The Hills of Refuge Part 36

Again the infinite yearning to take her to his breast swept over him. He put his arm about her; he was drawing her to him, when, with a groan of tortured resolution, he released her. His face was white in the dusk as he stood grimly silent.

"I can't understand you, Charlie," she whispered, tenderly, and yet in a groping, bewildered tone. "Somehow I know--I'm _sure_ that you--love me.

"Oh, I _do_!" he said, quickly, "but I have no right to do so. I can't explain. It would do no good, anyway. I am bound by honor not to reveal certain things, even to you."

"I see, I see; now I begin to understand _a little_," she said, wistfully. "And I won't press you to tell me, either. It may be that you are bound to others, as I am bound. Though I have the sweet comfort of talking to you about it. I couldn't bear it all but for you, but I shall be braver, less complaining, from now on."

She lowered her head; she stood back from him. An overwhelming sense of losing her pressed down on him like a pall. He wondered if in her mute att.i.tude lay any touch of womanly resentment against him for the stand he had taken. He held out his hands to her, but she simply sighed and slowly shook her head.

"What is it?" he asked, tremblingly.

"It must be as you say," she answered. "I wonder why G.o.d brought us together like this. It is strange--strange--strange!"

He could not answer. His arms sank to his sides. She turned and left him.

CHAPTER XXIV

Like a sheer mechanical thing, actuated by some external force, he went down the steps and on to the lawn. Standing near the front gate, he saw Rowland coming down the road, and stepped aside to avoid meeting him. He was in no mood for mere pa.s.sing plat.i.tudes such as the old man often dealt with. Charles crept around the house on the dewy gra.s.s, and found himself in the vicinity of the barn. Suddenly, despite his own depression, he felt a surge of pity pa.s.s over him at the thought of the plight of the two boys. They were her brothers, and on that account he loved them. He wondered if they were asleep already. Presently, while he stood looking at the dark, sloping roof of the barn, he saw a figure steal out from the kitchen door and move across the sward toward the barn. It was Mary. She pa.s.sed close to him, but made no sign of having seen him. Again his fears of having offended her womanhood besieged him.

She had said that she understood him, but she could not know how vast and grave his obligations were. Was there any way by which he could make them known and still be true to his vow? He could see none, and to suffer under her displeasure might only be another burden to bear. He walked back to the front of the house. He saw Rowland ascending the stairs with a candle in his hand on his way to his room. Twenty minutes pa.s.sed and then he saw Mary returning. How it was that he had the boldness to advance toward her he could not have explained, for, despite her open admissions in regard to himself, he still felt that he was only what he appeared to the outer world to be--a hired man of no social standing.

"I was hoping that I'd see you again to-night," she began, in an even tone. "I've just been to see my poor boys. Martin has a cold and I am giving him some medicine for it. I wanted to make a confession to you before I went to sleep to-night. I took the liberty of telling them something which you may not want them to know."

"About you and Frazier?" he ventured.

"No, no!" she answered, with a near approach to the sweet tone which she had used on the veranda. "Have you held that thought all by yourself here on the lawn? Was it that which made you stand like a post as I pa.s.sed just now? No, I did not mention his name. They don't like him.

They don't want me to--to--I sha'n't use the word. I think that is why you are so gloomy to-night--I mean because I said I was still at his mercy. This is what I told the boys. I could not help it. I could not keep it back. They won't tell, anyway. They promised, and do you know they would not displease you for anything; they admire you intensely. I told them who it was that sent Tobe Keith that money. I was partly guessing, but I told them that you sent it, too, by the friend who came here to see you and caused them such a fright."

Charles could find no words with which to answer; he heard her laugh softly as she stepped close to him and put her hand to his lapel and held it as she might have done were she pinning a flower upon it.

"Your good deeds tie your tongue," she said, "but you can't lie. You would lie out of this if you could. You tried to hide that act of goodness by what really was a sly trick, but I saw through it. I saw through it because I wanted it to be that way."

He caught her hand and held it, telling himself that it was a brief offense surely when he had made up his mind to give her up forever. But, oh, how it throbbed and pleaded in his clasp! Each little finger seemed to have a soul of its own. He dared not look into her eyes. Their drooping lashes seemed breakable bars between him and a life of eternal bliss.

"Are you angry because I told them?" she asked.

"Not if it pleased you," he said, pa.s.sionately. "That is all I live for--to please you."

"Do you mean it? Do you mean it, Charlie?" and she pressed his fingers--his calloused fingers--in her soft ones. She raised her face to his. "Oh, I know you do, but I am dying to hear you say so."

He nodded. He took a deep, quivering breath and slowly exhaled it; she felt him trembling; his face was grim and pale.

"I have no right," he said, "to talk to you this way--to allow you to--to talk to me in a way that would be impossible if you knew my whole history." He was speaking now as a man might just before the black cap was placed over his face. "I ought not to have come here to your father's house without--without telling him and you the full truth. I am a fugitive from the law. I can say that much without breaking my word to others. At any moment I may be caught and imprisoned. In that case your family would be mentioned as harboring me, and I had no right to let you unsuspectingly run that risk."

"You--you a fugitive from the law?" Mary cried. "You!"

He released her hand and mutely nodded. He kept his eyes now on the ground.

