The Ancient Law Part 49

For a moment Daniel stood there in silence, with his eyes on the gold-topped bottles on Lydia's dressing table. He had heard Alice's fall, but he did not stoop to lift her; he had heard Richard's words, but he did not reply to them. In one instant a violent revulsion--a furious anger against Alice swept over him, and the next he felt suddenly, as in his dream, the little hands pa.s.s over his brow and lips.

"She is right about it, Uncle Richard," he said, "I gave her the check."

At the words Richard turned quickly away, but with a shriek of joy, Alice raised herself to her knees, and looked up with s.h.i.+ning eyes.

"I told you papa would know! I told you papa would help me!" she cried triumphantly to the old man.

Without looking at her, Richard turned his glance again to his nephew's face, and something that was almost a tremor seemed to pa.s.s through his voice.

"Daniel," he asked, "what is the use?"

"She has told you the truth," repeated Daniel steadily, "I gave her the check."

"You are ready to swear to this?"

"If it is necessary, I am."

Alice had dragged herself slowly forward, still on her knees, but as she came nearer him, Daniel retreated instinctively step by step until he had put the table between them.

"It is better for me to go away, I suppose, at once?" he inquired of Richard.

The gesture with which Richard responded was almost impatient. "If you are determined--it will be necessary for a time at least," he replied.

"There's no doubt, I hope, that the case will be hushed up, but already there has been something of a scandal. I have made good the loss to the bank, but Geoffrey has been very difficult to bring to reason. He wanted a divorce and he wanted revenge in a vulgar way upon Alice."

"But she is safe now?" asked Daniel, and the coldness in his tone came as a surprise to him when he spoke.

"Yes, she is safe," returned Richard, "and you, also, I trust. There is little danger, I think, under the circ.u.mstances, of a prosecution. If at any time," he added, with a shaking voice, "before your return you should wish the control of your property, I will turn it over to you at once."

"Thank you," said Daniel quietly, and then with an embarra.s.sed movement, he held out his hand. "I shall go, I think, on the four o'clock train,"

he continued, "is that what you would advise?"

"It is better, I feel, to go immediately. I have an appointment with the lawyer for the bank at a quarter of five." He put out his hand again for his nephew's. "Daniel, you are a good man," he added, as he turned away.

Not until a moment later, when he was in the hall, did Ordway remember that he had left Alice crouched on the floor, and coming back he lifted her into his arms. "It is all right, Alice, don't cry," he said, as he kissed her. Then turning from her, with a strange dullness of sensation, he crossed the hall and entered his room, where he found Lydia still lying with her face hidden in the cus.h.i.+ons of the chair.

At his step she looked up and put out her hand, with an imploring gesture.

"Daniel!" she called softly, "Daniel!"

Before replying to her he went to his bureau and hurriedly packed some clothes into a bag. Then, with the satchel still in his hand, he came over and stopped beside her.

"I can't wait to explain, Lydia; Uncle Richard will tell you," he said.

"You are going away? Do you mean you are going away?" she questioned.

"To-morrow you will understand," he answered, "that it is better so."

For a moment uncertainty clouded her face; then she raised herself and leaned toward him.

"But Alice? Does Alice go with you?" she asked.

"No, Alice is safe. Go to her."

"You will come back again? It is not forever?"

He shook his head smiling. "Perhaps," he answered.

She still gazed steadily up at him, and he saw presently a look come into her face like the look with which she had heard of the blow he had struck Geoffrey Heath.

"Daniel, you are a brave man," she said, and sobbed as she kissed him.

Following him to the threshold, she listened, with her face pressed against the lintel, while she heard him go down the staircase and close the front door softly behind him.

CHAPTER VII

FLIGHT

NOT until the train had started and the conductor had asked for his ticket, did Ordway realize that he was on his way to Tappahannock. At the discovery he was conscious of no surprise--scarcely of any interest--it seemed to matter to him so little in which direction he went. A curious numbness of sensation had paralysed both his memory and his perceptions, and he hardly knew whether he was glad or sorry, warm or cold. In the same way he wondered why he felt no regret at leaving Botetourt forever--no clinging tenderness for his home, for Lydia, for Alice. If his children had been strangers to him he could not have thought of his parting from them with a greater absence of feeling. Was it possible at last that he was to be delivered from the emotional intensity, the power of vicarious suffering, which had made him one of the world's failures? He recalled indifferently Alice's convulsed features, and the pathetic quiver of her lip, which had drooped like a child's that is hurt. These things left him utterly unmoved when he remembered them, and he even found himself asking the next instant, with a vague curiosity, if the bald-headed man in the seat in front of him was going home to spend Christmas with his daughter? "But what has this bald-headed man to do with Alice or with me?" he demanded in perplexity, "and why is it that I can think of him now with the same interest with which I think of my own child? I am going away forever and I shall never see them again," he continued, with emphasis, as if to convince himself of some fact which he had but half understood. "Yes, I shall never see them again, and Alice will be quite happy without me, and Alice's child will grow up probably without hearing my name. Yet I did it for Alice.

