The Danger Mark Part 73

Geraldine sat up and laughed, laying the unc.o.c.ked rifle across her knees.

"Some of these days I'm going to win my wager," she said to her brother.

"And it won't be with a striped yearling, either; it will be with the biggest, s.h.a.ggiest, fiercest, tuskiest boar that ranges the Gilded Dome.

And that," she added, looking at Kathleen, "will give me something to think of and keep me rather busy, I believe."

"Rather," observed her brother, getting up and helping Kathleen to her feet. He added, to torment her: "Probably you'll get Duane to win your bet for you, Sis."

"No," said the girl gravely; "whatever is to die I must slay all by myself, Scott--all alone, with no man's help."

He nodded: "Sure thing; it's the only sporting way. There's no stunt to it; only keep cool and keep shooting, and drop him before he comes to close quarters."

"Yes," she said, looking up at Kathleen.

Her brother drew her to her feet. She gave him a little hug.

"Believe in me, dear," she said. "I'll do it easier if you do."

"Of course I do. You're a better sport than I. You always were. And that's no idle jest; witness my nose and Duane's in days gone by."

The girl smiled. As they turned homeward she slung her rifle, pa.s.sed her right arm through Kathleen's, and dropped her left on her brother's shoulder. She was very tired, and hopeful that she might sleep.

And tired, hopeful, thinking of her lover, she pa.s.sed through the woods, leaning on those who were nearest and most dear.

Somehow--and just why was not clear to her--it seemed at that moment as though she had pa.s.sed the danger mark--as though the very worst lay behind her--close, scarcely clear of her skirts yet, but all the same it lay behind her, not ahead.

She knew, and dreaded, and shrank from what still lay before her; she understood into what ruin treachery to self might precipitate her still at any moment. And yet, somehow, she felt vaguely that something had been gained that day which never before had been gained. And she thought of her lover as she pa.s.sed through the forest, leaning on Scott and Kathleen, her little feet keeping step with theirs, her eyes steady in the red western glare that flooded the forest to an infernal beauty.

Behind her streamed her gigantic shadow; behind her lay another shadow, cast by her soul and floating wide of it now. And it must never touch her soul again, G.o.d helping.

Suddenly her heart almost ceased its beating. Far away within, stirring in unsuspected depths, something moved furtively.

Her face whitened a little; her eyes closed, the lids fluttered, opened; she gazed straight in front of her, walked on, small head erect, lips firm, facing the h.e.l.l that lay before her--lay surely, surely before her. For the breath of it glowed already in her veins and the voices of it were already busy in her ears, and the unseen stirring of it had begun once more within her body--that tired white, slender body of hers which had endured so bravely and so long.

If sleep would only aid her, come to her in her need, be her ally in the peril of her solitude--if it would only come, and help her to endure!

And wondering if it would, not knowing, hoping, she walked onward through the falling night.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DANGER MARK

Her letters to him still bore the red cross:

"I understand perfectly why you cannot come," she wrote; "I would do exactly as you are doing if I had a father. It must be a very great happiness to have one. My need of you is not as great as his; I can hold my own alone, I think. You see I am doing it, and you must not worry. Only, dear, when you have the opportunity, come up if only for a day."

And again, in November:

"You are the sweetest boy, and it is not difficult to understand why your father cannot endure to have you out of his sight. But is this not a very heavy strain on you? Of course your mother and Nada must not be left alone with him; you are the only son, and your place is there.

"Dear, I know what you are going through is one of the most dreadful things that any man is called upon to bear--your father stricken, your mother and sister prostrate; the newspapers--for I have read them--cruel beyond belief! But whatever they say, whatever is true or untrue, Duane, remember that it cannot affect my regard for you and yours.

"If I had a father, whatever he might have done, or permitted others to do, would not, _could_ not alter my affection for him.

"Men say that women have no sense of honour. I do not know what that sense may be if it falters when loyalty and compa.s.sion are needed, too.

