Blacksheep! Blacksheep!, Meredith Nicholson [reading women .txt] 📗

your sword are at the command of any pretty jade who squints at you! But when I suggested that it might be well for you to keep in practice I didn't mean for you to make a monkey of yourself. Your true love—what did you say her name is?"

To recall Isabel to his memory was a greater mockery than the Governor knew, but Archie met the question with well-feigned unconcern.

"I didn't say," he answered; "but her name is Isabel."

"Ah! One of the few really perfect names in the whole list! Rather more style to it than Sally! And yet Sally has been used to good advantage by the balladists. To 'Sally in Our Alley,' we might add Sally at the Churn or Sally Softly Singing in the Corn, or Sally Leading Archie by the Ear. The possibilities are exquisite."

"If you don't mind," said Archie with dignity, "we'll stop talking nonsense. I want to know what happened."

"Just a little curious, are you, as to what followed your amazing breach of hospitality? Ran away with a pretty girl, assisted in marrying her to an undesirable son-in-law, and now you want to know how the old folks take it! Oh, Archie, for sheer innocence you are a wonder!"

"Walker had no right to force a girl like Sally to marry an old curmudgeon she hated. I never hesitated as to the course I should take after she told me her story. The marriage was in proper form and I haven't a single regret!"

The Governor rocked with delight.

"You didn't miss a stroke!" he exclaimed wiping the tears from his eyes. "The marriage satisfied all legal requirements. Your work was only too well done!"

"I'm glad you're satisfied," said Archie spitefully. "And if Walker is a sensible man he will welcome the young couple home and make the best of it."

"It saddens me to be obliged to speak the grievous truth when your conscience is so pleased with itself. Let me deal in surmises a moment before I hand you a few unhappy facts. Sitting with Sally down by the brook and probably holding her hand"—(Archie flinched)—"holding her hand perhaps, and strongly tempted to kiss her, you fell an easy prey to her fascinations. She told you a plausible yarn as to Walker's cruelty in wanting her to marry a tottering old widower and asked you to assist her to elope with a sturdy young farmer who was even then waiting for her by the old mill or the school house, or something like that. And your heart swelled to bursting with the thought of serving one so fair! Wholly natural, Archie, for I too have dwelt in Arcady! If that minx hadn't told you she had a lover loitering in the background, you'd probably have thrown yourself into the breach and eloped with her yourself. Yes, you would, Archie! I must have a care of you or your Isabel will never meet you at the altar!"

"We're not talking of Isabel," Archie interrupted haughtily. "I'll trouble you to say all you have to say about Sally and Abijah."

"Abijah!" squeaked the Governor, again overcome by mirth.

For the first time Archie disliked the Governor. His unsympathetic attitude toward the elopement was intolerable. A round of abuse would have been more palatable than this ironic jesting. The Governor saw that he had gone too far and immediately shifted the key.

"What you did, Archie," he resumed paternally, "what you did was to marry Sally, the incomparable, Sally the divine, to Pete Barney, the diamond thief. He took refuge with Walker a couple of weeks ago, and the old man extended him his usual generous hospitality. Barney had been well vouched for and had all the pass-words and countersigns of the great fraternity, but Walker mistrusted him. A week is the usual limit for a pilgrim's stay, and seeing how Sally and Barney were hitting it off the old man gave the chap a hint to move along. He didn't go, it seems, but hung round the neighborhood waiting for a chance to pull off the elopement in which you so kindly assisted even to the extent of bolting with Slippery Abe's car."

"You mean—you mean I married the girl to a crook?" gasped Archie.

"One of the smoothest in the game! And Sally knew he was a crook! I suppose it was the diamonds that fetched her. If you'd looked at his hands you would have noticed that he hadn't the paws of an honest Green Mountain farmer. Pick-pocket originally and marvelously deft; but precious stones are his true métier. The trifling little necklace he had on his person when he struck Walker's is worth a cool hundred thousand. He'll have to break it up and sell 'em in the usual way and it will take time."

Archie sank upon the bed, twisting his hands together. He had done a horrible thing, hardly second to murder, and his penitence weighed heavily upon him.

"You are not chaffing me! It doesn't seem possible that the girl would have deceived me!"

