The Song of the Wolf Part 25

"I never realized what possibilities Life held until six months ago.

Then for the first time I learned the difference in men--and the bitterness that comes with knowledge acquired too late. The confession may be unwomanly, but I glory in it. No, keep your seat." He had eagerly arisen and was holding out his arms. "I have been disloyal to my husband in the learning and this is part of my atonement."

She went over and stood beside him, breathing softly. In the subdued light her pallor only accentuated her ravis.h.i.+ng beauty. Dougla.s.s thought he had never beheld so heavenly a thing. Very gently he leaned forward and touched her hand but she as gently shook her head in negation.

"I was foolishly, criminally weak to come back here. But I had to see you again. Oh! I am mad! mad! mad! I know only too well the nature of the pa.s.sion I have inspired in you, and the humiliation of it is the bitterest part of my deserved punishment. Yet even your avid, brutal l.u.s.t is a thousand times dearer to me than the refined insipidity of any other man's purest love. Stop! I say, or--!" She placed her hand resolutely on the bell, her determination indubitable.

"It is the hour of my shame and you must know all. I had rather be your running mate--Oh! you grand, lovable, vicious, merciless beast--than be queen regnant in heaven. But that can never be. I am the wife of Anselm Brevoort and you are the betrothed husband of another woman. But she will breed you no wolves, my lost Ishmael; your getlings will be bleating lambs. Ah, G.o.d! the shame of it!"

She struck the bell savagely as he sprang to his feet with a choking cry.

"And, now that you know, I confidently invoke your honor, your clean manliness, for my protection. You will help me against myself, will you not, dear?"

"And who will help me?" he muttered hoa.r.s.ely. The perspiration was standing in white beads on his forehead. Swift as a flash she crossed over to him and laid her hand trustfully on his arm.

"We will help each other, beloved. Good night."

But hours after he had succ.u.mbed to the seductions of his coa.r.s.e blankets she lay on her dainty bed with clenched hands and sleepless eyes, trying to pierce the gloomy veil of futurity and tearfully striving to reconcile a great misery with a greater joy.

"I love him! I love him!" she moaned pa.s.sionately, "and if it were not for that milk-and-water baby he would love me with all the savage strength and intensity of his fierce nature. Oh! my Wolf, my strong, wild Wolf! What can that vapid ninny offer you in comparison to what I would give?"

She sat up erect, her eyes blazing in the darkness like those of a hunted wild beast.

"She shall not--I swear it! Home, station, wealth, honor, body and soul--I will sacrifice all! He is mine! mine! mine!" After awhile, in sheer exhaustion of pa.s.sion, she fell into a troubled sleep.

The next day he obtained leave of absence for a fortnight's inspection of his mines. En route he mailed several letters entrusted by Mrs.

Brevoort, one of which was addressed to a woman in New York. She was one of those inveterate gossips of high station who act as purveyors of "exclusive information" to the society editors of the great fas.h.i.+onable journals.

Some days later he stopped at Tin Cup for the ranch mail; it included a rather short and unsatisfactory note from Grace, written hurriedly in transit, announcing her party's embarkation on Lord Ellerslie's yacht for a cruise on the Mediterranean. The girl was really homesick in truth, but relying too implicitly on Love's divination had omitted to make that fact clear, ending her missive with the ambiguous sentence: "I wish we had never left home. I am so unhappy." It was the first communication he had received from her for over six weeks. He did not know that her customary budget, a sort of daily diary mailed once a month, had gone down with the fated _Peruvia_ in mid-ocean, and he was uneasy and resentful.

Mrs. Brevoort was out riding when he reached the ranch, so he merely instructed 'Rastus to inform her of his return, and dined at the common mess house. In the interim of waiting he glanced casually over the contents of the New York papers which he had received in the mail.

Unto Constance Brevoort, awaiting him with a great trepidation in the little den, came a white-lipped, stern-faced man with a paper crushed In his hand.

"Read that!" he said curtly, pointing to a paragraph at the head of the "Society Column." She caught her breath sharply but with no other visible evidence of emotion held the paper up to the light. He watched her grimly, a mirthless smile on his lips. With a well-simulated gasp of horror she let the sheet fall on the floor and turned to him breathlessly.

"It cannot be true! It is a lie! Oh! my poor friend!" Her voice was a curious commingling of fear and exultation. The gossip had done her work with artistic efficiency.

He picked up the paper and calmly read the paragraph aloud. It was short but succinct:

"We have it on indisputable authority that the engagement of one of Gotham's most lovely daughters, the beautiful Miss Grace Carter, to lord Yare Ellerslie, of ellesmere, Surrey, one of Britain's most eligible scions, will be formally announced on the return of his lords.h.i.+p's yacht from the Mediterranean, where he is at present cruising in company with his fiancee, her mother, and a party of mutual friends. It is said to be one of those delightful love-at-first-sight affairs, and society is all agog over the romantic outcome of what was merely intended to be a short pleasure trip. Lord Ellerslie is said to be immensely wealthy in his own right and will, besides, succeed to the t.i.tle and vast estates of his father, the present earl. Miss Carter is a joint heiress of the millions of the famous 'cattle king,' Robert Carter. We understand that the honeymoon will include a cruise around the world in his lords.h.i.+p's magnificent yacht, which has been rechristened the 'Gracie' in honor of his prospective bride."

