The Rose in the Ring/Part 2/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
TOM BRADDOCK'S PROMISE
She had seen Braddock turn the corner. Her eyes were closed now, as if to shut out the disaster that must rush down upon them in the next instant; her thrumming ears waited for the sound of running footsteps and the crack of a revolver. David started up the steps toward her.
"It will be best for you to hear what I have come to say," observed Grand, ignorant of the peril that lay behind him. He resumed his progress up the steps, Roberta following close behind.
"For Heaven's sake, man, go while you can," cried David hoarsely. "Don't you see—"
"Mary, will you listen to me? We've got to come to an understanding concerning Tom. He's in town. We must come to some agreement, you and I, as to whether a scandal is to follow his arrest—a scandal which will blast you and Christine forever in New—"
"Is there no way to stop him?" groaned Mary Braddock, opening her eyes to look again upon the sinister figure across the way. She had not heard a word of Colonel Grand's minacious overture.
"By this time Braddock has been taken by the police,—as Sam Brafford, the ex-convict and yeggman. Is he to go up this time as the father of Christine—"
David sprang to his side, seizing his right arm in a grip of iron. In the same movement he whirled the older man about and pointed toward the figure at the corner.
"It's Braddock!" he hissed. "Now we're in for it. By heaven, he ought to kill you!"
"Braddock!" gasped Grand. "Why, he is in jail—" The words died on his lips. He recognized the man. His eyes bulged, his grayish face seemed to freeze stiff, with the lower lip and tongue hanging loose.
Transfixed, he saw Thomas Braddock straighten up, relinquish his grip on the iron post, and start diagonally across the street, his head bent forward, his lower jaw extended. His unswerving gaze never left the face of Robert Grand.
"Get into the carriage, Roberta," shouted Grand, suddenly alive to his peril. He trembled, but he was not the man to run from an adversary, nor was he likely to sell his life cheaply. With a quick, desperate tug, he jerked himself free of David's grasp. His hand flew to his inside coat pocket.
Thomas Braddock had reached the curb. Miss Grand stood directly in his path, petrified by terror. Like a cat he sprang forward, cunningly putting her body between him and Grand, making it impossible for the latter to shoot without imperiling the life of his daughter.
A revolver gleamed in the hand of the man on the steps.
David's wits worked quickly. It may have been that he was inspired. Instead of attempting to grasp or disarm Colonel Grand, he decided to let the situation take care of itself for the moment. Neither of the men could make a move to attack the other.
"Here, I say!" gasped the Colonel. "He can shoot me down like a dog. Stop him, Jenison! Don't you see I can't protect myself?"
David took advantage of the knowledge that Braddock was unarmed.
"Colonel Grand," he cried out sharply, "if you attempt to kill that man I'll see that you suffer for it."
"But, damn it, he is here to kill me! I have the right to kill in self-defense if—"
"Then why doesn't he kill you? He has you in his power. He is not here to attack you. That must be plain, even to you. Mr. Braddock has come to see his wife before leaving the city."
He caught the cunning gleam in Tom Braddock's eyes. His heart gave a great bound of relief. The man was not so mad as to court certain death by attacking his enemy under the present conditions. Christine's father was perfectly cool; he was absolute master of himself. Nothing could be farther from the mind of Thomas Braddock than the desire to be shot by Robert Grand. It was his one purpose in life to kill, not to be killed. He realized that he was powerless. Grand could shoot him down like a dog—an inglorious end to the one spark of ambition left in him. The workings of Braddock's mind were as plain to Jenison as if the man were expounding them by word of mouth.
"Before leaving the country," David substituted. The ghost of a sneer flickered about Braddock's lips. He spoke for the first time, hoarsely, but with wonderful calmness.
"I came to see Mary," he said. "You'd better go, Grand. I don't want anything to do with you. It won't be healthy for either of us if we see too much of each other."
"Stand out from behind my daughter, you coward," shouted Grand.
"Don't shoot, father!" screamed the girl, terror-stricken.
"Go ahead!" said Braddock grimly.
The driver of the cab was looking wildly about in quest of a policeman. Two women had stopped on the opposite side of the street, and were staring at the group in front of the Portman mansion.
