How long she gazed into the convulsed face of the man who had squared himself before her, mattered little measured by the tick of the watch in her belt. Into the mental anguish endured a life's agony had been pressed. It could not have been more than twenty seconds, and yet it marked the birth of a new being within the soul of a woman. She had been searching only for her own happiness. The search had entangled another in the meshes of her life. Too much had been lived in the past two weeks to be undone by a word and forgotten in a day. She had attempted, coward-like, to run.
She saw now in the consuming flame of a great sorrow that the man before her had some rights which the purest woman must reckon with. He might be a burglar. At least it was her duty to try to save him from himself. Her surrender of the past weeks was a tie that would bind them through all eternity. There was no chemistry of earth or heaven or hell that could erase its memories. Her life was no longer her own—this man's was bound with hers. She must face the facts. She would make one honest, brave effort to save him. To do this she would give all without reservation—pride must be cast to the winds.
Her voice suddenly changed to tears.
“Oh, Jim, you do love me, don't you?”
His body slowly relaxed, his eyes shifted, and he shrugged his square shoulders.
“What'ell did I marry you for?”
“Tell me—do you?” she demanded.
“You know that I love you. What do you ask me such a fool question for? I love you with a love that can kill. Do you hear me? That's why you're not going anywhere without me.”
There was no mistaking the depth of his passion. She trembled to realize its power and yet it was the lever by which she must move him.
“Then you've got to give this life up. You're young and brave and strong. You can earn an honest living. You haven't been in this long—I feel it, I know it. Have you?”
“No!”
“How long?”
“Eight months.”
“Oh, Jim, dear, you must give it up now for my sake. I'll work with you and work for you. I'll teach, I'll sew, I'll scrub, I'll slave for you day and night—if you're only clean and honest.”
He turned on her fiercely.
“Cut it, Kid—cut it! I'm out for the stuff now. I'm going to get rich and I'm going to get rich QUICK—that's all that's the matter with me!”
“But, Jim,” she broke in tenderly—“you did earn an honest living. Your workshop proves that.”
“I've used that to improve my tools and melt the swag the past year. The shop's all right.”
“But you did make a successful invention?”
“You bet I did,” he answered savagely, “and that's why I quit the business. Three years ago I took down a big automobile and worked out an improvement in the transmission that settled the question of heavy draft machines. I took it to a lawyer in Wall Street and he took it to a man that had money. Between the two of 'em, they didn't do a thing to me! They were going to put my patent on the market and make me a millionaire. God, I was crazy——”
He paused and squared his shoulders with a deep breath.
“They put it on the market all right and they made some millionaires—but I wasn't one of 'em, Kiddo! They got me to sign a paper that skinned me out of every dollar as slick as you can pull an eel through your fingers. I hired another lawyer and gave him half he could get to beat 'em. He fought like a tiger and two days before I met you he got his verdict and they paid it—just ten thousand dollars. Think of it—ten thousand dollars! And each of them got a million cash. They sold it outright for two millions and a half. My lawyer got five thousand dollars, and I got five thousand dollars. That's mine, anyhow. It's in that bag there. I'm working on a new set of tools now in my shop. I'm going to get that money back from the two thieves who stole it from me by law. I'll take it by force, the way they took it. If I can croak them both in the fight—well, there'll be two thieves less to rob honest men and women, that's all.”
“Oh, Jim!” Mary gasped, lifting a trembling hand to her throat as if to tear open her collar. “You're mad. You don't know what you're saying——”
“Don't fool yourself, Kiddo,” he interrupted fiercely. “My eyes are open now, and I've got a level head back of 'em, too. I've doped it all out. You ought to 'a' heard that lawyer give me a few lessons in business when he'd skinned me and salted my hide. He was good-natured and confidential. He seemed to love me. `Business is war, sonny,' he piped, between the puffs of the big Havana cigar he was smoking—`war! war to the knife! We got you off your guard and put the knife into you at the right minute—that's all. Don't take it so hard! Invent something else and keep your eyes peeled. You ought to love us for giving you an education in business early in life. You're young. You won't have to learn your lesson again. Go to work, sonny, in your shop, and turn out another new tool for the advancement of trade!'”
He paused and smiled grimly.
“I've done it, too! I've just finished a little invention that'll crack any safe in New York in twenty minutes after I touch it.”
He broke into a dry laugh, sat down and deliberately lighted a fresh cigarette.
She studied his face with beating heart. Was he lost beyond all hope of reformation? Or was this the boyish bravado of an amateur criminal poisoned by the consciousness of wrong? She tried to think. She felt the red blood pounding through her heart and beating against her brain in suffocating waves of despair.
In vivid flashes the scene of her marriage but two weeks ago, came back in tormenting memories. The solemn words she had spoken kept ringing like the throb of a funeral bell far up in the star-lit heavens——
“I, MARY ADAMS, TAKE THEE, JAMES ANTHONY, TO MY WEDDED HUSBAND, TO HAVE AND TO HOLD... FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH, AND TO OBEY, TILL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE; AND THERETO I GIVE THEE MY TROTH.”