"I have read the papers; I know only what I read and what you tell me. The rules that custom has framed to safeguard and govern financial operations, I do not understand; but, as far as I can comprehend, it seems to me that custom has. .h.i.therto sanctioned what disaster has now placed under a bann. It seems to me that the very men who now blame your father have all done successfully what he did so disastrously.

"One thing I know: no kinder, dearer man than your father ever lived; and I love him, and I love his family, and I will marry his son when I am fit to do it."

And again she wrote:

"I saw in the papers that the Algonquin Trust Company had closed its doors; I read the heartbreaking details of the crowds besieging it, the lines of frightened people standing there in the rain all night long. It is dreadful, terrible!

"Who are these Wall Street men who would not help the Algonquin when they could? Why is the Clearing House so bitter? I don't know what it all means; I read columns about poor Jack Dysart--words and figures and technical phrases and stock quotations--and it means nothing, and I understand nothing of it save that it is all a fierce outcry against him and against the men with whom he was financially involved.

"The papers are so gloomy, so eager in their search for evil, so merciless, so exultant when scandal is unearthed, that I can scarcely bear to read them. Why do they drag in unhappy people who know nothing about these matters? The interview with your mother and Nada, which you say is false, was most dreadful. How cruel men are!

"Tell them I love them dearly; tell your father, too. And, dear, I don't know exactly how Scott and I are situated, but if we can be of any financial use to you, please, please let us! Our fortune, when it came to us, was, I believe, all in first mortgages and railroad securities. I believe that Scott made some changes in our investments under advice from your father. I don't know what they were.

"Don't bother your father with such details now; he has enough to think of lying there in his grief, bewildered, broken in mind and body. Duane, is it not more merciful that he is unable to understand what the papers are saying?

"Dear, heart and soul I am loyal to you and yours."

She wrote again:

"Yes, I had a talk with Scott. I did not know he had been receiving all those letters from your attorneys. Magnelius Grandcourt manages the investments. Scott's brokers are Stainer & Elting; our attorneys are, as you know, Landon, Brooks & Gayfield.

"Duane, I absolutely forbid you to worry. My brother is of age, sound in mind and body, responsible for whatever he does or has done. It is his affair if he solicits advice, his affair if he follows it. Your father has no responsibility whatever in the matter of the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Besides, Scott tells me that what he did was against the advice of Mr. Tappan.

"I remember last winter that he brought a Mr. Skelton to luncheon, and a horrid man named Klawber.

"Poor Scott! He certainly knows nothing about business matters. I know he had no desire to increase his private fortune; he tells me that what interested him in the Cascade Development and Securities Company was the chance that cheap radium might stimulate scientific research the world over. Poor Scott!

"Dear, you are not to think for one instant that any trouble which may involve Scott is due to you or yours. And if it were, Duane, it could make no difference to him or to me. Money and what it buys is such a pitiful detail in what goes to make up happiness. Who but I should understand that!

"Loss of social prestige and position, is a serious matter, I suppose; I may show my ignorance and inexperience when I tell you how much more serious to me are other things--like the loss of faith in one's self or in others--or the loss of the gentler virtues, which means the loss of what one once was.

"The loss of honour is, as you say, a pitiful thing; yet, I think that when that happens, love and compa.s.sion were never more truly needed.

"Honour, as I understand it, is not to take advantage of others or of one's better self. This is a young girl's definition. I cannot see--if one has yielded once to temptation, and truly repents--why honour cannot be regained.

"The honour of men and nations that seems to require arrogance, aggression, violence for its defence, I do not understand. How can the misdeeds of others impair one's true honour? How can punishment for such misdeeds restore it? No; it lies within one, quite intangible save by one's self.

"Why should I not know, dear?--I who have lost my own and found it, have held it desperately for a while, then lost it, then regained it, holding it again as I do now--alas!--against no other enemy than I who write this record for your eyes!