The next morning Inez handed it to her, saying, “Will you think me foolish if I ask you to take it away. Doesn’t it tick very loudly?”
Fanny did not think so, and Inez continued: “I had father put it on the bureau and the table and at last in the drawer last night, but I could hear it saying ‘halt, halt,’ just ashesaid it. I am sorry, but I can’t bear it. Take it away.”
With a feeling of disappointment Fanny took it from her and said, “Shall I give it to Mr. Hardy to keep for you until you are better?”
“No, no; oh no, not to Tom; anything but that,” Inez exclaimed, and greatly puzzled Fanny put the watch in her travelling bag down stairs where she was sure the fanciedhaltcould not be heard.
Inez’s attitude towards Tom had troubled Fanny from the first. She never asked for him, and if he came into her room and spoke to her, his visit was sure to be followed by a chill, or headache. At last Fanny spoke of it to Mr. Rayborne, who replied, “Inez is rather fanciful. It is part of the disease to turn against your best friend. Perhaps Tom had better stay away.” After that he staid away, but Fanny frequently found him near the door when she went out and in.
“I am here to see if there is anything I can do,” he said in explanation, offering to go for whatever she wanted and saving her many steps up and down the stairs.
Towards her father Inez’s manner was different. She seldom spoke to him, but she allowed him to sit by her and once she took his hand with a look in her eyes which he could not misunderstand, and he said to her, “Yes, daughter, I promise before Heaventhat workis finished for me and Tom, too. I can answer for him.”
Fanny’s step was heard outside and he stopped abruptly, but Inez seemed brighter and better for what he had said. He was constantly in the sick room, frequently sitting in the shadow where he could see not only the fever stained face with the sunken eyes in which the shadow of a great horror was still visible, but the fair, blue eyed girl who filled him with pride and an intense desire to take her in his arms and call her his daughter.
Ten days passed and there was no real improvement in Inez. Occasionally she would rally and inquire about the household matters, showing that she had some interest in them, but these moments were always followed by sinking spells when life seemed nearly extinct. The doctor was greatly perplexed.
“A strong girl like her ought not to be so affected by a scare,” he said. “I don’t understand it. She seems to have lost her grip and makes no effort to get hold of it, and then the weather is against her.”
It was very hot those July days, hotter and dryer than it had been in the valley for years, and Fanny began at last to droop in the heat and confinement. They sent to Stockton for a nurse and this relieved Fanny from her constant watch in the sick room, where Inez lay a part of the time half unconscious of what was passing around her and talking very low to herself. Once Fanny thought she caught the wordRidgefieldand wondered how Inez knew anything of that place.
“I mean to ask Mr. Rayborne,” she thought, and went to find him.
The sun was setting and a cool breeze was blowing down from the mountains and she stepped out upon the piazza for a moment to enjoy it. While there she heard Mr. Rayborne and Tom enter the sitting room from the kitchen. They were talking of her, and Tom’s voice was rather loud as he said, “I think it a shame that for the whim of a proud woman you cannot tell her that you are her father and Inez her half sister! Do you think she would be ashamed of you? She is not that kind.”
For a moment Fanny felt as if she, too, had heart disease. She could not move and there was a prickly sensation in her hands and feet. Then she recovered herself, and in a moment was confronting Mr. Rayborne with the question, “Are you Mark Hilton, and is Inez my half sister?”
Mark could not reply, but Tom did it for him. “I am bound by no promise,” he said, “and will tell you the truth. HeisMark Hilton, your father, if Helen Tracy is your mother. He was not killed in the mines, and Inez is your half sister. She knows it and your mother knows it, but would only permit you to come here on the condition that you were kept in ignorance of the relationship. I am hampered by no conditions. I have told you and it may save Inez’s life.”
Tom had freed his mind and walked from the room, leaving father and daughter alone. Mark waited for Fanny to speak first, but she could not. The prickly sensation had returned. Her tongue felt thick and her hands cold and stiff. She had thought so much of her own father since she heard of him, and had pictured him often in her mind as the Apollo her mother had described. She had regretted that she could not rememberhim, and now he was here before her, and was not at all like her idea of him, nor at all like Judge Prescott, nor Roy, nor any man she had ever known socially. He was still fine looking, with the manners of a gentleman, but he was a miner,—a stage driver,—a guide,—with another name than his own. All this passed through her mind, and with it a thought of ’Tina. There was some proud blood of the Tracys in her veins, and for a second it asserted itself strongly. Then, with a long breath, like one shaking off a nightmare, she went forward and said, “If you are my father,—kiss me!”
Mark felt as if all his life which he would forget were slipping from him and leaving him the man he used to be, while he held his daughter to him and cried over her as if his heart were breaking. When he grew calm he told her all he wished her to know of himself since he parted from her mother, whom he screened as far as possible from blame. After her father left her Fanny returned to the piazza and sat down alone to think and try to realize what she had heard and the new position in which it had placed her. One fact stood out vividly before her.Inezwas her sister, and she was glad, and began to build castles of the future when Inez would be able to go to New York. No thought of separation occurred to her. Inez was hers to care for. With the advantages of a city she would make a brilliant and beautiful woman. She was much younger than she looked. A year or two at school would be desirable and then she would live with Fanny and Roy, “and marry Tom?” Fanny whispered interrogatively.
There was no one to hear,—no one to answer,—except Fanny herself, who began to rebel against a marriage which before had seemed suitable enough, if the parties were satisfied. She had admired Tom for his apparentbravery, his pleasant face and genial manner, but as a brother-in-law he was not so desirable. She could mould and cultivate Inez, but not Tom. He was too old. She must take him as he was, if she took him at all; not as Tom Hardy either, but as Jeff Wilkes, who, her mother had told her, was a strange boy with strange ways, whom she had never liked. That her father had changed his name displeased her, but she did not resent it in him as much as she did in Tom, who she felt nearly sure had suggested it. But he was Inez’sfiancé. She must accept him and make Roy accept him, too. She did not anticipate much trouble there. Roy would think what she wished him to think, and Tom was really better looking than half the men of her acquaintance if they were shorn of their city dress. This comforted her, and when at last Tom came out and talked to her as he could talk when he chose, she began to feel quite reconciled to him as a prospective brother-in-law.
