CHAPTER XXVII

IN WHICH JUDGE HARMON LEAVES THE STORY

The Judge opened the street-door for Beth, and seemed to be preparing to follow her out. In spite of all she had gone through, perhaps because of it, her mind was alive to little things, and she saw that he was dazed. "You're not coming with me, sir? And without your coat?"

"I was going with you, was I not?" he asked. "But I--I've forgotten. Can you find your way alone?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "You must not come. Go in, sir." As if mechanically, he obeyed her, and shut the door. Beth went down the steps.

But the Judge seemed still confused. Slowly, very slowly he entered the hall. He went to the great chair that stood opposite the parlour door, and sat in it. His breath still came with difficulty, his head was buzzing; he could not remember what had happened. Then, raising his head, he looked through the portieres, which he and Beth had parted slightly, into the parlour. He saw, he remembered, and his heart gave a great leap in his breast.

So long as they heard voices at the door, Mrs. Harmon and Jim had stood listening. But when the indistinct tones ceased, and the door shut, they looked at each other.

"They've both gone!" Jim said. But they listened a moment longer. The slow footsteps of the Judge, as he made his way over the heavy rugs, were inaudible. Jim held his hands out to her again, but she pointed to the ring upon the floor.

"Trouble for you!"

He picked up the ring. "Trouble for both of us," he responded gloomily.

"Worst for you," she replied. "What shall you do?"

"I don't know."

"Oh!" and she stamped her foot. "How stupid of us! It was all, at last, just as we wished it. It could have gone on, nobody knowing. Now--oh, I am furious!"

"You mean," he asked, "that you would have let it go on as we were?"

"Yes."

"Meeting only once in a while?"

"Of course!"

"And that would have satisfied you?"

"Satisfied? No, Jim. But that would be all we could have."

"Then I am glad we were seen!" he cried. "I couldn't have gone on that way. Now we shall have to act."

"Act? What do you mean?"

"This," answered Jim. "Everything has got to stop for me, anyway. I'm--I'm in trouble. Ellis----" and he stopped to curse.

"Don't, don't!" she begged him. "Explain; I don't understand."

"He led me into it," said Jim. "He suggested it all: how I could take the money they send to the mill every Saturday for the men's pay, how I could get my mother's power of attorney, and use her securities. I never should have thought of it but for him--never!"

"You mean," asked Mrs. Harmon, "that you have done those things?"

"Yes," he replied. "I wanted to please you, to give you things, and have money."

She turned partly away from him, and stood looking down. Jim came to her side. "But we don't care, do we, Lydia?" He put his hands on her shoulders.

She moved away quickly. "What do you mean?"

"Ellis won't help me. Mather is after me. I've got to go away--go away this very night. Lydia, come with me!"

"Mr. Wayne," she began slowly.

"No; call me Jim!"

"You poor Jim, then. I can't do this."

"Why?" he stammered. "I thought you loved me?"

"So I do. So I will, if you'll stay here and let things go on as they were."

"Haven't I shown you I can't?"

"It can be hushed up."

"No, no!" he cried in despair. "And I can't face people; everybody will know. Lydia, come with me!" He neared her again, stretching out his arms; as she sought to avoid him, he strode to her side and caught her. "Come, come! I can't give you up." He crushed her to him and began kissing her eagerly.

But she resisted with sudden energy. "Let me go! Shall I call the servants?" He released her in astonishment; angrily she moved away from him, smoothing her dress. "I believe you're a fool after all, as Mr. Ellis said."

"Lydia!"

"I am Mrs. Harmon," she returned. "If you won't make a fight for yourself, you're not the man I thought you. Go away, then, but not with me."

"Then you don't love me?"

"Boy!" she said, growing scornful. "Love? What is love but convenience?"

"Oh," he cried, "come! You must come with me. See, I have money. Seven, eight hundred, I think. That will last a long time. We can go somewhere; I can get work; no one will find us."

"And that," she asked, "is all you offer? Eight hundred dollars, and a life in hiding!"

He began to understand, this poor Jim, but it was too much to grasp all at once. "You're fooling me, aren't you? Don't; I can't bear it. Say you'll come with me!" Beseeching her with open arms, he went toward her so eagerly that to avoid him she slipped around the table and went to the door. Then as she looked back at him, awkwardly pursuing, she saw him as she had never seen him before. He had rumpled his hair again: none but a manly head looks well when mussed. His eyes were bloodshot, his mouth open; she turned away in disgust, and looked into the hallway to measure her retreat.

There she saw her husband sitting, upright in his chair. With a sudden movement she threw the curtains wide apart and revealed him to Jim. "See," she said. "I have a protector. Now will you leave me?"

A protector! Jim, at first startled, saw the open mouth, the glazing eyes. He pointed, gasping; she saw and was frightened. In three steps she was at her husband's side; she grasped his arm. He was dead! Then she recovered herself. The doctor had said this might happen.

"He is--is----" hesitated Jim. "Oh, come back here; shut it out!"

"I shall call the servants," she answered. "You had better go."

"Go? And you are free! Lydia," he cried in despair, "for the last time, come with me!"

Cold and steady, she returned the proper response. "And you ask me that in his dead presence! Free, when his death claims my duty to him? Go with you, when I should stay and mourn him?"

Had she opened her breast and shown him a heart of stone, she could not better have revealed her nature. It was to Jim as if the earth had yawned before his feet, showing rottenness beneath its flowers. That eye of ice, that hard mouth, those blasphemous words! Jim did not know, he never could remember, how he got himself from the house.

He fled by night from the pursuit that never was to be. Taking the New York train, he lay in his berth, thinking, dozing, thinking again, while the train sped through the darkness. He slept and dreamed of burning kisses; he woke to feel the swaying of the car, to hear the whistle scream, or, shutting out all other sounds, to strain his ears for noises close at hand--the rustling of the curtains or the soft footfall of the porter. He slept again, and from a nightmare in which a serpent coiled about him, he came to himself in a quiet station, where steam hissed steadily, where hurrying steps resounded, where trucks rumbled by, and voices were heard giving orders. He looked from his berth along the curtained aisle--what misery besides his own was hiding behind those hangings? Then he dozed again with the motion of the train, and saw Beth, far removed and wonderfully pure, looking down on him with horror; his dream changed and Mrs. Harmon stood at his side, leading a walking corpse. And then he started from sleep with a smothered shriek, and with his thoughts urged the train to go faster, faster away from Beth, from that temptress, from the friends he had betrayed and the mother whom he had robbed.