The Way of the Strong Part 52

The cry rang through the room. Monica reeled and would have fallen. In a moment her husband's arms were about her. But she flung him off, and her action was one of something like loathing. She stood up facing him, and pointing at him, while her agonized eyes challenged his.

"You--you!" she cried fiercely. Then: "Go on! Tell me--tell me quickly!

It is you--you who have done this!"

Hendrie drew himself up. There was no hesitation about him, no shrinking before the story he had to tell.

"Yes, I did it," he said. "I--I! I have listened to your story. Now listen to mine, and when you blame me, you must blame yourself as well.

I have loved you desperately. I love you now. G.o.d knows how I love you.

If I did not I could never have endured what I have endured in the past and kept my reason. That is my excuse for what I have done.

"I saw that picture in your rooms and took the man to be an old lover.

I hated him, and--I tore it up. I told you then there could only be one man in your life. I destroyed that pasteboard as I would destroy any one who came between us."

Monica remained silent while the man choked down his rising emotion.

"After we were married I became aware of the clandestine visits of a handsome man, to you, at Deep Willows. You were known to have embraced him."

"You--you spied!"

"I did not spy--then. I learned these things, nor does it matter how. I determined to crush this man I believed to be your lover. I determined to be rid of him once and for all. My love for you was so great that what I believed to be your guilt left me quite untouched. It was men I understood; men with whom I was accustomed to deal. I meant to deal with this man. So I set to work. I need not tell you how I tracked him down and kept him watched. It is sufficient that I knew of his visit to Deep Willows on the night in question. My plans were carefully laid. I left very little to chance. You were in the library with him, and Angus summoned you, to give you some important news he had received from me.

I had arranged that. At the time the telephone bell rang I was beyond the window with the sheriff of Everton. The moment you left the room I entered it. I found this man with a bunch of money in his hand, and the safe open behind him. I had not hoped for such luck. I charged him then and there with the theft. Oh, I knew he had not stolen it. You had given it him, and it made me the more furious. I could have shot him where he stood. But it could not have been sufficient punishment. I meant to crush him.

"Then I did the crudest thing I could think of. I told him that I knew he had not stolen the money. I told him that he could clear himself of the charge by calling you into the witness box. In that way I knew that what I believed to be your shame would reach the whole world. But soon I was to see the stuff he was made of. He would not drag your name into the matter. He submitted to the charge with a simple declaration of his innocence, and I was well enough satisfied. The rest was sheriff's work. Within certain limits I knew I could buy the law, and I bought it. The case was kept out of the papers, and you were sent well away from any possibility of hearing of it. The name he was tried under, and which he clung to, helped further to disguise his ident.i.ty. That night when you returned to the library, as I knew you would, you found the place in order, and the boy gone. You had no possible suspicion of what had occurred. You could have none. You remember I drove up later, as from Everton, in my automobile."

Hendrie ceased speaking. Monica remained silent. She stood quite still looking into his face as though she were striving to read all that lay behind it, trying to fathom to the very limits the primitive motives which had driven this man to the dreadful cruelty he had so readily inflicted. He had sent Frank, her boy, to a felon's prison. Sent him without one single scruple, without mercy. He had committed, besides, every base action he could have been guilty of to achieve his purpose, and all--for love of her.

She tried to think it all out clearly. She tried to see it through his eyes, but she could not. The hideousness of it all was too terrible. It was unforgivable.

At last she spoke. Her voice was hard and cold. In it Hendrie detected, he believed, the sentence her woman's heart had pa.s.sed upon him.

"He must be released at once," she said, in a tone that warned him of all he had lost. "If you do not contrive this at once the world shall know the whole story--yours as well as mine."

The man made a slight movement. It was as though he had flinched before a blow in the face.

"He shall be released," he said.

"He must be released--at once." Monica's icy tone was final.

She turned away, moving toward the door. Then suddenly she paused, and a moan of despair broke from her.

"Oh, Alec," she cried, "how--how could you? How could you do it?"

The man was at her side in a moment.

"I love you, Mon," he cried, in deep tones. "You are more precious to me than all the world--than life itself. Can't you understand? Can't you see just something of what my eyes saw? Where you are concerned it is all so different. I could not, dared not lose you. I hated this man, who I believed had robbed me of your love."

Monica's agonized eyes were raised to his for a moment.

