Chapter 26

The girl laughed outright; how droll it was to see a man trying to make himself unhappy when there was nothing but happiness in the world. Through the open window she could hear the birds singing, and through it came the perfume of clover-buried fields; across the floor streamed warm, bright sunlight from a blue sky in which was no cloud. And from their lives, Mortimer's and her own, had been swept the dark cloud--and here, in the midst of all this joy was her lover with a long, sad face, trying to reproach her with a stiff, awkward bow.

Her laugh twirled Crane about like a top. He saw the odd situation; there was something incongruous in Mortimer's stiff attitude. Crane had a big cloud of his own not quite driven from his sky, but a smile hovered on his thin lips. This happiness was worth catching.

Mortimer noticed the distasteful mirth reflected in the other man's face, and he repeated with asperity, “You sent for me, sir--may I ask--”

“Will you take a chair,” said Crane, and he pushed the one he had been toying with toward Mortimer. The latter remained standing.

Allis sprang forward and caught him by the arm--Crane turned away, suddenly discovering that from the window the main street of Brookfield was a most absorbing study.

“I'm so happy,” began Allis. Mortimer shivered in apprehension. Why had Crane turned his face away--what was coming? How could she be happy, how could anyone in the world be happy? But evidently she was. She stole a quick look at Crane--to be exact, Crane's back, for his head and shoulders were through the window.

Then the girl--she had to raise on her tiptoes--kissed the sad man on the cheek. I'm ashamed to say that he stared. Were they all mad--was he not standing with one foot in the penitentiary?

She drew him toward the chair, calling to Crane: “Will you please tell Mr. Mortimer the good news. I am too happy; I can't.”

A fierce anger surged in Mortimer's heart; it was true, then--his disgrace had been too much for Allis. The other had won; but it was too cruel to kiss him.

Crane faced about, and coming forward, held out his hand to the man of distrust. “I hope you'll forgive me.”

Mortimer sprang to his feet, shoving back his chair violently, and stood erect, drawn to his full height, his right hand clenched fiercely at his side. “Shake hands? No, a thousand times no!” he muttered to himself.

Crane saw the action, and his own hand dropped. “Perhaps I ask too much,” he said, quietly; “I wronged you--”

Mortimer set his teeth and waited. There were great beads of perspiration on his forehead, and his broad chest set his breath whistling through contracted nostrils. A pretty misdirected passion was playing him. This was why they had sent for him--the girl he would have staked his life on had been brought to believe in his guilt, and had been won over to his rival. Ah--a new thought; his mind, almost diseased by unjust accusation, prompted it--perhaps it was to save him from punishment that Allis had consented to become Crane's wife.

“But I believed you guilty--” Mortimer started as Crane said this “now I know that you are innocent, I ask--”

Mortimer staggered back a step and caught at the chair to steady himself. He repeated mechanically the other's words: “You know I'm innocent?”

“Yes, I've found the guilty man.”

“Then Alan--oh, the poor lad! It's a mistake--you are wrong. The boy didn't take the money--I took it.”

Crane looked at him in admiration, an indulgent smile on his lips.

“Nonsense, my dear sir!” he exclaimed, dryly; “Alan did not take the money--neither did you. Cass took it, and you wasted a day of the bank's time covering the crime for him.”

“Cass took it?” asked Mortimer in a dazed way, looking from Crane to Allis.

“Yes; he has confessed, so you see he's ahead of you in that line” He went on, speaking hurriedly: “I ask you to forgive me now for my suspicions. Your innocence is completely established. You acted like a hero in trying to shield Alan Porter, and I like men of that stamp. The thousand dollars you paid in will be restored to you; it is yours. We will devise some scheme for clearing up the matter as far as your good name is concerned that will shield poor Cass from people who have no business in this affair.”

“But how did Cass manage to get the note?”

“Found it on the floor of the vault, he says.”

“I don't see how it could have fallen out of the box, because the three bills were pinned to the note.”

Crane drew forth a pocket book, and opening it took out the bill that had been stolen. He examined it closely, holding it up in front of the window.

“I think you are mistaken,” he said, “there are no pin holes in this bill; I see,” he continued, “the pin had not gone through this one; being detached, in handling the box, it has slipped out.”

“It must have,” concurred Mortimer. “I remember in putting the box in the compartment once I had to turn it on its edge; the bill being loose, as you say, has slipped to the floor, and as the vault was dark I did not notice it.”

“It doesn't matter,” added Crane. “I must go now. Good-bye, Miss Allis.”

Turning to Mortimer he held out his hand.

“Good-bye, and long happiness to you both,” he said; “I trust you will think kindly of me and poor Cass. I am sure we are sorry for what has been done.”

As Crane went down the stairs he wondered why he had coupled himself with Cass. Was the difference so slight--had they been together in the same boat up to the point of that silly, fantastic dream. Perhaps they had.

XLVI

With the going of Crane an awkward restraint came over the two who were left; the man who had suffered so much for the woman's sake, and the girl who had endeavored so much.

He was like a man suddenly thrust into a new world of freedom; he indulged in a physical manifestation of its exhilaration, drinking in a long, deep draught of the clover-scented air, until his great lungs sighed with the plethora. It seemed a lifetime that he had lived in the noisome atmosphere of a felon's cell. But now the crime had dropped from him; a free man in every sense of the word, he could straighten himself up and drink of the air that was without taint.

Allis watched Mortimer curiously; she was too happy to speak--just to look upon him standing there, her undefiled god, her hero, with his heroism known and applauded, was a suffusing ecstasy. He was so great, so noble, that anything she might say would be inane, tawdry, inconsequent; so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time, nor the sunshine, nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of conventionality in the unsupervised tete-a-tete.

The ecstatic magnetism of congenial silence has always a potency, and its spell crept into Mortimer's soul and laid embargo on his tongue. He crossed over to Allis, and taking her slender hand in his own, crouched down on the floor beside her chair, and looked up into her face, just as a great St. Bernard might have done, incapable of articulating the wealth of love and gratitude and faithfulness that was in his heart.

Even then the girl did not speak. She drew the man's strong rugged head close up to her face, and nestled her cheek against his. Love without words; love greater than words. It was like a fairy dream; if either spoke the gentle gossamer web of it would float away like mist, and of needs they must talk of the misery that had passed.

In the end the girl spoke first, saying like a child having a range of but few words, “You are happy now, my hero?”

“Too happy--I almost fear to wake and find that I've been dreaming.”

She kissed him.

“Yes, it's real,” he answered; “in dreams happiness is not so positive as this. You did not doubt?” he queried.

“Never.”

“You would have waited?”

“Forever.”

“And now--and now, we must still wait.”

“Not forever.”

They talked of the wonderful necromancy the gods had used to set their lives to the sweet music of happiness. How Lauzanne the Despised had saved Ringwood to her father; how he had won Alan's supposed price of redemption for Mortimer; how he had stood sturdy and true to the girl of much faith and all gentleness. And the room became a crypt of confessional when she, in penitence, told of her ride on the gallant Chestnut.

Just a span of Fate's hand from these two happy mortals, and twice the sand had sifted through the hour glass, sat a man all alone in his chamber. On his table was the dust of solitariness; and with his finger he wrote in it “Forever.” But he looked fearlessly across the board, for there sat no grinning demon of temptation, nor remorse, nor fear. But a fragrance as of lilacs and of sweet clover coming through an open window was in his nostrils; and in his memory was the picture of a face he loved, made like unto an angel's with gratitude, and on his forehead still burned, like a purifying fire, a kiss that reached down into his soul and filled him with the joy of thankfulness.