With a motion as swift as the flight of a hummingbird she caught his hand. She held it against her breast and forced his eyes to rise to hers. "I won't believe it! I won't! I won't! I won't! G.o.d will not let that be true, Charlie. You've come into my tormented life like a sweet dream of everything that is good and n.o.ble. You can't make me believe it. You have reasons for deceiving me. What they are I don't know, but what you say is not true. It would kill me to believe it. When Albert Frazier mentioned it I knew that it was too absurd to think about."

"Well, he was wrong about _that_," said Charles, seeing her drift.

"There were certain men in the circus who left about the time I did, and there were warrants out for their arrest. I was not one of them. I left for fear that certain questions regarding my ident.i.ty might be put to me that I could not answer, and for the additional reason that I was sick of the life I was leading. The--the offense with which I am charged dates further back. I did not think that I'd ever have to tell you these things, but I find that I must. I am not a safe man for you to know--certainly not a man worthy of--of the things you have said to-night. This living here and helping you a little has been like heaven to me, but it can't go on. I am a misfit in life. I am an outcast for all time. You may be holding a sort of ideal of me--women in their deep purity will do those things sometimes--but I must undeceive you. You must see me as I really am. I was a drunkard, a gambler--disgraced in the town I lived in, expelled from the clubs I belonged to, found guilty in court; I came away to hide myself from the eyes of all who knew me.

The new life has changed me to some extent. I see things differently. I think I have a keener moral sense. Adversity seems to have awakened it in me, but Fate is punis.h.i.+ng me severely, for the consequences of my past, it will always--always stand between me and the things I now want."

Mary still clung to his hand. Through his desperate recital she had looked steadfastly into his eyes. "I don't care what you have been," she said, under her breath. "It is what you are now that counts with me. The greatest men and the best in history have made mistakes when they were young. It is for you to judge whether--whether we can ever be anything more to each other than we are now. I don't think it amounts to much which it is, if only we love each other. That is the main thing. I don't know how you feel, but I can never love any other man--never!"

He lowered his head, but she saw that his eyes were ablaze.

"I think"--he was speaking now very earnestly, very despondently--"that I shall leave you as soon as my summer's work is over--that is, if you are out of your trouble by then. I could not go while you are so unhappy. I couldn't stand that."

"Oh, you mustn't go!" she sobbed, pressing the back of his hand to her wet eyes. "Why need you go?"

"Because the longer I stay the worse it will be for both of us, and I am afraid that my presence here will be discovered. I am using my own name.

I never threw it off. I must not be taken here. There are a thousand reasons why I should avoid a chance of that. You are the main one."

"Yes, that would kill me," she a.s.serted. Almost unconsciously she kissed his hand, she fondled it as a mother might that of a dying child. "I couldn't live after that." Suddenly, and after a pause, she fixed her eyes on his face again. "I want you to do something for me," she faltered.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I don't want you to tell father or my brothers what you have told me to-night."

"Why?" he wondered.

"Because they would misunderstand it all. They don't know you as I do, and I could not bear to have them misjudge you. You may have broken the law, but you said you were once in the habit of drinking too much. I am sure that if you did wrong you really were not conscious of what you were doing. No man with your n.o.bility of character could do wrong knowingly. It is not in you and never was. Don't tell my father and brothers. Will you?"

"If you don't want me to do so, I shall not," he promised. "I only wished you to understand my situation and be on your guard. It may be that a man's adoration of a woman may stir her sympathy and even cause her to imagine that she reciprocates his feeling, and you must have known how I felt about--"

"Yes," she interrupted, "I know. That night in the cabin--oh, that night! I've kissed its memory a thousand times. That night I saw love born in your eyes and I knew that for you no other girl existed. Is it any wonder that I loved you when I saw how humbly and unselfishly you were striving to save me from pain? Imagine that I reciprocate, indeed!

There is no imagination about my feeling for you, Charlie. This morning, when I discovered who it was that had sent that money to Tobe Keith, and knew that you were trying to keep me from discovering that you did it, I was so happy that I could not speak. In my mind I saw you stealing out of the house at night, meeting your friend at the hotel, and his slipping up to that cottage door while you remained hidden from view. Is it any wonder that I gloated in triumph over the fact that it was you who did the act of mercy rather than Albert Frazier? Is it any wonder that when he kissed me--It was just on the cheek, my darling, just here and it was as cold as ice. Kiss me, Charlie, kiss me--kiss me." Her face was raised to his, her lips were poised expectantly.

A storm of doubt swept over him, and then he clasped her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers.

CHAPTER XXV

It was just after sundown, two days later. Charles was at work in a patch of cabbages near the outer fence of the farm, not far from the barn. Presently, happening to look toward the thicket, he saw a man in a gray suit of clothes and a straw hat cautiously emerging. Their eyes met. The man waved a handkerchief and then stood still, partly hidden by the bushes among which he stood. Charles glanced toward the house and, seeing no one, he put down his hoe and walked toward the man. They met in the edge of the thicket and clasped hands.

"You are back already--or did you really go to Atlanta?" he questioned, eagerly.

"Yes, sir. I would have written, Mr. Charles, but--well, I thought it might not be best. You didn't say that I might. Yes, sir. I attended to everything the best I could. I was at the train when they got there with the poor fellow, and saw them take him from the Pullman at the station and put him into an ambulance from the sanatorium."

"How did he look? How did he seem to stand the trip?" Charles asked, anxiously.