The White Desert Part 31

"I'll tell nothing of the sort, Agnes. I don't fight that way. You ought to know that. You've been my enemy, I'll admit. I've felt bitter, terribly so, against you. I believed that you used my trust to betray me. But I believe I know the reason now. Besides, the harm's done. It's in the past. I fight men, not women."

"Do you want help?" A thin hand stretched out. "Will you give me a promise--if I give you one?"

"About what, Agnes?"

"My baby. You--you're not going to let it stay there? You're--"

"I hardly know what to do. I thought after you were better, I'd--"

"I'm better now." She tried to rise. "I'm better--see? I've more strength. You could leave me alone. I--I want you to take my baby."

"Where?"

"Where she can sleep in peace--in hallowed ground. I--I want a priest for her. Tell him that I baptized her Helena."

"Yes. And the other name?"

A weird laugh came from the colorless lips.

"She hasn't one."

"But--"

"Then use mine--so you'll have evidence that I'm not married. Use mine, if that's the kind of a man you are--so you can go back and tell them--back home--that I--I--" The last bond had snapped. She caught at him with clawing hands, her eyes wild, her teeth showing from behind tightly drawn lips. "Torture me--that's it--torture me! At least, I didn't do that to you! I told you that I believed in you--at least that cheered you up when you needed it--I didn't tell you that I believed you guilty. Did I? I didn't continually ask you for the name of the man you'd killed? Oh, there were other things--I know there were other things--" the lips seemed to fairly stream words, "but at least, I didn't torture you. I--I--"

Then she halted, for the briefest part of a moment, to become suddenly madly cajoling, crazily cunning:

"Listen, Barry, listen to me. You want to know things. I can tell them to you--oh, so many of them. I'll tell them too--if you'll only do this for me. It's my baby--my baby. Don't you know what that means? Won't you promise for me? Take her to a priest--please, Barry--for what you once thought I was? Won't you, Barry? Haven't I had punishment enough? Did you ever lie all day and listen to the wind shriek, waiting for somebody who didn't come--with your dead baby in your arms? Do you want to punish me more? Do you want me to die too--or do you want me to live and tell you why I did the things I did?

Do you? Do you want to know who was back of everything? I didn't do it for myself, Barry. It was some one else--I'll help you, Barry, honestly I'll help you."

"About the murder?" Houston was leaning forward now, tense, hopeful.

But the woman shook her head.

"No--I don't know about that. Maybe you did it--I can't say. It's about other things--the lease, and the contract. I'll help you about that--if you'll help me. Take my baby--"

"And keep your secret, Agnes? Is that it?"

"Will you?" The woman's eyes were gleaming strangely. "My mother doesn't know. She's old--you know her, Barry. She thinks I'm--what I should have been. That's why I came back out here. I--I--"

The man rose. He walked to the window and stood for a long time looking out, trying to close his ears to the ramblings of the woman on the bed, striving to find a way to keep the promise she sought. For just a moment the old hatred flooded through him, the resentment toward this being who had been an integral factor in all the troubles which had pursued him in his efforts to beat back to a new life. But as swift as they came, they faded. No longer was she an enemy; only a broken, beaten woman, her empty arms aching as her heart ached; hara.s.sed by fears of exposure to the one woman in whom she still desired to be held in honor, of the whereabouts of the man who had led her on through the byways of love into a dismal maze of chicanery.

Only a woman, ill, perhaps dying. A woman crying out for the one boon that she could ask of a person she knew to distrust and despise her, seeking the thing that now was her greatest desire in the world, and willing to promise--whether truthfully or not, Barry had no way of telling--to reveal to him secrets of the past, if he would but comply.

Was she honest? As he stood there looking out at the snow, it seemed to make little difference. Was she sincere? He would strive to aid a dumb brute if he found it in distress. At last he turned and walked to the bed.

"I'll promise, Agnes. If you want to help me afterward, well and good.

If not--you are free to do as you please. I suppose you want her dressed before--"

"Yes." The woman had raised eagerly. "There are clothes--she's never had on--in the bottom drawer of that old bureau. Take them with you.

