Rodman the Keeper Part 41

Honor gazed at him with helpless, fascinated eyes. Mrs. Kellinger noted the expression. There was evidently another secret: she had already divined one.

Soon afterward Honor went home, and Stephen did not accompany her.

Adelaide noted that. She noted also that he sat longer than usual in her parlor after the early dinner, smoking cigarettes and becoming gradually more and more drowsy, until at last, newspaper in hand, he sauntered off to his own room, as if for a _siesta_. It was too well acted. She said to herself, with conviction, "He is going out!" A woman can deceive admirably in little things; a man can not. He can keep the secret of an a.s.sa.s.sination, but not of a clam supper. The very cat discovers it.

Adelaide went to her room, put on her trim little walking-boots and English round hat, and, slipping quietly out of the house, walked down the road to a wooded knoll she remembered, a little elevation that commanded the valley and the village; here, under a tree, she sat waiting. She had a volume of Landor: it was one of Wainwright's ways to like Landor. After half an hour had pa.s.sed, she heard, as she had expected to hear, footsteps; she looked up. Wainwright was pa.s.sing.

"Why--is it you?" she called out. "I thought you would sleep for two hours at least. Sit down here awhile and breathe this delicious air with me."

Wainwright, outwardly undisturbed, left the road, came up the knoll, and sat down by her side. Being in the shade, he took off his hat and threw himself back on the gra.s.s. But that did not make him look any larger.

Only a broad-shouldered, big fellow can amount to anything when lying down in the open air: he must crush with his careless length a good wide s.p.a.ce of gra.s.s and daisies, or he will inevitably be overcome by the preponderant weight of Nature--the fathomless sky above, the stretch of earth on each side. Wainwright took up the volume, which Adelaide did not conceal; that he had found her reading his favorite author secretly was another of the little facts with which she gemmed his life. "What do you discover to like?" he asked.

"'His bugles on the Pyrenees dissolved the trance of Europe'; and, 'When the war is over, let us sail among the islands of the aegean and be as young as ever'; and, 'We are poor indeed when we have no half-wishes left us,'" said Adelaide, musically quoting. "Then there is the 'Artemidora.'"

"You noticed that?"

"Yes."

Meanwhile, the man was thinking, "How can I get away unsuspected?" and the woman, "How can I make him tell me?"

They talked some time longer; then Adelaide made up her mind to go into action.

_Adelaide_ (quietly). "There is a change in you, Stephen. I want you to tell me the cause."

_Stephen._ "We all change as time moves on."

_Adelaide._ "But this is something different. I have noticed--"

_Stephen._ "What?"

_Adelaide._ "No one observes you so closely as I do, Stephen: my life is bound up in yours; your interests are mine. Anything that is for your happiness engrosses me; anything that threatens it disturbs me. Let us speak plainly, then: you are interested in Honor Dooris."

_Stephen._ "I am."

_Adelaide._ "More than that--you love her."

_Stephen._ "What is love, Adelaide?"

_Adelaide_ (with emotion). "It was Ralph's feeling for me, Stephen. He is gone, but I have the warm memory in my heart. Somebody loved me once, and with all his soul." (Leaning forward with tears in her eyes:) "Take this young girl, Stephen; yes, take her. She will give you what you have never had in your life, poor fellow!--real happiness."

Wainwright was silent.

_Adelaide._ "Ah! I have known it a long time. You spent the whole of last summer here; what did that mean? You wrote to her at intervals all through the winter. You are here again. You love to study her girlish heart, to open the doors of her mind." (Rapidly:) "And have I not helped you? I have, I have. Was I not the quiet listener to all those first guarded descriptions of yours? Did I not comment upon each and every word of those careful little letters of hers, and follow every possibility of their meaning out to its fullest extent? All this to please _you_. But, when I came here and saw the child with my own eyes, did I not at once range myself really upon your side? Have I not had her here? Did I not form a close acquaintance with her family? Did I not give you those morning hours with her at the library? And am I not here also to answer for her, to describe her to your friends, to uphold your choice, to bring out and develop her striking beauty?"

_Stephen._ "But she is not beautiful."

_Adelaide._ "She is. Let me dress her once or twice, and New York shall rave over her. I have had your interests all the time at heart, Stephen.

Was it not I who sent for John Royce? And did you not see why I sent for him? It was to try her. I have given her every chance to see him, to be with him, to admire him. He is near her own age, and he is a handsome fellow, full of life and spirit. But you see as well as I do that she has come out unscathed. Take her, then, Stephen; you can do it safely, young as she is, for the man she first loves she will love always."

As she spoke, an almost imperceptible tremor showed itself around the mouth of the small, plain, young-old man who was lying on the gra.s.s beside her; he seemed to be conscious of it himself, and covered his mouth with his hand.

