Kindred of the Dust Part 48

The Laird wiped his eyes and got control of himself. Presently he said: "Keep that blessed dog off me," and started resolutely for the front gate. Without a moment's hesitation he folded Nan in his arms and kissed her. "Poor bairn," he whispered. "I've been cruel to you.

Forgie me, daughter, if so be you can find it in your heart to be that generous. G.o.d knows, la.s.s, I'll try to be worthy of you."

"Am I worthy of him?" she whispered, womanlike.

"Far more than his father is," he admitted humbly. "d.a.m.n the world and d.a.m.n the people in it. You're a good girl, Nan. You always were a good girl--"

"But suppose she wasn't--always?" Donald queried gently. "Is that going to make any difference--to you?"

"I don't care what she was before you married her. I haven't thought about that for a long time the way I used to think about it. I built The Dreamerie for you and the girl you'd marry and I--I accept her unconditionally, my son, and thank G.o.d she has the charity to accept an old Pharisee like me for a father-in-law."

Donald slipped his arm around Nan's waist, and started with her toward the door. "Tag along, father," he suggested, "and Nan will show you a prize grandson."

At the door, Nan paused. "Do you think, father McKaye," she queried, "that the remainder of the family will think as you do?"

"I fear not," he replied sadly. "But then, you haven't married the family. They'll accept you or keep out of Port Agnew; at any rate they'll never bother you, my dear. I think," he added grimly, "that I may find a way to make them treat you with civility at least."

"He's a pretty good old sport after all, isn't he, Nan?" her husband suggested.

"I'll tell the world he is," she answered archly, employing the A.E.F.

slang she had already learned from Donald. She linked her arm in old Hector's and steered him down the hall to the living-room. "Your grandson is in there," she said, and opening the door she gently propelled him into the room.

XLVII

Nan was right. His grandson was there, but strange to relate he was seated, as naked as Venus (save for a diaper) on his grandmother's lap.

Hector McKaye paused and glared at his wife.

"d.a.m.n it, Nellie," he roared, "what the devil do you mean by this?"

"I'm tired of being an old fool, Hector," she replied meekly, and held the baby up for his inspection.

"It's time you were," he growled. "Come here, you young rascal till I heft you. By the G.o.ds of war, he's a McKaye!" He hugged the squirming youngster to his heart and continued to glare at his wife as if she were a hardened criminal. "Why didn't you tell me you felt yourself slipping?" he demanded. "Out with it, Nellie."

"There will be no post-mortems," Nan interdicted. "Mother McKaye and Elizabeth and Jane and I patched up our difficulties when Donald came home yesterday. How we did it or what transpired before we did it, doesn't matter, you dear old snooper."

"What? Elizabeth and Jane? Unconditional surrender?"

She nodded smilingly and The Laird admitted his entire willingness to be--jiggered. Finally, having inspected his grandson, he turned for an equally minute inspection of his soldier son under the lamplight.

"Three service stripes and one wound stripe," he murmured. "And you're not crippled, boy dear?"

"Do I fight like one? Hector, man, those punches of yours would have destroyed a battalion of cripples. Oh, you old false-alarm! Honestly, Dad, you're the most awful dub imaginable. And trying to bribe me into permitting you to escape--what the deuce have you been monkeying with?

You reek of ammonia--here, go away from my son. You're poison."

The Laird ignored him. "What's that ribbon?" he demanded.

"Distinguished Service Cross."

"You must have bought it in a p.a.w.nshop. And that thing?"

"Croix de Guerre."

"And that red one?"

"Legion d'Honneur."

A pause. "What did Dirty Dan get, son?"

"The one thing in the world he thought he despised. The Congressional Medal of Honor for valor in saving the life of a British colonel, who, by the way, happens to be an Orangeman. When he discovered it he wanted to bayonet the colonel and I won the Croix de Guerre for stopping him."

"Oh, cease your nonsense, Donald," his wife urged, "and tell your father and mother something. I think they are ent.i.tled to the news now."

"Yes, Nan, I think they are. Listen, folks. Now that you've all been nice enough to be human beings and accept my wife at her face value, I have a surprise for you. On the day when Nan married the father of my adopted son, he waited until the officiating minister had signed the marriage license and attested that he had performed the ceremony; then while the minister's attention was on something else, he took possession of the license and put it in his overcoat pocket. Later he and Nan drove to a restaurant for luncheon and the overcoat with the license in the pocket was stolen, from the automobile. The thief p.a.w.ned the coat later and the p.a.w.nbroker discovered the license in the pocket after the thief had departed. The following day the fellow was arrested in the act of stealing another overcoat; the p.a.w.nbroker read of the arrest and remembered he had loaned five dollars on an overcoat to a man who gave the same name this thief gave to the police. So the p.a.w.nbroker--"

"I am not interested, my son. I require no proofs."

"Thank you for that, father. But you're ent.i.tled to them and you're going to get them. The p.a.w.nbroker found on the inside lining of the inner breast pocket of the overcoat the tag which all tailors sew there when, they make the garment. This tag bore the name of the owner of the overcoat, his address and the date of delivery of the overcoat."

"Now, the p.a.w.nbroker noticed that the man who owned the overcoat was not the person named in the marriage license. Also he noticed that the marriage license was attested by a minister but that it had not been recorded by the state board of health, as required by law--and the p.a.w.nbroker was aware that marriage licenses are not permitted, by law, to come into the possession of the contracting parties until the fact that they have been legally married has been duly recorded on the evidence of the marriage--which is, of course, the marriage license."

