The Way of the Strong Part 88

"She reckoned that way because she knew it was my purpose," he said coldly.

"But you didn't marry her, did you?" Leyburn cried tauntingly.

"I didn't marry her because she was dead when I finally found her whereabouts."

"But she did not die till after you deserted her," cried Leyburn, with venomous triumph.

"Best go straight on with the story. You want the boy to know it all--not in pieces." Hendrie went on smoking.

Leyburn turned to Frank again.

"And it's a pretty story," he a.s.sured him. "Listen. A week after we started down the trail these two followed us with a scout. They, too, got caught in the blizzard. They got caught in the open. They were high up in the hills. An accident happened. They lost their gold, dropped with a lot of their baggage over a precipice. This man got mad. He loved gold. He cared for nothing else. Your mother was nothing beside it. She was just a burden. Finally they made camp a few miles from us.

After a while this man saw our smoke in the distance. He stole out on the excuse of fetching wood. He tramped to our camp. He came there when I was away for wood and Charlie had just died. Finding Charlie dead, and no one about, he stole our gold, our dogs and sled, our provisions and blankets, and hit the trail south, leaving your mother with the scout, and me to walk back to their camp or starve. That's the man who is your father. That's the man you've gone over to, and sacrificed your pledges to humanity for. Do you understand what you've done? Do you?

You've helped this criminal, this skunk of a man who dishonored your mother, and left her and her unborn child on the long winter trail to die, this thief, this ghoul who could rob the dead, and renounced your most sacred pledges. By G.o.d, you are your father's son!"

The scorn and hatred the man flung into his final charge was far, far beyond the power of words.

He looked for its effect, waiting for Frank to take up his challenge.

But he remained disappointed.

"Well?" he urged, with gathering fury.

Still there was no answer in the darkened room.

But though he remained silent Frank's heart was beating hard. A strange excitement was plunging wildly through his veins. He felt that he wanted to reach out his strong young hands and do hurt. He felt at that moment, and during the moments he was hearkening to the venomous story, aggravated by every hateful inflection that could goad, that relief could only come in violence. And his desire was to silence that hateful voice, and choke the story it was telling back into the throat of the man telling it. It did not hurt him to hear these things of his own father because he was his father. They hurt him because they were on the tongue of this man, who, from the bottom of his heart, he had learned so to despise and hate.

Alexander Hendrie shot a sidelong glance into the boy's face. It was a furtive glance, watchful and anxious. Then his eyes returned to their dark brooding.

A moment later, as Frank made no response to the man's challenge, Hendrie removed the cigar from his mouth.

"You stuck nearer the truth than I expected you would. Maybe you knew it would be useless to do otherwise, seeing I'm here to put you right,"

he said, in his deep, unruffled tones. "Now----"

He broke off, and glanced quickly at the door as a sharp knock made itself heard. Suddenly he held up his hand, as though to enjoin silence, and, in a moment, his eyes lit with a mingling of wild hope and abject fear.

The door opened and, silhouetted against the brilliantly lit hall beyond, stood the slight figure of an elderly man with iron gray hair.

Hendrie sprang to his feet and pressed the switch of the electric light. Then he turned and faced Professor Hinkling as the surgeon advanced into the room.

The little man came straight up to him with his hand out-stretched. His clean-cut features were smiling, but he looked tired and nervous.

"I think," he said deliberately, "we have turned the corner, Mr.

Hendrie. I have every reason to believe Mrs. Hendrie will recover. The operation has been quite successful. I shall remain with Dr. Fraser to watch the case for a few days, but I have no fears of ultimate recovery. We were only just in time. Another day." He held up his hands to signify disaster, and the millionaire understood. "My best congratulations, my dear sir. She should be about again in less than a month."

The door closed on the retreating figure of the great surgeon. For a moment Hendrie stood looking after him. Then he abruptly turned and flung the end of his cigar into the cuspidor beside his desk. Then he turned again, and his eyes flashed round upon the three men who had remained perfectly silent during the surgeon's brief visit. They were different eyes now which finally settled upon the man who had so recently heaped accusation and insult upon his head. They were full of that great fighting spirit which they all knew so well.

He strode up to Austin Leyburn, who sat watching him speculatively, who was waiting for whatever development was yet to come.

"Get up!" he cried, with a deep, underlying ferocity in his voice and manner. "Get right up on to your hind legs. You heard what he said? You heard?" He drew his right hand from his coat pocket and produced a revolver. "If his verdict had been otherwise you would never have left this room. Every chamber of this gun is loaded, and each bullet would have found its way into your rotten body. As it is, you can go. You are free. Your car, and your man, will meet you in Everton. Take my advice and get away from this neighborhood without delay. When you are away remember this. You can take what action you like for what has happened here. I don't care a curse. But I'll warn you right here and now, that you have committed criminal conspiracy in playing the stock market, and when I give the word, the machinery for prosecution will be set moving against you. Further, I'd warn you that if one word of the story you've told here to-night reaches the world outside, that word will be given, and you'll pay as you never yet guessed you'd ever pay for the luxury of a private revenge. You get me? Now go! Go quick!"

