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!