Charlie suddenly shifted his position, and leaned his body against the counter. The saloonkeeper looked for that sign which was to re-establish his confidence. It was not forthcoming. For a moment the half-drunken man leaned his head upon one hand, and his face was turned from the other behind the bar.
O’Brien became impatient.
“Wal?” he demanded.
His persistence was rewarded at last. But it was rewarded with a shock which left him startled beyond retort.
Charlie suddenly brought a clenched fist down upon the counter with a force that set the glasses ringing.
“Fyles!” he cried fiercely, “Fyles! It’s always Fyles! God’s truth, am I never to hear, or see, the last of him? Say, you know. You think you know. But you don’t. Damn you, you don’t!”
Before the astonished saloonkeeper could recover himself and formulate the angry retort which rose to his lips, Charlie staggered out of the place.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SOUL OF A MAN
It was growing dark. Away in the west a pale stream of light was fading smoothly out, absorbed by the velvet softness of the summer night. There was no moon, but the starlit vault shone dazzlingly upon the shadowed valley. Already among the trees the yellow oil lamps were shining within the half-hidden houses.
From within a dense clump of trees, high up the northern slope of the valley, a man’s slight figure made its way. His movements were slow, deliberate, even furtive. For some moments he stood peering out at a point below where a woman’s figure was rapidly making its way up the steep trail toward the old Meeting House.
The man’s eyes were straining in the darkness for the outline of the woman’s figure was indistinct, only just discernible in the starlight. She came on, and he could distinctly hear her voice humming an old, familiar air. She evidently had no thought of the possibility that her movements could be of any interest to anybody but herself.
She reached the Meeting House and paused. Then the watching man heard the rattle of a key in the lock. The humming had ceased. The next moment there was the sound of a turning handle, and a tight-fitting door being thrust open. The woman’s figure had disappeared within the building.
The man left the sheltering bush and moved out on to the trail. He passed one thin hand across his brow, as though to clear the thoughts behind of their last murkiness after a drunken slumber. He stretched himself wearily as though stiff from his unyielding bed of sun-baked earth. Then he moved down the trail toward the Meeting House, selecting the scorched grass at the side of it to muffle the sound of his footsteps.
His weariness seemed to have entirely passed now, and all his attention was fixed upon the rough exterior of the old building, which had passed through such strange vicissitudes to finally become the house of worship it now was. With its old, heavy-plastered walls, and its long, reed-thatched roof, so heavy and vastly thick, it was a curiosity; the survival of days when men and beasts met upon a common arena and played out the game of life and death, each as it suited him, with none but the victor in the game to say him nay.
The man felt something of the influence of the place now as he drew near. Nor could he help feeling that the game that went on about it now had changed little enough in its purpose. The rules may have received modification, but the spirit was still the same. Men were still struggling for victory over some one else, and beneath the veneer of a growing civilization, passions, just as untamed, raged and worked their will upon their ill-starred possessors.
Reaching the building, he moved cautiously around the walls till he came to a window. It was closed, and a curtain was drawn across it. He passed on till he came to another window. It was partially open, and, though the curtain was drawn across it, the opening had disarranged the curtain, and a beam of light shone through.
He pressed his face toward the opening so that his mouth was at its level. Then he spoke softly, in a voice that was little more than a whisper —
“Kate!” he called. “Kate! It is I – Charlie. I’ve – I’ve been waiting for you, and want to speak to you.”
For answer there was a sound of hurrying footsteps across the floor of the room. The next moment the curtain was pulled aside. Kate stood at the other side of the window in the dim lamplight. Her handsome eyes were startled and full of inquiry, and her rounded bosom rose and fell quickly. When she saw the pale face peering in at her a gentle smile crept into her eyes.
“You scared the life out of me,” she said calmly. Then, with a quick look into his bloodshot eyes, she went on: “Why did you wait for me – here?”
Charlie lowered his eyes. “I – guessed you’d be along some time this evening. I wanted to speak to you – alone.”
Kate studied him for a moment. His averted, almost shifty, eyes seemed to hold her attention. She was thinking rapidly.
Presently his eyes came back to her face; a deep passion was shining in them.
“Can I come around to the door?”
There was just the smallest hesitation before Kate replied.
“Yes, if you must see me here.”
Charlie waited for no more. The door was on the other side of the building, overlooking the village below. He hurried thither, and when he thrust it open the place was in darkness.
Kate’s voice greeted him promptly. “The draught has blown the lamp out. Have you a match?”
