Part 10

Something in her tone had made Daniel take the books from the pile on her arm. It was a set, prayer-book and hymnal bound in one and prettily mounted. He slipped the clasp and opened them. A faded pansy slipped between the pages. He clasped it hastily and handed it back.

“I thought I knew them,” he said hastily.

“Yes?” Virginia’s eyes avoided his. Her lips were trembling, he thought. “I’ve had them a long time. William--your brother--gave them to me when I was just sixteen.”

“I wonder,” said Daniel, looking up at the old church, “how long ago they planted that English ivy! There’s a perfect mantle of it, isn’t there?”

“Grandfather says the old rector planted it--the one who married grandfather and grandmother in this very church.”

“I suppose he did as much for my grandparents,” said Daniel. “I wonder if they gave him a good fee!”

“Oh, you lawyer!” cried Virginia, and laughed happily.

But Daniel continued to look at the ivy. He had seen her face.

“She still loves William,” he thought bitterly.

Virginia, hiding her confusion, began to ascend the old stone steps.

“Why, there’s your father!” she exclaimed suddenly. “I didn’t know that he often came this way.”

Daniel, who was very pale again, looked around.

“He counted on walking down with me, I fancy,” he remarked quietly, aware of the thunderstorm in Mr. Carter’s face.

Virginia saw it, too, and made haste.

“I’m going in now. Good-by, Daniel, and remember--about that next speech.”

He watched her as she went into the old church, stopping at the door to wave a greeting to his father. Framed thus, she made a picture that he kept in his mind all the day and many days thereafter.

Mr. Carter came up, a little out of breath and very red.

“Going my way, father?”

“I suppose I am!”

Mr. Carter slowed his steps to suit his lame son’s gait. He was moody, and he had his morning paper done up like a club in his hand. He slashed viciously at the church snowball as they reached it.

“My Lord, to think of that lovely girl--and what I’ve got for a daughter-in-law!” he growled.

Daniel, who understood the process of his father’s mind without asking any questions, said nothing.

“I’ve got a nickelette-show, a ballet-dancer, a runaway-with-a-gambler daughter-in-law, that’s what I’ve got!”

They had reached the street now, and Daniel checked him.

“Hush, father!” the young man said gently. “Some one will hear you.”

“Hear me?” bawled Mr. Carter. “Hear me? Drat it! D’you suppose the whole town doesn’t know? I met Dr. Barbour when I came out of the house just now. He says the Bulls, those new people at the corner of Hill Street, brought her home last night at one o’clock--I mean this morning--in a motor. What d’you suppose they’ll say?”

“Perhaps they’ve got some sense and won’t say anything,” suggested Daniel, thinking of the prayer-book and Virginia’s face.

“They told Barbour, and he’ll tell every one--and it isn’t twelve hours old.”

“We can’t do anything, father. Give the girl a chance. William says it was an accident.”

“An accident? And your mother saw her flirting with Corwin in the morning!” Mr. Carter could not restrain his ire. “I tell you, Dan, I wouldn’t mind so much if William wasn’t behaving like a lummox. He won’t get a divorce. He told me so this morning.”

“Good Heavens, why should he? It isn’t as bad as that. She’s only a wild girl, and she hates our ways. Why shouldn’t she? We’ve been finding fault with her from the beginning. I don’t see why you spoke of a divorce to William.”

“Why?” Mr. Carter set his teeth. Then, as they got to the corner, he spoke his mind. “I want him to get a divorce, behave like a gentleman, and marry Virginia Denbigh--if she’ll have him.”

“I’m sure Virginia wouldn’t have him, if he got a divorce to ask her,” said Daniel quietly. “She’s not that kind of a woman.”

“She’s in love with him,” replied Mr. Carter; “but I don’t care for that, either, if I can make the fool shake off this--this wildcat!”

Daniel, who had reached Judge Jessup’s door, smiled.

“I’m really sorry for the wildcat,” he said quietly. “She’s alone, and she hasn’t a friend--unless you count Leigh.”

“Leigh’s a ninny!” Mr. Carter retorted, and went on, still storming, to his office.

But by twelve o’clock he had worked some of his temper off. The process of cooling down began and ended, too, in sympathy for William. After all, it was hardest on William. He had been a donkey, but he had--in common with the other Carters--a natural horror of notoriety for his women-folks.

