"We"ll help them, you and I. We"ll make things right all round. And Madam Beaubien shall have no further trouble. Nor shall the Express."
"Oh, Mr. Ames! Do you really mean it? And--Sidney?"
"Sidney shall come home--"
With a rush the impulsive girl, forgetting all but the apparent success of her mission, threw herself upon him and clasped her arms about his neck. "Oh," she cried, "it is love that has done all this!
And it has won you!"
The startled man strained the girl tightly in his arms. He could feel the quick throbbing in her throat. Her warm breath played upon his cheek like fitful tropic breezes. For a brief moment the supreme gift of the universe seemed to be laid at his feet. For a fleeting interval the man of dust faded, and a new being, pure and white, seemed to rise within him.
"Yes," he murmured gently, "we"ll take him to our home with us."
Slowly, very slowly, the girl released herself from his embrace and stepped back. "With--_us_?" she murmured, searching his face for the meaning which she had dimly discerned in his words.
"Yes--listen!" He reached forward and with a quick movement seized her hand. "Listen, little girl. I want you--I want you! Not now--no, you needn"t come to me until you are ready. But say that you will come!
Say that! Why, I didn"t know until to-day what it was that was making me over! It"s you! Don"t go! Don"t--"
Carmen had struggled away from him, and, with a look of bewilderment upon her face, was moving toward the door. "Oh, I didn"t know," she murmured, "that you were--were--proposing _marriage_ to me!"
"Don"t you understand?" he pursued. "We"ll just make all things new!
We"ll begin all over again, you and I! Why, I"ll do anything--anything in the world you say, Carmen, if you will come to me--if you will be my little wife!
"I know--I know," he hastily resumed, as she halted and stood seemingly rooted to the floor, "there is a great difference in our ages. But that is nothing--many happy marriages are made between ages just as far apart as ours. Think--think what it means to you! I"ll make you a queen! I"ll surround you with limitless wealth! I"ll make you leader of society! I"ll make Madam Beaubien rich! I"ll support the Express, and make it what you want it to be! I"ll do whatever you say for the people of Avon! Think, little girl, what depends now upon you!"
Carmen turned and came slowly back to him. "And--you will not do these things--unless I marry you?" she said in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
"I will do them all, Carmen, if you will come to me!"
"But--oh, you were only deceiving me all the time! And now--if I refuse--then what?"
"It depends upon you, entirely--and you will come? Not now--but within the next few months--within the year--tell me that you will!"
"But--you will do these things whether I come to you or not?" she persisted.
"I"ve put it all into your hands," he answered shortly. "I"ve named the condition."
A strange look crossed the girl"s face. She stood as if stunned. Then she glanced about in helpless bewilderment.
"I--I--love--you," she murmured, as she looked off toward the window, but with unseeing eyes. "I would do anything for you that was right.
I--love--everybody--everybody; but there are no conditions to _my_ love. Oh!" she suddenly cried, burying her face in her hands and bursting into tears. "You have tried to _buy_ me!"
Ames rose and came to her. Taking her by the hand he led her, unresisting, back to her chair.
"Listen," he said, bending toward her. "Go home now and think it all over. Then let me know your answer. It was sudden, I admit; I took you by surprise. But--well, you are not going to prevent the accomplishment of all that good, are you? Think! It all depends upon your word!"
The girl raised her tear-stained face. She had been crushed; and another lesson in the cruelty of the human mind--that human mind which has changed not in a thousand years--had been read to her. But again she smiled bravely, as she wiped her eyes.
"It"s all right now," she murmured. "It was all right all the time--and I was protected."
Then she turned to him. "Some day," she said gently, and in a voice that trembled just a little, "you will help the people of Avon, but not because I shall marry you. G.o.d does not work that way. I have loved you. And I love them. And nothing can kill that love. G.o.d will open the way."
"Then you refuse my offer, do you?" he asked sharply, as his face set.
"Remember, all the blame will be upon you. I have shown you a way out."
