"Forgeries one and all. I would not believe you on your oath, unless the grave yawned, and Leighton Dane--dead six years--came back as witness in your favor."
""He was the handsome Spanish-looking man" Delia Brown told me stole my wife and child and disappeared suddenly--going to Florida or Cuba to grow bananas--when you heard I was coming to Thompsonville?"
"He was a good old man, my father"s best friend, who took his place as teamster--and when I was literally driven out of the cabin one rainy night by my stepmother, he was the only human being who believed I was not vile. He pitied me and carried me in one of the Government wagons to Thompsonville, and paid my board until I was able to earn my bread by helping Delia Brown wash and iron. His term was expiring soon, and when he started back to his home in California, he came by to see if I needed anything.
"Finding I was ill in body, distracted in mind, desperate, because I knew then I was utterly deserted, and had no hope of help, he offered to carry me West and protect me on account of his friendship for my father.
Oh, bless him--for ever and ever! He made an humble little home for us, and shielded and respected me, and pitied and believed in me with all the strength of his great, true heart, and was a second and a much better father to me in my shameful desolation and helplessness. He adopted me and my baby, and when he died he left his small savings to us; and so I named my outcast little one Leighton Dane for the one loyal friend who helped me to feed and clothe him when his own father rejected and abandoned him. I had no proof except the certificate you made me swear I would conceal for two years, and your ally, the devil, worked well for you when the mice nesting in my trunk cut it into shreds while I was ill. The chaplain and Ransom Hill were dead; I had none to speak for me; but Mr. Dane believed my words, and he put his big hand on my head and comforted me.
""Poor little girl, don"t worry; just be easy in your mind, for I know you are telling the truth. I know you are good as your own baby, and if every mouth in America swore against you I would trust you as I always trusted my own mother.""
A mist clouded her eyes, as dew softens the tint of a violet, but she clenched her hands, and bit her lip hard to still its tremor, adding with sullen emphasis:
"In all these black years the one star of comfort I can ever see shines in the a.s.surance that the only truly good man I have found, who knew me well, respected and trusted me as he did his dead mother."
"You never saw or heard of the advertis.e.m.e.nts I published in various papers, asking you to inform me where I could find you?"
The contempt in her ringing answer stung him like a whip-lash.
"People who are neither "lost, strayed, nor stolen" spend no time hunting for imaginary advertis.e.m.e.nts that never go to press."
"You shall read them in the papers with their printed dates. Copies have been filed and preserved with reports of unsuccessful search from chiefs of police in Louisiana and Florida, whom I paid to hunt for some trace of you. They are deposited in a Boston bank, with a sum of money placed to your credit--all to be delivered to the order of Nona Moorland Temple. Write to Noah Giles, cashier of Orchard Street Bank. I will telegraph, vouching for your right to the tin box bearing your name, and in two days you shall possess absolute proof that I am not the hardened scoundrel you think me. Weak, rash, cowardly I certainly was, but as G.o.d hears me, never forgetful, never unfaithful, never intending the wrong for which you have suffered so frightfully."
The gaze of each fastened on the other, neither had noticed the cot or its occupant.
Leighton slipped slowly down till his feet touched the floor, and he clung to the mattress for some seconds, measuring the distance to the pair standing in the middle of the room. Weak from emotion that almost overwhelmed him, he felt his limbs would not support him, and, gathering his cotton nightgown about him, he sank on his knees and crawled noiselessly forward. Between father and mother he crouched, then laid his head against the feet of the priest and feebly raised his arms.
"My father----"
The sight, and all it implied as judgment of evidence in defence, drove her to jealous frenzy, and she sprang forward as a panther leaps to succor her young.
"Don"t touch him! Don"t you dare to lay your finger on him! You have no more right to him than to an archangel! He has no father, has only his downtrodden girl-mother. Don"t you dare to put your sacrilegious hand on his holy head. He is not yours!"
With his right arm he held her back, as she stooped to s.n.a.t.c.h the boy away, and, kneeling, he pa.s.sed his left hand under the prostrate form, gathered him close to his breast, and looked up smiling into her eyes.
"Not mine! If I am not his father--who is?"
