Read the book: «The Hundredth Chance», page 27

CHAPTER XVI
THE REVELATION

The autumn dusk was falling as the Fairharbour train crawled at length into the station. A sea-fog hung clammily along the shore, and a smell of burning weeds was in the air.

Maud shivered with cold and weariness as she descended to the platform. It had been a long, long journey. Her whole body ached with fatigue.

There were not many travellers, and they had all disappeared before she had collected her luggage and made her way out into the dank chill of the station-yard where a rickety cab stood waiting.

She shivered afresh as she got into it. The dampness and the cold seemed to penetrate to her very bones. She sat huddled in a corner.

"Where to, miss?" The porter thrust a cheery face in upon her, and, albeit she was veiled, she shrank back with an instinctive desire to avoid recognition.

"The Anchor Hotel," she said, through teeth that chattered in spite of her.

She heard him give the order, and in a moment the ramshackle conveyance was on its way. They clattered forth over the stones into the clinging billows of mist.

The cold caught and pierced her anew as they neared the dreary front. She heard the muffled roar of the sea splashing dully against the wall. The mist became a wet drizzle beating in through the window. She tried to close it, but the strap was broken. She could only draw her wrap more closely about her.

The cab horse stumbled, and was dragged up by his driver with a curse. They were nearing the Anchor Hotel. She wished she had prepared her mother for her advent. She had not dared to do so in case-just in case-it should come to Jake's knowledge, though she believed that Jake must be well on his way to Liverpool by now, if he had not already arrived there. It was possible that he had not been able to leave at a moment's notice, and she had not dared to take the chance of any rumour of her coming reaching him. But now that she was so nearly at the end of her journey, she wished earnestly that her mother were expecting her. The thought of meeting Giles Sheppard, asking his hospitality, was hateful to her.

It would not be for more than that one night. Of that she was convinced. Charlie would be swift to answer her summons, if indeed he had returned to the Castle. But he was so erratic in all his ways that she had some doubt on this point. If he had not returned-! But she could not think of that possibility. She turned from it with a sick foreboding. Surely Fate could not play her so hideous a trick!

They lumbered on.

Suddenly the light from the swinging lamp that hung in the porch of "The Anchor" burst across their path. The horse stumbled again, recovered itself, jolted on a few yards, stopped. They had arrived.

Maud gathered her energies for one supreme effort though she felt almost too stiff with cold to move. The cabman shambled down and opened the door.

"No one about seemin'ly," he remarked.

She controlled her quivering nerves. "Perhaps you will get down my trunk," she said. "You can leave it in the porch."

The man grumbled to himself, but proceeded to comply, she standing on the step to watch him.

The mist was beating in from the sea. Her face was wet with it. And yet her dread of entering that house was such that she could hardly bring herself to open the swing door, debating with herself if even then she might not run up the hill to the house in which they had lodged a year before-only a year before-and obtain shelter for the night there.

The darkness and the rain deterred her. Her courage seemed to have quite left her. In the end she turned with a species of dreary desperation and pushed back the heavy door.

The entrance-hall was empty, vaguely lit by one flaring gas-jet round which the fog-wreaths curled and drifted in the draught, cold as a vault, and smelling of stale tobacco-smoke. The place looked bare and poverty-stricken, almost squalid. The rugs were gone from the floor, the pictures from the walls.

The door swung closed behind her, and she felt as if she stood inside a prison. The office-window was shut, and no sound came from any quarter. Only through the desolate silence there came the sullen thump of the sea against the wall, like the waning struggle of a giant grown impotent with long and fruitless striving.

The utter solitude of the place began to possess her like an evil dream. She stood as one under a spell, afraid to move. And then, quite suddenly, she heard a step.

The impulse came to her then to flee, but she did not obey it. She stood stiffly waiting. Even if it were Giles Sheppard himself, she would meet him before she went out into the dripping dark outside.

