The Way of the Strong
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"She tried to go – when you first came," he said hesitatingly.
Hendrie only nodded, and the quick glance of his eyes silenced any further attempt on the part of the other.
Angus watched him silently, and, as he watched, it almost seemed to him that somehow the man's great figure had shrunk. Maybe it was the way he was sitting, huddled in his chair. Certainly the old command of his personality seemed to have lessened, he looked older, and there was a curious, gray look about his face. He looked weary, an utterly tired man. Yes, if he could only have associated such a thing with Alexander Hendrie, he looked like – a beaten man.
But at last the silence was broken, and with it vanished the last sign which Angus had read so pessimistically in his employer. The great head was lifted alertly, and the steady eyes lit anew.
"Guess you don't know much about women, Angus," he said thoughtfully.
Angus shook his head.
"Don't want to," he replied coldly. "Guess I got all I need worrying out wheat."
The other accepted the denial, and went on —
"Maybe I don't know as much as I ought – at my age. Maybe we've both been too busy – worrying wheat."
Angus smiled coldly. But there was no smile in Hendrie's eyes. He was gazing steadily before him, his cigar poised, forgotten, in his hand. He had definitely addressed himself to Angus, but now he seemed to have forgotten his presence.
"Pshaw! What's the use?" he cried suddenly, with an irritable shift of his position. "It's not the woman's fault – ever. It's the man's – the dirty, low-down cur who can always trade on her weakness. I ought to know. By God! I ought to know."
He picked up a match almost mechanically and struck it. But his cigar remained where it was, and the match was allowed to burn out in his fingers. He threw the end of it away with a vicious movement.
Suddenly he looked up and caught his manager's eyes fixed on him curiously.
"What are you staring at, man?" he cried. Then with sudden heat, "What in hell are you staring at? Do you think me a doddering fool – a weak imbecile? That's it!" he cried, working himself up into a sort of frenzy, and breaking into a laugh, as terrible a sound as Angus remembered to have heard. "I tell you she's not to blame," he went on furiously. "I tell you I'll not give her up. Say, you cold-blooded, herring-bodied Scotchman, have you ever loved a woman in the whole of your grouchy life?" Again he laughed. Again Angus felt the horror of it. "Never!" he went on furiously. "Never, never, never! Love? God, it's hell! Thank your God, you miserable, cold-blooded fish, you are incapable of loving any woman."
He reached out again for a match and struck it. But he threw it away from him at once.
"I can't give her up," he said, in a low, passionate tone. "I can win her back. I will win her back." His voice rose. "She is mine, and he – God have mercy on him, for I won't. Say, there's hell waiting for him. He'll be tried and condemned, and not a word of his trial will reach the outside world. He is utterly cut off from the world. I have seen to that. And then afterwards. By God, I'll hunt him down. I'll hunt him to his grave, if it costs me every cent I possess. Rob me? He would rob me of – my love? Love? It's the worst hell ever man blindly fell into, but – it's worth while."
Again he broke off, and his companion waited uneasily for what might yet come. He knew that for the moment something like madness had been turned loose in him. A passing madness, but still something to be dreaded.
He had not long to wait. All abruptly the gray eyes lit anew, and flashed in his direction.
"Why don't you say something?" he cried fiercely. "Why do you sit there in silence? Are you afraid to speak? Bah! Say, Angus, when you told me those things I promised you, if they were not true, I'd – kill you. You remember? They were true. And because they were true" – the man's eyes glowered – "I'd like – to kill you – anyway. Yes, I'd like to tear your miserable heart out of you, as you have helped to tear the heart out of me."
Angus offered no protest. He sat there still and watchful. He knew that the man's brain was fighting for sanity. Now had come the awful reaction. His purpose had been accomplished, the strain was over, and there was nothing left him but the knowledge of his own terrible disaster. He felt that any ill-timed word of his might upset the balance. This man, who had proved victorious in a thousand battles in the arena of commerce, was now torn in conflict with his own soul. He must fight his battle alone. He must fight it to the end.
