One evening, several days after Charles's trip with Mary to the hiding-place of the two boys, he and Rowland sat on the front veranda. It was dusk and supper was almost ready.
"We may have to wait a little while," the old gentleman explained, in his languid way. "Mary is looking for company, I understand, and he may be slow getting here. He is sometimes, for he is a little careless about such things—more careless, I know, than I used to be in my courting-days."
With a sudden depression of spirits Charles surmised that the expected visitor was Albert Frazier, and he made no comment. Presently Mary came down the stairs. She had changed her dress, rearranged her hair, and looked very pretty as she stood in the doorway and glanced down the road toward Carlin.
"You and Mr. Brown need not wait, father," she said. "You know how slow Albert is. I'm sure Mr. Brown is both hungry and tired. He has finished the cotton and started on the corn. Albert and I can eat later. I want to get news from Tobe Keith. Albert promised to go by his house before starting out."
"I am not at all hungry," Charles declared, as Mary disappeared in the parlor.
"Well, I am," Rowland said, "and I shall not wait longer for Frazier, or any one else. I have some notes to make after supper, and this delay is upsetting me. Come, let's go in and leave the two sweethearts to eat and coo together. They won't eat much, I reckon. By the way, in my genealogical research I find that there are many family names of French origin in our mountains. This Frazier—'Frazyea' would be the French pronunciation—may have had fine old Huguenot ancestors away back in the early settlement of South Carolina. He has his good points. He is not exactly the stamp of man I would have wanted my daughter to marry in the old days, you know, but things are frightfully changed. The financial shoe is on the other foot, you see, and it is money that founds families."
Their supper was soon ended, and on their return to the veranda they found Mary still watching the road. "I see him, I think," she announced, wearily. "It looks like a man with a broad-brimmed hat on. Yes, that is Albert."
The rider drew in at the gate and dismounted, leading his horse into the yard and up to the steps. "You must excuse me, little girl," he said. "I couldn't make it earlier and get the news you wanted. The doctor was making an examination and was delayed. Tobe fainted several times. He is weak, the doctor says tell you, but there is still hope." Here catching sight of Charles, he continued, gruffly: "Say, fellow, put up my horse. And, say, give him a pail of water from the well and some shelled corn and a bundle of fodder."
Starting in surprise, Charles was about to thunder out a furious reply; to save himself from such a display of temper in the presence of a lady he simply turned back into the sitting-room.
"Did he hear me?" he heard Frazier asking his host, in a rising tone of anger.
"He was not hired for that sort of work, Albert," the old man said, pacifically. "He has been in the field ever since sunup. Zilla takes care of our own stock. Come, I'll go with you and show you the stall and the feed."
Frazier swore aloud and muttered something about "tramp farm-hands" which Charles could not catch; then he and Rowland led the horse to the stable. Charles was standing in the center of the room when Mary came in. She walked straight up to him and laid her hand on his arm.
"Don't let that bother you; please don't!" she urged, excitedly. "I don't want you to have trouble with him. He is a dangerous sort of man. If he takes a dislike to you he will do his best to injure you, and he has it in his power to do all sorts of things, along with his brother as an officer of the law."
"I understand. I have already heard a few things he has said about me," Charles replied, still furious, and yet trying to calm himself. "I know the kind of man he is exactly. But you are in trouble, and I shall not worry you in the matter. If he insults me again I'll try to overlook it—I will overlook it."
"Thank you," Mary said, gently and sweetly, in a voice which quivered with curbed emotion, "but he mustn't do it again. I must talk to him. He has no right to come here giving orders like that to people who have been as kind and unselfish as you have been. Oh, I don't know what I am to do, Mr. Brown! When he was telling about how weak Tobe Keith was my very soul seemed to die in my body."
The room was dimly lighted by an oil-lamp on a table in the center of the room. She stood facing him, her wondrous eyes filling with tears of anxiety, her lips twitching, her brows knitted, her hands clasped over her snowy apron.
"I don't know what to say to comfort you," said Charles. His voice shook and he tried to steady it. "I am ashamed of myself for sinking so low as to be angry with that man at such a time as this. You are stretched on the rack, Miss Rowland, and you are being tortured. I wish I could take your place—as God is my judge, I do! I can't bear the sight of it. It is unfair, hellish, satanic! It must not go on like this."
