The Last Woman Part 20

If the friends whom Jack Gardner had made since his sojourn in the East could have seen him at that moment, they would not have recognized in the coldly stern, keen-eyed copper magnate, the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care Jack, of their acquaintance. The almost tragic occurrences of the evening had brought the real Jack Gardner to the surface, and he was for the moment again the dauntless young miner who had fought his way upward to the position he now held, by sheer force of character; for it requires a whole man to lift himself from the pick and shovel, and the drill and fuse, to the millionaire mine-owner and the person of prominence in the world such as he had become. He stood beside the small table at one end of the room; Morton occupied the center of it, facing him. Grouped around them, in various att.i.tudes, were the others of that strange gathering. Duncan leaned idly against the mantel, and smoked his cigar with deliberation, although his gray eyes were coldly fierce in their expression, and his half-smile of utter contempt for the man who occupied the center of the scene rendered his face less handsome and attractive than usual. Malcolm Melvin was alert and attentive, from the end of the room opposite Gardner, and the other gentlemen of the party occupied chairs conveniently at hand.

It would be hard to define Richard Morton's att.i.tude from any outward expression he manifested concerning it. He stood with folded arms, tall and straight, facing unflinchingly the accusing eyes of his life-long friend, Jack Gardner. His lips were shut tightly together, and he seemed like one who awaits stoically a verdict that is inevitable.

"Morton," said Gardner, speaking coldly and with studied deliberation, "you have been a life-long friend of mine, and, until to-night, I have looked upon you almost as a brother; but, to-night, by your own confession and by your acts which have followed upon that confession, you have destroyed every atom of the friendship I have felt for you.

You have made me wish that I had never known you. You have outraged every sense of propriety, and every feeling of manhood that I thought you possessed. Fortunately for us all, no one is much the worse for your scoundrelism; I can call it by no other word. You have shown yourself to be, at heart, an unspeakable scoundrel, as undeserving of consideration as a coyote of the plains."

Morton's face went white as death at these words, and his eyes blazed with the fury of a wild animal that is being whipped while it is chained down so that it cannot show resentment. He did not speak; he made no effort to interrupt. Gardner continued:

"When Miss Langdon arrived here alone, in your roadster, she gave us no explanation whatever of what had happened, and, while we believed that some unpleasant incident must have occurred, we did not press her for the story of it. Then, you came, and without mincing your words you told the whole brutal truth; and you uttered it with a spirit of brutality and bravado that would be unbelievable under any other circ.u.mstances. And when, in your own self-abas.e.m.e.nt for what you had done, you confessed to the acts of which you were guilty toward Miss Langdon, you received, at Duncan's hands, the blow you so thoroughly merited; I am frank to say to you that, if he had held his hand one instant longer, it would have been my fist, instead of his, that floored you. But that is not all. You have been a gun-fighter for so many years, out there in your own wild country, that, before you were fairly down after you received the blow, you must needs pull your artillery, and use it. Do you realize, I wonder, how near to committing a murder you have been, to-night? If Miss Brunswick had not seen your act, if she had not started forward and thrown herself between your weapon and its intended victim, thus frightening you so that you sought at the last instant to withhold your fire, I tremble for what the consequences might have been. As it happened, no one has been harmed. You deflected your aim just in time to avoid a tragedy; but it is not your fault that somebody does not carry a serious wound as the consequence of your brutality. Were it not for Miss Brunswick's act, there would be a dead man at this feast, and you would be his murderer. But even that, horrible as it might have been, is less a crime than the other one you have confessed. You, reared in an atmosphere where all men infinitely respect woman-kind, deliberately outrage every finer feeling of the one woman you have professed to love. That, Richard Morton, is very nearly all that I have to say to you. I have asked these gentlemen to come into the room, and to be present during this scene, in order that we may all bind ourselves to secrecy concerning what has happened to-night. I can a.s.sure you that nothing of this affair will leak out to others. I have quite finished now. One of the servants will bring your roadster around to the door.

Our acquaintance ends here."

He turned and pressed a b.u.t.ton in the wall behind him, and a moment later the door opened; but it was Beatrice Brunswick who stood upon the threshold, and not the servant who had been summoned.

She hesitated an instant, then came forward swiftly, until she stood beside Morton, facing his accusers. With one swift glance, she took in the scene by which she was surrounded, and with a woman's intuition understood it. Turning partly around, she permitted one hand to rest lightly upon Morton's arm, and she said to him, ignoring the others:

"It is really too bad, Mr. Morton. I know that you did not mean it; and I am unharmed. See: the bullet did not touch me at all. It only frightened me. I am sure that you were over-wrought by all that had happened, and I'll forgive you, even if the others do not. I am sure, too, that Patricia will forgive you, if you ask her. Come with me; I will take you to her."

