"We do not get things for nothing in this world," he answered, in a cold, deliberate voice. The paroxysm of pa.s.sion which had shaken him was gone now, and had left him maliciously cool and scheming. "You want me to declare this dividend. I can do it yet, for I"m the bank, you know. I kick those pups around down there like I do these dogs and n.i.g.g.e.rs here at home. The question is--how badly do you want this dividend?"
A rosy flush flared up into Julia"s waxen cheeks.
"It is not quite fair to flaunt our need in my face," she answered, all but imperiously. "But you know how we are situated, as does every one in Macon, and this county. Father"s bank stock is his only source of income, if you will have me say it."
"You have not exactly answered my question," pursued Devil Marston. "I told you that everything worth having must be bought. What will you give me for this dividend?"
"I do not understand what you mean. It belongs to us--or our part of it does. Why will you not let us have it?"
She could not look at him; his face was repulsive beyond measure, and she kept her eyes on the delicately-veined ears of The Prince as she desperately fought her battle of words.
"I will let you have it--but, there is a price to pay. You cannot get something for nothing, from me!"
His voice rang hard and exultant on the last sentence.
"Please be plain," she urged. "Tell me what you mean, quickly."
"The dividend has its price, if you will pay!" he said, drawing a step closer. "A little price to save you and your father from starvation. Get down, come into my home with me, drink a gla.s.s of wine with me, kiss me once!--Will you pay it?"
CHAPTER XII
There was the sound of rushing water in her ears, and for a moment she was blind. How dared he! To her, a Dudley! Then she knew she was looking full at him with unutterable scorn in her eyes. He saw the contempt and indignity which his words had aroused, and his face blackened.
"Just as you will!" he said, roughly. "It"s nothing to me. There was a time when I would have made you mistress of this house, and had it not been for a scoundrelly, meddling doctor you might have married me! You love him now--I know! I"m not a fool, but precious little happiness you"ll get from him. They ran him out of Jericho for mixing up with a married woman, and if you want to marry a rascal like that you"re welcome to do it!"
He stopped, and glared at her like a baffled animal.
She could not yet find her voice. In a vague way she knew that she had been hurt, sorely wounded; that a profane foot had trodden in the holy of holies in her breast, and that a profane hand had s.n.a.t.c.hed at the sacred fire which burned upon the altar there. She knew that never in her life before had she felt as she did now. Her purity had been affronted, and a friend"s dear name had been attacked. She was crushed, dumb, and realizing that she had failed miserably in her mission, she dully turned The Prince"s head towards the gate, and started to ride away. But on the instant Marston"s hand was on the bridle near the bit, and Marston"s figure loomed in her path.
"Not yet!" he gritted, venom flashing from his little eyes. "There is more to tell, and I don"t think I"ll have a lovely opportunity like this again soon! You refuse? You refuse my price?"
Still the girl did not answer. She could not answer, for her tongue seemed paralyzed. A rabid sort of anger was mounting again in the fiend before her. She saw its signals flare in a renewed gleam in his sodden eyes, in the dull red, gorged muscles of his thick throat. His coa.r.s.e lips were twitching, as though forming words too awful for her to hear.
At this moment, too, a cloud pa.s.sed before the sun, and a quick lessening of light was perceptible. To Julia it almost amounted to gloom, seated as she was in the dank shade of one of the funereal cedars, and she could have cried out in pure physical terror had her voice at that moment been subservient to her will. For there before her, almost within arm"s length, stood Devil Marston, like a huge spider in his loathesomeness, compelling her to remain where she was, and listen to whatever tale of malice, flavoured with a grain of truth, perhaps, which he might care to relate.
"The terms! The terms!" he said, again, thrusting his face towards her with all its projecting teeth visible. "You won"t be hurt! What"s a gla.s.s of wine and a kiss? Tut! The first is nothing, and I"ll bet that jackanapes of a doctor gets plenty of the second! Isn"t _one_ for _me_ worth two hundred and fifty dollars?"
This speech broke Julia"s reserve, with its cruel, brutal accusation.
