DA’S TURN

The wind was whistling down the Black Creek Valley, carrying heavy flakes of snow that whirled and eddied around them, as Rance Belmont and Evelyn made their way to the Stopping-House. The stormy night accorded well with the turmoil in Evelyn’s brain. One point she had decided she would go back to her father, and for this purpose she asked her companion if he would lend her one hundred dollars. This he gladly consented to do.

He was discreet enough to know that he must proceed with caution, though he felt that in getting her separated from her husband and so thoroughly angry with him that he had made great progress. Now he believed that if he could get her away from the Stopping-House his magnetic influence over her would bring her entirely under his power.

But she had insisted on going in to the Stopping-House to see Mrs. Corbett and tell her what she was going to do. It was contrary to Evelyn’s straightforwardness to do anything in an under-handed way, and she felt that she owed it to Mrs.

Corbett, who had been her staunch friend, to tell her the truth of the story, knowing that many versions of it would be told.

Mrs. Corbett was busy setting a new batch of bread, and looked up with an exclamation of surprise when they walked into the kitchen, white with snow. It staggered Mrs. Corbett somewhat to see them together at that late hour, but she showed no surprise as she made Mrs. Brydon welcome.

“I am going away, Mrs. Corbett,” Evelyn began at once.

“No bad news from home, is there?” Mrs. Corbett asked anxiously.

“No bad news from home, but bad news here. Fred and I have quarrelled and parted forever!”

Mrs. Corbett drew Evelyn into the pantry and closed the door. She could do nothing, she felt, with Rance Belmont present.

“Did you quarrel about him?” she asked, jerking her head towards the door.

Evelyn told her story, omitting only Rance Belmont’s significant remarks, which indeed she had not heard.

Mrs. Corbett listened attentively until she was done.

“Ain’t that just like a man, poor, blunderin’ things they are. Sure and it was just his love for you, honey, that made him break out so jealous!”

“Love!” Evelyn broke in scornfully. “Love should include trust and respect I don’t want love without them. How dare he think that I would do anything that I shouldn’t? Do I look like a woman who would go wrong?”

“Sure you don’t, honey!” Mrs. Corbett soothed her, “but you know Rance Belmont is so smooth-tongued and has such a way with him that all men hate him, and the women like him too well. But what are you goin’ to do, dear? Sure you can’t leave your man.”

“I have left him,” said Evelyn. “I am going to Brandon now to-night in time for the early train. Rance Belmont will drive me.”

Something warned Mrs. Corbett not to say all that was in her heart, so she temporized.

“Sure, if I were you I wouldn’t go off at night it don’t look well. Stay here till mornin’. The daylight’s the best time to go. Don’t go off at night as if you were doin’ something you were ashamed of. Go in broad daylight.”

“What do I care what people say about me?” Evelyn raged again. “They can’t say any worse than my husband believes of me. No I am going I want to put distance between us; I just came in to say good-bye and to tell you how it happened. I wanted you and Mr. Corbett to know the truth, for you have been kind friends to me, and I’ll never, never forget you.”

“I’d be afraid you’d never get to Brandon tonight, honey.” Mrs. Corbett held her close, determining in her own mind that she would lock her in the pantry if there was no other way of detaining her. “Listen to the wind sure it’s layin’ in for a blizzard. I knew that all day. The roads will be drifted so high you’d never get there, even with the big pacer. Stay here tonight just to oblige me, and you can go on in the morning if it’s fit.”

Meanwhile John Corbett had been warning Rance Belmont that the weather was unfit for anyone to be abroad, and the fact that George Sims, the horse trader from Millford, and Dan Lonsbury, had put in for the night, made a splendid argument in favor of his doing the same. Rance Belmont had no desire to face a blizzard unnecessarily, particularly at night, and the storm was growing thicker every minute. So after consulting with Evelyn, who had yielded to Mrs. Corbett’s many entreaties, he agreed to remain where he was for the night. Evelyn went at once to the small room over the kitchen, which Mrs. Corbett kept for special guests, and as she busied herself about the kitchen Mrs. Corbett could hear her pacing up and down in her excitement.

Mrs. Corbett hastily baked biscuits and “buttermilk bread” to feed her large family, who, according to the state of the weather and the subsequent state of the roads, might be with her for several days, and while her hands were busy, her brain was busier still, and being a praying woman, Maggie Corbett was looking for help in the direction from which help comes.

The roaring of the storm as it swept past the house, incessantly mourning in the mud chimney and sifting the snow against the frosted windows, brought comfort to her anxious heart, for it reminded her that dominion and majesty and power belong to the God whom she served.

When she put the two pans of biscuits in the oven she looked through the open door into the “Room,” where her unusual number of guests were lounging about variously engaged.

Rance Belmont smoked cigarettes constantly and shuffled the cards as if to read his fate therein. He would dearly have loved a game with some one, for he had the soul of a gambler, but Mrs. Corbett’s decree against card-playing was well known.