It was too late for her to see Inez that night, but very early in the morning she was at her bedside, calling her sister and telling her how glad she was and that now she must get well fast so as to go to New York in September, when she and her mother went home.
“No, Fanny,” Inez said. “I shall never go to New York. It is lovely in you to suggest it and to be glad I am your sister. You don’t know what joy it is to have you call me so, and to believe you love me. In some circumstances I might have gone with you for a while, for I should like to see the eastern world where father and Tom were born. He must be Tom to me always, and it will not be long. I am going as mother did, only not so sudden. I am younger and stronger, but I know I am dying. I feel as if part of me were dead already and there is nothing to rally from. The tree struck withlightning twice does not recover. I have been struck twice, once in the stage when——oh, Fanny, I can’t talk of that without my heart standing still. The second shock was different and came when I heard that father and Tom were somebody else, and you my sister. I was so weak that it was like another blow. For your sake I’d like to live, although our paths would be apart. Yours in the great, busy world, and mine here with father. I wish I could see your Roy, but it is too much to think he would come across a continent.”
Inez had thought all this out the previous night after her father told her that Fanny knew of the relationship, and now that she had said it she sank into a state of great exhaustion, during which Fanny staid by her and every time she put her hand on Inez’s head, or spoke her name, the sick girl’s eyes opened with an expression of unutterable joy, and the pale lips whispered “My sister!”
That night Fanny wrote to her mother: “I know everything from ’Tina to the present time. Tom has told me that Mr. Rayborne was Mark Hilton, my father, and Inez my sister.My fathertold me the rest, and I do not believe there is anything more for me to learn about myself. At first I prickled all over and could scarcely speak. Now I am very calm and glad and should be happy if Inez were not so low. I think she is going to die, and I cannot leave her. I shall write to Roy to-morrow and tell him everything. I hope he will come. I want him to see Inez.”
After this Fanny devoted herself entirely to Inez, taking quite as much care of her as the hired nurse. But it was of no avail. Inez grew weaker every day and baffled both the physician from Stockton and the specialist from San Francisco, who had been called to see her.That there was serious heart trouble, complicated with slight paralysis, both agreed, but neither could understand why the stage fright alone should have affected her so strangely. If love and care and tenderness could have given her back her life she would have had it, but nothing could save her. Every night she seemed weaker, and every morning her face looked thinner and her hands more transparent as they lay just where they were put, for she had but little power to move them now.
“They are almost as white as yours, but not so small,” she said one afternoon to Fanny, who was rubbing and bathing them. “They have been strong hands and done a heap of work, but will never do any more, and it is better so. I’ve thought it all over and do not want to live. I’d rather go to mother, who is waiting for me. She’ll be glad to see me. I know what you want to say,” she went on as Fanny tried to interrupt her. “You would take me to New York and try to make a lady of me like yourself. But I am not like your people. I could never be like them and they would wonder how you came to have a sister like me, and tongues would be busy and you would feel hurt, and Roy, too. I should like to see him before I die. Do you think he will come?”
Fanny had not heard from him since she wrote and told him of Inez and her father and it was time she received a letter. She was quite sure, however, that he would come, “and take me by surprise, most likely,” she said to Inez, who was exhausted and disposed to sleep. Fanny, too, felt the need of rest and air and went out upon the piazza to enjoy the sunset. She was very tired and a little homesick, with a great longing for Roy. “If he would only come,” she was thinking, when in answer to her thought Roy came rapidly up the walk and stood at her side.
CHAPTER XIV.ROY.
Fanny’s letter had reached him in Ridgefield, where, with his father and mother, he was spending a few days at the Prospect House. Its contents electrified them all and no one more than Uncle Zach.
“Mark and Jeff both alive!” he said. “I never b’lieved Jeff was dead. He ain’t the kind, but for Mark, that I sot such store by not to be killed is queer and I’ve mourned for him as I would for Johnny. And he took another name, and married another woman and had another girl! I didn’t think that of Mark! No, marm, I didn’t. And he is Fanny’s father? I’ll be dumbed! I’d like to see him, though, and Jeff, too. Like fust rate to see him turn a summerset on the grass again. Give ’em my respects and tell ’em to come home and bring that girl if they want to. Ridgefield air and Dot will soon bring her round. She must be a clipper to spring at a robber like that. No wonder she’s got heart disease. It makes mine wobble round to think of it.”
Uncle Zach had his remarks mostly to himself, as Roy was talking excitedly to his father and mother of the journey he was going to take at once.
“Fanny needs me, and I am going,” he said, and he started that night, and several days later reached Clark’s very hot, very tired, very dusty, and very impatient to see Fanny. “You say she is still in the mountains. How long does it take to get there?” he asked Mrs. Prescott, whom he had surprised as she was taking her lunch in her room.
She was very glad to see him, for she was getting tiredof waiting for Fanny and anxious as to what the result of the waiting might be. She was not hard enough to hope Inez would die, but could not help thinking that if she did one possible annoyance would be removed, and this thought was in her mind when Roy came suddenly upon her, overwhelming her with so many questions that for a few minutes she could only listen without replying. When at last she had a chance she repeated all that had happened since she came into the valley, dwelling most upon the loss of her diamonds for which Roy did not particularly care. He was more interested in Fanny. Once or twice during his rapid journey it had occurred to him that his newly found relatives might prove awkward appendages if Fanny insisted upon having them near her. But he put the feeling aside as unworthy of him.
