CHAPTER XXIII

It was growing dusk when Frazier brought Mary back to the farm. He did not stop, having some important business to attend to that evening, and drove back to the village. Mary was very unhappy. From a window in the parlor of the hotel she had seen Tobe Keith taken to the train, and the silent awe of the bystanders, the grave looks of the doctors, the nurse, and Mrs. Keith in her best dress induced a feeling of vast depression. She had heard people on the pavement below saying that Keith would never be cured—that no man in his condition could stand the operation that was proposed. She thought, too, that Mrs. Quinby had failed to give her much encouragement. Indeed, it was almost as if her good friend were trying to prepare her for the worst.

Finding no one in sight about the house, Mary went straight to the barn to acquaint her brothers with all that had taken place. She tried to shake off the morbid feeling which clung to her so persistently, not realizing that it was due to the fact of her still being, in a sense, in the power of Albert Frazier. It was true that he had not paid for Keith's expenses, but he had managed to make her feel her absolute dependence on him for the safety of her brothers. She shuddered, and fairly cringed, under the thought that she had not repulsed him when he had put his arm around her in a secluded spot on the road home and kissed her on the cheek. The spot stung now as if it were a wound which her rising flush was irritating.

She had seen her brothers in their loft, and was entering the house, when she met Charles descending from his room.

"You are late," he smiled. "We have had supper already."

"So have I," she answered. "I took it early with Mrs. Quinby at the hotel. We drove rapidly, as Mr. Frazier had to hurry back to town."

She sat down on the veranda, and he stood, with an unusual air of embarrassment, quite near to her.

"Sit down, please," she said. "I know you are tired from your work."

He obeyed willingly enough, but it seemed to her that there was a certain undefinable restraint about him. They sat silent for several minutes. She was watching his face attentively. At any other time she might have been amused. Did he not realize that his failure to inquire about Tobe Keith was an indirect confession of the part he had played the night before?

"Well, they took Tobe to Atlanta to-day," she suddenly announced, still eying him closely.

"Oh, did they?" he exclaimed.

She said nothing for another moment. "I suppose you think that Albert furnished the money?" she continued. She smiled now at his look of confusion, and as he made no reply she went on: "Well, he didn't. When I got to Mrs. Keith's this morning I learned that some one else had given her the necessary money. No one knows from whom it came."

"That's strange," Charles said, feebly.

"Yes, it was very strange. It seems that the man who brought it was an absolute stranger. He turned it over to Mrs. Keith, but refused to say who sent it. The whole town is talking about it."

"Very strange indeed," Charles said, still awkwardly. "I hope the poor fellow will stand his journey well."

"Yes, sending money like that was very strange," Mary persisted. "Most persons do their charity differently. They blow a horn, sound a trumpet, or get it into the papers; but this is genuine charity. However, it will leak out. You can't keep things like that hidden long."

"What do the doctors think—do they think that his chances are good for recovery?"

Again Mary ignored his remark, smiling faintly through the dusk as she watched his obvious floundering. "No, a deed like that is too rare and fine for the author of it to keep hidden. Oh, if you could have been there with me this morning and seen that poor mother's face and her son's as they told about how the money came, you would have felt like crying for joy. I did. I couldn't help it. I broke down. I think I know now what heaven is like. It is like I felt at that moment. They were like two happy children, and I was happy, too, and grateful." Here Mary actually sobbed. "I was grateful to some unknown person who had saved me from—from the most humiliating thing that ever threatened me. I was willing to give my life rather than accept that aid from Albert Frazier, and it had come in that mysterious way like a gift from God at the very last moment. You must help me—help me find out who did it, Mr. Brown. Will you?"

He stared like a man in a bewildered dream. "Yes, yes," he stammered, "I will, but why bother about it now, anyway?"

"'Bother about it'! How can you use such words? You see, you are not in my place. You can't realize how I feel. I want to see him. I want to look into his face, as—as I am looking into yours now, and tell him just how I feel and what he has done for me. I want to repay him. I want to tell him that there is nothing—nothing under high heaven I would not do for him. I want him to tell me what to do in all this darkness that has gathered about me and is stifling hope and life out of me, young as I am. I want to be his faithful friend till the end of time. I want to serve him—to be his slave—anything."

Charles rose to his feet awkwardly. "I—I see how you feel, Miss Rowland," he said. "But I am afraid I am keeping you from your duties. By the way, your father has gone over to Dodd's. He came by the field and asked me to tell you that he would not be back till about bedtime."

Mary got up also. She reached out and took his arm and walked with him to the other end of the veranda. He felt her hand trembling. She pressed his arm against her side. "You shall not go yet!" she cried, passionately. "I have been beating about the bush. I know that you did that thing. I've known it all day. No one else knows, but I do—and it has made me so happy. I could not have taken it from any one else, but I want to take it from you. I want to take it, because I know you wanted to give it. I know how you feel about me, and I want you to know how I feel about you."

