The Rose in the Ring Part 38

"Oh, I want to talk about it to you," she interrupted with a directness that made him more uncomfortable than ever. "I know that you knew my father for what he really was. You knew how kind and good he was, and how n.o.bly he befriended the Braddocks and all those wretched show people. You know how they treated him in return for his generosity. I feel as if I had known you always."

"It's very nice of you," he mumbled helplessly. "You say the show people turned against him. Do you mean at the--er--the trial?"

She lifted her brows, a sudden coldness in her manner.

"Not at all. I refer to what happened afterward."

"I am quite ignorant, Miss Grand," he said, a certain hoa.r.s.eness creeping into his voice.

"He was actually compelled to pay something like twenty thousand dollars on the complaint of Mary Braddock, who set up the claim that she owned part of the show. It was a blackmailing scheme, pure and simple, but he paid it. He is a man. He took his medicine like one."

David glowed. He felt the blood surge to his head; he grew warm with suppressed joy.

"When did this happen?" he asked, the tremor of eagerness in his voice.

"Oh, I don't remember--three or four years ago. It really never came to a public trial. He settled her infamous claim out of court. Her lawyers hounded him as if he were a rat."

"I happen to know that Mrs. Braddock was part owner in the show," he said quietly.

"But he had already bought her out," she exclaimed. "He wrote all of this to me, after it came out in the papers. I had the whole story from him, just as it really happened. No, Mr. Jenison, he was compelled to pay twice."

He was half smiling as he looked into her face. The smile died, for he saw in the features of Bob Grand's daughter a startling resemblance to the man himself, hitherto unnoted but now quite a.s.sertive. A moment before he had thought her pretty; now he realized that he had scarcely looked at her before. There was the same beady, intent gleam in her dark eyes, which were set quite close to each other over a straight nose with rather flat nostrils. Her mouth and chin were unlike Grand's.

They were perfect, they were beautiful. The eyes were unmistakably his, and therefrom peered the character of the girl as well as that of the man.

David was sharply cognizant of a feeling of repugnance. Much that had puzzled him a moment before was perfectly plain to him now. She championed the father because he had been stronger in her creation than the mother.

"Did Mrs. Braddock prosecute her claim in person?" he asked, subduing the impulse to set his friend right in the eyes of this girl.

"Not at all. She kept out of sight. Lawyers did it all."

"Did your father say where she was living at the time?"

"Oh, I know where she was living in London."

"London?" he said, suddenly cold.

"Yes. We saw her there, Centennial year. She had a home in one of those nice little West End streets. Of course, we could have nothing to do with her."

"Of course not," murmured he dumbly. "And Christine?"

"She was at the Sacred Heart Convent in Paris,--at school, you know.

Father wrote me about her."

He could not ask her the sickening question that was in his mind: was Mary Braddock the woman in the case? But his heart was cold with despair. He could not, would not believe it of her, and yet the circ.u.mstances were d.a.m.nably convincing.

"In a month, Mr. Jenison, I will be of age. I am sure that you, having been such a friend to him, will be glad to know that I am going to him.

If he wants me, I shall stay with him."

"You--you will leave your mother?" he demanded, unconsciously drawing back in his chair.

"Just because my mother cast him out is no reason why I should do likewise. I love my father--I adore him! What did you say?"

Under his breath he had uttered the word "G.o.d!"

"I beg your pardon," he said hurriedly He felt like cursing her. "I just happened to think of something," he explained.

"I am sorry to have bored you. I thought you'd like to know about father after all these years. Pray forgive me."

"You intimated awhile ago that perhaps he could tell me where Mrs.

Braddock is living, he said. His forehead was covered with moisture.

"I've no doubt he knows, Mr. Jenison. She is living in New York."

She was perfectly calm and matter-of-fact about it. If there was more that she could have told him, her inscrutable smile signified plainly that it should be left for him to find out for himself.