"God! If you'd help rob me of all the wealth I possess you could not have begun to hurt me as – as you have hurt me in this. All that I have, or am, is – in that woman's love. All that makes my life worth while is in her smile. Do you understand? No. Or you'd never have come to me with your miserable tale." His face was working. "You're all the same. You're all in the conspiracy. Oh, I could crush you, as well as the others, with these two hands. I could squeeze the wretched life out of you, and it would please me. Yes, it would please me."
Angus held his watchful attitude.
The man was breathing hard, and his usually cold eyes were burning. He shifted his position spasmodically.
Presently a deep sigh came from between his clenched teeth. Again he moved, but this time it was to cross his legs. Angus saw the movement, and, all unconsciously, he sighed, too. He understood the relaxing of tension which permitted such a movement. Was the end near? Had the battle worn itself out? Had the man emerged victorious?
Suddenly Hendrie turned to the cigar, still poised between his fingers. He smiled. And Angus knew that victory was within sight. A match was again struck, and this time the millionaire lit his cigar. The next moment his companion beheld a glimpse of the suffering heart so deeply hidden in that broad bosom.
"I'm – I'm sorry, old friend," Hendrie said, with an unusual note of genuine kindness in his voice. "I'm sorry. Guess I said a whole heap of rotten stuff to you. Maybe you'll forget. Maybe you understand something of what I'm feeling about now. You see – I – just love her, and, well – I just love her."
CHAPTER XX
THE VERDICT
The machinery at the command of Alexander Hendrie had been set in motion. Nor was its power in doubt for a single moment. Wealth may not be able to bias the ruling of a court, but it can do all those things which can force conviction upon the mind of the most upright judge on the bench. It's subtle working in the hands of men who live by corruption is more powerful than, perhaps, the ordinary mind would believe. No innocence is sufficient that its victim need not fear for liberty – even for life itself.
Frank Burton, charged in Calford as Frank Smith, a name which, to the last, he claimed for his own, was soon enough to learn something of this extraordinary, intangible power. To his horror he found himself utterly powerless before an array of evidence which conveyed a cruelly complete story of his alleged malefactions, characterized as house-breaking – with violence. Some of the witnesses against him were men whom he had never seen or heard of, and strangely enough, Alexander Hendrie did not appear against him. The charge was made by Angus Moraine.
For his defence he had only his absurdly bare declaration of innocence, a declaration made from the passionate depths of an innocent heart, but one which, in the eyes of the court, amounted to nothing more than the prerogative of the vilest criminal.
What use to fight? His counsel, the counsel appointed by the court, did his conscientious best, but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. There was no hope from the outset, and he knew it. However, he had his fee to earn, and he earned it to the complete satisfaction of his conscience.
In view of his client's declaration of absolute innocence this worthy man endeavored to drag from him a plausible explanation of his presence at Deep Willows, with the money taken from the open safe in his possession. But on this point Frank remained obstinately silent. He had no explanation to offer. His mother's honor was more to him than his liberty – more to him than his life. So the mockery of justice went on to the end.
In the meantime Alexander Hendrie was no nearer the scene of persecution than Winnipeg, but the six hundred odd miles was bridged by telephone wires, and he was in constant touch with those whose service was at his command.
The completeness with which the last details of his plans were executed was at once a tribute to his consummate manipulation, and the merciless quality of his hatred. The cruelty he displayed must have been indefensible except for that one touch of human – nay, animal nature, which belongs to all life. He honestly believed in this man's guilty relations with his own wife, and his blindly furious jealousy thus inspired he saw no penalty, no vengeance too cruel or too lasting to deal out to the offender.
Alexander Hendrie had no scruples when dealing with his enemies. His was the merciless fighting nature of the brute. But he was also capable of prodigal generosities, lofty passions, and great depths of human gentleness.
No feeling of pity stirred him as he sat in his office in Winnipeg, with the telephone close to his hand, on the afternoon of his victim's trial.
