Marcia Schuyler Part 30

"I am here for that purpose. I am here to help you and for no other reason. In the stable are horses harnessed and a comfortable carriage. My advice to you is to fly from here as fast as these fleet horses can carry you. Where you go is for you to say. I should advise going to your father's house. That I am sure is what will please him best. He is your natural refuge at such a time as this. If, however, you shrink from appearing before the eyes of the village gossips in your native town, I will take you to the home of a dear old friend of mine, hidden among the quiet hills, where you will be cared for most royally and tenderly for my sake, and where you can work out your life problem in the way that seems best to you. It is there that I am planning to take you to-night. We can easily reach there before evening if we start at once."

Marcia started to her feet in horror.

"What do you mean?" she stammered in a choking voice. "I could never go anywhere with you Mr. Temple. You are a bad man! You have been telling me lies! I do not believe one word of what you have said. My husband is n.o.ble and good. If he did any of those things you say he did he had a reason for it. I shall never distrust him."

Marcia's head was up grandly now and her voice had come back. She looked the man in the eye until he quailed, but still he sought to hold his power over her.

"You poor child!" and his voice was gentleness and forbearance itself. "I do not wonder in your first horror and surprise that you feel as you do. I antic.i.p.ated this. Sit down and calm yourself and let me tell you more about it. I can prove everything that I have said. I have letters here--"

and he swept his hand toward a pile of letters lying on the table; Miranda in the closet marked well the position of those letters. "All that I have said is only too true, I am sorry to say, and you must listen to me--"

Marcia interrupted him, her eyes blazing, her face excited: "Mr. Temple, I shall not listen to another word you say. You are a wicked man and I was wrong to come here at all. You deceived me or I should not have come. I must go home at once." With that she started toward the door.

Harry Temple flung aside the shawl that covered his sometime sprained ankle and arose quickly, placing himself before her, forgetful of his invalid role:

"Not so fast, my pretty lady," he said, grasping her wrists fiercely in both his hands. "You need not think to escape so easily. You shall not leave this room except in my company. Do you not know that you are in my power? You have spent nearly an hour alone in my bedchamber, and what will your precious husband have to do with you after this is known?"

CHAPTER XXIV

Miranda's time had come. She had seen it coming and was prepared.

With a movement like a flash she pushed open the closet door, seized the pot of ink from the table, and before the two excited occupants of the room had time to even hear her or realize that she was near, she hurled the ink pot full into the insolent face of Harry Temple. The inkstand itself was a light affair of horn and inflicted only a slight wound, but the ink came into his eyes in a deluge blinding him completely, as Miranda had meant it should do. She had seen no other weapon of defense at hand.

Harry Temple dropped Marcia's wrists and groaned in pain, staggering back against the wall and sinking to the floor. But Miranda would not stay to see the effect of her punishment. She seized the frightened Marcia, dragged her toward the cupboard door, sweeping as she pa.s.sed the pile of letters, finished and unfinished, into her ap.r.o.n, and closed the cupboard doors carefully behind her. Then she guided Marcia through the dark mazes of the store room to the hall, and pus.h.i.+ng her toward the front door, whispered: "Go quick 'fore he gets his eyes open. I've got to go this way.

Run down the road fast as you can an' I'll be at the meetin' place first.

Hurry, quick!"

Marcia went with feet that shook so that every step seemed like to slip, but with beating heart she finally traversed the length of the piazza with a show of dignity, pa.s.sed the loungers, and was out in the road. Then indeed she took courage and fairly flew.

Miranda, breathless, but triumphant, went back into the kitchen: "I guess 'tain't him after all," she said to the interested woman who was putting on the potatoes to boil. "He's real interesting to look at though. I'd like to stop and watch him longer but I must be goin'. I come out to hunt fer"-Miranda hesitated for a suitable object before this country-bred woman who well knew that strawberries were not ripe yet-"wintergreens fer Grandma," she added cheerfully, not quite sure whether they grew around these parts, "and I must be in a hurry. Good-bye! Thank you fer the drink."

Miranda whizzed out of the door breezily, calling a good morning to one of the hostlers as she pa.s.sed the barnyard, and was off through the meadows and over the fence like a bird, the package of letters rustling loud in her bosom where she had tucked them before she entered the kitchen.

