CHAPTER XXV

BEING LAUGHED AT.

Every one sat very still lest an excited movement or gesture precipitate the storm. From my place on the slightly elevated witness chair I had a full view of the scene in all its ominous tensity. It was as though breathing had not alone stopped, but all living animation had for the second been suspended. The body of men had been fixed as though photographed. An incautious start or the sweep of a hand pocket-ward, and the outburst would be inevitable.

There were three exceptions among those whom I may term non-combatants.

One reporter began edging down behind the table. Weighborne unostentatiously shifted his position so as to place his bulky shoulders between Frances Weighborne and the crowd, and She with an impatient shifting declined his shielding and sat steadily looking to the front.

She was pale, as I suppose we all were, but perfectly composed.

Then Marcus wheeled and faced the rear of the room, deliberately turning his back on the enemies who might kill him as they had killed his partner. With both hands raised above his head and his thin, cuffless wrists stretching out of his threadbare sleeves, he stood for a tense moment in silence. His rugged countenance was black with the vehemence of feeling and his deep eyes were burning.

"_Sit down!_" he thundered. He said no other word, but as he ripped out that crisp and brief command he swept both arms and hands downward, and, like hypnotic subjects answering the gesture of the demonstrator, his clansmen dropped into their seats. Garvin took the cue. He pounded on his desk with the gavel. "Order in the court-room," he shouted, and his henchmen also subsided into their benches.

A deep breath of relief swept over the place. The crisis was averted.

Garvin beckoned Marcus and the opposing counsel to his side.

"Gentlemen," he said coolly, "the boys seem a little excited. Unless there is an objection I'm goin' to adjourn co'te for a half-hour, and then keep this room clear of spectators." But the moment of peril had pa.s.sed and when I reached the square with the attorney, who hastily spirited me out by the back door, I saw the two elements mingling with a semblance of entire peace.

Marcus took me directly to his office where we were busied with a supplemental and more exact affidavit, and I did not see the Weighbornes. I knew that any meeting must be a most unhappy occasion, and until this matter was disposed of I was willing to postpone that final clash. We were shortly interrupted by the arrival of the county attorney, who announced that at the reconvening of court he would move to dismiss the cases. He said he realized that there could be no conviction and would not risk precipitating a conflict. Marcus could hardly refuse to allow his clients to go free, and so for the time he had to accept that surrender and reserve his ammunition for later effectiveness.

To the Marcus house we rode in cortege. I had not intended running at all, but when I came out of the law office I found that Weighborne had been much fatigued and had already started back with another guard, and I could hardly run away without facing the two of them. Marcus too, insisted that I must return, even if only for a day. Much of our business remained unfinished, and I inferred from his att.i.tude that he knew nothing of the inevitable reckoning which I must face at the hands of my business partner. We started late and our small army arrived after nine o'clock. It was again a night of sparkle and starlight and frost.

We learned that supper had been saved for us and the attorney and I ate it in silence. The Weighbornes had not waited for us. I quite understood that they might not care to break bread with me, and yet I was puzzled, because in that paralyzed moment in the court-room when I had, for the only time during the day, looked full in the lady's eyes, I had seen no anger in them. I had almost fancied that her lips half-shaped a smile. But she was a remarkable woman, and whatever her feeling, she might be magnanimous enough and big enough at such a moment, when we were all in equal danger, to lay aside for the nonce her just resentment. Now we should meet again as though that had not happened, and I had no hope of seeing her smile on me again.

Probably she had retired and I should not have to meet her until to-morrow. I rose from the table and turned to Marcus.

"Where do I sleep to-night?" I inquired.

"Your same place, sir," he answered, and when I had said good-night I turned and walked along the porch and opened the door of the room which served jointly as parlor and bedroom.

Once more, precisely as on that other night, I halted in surprise.

Indeed, it might have been the other night, except that Weighborne lay where he had thrown himself down fully dressed across the big bed. But just as before, he was sleeping, and just as before She sat before the fire alone, in much the same att.i.tude. On her face was the same trace of wistful loneliness.

I could not escape the feeling that this was in reality a part of the other evening--that it had been momentarily interrupted and that all which had transpired since I had opened this same door in this exact way, and seen this precise picture, was only the figment of disordered imagination. But it was now too late to turn back, and after all there was nothing to gain by deferring the reckoning. The three of us were here, and it would take only a moment to wake the sleeping man.

I closed the door, and my heart began the wild beating that meeting her must always bring. As I started across the room she looked up and rose.

I halted where I stood, waiting for her to speak. This evening she wore a very simple gingham dress, and the chill of the room had led her to add the sweater. For a breathing s.p.a.ce we stood there, she as slender and youthful as a school-girl; I as awkward and disheveled as a b.u.mpkin, with my head hanging shamefacedly--awaiting sentence.

