Chapter II (5)

"'Night and the sombre silence, oh, my love, and one star shining!
First, warm, velvety sleep, and then this quick, quiet waking to your
voice which seems to call me. Is it--_is_ it you that calls? Do you
sometimes, even in your dreams, speak to me? Far beneath
unconsciousness is there the summons of your spirit to me?... I like
to think so. I like to think that this thing which has come to us is
deeper, greater than we are. Sometimes day and night there flash
before my eyes--my mind's eyes--pictures of you and me in places
unfamiliar, landscapes never before seen, activities uncomprehended
and unknown, bright, alluring glimpses of some second being, some
possible, maybe never-to-be-realized future, alas! Yet these
swift-moving shutters of the soul, or imagination, _or_ reality--who
shall say which?--give me a joy never before felt in life. If I am
not a better man for this love of mine for you, I am _more_ than I
was, and shall be more than I am. Much of my life in the past was
mean and small, so much that I have said and done has been
unworthy--my love for you is too sharp a light for my gross
imperfections of the past! Come what will, be what must, I stake my
life, my heart, my soul on you--that beautiful, beloved face; those
deep eyes in which my being is drowned; those lucid, perfect hands
that have bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I
must go forward: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I
did not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of
devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams. "_O
Cithoeron!_" Turn from me now--or never, O my love! Loose me from the
mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea of your
forgetfulness now--or never!... But keep me, keep me, if your love is
great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; for I am yours to my
uttermost note of life.'"

"He knew!--he knew!" Rawley said, catching her wrists in his hands and drawing her to him. "If I could write, that's what I should have said to you, beautiful and beloved. How mean and small and ugly my life was till you made me over! I was a bad lot."

"So much hung on one little promise," she said, and drew closer to him. "You were never bad," she added; then, with an arm sweeping the universe, "Oh, isn't it all good, and isn't it all worth living?"

His face lost its glow. Over in the town her brother faced a ruined life, and the girl beside him a dark humiliation and a shame which would poison her life hereafter, unless--his look turned to the little house where the quack-doctor lived. He loosed her hands.

"Now for Caliban," he said.

"I shall be Ariel and follow you--in my heart," she said. "Be sure and make him tell you the story of his life," she added, with a laugh, as his lips swept the hair behind her ears.

As he moved swiftly away, watching his long strides, she said, proudly, "As deep as the sea."

After a moment she added: "And he was once a gambler, until, until" she--glanced at the open book, then with sweet mockery looked at her hands--"until 'those lucid, perfect hands bound me to the mast of your destiny.' O vain Diana! But they are rather beautiful," she added, softly, "and I am rather happy." There was something like a gay little chuckle in her throat.

"O vain Diana!" she repeated.

* * * * *

Rawley entered the door of the hut on the hill without ceremony. There was no need for courtesy, and the work he had come to do could be easier done without it.

Old Busby was crouched over a table, his mouth lapping milk from a full bowl on the table. He scarcely raised his head when Rawley entered--through the open door he had seen his visitor coming. He sipped on, his straggling beard dripping. There was silence for a time.

"What do you want?" he growled at last.

"Finish your swill, and then we can talk," said Rawley, carelessly. He took a chair near the door, lighted a cheroot and smoked, watching the old man, as he tipped the great bowl toward his face, as though it were some wild animal feeding. The clothes were patched and worn, the coat-front was spattered with stains of all kinds, the hair and beard were unkempt and long, giving him what would have been the look of a mangy lion but that the face had the expression of some beast less honorable. The eyes, however, were malignantly intelligent; the hands, ill-cared for, were long, well-shaped, and capable, but of a hateful yellow color like the face. And through all was a sense of power, dark and almost mediaeval. Secret, evilly wise, and inhuman, he looked a being apart, whom men might seek for help in dark purposes.

"What do you want--medicine?" he muttered at last, wiping his beard and mouth with the palm of his hand, and the palm on his knees.