It was not Giles Sheppard. A man in a tweed suit and black gaiters, square-shouldered, rather short than tall, – a man of bull-dog strength-came suddenly upon her from the interior of the house. She heard the jingle of spurs upon the stones of the hall, caught one glance of a sunburnt, dominant face and hair that shone like burnished copper in the light; and then she was tottering blindly backwards, groping, groping for the door by which she might escape.

He came to her ere she could open it, and in a moment she became rigid, as one fascinated into passivity. He took her ice-cold hands and held them.

"Why, Maud! Maud!" he said, in the tone of one who would comfort a child.

A great shiver went through her at his touch; but she stood speechless. His face swam before her shrinking vision. She felt sick and faint.

"Snakes!" he said. "You're perished with cold. Say, why didn't you tell me you were coming?" Then, as still she could not speak: "Come along into the office! There's no one there; and I'll soon have a fire for you. You lean on me, my girl! It'll be all right."

His arm went round her; he supported her strongly. The warmth of his body sent a faint glow through her. Almost without knowing it, she leaned upon him.

He took her into the deserted office, put her into a chair by the empty fireplace, lighted the gas, then knelt to kindle the fire. The wood was damp; he coaxed it to burn, blowing at the unwilling flame, his head in the smoke.

"Say, that's better," he said softly at length. "Now I'm going to give you something you'll hate, but I reckon you'll take it to please me. Won't you?"

He still knelt beside her, but there was no hint of authority, no possessiveness, in his bearing. Rather there was about him a curious something that was almost like humility.

She watched him dumbly as he pulled a small glass flask out of his pocket and withdrew the cork. He turned to her as he did it, and for an instant she met his eyes. The old hot glow was wholly gone from them. She missed it with an odd sense of shock. Only kindness shone out at her; only friendliness was in the clasp of the hand he laid on hers.

"You'll take it?" he said, in his voice of soft persuasion, "It's raw spirit; but it's not going to do you any harm. Just a drop, and then I'll feel easier about you! There now, if that's not real good of you!"

He was pressing it gently upon her; and she could not refuse. She took the flask from him and drank a burning drain.

"Has it gone?" said Jake.

She nodded silently, feeling the glow of the spirit spreading through her veins and the deadly coldness at her heart giving place to it.

He smiled upon her, his pleasant, sudden smile, and took the flask back into his own keeping. Then he bent again to the fire, blowing at it persistently, patiently, till it shot up into a blaze.

She watched him as one in a dream-a dream from which all nightmare horror had been magically banished. This-this was the old Jake to whom she had once turned in trouble, in whose arms she had sobbed out her misery and despair. This was Jake the friend into whose keeping she had given her life.

He straightened himself again, coughing a little. She caught again the gleam of the red-brown eyes, seeking hers.

"Better now?" he asked her.

She bent her head. "Yes, I am all right now. You-you-I didn't expect to see you here."

"Guess it was a mutual surprise," said Jake. "What brought you anyway?"

Her heart gave a sudden quick throb of dismay.

Actually she had forgotten the desperate resolution that had urged her for so long. She turned her face quickly from him. "I-came-to-to see my mother," she faltered.

He raised his brows momentarily. "She wasn't expecting you, sure," he commented.

"No," she felt her cheeks burning, and strove still further to avoid his look. "No. It-it was a-surprise visit."

There fell a brief silence upon her words, and while it lasted, she sat in tense suspense, waiting-waiting for him to pounce upon her secret and drag it to the light. She dared not look at him kneeling there beside her, dared not meet the awful scrutiny of those lynx-eyes. Such was her agitation that she scarcely dared even to breathe.

And then an amazing thing happened. Jake's hand was suddenly laid upon her knee, pressing it reassuringly. "Well," he said in his casual drawl, "I reckon you've come in the nick of time so far as your mother is concerned. Your amiable step-father has cleared out bag and baggage, and left her to face the music. He pawned everything he could lay his dirty hands on first, and the place is empty except for the old ostler who is serving behind the bar till further orders."