"We never know when they are going to deceive us, Archie! I hate to think that Sally inherited a strain of lawlessness and yet she hated the farm and was crazy to escape. I forgot to mention that she lifted a couple of hundred dollars the old man kept under a plank in the parlor floor—an emergency fund in case he ever had to run for it. A nasty trick, I call it; most unfilial on Sally's part. The Walkers are crushed by her conduct. They have tried to shield her from all the sorrow and shame of the world; and there was really a very decent young farmer wild to marry her, old New England stock, revolutionary stuff, aristocrats, you may say. And if you hadn't muddled everything it would have come about in time. But you will have your fling, Archie! You certainly spilled the beans. And I had vouched for you at the Walkers'; it's almost as bad as though I had betrayed them myself. You will not, of course, make the serious error of knocking at the Walker door again! That would be rubbing it in; but I hope you have learned your lesson. It probably didn't occur to you that I might have been sore enough to mention somewhere your connection with certain blood stains on the board walk at Bailey Harbor. You should have a care of yourself!"

"I don't want you to think me ungrateful," Archie stammered. "The girl made a fool of me; I see it all now!"

"She made a fool of you but you in turn made a fool of me! And while I'm not caviling, you will pardon me, son, if I suggest that hereafter you play square with me. I'm no saint, but I wouldn't desert a comrade or stick a knife in his back. Please understand that I don't mean to curb your personal enterprise, or set any limit on your little affairs of the heart. You are not the first man who thought he understood women, and you are not the last victim of that deplorable delusion. But let's have no more foolishness."

"I haven't a thing to say for myself!" blurted Archie, who was at the point of tears. "I was weak, miserably weak. I had no idea that any one could lie as that girl did. And it's not fair for me to stay on with you. I can't ask you to trust me again. We'd better part company right here!"

"How completely you misjudge me, Archie! There's a charm in you begotten of your very innocence and helplessness, and I should be very unhappy if we parted now. We've shared some danger together and in spite of your weaknesses I'm fond of you. And if I left you to your own devices something quite disastrous might happen to you."

Discomfited and humiliated as he was the very thought of going out into the world alone filled Archie with horror. Under Sally's hypnotic influence he had concluded that the Governor was a negligible factor in his life; but away from the girl and rankling under her deceit he grasped at the Governor's friendship with the frantic clutch of a drowning man. The Governor drew out his bill fold and extracted from it a newspaper cutting.

"Note this, Archie, from a Boston paper of today. Our old friend Congdon has stirred up the Boston police about the disappearance of his son. I don't ask you to make any comment on that item; I merely call your attention to the fact that Putney Congdon is on the missing list and like ourselves Putney Congdon was at Bailey Harbor. Nothing particularly startling in all this, as the police records show something like an average of one thousand four hundred and thirteen missing or unaccounted for persons in the United States every year. This paper says that Congdon was seen by one person and one only at Bailey Harbor. That was a garage man who sold him some gas—it was a stormy night—and incidentally that night poor Hoky set sail for the happy isles. And the date is further memorable from the fact that it was the occasion of our first meeting. And the blood stains on the board walk of one of the streets at Bailey—"

"Stop, for God's sake!" cried Archie. "I'll tell you everything; I'll—"

"You'll tell me nothing, because I refuse to listen! Confessing is a habit. If I encourage you to confess to me you'll be pouring your tale into the ear of the first policeman you meet. As things stand you are not suspected, and if we follow my program you are likely to walk the world in safety for the rest of your days. If I knew the circumstances I might become nervous and I must retain my poise or we perish. Your autobiography for the past week or so would make a ripping narrative, but you'd better learn to forget. Our yesterdays are as nothing; it's tomorrow we've got to think about. Those Congdons are rather a picturesque lot as I catch them in cinema flashes. It appears from the paper that young Putney's wife had left him, and there was some sort of row about the children. The old boy we struck at Cornford will probably be charging the absconding wife with killing Putney the first thing we know!"

"Charge Mrs. Congdon with killing her husband! O my God!" wailed Archie.

"Control yourself, my dear boy! One would infer from that item that Mrs. Congdon dropped off the earth after she left Bailey Harbor. She and her children motored out of Bailey and haven't yet reached their house in New York, for which she was presumably bound. By Jove, it's woozzy the way these Congdons keep bobbing up! I'd give something handsome to know how the old chap and Seebrook came out at Cornford. I learn that they're holding Silent Tim, the chap I told you would be arrested, and our part in the delicate transaction is already obscured."

Archie was giving the Governor only half attention. His nerves were unstrung by the bald, colorless report of Putney Congdon's disappearance, which shocked him all the more from the fact that it was so hideously commonplace, merely a bit of journalistic routine. He wished the Governor would stop reading newspapers. Now that the man's disappearance had been heralded the police of the entire country would be searching for him dead or alive and if his body were found there would be a great hue and cry until his murderer was apprehended.

The Governor was unconcernedly sketching one of the diagrams with which he seemed to visualize his plans. These he made in small compass, any scrap of paper serving his purpose. Archie had supposed this was a means of recalling places and highways and determining the time required to reach a certain point, but the Governor was always