Austin Leyburn was on his feet. The two men stood eye to eye. With all his faults, the difference between them left the balance absurdly in the millionaire's favor.

"Yes, I'll go. And I'll remember," cried Leyburn fiercely. "You can shout now, but I'll remember everything. You won't have to set that machinery in motion, but when the time comes--and I'll be looking for that time all my life--you'll find I have remembered everything, both for you and--your b.a.s.t.a.r.d son."

As his last words leaped from between his clenched teeth he moved swiftly across to the door. Hendrie shot a quick glance at Angus, and the watchful Scot promptly followed him out.

"It's a pretty story, Frank."

Hendrie's lips were smiling, but his eyes were half anxious, half questioning.

"Guess it hasn't gained niceness from that feller," he went on. "No,"

he added thoughtfully. "Nothing ever gained in niceness from those lips. Tug never had pleasant ways. Still, there it is--and----" In spite of himself his eyes were wholly anxious now--"it's true, when you clean his tone off it."

Frank rose from his chair and moved away across the room. His movement seemed objectless, yet his father understood. He knew that a great conflict was going on within that silent heart, and he wondered.

But Leyburn's venomous manner of telling his, Hendrie's, story had satisfied the millionaire. He preferred that his son should know it from its worst possible aspect. That was why he had forced it from the labor man's lips. He desired no smoothing over of the roughnesses of his past character. Certainly not for his own son's benefit. He was determined that this boy should sit in judgment upon him with his eyes wide open to all his shortcomings. He wanted him to know his father as he was.

"I wanted him to tell Monica, too," Hendrie went on, after a pause.

"But she's not fit to hear it--yet. Now I'll have to tell her myself. I shan't cover things up, anyway. There's just one thing I want to add.

It's right I should add it. Leyburn didn't know it." He smiled. "Guess no one knew it but me. I wanted the truth from him, so we'll have it all. I want to tell you, after your mother got down to civilization I spent most of Tug's gold trying to find her--to marry her. It took me weeks and weeks. Then I found she was dead, and you--I had lost you, too."

Frank turned round, and there was thankfulness and no condemnation in the eyes that looked into his father's across the room. Instantly Hendrie's face became set.

"Say," he cried quickly, "don't think I'm squealing. Don't think I'm shuffling. These are just facts, same as the others. Get a grip on things, boy. I'm wholly unrepentant for the things I've done.

Especially for--helping myself to Tug's gold. I don't go back on anything I do. These things were, and I--stand for them. There's just one other thing I'd like you to know. I didn't know you were my son till I set about getting you released from the penitentiary. I learned that from Monica, when she told me about you. I didn't tell her of my discovery--again this is the truth--because I was scared to lose her love. You see, boy, there are some things make cowards of us in spite of ourselves. I told you that before.

"That's pretty well all. Maybe there's things you'd like to know later, when you aren't feeling so hot about this. Well, I'll be glad to tell you when you want to hear them. I'm your father, boy, and Monica is your stepmother. This is your home, same as any other place I own.

You've just to open your lips and say the word, and your share of all I have is waiting for you--everything I have or--am. You get that? It's all up to you. You're just as free as you were before. Your own decision goes with me. I just want you to get me clearly. I want you to understand all that's in my head. You are my son, and I'm proud and pleased about it. But--I bend the knee to no man--not even to you--my son."

The man's curious dignity, his crude truth, and deliberate honesty of purpose were superlative. Frank was looking upon the man as he was, shorn of everything that could hide, in however slight a degree, the rugged character that was his, and he knew it.

This was the father whose violent youthful pa.s.sions had brought him into the world. This was the father who had given him the breath of life which had borne him upon its stormy bosom. This unrepentant sinner. This strong man among strong men. This human creature so ready to err, yet so full of human nature, was his father.

The knowledge somehow left him no sense of outrage. He had neither resentment nor dislike. Only, in the back of his simple mind, was a lurking admiration for one who had the courage to talk as he had just talked, to do as he had just done.

He drew a step nearer.

"Father," he said. Then he paused. After a moment he repeated the word.

"Father--it sounds queer to call you 'father,' doesn't it?"

The millionaire nodded. His eyes were smiling.

"Your ways may not be my ways," he went on. "I don't know. Anyway, I fancy you just see things your own way, and I mine. All that man said left me cold--except one thing. He said you--deserted my mother. You've cleared that up--and I'm glad. I'd sooner believe the truth from you than from him. But I seem to have heard such a heap. I seem to have lived through years this past week. I can't just get that full grip you spoke of. Maybe I will after a while. Still--there's a thing standing right out in my mind, and--and I'm glad. Our Mon is going to get through. G.o.d's been pretty good to us in that. She's going to live for us both. Say, we had to fight hard--and it's good to fight--after all.

Since I've tasted what fighting means I seem to understand some of your life, seem to understand something of you. I'm glad we were to--gether in this. I think I'll get out, and--just walk around. I--yes, I want to--think."

The millionaire remained where he was. He made no movement. His eyes were on his son's face. He saw its color come and go in the brilliant light of the room. His halting speech told him far more than his words.