Divorce and scandal! Mr. Carter, thinking hard, could not recall a single case in his own family. Of course Uncle Duff Carter had quarreled with his wife, but it was about a back lot that adjoined their place. He wanted to sow it to oats for his horses, and his wife wanted to keep it for a private burial-ground for the family. There hadn’t been the least bit of scandal about that quarrel, and it was made up before his uncle died. He was buried, by the way, in that same back lot, with a monument of Florentine marble. His widow had her own way!

As for a runaway wife, or any kind of a wife who wasn’t what Mr. Carter called “a lady,” there was no record of it. William, his eldest son and the pride of his heart, seemed about to make the first break in a long line. It must distress William as much as it did his father.

Mr. Carter began to feel the greatest compunction about his son. The boy had behaved like a donkey, but there was no use in crying over spilt milk. The only way was to help him set it right. Of course, if the talk got no farther, and William chose to forgive her and could keep her in hand, there was nothing to be done about it.

As Mr. Carter’s rage against Fanchon began to cool, he saw the advantage of suppressing the scandal and making her behave. He had no very clear idea of how this should be done, except his firm belief that any sensible man could prevent such doings in his own household. He belonged, too, to a type of manhood that has long ago decided on the simplest method to avenge an insult to his family. He couldn’t recall an ancestor who under such provocation would fail to shoot his man. Times had changed now, but Mr. Carter felt an intense desire to annihilate that brute, Corwin.

He had no intention of mentioning this to William. The cooling-off process had reached the stage of common sense; but he felt that he must talk things over with his son. He had experience of life, if he had no experience with a recalcitrant wife, and he wanted to suggest some kind of restraint for his daughter-in-law. It seemed to him a perfectly practical thing--because he had never tried it. A moral strait-jacket for Fanchon appealed to his mind, at the moment, more strongly than any other idea in life.

He got through the morning’s work, lunched alone, and then waited until three o’clock. At that time he could endure it no longer. He had caught his two girl stenographers whispering, and he had seen the office-boy watching the inn opposite, where Corwin had stayed the day before. The office-boy brought Mr. Carter’s resolution to a head. He closed his desk sharply, snatched up his hat, and started for William’s office.

The office was situated on the top floor of the Payson Building. William was the buyer and traveling agent of Mr. Payson’s chain of department-stores. There was only a modest branch store in the home town, but in larger cities there were towering beehives bearing the name of Payson.

William had traveled abroad for these stores, and now, in his private office here, he was still directing the foreign correspondence of the firm. It was a position of great responsibility, and it carried a handsome salary and perquisites. Mr. Carter was proud of his son’s advance and proud of his ability to keep up with it. It was his pride in him that made this unfortunate marriage such a bitter disappointment.

He passed through the crowded shop, glancing at the long aisles of merchandise and noting the rugs--some of them brought from Turkey by William, others imported by his advice to be sent to the larger markets in the North. At the elevator Mr. Carter encountered Mr. Payson--the rich man who had paid for the singers at the concert where Fanchon had made herself notorious.

“I’m going up to see my son a moment,” said Mr. Carter, as they shook hands.

Payson nodded, but he did not repeat his commendation of William. Instead, he looked rather odd and spoke about the weather.

“Fine for the crops,” he said; “but we need more rain.”

Mr. Carter assented. He felt uneasy. There was something odd in Payson’s manner. The magnate got off at the second floor, and the elevator continued its ascent. At the top Mr. Carter got out and hurried to his son’s door. As no one answered his knock, he opened it and went in.

It was a good-sized office, furnished in accordance with Mr. Payson’s ideas of business--that is, in the latest and most solid fashion. On a table in the center of the room stood a bottle and a glass, and William Carter was stretched in a chair beside it, lying half on the table, his head down, sound asleep.

Mr. Carter stood aghast. He could see the haggard profile and the dark rings under the closed eyes. Worn out with his heart-breaking night vigil, William had fallen asleep; but his father felt that he was looking on the wreck of his son’s life, that William, in his misery, had sought oblivion in the old and time-honored way.

XVI

LEIGH CARTER had attained the dignity of his eighteenth birthday a few days before the arrival of his brother’s bride. He had done fairly well at the high school, and was preparing now, during vacation, for a preliminary examination for the university which had educated the male Carters for generations.