Then look in a box in the top drawer. You'll find a crucifix.

They--they might want to put it on her."

She sank back in the bed, and Barry went to his task of searching the drawers of the rickety old bureau. In a ma.s.s of tangled, old-fashioned jewelry, he found the crucifix, its chain broken and twisted, and placed it in a pocket. Then he turned to the grimmer task,--and the good-by. A half-hour later, white-featured, his arms cupped gently about a blanket-wrapped form, he stepped forth into the storm, and bending against the wind, turned toward the railroad in obedience to the hazy directions of the sobbing woman he had left behind.

The snowfall was lighter now; he could find his way more easily. A half-hour pa.s.sed, and he stopped, kneeling and resting the tiny, still bundle upon his knees to relieve his aching arms. Then on again in plodding perseverance,--fulfilling a promise to a woman who had done her best to wreck his existence.

A mile farther, and the railroad telegraph poles appeared. Houston saw them with grateful eyes, though with concern. He knew to a certainty that there was no priest in Tabernacle, and what his story would be when he got there was a little more than he could hazard. To Ba'tiste, he would tell the truth; to others, there must simply be some fabrication that would hold for the moment and that would allow him to go on--while Ba'tiste--

But suddenly he ceased his plans. Black splotches against the snow, two figures suddenly had come out of the sweeping veil,--a girl and a man. Something akin to panic seized Houston. The man was Lost Wing, faithfully in the background as usual. The girl was Medaine Robinette.

For once Houston hoped that she would pa.s.s him as usual,--with averted eyes. He did not care to make explanations, to be forced to lie to her. But Fate was against him. A moment more and the storm closed in again, with one of its fitful gusts, only to clear at last and to leave them face to face. Medaine's eyes went with womanly instinct to the bundle in his arms. And even though she could see nothing but the roundness of the blankets, the tender manner in which Barry Houston held the poor, inanimate little parcel was enough.

"A baby!" There was surprise in her tone. Forgetting for the moment her aversion to the man himself, she came forward, touching the blankets, then lifting one edge ever so slightly that she might peer beneath. "Where did you find it? Whose is it?"

Houston sought vainly for words. He stammered,--a promise made to an enemy struggling for supremacy. And the words seem to come unbidden:

"Does it matter?"

"Of course not." She looked at him queerly. "I merely thought I could be of a.s.sistance."

"You can. Tell me where I can find a priest."

"A priest?"

"Yes, I need him--the baby is dead."

"Oh." She touched the bundle ever so softly. "I didn't know." Then with a sudden thought; "But her mother. She must need--"

"Only a doctor. I will try to get Ba'tiste to come out."

"But couldn't I--"

"I'm sorry." Barry tried in vain for the words that would tell her the truth, yet tell her nothing. He felt that he was miring himself hopelessly, that his denials and his efforts at secrecy could cause only one idea to form in her brain. He wanted to tell her the truth, to ask her aid, to send her back into the woods to the a.s.sistance of the stricken woman there. But he could not frame the request.

Instead, "I--I can't tell you. I've given a woman my word. She wouldn't understand--if you went there. With Ba'tiste, it is different. He is a doctor. He has a right. I--I--"

"I understand," came quietly, and in those two words Houston felt that her opinion had been formed; that to her, he was the father; the quiet form in his arms his own child! It was like a blow to him; yet it was only what he had expected from the moment that he had recognized her.

And after all, he felt that it did not matter; it was only one more false accusation to be added to the total, only one more height to be added to the barrier which already existed between them. He accepted her att.i.tude--in spite of the pain it brought--and faced her.

"You were willing to help--before you--knew. You would have been glad to help in the case of a stranger. Are you still willing--now?"

She hesitated a moment, her eyes downcast, at last to force a smile.

"Of course. But you are asking something almost impossible. The nearest priest is at Crestline."

"Crestline?" Houston instinctively turned toward the hills, a bleak, forbidding wall against the sky. "I--"

"Rather, a mile below there at the Croatian settlement on Mount Harris.

I am afraid you couldn't find it."

"I can try. Will you lend me Lost Wing to run an errand? I want to get Ba'tiste--for her."