The Vagrant Duke Part 24

"You look as if your name ought to be Algernon."

"Why?" he asked, laughing.

"Oh, I don't know. It's the name of a man in a book I read--an Englishman. You're English, you said."

"Half English," said Peter.

"What's the other half?"

"Russian." He knew that he ought to be lying to her, but somehow he couldn't.

"Russian! I thought Russians all had long hair and carried bombs."

"Some of 'em do. I'm not that kind. The half of me that's English is the biggest half, and the safest."

"I'm glad of that. I'd hate to think of you as bein' a Bolshevik."

"H-m. So would I."

"But Russia's where you get your music from, isn't it? The band leader at Gla.s.sboro is a Russian. He can play every instrument. Did you learn music in Russia?"

Beth was now treading dangerous ground and so it was time to turn the tables.

"Yes, a little," he said, "but music has no nationality. Or why would I find a voice like yours out here?"

"Twenty miles from nowhere," she added scornfully.

"How did you come here, Beth? Would you mind telling me? You weren't born here, were you? How did you happen to come to Black Rock?"

"Just bad luck, I guess. n.o.body'd ever come to Black Rock just because they want to. We just came. That's all."

"Just you and Aunt Tillie? Is your father dead?" he asked.

She closed her eyes a moment and then clasped her knees again.

"I don't like to talk about family matters."

"Oh, I----"

And then, gently, she added,

"I never talk about them to any one."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Peter, aware of the undercurrent of sadness in her voice. "I didn't know that there was anything painful to you----"

"I didn't know it myself, until you played it to me, just now, the piece with the sad, low voices, under the melody. It was like somebody dead speakin' to me. I can't talk about the things I feel like that."

"Don't then----Forgive me for asking."

He laid his fingers softly over hers. She withdrew her hand quickly, but the look that she turned him found his face sober, his dark eyes warm with sympathy. And then with a swift inconsequential impulse born of Peter's recantation,

"I don't s'pose there's any reason why I shouldn't tell you," she said more easily. "Everybody around here knows about me--about us. Aunt Tillie and I haven't lived here always. She brought me here when I was a child."

She paused again and Peter remained silent, watching her intently. As she glanced up at him, something in the expression of his face gave her courage to go on.

"Father's dead. His name was Ben Cameron. He came of nice people," she faltered. "But he--he was no good. We lived up near New Lisbon. He used to get drunk on 'Jersey Lightnin'' and tear loose. He was all right between whiles--farmin'--but whisky made him crazy, and then--then he would come home and beat us up."

"Horrible!"

"It was. I was too little to know much, but Aunt Tillie's husband came at last and there was a terrible fight. Uncle Will was hurt--hurt so bad--cut with a knife--that he never was the same again. And my--my father went away cursing us all. Then my mother died--Uncle Will too--and Aunt Tillie and I came down here to live. That's all. Not much to be proud of," she finished ruefully.

Peter was silent. It was a harrowing, sordid story of primitive pa.s.sion.

He was very sorry for her.

Beth made an abrupt graceful movement of an arm across her brows, as though to wipe out the memory.

"I don't know why I've told you," she said. "I never speak of this to any one."

"I'm so sorry."

He meant it. And Beth knew that he did.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PLACARD

The look that she had given him showed her sense of his sympathy. So he ventured,

"Did you hear from your father before he died?"

"Aunt Tillie did,--once. Then we got word he'd been killed in a railway accident out West. I was glad. A man like that has no right to live."

"You and Aunt Tillie have had a pretty hard time----" he mused.

"Yes. She's an angel--and I love her. Why is it that good people have nothin' but trouble? She had an uncle who went bad too--he was younger than she was--my great-uncle--Jack Bray--he forged a check--or somethin'

up in Newark--and went to the penitentiary."

"And is he dead too?"

"No--not at last accounts. He's out--somewhere. When I was little he used to come to Aunt Tillie for money--a tall, lantern-jawed man. I saw him once three years ago. He was here. Aunt Tillie tried to keep me out of the kitchen. But I thought he was up to some funny business and stayed. He took a fancy to me. He said he was camera man in the movies.

He wanted me to go with him--thought I could be as good as Mary Pickford. I'm glad I didn't go--from what I know now. He was a bad man.

Aunt Tillie was scared of him. Poor soul! She gave him all she had--most of what was left from the old farm, I guess."

"Do you think----" began Peter, then paused. And as she glanced at him inquiringly, "Did you notice that your Aunt Tillie seemed--er--frightened last night?" he asked at last.