Leigh had some mental gifts and a taste for poetry, which seemed to indicate a literary career, and his fond mother regarded him as a budding genius. There was a wide gap in age between the two younger and the two older Carters, occasioned by the death of three intervening children, and Mrs. Carter’s affections had always centered on her baby boy, as she still called Leigh--to his great indignation. Her pride had been in William, her sympathy for poor Dan, but her doting fondness was for Leigh.

Mr. Carter did not approve of it. He had warned her more than once that she couldn’t bring up anything but an incubator chicken in that way and make a success of it.

Leigh wasn’t exactly a success. The latent manhood in him had scarcely stirred. He was a tall, lanky youth with a handsome, boyish face and the eyes of a girl. He had been a dreamer, too, and had spent much time in reading romances from the news-stands; but he was a good boy, he had cultivated no vices, and “milksop” was the worst charge that other youths of his set could make against him.

He had reached the impressionable age without falling deeply in love, and his mind and heart happened to be in a peculiarly receptive state when Fanchon suddenly burst upon his vision. Her beauty, the subtle charm and mystery of those fawn-like eyes, and her caressing voice, captured his youthful fancy. He could understand why William loved her, and he became at once her slave and worshiper. Then, when he saw the attitude of the family revealed in pitiless criticism, he became her still more devoted champion. Fanchon saw it, and she coaxed the boy into still deeper infatuation. It was her triumph to secure at least one ally in a hostile family, and she used him as a buffer. She always had a kind word for Leigh, a soft pat of the hand, an errand which she conferred as a favor. Leigh, immersed in romantic visions, saw her as the loveliest and most persecuted of beings, and he was ready to give battle to the entire family in her behalf. As Emily expressed it, he would have made himself into Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak for Fanchon to tread upon.

The storm that had followed upon her disappearance on horseback had beaten upon Leigh’s nerves. He had lashed himself into a dumb fury in the solitude of his room because his father and mother dared to doubt his paragon, and William, her husband, merely sat and waited for her to come back. William’s supineness was the last straw. Leigh had been in a frenzy when Fanchon finally returned, and the meeting on the stairs and her soft kiss of gratitude had gone to his head. He had refused to join a game of baseball that afternoon because he wanted to go home and complete a poem to his sister-in-law.

Fanchon had sent him on an errand to the nearest chemist. She had given him a prescription for some headache powders, she said, and Leigh did not know that he was returning with a peculiarly effective preparation of “bloom” that she usually applied at night. He carried the package with something of the air and feeling with which _Sir Lancelot_ might have worn the colors of _Elaine_.

It happened that his way led him past a corner of the main street, where Mr. Bernstein had just made special arrangements for showing Rosamond Silvertree’s feature pictures at the little local theater. Mr. Bernstein himself, in a new plaid suit with a diamond scarf-pin, was viewing a poster of Rosamond in the effective, if rather startling, costume of “A Belle from Borneo.” He had encountered Leigh on one or two previous occasions, and knew him to be the youngest son of Johnson Carter. As the boy approached, looking a little pale from his night’s vigil, Mr. Bernstein eyed him shrewdly.

“Looks like a regular moon-calf,” he thought; “but I guess he’s got gumption enough to take a warnin’ to the rest of ’em. Hello, young man!” he called out. “Been in to see this picture? Greatest picture on the screen! There’s a matinee to-day and two showings to-night.”

Leigh shook his head, stopping to gaze in some amazement at the highly colored portrait of the fair Rosamond.

“Gee!” he remarked. “She’s fat!”

“Fat?” Mr. Bernstein blew his cheeks out and stared at him with a kindling eye. “Fat, boy? Why, she’s superb! That’s Rosamond Silvertree, the most beautiful star on the screen!”

Leigh giggled. He giggled like a girl, a faint pink color coming into his beardless cheeks, and his girlish eyes dancing.

“How much do you suppose she weighs?” he asked gleefully. “Looks to me like four hundred pounds--and some spangles!”

“Miss Silvertree’s a lady, young man!” retorted Mr. Bernstein reprovingly. “She’s got one of the finest figures I ever saw. Spangles? I want you to know that there’s one scene where she’s got on the fetchingest costume--five yards of chiffon and fifteen pounds of crystal spangles! It’s beauty, classic beauty, on the screen.”

Leigh suppressed a giggle this time, and only smiled inanely, edging away.