She tightened her grasp upon his arm and sought to draw him toward the door, but Jack Gardner interrupted, quickly and sharply.

"Stop Beatrice!" he said. "Mr. Morton is about to take his departure.

This is an occasion for men to deal with. Morton cannot see Miss Langdon again unless she seeks him, and that I don't think she will do."

"I'll get her; I'll bring her here!" exclaimed Beatrice, starting toward the door alone; but this time it was Morton's voice that arrested her--the first time he had spoken since he entered the room.

"Please, wait, Miss Brunswick," he said, and the quiet calmness of his tone was a surprise to everyone present. It belied the expression of his eyes and of his set jaws. "I thank you most heartily for what you have said, and for what you would do now. Miss Langdon won't forgive me, nor, indeed, do I think she ought to do so. I have not attempted to make any explanation of my conduct to these gentlemen, but to you I will say this: I realize the enormity of it, thoroughly, and, while I can find no excuse for what I have done, I can offer the one explanation, that I was, for the moment, gone mad--locoed, we call it, in the West. If Miss Langdon will receive any message from me at all, tell her that I am sorry."

He bowed to her with a dignity that belied his training, and, stepping past her, opened the door, holding it so until she had pa.s.sed from the room. Then, he turned toward the others.

"I am quite ready to go now," he said. "Gardner, if you will have my car brought around, I shall not trouble you further."

With another slight inclination of his head, he pa.s.sed out of the room and along the hall to the front door, where he paused at the top of the steps, waiting till his car should be brought to him; and no one attempted to follow, or say another word to him.

Standing alone at the top of the steps, while he waited for the car, Morton was presently conscious of a slight movement near him, and he turned quickly. Patricia Langdon slowly arose from one of the veranda chairs, and approached him. She came quite close to him, and stopped.

For a moment, both were silent; he, with hard, unrelenting eyes, which nevertheless expressed the exquisite pain he felt; she, with tear-dimmed vision, in which pity, regret, sympathy and real liking strove for dominant expression.

"I couldn't let you go, Mr. Morton, without a few more words with you, and I have purposely waited here, because I thought it likely you would come from the house alone."

"Thank you," he replied, not knowing what else to say.

"I am so sorry for it all, Mr. Morton; and I cannot help wondering if I am to blame, in any measure. I wanted you to know that I freely forgive you for whatever offense you have committed against me. I think that is all. Good-night."

She was turning away, but he called to her, with infinite pain in his voice:

"Wait; please, wait," he said. "Give me just another moment, I beseech you."

She turned to face him again.

"I have been a madman to-night, Miss Langdon, and I know it," he told her rapidly. "There is no excuse for the acts I have committed; there can be no palliation for them. I would not have dared to ask for your forgiveness; I can only say that I am sorry. It was not I, but a madman, who for a moment possessed me, who conducted himself so vilely toward you. I shall go back to my ranch again. My only prayer to you is, that you will forget me, utterly."

Patricia came a step nearer to him, reaching out her hand, tentatively, and said, in her softest tone, while tears moistened her eyes:

"Good-bye, and G.o.d bless you."

But Morton, ignoring her extended hand, cleared the steps of the veranda at one leap, and disappeared in the darkness, toward the garage.

Five minutes later, while Patricia yet remained at the top of the steps where Morton had left her, the steam-roadster that had been so closely related to her experiences of the night rushed past the house and disappeared along the winding roadway toward the Cedarcrest gate.

And she remained there, in a listening att.i.tude, as long as she could hear the droning murmur of its mechanism. When that died away in the distance, she sighed, and turned to reenter the house; but it was only to find that she was no longer alone. Roderick Duncan appeared in the doorway, and came through the entrance, to meet her.

"Was it Morton's car that just went past the door?" he asked her.

"Yes," she replied, shrinking away from him.

"Did you see him, and talk with him, before he went away?" he asked, partly reaching out one hand, but instantly withdrawing it.

"Yes," she answered again, retreating still farther from him.

"That was like you, Patricia. I am rather sorry for the poor chap, despite what he did to you, to-night. You see, I know what it means, to be so madly in love with you that it is barely possible for one to stand or sit beside you, without crushing you in one's arms. Oh, Patricia, won't you be kind to me? Won't you forgive me, too, as I know, just now, you forgave that poor chap? Surely, my offense was not so great as his."

"It has been infinitely greater," she told him, coldly; and, with head erect, but with averted face, she went past him, through the doorway.

