- -
- 100%
- +
There was a brief silence. When Blake did speak, Katherine could discern in his repressed tone a keen aversion for his companion.
“My position is the same as last night. What you say is all guesswork. There is nothing in it.”
Blind Charlie’s voice was soft – purringly soft.
“Then why didn’t you ask me to go to hell, and stay at home instead of coming out here?”
There was again a short silence.
“Come now,” the soft voice persuaded, “let’s don’t go over what we did last night. I know I’m right.”
“I tell you you’re only guessing,” Blake doggedly returned. “You haven’t a scrap of proof.”
“I don’t need proof, when I’m certain about a thing,” gently returned the voice of Blind Charlie. “I’ve been in politics for forty-eight years – ever since I was nineteen, when I cast my first vote. I’ve got sharpened up considerable in that time, and while I haven’t been in on much in the last ten years, I can still smell a fat deal clean across the state. For the last three months I’ve been smelling, and smelling it keener every day, that you’ve got a rich game going.”
“And so” – rather sarcastically – “you set Bruce on, to try to run the game down!”
“Well, I would use a little different figure of speech,” returned Blind Charlie smoothly. “When I’ve got a coon up a hollow tree I build a fire in the hollow to bring him down. Bruce is my fire.”
“And you think your coon is coming down?”
“I rather think he is. Don’t you?”
“Well, I tell you he’s not! For there’s no coon up the tree!”
“I see I’ve got to state the thing to you again,” said Blind Charlie patiently, and so softly that Katherine had to strain her utmost to get his words. “When I grew sure you had a big deal on about the water-works, I saw that the only way to force you to let me in was to put you in a fix where you would either have to split up or be in danger of losing the whole thing. So I nominated Bruce. He’s one of the easiest I ever took in; but, I tell you, he is certainly one hell of a fighter! That’s what I nominated him for. You know as well as I do the way he’s swinging the voters round. It beats anything I’ve ever seen. If he keeps this up till election, and if I pull off a couple of good tricks I’ve got all ready, he’ll be a winner, sure! And now” – Blind Charlie’s purring voice thrust out its claws – “either I put Bruce in and smash your deal till it’s not worth a damn, or else you come across!”
“There’s nothing in it, I tell you!” declared Blake.
“There’s no use keeping up that pretence,” continued Blind Charlie. “You’ve had a day to think over my proposition. You know perfectly well what your choice is between: a sure thing if you divide with me, the risk of nothing if you refuse. So let’s waste no more time. Come, which is it?”
There was a long silence.
“I understand,” commented Blind Charlie, with a soft sympathy that Katherine knew was meant to bite like acid. “It’s hard for a respectable man like you to mix up with Charlie Peck. But political business makes strange bed-fellows, and unless you’re willing to sleep with almost anybody you’d better keep out of this kind of business altogether. But after all,” he added, “I guess it’s better to share a good bed than to have no bed at all.”
“What do you want?” Blake asked huskily.
“Only my share of the bed,” blandly returned Blind Charlie.
“What’s that, in plain words?”
“Not much. Only half of what you’re going to make.”
Blake exploded.
“Damn you, Peck, you’re nothing but a damned blackmailer!”
“All right, I agree to that,” said Blind Charlie. Then he added in his soft voice: “But if I’m a blackmailer in this affair, then please, Mr. Blake, what do you call yourself?”
“You – you – ” To the crouching figure outside the window Blake seemed to be half-choking. But suddenly he exploded again. “I’ll not do it, Peck! I’ll not do it – never while God’s earth stands!”
“I guess you will, Blake!” Blind Charlie’s voice was no longer soft; it had a slow, grating, crunching sound. “Damn your soul, you’ve been acting toward me with your holier-than-thou reformer’s attitude for ten years. D’you think I’m a man to swallow that quietly? D’you think I haven’t had it in for you all those ten years? Why, there hasn’t been a minute that I haven’t been looking for my chance. And at last I’ve got it! I’ve not only got a line on this water-works business, but I’ve found out all about your pretty little deal with Adamson during the last months you were Lieutenant-Governor!”
“Adamson!” ejaculated Blake.
