The Way of the Strong
It was about this time that the editor's sanctum was invaded by a stranger; a big stranger of quite uncommon appearance. The man was simply dressed in good store clothes, which covered a powerful, burly figure. But the chief interest lay in the man's face and head. It was a strong face. To use Mr. Meakin's own description of him to his young clerk some time later, he possessed a "tow head and a face like emery cloth."
He gave no name, in fact he refused his name. He came to insert an advertisement in the paper, and to consult the editor upon the matter.
His objects were so definite that, in spite of the refusal to give his name, Mr. Meakin decided to see him. Monica was away at dinner, or he would probably have turned him over to her. However, when the man finally appeared the editorial mind was pleased at the study his unusual personality offered him.
The stranger very nearly filled up the doorway as he entered the inner office.
"Guess you're the editor?" he began at once, dropping into the chair Mr. Meakin kicked towards him.
"Sure," Mr. Meakin was always sparing of words to strangers.
"Ah."
Then, so long did the man remain silent that the editor found it necessary to spur him on by a method he usually adopted in such cases. He pressed the button of his dummy telephone with his foot. The bell rang out, and he lifted the receiver to his ear.
"Hullo! Who is it? Oh, that you, Allards? Oh, is it important? Well, I'm engaged just now. I shan't be three minutes. Yes, I'll come right along then. Goo'-bye!"
He looked across at his visitor as he put the receiver up.
"Sorry to interrupt you. I didn't just get what you said."
A flicker of a smile passed across the visitor's serious face.
"It's of no consequence," he said. "Guess I must have been thinking aloud. You see it's kind of a fool trick having the button of that dummy 'phone in sight under the table. Guess the feller who fixed it was a 'mutt.'"
"Eh?" Mr. Meakin's face went suddenly scarlet. He was about to make a hasty reply, but changed his mind, and laughed with a belated sense of humor.
"It's served its purpose anyhow," he said genially. "What can I do for you?"
The stranger responded to his humor at once.
"Don't guess you can do much. Maybe you can tell me a deal. I'm looking for some one who's lately come to this city. A lady. Maybe you get a list of visitors to this city in your paper."
"At the hotels – yes."
"Ah, I don't guess she's stopping at an hotel. Came to visit her sister. Her name's Audrey Thorne."
"Audrey Thorne," Mr. Meakin searched the back cells of memory. He seemed to have heard the name at some time or other, but for the life of him he could not recall where.
"Guess I'm not wise," he said at last, with a thoughtful shake of his head, while he eyed his visitor shrewdly. "Anyway, if I knew of the lady, tain't up to me to hand information to a stranger – without a name."
The stranger promptly rose from his seat.
"Just so," he said, with a sharp clip of his powerful jaws. "I'll ask you to read this over," he went on, producing a sheet of paper from his pocket, "and say what it'll cost to have it in your news-sheet for a week."
He handed the paper across the desk, and Mr. Meakin admired the bold handwriting in which the advertisement was set out.
"'Will Audie send her address to Box 4926 P. O. Winnipeg? Sign letter in full name. – Leo.'"
Mr. Meakin read it over twice. Then he looked up keenly.
"Guess it'll cost you ten dollars," he said. "Sunday edition two dollars extra. In advance."
The stranger paid out the money without comment and moved towards the door. Then he looked back.
"There'll be no mistake. It's particular," he said deliberately.
"There'll be no mistake."
"Thanks." The stranger pocketed the receipt for the money with some care.
The door closed behind the man who signed himself as "Leo," and Mr. Meakin heard him pass down the passage to the outer office. Then he turned to the stack of local copy at his elbow.
He was quite used to strange visits from stranger people, so he thought no more of the matter until nearly an hour later when Monica returned from her dinner.
As she entered the wholesome, airy apartment, with its soft carpet and comfortable furniture, he looked up quickly.
"Say, Miss Hanson," he said, holding out a pile of proofed copy. "This needs classifying. It goes in tomorrow's issue. Get it through before four. Say, and you might hand this in to the advertisement department. A guy with a tow-head, and a face like emery cloth handed me twelve dollars for a week – and Sunday. Reckon he's chasin' up his lady friend, and she's guessin' to lie low."
He passed her Leo's advertisement, and went on with his work.
Monica waited for any further instructions to come, and, as she stood, glanced down at the sheet of paper containing the advertisement. In a moment her attention was riveted upon it, and a sickening feeling stole through her whole body. Then her pulses were set hammering with a nervousness she could not control, and she felt faint.
At that moment Mr. Meakin happened to look up.
"Well?" he inquired.
Then he became aware of the pallor of the pretty face he was accustomed to admire, when Mrs. Meakin was safely within the walls of their home on the outskirts of the city.
"Say, you're not well," he exclaimed kindly.
Monica promptly pulled herself together.
"It's – it's just the heat," she stammered. "I'll – go and see to these. Anything else?"
"Nothin' else just now. Say, don't worry too much if the heat – "
But Monica had fled before he finished his well-intentioned admonition. Once in her own office she flung herself into the chair at her desk, and sat staring at the ominous sheet of paper.
"Leo!" she muttered. "Whatever am I to do? Whatever am I to do?"
For a long time the pile of copy remained untouched while she struggled with the problem confronting her. She viewed it from every aspect. And with each fresh view it troubled her the more. What was her duty? What was the right course to pursue? This man was Leo. Elsie's Leo. She had no doubt of it. Leo, the father of Elsie's boy. If Elsie had lived she would have welcomed him. But Elsie was dead. Elsie was dead and carried with her her promise never to let the child know his mother's shame. Ought she to tell the father of this child? Ought she to give him up? It would be an easy way out of all her difficulties. Yet she had promised to bring him up as her own.
No, she would not give the boy up. It was plainly her duty to keep him, and – yes, she knew it – her desire. But equally she had a duty of some sort to fulfil by this man. He must not be left in ignorance of Elsie's death. He must be told that or he would haunt this town, and become an everlasting source of disquiet to her. Yes, there was a duty to herself as well. She must safeguard herself; safeguard the child. And with this conclusion came an inspiration. She would write to him on her typewriter, and leave the letter unsigned.
So she passed the advertisement on to its department, and, on a plain sheet of paper, sent the briefest possible message to the post office, Winnipeg.
"Audie died in child birth."
There was neither heading nor signature, and she determined to have it mailed from another town. The more she considered it the more her message pleased her. She was keeping her promise to her sister, and fulfilling what she believed to be her duty to the man. He had asked for news of Elsie; well, here was news which was the exact truth.
Her work was duly completed by four o'clock, and she awaited a call from Mr. Meakin. There would be a number of letters to take down, she knew, when his editorial work was finished for the day. In the meantime she had leisure to reflect upon the visit of the man, Leo.
It was curious. Almost a coincidence that he should call when she was out. Had she been in it would have fallen to her duty to have interviewed him first. As it was she had missed seeing him. It was a pity. She ought to have seen him. Yes, she would have given half a month's salary to have seen him —
A bell rang; but it was not Mr. Meakin's bell. It was from the outer office. She took up the 'phone at once. Could it be – ?
"Hello! Oh! Some one to see Mr. Meakin? Who is it? What's that? Austin Leyburn? What's that? He's dressed funny? All right, send him in to me. Right."
Monica put up the receiver and waited. It was not Leo, and she was disappointed. Austin Leyburn. She didn't know the name.
There was a knock at the door, and, in answer to the girl's summons, it was thrown open by the small boy who piloted visitors.
"Mr. Austin Leyburn, Miss!"
Monica indicated a chair as the door closed behind her visitor. He took it without hesitation, and she found herself gazing upon a most extraordinary object. He was obviously a powerfully built man with a keen, alert face and narrow eyes. He was smiling at her with a curiously ironical smile which rather annoyed her. But his general appearance was deplorable. His clothes were so unclean and ragged that, even among tramps, she never remembered seeing anything quite like them. They were patched and torn again in a dozen different places, and it would have been impossible to have described their original color with any accuracy. Yes, there could be no doubt he was a tramp of some sort. Yet when he spoke his manner was not that of a tramp. However, as a precaution, Monica kept her foot over a push button which did not belong to a dummy 'phone.
