The Sherrods Part 26

It was the first complaint she had ever expressed to him in all those weary, despairing months of loneliness and privation, and he covered his face with his hands. She drew them gently away, so that he might look at the baby. It was with a feeling of shame that he first saw his child. Young as it was, it bore the features of its father; there could be no doubt. He gazed upon the little face and the clenched fists, and a deep reverence came to him. Pity for the baby, the mother and himself overcame him and he dropped his head upon Justine's shoulder.

"Justine, forgive me, forgive me," he sobbed.

"There is nothing to forgive, dear. Don't cry," she said, softly. "It will all come right some day and we'll be so proud of the boy. Isn't he strong? Just feel of his little arms. And isn't he just like you?

I hope he will grow up to be as good and as strong as you, Jud." He looked dumbly into her eyes, still dewy with tears, and dropped his own, lest she should sec the deceit in them. But she was not looking for deceit.

"You are so cold, dear," she went on, "and you look so ill and tired.

Come to bed and let me get up and make some hot coffee for you. Why, Jud, it is past midnight, and it is bitterly cold outside. How did you come from Glenville?"

"I walked," he answered, wearily.

"Walked?" she cried. "Why, Jud, what is wrong? Why are you here? Has anything happened to you?" Her voice was sharp with dread.

"I am the most wretched man in the world, Justine."

"Tell me all about it, Jud; let me help you. Don't look like that! It must be all right, dear, now that we are together. All three, Jud,"

she went on, cheerily. "I would not even name him before you came, but I want you to call him Dudley." He felt the loving arms tighten about his neck, and there came the eager desire to confess everything and to beg her to hide from the world with him in some place where he could never be found out. The love for Celeste was deep, but it was not like this love for Justine. He must keep it. The other might go; he and Justine and the baby would go away together. But not yet. Justine must not know, after all--at least not yet.

"Everything has gone wrong, dear, and I had nothing to live for," he began, wearily; and then with a skill that surprised him he rushed through with a story that drew the deepest pity from his listener and gave him a breathing spell in which to develop a plan for the future.

"You will loathe and despise me, Justine, but I couldn't bear the thought of going into the hereafter without you," he said, after he had confessed his object in coming. "I had failed in everything and life wasn't worth living. My position is gone, I have no money and I don't seem to be able to find work. You were everything in the world to me and you were so proud of me. I just couldn't come back here and tell you that I had failed after all the chances I have had. When I opened your door to-night I had that knife in my hand. Do not be afraid, dearest; it is all over and we'll live to be happy yet. G.o.d help me, I was going to kill you while you slept, kiss you to prove to your departing soul that I loved you and that it was not hate that inspired the deed, and then, the blade, wet with your dear blood, was to find its way to my heart. Thank G.o.d, you awoke. Had it not been for that we would be lying here dead, and our boy, hidden in the bed, would have escaped my hand only to be thrown upon the world, a helpless orphan.

But G.o.d has helped me to-night and He will not again forget me. With His help and your love, I will go forth again with new courage and I'll win my way."

She shuddered and thanked G.o.d alternately during his story, and when he paused after the firm declaration to win his way, she cried:

"You have been brave so long and I have been brave, too, Jud. Why should we give up the fight? I have hardly enough to eat in the house, and I have endured more than seemed just from our loving G.o.d, but I did not forget that I have you and you are everything. It has been hard, terribly hard, but I did not give up."

Then she confessed her secret, timorously at first, then eagerly, pleadingly. She told him of 'Gene Crawley's reformation, his kindness, his real n.o.bility, expecting at the outset that Jud would be angry and displeased. But he was thinking of the future, not of the past or the present. After a moment or two of surprise and chagrin, he accepted her course in regard to Crawley as a natural condition, and, trusting her implicitly, found no fault with her action. He went so far as to credit Crawley with more manhood than he had suspected. A flood of joy enveloped her when she saw that he was reconciled; the weight of her only deception was lifted from her troubled heart.

Already he was thinking of the ordeal ahead of him: the return to Celeste, the confession of his duplicity, his plea for forgiveness and leniency, and then the life of peace and solitude with Justine and the boy. He knew that Celeste's heart would be crushed, but it was the only way back to the path of honor. Justine should never know of his marriage to Celeste; that was the one thing the honest, virtuous country girl would not forgive. He even found himself, as he always was in emergencies, impatient to have the ordeal over, to know his fate, to give torture to one that he might be happy with the other.

With the arms of the real wife about his neck, he trembled with the desire to be off to the side of the deceived one, there to unmask himself, to grovel at her feet and then to fly from the world. How he could face Celeste he knew not, but he must do it. There seemed no way to lighten the blow he must deal and there seemed no escape from it.

He was a bigamist, a criminal.

To leave her without an explanation would result in a tireless search, inspired by her love; the discovery of his duplicity by the police would mean conviction; even Celeste could not save him. Shrewdly he brought himself to believe that, though she could not forgive him, she would release him to avoid a scandal. He knew that he must play out to the end his role of the coward and the supplicant and the liar.

It was only after the most persistent pleading that Justine induced him to remain with her through the night and the day following. She promised to keep his visit a secret, respecting his show of humiliation, and she vouched for the silence of Mrs. Crane who slept upstairs. And so the would-be murderer and suicide slept and dreamed and plotted for twenty-four hours in the house of his victim, slinking away on the night after, with her kisses on his lips, her voice in his ears, leaving behind brave promises and the vow to come back to her and the boy without murder in his heart.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE TALE OF TEARS.

He had told Celeste that he would be away from home over one night, and she was alarmed when he did not return on the second night after his departure. On the third day she could not shut out the picture of his despondent face. When she heard his footsteps in the lower hall that afternoon her heart gave a great bound of relief, and all his plans went scattering before her joyous greeting.

