Chapter XX: Deliverance

She stared at him vaguely for a space half in wonder, half in fear. His look was very intent, but it was without anger. She wondered hazily what had happened, why he was watching her so.

"Where am I?" she murmured at length.

He made answer very quietly, as if he had expected the question. "You are here in the old parlour with me. I brought you here."

"Oh?" She gazed around her doubtfully. Her brain felt clogged and dull. "Have I been away then?" she said. "Where is Bunny?"

He rose and moved across the room to the fire. "Bunny is at school," he said, and stooped to lift off a saucepan. "Yes, you have been away. You came back from Liverpool yesterday."

"Ah!" She gave a quick gasp. The mists were beginning to clear a little. She became dimly conscious that there was something terrible behind. She raised herself on her elbow, but was instantly assailed by a feeling of sickness so intense that she sank back again.

She was lying with closed eyes when Jake came back to her. He bent over her with a steaming cup in his hand.

"Try a little of this!" he said.

She looked up with an effort. "I don't think I can. Jake, what has happened? Am I ill again?"

"Guess you'll remember presently if you drink this," he said.

She drew back shuddering. "What is it? Not brandy?"

"No. It's beef-tea." He sat down beside her with a resolute air, and she suddenly realized that resistance was useless.

He was very gentle with her, feeding her spoonful by spoonful; and gradually as she swallowed it she revived. Her brain stirred and seemed to awake. Memory came crowding back. Long ere the cup was finished, that last scene in the music-room hung before her like a lurid picture from which she could not tear her gaze.

Quietly Jake set aside the cup. "Maybe you'll sleep better now," he said.

She lifted her heavy eyes to his. "No, I don't want to sleep any longer. Jake, you--you are not going away!"

He seemed on the point of rising. She stretched out a beseeching hand and laid it on his arm.

"Jake, I--I want to tell you something. Will you listen to me? Please, will you listen to me?"

His arm grew tense as a stretched wire under her touch. She thought there was a glitter of hardness in the red-brown eyes as he said, "There is no call for you to tell me anything unless you wish."

She sat up slowly, compelling herself to face him, "But I want you to--understand," she said.

He laid his hand abruptly upon hers with a gesture that almost seemed as if he would restrain her. "You needn't fret any about that," he said. "Reckon I--do understand."

The vital force of the man was in that free grip of his. She looked to see the awful flare of savage passion leap back into his eyes. But she looked in vain. His eyes baffled her. They seemed to hold her back like a sword in the hand of a practised fencer.

The words she had thought to utter died upon her lips. There was to be no reckoning then. And yet she could not feel reassured. He did not look like a man who would forego his revenge.

"What--what are you going to do?" she faltered at last.

"I shouldn't want to know too much if I were you," said Jake, softly drawling. "Not at this stage anyway."

His hand still held hers. He looked her hard and straight in the face, and she was conscious of something fiery, something elementary, wholly uncivilized, behind his look. There was a suggestion of violence about him. She saw him as a man tracking his enemy through an endless wilderness, breasting mighty rivers, hewing his way through pathless forests, conquering every obstacle with fixed determination, mercilessly riding him down.

She braced herself and rose, drawing her hand free. Her head still swam, but she controlled herself resolutely. She stood before him like a prisoner upon trial.

"Jake," she said, "I am going to tell you something that will make you terribly angry; but it's something that you must know."

She paused, but he sat in silence, grimly watching her. She found her resolution wavering and gripped it with all her strength.

"When I came back here from Liverpool, it was not--not to see my mother as I gave you to understand. It was to--to--" She faltered under his look, found she could not continue, and suddenly threw out her hands in piteous appeal. "Jake, don't make it impossible for me to tell you!"

He rose also. They stood face to face. "Are you going to tell me that you lied to me?" he said.

She drew back from him sharply. The question felt like a blow. "I am telling you the truth now," she said.