"Shall I call a cop?" called out the cabby, addressing himself to the one person who seemed to belong on the premises—Mrs. Braddock.
"No! No! Take them away!" she cried. "That's all I ask of you!"
"Wait!" said Colonel Grand, master of himself once more. "We may just as well understand each other. I had an object in coming here. It concerns this man. He—"
David broke in peremptorily. It was time to bring the distressing scene to an end, if it were possible to do so without inviting the actual catastrophe. He realized that he would have to act quickly in order to anticipate the curious crowd and to be ahead of the police.
"Colonel Grand, you have put yourself in an unpleasant, uncalled-for position," he said. "I am of half a mind to hold you here until the police arrive. Cabby, I call upon you to witness, with all the rest of us, that Colonel Grand has drawn a revolver with the design to kill an unarmed, unoffending man. You have seen everything. Mr. Braddock saved his life only by—"
"Unarmed!" shouted Colonel Grand. "Why, he is armed to the teeth. He's after me. He's going to kill me on sight, I swear—"
"What is to prevent him from doing so now, Colonel?" demanded David. "You are in a position where you cannot shoot. He could drill you full of holes if that were his intention. Mr. Braddock, are you armed?"
"No," said Braddock. "Do you suppose, if I had a gun, I would be standing behind this girl?"
"Do you hear that, cabby? Do you, Colonel? Now, I want to say just this to you, sir; I am going to the nearest police station and swear out a warrant for your arrest. I can't hold you myself, but I can do the next best thing. I can land you in jail for attempted murder."
Colonel Grand stared at him with uncomprehending eyes, a sickly smile on his lips.
"You know better than—" he began.
David cut him short with an exclamation. Then he walked out to the curb, opened the cab door and coolly motioned for Colonel Grand to step down and enter.
Mary Braddock waited no longer. She sped down the steps, passing the slow-moving, stupefied Colonel, and ruthlessly shoved Roberta Grand to one side, taking her stand in front of her husband, facing his foe.
"It isn't necessary for my husband to shield himself behind your flesh and blood, Colonel Grand," she said, her head erect. "Now, if you care to shoot, you have both of us at your mercy."
"I came to propose a peaceful—" began the Colonel, baffled.
"Step lively, Colonel Grand!" commanded Jenison. "Permit me, Miss Grand."
"Don't touch me," hissed Roberta, disdaining his assistance. The look she bestowed upon her father, as she passed him, was not a pleasant one. He had promised her a different reception at the Portman home, secretly depending on his power to force Mrs. Braddock to welcome an armistice, no matter how distasteful it may have been to her. He had not anticipated the outcome. Miss Grand accompanied him, meanly it is true, in the hope that she might gloat over the Braddocks in their humiliation.
She entered the cab, frightened and dismayed. Her father, still grasping his pistol, followed her. He cast a defeated, almost appealing glance at the uncompromising face of the young man who held open the door.
"You can't obtain a warrant for me," he said nervously. "I have the law on my side. I can prove that this man threatened—"
"Drive on, cabby," said David relentlessly. "I've taken your number. You will be called on as a witness. Don't argue! I mean it!"
Muttering excitedly, the driver, without the customary "where to?" started off down the street. Colonel Grand leaned forward to send a menacing scowl toward the group on the sidewalk. He smiled sardonically when he saw that Mary Braddock still kept her place in front of her husband, evidently afraid that he would fire from the window of the departing cab. Then he called out his instructions to the driver and settled back in the seat.
The gritting of Tom Braddock's teeth did not escape the tortured ears of his wife. She looked up quickly. He was glaring after the cab, a look of appalling ferocity in his face.
"Come into the house, Tom," she said quickly.
He turned on her with a snarl.
"I won't keep you long," he grated. "I've got other business on hand." It occurred to him to tender David his meed of praise. "That was pretty sharp in you, David, staving him off like that. I owe you something for doing that."
"I knew you were unarmed. You would have had no chance."
They were going up the steps, Braddock between the others. Brooks, the footman, was holding the door open. He had been a politely interested witness to the startling encounter.
