The Power and the Glory Part 30

Standing at the gate, an astonishing figure, still in her evening frock, looking haggard and old in the gray, disillusioning light of early morning, was Lydia Sessions. Upstairs, her white bed was smooth; its pillows spread fair and prim, unpressed by any head, since the maid had settled them trimly in place the morning before; but the long rug which ran from her dressing table to the window might have told a tale of pacing feet that pa.s.sed restlessly from midnight till dawn; the mirror could have disclosed the picture of a white, anxious, and often angry face that had stared into it as the woman paused now and again to commune with the real Lydia Sessions.

She was thirty and penniless. She belonged to a circle where everybody had money. Her sister had married well, and Harriet was no better-looking than she. All Lydia Sessions's considerable forces were by heredity and training turned into one narrow channel--the effort to make a creditable, if not a brilliant, match. And she had thought she was succeeding. Gray Stoddard had seemed seriously interested. In those long night watches while the lights flared on either side of her mirror, and the luxurious room of a modern young lady lay disclosed, with all its sumptuous fittings of beauty and inutility, Lydia went over her plans of campaign. She was a suitable match for him--anybody would say so. He had liked her--he had liked her well enough--till he got interested in this mill girl. They had never agreed on anything concerning Johnnie Consadine. If that element were eliminated to-morrow, she knew she could go back and pick up the thread of their intimacy which had promised so well, and, she doubted not at all, twist it safely into a marriage-knot. If Johnnie were only out of the way. If she would leave Cottonville. If she would marry that good-looking mechanic who plainly wanted her. How silly of her not to take him!

Toward dawn, she s.n.a.t.c.hed a little cape from the garments hanging in the closet, flung it over her shoulders and ran downstairs. She must have a breath of fresh air. So, in the manner of helpless creatures who cannot go out in the highway to accost fate, she was standing at the gate when she caught sight of Shade Buckheath approaching. Here was her opportunity. She must be doing something, and the nearest enterprise at hand was to foster and encourage this young fellow's pursuit of Johnnie.

"I wanted to talk to you about a very particular matter," she broke out nervously, as soon as Buckheath was near enough to be addressed in the carefully lowered tone which she used throughout the interview. She continually huddled the light cape together at the neck with tremulous, unsteady fingers; and it was characteristic of these two that, although the woman had heard of the calamity at the Victory mill the night before, and knew that Shade came directly from the Himes home, she made no inquiry as to the welfare of Deanie, and he offered no information.

He gave no reply in words to her accost, and she went on, with increasing agitation.

"I--this matter ought to be attended to at once. Something's got to be done. I've attempted to improve the social and spiritual conditions of these girls in the mill, and if I've only worked harm by bringing them in contact with--in contact with--"

She hesitated and stood looking into the man's face. Buckheath knew exactly what she wished to say. He was impatient of the flummery she found it necessary to wind around her simple proposition; but he was used to women, he understood them; and to him a woman of Miss Sessions's cla.s.s was no different from a woman of his own.

"I reckon you wanted to name it to me about Johnnie Consadine," he said bluntly.

"Yes--yes, that was it," breathed Lydia Sessions, glancing back toward the house with a frightened air. "John is--she's a good girl, Mr.

Buckheath; I beg of you to believe me when I a.s.sure you that John is a good, honest, upright girl. I would not think anything else for a minute; but it seems to me that somebody has to do something, or--or--"

Shade raised his hand to his mouth to conceal the swift, sarcastic smile on his lips. He spat toward the pathside before agreeing seriously with Miss Lydia.

"Her and me was promised, before she come down here and got all this foolishness into her head," he said finally. "Her mother never could do anything with Johnnie. Looks like Johnnie's got more authority--her mother's more like a little girl to her than the other way round. Her uncle Pros has been crazy in the hospital, and Pap Himes, her stepfather--well, I reckon she's the only human that ever had to mind Pap and didn't do it."