“Yes, Adamson!” went on the harsh voice of Blind Charlie. “That hits you where you live, eh! You didn’t know I had it, did you? Well, I didn’t till to-day – but I’ve got it now all right! There, my cards are all on the table. Look ’em over. I don’t want Bruce elected any more than you do; but either you do what I say, or by God I turn over to Bruce all I know about the Adamson affair and all I know about this water-works deal! Now I give you just one minute to decide!”
Katherine breathlessly awaited the answer. A space passed. She heard Blind Charlie stand up.
“Time’s up! Good night – and to hell with you!”
“Wait! Wait!” Blake cried.
“Then you accept?”
Blake’s voice shook. “Before I answer, what do you want?”
“I’ve already told you. Half of what you get.”
“But I’m to get very little.”
“Very little!” Blind Charlie’s voice was ironical; it had dropped its tone of crushing menace. “Very little! Now I figure that you’ll get the water-works for a third, or less, of their value. That’ll give you something like half a million at the start-off, not to speak of the regular profits later on. Now as for me,” he concluded drily, “I wouldn’t call that such a very little sum that I’d kick it out of my way if I saw it lying in the road.”
“But no such sum is lying there.”
“No? Then what do you get?”
Blake did not answer.
“Come, speak out!”
Blake’s voice came with an effort.
“I’m not doing this for myself.”
“Then who for?”
Blake hesitated, then again spoke with an effort.
“The National Electric & Water Company.”
Blind Charlie swore in his surprise.
“But I reckon you’re not doing it for them for charity?”
“No.”
“Well, what for?”
Blake again remained silent.
“Come, what for?” impatiently demanded Charlie.
“For a seat in the Senate.”
“That’s no good to me. What else?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
“The devil! Is that all?” ejaculated Blind Charlie.
“Everything.”
Blind Charlie swore to himself for a moment. Then he fell into a deep silence.
“Well, what’s the matter?” Blake presently inquired.
“I was just wondering,” replied Blind Charlie, slowly, “if it wouldn’t be better to call this business off between you and me.”
“Call it off?”
“Yes. I never imagined you were playing for such a little pile as fifty thousand. Since there’s only fifty thousand in it” – his voice suddenly rang out with vindictive triumph – “I was wondering if it wouldn’t pay me better to use what I know to help elect Bruce.”
“Elect Bruce?” cried Blake in consternation.
“Exactly. Show you up, and elect Bruce,” said Blind Charlie coolly. “To elect my mayor – there’s more than fifty thousand for me in that.”
There was a dismayed silence on Blake’s part. But after a moment he recovered himself, and this time it was his voice that had the note of ascendency.
“You are forgetting one point, Mr. Peck,” said he.
“Yes?”
“Bruce’s election will not mean a cent to you. You will get no offices. Moreover, the control of your party machinery will be sure to pass from you to him.”
“You’re right,” said the old man promptly. “See how quick I am to acknowledge the corn. However, after all,” he added philosophically, “what you’re getting is really enough for two. You take the senatorship, and I’ll take the fifty thousand. What do you say to that?”
“What about Bruce – if I accept?”
“Bruce? Bruce is just a fire to smoke the coon out. When the coon comes down, I put out the fire.”
“You mean?”
“I mean that I’ll see that Bruce don’t get elected.”
“You’ll make sure about that?”
“Oh, you just leave Bruce to me!” said Blind Charlie with grim confidence. “And now, do you accept?”
Blake was silent. He still shrunk from this undesirable alliance. Outside, Katherine again breathlessly hung upon his answer.
“What do you say?” demanded the old man sharply. “Do you accept? Or do I smash you?”
“I accept – of course.”
“And we’ll see this thing through together?”
“Yes.”
“Then here you are. Let’s shake on it.”
They talked on, dwelling on details of their partnership, Katherine missing never a word.
At length, their agreement completed, they left the room, and Katherine slipped from the window across into the trees and made such haste as she could through the night and the storm to where she had left her horse. She heard one car go slowly out the entrance of the grove, its lamps dark that its visit might not be betrayed, and she heard it turn cautiously into the back-country road. After a little while she saw a glare shoot out before the car – its lamps had been lighted – and she saw it skim rapidly away. Soon the second car crept out, took the high back-country pike, and repeated the same tactics.