“If she can stand it, I can,” he thought, and began to wonder what manner of people his father-in-law elect and sister-in-law might be.
Craig and Alice had both said that Mark was a gentleman and Roy accepted that so far as it went. He might have been a gentleman when they knew him, but he had passed through many phases since and there was no guessing what he was now, except that he was Fanny’s father, and as such must be respected. Mrs. Prescott did not help to reassure him and in all she said he detected a keen regret for what had happened, and that it was Inez who troubled her most. Mark would never intrude himself upon her, but Fanny would insist upon taking Inez to New York, if she lived, as she probably would.
“And if she does, oppose it with all your strength. We cannot have it. And bring Fanny away at once,”she said to Roy, when he left her for his drive to the cottage.
The sun was down when he reached it, but there was still light enough for him to see the gleam of a white dress upon the piazza. Something told him it was Fanny, and quickening his step he soon had her in his arms, smothering her with kisses, while she cried for joy. He did not at first notice how worn and pale she was, he was so glad to see her and so struck with her surroundings.
“By Jove, isn’t it queer to find you here? and how white you are,” he said at last. “This will never do. I must get you away at once.”
“Not while Inez lives,” Fanny answered, in a tone Roy knew it was useless to combat.
“Is she so very low?” he asked. “Tell me all about it. You have written a good deal, and your mother told me a lot, but I want to hear it from you. It’s the strangest thing I ever heard.”
Fanny told him everything from the day she first saw Inez up to the present time. When she described the hold-up she was very earnest and dramatic, and Roy’s blood tingled with admiration for the heroic girl who had braved a masked robber and was perhaps paying for it with her life. Two or three times he asked questions which Fanny thought irrelevant to the subject, but for the most part he listened quietly till she was through.
“You are glad you have found your father?” he said, during a pause in the conversation.
“Glad? Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?” Fanny replied. “I once told you I believed I should find him. He is not like you, nor Judge Prescott, nor anybody I ever knew, but he ismine, and you must like him.”
“I intend to,” Roy said, “and now fire away at Tom. What is he like?”
If there was sarcasm intended Fanny did not know it, and answered readily, “He is nice, too,—though not like father. I don’t quite know what I mean, only he is different. I am sorry for him. He was to marry Inez, you know, and now that can never be, and what I don’t understand is that he seldom comes into her room, and when he does she is sure to have a chill. She used to ask me often where he was and when I said, ‘Do you want to see him?’ she’d say, ‘No, I only want to know if he has gone out.’ I told him of it and he said, a little irritably, ‘Tell her I’m always in the house.’ That seemed to quiet her. Strange, isn’t it?”
Before Roy could answer, Fanny exclaimed, “There’s father,” and Mark Hilton appeared, looking surprised at the sight of a young man, with his arm around his daughter.
“Father, this is Roy,—come all the way from Boston,” Fanny said, and the two men were soon shaking hands and looking keenly at each other in the moonlight which fell upon them.
Roy saw a tall man, with a slight stoop, who must have been handsome once and was good looking still, with something in his language and manners indicative of education and a knowledge of good society. Mark saw a boyish young fellow, with innocence and purity written on his face, and thanked God that Fanny’s choice had fallen upon him. At first he was a little reserved, for he never grasped the hand of an honest man that he did not experience a twinge of shame, and this was very strong in the presence of Roy, who, as Craig Mason’s son, was allied with the past, and whose frank, honest eyes were studying him so closely.
If Mark felt any trepidation in meeting Roy, Tom felt it in a greater degree. He guessed who the young man was on the piazza with Mark, for he knew Fanny had written him to come, and for a minute he shook like a leaf. Then steadying himself with the thought that he had nothing to fear from Roy, he went forward to meet him as he came in, greeting him cordially and seeming wholly at his ease. When supper was over the three men began chatting together as familiarly as if they had known each other all their lives. Roy casually mentioned Ridgefield to Fanny, saying he had left his father and mother there, and both Mark and Tom began to ply him with questions concerning the town and Uncle Zacheus and Dotty.
“You know we lived there years ago and are interested in the place,” Mark said, and Roy told them all he knew, and then at the first opportunity plunged into the subject uppermost in his mind—the robbers and the hold up on the road.
This was something of which neither Mark nor Tom cared to talk. But they could not help themselves. No matter how adroitly they tried to turn it aside Roy brought it up again, with all the eagerness of youth, to whom such things are interesting.
“I wonder the robbers have never been caught,” he said. “We do things better in Boston. Why don’t you get a detective from the east? There’s Converse,—nearly equal to Sherlock Holmes. He only needs the slightest clew,—sometimes a word, a look,—to follow to the end. He’d unearth them quick. I believe I could run them down myself, give me time.”
“Why don’t you try and get the reward? It is a big one,” Fanny asked. “People think they live here.”
“Here!” Roy repeated, glancing around the room, as if in quest of a robber in some of the shadowy corners.
“Not in this house, you stupid,” Fanny said, laughingly, “but in the neighborhood,—among the mountains,—and that we possibly meet them every day. The very idea gives me the shivers, and I never see a strange man that I do not think, perhaps you are one of them. It would be dreadful if I had ever been near them, or spoken to them.”
“Is there nothing in their appearance to mark them?” Roy asked, and Fanny replied, “Nothing but their size. One is very tall; that is Long John. The other is short; they call him Little Dick. He attacked us. You know I told you that before.”
There was a lamp in the room and Tom and Mark were sitting where its light fell upon them. Roy had not noticed them particularly until Fanny spoke of the size of the robbers. Happening then to glance that way he was struck with the expression of Mark’s face and saw the look which passed between him and Tom.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, under his breath.
Then, as Fanny looked inquiringly at him he covered his blunder by fanning himself with his hands and asking if the room were not very hot and close.
