The Tracy diamonds

by Mary Jane Holmes

He was shaking with cold, notwithstanding that drops of sweat were on his face and hands, and his hair was wet as if drenched with water.

“It is an accursed business,” he went on rapidly, “and I am sorry I dragged you into it. I was never so bad as some might think and I did it less for gain than for the excitement of seeing half a dozen men cower before a little fellow like me and a pistol which half the time was not loaded. That was the case to-day with the revolver Inez picked up and held at my head before she pocketed it. You should have seen her when she bade me go before she shot me like a dog. I never loved her as I did at that moment when I knew I had lost her. Once on the road when she seemed about to fall from the saddle and I tried to help her she threatened to shoot me again, reminding me that my revolver was in her pocket. Do you remember how I used to stand on my head when anything sudden pleased me? Well, I felt like trying it again when I imagined Inez’s surprise to find the chambers empty if she tried to kill me. She said you had told her there was murder in her blood. Do you think that Dalton woman’s fingers were tingling to shoot me?”

Tom was talking at random, scarcely knowing what he was saying. But it did not matter. Mark was not listening to him. He had heard all he cared to know and was wondering how he could meet Inez and what she would say to him. He knew she had gone to her room, but could hear no sound of her moving. Once the thought came to him, “Is she dead? Has the shock killed her as it did her mother?” and he started to go to her. Then as he heard the opening of a window he resumed his seat. Outside, the bay mare had been patiently standing waiting to be cared for, and at last, as the care did not come, neighing loudly and pawing on the ground. Mark heard her and rising mechanically went out to her, glad of something to do, which would for a few moments divert his mind from himself. Over the mare’s stall a halter was hanging, and Mark looked at it attentively and tested its strength and wondered if it would hold him and how he would look dangling there, and if his feet would not touch the floor and so defeat his purpose. Satan was tempting him terribly and might have won the victory if there had not come to him a second time that day thoughts of Ridgefield and the old man who had loved and trusted him, and who, he had no doubt, had prayed for him when he supposed him still alive. The north piazza of the Prospect House, with Craig and Alice and Helen and the pleasant hours spent there came up before him and brought the tears to his hot eyes, cooling and healing and driving the tempter away.

“’Tina’s great-grandson must not hang himself. That would be heredity with a vengeance,” he said, laughing an unnatural laugh. “Only Inez knows it, and my whole life shall be devoted to convincing her of my repentance,” he thought, as he left the stable.

There was a grain of comfort in this, and the future did not look quite so dark as he went back to the house and sat down with Tom, who neither moved nor looked up at him as he came in. He, too, was thinking of the future and the past; of Ridgefield and his happy boyhood there; of Mrs. Taylor’s teachings, which, although occasionally emphasized with a box, had lodged in his memory, and were repeating themselves over and over in his brain. But beyond all this was a thought of Alice, who had been so kind to him,—who had defended him against Mrs. Tracy, saying there was no harm in him and she would trust him anywhere.

“What would she think of me now, all smirched and stained as I am? Would she speak to me as she did that morning when we gathered the pond lilies and she smoothed my hair?” he thought, and his hand went up to his head to the spot where Alice’s hand had rested so long ago. “I can feel it yet,” he said to himself. “It kept me then from mischief; it shall help me now.”

Then he thought of Inez. She was lost to him so far as the life he had hoped for was concerned. He might in time learn to live without her, but he could not live and see her cold and hard towards him as she had been that morning.

“I would rather die,” he thought, “than know she would never again look upon me except with hatred and distrust.”

Had he been in the stable and seen the halter which had suggested suicidal thoughts to Mark there might have been a tragedy added to that day’s doings. But the halter was out of sight and Tom wrestled with his remorse, which, to do him justice, did not arise alone from the fact that Inez knew and despised him. He was genuinely sorry and could not understand how he had become what he was. In his nature there was enough of hopefulness for a rebound from the depths of despair if he saw a ray of light, and after sitting for more than an hour in perfect silence he arose and going up to Mr. Hilton said, “If we were in a boat that was sinking, we’d get out of it, if we could. Let’s do so now. We have been on the down track and touched the bottom. Let’s try the upward slope. Let us be what the world thinks we are,—honorable, upright men. I have helped to pull you down. I will try to help you up, and maybe——I don’t think I ought to take His name on my lips, but you know whom I mean, and He, perhaps, will help us. I used to learn a lot about Him in the Sunday School in Ridgefield, and it is coming back to me now. What do you say? Shall we strike hands on a new deal? No one knows but ourselves and Inez. She will not tell. We shall carry the burden of our secret always, but maybe it will grow lighter in time.”

He offered his hand to Mr. Hilton, who took and held it a moment, but said nothing. He was still shifting the blame to some extent upon Tom’s shoulders and cursing himself for having been so weak as to be led by him. Releasing Mark’s hand, Tom began walking across the piazza with his hands in his pockets, when he touched something hard and started as if a serpent had stung him.