Charlie closed the door behind him, and produced and struck a match. The lamp flared up and Kate replaced the glass chimney. Then she moved over to the wall and placed the lamp in its bracket.
It was a curious interior. In their unevenness the white kalsomined walls displayed their primitive workmanship. The windows were small, framed, and set deep in the ponderous walls. They looked almost like the arrow slits in a mediæval fortress. The long, pitched roof was supported, and collared, by heavy, untrimmed logs, which, at some time, had formed the floor-supports of a sort of loft. This had been done away with since, for the purpose of giving air to the suppliants at a prayer meeting below.
At the far end of the room were two reading desks and a sort of communion table. While in one corner, behind one of the reading desks, was a cheap-looking harmonium. Here and there, upon the rough walls, were nailed cardboard streamers, conveying, amid a wealth of illumination, sundry appropriate texts of a non-committal religious flavor, and down the narrow body of the building were stretched rows of hard-seated, hard-backed benches for the accommodation of the congregation.
One swift glance sufficed for Charlie, and his eyes came back to the woman’s smiling face. Her good looks were undoubted, but to him they were of an almost celestial order. There was no creature in the whole wide world to compare with her.
His eyes devoured every detail of her expression, of her personality, with the hungry greed of a soul-starved man. It was almost an impossibility for him to seize upon and hold the thoughts that so swiftly poured through his brain. So the moments passed and Kate found her patience ebbing.
“Well?” she demanded, her smile slowly fading.
The man breathed a sigh, and swallowed as with a dry throat. The spell of her charm had been broken.
“I had to come,” he cried, with a nervous rush. “I had to find you. I had to speak to you – to tell you.”
The woman’s eyes, so steadily fixed upon his face, were wearing an almost hard look.
“Was it necessary to stimulate your nerve to come, and – speak to me? Charlie, Charlie,” Kate went on more gently, her fine eyes softening, “when is this all to cease? Why must you drink? It seems so hopeless. Oh, man, where is your backbone, your grit. You tell me you long to be free of your curse, yet you plunge headlong the moment you are disturbed.”
Her moment of passionate remonstrance passed and a subtle coolness superseded it, as the scarlet flushed into the man’s pale cheeks.
“Tell it me all,” she went on, “tell me what it is you had to see me about. Remember, to-morrow is Sunday, and this place must be put in order for meeting. As it is, I am late. I was kept.”
The flush of shame died out of the man’s face, and his eyes became questioning. But his manner was almost humble.
“I know,” he said. “I knew I had no right to disturb you – now. I knew you would resent it. But I had to see you – while I had the chance. To-morrow it might be too late.”
“Too late?”
The woman’s question came with a sharp, rising inflection.
“Oh, Kate, Kate, won’t you understand what has brought me? Can’t you understand all that I feel now that the shadow of the law is so threatening here in this valley? All the time I’m thinking of you; thinking of all you mean in my life; thinking of the love which would make it a happiness to lay down my life for you, the love which to me is the whole, whole world.”
He ceased speaking with a curious abruptness. It was as though there were much more to be said, but he feared to give it expression.
Kate seized upon his pause to remonstrate.
“Hush, Charlie,” she cried almost vehemently, “you mustn’t tell me all this. You mustn’t. I am not worthy of such a love from any man. Besides,” she went on, with a sigh, “it is all so useless. I have no love to return you. You know that. You have known it so long. Our friendship has been precious to me. It will always be precious. I feel, somehow, that you belong to me, are part of me, but not in the way you would have it. Oh, Charlie, the one thought in my mind, the one desire in my heart, is for your welfare. I desire that more than I could ever desire the love of any man. You love me, and yet by every act of yours that jeopardizes that welfare you stab me to the heart as surely as you add another nail to the coffin of your moral and physical well-being. You come here to tell me of these things, straight from one of your mad debauches, the signs of which are even now in your eyes, and in your shaking, nervous hands. Oh, Charlie, why must it all be? What madness is it with which you are possessed?”
The man looked into her big eyes, so full of strength and courage. The yellow lamplight left them shining darkly. He sought in them something that always seemed to baffle. Something he knew was there, but which ever eluded him. And the while he cried out in bitterness at her challenge.
“What does it matter – these things?” he said hoarsely. “What does it matter what I am if – I can’t be anything to you?”
Then his bitterness was redoubled, and an almost savage light shone in his usually gentle eyes.