"Hush!" she exclaimed, all the dormant and deadened forces of her nature awaking to full and vigorous protest. "Don"t dare to say such things to me, Devil Marston! I came alone to your house this morning, because, though I knew that you were a bad man, I believed that I would be received and treated with proper respect. You have forfeited all right to any kind of consideration; you have trampled upon my finer feelings and made me suffer keenly--and you shall pay! You shall pay!"
She leaned from her saddle-bow towards him, setting her flame-tinged face with its large, distressed, undaunted eyes in opposition to his vulgar visage lit with fires from h.e.l.l.
He started at the sudden vehemence of her speech, and the quick transition from almost lethargy to almost violent action.
"_I_ pay?--What do you mean, girl?" he cried, gripping the bridle firmer and throwing a quick glance in the direction of the highway, which was no great distance off, and visible for several rods from where they were standing.
"I mean what I say!" she repeated, undismayed. Her courage was perhaps unnatural, induced by that low speech wherein Marston had cuttingly spoken of the kisses she had given Glenning. "My father shall hear of this, and Dr. Glenning, too--he whom you have vilely slandered! I withdraw the request which I made a while ago; I don"t want a dividend if it has to come through _your_ influence and _your_ power. Though it is rightly ours, I do not want it now, for it would degrade anyone who touched it after _your_ word had made it possible! I scorn and detest you! I defy you, and dare you to do your worst, you pitiful thing whom G.o.d made like a man, and gave the nature of a brute instead of a soul!
Now I am through. Let me go! Take your hand from my bridle-rein! Miss Dudley is ready to ride back home!"
Erect in her saddle now as a young G.o.ddess, she gazed down upon him with high-held head, disgust and anger blending charmingly on her lovely features. She did not feel herself. Never in her life before had such storms of feeling swept her. She knew she was unreal; that this side to her nature she had never seen--had never known of its existence. The flood which had carried her to that grand height where she could brave and dare a man like Devil Marston in his own yard, was receding. It was too powerful to last. It had given her a glorious strength to say what was in her heart and mind, in clear words which rang with sincerity and conviction, but now, that she was done, was sitting with her proud chin up and disdainful eyes fastened upon the object of her displeasure, she felt the ebb of tears which followed the flood of courage. She was surely and quickly coming back to her own; the normal woman in her was being reinstated. She knew that she must go, at once, or her next words would struggle through sobs. Though her face showed naught of it, her breast was filled with a fearful anxiety, as she watched the effect of her words. At first the man was stunned. He could not believe his ears.
That anyone, to say nothing of a girl, should come before him and speak such things, was past his comprehension. He actually blinked at her, stupidly, as she went on, and his face turned a yellowish gray. But when she concluded his brutish rage had gained the ascendency.
"You"re ready to go home--I guess you are! But I"m not ready to let you go! You defy me! You dare me! You call me ugly names! I"m not as pretty as your doctor friend who went regularly every evenin" to see that married woman back in Jericho! Ha! ha! ha! You don"t like that, do you?
But it"s true, anyway, I--"
"Let me go--let me go!" sobbed Julia, the strain overcoming her at last, breaking down the frail fabric of her brave young courage. "You shan"t say such things to me!"
She attempted to urge The Prince on, but the iron grip of Marston held him.
"Go easy, young lady! Don"t hurry!" mocked the monster. "There"s more to tell. I"m saving the choicest morsel of scandal for the last, then I"ll fix this long-legged fellow of yours!"
Julia had purposely delayed bringing her weapon into play, but she saw now that the time was ripe for her to use it. She drew it from its place and quickly leveled it at the man.
"Unloose my horse, or I swear I"ll shoot!" she said, and Marston, looking in her eyes, knew that she meant it.
He feinted, dropped the bridle, and pretended to draw aside. But the next moment he took a rapid step forward, threw up his arm, and sent the revolver flying through the air. It alighted on the thick gra.s.s, without exploding. It happened that the gaunt hound which had disputed Julia"s pa.s.sage at the beginning of her call, having finished the roast of beef in a further corner of the yard, was pa.s.sing that moment on his way back to the kitchen porch, his hunger doubtless still unappeased. He was a brute used to sudden foray and quick brawls, and this movement of his master towards the horsewoman seemed to him a signal--a call to battle.