"If you'll state your business, I'll inquire if Mr. Meakin will see you," she said, in her most business-like way. "He's very busy. You see, the paper will be going to press soon."
"I don't guess I need to worry the boss if you happen to know about things." The man's manner was sharp, but his smile remained. Monica became interested. There was nothing of the usual whine of the tramp here.
"I deal with all inquiries," she said simply.
"Confidential?"
"That depends on the nature of the confidence."
"Ah. Maybe what I'm after won't be reckoned confidential."
"If you'll – "
"Just so, Miss. Well, see here, maybe it isn't a heap except to me. I'm after a feller who calls himself Leo," he said distinctly. Monica started. The man's quick, smiling eyes saw the start and drew his conclusions. "I see you know him. I knew he'd been here. Came this morning. You see he's after a woman belonging to this city. I guessed he'd get around. I'm on his trail and want him bad. Maybe you can put me wise where he's stopping?"
Monica shook her head with a calmness she was by no means feeling.
"I shouldn't tell you if I knew. You're quite right, I know the man – by name, but that's all. You see, we know many people by name – but there our information to strangers ends."
"So." Mr. Leyburn eyed her coldly. "Maybe Mr. Meakin, as you call him, will – "
"Mr. Meakin will tell you no more. In fact, if this is your business Mr. Meakin will not see you."
Monica pressed the bell under her foot.
The man laughed harshly.
"Well, it don't matter. Guess I'll come up with him sooner or later. Maybe he'll look into this office again another day." He rose, and his hard eyes shone with a metallic gleam. "If he does – you can just tell him that Tug is on his heels. He's looking for him bad. So he best get busy. Good-day."
The small boy threw open the door, and stood aside to allow the visitor to pass out. Nor, in spite of the curious threat in the man's words, could Monica help a smile at the impish manner in which the boy held his nose as the man passed by him.
The stranger's visit left an unsavory flavor behind him. Monica was disturbed, and sat thinking hard. She was striving hard to raise the curtain which shut out her view of the life lying behind all these people. She was striving to visualize something of that life with which poor Elsie had so long been associated. A number of vague pictures hovered before her mind's eye, but they were indistinct, unreal. She could not see with eyes of knowledge. How could she? Was not this life belonging to another world? A world she had never beheld, never been brought into contact with? No, it was useless to try to penetrate those dark secrets which she felt lay hidden behind the curtain she was powerless to draw aside.
Yet she knew these things had not come to her to be set aside and forgotten. They had come to her for a purpose. What was that purpose? She tried to see with her sister's eyes. What would Elsie have done, with Leo – threatened? Ah, that was it; that was the purpose. Her sister's responsibility had devolved upon her. Elsie would have taken some action to help – Leo. What would she have done?
She thought and puzzled for a long time. Then she pressed the bell under her desk once more. An inspiration had come.
When the boy appeared she demanded the proofs of the day's advertisements.
She waited impatiently until the boy returned, and then kept him waiting while she hastily extracted the one she required from the pile. She read it over carefully. Leo had worded it to suit her purpose well. Suddenly she took up her blue pencil. She dashed out the word "Winnipeg" and substituted "Toronto" in its place. And without another glance at it handed the papers back to the boy.
"That's all," she said briefly.
But the boy was full of the impertinence of his kind.
"Toronto?" he read. "Say, Miss, ain't that the place they have ice palaces an' things?" he demanded, with a grin.
Monica was in no mood to answer his questions.
"Take them back," she said sharply.
As the boy slouched off she leaned back in her chair with a sigh of relief. She had done her best to put the man calling himself Tug off the track of his quarry.
PART II
CHAPTER I
AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS
Monica Hanson stood in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom. For a long time she stood viewing her fair reflection with a smile at once half humorous, half tearful.
Thirty-five!