"I want you to—to think well of me," Mary said, haltingly, "and I believe you will. You must not think me shallow if I appear to be light-hearted to-night with Mr. Frazier. You see, everything depends on him now. He knows where the boys are, and if I were to anger him or rouse his suspicions in any way he would turn against us. I am sorry he is like that, but he is. I see now that I made a mistake in allowing him to pay such constant attention to me, but I am only a weak girl and couldn't help it. You see, at first he offered to take me to places, parties, picnics, and I wanted to go, as any girl would in my place, and that is the way it began. Then he became dictatorial and jealous, and so it went on till—well, you see how it now is. My father is indebted to him and so am I now."
"Surely you haven't obligated yourself—" stammered Charles.
"Not in so many words," Mary broke in, "but it amounts to the same thing. He wants me to let him furnish the money to pay Tobe Keith's expenses to Atlanta, and I see no other way than to accept his offer. If it goes that far, I shall consent to be his wife. If he saves my brothers from the scaffold I'll be his slave for life. Love? I don't expect love. What he feels for me is not love, and what I would be giving would not be, either. Love is a dreamlike thing, more of the soul than the body."
"I know what love is now," Charles thought. "I never knew before, but I do now."
The steps of the two men were heard coming from the barn, and Mary went hastily out of the lamplight and into the gloom of the hall.
"Our supper is ready, Albert," Charles heard her say. "Come on before it is cold."
Passing through the dining-room, Charles managed to reach the yard by means of a side door without having to meet Frazier. He found himself standing among some fig-trees and grape-vines in the dewy grass, surrounded by what had been beds of flowers in the day when the place had been well kept. An unshaded window of the dining-room was before him, and through it Charles saw Frazier and Mary approaching the table. The man's arm was actually about the girl's waist, his coarse lips were close to her pale cheek. He was smiling broadly, and laughing as if over some jest of his own making. Charles would have withdrawn his eyes, but he was held as if spellbound by the tragedy which was being enacted, with him as the sole spectator. Charles noted that Frazier sank heavily into a chair without first seeing that Mary was seated. He saw him take a cigar damp with saliva from the corner of his great mouth and place it on a plate at his side. He saw him reach out and take Mary's hand and fondle it patronizingly as he continued to talk. Even in the dim lamplight Charles read in the girl's face the growing desire to resent the fellow's coarse familiarity.
Charles uttered a groan and turned away. Off toward the barn he wandered, finding himself presently at the blacksmith's shop. The wide sliding-door was open, and for no reason of which he was conscious he went into the dark room and sat on the anvil. Money was now the thing he wanted above all else in the world. If only he could anonymously send to the suffering girl the funds needed for Keith's treatment, how glorious it would be! So small a thing and yet it might free the girl from a union that would be a lifelong outrage against her sensitive spirit. Only four hundred dollars! He remembered having spent more than that in a single night at a card-table—more than that on a drunken trip to Atlantic City in the company of reckless associates. Obtaining the money, however, was out of the question. He might get it from William, but he had pledged his honor never to enter his brother's life again; besides, the time was too short. The window of the dining-room gleamed in a sheen of light through the boughs of the trees about the house. He fancied he saw the pair again, and the thought maddened him. Marry that man! Could she possibly work herself up to the ordeal? Yes, for she was simply ready to sacrifice herself, and Charles knew from experience what self-sacrifice was like. He groaned as he left the shop and went toward the barn. The dense wood beyond it, lying under the mystic light of the rising moon, lured him into its bosom, and he decided that he would walk there, for no reason than that he hoped in that way to throw off the gnawing agony which lay upon him.
He had climbed over the fence and was about to plunge into the thicket when he heard a low, guarded whistle. He recognized it as the one Kenneth had used in response to his own as he approached the secret hiding-place. In a low whistle he answered and stood still.
"It's him!" He now recognized Kenneth's voice. "I knew him as he got over the fence. Come on, stupid! It's all right!"
"Yes, it is all right. I'm alone," Charles said softly.
"Come here to us, then," Kenneth proposed. "The bushes are thicker."
Charles obeyed, and soon stood facing the two bedraggled boys.
"What does this mean?" he asked, aghast over the risk they were running.
"It means that we've made up our minds to hide closer to home," Kenneth half-sheepishly explained. "Nobody's looking for us here in the mountains; you said so yourself. Sister said Albert Frazier was keeping the sheriff off the track. We don't like it out there, and—"
"How is Tobe Keith?" Martin's tremulous voice broke in. "What is the use of so much chatter about smaller things? How is he?"