"He is mine, solely mine; body and soul, he belongs only to me! Before he was born you turned us adrift in the world to perish, and now that for ten years I have worked day and night, fought for bread and shelter, carried him on my bosom, slept with him in my arms, you--who robbed me of everything, even my good name--you dare--dare claim my outcast baby!
I would rather shroud my darling than hear him call you father."
Leighton"s arms stole round the priest"s neck, and his tangled yellow curls touched the dark head bent over him. Father Temple kissed the little quivering face, strained him to his heart, and the long-sealed fountain broke in tears that streamed upon the clinging child.
"My baby, my son, my own lost lamb, for whom I have searched and prayed--G.o.d knows how faithfully, how sorrowfully--all these long, dreadful years!"
As she stood above them, barred by that tense right arm, noting the tight clasp of the thin hands locked behind the father"s head, an impotent rage made her long to scream out the agony that found no vent save in a rapid beating of one foot on the bare floor--much like the lashing tail of some furious furred creature, crouching to spring, yet warily hesitant.
Father Temple"s outstretched hand caught a fold of her skirt, and with it a strand of floating hair.
"Nona, my wife--my own wife----"
She twitched her dress from his grasp and shook it.
"I am not your wife! Thank G.o.d, I am no man"s wife! I am free as I was before you came--an ever-lasting blot between me and the sunshine. I kept my promise to you. I set my teeth and was silent under a fiery storm of slander and foul accusations that blistered my girlish cheek with shame, but I waited till the years you named had pa.s.sed, and you had reached your majority, and plucked up courage to face your father, and had a legal right to ratify what the Church sanctioned through the chaplain. Then I told my only friend all the facts. I ceased to hope, because I had lost faith, but Mr. Dane pleaded for you: "Wait one year more, give him the last chance to do right." He wrote to a friend in the old regiment and inquired about all the officers, and his answer told us that your father was in Europe, and that the major thought you were with him. Then I laid my case before one of the human vultures that batten on the wreckage of broken vows--a lawyer, expert in snapping matrimonial chains. He sent you all the necessary notices--sent them to your college address, the only one I could give him. Very soon the decree of absolute divorce was rendered, and I dropped all right to a name I had never publicly claimed--cast it off as gladly as I would some foul garment worn by a leper. Free--free to live my life as I pleased; Mrs. Dane and her boy Leighton--free to go wherever I wished, after death took the only real protector I ever had. And I chose, for my baby"s sake as well as my own, to lead the hard life of a working woman, but clean, and honorable, and innocent as that of any abbess safely stored away from temptation behind brick walls and iron gates, and though my own little one may well be ashamed of his father, he will never need to blush for his mother when the peace of death hides her from an unjust and a cruel world."
Sunshine had vanished, the room was darkening, and the last glow from a topaz band low in the west flickered over the woman"s head, as she swayed in the wave of pa.s.sionate protest that rocked her from all trammels of control. There was a brief silence, broken by a strangling sob and cough, and over the breast of the priest"s ca.s.sock a warm red stream trickled. He rose quickly with the boy in his arms and carried him to the window.
"Nona, a hemorrhage!"
"Lay him down. If you have killed him, it is the fit ending of all my wrongs at your hands. Now stand back! Back! Do you hear--you curse of my life!"
She sponged the child"s face, laid a wet compress on his throat, and kept one finger on his pulse, not daring to give medicine while the narrowing red stream oozed more slowly. She lighted a lamp, flew into a recess near the stove, and came back with a hypodermic syringe.
"Now, mother"s man, don"t flinch."
Pushing up the sleeve, she injected a colorless fluid into his arm, held it some seconds, and laid her lips near the puncture. Then with one hand she held his head raised slightly, and with the other sponged the lips until the flow ceased and the gasping breath grew easy.
"Swallow your medicine slowly, don"t strangle. You must lie perfectly still. Mother"s own little man needs to go to sleep now and forget all he has heard to-day."
Father Temple had fallen on his knees at the opposite side of the cot, clinging to one of the boy"s hands, and suddenly the child turned his head and looked imploringly, first at father, then at mother. Both understood the mute prayer in the beautiful, tender eyes. A quavering sound--part sob, part cough--made their hearts leap.
