke and Jim joined.
“Bully! Bully, old girl—bully!”
He lifted his cup and drained it at one draught and Nance did the same.
He seized the jug and poured another drink for each.
“Once more——”
He leaned across the table.
“And here's one for you.” He squared his body and lifted his cup:
“To all your little ones—no matter how big they are!”
Jim drained his liquor without apparently noticing her agitation, though he was watching her keenly from the corner of his eye.
The cup she held was lowered slowly until the whiskey poured over her dress and on the floor. Her thin figure drooped pathetically and her voice was the faintest sob:
“I—I—ain't got—none!”
“I heard you had a boy,” Jim said carelessly.
The drooping figure shot upright as if a bolt of lightning had swept her. She stared at him in tense silence, trying to gather her wits before she answered.
“Who told you anything about me?” she demanded sternly.
“A fellow in New York,” Jim continued with studied carelessness—“said he used to live down here.”
“He LIVED down here?” she repeated blankly.
“Yep—come now, loosen up and tell us about the kid.”
“There ain't nuthin' ter tell—he's dead,” she cried pathetically.
“He said you deserted the child and left him to starve.”
“He said that?” she growled.
“Yep.”
He was silent again and watched her keenly.
She fumbled her dress and glanced nervously across the table as if afraid to ask more. Unable to wait for him to speak, she cried nervously at last:
“Well—well—what else did he say?”
“That he took the little duffer to New York and raised him.”
“RAISED him?”
She fairly screamed the words, springing to her feet trembling from head to foot.
“Till he was big enough to kick into the streets to shuffle for himself.”
“The scoundrel said he was dead.”
Her voice was far away and sank into dreamy silence. She was living the hideous, lonely years again with a heart starved for love.
Jim's voice broke the spell:
“Then you didn't desert him?” The man's eyes held hers steadily.
She stared at him blankly and spoke with rushing indignation:
“Desert him—my baby—my own flesh and blood? There's never been a minute since I looked into his eyes that I wouldn't 'a' died fur him.”
She paused and sobbed.
“He had such pretty eyes, stranger. They looked like your'n—only they wuz puttier and bluer.”
She lifted her faded dress, brushed the tears from her cheeks and went on rapidly:
“When I found his drunken brute of a daddy was a liar and had another wife, I wouldn't live with him. He tried to make me but I kicked him out of the house—and he stole the boy to get even with me.” Her voice broke, she dropped her head and choked back the tears. “He did get even with me, too—he did,” she sobbed.
Jim watched her in silence until the paroxysm had spent itself.
“You think you'd know this boy now if you found him?”
She bent close, her breath coming in quick gasps.
“My God, mister, do you think I COULD find him?”
“He lives in New York; his name is Jim Anthony.”
“Yes—yes?” she said in a dazed way. “He called hisself Walter Anthony—he wuz a stranger from the North and my boy's name was Jim.” She paused and bent eagerly across the table. “New York's an awful big place, ain't it?”
“Some town, old gal, take it from me.”
“COULD I find him?”
“If you've got money enough. You said you'd know him. How?”
“I'd know him!” she answered eagerly. “The last quarrel we had was about a mark on his neck. He wuz a spunky little one. You couldn't make him cry. His devil of a daddy used to stick pins in him and laugh because he wouldn't cry. The last dirty trick he tried was what ended it all. He pushed a live cigar agin his little neck until I smelled it burnin' in the next room. I knocked him down with a chair, drove him from the house and told him I'd kill him if he ever put his foot inside the door agin. He stole my boy the next night—but he'll carry that scar to his grave.”
“You'd love this boy now if you found him in New York as bad as his father ever was?” Jim asked with a curious smile.
“Yes—he's mine!” was the quick, firm answer.
Jim watched her intently.
“I looked Death in the face for him,” she went on fiercely. “I'd dive to the bottom o' hell to find him if I knowed he wuz thar—— But what's the use to talk; that devil killed him! I've waked up many a night stranglin' with a dream when I seed the drunken brute burnin' an' beatin' an' torturin' him to death. The feller you've heard about ain't him. 'Tain't no use to make me hope an' then kill me——”
“He's not dead, I tell you. I know.”
