The Price of the Prairie Part 38

"Amos Judson is my best friend; I'll tell him you said he's one of the two worst men in this town," Lettie cried.

"It's a waste av time; he knows it himself. Now, a girl who visits in lonely cabins at dead hours av the night, with men she knows is dangerous, oughtn't to ask why some folks are so precious. It's because they keep their bodies and souls sacred before Almighty G.o.d, and don't sell aither. You've accused me of tryin' to protect Phil, and of keepin'

Marjie's name out of everything, and that I've been spyin' on you. Good G.o.d! Lettie, it's to keep you more 'n them. I was out after my own business, after things other folks ought to a' looked after and didn't, things strictly belongin' to me, whin I run across you everywhere, and see your wicked plan to ruin good names and break hearts and get money by blackmail. Lettie, it's not too late to turn back now. You've done wrong; we all do. But, little girl, we've knowed each other since the days I used to tie your ap.r.o.n strings when your short little fat arms couldn't reach to tie 'em, and I know you now. What have you done with Marjie's letter that you stole before it got to Phil?" His voice was kind, even tender.

"I'll never tell you!" Lettie blazed up like a fire brand.

"Aren't you willing to right the wrongs you've done, and save yourself, too?" His voice did not change.

"I'm going to leave here when I get ready. I'm going away, but not till I am ready, and--" She had almost yielded, but evil desire is a strong master. The spirit of her low-browed father gained control again, and she raised a stormy face to him who would have befriended her. "I'm going to do what I please, and go where I please; and I'll fix some precious saints so they'll never want to come back to this town; and some others'll wish they could leave it."

"All right, then," O'mie replied, as Lettie flung herself out of the door, "if you find me among those prisent when you turn some corner suddenly don't be surprised. I wonder," he went on, "who got that letter the last night the miserable Melrose girl was here, or the night after.

I wonder how she could reach it when she couldn't get the other one.

Maybe the hole had something in it, one of Phil's letters to Marjie, who knows? And that was why that letter did not get far enough back from her thievin' fingers. Oh, I'm mighty glad Kathleen Morrison give me the mitten for Jess Gray, one of them Red Range boys. How can a man as good and holy as I am manage the obstreperous girls? But," he added seriously, "this is too near to sin and disgrace to joke about now."

CHAPTER XX

THE CLEFT IN THE ROCK

And yet I know past all doubting truly, A knowledge greater than grief can dim, I know as he loved, he will love me duly, Yea, better, e'en better, than I love him.

--JEAN INGELOW.

While O'mie and Lettie were acting out their little drama in the store that afternoon, Judson was up in Mrs. Whately's parlor driving home matters of business with a hasty and masterful hand. Marjie had slipped away at his coming, and for the second time since I had left Springvale she took the steep way up to our "Rockport." Had she known what was going on at home she might have stayed there in spite of her prejudices.

"It's just this way, Mrs. Whately," Judson declared, when he had formally opened the conference, "it's just this way. With all my efforts in your behalf, your business interest in the store has been eaten up by your expenditures. Of course I know you have always lived up to a certain kind of style whether you had the money or not; and I can understand, bein' a commercialist, how easy those things go. But that don't alter the fact that you'll have no more income from the store in a very few months. I'm planning extensive changes in the Winter for next Spring, and it'll take all the income. Do you see now?"

"Partly," Mrs. Whately replied faintly.

She was a sweet-spirited, gentle woman. She had been reared in a home of luxury. Her own home had been guarded by a n.o.ble, loving husband, and her powers of resource had never been called out. Of all the women I have ever known, she was least fitted to match her sense of honor, her faith in mankind, and her inexperience and lack of business knowledge against such an unprincipled, avaricious man as the one who domineered over her affairs.

Judson had been tricky and grasping in the day of his straightened circ.u.mstances, but he might never have developed into the scoundrel he became, had prosperity not fallen upon him by chance. Sometimes it is poverty, and sometimes it is wealth that plays havoc with a man's character and leads an erring nature into consummate villainy.

"Well, now, if you can see what I'm tellin' you, that you are just about penniless (you will be in a few months; that's it, you will be soon), then you can see how magnanimous a man can be, even a busy merchant, a--a commercialist, if I must use the word again. You'll not only be poor with n.o.body to support you, but you'll be worse, my dear woman, you'll be disgraced. That's it, just disgraced. I've kept stavin' it off for you, but it's comin'--ugly disgrace for you and Marjory."