"Oh Jake!" Startled, Maud turned back to him. "And what is my mother doing?"

There was a faintly humorous twist about Jake's lips as he made reply. "Your mother has gone to bed in hysterics. I can't get out of her what exactly she means to do. P'raps you will be more successful. I came down this morning as soon as I got the news of Sheppard's departure, and tried to persuade her to come along to the Stables; but she wouldn't hear of it. She's got some idea at the back of her mind, I gather; or maybe the Stables aren't aristocratic enough. Anyway, there was no moving her. I've been up at Tattersall's all day. Only got back half an hour ago. I thought I'd look in again here, and see how things were going before I went home. But they haven't moved any since this morning, and she is still in bed with hysterics."

He had not been home all day; he had received no message. The thought darted through Maud with a suddenness that nearly made her gasp with relief. He did not know of Uncle Edward's summons. And then she remembered that it must be awaiting him, and her heart sank again.

"You're shivering still," said Jake gently.

"It's nothing," she made answer. "It's nothing." And then desperately: "You-you didn't get-a telegram from Uncle Edward-last night?"

"I?" said Jake. "No. What should he wire to me for?"

She hesitated a second, then feverishly faced the danger that menaced her. "You-I expect you will find a message waiting for you. We-we had a disagreement yesterday. That's why I came away."

Jake's brows met abruptly. "Hasn't he been treating you properly?"

"Oh, it's not that. I-I can't tell you what it was. But-he said he should wire to you-to go to Liverpool."

Maud's hands clasped each other very tightly. She was striving with all her strength for composure. But she could not bring herself to look him in the face.

"And so you came away," Jake said slowly.

She nodded, swallowing down her agitation. "I didn't want to meet you-like that. I didn't know what was in the telegram."

Jake's fingers patted her knee gently. "And so you came back here for refuge! All right, my girl! You needn't be afraid. Uncle Edward may go to blazes. I shan't read that telegram."

He stooped with the words, picked up a fragment of burning stick that had fallen at her feet, and tossed it back into the flames.

Maud uttered a sharp exclamation. "Jake! You'll be burnt!"

He looked up at her with a smile. "I guess not," he said. "And now that that matter is disposed of, you'll maybe like to go and see your mother."

She met his eyes with a feeling that she could do no less. "You're very good," she said, with an effort.

His smile broadened. "Then it's the cheapest form of goodness I know," he said. "If your Uncle Edward were a little younger, I'd give myself the pleasure of accepting his invitation just for the sake of administering the kicking he deserves. However, we won't waste time discussing him. Are you going to spend the night here along with your mother?"

He seemed bent upon making things easy for her. His attitude amazed her. She kept asking herself again and again if this could be the man from whom she had fled in bitterness of spirit all those weeks ago.

She hesitated to answer his question. She was painfully uncertain of the ground beneath her feet. Almost she expected it to cleave asunder at any moment and reveal the raging fires that once had scorched her soul.

But Jake did not suffer her to remain in suspense. Very quietly he filled in her hesitation. "Maybe you'd sooner stay here," he said, in his soft, rather sing-song voice. "It's up to you to decide. Guess I shan't interfere any with your movements."

His one hand still lay on her knee. It pressed upon her a little as though seeking to convey something that she was slow to grasp.

Her doubt subsided under the steady touch. She suddenly knew beyond all questioning that she stood on solid ground. Yet it was not without difficulty that she answered him. "I think-perhaps-for to-night-I will stay with her."

Jake nodded with his face to the flames. "It's up to you," he said again.

She looked at his bent head, conscious of a new distress. How was she going to repay him for this his goodness to her? He was trusting her blindly. He had refused to let his eyes be opened. For she knew he would keep his word about that telegram. Jake always kept his word.