"Why didn't the idiot send the license back to the minister who had performed the ceremony?" The Laird demanded. "Then this tangle would never have occurred."

"He says he thought of that, but he was suspicious. It was barely possible that the officiating clergyman had connived at the theft of the license from his desk, so the p.a.w.nbroker, who doubtless possesses the instincts of an amateur detective, resolved to get the license into the hands of Nan Brent direct. Before doing so, however, he wrote to the man named in the license and sent his letter to the address therein given. In the course of time that letter was returned by the post-office department with the notation that the location of the addressee was unknown. The p.a.w.nbroker then wrote to the man whose name appeared on the tailor's tag in the overcoat, and promptly received a reply. Yes, an overcoat had been stolen from his automobile on a certain date. He described the overcoat and stated that the marriage license of a friend of his might be found in the breast pocket, provided the thief had not removed it. If the license was there he would thank the p.a.w.nbroker to forward it to him. He enclosed a check to redeem the overcoat and pay the cost of forwarding it to him by parcel post, insured. The p.a.w.nbroker had that check photographed before cas.h.i.+ng it and he forwarded the overcoat but retained the marriage license, for he was more than ever convinced that things were not as they should have been.

"His next move was to write Miss Nan Brent, at Port Agnew, Was.h.i.+ngton, informing her of the circ.u.mstances and advising her that he had her marriage certificate. This letter reached Port Agnew at the time Nan was living in San Francisco, and her father received it. He merely scratched out Port Agnew, Was.h.i.+ngton, and subst.i.tuted for that address: 'Care of---- using Nan's married name, Altamont Apartments, San Francisco.'

"By the time that letter reached San Francisco Nan had left that address, but since she planned a brief absence only, she left no forwarding address for her mail. That was the time she came north to visit her father and in Seattle she discovered that her supposed husband was already married. I have told you, father, and you have doubtless told mother, Nan's reasons for refusing to disclose this man's ident.i.ty at that time.

"Of course Nan did not return to San Francisco, but evidently her husband did and at their apartment he found this letter addressed to Nan. He opened it, and immediately set out for San Jose to call upon the p.a.w.nbroker and gain possession of the marriage license. Unknown to him, however, his lines were all tangled and the p.a.w.nbroker told him frankly he was a fraud and declined to give him the license. Finally the p.a.w.nbroker tried a bluff and declared that if the man did not get out of his place of business he would have him arrested as a bigamist--and the fellow fled.

"A month or two later the p.a.w.nbroker was in San Francisco so he called at the Altamont Apartments to deliver the license in person, only to discover that the person he sought had departed and that her address was unknown. So he wrote Nan again, using her married name and addressed her at Port Agnew, Was.h.i.+ngton. You will remember, of course, that at this time Nan's marriage was not known to Port Agnew, she had kept it secret. Naturally the postmaster here did not know anybody by that name, and in due course, when the letter remained unclaimed he did not bother to advertise it but returned it to the sender."

"It doesn't seem possible," Mrs. McKaye declared, quite pop-eyed with excitement.

"It was possible enough," her son continued drily. "Well, the bewildered p.a.w.nbroker thrust the license away in his desk, and awaited the next move of the man in the case. But he never moved, and after a while the p.a.w.nbroker forgot he had the license. And the minister was dead. One day, in cleaning out his desk he came across the acc.u.mulated papers in the case and it occurred to him to write the state board of health and explain the situation. Promptly he received a letter from the board informing him that inquiries had been made at the board of health office for a certified copy of the license, by Miss Nan Brent, of Port Agnew, Was.h.i.+ngton, and that the board had been unable to furnish such a certified copy. Immediately our obliging and intelligent p.a.w.nbroker, whose name, by the way, is Abraham Goldman, bundled up the marriage license, together with the carbon copy of the p.a.w.n ticket he had given the thief; a press clipping from the San Jose _Mercury_ recounting the story of the capture of the thief; carbon copies of all his correspondence in the case, the original of all letters received, the photograph of the check--everything, in fact, to prove a most conclusive case through the medium of a well-ordered and amazing chain of optical and circ.u.mstantial evidence. This evidence he sent to Miss Brent, Port Agnew, Was.h.i.+ngton, and she received it about a week before I married her. Consequently, she was in position to prove to the most captious critic that she was a woman of undoubted virtue, the innocent victim of a scoundrel who had inveigled her into a bigamous marriage. Of course, in view of the fact that the man she went through a legal marriage ceremony with already had a wife living, Nan's marriage to him was illegal--how do you express it? Ipso facto or per se? In the eyes of the law she had never been married; the man in the case was legally debarred from contracting another marriage.

The worst that could possibly be said of Nan was that she played in mighty hard luck."

"In the name of heaven, why did you not tell me this the day you married her?" The Laird demanded wrathfully.

"I didn't know it the day I married her. She was curious enough to want to see how game I was. She wanted to be certain I truly loved her, I think--and in view of her former experience I do not blame her for it. It pleased you a whole lot, didn't it, honey?" he added, turning to Nan, "when I married you on faith?"

"But why didn't you tell us after you had discovered it, Donald?" Mrs.

McKaye interrupted. "That was not kind of you, my son."