The last solemn prayer kept ringing its deep-toned message over all——
“GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON, GOD THE HOLY GHOST, BLESS, PRESERVE, AND KEEP YOU; THE LORD MERCIFULLY WITH HIS FAVOR LOOK UPON YOU, AND FILL YOU WITH ALL SPIRITUAL BENEDICTION AND GRACE; THAT YE MAY SO LIVE TOGETHER IN THIS LIFE, THAT IN THE WORLD TO COME YE MAY HAVE LIFE EVERLASTING. AMEN.”
In a sudden rush of desperate pity for herself and the man to whom she was bound, she dropped on her knees by his side, slipped her arms about his neck and clung to him, sobbing.
“Oh, Jim, Jim, man,” she whispered hoarsely. “I can't see you sink into hell like this! Have you no real love in your heart for the woman who has given all? Have mercy on me! Have mercy! You can't mean the hideous things you've just said! You've been crazed by your losses. You're just a boy yet. Life is all before you. You're only twenty-four. I'm just twenty-four. We can both begin anew. I've never lived until these past weeks—neither have you. You couldn't drag me down into a life of crime——”
Her head sank and her voice choked into silence. He made no movement of his hand to soothe her. His voice was not persuasive. It was hard and cold.
“I'm not asking you to help me on any of my jobs,” he said. “I'm the financier of the family. You can say the prayers and keep house.”
“Knowing that you are a criminal? That your hands are stained with human blood?”
“Why not?” he snapped, the blue blaze flashing again in his eyes. “Suppose you were the wife of the gentlemanly lawyer-thief who robbed me, using the law instead of a jimmy—would you bother your little head about my business? Does his wife ask him where he got it? Does anybody know or care? He lives on Fifth Avenue now. He bought a palace up there the day after he got my money. We passed it on the way to the Park the day I met you. A line of carriages was standing in front and finely dressed women were running up the red carpet that led down the stoop and under the canopy to the curb. Did any of the gay dames who smiled and smirked at that thief's wife ask how he got the money to buy the house? Not much. Would they have cared if they had known? They'd have called him a shrewd lawyer—that's all! Do you reckon his wife worries about such tricks of trade? Why should mine worry?”
She gripped his hand with desperate pleading.
“Oh, Jim, dear, you can't be a criminal at heart! I wouldn't have loved you if it had been true. I can't believe it! I won't believe it. You're posing. You don't mean this. You can't mean it. You're going to return every dishonest dollar that you've taken.”
“You don't know what you're talking about!”
He closed his jaw with a snap and leaned close in eager, tense excitement.
“Do you know how much junk I've piled into a little box in my shop the past three months?”
“I don't care—I don't want to know!”
“You've got to care—you've got to know now! It's worth a hundred thousand dollars, do you hear? A hundred thousand dollars! It would take me a life-time to earn that on a salary. In two weeks after we get back to New York with my new invention that lawyer advised me to make, I'll go through his house—I'll open his safe, I'll take every diamond, every pearl and every scrap of stolen jewelry his wife's wearing. And I won't leave a fingerprint on the window sill. I've got two of his servants working for me.
“In six months I'll be worth half a million. In a year I'll pull off the big haul I'm planning and I'll be a millionaire. We'll retire from business then—just like they did. We'll build our marble palace down at Bay Ridge and our yacht will nod in the harbor. We'll spend our summers in Europe when we like and every snob and fool in New York will fall over himself to meet me. And every woman will envy my wife. I'm young, Kiddo, but I've cut my eye teeth. You've just been born. I'm running the business end of this thing. You think you can reform me. You can—AFTER I'VE MADE OUR PILE. I'll join the church then and sing louder than that lawyer. But if you think you're going to stop my business career at this stage of the game—forget it, forget it!”
He sprang up with a quick movement of his tense body and threw her off. She rose and watched his restless steps as he paced the floor. Her mind was numb as if from a mortal blow. She brushed the tangled ringlets of brown hair back from her forehead, drew the handkerchief from her belt and wiped the perspiration from her brow.
Before she could gather the strength to speak, he wheeled suddenly and confronted her:
“I've known from the first, Kiddo, that you're not the kind to help in this business. I don't expect it. I don't ask it. I need a ranch like this down here for storage. I'm going to take the old woman into partnership with me.”
She started back in an instinctive recoil of horror.
“Your MOTHER?”
He nodded.
“Yep!”
She drew a step nearer and peered into his set face.
“YOU WILL MAKE YOUR OWN MOTHER A CRIMINAL?”
“Sure!” he growled. “That's what I came down here for.”
“She won't do it!”
“She won't, eh?” he sneered. “Look at this hog pen!”
He swept the bare, wretched cabin with a gesture of contempt and shrugged his shoulders.
“Look at the rags she's wearing,” he went on savagely. “When we talk it over tonight with that five thousand dollars in gold shining in her eyes—I'm going to show her a lot o' things she never saw before, Kiddo—take it from me!”
She answered in slow, even tones:
“I can't live with you, Jim.”