Her distress grew, became almost unbearable. She saw herself in a new and horrible light, and shrank in anguish of soul from the revelation. It was as if upon that downward path she had suddenly caught a glimpse of the precipice at the end, the cruel rocks, the dreadful fall, the black, seething whirlpool below. And her whole being revolted. All that was pure in her made swift outcry.

If Jake-Jake-had climbed back to the old high ground, surely she could do the same! Surely she could do no less. He trusted her-he trusted her! How could she go on?

The wild tempest of feeling rushed through her, and passed. She was left very cold, striving desperately to suppress a fit of shuddering that threatened to overwhelm her.

Jake was not looking at her. He seemed unaware of her agitation. After a moment he took his hand away, and rose.

He began to feel in his pockets, produced his clay pipe and tobacco-pouch; then suddenly paused. "Do you mind if I light up? I'm just going."

"Oh, please do!" she said.

He began to fill the pipe with minute care. "Don't let your mother take too much out of you!" he said. "Have a meal and turn in as early as you can! Guess you're needing a good rest."

She leaned her head on her hand. "Yes. I am tired."

Jake was silent again for a space. Finally he put the pipe into his mouth and shook the tobacco back into his pouch. Then in a curiously hesitating voice, he spoke. "Say, – Maud!"

She gave a start, and raised her head. He was looking down at her with a faint smile in his eyes, a smile that struck her as being whimsical and yet curiously wistful also.

"I just want to tell you, my girl," he said, "that you're not to be scared of me any more. Reckon you've had a hell of a time all your life, but it's to come to an end right now. For the future, you do the asking and I the giving. You're boss, and don't you forget it! I'm your man, not your master, and I'll behave accordingly. Guess I'll even lie down and let you kick me if it'll make you happy any."

Maud was gazing at him in open amazement long before he had finished his astounding speech. The slow utterance, half-sad, half-humorous, was spoken with the full weight of the man's strength of purpose. Every word came with the steady force of unwavering resolution. There was a touch of the superb about him even with that unlighted pipe between his teeth. And every word seemed to pierce her with a deeper pain, pain that was well-nigh unendurable.

As he uttered the last deliberate sentence, she rose quickly with a gesture of protest. She could bear no more.

"Jake, you-you-you hurt me!" she stammered incoherently.

He put out a hand to her. "No-no!" he said. "That was not my intention."

It was almost as though he pleaded with her for some species of clemency. She was sure she read entreaty in the red-brown eyes. But she could not lay her hand in his. She could not-she could not! She stood before him panting, speechless, shaken to the very foundations of her being.

His hand fell. "I just want you to be happy, my girl, that's all," he said gently; "happy after your own notions of happiness. Maybe there ain't room for me in the general scheme of things. If that's so, – I reckon I'll stay outside."

He turned aside with the words and struck a match to kindle his pipe with the air of a man who has said his say. Then while she still watched him, he puffed a great cloud of smoke into the air, straightened himself, and made her an odd, clumsy bow.

"I'm going now. So long!" he said.

And so, without further parley, he left her, striding away in his square, purposeful fashion without a backward glance.

Only when he was gone did it flash upon her that this-this-was her dream come true. All unknowing, wholly without intention, he had opened her eyes. And she knew that he loved her-he loved her!

CHAPTER XVII
THE LAST CHANCE

"It's a cruel world," complained Mrs. Sheppard. "Nothing ever goes right, and no one ever thinks of anybody but themselves." She wiped her eyes pathetically. "I'm sure I've always tried to consider others. And this is the result. In my hour of need I am forsaken by everybody."

"It's no good fretting," Maud said very wearily. "We must think what is best to be done."

She realized that her mother was in her most unreasonable mood, and she felt herself powerless to cope with it. Yet the situation had to be faced, and with a heavy heart she faced it.

"My dear, I've thought and thought till my brain refuses to work," said Mrs. Sheppard plaintively. "What is the good of it? You know as well as I that if Charlie refuses to help, all hope is gone. And you say he has refused."

"Yes." Maud was stooping over the kettle that she was boiling in her mother's bedroom. "He has refused."

