The Hundredth Chance

"Maud, darling, wait a minute! I haven't finished. You took my breath away. But listen a moment! This sacrifice won't be necessary, I am sure, I am sure. You couldn't marry that horsey creature. You would never bear life with him. You are not adaptable enough nor experienced enough. You could never endure it. It would be infinitely worse than poor Giles and his tantrums. No, but listen, dear! If you really feel you must go, I think a way of escape is going to be offered to you and poor little Bunny too. I have had a letter from your Uncle Edward, and he is coming expressly to see you both."

"Mother!" Maud almost tore herself free, gazing at her with that in her eyes that was to haunt Mrs. Sheppard for many days. "Oh, why, why, why didn't you tell me before? When did the letter come?"

"It was last night, darling. You were such a long way off-right at the top of the house-and I was too tired to go after you-I meant to tell you first thing, dear; but when I went to look for you after breakfast, you had gone. I am very sorry, but really it wasn't my fault. Still, you won't want to marry that vulgar person now, for I am sure your uncle means to make provision for you. He can well afford it. He is very wealthy."

But Maud resolutely put her mother's clinging arms away from her. "Jake is not vulgar," she said in a voice that sounded flat and tired. "And I have promised to marry him. Nothing can make any difference to that now."

"My dear! What nonsense! I will get Giles to talk to him. How can you dream of such a thing, you who might have married Lord Saltash-and may yet! There is no knowing. Maud, dearest, you must be reasonable. You must indeed. This Jake Bolton may be a very excellent man, a very worthy man, but as a husband for you he would be utterly unsuitable. Surely you can see that for yourself! I can't imagine what possessed you to entertain such an idea for a moment. It was rank presumption on his part to dare to lift his eyes to you. Why, my dear, if you were to marry him your life would be an absolute thraldom. You mustn't think of it, dear child. You mustn't indeed. Why, he is not much better than a stable-boy. And his speech-"

"He has spent a good deal of his time among cowboys." Maud was still firmly trying to disengage herself. "His speech is more or less acquired. In any case-in any case-I have given him my promise. And you had better not let Mr. Sheppard interfere. It would be wise of him to keep out of Jake's way in fact. Jake knows exactly why I am prepared to marry him."

"My dear! You actually made a confidant of that dreadful person! How could you?"

"I wanted a man to protect me," Maud said very bitterly, "from the vindictive savagery of a brute!"

"Maud! How can you talk so? And I am sure Jake Bolton is much more of a brute than poor Giles. Why, look at the man! Look at his mouth, his eyes! They absolutely stamp him. Oh, dear, you're very headstrong and difficult. I begin to think Giles had some excuse after all. Perhaps your uncle will be able to manage you. You are quite beyond me."

Maud almost laughed. "When does he arrive?" she asked.

"This evening. He has asked us to reserve a room for him." Mrs. Sheppard had speedily developed a proprietary interest in the management of the hotel. Its welfare had become far more engrossing than that of her children.

Maud opened the door. "We shall be gone by that time. Jake's finding us rooms somewhere in the town."

Mrs. Sheppard held up her hands. "Jake finding rooms! Maud! how-scandalous! How do you know-you don't know! – that he is to be trusted?"

Maud made a brief gesture as of one who submits to the inevitable. "I trust him," she said, with that in her voice that stilled all further protest.

And with the words she passed with finality out of her mother's room, and went away upstairs without a backward glance.

Mrs. Sheppard sat down and shed a few petulant tears over her child's waywardness. "She never would listen to advice," was the burden of her lament. "If she had, she would have been happily married to Lord Saltash by now, and I might have had my house in London to-day. Oh dear, oh dear! Children are a bitter disappointment. They never can be made to see what is for their own good. She'll rue the day. I know she will. That trainer man has a will of iron. He'll break her to it like one of his horses. My poor, proud Maud!"

CHAPTER XV

THE CLOSED DOOR

A way of escape! A way of escape! How often during the hours of that endless day were those words in Maud's mind. They pursued her, they mocked her, whichever way she turned.

To Jake she merely very briefly imparted the news of her uncle's expected advent, and he received it without comment.

Bunny was much more speculative. He had been somewhat carried out of himself by the trend of events. It was Jake who whispered to him the amazing information of his sudden conquest, together with a very strenuous injunction not to talk to Maud about it unless she started the subject. And Maud, for some reason, could not start it. She went through all the necessary arrangements for their removal as one in a dream, scarcely speaking at all, responding very occasionally to Bunny's eager surmises respecting the unknown great-uncle who had never before taken the faintest interest in them, or shown himself so much as aware of their existence. His coming did not seem to matter to her. If indeed he were about to offer her a way of escape, it could not matter to her now. The door that led thither had closed, closed in the night, because her mother had been too tired to seek her out and tell her. The irony of it! The bitter cruel irony! She dared not pause to think.