“Let’s go outside, where it is cooler,” he said.
Fanny was glad to go and Mark and Tom were glad to have her and be rid for a while of their inquisitive guest.
“How much longer could you have stood that,” Tom asked Mark, whose face was bathed in perspiration, and who only replied, “I think it is getting rather hot;” then he went out at the rear door and strolled off into the woods with Nero for company, while Tom stood his ground, deciding to make himself so agreeable to Roythat he would forget the detective Converse and the robbers and his intention to “run them down.”
Meantime Roy and Fanny were walking along the road in the moonlight, Fanny supremely happy and trying to answer the many questions Roy was putting to her about the hold-up in which she had a part. She thought she had told him all about it, but here he was asking her such funny questions; “How did Inez look when she confronted the robber? How did the robber look? that is, how tall was he?”
“Tall as I am?” he asked, and Fanny replied, “Oh, no; he was about as tall as Tom, and slimmer. He wore a sweater which made him look small.”
“How did Tom look when he came up?” was Roy’s next question.
Fanny couldn’t enlighten him much there. She didn’t think of Tom, she was so absorbed with Inez. She knew he picked up her hat, which was frightfully jammed, and straightened it, and put it on her head. Then she spoke of her diamonds, wondering how they could have gotten loose and if she would ever find them.
“Tom is still hopeful that after a heavy rain they may come to light and has promised to look for them.”
“I hope he’ll find them,” Roy said, and continued: “By the way, what am I to call him and your father? Do the people know he isn’t Tom, and that your father is not Mr. Rayborne?”
“No,” Fanny said. “Inez wanted them to stay as they were, Mr. Rayborne and Mr. Hardy. They know father was divorced and that I am the daughter of his first marriage and took my step-father’s name at his request; that is all they know, and they wouldn’t care, if they knew the whole. I think divorces are wrong, butthey are common, and a lot of people left their real names east when they came here.”
“Queer set Fanny has fallen among. I wonder what father would say,” Roy thought, as they walked back to the house, where only Tom was waiting to say good night.
Alone in his room Roy thought over all he had heard and seen and drew his own conclusions.
“I may be wrong,” he said. “I hope I am. Mr. Rayborne does not look like a highwayman. Fanny’s father, too. It can’t be, but I don’t quite like Tom’s face, it is too cunning and that look he gave Mr. Rayborne meant something. I wish Converse was here. No, I don’t. There’s Fanny! It would kill her, as it is killing Inez, if I am correct in my surmise. I’ll get her away from here as soon as I can, but while she staysIstay and watch! There will be a kind of excitement about it.”
For one so young Roy was a shrewd observer and was seldom wrong in his estimation of people. He was fond of detective stories, and often thought how he would act in such and such circumstances. A suspicion, of which he did not like to think, had fastened itself upon his mind, and in trying to combat it he at last fell asleep.
The next morning, when he met Mark and Tom by daylight, they both looked better to him and were so genial and gentlemanly and kind that he mentally asked pardon for having harbored an evil thought against them. Tom was particularly friendly and proposed a drive through the valley, as the day was fine. To this Roy acceded readily, saying he would be ready as soon as he had seen Inez. At the mention of her name Tom’s face grew so sad that Roy said to him, “Fanny has told me ofyour engagement to her and I sincerely hope Inez will live to keep it.”
“Never,” Tom answered, and turned away, while Roy followed Fanny up to Inez’s room.
Inez had passed a fairly good night, and was very anxious to see Roy. Fanny had brushed her hair and put on her one of her own pink and white dressing jackets, which brought out the beauty of her face, notwithstanding her hollow eyes and sunken cheeks.
“She looks like a picture,” Fanny thought, as she led Roy to the side of the bed.
No introduction was needed and none was given. Inez’s hand was lifted slowly to Roy, who took and held it in both his own. He knew the great black eyes, which looked blacker from contrast with the pallor of her face, were studying him closely, but he had nothing to conceal and met her scrutiny unflinchingly.
“Roy,” she said. “I am so glad for Fanny that you are her Roy, and glad you are here.”
He could not say he was altogether glad to be there except to be with Fanny, but he told her how sorry he was to find her so ill and that he hoped she would soon be better. He knew they were idle words, for death was written on every lineament of her face, but he must say something. Inez shook her head, but did not reply, and Roy, thinking to please and interest her, said, “I am going to drive with Mr. Hardy, who has kindly offered to show me the beauties of the valley.”
At the mention of Tom Inez closed her eyes as if to shut out a painful sight.
“Tired? Ar’n’t you?” Fanny said, motioning Roy to leave, which he did, willingly.
Sick rooms were not to his taste; he was happier with Tom, who proved a most agreeable companion, andtalked so well and so intelligently on every subject and seemed imbued with so good principles that Roy mentally asked pardon again for having distrusted him. Of the hold-ups Tom did not like to talk, and said so.
“The last was fraught with so much disaster to Inez that I never think of it without a shudder,” he said, while of the first, in which he had been the hero, he made light, saying people had magnified what he did, and praised him too much. “I don’t believe it was courage. I was mad,” he said, “and flew at the man without thinking what the consequence might be to me. I hope we are done with the rascals and tourists can hereafter visit the valley in peace.”
Then he began to talk of the east and of Ridgefield and to relate anecdotes of his boyhood and his experience with Uncle Zach and Dotty. Mark, too, came in for a share in the conversation. And here Tom was very eloquent.
“Seeing him now, broken with hard work and crushed with anxiety for Inez, you can have no idea of the grand man he was when he lived in Ridgefield. Everybody respected him, and under right influences he would have staid what he was. No man will stand being nagged continually and twitted with his birth and poverty. I beg your pardon,” he added, as he saw Roy scowl, and remembered that he had been making insinuations against his mother-in-law elect; “I mean no disrespect to Mrs. Prescott. She was proud and beautiful, and greatly admired, and not always on the square. Her daughter is not at all like her.”