Braddock seemed to be studying each successive slab of stone as he ascended. The muscles of his jaw were working. He seemed to have formed a habit of jamming his hands far down into his coat pockets.
"That was the only chance he'll ever have," was his sententious remark. No other word was uttered until they were inside the house, Mrs. Braddock's gasp of relief could not have been called a sigh.
"Thank God!" she breathed, sinking upon the hall seat and clasping her clenched hands to her breast.
Braddock shot a quick glance up the broad stairway. The surroundings were strange to him,—he had never been inside the home of his father-in-law before,—but he knew that Christine was somewhere overhead.
"How's Christine, Mary?" he asked roughly.
"She is wretchedly unhappy, Tom."
"Umph!" was the way he received it, but a close observer might have seen the flutter of his eyelids and the sharp, convulsive movement in the coat pockets. "I don't want her to see me," he said.
"She wants to see you—"
He faced her angrily. "No! I've got to take care of my nerves. I can't take any chances on having 'em upset. See here, David," he said, lowering his voice and speaking with deadly emphasis, "that talk of yours about swearing out a warrant for Grand don't go, do you understand? I don't want him to be arrested. I don't want him locked up. I want him to be free. He'd be too safe behind the bars?"
The sound of a door opening above came to them at this juncture, followed by the swift rush of feet and the rustle of skirts. Braddock looked up and instinctively drew back into an obscured recess at his left.
Christine's face appeared over the railing above. She leaned far forward and called out in the high, tense tones of extreme nervousness:
"Father! Is it you? Are you there?"
There was no response.
David, standing on the lower step, permitted his gaze to swerve from the sweet, eager face of the girl above to that of the man in the corner.
The effect on Braddock was astounding. Signs of a great convulsion revealed themselves in his face. His lips were parted and drawn as if in pain; his eyes were half closed, screening the emotion that groped behind the lids. It was the face, the figure of a man mightily shaken by an unexpected emotion. Slowly his eyes were opened. An expression of utter despair and longing had come into them. Mrs. Braddock was staring at her husband as if she could not believe her senses.
Words came hoarsely, unbidden from the man's lips, spoken as if from the bottom of his soul after years of subjection and restraint, so nearly whispered that they came to David's ears as if from afar off.
"Oh! How lonesome I've been all these years, just for the sound of her voice!"
His wife's hand went out to him involuntarily. He looked at it for a second, then into her eyes, waveringly, uncertain as to the impulse that moved her. He suddenly regained control of himself. He grasped the slender hand in his great, crushing fingers; the sullen, repellent glare leaped back into his eyes; alert and shifty, he held up his free hand to command the silence of David. Then, like a hunted creature at bay, he glanced over his shoulder. Seeing an open door almost at his elbow, he resolutely drew his wife after him into the room beyond. As he turned to slam the door with vicious energy, the tense, incisive voice called out once more from the head of the stairs:
"Father!"
The door banged as if propelled by the added energy of sudden fear.
An instant later, David was dashing up the stairs, three steps at a time. She had started down. He met her at the bend.
"Not just now, dearest," he cried. "Wait! He wants to see your mother first."
She clutched the rail, putting one hand out as if to ward him off. The dread in her eyes went straight to his heart. Her lips were stiff, her voice was low with anxiety.
"Is—is she safe, David,—is he himself? Oh, I must go down there. I know I can reason—"
He stopped her gently. "Please, Christine," he commanded. She suddenly put her hands to his face, and looked into his eyes.
"If anything were to happen to her," she whispered in agony, "I would—"
"She is perfectly safe," he broke in. "Your father will not mistreat her." He clasped her hands and held them to his breast. "My poor darling!"
Her head dropped, her lip quivered. Then she quietly withdrew her hands and sank to a sitting posture on the step, leaning her head wearily against the banister.
Ruby Noakes, a discarded wet towel in her hand, came into the hallway above them. She saw them, hesitated for a moment, and then quietly returned to Christine's bed-chamber.
David dropped to his sweetheart's side. His arm fell about her shoulders. She did not offer to remove it, but sat listless, unresponsive, her eyes lifted to a narrow window beyond which the hot sky gleamed.