Then Katherine untied Nelly, mounted, and started slowly homeward along the River Road.
CHAPTER XVI
THROUGH THE STORM
Bowed low to shield herself against the ever fiercer buffets of the storm, Katherine gave Nelly free rein to pick her own way at her own pace through the blackness. The rain volleyed into her pitilessly, the wind sought furiously to wrest her from the saddle, the lightning cracked open the heavens into ever more fiery chasms, and the thunder rattled and rolled and reverberated as though a thousand battles were waging in the valley. It was as if the earth’s dissolution were at hand – as if the long-gathered wrath of the Judgment Day were rending the earth asunder and hurling the fragments afar into the black abysm of eternity.
But Katherine, though gasping and shivering, gave minor heed to this elemental rage. Whatever terror she might have felt another time at such a storm, her brain had now small room for it. She was exultantly filled with the magnitude of her discovery. The water-works deal! The National Electric & Water Company! Bruce not a bona fide candidate at all, but only a pistol at Blake’s head to make him stand and deliver! Blake and Blind Charlie – those two whole-hearted haters, who belaboured each other so valiantly before the public – in a secret pact to rob that same dear public!
At the highest moments of her exultation it seemed that victory was already hers; that all that remained was to proclaim to Westville on the morrow what she knew. But beneath all her exultation was a dim realization that the victory itself was yet to be won. What she had gained was only a fuller knowledge of who her enemies were, and what were their purposes.
Her mind raced about her discovery, seeking how to use it as the basis of her own campaign. But the moment of an extensive and astounding discovery is not the moment for the evolving of well-calculated plans; so the energies of her mind were spent on extravagant dreams or the leaping play of her jubilation.
One decision, however, she did reach. That was concerning Bruce. Her first impulse was to go to him and tell him all, in triumphant refutation of his ideas concerning woman in general, and her futility in particular. But as she realized that she was not at the end of her fight, but only at a better-informed beginning, she saw that the day of her triumph over him, if ever it was to come, had at least not yet arrived. As for admitting him into her full confidence, her woman’s pride was still too strong for that. It held her to her determination to tell him nothing. She was going to see this thing through without him.
Moreover, she had another reason for silence. She feared, if she told him all, his impetuous nature might prompt him to make a premature disclosure of the information, and that would be disastrous to her future plans. But since he was vitally concerned in Blake’s and Peck’s agreement, it was at least his due that he be warned; and so she decided to tell him, without giving her source of information, that Blind Charlie proposed to sell him out.
Nelly’s pace had slowed into a walk, and even then the gale at times almost swept the poor horse staggering from the road. The rain drove down in ever denser sheets. The occasional flashes of lightning served only to emphasize the blackness. So dense was it, it seemed a solid. The world could not seem blacker to a toad in the heart of a stone. The instants of crackling fire showed Katherine the river, below her in the valley, leaping, surging, almost out of its banks – the trees, writhing and wrestling, here and there one jaggedly discrowned. And once, as she was crossing a little wooden bridge that spanned a creek, she saw that it was almost afloat – and for an instant of terror she wished she had followed the higher back-country road taken by the two automobiles.
She had reached the foot of Red Man’s Ridge, and was winding along the river’s verge, when she thought she heard her name sound faintly through the storm. She stopped Nelly and sat in sudden stiffness, straining her ears. Again the voice sounded, this time nearer, and there was no mistaking her name.
“Miss West! Katherine!”
She sat rigid, almost choking. The next minute a shapeless figure almost collided with Nelly. It eagerly caught the bridle-rein and called out huskily:
“Is that you, Miss West?”
She let out a startled cry.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“It’s you! Thank God, I’ve found you!” cried the voice.
“Arnold Bruce!” she ejaculated.
He loosened the rein and moved to her side and put his hand upon the back of her saddle.
“Thank God I’ve found you!” he repeated, with a strange quaver to his voice.
“Arnold Bruce! What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t you hear me shout after you, when you started, that I was coming, too?”
“I heard your voice, but not what you said.”
“Do you think I would let you go out alone on a night like this?” he demanded in his unstrung tone. “It’s no night for a man to be out, much less a woman!”