He was waiting for the news of the verdict which was to reach him over those hundreds of miles of silent wire. He was waiting patiently, but absorbed in his desire that word should reach him at the earliest moment. His desk was littered with business papers which required his attention, but they remained untouched. It was an acknowledgment that paramount in the man's mind is passionate feeling for the woman he had married.
It was a strange metamorphosis in a man of his long-cultivated purpose. All his life success had been his most passionate desire. Now he almost regarded his millions with contempt. Nature had claimed him at last, and the lateness of her call had only increased the force and peremptoriness of her demands.
Even now, while he waited, his thoughts were in that up-town mansion where Monica was waiting for him. Nor were they the harsh thoughts of the wronged husband for the woman in whom his faith had been shattered. He was thinking of her as the wonderful creature, so fair, so perfect in form, so delightful in the appeal of her whole personality, around whom shone the deepest, most glowing fires of his hopes. She was to him the fairest of all God's creatures; she was to him the most desirable thing in all the world.
The fierce tempest which had so bitterly raged in his soul at the first discovery of her frailty had abated, it had almost worn itself out. Now he had taken the wreckage and deliberately set it behind him, and once more the flame of his passion had leaped up – fanned by the breath of the strong life which was his.
Another might have cast the woman out of his life; another of lesser caliber. This man might have turned and rent her, as he had turned and rent the man who was her secret lover. But such was not Alexander Hendrie. His passions were part of him, uncontrolled by any lukewarm considerations of right and wrong. To love, with him, was to hurl aside all caution, all deliberation, and yield himself up to it, body and soul. To have cast Monica out of his life must have been to tear the heart from the depths of his bosom.
The time crept on, and still the telephone remained silent. But the waiting man's patience seemed inexhaustible. His was the patience of certainty. So he smoked on in his leisurely fashion, dreaming his dreams in the delicate spirals of fragrant smoke which rose upon the still air of the room to the clouded ceiling above.
He had no thought for the innocent young life he was crushing with the power of his wealth so many miles away. He cared not one jot for the ethics of his merciless actions. His thwarted love for his erring wife filled all his dreams to the exclusion of every other consideration.
A secretary entered and silently left some papers upon his desk. He retired voicelessly to wonder what fresh manipulation in the wheat world his employer was contemplating.
A junior entered with several telegrams. They, too, were silently deposited, and he vanished again to some distant corners of the offices.
Still Hendrie dreamed on, and still the telephone had no word to impart. His cigar was burning low. The aroma of its leaf was less delicate. Perhaps it was the latter that broke in on his dreaming, perhaps it was something else. He stirred at last, and dropped the lighted stump into a cuspidor, and thrust his chair back.
At that moment the bur-r-r of the telephone's dummy bell broke the silence. Without haste, without a sign of emotion he drew his chair forward again, and leisurely placed the receiver to his ear.
"Yes – Who's that? – oh! – Calford." Hendrie waited a moment, the fingers of his right hand drumming idly on his desk. Presently he went on: "Yes, yes – you are Calford. Who is it speaking? – Eh? – That you, Angus? Damn these long-distance 'phones, they're so indistinct! – Yes. This is Hendrie speaking. Well? – Oh. Finished, is it? – Yes. And? – oh – splendid. Five years – Good – Five years penitentiary. Excellent. Thanks. Good-bye."
He replaced the receiver and quietly began to deal with the accumulation of work which had lain so long untouched upon his desk.
PART III
CHAPTER I
THE MARCH OF TIME
In the rush of new life in Winnipeg, Monica was left with little enough time for anything but those duties which, in her husband's interests, were demanded of her. A fresh vista of life's panorama had opened out before her, making it necessary to obtain a definite readjustment of focus.
She quickly found herself tossed about amid the rapids of the social stream, and, however little the buffeting of its wayward currents appealed to her, hers was a nature not likely to shrink before it. It was her duty, as the wife of one of the richest men in the country, to make herself one of the pivots about which revolved a narrow, exclusive social circle, and toward that end she strove with her greatest might.
But the life was certainly not of her choosing. For her its glamor had no appeals. She regarded it as a splendid show, built upon the sands of insincerity, hypocrisy, self-indulgence, vulgarity, all of which were far enough removed from her true nature.