Jim's voice rang with conviction so positive the old woman's breath came in quick gasps and she smiled through her eager tears.
“And I MIGHT find him?”
“IF you've got money enough! Money can do anything in this world.”
He opened the black bag, thrust both hands into it and threw out a handful of yellow coin which he allowed to pour through his fingers and rattle into a tin plate which had been left on the table.
Her eyes sparkled with avarice.
“It's your'n—all your'n?” she breathed hungrily.
“I'm taking it down South to invest for a fool who thinks”—he stopped and laughed—“who thinks it's bad luck to keep money that's stained with blood——”
Nance started back.
“Got blood on it?”
Jim spoke in confidential appeal.
“That wouldn't make any difference to you, would it?”
She shook her gray locks and glanced at the pile of yellow metal, hungrily.
“I—I wouldn't like it with blood marks!”
He lifted a handful of coin, clinked it musically in his hands and held it in his open palms before her.
“Look! Look at it close! You don't see any blood marks on it, do you?”
Her eyes devoured it.
“No.”
He seized her hand, thrust a half-dozen pieces into it and closed her thin fingers over it.
“Feel of it—look at it!”
Her hands gripped the gold. She breathed quickly, broke into a laugh, caught herself in the middle of it, and lapsed suddenly into silence.
“Feels good, don't it?” he laughed.
Nance grinned, her uneven, discolored gleaming ominously in the flicker of the candle.
“Don't it?” he repeated.
“Yeah!”
He lifted another handful and threw it in the air, catching it again.
“That's the stuff that makes the world go 'round. There's your only friend, old girl! Others promise well—but in the scratch they fail.”
“Yeah—when the scratch comes they fail!” Nance echoed.
“Money never fails!” Jim continued eagerly. “It's the god that knows no right or wrong——”
He touched the pile in the plate and drew the bag close for her to see.
“How much do you guess is there?”
Nance gazed greedily into the open bag and looked again at the shining heap in the plate.
“I dunno—a million, I reckon.”
The man laughed.
“Not quite that much! But enough to make you rich for life—IF you had it.”
The old woman turned away pathetically and shook her gray head.
“I wouldn't have to work no more, would I?”
Her thin hands touched the faded, dirty dress.
“And I could buy me a decent dress,” her voice sank to a whisper, “and I could find my boy.”
“You bet you could!” Jim exclaimed. “There's just one god in this world now, old girl—the Almighty Dollar!”
He paused and leaned close, persuasively:
“Suppose now, the man that got that money had to kill a fool to take it—what of it? You don't get big money any other way. A burglar watches his chance, takes his life in his hands and drills his way into a house. He finds a fool there who fights. It's not his fault that the man was born a fool, now is it?”
“Mebbe not——”
“Of course not. A burglar kills but one to get his pile, and then only because he must, in self-defence. A big gambling capitalist corners wheat, raises the price of bread and starves a hundred thousand children to death to make his. It's not stained with blood. Every dollar is soaked in it! Who cares?”
“Yeah—who cares?” Nance growled fiercely.
Jim smiled at his easy triumph.
“It's dog eat dog and the devil take the hindmost now!”
“That's so—ain't it?” she agreed.
“You bet! Business is business and the best man's the man that gets there. Steal a hundred dollars, you go to the penitentiary—foolish! Don't do it. Steal a million and go to the Senate!”
“Yeah!” Nance laughed.
“Money—money for its own sake,” he rushed on savagely—“right or wrong. That's all there is in it today, old girl—take it from me!”
He paused and his smile ended in a sneer.
“Man shall eat bread in the sweat of his brow? Only fools SWEAT!”
Nance turned her face away, sighed softly, glancing back at Jim furtively.
“I reckon that's so, too. Have another drink, stranger?”
She poured another cup of whiskey and one for herself. She raised hers as if to drink and deftly threw the contents over her shoulder.
Jim seized the jug and poured again.
“Once more. Come, I've another toast for you. You'll drink this one I know.”
He lifted his cup and rose a little unsteadily. Nance stood with uplifted cup watching him.
“As the poet sings,” he began with a bow to the old woman: