The Ancient Law Part 46

"She says not. It's easier to deal with him, she feels, alone--and any way Uncle Richard will call there this afternoon."

"Oh, Uncle Richard!" he groaned, as he went out.

In the evening there was no news beyond a rea.s.suring visit from Richard Ordway, who stopped by, for ten minutes, on his way from an interview with Geoffrey Heath. "To tell the truth I found him less obstinate than I had expected," he said, "and there's no doubt, I fear, that he has some show of justice upon his side. He has agreed now to make Alice a very liberal allowance from the first of April, provided she will promise to make no more bills, and to live until then within her own income. He told me that he was obliged to retrench for the next six months in order to meet his obligations without touching his investments. It seems that he had bought very largely on margin, and the shrinkages in stocks has forced him to pay out a great deal of money recently."

"I knew you would manage it, Uncle, I relied on you absolutely," said Lydia, sweetly.

"I did only my duty, my child," he responded, as he held out his hand.

The one good result of the anxiety of the last twenty-four hours--the fact that it had brought Lydia and himself into a kind of human connection--had departed, Daniel observed, when he sat down to dinner, separated from her by six yellow candle shades and a bowl of gorgeous chrysanthemums. After a casual comment upon the soup, and the pleasant reminder that d.i.c.k would be home for Thanksgiving, the old uncomfortable silence fell between them. She had just remarked that the roast was a little overdone, and he had agreed with her from sheer politeness, when a sharp ring at the bell sent the old Negro butler hurrying out into the hall. An instant later there was a sound of rapid footsteps, and Alice, wearing a long coat, which slipped from her bare shoulders as she entered, came rapidly forward and threw herself into Ordway's arms, with an uncontrollable burst of tears.

"My child, my child, what is it?" he questioned, while Lydia, rising from the table with a disturbed face, but an unruffled manner, remarked to the butler that he need not serve the dessert.

"Come into the library, Alice, it is quieter there," she said, putting her arm about her daughter, with an authoritative pressure.

"O, papa, I will never see him again! You must tell him that. I shall never see him again," she cried, regardless alike of Lydia's entreaties and the restraining presence of the butler. "Go to him to-night and tell him that I will never--never go back."

"I'll tell him, Alice, and I'll do it with a great deal of pleasure," he answered soothingly, as he led her into the library and closed the door.

"But you must go at once. I want him to know it at once."

"I'll go this very hour--I'll go this very minute, if you honestly mean it."

"Would it not be better to wait until to-morrow, Alice?" suggested Lydia. "Then you will have time to quiet down and to see things rationally."

"I don't want to quiet down," sobbed Alice, angrily, "I want him to know now--this very instant--that he has gone too far--that I will not stand it. He told me a minute ago--the beast!--that he'd like to see the man who would be fool enough to keep me--that if I went he'd find a handsomer woman within a week!"

"Well, I'll see him, darling," said Ordway. "Sit here with your mother, and have a good cry and talk things over."

As he spoke he opened the door and went out into the hall, where he got into his overcoat.

"Remember last night and don't say too much, Daniel," urged Lydia in a warning whisper, coming after him, "she is quite hysterical now and does not realise what she is saying."

"Oh, I'll remember," he returned, and a minute later, he closed the front door behind him.

On his way to the Heath house in Henry Street, he planned dispa.s.sionately his part in the coming interview, and he resolved that he would state Alice's position with as little show of feeling as it was possible for him to express. He would tell Heath candidly that, with his consent, Alice should never return to him, but he would say this in a perfectly quiet and inoffensive manner. If there was to be a scene, he concluded calmly, it should be made entirely by Geoffrey. Then, as he went on, he said to himself, that he had grown tired and old, and that he lacked now the decision which should carry one triumphantly over a step like this. Even his anger against Alice's husband had given way to a dragging weariness, which seemed to hold him back as he ascended the brown-stone steps and laid his hand on the door bell. When the door was opened, and he followed the servant through the long hall, ornamented by marble statues, to the smoking-room at the end, he was conscious again of that sense of utter incapacity which had been bred in him by his life in Botetourt.

Geoffrey, after a full dinner, was lounging, with a cigar and a decanter of brandy, over a wood fire, and as his visitor entered he rose from his chair with a lazy shake of his whole person.

"I don't believe I've ever met you before, Mr. Ordway," he remarked, as he held out his hand, "though I've known you by sight for several years. Won't you sit down?" With a single gesture he motioned to a chair and indicated the cigars and the brandy on a little table at his right hand.

At his first glance Ordway had observed that he had been in a rage or drinking heavily--probably both; and he was seized by a sudden terror at the thought that Alice had been so lately at the mercy of this large red and black male animal. Yet, in spite of the disgust with which the man inspired him, he was forced to admit that as far as a mere physical specimen went, he had rarely seen his equal. His body was superbly built, and but for his sullen and brutal expression, his face would have been remarkable for its masculine beauty.

"No, I won't sit down, thank you," replied Ordway, after a short pause.

"What I have to say can be said better standing, I think."

"Then fire away!" returned Geoffrey, with a coa.r.s.e laugh. "It's about Alice, I suppose, and it's most likely some darn rot she's sent you with."

"It's probably less rot than you imagine. I have taken it upon myself to forbid her returning to you. Your treatment of her has made it impossible that she should remain in your house."

"Well, I've treated her a d.a.m.ned sight better than she deserved,"

rejoined Geoffrey, scowling, while his face, inflamed by the brandy he had drunk, burned to a dull red; "it isn't her fault, I can tell you, that she hasn't put me into the poorhouse in six months."

"I admit that she has been very extravagant, and so does she."

"Extravagant? So that is what you call it, is it? Well, she spent more in three weeks in Paris than my father did in his whole lifetime. I paid out a hundred thousand for her, and even then I could hardly get her away. But I won't pay the bills any longer, I've told her that. They may go into court about it and get their money however they can."

"In the future there will be no question of that."

"You think so, do you? Now I'll bet you whatever you please that she's back here in this house again before the week is up. She knows on which side her bread is b.u.t.tered, and she won't stay in that dull old place, not for all you're worth."

"She shall never return to you with my consent."

"Did she wait for that to marry me?" demanded Geoffrey, laughing uproariously at his wit, "though I can tell you now, that it makes precious little difference to me whether she comes or stays."

"She shall never do it," said Ordway, losing his temper. Then as he uttered the words, he remembered Lydia's warning and added more quietly, "she shall never do it if I can help it."

"It makes precious little difference to me," repeated Geoffrey, "but she'll be a blamed fool if she doesn't, and for all her foolishness, she isn't so big a fool as you think her."

"She has been wrong in her extravagance, as I said before, but she is very young, and her childishness is no excuse for your brutality."

Rage, or the brandy, or both together, flamed up hotly in Geoffrey's face.

"I'd like to know what right you have to talk about brutality?" he sneered.

"I've the right of any man to keep another from ill-treating his daughter."

"Well, you're a nice one with your history to put on these highfaluting, righteous airs, aren't you?"

For an instant the unutterable disgust in Ordway's mind was like physical nausea. What use was it, after all, to bandy speeches, he questioned, with a mere drunken animal? His revulsion of feeling had moved him to take a step toward the door, when the sound of the words Geoffrey uttered caused him to stop abruptly and stand listening.

"Much good you'll do her when she hears about that woman you've been keeping down at Tappahannock. As if I didn't know that you'd been running back there again after that Brooke girl----"

The words were choked back in his throat, for before they had pa.s.sed his lips Ordway had swung quickly round and struck him full in the mouth.

With the blow it seemed to Daniel that all the violence in his nature was loosened. A sensation that was like the joy of health, of youth, of manhood, rushed through his veins, and in the single exalted instant when he looked down on Geoffrey's prostrate figure, he felt himself to be not only triumphant, but immortal. All that his years of self-sacrifice had not done for him was accomplished by that explosive rush of energy through his arm.

There was blood on his hand and as he glanced down, he saw that Geoffrey, with a bleeding mouth, was struggling, dazed and half drunk, to his feet. Ordway looked at him and laughed--the laugh of the boastful and victorious brute. Then turning quickly, he took up his hat and went out of the house and down into the street.

The physical exhilaration produced by the muscular effort was still tingling through his body, and while it lasted he felt younger, stronger, and possessed of a courage that was almost sublime. When he reached home and entered the library where Lydia and Alice were sitting together, there was a boyish lightness and confidence in his step.

"Oh, papa!" cried Alice, standing up, "tell me about it. What did he do?"

Ordway laughed again, the same laugh with which he had looked down on Geoffrey lying half stunned at his feet.

"I didn't wait to see," he answered, "but I rather think he got up off the floor."

"You mean you knocked him down?" asked Lydia, in an astonishment that left her breathless.