_ CHAPTER XVII. SHALL THE SECRET BE TOLD?
Fran had expected Robert Clinton's return in four or five days, as had Grace Noir, but secrets that have been buried for many years are not picked up in a day. However, had the chairman of the school-board returned the day after his departure, Abbott Ashton would have met him at the station. Twice, in the opinion of Fran, the young man had failed her by allowing Grace's mind to flash to important discoveries along the path of his insulated remarks about the weather. This third test was more equal, since he was to deal with no Grace Noir--merely with a man.
As Littleburg had only one railroad, and it a "branch", it was not difficult to meet every train; moreover, Miss Sapphira's hasty notes from her brother kept Abbott advised. At first, Miss Sapphira said, "It will be a week;" later--"Ten days more--and the business left like this!" Then came the final bulletin: "I may come to-morrow. Look for me when you see me."
What the secret was that Abbott must prevent Clinton from divulging, he did not care to guess; doubtless the picture of Gregory's past, with its face to the wall, might be inscribed, "Some other woman." For surely Grace Noir was some other woman. Having admitted the truth to himself, he wondered that all the world did not see--or was it that all the world needed a Fran to open eyes willfully blind?
With these thoughts, Abbott met the evening train, to see Robert Clinton hastily emerge from the solitude he had endured in the midst of many.
Robert was in no pacific mood, and when he found himself almost in the arms of Abbott, his greeting was boisterous because impatient at being stopped. Abbott, knowing that Robert was not ordinarily effusive, thought, "He has the secret!"
Robert shook hands without delaying progress toward the waiting hack, bearing Abbott along on waves of greeting.
"But surely you are not going to
ride!" Abbott expostulated.
"Business--very pressing--see you later."
"But I have business with you, Mr. Clinton, that can't wait. Come, walk with me to town and I'll explain; it'll delay you only a few minutes."
Like a restive horse on finding himself restrained, Robert Clinton lifted a leg without advancing. "Oh, very well," he agreed. "In fact, I've something important for
you, old fellow, and I'll explain before I--before the--yes,
before," he ended, turning his back upon the hack with a smothered growl.
They penetrated the silent by-streets of the outskirts of Littleburg, Robert going as fast as he could drag his companion, and Abbott walking as slowly as he could hold back the other.
"Lucky I was at the station," Abbott exclaimed, "since you've something to tell me, Bob. What is it?" In thus addressing his old friend as "Bob" the young man was officially declaring that their relationship as teacher and school-director was for ever at an end, and they stood as man to man.
Clinton spoke rapidly, with his wonted bruskness: "Guess you know I've been knocking about the country for the last three or four weeks--saw a good many old friends--a fellow can't go anywhere without meeting somebody he knows--curious, isn't it? Well, I've got an opening for you. You know how sorry I am because we had to plump another teacher on to your job, but don't you worry if Fran
did hold your hand--just you keep your hands in your pockets after this, when there's danger-- Say! I've got something lots better for you than Littleburg. School out in Oklahoma--rich--private man behind it--he owns the whole plant, and he's determined to run it to suit the new ideas. This rich man-- chum of mine--went West, bought land, sat on it, got up with his jeans full of money. Wants you to come
at once."
Abbott was elated. "What kind of new ideas, Bob?" he asked joyously.
"Oh, that impractical nonsense of teaching life instead of books--I guess it's as much an advance over the common thing, as teaching words instead of a, b, c's. You know what I mean, but I don't think
I do. Don't worry about it now--something terrible's on my mind--just awful! I can't think of anything else. What you want to do is to scoot out to Tahlelah, Oklahoma, to this address--here's his card--tell 'em Bob sent you--" He looked at Abbott feverishly, as if almost hoping Abbott would bolt for Tahlelah then and there. His broad red face was set determinedly.
"This news is splendid!" Abbott declared enthusiastically. "I had already applied for a country school; I was afraid I had lost out a whole year, on account of--everything. I must thank--"
"Abbott, I don't want to be thanked, I haven't got time to be thanked. Yonder's Hamilton Gregory's house and that's where I'm bound--good night--"
"But, Bob, I haven't told you my business--"
"I'll hear it later, old fellow--dear old fellow--I think a heap of you, old Abb. But I must go now--"
"No, you mustn't. Before you go into that house, we must have a little talk. We can't talk here--people are coming and going--"
"I don't want to talk here, bless you! I want to go in that house. My business is private and pressing." The gate was but a few yards away; he looked at it fixedly, but Abbott held his hand upon the agitated arm.
