Black Jack, Max Brand [snow like ashes .txt] 📗

chair with an

exclamation. Then, without explanation of any sort, he had gone to his

room and stayed there. She would have followed to find out what was the

matter, but the requirements of dinner and her guests kept her

downstairs.

 

Immediately after dinner Vance, at a signal from her, dexterously herded

everyone into the living room and distributed them in comfort around the

big fireplace; Elizabeth Cornish bolted straight for the room of Terence.

She knocked and tried the door. To her astonishment, the knob turned, but

the door did not open. She heard the click and felt the jar of the bolt.

Terry had locked his door!

 

A little thing to make her heart fall, one would say, but little things

about Terry were great things to Elizabeth. In twenty-four years he had

never locked his door. What could it mean?

 

It was a moment before she could call, and she waited breathlessly. She

was reassured by a quiet voice that answered her: “Just a moment. I’ll

open.”

 

The tone was so matter-of-fact that her heart, with one leap, came back

to normal and tears of relief misted her eyes for an instant. Perhaps he

was up here working out a surprise for the next day—he was full of

tricks and surprises. That was unquestionably it. And he took so long in

coming to the door because he was hiding the thing he had been working

on. As for food, Wu Chi was his slave and would have smuggled a tray up

to him. Presently the lock turned and the door opened.

 

She could not see his face distinctly at first, the light was so strong

behind him. Besides, she was more occupied in looking for the tray of

food which would assure her that Terry was not suffering from some mental

crisis that had made him forget even dinner. She found the tray, sure

enough, but the food had not been touched.

 

She turned on him with a new rush of alarm. And all her fears were

realized. Terry had been fighting a hard battle and he was still

fighting. About his eyes there was the look, half-dull and half-hard,

that comes in the eyes of young people unused to pain. A worried, tense,

hungry face. He took her arm and led her to the table. On it lay an

article clipped out of a magazine. She looked down at it with unseeing

eyes. The sheets were already much crumbled. Terry turned them to a full-page picture, and Elizabeth found herself looking down into the face of

Black Jack, proud, handsome, defiant.

 

Had Vance been there, he might have recognized her actions. As she had

done one day twenty-four years ago, now she turned and dropped heavily

into a chair, her bony hands pressed to her shallow bosom. A moment later

she was on her feet again, ready to fight, ready to tell a thousand lies.

But it was too late. The revelation had been complete and she could tell

by his face that Terence knew everything.

 

“Terry,” she said faintly, “what on earth have you to do with that—”

 

“Listen, Aunt Elizabeth,” he said, “you aren’t going to fib about it, are

you?”

 

“What in the world are you talking about?”

 

“Why were you so shocked?”

 

She knew it was a futile battle. He was prying at her inner mind with

short questions and a hard, dry voice.

 

“It was the face of that terrible man. I saw him once before, you know.

On the day—”

 

“On the day he was murdered!”

 

That word told her everything. “Murdered!” It lighted all the mental

processes through which he had been going. Who in all the reaches of the

mountain desert had ever before dreamed of terming the killing of the

notorious Black Jack a “murder”?

 

“What are you saying, Terence? That fellow—”

 

“Hush! Look at us!”

 

He picked up the photograph and stood back so that the light fell sharply

on his face and on the photograph which he held beside his head. He

caught up a sombrero and jammed it jauntily on his head. He tilted his

face high, with resolute chin. And all at once there were two Black

Jacks, not one. He evidently saw all the admission that he cared for in

her face. He took off the hat with a dragging motion and replaced the

photograph on the table.

 

“I tried it in the mirror,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t quite sure until I

tried it in the mirror. Then I knew, of course.”

 

She felt him slipping out of her life.

 

“What shall I say to you, Terence?”

 

“Is that my real name?”

 

She winced. “Yes. Your real name.”

 

“Good. Do you remember our talk of today?”

 

“What talk?”

 

He drew his breath with something of a groan.

 

“I said that what these people lacked was the influence of family—of old

blood!”

 

He made himself smile at her, and Elizabeth trembled. “If I could

explain—” she began.

 

“Ah, what is there to explain, Aunt Elizabeth? Except that you have been

a thousand times kinder to me than I dreamed before. Why, I—I actually

thought that you were rather honored by having a Colby under your roof. I

really felt that I was bestowing something of a favor on you!”

 

“Terry, sit down!”

 

He sank into a chair slowly. And she sat on the arm of it with her

mournful eyes on his face.

 

“Whatever your name may be, that doesn’t change the man who wears the

name.”

 

He laughed softly. “And you’ve been teaching me steadily for twenty-four

years that blood will tell? You can’t change like this. Oh, I understand

it perfectly. You determined to make me over. You determined to destroy

my heritage and put the name of the fine old Colbys in its place. It was

a brave thing to try, and all these years how you must have waited, and

waited to see how I would turn out, dreading every day some outbreak of

the bad blood! Ah, you have a nerve of steel, Aunt Elizabeth! How have

you endured the suspense?”

 

She felt that he was mocking her subtly under this flow of compliment.

But it was the bitterness of pain, not of reproach, she knew.

 

She said: “Why didn’t you let me come up with you? Why didn’t you send

for me?”

 

“I’ve been busy doing a thing that no one could help me with. I’ve been

burning my dreams.” He pointed to a smoldering heap of ashes on the

hearth.

 

“Terry!”

 

“Yes, all the Colby pictures that I’ve been collecting for the past

fifteen years. I burned ‘em. They don’t mean anything to anyone else, and

certainly they have ceased to mean anything to me. But when I came to

Anthony Colby—the eighteen-twelve man, you know, the one who has always

been my hero—it went pretty hard. I felt as if—I were burning my own

personality. As a matter of fact, in the last couple of hours I’ve been

born over again.”

 

Terry paused. “And births are painful, Aunt Elizabeth!”

 

At that she cried out and caught his hand. “Terry dear! Terry dear! You

break my heart!”

 

“I don’t mean to. You mustn’t think that I’m pitying myself. But I want

to know the real name of my father. He must have had some name other than

Black Jack. What was it?”

 

“Are you going to gather his memory to your heart, Terry?”

 

“I am going to find something about him that I can be proud of. Blood

will tell. I know that I’m not all bad, and there must have been good in

Black Jack. I want to know all about him. I want to know about—his

crimes.”

 

He labored through a fierce moment of silent struggle while her heart

went helplessly out to him.

 

“Because—I had a hand in every one of those crimes! Everything that he

did is something that I might have done under the same temptation.”

 

“But you’re not all your father’s son. You had a mother. A dear, sweet-faced girl—”

 

“Don’t!” whispered Terry. “I suppose he broke—her heart?”

 

“She was a very delicate girl,” she said after a moment.

 

“And now my father’s name, please?”

 

“Not that just now. Give me until tomorrow night, Terry. Will you do

that? Will you wait till tomorrow night, Terry? I’m going to have a long

talk with you then, about many things. And I want you to keep this in

mind always. No matter how long you live, the influence of the Colbys

will never go out of your life. And neither will my influence, I hope. If

there is anything good in me, it has gone into you. I have seen to that.

Terry, you are not your father’s son alone. All these other things have

entered into your make-up. They’re just as much a part of you as his

blood.”

 

“Ah, yes,” said Terry. “But blood will tell!”

 

It was a mournful echo of a thing she had told him a thousand times.