He began by whispering words of encouragement and sympathy, his soul in every syllable. She was so quiet, so hurt, so forlorn; never had she been so precious to him as now.
"David," she interrupted, closing her eyes as if through faintness, "it is so good of you to say these things to me, but—but—oh, can't you see how impossible it is now? Don't stay here! Go away, David. Do you think that I can marry you now? It was bad enough before—but now! What am I that you should take me to be your wife! You must go away and forget—"
Her drew her head to his breast, smothering the heartbroken cry by the fierceness of his embrace.
"Open your eyes, Christine! Look at me." She looked up, utter desolation in her eyes. "Nothing on earth can keep you from being my wife—nothing! I couldn't give you up. What am I for, if not to cherish and protect and comfort you? What is the real meaning of the word 'love'? Husband! What does that stand for? A stone wall between pain and peril and trouble; that's what it means. And I'm going to be all of that to you—a stone wall for all your life, Christine. It is settled. The strongest man in the world is not strong enough for the weakest woman. I will never cease being proud of the fact that you are my wife. Don't speak! Lie quiet, dearest. Nothing can change things for you and me."
"It cannot be, David,—it cannot be!" she moaned, covering her face with her hands. He held her there, sobbing, against his breast.
Meanwhile Thomas Braddock was pacing the floor of the library almost directly beneath them. His wife watched him in silence; her eyes followed the tall, bent figure as it swung back and forth with the steadiness of a clock's pendulum. He had not spoken since they entered the room, nor had she moved from the spot where he left her when he released her hand. All this time she had been holding the wrist he had grasped so cruelly. It pained her, but she was only physically conscious of the fact; her mind was not comprehending it.
It was the first time she had seen him in five years. A curious analysis was going on in her perturbed brain. The change in him! She could not take her eyes from the haggard, heavily-lined face, so unlike the blithe, youthful one she had loved, or the bloated, bestial one she had feared and despised. The coarseness, the flabbiness, the purplish hues were no longer there. The bulging, bleary eyes, on which the glaze of continuous dissipation had once settled as if to stay, were not as she remembered them. Instead, they were bright and clear, and lay deep in their sockets. The lips, now beardless, were no longer thick and repulsive. She marveled. This was not the vacillating, whiskey-willed man she had known for so long; here was a determined character, swelling with force, fierce in the resources of a belated integrity of purpose. No longer the careless, handsome youth, nor the honorless man, but a power! Whether that power stood for good or evil, it mattered not; he was a man such as she had never expected him to be.
She was sensitive to one thing in particular, although the realization of it did not come to her at once, she was so taken up with the study of him as a whole: she missed the cigar from the corner of his mouth.
He stopped in front of her.
"This is the first time I have ever been asked into this house," he said, his lips curling in a bitter, unfriendly smile. "Where is your father?"
"His rooms are in the other end of the house, upstairs. He sleeps till noon," she answered mechanically.
"Umph!" he grunted, resuming his walk.
"Tom," she said, taking a firm grasp on her nerves, "let us talk it over quietly. Sit down."
He halted. "I can talk better standing," he said grimly. He came up close to her. She stood her ground, looking him squarely in the eyes. "There isn't much to say, Mary. You know me for what I am, and you know who made me so. He's got to pay, that's all. We won't go into the past. It's not easily forgotten. I guess we remember everything."
"Everything," she said.
"I'm not excusing myself. I'm past that, and besides it wouldn't go down with you. You know where I've been, and you must give me credit for trying to shield Christine a little bit. I took my medicine, and nobody but you and Grand knew that her father was up there until now, excepting Dick. I want to say to you, Mary, I was railroaded for a crime I didn't commit. I was jobbed. He was at the back of it. He was afraid of me—and well he might have been. I did a lot of rotten things while you and I were ploddin' along through those last two years with the show—you know what they were. But it was whiskey! I took money that didn't belong to me—yours and Christine's, and Grand's, and Jenison's. I did worse than that, Mary. I sold you out to Bob Grand—you knew that, too. But I'm going to try to pay up all my debts—all of 'em, in a day or two. I owe you my ugly, worthless life. I'm going to pay you in full by ending it. I owe Colonel Grand for everything I was, for what I am. I'm going to pay him, so help me God. Don't interrupt! My mind's made up. Nothing above hell can change it. I came here to ask you just two questions. I want you to answer them. I'm going to believe you. You never lie, I know that."
