Chapter VIII: Mark Hilton

When the stage disappeared from her sight Inez was standing as motionless as a statue, with a look in her eyes which made Tom half afraid to go near her.

“Inez,” he said, at last, as she did not move. “Inez, shall we go now?”

“Bring up the mare,” was her answer.

He brought her, and pointing to the stump of a tree near by Inez continued, “Take her there.”

He took her there, and held out his hand to help Inez mount. She motioned him aside and seated herself in the saddle, which did not inconvenience her at all, as she was accustomed to it. She was shaking like a leaf, but did not know it or feel any fatigue as she started on the road, followed by Tom and Nero. The latter alone seemed to have any life in him. He was glad to go home and showed his gladness by barking and jumping alternately at Inez and the mare. At last, as no attention was paid to him, it seemed to occur to his canine sagacity that something was wrong and had been all the time, and he, too, subsided into silence and trotted demurely by Inez’s side. Once when a feeling of dizziness came over her, making her sway in the saddle, Tom, whose eyes were constantly upon her, put his arm upon her waist to steady her. Recoiling from him as from a viper she said, “Don’t touch me, Tom Hardy, nor speak to me until this mood is past. Your revolver is in my pocket. Father says there is murder in my blood, and I might kill you.”

Tom fell back behind her, while she straightened herself and sat erect as an Indian, but made no effort to guide the horse, who took her own gait, a rather slow one, with which Tom could easily keep pace. What his thoughts were during that long walk it were difficult to guess. His hands were in his pockets and his head was down, hiding his face from Inez, who glanced at him once as the mare stopped a moment under the shade of a tree and he passed on in advance. If, as her father had said, there was murder in her blood, it was boiling now and had been since she bounded from the coach.

“I could rid the world of him so easily,” she thought, and her hand went into her pocket, but with a sob which seemed to rend her heart in two, she drew it back, and whispered, “I have loved him so much. I cannot harm him now.”

They had reached a point from which the cottage could be seen, with her father on the piazza looking in their direction. At sight of him Tom turned to Inez and said, “You are not to despise your father as you do me. I led him into it. I am to blame.”

Inez made no answer, but her face softened a little; then hardened again when, as she drew near the cottage, she saw her father coming to meet her. He had felt all the morning that the crisis he had so long expected was close at hand. The net of sin he had woven was closing round him and, but for his daughter, who believed in him so fully, he did not care how soon it enfolded him and he stood unmasked before the world which now respected him so highly.

The reader has, of course, long suspected that Mr. Rayborne and Long John and Mark Hilton were one. How he came to be what he was he could scarcely tell. He had loved Helen Tracy devotedly. He sometimes thought he loved her still in spite of the bitterness which had sprung up between them, he hardly knew how or why, as he looked back upon it. She had thought herself safe with him because he knew the worst there was of her. But because he knew it he was, after the first few months of feverish adoration were over, more on the alert, perhaps, than he should have been. He did not trust her and she knew it and grew restive under his watchful surveillance. He had no right to distrust her,—no right to be jealous,—no right to criticise her actions, and because he did, she, in a spirit of retaliation, taunted him with his birth and position and poverty, until he could endure it no longer and left her, half resolving, before a week was passed, to go back, for his little baby daughter had, if possible, a stronger hold upon him than her mother. Then his pride came up and he said, “I’ll stay away till she sends for me. She knows where I am.” But she did not send, and from some source he heard she was getting a divorce. This hurt him more than all the hard words she had ever said to him, as it cut him off from her forever. But there was still the baby. “For her sake I’ll be a man and some day I’ll go to her and tell her I am her father,” he thought.

Alas for the mistakes which change the current of one’s whole life. Chancing upon a Chicago paper in which were comments upon the recent divorce of “the beautiful Mrs. Hilton, so well known in fashionable circles,” there was mention made of her recent bereavement in the death of her little girl. Mark could not remember when he had cried before, but he did so now. Everything was swept from him,—his wife, his home, and his infant daughter.

“God has turned against me, if there is a God,” he said, “and I care nothing what becomes of me how.”

For days he was in a most despondent mood, scarcely eating or sleeping, and paying but little attention to anything passing around him. Jeff, who had come with him from Chicago, roused him at last by suggesting that they go to the mines of Montana. Although so young, Jeff was beginning to have a great influence over Mark, who felt so discouraged and hopeless that it was pleasant to lean upon some one even if it were a boy. They went to Montana and into the mines, but on the day of the accident both were away at some distance from the scene of the disaster, prospecting for themselves. When the news reached them and Mark heard that he was supposed to be dead and that Jeff was missing, it was the latter who said, “Let’s _stay_ dead and missing, and take another name, and go on further west or south, and begin new with the world. I think it will be fun.”

The boy’s advice was followed, and John Rayborne and Tom Hardy went to California, where Anita Raffael came in Mark’s way. She was an orphan,—alone in the world,—with no home but the convent in which her father had placed her at school before he died. With Mark it was at first only pastime to talk to the little half Spanish, half Mexican, when he chanced to meet her. Then something in her lovely face and soft, dark eyes began to appeal to him, and he accidentally discovered how much he was to her, and how forlorn she was in her convent home, where she was like an imprisoned bird beating its wings against the bars of its cage in its efforts to escape. No one was unkind to her; no one could be, she was so gentle and sweet. She was unhappy because she wanted freedom, and when Mark asked her to be his wife, she took him gladly, and was so loving, and happy and gay, that he never repented the act. She was not like Helen, nor was he like the Mark Hilton who had won the famous beauty. He was John Rayborne, and Anita was his wife, and their home was in the Yosemite, where she persuaded him to go, for she loved the wild, mountain scenery and made their cottage a bower of beauty, with her skillful hands and perfect taste. When she heard of a stage robbery she would get furious and stamp her little feet and denounce the robbers in her broken English, while Mark laughed at her excitement and asked, “What would you do if I were to take to the road some day?”