Had the heavens split above him, dropping flames of celestial fire, he could not have felt more ecstatic. She had suddenly paused and lifted her wondrous face to his. Her beautiful lips hung quivering like drooping flowers. He was a man of remarkable restraint, but sometimes acted under impulse. He took her face between his hands, he bent to kiss her unresisting lips; then suddenly he checked himself. A picture of his whole past flashed before him. He was a man with a price on his head and liable to exposure at any moment. What right had he to the heart of such a girl as this—to win it under her father's kindly roof through the agency of a just act to a suffering man. He dropped his hands. With his face full of deepening agony he simply looked at her fixedly and remained mute.

"What is the matter?" she asked. "You are troubled about something; I see it. I've known it a long time."

"Miss Rowland—" he began.

"Miss Rowland!" she cried, impatiently. "Charlie—don't you see I call you Charlie! I have called you that a hundred times to myself since finding out what you did. I used it when I prayed to you—actually prayed to you this afternoon to forgive me for allowing that man to kiss me on the way home."

"To kiss you!" She saw him start and stand quivering under her earnest upward stare. She saw him lower his head as a slave being scourged with thongs of steel—a slave who was determined to show no signs of suffering. "He kissed you! Then—then—my God! you are engaged to him! After all, you are engaged to him!"

"No, not quite that!" she cried, in almost piteous appeal, "but I was afraid, from the way he talked—Oh, Charlie, you can't understand! It is true that I did not have to take his money to-day, but I am still at his mercy."

"Still at his mercy!" Charles groaned, his eyes ablaze with blended lights of fury and despair.

Falteringly she explained Frazier's veiled threats. As she ended she put her hands on his shoulders and again she lifted her face to his. Again he was swept by the flames of desire; again he held himself in check; again the shackles of his hopeless condition bit into the flesh of his memory, sinking to the very bones of his consciousness. What could he do? He might tell her of the blight on his life which had isolated him from all others, but what good would that do? And had he not promised William that the truth should never be known? No, his fate was sealed. He had won her, but he must lose her. No honorable man could ask such a woman to share such a precarious fate. She would be less unfortunate even as the wife of a man like Frazier. Charles was a social outcast who had crept into the shelter of unsuspecting hospitality. One loophole, and one only, flashed before his eyes on the screen of temptation, and that was to go back to Boston and demand his moral rights. But that would mean that he was failing to make good those sacred obligations. That would mean the degradation of William, and the terrible blight upon his family whom till now he had saved from humiliation and pain. No, that course would rouse condemnation even in the heart of the girl before him. Was there anything she would not do or suffer to save her brothers? Could such a selfless creature approve of a man less selfless? Her wondrous face, the all but visible halo about it, was his answer.

"What is the matter, Charlie?" she asked. "Have you lost respect for me for allowing him to kiss me? I could have died when he did it—I hated myself so, for I was thinking of what you would think if you knew. But I was afraid—afraid of him. If he were to become angry and turn against me, he would give my brothers up at once. He would lead in the search for them, and if he knew or suspected—"

"Suspected what?" he interrupted, as she paused and stood shuddering, her eyes filling with shadows.

"If he suspected that I—if he suspected how I feel to you—he would try to kill you. Already he is your enemy, already he suspects you of—"

"Suspects me of what?"

"—of being a fugitive from the law who left the circus to avoid being arrested. It is absurd, ridiculous! Only such a man as he is would dream of such a thing. If ten thousand persons testified under oath that such was the case I'd not believe them."

"You'd not believe them?" he echoed, and he hugged to himself his inherent right to her faith in him as an honest man, for dishonest he had never been.

"No, I'd not believe them. It seems to me now that I believe only in you. In all humanity I know of no one I trust so much—my father, my brothers, even my sweet dead—" She hesitated, then finished, fervently: "Yes, even my mother. She would forgive me if she were here and understood."

Again the infinite yearning to take her to his breast swept over him. He put his arm about her; he was drawing her to him, when, with a groan of tortured resolution, he released her. His face was white in the dusk as he stood grimly silent.

"I can't understand you, Charlie," she whispered, tenderly, and yet in a groping, bewildered tone. "Somehow I know—I'm sure that you—love me.

"Oh, I do!" he said, quickly, "but I have no right to do so. I can't explain. It would do no good, anyway. I am bound by honor not to reveal certain things, even to you."

"I see, I see; now I begin to understand a little," she said, wistfully. "And I won't press you to tell me, either. It may be that you are bound to others, as I am bound. Though I have the sweet comfort of talking to you about it. I couldn't bear it all but for you, but I shall be braver, less complaining, from now on."

She lowered her head; she stood back from him. An overwhelming sense of losing her pressed down on him like a pall. He wondered if in her mute attitude lay any touch of womanly resentment against him for the stand he had taken. He held out his hands to her, but she simply sighed and slowly shook her head.

"What is it?" he asked, tremblingly.

"It must be as you say," she answered. "I wonder why God brought us together like this. It is strange—strange—strange!"

He could not answer. His arms sank to his sides. She turned and left him.