At the Crossroads Part 44

With his anxiety about his mother lessened, Northrup received this news with a sense of relief. Once the car was in commission they could make good the loss of time. So Northrup started upon his errand, taking the roundabout trail he had broken for himself, and which led to that point back of the cabin from which he had often held his lonely but happy vigils.

Over this trail, leaf-strewn and wet, Northrup now went. He did not pause at the mossy rock that had hitherto marked his limit. He sternly strode ahead over unbroken underbrush and reached the cabin.

The door was open; without hesitation he went in, laid his note on the table, put the Bible over it, and retraced his steps. But once at the clump of laurel a weak, human longing overcame him. Why not wait there and see what happened? There was an hour or more to while away before the car would be in readiness. Again Northrup had that sense of being, after all, an atom in a plan over which he had small control.

So far he could go, no further! After that? Well, after that he would never weaken. He sat down on the rock, held the branches aside so that the cabin was in full view and, unseen himself, waited.

Now it happened that others besides Northrup were astir that morning.

Larry, shaved and washed, having had a good breakfast, provided by Peneluna and served by Jan-an, straightened himself and felt more a man than he had felt for many a day. He gave Jan-an money for Peneluna and a dollar for herself. The girl stared at the bill indicated as hers and pushed it back.

"Take it, Jan-an," Larry urged. "I'd like to remember you taking it."

The girl, thus urged, hid the money in her bosom and shuffled out.

Larry was sober and keen. He was going to carry out Northrup's commands, but in his own way! He meant to lay a good deal more in waste than perhaps any one would suspect. And yet, Larry, sober and about to cut loose from all familiar things, had sensations that made him tremble as he stumbled over the debris of the Point.

Never before had he been so surely leaving everything as he was now.

In the old days of separation, there had always been _home_ in the background. During that hideous year when he was shut behind bars, his thoughts had clung to home, to his father! He had meant then to go back and reform! Poor Larry! he had nothing to reform, but he had not realized that. Then Maclin caught him and instead of being reformed, Larry was moulded into a new shape--Maclin's tool. Well, Maclin was done with, too! Larry strode on in the semi-darkness. The morning was dull and deadly chill.

Traditional prejudice rose in Rivers and made him hard and bitter. He felt himself a victim of others' misunderstanding.

If he had had a--mother! Never before had this emotion swayed him. He knew little or nothing of his mother. She had been blotted out. But he now tried to think that all this could never have happened to him had he not been deprived of her. In the cold, damp morning Larry reverted to his mother over and over again. Good or bad, she would have stood by him! There was no one now; no one.

"And Mary-Clare!" At this his face set cruelly. "She should have stood by me. What was her sense of duty, anyway?"

She had always eluded him, had never been his. Larry rebelled at this knowledge. She had been cold and demanding, selfish and hard. No woman has a right to keep herself from her husband. All would have been well if she had done her part. And Noreen was his as well as Mary-Clare's.

But she was keeping everything. His father's house; the child; the money!

By this time Larry had lashed himself into a virtuous fury. He felt himself wronged and sinned against. He was prepared to hurt somebody in revenge.

Larry went to the yellow house. It was empty. There was a fire on the hearth and a general air of recent occupancy and a hurried departure.

A fiendish inspiration came to Rivers. He would go to that cabin of Mary-Clare's and wait for her. She should get her freedom there, where she had forbidden him to come. He'd enter now and have his say.

Larry took a short cut to the cabin and by so doing reached it before Mary-Clare, who had taken Noreen to Peneluna's--not daring to take her to the inn.

Larry came to within a dozen yards of the cabin when he stopped short and became rigid. He was completely screened from view, but, for the moment, he did not give this a thought. There was murder in his heart, and only cowardice held him back.

Northrup was coming out of the cabin! Rivers had not realized that he trusted Northrup, but he had, and he was betrayed! All the bitterness of defeat swept over him and hate and revenge alone swayed him.

Suddenly he grew calm. Northrup had pa.s.sed from sight; the white mists of the morning were rolling and breaking. He would wait--if Mary-Clare was in the cabin, and Larry believed she was, he could afford to bide his time. Indeed, it was the only thing to do, for in a primitive fashion Rivers decided to deal only with his woman, and he meant to have a free hand. He would have no fight for what was not worth fighting for--he would solve things in his own way and be off before any one interfered.

And then he turned sharply. Someone was advancing from the opposite direction. It was Mary-Clare. She came up her own trail, emerging from the mists like a shadowy creature of the woods; she walked slowly, wearily, up to the Place and went inside with the eyes of two men full upon her.