Jake spent a great part of the day with them, working with a will to get them comfortably settled in their new quarters before the fall of the early dusk. After that, he remained to tea; but he devoted almost the whole of his attention to Bunny, who had in fact come to regard it as his right.

He left soon after, refusing to remain for the game of chess for which the lad earnestly pleaded.

"Not to-night, my son! Your brain has got to settle down. It's a deal too lively at present."

He bent over Bunny at parting, and whispered a few words that were inaudible to Maud. Then he turned to go.

She followed him to the outer door. The evening air smote chill and salt upon her, and she shivered involuntarily. Jake stopped to light a cigarette.

"I shan't be coming round to-morrow," he remarked then. "I shall be too busy. But I'll look in on Saturday, and tell you what I've fixed up. Will Sunday morning do all right if I can fix it?"

She shivered again. "Yes," she said.

"Say, you're cold," said Jake gently. "I mustn't keep you standing here. But you really meant that Yes?"

He looked at her, and she saw that his eyes were kindly. She held out her hand with a desperate little smile.

"Yes, I meant it."

His hand closed strongly, sustainingly, upon hers. "Guess there's nothing to be scared of," he said. "I'll take care of you, sure."

She felt a sudden lump rise in her throat, and found she could not speak.

"You're tired," said Jake softly. "Go and get a good night! It's what you're wanting."

"Yes, I am tired," she managed to say.

He still held her hand, looking at her with those strange, glittering eyes of his that seemed to pierce straight through all reserve and enter even the hidden inner sanctuary of her soul.

"What's this relative of yours like now?" he asked unexpectedly.

She shook her head. "I don't know. I've never seen him."

"Think he's coming along to offer you a home?" asked Jake.

Her face burned suddenly and hotly. For some reason she resented the question. "I don't know. How can I possibly know?"

"All right," said Jake imperturbably. "But in case he does, I'd like you to know that you are at liberty to do as you please in the matter. He'll tell you, maybe, that I'm not the man for you. That, I gather, is your mother's attitude. I sensed it from the beginning. If he does, and if you feel inclined to agree with him, you're free to do so, – free as air. But at the same time, I'd like you to remember that if you should accept anything from him and then not find it to your liking, you can still come along to me and follow out the original programme. I'm only wanting to make you comfortable."

He stopped; and in the pause that followed, Maud's other hand came out to him, shyly yet impulsively. "You are-such a good fellow!" she said with a catch in her voice.

"Oh, bunkum!" said Jake, in a tone of almost indignant remonstrance.

He held her two hands, and turning, spat forth his cigarette into the night; an action of primitive simplicity that filled Maud with a grotesque kind of horrified mirth, mirth so intense that she had a sudden, hysterical desire to laugh. She restrained herself with a desperate effort.

"Good night!" she said, with something of urgency in her voice. "It isn't bunkum at all. It's the truth. You-I think you are the best friend I ever had. But-but-"

"But-" said Jake.

She freed her hands with a little gasp. "Nothing," she said. "Good night!"

It was a final dismissal, and as such he accepted it. She heard the steady fall of his feet as he went away, and with his going she managed to recover her composure.

There was an undeniable greatness about him that seemed to dwarf all criticism. She realized that to measure him by ordinary standards was out of the question, and as she reviewed all that he had done for her that day a gradual warmth began to glow in her. There was no other friend in all her world who would have extended to her so firm or so comforting a support in her hour of adversity. And if her face burned at the memory of her own utter collapse in his presence, she could but recall with gratitude and with confidence the steadfast kindness with which he had upheld her. She had gone to him in anguished despair, and he had offered her the utmost that he had to offer. As to his motives for so doing, she had a feeling that he had deliberately refrained from expressing them. He wanted her and he wanted Bunny. Perhaps he was lonely. Perhaps years of wandering had created in him a longing for home and domestic comfort.

But she did not speculate very deeply upon that subject. She felt that she could not. There was something in the man's nature, something colossal of which she was but dimly aware, and which she had no means of gauging, that checked her almost at the outset. She found herself standing before a closed door, a door which she had neither the audacity nor the desire to attempt to open. She was even a little fearful lest one day that door should open to her of its own accord and she should be constrained to enter whether she would or not.