Within the Law Part 27

In the instant of reply, d.i.c.k Gilder, by some inspiration of love, changed his att.i.tude. "Just the same," he said cheerfully, "you are my wife, and I'm going to keep you and make you love me."

Mary felt a thrill of fear through her very soul.

"You can't!" she cried harshly. "You are his son!"

"She's a crook!" Burke said.

"I don't care a d.a.m.n what you've been!" d.i.c.k exclaimed. "From now on you'll go straight. You'll walk the straightest line a woman ever walked. You'll put all thoughts of vengeance out of your heart, because I'll fill it with something bigger--I'm going to make you love me."

Burke, with his rousing voice, spoke again:

"I tell you, she's a crook!"

Mary moved a little, and then turned her face toward Gilder.

"And, if I am, who made me one? You can't send a girl to prison, and have her come out anything else."

Burke swung himself around in a movement of complete disgust.

"She didn't get her time for good behavior."

Mary raised her head, haughtily, with a gesture of high disdain.

"And I'm proud of it!" came her instant retort. "Do you know what goes on there behind those stone walls? Do you, Mr. District Attorney, whose business it is to send girls there? Do you know what a girl is expected to do, to get time off for good behavior? If you don't, ask the keepers."

Gilder moved fussily.

"And you----"

Mary swayed a little, standing there before her questioner.

"I served every minute of my time--every minute of it, three full, whole years. Do you wonder that I want to get even, that some one has got to pay? Four years ago, you took away my name--and gave me a number....

Now, I've given up the number--and I've got your name."

CHAPTER XV. AFTERMATH OF TRAGEDY.

The Gilders, both father and son, endured much suffering throughout the night and day that followed the scene in Mary Turner's apartment, when she had made known the accomplishment of her revenge on the older man by her ensnaring of the younger. d.i.c.k had followed the others out of her presence at her command, emphasized by her leaving him alone when he would have pleaded further with her. Since then, he had striven to obtain another interview with his bride, but she had refused him. He was denied admission to the apartment. Only the maid answered the ringing of the telephone, and his notes were seemingly unheeded. Distraught by this violent interjection of torment into a life that hitherto had known no important suffering, d.i.c.k Gilder showed what mettle of man lay beneath his debonair appearance. And that mettle was of a kind worth while. In these hours of grief, the soul of him put out its strength. He learned beyond peradventure of doubt that the woman whom he had married was in truth an ex-convict, even as Burke and Demarest had declared.

Nevertheless, he did not for an instant believe that she was guilty of the crime with which she had been originally charged and for which she had served a sentence in prison. For the rest, he could understand in some degree how the venom of the wrong inflicted on her had poisoned her nature through the years, till she had worked out its evil through the scheme of which he was the innocent victim. He cared little for the fact that recently she had devoted herself to devious devices for making money, to ingenious schemes for legal plunder. In his summing of her, he set as more than an offset to her unrighteousness in this regard the desperate struggle she had made after leaving prison to keep straight, which, as he learned, had ended in her attempt at suicide. He knew the intelligence of this woman whom he loved, and in his heart was no thought of her faults as vital flaws. It seemed to him rather that circ.u.mstances had compelled her, and that through all the suffering of her life she had retained the more beautiful qualities of her womanliness, for which he reverenced her. In the closeness of their a.s.sociation, short as it had been, he had learned to know something of the tenderer depths within her, the kindliness of her, the wholesomeness. Swayed as he was by the loveliness of her, he was yet more enthralled by those inner qualities of which the outer beauty was only the fitting symbol.

So, in the face of this catastrophe, where a less love must have been destroyed utterly, d.i.c.k remained loyal. His pa.s.sionate regard did not falter for a moment. It never even occurred to him that he might cast her off, might yield to his father's prayers, and abandon her. On the contrary, his only purpose was to gain her for himself, to cherish and guard her against every ill, to protect with his love from every attack of shame or injury. He would not believe that the girl did not care for him. Whatever had been her first purpose of using him only as an instrument through which to strike against his father, whatever might be her present plan of eliminating him from her life in the future, he still was sure that she had grown to know a real and lasting affection for himself. He remembered startled glances from the violet eyes, caught unawares, and the music of her voice in rare instants, and these told him that love for him stirred, even though it might as yet be but faintly, in her heart.

Out of that fact, he drew an immediate comfort in this period of his misery. Nevertheless, his anguish was a racking one. He grew older visibly in the night and the day. There crept suddenly lines of new feeling into his face, and, too, lines of new strength. The boy died in that time; the man was born, came forth in the full of his steadfastness and his courage, and his love.

The father suffered with the son. He was a proud man, intensely gratified over the commanding position to which he had achieved in the commercial world, proud of his business integrity, of his standing in the community as a leader, proud of his social position, proud most of all of the son whom he so loved. Now, this hideous disaster threatened his pride at every turn--worse, it threatened the one person in the world whom he really loved. Most fathers would have stormed at the boy when pleading failed, would have given commands with harshness, would have menaced the recalcitrant with disinheritance. Edward Gilder did none of these things, though his heart was sorely wounded. He loved his son too much to contemplate making more evil for the lad by any estrangement between them. Yet he felt that the matter could not safely be left in the hands of d.i.c.k himself. He realized that his son loved the woman--nor could he wonder much at that. His keen eyes had perceived Mary Turner's graces of form, her loveliness of face. He had apprehended, too, in some measure at least, the fineness of her mental fiber and the capacities of her heart. Deep within him, denied any outlet, he knew there lurked a curious, subtle sympathy for the girl in her scheme of revenge against himself. Her persistent striving toward the object of her ambition was something he could understand, since the like thing in different guise had been back of his own business success.

