Still no response of word or of action. Still the dainty, curved shoulders trembled and were quiet and trembled again.
The man's hand dropped to the coverlet beside him. His face went very close.
"Cousin Bess," he repeated for the last time tensely, "I can't let you cry so. I won't. I care for you too much, little girl; infinitely too much. It hurts me to have you feel so terribly, hurts me more than I can tell." Just for a moment he hesitated, and like an inexperienced gambler his face went tense and white. "You must listen to me, Elizabeth, Uncle has gone, but there are others who will take care of you. I myself will take care of you, girlie. Listen, Bess, for there's something I must tell you, something you make me tell you now." Swiftly, unhesitatingly, he leaned still nearer; with one motion his arm passed about her and he clasped her close, so close she could not struggle, could not prevent. "I love you, little girl. Though I've only known you two days, I love you. That is what you compel me to tell you. This is why it hurts me to have you cry so. I love you, Bess; I love you!"
This is what, there in that tiny unplastered bed-room next the roof, came to pass that October morning. Just so the four living actors remained for a second while the first light of day sifted in through the tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious of the drama enacting before her eyes, unconscious of anything, her thin fingers still picking at the edge of her sack; the motionless watcher rigid as a casting in bronze: the passionate gambling stranger man holding the girl to him tightly, so tightly she could not but remain so, passive; then came the climax. Of a sudden the image that had been lifeless resolved itself into a man. Muscles played here and there visibly beneath the close-fitting flannel shirt he wore. Swiftly, yet still without a sound, one moccasined foot moved forward, and its mate—and again the first. Unexpected as death itself would have been at that instant, Craig felt two mighty irresistible hands close on his shoulders; close with a grip that all but paralysed. Irresistibly again he felt himself turned about, put upon his feet; realised of a sudden, too suddenly and unexpectedly even to admit of a cry, that the girl was free, that, not a foot distant, he was staring into the face of the one being on earth from whom he had most to fear. All this in seconds; then, mercifully intervening, a Providence itself, the tense wet face of the girl came between. The first sound that had been spoken came to his ears.
"How! In God's name don't! He didn't mean any harm; I know he didn't. Forgive him, How; please, please," and repeated: "Forgive him—for my sake."
The lamps had long been out, but the odour of low-test kerosene still hung about the closed living-room where the same four people sat in council. No effort had as yet been made to put the place to rights, and in consequence it was stuffy and disordered and proportionately depressing. The mound of cigarette stumps which Craig had builded the night before lay unsightly and evil of odour on the table. The faded rag carpet was littered with the tobacco he had scattered. His gaudy riding blouse and cap reposed on a lounge in one corner. His ulster and hat, which he had unpacked the last thing before retiring, lay across a chair. Look where one might about the place, there were evidences of his presence, of his dominant inhabitance. Already after two days' residence, as Howard had said, he had taken complete possession. Whosoever may have possessed the voice of authority in the past, concerning the future there was to be no doubt. That voice was speaking now.
"To be sure I shall take him East," it said. "His father is buried in Boston, and his grandfather, and his grandfather's father." The voice halted, lowered. "Besides, my mother and his other sister, who died years and years ago, are both there." Obviously, too obviously, he turned away until his face was hid. Into the voice there crept a throb that was almost convincing. "They'd all want him with them, I'm sure, even though he wouldn't have cared; and I think he would. He mentioned it the first night I came, but of course I didn't realise—then—" The voice was silent.
As hours before in the room above, Mary Landor showed no emotion, did not speak. Not even yet had her sorrow-numbed brain awakened, had she grasped the full meaning of the thing which had happened to her. Later, indefinitely later, the knowledge would come, and with it the hour of reckoning; but for the present she was a mere puppet in the play. Craig, the dominant, had told her to dress, and she had dressed. He had summoned her to the council, and she had obeyed. But it was not to her now that he had spoken, nor to the other man who, silent as he had entered, stood erect, his arms folded, listening. To yet another he had spoken. She it was, Elizabeth, who answered.
"But to take him clear back there, away from everyone who cares for him or ever has cared for him." The soft lower lip was becoming unmanageable and the girl halted, winking hard. "It seems cruel."