Rawley looked at the ominous-looking bottles on the shelves above the old man's head, at the forceps, knives, and other surgical instruments on the walls--they at least were bright and clean--and, taking the cheroot slowly from his mouth, he said:

"Shin-plasters are what I want. A friend of mine has caught his leg in a trap."

The old man gave an evil chuckle at the joke, for a "shin-plaster" was a money-note worth a quarter of a dollar.

"I've got some," he growled in reply, "but they cost twenty-five cents each. You can have them for your friend at the price."

"I want eight thousand of them from you. He's hurt pretty bad," was the dogged, dry answer.

The shaggy eyebrows of the quack drew together, and the eyes peered out sharply through half-closed lids. "There's plenty of wanting and not much getting in this world," he rejoined, with a leer of contempt, and spat on the floor, while yet the furtive watchfulness of the eyes indicated a mind ill at ease.

Smoke came in placid puffs from the cheroot--Rawley was smoking very hard, but with a judicial meditation, as it seemed.

"Yes, but if you want a thing so bad that, to get it, you'll face the devil or the Beast of Revelations, it's likely to come to you."

"You call me a beast?" The reddish-brown face grew black like that of a Bedouin in his rage.

"I said the Beast of Revelations--don't you know the Scriptures?"

"I know that a fool is to be answered according to his folly," was the hoarse reply, and the great head wagged to and fro in its smarting rage.

"Well, I'm doing my best; and perhaps when the folly is all out we'll come to the revelations of the Beast."

There was a silence, in which the gross impostor shifted heavily in his seat, while a hand twitched across the mouth and then caught at the breast of the threadbare black coat abstractedly.

Rawley leaned forward, one elbow on a knee, the cheroot in his fingers. He spoke almost confidentially, as to some ignorant and misguided savage--as he had talked to Indian chiefs in his time when searching for the truth regarding some crime.

"I've had a lot of revelations in my time. A lawyer and a doctor always do. And though there are folks who say I'm no lawyer, as there are those who say with greater truth that you're no doctor, speaking technically, we've both had 'revelations.' You've seen a lot that's seamy, and so have I. You're pretty seamy yourself. In fact, you're as bad a man as ever saved lives--and lost them. You've had a long tether, and you've swung on it--swung wide. But you've had a lot of luck that you haven't swung high, too."

He paused and flicked away the ash from his cheroot, while the figure before him swayed animal-like from side to side, muttering.

"You've got brains, a great lot of brains of a kind--however you came by them," Rawley continued; "and you've kept a lot of people in the West from passing in their checks before their time. You've rooked 'em, chiselled 'em out of a lot of cash, too. There was old Lamson--fifteen hundred for the goitre on his neck; and Mrs. Gilligan for the cancer--two thousand, wasn't it? 'Tincture of Lebanon Leaves' you called the medicine, didn't you? You must have made fifty thousand or so in the last ten years."

"What I've made I'll keep," was the guttural answer, and the talon-like fingers clawed the table.

"You've made people pay high for curing them, saving them sometimes; but you haven't paid me high for saving you in the courts; and there's one case that you haven't paid me for at all. That was when the patient died--and you didn't."

The face of the old man became mottled with a sudden fear, but he jerked it forward once or twice with an effort at self-control. Presently he steadied to the ordeal of suspense, while he kept saying to himself, "What does he know--what--which?"

"Malpractice resulting in death--that was poor Jimmy Tearle; and something else resulting in death--that was the switchman's wife. And the law is hard in the West where a woman's in the case--quick and hard. Yes, you've swung wide on your tether; look out that you don't swing high, old man."

"You can prove nothing; it's bluff!" came the reply in a tone of malice and of fear.

"You forget. I was your lawyer in Jimmy Tearle's case, and a letter's been found written by the switchman's wife to her husband. It reached me the night he was killed by the avalanche. It was handed over to me by the post-office, as the lawyer acting for the relatives. I've read it. I've got it. It gives you away."

"I wasn't alone." Fear had now disappeared, and the old man was fighting.

