The Law-Breakers Part 44

Kate's voice greeted him promptly. "The draught has blown the lamp out. Have you a match?"

Charlie closed the door behind him, and produced and struck a match.

The lamp flared up and Kate replaced the gla.s.s chimney. Then she moved over to the wall and placed the lamp in its bracket.

It was a curious interior. In their unevenness the white kalsomined walls displayed their primitive workmanship. The windows were small, framed, and set deep in the ponderous walls. They looked almost like the arrow slits in a mediaeval fortress. The long, pitched roof was supported, and collared, by heavy, untrimmed logs, which, at some time, had formed the floor-supports of a sort of loft. This had been done away with since, for the purpose of giving air to the suppliants at a prayer meeting below.

At the far end of the room were two reading desks and a sort of communion table. While in one corner, behind one of the reading desks, was a cheap-looking harmonium. Here and there, upon the rough walls, were nailed cardboard streamers, conveying, amid a wealth of illumination, sundry appropriate texts of a non-committal religious flavor, and down the narrow body of the building were stretched rows of hard-seated, hard-backed benches for the accommodation of the congregation.

One swift glance sufficed for Charlie, and his eyes came back to the woman's smiling face. Her good looks were undoubted, but to him they were of an almost celestial order. There was no creature in the whole wide world to compare with her.

His eyes devoured every detail of her expression, of her personality, with the hungry greed of a soul-starved man. It was almost an impossibility for him to seize upon and hold the thoughts that so swiftly poured through his brain. So the moments pa.s.sed and Kate found her patience ebbing.

"Well?" she demanded, her smile slowly fading.

The man breathed a sigh, and swallowed as with a dry throat. The spell of her charm had been broken.

"I had to come," he cried, with a nervous rush. "I had to find you. I had to speak to you--to tell you."

The woman's eyes, so steadily fixed upon his face, were wearing an almost hard look.

"Was it necessary to stimulate your nerve to come, and--speak to me?

Charlie, Charlie," Kate went on more gently, her fine eyes softening, "when is this all to cease? Why must you drink? It seems so hopeless.

Oh, man, where is your backbone, your grit. You tell me you long to be free of your curse, yet you plunge headlong the moment you are disturbed."

Her moment of pa.s.sionate remonstrance pa.s.sed and a subtle coolness superseded it, as the scarlet flushed into the man's pale cheeks.

"Tell it me all," she went on, "tell me what it is you had to see me about. Remember, to-morrow is Sunday, and this place must be put in order for meeting. As it is, I am late. I was kept."

The flush of shame died out of the man's face, and his eyes became questioning. But his manner was almost humble.

"I know," he said. "I knew I had no right to disturb you--now. I knew you would resent it. But I had to see you--while I had the chance.

To-morrow it might be too late."

"Too late?"

The woman's question came with a sharp, rising inflection.

"Oh, Kate, Kate, won't you understand what has brought me? Can't you understand all that I feel now that the shadow of the law is so threatening here in this valley? All the time I'm thinking of you; thinking of all you mean in my life; thinking of the love which would make it a happiness to lay down my life for you, the love which to me is the whole, whole world."

He ceased speaking with a curious abruptness. It was as though there were much more to be said, but he feared to give it expression.

Kate seized upon his pause to remonstrate.

"Hush, Charlie," she cried almost vehemently, "you mustn't tell me all this. You mustn't. I am not worthy of such a love from any man.

Besides," she went on, with a sigh, "it is all so useless. I have no love to return you. You know that. You have known it so long. Our friendship has been precious to me. It will always be precious. I feel, somehow, that you belong to me, are part of me, but not in the way you would have it. Oh, Charlie, the one thought in my mind, the one desire in my heart, is for your welfare. I desire that more than I could ever desire the love of any man. You love me, and yet by every act of yours that jeopardizes that welfare you stab me to the heart as surely as you add another nail to the coffin of your moral and physical well-being. You come here to tell me of these things, straight from one of your mad debauches, the signs of which are even now in your eyes, and in your shaking, nervous hands. Oh, Charlie, why must it all be? What madness is it with which you are possessed?"

The man looked into her big eyes, so full of strength and courage. The yellow lamplight left them shining darkly. He sought in them something that always seemed to baffle. Something he knew was there, but which ever eluded him. And the while he cried out in bitterness at her challenge.