Mrs. Whately looked steadily at him with a face so blanched with grief only a hard-hearted wretch like Judson could have gone on.

"I've been gettin' you ready for this for months, have laid my plans carefully, and I've been gradually puttin' the warnin' of it in your mind."

This was true. Judson had been most skilfully paving the way, else Mrs.

Whately would not have had that troubled face and burdened spirit after each conference. The intimation of disaster had grown gradually to dreaded expectation with her.

"Do tell me what it is, Amos. Anything is better than this suspense.

I'll do anything to save Marjie from disgrace."

"Now, that's what I've been a-waitin' for. Just a-waitin' till you was ready to say you'd do what's got to be done anyhow. Well, it's this.

Whately, your deceased first husband"--Judson always used the numeral when speaking of a married man or woman who had pa.s.sed away--"Whately, he made a will before he went to the war. Judge Baronet drawed it up, and I witnessed it. Now that will listed and disposed of an amount of property, enough to keep you and Marjie in finery long as you lived.

That will and some other valuable papers was lost durin' the war (some says just when they was taken, but they don't know), and can't nowhere be found. Havin' entire care of the business in his absence, and bein'

obliged to a.s.soom control on his said demise at Chattanoogy, I naturally found out all about his affairs. To be short, Mrs. Whately, he never had the property he said he had. n.o.body could find the money. There was an awful shortage. You can't understand, but in a word, he was a disgraced, dishonest man--a thief--that's it."

Mrs. Whately buried her face in her hands and groaned aloud.

"Now, Mrs. Whately, you mustn't take on and you must forget the past.

It's the present day we're livin' in, and the future that's a-comin'.

n.o.body can control what's comin', but me." He rose up to his five feet and three inches, and swelled to the extent of his power. "Me." He tapped his small chest. "I'll come straight to the end of this thing.

Phil Baronet's been quite a friend here, quite a friend. I've explained to you all about him. Now you know he's left town to keep from bein'

mixed up in some things. They's some business of his father's he was runnin' crooked. You know they say, I heard it out at Fingal's Creek, that he left here on account of a girl he wanted to get rid of. And if they'd talk that way about one girl, they'll say Marjie was doin' wrong to go with him. You've all been friends of the Baronets. I never could see why; but now--well, you know Phil left. Now, it rests with me"--more tapping on that little quart-measure chest--"with me to keep things quiet and save his name from further talk, and save Marjie, too. Many a man, a business man, now, wouldn't have done as I'm doin'. I'll marry Marjie. That saves you from poverty. It saves Irving Whately's name from lastin' disgrace, and it saves Baronet's boy. I can control the men that's against Baronet, in the business matter--some land case--and I know the girl that the talk's all about; and it saves Marjory's name bein' mixed up with this boy of Judge Baronet's."

Had Judson been before Aunt Candace, she would have thrust him from the door with one lifting of her strong, shapely hand. Dollie Gentry would have cracked his head with her rolling pin before she let him go. Cris Mead's wife would have chased him clear to the Neosho; she was Bill Mead's own mother when it came to whooping things; but poor, gentle Mrs.

Whately sat dumb and dazed in a grief-stricken silence.

"Give me your consent, and the thing's done. Marjie's only twenty.

She'll come to me for safety soon as she knows what you do. She'll have to, to save them that's dearest to her. You and her father and her friendship for the Baronets ought to do somethin'; besides, Marjie needs somebody to look after her. She's a pretty girl and everybody runs after her. She'd be spoiled. And she's fond of me, always was fond of me. I don't know what it is about some men makes girls act so; but now, there's Lettie Conlow, she's just real fond of me." (Oh, the popinjay!) "You'll say yes, and say it now." There was a ring of authority in his last words, to which Mrs. Whately had insensibly come to yield.

She sat for a long time trying to see a way out of all this tangled web of her days. At last, she said slowly: "Marjie isn't twenty-one, but she's old for her years. I won't command her. If she will consent, so will I, and I'll do all I can."

Judson was jubilant. He clapped his hands and giggled hysterically.

