SHE did not sit there long. For a few minutes only she permitted herself the luxury of tears. Then she rose, cleared away the remains of the impromptu wedding feast, hastened out to the kitchen, bathed her face in the cold water from the pump, dried it on the roller towel, patted her hair into place, and returned to the sitting-room. There was another interview in store for her that night, she was sure of it, and it was likely to be the hardest trial of all. She must be ready. So she sat down again in the rocker and tried to plan exactly what she should say to Foster Townsend when he came, demanding his niece.
She had been sitting there for perhaps twenty minutes when she heard his step upon the walk. She did not wait for him to knock, but opened the door at once.
“Come in, Foster,” she said.
He did not bid her good evening, nor did he speak until he had crossed the threshold. He glanced about him, strode to the door of the room adjoining, looked in there, and turned back.
“Where is she?” he asked, sharply.
Reliance faced him bravely.
“She isn’t here, Foster,” she replied.
“Bosh! Of course she is here. Come, come! don’t fool with me. Where is she?”
“I am not fooling, Foster. Esther isn’t here. She has been here, but she has gone.”
He stared at her. The expression upon her face caught and held his attention. He took a step toward her.
“Gone!” he repeated. “Gone where?... What do you mean?”
“I am goin’ to tell you what I mean. There is a lot to tell. Foster, I— Oh, dear!” desperately, “I don’t know where to begin. This is harder even than I thought it was goin’ to be. Foster, you must be patient.”
She had frightened him now. She heard him catch his breath.
“What is the matter with you?” he demanded. “What—!” Then his tone changed. He leaned toward her, his hand upon the center table. “Say, Reliance,” he whispered, anxiously, “you are fooling, aren’t you? She is in this house, isn’t she? Look here, if she is hiding from me—if she has got the idea that I am mad with her or anything like that—why, she needn’t be. We had a row, she and I, up at the house this noon; maybe she told you about it, I don’t know. Well, that’s all right. I— Here! Why do you keep looking at me like that?... What is that thing?”
Reliance was proffering him an envelope which she had taken from the bosom of her dress. He gazed at it, then snatched it from her hand.
“Eh?” he gasped. “It’s from her, isn’t it? What is she writing me letters for?... Good God, woman, what has happened? Where is she? Why don’t you tell me?”
Reliance shook her head.
“Read your letter first,” she said. “It will tell you almost everything and I will try and tell you the rest.... Oh, Foster,” in an irrepressible burst of agonized sympathy. “I am so sorry for you.”
She did not wait to see him open the envelope, but ran into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. She remained there for perhaps ten minutes, it seemed much longer to her. When she reëntered the sitting-room he was seated in the rocker, the letter which Esther had written him dangling in his limp fingers, and upon his face a look which wrung her heartstrings. She came toward him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“I am so sorry for you, Foster,” she said again.
He scarcely seemed to notice her presence. He did not speak.
“You have read the letter?” she faltered, after a moment.
He heard her then and straightened in the chair.
“I have read it,” he muttered. “Yes, I’ve read it.”
“Well—you see? It is done now and we can’t change it. So—”
He threw her hand from his shoulder and rose to his feet, crumpling the letter in his fist as he did so. He snatched his hat from the floor where it had fallen.
“Change it!” he growled, between his teeth. “We’ll see whether we can change it or not. If that low-lived son of a skunk thinks he has got me licked I’ll show him he is mistaken. He has made a fool of her with his slick tongue, but he hasn’t married her yet, and it’s a long time between now and morning.... Get out of my way!”
He would have pushed her aside but she clung to his arm.
“Wait—wait!” she begged. “You must wait. You don’t understand. He has married her. They were married an hour ago. She is his wife.”
He stopped short. She still clung to him, but, as he made no move to go, she loosed her hold. When she looked up into his face she was shocked and alarmed.
“Foster—Foster!” she urged. “Please—please! Come and sit down. Let me tell you all about it. There is so much to tell. You can’t do anything. It is too late. No one could have stopped it. I tried my best, but— Oh, please sit down and listen!”
She led him toward the chair. He sat and, bending forward, leaned his head upon his hands.
“Go ahead,” he groaned. “I’m listening.”
She told him the whole story, beginning with her learning from Millard of his experience the night of the accident, of her early morning call upon the Campton girl, of her long talk with Esther, at the big house and afterward there at the cottage. Then she went on to tell how Esther and Bob Griffin had come to say good-by, how she had argued and pleaded to shake their determination to go away together that very night. Then of the marriage.
“What could I do?” she pleaded, desperately. “They wouldn’t listen. They would go. There was only one thing I saw that must be done and I did it. I saw them married, legally married by a Harniss minister right in this very room. We’ve got that to be thankful for—and it’s a lot. There can’t be any gossip started, for I can nail it before it starts. Foster, as I see it, all you can do—all any of us can do—is make the best of it. Tell the whole town you think it is all right, even if you are sure it is all wrong. And it isn’t all wrong. It is terribly hard for you to give her up to somebody else, but you would have had to do it sometime. And she has got a good husband; as sure as I stand here I do believe that.”
She finished. Still he sat there, his head upon his hands. She ventured once more to put her hand upon his shoulder.
