The Rose in the Ring Part 60

She shook her head. "I will not tell you that, David. Only he and I are to know."

"And you are to send him money from time to time?"

"No, I am not to send him a penny."

"He goes to-night--positively?"

"He goes to-night, positively."

"And he refuses to see Christine?"

"Why should he see her?"

"Well, I don't know," said he dubiously. "It seems rather hard, don't you think?"

"Yes. He wors.h.i.+ps her, David. Yes, it is hard. He is going in this way because it makes it easier--for both of them, he says. You see, David, he is doing it for her sake, not for his own. If he were to do things just now for his own sake, he would kill Grand instead of running away from him."

"He's a good deal of a man, after all, Mrs. Braddock."

"A good deal of a man," she repeated.

"He wishes Christine to be my wife. He told you so, but she won't consent until you tell her that it is all right. It's silly of her. I'm never going to give her up, and she knows it."

She faced him suddenly. "You ask me why the marriage cannot take place to-morrow, David. Would you be just as eager to have it take place if her father decided to change his mind and remain here, with all the consequences such an act might create?"

"Certainly," he replied promptly.

"You do not forget what he is, what he has been, what he may yet become?"

"That has nothing to do with it. I love Christine."

"Would you be willing to stand at his side, the husband of his daughter, and say, 'I am content to be called your son'--would you?"

David stared hard at the floor for a moment. "I think that is rather an unfair question, Mrs. Braddock, when we stop to recall the fact that both you and Christine have denied him for years. I will call myself his son when you call him husband and Christine speaks of him as father--to the world. You can hardly expect me to be proud of what you are ashamed to own."

She bowed her head in sudden humility. "I was wrong," she said. "I deserve the rebuke."

"I have hurt you. Forgive me."

She placed her hand on his. He observed that it was as cold as ice.

"While it is true that we have denied him, my dear David, nevertheless we do belong to him. She is his daughter. That is what I am trying to make plain to you."

"If she chooses to call herself his daughter, I am perfectly content to call myself his son."

"I wanted to hear you say that, David. You must take her as Thomas Braddock's daughter, quite as much as you do as Albert Portman's granddaughter."

"I am not deceiving myself," he said with a smile.

"Then I am ready to give my consent to an immediate marriage," she said. For the first time since their interview began she spoke hurriedly. A feverish light came into her eyes, burning bright and dry.

He sprang to his feet, triumphant. "Come with me to her! She will name the day if you--"

"I shall name the day, David," she said evenly. "It must be to-night,--this very night,--before her father goes away."

"Are you in earnest?" he cried, scarcely believing that he heard aright.

"She loves you with all her soul, and you love her. You are her protector, the stone wall between her and all the unkind things of life. She needs you now. Tomorrow may bring the hour of trial. It is best that she should have you to lean upon. It must be to-night. Come; we will go to her. It is nearly three o'clock. There is much to be done between now and the time that your train starts for Richmond. I want her to be in Jenison Hall to-morrow."

Together they went to Christine. Half an hour later he hurried away from the house, a dozen imperative duties to be performed between that time and seven o'clock. He went with a joyous spirit, a leaping heart, and with the will to accomplish all that was required of him in that short s.p.a.ce of time.

At seven Christine and he were to be married in the huge, old-fas.h.i.+oned drawing-room; at eight-thirty they would be on board the train, bound for Jenison Hall. He was to take her away with him, far from all the ugly possibilities that crept up from all sides to threaten her. Mary Braddock refrained from telling Christine even so much as she had told David concerning the plans of her husband. The girl was allowed to believe that the man was already on his way to the far West. There was a rather trying scene when Christine learned that it would be impossible for her to see her father. She broke down and wept, crying out bitterly that she might have been able to comfort him if she had been given the opportunity. It was with some difficulty and the exercise of considerable patience that her mother convinced her that they had acted for the best.

"Some day I shall go to see him, mother," she had said with a resoluteness that brought a strange gleam to the eyes of the older woman. "I am sorry for him. He needs some one to love him. I am sure he is not so wicked as--"

"You must be guided by what David says, my child. Remember that you will have more than yourself to consider," was the evasive remark of Mary Braddock.

Brooks was sent off with a letter to Dr. Browne, the rector, requesting him to conduct the marriage ceremony. Maid-servants packed Christine's trunks, all enjoined to secrecy. Ruby Noakes and old Joey attended to a few of the many preparations that were being hurried through with such nervous haste.

All through the long afternoon Mary Braddock lived under the most intense strain of suspense and apprehension. Uppermost in her mind was the question: had he succeeded in eluding the watchers who were on his trail?

At four o'clock she went to her father, prepared to tell him all that had transpired during the past thirty-six hours. She held nothing back from the old man, not even Braddock's gruesome design. They were closeted together for more than an hour. That which pa.s.sed between father and daughter went no farther than the walls of the secluded little room that he called his study. She came forth from the trying interview with her head high and her heart low.

The old man's last tremulous words to her were these: "Well, Mary, G.o.d shows all of us the way. Sometimes the way is hard, but we reach the end if we look neither to the right nor the left,--nor behind. What you have just told me is terrible. Is it the only way?"

"Yes, it is the only way."

He bowed his head and said no more. She kissed his gray hair and pa.s.sed out from the room, closing the door gently behind her.

David and Christine were married at seven o'clock. The shadow which hung over the household, the grievous exigency which made haste so imperative, did much toward suppressing the joy and gladness that under other conditions would have filled the house and the hearts of all therein. Mr. Portman, gray-faced and taciturn, gave the bride in marriage. There were but three witnesses outside of the family. Joey Noakes and Ruby were there and a single college friend to whom David had gone in the stress of necessity.

Mother and daughter said their farewells in private. Christine sobbed in her mother's arms, imploring her to come away with them at once, to be happy forever. Mary Braddock's eyes were dry and burning, her hands were cold, her heart like ice.

"I will come some time, my darling, but--not now. You must make your home before I come to see you in it. I shall go abroad, as I told you this afternoon. Father agrees with me that it is the thing to do under the circ.u.mstances. When I return, my child, I will come to see you in Jenison Hall. You will be its true mistress by that time. You will have discovered the true happiness of life. Until then, my darling, you will not have lived. Even I found joy and happiness in their fullest estate before I came to know bitterness and unrest. You are to be very, very happy. I will come to you in the midst of it all."

After they were gone and the lights were out Mary Braddock, wide-eyed and tense, stole down to the stables and waited for the father of the bride. She was there a long while ahead of the appointed time--hours, it seemed to her.

He came at last, slinking up from the mouth of the alley where a single street-light spread a dim glow in which he resolved himself for a moment in transit, only to be blotted out again as if by some magic process. With narrowed, anxious eyes and alert ears she waited, standing there in the half-open door of the carriage-house. Suddenly he grew up out of the darkness, almost at her side.

"Tom," she cried out softly.

He came straight to her. His eyes, used to the darkness and made keen by the ever-present sense of danger, had seen the faintly white splotch in the night that marked her face for him. He had seen and had waited to make sure that it was she who stood there peering forth.

"Well, I'm here," he said in a hoa.r.s.e, restrained whisper. "Have you heard what's happened?"

"They are not pursuing you? What is it, Tom?"

"Grand has been murdered, Mary!"