_Adelaide._ "But there is something which you must tell _me_ now, Stephen. _You_ can not be in league with these outlaws; is it Honor, then? You had better tell. Her uncle and aunt evidently know nothing of it, and the child should have a woman-friend by her side. You know I would cut myself up into small pieces for you, Stephen; let me be your ally in this, too. Is it not best for Honor that I should know everything? Shall I not be her true friend when she is your wife--your sweet young wife, Stephen, in that old house of yours which we will fit up for her together, and where you will let me come and see you, will you not, your faithful, loving cousin?" Her voice broke; she turned her head away. Her emotion was real. The man by her side, urged at last out of his gray reticence by his own deep longing, which welled up irresistibly to meet her sympathy, turned over on his arm and told her all--in a few words as regarded himself, with careful explanation as regarded Honor.

"I have the money with me now," he said, "and Head, who was so anxious to guide me, the supposed detective, _away_ from Eliot, now guides me to him, relies upon me to save him."

"And Honor knows--knows, too, that he shot Allison," said Adelaide musingly. "That was the reason why she was so pale, and why she brought all her roses, and kissed the poor boy's forehead."

"She does not _know_, but fears."

"Ah! we must help the child, Stephen; the burden of this is too heavy for such young shoulders. Go; I will not keep you a moment longer; I will go back to Honor. But, first--G.o.d bless you! Do not put yourself into any danger, for _my_ sake. I have loved you long, and years hence, when we are old, I shall love you just the same."

They were both standing now; she came close to him, and laid her head upon his shoulder for an instant, tears shining on her cheeks. He put one arm around her, touched by her affection; she raised her eyes, and let him look deep into them for one short moment. "He shall see the truth this once," she thought; "though nothing to him now, it will come back to him."

Adelaide Kellinger did that time a bold thing; she let Wainwright see that she loved him, relying upon the certainty that he would not think she knew he saw it, much less that she intended him to see it. She had the balance of reality on her side, too, because she really did love him--in her way.

In another moment he had left her, and was walking rapidly down the river-road. Adelaide went back to the village.

Her first step was to find out whether Honor was at home; she was not.

At the library, then? Not there. "Already gone to Brother Bethuel's,"

she thought. She next woke up Royce, laughed at his ill nature, flattered him a little, coaxed him into good temper, and finally told him plainly that she would not stand his bearishness any longer; that he must go and dress himself anew, brush his hair, and come back and be agreeable.

"You will turn into a mountain outlaw yourself, if I do not see to you,"

she said.

"Oh, let me off for to-day," said Royce lazily.

"This moment!"

She had her way: Royce took himself off, followed by the injunction to come back looking like an Apollo. Now, to make one's self look like an Apollo is an occupation which no young man is in his heart above; and, when incited thereto by an expressed belief from feminine lips that he has only to try, he generally--tries. Not long afterward Royce returned to the parlor looking his best, threw himself into a chair, and took up a book carelessly. He knew Adelaide would comment. She did. She called him "a good boy," touched the crisp, curling ends of his yellow hair, and asked why he kept them so short; stroked his forehead, and said that, on the whole, he looked quite well. Her heart was beating rapidly as she chatted with him; she listened intently; everything depended upon a chance. Ten minutes before, she had executed a daringly bold action--one of those things which a woman can do once in her life with perfect impunity, because no one suspects that she can. If she will do it alone, and only once, there is scarcely any deed she may not accomplish safely. A few more moments pa.s.sed, Adelaide still listening; then came a shuffling step through the pa.s.sage, a knock at the door, and, without waiting for reply, the burly figure of the revenue detective appeared, wrapped in a dressing-gown, with head still bandaged, and eyes half closed, but mind sufficiently clear to state his errand.

"Beg pardon," he said; "is Royce here? I can't see very well.--Is that you, Royce? Look at this."

He held out a crumpled piece of paper.

"Seems to be something, but I can't quite make it out," he said.

Royce took it, glanced over it, cried, "By Jove!" and was out of the room in a second. The detective went stumbling along after him; he had to feel his way, being half blinded by his swollen eyelids.

"Take your pistols!" he called out, keeping his hand on the wall all the way down the pa.s.sage.

Royce had dropped the paper; Adelaide had instantly destroyed it, and then she followed the detective.

"What was it?" she asked anxiously.

"Only a line or two, ma'am--from somebody in the town here, I suppose--saying that one of them distillers, the one, too, that shot Allison, was hidden in the house of that rascally, deceiving little minister, up toward Eagle k.n.o.b. They're all in league with each other, ministers or no ministers."

"Who wrote it? How do you know it is true?"

"I dun know who wrote it, and I dun know as it's true. The paper was throwed into my room, through the winder, when there didn't happen to be anybody around. It was somebody as had a grudge against this man in particular, I suppose. 'Twas scrawly writing, and no spelling to speak of. I brought it to Royce myself, because I wouldn't trust any one to carry it to him, black or white, confound 'em all!"

The detective had now reached the end of the pa.s.sage and his endurance; his hand was covered with whitewash where he had drawn it along the wall, his head was aching furiously, and his slippers were coming off.