He looked into her eyes for a moment without speaking. A feeling of loathing such as he had never known before welled up in his heart against this girl. He hated the sight of her face. He almost imagined he could see its soft, warm tints changing subtly into the gray, putty-like complexion of his oldtime enemy. A beastly jowl seemed suddenly to spread from her smooth round cheek and sag heavy over her neck; her smile, bewitching to other eyes than his, took on a mysterious breadth that horrified him. He was seeing visions. He knew that there was no change such as his mind pictured, and yet he could not cast out the illusion. He arose abruptly, fearful that she might see the repugnance in his eyes. He could not sit there an instant longer, facing this reminder of Bob Grand. Something atavistic in his nature urged him to strike out with all his strength at the fantastic face that forced itself upon him.

"I beg your pardon," he said, and his voice sounded queer in his own ears, "but I must get off some letters to-night. May I take you to the stairs?"

A few minutes later he was lying flat on his back, fully dressed, on the bed in his chamber, staring up at the ceiling, his brain a chaos of anguish, dread, pity--and faith, after all, in Mary Braddock. The walls seemed papered with the faces of Bob Grand and Roberta Grand. He was haunted by them.

At daybreak he arose, without a single instant of sleep behind him. His mind was made up to one purpose. He could not stay in the same house with Roberta Grand.

Before going in to breakfast at eight o'clock, one of the young men in the party of the night before asked the clerk at the desk if Mr.

Jenison had come down.

"Mr. Jenison left by the morning stage, Mr. Scott. He had a letter calling him back to Jenison Hall. Something very important, sir. He left a note for Miss Beaumont, I believe, to tell her he can't be back in time for the trip to Natural Bridge."

CHAPTER II

THE STRANGER AT THE HALL

The letter that called David to Jenison Hall came, by curious coincidence, at a most opportune time. He had decided to leave the Springs within a day or two, cutting short his proposed stay of a month almost at its beginning. The advent of Roberta Grand, heretofore an unknown quant.i.ty, brought with it new and unpleasant complications. Her revelations disturbed him, her att.i.tude angered and disgusted him. It was from this girl, so amazingly like her father, that he would have fled in any event. His nature revolted against the possibility of constant a.s.sociation with her, he scarcely could have maintained even a perfunctory show of consideration for her. And then something told him that her confidences would grow, that she would go farther in the effort to justify her father. He realized that he could not stand by and hear the things she doubtless would feel called upon to say in respect to Mary Braddock. His sleepless night had drawn many ugly pictures for him to efface before he could be at peace with himself.

All through that dismal night he had given his thoughts to these people, and to three cities,--London, Paris and New York.

In the last of these, Mary Braddock was living. Staring up at the dim, flickering shadows on the ceiling, he traveled in horrid conjecture from one to the other of these immense wildernesses. Ahead of him stalked the ugly figure of Robert Grand, who _knew_--who perhaps had known all the time; at his side was the knowledge that the five years had come to an end. Was Mary Braddock, after all, in a position to redeem her promise?

The candle sputtered and went out. But he was no more in the dark than he had been all along. If there was to be light, he must make it for himself. He would not wait for her to speak out of the darkness. He would search her out, come what may; he would claim Christine.

With his mind full of the decision to go to New York as soon as possible, where it would be an easy matter to find Colonel Grand, at least, he hurried down to an early breakfast, successfully evading his body-servant. There were two letters in his box, products of the night mail.

One of them caused him to start and almost cry out aloud. It was from Artful d.i.c.k Cronk. The envelope bore the Jenison crest and it had come from Jenison Hall. A year had pa.s.sed since he had heard from the pickpocket.

The missive was brief, as were all of d.i.c.k's communications, written or oral. It said: "Just stopped off on my way north. n.i.g.g.e.rs say you are at the Springs. I'll wait here till you come back, if it ain't too long. Hope this reaches you prompt, because I am in a hurry to get up to New York. Don't write. You can get here just as quick as a letter.

Maybe quicker."