He laid the paper down on the table and stood looking silently at It. It seemed to the woman watching him nervously that he aged a dozen years since she last saw him. She almost relented at the sight of his fiercely-controlled misery, but she shut her teeth with determination.

One cannot make an omelet without the breaking of eggs. The game was a desperate one, but she had everything at stake. She would play it out and win.

She was about to speak when he looked up with a harsh laugh.

"Your n.o.bleman wasn't so very 'innocuous' after all, it seems. Her mother certainly lost no time. What is the accepted form of a letter of congratulation on such occasions?"

"Oh! it cannot be true!" she faltered, evading his eyes unaccountably.

"There has been some terrible mistake!"

"And I have made It." He handed her Grace's little note. "This is the amount of her correspondence in the last two months. It seems to clinch the certainty of the glad tidings. And to think that I was fool enough to imagine that there was one pure, true heart among your fair, false s.e.x." He turned upon her scornfully. "I wonder how much of what you said the other night was a lie. It is a rare accomplishment, this clever ability to turn an impending tragedy into a harmless comedy. Tell me, how long did you laugh after I had gone?"

She paled, for his mood was a dangerous one and a single false move might imperil everything. But she was a past-master of the gentle craft of love-making and all her finesse had been to this very end. She had calculated on the ease with which a heart may be caught in the rebound, and her opportunity was at hand. And she knew now, with a certainty that terrified and yet emboldened her, that she loved this man better than life and that existence without him would be one eternal curse. She was a brave woman and her hesitation was only momentary.

"Suffering has made you unjust, my friend," she said quietly. "I take bitter shame to myself for having bared my heart so nakedly to you that dreadful night, since it has been so pitiably unavailing. I did not laugh that night--I cried. I only wish I could lie to you, dear. It might be the means of conserving my honor and self-respect in those hours of danger--the every hour I spend in your company. Must I abase myself more? Must I tell you that I have prayed that this pain should come to you so that I might comfort you with a love so tender, so all-giving that you would blush in self-commiseration of your callow infatuation for that foolish fledgling who deserted the eyrie of an eagle for the flat commons of an English goose pasture? And now that the measure of my shame is complete, go--and leave me to the agony of it.

Oh! my Wolf! my Wolf! I could have given so much, and so willingly! But now I hate you! I hate you! Go, I say! Go!" She pointed imperiously to the door with streaming eyes. "Will you go or must I summon the servants?"

But with eyes flaming and extended arms he advanced Instead. With a little cry of alarm she evaded him and took refuge on the divan, where she cowered with covered eyes. With a strange forced smile he sank on his knee beside her. Very gently he removed her hands from her face and compelled her to look at him. She was quivering all over and her eyes were gleaming like stars.

"What is the need of other servants when you have a loving slave here at your feet? Connie! Connie!"

Afar in the distance rang a familiar cry; at the eerie sound their pulses leaped in unison. The man put his whole soul into one fierce appeal:

"Connie! my Queen!"

From without stole the answering call of the she-wolf.

With a soft little cry that was half a laugh, half a sob, she drew his face down upon her bosom.

CHAPTER XX

A Pa.s.sAGE AT ARMS

At Brindisi, a month later, Grace found Dougla.s.s's letter awaiting her.

She kissed it furtively and thrust it in her bosom, reserving its reading for the privacy of her room. Not until she had crept into bed did she open the prosaic government-stamped envelope which he methodically used. She always read his letters so, punctuating each tender sentence with a kiss and going to sleep with It tucked In her nightdress next her heart.

This was an unusually bulky enclosure and she hugged it in antic.i.p.ation; how sweet it was of him to devote so much of his time to her in his busiest season. Pa.s.sionately she pressed her lips to it again and with a sigh of delight drew out--a single sheet of note paper enclosing a closely-folded page of printed matter.

As though doubting her senses, she sat erect in bed and unfolded the newspaper; there was nothing enclosed therein and with perplexity writ large all over her face she turned curiously to the written sheet.

Slowly, as one in a daze, she read and reread it a dozen times; it was very short and in nowise ambiguously phrased, yet she did not seem able to grasp its meaning:

"My congratulations on the speed and facility with which your very astute and clever mother has extricated you from what must certainly have been a very embarra.s.sing entanglement. May you be as happy in your new exalted station as you once made me imagine I was going to be!

"Owing you, as I do, not only my life but my fortune as well, for my mines are now in bonanza, I confess to even a greater indebtedness: you gave me a six-month of the only happiness I have ever known. But you would have rendered me an incalculably greater service had you left those dynamite cartridges undisturbed that day.

"If in the mutations of time and chance you should ever have need of me, the life and fortune which you gave are at your command.

Good-by."

In an agony of bewilderment she took up the newspaper, intuitively seeking the Society Columns.

Mrs. Robert Carter, leisurely preparing for her night's rest in the adjoining apartment, looked up with a pleasant smile as the communicating door opened, a word of loving greeting on her lips. But there was little of answering affection in the glittering eyes and white face of the girl who, with clenched hands and dilating nostrils, advanced upon her. Something in the unnatural demeanor of Grace alarmed her and she nervously dropped her hair brush and rose to her feet.