Part 7

“He hadn’t! He hadn’t!” she assented in a voice like a wail. “And when we tried to find Mr. Gardner he was gone. Gone off the yacht. Had run away. So then Mr. Viles went ashore himself, and by and by he came back, very well pleased, and said they had caught Mr. Gardner on the boat and had the necklace back again.”

“Did you run away right then?” he asked, when he saw she had forgotten to go on.

She hesitated, as though choosing her words.

“No,” she told him. “That was the day before. I was very unhappy even then. But until the next day I did not realize. Mr. Viles made me see. It was just before dinner, and I met him in the main cabin. He was very expansive and very good-humored and triumphant. He spoke of Mr. Gardner. And he said this to me.”

She repeated the words in a curious, parrot-like tone, as though they were engraved upon her memory. “He said: ‘It’s lucky you saw him, Lucia. If you hadn’t actually seen him come out of your cabin with the necklace in his hands we probably couldn’t send him to jail, even now!’”

Jeff was watching her attentively, waiting.

“I hadn’t really understood, before, that they would send him to jail,” the woman cried. “I asked Mr. Viles if he meant to do that, and begged him not to; and he just laughed at me. He said: ‘He’ll do ten years for this little piece of work, Lucia. And you’ll be the one whose testimony will send him up. That ought to be a satisfaction to you.’”

She added, with a movement of her hands as though everything were explained, “So I ran away. There was a sailor who helped me and gave me his coat, and I ran away, and got in your car because it was raining so hard and that was the first place I saw where I could hide and be sheltered from the rain.”

She broke off abruptly; and neither of them spoke for a period, while Jeff considered that which she had told him.

At length he asked gently, “You didn’t want to see this here Gardner in jail?”

The woman cried passionately, “No! No! Oh, he was wrong to steal. If I had not seen him I would never have believed--But I didn’t want to put him in jail!”

“I guess you liked him pretty well,” Jeff said. His tone was sympathetic, not inquisitive.

“Yes,” she nodded sadly, as though she spoke of one who were dead. “Yes, I did.” With a sudden confidence she added, “Why, he was my best friend. We knew each other so well. It was through him I met Mr. Viles. And then Frank had to go to Europe on business for Mr. Viles, and he was away so long, and I did not hear from him. I used to work, you know. I was a buyer in one of the New York stores. And Mr. Viles was ever so good to me, and I was tired, and he begged me so. That was how I came to marry him.”

“I don’t figure you ever loved him very much,” Jeff suggested after an interval.

“He was good to me at first,” she protested. “I think he meant to be good to me.”

Silence fell upon them both once more, and this time it persisted. By and by Jeff rose from his chair, passed behind hers and touched her shoulder roughly with his heavy hand.

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” he said cheerfully. “I wouldn’t worry too much if I was you.”

She looked up at him and smiled through sudden tears. “You’re good to me,” she told him.

“You run along to bed,” Jeff bade her. “Just forget your bothers and run along to bed.”

But when she had gone upstairs the man remained for a long time in his chair beside the warm lamp, thinking over what she had told him, supplying for himself the things she had not told. Jeff had a shrewd common sense; he was able to fill in many of the gaps, to see the truths to which even Lucia was blind. And as he thought, his eyes clouded with slow anger and his brows drew somewhat together; and when he got up at last to turn toward his bedroom there was a ferocity in his expression that no one had ever seen on Jeff Ranney’s face in all his fifty-seven years. He spoke slowly, half aloud, addressing no one at all.

“Damn the man,” he muttered. “I’d like to bust him a good one. It’d do him good.”

Upon this wish, which had a solemnity about it almost like a prayer, Jeff went to bed.

V

Next morning, when Andy Wattles drove by the farm with Will Bissell’s truck on his way to East Harbor, Jeff saw that Andy had a passenger. Will Belter was riding to town with Andy. They hailed him as they passed the barn, and Andy waved a hand in greeting as they disappeared. Jeff’s perceptions were quick; it was no more than half a dozen seconds before he understood that there was menace in this move on Belter’s part. His first thought was to stop the man and bring him back, but the truck was already far away along the townward road. He shook his head; there was nothing he could do. If Belter meant harm the harm was done.