"Unconditionally?" Mrs. Sheppard sent a sudden keen glance across at the slim, drooping figure and noted the weariness of its pose. "Maud, tell me! Unconditionally?"

Maud remained bent. "I am not going to accept his conditions," she said, after a moment.

"Then he made conditions?" The question came sharp and querulous from the bed.

"One condition." Maud bent a little lower.

"What was it? My child, you must tell me. I have a right to know." Mrs. Sheppard raised herself to a sitting position. "What was this condition?"

Maud did not turn. "What does it matter what it was as I am not going to accept it," she said.

"You have refused?"

"I am going to refuse." There was utter weariness in her voice. She spoke as one to whom nothing mattered any more.

"Maud! Then you haven't actually refused him yet?" Mrs. Sheppard suddenly flung out her arms. "Maud-darling, come and tell me all about it!" she urged. "There is something behind that you haven't told me yet. Come here, dearest! Come to me!"

Maud turned an unwilling face over her shoulder. "I am too tired to-night, Mother," she said. "Besides, there is really nothing to tell. Charlie made me a certain proposal which-which I thought for a little that I might accept. I now realize that I can't and-and-" a faint quiver of vehemence crept into her voice, – "I want to forget that I ever thought I could. Please let me forget!"

"My dear child! Do you mean that he made you a proposal of marriage?" The eagerness of Mrs. Sheppard's query was scarcely veiled. Her eyes had the look of one in search of treasure.

"Yes; just that." The emotion had gone out of Maud's voice again. It sounded flat and mechanical. She leaned her arm upon the mantelpiece for support. "I ought not to have suffered it. I was to blame more than he. He has always been-that sort. I-haven't."

"But, my dear, you have always loved each other. Why should either of you be to blame? The fault was certainly yours in the first place for sending him away long ago; but now-now-"

"Now I am married to another man," Maud said.

Mrs. Sheppard clapped her hands together in a sudden access of impatience. "A man for whom you have not the smallest respect or affection! A man of intemperate habits who took advantage of a weak moment to marry you, who has made you utterly miserable, and deserves nothing from you but the utmost contempt! My dear Maud, I always thought that you were proud and fastidious. Didn't Charlie always call you his queen rose? How can you-how can you-regard that farcical marriage of yours as binding? How can you contemplate ruining your own life and Charlie's also now that another chance has been given you? It is sheer wilful folly. It is madness. Or is it that you are just-afraid?"

Maud shook her head. "I don't suppose you would ever really understand, Mother," she said. "Anyhow I don't know how to explain. But I can't do it-now. I thought I could. I came back because I thought I could. But now I am here-now I have seen Jake-I find I can't."

"That is because you are afraid," declared Mrs. Sheppard, "He has terrorized you. But, oh, my dear, do try to break away from that! Do think of yourself-and of Charlie who has loved you all these years! One great effort-only one-and you will be free from this horrible, unnatural bond. I know that Charlie will be true to you. You are the one woman so far as he is concerned. And he-he is the one man, dear, isn't he? You can't-surely you can't-bear to disappoint him now! Think of the years to come! Think of the life-happiness waiting for you if you only muster the strength now to grasp it! Maud, my darling, my own girlie, can't you be brave just this once when so much hangs upon it? He will take you away in his yacht, and you will be all in all to each other. You will find all the good things you have missed till now; and this dreadful year will fade away like a dream. Oh, darling, surely you will make this one great effort to gain so much! The chance will never come again to you. It is the one chance of your life, – the last. How can you bear to throw it away?"

"And what of Jake?" Maud spoke the words as though uttering her thought aloud. She was gazing downwards at the steaming kettle and the red-hot glow of the fire.

"Jake!" Mrs. Sheppard's reply was instant and contemptuous. "He will marry a girl in his own station who will satisfy all his desires. You can't honestly imagine that you have done that, that he regards his marriage with you as a success! He may be annoyed at your preference, but he will be as glad as you are to be rid of his bargain. It will be the greatest kindness you can do him-if you want to be kind. You know you hate him from the bottom of your heart."