"The doctors say there has been no vital change," Charles informed the quaking boy.
"No change? My God! when will there be a change?" Martin groaned. He was covering his pale face with his hands, when Kenneth roughly swept them down.
"Don't be a baby, silly!" he snarled. "Blubbering won't undo the matter. If he dies, he dies, and we can't help it." Kenneth forced a wry smile which on his soiled, bloodless face was more like a grimace in the white moonlight. "Martin behaves like that all the time, morning, noon, and night. That is one reason I decided to come nearer home. He needs sister to cheer him up and pet him. I don't know how. Then our cave is damp and chilly. I'm afraid he will get sick. He don't eat enough. I get away with most of the grub. Here is my plan, Brown. You are a good chap, and a friend, too. We may as well sleep in the hay in the loft of the barn. We'd have nothing to fear in the night, and through the day, with all of the family to keep a lookout up and down the road, we could get away even if the sheriff did come."
Charles informed him of Albert Frazier's presence in the house and that he might remain over night. At this the two boys exchanged dubious glances.
"Well," Kenneth opined, slowly, "I am sure he can be trusted in the main. As long as he and sister understand each other he will be on our side. He has stood behind the old man often in raising money; though, take it from me, Brown, Albert is not made of money. He owes a lot here and there and has to be dunned frequently even for small amounts. In her last note sister said that he would raise the money to send Keith to Atlanta. He can get it, I guess, by some hook or crook."
"Sister mustn't let him furnish the money," Martin faltered, his voice raising in uncertainty and ending in firmness.
"Mustn't? What do you mean, silly?" and Kenneth turned on him impatiently.
"Because she doesn't want to accept it from him, that's why," Martin stated, almost angrily. "She doesn't want to bind herself to him like that. I know how she feels about that fellow. She was just amusing herself with him and was ready to break off when this awful thing came up. If she takes the money and binds herself we'll be responsible, for if we hadn't been drunk that night at Carlin—"
"Oh, dry up! dry up! you sniffling chump!" Kenneth retorted. "We are in a hole, and we have got to get out the best we can."
"She mustn't take the money from him," reiterated the younger boy, turning his twisting face aside. "If she takes it she will marry him, and she is no wife for that dirty, low-bred scoundrel. You and I know all about the girls he has ruined. Didn't Jeff Raymond come all the way from Camden County to shoot him like a dog for the way he treated his niece, and then the sheriff stepped in and smoothed it over? Pouf! do you think I want my sweet, beautiful sister to marry a man like that to save my neck? I'll tell you what I'll do, Mr. Brown, if she starts to do that for my sake I'll drown myself. She is an angel. She has had enough trouble from me and Ken. We have treated her worse than a nigger slave ever was treated."
"For the Lord's sake, let up!" thundered Kenneth. "This is no camp-meeting. If sis wants to take the money, let her do it. Now, Brown, I'm willing to trust Albert Frazier to some extent, but he need not know just yet that we are bunking in the barn. Let him keep on thinking we are at the other place. Tell the others about it, though. We've had enough to eat to-night, but please have Aunt Zilla get us up a warm breakfast in the morning. It will tickle the old soul and she will spread herself. You see, I'm in a better mood than Martin is. I don't cross a bridge till I get to it, but he has attended Keith's funeral a hundred times in a single night, and as for the other"—Kenneth uttered a short, hoarse laugh and made a motion as if tying a rope around his neck—"he has been through that quite as often. That boy is full of imagination. Mother used to say he would write poems or paint pictures. He has 'painted towns red' with me often enough, the Lord knows. Some say I am ruining him. I don't know. I don't care. If a fellow is weak enough to be twisted by another—well, he deserves to be twisted, that's all."
"I don't blame anybody but myself," Martin whispered from a full, almost gurgling throat. "I know I never let sister twist me, and I ought to have done so. A man is a low cur that will bring his sister down to this sort of thing, and that's what I am. But she shall not marry Frazier if I can help it. The trouble is, I can't help it!" he ended, with a groan. "By my own conduct I have sealed her fate and mine. If our gentle mother were—"
Kenneth abruptly turned his back on his brother. "Come on," he said to Charles, with a frown of displeasure, "let's go to the barn and put the baby to bed in the hay. Then you may go tell sister, if you will be so kind."