But the incident put Jeff on his guard, so that he made it his business to stay about the house that day; and when, in the early afternoon, an automobile stopped in the road before the farm he saw it and was ready. He had given the woman no warning, but she heard the machine, and came to his side in the dining room and looked out through the window. Themselves hidden, they could see the car. Three men were in it--the chauffeur, Will Belter and another. Jeff knew this other man; it needed not the woman’s exclamation to inform him. Her husband had found her hiding place.

When Lucia saw him she sank weakly in a chair beside the table, said in a voice like a moan, “He’s found me! He’s found me!”

But for this crisis of his adventure Jeff was ready; he rose to meet the moment, gripped her shoulder.

“Just mind this,” he told her swiftly. “Keep your head, ma’am, and mind what I say. You don’t have to go back with him unless you want. He can’t make you, ha’n’t no legal way to make you; and if you don’t want to go you don’t have to go. I’ll see he don’t take you unless you say the word.”

She looked up at him in swift gratitude; and he smiled at her and asked, “Now can’t you take a little heart from that, ma’am?”

“He’s coming,” she whispered.

And Jeff looked through the window again and saw that Viles had left Belter and the chauffeur in the car he had hired in East Harbor. He himself came steadily toward the kitchen door, while the two other men watched him from the road. Jeff and the woman heard his loud knock upon the door.

At this summons Jeff left her where she sat, her strength returning. He opened the kitchen door and faced the man he had learned to hate so blindingly that the passion intoxicated him. Yet his countenance was calm, his features all composed.

Viles was a large man without being fat; one of those men who have about them the apparent solidity of flesh which is the attribute of such dogs as Boston terriers. He may have been six feet tall, but he was inches broader across the shoulders than most men of his height. His countenance was peculiarly pink, as though rich blood coursed too near the surface of his skin. Jeff marked that he was subject to a certain shortness of breath, that his eyes were too small, and that even now a little pulse was beating in the man’s throat.

Yet Viles spoke in a smooth and pleasant voice, said a jovial good afternoon and asked if this was Jeff Ranney’s farm. Jeff said it was.

Viles asked, “Are you Ranney?”

“I’m Ranney,” Jeff assented. He had not asked the other to come in; the screen door still separated them.

“Ah,” said Viles. “I am told your niece from California is visiting you. I have a rather important bit of business to transact with her.”

Jeff shook his head. “She ain’t my niece,” he answered frankly. “She’s your wife, that had to run away from you.”

His voice was stony; but at his words Viles moved backward a step, as though under the impact of a blow, and Jeff saw the swift rage mount his cheeks in a purple flood. Then the rich man laid his hand upon the screen door, opened it.

Jeff did not move to one side, and Viles said hoarsely, “Get out of my way, you impudent fool!”

Jeff shook his head. “Listen, mister,” he said softly. “This is my house. You can’t come in here on your own say-so. I’m not fooling with you either. If you want to come in, you ask.”

Viles lifted one clenched hand as though to sweep the other aside; and Jeff added, “I’ve heard enough about you so I’d like right well to mix it up with you a little bit--if you want to try anything like that. Do you?”

“I want to come in,” said Viles hoarsely.

Jeff considered this for a moment, then he spoke to the woman, over his shoulder. “Do you want to see him?” he asked her.

“I suppose so,” she told him wearily.

Jeff nodded. “All right, mister,” he said to Viles. “Come in and take a chair.”

Viles had somewhat recovered himself. He followed Jeff’s indifferent back into the dining room. The woman did not rise. Jeff set a chair across the table from her, and Viles sat down in it while Jeff himself crossed to shut the door that led into the parlor, then came back and leaned against the kitchen door, watching this husband and wife, waiting for what they would say.

Viles had drawn a velvet glove over the iron hand. He asked the woman gently, “Are you all right, my dear?” She nodded. “You are well?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Yes, I am well.”

He looked toward Jeff. “Mrs. Viles is unfortunately subject to moments of great depression,” he explained courteously. “In these moments--” He stopped, arched his eyebrows meaningly, as though Jeff must understand.

“You mean she has crazy spells?” Jeff asked bluntly. Viles protested wordlessly. “She don’t act crazy to me,” Jeff commented. “But you may be right. She married you.”