“Looks kinder foolish,” Mr. Bernstein reflected, but he laid a detaining hand on Leigh’s arm. “See here, you’re Leigh Carter, ain’t you?”

Leigh nodded. He half expected an offer for the screen, and he lingered, coloring like a girl.

“Then I guess I can say a word to you--confidential, you understand?” Mr. Bernstein winked slowly. “Entirely confidential--between gentlemen, see?” he added with a stroke of inspiration.

Leigh, flattered in spite of himself, nodded. Mr. Bernstein linked an arm in his.

“Step this way,” he said casually. “Don’t want to attract attention. Now, Mr. Carter----” He paused, allowing the formal address to sink in. It did. Leigh straightened up. “There’s a fellow over at the inn named Corwin. Heard of him?”

Leigh’s color deepened.

“I think so,” he said stiffly.

Mr. Bernstein nodded.

“He’s Caraffi’s manager. Caraffi’s up at the Hot Springs, taking baths to reduce his flesh, or to make his hair grow, and Corwin’s killing time down here. Now I ain’t meaning any offense. I’m speaking as a friend, you understand? This man, Corwin, he ain’t a gentleman. He’s a sport an’ a gambler an’ a loafer. He ain’t any nearer being a gentleman than that there lamp-post’s near being a brindled cow. He gets full, too, and when he does he talks, see?”

Leigh, beginning to suspect the drift of the talk, was becoming furious.

“I take no interest in Mr. Corwin,” he said sharply. “If that’s all you’ve got to say, Mr. Bernstein----”

“Hold on!” said Mr. Bernstein impatiently. “I’ve got to tell one of your family--for the sake of the lady. If you want to protect your sister-in-law from scandal, Mr. Leigh Carter, you’d better listen. I ain’t believing the talk myself, but it ain’t my business. If it was, I’d lam the feller good an’ plenty!”

Leigh stared at him. He did not want to listen, but he was boy enough to want to hear. He breathed rather short.

“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Bernstein,” he cried excitedly. “I won’t hear talk of my sister-in-law!”

“Say!” Bernstein tapped his shoulder with a fat forefinger. “Ain’t it better for you Carters to hear it than the whole town? I ask you that? Ain’t it up to you Carters to shut his mouth?”

Leigh faltered, then he set his young teeth hard and flung his head back.

“What does he dare to say about Mrs. William Carter?” he demanded fiercely.

“I ain’t telling you all he says,” Mr. Bernstein replied meaningly. “I ain’t soiling my mouth with it--he’s a bad one! But he’s saying now--to-day--that she started to run away with him yesterday, and then got scared an’ come back at one o’clock in the mornin’--”

“That’s a lie!” cried Leigh. “A black lie! Where is he?”

“Shucks!” said Mr. Bernstein. “You’re a boy. Don’t you go lookin’ for him. You tell your father, Leigh Carter. He had oughter know it, he--say!”

Leigh had torn himself away and dashed off at a pace that left Mr. Bernstein gasping.

“Well, I’m darned!” he exclaimed. Then he relaxed, and stood looking after Leigh with something like satisfaction. “I guess he’ll tell ’em. They wouldn’t listen to me, and that Corwin--something oughter be done to him. He ain’t no gentleman!”

Mr. Bernstein walked slowly and thoughtfully back to the “Belle from Borneo” poster. He felt that he had done his duty. He bore no ill-will to little Fanchon la Fare, and he hated Corwin.

Leigh, meanwhile, turned off the main street into the quiet lane behind the church and stopped to think. He stopped, panting, on the very step where Virginia had stood talking with Dan. His hot young blood was beating in his head with a noise like a sledge-hammer. Fury choked him. He remembered his own hours of anguished suspense last night, Fanchon’s return after her accident, and her light kiss on his cheek. Her knight had received his accolade; he would not fail her!

Sitting under the old tree where the scarlet-headed woodpecker had bored a neat hole, Leigh made up his mind. Bernstein had told the truth about Corwin--that he knew. He couldn’t doubt Bernstein. The little man’s earnestness had been apparent.

Corwin must be dealt with. Leigh Carter would deal with him, too, at once. He was no child to run to his father. Besides, his father didn’t like Fanchon. Lately he had thought his father an unjust man.

As for William--Leigh remembered William’s supine waiting last night. Leigh did not mean to wait now. He would carry out the thing he had in mind.