The blue flames beneath the drooping eyelids were leaping now in the yellow glare of the candle's rays. The muscles of his body were knotted. His voice came from his throat a low growl.
“Do you know who you're fooling with?”
The blood of a clean life flamed in her cheeks and nerved her with reckless daring. Her figure stiffened and her voice rang with defiant scorn:
“Yes. I know at last—a thief who would drag his own mother down to hell with him!”
Not a muscle of his powerful body moved; his face was a stolid mask. He threw his words slowly through his teeth:
“Now you listen to me. You're my wife. I didn't invent this marriage game. I played it as I found it. And that's the way you're going to play it. You're good and sweet and clean—I like that kind, and I won't have no other. You're mine. MINE, do you hear! Mine for life—body and soul—`FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH'——”
He paused and thrust his massive jaw squarely into her face:
“`——AND OBEY!'” he hissed, “`UNTIL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE'—you said it, didn't you?”
“Yes——”
“Well?”
She turned from him with sudden aversion:
“I didn't know what you were——”
“Nobody ever knows BEFORE they're married!” he broke in savagely. “You took your chances. I took mine—`FOR BETTER FOR WORSE.' We'll just say now it's for worse and let it go at that!”
The little body stiffened.
“I'll die first!”
He held her gaze without words, searching the depths of her being with the cold, blue flame in his drooping eyes. If she were bluffing, it was easy. She could talk her head off for all he cared. If she meant it, he might have his hands full unless he mastered the situation at once and for all time.
There was no sign of yielding to his iron will. An indomitable soul had risen in her frail body and defied him. His decision was instantaneous.
“Oh, you'll die sooner than live with me—eh?”
There was something hideous in the cold venom with which he drawled the words. Her heart fairly stopped its beating. With the last ounce of courage left, she held her place and answered:
“Yes!”
With the sudden crouch of a tiger he drew his clenched fist to strike.
“Forget it!”
She sprang back with terror, her body trembling in pitiful weakness.
“You snivelling little coward!” he growled.
“Oh, Jim, Jim,” she faltered,—“you—you—couldn't strike me!”
A step nearer and he stood over her, his big, flat head thrust forward, his eyes gleaming, his muscles knotted in blind rage.
“No—I won't STRIKE you,” he whispered. “I'll just KILL you—that's all!”
With the leap of an infuriated beast he sprang on her and his sharp fingers gripped her throat.
The world went black and she felt herself sinking into a bottomless abyss. With maniac energy she tore his hands from her throat and the warm blood streamed from the gash his nails had torn.
“Jim! Jim! For God's sake!” she moaned in abject terror.
With a sullen growl, his fingers, sharp as a leopard's claw, found her neck again and closed with a grip that sent the blood surging to her brain and her eyes starting from their sockets.
The one hideous thought that flashed through her mind was that he was going to plunge his claws into her eyes and blind her for life. He could hold her his prisoner then. She made a last desperate struggle for breath, her hands relaxed, she drooped and sank to the couch toward which he had hurled her in the first rush of his assault.
He lifted her and choked the slender neck again to make sure, loosed his hands and the limp body dropped on the couch and was still.
He stood watching her in silence, his arms at his side.
“Damned little fool!” he muttered. “I had to give you that lesson. The sooner the better!”
He waited with contemptuous indifference until she slowly recovered consciousness. She lay motionless for a long time and then slowly opened her eyes.
Thank God! They had not been gouged out as poor Ella's. She didn't mind the warm blood that soaked her collar and ran down her neck. If he would only spare her eyes. Blindness had been her one unspeakable terror. She closed her eyes again and silently prayed for strength. Her strength was gone. Wave after wave of sickening, cowardly terror swept her prostrate soul. She could feel his sullen presence—his body with its merciless strength towering above her. She dared not look. She knew that he was watching her with cruel indifference. A single cry, a single word and he might thrust his claw into her eyes and the light of the world would go out forever.
Her terror was too hideous; she could endure it no longer. She must move. She must try to save herself. She lifted her head and caught his steady, venomous gaze.
A quick, sliding movement of abject fear and she was erect, facing him and backing away silently.
He followed with even step, his gaze holding her as the eyes of a snake its victim. She would not let him know her terror of blindness. She preferred death a thousand times. If he would only kill her outright it was all the mercy she would ask.
“You—won't—kill—me—Jim!” she sobbed. “Please—please, don't kill me!”
He lifted his sharp finger and followed her toward the shed-room door, his voice the triumphant cry of an eagle above his prey.
“`FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE—UNTIL DEATH DO US PART!'”
Her heart gave a bound of cowardly joy. He had relented. He would not blind her. She could live. She was young and life was sweet.
She tried to smile her surrender through her tears as she backed slowly away from his ominous finger.
“Yes, I'll try—Jim. I'll try—`UNTIL DEATH DO US PART—UNTIL DEATH—UNTIL DEATH——'”
Her voice broke into a flood of tears as she blindly felt her way through the door and into the darkened room.
He paused on the threshold, held the creaking board shutter in his hand and broke into a laugh.
“The world ain't big enough for you to get away from me, Kiddo. Good night—a good little wife now and it's all right!”
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