The Just and the Unjust Part 29

"I want you to go to him--to Mr. North, I mean. I want you to tell him how sorry you are; I want him to know--I--" she paused uncertainly.

Perhaps for the first time in her life she was not quite sure of her father's sympathy. She dreaded his man's judgment in this crisis.

"Now seriously, Elizabeth, don't you think I'd better keep away from him? I can do nothing--"

"Oh, how cowardly that would be!" she cried. "How cowardly!"

The old general winced at this. He was far from being a coward, but appearances had their value in his eyes; and even, in its least serious aspect, young North's predicament was not pleasant to contemplate.

"But there is nothing I can do, Elizabeth; why should I become involved?" he urged.

"Then you must go to him from me!" she cried.

"Child--child; what are you saying!" cried the general.

"Either you must go to him, or I shall go!" she said with fine firmness.

Her father groaned.

"Be frank with me, Elizabeth. Has North ever told you that he cared for you?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Before he went away--I mean that last night he was here."

"I feared as much!" he muttered. "And you, dear?" he continued gently.

"He said we might have to wait a long time--or I should have told you!

He went away because he was too poor--"

There was a pause.

"Do you care for him, Elizabeth?" her father asked at length. "Do you wish me to understand that you are committed--are--"

"Yes," she answered quite simply.

"You are sure it is not just pity--you are sure, Elizabeth? For you know, right or wrong, he will probably come out of this with his reputation smirched."

"But he is _innocent_!"

"That is not quite the point!" urged the general. "We must see things as they are. You must understand what it may mean to you in the future, to have given your love to a man who has fallen under such suspicion. There will always be those who will remember this against him."

"But _I_ shall know!" she said proudly.

"And that will be enough--you will ask no more than that, Elizabeth?"

"If my faith in him has never been shaken, could I ask more?"

He looked at her wistfully. Her courage he comprehended. It was fine and true, like her sweet unspoiled youth; in its presence he felt a sudden sense of age and loneliness. He asked himself, had he lived beyond his own period of generous enthusiasm?

"It would be a poor kind of friends.h.i.+p, a poorer kind of love, if we did not let him know at once that this has not changed our--our, regard for him!" she said softly.

"It is not your ready sympathy; you are quite certain it is not that, Elizabeth?"

"I am sure, father--sure of myself as I am of him! You say he has been arrested, does that mean--" and she hesitated.

"It means, my dear, that he is in jail," answered the general as he came slowly to his feet.

She gave a little cry, and running to him hid her face against his arm.

"In jail!" she moaned, and her imagination and her ignorance clothed the thought with indescribable horrors.

"Understand, dear, he isn't even indicted yet and he may not be! It's bad enough, of course, but it might be a great deal worse. Now what am I to tell him for you?"

"Wait," she said, slipping from his side. "I will write him--"

"Write your letter then," said her father. "I'll order the horses at once," he added, as he quitted the room.

Ten minutes later when he drove up from the stables, Elizabeth met him at the door.

"After you have seen him, father, come home at once, won't you?" she said as she handed him her letter.

"Yes, I am only going for this," he replied.

It was plain that his errand had not grown less distasteful to him.

Perhaps Elizabeth was aware of this, for she reached up and pa.s.sed an arm about his neck.

"I don't believe any girl ever had such a father!" she whispered softly.

"I suppose I should not be susceptible to such manifest flattery," said the general, kissing her, "but I find I am! There, you keep up your courage! This old father of yours is a person of such excellent sense that he is going to aid and abet you in this most outrageous folly; I expect, even, that in time, my interest in this very foolish young man will be only second to your own, my dear!"

As he drove away he turned in his seat to glance back at the graceful girlish figure standing in the shelter of Idle Hour's stone arched vestibule, and as he did so there was a flutter of something white, which a.s.sured him that her keen eyes were following him and would follow him until the distance and the closing darkness intervened, and hid him from her sight.

"I hope it will come out all right!" he told himself and sighed.

If it did _not_ come out all right, where was his peace of mind; where was the calm, where the long reposeful days he had so valued? But this thought he put from him as unworthy. After all Elizabeth's happiness was something he desired infinitely more than he desired his own. But why could it not have been some one else? Why was it North; what unkind fate had been busy there?

"She sees more in him than I could ever see!" he said aloud, as he touched his horse with the whip.

Twenty minutes later he drove up before the court-house, hitched and blanketed his horse, and pa.s.sing around the building, now dark and deserted, reached the entrance to the jail. In the office he found Conklin at his desk. The sheriff was rather laboriously engaged in making the entry in his ledger of North's committal to his charge, a formality which, out of consideration for his prisoner's feelings, he had dispensed with at the time of the arrest.

"I wish to see Mr. North. I suppose I may?" his visitor said, after he had shaken hands with Conklin.

"Certainly, General! Want to go up, or shall I bring him down here to you?"

"I'd prefer that--I'd much prefer that!" answered the general hastily.