"Mother! You're wrong!" Sharply-as though stung to action-Maud turned. "I don't hate Jake. He-he is too good a man-too upright a man-to hate. It is true I haven't been happy with him, but that has not been his fault. Our ideas of happiness are not the same, that's all."

Mrs. Sheppard stared in momentary discomfiture at this sudden display of strength. She had not expected serious resistance in this quarter. But she was quick to rally her forces.

"Oh, I don't blame him entirely," she said. "As you say, you are utterly unsuited to each other. But it is sheer nonsense to call him a good man. I know that he is often the worse for drink. I have seen him myself flogging his horses down on the beach as no man in his sober senses would dream of doing. He is an utter brute at heart. There is no getting away from that fact. He may not be a wholly bad man. I have not said that he is. But he is a man of violent impulses. He knows nothing of the refinements of life. He is a brute."

Mrs. Sheppard paused. Maud was standing mute and motionless with tragic eyes fixed before her.

After a moment or two to give her words time to sink in, Mrs. Sheppard continued on a note of pathos.

"You may say to me that I have made exactly the same mistake myself. But then, I did it for you children. And it was not the whole of my life that I had to offer. But you, – you are young. Your good time is yet to come. And think, dear, think how much depends upon you! If Charlie dies unmarried, there will be no one to succeed him. He is the last of the Burchesters. And if he doesn't marry you, I am sure he will never marry any other woman. He loves you so devotedly. Through all his peccadilloes, he has always remembered you, come back to you. Are you going to let him be lonely always because of his love for you? He has laid the greatest gift in the world at your feet, dear. Oh, grasp it while you can! Don't let the whole of his manhood, your womanhood, be one long and fruitless regret!"

It was the climax of her pleading. The tears were running down her face as she reached it, and she did not check them too readily though she knew that she had made an impression. Victory would not come at once, she fully realized. The stony immobility of Maud's attitude told her that. But she had laid her plans with craft. She believed that by the exercise of extreme patience victory might ultimately be achieved.

"There, darling! You're very tired," she said, as she slowly dried her eyes; "much too tired to see anything in its proper light to-night. You must go to bed and sleep. You will see things much more clearly in the morning. And shall I tell you a secret?" She smiled, a wistful, loving smile. "Charlie will be at the Castle to-morrow afternoon."

"How do you know, Mother?" Maud spoke quickly as one suddenly awakened.

"How do I know? But everyone knows," Mrs. Sheppard answered vaguely. "The yacht is in the harbour, and they are getting her ready for a trip. Darling, the kettle is boiling at last. Mind how you take it off! Oh dear, I'm very tired. I hope I shan't end my days in the workhouse. So trying to have to make one's bed every day. Good night, darling! No tea for me, thank you. I haven't the heart to drink it. There's a bed made up in the room next to this. I hope you will find it comfortable. Good night, dear! Good night!"

The words went into a deep sigh. Mrs. Sheppard sank down upon her pillow. And Maud turned with a set face, and prepared to leave her for the night.

Yes, her mother's words had made an impression upon her. They had voiced all the doubt and turmoil in her own sad heart. But they had not blotted out that vision of the precipice, the rocks, and the black, black whirlpool that awaited her at the end of the downward path.

Neither had they wholly taken from her the memory of a man's eyes, straight and honest and strangely appealing, that had looked into hers only a couple of hours before.

Above her mother's warnings, above all the trouble and the tumult of her soul, she heard a voice within, clear, insistent, indomitable: "Love is only gained by love. We must pour out all we have to win it, purge our hearts of all selfish desire, sanctify ourselves by the complete renunciation of self, before the perfect gift can be ours."

The perfect gift! The perfect gift! She had almost ceased to believe in it. But that night she dreamed that she had it in her grasp.