Then to my total bewilderment she smiled and held out her hand.

Had she stricken me down with a lightning bolt as the savages thought she had stricken down the profaning native, I should have been less astonished. I stood there unable to understand such forgiveness, and while I waited, she spoke.

"Now," said the voice which had been ringing in my heart ever since I had last heard it, "will you be good enough to explain things, or are you still to be the man of mystery?"

How could I explain things? How could I make a commencement? And yet it was just that which I had come to attempt.

"If I can explain at all," I said, very miserably, "it will be in one word--madness."

"Is that all?" she questioned. In her eyes was the whimsical challenge that had, on the previous occasion, swept me away from my moorings. The question that I had asked myself once before came back to my mind. Could it be that my G.o.ddess was so far from my ideal that, after all, what had occurred needed no explanation? I would not admit such a possibility, and yet her next words seemed to confirm it.

"When I first came here," she mused reflectively and only half-aloud, "you stayed outside for an hour, and then you disappeared. Of course you were a prisoner, but to-day you had the opportunity to see us. You didn't--and yet--" she flushed deeply, and I knew that her thoughts too were going back to the moment when I had, without words, avowed myself so savagely.

"I stayed out there that night," I said bluntly, "because I could hardly be an interloper, when you had ridden these infernal hills to be with _him_--" I jerked my head savagely toward the bed. Then I went doggedly on, determined that since she had forced me this far we should hereafter stand in the certain light of understanding. "I also stayed out there because, as it happens, I'm a fool. I couldn't endure witnessing a reunion between yourself and your husband." It seemed to me that she should first have called on me for other explanations.

At the last word her face clouded with an expression of absolute bewilderment, and her eyes widened as she gazed at me.

"My--my _what_?" she demanded.

"Your husband," I repeated. "Mr. Weighborne."

She contemplated me as though I were a new and rather interesting variety of maniac, then her laugh was long and delicious. Her clouded eyes cleared and danced like skies in which the sun has suddenly burst through rain.

"Oh," she said finally. "I understand now." Once more her face grew grave and she added with a catch in her voice.

"And, thank G.o.d, I _do_ understand."

"For Heaven's sake," I implored, "tell me what you understand! As for me, I understand nothing."

"Why, you totally unspeakable idiot," she explained, as though she had known me always, and as though we had long been close comrades, "I haven't any husband--yet. That's my brother. Didn't you know that?"

I stood at gaze, dazed, stupefied, open-mouthed; every thing that denotes the gawky fool. Then I dropped fervently on my knees at her feet and shamelessly seized her hands in mine and kissed them. She made no effort to release them and I crushed them greedily while my tongue could find no words, until, as I afterward learned, her rings cut into the flesh.

"But," I stammered finally, "you are Frances Weighborne. His wife is Frances Weighborne. Bob Maxwell told me--"

She laughed again, and Weighborne's heavy breathing became almost a snore. After all, first impressions are best. Weighborne was a capital fellow, one could not help liking him.

"Correct," said the lady indulgently, as though she were teaching a small boy his primer lessons. "I am Frances Weighborne. My sister-in-law was also christened Frances in baptism, and acquired the surname of Weighborne in matrimony. There may, so far as I know, be various other Frances Weighbornes. We have never copyrighted the name."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" I groaned helplessly. "What an unspeakable imbecile I've been--but you're wrong, dearest, you _are_ the only one."

"Do you think it necessary to swear about it?" she inquired. "And are you now quite certain that I'm the right one?"

"There isn't any time to swear," I a.s.sured her, "there is so infinitely much to say--but not here. Come out under the stars, where one can breathe. Give me five minutes. Unless I speak now I shall die of suppressed emotion. All my life I've been a supposedly extinct volcano.

I'm no longer extinct." I halted my rush of words; then added, "Yes, you're the right one." I rose and, still holding her hands, lifted her to her feet. At the door, with my hand on the latch, I paused.

"No," I exclaimed, hardly realizing that I was speaking aloud. "You open it. In the dream it is always you who open the door into the other world."

She wheeled and looked me in the eyes, her own pupils wide and incredulous.

"Do you have it, too?" she demanded breathlessly. "Do you dream my dream? Do I come to you in some vague danger and lead you through a door?"

She laid her hand on the bolt, just as I had so often seen her do in my vision, and we stepped together out into the glory of the frost and moon.

"As you are doing now," I answered; then with a new wonder I demanded, "But tell me, how in Heaven's name could you dream of me before you knew me?"

She laughed mockingly.

"Perhaps," she vouchsafed, "if you make yourself very agreeable I may tell you."