Down the highway, half-way between Cedarcrest and the city, was a place where building operations were in progress; where huge rocks had been blasted out to make room for intended improvements; where derricks and stone-crushers and other machinery were idly waiting the dawn of another day, when the workmen would arrive and resume their several occupations.

Richard Morton, dashing along this highway with ever-increasing speed, utilizing the full power of his racing roadster, remembered that place along the highway. With cold, set face and protruding chin, he set his jaws sharply together, and wondered why his flying car would go no faster. He did not realize that he was covering more than a mile with every minute of time. The pace seemed slow to him, for he had suddenly determined what he would do. He had thought of a plan to expiate his follies of the night.

At last, almost directly beneath an arc-light along the highway, he saw, dimly, the spot where the stone was being quarried, and, as he recognized it, he laughed aloud with a sort of desperate joy, because of the plunge he intended to take. He threw the throttle wide open, and after another moment he saw the derrick loom before him. With careful deliberation, he turned the steering-wheel.

There was a loud crash in the darkness; the roadster leaped into the air like a live thing, and turned over, end for end, twice. Then, it seemed to shoot high into the air, and fell again, in a confused heap of wreckage, among the broken stones of the quarry. Morton was thrown from it, like the projectile from a catapult, and he came down in a crumpled heap, somewhere among that ma.s.s of rocks; and after that there was silence.

CHAPTER XVII

CROSS-PURPOSES AT CEDARCREST

At Cedarcrest, the night was still young. Patricia, and then Morton, had arrived at the country home of the Gardners while the several guests were still at table, and the scenes which followed their coming had pa.s.sed with such stunning rapidity that every one of the party was more or less affected by them, each one in his or her separate manner.

The men of the party were silent and preoccupied. The scene enacted just before the departure of Morton weighed more or less heavily upon them, and while each one felt that the young ranchman had "got what was coming to him," there was not one among them who did not experience a thrill of sympathy for the young fellow, who had been so well liked by the new acquaintances he had made in the East.

The two gentlemen strangers, who had brought Morton to the house in their car, were the first to take their departure, after Morton's dramatic exit, although they remained long enough to imbibe a whisky-and-soda, and to hear what Jack Gardner still had to say. That was not so very much, but, like all he had said that night, it was straight to the point.

"Gentlemen," he said to them, standing with his gla.s.s in hand and addressing all, impersonally, "what I have to say now, is said to all, alike. Two of you are strangers to me; the others are more or less intimately my friends. It is my particular wish that we should all bind ourselves to secrecy, concerning what has happened at Cedarcrest, and in this vicinity, to-night. It happens that no real harm has been done; no one has been injured; amends have been made to Miss Langdon, so far as it has been possible to make them, and I am quite sure of her desire never to hear the subject mentioned again."

There was a generally affirmative nodding of heads about him as he spoke, and after an instant, he continued:

"In what has occurred in this room, I have had to a.s.sume a triple obligation: that of host, that of self-appointed champion of the young woman who received the affront from another of my guests, and that of a life-long acquaintance with the man whom I was compelled, by circ.u.mstances, to expel from my house. The last was the most difficult of all to fill. There is not one of you who could not readily have a.s.sumed two of the responsibilities; the last one I have named has been distinctly unpleasant. I have known and liked d.i.c.k Morton, since we were boys. We hail from the same state, and from a locality there where we were near neighbors, during our youth. He is somewhat younger than I--about two years, I think--and, until to-night, I have never known him to be otherwise than a brave and chivalrous fellow, ready to fight at the drop of the hat. We must agree that no matter what his conduct was, prior to the scene in this room, he conducted himself, while here, in a manner that was beyond reproach. He realized the enormity of the outrage he had committed, and he took his medicine, I think, as a fighter should. He is gone now, and I doubt if any of us see him again. That is all, I think, that need be said." It was then that Roderick Duncan silently put aside his gla.s.s, and went out of the room, unnoticed by the others. He knew that a general discussion of the incidents of the evening would follow, and he had no wish to take part in it. He antic.i.p.ated that the two gentlemen who had brought Morton to the house, would be asked to remain, and that he would therefore see them again, later on, and so he took the opportunity that was afforded him to escape unseen and unnoticed.

The whole affair weighed heavily upon him. He realized much better than Patricia did that she alone was to blame for it all; and the fear lest the responsibility of it should come home to her drove him to seek her at once, even before Morton had had time to get beyond the gates of Cedarcrest. Patricia was, of course, unaware of the scene that had taken place at Duncan's rooms just before the informal invitations to Cedarcrest were issued, but Duncan recalled that circ.u.mstance now, with a deeper understanding of all that had happened as a sequel to it; and he believed that the time was ripe for a better understanding between himself and Patricia. Therefore, he left the room to seek her.