The Rose in the Ring Part 54

"Open your eyes, Christine! Look at me." She looked up, utter desolation in her eyes. "Nothing on earth can keep you from being my wife--nothing! I couldn't give you up. What am I for, if not to cherish and protect and comfort you? What is the real meaning of the word 'love'? Husband! What does that stand for? A stone wall between pain and peril and trouble; that's what it means. And I'm going to be all of that to you--a stone wall for all your life, Christine. It is settled.

The strongest man in the world is not strong enough for the weakest woman. I will never cease being proud of the fact that you are my wife.

Don't speak! Lie quiet, dearest. Nothing can change things for you and me."

"It cannot be, David,--it cannot be!" she moaned, covering her face with her hands. He held her there, sobbing, against his breast.

Meanwhile Thomas Braddock was pacing the floor of the library almost directly beneath them. His wife watched him in silence; her eyes followed the tall, bent figure as it swung back and forth with the steadiness of a clock's pendulum. He had not spoken since they entered the room, nor had she moved from the spot where he left her when he released her hand. All this time she had been holding the wrist he had grasped so cruelly. It pained her, but she was only physically conscious of the fact; her mind was not comprehending it.

It was the first time she had seen him in five years. A curious a.n.a.lysis was going on in her perturbed brain. The change in him! She could not take her eyes from the haggard, heavily-lined face, so unlike the blithe, youthful one she had loved, or the bloated, b.e.s.t.i.a.l one she had feared and despised. The coa.r.s.eness, the flabbiness, the purplish hues were no longer there. The bulging, bleary eyes, on which the glaze of continuous dissipation had once settled as if to stay, were not as she remembered them. Instead, they were bright and clear, and lay deep in their sockets. The lips, now beardless, were no longer thick and repulsive. She marveled. This was not the vacillating, whiskey-willed man she had known for so long; here was a determined character, swelling with force, fierce in the resources of a belated integrity of purpose. No longer the careless, handsome youth, nor the honorless man, but a power! Whether that power stood for good or evil, it mattered not; he was a man such as she had never expected him to be.

She was sensitive to one thing in particular, although the realization of it did not come to her at once, she was so taken up with the study of him as a whole: she missed the cigar from the corner of his mouth.

He stopped in front of her.

"This is the first time I have ever been asked into this house," he said, his lips curling in a bitter, unfriendly smile. "Where is your father?"

"His rooms are in the other end of the house, upstairs. He sleeps till noon," she answered mechanically.

"Umph!" he grunted, resuming his walk.

"Tom," she said, taking a firm grasp on her nerves, "let us talk it over quietly. Sit down."

He halted. "I can talk better standing," he said grimly. He came up close to her. She stood her ground, looking him squarely in the eyes.

"There isn't much to say, Mary. You know me for what I am, and you know who made me so. He's got to pay, that's all. We won't go into the past.

It's not easily forgotten. I guess we remember everything."

"Everything," she said.

"I'm not excusing myself. I'm past that, and besides it wouldn't go down with you. You know where I've been, and you must give me credit for trying to shield Christine a little bit. I took my medicine, and n.o.body but you and Grand knew that her father was up there until now, excepting d.i.c.k. I want to say to you, Mary, I was railroaded for a crime I didn't commit. I was jobbed. He was at the back of it. He was afraid of me--and well he might have been. I did a lot of rotten things while you and I were ploddin' along through those last two years with the show--you know what they were. But it was whiskey! I took money that didn't belong to me--yours and Christine's, and Grand's, and Jenison's. I did worse than that, Mary. I sold you out to Bob Grand--you knew that, too. But I'm going to try to pay up all my debts--all of 'em, in a day or two. I owe you my ugly, worthless life.

I'm going to pay you in full by ending it. I owe Colonel Grand for everything I was, for what I am. I'm going to pay him, so help me G.o.d.

Don't interrupt! My mind's made up. Nothing above h.e.l.l can change it. I came here to ask you just two questions. I want you to answer them. I'm going to believe you. You never lie, I know that."

"I will answer them, Tom."

He hesitated, his gaze wavering for the first time. "I--I hate to ask you this first one, Mary," he said.

"Go on. Ask it."

"It's a mean question, but I've just _got_ to hear you say no. Did you go to England with Bob Grand?"

"No."

He breathed deeply. "That's one," he said.

"Here's the other. Did he give you money to live on, to educate Christine with, abroad?"

"No.",

"I'll ask still another. Where did you get the money?"

"Some of it from my father. Afterwards I brought suit against you and Colonel Grand for an accounting. He was compelled to pay into court all that was due me as part owner of Van Slye's. I had my own money in the show. I could not be robbed of that."

"I'm glad you did that. It must have been a nasty dose for him."

"His wife tried to make trouble for me. You heard that?"

