But Linton was determined to win his point. He thought he saw his opportunity. He hoped he could force a break between Presson and the other suitor.
"I"m interested in this matter as much as any one," he declared. "I have not told you the full story, Mr. Presson. But I"m here to see this matter straightened out for good and all, and unless you get an answer from this man, as a father ought to, I"ll see that you have the facts to put you right."
"Linton, didn"t I tell you last night that you were circulating a lie?"
Harlan"s face was gray.
"If it"s a lie why are you afraid of telling Mr. Presson the whole truth and explaining the matter?" insisted Linton with a lawyer"s pertinacity in extracting evidence. He realized that if young Thornton talked, even to admit the facts that information from the north country seemed to prove, a bit of impromptu cross-examination might yield results that would help the Linton cause.
"I refuse because every word that is said on the subject is a gross insult to an innocent girl," declared Harlan, pa.s.sionately. "And I warn you that if you open your mouth again you"ll get the only thing a man can give you and remain a man!"
"You"d better take the hint, Linton," advised the Duke. "I don"t know exactly what you"re driving at, but you"re heading toward trouble. They don"t do things up our way as they do in a city court-room."
Linton was angry, desperate, and he was as stalwart as the other. He was not inclined to let that opportunity pa.s.s.
Defiantly he plunged into the story that Spinney had reported. To his astonishment Harlan rushed for the door. He went out and slammed it behind him.
A project had come to him, prompted by his furious rage which mocked common-sense. A man more accustomed to the conventions would not have attempted it. But all his north-country pa.s.sion rioted in him at that moment.
The night before he had wept because the peace and good name of Clare Kavanagh were threatened and he could only beat the ugly phantom of scandal helplessly.
Now suddenly he found work for his hands--and his hands had always been his means of expressing his soul in toil, achievement, and in pa.s.sion.
He hurried down the stairs into the State House rotunda where the throngs were. The hearing before the committee was adjourned. The band was playing. He thrust himself through the press of the women. Maids and matrons stared after him. His face was pale, his lips made a straight-edge and his eyes swept every group with eagerness that was almost wild. It was search that was distracting. There were women, women. There were so many faces to scan! Chance led him to her--good fortune and the sudden thought that she would probably be found near some object of interest, were she escorted by a teacher. He saw the group near the great case that held the State"s battle-flags. He caught her arm and her startled face was turned up to his.
"Come," he whispered, hoa.r.s.ely. "Come! Do not ask me why. Only come.
Hurry!"
With the trustfulness she had always shown in him she did not hesitate.
She did not even offer excuses to the tall woman who stepped forward to inquire the intentions of this abrupt young man. She went, as she went in the north country when he called to her. Clinging to his arm she hurried up the broad marble stairway.
She did not ask why. Her faith was complete. But his demeanor frightened her.
"I was sorry after I got here," she gasped, as they hurried on. "But the others came from the school, and I thought it would be such a great place here that no one would notice me. I thought you would not see me, Harlan. But I wanted to learn about--about what you did--what the lawmakers did, so that--so that--"
"Hurry," he urged her. He feared that they would be gone.
This brusqueness, his haste, his sternness troubled her more and more.
They were alone in the corridor that led to the committee-room. She stopped, holding him back with her strong young arms. He had hardly looked at her till then. She had changed in the months since he had seen her. Womanly dignity was mingled with the high spirit that had inspired the child. Her garb, her new mien made her beauty brilliant.
"I never lied to you yet, Big Boy," she cried. "I came here because I was hungry for a sight of you. Then I would go back to my work comforted. Now my conscience is clear. Take me where you will."
In that moment his heart was revealed to him. In the stress of new emotions he understood himself at last. He understood that the love which mates, which sweeps away all calculation, which welds, trusts, and never pauses to a.n.a.lyze or compute, is love that disdains mere admiration of intellect or lure of beauty.
His quiet nature had depths. They had never been stirred till then. The child-love had been budding there ready for blossom. It had been fed by faith and ripened by a.s.sociation. Pa.s.sion now brought it to fruition.
Madeleine Presson had appealed only to one side of him. This girl rounded out the whole philosophy of love. She was not a divinity. His nature did not crave divinity. In his strength, sincerity, ingenuousness, his man"s soul, primitive as the free woods, required the mate--one to be cherished and protected. And so, now, when all his soul was stirred, this girl, so bitterly in need of protection--the girl whom the years had endeared to him--came into his heart to reign there.
Words, emotion choked him. But he could not wait, then. She saw something in his eyes she had never seen there till that moment. But before she could understand he carried her along with him.
"Come! I can"t wait!" he cried.
When he flung open the door of the committee-room the men in it were standing in silence. Presson had picked up the "Thornton Bill" and was reading it, scowling. Whatever Linton had said, it was plain that the father of Madeleine Presson had just found something which diverted his attention from family matters.
Harlan shut the door behind. He locked it. He stepped away from the girl, leaving her standing there. She was a picture to confute slander.
The chairman gazed at her in astonishment. He had not expected such prompt incarnation of the topic.
"I know what foul lies have just been uttered in this room by that fellow!" Harlan leaned forward and drove an accusatory finger at Linton.
"Now here stands the woman you have insulted. Look at her, you lying hound! There"s only one thing you can do! Acknowledge yourself a liar and apologize!"
Linton did not speak. He raised his eyebrows; it was unspoken comment on the peculiar actions of this young savage from the woods.
"Presson, get out of here and bring help," muttered the Duke. "h.e.l.l is going to break loose!"
The chairman slipped the doc.u.ment into his pocket and tiptoed around the side of the room. Harlan paid no attention to him. His eyes were for Linton.
"Are you going to apologize?"
"I"ll wait until--" began the lawyer, but he got no further.
The Thornton temper had been strained beyond the breaking-point. Harlan was upon him.
"Bring a dozen!" yelled the Duke after the chairman who had been tugging at the door, and now escaped.
Linton was tall and muscular, but law-practice is not lumbering. He struck viciously at Harlan, ducking to and fro with the briskness of the trained boxer. But the woodsman merely leaped upon him, heedless of his blows. He bore him down. He drove resistless knees into his shoulders.
He thrust Linton"s face against the floor and ground it against the boards. Then he dragged the limp figure past the cursing Duke toward the girl. She had fled to a corner, covering her eyes and sobbing in terror.
"D--n you, you"ll apologize to the girl who"s going to be my wife,"
raved Harlan.
When Presson returned at the head of volunteers the victor was grinding the bleeding face on the floor once more and Linton was screaming appeals.
There were enough of them to separate the men. They dragged Harlan away out of the room in spite of his struggles. The mere sight of the lawyer seemed to infuriate him more.
The Duke hurried the girl out and away while the peacemakers were struggling with the young combatants.
"Stop that blubbering," he commanded, roughly. "If you"ve got any grit left in you, brace up. Don"t let people here notice!"
He was trying to hide as much of the true reason for the affray as he could. He wanted to get the girl out of sight.
"I didn"t know--I did nothing--if it was about me I didn"t--" He stopped her brutally.
"About you, you little fool? Of course it wasn"t about you! My grandson is going to marry Luke Presson"s daughter."
She stiffened in the hook of his arm. They were in the corridor and had not come into the view of the people.
"Every one knows it," he hurried on. He saw an opportunity to get in a cruel blow at the romance he suspected and hated. "They have been going together for months. She"ll be the right kind of a wife for him. They were fighting about her--those two young hyenas."
She pulled away from him. The tears were on her cheeks, but she held herself straight and looked him in the eye.