"No, you weren't alone; and if the switchman and the switchman's wife weren't dead and out of it all, and if the other man that didn't matter any more than you wasn't alive and hadn't a family that does matter, I wouldn't be asking you peaceably for two thousand dollars as my fee for getting you off two cases that might have sent you to prison for twenty years, or, maybe, hung you to the nearest tree."

The heavy body pulled itself together, the hands clinched. "Blackmail--you think I'll stand it?"

"Yes, I think you will. I want two thousand dollars to help a friend in a hole, and I mean to have it, if you think your neck's worth it."

Teeth, wonderfully white, showed through the shaggy beard. "If I had to go to prison--or swing, as you say--do you think I'd go with my mouth shut? I'd not pay up alone. The West would crack--holy Heaven, I know enough to make it sick. Go on and see! I've got the West in my hand." He opened and shut his fingers with a grimace of cruelty which shook Rawley in spite of himself.

Rawley had trusted to the inspiration of the moment; he had had no clearly defined plan; he had believed that he could frighten the old man, and by force of will bend him to his purposes. It had all been more difficult than he had expected. He kept cool, imperturbable, and determined, however. He knew that what the old quack said was true--the West might shake with scandal concerning a few who, no doubt, in remorse and secret fear, had more than paid the penalty of their offences. But he thought of Di Welldon and of her criminal brother, and every nerve, every faculty, was screwed to its utmost limit of endurance and capacity.

Suddenly the old man gave a new turn to the event. He got up and, rummaging in an old box, drew out a dice-box. Rattling the dice, he threw them out on the table before him, a strange, excited look crossing his face.

"Play for it," he said, in a harsh, croaking voice. "Play for the two thousand. Win it, if you can. You want it bad. I want to keep it bad. It's nice to have; it makes a man feel warm--money does. I'd sleep in ten-dollar bills, I'd have my clothes made of them, if I could; I'd have my house papered with them; I'd eat 'em. Oh, I know, I know about you--and her--Diana Welldon! You've sworn off gambling, and you've kept your pledge for near a year. Well, it's twenty years since I gambled--twenty years. I gambled with these then." He shook the dice in the box. "I gambled everything I had away--more than two thousand dollars--more than two thousand dollars." He laughed a raw, mirthless laugh. "Well, you're the greatest gambler in the West. So was I--in the East. It pulverized me at last, when I'd nothing left--and drink, drink, drink. I gave up both one night and came out West. I started doctoring here. I've got money, plenty of money--medicine, mines, land got it for me. I've been lucky. Now you come to bluff me--me! You don't know old Busby." He spat on the floor. "I'm not to be bluffed. I know too much. Before they could lynch me I'd talk. But to play you, the greatest gambler in the West, for two thousand dollars--yes, I'd like the sting of it again. Twos, fours, double-sixes--the gentleman's game!" He rattled the dice and threw them with a flourish out on the table, his evil face lighting up. "Come! You can't have something for nothing!" he growled.

As he spoke, a change came over Rawley's face. It lost its cool imperturbability, it grew paler, the veins on the fine forehead stood out, a new, flaring light came into the eyes. The old gambler's spirit was alive. But even as it rose, sweeping him into that area of fiery abstraction where every nerve is strung to a fine tension and the surrounding world disappears, he saw the face of Diana Welldon, he remembered her words to him not an hour before, and the issue of the conflict, other considerations apart, was without doubt. But there was her brother and his certain fate if the two thousand dollars were not paid in by midnight. He was desperate. It was in reality for Diana's sake. He approached the table, and his old calm returned.

"I have no money to play with," he said, quietly.

With a gasp of satisfaction, the old man fumbled in the inside of his coat and drew out layers of ten, fifty, and hundred dollar bills. It was lined with them. He passed a pile over to Rawley--two thousand dollars. He placed a similar pile before himself.

As Rawley laid his hand on the bills, the thought rushed through his mind, "You have it--keep it!" but he put it away from him. With a gentleman he might have done it, with this man before him it was impossible. He must take his chances; and it was the only chance in which he had hope now, unless he appealed for humanity's sake, for the girl's sake, and told the real truth. It might avail. Well, that would be the last resort.