No, I did not do it for Alice, or for Alice's child," he corrected quickly, with a piercing flash of insight. "It was for something larger, stronger--something as inevitable as the law. I could not help it, it was for myself," he added, after a minute. And it seemed to him that with this inward revelation the outer covering of things was stripped suddenly from before his eyes. As beneath his sacrifice he recognised the inexorable law, so beneath Alice's beauty he beheld the skeleton which her radiant flesh clothed with life, and beneath Lydia's mask of conventionality her little naked soul, too delicate and s.h.i.+vering to stand alone. It was as if all pretence, all deceit, all illusions, had shrivelled now in the hard dry, atmosphere through which he looked.

"Yes, I am indifferent to them all and to everything," he concluded; "Lydia, and d.i.c.k and even Alice are no closer to me than is the bald-headed man on the front seat. n.o.body is closer to another when it comes to that, for each one of us is alone in an illimitable s.p.a.ce."

The swinging lights of the train were reflected in the falling snow outside, like orbed blue flames against a curtain of white. Through the crack under the window a little cold draught entered, blowing the cinders from the sill into his face. It was the common day coach of a local train, and the pa.s.sengers were, for the most part, young men or young women clerks, who were hastening back to their country homes for Christmas. Once when they reached a station several girls got off, with their arms filled with packages, and pushed their way through the heavy drifts to a sleigh waiting under the dim oil lamp outside. For a minute he followed them idly in his imagination, seeing the merry party ploughing over the old country roads to the warm farm house, where a bright log fire and a Christmas tree were prepared for them. The window panes were frosted over now, and when the train started on its slow journey he could see only the orbed blue flames dancing in the night against the whirling snowflakes.

It was nine o'clock when they pulled into Tappahannock and when he came out upon the platform he found that the storm had ceased, though the ground lay white and hard beneath the scattered street lamps. Straight ahead of him, as he walked up the long hill from the station, he heard the ring of other footsteps on the frozen snow. The lights were still burning in the little shops, and through the uncurtained windows he could see the variegated display of Christmas decorations. Here and there a woman, with her head wrapped in a shawl, was peering eagerly at a collection of toys or a wreath of evergreens, but, for the rest, the shops appeared singularly empty even for so late an hour on Christmas Eve. In the absorption of his thoughts, he scarcely noticed this, and he was conscious of no particular surprise when, as he reached the familiar warehouse, he saw Baxter's enormous figure loom darkly under the flickering light above the sidewalk. Behind him the vacant building yawned like a sepulchral cavern, the dim archway hung with a glistening fringe of icicles.

"Is that you, Baxter?" he asked, and stretched out his hand with a mechanical movement.

"Why, bless my soul, Smith!" exclaimed Baxter, "who'd ever have believed it!"

"I've just got off the train," returned Ordway, feeling vaguely that some explanation of his presence was needed, "and I'm trying to find a place where I can keep warm until I take the one for the West at midnight. It didn't occur to me that you would be in your office. I was going to Mrs. Buzzy's."

"You'd better come along with me, for I don't believe you'll find a living soul at Mag Buzzy's--not even a kid," replied Baxter, "her husband is one of Jasper Trend's overseers, you know, and they're most likely down at the cotton mills."

"At the cotton mills? Why, what's the matter there?"

"You haven't heard then? I thought it was in all the papers. There's been a big strike on for a week--Jasper lowered wages the first of the month--and every operative has turned out and demanded more pay and shorter hours. The old man's hoppin', of course, and the funny part is, Smith, that he lays every bit of the trouble at your door. He says that you started it all by raisin' the ideas of the operatives."

"But it's a pretty serious business for them, Baxter. How are they going to live through this weather?"

"They ain't livin', they're starvin', though I believe the union is comin' to their help sooner or later. But what's that in such a blood-curdlin' spell as this?"

A sudden noise, like that of a great shout, rising and falling in the bitter air, came to them from below the slope of the hill, and catching Ordway's arm, Baxter drew him closer under the street lamp.

"They're hootin' at the guards Trend has put around the mills," he said, while his words floated like vapour out of his mouth into the cold, "he's got policemen stalkin' up an' down before his house, too."