He entered the house steeled to tell her, but his resolution wavered, and, with the words on his tongue's end, he felt them forced back by her kisses. He let himself procrastinate; every vestige of courage vanished before this attack of love and confidence. If his response to her welcome was lifeless and cold, she did not complain; if he seemed distraught, she overlooked it in the joy of having her apprehensions swept away.

"Do you know, dear, I was beginning to fear you had been lost in the snow storm and that I should have to send St. Bernard dogs out to find you?" she said, gaily, as she drew him into the big chair before the grate and climbed cozily upon the arm beside him.

"I can't tell her now," he was groaning to himself. "I can't break her heart to-day--not to-day."

"Was it so warm and pleasant in Milwaukee that you couldn't tear yourself away?" she went on, her hand caressing his hair.

"Where? Mil--Oh, yes, Milwaukee," he stammered, recalling that he had told her he was going there on business. "No; it was beastly. I had to stay a day longer than I expected."

"Tell me all about it," she said. "Did everything turn out as good as you hoped? Will he take the pictures?"

He was unable to reply at once. Indeed, it was necessary for him to remember just what excuse he had given her for going to Milwaukee.

Slowly it came back to him. Without lifting his guilty eyes from the coals, he told her that Mr. Evans had not given him the order for the five paintings until he had consulted his partner, who was delayed in returning from St. Paul. On the partner's return (here Jud's twisted heart leaped at a fresh inspiration) the firm promptly agreed to accept all of his paintings and contracted for others to be finished within a very short s.p.a.ce of time.

"Isn't that a very short time in which to do the work, Jud?" she inquired, anxiously. A cunning thought had prompted his statement; in it he saw the respite that might be needed. The task of supplying the fict.i.tious order would command his closest thought and energy, and, by preventing the trip to Florida, would give him a longer time in which to make ready for the trial at hand. He saw that he would lack the immediate courage to tell her, and that it would require hours and days of torture to bring him to the task.

"It means that I'll have to give up the Florida trip," he said.

"O, no, Jud! Let the old pictures go! Can't they wait? You must go to Florida. It will do you so much good, and my heart is so set on it."

A new thought struck him sharply and his spirits leaped upward. "You could go without me, Celeste. There's no reason why you should give up the pleasure because I have to----"

"Dudley Sherrod," she interrupted, decisively, "you are hateful. I will not go a step without you. It is you who need the rest and the change. Write to Mr. Evans this afternoon and tell him you cannot do the pictures until next spring."

"I can't do that, dear. They must be done at once," he said.

"But you must have the two months in Florida," she persisted in troubled tones. "Why, dear, I have made preparations to leave on Sat.u.r.day and this is Thursday. Won't you, please, for my sake, give up the pictures?"

"Impossible," he said, firmly, rising suddenly. He pressed her hand softly and pa.s.sed from the room, afraid to look back into her eyes.

She sat perfectly still for many minutes, the puzzled expression deepening in her eyes.

"To-morrow I will tell her all," he vowed, as he paced the floor of his studio. The memory of the distressed look in her eyes bore him down.

He knew that he could not endure the sight of prolonged pain in those loving eyes, and what little wisdom he had at his command told him that to end the suspense quickly was the most charitable thing to do.

"To-morrow, to-morrow," he repeated, feverishly. He groaned aloud with loathing for himself and shame of what the morrow was to bring. "I love her. How can I tell her that she is not my wife? How can I tell her that I deceived her deliberately? And what will she say, what will she do? Good G.o.d, what is to be the end of it? Will she submit or will she cry for the vengeance that is justly hers?"

For the first time the agony of this question was beyond his power of suffering. His mind refused to consider it. He was dulled; he felt nothing--and presently there was a relief in feeling nothing. Up to that time his sensitive nature had responded to every grief. Of a sudden his mind refused grief; and the inspiration came to him to support that refusal. He shut out thoughts of Celeste, and let himself look forward to the happiness with Justine and his boy.

The next day he faltered in his determination to tell Celeste, and the day after it was the same. He could not stand before her and look into her eyes and tell her. He was conscious of the fact that her troubled gaze was following him wherever he moved, that she seemed to be reading his thoughts. He grew more apathetic under the scrutiny. He took to good food as a refuge from his thoughts, and surprised her by asking for dainty dishes. He found some poetry, careless with fatalism, and instantly became a fatalist. He would let affairs take their course.

The yearning for Justine dulled a little.

But one day, entering his studio, expecting to find him at work, she was amazed to see him with a picture in his hand. He was looking at it eagerly. She could see the face. It was Justine Van.

Justine Van! The girl of the meadow; the sweetheart of the old days!

The first jealousy tore at her heart and she began vaguely to comprehend the stoop in his shoulders.

He had found the picture among some old drawings, and the sight of it enlivened his desire for Justine. He wrote her a letter, and then conceived the plan of writing a confession to Celeste, and slinking off to his room to await the crash. He knew she would fly to him and--well, it would be like defending himself against an a.s.sault. He laughed harshly at himself as he contemplated this last exhibition of cowardice. He wrote not only one but ten confessions, destroying one after the other as the lingering spark of manhood flared up in resistance to this mode of doing battle.

One night Celeste came to him in the dimly lighted studio. The trouble in her heart revealed itself in her voice and eyes. He sat dreaming before the little grate and started when her hands gently touched his cheeks from behind.

"What is the matter, Jud, dear?" she asked, softly. "There is something on your mind. Won't you confide in me? I love you, dear.

Tell me everything, Jud, and don't try to bear it alone. Don't you think I love you enough to share the greatest pain that might come to you?"