It sounded terrible as she muttered the age she knew herself to be. Thirty-five! Yet the perfect blue eyes were not a day older, as they looked back at her out of the glass. There was no hardening in their depths; there were no gathering lines about their fringed lids. Perhaps there was a deeper, wiser look in them; a look suggesting a wider knowledge, a more perfect sympathy with the life into which they had peeped during her years of struggling. But there was no aging in them. The rich, ripe mouth, too, so wonderfully firm, yet gentle, the broad, intelligent forehead with its fair, even brows. There was not one single unsightly line to disfigure these features which displayed so much of the strong character which lay behind them. Her wealth of fair, wavy hair, which since her earliest days had been her one little conceit, her constant joy and pride, was faultlessly dressed, nor had she ever yet found in its midst one of those silver threads whose discovery never fails to strike terror into the heart of an aging woman.
No, she beheld nothing in her reflection to cause her a single pang, a single heartache. Yet her heart was aching; and the pain of it was in the smile which came back to her from her reflection.
Had Monica only known it, the years had been more than kind to her. With a little more womanly vanity she would have understood that her girlish attractions had been increased a hundredfold. Not only had the years matured her figure to perfections which can never belong to early youth, but they had endowed her with a beauty of soul and mind, far more rarely found in one of such unusual physical attraction.
But such ponderings before her glass were useless, perhaps harmful. It was all so impossible. So she turned away with a little impatient gesture, and, picking up the letter lying on her bed, she passed through the folding doors into her sitting-room beyond.
The winter sun was shining in through frosty windows; that wonderful winter sun which brightens and makes joyous the Canadian dead season, without shedding sufficient warmth to disturb the thermometer from its despairing depths of cold.
She crossed to the window, and stood beside the heat radiator while she read her letter for perhaps the twentieth time. It was quite short, and intensely characteristic of the writer. Monica understood this. The lack of effusion in no way blinded her to the stormy passion which had inspired it.
"Dear Monica:
"I am going to call on you at 4 o'clock this afternoon, if you have no objection. If you have, 'phone me. I simply cannot rest until the subject of our talk the other night is settled.
"Yours,
"Alexander Hendrie."
There was a wistful longing in her eyes as the woman looked up from the brief note. The subject of their talk. He could not rest. Had she rested, or known peace of mind since that evening? She knew she had not. She knew that come what might that calm which belongs to a heart untouched by love could never again be hers. She knew that love, at last, had come knocking at the door of her soul; nor had it knocked in vain, in spite of the impossibility of it all. She had not 'phoned. Instead she had spent two hours over her toilet to receive the man who was her employer, and had now become her lover.
No one knew better than she the happiness that might have been hers in her newly found regard for this great wheat grower of Alberta, had things only been different. She loved him; she had admired him ever since she came into his employ, but now she loved him with all the long-pent passion of a woman who has for years deliberately shut the gates of her soul to all such feelings.
She knew her love must be denied. There was no hope for it.
The trials she had gone through for the sake of her pledge to her dying sister were far too vividly in her mind to leave her with any hope for this love of hers. She must crush it out. She must once more steel herself, that her faith with the dead might be kept.
She dropped upon the ottoman beside the window, and, gazing out on Winnipeg's busy main street, gave herself up to profound thought. Her incisive brain swiftly became busy, reviewing the career which had been hers since – since young Frank, her beloved boy, the child who had cost her a sister's life, had become her one object and care.
Her deep eyes grew introspective, and her pretty lips closed firmly.
She had not traveled an easy road during those years. Far from it. The rocks prophesied by the kindly doctor had been quickly realized. They had come well-nigh to wrecking her craft at the outset. Only that its ribs were so stout, and the heart that guided it so strong, it must inevitably have been doomed.
So much for her youthful conceit; so much for the boundless optimism of her years. She was caught among the very first shoals that presented themselves in the ebb tide of her fortunes six months before the completion of her contract on the Daily Citizen. Would she ever forget the – yes, tragedy of that moment? She thought not.
Everything had gone along so smoothly. Her fears had been lulled. There was no sign to point the coming of the disaster. Yes, that was it. There had been overconfidence. The complications at her sister's death had been forgotten. There had been no unpleasant developments to remind her of the pitfalls with which she was surrounded. So she had grown careless in her confidence. In the warmth of her girl's heart, her rapidly growing love for the little life in her charge, she found herself spending every moment of her spare time with the child she intended to teach to call her "mother."
They were happy days. The joy of them still remained. Nor, for all the trouble they had caused her, did she regret a single one of them. But her indiscretion grew, and so the blow fell.
