第66章

"You remember?" she said, her hands resting negligently upon the back of the chair."Surely you remember?"She was not in the least afraid of him, but coolly watchful of him.This had been her habit with him since her return.She had seen little of him, except at table, when he was usually grimly laconic, though now and then she would hear him joking heavily with Sam Warden in the yard, or, with evidently humorous intent, groaning at Mamie over Eugene's health; but it had not escaped Ariel that he was, on his part, watchful of herself, and upon his guard with a wariness in which she was sometimes surprised to believe that she saw an almost haggard apprehension.

He did not answer her question, and it seemed to her, as she continued steadily to meet his hot eyes, that he was trying to hold himself under some measure of control; and a vain effort it proved.

"You go back to my house!" he burst out, shouting hoarsely."You get back there! You stay there!""No," she said, moving between him and the door."Mamie and I are going for a drive.""You go back to my house!" He followed her, waving an arm fiercely at her."Don't you come around here trying to run over me! You talk about your `affairs'! All you've got on earth is this two-for-a-nickel old shack over your head and a bushel-basket of distillery stock that you can sell by the pound for old paper!" He threw the words in her face, the bull-bass voice seamed and cracked with falsetto."Old paper, old rags, old iron, bottles, old clothes! You talk about your affairs! Who are you? Rothschild? You haven't GOT any affairs!"Not a look, not a word, not a motion of his escaped her in all the fury of sound and gesture in which he seemed fairly to envelop himself; least of all did that shaking of his--the quivering of jaw and temple, the tumultuous agitation of his hands --evade her watchfulness.

"When did you find this out?" she said, very quickly."After you became administrator?"He struck the back of the chair she had vacated a vicious blow with his open hand."No, you spendthrift! All there was TO your grandfather when you buried him was a basket full of distillery stock, I tell you! Old paper! Can't you hear me?

Old paper, old rags--"

"You have sent me the same income," she lifted her voice to interrupt; "you have made the same quarterly payments since his death that you made before.If you knew, why did you do that?"He had been shouting at her with the frantic and incredulous exasperation of an intolerant man utterly unused to opposition; his face empurpled, his forehead dripping, and his hands ruthlessly pounding the back of the chair; but this straight question stripped him suddenly of gesture and left him standing limp and still before her, pale splotches beginning to show on his hot cheeks.

"If you knew, why did you do it?" she repeated.

"You wrote me that my income was from dividends, and I knew and thought nothing about it;but if the stock which came to me was worthless, how could it pay dividends?""It did not," he answered, huskily."That distillery stock, I tell you, isn't worth the matches to burn it.""But there has been no difference in my income,"she persisted, steadily."Why? Can you explain that to me?""Yes, I can," he replied, and it seemed to her that he spoke with a pallid and bitter desperation, like a man driven to the wall."I can if you think you want to know.""I do.""I sent it."

"Do you mean from you own--"

"I mean it was my own money."

She had not taken her eyes from his, which met hers straightly and angrily; and at this she leaned forward, gazing at him with profound scrutiny.

"Why did you send it?" she asked.

"Charity," he answered, after palpable hesitation.

Her eyes widened and she leaned back against the lintel of the door, staring at him incredulously.

"Charity!" she echoed, in a whisper.

Perhaps he mistook her amazement at his performance for dismay caused by the sense of her own position, for, as she seemed to weaken before him, the strength of his own habit of dominance came back to him."Charity, madam!" he broke out, shouting intolerably."Charity, d'ye hear?

I was a friend of the man that made the money you and your grandfather squandered; I was a friend of Jonas Tabor, I say! That's why I was willing to support you for a year and over, rather than let a niece of his suffer.""`Suffer'!" she cried."`Support'! You sent me a hundred thousand francs!"The white splotches which had mottled Martin Pike's face disappeared as if they had been suddenly splashed with hot red."You go back to my house," he said."What I sent you only shows the extent of my--""Effrontery!" The word rang through the whole house, so loudly and clearly did she strike it, rang in his ears till it stung like a castigation.

It was ominous, portentous of justice and of disaster.There was more than doubt of him in it:

there was conviction.

He fell back from this word; and when he again advanced, Ariel had left the house.She had turned the next corner before he came out of the gate; and as he passed his own home on his way down-town, he saw her white dress mingling with his daughter's near the horse-block beside the fire, where the two, with their arms about each other, stood waiting for Sam Warden and the open summer carriage.

Judge Pike walked on, the white splotches reappearing like a pale rash upon his face.A yellow butterfly zigzagged before him, knee-high, across the sidewalk.He raised his foot and half kicked at it.