This somewhat ambiguous statement of the case failed to bring any smile to his hearer's lips.

"There's no use talking to John herself," Miss Lydia took up the tale feverishly. "I've done that, and it had no effect on--. Well, of course she would say that she didn't encourage him to the things I saw afterward; but I know that a man of his sort does not do things without encouragement, and--Mr. Buckheath don't you think you ought to go right to Mr. Stoddard and tell him that John is your promised wife, and show him the folly and--and the wickedness of his course--or what would be wickedness if he persisted in it? Don't you think you ought to do that?"

Shade held down his head and appeared to be giving this matter some consideration. The weak point of such an argument lay in the fact that Johnnie was not his promised wife, and Gray Stoddard was very likely to know it. Indeed, Lydia Sessions herself only believed the statement because she so wished.

"I reckon I ort," he said finally. "If I could ever get a chance of private speech with him, mebbe I'd--"

There came a sound of light hoofs down the road, and Stoddard on Roan Sultan, riding bareheaded, came toward them under the trees.

Miss Sessions clutched the gate and stood staring. Buckheath drew a little closer, set his shoulder against the fence and tried to look unconcerned. The rising sun behind the mountains threw long slant rays across into the bare tree tops, so that the shimmer of it dappled horse and man. Gray's face was pale, his brow looked anxious; but he rode head up and alert, and glanced with surprise at the two at the Sessions gate.

He had no hat to raise, but he saluted Lydia Sessions with a sweeping gesture of the hand and pa.s.sed on. A blithe, gallant figure cantering along the suburban road, out toward the Gap, and the mountains beyond, Gray Stoddard rode into the dip of the ridge and--so far as Cottonville was concerned--vanished utterly.

Buckheath drew a long breath and straightened up.

"I'm but a poor man," he began truculently, "yit there ain't n.o.body can marry the gal I set out to wed and me stand by and say nothing."

"Oh, Mr. Buckheath!" cried Miss Lydia. "Mr. Stoddard had no idea of _marrying_ John--a mill girl! There is no possibility of any such thing as that. I want you to understand that there isn't--to feel a.s.sured, once for all. I have reason to know, and I urge you to put that out of your mind."

Shade looked at her narrowly. Up to the time Pap gave him definite information from headquarters, he had never for an instant supposed that there was a possibility of Stoddard desiring to marry Johnnie; but the flurried eagerness of Miss Sessions convinced him that such a possibility was a very present dread with her, and he sent a venomous glance after the disappearing horseman.

"You go and talk to him right now, Mr. Buckheath," insisted Lydia anxiously. "Tell him, just as you have told me, how long you and John have been engaged, and how devoted she was to you before she came down to the mill. You appeal to him that way. You can overtake him--I mean you can intercept him--if you start right on now--cut across the turn, and go through the tunnel."

"If I go after him to talk to him, and we--uh--we have an interruption--are you going to tell everybody you see about it?"

demanded Shade sharply, staring down at the woman.

She crouched a little, still clinging to the pickets of the gate. The word "interruption" only conveyed to her mind the suggestion that they might be interfered with in their conversation. She did not recollect the mountain use of it to describe a quarrel, an outbreak, or an affray.

"No," she whispered. "Oh, certainly not--I'll never tell anything that you don't want me to."

"All right," returned Buckheath hardily. "If you won't, I won't. If you name to people that I was the last one saw with Mr. Stoddard, I shall have obliged to tell 'em of what you and me was talkin' about when he pa.s.sed us. You see that, don't you?"

She nodded silently, her frightened eyes on his face; and without another word he set off at that long, swinging pace which belongs to his people. Lydia turned and ran swiftly into the house, and up the stairs to her own room.