“You mean – you followed me?”
“What else did you think I’d do?”
“And on foot?”
“If I had stopped to get a horse I’d have lost your direction. So I ran after you.”
They were moving on now, his hand upon the back of her saddle to link them together in the darkness. He had to lean close to her that their voices might be heard above the storm.
“And you have run after me all this way?”
“Ran and walked. But I couldn’t make much headway in the storm – Calling out to you every few steps. I didn’t know what might have happened to you. All kinds of pictures were in my mind. You might have been thrown and be lying hurt. In the darkness the horse might have wandered off the road and slipped with you into the river. It was – it was – ” She felt the strong forearm that lay against her back quiver violently. “Oh, why did you do it!” he burst out.
A strange, warm tingling crept through her.
“I – I – ” Something seemed to choke her.
“Oh, why did you do it!” he repeated.
Contrary to her determination of but a little while ago, an impulse surged up in her to tell him all she had just learned, to tell him all her plans. She hung for a moment in indecision. Then her old attitude, her old determination, resumed its sway.
“I had a suspicion that I might learn something about father’s case,” she said.
“It was foolishness!” he cried in fierce reproof, yet with the same unnerved quaver in his voice. “You should have known you could find nothing on such a night as this!”
She felt half an impulse to retort sharply with the truth. But the thought of his stumbling all that way in the blackness subdued her rising impulse to triumph over him. So she made no reply at all.
“You should never have come! If, when you started, you had stopped long enough for me to speak to you, I could have told you you would not have found out anything. You did not, now did you?”
She still kept silent.
“I knew you did not!” he cried in exasperated triumph. “Admit the truth – you know you did not!”
“I did not learn everything I had hoped.”
“Don’t be afraid to acknowledge the truth!”
“You remember what I said when you were first offered the nomination by Mr. Peck – to beware of him?”
“Yes. You were wrong. But let’s not talk about that now!”
“I am certain now that I was right. I have the best of reasons for believing that Mr. Peck intends to sell you out.”
“What reasons?”
She hesitated a moment.
“I cannot give them to you – now. But I tell you I am certain he is planning treachery.”
“Your talk is wild. As wild as your ride out here to-night.”
“But I tell you – ”
“Let’s talk no more about it now,” he interrupted, brushing the matter aside. “It – it doesn’t interest me now.”
There was a blinding glare of lightning, then an awful clap of thunder that rattled in wild echoes down the valley.
“Oh, why did you come?” he cried, pressing closer. “Why did you come? It’s enough to kill a woman!”
“Hardly,” said she.
“But you’re wet through,” he protested.
“And so are you.”
“Have my coat.” And he started to slip it off.
“No. One more wet garment won’t make me any drier.”
“Then put it over your head. To keep off this awful beat of the storm. I’ll lead your horse.”
“No, thank you; I’m all right,” she said firmly, putting out a hand and checking his motion to uncoat himself. “You’ve been walking. I’ve been riding. You need it more than I do.” And then she added: “Did I hurt you much?”
“Hurt me?”
“When I struck you with my crop.”
“That? I’d forgotten that.”
“I’m very sorry – if I hurt you.”
“It’s nothing. I wish you’d take my coat. Bend lower down.” And moving forward, he so placed himself that his broad, strong body was a partial shield to her against the gale.
This new concern for her, the like of which he had never before evinced the faintest symptoms, begot in her a strange, tingling, but blurred emotion. They moved on side by side, now without speech, gasping for the very breath that the gale sought to tear away from their lips. The storm was momently gaining power and fury. Afterward the ancient weather-men of Calloway County were to say that in their time they had never seen its like. The lightning split the sky into even more fearsome fiery chasms, and in the moments of wild illumination they could see the road gullied by scores of impromptu rivulets, could glimpse the broad river billowing and raging, the cattle huddling terrified in the pastures, the woods swaying and writhing in deathlike grapple. The wind hurled by them in a thousand moods and tones, all angry; a fine, high shrieking on its topmost note – a hoarse snarl – a lull, as though the straining monster were pausing to catch its breath – then a roaring, sweeping onrush as if bent on irresistible destruction. And on top of this glare, this rage, was the thousandfold crackle, rattle, rumble of the thunder.