“I should think not,” Roy answered, dryly, and then Tom spoke of Roy’s mother and the good she had done him as a boy.
“If I had followed her advice I should have been a betterman, but what is done is done and cannot be changed. Do you believe a bad man can become a thoroughly good one?”
The question startled Roy, who felt unequal to meet it, but who answered with a gravity beyond his years, “It depends upon what he has done. If reparation can be made he should make it, and—. Yes, it seems to me a bad man may become a good one. Of course the memory of the bad would always cling to him, making him sorry for the past and most sorry when the world was praising him.”
Roy had no idea how his words were stinging Tom, who answered quickly, “That’s just it. Memory! If we could kill that; but we can’t. Hell must be made up of memories.”
Again the suspicion of the previous night began to creep into Roy’s mind, but he cast it aside, while Tom roused himself from his melancholy mood and began to point out the lights and shadows on the mountains and asked if Roy would like to try a trail on the morrow. Nothing could suit Roy better, and for the next two or three days Tom went with him from mountain to mountain and was as gay as if no harrowing memory were intruding itself upon his mind. At last Roy suggested that they go to the scene of the last hold-up and look again for the missing diamonds. At first Tom hesitated. That spot was like a haunted spot to him, but there was no good reason for refusing, and they set off together for the scene of the attempted robbery. Once there Tom grew very communicative, rehearsing the proceedings even more dramatically than Fanny had done when describing them to Roy. Here was the stage. Here the robber stood waiting for it, and commanding the driver to halt and the passengers to hold up their hands. HereInez sat and sprang over the wheel with a shriek which must have frightened the brigand quite as much as the revolver which proved not to be loaded, and here she lay fainting with her head in Fanny’s lap when all was over.
“Were you here through it all? I thought you came later,” Roy said, and Tom, who saw he had made a mistake, colored and stammered, “Sounds as if I was here, don’t it? You know, I happened along after the rascal had left, and a more frightened lot of people you never saw. I have heard Inez describe the scene so graphically that I feel as if I were a part of it.”
“I do believe you were,” Roy thought.
“Where was Fanny’s hat when you picked it up? We will look for the diamonds there, first,” he said.
Tom’s face was flushed, but his manner was composed and natural as he pointed out the spot where he had rescued the crushed hat from the mud. The grass was growing there now, and there was not a spot within a radius of many yards where the diamonds could have dropped and lain hidden.
“Some one of the crowd must have taken them,” Roy said, with conviction, when they ended their search and sat down upon a fallen tree to rest. “Yes, somebody took them here, and I will not leave California till I know who the thief is. I believe I’ll send for Converse. I suppose he could visit the valley like any ordinary person, and keep his eyes open. The diamonds were to have been Fanny’s on her wedding day.”
“And when is that to be?” Tom asked.
Roy was not sure, but some time between Christmas and New Years.
“I hope she will have them by that time,” Tom said, throwing down the stick with which he had been pokingin the grass and bushes, and going back to the buggy preparatory to returning home.
It was rather a silent drive, for they were both tired and a shadow had come over both, distrust on Roy’s side, and on Tom’s a dread of what the hot-headed young man might do. It was the second time he had mentioned Converse, the Boston detective, and Tom felt that his sin might be finding him out, and saw no escape from it except by suicide, of which he had thought more than once, but had always put the tempter behind him, with a vehemence which kept him at bay. His Ridgefield training had not wholly lost its effect, nor the advice Alice Tracy had given him when she gathered lilies with him on the river or tramped through the woods to visit the hornet’s nest and the turtle bed in the pond. Those days were very vivid to him now with Alice’s son beside him and a look like her in his face and blue eyes. He liked the boy, as he designated him, and was still a little afraid of him or what he might do. Roy, on his part, was thinking, “A first-rate fellow whom I can’t help liking, any more than I can help putting things together, but if he is bad so is Mr. Hilton, and on Fanny’s account I’d better keep quiet.”
In this state of mind they reached the cottage where they found Fanny waiting for them on the piazza, greatly excited and alarmed.
“Inez is much worse,” she said, “and wants to see Roy alone.”
CHAPTER XV.AT THE LAST.
Inez had been better that morning and had asked to sit in her chair near the window where she could look out upon the mountains and the valley. Fanny was brushing her hair and talking to her, when she asked, as she often did, “Where is Tom?”
“Gone to drive with Roy,” Fanny said. “I believe they were going as far as the scene of the hold-up. Roy is anxious to see the place, and look for my diamonds. But it is of no use. If Tom can’t find them, he can’t.”
“The diamonds? What diamonds?” Inez asked quickly.
Fanny had been warned not to talk to Inez of the hold up. Consequently, with the exception of the day when the watch came, she had never mentioned it until now when she spoke of it in connection with her diamonds. It was of no use for her to try and waive the subject. Inez could not be put off, and she finally explained that when she reached Clark’s the diamonds were missing. The stitches in the ribbon bow of her hat had been broken and the linen bag had slipped out somewhere on the road.
“I have given them up,” she said, “and now only care to have the robbers caught. Roy talks of sending for a famous detective from Boston, but I hardly think he will. He is a rash boy any way and would like nothing better than such an adventure as we had.”
As she talked Fanny was admiring the gloss and texture of Inez’s hair, and wondering how it would looktwisted on the top of her head after the fashion then beginning to prevail.
“I am going to do your hair in the latest style, if it will not tire you too much,” she said, going for some hair pins.