"I will answer them, Tom."
He hesitated, his gaze wavering for the first time. "I—I hate to ask you this first one, Mary," he said.
"Go on. Ask it."
"It's a mean question, but I've just got to hear you say no. Did you go to England with Bob Grand?"
"No."
He breathed deeply. "That's one," he said. "Here's the other. Did he give you money to live on, to educate Christine with, abroad?"
"No."
"I'll ask still another. Where did you get the money?"
"Some of it from my father. Afterwards I brought suit against you and Colonel Grand for an accounting. He was compelled to pay into court all that was due me as part owner of Van Slye's. I had my own money in the show. I could not be robbed of that."
"I'm glad you did that. It must have been a nasty dose for him."
"His wife tried to make trouble for me. You heard that?"
"I knew she would, sooner or later."
"You knew it?"
"She wasn't blind."
"But how could she dare to think that I—"
"She knew her husband's reputation, that's all. He was careless about women." His face went black as a thundercloud. "But he's had his day!"
"Tom," she cried, clutching the lapels of his coat, "you shall not leave this house until you've promised me to do nothing—"
He shook off her hands. "Don't come any of that, Mary. It won't do any good. He made me what I was, he would have prostituted you. I was just bad enough to fall, you were too good to even stumble. Then he landed me in the pen. Maybe you won't believe it, Mary, but I'd stopped drinking and was earning fair wages—well, I was tending bar in Chicago. Barkeepers have to be sober men, you see. I had not touched a drop for nearly three months. The temptation was too strong there, so I got out of it. Then I looked up Barnum to get a job as ringmaster. I was going under the name of Bradford. Somehow nobody would trust me. They knew me. Joey Noakes came through the West with a pantomime show about that time. He told me you were in Europe. First thing I'd heard of you, that was, Mary. Then he told me you'd got your money out of Grand, legitimately, he swore. I didn't believe him. I thought there had been some shinanigan. I stood it as long as I could, and then I broke for New York. You see, girlie—I mean Mary, I'd done for you in a nasty way. I practically handed you to him. You—well, we won't go into that."
"No," she said, very pale, "we must not go into that, Tom. You sold me with the show. I—I can never forgive you for that."
"I'm not asking forgiveness, am I?" he cried harshly. "I'm just tellin' you, that's all. Well, I came down here to kill him three years ago. I knew you hated him. If you gave in it wasn't because you wanted to, but because I'd fixed it so's you couldn't very well get out of it. There was only one way for you to be rid of Bob Grand after that—and only one man to do it for you. So I came down here to do it. Ernie Cronk ran across me on the street one night. He began filling me up with stories of how Grand had also tried to hurt Christine, and all about how you were living like a princess abroad. I waited until Grand came back from England, a couple of weeks later. Ernie had got me clear off my head by that time, nagging me day and night. He tried to get me to drink, but I was too wise for that. Well, I found Bob Grand and, like a fool, started in to tell him what I was going to do to him instead of doing it first. All of a sudden he pulled a gun. I had no chance, so I bolted. He fired twice and yelled for the police. They—they caught me in an alley—and I had a gun in my clothes, too. The next morning he came to see me in the station-house—to identify me, he said. Then he told me he was going to send me up for highway robbery—but he was willing, for your sake and Christine's, to say nothing about the past—or anything. He did swear me into the pen, and I kept my mouth closed. But, Mary, I am not a thief at heart, I never was one. Whatever I did that was crooked in the old days was due to whiskey. It's a habit men have, I know, blaming everything on to whiskey, but—but, oh, say, Mary, you know I wasn't that sort of a man when I married you. I was straight, wasn't I? I never had done a crooked thing in my life. I don't think I'd ever told a lie. I had a good mother, just as Christine has. But what the devil am I doing—talking like this!" The eager, rather appealing note went out of his voice; he almost snarled the bitter sentence. "I didn't come to explain, or to beg, or to excuse myself. I won't keep you any longer. Remember, I'm not asking anything of you, Mary,—not a thing. I'm not that low."
