The Broken Gate Part 32

"You won't let me help you, Don?"

"No! I won't let you have anything to do with me! I'll never allow your name to come on my lips, and you must never think of mentioning mine!

Only--Anne, Anne--surely you don't think I had any idea before yesterday--about my father? I wouldn't buy my own happiness at that price. I'm no one's son. I'm dead, and doubly dead. But I never knew."

"No," said she, "I know you did not--I know you would not."

They both were so young, as they talked on now, wisely, soberly.

"So you are free," he said, casting away her hands from him, and standing back. "You never were anything but free."

"I'll never be free again, Don," said she, shaking her head. "You kissed me! I'm not a girl any more--I'm a woman now. I can't go back. And now you tell me to go away! Don't you love me, Don? Why, I love you--so much!"

"My G.o.d, don't!" he groaned. "Don't! I can't stand everything. But I can't take anything but the best and truest sort of love."

"Isn't mine?"

"No. It's pity, maybe--I can't tell. This is no place for us to talk of that now. You must go away. I hope you will forget you ever saw me. I don't even know my father's name--I don't know whether he is living--I don't know anything! I have been walled in all my life--I'm walled in now. I never ought to have touched even the hem of your garment, for I wasn't fit. But I couldn't help it."

"That's the trouble," said Anne. "I can't help it, either."

"Ah!" he half groaned, "you ought to be kept from yourself."

"Kept from myself, Don? If that were true of all the women in the world, how much world would there be left? That's why I'm here--why, Don, I had to come!"

"Anne! It can't be. It's only cruel for you to tear me up by coming here--by staying here--by standing here. I love you! Anne! Anne! I don't see how it could be hard as this for any man to part from any woman." He was trembling through all his strong frame now.

"But we promised!"

"The law says that a promise is such only when two minds meet. Our minds never met--I didn't know the facts--you didn't know about me--we have just found out about it now."

"Our minds didn't meet?" said Anne Oglesby. "Our _minds_? Did not our _hearts_ meet--don't they meet now--and isn't _that_ what it all means between a man and a woman?"

He stood, trembling, apart from her in the twilight.

"Don't!" he whispered. "I love you! I will love you all my life! You must go away. Oh, go now, go quickly!"

A merciful footfall sounded on the stone floor of the outer hall. The door opened, letting in a shaft of light with it. Cowles stood hesitating, looking at the two young people, still separated, standing wretchedly.

"I hate to say anything," said the sheriff, "but I reckon----"

"She must go," said Don Lane. "Take her away. Good-by--Anne! Anne! Oh, good-by!"

"Won't you kiss me, Don?" said Anne Oglesby--"when I love you so much?"

There were four tears, two great, sudden drops from each eye, that sprang now on Dan Cowles' wrinkled, sunburned cheeks.

But Don Lane had cast himself down once more on the pallet and was trying with all his power to be silent until after she had gone.

"In some ways," said Dan Cowles to his wife later that night, "he's got me guessing, that young fellow. He don't act like no murderer to me. But since she left, and since all this here happened, he's wild--Lord! he's wild!"

CHAPTER XIX

THE MOB

Anne Oglesby left the jail shortly after the time when church services were ending. As she hurried by Aurora Lane's house in Mulberry Street she saw a light s.h.i.+ning from the windows, but she did not enter--she could not have spoken to anyone now.

She evaded any meeting with her guardian after she had made her way back home. Judge Henderson had not known of her absence and was not aware of her return. Anne thus by a certain period of time missed seeing what Dan Cowles presently saw.

It was noticeable that Sabbath day that more than the usual number of farmers' wagons remained in town, quite past the time when the country church members usually started back for their homes. The farmers seemed to be in no hurry, even although they had seen a double church service.

There was something restless, something vague, disturbing, over the town. A number of townsmen also seemed impelled to walk back toward the public square. Some strange indefinite summons drew them thither. Little knots of men stood here and there. Groups of women gathered at this or that gallery front.

No one knows the point where in vague public thought a general resolution actually begins. The ripple in the pool spreads widely when a stone is cast. What chance word, or what deliberate resolve, may have started the slowly growing resolution of Spring Valley may not be known; but now a sort of stealthy silence fell over the village as groups gathered here and there, speaking cautiously, in low tones.

A knot of men stood near the corner of the square looking down the street to the light which shone red from the shaded window of Aurora Lane.

"I know what was done right in this here town thirty year ago," said one high pitched voice. "It was old Eph Adamson's father that led them, too.

Them was days when----"

"Why ain't Eph in town today?" asked another voice. "I seen considerable of his neighbors around in town today."

"He was, a while back," said someone.

"That must have been about a hour ago," said some other, looking about furtively at the faces of his neighbors.

"Let's take a stroll over towards the open lots near the jail,"

suggested someone else.

So, following the first to start with definite purpose, little straggling groups pa.s.sed on beyond the corner of the square, beyond the jail itself, to a sort of open s.p.a.ce not yet encroached upon by public or private buildings.

There was no shouting, no loud talking. The light was dim. The crowd itself moved vaguely, milling about, like cattle restive and ready to stampede, but not yet determined on their course.

"G.o.d! Did you hear that music this afternoon--they're done a-buryin'

poor old Joel Tarbush by now, but I can hear it yet, seems to me! Now, what had poor old Joel ever done--all his life--to deserve bein'

murdered like a dog? It makes my blood sort of rise up to think of that.

Now, them that done that--them that was back of that----"

His friend, accosted, nodded grimly, his mouth was shut tight and turned down deep at the corners.

There did not lack one or two willing at least to talk further. One was a young man, rather well dressed, apparently fresh from church. He spoke to any who would listen.

"What I mean to say, men, is this," said he, "we've got to do something to clean up this town. It's the _people_ that's behind the law anyhow.

Am I right?"

"He talks like a lawyer--what he says is pretty true," said one farmer to another.