A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties Part 41

"And you would soon learn to like Williams," continued the distracted father. "Please, Rita, try to do this and save me and Tom."

"She shall do it," cried Madam Jeffreys, taking courage from the knowledge that at last her husband was her ally. She went to Rita and pulled her from her father's arms. "She shall do it or go into the street this very night, never to enter my house again. I'll never speak to her again if she don't. It will pain me to treat my own flesh and blood so harshly, but it is my duty--my duty. I have toiled and suffered and endured for her sake all my life, and it will almost kill me to turn against her now; but if she don't save her father and brother, I surely will. G.o.d tells me it is my duty. I do not care for myself. I have eaten husks all my life, ever since I got married, and I can die eating them; but for the sake of my dear husband and my dear son who bears his own father's name, it is my duty, G.o.d tells me it is my duty to spurn her.

It is but duty and justice; and justice to all is my motto. It was my father's motto." She was a wordy orator, but her vocabulary was limited; and after several repet.i.tions of the foregoing sentiments, she turned from oratory to anatomy. "Oh, my heart," she cried, placing her hand upon her breast, "I believe I am about to die."

She sank gasping into the chair, from which she had risen to hurl her Philippic at Rita's head, and by sheer force of her indomitable will caused a most alarming pallor to overspread her face. Rita ran for the camphor, Mr. Bays fetched the whiskey, and under these restoratives Madam Jeffreys so far recovered that her husband and son were able to remove her from the chair to the bed. Rita, in tribulation and tears, sat upon the bedside, chafing her mother's hands and doing all in her power to relieve the sufferer.

"Don't touch me, ungrateful child," cried Mrs. Margarita, "don't touch me! If you won't save your father and brother from ruin when you can, you are not fit to touch your mother. I am dying now," she continued, gasping for breath. "Because of your cruelty and ingrat.i.tude, the blow has been more than G.o.d, in His infinite mercy, has given me strength to endure. When I am gone, you will remember about this. I forgive you; I forgive you." Sigh followed sigh, and Rita feared she had killed her parent.

"Oh, mother," she sobbed, "I will do what you wish. Ah, no, I can't. I can't do it. Don't ask me."

"Beg her, father, beg her," whispered Mrs. Bays to her spouse when she saw that Rita was wavering. Bays hesitated; but a look from the bed brought him to a proper condition of obedience:--

"Rita, won't you save your father and brother?" he asked, taking his daughter's hands in his own. "We are all ruined and disgraced and lost forever if you do not. Rita, I beg you to do this for my sake."

The father's appeal she could not withstand. She covered her face with her hands; then, suddenly drawing herself upright and drying her tears, she said in a low voice, "I will."

Those two little words changed the world for father and son from darkness to light. They seemed also to possess wonderful curative powers for heart trouble, for within three minutes they s.n.a.t.c.hed my Lady Jeffreys from the jaws of death and placed her upright in the bed.

Within another minute she was on her feet, well and hearty as ever, busily engaged evolving a plan for immediate action.

"Write to Williams at once," she said to Rita, "asking him to call this evening. Tell him you want to talk to him about your father's affairs."

Rita again hesitated, but she had given her word, and accordingly wrote:--

"MR. WILLIAMS: If not otherwise engaged, will you please call this evening. I am in great trouble about my father and Tom, and wish to talk to you concerning their affairs.

"RITA."

Tom delivered the note, which threw Williams into a state of ecstasy bordering on intoxication.

I beg you to pause and consider this girl's piteous condition. Never in all the eighteen years of her life had she unnecessarily given pain to a human heart. A tender, gentle strength, love for all who were near her, fidelity to truth, and purity without the blemish of even an impure thought, had gone to make up the sum of her existence. As a reward for all these virtues she was now called upon to bear the burden of an unspeakable anguish. What keener joy could she know than that which had come to her through her love for Dic? What agony more poignant could she suffer than the loss of him? But, putting Dic aside, what calamity could so blacken the future for her, or for any pure girl, as marriage with a man she loathed? We often speak of these tragedies regretfully and carelessly; but imagine yourself in her position, and you will pity this poor girl of mine, who was about to be sold to the man whom she despised--and who, worst of all, loved her. Madame Pompadour says in her memoirs, "I was married to one whom I did not love, and a misfortune still greater was that he loved me." That condition must be the acme of a woman's suffering.

Williams knocked at Rita's door early in the evening, and was admitted to the front parlor by the girl herself. She took a chair and asked him to be seated. Then a long, awkward silence ensued, which was broken by Williams:--

"You said you wished to see me. Is there any way in which I can serve you?"

"Yes," she murmured, speaking with difficulty. "My father and Tom are in trouble, and I wanted to ask you if anything could be done to--to--" she ceased speaking, and in a moment Williams said:--

"I have held the house off for four or five months, and I cannot induce them to wait longer. Their letters are imperative. I wish I had brought them."