He had read once of a man like Corwin slandering a noble lady. The hero--Leigh’s favorite hero, by the way--had seized a horse-pistol, ridden fifty miles on a mustang, confronted the villain, held his pistol to his head, and forced him to write and sign a retraction that made the lady’s character shine out as clear as noonday. Getting his breath on the old stone step of the church where he had been baptized, Leigh made up his mind as swiftly as the mustang had galloped. He took off his hat, wiped the drops of perspiration from his boyish forehead, and, straightening his collar and tie, rose and went straight home.

It happened at the moment that there was no one in the house but Miranda and his mother. As he entered, he heard his mother’s voice in the kitchen.

“Miranda, get me those pitted cherries. I’m going to make a pie for dinner. Leigh loves cherry pie!”

He paused with his hand on the banister, thrilled with that poignant moment. Unknown to Mrs. Carter, her son was about to act a man’s great part, to avenge the honor of the family, and she--oh, grotesque thought--she was making cherry pie for him!

But he could not wait even for such thoughts as these. He ran up-stairs and into his father’s room. In the upper draw of the old mahogany highboy was a pistol. Mr. Carter kept it loaded as a precaution against mythical burglars. Leigh found it, thrust it in his pocket, and walked slowly down the hall.

Fanchon’s door was open. She had gone out, but she had left the room in sweet confusion. He caught sight of the trailing silk and chiffon of her tea-gown--one of the family amazements--lying across the bed. On a chair hung her riding-jacket, left to dry. There was an elusive fragrance of violets, the same fragrance that always hung about her person. Evidently she had forgotten her headache, or she had gone out to walk it off.

Very reverently Leigh laid the chemist’s package on a chair near the door. Then he saw a small glove lying on the floor. He picked it up, kissed it solemnly, and thrust it into his pocket. The illusion was complete--he bore his lady’s glove.

* * * * *

Aristide Corwin was alone in his room at the inn. It happened that his open windows commanded a clear view of Mr. Carter’s office opposite, and of the sign over the door--“Johnson Carter, Insurance and Loans.” Corwin had been staring at it moodily. He hated it for some reason.

Not that he thought much of the Carters. His business was with Fanchon, not with William Carter. But he hated that office, and he hated the whole tribe, at the moment, because Fanchon had outwitted him. She had made a fool of him. He had had his revenge, he was making the town ring with his talk, but he was not even with her yet--not yet! His eyes kindled fiercely at the thought of her. He had been drinking. Two bottles still stood on his table, and his glass was full.

He was a man who had been handsome in his first youth, but his face had coarsened and his hard eyes lowered. He rose, stripped off his coat, and sat down again in his shirt-sleeves, his collar unbuttoned from his big throat. He was hot, but he kept on drinking. It was late now, near supper-time, and there came a knock at his door.

“Come in!” he said harshly.

The door opened, and Leigh Carter entered. Corwin did not know him, he did not remember having seen him with Fanchon, but he saw a slender boy of seventeen or eighteen, well-dressed and deathly pale, with the eyes of a girl.

“What do you want, kid?” he demanded sharply, setting down his glass.

Leigh walked straight across the room to the table and stood looking down at him, an image of young scorn and wrath.

“I’m Leigh Carter,” he said, breathing quickly. “I’ve heard the infamous story you’re telling about a lady--my sister-in-law, Mrs. William Carter--a story that she ran away with you last night. I’m here to demand the truth. Did you--did you dare to tell such a story here?”

Corwin’s first stare of surprise gave way to a slow, insulting grin. He measured Leigh from head to foot. Then he laughed.

“Yes,” he replied truculently. “I did say that--and a damned sight more, Mr. Leigh Carter--kid. And it’s every bit true!”

Leigh’s hands shook as he grasped the edge of the table.

“You’ll take that back, Mr. Corwin,” he said in a low voice, leaning forward and looking at the man opposite.

Corwin laughed, tilting his chair and putting his feet on the table. His very nonchalance stung the boy opposite with a fresh sense of insult.

“Will I?” he mocked. “Who’s going to make me do it?”

Leigh, white with passion now, flashed scorn upon him.

“I will! You can’t say things like that about my brother’s wife!”

Corwin stared at him, still laughing; then he lowered his feet to the floor and rose. Standing, he overtopped the slender Carter boy by half a head.