Carter opened his eyes, and the terror returned to them.
"Don"t give me up, Kilday!" he cried, trying to rise. "I"ll pay you anything you ask. It was the drink. I didn"t know what I was doing.
For the Lord"s sake, don"t give me up! I haven"t long to live at best. I can"t disgrace the family. I--I am the last of the line--last Nelson--" His voice was high and uncontrolled, and his eyes were gla.s.sy and fixed.
Sandy stood before him in an agony of indecision. He had fought it out with himself there in his bedroom, and all personal considerations were swept from his mind. All he wanted now was to do right. But what was right? He groped blindly about in the darkness of his soul, and no guiding light showed him the way.
With a groan, he knotted his fingers together and prayed the first real prayer his heart had ever uttered. It was wordless and formless, just an inarticulate cry for help in the hour of need.
The answer came when he looked again at Carter. Something in the frenzied face brought a sudden recollection to his mind.
"We can"t judge him by usual standards; he"s bearing the sins of his fathers. We have to look on men like that as we do on the insane."
They were the judge"s own words.
Sandy jumped to his feet, and, helping and half supporting Carter, persuaded him to go out to the buggy, promising that he would not give him up.
At the Willowvale gate he led the horse into the avenue, then turned and ran at full speed into town. As he came into the square he found only a few groups shivering about the court-house steps, discussing the events of the day.
"Where"s the crowd?" he cried breathless. "Aren"t they going to start from here?"
An old negro pulled off his cap and grinned.
"Dey been gone purty near an hour, Mist" Sandy. I "spec" dey"s got dat low-down rascal hanged by now."
CHAPTER XXII
AT WILLOWVALE
There was an early tea at Willowvale that evening, and Ruth sat at the big round table alone. Mrs. Nelson always went to bed when the time came for packing, and Carter was late, as usual.
Ruth was glad to be alone. She had pa.s.sed through too much to be able to banish all trace of the storm. But though her eyes were red from recent tears, they were bright with antic.i.p.ation. Sandy was coming back. That fact seemed to make everything right.
She leaned her chin on her palm and tried to still the beating of her heart. She knew he would come. Irresponsible, hot-headed, impulsive as he was, he had never failed her. She glanced impatiently at the clock.
"Miss Rufe, was you ever in love?" It was black Rachel who broke in upon her thoughts. She was standing at the foot of the table, her round, good-humored face comically serious.
"No-yes. Why, Rachel?" stammered Ruth.
"I was just axin"," said Rachel, ""cause if you been in love, you"d know how to read a love-letter, wouldn"t you, Miss Rufe?"
Ruth smiled and nodded.
"I got one from my beau," went on Rachel, in great embarra.s.sment; "but dat n.i.g.g.e.r knows I can"t read."
"Where does he live?" asked Ruth.
"Up in Injianapolis. He drives de hea.r.s.e."
Ruth suppressed a smile. "I"ll read the love-letter for you," she said.
Rachel sat down on the floor and began taking down her hair. It was divided into many tight braids, each of which was wrapped with a bit of shoe-string. From under the last one she took a small envelope and handed it to Ruth.
"Dat"s it," she said. "I was so skeered I"d lose it I didn"t trust it no place "cept in my head."
Ruth unfolded the note and read:
"DEAR RACHEL: I mean biznis if you mean biznis send me fore dollars to git a devorce.
"_George_."
Rachel sat on the floor, with her hair standing out wildly and anxiety deepening on her face.
"I ain"t got but three dollars," she said.
"I was gwine to buy my weddin" dress wif dat."
"But, Rachel," protested Ruth, in laughing remonstrance, "he has one wife."
"Yes,"m. Pete Lawson ain"t got no wife; but he ain"t got but one arm, neither. Whicht one would you take, Miss Rufe?"
"Pete," declared Ruth. "He"s a good boy, what there is of him."
"Well, I guess I better notify him to-night," sighed Rachel; but she held the love-letter on her knee and regretfully smoothed its crumpled edges.
Ruth pushed back her chair from the table and crossed the wide hall to the library.
It was a large room, with heavy wainscoting, above which simpered or frowned a long row of her ancestors.
She stepped before the one nearest her and looked at it long and earnestly. The face carried no memory with it, though it was her father. It was the portrait of a handsome man in uniform, in the full bloom of a dissipated youth. Her mother had seldom spoken of him, and when she did her eyes filled with tears.
A few feet farther away hung a portrait of her grandfather, brave in a high stock and ruffled shirt, the whole light of a bibulous past radiating from the crimson tip of his incriminating nose.
Next him hung Aunt Elizabeth, supercilious, arrogant, haughty. Ruth recalled a tragic day of her past when she was sent to bed for climbing upon the piano and pasting a stamp on the red-painted lips.
She glanced down the long line: velvets, satins, jewels, and uniforms, and, above them all, the same narrow face, high-arched nose, brilliant dark eyes, and small, weak mouth.
On the table was a photograph of Carter. Ruth sighed as she pa.s.sed it.
It was a composite of all the grace, beauty, and weakness of the surrounding portraits.
She went to the fire and, sitting down on an ottoman, took two pictures from the folds of her dress. One was a miniature in a small old-fashioned locket. It was a grave, sweet, motherly face, singularly pure and childlike in its innocence. Ruth touched it with reverent fingers.
"They say I am like her," she whispered to herself.
Then she turned to the other picture in her lap. It was a cheap photograph with an ornate border. Posed stiffly in a photographer"s chair, against a background which represented a frightful storm at sea, sat Sandy Kilday. His feet were sadly out of focus, and his head was held at an impossible angle by the iron rest which stood like a half-concealed skeleton behind him. He wore cheap store-clothes, and a turn-down collar which rested upon a ready-made tie of enormous proportions. It was a picture he had had taken in his first new clothes soon after coming to Clayton. Ruth had found it in an old book of Annette"s.