Chapter 7

The motor-cycle had stopped during this declaration, and the rider now stepped into the office-door. Geraldine, her hands still unconsciously on her heart, gazed at the newcomer. Could it be that Rufus Carder had a tenant like this youth? The well-born, the well-bred, showed in his erect bearing and in his sunny brown eyes, and the smile that matched them.

The owner started and scowled at sight of him.

"Mr. Carder, I believe," said the visitor.

Rufus's chair grated as he advanced to edge the stranger back through the door.

"Your business, sir," he said roughly. "Can't you see I'm in the midst of an interview?"

Ben's eyes never left those of the young girl, and hers clung to him with a desperate appeal impossible to mistake. She rose from her chair as if to go to him.

"Yes, Mr. Carder, and I won't interrupt you. I'll wait outside. I came to see Miss Melody with a message from one of her friends and I'm sure from the description that this is she." The young fellow bowed courteously toward Geraldine, who stood mute drinking in the inflections of his voice; the very pronunciation of his words were earmarks of the world of refinement from which she was exiled. In her distraction she was unconscious of the manner in which she was gazing at him above the tumult of grief at her father's double treachery. Her father had sold her, sold her in cold blood, and her life was ruined. Had the visitor in his youth and strength and grace been Sir Galahad himself, she could not have yearned more toward his protection.

To Ben she looked, as she stood there, like a lovely lily in a green calyx, and her expression made his hands tingle to knock flat the scowling, middle-aged man with the unkempt hair and the missing tooth who was uneasily edging him farther and farther out the door.

"Miss Melody don't wish to receive calls at present and you can tell her friend so," said Rufus in the same rough tone. "She don't wear black, but she's in mournin' all the same. Her father died recently. Ain't you in mournin', Geraldine?" He turned toward the girl.

She had dropped her hands and seized the back of her chair for support.

"Yes," she breathed despairingly.

"Can't I see you for a few minutes, Miss Melody?" said Ben over the wrathful Carder's shoulder. "Miss Upton sent me to you. My name is Barry."

"No, you can't, and that's the end of it!" shouted Rufus.

Ben's smile had vanished. His eyes had sparks in them as he looked down at the shorter man.

"Not at all the end of it," he returned. "Miss Melody decides this. Can you give me a few minutes?"

As he addressed her he again met the wonderful, dark-lashed eyes that were beseeching him.

Rufus Carder looked around at the girl his thin lips twitching in ugly fashion.

"_You_ can tell him, then, if he won't take it from me," he said, "and mind you're quick about it. We ain't ready here for guests. Miss Melody don't want to receive anybody. She's tired and she's recuperatin'. Tell him so, Geraldine."

The girl's lips moved at first without a sound; then she spoke:

"I'm very tired, Mr. Barry," she said faintly. "Please excuse me."

Rufus turned back to the guest.

"Good-day, sir," he ejaculated savagely.

Ben stood for a silent space undecided. His fists were clenched. Geraldine, meeting his glowing eyes, shook her head slowly. Her keen distress made him fear to make another move.

"At some other time, then, perhaps," he said, tingling with the increasing desire to knock down his host and catch this girl up in his arms.

"Yes, at some other time," said Rufus, speaking with a sneer. "Tell Miss Upton that Mrs. Carder may see her later."

A tide of crimson rushed over Ben's face. He saw that there must be a pressure here that he could not understand, and again Geraldine's fair head and wonderful eyes signaled him a warning. He could not risk increasing her suffering.

"Good-day, sir," repeated Rufus; and the visitor stepped down from the office-door in silence and out to his machine.

Carder turned back to Geraldine, who met his angry gaze with despairing eyes.

"What have I to hope for from you when you treat a stranger so inexcusably?" she said in a low, clear voice that had a sharp edge.

"Let me run this," said Rufus with bravado. "You'll find out later what you'll get from me, and it will be nothin' to complain of when once you're Mrs. Carder. You can have that fat porpoise or any other woman come to see you, and when you're ridin' 'em around in the new car I'm goin' to get you, they'll be green with envy. You'll see. Let me run this."

His absorption in Geraldine had distracted Carder's attention from the fact that he was not hearing the departure of that most satirically named engine of misery, "The Silent Traveler."

He strode to a window and saw Ben Barry mounting his machine close to where Pete was mowing the grass.

He hurried to the door. "Come here, you damned coot!" he yelled. And Pete dropped the mower and ambled up to the office-door.

"What did that man want of you?" he asked furiously.

"Wanted to know the shortest road to Keefe," replied Pete in his usual sullen tone.

"You lie!" exclaimed Rufus. If Ben Barry had looked like a dusty Sir Galahad to Geraldine, he had looked dangerously attractive to Carder, who cursed the luck that had made him invite the girl to his office on this particular afternoon. "You lie!" he repeated, and stepping back to his desk he seized a whip which lay along one side of it.

Geraldine cried out, and springing forward grasped his arm. He paused at the first voluntary touch he had ever received from her.

"Don't you dare strike that boy!" she exclaimed breathlessly.

Carder looked down at the white horror in her face and in her shining eyes.

"I'm goin' to get the truth out of him," he said, his mouth twitching. "You go up to the house."

"I will not go up to the house! Put down that whip! If you strike Pete, I'll kill myself." She finished speaking, more slowly, and Rufus, looking down into her strangely changed look, became uneasy.

"I guess not," he said. "You go up to the house."

"I mean it," declared Geraldine in a low tone. "What have I to live for! My own father, the only one on earth I had to love, has sold me to a man who has shown himself a ruffian. One thing you have no power over is my life, and what have I now to live for!"

Carder dropped the whip. There was no doubt of her sincerity.

"Now, Geraldine, calm down," he said, anxiety sounding through his bravado. "I'm sorry I had to give you that shock about Dick; but it was your own high-headed attitude that made it necessary. Calm down now. I won't touch Pete. What was it, boy," he went on, addressing the dwarf in his usual tone--"What did that man ask you?"

"The shortest way to Keefe," repeated the dwarf. His eyes were fixed dully on Geraldine, but his heart was thumping. She had said she would kill herself if his master struck him.

Rufus looked at him, unsatisfied.

"What did he give you?" he asked after a silence.

Pete put his hand in the pocket of his coarse blue shirt and drew out a half-dollar.

"Humph!" grunted Rufus. "You can go."

He turned back to Geraldine.

"Is one allowed to write letters from here?" she asked.

"Of course, of course," replied Rufus genially. "What a foolish question." His face had settled into its customary lines.

"Where do we take them? Out to the rural-delivery box? I should like to write to Miss Upton. She was very kind to me."

"No, don't mail anything there. It isn't safe. Right here is the place." He indicated a box on his desk. "Drop anything you want to have go right in here. I'll take care of it."

"Yes," thought Geraldine bitterly. He will take care of it.

Another motor-cycle now sped into the driveway and approached. This time it was the tenant Carder had expected, and Geraldine left the office and went back to the house. At the moment when she stepped out of the yellow building, Pete ceased mowing the grass. Looking back when she had traversed half the distance, she saw that he was following her, the mower clicking after him.

"Poor slaves," she thought heavily. "Poor slaves, he and I!"