"Bob, what I have to tell you can't wait, and that's all about it. I won't keep you long, just turn down this alley with me, for it's a matter of life and death."
"Confound your life and death!
My business is life and death, too."
At that moment, a light was turned on in Gregory's library, and Grace Noir was seen to pass the window.
Abbott's hand tightened on the other's arm, as he urged, "Down that alley, a nice dark place for talking--"
"'Nice dark', be hanged!" growled Robert. "What business can you have with me that wouldn't wait till morning? Look here, I'm desperate!"
"So am I," retorted Abbott. "Bob, you've been to Springfield."
Robert Clinton snatched open the yard-gate, muttering, "That's my business."
"Miss Noir sent you to unearth a secret."
"Oh!" exclaimed Robert, in an altered tone, stopping in the gateway, "did
she tell you about it?"
"No--but you've brought back that secret, and you must not tell it to Miss Noir."
"Not tell her? That's funny!" Robert produced a sound which he expected to pass as laughter. "So that's what you wanted to tell me, is it? Do you know what the secret is?"
"I do not. But you mustn't tell it."
"However, that's what I'm going to do, as soon as I reach that door-- take your hand off, man, my blood's up, by George! Can't you see my blood's up? It's a-boiling, that's what it's doing! So all you want is to ask me not to tell that secret?"
"Not exactly all."
"Well, well--quick! What else?"
"To see that you don't tell it."
"How do you mean to 'see' that I don't tell it?"
"You will listen to reason, Bob," said Abbott persuasively.
"No, I won't!" cried Robert. "Not me!
No, sir! I'm going to tell this minute."
"You shall not!" said Abbott, in a lower and more compelling tone. His manner was so absolute, that Robert Clinton, who had forced his way almost to the porch-steps, was slightly moved.
"See here, Abbott--say! Fran knows all about it, and you pretend to think a good deal of her. Well, it's to her interests for the whole affair to be laid open to the world."
"I think so much of Fran," was the low and earnest rejoinder, "that if I were better fixed, I'd ask her to marry me without a moment's delay. And I think enough of her, not to ask her to marry me, until I have a good position. Now it was Fran who asked me to see that you didn't betray the secret. And I think so much of her, that I'm going to see that you don't!"
For a moment Clinton was silent; then he said in desperation: "Where is your nice dark alley? Come on, then, let's get in it!"
When they were safe from interruption, Clinton resumed: "You tell me that Fran wants that secret kept? I'd think she'd want it told everywhere. This secret is nothing at all but the wrong that was done Fran and her mother. And since you are so frank about how you like Fran, I'll follow suit and say that I have asked Grace Noir to marry me, and I know I'll stand a better show by getting her out of the hypnotic spell of that miserable scoundrel who poses as a bleating sheep--"
Abbott interrupted: "The wrong done Fran? How do you mean?"
"Why, man, that--that hypocrite in wool, that weed that infests the ground, that--"
"In short, Mr. Gregory? But what about the wrong done Fran?"
"Ain't I telling you? That worm-eaten pillar of the church that's made me lose so much faith in religion that I ain't got enough left worth the postage stamp to mail it back to the revival meeting where it come from--"
"For heaven's sake, Bob, tell me what wrong Mr. Gregory did Fran!"
"Didn't he marry Fran's mother when he was a college chap in Springfield, and then desert her? Didn't he marry again, although his first wife--Fran's mother--was living, and hadn't been divorced? Don't he refuse to acknowledge Fran as his daughter, making her pass herself off as the daughter of some old college chum? That's what he did, your choir-leader! I'd like to see that baton of his laid over his back; I'd like to lay it, myself."
It was impossible for Abbott to receive all this as a whole; he took up the revelations one at a time. "Is it possible that Fran is Mr. Gregory's
daughter?" "Oh, she's his, all right, only child of his only legal wife--that's why she came, thinking her father would do the right thing, him that's always praying to be guided aright, and balking whenever the halter's pulled straight."
