XIV
Downin the library William Carter waited alone. He was glad to be alone. Aware of his father’s attitude, he had dragged through a fearful evening. Mr. Carter had sat at the table, smoking and reading his newspaper. He had said nothing about the one subject that was uppermost in both minds; but at intervals he had lowered his paper sufficiently to fix a fierce eye on the clock and then to turn it significantly upon his son. Without meeting his glance, William felt it. With the tide of rage and grief rising in his own heart, that hostile eye—which seemed to say, “I told you so!” was intolerable.
He was thankful when his father’s stout figure disappeared into the front part of the house. He heard the vigorous locking-up without protest. It was evident that Mr. Carter had decided that Fanchon wouldn’t return that night, and he was bound to lock up as usual. In fact, he did it a little more violently than usual. It was an overt act which relieved his feelings. Then, carrying a pitcher of iced water, he went heavily up-stairs,and his son heard the sharp closing of his bedroom door.
It took no very vigorous imagination, either, to fancy his mother’s anxious inquiry for the truant, and the subsequent comment on the situation. Even in the solitude of the library William’s face burned. He was bewildered, too. He knew that he had reached a crisis, and he did not know how to deal with it. To do anything seemed only to publish his own misery. He had telephoned twice to the livery-stable already, and been assured that Mrs. Carter’s horse was still out.
He had no idea where she had gone, and to follow, even in a motor, would be senseless enough. It was a fine night; a full moon lighted the roads. If she meant to return, she could get home so easily that he could not believe she intended to do so.
As for Corwin, William had only seen the man two or three times, and was cognizant of the gossip only through his father. People didn’t talk to him.
His father had seen Corwin follow Fanchon, but had Fanchon planned it all? Or had the man—a hard, coarse-looking brute—pursued her without any invitation, without her consent? William Carter did not know; he only felt a blind rage thathe had suddenly been forced to doubt his wife. It was hideous—simply hideous!
They had been quarreling lately nearly all the time—petty quarrels. Fanchon evidently hated the place, she seemed to hate even her husband’s people, and he had found her becoming wilder and stranger every day. He knew she longed to go back to Paris, or at least to New York; but William had never brought his mind to consider even the possibility that she was disloyal, or could be. He could not believe it now, but he found that the conviction was deep-rooted in his father’s mind, and he saw it in his mother’s kind, worried eyes.
What had they heard? He did not know—at least he was sure he did not know it all. He saw something of it in Leigh’s white face to-night. The boy was fond of Fanchon. William felt relief to think that at least one member of his family liked her.
He watched the clock until the hands indicated midnight. Where could she be? He walked the floor again.
Unobserved, he could give way to his agony of mind. Had there been an accident? Had Fanchon been hurt?
The suspense was fast becoming a deep and keen agony. He was shaken. He knew that histhoughts had wandered to Virginia, to the peace he might have had. Had Fanchon seen it? Was she tormenting him in a wild fit of jealousy, or—intolerable and monstrous thought!—his wife in flight with a man who looked to him to be no more than a common gamester?
How still it was! Through the open window the soft night air poured in; and now it had a difference, a perceptible quickening, the keenness of the morning. It was nearly one o’clock.
He flung himself into a chair and waited, burying his head in his hands. He tried to think coherently, but he could not. Then a thrill ran through him as the telephone-bell rang at his elbow. He snatched up the receiver. A man’s voice called for Mr. William Carter—a gruff, half-drowsy negro voice.
“Yes, yes! What is it?” he questioned.
“De boss tol’ me to watch out fo’ dat horse Miz Carter hired, suh. I’s been up all night—dat horse jes’ come in dis minute. He’s drippin’, an’ he ain’t got no rider, suh.”
William dropped the receiver and stood motionless, as if turned to stone. Good God, how he had wronged her! There had been an accident!
A vision of Fanchon lying by the wayside, her lovely face cold in the moonlight, her helpless, pretty, idle hands flung out, pierced his heart.He groaned aloud. Then his sickened brain cleared and he roused himself. He must get help, hire a motor, and go out to search.
He raised his head sharply. His strained ear caught a sound at the front door. He crossed the room almost at a stride, switched on the light in the hall, threw back his father’s elaborate chains and bolts with a shaking hand, and flung the door open. On the threshold, deadly pale and dripping wet, stood his wife.
“Fanchon!”