So, as Marston deftly disarmed Julia, the dog promptly leaped at The Prince"s front with a savage roar. The wonder is the poor girl kept her senses, but this attack of the dog was her salvation. The sensitive animal which she rode reared and swerved with the agility of a cat, eluding the hound"s spring and colliding with Marston, who was sent sprawling upon the ground. The way to safety was clear! She touched The Prince"s side with her heel, drew up her reins, and told him to go in a low voice of entreaty. But he needed no urging. Down the yard they flew, and Julia put him at the fence, for there was no time to be lost with the narrow gate. He went over the barrier with the ease and grace of a swallow, and on towards the road. The farm gate letting onto the pike she had left open, and as she dashed through it she almost ran into a buggy coming from the direction of town, with a man in it. The Prince swerved around the obstacle--he was running at last, and his rider made no attempt to restrain him--and was gone down the white limestone road like a greyhound in chase.
The top of the buggy which the man drove was down flat, for it was a summer morning, and he loved sunshine and air. He drew his horse up to a standstill, and turning in his seat looked back at the fleeing twain, now rapidly diminishing in a cloud of gray dust. The glimpse which he had caught of the two as they pa.s.sed was almost as brief as that one gets of a landscape on a night of storm during a lightning flash. He thought he knew the colt--surely there was none other like it anywhere, and he was confident he knew the rider, although her face was white, terror-stricken, tear-stained. Whether she had recognized him or not he could not say. Her haunting eyes had looked straight at him for a moment, but no gleam of understanding had lighted them. Now they were gone; the distant hoof-beats had died. The man turned half way around, and looked again. This time his eyes swept the home of Devil Marston and its vicinity. As he looked his mouth grew hard, his eyes drooped at the corners, and the muscles of his cheeks ridged themselves under his skin.
He understood. He slowly and deliberately got out, led his horse to the roadside and carefully hitched it, then pa.s.sed through the open farm gate and strode briskly on. Two minutes later John Glenning, with folded arms, stood fronting Devil Marston between the cedars. The hound had disappeared. The two men were absolutely alone. There was no word of greeting exchanged between them. Each knew that civilities would be superfluous and out of place. They simply met as two things of primeval creation might meet, and the feelings which governed each of them in that moment were wholly savage. In every one this old strain is running: animal first, then soul, and mind, and heart. Mere being first; then civilization, with its accessories of education and refinement. Two animals met between the cedars; the mask had been flung aside. They had come face to face moved entirely by the world-old battle l.u.s.t. The one naturally evil; the other made so because he knew that in some way the woman he loved had been mistreated and abused. Words were out of place and unnecessary, but a sense of right and decency crept into Glenning"s seething brain, and made him speak.
"I want to apologize for striking you on the street in Macon."
The sentence was cold as ice, and formal. There was no feeling in it.
The man to whom it was addressed stood with arms hanging loosely at his sides, his face sullen and crafty. He did not reply.
"You know I had to do it," went on the steel-like voice. "I regret the necessity more than I apologize for the blow. You deserved that. Let it pa.s.s."
Marston spoke.
"What in the devil do you want here? Begone, before I put the dogs on you!"
"I am here to give you a thrashing you won"t forget as long as you live!
You are a coward and a cur!"
The stinging words brought no added colour to Marston"s face. They did not hurt him; his sensibilities were hardened, and were difficult to reach. But he cast an involuntary look of longing towards the revolver lying partly concealed in the long gra.s.s a rod or more away. The sombre eyes watching him with hawk-like intentness noticed the glance, and instantly turned in the same direction. Glenning saw.
"Don"t you wish you had that in your hand?" he said. "I know you haven"t one on your person, or you would have shot me before now. To relieve you of any apprehension I don"t mind telling you that I am totally unarmed.
How did that come there?"
He nodded abruptly in the direction of Julia"s revolver.
"I don"t see that I"m in a witness box!" Marston answered, viciously.
"Take comfort," retorted Glenning, evenly. "You will be if you live long enough. We are wasting time and bandying words to no purpose," he resumed briskly. "I met a young lady coming from your house in evident distress a few moments ago. She was riding hard and she was scared. Did _you_ scare her, and had she anything to do with that revolver?"