He was seeking quite deliberately to goad the other man into violence, but Viles controlled himself, said across the table to his wife, “We have been greatly concerned, my dear.”

“I’m sorry,” she said unconvincingly.

“It is a relief to know that you have not suffered. That scratch across your temple--”

Lucia touched with her fingers the slight wound. “It is nothing.”

“You must have a good rest in bed when we get back to the yacht,” he told her. There was an elephantine sportiveness in the man’s demeanor. “I’m going to enjoy taking care of you.”

She was silent for a moment, then slowly shook her head. “I don’t think I’ll go back,” she told him. “I don’t think I’ll go back at all.”

He tried to laugh easily. “You’re fancying things, Lucia. It is your home. You belong there.”

She faced him with a moment of decision. “If you withdraw the charge against Frank I’ll go back with you, Leander.”

“Withdraw it?” he asked in pretended astonishment.

“I can’t bear to have him go to jail,” she cried softly.

“But, my dear, the man’s a thief; has betrayed the trust I reposed in him.”

“I can’t help it. I can’t help it. I don’t want him to go to jail.”

Viles dropped his eyes to the oilcloth that covered the table and drummed upon it with his fingers for a moment, then turned to Jeff.

“I’d be obliged for a few moments’ talk with my wife alone,” he said, a sardonic note in his tone.

Jeff held his eyes for a minute, then looked toward the woman. “What shall I do, ma’am?” he asked, as though it were a matter of course that he should defer to her.

She made a weary gesture. “He has a right to that,” she said.

Jeff nodded. “I’ll come back in fifteen minutes, mister,” he told Viles menacingly.

But Viles smiled in affable assent. “That will do finely,” he agreed.

Jeff went out through the kitchen into the shed. When he was gone Viles rose and crossed to listen at the door, and heard Jeff go on into the barn. He returned to the dining room and stood above his wife, and when she did not move he gripped her chin harshly and turned her face up to his. No velvet glove upon the iron hand now. She winced a little with the pain, but made no sound. There was triumph and malice in his grin.

“Thought you could get away with it, did you, Lucia?” he asked. She said nothing. “Thought I wouldn’t find you?” Still she made no sound. “Where’d you pick up this rural squire of yours?”

His tone was insult, and her continued silence seemed to anger him; he loosed her chin with a gesture as though he flung her aside; rounded the table again and sat down facing her and lighted a cigar, watching his wife through the smoke. For a long minute neither of them moved or spoke; then she lifted her head, very slowly, and met his eyes.

After an instant he laughed at her mockingly and leaned forward, gesturing with the cigar, dropping flecks of ash upon the oilcloth.

“Lucia, my dear,” he said, “you haven’t played fair with me. You and that tame cat of yours. And now I’m going to even the score. If you loved him you shouldn’t have married me. Or having married me you should have ceased to love him. Isn’t that a fair statement of the ethics of the case?”

“I didn’t know, Leander,” she said pitifully. “He had been so long away.”

“I sent him away,” the man admitted harshly. “I wanted a clear field, and got it and got you. Thought I was getting the whole of you. But when he came back I saw within six months’ time that it was only the husk of you I had won.”

“You’re unfair!” she cried. “Frank never spoke to me--there was never anything--”

“What do I care?” Viles demanded. “Don’t you suppose I know that? Don’t you suppose I’ve seen to it that you were both pretty closely looked after? But you loved him, and he loved you. A blind man could see that whenever you were together.”

“I played fair with you,” his wife pleaded. “And he did too.”

“That’s because you were afraid to do anything else,” he assured her scornfully. “That’s because you’re weaklings. I’m not a weakling, my dear. In his place I’d have you. In my place I’ve evened the score--against both of you.”

She began to sense that there was something more, something she did not know. “What?” she asked faintly. “What have you done to him?”

He puffed at his cigar, relishing it, relishing the situation. “You two blind fools! Did you think I was also blind?”

She shook her head helplessly. “What are you trying to say?”

The man swung around for a moment to look toward the road and make sure the two men who had come with him were still in the car, then leaned across the table toward her, speaking softly.

“I gave Frank the combination of your safe,” he told her, grinning with delight in this moment of his triumph. “I told him to get the necklace, and take it to Boston. To have it restrung; a surprise for you. Told him not to let you see him, not to let you know. The poor fool believed me.”