"I never will be fatherless any more. So glad! Don"t leave me, father."
"Leighton, you shall always be fatherless. This man can be nothing to us. Because of his deceitful promises I suffered the disgrace of smarting from a horse-whip laid on my shoulders when one night I was driven out of my father"s cabin by his wife, and to shelter myself from sleet and rain crawled into a covered wagon and slept on hay and corn, until Uncle Dane found me there, and had mercy on me. I owe to this priest every sorrow and trouble that have darkened my life and yours.
All these years we have had only each other, and you must understand your mother is the one who has the sole right to your love. My darling, you and mother can be happy together, and we need only each other."
She struggled for composure, but there was an ominous pant in her veiled voice.
"I want my father! Oh, I want him--I--want him!" Tears glided over his cheeks.
She leaned down, s.n.a.t.c.hed Leighton"s hand from the priest"s clasp, clutching it between both of hers, and turned her blazing eyes upon the kneeling man.
"Will you go now? Have you not done harm enough to satisfy even you?
These are my rooms, and I will tolerate your intrusion no longer.
Remember, my decree of divorce is absolute, and it secures to me the custody of my child."
"I recognize no validity in divorces, and the law cannot annul a ceremony performed outside of its restrictions and requirements. Because we were minors we invoked the aid of the Church, and our vows before G.o.d can never be cancelled by any civil statute. Except as a solemn, sacred rite, there was nothing in our marriage to legitimize our child. This is my son, not by license of law, but because we swore fidelity to each other "until death do us part," and called G.o.d to witness; and no human decree can rob me of my child--since you dare not name any other man his father. I defy you to lay your hand on his innocent head and question his legitimacy, which inheres only in a ceremony no civil law sanctioned. Months of tedious and well-nigh fatal illness delayed my return to you, and during my delirium your letters were mislaid. When at last I accidentally recovered two letters, and went on crutches to bring you back with me, you had disappeared. All the proofs of my search shall be laid before you, and though I do not wonder you grew desperate and cast me out of your heart as unscrupulous and treacherous, the facts when investigated must convince you I have kept my vows as faithfully as you kept yours. I felt that somewhere in the world my wife and child were adrift, through my folly, my cowardly fear of my father, and, broken-hearted and conscience-smitten, I confessed to the Superior of my Order in England at that time, that I desired to live a celibate in expiation of a rash act in my boyhood, which separated me from the wife I still loved. I took my vows of poverty, obedience, and chast.i.ty with the explicit understanding that they did not absolve me from my marriage vows, should G.o.d mercifully permit me to find my family. I hold supreme the oath I took under the stars at the Post, and second in sanct.i.ty my vows before the altar in our chapel. For the awful consequences of my boyish weakness I accuse only myself, and if it be part of my punishment that I have lost irrevocably the affection and confidence of the mother of my child, then, at least, there remains for me the comfort of finding my boy, from whom I will never again be separated; and to him I must atone for years of unintentional neglect."
He saw that his appeal was futile as the leap of a wave that breaks and sinks in froth at the foot of basaltic cliffs, and the joyful light died in his eyes when he began to realize that wishing to believe the worst she would never accept proofs offered in exculpation.
"Nona, try to forgive me, for the sake of our son, our own beautiful, innocent boy."
There was no answer but the steady, quick tapping of her foot on the floor, and her defiant face showed no more softening than an iron mask.
Leaning forward, he kissed Leighton"s tearful cheek, and despite his effort to control his voice it trembled.
"My precious child, I thank G.o.d I have found you! Between your mother and me you must not attempt to judge now. She has suffered terribly on account of mistakes I made, and she certainly has the best right to you and to your love. It is painful for her to see me, and I cannot blame her, but some arrangement must and shall be made by which I can come often and be with you without intruding upon her. She will select and name the hours when my visits will give her least annoyance. Good night, my son. To-day I am happier than I have been since I kissed your dear mother good-bye."
He tore a blank page from Ugo Ba.s.si"s "Sermon," wrote a few lines, laid the paper near his wife"s hand, and went out, closing the door very gently.