She looked up at him. She saw now with a clairvoyance which separated him from the mask which he had worn. Her glance penetrated until it found his soul.
"You have shown me the depths of the carnal mind," she slowly replied.
"The responsibility is not with me, but with--G.o.d. I--I came to-day to--to help you. But now I must leave you--with Him."
"Humph!"
He stooped and took up her m.u.f.f which lay upon the floor. As he did so, a letter fell out. He seized it and glanced at the superscription.
"Cartagena! To Jose de Rincon! Another little _billet-doux_ to your priestly lover, eh?"
She looked down at the letter which he held. "It is money," she said, though her thought seemed far away. "Money that I am sending to a little newsboy who bears his name."
"Ha! His brat! But, you still love that fallen priest?"
"Yes," was the whispered answer.
He rose and opened a drawer in his desk. Taking out a paper-bound book, he held it out to the girl. "Look here," he sneered. "Here"s a little piece of work which your brilliant lover did some time ago.
"Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest." Do you know the penalty your clerical paramour paid for that, eh? Then I"ll tell you," bending over close to her ear, "his _life_!"
Carmen rose unsteadily. The color had fled from her cheeks. She staggered a few steps toward the door, then stopped. "G.o.d--is--is--_everywhere_!"
she murmured. It was the refuge of her childhood days.
Then she reeled, and fell heavily to the floor.
CHAPTER 15
If additional proof of the awful cost of hating one"s fellow-men were required, the strike which burst upon the industrial world that winter must furnish it in sickening excess. But other facts, too, were rendered glaringly patent by that same desperate clash which made Avon a shambles and transformed its fair name into a by-word, to be spoken only in hushed whispers when one"s thought dwells for a moment upon the madness of the carnal mind that has once tasted blood. The man-cleft chasm between labor and capital, that still unbridged void which separates master and servant, and which a money-drunk cla.s.s insolently calls G.o.d-made, grows wider with each roar of musketry aimed by a frenzied militia at helpless men and women; grows deeper with each splitting crack of the dynamite that is laid to tear asunder the conscienceless wielder of the goad; and must one day fall gaping in a cavernous embouchure that will engulf a nation.
Hitt saw it, and shuddered; Haynerd, too. Ames may have dimly marked the typhoon on the horizon, but, like everything that manifested opposition to this superhuman will, it only set his teeth the firmer and thickened the callous about his cold heart. Carmen saw it, too.
And she knew--and the world must some day know--that but one tie has ever been designed adequate to bridge this yawning canon of human hatred. That tie is love. Aye, well she knew that the world laughed, and called it chimera; called it idealism, and emotional weakness.
And well she knew that the most pitiable weakness the world has ever seen was the cla.s.s privilege which nailed the bearer of the creed of love upon the cross, and to-day manifests in the frantic grasping of a nation"s resources, and the ruthless murder of those who ask that they, too, may have a share in that abundance which is the common birthright of all. Do the political bully, the grafter, the tout, know the meaning of love? No; but they can be taught. Oh, not by the hypocritical millionaire pietists who prate their glib plat.i.tudes to their Sunday Bible cla.s.ses, and return to their luxurious homes to order the slaughter of starving women and babes! They, like their poor victims, are deep under the spell of that mesmerism which tells them that evil is good. Nor by the Church, with its lamentable weakness of knowledge and works. Only by those who have learned something of the Christ-principle, and are striving daily to demonstrate its omnipotence in part, can the world be taught a saving knowledge of the love that solves every problem and creates a new heaven and a newer, better concept of the earth and its fullness.
That morning when Carmen went to see Ames the Express received word of the walk-out of the Avon mill employes. Almost coincident with the arrival of the news, Carmen herself came unsteadily into Hitt"s office. The editor glanced up at her, then looked a second time. He had never before seen her face colorless. Finally he laid down his papers.
"What"s happened?" he asked.
"Nothing," answered the girl. "What work have you--for me--to-day?"
She smiled, though her lips trembled.
"Where have you been?" he pursued, scanning her closely.