She was staring at him, half understanding. “He didn’t steal it? He didn’t steal it, then?”

“And the pretty part of it was the way I rang you in,” her husband assured her mockingly. “Sending you down to the cabin at a moment when I knew he would be there. So that you might catch him in the very doing of it. So that your own testimony, my dear, might send this sweetheart of yours to jail.” Her eyes widened, she was white as snow; and he threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Ah, you see it now?”

Lucia came swiftly to her feet. “He didn’t steal it? He didn’t steal it?” she cried. “Oh, he won’t have to go to jail!”

Her husband chuckled, watching her narrowly. “Not so quick on the trigger, Lucia. Not so fast. He’ll go to jail, right enough. Don’t worry about that. And you’ll send him there.”

“But he didn’t do it, Leander?” she urged pleadingly. “He’s not a thief at all!”

“Of course he isn’t,” Viles assented. “That’s the beauty of the little trap I laid.”

Flames were burning in her cheeks now; her head was high. “I won’t testify against him,” she said swiftly. “You can’t do it without me, and I won’t--”

“That was why you ran away?” he asked casually. “To avoid testifying? I thought as much.”

“I won’t go back!” she cried. “I’ll go away again!”

He smiled. “There were others who saw,” he told her mildly. “Do you suppose I would be content with so loose a plan? They saw him, as well as you. Saw you also.” He leaned toward her ferociously. “You’ll testify, and you’ll tell the truth, or I’ll convict you of perjury on your own lie, my dear. He’ll go to jail certainly; and you also if you choose.”

The woman was very intent, her thoughts racing. And suddenly she laughed in his face. “And I’ll tell what you’ve just told me,” she reminded him. “How long will your scheme stand then?”

He shook his head. “Oh, no, you won’t, my dear.”

“I will.”

“There is,” he said equably, “a little provision in the law of evidence which will prevent you. A wife cannot testify to any private conversation between herself and her husband. Did you suppose I would be so mad as to let you slip out of this trap so easily? The judge himself will forbid your saying one word as to what I have told you here.”

She was trembling with despair. “I won’t obey him!” she cried. “I’ll tell anyway. The jurymen will believe me.”

“If you blurt out such a thing against the order of the court you will be jailed for contempt, and the jury will be forbidden to believe you, will be told to forget what you have said.” He shook his head mockingly. “No, Lucia, my dear, there’s no way out. I have told you this simply in order that you might appreciate the pains I have taken.” He laughed a little. “What a thoughtful husband you have!”

He was still sitting, watching her with a cruel satisfaction; but she was trembling, broken, her knees yielding beneath her. By littles she sank into her chair, and put her head down upon her arms and wept bitterly.

Her husband watched her from across the table and puffed at his cigar.

Then Jeff Ranney opened the parlor door and came into the room. Viles, at the sound of the opening door, looked up in surprise, looked toward the kitchen through which Jeff had disappeared, looked at Jeff again.

“What were you doing there?” he demanded, coming to his feet in sudden anger.

“Listening to you talk,” said Jeff equably.

“Listening? How long?”

“Oh, I came right around the house and in the front door, soon as I went out the back. Heard all you said, I guess.”

Lucia had stopped crying; she lifted her head and dried her eyes and looked at Jeff. He looked down at her and smiled, a reassuring smile that gave her somehow comfort.

Viles swung toward him, cried aloud, “You dog! I’ll teach you manners!”

“Yes, sir,” said Jeff slowly. “I’d like right well to mix it up with you.”

Viles stopped in his tracks; the man was convulsed and shaking with his own ferocious rage. “But it ain’t fair to pick on you,” Jeff decided; “you’re such a fool.”

Lucia came to her feet, turned to Jeff appealingly. “You heard what he said?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is it true? Can he do this? Is the law that way?”

Viles reached toward his wife, would have taken her arm. “Lucia!” he cried. “Come away from here. Come away from here with me.”

But Jeff put an arm between them, swept the big man back against the table. For an instant no one of them moved. Then Jeff said slowly, “I had a lawsuit once, so I happen to know. What he says is all right. On private conversations. But you see, this wa’n’t private. I heard.”