There was no answer and when she came back with the pins she saw that Inez’s head was turned to one side and lay motionless against the chair. She had not heard of the loss of the diamonds until now, when in an instant she saw the whole scene again, and knew where the diamonds were. The thought of the detective Roy was to send for added to her excitement. Tom was worse than she had supposed him to be, but she could not have him arrested. His downfall would implicate her father and Fanny would be involved in the disgrace. All this went rapidly through her mind until unconsciousness came and she knew no more until she was in bed, with her father and Fanny and the nurse bending over her with restoratives.
“Was she excited in any way?” Mr. Hilton asked, and Fanny replied, “I think not. I was brushing her hair and telling her that Roy had gone with Mr. Hardy to look for the diamonds. I had forgotten that she didn’t know they were lost. It might have been that, but I think it was the fatigue of sitting up too long.”
Mr. Hilton made no reply, but he knew what caused the faint which lasted so long and left Inez with no power to move except her head and one hand which from the wrist beat the air constantly. It was still moving feebly up and down, when Roy went to her and asked what he could do for her. Fanny had come up with him and with a motion of her head Inez dismissed her; then said in a whisper, with long, painful breaths between each word, “Don’t try to find the robbers, nor send for a detective.I shall be gone, but Fanny will be here. Don’t do it for her sake.Myfather isherfather. She will have the diamonds back.”
Roy looked surprised. His talk of a detective had been mostly talk, and he told Inez so, assuring her that nothing should ever be done which could hurt Fanny, or compromise her father or Tom. She knew he understood her and that she was giving away those whom she loved better than her life, but she was giving them to Roy, who loved Fanny.
“Thanks,” she said faintly. “You will keep what I have said to yourself, and never let Fanny, nor any one, know. I can trust you?”
“To the death,” he answered, taking her shaking hand, which was as cold as if the shadow stealing into the room had touched that first and turned it into ice.
“I knew Tom was a rascal all the time, and Mr. Hilton, too, but my word is pledged and I shall keep it. Think of Fanny here in a den of robbers. It can’t be long, though. The poor girl is about done for,” Roy thought, as he tried to soothe and quiet Inez.
“Go now, and send Tom,” she said at last, and, glad to escape, Roy went quickly down the stairs and delivered the message to Tom.
It was the first time she had asked for him, and he felt much as a criminal feels when going to execution. He had no idea what she wanted and was rather relieved when she said to him, “Do you love me still?”
“More than I can tell you. Oh, Inez, I am so sorry for it all, and have nothing to offer in excuse,” he replied, bending over her until his face touched the hand which was still moving very slowly, and whose fingers stirred his hair as they moved.
“Don’t try to excuse, or explain,” she said. “Burythe past in my grave, and begin a new life. Make restitution as far as possible. Give Fanny her diamonds!”
Tom started violently. “How did you know she lost them?” he asked, and Inez replied, “I do know, and it has put out the little flickering flame there was left of my life. Get them to her somehow.”
“I have intended to do this all the time, and I assure you she shall have them,” Tom said.
“And the others,” she continued; “If you know who they are and where they are, send them what belongs to them, or its equivalent. You and father, both; I cannot talk to him. I leave it with you.”
She was asking impossibilities and Tom knew it, but he promised that so far as he could he would do all she wished.
“Tom,” she whispered, after a moment’s silence, “Come closer; it is hard for me to talk; the lump in my throat chokes me so.”
Tom bent closer to her, while she went on: “I have loved you so much and thought you so good and never suspected the truth. Tom, oh, Tom, kiss me for the sake of what we have been to each other, and when I am gone, be the good man I used to think you were. Stay with father and take care of him. He needs you. Good bye. Go now. I am so tired.”
In an agony of remorse Tom kissed the face where the moisture of death was gathering fast. Then he left her, and when he saw her again she was like a beautiful piece of marble, with a smile on her lips which told of perfect peace. Mark and Fanny watched by her until the great change came, and the hand which had beaten the air constantly was stilled forever, its last stroke falling on the head of her father who knelt beside her. In his heart was anguish such as few men have ever known.Not once had she reproached him. If she had he could have borne better than he could the look in her eyes and the way she shrank from him at times. Once when Fanny was absent from the room for a moment she said to him, “Poor father, I know you are sorry, and I have loved you through it all, but I can’t bear it. I must die. It is better so, for things could never be again as they have been. I couldn’t be happy here, nor anywhere. I want to go to mother and to God. Stay with Tom; he will be kind to you. Don’t go with Fanny, if she urges it,—with her and Roy, I mean. You could not go to her mother.”
She had done what she could for all of them, and felt that her work was finished. For an hour or more she lay with her eyes closed and with no perceptible motion in her body except the slow beating of her fingers, and when they stopped she was dead. When sure she was gone Mark broke down entirely, while Fanny and Tom tried in vain to quiet him.
“Let me alone,” he said. “I must have it out by myself. Nothing can help me but time.”
Leaving the house he spent hours among the hills, walking up and down while the rain, which had begun to fall, beat upon him unnoticed. He did not think of the storm, or the darkness, and stumbled over rocks and bushes until benumbed with cold and wet with the rain he returned to the house, an old man, so broken that he would never be himself again. He let Tom and Roy and Fanny make the arrangements for the funeral, while he sat in the room with Inez, sometimes talking to her, sometimes to himself, and sometimes to Anita, by whom Inez was buried on one of the loveliest mornings of the late summer. There were few visitors in the valley, butall the people in the sparsely settled neighborhood turned out to the funeral, as they had done to her mother’s. The house was filled with the flowers they brought, some from the woods and some from the gardens which were stripped to honor the dead. Early in the morning on the day of the funeral there came from Stockton a box of exquisite roses and a pillow of flowers, with Inez’s name in the centre. The moment she heard of Inez’s death Mrs. Prescott had telegraphed for the flowers, urging haste and fearing lest her gift should not be in time. As the funeral did not take place until the third day after Inez’s death, they were in time, and neither Fanny nor Mark would have had any doubt as to the sender, if her card, “Mrs. Helen Tracy Prescott,” had not accompanied them.
