Never before had he been so surely leaving everything as he was now. In the old days of separation, there had always been home in the background. During that hideous year when he was shut behind bars, his thoughts had clung to home, to his father! He had meant then to go back and reform! Poor Larry! he had nothing to reform, but he had not realized that. Then Maclin caught him and instead of being reformed, Larry was moulded into a new shape––Maclin’s tool. Well, Maclin was done with, too! Larry strode on in the semi-darkness. The morning was dull and deadly chill.
Traditional prejudice rose in Rivers and made him hard and bitter. He felt himself a victim of others’ misunderstanding.
If he had had a––mother! Never before had this emotion swayed him. He knew little or nothing of his mother. She had been blotted out. But he now tried to think that all this could never have happened to him had he not been deprived of her. In the cold, damp morning Larry reverted to his mother over and over again. Good or bad, she would have stood by him! There was no one now; no one.
“And Mary-Clare!” At this his face set cruelly. “She should have stood by me. What was her sense of duty, anyway?”
She had always eluded him, had never been his. Larry rebelled at this knowledge. She had been cold and demanding, selfish and hard. No woman has a right to keep herself from her husband. All would have been well if she had done 211 her part. And Noreen was his as well as Mary-Clare’s. But she was keeping everything. His father’s house; the child; the money!
By this time Larry had lashed himself into a virtuous fury. He felt himself wronged and sinned against. He was prepared to hurt somebody in revenge.
Larry went to the yellow house. It was empty. There was a fire on the hearth and a general air of recent occupancy and a hurried departure. A fiendish inspiration came to Rivers. He would go to that cabin of Mary-Clare’s and wait for her. She should get her freedom there, where she had forbidden him to come. He’d enter now and have his say.
Larry took a short cut to the cabin and by so doing reached it before Mary-Clare, who had taken Noreen to Peneluna’s––not daring to take her to the inn.
Larry came to within a dozen yards of the cabin when he stopped short and became rigid. He was completely screened from view, but, for the moment, he did not give this a thought. There was murder in his heart, and only cowardice held him back.
Northrup was coming out of the cabin! Rivers had not realized that he trusted Northrup, but he had, and he was betrayed! All the bitterness of defeat swept over him and hate and revenge alone swayed him. Suddenly he grew calm. Northrup had passed from sight; the white mists of the morning were rolling and breaking. He would wait––if Mary-Clare was in the cabin, and Larry believed she was, he could afford to bide his time. Indeed, it was the only thing to do, for in a primitive fashion Rivers decided to deal only with his woman, and he meant to have a free hand. He would have no fight for what was not worth fighting for––he would solve things in his own way and be off before any one interfered.