The Ancient Law Part 26

"Why, he told me with his own lips that his daughter had given him to understand that she preferred you to Brown."

"And so she did give him to understand--so she did," affirmed Banks, in despair, "but it was all a blind so that he wouldn't make trouble between her and Brown. I tell you, Smith," he concluded, bringing his clenched fist down on the wheel of the wagon, from which a shower of dried mud was scattered into Ordway's face, "I tell you, I don't believe women think any more of telling a lie than we do of taking a c.o.c.ktail!"

"But how do you know all this, my dear fellow? and when did you discover it?"

"That's the awful part, I'm coming to it." His voice gave out and he swallowed a lump in his throat before he could go on. "Oh, Smith, Smith, I declare, if it's the last word I speak, I believe she means to run away with Brown this very evening!"

"What?" cried Ordway, hardly raising his voice above a whisper. A burning resentment, almost a repulsion swept over him, and he felt that he could have spurned the girl's silly beauty if she had lain at his feet. What was a woman like Milly Trend worth, that she should cost him, a stranger to her, so great a price?

"Tell me all," he said sharply, turning again to his companion. "How did you hear it? Why do you believe it? Have you spoken to Jasper?"

Banks blinked hard for a minute, while a single large round teardrop trickled slowly down his freckled nose.

"I should never have suspected it," he answered, "but for Milly's old black Mammy Delphy, who has lived with her ever since she was born. Aunt Delphy came upon her this morning when she was packing her bag, and by hook or crook, heaven knows how, she managed to get at the truth. Then she came directly to me, for it seems that she hates Brown worse than the devil."

"When did she come to you?"

"A half hour ago. I left her and rushed straight to you."

Ordway drew out his watch, and stood looking at the face of it with a wondering frown.

"That must have been five o'clock," he said, "and it is now half past.

Shall I catch Milly, do you think, if I start at once?"

"You?" cried Banks, "you mean that you will stop her?"

"I mean that I must stop her. There is no question."

As he spoke he had started quickly down the warehouse, scattering as he walked, a pile of trash which the old Negro had swept together in the centre of the floor. So rapid were the long strides with which he moved that Banks, in spite of his frantic haste, could barely keep in step with him as they pa.s.sed into the street. Ordway's face had changed as if from a spasm of physical pain, and as Banks looked at it in the afternoon light he was startled to find that it was the face of an old man. The brows were bent, the mouth drawn, the skin sallow, and the gray hair upon the temples had become suddenly more prominent than the dark locks above.

"Then you knew Brown before?" asked Banks, with an accession of courage, as they slackened their pace with the beginning of the hill.

"I knew him before--yes," replied Ordway, shortly. His reserve had become not only a mask, but a coffin, and his companion had for a minute a sensation that was almost uncanny as he walked by his side--as if he were striving to keep pace uphill with a dead man. Banks had known him to be silent, gloomy, uncommunicative before now, but he had never until this instant seen that look of iron resolve which was too cold and still to approach the heat of pa.s.sion. Had he been furious Banks might have shared his fury with him; had he shown bitterness of mood Banks might have been bitter also; had he given way even to sardonic merriment, Banks felt that it would have been possible to have feigned a mild hilarity of manner; but before this swift, implacable pursuit of something he could not comprehend, the wretched lover lost all consciousness of the part which he himself must act, well or ill, in the event to come.

At Trend's gate Ordway stopped and looked at his companion with a smile which appeared to throw an artificial light upon his drawn features.

"Will you let me speak to her alone first," he asked, "for a few minutes?"

"I'll take a turn up the street then," returned Banks eagerly, still panting from his hurried walk up the long hill. "She's in the room on the right now," he added, "I can see her feeding the canary."

Ordway nodded indifferently. "I shan't be long," he said, and going inside the gate, pa.s.sed deliberately up the walk and into the room where Milly stood at the window with her mouth close against the wires of the gilt cage.