"Then nothing can save them?" asked Rita. The words almost choked her, because she knew the response they would elicit. She was asking him to ask her to marry him.

"Rita, there is one thing might save them," replied Roger of the craven heart. "You know what that is. I have spoken of it so often I am almost ashamed to speak again." Well he might be.

"Well, what is it? Go on," said Rita, without a sign of faltering. She wanted to end the agony as soon as possible.

"If you will marry me, Rita--you know how dearly I love you; I need not tell you of that. Were you not so sure of my love, I might stand better with you. You see, if you will marry me my father could not, in decency, prosecute Tom or ruin your father. He would be compelled to protect them both, being in the family, you know."

"If you will release Tom and save my father from ruin I will ... will do ... as ... you ... wish," answered the girl. Cold and clear were the words which closed this bargain, and cold as ice was the heart that sold itself.

Williams stepped quickly to her side, exclaiming delightedly, "Rita, Rita, is it really true at last?"

He attempted to kiss her, but she held up her hand warningly.

"No," she said, "not till I am your wife. Then I must submit. Till then I belong to myself."

"I have waited a long time," answered this patient suitor, "and I can wait a little longer. When shall we be married?"

"Fix the time yourself," she replied.

"I am to leave Christmas morning by the Napoleon stage for home, and if you wish we may be married Christmas Eve. That will give you four days for preparation."

"As you wish," was the response.

"I know, Rita, you do not love me," said Williams, tenderly.

"You surely do," she interrupted.

"But I also know," he continued, "that I can win your love when you are my wife. I know it, or I would not ask you to marry me. I would not accept your hand if I were not sure that I would soon possess your heart. I will be so loving and tender and your life will be so perfect--so different from anything you have ever known--that you will soon be glad you gave yourself to me. It will not be long, Rita, not long."

"Perhaps you are right," she answered with her lips; but in her heart this girl, who was all tenderness and love, prayed G.o.d to strike him dead before Christmas Eve should come.

Williams again took his chair, but Rita said, "I have given you my promise. I--I am--I fear I am ill. Please excuse me for the rest of the evening and--and leave me, I beg you."

Williams took his leave, and Rita went into the sitting room, where father, mother, and Tom were waiting for the verdict.

"You are saved," said Rita, as if she were announcing dinner.

"My daughter! my own dear child! G.o.d will bless you!" exclaimed the tender mother, hurrying to embrace the cause of her joy.

"Don't touch me!" said Rita. "I--I--G.o.d help me! I--I fear--I--hate you." She turned to the stairway and went to her own room. For hours she sat by the window, gazing into the street, but toward morning she lighted a candle and told Dic the whole piteous story in a dozen pages of anguish and love.

After receiving Sukey's letter, Dic left home for a few days to engage horses to take east with him in the spring. He did not return until late in the afternoon of the day before Christmas.

On the morning of that day--the day before Christmas--Jasper Yates, Sukey's father, came to Billy Little's store in great agitation. Tom Bays had been there the day before and had imparted to Billy the news of Rita's forthcoming wedding. She had supposed that Dic would tell him and had not written; but Dic was away from home and had not received her letter.

I cannot describe to you the overpowering grief this announcement brought to the tender bachelor heart. It stunned him, crushed him, almost killed him; but he tried to bear up manfully under the weight of his grief. He tried, ah, so hard, not to show his suffering, and Maxwelton's braes, was sung all day and was played nearly all night; but the time had come to Billy when even music could not soothe him. There was a dry, hard anguish at his heart that all the music of heaven or of earth could not soften. Late in the night he shut his piano in disgust and sat before the fire during the long black hours without even the comfort of a tear.

When Tom imparted the intelligence of Rita's wedding, he also asked Billy for a loan of four hundred dollars. As an inducement, he explained that he had forged the name of Mr. Wallace to a note calling for that sum, and had negotiated the note at an Indianapolis bank. Rita's marriage would settle the Williams theft, but the matter of the forgery called for immediate adjustment in cash. Billy refused the loan; but he gave Tom fifty dollars and advised him to leave the state.

"If you don't go," said Billy, savagely, "you will be sent to the penitentiary. Rita can't marry every one you have stolen from. What did you do with the money you stole from me--Dic's money? Tell me, or I'll call an officer at once. I'll arrest you myself and commit you. I'm a justice of the peace. Now confess, you miserable thief."

Tom turned pale, and, seeing that Billy was in dreadful earnest, began to cry: "There was five of us in that job," he whispered, "and, Mr.

Little, I never got none of the money. Con Gagen and Mike Doles got it all. I give them the sacks to keep for a while after I left the store.

They promised to divide, but they run away soon afterwards, and of course we others were afeared to peach. I didn't know you knowed it. Con Gagen put me up to it."