The Miracle Man Part 32

"I do not need to know," he answered gravely. "You are as genuine as pure gold is genuine--it is in your voice, your smile, your eyes. It is a crude simile perhaps, but one never asks where the pure gold was dug--it stands for itself, for what it is, because it is what it is--pure gold--at its face value."

The words seemed to stab at Helena, condemning, accusing; and yet, too, in a strange, vague way, they seemed to bring her a hope, a promise for the days to come--at face value! If she could live hereafter--at face value!

"Listen," she said, and her voice was very low. "I do not know how to say what I must say to you. Last night I knew that--that you loved me. I had not thought of you like that, in that way, until then, or--or I should have tried never to have let this hurt come to you. But last night I knew, and since then I have known that sooner or later you would--would tell me of it." She stopped for an instant--her eyes full of tears now. "And so," she went on presently, "I have let you speak to-night because it was better, it was even necessary that I should do so at once--because this could not go on--because you must go away and--"

"Necessary?" he repeated. "I--I do not understand."

"No," she said helplessly; "you do not understand--and I--I cannot explain. Oh, I do not know what to say to you, only that you must take what I say, as you have taken me--at face value."

"I do not understand," he said again. "Helena, I do not understand. Are you in trouble--tell me?"

"No," she said.

"But I cannot go away like this!" he cried out suddenly. "I cannot go and leave you, Helena. You have come into my life and filled it; and I cannot let you pa.s.s out of it--like this--without an effort to hold what has come to mean everything to me now. You may not love me now, but some day--"

She shook her head, interrupting him once more.

"There can never be a 'some day,'" she said. "Oh, I do not want to hurt you--you, to whom I owe more than you will ever know--but--but there can never be anything between us, and--and we are only making it harder for ourselves now--aren't we?"

And then he leaned abruptly toward her.

"Is there--some one else?" he asked in a strained voice.

And to Helena the question came as though it had been an inspiration given him--for after that he would ask no more, seek no more to understand, for he was too big and strong and fine for that; and even if it was hopeless now this love that she had known for Madison, even if it could never be again, still that love was hers, and she could answer truthfully.

"Yes," she said beneath her breath.

For a moment Thornton neither moved nor spoke. Then he held out his hand.

"Miss Vail," he said simply, "will you tell this 'some one else' that another man beside himself is the better for having known you.

Good-night. And may G.o.d bring you happiness through all your life."

But she did not speak--they were standing by the rustic bench and she sank down upon it, and, with her head hidden in one arm outflung across the back of the seat, was sobbing softly.

And he stood and watched her for a little s.p.a.ce, his face grave and white; then taking the hand that lay listlessly in her lap, he raised it to his lips--and turned away.

And so he left her--and so, because of this, he knocked upon another door that night, and all unwittingly gave to that "some one else"

himself the message that he had asked Helena to deliver.

Madison, pacing his room like a caged beast, his teeth working upon the cigar that he had never thought to light, paid no attention to the summons until it had been repeated twice; then, with a glance around the room, his eyes lingering for a critical instant upon the trunks, closed now, the trays restored to their hiding places, he stepped to the door, unlocked it, and flung it open. And at sight of Thornton, mechanically, as second nature to him, outwardly, like a mask, there came a smile upon his working lips, a suave, unconcerned composure to his face; while inwardly, in his dazed, fogged brain where chaos raged, surged an impulse to fling himself upon the other, wreck a mad vengeance upon the man--and then swift upon the heels of this an impulse to refrain, for if Helena was straight why should he harm Thornton--and then the shuttle again--why should he not--hadn't Helena said that she had learned what love was last night--and last night she had been with Thornton. How his brain whirled! What had brought Thornton here, anyhow? If he stayed very long perhaps he would batter Thornton to jelly after all! Quick, almost instantaneous in their sequence came this wild jumble singing dizzily its crazy refrain through his mind--and then to his amazement he heard some one speaking pleasantly--and to his amazement it was himself.

"Come in, Thornton. Come in--and take a chair."

"Thanks," Thornton answered; and, entering the room, closed the door behind him. "No; I won't sit down--I shall only remain a moment."

The lamp was on the washstand, and, intuitively again, Madison s.h.i.+fted his position to bring his face into shadow--and leaned against the foot of the bed. He stared at Thornton, nodding--Thornton's face was white and exceedingly haggard--rather curious for Thornton to look that way!

"Madison," said Thornton abruptly, "I believe you to be a gentleman in the best sense of the word, and because of that, and because of the unusual circ.u.mstances that first brought us together and the mutual interests that have since been ours, I have come to you to-night to tell you, first, that I am going away from Needley and that I shall not return--and then to ask a service and repose a trust in you. You have said several times that you intended to remain here and take a personal and active part in the work?"

Madison removed the chewed cigar end from one corner of his mouth--and placed it in the other.

"Yes," said Madison.