“Oh, God, I know I can never be anything to you but a sort of puling weakling, who must be nursed, and petted, and cared for. I know,” he went on, his words coming with a rush in the height of his protesting passion, “if your thoughts, your secret thoughts and feelings, were put into words, I know what they would say of me, must say of me. Do I need to tell you? No, I think not. Look at me. It is sufficient.”
He paused, his great dark eyes alight as Kate had never seen them before. Then he went on, and his tone had become subdued, and its rich note thrilled with the depths of passion stirring him.
“But for all that I am a man, Kate. For all my weakness I have strength to feel, to love, to fight. I have all that, besides, which goes to make a man, just as surely as has the man, Fyles, whom you love. I know, Kate. Denial would be useless, and in denying, you would be untrue to yourself. Fyles is the man for you, and no one knows it better than I. Fyles! The irony of it. The man who represents the law is the man who stands between me and all I desire on earth. I have seen it. I have watched. Nothing that concerns your life escapes me. How could it, when my whole thought is for you – you? But the agony of mind I suffer is no less. I cannot help it, Kate. The knowledge and sight of things drives me nearly crazy, and I suffer the tortures of hell. But even so, if your happiness lies at Fyles’s side, then – I would have it so. If I were sure – sure that this happiness were awaiting you. Is it, Kate? Think. Think of it in – every aspect. Is it? Happiness with this – Fyles?”
It was some moments before Kate made any reply. Her eyes were fixed upon the old Communion Table, so shadowy in the single lamplight. She was asking herself many questions; almost as many as he could have asked her. She had permitted herself to drift on the tide of her feelings. Whither? She knew she was beyond her depth. Her life was in the hands of a Providence which would inevitably work its will. All she knew was that she loved. She had known it from the first. She loved, and rejoiced that it was so. Again, there were moments when she feared as cordially. She knew the work that lay before this lover of hers. She knew in what direction it pointed. And in obedience to her thoughts her eyes came back to the drunkard’s eager face.
“You – you came to tell me – all this?” she said, in a low tone. “You came to assure yourself of my – happiness?” Then she shook her head. “Tell me the rest.”
It was Charlie’s turn to hesitate now. The demand had robbed him of the small enough confidence he possessed.
But Kate was waiting and he had no power to deny her anything.
“I came to tell you of – things, while I still have the chance. To-morrow? Who knows what to-morrow may bring forth?”
A keen, hard light suddenly flashed into the woman’s eyes.
“What of – to-morrow?” she demanded sharply, while she studied the man’s pale features, with their boyish good looks.
For answer Charlie reached out and caught one of her hands in both of his. She strove to release it, but he clung to it despairingly.
“No, no, Kate. Don’t take it away,” he cried passionately. “It is for the last – the very last time. Tell me, dear, is – is there no hope for me? None? Kate, I love you so. I do – dear. I will give up everything for you, dear, everything. I can do it. I will do it. I swear it, if – only you’ll love me. Tell me. Is there – ?”
Kate shook her head, and the man dropped her hand with a gesture of utter hopelessness.
“My love is given, Charlie. Believe me, I have not given it. It – it is simply gone from me.”
Kate sighed. Then her mood changed again. That sharp alert look came into her eyes once more.
“Tell me – of to-morrow,” she urged him.
The second demand had a pronounced effect upon Charlie. The air of the suppliant fell from him, even the signs of his recent debauch seemed to give way before a startling alertness of mentality. In his curious way he seemed suddenly to have become the man of action, full of a keenness of perception and shrewdness which might well have carried an added conviction to Stanley Fyles, had he witnessed the display.
“Listen,” he said, with a thrill of excitement. “Maybe it’s not necessary to tell you. Maybe it’s stale news. Anyway, to-morrow is to be the day of Fyles’s coup.” He paused, watching for the effect of his words.
Just for an instant the woman’s eyes flashed, but whether in fear, or merely excited interest, it would have been impossible to say.
“Go on,” she said.
“To-morrow the village is to be surrounded by a chain of police patrols. Every entry will be closely watched for the incoming cargo of whisky. Fyles reckons to get me red-handed.”
“You?”
Kate’s eyes flashed again.
“Sure. That’s how he reckons.”
They looked into each other’s eyes steadily. Charlie’s were lit by a curious baffling irony.
It was finally Charlie who spoke.
“Fyles’s plans are not likely to disconcert – anybody. There is no fear of legitimate capture. It is treachery – that is to be feared.”
Kate started.
“Treachery?”
The man nodded. And the woman gave a sharp exclamation of disgust.