“Look, father,” Fanny said. “See what mother has sent.”
She put the roses upon the table and left the room for vases in which to arrange them. When she returned one was gone, but there were so many she did not miss it, or suspect that it was between the lids of the family Bible which Mark had not opened before since he recorded Anita’s death. Helen’s thoughtfulness had touched him closely and the rose he took was for her sake and the old time when he had nearly ruined himself with the roses bought for her in Ridgefield. When the short service was over Roy, who longed to get away, suggested to Fanny that they should leave that afternoon, as her mother was anxious for her return. There was no good reason for her staying longer, except to be with her father, who, putting his own grief aside, said to her, “Much as I want you to stay I think you should go to your mother. It was kind in her to let me have you solong. Tell her so, and thank her for the flowers she sent to Inez.”
Fanny would like to have asked him to come to New York, but she knew this could not be. Her father and mother had separated themselves from each other, and the gulf between them could never be recrossed. But she could have him in her own home, when she had one, and she urged his coming to Boston and felt piqued that Roy did not second her invitation. He was busy strapping his satchel and pretended not to hear. Mark understood perfectly, and while thanking Fanny for her kindness, knew he should never trouble Roy, and knew, too, when he said good bye to Fanny that in all human probability he should never see her again. For hours after Tom, who took Roy and Fanny to Clark’s, was gone, he lay on Inez’s bed, wishing he, too, were dead and lying by the new-made grave from which a faint odor of roses occasionally reached him. It was like a breath of Helen,—a perfume from the years of long ago, and he could have shrieked as he recalled those days, remembering what he was then and what he was now. It was dark when Tom returned, and not finding Mark in the house he went to the grave where he was standing with folded arms and his frame convulsed with sobs.
“Mark,” Tom said, stretching his hand across Inez’s grave, “Mark, it is we two alone forever.”
“Yes, we two alone forever,” Mark answered, grasping Tom’s hand, and holding fast to it as a drowning man holds to a spar. “Alone forever, with our secret to keep, and here by Anita’s grave and Inez’s, both of whom I killed, let us swear that henceforth we will be honest men and try in some small measure to redeem the past.”
“I swear it! I promised Inez that whatever restitution could be made we would make,” Tom said, and fora few moments the clasped hands were held above the grave, while the heads of the two men were bowed low as if each were ratifying the solemn vow.
It was the morning of Fanny’s wedding day and the house in Madison Avenue was a scene of great excitement. Flowers and ferns and palms, and florists arranging them, were everywhere. Presents were constantly arriving until the room set apart for them could scarcely hold any more. Cards had been sent to Fanny’s father and Tom, who were in San Francisco, Mark at the Palace Hotel and Tom in a wholesale grocery. A pretty remembrance had come from each, with a letter from Mark wishing his daughter every possible happiness. So far as practicable Tom’s promise to Inez had been kept. Only a few of the people robbed were known to him or Mark by name. To these at intervals money had been sent, which produced nearly as great a sensation as the hold-ups had done. That the brigands had reformed or left the country was evident and Mark and Tom often heard the subject discussed, but Mark never joined in the discussion, or in any other. He was a silent, broken man, doing his work faithfully, but keeping apart by himself, with a sad, far-away look on his face, as if his thoughts were always with the two graves on the mountain side of the Yosemite.
Tom, whose temperament was different, was more social. It was seldom, however, that anything called asmile to his face, for he, too, was nearly always thinking—not so much of Inez’s grave as of the scene on the road and her face as it looked at him when bidding him go before she shot him, as she would shoot a dog. Just before Christmas he asked leave of his employer to go for a day to Salt Lake City. On his return he said to Mark, “It is all right. They are on the way.”
A few days later, and on the morning of the wedding day, Fanny and Roy were sitting together behind a forest of palms and azaleas, when the door bell rang for the twentieth time within an hour.
“Another present, I’ll bet you,” Roy said. “We shall have enough to set up a bazaar.”
“I hope it isn’t a clock. I have four already,” Fanny rejoined, going forward to take the carefully sealed package sent by express from Salt Lake City.
“Salt Lake City!” Fanny repeated, examining the package curiously. “Do we know anybody there? What do you suppose it is?”
Roy could not explain the presentiment he had as to what it was. He had expected something of the kind long before this, for he remembered that Inez had said, “Fanny will have her diamonds.”
“Open the package and see what it is,” he said.
The seals of wax were broken, the box opened, and Fanny gave a start of surprise as she saw the linen bag she had sewed with so much care into the ribbons on her hat.
“Mother! Look here! The diamonds!” she cried, laying them one by one on her mother’s lap.
They were all there and unharmed except as they were a little dim for want of cleaning.
“Who could have found them and sent them?” Fanny kept saying.
Roy felt sure he knew, but said nothing, while Mrs. Prescott suggested that the person who found them intended at first to keep them,—then, failing to dispose of them, decided to send them to New York.
“Yes, but how did he know where I lived, or that I was to be married to-day?” Fanny asked.
Roy tided over that difficulty by saying, “Easy enough, your mother advertised for them to be sent here if they were found, and the man or woman, whoever it is, happened to forward them in the nick of time. Providential dispensation, don’t you see?”
He was decking Fanny with the jewels as he talked, and she accepted his theory as she accepted everything from him.
“I shall write to father this very day that I have them. He will be so glad, and Tom, too. I dare say the poor fellow has hunted over every foot of ground between that place and Clark’s several times.”
Roy’s shoulders always gave a little shrug when Fanny talked in this strain, and he now left her while she wrote a few hurried lines to her father telling him her diamonds had come and asking if he had any idea who sent them.