"For small stakes?" said the grimy quack, in a gloating voice.

Rawley nodded, and then added: "We stop at eleven o'clock, unless I've lost or won all before that."

"And stake what's left on the last throw?"

"Yes."

There was silence for a moment, in which Rawley seemed to grow older, and a set look came to his mouth--a broken pledge, no matter what the cause, brings heavy penalties to the honest mind. He shut his eyes for an instant, and, when he opened them, he saw that his fellow-gambler was watching him with an enigmatical and furtive smile. Did this Caliban have some understanding of what was at stake in his heart and soul?

"Play!" Rawley said, sharply, and was himself again.

For hour after hour there was scarce a sound, save the rattle of the dice and an occasional exclamation from the old man as he threw a double-six. As dusk fell, the door had been shut and a lighted lantern was hung over their heads.

Fortune had fluctuated. Once the old man's pile had diminished to two notes, then the luck had changed and his pile grew larger; then fell again; but, as the hands of the clock on the wall above the blue medicine bottles reached a quarter to eleven, it increased steadily throw after throw.

Now the player's fever was in Rawley's eyes. His face was deadly pale, but his hand threw steadily, calmly, almost negligently, as it might seem. All at once, at eight minutes to eleven, the luck turned in his favor, and his pile mounted again. Time after time he dropped double-sixes. It was almost uncanny. He seemed to see the dice in the box, and his hand threw them out with the precision of a machine. Long afterward he had this vivid illusion that he could see the dice in the box. As the clock was about to strike eleven he had before him three thousand eight hundred dollars. It was his throw.

"Two hundred," he said, in a whisper, and threw. He won.

With a gasp of relief, he got to his feet, the money in his hand. He stepped backward from the table, then staggered, and a faintness passed over him. He had sat so long without moving that his legs bent under him. There was a pail of water with a dipper in it on a bench. He caught up a dipperful of water, drank it empty, and let it fall in the pail again with a clatter.

"Dan," he said, abstractedly--"Dan, you're all safe now."

Then he seemed to wake, as from a dream, and looked at the man at the table. Busby was leaning on it with both hands, and staring at Rawley like some animal jaded and beaten from pursuit. Rawley walked back to the table and laid down two thousand dollars.

"I only wanted two thousand," he said, and put the other two thousand in his pocket.

The evil eyes gloated, the long fingers clutched the pile and swept it into a great inside pocket. Then the shaggy head bent forward.

"You said it was for Dan," he said--"Dan Welldon?"

Rawley hesitated. "What is that to you?" he replied, at last.

With a sudden impulse the old impostor lurched round, opened a box, drew out a roll, and threw it on the table.

"It's got to be known sometime," he said, "and you'll be my lawyer when I'm put into the ground--you're clever. They call me a quack. Malpractice--bah! There's my diploma--James Clifton Welldon. Right enough, isn't it?"

Rawley was petrified. He knew the forgotten story of James Clifton Welldon, the specialist, turned gambler, who had almost ruined his own brother--the father of Dan and Diana--at cards and dice, and had then ruined himself and disappeared. Here, where his brother had died, he had come years ago and practised medicine as a quack.

"Oh, there's plenty of proof, if it's wanted!" he said. "I've got it here." He tapped the box behind him. "Why did I do it? Because it's my way. And you're going to marry my niece, and'll have it all some day. But not till I've finished with it--not unless you win it from me at dice or cards.... But no"--something human came into the old, degenerate face--"no more gambling for the man that's to marry Diana. There's a wonder and a beauty!" He chuckled to himself. "She'll be rich when I've done with it. You're a lucky man--ay, you're lucky."

Rawley was about to tell the old man what the two thousand dollars was for, but a fresh wave of repugnance passed over him, and, hastily drinking another dipperful of water, he opened the door. He looked back. The old man was crouching forward, lapping milk from the great bowl, his beard dripping. In disgust he swung round again. The fresh, clear air caught his face.

With a gasp of relief he stepped out into the night, closing the door behind him.