The Last Straw Part 45

"Now I'll finish my errand by escorting you to the owner of this establishment."

Hilton led his horse across to the dooryard. The Reverend dismounted and the two walked down the cottonwoods to the big veranda, the Easterner still in the lead, the other with his hand in his side pocket.

Jane saw them; she was at the door.

"Good evening!" said Hilton with bitterness.

"In accordance with your orders, ma'am, I persuaded this gentleman to call," said Beal, almost humbly. "I'll feed his horse and return later."

He turned and hurried up the path.

Hilton pulled down his coat sleeves irritably and looked at Jane with a bitter smile.

"To what do I owe the ... the honor of such a summons?"

"Come in, d.i.c.k. I want to talk to you,"--keeping her voice and expression steady. She held the door open to him and he entered, his mouth drawn down in a sardonic grimace. A single shaded lamp was lighted and as she turned to him she could see his eyes glittering balefully in the semi-darkness.

"Rather different from our last meeting," he said testily. "Then you were concerned with my going; now you seem determined to have me here."

"Let's not discuss the past, d.i.c.k. I called you here for a definite purpose. Can you guess what it is?"

He eyed her in hostile speculation.

"I don't see where anything that concerns me could concern you now.

That is, unless you've changed your mind."

She gave him a wry smile and a shake of her head.

"I shall never change, d.i.c.k. It was no interest in you that made me send for you. It was interest in the well-being of another woman."

"Oh, another woman! And who, pray, may she be?"--frigidly, face darkening.

"Can't you guess? Have there been so many out here?"

"You know there's only one woman for me," he said bitterly, "and she drove me off like a thief and has called me back as though I were a thief!"

"Perhaps you are."

"What do you mean by that?"

There was that about him which made her think of a man cornered.

"I have called you here because I have reason to believe that you are trying to steal the heart of a young girl--of Bobby Cole."

He laughed unpleasantly, but there was in the laugh a queer relief, as though he had antic.i.p.ated other things.

"Now who's been tattling to you?"

"My men have seen you come and go, they have seen you with the girl.

One of them came to me and begged that I send for you and try to talk you out of this. They know, d.i.c.k. These men understand men ... like you."

"Because they see me with her and because I'm not considered fit by you to stay beneath your roof, even when it is night and storming, they think I'm d.a.m.ned beyond hope, do they? They think I'm menacing her happiness, do they?"

"But aren't you?" she countered. "I know her. I have talked to her and watched her. d.i.c.k, she is a lonely, pathetic little creature with the world against her. There have been just two things left in her life: her own splendid self respect and her devotion to her father. Why, she hasn't even had the respect of the people about her!

"And now she is facing loss of the biggest thing she possesses: the loss of her belief in herself, for you will destroy that just as surely as you force her to listen to your ... to what I suppose you still call your love-making."

He eyed her a moment before saying:

"You used, at least, to be fair, Jane; you used to go slowly in judging people and their motives and usually you were more or less right. Have you put all that behind you? Does the fact that a man is charged with some irregularity convince you of his guilt now?"

"Why no. But knowing you and knowing her..."

"Don't you think it possible for a man, even, for the sake of the argument, a blackguard like me,"--bowing slightly--"to change a trifle?"

He put the question with so much confidence, with so much of his old certainty that it checked Jane.

"Why, we all may change," she said slowly.

"I am glad you will grant that much,"--ironically. "Think back, just a few weeks, and you may recall one somewhat theatrical statement you made to me about finding yourself among these people. I thought it preposterous then but I have lived and learned; I know now that you could mean what you said then.... Jane, I, too, have found my people ... at least my woman."

She stared hard at him.

"Do you mean that, d.i.c.k Hilton?"--very lowly.

"As much as I have ever meant anything in my life!"

"Sit down," she said, more to give her time to think than in consideration of his comfort. Then, after a moment: "It isn't much of a boast, to mean this as much as you have ever meant anything."

"Then need we talk further? You ask questions; I answer; you do not believe. Why continue?"

She sat down in a chair before him.

"This is the reason: That I think you have lied to me again. I don't believe you are sincere. No, no, you must listen to me, now!"--as he started forward with an enraged exclamation. "I brought you here to make what is left of the d.i.c.k Hilton I once liked see this thing as I see it."

And try she did. She talked rapidly, almost hurriedly, carried along by her own conviction, made dominant by it, sweeping aside his early protests, forcing him to listen to her. She put her best into that effort for as he sat there with his cruel, cynical smile on her she realized that this was a task worthy of her best mettle.

She sketched Bobby Cole's life as she knew it, she argued in detail to show him how the girl had never had a chance to taste the things which are sweetest to girlhood. She touched on the incident in town where, in desperation, Bobby had tried to force the respect of men and she told him of the defiance with which her own advances of friendship had been met.

Jane was eloquent. For the better part of an hour she talked steadily, occasionally interrupted by a skeptical laugh or a sneering retort, but she persisted. Hilton listened and watched, eyes hard, mouth drawn into forbidding lines, a manner of suspicious caution about him, as though there were much that he wanted to conceal.

Finally her sincerity had an effect and she could see his cold a.s.surance melting. His gaze left hers and a flush crept into his cheeks. She moved quickly to sit beside him.

"d.i.c.k! d.i.c.k! For the sake of what you once were, for the sake of what you still can be, go away! If you won't go for the sake of the girl, go for your own salvation!"

"It's not what you think," he protested feebly, without looking at her.

"I'm not philandering. I--"

"No, d.i.c.k, not philandering, because that is too gentle a word. It is something worse, something darker, which will bring more shame to you and to all who once knew and trusted you.