The Dust of Conflict

“The one thing I resent is that it apparently sets you thinking,” she said. “I can’t be satisfied with less than I offer you, Tony, and the man who loves me must believe in me implicitly. I did not get angry when you would not share your troubles with me.”

Tony softened. “I’m sorry, Violet, but the fact is I don’t feel very pleased about anything to-night. Nobody could expect it!”

“Is it Davidson’s death that is troubling you?”

She looked at him with a curious intentness, for Tony’s face was haggard, and a horrible fear came upon the man as she did so. Her gaze disconcerted him, and he fancied he saw suspicion in it. Accordingly he clutched at the first excuse that presented itself.

“Not altogether! It’s Bernard,” he said.

Another irretrievable step was taken. Tony had waited as usual for events, instead of choosing a path to be adhered to in spite of them. As the result he was forced into one by which he had not meant to go, and it led rapidly down hill. Violet Wayne, however, straightened herself a trifle in her chair.

“Tony,” she said, “it is quite impossible that you should think what your words suggest.”

The man’s face flushed, for her quiet assurance stirred the bitterness of jealousy that had hitherto lain dormant in him, and again he answered without reflection, eager only to justify himself.

“When a man borrows money, and goes out at night to meet another who may have been blackmailing him, and then disappears when that man is found dead with marks of violence on him, what would anybody think?” he said.

“Blackmailing him!” said Violet Wayne, and then sat very still a moment while the blood crept into her pale cheek, for the meaning of one or two vague allusions she had heard concerning Lucy Davidson flashed upon her.

“It slipped out. Of course, I should not have mentioned it to you.”

“You have done so, but the thing is so utterly hateful that it carries its refutation with it”; and there was a portentous sparkle in the girl’s eyes as she fixed them upon him.

Tony saw it, and trembled inwardly. He had been favored with glimpses of Violet Wayne’s inner self before, and could discern the difference between a becoming prudery and actual abhorrence.

“Still,” he said slowly, realizing that he was committed, “he disappeared. Of course, the affair may not be as black as it looks, and perhaps he was driven into it. Men with really good intentions are forced into doing what they never meant to now and then.”

Violet Wayne laughed a little scornful laugh. “Isn’t the cowardice which leads a man into meanness he is ashamed of more contemptible than bold iniquity?”

“Well,” said Tony, “I don’t quite know. I don’t worry over those questions, but it seems to me there is something to be said for the man who does what he shouldn’t when he can’t help it.”

“Can’t help it?”

“Yes,” said Tony. “I mean when it would only cause trouble to everybody if he did the correct thing.”

The girl looked at him curiously. “I think we had better abandon that subject, Tony,” she said. “We will go back to the other. Your friend could have had no hand in Davidson’s death – because he is your friend, and because I know what kind of man he is. Is there nothing you could do to clear him?”

Tony shook his head. “No; I wish I could,” he said.

“Still, you see, it doesn’t matter quite so much in his case. He leaves nobody to worry about it behind him, and had no prospects. He told me he was going out to try his fortune in another land, anyway.”

“It doesn’t matter! Is it nothing that he should go out with a brand of that kind upon him?”

“Well,” said Tony reflectively, “I really don’t think it counts for very much where he is going to. You see, they are not remarkably particular in America.”

Violet Wayne rose. “You are not in a pleasant mood tonight, Tony, and I am tired. We will not stay here and vex each other.”

Tony endeavored to slip his arm about her. “I know I’m a bad-tempered beast now and then. I can only tell you that you are ever so much too good for me again.”

The girl did very little to repulse him, in fact scarcely more than lift her eyes, but Tony’s arm fell to his side. Then she smiled somewhat curiously. “Don’t make too determined an effort to convince me,” she said. “I should not like to believe you.”

She went out, leaving Tony alone with a horror of himself. He realized that there could be no turning back now. He must go on by the path he had taken, and standing with hand clenched on the mantle he groaned a little.

V – APPLEBY MAKES A FRIEND

IT was blowing a moderate gale, and the “Aurania,” steaming at full speed into it, rolled viciously. A half-moon shone out low down beneath wisps of whirling cloud, and the big black seas shook their frothing crests high aloft against the silvery light as they swept in long succession out of the night. The steamer met them with dipping forecastle from which the spray blew aft in clouds, lurched and hove her streaming bows high above the froth, rolled until one rail seemed level with the sea, and slid down into the hollow, out of which her head swung slowly up to meet the onslaught of the next. Bitter spray was flying everywhere, her decks ran water; but it was only between foremast and forecastle head she shipped it in cascades, and little groups of passengers stood where they could find shelter. They had finished their dinner with some difficulty, and because the vessel rolled so that it was not an easy task to keep one’s seat or footing had found their attempts to amuse themselves below a waste of effort.

Bernard Appleby stood a little apart from one group of them under the lee of a deck-house. Tony had lent him fifty pounds, and he had taken the cheapest berth obtainable which would permit him to travel saloon. This was apparently a reckless extravagance, but Appleby had inherited a certain shrewdness from his father, who had risen from the ranks, and decided that the risk was warranted. He would, he told himself, certainly make acquaintances, and possibly a friend, during the passage, while he knew that the majority of those who travelled by those vessels were Americans who had acquired a competence by commerce, and could therefore direct him how to find an opening for his energies if they felt inclined. He had already made the acquaintance of five or six of them, and acquired a good deal of information about the great Republic, which did not, however, promise to be of much use to him.