However, she was not without her compensation. She felt she was an important spoke in the wheel of fortune her husband was spinning, and, for his sake, she was glad to endure the slavery.
So, in her great mansion, in the most exclusive portion of the city, she dispensed lavish and tasteful hospitality; and, in turn, took part in all the functions that went to make up the program of the set in which she found herself something more than an ordinary star. Within three months her popularity was achieved, and in six she was voted the most brilliant hostess in the city.
She spared herself not at all. All her tact, her discretion, her mentality were exerted in the service of the man she loved, who, watching her uncomplaining efforts, saw that they were good. Whatever her feelings and longings for the peace of the golden plains of Deep Willows, her reward lay in the quiet acknowledgment, the smiling approval and systematic devotion of the man whose slave she was only too willing to be.
It would all end some day, she knew. Some day, her husband's work completed, she would find herself at his side, shoulder to shoulder, hand clasped in hand, supported always by his strong affection, completing their little journey through life in the proud knowledge that the work they had set themselves was well and truly done.
Hendrie's satisfaction with her was very apparent. Whatever his secret thoughts and feelings, whatever his bitterness of memory, no sign of these was permitted to escape him. She moved through his life an idol. She was something in the nature of a religion which reduced him to the verge of fanaticism.
Thus Monica was absorbed during her first six months of Winnipeg. But in her moments of respite her thoughts more than frequently drifted in the direction of young Frank, and the girl he was to make his wife.
At first she recalled with satisfaction the fact that she had been able to help him, and she found herself building many castles for his occupation. Then, as the time slipped by, she began to wonder at his silence. There was no sense of alarm. She just wondered, and went on with her pictures of his future. She thought of the new home she had helped him select, and saw him in its midst, preparing it for the reception of the young wife he was so soon to take to his bosom.
Frank married! It seemed so strange. The thought carried her happily back to the picture of a blue-eyed, crumpled-faced baby as it had looked up from its cot with that meaningless stare, so helpless, yet so ravishing to the mother instinct. It seemed absurd to think of Frank married. And yet —
Why had he not written? She was puzzled.
At first her puzzlement was merely passing, as other important matters drove it from her thoughts. But, as the days passed without any word, it recurred with greater and greater frequency. Gradually a subtle worry set in, a worry both undermining and harassing. Then she seriously began to consider the puzzle of it, and, in a moment, genuine alarm took hold of her.
She reviewed the night of her husband's sudden return to Deep Willows. She remembered how, immediately on leaving Angus's office, she had gone straight to her library. It was empty. The safe was locked; all was in order. Even the window was closed. All this told her what she wanted to know. Frank had taken his departure safely. The final touch of the window remaining unfastened, pointed the fact that he had closed it after him.
Yes, he was safely away. Of that there was no doubt in her mind. Then, why this silence? Could an accident have occurred? Could he be ill? It did not seem likely. In either case he would have let her know. Could he be – ? No, she thrust the thought of his death aside as too horrible to contemplate.
Then she thought of the money. It was a large sum. Had he been robbed? It was a possibility, but one that did not carry conviction. It was not likely, she told herself. Knowing him as she did it seemed impossible. No one knew of his possession, and he was not likely to proclaim it. He was quite cautious, and, besides, he knew the people he was likely to find himself among.
At length she wrote to him. This was about three months after her arrival in Winnipeg. She wrote him at the farm where he had worked, feeling that the letter would be forwarded on if he had left the place.
Days passed; two weeks. There was no reply to her letter, and her fears increased. A month later she wrote again, this time addressing the letter to his new farm. The result was the same. His silence remained unbroken.
Then came a shock which reduced her to a condition of panic. Her first letter was returned to her through the mail, and the envelope bore the ominous blue pencil message, "not known." A few days later her second letter came back with similar words.
The return of the second letter had a curious effect upon Monica. For a long time she found herself unable to think clearly upon the matter. Her panic seemed to have paralyzed her capacity for clear thought, and she was left helplessly dreading.