“Kill you first, and then die myself,” she answered, with no more thought that such a thing could be than Mark himself had then.

For a time he drove the stage in the summer between Milton and the valley, and was once or twice stopped on the road when Jeff was with him on the box. Thus, both “knew the ropes,” as Jeff said, criticising the manner of the attack and pointing out a better way, while Mark laughed at him, and without meaning what he said, suggested that he try it.

Giving up stage-coaching, he became a guide, and then——. There was a deep, dark gulf after the then, and he always shuddered when he recalled the day when he joined Jeff in what he called a mere lark. Jeff had tried it alone, and, unknown to Mr. Hilton, to see if he could do it. He had profited by what he had seen on the road and laid his plans carefully as to what he would do in certain circumstances. As a boy he had picked pockets for fun, and he stopped the coach on the same principle, finding that the gymnastic performances of his youth were a help to him in the rapidity with which he could do his work and disappear. The stage which was the object of his first attempt was chosen because there was only one passenger in it, a clergyman, who had prayed aloud while he was being searched.

“The old cove’s watch was silver, and he had only twenty-five dollars in his purse, and I gave them back to him. I never meant to take a blessed thing, and my revolver wasn’t loaded,” he said to Mark to whom he related his adventure.

The boy, who had horrified Uncle Zacheus by saying he’d like to be a robber and had astonished Alice by offering to pick her pocket, had developed into a man with a will so strong and a manner so enticing that Mark was like clay in his hands. It was, however, some time before he was persuaded to try what he could do at a hold-up. He found he could do a great deal. The excitement and danger were exhilarating, especially when Jeff was with him and by his wonderful activity bewildered the passengers until they could have sworn there were half a dozen men instead of one demanding their money. It was exhilarating, too, to help search for the brigands and hear all that was said of them and make suggestions as to the best means of capturing them. The downward grade once entered upon, it was comparatively easy to continue it until he was steeped in crime so deep that to go back seemed impossible. Sometimes when Anita’s arms were around his neck he would put her from him quickly with a feeling that he was not worthy to touch one so pure and innocent and who trusted him so implicitly. It would kill her if she knew the truth, but she never should know it, he thought, and for her sake and his daughter’s he was deciding to quit his mode of life when her sudden death paralyzed for a time every faculty of his mind and left him without the ballast he needed.

Returning home late one night after an absence of two or three days he had been talking with Jeff of a recent robbery and the necessity there was to keep quiet for some time to come, the country was so thoroughly aroused and so large a price was offered for the capture of the men. A slight sound, more like the cry of a wounded animal than of a human being, attracted his attention, and hurrying into the next room he found Anita senseless upon the floor. She had been sitting up after Inez was in bed hoping he might come home and had fallen asleep so that she did not hear him when he came in; neither did he see her, or suspect that she was in the next room. His voice must have awakened her, but what she heard he never knew. That it was enough to kill her he was sure. Everything which he could do for her he did, but although she recovered her consciousness she never spoke again except with her eyes which followed him constantly and were full of the horror she could not express. After she died he remained at home the entire summer, but when the next season came round Tom persuaded him to take up the old life, which would give him excitement if not peace of mind. Many were the ruses resorted to to throw people off the track should they ever chance upon it. The attack of Mark upon a stage and Tom’s defence was one of them, planned by Tom, who was ringleader in everything. No one suspected them and their popularity hurt Mark nearly as much as suspicion would have done. But nothing touched him like Inez’s faith in him. She was his idol, on whom he lavished all the love he had ever given to Helen and Anita. Of her engagement he secretly disapproved. That Tom would leave nothing undone to make her happy he knew, but that his beautiful young daughter should marry a man for whose capture thousands of dollars were offered was terrible. But he was powerless. To betray Tom was to condemn himself, and either would kill Inez as her mother was killed.

And so matters were drifting when chance threw Fanny Prescott in his way and something about her reminded him of the days when he had walked with Helen Tracy through the woods and pastures of Ridgefield, and when Uncle Zacheus had believed in him implicitly, disclaiming all taint of heredity which might have come to him from ’Tina. He had no thought that Fanny was his daughter, but she was like the people he used to know,—like Helen and Alice and Craig, and she sent his thoughts back to them with a vividness which almost made him feel that he was like them again. He would not harm her, nor have her harmed.

“It’s no use talking,” he said, when Tom unfolded his plan of stopping the coach in which she was to leave the valley. “I’m tired of it all, and would give half the remainder of my life if the scroll could be unrolled and all the black writing erased.”

To this resolution he stood firm, wondering what he could do to prevent the catastrophe. It came to him like an inspiration to send Inez with the driver, knowing that with her tall figure she would be readily seen from the point where Tom would probably stand concealed and make his observations. That something might happen he feared when he found that Nero had gone after the coach. He would recognize Tom and springing upon him in his delight, as he had a habit of doing, he might unmask him and the secret be revealed. To threaten to do this himself was one thing, and to have it done was another, and he was waiting impatiently for the result when he at last saw Inez coming up the path on the bay mare. Her face was pallid as a corpse and her eyes so unnaturally large and black that he could see their blackness in the distance and felt himself shrinking from meeting them. Tom was near her, with his head bent down and his feet dragging heavily as if walking were difficult for him.

“I must face it,” Mark said to himself, and hurrying to meet them he asked what had happened.

“Don’t ask _me_, and don’t touch me,” Inez answered, motioning him away. “Tom, your colleague, will tell you.”

She sprang from the horse and went into the house without looking at her father, who turned to Tom for an explanation.