“You heard?” she whispered, not understanding.

Jeff nodded. “Sure. And I can tell anything I heard; and I guess--not sure, but it don’t matter much, anyhow--I guess you can tell it, too, if I heard what he said.”

He was looking down at her, had for the moment forgotten her husband. But Lucia had not forgotten, and it was Lucia’s cry that warned Jeff. Viles was tugging a pistol from his pocket.

Jeff swung his right leg upward, kicked cunningly at the big man’s hand. The pistol flew across the room; and Viles, roaring with pain, swung in at Jeff to grapple him. They came breast to breast, stood thus for an instant, each straining terribly, exerting utmost strength.

Then Viles’ big head drooped with a little snapping jerk as all his body let go; and he slid limply through Jeff’s arms to the floor. Jeff’s one great hour was done.

An hour later Jeff drove Lucia back to town. He would send a man who made such matters his profession, to care for what was left of Leander Viles.

VI

A day or two later Mrs. Ranney came home from Augusta. By that time Jeff had settled into the old routine once more. His life had become again as uneventful as any life can be. Save for one or two echoes of his great adventure--when Lucia wrote that she and Gardner were to wed, and when their first baby was born--his existence continued in its old accustomed way. He lived some dozen years or so on his farm eight miles out of East Harbor. Last winter, while working in his woodlot, he became overheated and then chilled with the coming of night; and a few days later he died.

MINE ENEMY’S DOG

I

Fraternity has not changed in a hundred years; yet is there always some new thing in Fraternity. It may be only that Lee Motley’s sow has killed her pigs, or that choleric Old Man Varney has larruped his thirty-year-old son with an ax helve, or that Jean Bubier has bought six yearling steers. But there is always some word of news, for the nightly interchange in Will Bissell’s store, before the stage comes in with the mail. You may see the men gather there, a little after milking time, coming from the clean, white houses that are strung like beads along the five roads which lead into the village. A muscular, competent lot of men in their comfortable, homely garments. And they sit about the stove, and talk, and smoke, and spit, and laugh at the tales that are told.

Fraternity lies in a country of little towns and villages, with curious names something more than a century old. Liberty is west of Fraternity, Union is to the southward, Freedom lies northwest. Well enough named, these villages, too. Life in them flows easily; there is no great striving after more things than one man can use. The men are content to get their gardening quickly done so that they may trail the brooks for trout; they hurry with their winter’s wood to find free time for woodcock and partridge; and when the snow lies, they go into the woods with trap for mink or hound for fox.

Thirty years ago there were farms around Fraternity, and the land was clear; but young men have gone, and old men have died, and the birches and the alders and the pines have taken back the land. There are moose and deer in the swamps, and a wildcat or two, and up in Freedom a man killed a bear a year ago....

The hills brood over these villages, blue and deeper blue from range to farther range. There is a bold loveliness about the land. The forests, blotched darkly with evergreens, or lightly splattered with the gay tops of the birches, clothe the ridges in garments of somber beauty. Toward sunset a man may stand upon these hilltops and look westward into the purple of the hills and the crimson of the sky until his eyes are drunk with looking. Or in the dark shadows down along the river he may listen to the trembling silences until he hears his pulses pound. And now and then, with a sense of unreality, you will come upon a deer along some old wood road; or a rabbit will fluster from some bush and rise on haunches, twenty yards away.

The talk in Will Bissell’s store turns, night by night, upon these creatures of the woods that lie about the town; and by the same token the talk is filled with speech concerning dogs. The cult of the dog is strong in Fraternity. Every man has one dog, some have two. These, you will understand, are real dogs. No mongrels here; no sneaking, hungry, yapping curs. Predominant, the English setter, gentlest and kindest and best-natured of all breeds; and, in second place, the lop-eared hounds. A rabbit hound here and there; but not many of these. Foxhounds more often. Awkward, low-bodied, heavy dogs that will nevertheless nose out a fox and push him hard for mile on mile. These are not such fox-hounds as run in packs for the sport of red-coated men. These are utilitarian dogs; their function is to keep the fox moving until the hunter can post himself for a shot. A fox skin is worth money; and cash money is scarce in Fraternity, as in all such little towns, and very hard to come by.