CHAPTER XX

MISSING

When Stoddard did not come to his desk that morning the matter remained for a time unnoticed, except by McPherson, who fretted a bit at so unusual a happening. Truth to tell, the old Scotchman had dreaded having this rich young man for an a.s.sociate, and had put a rod in pickle for his chastis.e.m.e.nt. When Stoddard turned out to be a regular worker, punctual, amenable to discipline, he congratulated himself, and praised his a.s.sistant, but warily. Now came the first delinquency, and in his heart he cared more that Stoddard should absent himself without notice than for the pile of letters lying untouched.

"Dave," he finally said to the yellow office boy, "I wish you'd 'phone to Mr. Stoddard's place and see when he'll be down."

Dave came back with the information that Mr. Stoddard was not at the house; he had left for an early-morning ride, and not returned to his breakfast.

"He'll just about have stopped up at the Country Club for a snack,"

MacPherson muttered to himself. "I wonder who or what he found there attractive enough to keep him from his work."

Looking into Gray's office at noon, the closed desk with its pile of mail once more offended MacPherson's eye.

"Mr. Stoddard here?" inquired Hartley Sessions, glancing in at the same moment.

"No, I think not," returned the Scotchman, unwilling to admit that he did not exactly know. "I believe he's up at the club. Perhaps he's got tangled in for a longer game of golf than he reckoned on."

This unintentional and wholly innocent falsehood stopped any inquiry that there might have been. MacPherson had meant to 'phone the club during the day, but he failed to do so, and it was not until evening that he walked up himself to put more cautious inquiries.

"No, sah--no, sah, Mr. Gray ain't been here," the Negro steward told him promptly. "I sure would have remembered, sah," in answer to a startled inquiry from MacPherson. "Dey been havin' a big game on between Mr.

Charley Conroy and Mr. Hardwick, and de bofe of 'em spoke of Mr. Gray, and said dey was expectin' him to play."

MacPherson came down the stone steps of the clubhouse, gravely disquieted. Below him the road wound, a dimly conjectured, wavering gray ribbon; on the other side of it the steep slope took off to a gulf of inky shadow, where the great valley lay, hushed under the solemn stars, silent, black, and shimmering with a myriad pulsating electric lights which glowed like swarms of fireflies caught in an invisible net. That was Watauga. The strings of brilliants that led from it were arc lights at switch crossings where the great railway lines rayed out. Near at hand was Cottonville with its vast bulks of lighted mills whose hum came faintly up to him even at this distance. MacPherson stood uncertainly in the middle of the road. Supper and bed were behind him. But he had not the heart to turn back to either. Somewhere down in that abyss of night, there was a clue--or there were many clues--to this strange absence of Gray Stoddard. Perhaps Gray himself was there; and the Scotchman cursed his own dilatoriness in waiting till darkness had covered the earth before setting afoot inquiries.

He found himself hurrying and getting out of breath as he took his way down the ridge and straight to Stoddard's cottage, only to find that the master's horse was not in the stable, and the Negro boy who cared for it had seen nothing of it or its rider since five o'clock that morning.

"I wonder, now, should I give the alarm to Hardwick," MacPherson said to himself. "The lad may have just ridden on to La Fayette, or some little nearby town, and be staying the night. Young fellows sometimes have affairs they'd rather not share with everybody--and then, there's Miss Lydia. If I go up to Hardwick's with the story, she'll be sure to hear it from Hardwick's wife."

"Did Mr. Stoddard ever go away like this before without giving you notice?" he asked with apparent carelessness.

The boy shook his head in vigorous negative.

"Never since I've been working for him," he a.s.serted. "Mr. Stoddard wasn't starting anywhere but for his early ride--at least he wasn't intending to. He hadn't any hat on, and he was in his riding clothes. He didn't carry anything with him. I know in reason he wasn't intending to stay."

This information sent MacPherson hurrying to the Hardwick home. Dinner was over. The master of the house conferred with him a moment in the vestibule, then opened the door into the little sitting room and asked abruptly:

"When was the last time any of you saw Gray Stoddard?"

His sister-in-law screamed faintly, then cowered in her chair and stared at him mutely. But Mrs. Hardwick as yet noted nothing unusual.