Neither of the two girls spoke for some minutes after they met, but continued their rapid gait, until the end of the corduroy road was in sight and they felt comparatively safe.

"Wal, that feller certainly ought to be strung up an' walluped, now, fer sure," remarked Miranda, "an I'd like to help at the wallupin'."

Marcia's overstrung nerves suddenly dissolved into hysterical laughter.

The contrast from the tragic to the ridiculous was too much for her. She laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks, and then she cried in earnest. Miranda stopped and put her arms about her as gently as a mother might have done, and smoothed her hair back from the hot cheek, speaking tenderly:

"There now, you poor pretty little flower. Jest you cry 's hard 's you want to. I know how good it makes you feel to cry. I've done it many a time up garret where n.o.body couldn't hear me. That old Satan, he won't trouble you fer a good long spell again. When he gets his evil eyes open, if he ever does, he'll be glad to get out o' these parts or I miss my guess. Now don't you worry no more. He can't hurt you one mite. An' don't you think a thing about what he said. He's a great big liar, that's what he is."

"Miranda, you saved me. Yes, you did. I never can thank you enough. If you hadn't come and helped me something awful might have happened!" Marcia shuddered and began to sob convulsively again.

"Nonsense!" said Miranda, pleased. "I didn't do a thing worth mentioning.

Now you jest wipe your eyes and chirk up. We've got to go through town an'

you don't want folks to wonder what's up."

Miranda led Marcia up to the spring whose location had been known to her all the time of course, and Marcia bathed her eyes and was soon looking more like herself, though there was a nervous tremor to her lips now and then. But her companion talked gaily, and tried to keep her mind from going over the events of the morning.

When they reached the village Miranda suggested they go home by the back street, slipping through a field of spring wheat and climbing the garden fence. She had a mind to keep out of her grandmother's sight for a while longer.

"I might's well be hung for a sheep's a lamb," she remarked, as she slid in at Marcia's kitchen door in the shadow of the morning-glory vines. "I'm goin' to stay here a spell an' get you some dinner while you go upstairs an' lie down. You don't need to go back to your aunt's till near night, an' you can wait till dusk an' I'll go with you. Then you needn't be out alone at all. I know how you feel, but I don't believe you need worry.

He'll be done with you now forever, er I'll miss my guess. Now you go lie down till I make a cup o' tea."

Marcia was glad to be alone, and soon fell asleep, worn out with the excitement, her brain too weary to go over the awful occurrences of the morning. That would come later. Now her body demanded rest.

Miranda, coming upstairs with the tea, tiptoed in and looked at her,-one round arm thrown over her head, and her smooth peachy cheek resting against it. Miranda, homely, and with no hope of ever attaining any of the beautiful things of life, loved unselfishly this girl who had what she had not, and longed with all her heart to comfort and protect the sweet young thing who seemed so ill-prepared to protect herself. She stooped over the sleeper for one yearning moment, and touched her hair lightly with her lips. She felt a great desire to kiss the soft round cheek, but was afraid of wakening her. Then she took the cup of tea and tiptoed out again, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with satisfaction. She had a self-imposed task before her, and was well pleased that Marcia slept, for it gave her plenty of opportunity to carry out her plans.

She went quickly to David's library, opened drawers and doors in the desk until she found writing materials, and sat down to work. She had a letter to write, and a letter, to Miranda, was the achievement of a lifetime. She did not much expect to ever have to write another. She plunged into her subject at once.

"DEAR MR. DAVID:" (she was afraid that sounded a little stiff, but she felt it was almost too familiar to say "David" as he was always called.)

"I ain't much on letters, but this one has got to be writ.

Something happened and somebody's got to tell you about it. I'm most sure she wont, and n.o.body else knows cept me.