“If you knew how I have been dreadin’ your comin’ here to-night,” she said, wearily. “If you only knew! If only somebody else could have told you. But there wasn’t any one else; I had to do it. You poor man! I—I— Oh, dear! What a world this is! Foster, you will believe I am sorry, won’t you?”
He drew a deep breath. Then, placing his hands upon the chair arm, he slowly lifted his big body and stood erect. His face was haggard, his eyes heavy, he looked, so she thought, as if he had been through a long sickness. And the tone in which he spoke was hollowed and, at first, listless.
“Sorry!” he repeated. “Sorry! Humph!... Yes, I guess so. You are sorry and so is she—she says so in her letter. I suppose that damned cub she has run away with is sorry, too. Yes, you are all sorry, but not so sorry but what you could do the thing, play the dirty trick you meant to play all along.... All right! All right!” with sudden savageness. “She will be sorrier by and by. Let her go to the devil. She has started that way already. Let her go. And you, and the gang who will come tiptoeing around to-morrow telling me how sorry they are, may go with her.... Well, you have said all you wanted to, haven’t you? I can go home now, I suppose—eh?”
She stepped back. “Yes,” she agreed, sadly. “I guess you can, if you want to. I was afraid you would take it this way; it is natural you should, I guess. I hope, though, by and by, when you have had time to think it all over, you may be a little more reconciled and, maybe, not quite so bitter. What has happened isn’t really any one’s fault. You must see that; you will by and by. You couldn’t have stopped it; I couldn’t; nobody could. It just happened, same as lots of things happen to us poor humans. Whether we like ’em or not doesn’t seem to make a bit of difference. They happen, just the same.”
He turned on her, looked her over from head to foot. “Good Lord A’mighty!” he sneered. “Good Lord! I have lived a good many years and I thought I had run afoul of about every kind of cussedness there was, but this beats ’em all. Isn’t there any limit? Wasn’t it bad enough to play the hypocrite when there was something to be gained by it, when it helped me to keep my eyes shut to what was going on behind my back? Wasn’t that enough, without playing it now? Nobody’s fault! Huh! It was somebody’s fault—oh, yes! It was mine for being such a blind, innocent jackass as to trust her—and you. Ah-h!... There, that is enough.”
It was more than enough, it was a little too much. Reliance stepped between him and the door.
“Foster Townsend,” she cried, “you shan’t go until you take that back, or at least hear what I have to say about it. You know I’m not a hypocrite. That is one thing I never have been. And, since you said it yourself first, you are right, partly right, when you say it was your fault. If you hadn’t been just what you always have been, so set on drivin’ everybody along the road you wanted ’em to travel, you and Esther might not have come to this pass. You couldn’t have stopped her marryin’ the Griffin boy—I don’t believe all creation could have done that—but you might have held it off for a while, and saved all this dreadful business. You couldn’t drive her. Every time you tried it you got into trouble. And now this! She is a Townsend, just as you are yourself.”
“Townsend! Bah! She is a Clark, that’s what she is. Her father was a Townsend and he was a soft-headed fool; but he wasn’t a hypocrite. She’s a Clark, that’s where the hypocrisy comes from.”
“Stop! You shan’t say that! There wasn’t any hypocrisy at all, on my part or hers. You know it. I have been honest with you from the very beginnin’. That day, years ago, when she went to live with you, I warned you to be careful. I knew you, and I knew her, and I warned you that you couldn’t force her to draw her every breath just at the second when you told her to. I had seen you drive and drive her poor father, and I saw that road end in smash, just as this one has ended. And you mustn’t call her a hypocrite, either. She has been honest with you always—except perhaps for those few days when she let Bob Griffin paint her picture without tellin’ you about it. But have you played straight and aboveboard with her? You can answer that yourself, but I tell you she doesn’t think you have. And I tell you the plain truth when I say that nobody, short of the Almighty himself, could have stopped what has happened to-night. You be thankful it happened as it did—here in this house, with a friend—yes, a good friend, and there’s no hypocrisy about that either—to see it done and keep every mean mouth in Harniss shut tight. You can be thankful for that, Foster Townsend, I give you my word I am.”
He was standing there, his hand upon the latch. Now, as she paused, breathless, the fires of righteous indignation still burning in her eyes, he carried that hand to his face. A sob shook him.
“Oh, don’t!” he groaned. “For God’s sake, don’t! Let me out of here! Let me get away—somewhere.”
And then, of all inopportune times, Fate chose that moment to bring Millard Fillmore Clark upon the scene. The door opened and he came into the room. He looked at his sister, then at her visitor. His backbone suppled; his hat was removed with a flourish.
“Well, well!” he exclaimed, in polite surprise. “It is you, ain’t it, Cap’n Foster. How do you do, sir?” Then, as the possibilities of the situation crossed his mind, he added, a little more anxiously: “You and Reliance been havin’ a little talk about—about what you and me talked about yesterday? I—I thought it was best to tell her, you understand.”
He might have said more, probably would had the opportunity been given him. It was not. Foster Townsend’s big hand shot forward, seized him by the shoulder and threw him headlong from the doorway. He spun across the room, tripped over the hassock, and fell sprawling. Before he could rise, or even understand what had happened to him, Townsend had gone.