He was out of breath. No doubt, it was the longest speech he had made in years. Perhaps his own voice sounded strange to him.
"You are not to leave this house, Tom, until you have promised," she said firmly. All the time he was speaking, she had stood like a statue before him, never taking her eyes from his distorted face.
"Oh, I'm not, eh? We'll see!"
"What are you going to do to Colonel Grand?"
"I'm going to—" he checked himself. "I'm going to beat him to a jelly!"
"You mean, you are going to murder him?" She shuddered as she said it.
"No," he said, with grim humor; "I'm only going to help him to die. You see, Mary, Bob Grand committed suicide the day he sent me up. The final death struggle has been a long time coming, but it's almost here. He took a very slow, but a sure poison."
The time had come for the strong appeal. She laid her hands on his shoulders.
"Tom, have you thought of what it will mean, not to me, but to Christine?"
"She knows, by this time, that I'm an ex-convict. It won't hurt her to know I'm even worse."
"She does not believe you were guilty. She always has said you could have been a good man if you had let whiskey alone. You see, Tom, she understood—she understands. Isn't it worth your while to think of her? You are not drinking now. Can't you think of something good—something kind to do? Must you go to your grave—and such a grave!—knowing that you never did a really big thing for her in all your life? Have you no desire to make her think of you as something except the unnatural beast you were when she knew you best of all? I see the change in you. Don't you want her to see it? What do you gain by killing Colonel Grand? He has wronged you, but do you help yourself by making matters infinitely worse now, so many years afterward? Do—"
"He told me, over there in the police station, three years ago, that he had won your love, that you lived for him alone. He lied. I could kill him once for that lie. He told me, in the next breath, that you and he were going to sell Christine to a certain French nobleman, who already had a wife and family. He lied again. I could kill him once more for that lie. He told me—"
"Don't! Don't! For God's sake, don't tell me any more," she groaned, horror-stricken.
He went on. "He taunted me, he laughed at me. I was up there for three years. In all that time his damned sneers and laughter were never out of my mind. He laughed at me because the drunken bargain I had made with him had turned out to his credit, after all."
"The sale?"
"Yes."
He looked away. The expression in her eyes cut him like a knife.
"I ought to have been shot for that, Mary," he said.
"Yes," she agreed mechanically.
His hand went to his mouth suddenly, as if to steady the lips.
"I'm not asking you to overlook it. Maybe you'll spare Christine the knowledge of it—not for my sake, but for hers."
"Tom, don't you feel that you owe me something?" she asked steadily.
"Everything. I'm going to pay, too. I took you from a home like this and— Oh, well, it won't do any good to bring it all up again. Let's—"
"You owe me a little happiness and peace, Tom, after all these years."
"Oh, I'll go away all right. This is the last time you'll ever see me."
"It isn't that that I ask. There was a time when we were happy, you and I. I do not forget the old days, before you—I mean, when we were working together, you and I, to get control of the circus. Not that I liked the life—God knows I did not! but that we were striving for big, good things. I—"
"You got your money back," he broke in weakly. "That's more than I did."
"What had I ever done to you, Tom, that you should sell me as if I were a concubine to—"
"Didn't I tell you it was whiskey—and cards?" he cried fiercely.
"True. You did tell me that," she admitted, closing her eyes. He looked at the lowered lids for a moment and then swore softly to himself—not an oath of anger but of despair. She opened her eyes and caught the fleeting look of shame and remorse. "Ah," she cried, "you have a heart, after all. I saw it then. Tom, you did love me, years ago—you were fine and strong and true. You were yourself. You have changed, but I can still see something of the strong, manly Tom Braddock I loved in those wonderful days."
He was scowling again, but she had seen through the mask. She went on eagerly: "You are obsessed by this idea of vengeance. What can it mean to you, after all is said and done? You say you are going to end your own life, as well. You will escape the consequences, as any coward would, and you are not a coward. Who stays behind to suffer all the pain and anguish? Not you! Oh, no! I am the one—as if you had not already done enough. Christine and I! We—"
"I won't listen to you!" he cried, his breast heaving.