"Good enough, good enough! I'll let it be quietly understood we are engaged, and I'll manage the rest. You must use all the influence you can with her. Leave nothing undid that you can do. Oh, joy! You'll excuse my pleasure, Mrs. Whately. The prize is as good as mine right now, though it may take a few months even to get it all completely settled. I'll go slow and quiet and careful. But I've won."

Could Mrs. Whately have seen clear into the man's cruel, cunning little mind, she would have been unutterably shocked at the ugly motives contending there. But she couldn't see. She was made for sunshine and quiet ways. She could never fathom the gloom. It was from her father that Marjie inherited all that strong will and courage and power to walk as bravely in the shadows as in the light, trusting and surefooted always.

Judson waited only until some minor affairs had been considered, and then he rose to go.

"I'm so sure of the outcome now," he said gleefully, "I'll put a crimp in some stories right away; and I'll just let it be known quietly at once that the matter's settled, then Marjie can't change it," he added mentally. "And you're to use all your influence. Good-evening, my dear Mrs. W. It'll soon be another name I may have for you."

Meanwhile, Marjie sat up on "Rockport," looking out over the landscape, wrapped in the autumn peace. Every inch of the cliff-side was sacred to her. The remembrance of happy childhood and the sweet and tender memories of love's young dream had hallowed all the ground and made the view of the whole valley a part of the life of the days gone by. The woodland along the Neosho was yellow and bronze and purple in the afternoon sunshine, the waters swept along by verdant banks, for the fall rains had given life to the brown gra.s.ses of August. Far up the river, the shapely old cottonwood stood in the pride of its autumn gold, outlined against a clear blue sky, while all the prairie lay in seas of golden haze about it. On the gray, jagged rocks of the cliff, the blood-red leaves of the vines made a rich warmth of color.

For a long time Marjie sat looking out over the valley. Its beauty appealed to her now as it had done in the gladsome days, only the appeal touched other depths of her nature and fitted her sadder mood. At last the thought of what might have been filled her eyes with tears.

"I'll go down to our post-office, as O'mie suggested," she declared to herself. "Oh, anything to break away from this hungry longing for what can never be!"

The little hidden cleft was vine-covered now, and the scarlet leaves clung in a lacework about the gray stone under which the crevice ran back clean and dry for an arm's length. It was a reflex action, and not a choice of will, that led Marjie to thrust her hand in as she had done so often before. Only cold stone received her touch. She recalled O'mie's picture of Lettie, short-necked, stubby Lettie, down there in the dark trying to stretch her fat arm to the limit of the crevice, and as she thought, Marjie slipped her own arm to its full length, down the cleft. Something touched her hand. She turned it in her fingers. It was paper--a letter--and she drew it out. A letter--my letter--the long, loving message I had penned to her on the night of the party at Anderson's. Clear and white, as when I put it there that moonlit midsummer night, when I thrust it in too far for my little girl to find without an effort.

Marjie carried it up to "Rockport" and sat down. She had no notion of when it was put there. She only knew it was from my pen.

"It's his good-bye for old times' sake," she mused.

And then she read it, slowly at first, as one would drink a last cup of water on the edge of a desert, for this was a voice from the old happy life she had put all away now. I had done better than I dreamed of doing in that writing. Here was Rachel Melrose set in her true light, the possibility of a visit, and the possibility of her words and actions, just as direct as a prophecy of what had really happened. Oh! it cleared away every reason for doubt. Even the Rockport of Rachel's rapturous memory, I declared I detested because only our "Rockport" meant anything to me. And then she read of her father's dying message. It was the first time she had known of that, and the letter in her trembling hands pulsed visibly with her strong heart-throbs. Then came the closing words:

"Good-night, my dear, dear girl, my wife that is to be, and know now and always there is for me only one love. In sunny ways or shadow-checkered paths, whatever may come, I cannot think other than as I do now. You are life of my life; and so again, good-night."

The sun was getting low in the west when Marjie with shining face came slowly down Cliff Street toward her home. Near the gate she met my father. His keen eyes caught something of the Marjie he had loved to see. Something must have happened, he knew, and his heartbeats quickened at the thought. Down the street he had met Judson with head erect walking with a c.o.c.ksure step.

The next day the word was brought directly to him that Amos Judson and Marjory Whately were engaged to be married.