"Then," Abbott stammered, "Mrs. Gregory is..."
"Yap;
is with a question mark. But there's one thing she isn't; she isn't the legal wife of this pirate what's always a-preying upon the consciences of folks that thinks they're worse than him."
"As for Mr. Gregory," Abbott began sternly--
Robert pursued the name with a vigorous expletive, and growled, "One thing Mr. Gregory
has done for me, he's opened the flood-gates that have been so long dammed--yes, I say dammed--I say--"
"Bob," Abbott exclaimed, "don't you understand Fran's object in keeping the secret? It's on account of Mrs. Gregory. If
she finds it out--that she's not legally married--don't you see? Of course it would be to Fran's interests--bless her heart! What a--what a Nonpareil!"
"'Tain't natural," returned Clinton, "for any girl to consult the interests of the woman that's supplanted her mother. No, Fran's afraid to have it told for fear she'd be injured by your cut-glass paragon, your religion-stuffed pillow that calls itself a man."
"Fran afraid? That's a joke! I tell you, she's thinking only of Mrs. Gregory."
"I'm sorry for Mrs. Gregory," Robert allowed, "but Grace Noir is more to me than any other woman on earth. You don't see the point. When I think of a girl like Grace Noir living under the same roof with that-- that--"
"Mr. Gregory," Abbott supplied.
"--And she so pure, so high, so much above us....It makes me crazy. And all the time she's been breathing the same air, she's thought him a Moses in the Wilderness, and us nothing but the sticks. Think of her believing in that jelly pulp, that steel engraving in a Family Bible! No, I mean to open her eyes, and get her out of his spider's web."
"I see your point of view."
"You do if you have eyes. Think of that perfect angel--but just say
Grace Noir and you've called all the virtues. And her in his house!--"
"You still believe in angels?" inquired Abbott gravely.
"Yap; and devils with long sort-of-curly hair, and pretty womanish faces, and voices like molasses."
"But Fran wants Mrs. Gregory spared--"
"Abbott, when I think of Grace Noir spending one more night under the roof of that burrowing mole, that crocodile with tears in his eyes and the rest of him nothing but bone and gristle--"
"Bob, if I assure you that Miss Noir will never spend another day under his roof, will you agree to keep this discovery to yourself?"
"You can't make no such assurance. If she ain't put wise to what branch of the animal kingdom he twigs to, she'll not leave his roof."
"Bob, if she leaves that house in the morning, for ever, won't you agree to silence, for Mrs. Gregory's sake--and because Fran asks it?"
"Fran's another angel, bless her heart! But you can't work it."
"Leave it to me, Bob. I'll be guided by the spur of the moment."
"I need a bookkeeper at my store," Robert said, ruminating.
"I promise you that Miss Noir will soon be open to offers."
"See here, Abbott, I can't afford to lose any chances on this thing. I'm going into that house before this night passes, and I'm going to see the feathers fly. No--I don't want Mrs. Gregory to learn about it, any more than you or Fran; but I'll limit the thing to Grace--"
"She'd tell Mrs. Gregory."
"Don't you say anything against Grace Noir, Abbott, for though you are my friend--"
"I say nothing against her; I say only that she's a woman."
"Well," Clinton reluctantly agreed, "I reckon she is. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go with you into that wolf's den, and I'll let you do all the talking; and if you can manage things in half an hour--just thirty minutes by my watch--so that Grace leaves there to-morrow, I'll leave you to steer things, and it's mum for keeps. But I'm going to be present, though I don't want to say one word to that--that--But if he don't crawl out of his wool far enough to suit the purpose, in short, if he don't cave, and in half an hour--"
"Half an hour will do the business," said Abbott stoutly. "Come!"
"Be sure to call for Mr. Gregory by himself," said Robert, as they walked swiftly back to the Gregory residence. "If Grace comes into the room while we're talking, or Mrs. Gregory--"
"If they do," Abbott said quickly, "you are not to utter one word,
not one, about Springfield--you understand? It's the bargain, and I shall hold you to your word of honor."
"For half an hour I won't say a word," Clinton declared, "unless it's some word just drawn out of my bosom by the sight of that villain. Come!" _