He would not let the idea rise to the surface of consciousness, for he still refused to believe that Mary Turner had suffered at his hand unjustly. He would think of her as nothing else than a vile creature, who had caught his son in the toils of her beauty and charm, for the purpose of eventually making money out of the intrigue.

Gilder, in his library this night, was pacing impatiently to and fro, eagerly listening for the sound of his son's return to the house. He had been the guest of honor that night at an important meeting of the Civic Committee, and he had spoken with his usual clarity and earnestness in spite of the trouble that beset him. Now, however, the regeneration of the city was far from his thought, and his sole concern was with the regeneration of a life, that of his son, which bade fair to be ruined by the wiles of a wicked woman. He was anxious for the coming of d.i.c.k, to whom he would make one more appeal. If that should fail--well, he must use the influences at his command to secure the forcible parting of the adventuress from his son.

The room in which he paced to and fro was of a solid dignity, well fitted to serve as an environment for its owner. It was very large, and lofty. There was ma.s.siveness in the desk that stood opposite the hall door, near a window. This particular window itself was huge, high, jutting in octagonal, with leaded panes. In addition, there was a great fireplace set with tiles, around which was woodwork elaborately carved, the fruit of patient questing abroad. On the walls were hung some pieces of tapestry, where there were not bookcases. Over the octagonal window, too, such draperies fell in stately lines. Now, as the magnate paced back and forth, there was only a gentle light in the room, from a reading-lamp on his desk. The huge chandelier was unlighted.... It was even as Gilder, in an increasing irritation over the delay, had thrown himself down on a couch which stood just a little way within an alcove, that he heard the outer door open and shut. He sprang up with an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of satisfaction.

"d.i.c.k, at last!" he muttered.

It was, in truth, the son. A moment later, he entered the room, and went at once to his father, who was standing waiting, facing the door.

"I'm awfully sorry I'm so late, Dad," he said simply.

"Where have you been?" the father demanded gravely. But there was great affection in the flash of his gray eyes as he scanned the young man's face, and the touch of the hand that he put on d.i.c.k's shoulder was very tender. "With that woman again?"

The boy's voice was disconsolate as he replied:

"No, father, not with her. She won't see me."

The older man snorted a wrathful appreciation.

"Naturally!" he exclaimed with exceeding bitterness in the heavy voice.

"She's got all she wanted from you--my name!" He repeated the words with a grimace of exasperation: "My name!"

There was a novel dignity in the son's tone as he spoke.

"It's mine, too, you know, sir," he said quietly.

The father was impressed of a sudden with the fact that, while this affair was of supreme import to himself, it was, after all, of still greater significance to his son. To himself, the chief concerns were of the worldly kind. To this boy, the vital thing was something deeper, something of the heart: for, however absurd his feeling, the truth remained that he loved the woman. Yes, it was the son's name that Mary Turner had taken, as well as that of his father. In the case of the son, she had taken not only his name, but his very life. Yes, it was, indeed, d.i.c.k's tragedy. Whatever he, the father, might feel, the son was, after all, more affected. He must suffer more, must lose more, must pay more with happiness for his folly.

Gilder looked at his son with a strange, new respect, but he could not let the situation go without protest, protest of the most vehement.

"d.i.c.k," he cried, and his big voice was shaken a little by the force of his emotion; "boy, you are all I have in the world. You will have to free yourself from this woman somehow." He stood very erect, staring steadfastly out of his clear gray eyes into those of his son. His heavy face was rigid with feeling; the coa.r.s.e mouth bent slightly in a smile of troubled fondness, as he added more softly: "You owe me that much."

The son's eyes met his father's freely. There was respect in them, and affection, but there was something else, too, something the older man recognized as beyond his control. He spoke gravely, with a deliberate conviction.

"I owe something to her, too, Dad."

But Gilder would not let the statement go unchallenged. His heavy voice rang out rebukingly, overtoned with protest.

"What can you owe her?" he demanded indignantly. "She tricked you into the marriage. Why, legally, it's not even that. There's been nothing more than a wedding ceremony. The courts hold that that is only a part of the marriage actually. The fact that she doesn't receive you makes it simpler, too. It can be arranged. We must get you out of the sc.r.a.pe."

He turned and went to the desk, as if to sit, but he was halted by his son's answer, given very gently, yet with a note of finality that to the father's ear rang like the crack of doom.

"I'm not sure that I want to get out of it, father."

That was all, but those plain words summed the situation, made the issue a matter not of advice, but of the heart.

Gilder persisted, however, in trying to evade the integral fact of his son's feeling. Still he tried to fix the issue on the known unsavory reputation of the woman.

"You want to stay married to this jail-bird!" he stormed.

A gust of fury swept the boy. He loved the woman, in spite of all; he respected her, even reverenced her. To hear her thus named moved him to a rage almost beyond his control. But he mastered himself. He remembered that the man who spoke loved him; he remembered, too, that the word of opprobrium was no more than the truth, however offensive it might be to his sensitiveness. He waited a moment until he could hold his voice even. Then his words were the sternest protest that could have been uttered, though they came from no exercise of thought, only out of the deeps of his heart.