"What does it matter--these things?" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "What does it matter what I am if--I can't be anything to you?"

Then his bitterness was redoubled, and an almost savage light shone in his usually gentle eyes.

"Oh, G.o.d, I know I can never be anything to you but a sort of puling weakling, who must be nursed, and petted, and cared for. I know," he went on, his words coming with a rush in the height of his protesting pa.s.sion, "if your thoughts, your secret thoughts and feelings, were put into words, I know what they would say of me, must say of me. Do I need to tell you? No, I think not. Look at me. It is sufficient."

He paused, his great dark eyes alight as Kate had never seen them before. Then he went on, and his tone had become subdued, and its rich note thrilled with the depths of pa.s.sion stirring him.

"But for all that I am a man, Kate. For all my weakness I have strength to feel, to love, to fight. I have all that, besides, which goes to make a man, just as surely as has the man, Fyles, whom you love. I know, Kate. Denial would be useless, and in denying, you would be untrue to yourself. Fyles is the man for you, and no one knows it better than I. Fyles! The irony of it. The man who represents the law is the man who stands between me and all I desire on earth. I have seen it. I have watched. Nothing that concerns your life escapes me.

How could it, when my whole thought is for you--you? But the agony of mind I suffer is no less. I cannot help it, Kate. The knowledge and sight of things drives me nearly crazy, and I suffer the tortures of h.e.l.l. But even so, if your happiness lies at Fyles's side, then--I would have it so. If I were sure--sure that this happiness were awaiting you. Is it, Kate? Think. Think of it in--every aspect. Is it?

Happiness with this--Fyles?"

It was some moments before Kate made any reply. Her eyes were fixed upon the old Communion Table, so shadowy in the single lamplight. She was asking herself many questions; almost as many as he could have asked her. She had permitted herself to drift on the tide of her feelings. Whither? She knew she was beyond her depth. Her life was in the hands of a Providence which would inevitably work its will. All she knew was that she loved. She had known it from the first. She loved, and rejoiced that it was so. Again, there were moments when she feared as cordially. She knew the work that lay before this lover of hers. She knew in what direction it pointed. And in obedience to her thoughts her eyes came back to the drunkard's eager face.

"You--you came to tell me--all this?" she said, in a low tone. "You came to a.s.sure yourself of my--happiness?" Then she shook her head.

"Tell me the rest."

It was Charlie's turn to hesitate now. The demand had robbed him of the small enough confidence he possessed.

But Kate was waiting and he had no power to deny her anything.

"I came to tell you of--things, while I still have the chance.

To-morrow? Who knows what to-morrow may bring forth?"

A keen, hard light suddenly flashed into the woman's eyes.

"What of--to-morrow?" she demanded sharply, while she studied the man's pale features, with their boyish good looks.

For answer Charlie reached out and caught one of her hands in both of his. She strove to release it, but he clung to it despairingly.

"No, no, Kate. Don't take it away," he cried pa.s.sionately. "It is for the last--the very last time. Tell me, dear, is--is there no hope for me? None? Kate, I love you so. I do--dear. I will give up everything for you, dear, everything. I can do it. I will do it. I swear it, if--only you'll love me. Tell me. Is there----?"

Kate shook her head, and the man dropped her hand with a gesture of utter hopelessness.

"My love is given, Charlie. Believe me, I have not given it. It--it is simply gone from me."

Kate sighed. Then her mood changed again. That sharp alert look came into her eyes once more.

"Tell me--of to-morrow," she urged him.

The second demand had a p.r.o.nounced effect upon Charlie. The air of the suppliant fell from him, even the signs of his recent debauch seemed to give way before a startling alertness of mentality. In his curious way he seemed suddenly to have become the man of action, full of a keenness of perception and shrewdness which might well have carried an added conviction to Stanley Fyles, had he witnessed the display.

"Listen," he said, with a thrill of excitement. "Maybe it's not necessary to tell you. Maybe it's stale news. Anyway, to-morrow is to be the day of Fyles's coup." He paused, watching for the effect of his words.

Just for an instant the woman's eyes flashed, but whether in fear, or merely excited interest, it would have been impossible to say.

"Go on," she said.

"To-morrow the village is to be surrounded by a chain of police patrols. Every entry will be closely watched for the incoming cargo of whisky. Fyles reckons to get me red-handed."

"You?"