We Can't Have Everything Part 99

Adna pondered aloud, his claim-agent instincts alert: "Settlement, eh?

What might you call settlement?"

"Whatever you'd consider fair. How much would you say was right?"

Adna filled his lungs and mouthed the deliciously liquid word as if it were a veritable _aurum potabile_:

"Millions!"

"What!" Jim gasped.

Adna fairly gargled it again:

"Millillions!"

The greed in the old man's eyes shot Dyckman's eyes with blood. He snarled:

"So it's the plain old blackmail, eh? Well, you can go plumb to h.e.l.l!"

"All right," said Adna, felicitously, "but we won't go alone. I and daughter will have comp'ny. Come on, Mr. Beattie."

After they had gone Jim realized that his hatred of being gouged had involved Charity's priceless reputation. He told McNiven to recall Beattie, but Charity herself appeared in a new and militant humor.

The first realization that her good name was gone had crushed her. She had built it up like a mansion, adding a white stone day by day. When it fell about her in ruins her soul had swooned with the disaster.

After a night and a day of groveling terror she had recaptured the valor that makes and keeps a woman good, and she leaped from her sick bed and her sick soul into an armor of rage.

She burst in on McNiven and Jim and demanded a share in the battle. When Jim told her of his latest blunder she spoke up, stoutly:

"You did the right thing. To try to buy them off would be to confess guilt. The damage is done. The whole world has read the lie. Now we'll make it read the truth. There must be some way for me to defend my name, and I want to know what it is."

McNiven told her that the law allowed her to enter the case and seek vindication, but he advised her against it. She thanked him for the information and rejected the advice. She was gray with battle-ardor and her very nostrils were fierce.

"I'm sorry to do anything to interfere with your welfare, Jim, for if I win she wins you; but you can get rid of her some other way. The little beast! She thinks she can make use of me as a bridge to cross over to her Marquess, but she can't!"

"Her Marquess?" Jim mumbled. "What does that mean?"

Charity regretted her impetuous speech, but McNiven explained it.

Jim was pretty well deadened to shocks by this time, but the news that his wife had been disloyal found an untouched spot in his heart to stab.

It gave him a needed resentment, however, and a much-needed something to feel wronged about.

He caught a spark of Charity's blazing anger, and they resolved to fight the case to the limit. And that was where it took them.

CHAPTER X

Once the battle was joined, a fierce desire for haste impelled all of these people. Kedzie dreaded every hour's delay as a new risk of losing Strathdene, who was showing an increasing rage at having the name of his wife-to-be bandied about in the press, with her portraits in formal pose or snapped by batteries of reporters.

Her lawyer emphasized the heartbreak it was to her to learn that her adored husband had been led astray by her trusted friend. This did not make pleasant reading for the jealous Strathdene, and he wished himself jolly well out of the whole affair.

It was not long before his own name began to slip into the case by innuendo. Once he was in, he could not decently abandon his Kedzie, though he had to prove his devotion by denying it and threatening to shoot anybody who implied that his interest in Mrs. Dyckman was anything more than formal.

Jim Dyckman was impatient to have done with the suit, however it ended.

He was tossed on both horns of the dilemma. He was compelled to fight one woman to save another. He could not defend Charity without striking Kedzie and he could not spare Kedzie without destroying Charity.

In a situation that would have overwhelmed the greatest tacticians he floundered miserably. He vowed that whatever the outcome of the case might be, he would never look at a woman again. Men find it very easy to condemn womankind _en bloc_, and they are forever forswearing the s.e.x as if it were a unit or a bad habit.

During the necessary delay in reaching trial Jim asked and received an extension of his leave of absence; then his regiment came home from the Border and was mustered out of the Federal service and received again into the State control. Jim felt almost as much ashamed of involving his regiment in his scandal as Charity.

He had suffered so greatly from the embarra.s.sment of the publicity that he could hardly endure to face his regiment and drill with his company.

He offered his resignation again, but it was not accepted.

In fact, under the new condition of the National Guard service, his immediate officers had nothing to do with his resignation.

The probability of a call to arms, not against Mexico, but against the almost almighty German Empire, was so great that it looked like slackery or cowardice to ask to be excused. His next dread was that the regiment would be mustered in before the case was finished, compelling its postponement and leaving Charity to languish unrevenged.

For his inclusive anger at Everywoman soon changed back to deeper affection than ever. The first sight of her on the witness-stand at the mercy of the inquisition of the unscrupulous Beattie brought back all his old emotions for her and unnumbered new.

He had seen a picture of one of the Christian martyrs whose torture was inflicted on her by a man armed with steel pincers to pluck off her flesh from her shuddering soul bit by bit. It seemed to him that his sainted Charity was condemned to like atrocity. Her hands were bound by the thongs of the law, her body was stripped to the eyes of the crowd, and the tormentor went here and there, nipping at the quick with intolerable cruelty.

And Jim must not go to her rescue. He must not protest or lift a hand in her behalf. He must sit and suffer with her while the anguish squeezed the big sweat out of his knotted brows.

It had been hard enough to await the appearance of the case on the docket, to sit through the selection of the jury, and to study the gradual recruitment of that squad of twelve sphinxes, all commonplace, yet mysterious, lacking in all divinity of comprehension and eager to be entertained with an exciting conflict.

The fact that a woman was the plaintiff was a tremendous handicap for Jim, even though a woman was allied with him in the defense. The very name "co-respondent" condemned her in advance in the public mind. And then she was rich and therefore dissipated in the minds of those who cannot imagine wealth as providing other fascinating businesses besides vice. And Jim was wealthy and therefore a proper object for punishment.

If he had earned his millions it must have been by tyrannous corruption; if he had only inherited them that was worse yet.

Beattie lost no chance to play on the baser phases of the n.o.ble and essential suspicions of the democratic soul and also on Kedzie's humble origin, her child-like prettiness proving absolutely a child-like innocence and trust, and the homely simplicity of her parents, who, being poor and ignorant, were therefore inevitably virtuous and sincere.

Jim had realized from the first what a guilty aspect his unfortunate excursion with Charity must wear in the eyes of any one but her and him.

Even the waiter who was on the ground had unwittingly conspired with their delicacy to put them in a most indelicate situation. Skip went on the stand, reveling in his first experience of fame, basking in the spot-light like a cheap actor, and acting very badly, yet well enough for the groundlings he amused.

Jim and Charity underwent a martyrdom of ridicule during his testimony.

A man and woman riding backward on a mule through a jeering mob might seem pathetic enough if one had the heart to deny himself the laughter, but Jim and Charity made their grotesque pilgrimage without exciting sympathy.

Beattie had tried to get Mrs. Noxon on the stand to confirm the proof that Charity had spent the night away, but the old lady showed her contempt of the court and of the submarines by sailing for Europe to escape the ordeal. The chauffeur, the valet, and the Viewcrest servants were enough, however, to corroborate Skip Magruder's story beyond any a.s.sailing, and handwriting experts had no difficulty in convincing the jury that Jim's signature on the hotel register was in his own handwriting. He had made no effort to disguise it or even to change his name till the last of it was well begun.

Mr. and Mrs. Thropp made splendid witnesses for their child and the old mother's tears melted a jury that had never seen her weep for meaner reasons.

When Charity reached the stand the case against her was so complete that all her bravery was gone. She felt herself a fool for having brought the ordeal on herself. She took not even self-respect with her to the chair of torture.

CHAPTER XI