"Then this is what I want to say," said Thornton seriously. "For my own sake, because it was my wife's wish, and for other reasons as well, my interest here, though I am going away, will be just as great as it has ever been; and so I want you to keep me thoroughly posted, and when the time comes that I can be of further material a.s.sistance to let me know.

I impose only one condition--you are to say nothing to Miss Vail about it--you can make anything that I may do appear to come from yourself."

"Say nothing to Miss Vail!" repeated Madison vaguely--then a sort of ironic jest seemed to take possession of him: "But Miss Vail keeps all the funds."

"That is why I am asking you to represent me," said Thornton quietly. "I am afraid that she might have a natural diffidence about accepting anything more from me--I asked Miss Vail to marry me to-night, and she refused."

The cigar kind of slid down unnoticed from the corner of Madison's mouth--and he leaned forward, hanging with a hand behind him to the bedpost--and stared at Thornton.

"You--_what_!" he gasped.

"Yes; I know," Thornton answered--and moved abruptly toward the door.

"Love makes one's temerity very great--doesn't it? I asked her to marry me--because I loved her." He came back from the door and held out his hand, "I've told you what I would tell no other man, Madison. You understand now why--and you'll do this for me?"

What answer Madison made he never knew himself--he only knew that he was staring at the door after Thornton had gone out, and that he wanted to laugh crazily. Marry Helena! Thornton had asked Helena to marry him because he loved her. G.o.d, there was humor here! His brain itself seemed to cackle at it--_marry_ Helena!

And then suddenly there seemed no humor at all--only black, infamous shame and condemnation--and he straightened up from where he leaned against the bedpost, his face set and strained.

"Thornton had asked Helena to marry him because he _loved_ her"--the words came slowly, haltingly, aloud--and then he covered his face with his hands. But he, he who loved her too--what had _he_ done!

--XXII--

THE SHRINE

For a little time Madison stood there in his room, motionless, staring unseeingly before him--and then, as one awakening from a dream that had brought dismay and a torment too realistic to be thrown from him on the instant, his brain still a little blunted, he took up his hat mechanically, went out from the room, descended by the back stairs to the rear door of the hotel, and took the road to the Patriarch's cottage.

And as he walked in the freshness of the night, the restless turmoil of his soul that since early afternoon had brought him near to the verge of madness itself, that had robbed him of sane virility, that a moment since in his room had suddenly begun to lift from him even as the leaden clouds in the vault above him now were scattering, breaking, and through the rifts a moon-glint and the starlight came, pa.s.sed from him utterly--and a strange calm, a strange joy, a strange sadness was upon him--and his brain for the first time in many hours was rational, keen--and he was master of himself again--and yet master of himself no more!

He smiled a little at the seeming paradox--smiled a little wistfully. He was beaten--by the game--he had won. How strange it was that sense of more than resignation now--a sense that seemed like one of thankfulness--a sense that bade him fling wide his arms as though suddenly they had been loosed from bondage and he was free, free as the G.o.d-given air around him.

He could understand Helena, and the Flopper, and Pale Face Harry now.

With them it had come slowly, in a gradual concatenation, a progression, as it were, that had worked upon them, molding them, changing them day by day--and he had been too blind to see, or, seeing, had measured the changes only by a standard as false as all his life had been false. With him it had come in a crash, unheralded, that had left him a naked, quivering, stricken thing to know madness, terror and despair, to taste of emotions that had sickened the soul itself.

On Madison walked--along the road, across the little bridge, into the wagon track where, under the arched branches, it was utter dark. There was no one upon the road--he pa.s.sed no one--saw no one--he was alone.

He had lost Helena--but he understood her now--understood the depth of remorse that she was living through, the terror and the dread as she sought escape, the fear of him--yes, it would be fear now where once it had been love! He had lost Helena--that was the price he had paid--but he understood her now, and he was going to her to help her if he could, going to tell her that he, too, was changed--as she was changed.

His hands clenched suddenly. G.o.d, the misery, the hopelessness, the wreck and ruin that lay at his door! And amends--what amends could he make--it was too late for that! How clearly he saw now--when it was too late! Her life was a broken thing, robbed, stripped and despoiled for all the years to come. Their love had not been love--she had given it its name--"pa.s.sion, vice, l.u.s.t, sin, degradation and misery and shame."

And then love had come to her, into her life, love as G.o.d had meant love to be, and she had learned what love was she had said--only that she might never know its fulness, only that it might bring her added bitterness and added sorrow! Thornton had asked her to marry him that night--and she had refused him--because the past, it must have been as a shuddering, hideous phantom that the past had risen before her, had left her no other thing to do but turn away. It seemed he could see her--see her bury her face in her hands and--

He stopped short in his walk. Was he changed so much as this! Did he care so much that it was her happiness--even with another--that counted most! Yes; it was true--he was changed indeed. And the change had brought him too, it seemed, to learn what love was--too late.