His first impulse of wild relief was lost in another and a stronger feeling. The look on her face checked the words on his lips.
She came in slowly, reluctantly, putting out a small, groping hand. As the light from the hall lamp fell full upon her, he saw that she had lost her hat, and that her pretty hair clung in wet curls to her forehead. All the gaiety and frivolity of that Parisian habit was gone. It was torn and muddy and wet. But she did not go to him, she did not exclaim that she had been hurt and half drowned. She walked past him, a little unsteadily, and went into the library.
William shut the door and followed her. She had dropped into a chair and lay there, half reclining, her arm across the back and her face hidden on it. Her husband stood looking down ather in silence for a moment; then he turned without a word and went into the dining-room, poured some brandy into a glass, and brought it.
“Drink this!” he said peremptorily.
She lifted the glass slowly, and, without raising her eyes, tasted the liquor and then thrust it aside.
“I know what you think!” she said in a low voice. “It isn’t true—I’ve done nothing—nothing at all!”
His face hardened.
“Why do you say that, Fanchon? I haven’t accused you.”
She turned with a gesture of impatience.
“I know they have—your father and your mother!”
William, who had taken the glass from her, set it down on the table.
“You’re wet through,” he said coldly. “Go up-stairs and change. You can talk afterward—if you want to.”
“I don’t care if I’m wet!” she answered a little wildly. “I’d rather bear wet than your face!”
“I’m sorry my face is so unbearable. I had no thought when I saw you but anxiety. There’s been an accident. You haven’t even told me whether you’re hurt!”
“It wasn’t an accident,” said Fanchon. “The horse got down in the stream and wallowed. I hadto get off to save myself, and when he came out he ran off.”
William lifted his eyes reluctantly to hers.
“That horse has just come in, Fanchon. I got a telephone as you came up the porch steps.”
She did not seem to grasp the significance of this. She put up a wandering hand and pushed back her damp hair.
“I can’t help it!” she said sharply. “It’s so—I never would have got here but for a motor. Some people—perfect strangers, too—were coming this way, and they brought me. We came faster than any horse could go.”
“Where were you? Where did the horse roll?”
“At Fanshawe’s Creek—you know, half-way to the Mountain Inn.”
William turned abruptly and walked across the room and back again.
“That wouldn’t take an hour and a half for a horse,” he remarked dryly. “It’s one o’clock, Fanchon.”
A flame of red shot up in her white cheeks.
“I think he got into the water at about eleven o’clock. I tried to make him ford the stream, and he—he just got down and wallowed in the water. I had to get off.”
“You went out just after luncheon—while mother was at lunch, in fact—and you were cominghome on those lonely roads at eleven o’clock at night, alone?”
She sat up in her chair at that, her flushed face turned fully toward him, and something like a flame kindling in her fawn-like eyes.
“Of course your mother told you!”
“Told me what?”
“About my talk with Corwin in the lane.”
William stared at her.
“My mother told me nothing. I didn’t mean to tell you, I didn’t mean to say anything,” he added grimly; “but since you’ve said so much, I will. I heard from father that Corwin followed you out on the turnpike to-day—to the edification of the town! Was he with you at the creek?”
Fanchon sat quite still, looking at him, her large eyes seeming to grow larger and darker in her white face. He returned the look as steadily, not in anger, but with a kind of grimness new in her experience with him. Neither of them moved, and the stillness in the room was so deep that they both heard the familiar sounds outside. The church clock struck in the distance, and some cocks crowed. The fresh breeze stirred the curtains in the window while the shaded lamp on the table flared up with the little gust. In the flare William saw the misery on his wife’s face.
“Fanchon, that man’s pursuing you—he’s a villain!What has happened? Tell me—I have a right to know!”
Something in his changed tone touched her. She sank back in her chair, covering her face with her hands.
“Mon Dieu!” she murmured brokenly, and then, as her emotions swept her away, she burst into wild and uncontrollable weeping, her sobs shaking her from head to foot.
Something in the passion of her tears, and in the crumpled helplessness of the small figure in the chair, touched William in his turn. He stood looking at her without moving, thinking unhappily. He had made a mess of it; but after all it wasn’t all her fault. It was his, and he still loved her. From what he had suffered to-night he knew that he loved her. Suddenly he bent over the small, writhing figure and spoke.
“Tell me, Fanchon,” he said hoarsely. “Must I thrash that villain?”