Dan Lonsbury, close beside the table lamp, read a week-old copy of the Brandon Times. George Sims, the horse-dealer, by the light of his own lantern, close beside him on the bench, pared his corns with minute attention to detail.

Under the wall lamp, which was fastened to the window frame, Da Corbett, in his cretonne-covered barrel-chair of home manufacture, read the War Cry, while Peter Rockett, on his favorite seat, the wood-box, played one of the Army tunes on his long-suffering Jew’s-harp.

“They can’t get away as long as the storm lasts, anyway,” Mrs. Corbett was thinking, thankful even for this temporary respite, “but they’ll go in the mornin’ if the storm goes down, and I can’t stop them vain is the help of man.”

Suddenly Mrs. Corbett started as if she had heard a strange and disturbing noise; she threw out her hands as if in protest. She sat still a few moments holding fast to the kitchen table in her excitement; her eyes glittered, and her breath came short and fast.

She went hurriedly into the pantry, fearful that her agitation might be noticed. In her honest soul it seemed to her that her plan, so terrible, so daring, so wicked, must be sounding now in everybody’s ears.

In the darkness of the pantry she tried to think it out. Was it an inspiration from heaven, or was it a suggestion of the devil? One minute she was imploring Satan to “get thee behind me,” and the next minute she was thanking God and whispering Hallelujahs! A lull in the storm drove her to immediate action.

John Corbett came out into the kitchen to see what was burning, for Maggie had forgotten her biscuits.

When the biscuits were attended to she took “Da” with her into the pantry, and she said to him, “Da, is it ever right to do a little wrong so that good will come of it?”

She asked the question so impersonally that John Corbett replied without hesitation: “It is never right, Maggie.”

“But, Da,” she cried, seizing the lapel of his coat, “don’t you mind hearin’ o’ how the priests have given whiskey to the Indians when they couldn’t get the white captives away from them any other way? Wasn’t that right?”

“Sure and it was; at a time like that it was right to do anything but what are you coming at, Maggie?”

“If Rance Belmont lost all the money he has on him, and maybe ran a bit in debt, he couldn’t go away to-morrow with her, could he? She thinks he’s just goin’ to drive her to Brandon, but I know him he’ll go with her, sure she can’t help who travels on the train with her and how’ll that look? But if he were to lose his money he couldn’t travel dead broke, could he, Da?”

“Not very far,” agreed Da, “but what are you coming at, Maggie? Do you want me to go through him?” He laughed at the suggestion.

“Ain’t there any way you can think of, Da no, don’t think the sin is mine and I’ll take it fair and square on my soul. I don’t want you to be blemt for it Da, listen ” she whispered in his ear.

John Corbett caught her in his arms.

“Would I? Would I? Oh, Maggie, would a duck swim?” he said, keeping his voice low to avoid being heard in the other room.

“Don’t be too glad, Da; remember it’s a wicked thing I’m askin’ you to do; but, Da, are you sure you haven’t forgot how?”

John Corbett laughed. “Maggie, when a man learns by patient toil to tell the under side of an ace he does not often forget, but of course there is always the chance, that’s the charm of it nobody can be quite sure.”

“I’ve thought of every way I can think of,” she said, after a pause, “and this seems to be the only way. I just wish it was something I could do myself and not be bringing black guilt on your soul, but maybe God’ll understand. Maybe it was so that you’d be ready for to-night that He let you learn to be so handy with them. Sure Ma always said that God can do His work with quare tools; and now, Da, I’ll slip off to bed, and you’ll pretend you’re stealin’ a march on me, and he’ll enjoy himself all the more if he thinks he’s spitin’ me. Oh, Da, I wish I knew it was right maybe it’s ruinin’ your soul I am, puttin’ you up to such wickedness, but I’ll be prayin’ for you as hard as I can.”

Da looked worried. “Maggie, I don’t know about the prayin’ I was always able to find the card I needed without bein’ prayed for.”

“Oh, I mean I’ll pray it won’t hurt you. I wouldn’t interfere with the game, for I don’t know one card from another, and I’m sure the Lord don’t either, but it’s your soul I’m thinkin’ of and worried about. I’ll slip down with the green box there’s more’n a hundred dollars in it. And now good-bye, Da go at him, and God bless you and play like the divil!”

Mr. John Corbett slowly folded up the War Cry and placed it in his pocket, and when Maggie brought down the green box with their earnings in it he emptied its contents in his pocket, and then, softly humming to himself, he went into the other room.

The wind raged and the storm roared around the Black Creek Stopping-House all that night, but inside the fire burned bright in the box-stove, and an interested and excited group sat around the table where Rance Belmont and John Corbett played the game! Peter Rockett, with his eyes bulging from his head, watched his grave employer cut and deal and gather in the stakes, with as much astonishment as if that dignified gentleman had walked head downward on the ceiling. Yet John Corbett proceeded with the game, as grave and solemn as when he asked a blessing at the table. Sometimes he hummed snatches of Army tunes, and sometimes Rance Belmont swore softly, and to the anxious ear which listened at the stovepipe-hole above, both sounds were of surpassing sweetness!