"I knew she would, sooner or later."

"You knew it?"

"She wasn't blind."

"But how could she dare to think that I--"

"She knew her husband's reputation, that's all. He was careless about women." His face went black as a thundercloud. "But he's had his day!"

"Tom," she cried, clutching the lapels of his coat, "you shall not leave this house until you've promised me to do nothing--"

He shook off her hands. "Don't come any of that, Mary. It won't do any good. He made me what I was, he would have prost.i.tuted you. I was just bad enough to fall, you were too good to even stumble. Then he landed me in the pen. Maybe you won't believe it, Mary, but I'd stopped drinking and was earning fair wages--well, I was tending bar in Chicago. Barkeepers _have_ to be sober men, you see. I had not touched a drop for nearly three months. The temptation was too strong there, so I got out of it. Then I looked up Barnum to get a job as ringmaster. I was going under the name of Bradford. Somehow n.o.body would trust me.

They knew me. Joey Noakes came through the West with a pantomime show about that time. He told me you were in Europe. First thing I'd heard of you, that was, Mary. Then he told me you'd got your money out of Grand, legitimately, he swore. I didn't believe him. I thought there had been some shinanigan. I stood it as long as I could, and then I broke for New York. You see, girlie--I mean Mary, I'd done for you in a nasty way. I practically handed you to him. You--well, we won't go into that."

"No," she said, very pale, "we must not go into that, Tom. You sold me with the show. I--I can never forgive you for that."

"I'm not asking forgiveness, am I?" he cried harshly. "I'm just tellin'

you, that's all. Well, I came down here to kill him three years ago. I knew you hated him. If you gave in it wasn't because you wanted to, but because I'd fixed it so's you couldn't very well get out of it. There was only one way for you to be rid of Bob Grand after that--and only one man to do it for you. So I came down here to do it. Ernie Cronk ran across me on the street one night. He began filling me up with stories of how Grand had also tried to hurt Christine, and all about how you were living like a princess abroad. I waited until Grand came back from England, a couple of weeks later. Ernie had got me clear off my head by that time, nagging me day and night. He tried to get me to drink, but I was too wise for that. Well, I found Bob Grand and, like a fool, started in to tell him what I was going to do to him instead of doing it first. All of a sudden he pulled a gun. I had no chance, so I bolted. He fired twice and yelled for the police. They--they caught me in an alley--and I had a gun in my clothes, too. The next morning he came to see me in the station-house--to identify me, he said. Then he told me he was going to send me up for highway robbery--but he was willing, for your sake and Christine's, to say nothing about the past--or anything. He did swear me into the pen, and I kept my mouth closed. But, Mary, I am not a thief at heart, I never was one. Whatever I did that was crooked in the old days was due to whiskey. It's a habit men have, I know, blaming everything on to whiskey, but--but, oh, say, Mary, you _know_ I wasn't that sort of a man when I married you. I was straight, wasn't I? I never had done a crooked thing in my life. I don't think I'd ever told a lie. I had a good mother, just as Christine has. But what the devil am I doing--talking like this!" The eager, rather appealing note went out of his voice; he almost snarled the bitter sentence. "I didn't come to explain, or to beg, or to excuse myself. I won't keep you any longer. Remember, I'm not asking anything of you, Mary,--not a thing. I'm not that low."

He was out of breath. No doubt, it was the longest speech he had made in years. Perhaps his own voice sounded strange to him.

"You are not to leave this house, Tom, until you have promised," she said firmly. All the time he was speaking, she had stood like a statue before him, never taking her eyes from his distorted face.

"Oh, I'm not, eh? We'll see!"

"What are you going to do to Colonel Grand?"

"I'm going to--" he checked himself. "I'm going to beat him to a jelly!"

"You mean, you are going to murder him?" She shuddered as she said it.

"No," he said, with grim humor; "I'm only going to help him to die. You see, Mary, Bob Grand committed suicide the day he sent me up. The final death struggle has been a long time coming, but it's almost here. He took a very slow, but a sure poison."

The time had come for the strong appeal. She laid her hands on his shoulders.

"Tom, have you thought of what it will mean, not to me, but to Christine?"

"She knows, by this time, that I'm an ex-convict. It won't hurt her to know I'm even worse."

"She does not believe you were guilty. She always has said you could have been a good man if you had let whiskey alone. You see, Tom, she understood--she understands. Isn't it worth your while to think of her?

You are not drinking now. Can't you think of something good--something kind to do? Must you go to your grave--and such a grave!--knowing that you never did a really big thing for her in all your life? Have you no desire to make her think of you as something except the unnatural beast you were when she knew you best of all? I see the change in you. Don't you want her to see it? What do you gain by killing Colonel Grand? He has wronged you, but do you help yourself by making matters infinitely worse now, so many years afterward? Do--"