At that moment the sun broke through the mists; it flooded the cabin and touched warmly the girl who sank down beside the table. Instantly her glance fell upon the note by the Bible. She took it up, read it once, twice, and--understood more, far more than Northrup could guess.

Perhaps a soul awakening from the experience of death might know the sensation that throbbed through the consciousness of Mary-Clare at that moment. The woman of her had been born in the cabin the day before, but the birth pains had exhausted her. She had not censured Northrup in her woman-thought; she had believed something of what now she knew, and understood. She raised the note and held it out on her open palms--almost it seemed as if she were showing it to some unseen Presence as proof of all she trusted. With the sheet of paper still held lightly, Mary-Clare walked to the door of her cabin. She had no purpose in mind--she wanted the air; the sunlight. And so she stood in the full glow, her face uplifted, her arms outspread.

Northrup from his hidden place watched her for a moment, bowed his head, and turned to the inn. Larry watched her; in a dumb way he saw revealed the woman he had never touched; never owned. Well, he would have his revenge.

Mary-Clare turned back after her one exalted moment; she took her place by the table and spread again the note before her. She did not notice the footsteps outside until Larry was on the threshold and then she turned, gripping, intuitively, the sheet of paper in her hand.

Larry saw the gesture, saw the paper, and half understood.

Mary-Clare looked at her husband distantly but not unkindly. She did not resent his being there--the Place was no longer hers alone.

"A nice lot you are!" Rivers blurted this out and came in. He sat down on the edge of the table near Mary-Clare. "What's that?" he demanded, his eyes on the note.

"A letter."

"Full of directions, I suppose?" Larry smiled an ugly, keen smile.

"Directions? What do you mean?"

"I guess that doesn't matter, does it?" he asked. "Don't let us waste time. See here, my girl, the game's up! Now that letter--I want that.

It will be evidence when I need it. He's broken his bargain. I mean to take the advantage I've got."

Mary-Clare stared at Rivers in helpless amazement--but her fingers closed more firmly upon the note.

"When he--he bought you--he promised me that he'd never see you again.

He wanted you free--for yourself. Free!" Larry flung his head back and indulged in a harsh laugh. "I got the Point--he bought the Point and you! Paid high for them, too, but he'll pay higher yet before I get through with him."

Mary-Clare sat very quiet; her face seemed frozen into an expression of utter bewilderment. That, and the memory of her as she had stood at the door a few moments ago, maddened Rivers and he ruthlessly proceeded to batter down all the background that had stood, in Mary-Clare's life, as a plea for her loyalty, faith, and grat.i.tude.

"Do you know why my father kept me from home and put you in my place?"

he demanded.

"No, Larry."

"He was afraid of me--afraid of himself. He left me to others--and others helped me along. Others like Maclin who saw my ability!" Again Larry gave his mirthless, ugly laugh and this time Mary-Clare shuddered.

She made no defence for her beloved doctor--the father of the man before her. She simply braced herself to bear the blows, and she shuddered because she intuitively felt that Larry was in no sense realizing his own position; he was so madly seeking to destroy that of others.

"I'm a counterfeiter--I've been in prison--I've----" but here Rivers paused, struck at last by the face opposite him. It was awakening; it flushed, quivered, and the eyes darkened and widened. What was happening was this--Larry was setting Mary-Clare free in ways that he could not realize. Every merciless blow he struck was rending a fetter apart. He was making it possible for the woman, close to him physically, to regard him at last as--a man; not a husband that mistaken loyalty must shield and suffer for. He was placing her among the safe and decent people, permitting her at last to justify her instincts, to trust her own ideals.

And from that vantage ground of spiritual freedom, released from all false ties of contract and promise, Mary-Clare looked at Larry with divine pity in her eyes. She seemed to see the veiled form of his mother beside him--they were like two outcasts defiantly accusing her, but toward whom she could well afford to feel merciful.

"Don't, Larry"--Mary-Clare spoke at last and there were tears in her eyes--"please don't. You've said enough."

She felt as though she were looking at the dying face of a suicide.

"Yes, I think I have said enough about myself except this: I wrote all those letters you--you had. Not one was my father's--they were counterfeits--there are more ways than one of--of getting what you want."

Again Mary-Clare shuddered and sank into the dull state of amazement.

She had to think this over; go slowly. She looked at Larry, but she was not listening. At last she asked wonderingly:

"You mean--that he did not want me to marry you? And that last night--he did not say--what you said you understood?"

Larry laughed--but it was not the old a.s.sured laugh of brutality--he had stripped himself so bare that at last he was aware of his own nakedness.

"Oh!" The one word was like a blighting shaft that killed all that was left to kill.