“I am so happy,” she wrote, “for in a few hours I shall be Roy’s wife. I wish you could be here, and Inez. Oh, if she were only alive she would be my maid of honor and eclipse me with her beauty. Dear Inez. It makes me cry every time I think of her up among the mountains with the snow piled over her grave, and I so happy here with Roy. Think of me to-night and bless me, dear father. Mother is to give me away, but I shall fancy it is you. Good bye. Your loving daughter, Fanny Hilton, soon to be Fanny Mason.”
Mark read this letter to Tom, who said after a moment,“She is a splendid girl. I don’t think she takes after her mother.”
“Or her father, either,” Mark rejoined.
“Where does she get her lovely traits of character?” was Tom’s next remark, and for the first time since Inez died a smile broke over Mark’s face, as he replied, “It must be from ’Tina. From all descriptions I have had of that unfortunate lady Fanny looks like her.”
“I guess she does,” Tom said, then added, “I am glad the diamonds reached her safely. That chapter is closed and a great weight off my mind. I wonder if Inez knows?”
“Of course she does, and is glad as we are,” was Mark’s reply, and the diamonds were never mentioned again between them.
Mark was failing, and after he knew the diamonds were safe with Fanny, he began to go down rapidly.
“I feel as if I had been broken on the rack until every joint was loosened and every nerve crushed,” he said to Tom. “There is nothing to live for. Inez is dead; I shall never see Fanny again, and it is better so. But I do long for the hills and ponds of Ridgefield and Uncle Zach and Dotty. Do you think they’d be glad to see me? They don’t know what I am. Nobody knows but you and me.”
Tom wasn’t so sure about Roy. He believed that young man had his suspicions, and was equally sure he would keep them to himself.
“I know Uncle Zach and Dotty would be glad to see you, and in the spring we will go there,” he said to Mark, who, buoyed up with this hope, counted the weeks as they passed away, knowing the while that his strength was slipping from him and leaving him so weak that he staid all day in his room where Tom came every nightto see him, and Mark, who had forgotten all the blame he had ever attributed to him, clung to him, as if he had been his son.
“I shan’t go to Ridgefield. I’ve given that up,” he said to Tom one day in March. “It’s the cottage now in the valley I want to see. How soon do you think we can go there?”
Tom didn’t know, and his face was very grave as he looked at his old comrade, who was so surely dying. Spring came early that year and as soon as it was at all practicable Tom took Mark by easy stages to the cottage. He had been there himself to see that it was made ready for the sick man and had passed a most uncomfortable time. He was neither a coward, nor superstitious, but during the three days and nights he spent alone in the cottage he suffered what he called the tortures of the damned. He heard or saw Inez everywhere. Saw her flitting in and out from room to room; heard her singing as she used to sing in her glad girlhood, and felt her kisses on his cheeks just as he felt them on the night of their betrothal. They were real kisses then which made his pulse beat with ecstasy; they were shadowy kisses now, which burned where they touched him, while his lips were purple with cold. Once he called to her, “Inez, Inez, do you know I am here?”
Then in his disordered imagination he fancied he heard again the shriek which had curdled his blood when she sprang over the wheel and confronted him.
“I am not afraid,” he said to himself, “but I wish Mark was here, or even Nero. I ought to have brought the dog, although he does not take to me as he used to do. I believe he knows something. Lucky he can’t talk.”
A week later Mark was there in the old familiar place,where everything spoke to him of Inez. He had no such fancies as Tom, and took Inez’s room for his own, sleeping in her bed, sitting in her chair by the window watching the light of the first summer days as it crept over the mountains, and knowing it was for the last time. Once he went to the closet where Inez’s dresses were hung, and taking them down looked at them with eyes, which could not shed a tear. On the one she wore on the day of the hold-up he gazed the longest. It was the last in which he had ever seen her and he recalled just how she looked in it when he helped her to a seat by the driver and remembered with a pang her soiled, crumpled condition when she came back with a look on her face he would never forget. There was a bit of dry mud still clinging to the skirt and he brushed it off carefully and shook from the dress every particle of soil and dirt and hung it away with the other gowns, leaving the closet door open so that from his bed where he lay a good part of the time he could see them and feel through them a nearness to Inez.
Everything he could do for him Tom did, and the two men lived alone through the months of May and June, when the tourist season commenced and the valley was again full of life and stir, and pilgrimages were made to Inez’s grave as to the grave of a saint. It was covered with flowers and some of these Mark pressed and sent to Fanny, who wrote to him every week and whose letters helped to prolong his life. But like Inez, he had lost his grip, and early in July he died quietly, like going to sleep, and there were three graves on the hill behind the cottage.
Tom was alone, with only Nero for company. Since the hold-up he had fancied that the dog avoided him. He had been much in Inez’s room during her illness andconstantly with Mark until he died. He had stood by Inez’s grave when she was lowered into it and had lain by it for days after as if watching for her reappearance. And now he and Tom stood by Mark’s grave, the only mourners there, and Tom’s hand rested on Nero’s head as if asking for sympathy, which the sagacious animal gave. He seemed to know they were alone, and when the burial, which took place at sunset, was over and the people gone and Tom sat in the gathering twilight with his head upon a table and his hand hanging at his side, Nero crept to his feet, licking his hand and rubbing against him as he had not done in a year. Then Tom cried, as he said, “Bless you, Nero; if you have forgiven me I am not quite alone in the world. We will stick together, old fellow, but not here. You may like to sit by their graves, wondering why they don’t come back, but I can’t endure it. I am going away and you are going with me,—miles and miles away, old chap, where it will not be as lonesome as it is here, and where one at least will be glad to see me.”
A letter received by Mark from Fanny a few days before he died had decided Tom upon his future, and three weeks later, when a carriage full of tourists came from a hotel to see the grave of the girl who was always spoken of as “the heroine of the valley,” the cottage was closed and Tom was gone.