At such a time wild beasts, with hostility born in their blood, draw close together. It was a storm to resolve, as it were, all complex shades of human feeling into their elementary colours – when fear and hate and love stand starkly forth, unqualified, unblended. Without being aware that she was observing, Katherine sensed that Bruce’s agitation was mounting with the storm. And as she felt his quivering presence beside her in the furious darkness, her own emotion surged up with a wild and startling strength.
A tree top snapped off just before them with its toy thunder.
“Will this never stop!” gasped Bruce, huskily. “God, I wish I had you safe home!”
The tremulous tensity in his voice set her heart to leaping with an unrestraint yet wilder. But she did not answer.
Suddenly Nelly stumbled in a gully and Katherine pitched forward from the saddle. She would have fallen, had not a pair of strong arms closed about her in mid-air.
“Katherine – Katherine!” Bruce cried, distracted. Nelly righted herself and Katherine regained her seat, but Bruce still kept his arm about her. “Tell me – are you hurt?” he demanded.
She felt the arms around her trembling with intensity.
“No,” she said with a strange choking.
“Oh, Katherine – Katherine!” he burst out. “If you only knew how I love you!”
What she felt could not crystallize itself into words.
“Do you love me?” he asked huskily.
Just then there was a flash of lightning. It showed her his upturned face, appealing, tender, passion-wrought. A wild, exultant thrill swept through her. Without thinking, without speaking, her tingling arm reached out, of its own volition as it were, and closed about his neck, and she bent down and kissed him.
“Katherine!” he breathed hoarsely. “Katherine!” And he crushed her convulsively to him.
She lay thrilled in his arms… After a minute they moved on, his arm about her waist, her arm about his neck. Rain, wind, thunder were forgotten. Forgotten were their theories of life. For that hour the man and woman in them were supremely happy.
CHAPTER XVII
THE CUP OF BLISS
The next morning Katherine lay abed in that delicious lassitude which is the compound of complete exhaustion and of a happiness that tingles through every furthermost nerve. And as she lay there she thought dazedly of the miracle that had come to pass. She had not even guessed that she was in love with Arnold Bruce. In fact, she had been resisting her growing admiration for him, and the day before she could hardly have told whether her liking was greater than her hostility. Then, suddenly, out there in the storm, all complex counter-feelings had been swept side, and she had been revealed to herself.
She was tremulously, tumultuously happy. She had had likings for men before, but she had never guessed that love was such a mighty, exultant thing as this. But, as she lay there, the thoughts that had never come to her in the storm out there on the River Road, slipped into her mind. Into her exultant, fearful, dizzy happiness there crept a fear of the future. She clung with all her soul to the ideas of the life she wished to live; she knew that he, in all sincerity, was militantly opposed to those ideas. Difference in religious belief had brought bitterness, tragedy even, into the lives of many a pair of lovers. The difference in their case was no less firmly held to on either side, and she realized that the day must come when their ideas must clash, when they two must fight it out. Quivering with love though she was, she could but look forward to that inevitable day with fear.
But there were too many other new matters tossing in her brain for her to dwell long upon this dread. At times she could but smile whimsically at the perversity of love. The little god was doubtless laughing in impish glee at what he had brought about. She had always thought in a vague way that she would sometime marry, but she had always regarded it as a matter of course that the man she would fall in love with would be one in thorough sympathy with her ideas and who would help her realize her dream. And here she had fallen in love with that dreamed-of man’s exact antithesis!
And yet, as she thought of Arnold Bruce, she could not imagine herself loving any other man in all the world.
Love gave her a new cause for jubilation over her last night’s discovery. Victory, should she win it, and win it before election, had now an added value – it would help the man she loved. But as she thought over her discovery, she realized that while she might create a scandal with it, it was not sufficient evidence nor the particular evidence that she desired. Blake and Peck would both deny the meeting, and against Blake’s denial her word would count for nothing, either in court or before the people of Westville. And she could not be present at another conference with two or three witnesses, for the pair had last night settled all matters and had agreed that it would be unnecessary to meet again. Her discovery, she perceived more clearly than on the night before, was not so much evidence as the basis for a more enlightened and a more hopeful investigation.