“Treachery! I hate it. I despise it. I – I could kill a traitor. You – fear treachery?”
“I have been warned of it. That’s all,” he said, in a hard biting voice. “It is because of this I’ve come to you to-night. Who can tell the outcome of to-morrow if there’s treachery? So I came to you to make my – last appeal.” In a moment his passion was blazing forth again. “Say the word, dear. Forget this man. Give me one little grain of hope. We can leave this place, and all the treachery in the world doesn’t matter. We can leave that, and everything else, behind us – forever.”
Kate shook her head. It almost seemed as though his pleading had passed her by.
“It can’t be,” she said, almost coldly. “It’s too late.”
“Too late?”
The woman nodded, but her thoughts seemed far away.
“Tell me,” she said, after a pause, while she avoided the man’s despairing eyes, “where does the treachery – lie?”
The man turned away. His slim shoulders lifted with seeming indifference.
“Pete Clancy and Nick Devereux – your two boys. But I don’t know yet. I’m not sure.”
Suddenly Kate moved toward him. The coldness had passed out of her manner. Her eyes had softened, and a smile, a tender smile, shone in their depths. She held out her two hands.
“Charlie, boy,” she said, “you needn’t fear for treachery for to-morrow. Leave Pete and Nick to me. I can deal with them. I promise you Fyles will gain nothing in the game he’s playing, through them. Now, you must go. Give up all thought of me. We cannot help things. We can never be anything to each other, more than we are now, so why endure the pain and misery of a hope than can never be fulfilled. As long as I live I shall pray for your welfare. So long as I can I shall strive for it. It is for you to be strong. You must set your heart upon living down this old past, and – forgetting me. I am not worth the love you give me. Indeed – indeed I am not.”
But her outstretched hands were ignored. Charlie made a slight, impatient movement, and turned toward the door. Finally he looked back, and, for a moment, his gaze encountered the appeal in Kate’s eyes. Then he passed on swiftly as though he could not endure the sight of all that which he knew to be slipping from beyond his reach.
One hand reached the door handle, then he hunched his shoulders obstinately.
“I give up nothing, Kate. Nothing,” he said doggedly. “I love you, and I shall go on loving you to – the end.”
It was late when Kate returned to her home. The house was in darkness, and the moon brought it out in silvery, frigid relief. Thrusting the front door open, she paused for a moment upon the threshold. She might have been listening; she might merely have been thinking. Finally she sat down and removed her shoes and gently tip-toed to her sister’s room.
Helen’s door was ajar, and she pushed it open and looked in. The moonlight was shining across her sister’s fair features, and the mass of loose fair hair which framed them. She was sound asleep in that wonderful dreamless land of rest, far from the turbulent little world in which her waking hours were spent.
Kate as softly withdrew. Now she made her way back to the familiar kitchen parlor, and, in the dark, took up her position at the open window. Her whole attention was centered upon the ranch house of Charlie Bryant across the valley, which stood out in the moonlight almost as clearly as in daylight. A light was shining in one of its windows.
She sat there waiting with infinite patience, and at last the light was extinguished. Then she rose, and, going to her bureau, picked up a pair of night glasses. She leveled these at the distant house and continued her watch.
Her vigil, however, did not last long. In a few minutes she distinctly beheld a figure move out on to the veranda. Its identity, at that distance, she was left to conjecture. But she saw it leave the veranda and make its way round to the barn. A few minutes later, again, it reappeared, this time mounted upon a horse.
She sighed. It was a sigh of impatience, it was also a sigh of resignation. Then she rose from her seat, and returned her night glasses to the bureau. Again she looked out of the window, but this time she remained standing. Nor were her eyes turned upon the distant ranch house. Her whole attitude was one of deep pensiveness.
At last, however, she stirred, and, quite suddenly, her movements became quick and decided. It almost seemed as though she had finally reached a definite resolve.
She passed out of the room, and then out of the house through the back way. The little barn was within a hundred yards of the house. She was still in the shadow of the house when she became aware of figures moving just outside the barn. In a moment she recognized them. They were her two hired men in the act of riding away on their horses.
She let them get well away. Then she drew the door close after her and crossed over to the barn.
The door was open and she went in. Passing the two empty stalls where the men’s horses were kept, she went on to another, where her own horse, hearing her approach, set its collar chains rattling and greeted her with a suppressed whinny.
It was the work of but a few minutes to saddle him and bring him out into the moonlight. Then she mounted him and rode off in the wake of those who had gone on before.