"You are listening! You can't help it. Come! You must sit down here beside me. This is the one, great, solitary hour in your life."
"This is the one, great, solitary hour in your life"
He drew back and permitted an irrelevant question to break from his lips:
"Why didn't you divorce me?"
"Because I married you, Tom, that is why! I'll always be your wife. I—I can't live with you—but I—"
"Mary, you are the grandest woman in all this world," he cried, amazement in his eyes. "And to think of it! I am the one to have married you,—a thing like me!"
She was trembling all over. "Will you do this for me, Tom?"
"Do what?"
"You know what, Tom."
"You mean, give up the one thing I've lived for all these awful years?"
"Yes."
"I—I can't do it, Mary. It's got to be, sooner or later. That man and I can't live on the earth at the same time."
"Oh! Won't you give me something to thank you for after all I've—"
"Wait a minute! Let me think!" He began pacing the floor again. She watched him with bated breath, a half-hope in her heart. He stopped before her once more. His eyes were bright with a new, strange light. "I'll tell you what I'll do, Mary,—for you and Christine. I'll put an end to myself. That's the best way out of it. I can't live if he does. Wait a minute! It's the simplest, surest way. Don't breathe a word of this to any one. I'll go down to the river to-night. That will be the end of it all. I swear to you, I won't hunt up Grand,—on my word of honor, if you will believe that I have any honor. There is some sort of integrity in a man who can fight the battle I have—and without wavering or whimpering. I'll do that for you, Mary. It's the safest way."
She had heard him at first with a sickening horror in her soul. It was a frightful compromise that he proposed. She knew he meant it, that he would keep his word. She understood how great the sacrifice would be on his part, how bitter the defeat; and she realized that he was doing it to justify himself in her eyes. As he got deeper into his amazing proposition, her clearing brain began to discern the rift in his armor. Not that she saw a sign of weakness beyond, but that the humanness of his strength was being revealed to her. There was an authority in his offer that dispelled all doubt as to the cloudiness of his mental vision. He was seeing things clearly. His sacrifice lay in the willingness to forego the joy of killing another man before he carried out his original design to make way with himself. She studied his face for a moment before speaking. There was something like gladness there—a truly bright glow that told of the relief he had found in at last doing something to please her!
"Is there no other way, Tom?" she asked, so quietly that his eyes narrowed with a curious intentness.
"It's the only one," he said grimly.
She walked over to the window and looked down into the area-way. Her heart was throbbing loudly.
"To-night?" she asked in muffled tones.
"If I don't do it to-night I'll do something worse to-morrow," he said.
"You promise me,—on your word of honor?"
He started. "Certainly. I'll do it."
She turned to face him, her back to the light. He could not see the expression in her eyes.
"You will do this for me, Tom?"
He nodded his head, that was all.
"Take your own life?"
"I was going to do it anyway. Before they could hang me."
Both were silent for a long time. Neither had changed position.
"You won't tell Christine that I did it, will you? Just say that I went away—to South America, I guess."
"I will not tell her, Tom."
"Is she going to marry David Jenison?"
"I hope so."
"Well, she'll feel easier in her mind if she knows I'm gone for good, then. Maybe you'd better tell her I'm dead."
He said it as calmly as if he were announcing the time of day, but he was none the less earnest.
"There is one alternative, Tom," she said, at last coming to the plan she had had in mind from the beginning.
"You're not thinking of—of taking me back," he said, aghast at the very thought of it.
"No. I'm going to make an offer that will give you greater satisfaction than that. Will you go away from New York forever, if I pay over to you every cent that I received for my share in Van Slye's—"
"No!" he almost shouted. "You can't buy me off. I was willing to do the right thing a minute ago. Now, you've gone and spoiled it all." He clapped his hands to his eyes; his big frame shook with rage.
She went quickly to him.
"Now, I know you are a man—a big man, Tom. I am prouder of you now than I ever was in all my life."
He looked bewildered. "You mean, you did that to try me?"
"To try myself," was her enigmatic response,
"Well?"
She stood back and looked at him intently.
"I still have your promise. You will do it to-night?"
He stared at her as if he could not believe his ears, but he said resolutely:
"Of course, I will."