The truth was she had no one to whom she could open her heart. No one to whom she could confide, and with whom she could discuss the situation. So she was left with an awful dread weighing her down. Something had happened to the boy, something dreadful. And she dared not, even in thought, admit the nature of her fears.
Nor was her trouble without its outward, physical effect. Sleepless nights and anxiety rapidly began to leave their mark. She became nervous and irritable. Her beautiful rounded cheeks lost something of their delicate beauty. Her eyes grew shadowed, and the nervous strain left bloodshot markings in the pearly whiteness of her eyes. Her faithful Margaret was quick to perceive these signs. But in her ignorance of the real facts she read them as due to the constant drain of her mistress's social duties upon a system unused to such a life.
"Madam must rest," she assured her charge, as the latter sat before her mirror, while the girl's deft fingers prepared her hair for Mrs. Lionel K. Horsley's ice carnival at the great skating rink. "Madam will be a ghost of herself soon. She will be so – so ill."
But "madam" had no reply for the girl's well-meant warning. She sat silently studying her reflection in the mirror for many minutes.
The result of that study was a sudden determination to do something by which she might hope to stay these inroads. Her resolve took the form of a desire for action. She must set her doubts at rest. She must find out definitely the actual reason of her boy's silence.
So once more she set herself to study the dreary list of possibilities. It was a hopeless, blind sort of groping, and led nowhither. Nor was it until some days had passed that her inspiration really came. It came in the middle of a long, sleepless night, and she only marveled that she had not thought of it before. If there was one person in the world likely to know of Frank's whereabouts it was Phyllis Raysun. Why had she not thought of it before?
Forthwith she left her bed and wrote a letter. Nor did the possible consequences of what she was doing occur to her until she had sealed the envelope. Then realization came sharply enough. She remembered Phyllis's unusual keenness. Who was she, Monica, to require information about Frank? What relationship was there between them? The girl was aware of Frank's illegitimacy. Well? Yes, she would guess the secret she, Monica, had been at such pains to keep.
On the impulse of the moment she tore the letter up. But, almost immediately, she wrote another. The second was shorter. It was more formal, too, and she left out of it all excuse for requiring the information. Phyllis must guess, if she chose. If she guessed, when she answered, she, Monica, would tell her the truth of her relationship to Frank, or, at least, the story she had told Frank himself. It would be the best course to take – the only course she could see.
With the letter written she enjoyed the first real night's sleep she had had for many days. She felt better. She felt she was on the right track, and now, at last, was actively moving to clear up the mystery which had robbed her of so much peace of mind.
She mailed the letter herself next morning, and then prepared to await the result with what patience she could.
In due course her answer arrived. It came in the shape of a cheap envelope bulging to its capacity. For a moment Monica's excitement was almost painful. Perhaps it contained the long-awaited letter from Frank himself. Perhaps, through some mischance, he had been away, and unable to write her before. Perhaps all her fears had been unnecessary.
She tore off the outer covering. But the first paragraph written in a girlish hand, dashed every hope, and plunged her to the depths of despair.
Monica read the letter to the end – the bitter, bitter end – and she read the simple story of a heartbroken girl, who, like herself, had been waiting, waiting for word from the man who was her whole world. She had no news of him whatsoever. She knew nothing of his whereabouts. She could find no trace of him. He had vanished. He had gone out of her life without a word. From the moment he had left Gleber to visit his mother, nothing had been seen of him by any one in the vicinity of the farm upon which he had been working.
Not one doubt of the man himself did the girl express. She was convinced that some terrible accident had befallen. Death alone, she declared, would have kept him from her, and in this belief her grief left her overwhelmed. Monica's tears fell fast as she read the letter. They were tears for the child who had written it, tears for herself, tears for the unhappy boy whom she looked upon and loved as a son.
But the appeal of the girl's story had another effect upon her. It stiffened her courage, and, for some strange reason, left her utterly unconvinced of the rightness of the surmise the letter contained. Frank was not dead, she told herself, and the denial came from her heart rather than her head.