At his step on the threshold the girl turned quickly toward the door with a fluttering movement. Surprise and disappointment battled for an instant in her glance, and he gathered from his first look that he had come at the moment when she was expecting Wherry. He noticed, too, that in spite of the mild autumn weather, she wore a dark dress which was not unsuitable for a long journey, and that her sailor hat, from which a blue veil floated, lay on a chair in one corner. A deeper meaning had entered into the shallow prettiness of her face, and he felt that she had pa.s.sed through some subtle change in which she had left her girlhood behind her. For the first time it occurred to him that Milly Trend was deserving not only of pa.s.sion, but of sympathy.

At the withdrawal of the lips that had offered him his bit of cake, the canary fluttered from his perch and uttered a sweet, short, questioning note; and in Milly's face, as she came forward, there was something of this birdlike, palpitating entreaty.

"Oh, it is you, Mr. Smith," she said, "I did not hear your ring."

"I didn't ring," responded Ordway, as he took her trembling outstretched hand in which she still held the bit of sponge cake, "I saw you at the window so I came straight in without sending word. What I have to say to you is so important that I dared not lose a minute."

"And it is about me?" asked Milly, with a quiver of her eyelids.

"No, it is about someone else, though it concerns you in a measure. The thing I have to tell you relates directly to a man whom you know as Horatio Brown----"

He spoke so quickly that the girl divined his meaning from his face rather than from his words.

"Then you know him?" she questioned, in a frightened whisper.

"I know more of his life than I can tell you. It is sufficient to say that to the best of my belief he has a wife now living--that he has been married before this under different names to at least two living women----"

He stopped and put out his hand with an impulsive protecting gesture, for the wounded vanity in the girl's face had pierced to his heart.

"Will you let me see your father?" he asked gently, "would it not be better for me to speak to him instead of to you?"

"No, no!" cried Milly sharply, "don't tell him--don't dare to tell him--for he would believe it and it is a lie--it is a lie! I tell you it is a lie!"

"As G.o.d is my witness it is the truth," he answered, without resentment.

"Then you shall accuse him to his face. He is coming in a little while, and you shall accuse him before me----"

She stopped breathlessly and the pity in his look made her wince sharply and shrink away. With her movement the piece of sponge cake fell from her loosened fingers and rolled on the floor at her feet.

"But if it were true how could you know it?" she demanded. "No, it is not true--I don't believe it! I don't believe it!" she repeated in a pa.s.sion of terror.

At her excited voice the canary, swinging on his perch, broke suddenly into an ecstasy of song, and Milly's words, when she spoke again, were drowned in the liquid sweetness that flowed from the cage. For a minute Ordway stood in silence waiting for the music to end, while he watched the angry, helpless tremor of the girl's outstretched hands.

"Will you promise me to wait?" he asked, raising his voice in the effort to be heard, "will you promise me to wait at least until you find out the truth or the falsehood of what I tell you?"

"But I don't believe it," repeated Milly in the stubborn misery of hopeless innocence.

"Ask yourself, then, what possible reason I could have in coming to you--except to save you?"

"Wait!" cried the girl angrily, "I can't hear--wait!" Picking up a shawl from a chair, she flung it with an impatient gesture over the cage, and turning immediately from the extinguished bird, took up his sentence where he had broken off.

"To save me?" she repeated, "you mean from marriage?"

"From a marriage that would be no marriage. Am I right in suspecting that you meant to go away with him to-night?"

She bowed her head--all the violent spirit gone out of her. "I was ready to go to-night," she answered, like a child that has been hurt and is still afraid of what is to come.

"And you promise me that you will give it up?" he went on gently.

"I don't know--I can't tell--I must see him first," she said, and burst suddenly into tears, hiding her face in her hands with a pathetic, shamed gesture.

Turning away for a moment, he stood blankly staring down into the jar of goldfish. Then, as her sobs grew presently beyond her control, he came back to the chair into which she had dropped and looked with moist eyes at her bowed fair head.

"Before I leave you, will you promise me to give him up?--to forget him if it be possible?" he asked.

"But it is not possible," she flashed back, lifting her wet blue eyes to his. "How dare you come to me with a tale like this? Oh, I hate you! I shall always hate you! Will you go?"