"But where was your faith? Where your trust?" she cried. "Why, why did you not openly accuse me?"

"Accuse you? Mon, you have yet to learn all that my love means. You think me, the world thinks me, a strong, even ruthless man. There is truth enough in the latter--G.o.d knows. But for the rest, where you are concerned, I am weak--so weak. I am more than that. I am an utter coward, too. While my heart might break at the knowledge of your infidelity, it would be incomparable to losing you out of my life. Why did I not accuse you openly? Because I was afraid to hear the truth from your lips. Do you know what would have happened had you confessed to me that you loved this man? It would have meant--murder. Oh, not your death," as Monica drew away horrified at the terrible sincerity of the threat. "That man would have died. Now can you understand? Won't you understand?"

There was a dreadful moment of doubt, of anxiety, while the man waited an answer to his appeal. No prisoner could have awaited sentence with more desperate hope. His eyes devoured the woman's averted face, while his heart hungered for the faintest gleam of hope it might hold out.

And waiting he wondered. Was there anything in a woman's love at all, or was he to be condemned to a life with the doors of her soul closed and barred against him for ever?

It seemed an endless waiting. Then she gave a sign. She turned to him, and raised a pair of eyes, whose sadness and distress smote him to the heart, and looked up into his face. Then he knew, however undeserved, her love was still his.

"Perhaps I can understand, Alec, but--but give me time." Monica spoke in a deep, tender voice that was full of pain, full of suffering. "I am beginning to understand many things I did not comprehend before. You, perhaps, are not so much to blame as I thought. I have been so weak, too. A little candor and honesty on my part might have saved it all. We are both terribly to blame, and perhaps most of it lies at my door. Let us try to forget ourselves. Let us forget everything but that which we owe to Frank. We both owe him so much. Oh, when I think of the way I have fulfilled poor Elsie's trust I feel as though my heart would break."

"If ever a trust was carried out truly, yours has been, Mon."

The man's arms were about her, and he gently drew her to him. He gazed tenderly down upon her now tear-stained face.

"No woman could have done more than you have," he went on. "If things have gone awry it is no fault of yours." He smoothed her beautiful hair with one tender hand. "I give you my sacred word your Frank shall be released. I swear it by the memory of your poor dead sister. I can still undo the mischief which my mad jealousy has wrought, and your--Elsie will forgive."

He bent and kissed her upturned face, while she clung to him for support.

"Yes, yes, she will forgive. It was her nature to forgive," Monica said, in a wave of tender memory. "To the last she would not hear one word against the wretched father of her boy. Do you know, Alec, I sometimes wonder that Heaven allows such men to go about working their cruel mischief upon trusting women."

Hendrie stirred uneasily, and his arms gently released her.

"Tell me of her--of him," he said, his eyes turned upon the streaming light from the street lamps.

Monica became thoughtful.

"I know so little about him," she said, after a slight pause. "You see, I never saw him; and Elsie--she would say so little. It seems she met him in New York. I forgot to tell you Elsie was an actress. She acted under the name of Audie Thorne."

The man started. Then, slowly, his eyes came back to her face.

Fortunately their expression was lost upon her, and, before she could turn in his direction, he was once more gazing out at the brilliant light which, somehow, he was no longer aware of. He was listening to his wife's voice, but her words conveyed little enough to him now. His mind was far back in a dim, almost forgotten past.

"I don't know how it all happened," Monica went on. "She was doing so well on the stage. Then she met this man, Leo. The next thing she was up in the Yukon with him. He was prospecting. Then they were traveling down country--overland--with an Indian scout. That's when he deserted her. She only managed to reach me, in San Sabatano, through the aid of the scout. He gave her money. Money paid him for the trip." Then a world of contempt crept into her voice. "I suppose it was the coming of Elsie's baby which frightened him--the cowardly brute."

Hendrie nodded, his face studiously averted.

"Perhaps," he murmured. "But one can never be sure of such a man's motives."

"Motives?" There was unutterable scorn in the woman's voice. "And while he goes free, she, poor soul, is left to suffer and die--in the--gutter!"

"But--you sheltered her? You cared for her?"

The man's voice was almost pleading.

"Thank G.o.d, I could at least do that--but it was not through any doing of his. Oh, if only I had the punishing of such--as he."

"Perhaps he will get his punishment, even as you could desire it.

Perhaps he has got it."

"I pray G.o.d it may be so."