This she felt, and yet the feeling conveyed no real conviction to her mind. All she knew was that loathing and repulsion stirred her, until the thought revolted her that she was breathing the same air as one who could be capable of such vicious cruelty. But she struggled to stifle all outward sign. And though she was only partly successful she contrived to keep her words calm, even if her eyes, those windows of her simple girl’s soul, would not submit to such control.
“I’m over fifty now, girl,” Mercy finished up, in a low suppressed tone, husky with feeling, yet thrilling with a cruel triumph. “Over fifty, and, for the last twenty and more years of it, I have waited for this moment. I have waited with a patience you can never understand because you have never been made to suffer as I have. But I knew it would come. I have known it every day of those twenty years, because I have read it in that book in which I have read so many things which concern human life. I was robbed of life years and years ago. Yes, life. I have been a dead woman these twenty years. My life was gone when your father died, leaving you, another woman’s child, in my hands. God in heaven! Sometimes I wonder why I did not strangle the wretched life out of you years ago—you, another woman’s child, but yet with Charles Stanmore’s blood in your veins. Perhaps it was because of that I spared your life. Perhaps it was because I read your fate, and knew you had to suffer, that I preferred my sister’s child should reap the reward of her mother’s crime—yes, crime. Perhaps it was that while Charles Stanmore lived my hopes and longings were still capable of fulfilment. But he is dead—dead years and years ago. And with his death my life went out too. Now there is only revenge. No, not revenge,” she laughed, “justice to be dealt out. That justice it is my joy to see dispensed. That justice it is my joy to feel that my hand has brought its administering about.
“I have laid all the information necessary. I have a lawyer in Leeson Butte in communication with my man in New York. And—and the sheriff and his men will be here before daylight. Oh, yes, I can afford to tell you now that the work is accomplished. You shall have no opportunity of communicating with your friends. I shall not sleep to-night. Nor will you leave this house. There is a means of holding you here. A means which will never be far from my hand.” She tapped the bosom of her dress significantly, and Joan understood that she had armed herself. “The arrest will be made while they are still sleeping in that old fort of theirs—and your young Buck will pay the penalty if he interferes. Yes, yes,” she added, rubbing her lean, almost skeleton hands together in an access of satisfaction, “when you sip your coffee in the morning, my girl, your Buck’s foster-father will be on his way to the jail from which he will only emerge for the comfort of an electric chair. I have endured twenty years of mental torture, but—I have not endured them in vain.”
The cold, consummate completeness with which the woman detailed her carefully considered plans turned Joan’s heart to stone. It chilled her and left her shivering in the awful heat. For one moment, one weak moment when her woman’s spirit quailed before the deadly array of facts, she felt faint, and one hand sought the table for support. But with a tremendous effort she recovered herself. It was the thought of Buck which helped her. She could not let him fall into the trap so well laid by this—this creature, without an effort to save them both. In a flash her mind pictured the scene of the Padre’s capture. She saw the fort surrounded by the “deputies.” She saw the Padre shackled before he could rise from his blankets. She saw Buck, under cover of ruthless firearms, hurl himself to the rescue and pay for his temerity with his life. In a sudden overwhelming passion of appeal she flung herself on her knees before the terrible old woman.
“Aunt, aunt!” she cried. “You cannot be so heartless, so cruel. There is a mistake. You are mistaken. The Padre swears to his innocence, and if you knew him as I know him, as all this countryside knows him, you must believe. He is not capable of murder. My father committed suicide. Think, think of all that went before his death, and you, too, will see that everything points to suicide. Oh, aunt, think of what you are doing. The plans you have made must involve the man I love. A perfectly innocent man, as even you know. If my father was all your world, so is Buck all mine. He will defend the Padre. I know him. And as you say he will pay the penalty with his life. If you have one grain of pity, if you have one remaining thought of love for my dead father, then spare this man to his daughter. Where is the right that you should involve Buck? You do not even know him. Oh, aunt, you have lived all these twenty years with me. In your own way you have cared for me. Sacrifice your enmity against this innocent man. It will give you a peace of mind you have never known before, and will give me the happiness of the man I love.”
Mercy’s eyes lit with fine scorn as she caught at Joan’s final words.
“The happiness of the man you love!” she cried with passionate anger, “Why should I give you your man’s love? Why should I help any woman to a happiness I have never been allowed to taste? Perhaps it pleases me to think that your Buck will be involved. Have I not warned you of the disaster which you have permitted him to court? Listen, girl, not one detail of all that which I have waited for will I forego. Not one detail. When it is accomplished nothing on earth matters to me. The sooner I am off it the better. The sooner I leave this world for other realms the sooner I shall be able to pursue those others who have injured me and passed on to—a fresh habitation. Do you understand? Do you understand that I will brook no interference from you? Peace, child, I want no more talk. When this night is over I leave here—nor shall I ever willingly cross your path again. You are another woman’s child, and so long as you live, so long as we are brought into contact, the sting of the past must ever remain in my heart. Go to your bed, and leave me to watch and wait until the morning.”
The old woman’s domination was strong—it was so strong that Joan felt appalled before the terrible mental force she was putting forth. The horror of her diseased mind sickened her, and filled her with something closely allied to terror. But she would not submit. Her love was greater than her courage, her power to resist for herself. She was thinking of those two men, but most of all she was thinking of Buck. She was determined upon another effort. And when that effort was spent—upon still another.
“Listen to me, aunt,” she cried with no longer any attempt at appeal, with no longer any display of regard for this woman as a relation. “I am mistress in my own house, and I shall do as I choose. I, too, shall sit up and you will have to listen to me.”
Mercy smiled ironically.