It was on a Sunday. In the afternoon. She remembered it well; a glorious sunny day in early summer. She was pushing the baby coach along the sidewalk of the broad country road toward the city. She had paused to readjust the sunshade over the child's head. When she looked up it was to discover a light, top buggy, drawn by a fast trotter, rapidly approaching. Mr. Meakin was driving it, and beside him sat his little, chapel-going wife.
They saw her and promptly pulled up; and instantly Monica knew that trouble was knocking at her door. Mrs. Meakin did not like her. She did not approve of her husband's secretary; and Mrs. Meakin was one of those narrow, straight-laced puritans, who never cease to thank Providence that they are so pure.
"Why, it's Miss Hanson," she promptly exclaimed. "And – oh, the lovely baby. Why – " She looked at Monica's scarlet face and broke off.
Mr. Meakin took up the greeting in the cordial fashion of a man who is well disposed.
"Say, Miss Hanson, it's a hot day for you to be pushing that coach. You surely ought to be around an ice cream parlor with one of your beaus. Not out airing some friend's kid."
But Monica's confusion only increased under the sharp eyes of Mrs. Meakin, which never left her face.
"A baby can't have too much of this beautiful air," she said helplessly.
"Why doesn't its mother look after it?" demanded Mrs. Meakin.
"She's – she's busy."
Monica's attempts at evasion were so feeble, she had so little love for subterfuge, that, to a mind as prone to suspicion as Mrs. Meakin's, the word "mystery" quickly presented itself.
"Whose is it?"
The inevitable question seemed to thunder into the wretched girl's ears.
Whose is it? Whose is it? It was useless to lie to this woman, whom she knew had no love for her. So on the spur of the moment she did the only thing that seemed possible, seeing Mr. Meakin was her employer. But she did it so badly that, even while she spoke, she knew her doom was sealed.
"She belongs back there." Monica pointed at the distant farm house.
"That house?" cried Mrs. Meakin sharply. "Why, that's Mrs. Gadly's. I – " She turned abruptly to her husband. "We'd better drive on, or we'll be late back for supper, and that will make us late for chapel."
With a flourish of his whip, and a cheery good-bye, Mr. Meakin set his "three-minute" trotter going again, and Monica was left to her dismay.
She knew. She needed no instinct to tell her. It had all been written in Mrs. Meakin's icy face. The woman would find out all about the baby she had seen her husband's secretary with. She would smell out the whole trail with that nose which was ever sharp for an evil scent.
She continued her walk thinking hard all the while, and finally took the child back to its nurse at the usual time.
Mrs. Gadly met her at the front door, and Monica put a sharp question.
"Has Mrs. Meakin been here?"
"She surely has, mam," replied the woman, smiling. "And a God-fearin' woman she is. I've known her years an' years. I didn't jest know you was her good man's secretary. She's a lady, she is; a real, elegant lady. An' she was all took up with the baby, an' the way I'd looked after him. She said as it was a great thing for a woman who 's lost her baby to have the care of another woman's child, kind o' softens the pain. An' when I told her as you paid me so liberal for it – Why, mam, you ain't faint? Ah, it's the sun; you best come right inside and set down."
It had been a terrible moment for Monica. She knew that her career in San Sabatano had suddenly terminated. The God-fearing Mrs. Meakin would have no mercy on her, particularly as she was her husband's secretary.
She returned to her apartments that evening with her mind made up to a definite course; and, on the Monday morning following, before she went to her office, she looked up her contract with the Daily Citizen. She took it with her. She knew that the thing she was about to do was a tacit admission of the child's parentage. But she intended it so to be, since truthful explanation was denied her.
Mr. Meakin was amiability itself. But there was evident relief in the sigh with which he accepted the return of the girl's contract.
"I'm real sorry, Miss Hanson, real sorry," he said sincerely. "But I guess you're right, seeing things are as they are. You see, Mrs. Mea – you see, San Sabatano has notions. I'd just like to say right here, though, I'm the loser by your going. I'm the loser by a heap. An' whenever you're wanting a reference I'll hand you a bully one. Just you write me when you need it. Meanwhile the cashier'll hand you a check for salary, right away."