"And for whose sake?" He flung the words brutally, as a man goaded beyond endurance. But the moment they were uttered he drew a hard breath as though he would recall them. He came to her, took her by the shoulders. "You take my advice!" he said. "Leave the whole miserable business alone! You've been tricked--badly tricked. You have appealed to me to protect you, and that's enough. I don't want any more than that. I reckon I understand the situation better than you think. You are trying to tell me that it was your original intention to elope with Saltash. Well, maybe it was. But you had given up the notion before you went to him at the Castle, and he knew you had given it up. If he hadn't known it, he wouldn't have taken the trouble to drug you. It's an old device--old as the hills. He's probably done it a score of times, and with more success than he had to-day. Yes, that makes you sick. I guessed it would. And that's what he's going to answer to me for,--what he'll ask your pardon for on his knees before I've done with him."

"Oh no, Jake, no!" She broke in upon him with a cry of consternation. "For pity's sake, no! Jake, I can't bear it! I cannot bear it! Jake, I beseech you, leave him alone now! Oh, do leave him alone! You--you can punish me in any other way. I'll bear anything but that--anything but that!"

Piteously she besought him, shaken to the soul by the grim purport of his speech. She did not flinch from him now. Rather she appealed to him as one in sore straits, pouring out her entreaty with all that remained of her quivering strength.

And her words made an impression upon him of which she was instantly aware. His hands still held her, but the tension went out of his grasp. He looked at her with eyes that were no longer hard, eyes that held a dawning compassion.

"Reckon you're the last person that deserves punishing," he said at length, and in his voice she fancied she caught an echo of the old frank kindliness. "You've been the victim all through. Reckon you've suffered more than enough already."

She hid her face from him with a sudden rush of tears. Something in his words pierced straight to her heart.

"You don't know me!" she sobbed. "Oh, you don't know me!"

She drew herself away and sank down in the chair by the fire where once she had poured out all her troubles to him.

He did not kneel beside her now. He stood in silence, and as he stood his hands slowly clenched and he thrust them into his pockets.

He spoke at last, but it was with a restraint that made the words sound cold. "Maybe I know you better than you think. I know you've cared for the wrong man ever since I first met you. Guess I've known it all along, and it hasn't made things extra easy for either of us, more especially as he was utterly unworthy of you. But you're not to blame for that. It's just human nature. And you'd never have fallen in love with me anyway." He paused a moment. "I don't see you're to blame any for that either," he said, and she knew by his voice that he had turned away from her. "Anyway, I'm not blaming you. And if--if punishing Saltash means punishing you too--well,--even though he's a skunk and a blackguard--I reckon--I'll let him go."

He was moving to the door with the words. They came half-strangled as if something within rebelled fiercely against their utterance.

He reached the door and stopped with his back to her.

"You'd better get your mother to join you here to-morrow," he said. "I'm sleeping with The Hundredth Chance to-night. He's been below par lately, and I'm kind of worried about him."

He opened the door. He was on the point of squarely passing through when quickly, tremulously, she stopped him.

"Jake, please--please wait a moment! I must--I must--Jake!"

He closed the door again and turned round, but he did not come back or even look at her. There was a hint of doggedness about him, almost as though he waited against his will.

She stood up. Something in his attitude made it difficult, painfully difficult, to speak. She strove for self-control. "You--are going to--to forgive me?" she said quiveringly.

He glanced up momentarily, a grim flicker as of a smile about his mouth. "For what you haven't done, and never could do? It would be mighty generous of me, wouldn't it?" he said.

She moved a step towards him. "I--might have done it. I--so nearly--did it," she said, in distress. "I don't deserve any kindness from you, Jake. I--don't know how to thank you for it."

He made a sharp gesture with one hand. "If I've given you more than bare justice," he said, "put it to my credit! Make allowance for me next time!"

Something rose in her throat. She stood for a moment battling with it. Bare justice! Had she ever given him so much as that? And he rewarded her with this blind generosity that would not even be aware of her sin.

Trembling, she drew nearer to him. She stretched out a quivering hand. "Jake," she said, and the tears were running down her face. "I--will try--to be worthy of your--goodness to me."

He took the hand, gripping it with a force that made her wince. "Shucks, my girl!" he said, with a gruffness oddly uncharacteristic of him. "That's nothing. Be worthy of yourself!"

And with that abruptly he let her go, turned and left her. She knew by the finality of his going that she would see him no more that night.