Still, he was by no means dejected. Bernard Appleby had a good courage, and there was in him a longing for adventure which he had hitherto held in check. He knew that the gates of the old life were closed against him, but this caused him no regret, for he had not the least desire to go back to it. Indeed, he wondered how he had borne the monotonous drudgery he detested, and practised an almost Spartan self-denial so long, and it was with a curious content he looked forward into the night over the plunging bows. The throb of hard-driven engines, roar of wind, and crash of shattered seas that fell back seething from the forecastle, stirred the blood in him. It all spoke of stress and effort, but there was a suggestion of triumph in it, for while the white-crested phalanxes arrayed themselves against her the great ship that man had made went on, battered and streaming, but irresistible. Appleby felt that there were in him capacities for effort and endurance equal to those of other men who had fought their way to fortune, if he could find a field for them.

Then he became interested in his companions. There were two women among them, and he could see the figure of one silhouetted against the blue and silver of the night when the steamer rolled. It was a dainty figure in spite of the big cape that fluttered about it; while the loose wisps of hair that blew out from under the little cap in no way detracted from the piquancy of the half-seen face and head. Appleby recognized the girl as Miss Nettie Harding, whom he sat opposite to at the saloon table.

“Keep a good hold, Miss Harding!” said one of the men beside her. “This boat is trying to roll her funnels out of her, and it seems to me quite possible for one to pitch right over the rail.”

The girl’s laugh reached Appleby through the roar of the gale, as she stood, poised lightly, with one hand on the guardrail that ran along the deck-house, and the deck slanting like a roof beneath her, while the white chaos of a shattered sea swirled by, as it seemed, directly beneath her. Then she fell against the deck-house as the steamer rolled back again until her streaming plates on that side were high above the brine, and a woman said, “Can’t you be careful, Nettie?”

There was a crash beneath the dipping bows, a great cloud of spray whirled up, and a man’s voice said: “Hold on, everybody! She has gone slap into an extra big one.”

There was a few seconds interval while the wet deck rose up before the roll began, and then the “Aurania” swung back with a vicious jerk. Appleby heard a faint cry, and saw Miss Harding reel away from the deck-house. The sea lay apparently straight beneath her, with the steamer’s slanted rail a foot or two above it. Almost simultaneously he sprang, and felt the girl’s shoulder under his hand. How he span her round and thrust himself behind her he did not know, but next moment he struck the rail a heavy blow, and the girl crushed him against it. He afterwards decided that they could scarcely have fallen over it; but that fact was not apparent just then, and flinging himself on hands and knees he dragged the girl down with him. As he did so two of her companions came sliding down to their assistance, and the four glissaded back to the deck-house amidst several inches of very cold water as the following roll began. Appleby helped Miss Harding to her feet, and into the lighted companion, where she turned to him, flushed, gasping, and dripping, with a grateful smile.

“That was awfully good of you,” she said. “I should have been hurt against the rail, anyway, if you hadn’t got in front of me. But your face is bleeding. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

Appleby said he was not hurt in the least, though his shoulder felt unpleasantly sore; and leaving her with an elder lady who came in with the rest he hastened to his state-room, where he struggled into dry clothing, an operation which is not altogether simple on board a rolling steamer. There was also a lacerated bruise on his forehead which required some little attention, and while he was occupied with it a man who tapped upon the door came in. He was apparently of middle age, and had a shrewd, lean face, with blue eyes that had a twinkle in them. He sat down and waited until Appleby turned to him. Then he held out a card.

“I guess you will know my name, but there’s my address. Put it in your wallet,” he said.

“Mr. Cyrus P. Harding,” said Appleby. “What can I do for you?”

The man laughed pleasantly. “That is rather what I should ask you. Anyway, I want to thank you for the help you rendered my daughter.”

Appleby made a little whimsical gesture. “The conventional answer fits the case. It was nothing, sir.”

“Well,” said Harding dryly, “it would have been a good deal to me if my girl had gone out over the rail.”

“I don’t think that could have happened.”

Harding nodded, but the twinkle snowed more plainly in his eyes. “I don’t either, but I guess you were not quite sure of it then, and there are men who would have made the most of the thing. I understand you got between her and the rail, anyway, and that is what gave you the bruise on the head.”

“I’m glad I had so much sense. I have, however, had more serious bruises, and may get them again. I hope Miss Harding is none the worse.”

“No,” said Harding. “She seems quite pleased with herself. It’s an adventure, and she likes them. She will thank you to-morrow, and I don’t want to intrude on you. Still, you haven’t told me what to call you, and I hope to see more of you.”

Appleby was a young man, and the fall against the rail had shaken him, or his answer would have been more prompt and decided.

“Walthew Broughton,” he said.

Harding, he fancied, looked at him curiously, and then smiled as he went out; but there was a trifle more color than usual in Appleby’s face when he took up the card. It bore a business address in New York, but there was written across it, apparently in haste, “Sonoma, Glenwood, Hudson River.”