Very slowly she raised her head, very slowly and reluctantly she raised her tear-drenched eyes to his.
“I—I didn’t go with him, I didn’t want to see him—he followed me.” She hesitated, trembling. “I don’t know how to tell you. He overtook me and he made me come back. I’d lost my way. Hemade me go back to the inn—we ate dinner together.”
“You dined at a public road-house with that man—a man I wouldn’t ask to my father’s house?”
She nodded, biting her lips.
For a moment he was hot with rage; but he curbed it. He wanted to be just, and he was deeply moved. As she sat there she looked as she had looked once in Paris, when he had first seen her—a butterfly of a creature fighting to live, fighting hopelessly in the midst of glittering, sordid surroundings. He hadn’t been blinded, his eyes had been wide open, but he had fallen in love with her; and he had been moved, too, by compassion. He had snatched her out of that gay, hollow sham of a life, and he had meant to save her, to keep her safe. Yet, as she sat there now, she looked forlorn and helpless and beset.
“Fanchon,” he said gravely and gently, “tell me why you did this. You didn’t mean to do it, you didn’t set out to do it—why did you? See, I trust you—I’m asking you to tell me the truth.”
“I lost my way.” She repeated it as if she had a lesson by rote. “Corwin overtook me and made me turn back. I was hungry, and we ate dinner at the same table—in the public dining-room. Then—then I didn’t want him to ride back withme—and I went out of the side door and started alone. When I came to the crossing above Fanshawe’s Creek, I didn’t know which way to go, and I chose the wrong road. I rode so far that I got frightened. I asked at a house out there—a woman with a queer name—Quantah, I think. I had to come back to the crossing. Then, when I did get to the creek, the horse lay down in the water. I sat and waited, dripping, until a motor picked me up. That’s all.”
“No,” said William, “that’s not all. You’re afraid of that man, Fanchon!”
“I!” she laughed tremulously. “Why do you think that?”
He was watching her, and he saw her eyes change. He was right. She was afraid of Corwin.
“I don’t think it,” he said gravely. “I know it. Go on, Fanchon; tell me the rest.”
“I have nothing to tell,” she replied slowly, deliberately, but with shaking lips. “You—you don’t believe me,n’est-ce-pas?”
William, looking steadily into her face, made no reply. His changed, white face frightened her. She rose unsteadily to her feet, a forlorn little figure.
“I’m not afraid of Corwin,” she said angrily,“not a bit!Ciel, why should I be afraid of any one? I ask you that,mon ami!”
He still said nothing, his grave eyes on hers. Fanchon returned his look—tried to return it steadily. She had told him a falsehood. She had never been afraid of falsehood; it was an easy way of escape. But now, under his eyes, she flinched. She blushed scarlet, put out a wavering little hand, and tried to catch at his, but he moved away.
“Go up-stairs,” he said gravely, without anger, in the remote tone of a man who no longer cared. “You’re worn out; you’ll take cold. I told you so before. Go up-stairs to bed. Shall I rouse Miranda? Do you need help?”
“Help?” she shivered, but not with cold. “Non, non!No help for me—here!”
As she spoke she turned, lifted the discarded glass of brandy to her lips, and drained it. Then, without looking at him again, she left the room.
The light was still on in the hall, but she felt her way to the stairs blindly. She was crying. She had not intended to lie to him, but it was so much easier than to tell the truth. She clung to the banisters for a moment, sobbing bitterly; then, dashing the tears from her eyes, she went on, aware that he was still standing motionless where she had left him.
As she dragged herself to the head of the stairs,she was suddenly aware of a figure in the upper hall. She stopped and looked around in a panic. She expected her father-in-law, but it was only Leigh.
“Are you safe?” he asked eagerly. “There’s been an accident—I knew it! You’ve been hurt, Fanchon?”
She looked at him in surprise.
“Where were you, Leigh?”
“I’ve been up all night. I knew William was, too, and I’ve waited.”
He was eighteen, but he looked younger, and his boyish face was white with anxiety. With a sudden impulse, Fanchon laid her hands on his shoulders.
“I’m safe—quite safe, dear boy!” she whispered, and, lifting her pale, beautiful face to his, she kissed him lightly on both cheeks. “Dear Leigh—dear brother!” she murmured. “I shall love you—toujours!”
Leigh, unused to being kissed, turned from white to red, but he felt as if he had received an accolade.