"Last night 'bout dark I went out to feed the chickens, an' I see that nims.h.i.+ Harry Temple skulkin round your house. It was all dark there, an he walked in the side gate and tried to peek in the winders, only the shades was down an he couldn't see a thing. I thought he was up to some mischief so I followed him down the street a piece till he turned down the old corduroy road. It was dark by then an I come home, but I was on the watchout this morning, and after Mis' Spafford come down to the house I heard a horse gallopin by an I looked out an saw a boy get off an take a letter to the door an ride away, an pretty soon all in a hurry your wife come out tyin her bonnet and hurryin along lookin scared. I grabbed my sunbonnet an clipped after her, but she went so fast I didn't get up to her till she got on the old corduroy road. She was awful scared lookin an she didn't want me much I see, but pretty soon she up an told me she had a note sayin there was a messenger with news from you out to the old Green Tavern. He had a accident an couldn't come no further. He wanted her to come alone cause the business was private, so I stayed down by the turn of the road till she got in an then I went cross lots an round to the kitchen an called on Mis' Green a spell. She was tellin me about her boarders an I told her I thought mebbe one of em was a friend o' Hannah Heath's so she said I might peek through the key hole of the cubberd an see. She was busy so I went alone.

"Well sir, I jest wish you'd been there. That lying nims.h.i.+ was jest goin on the sweetest, as respectful an nice a thankin your wife fer comin, an excusin himself fer sendin fer her, and sayin he couldn't bear to tell her what he'd come fer, an pretty soon when she was scared 's death he up an told her a awful fib bout you an a woman called Kate, whoever she is, an he jest poured the words out fast so she couldn't speak, an he said things about you he shouldn't uv, an you could see he was makin it up as he went along, an he said he had proof. So he pointed at a pile of letters on the table an I eyed em good through the hole in the door.

Pretty soon he ups and perposes that he carry her off in a carriage he has all ready, and takes her to a friend of his, so she wont be here when you come home, cause you're so bad, and she gets up looking like she wanted to scream only she didn't dare, and she says he dont tell the truth, it wasn't so any of it, and if it was it was all right anyway, that you had some reason, an she wouldn't go a step with him anywhere. An then he forgets all about the lame ankle he had kept covered up on a chair pertendin it was hurt fallin off his horse when the coach brought him all the way fer I asked Mis' Green-and he ketches her by the wrists, and he says she can't go without him, and she needn't be in such a hurry fer you wouldn't have no more to do with her anyway after her being shut up there with him so long, an then she looked jest like she was going to faint, an I bust out through the door an ketched up the ink pot, it want heavy enough to kill him, an I slung it at him, an the ink went square in his eyes, an we slipped through the closet an got away quick fore anybody knew a thing.

"I brought all the letters along so here they be. I havn't read a one, cause I thought mebbe you'd ruther not. She aint seen em neither. She dont know I've got em. I hid em in my dress. She's all wore out with cryin and hurryin, and being scared, so she's upstairs now asleep, an she dont know I'm writing. I'm goin to send this off fore she knows, fer I think she wouldn't tell you fear of worryin you. I'll look after her es well's I can till you get back, but I think that feller ought to be strung up. But you'll know what to do, so no more at present from your obedient servent,

"MIRANDA GRISCOM."

Having at last succeeded in sealing her packet to her satisfaction and the diminis.h.i.+ng of the stick of sealing wax she had found in the drawer, Miranda slid out the front door, and by a detour went to David Spafford's office.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Clark," she said to the clerk importantly. "Grandma sends her respecks and wants to know ef you'd be so kind as to back this letter fer her to Mr. David Spafford. She's writin' to him on business an'

she don't rightly know his street an' number in New York."

Mr. Clark willingly wrote the address, and Miranda took it to the post office, and sped back to Marcia, happy in the accomplishment of her purpose.

In the same mail bag that brought Miranda's package came a letter from Aunt Clarinda. David's face lit up with a pleased smile. Her letters were so infrequent that they were a rare pleasure. He put aside the thick package written in his clerk's hand. It was doubtless some business papers and could wait.

Aunt Clarinda wrote in a fine old script that in spite of her eighty years was clear and legible. She told about the beauty of the weather, and how Amelia and Hortense were almost done with the house cleaning, and how Marcia had been going to their house every day putting it in order. Then she added a paragraph which David, knowing the old lady well, understood to be the _raison d'etre_ of the whole letter:

"I think your wife misses you very much, Davie, she looks sort of peeked and sad. It is hard on her being separated from you so long this first year. Men don't think of those things, but it is lonely for a young thing like her here with three old women, and you know Hortense and Amelia never try to make it lively for anybody. I have been watching her, and I think if I were you I would let the business finish itself up as soon as possible and hurry back to put a bit of cheer into that child. She's whiter than she ought to be."

David read it over three times in astonishment with growing, mingled feelings which he could not quite a.n.a.lyze.