The Rose in the Ring

G >> George Barr McCutcheon >> The Rose in the Ring

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"It will be best for you to hear what I have come to say," observed
Grand, ignorant of the peril that lay behind him. He resumed his
progress up the steps, Roberta following close behind.

"For Heaven's sake, man, go while you can," cried David hoarsely.
"Don't you see--"

"Mary, will you listen to me? We've got to come to an understanding
concerning Tom. He's in town. We must come to some agreement, you and
I, as to whether a scandal is to follow his arrest--a scandal which
will blast you and Christine forever in New--"

"Is there no way to stop him?" groaned Mary Braddock, opening her eyes
to look again upon the sinister figure across the way. She had not
heard a word of Colonel Grand's minacious overture.

"By this time Braddock has been taken by the police,--as Sam Brafford,
the ex-convict and yeggman. Is he to go up this time as the father of
Christine--"

David sprang to his side, seizing his right arm in a grip of iron. In
the same movement he whirled the older man about and pointed toward
the figure at the corner.

"It's Braddock!" he hissed. "Now we're in for it. By heaven, he ought
to kill you!"

"Braddock!" gasped Grand. "Why, he is in jail--" The words died on his
lips. He recognized the man. His eyes bulged, his grayish face seemed
to freeze stiff, with the lower lip and tongue hanging loose.

Transfixed, he saw Thomas Braddock straighten up, relinquish his grip
on the iron post, and start diagonally across the street, his head
bent forward, his lower jaw extended. His unswerving gaze never left
the face of Robert Grand.

"Get into the carriage, Roberta," shouted Grand, suddenly alive to his
peril. He trembled, but he was not the man to run from an adversary,
nor was he likely to sell his life cheaply. With a quick, desperate
tug, he jerked himself free of David's grasp. His hand flew to his
inside coat pocket.

Thomas Braddock had reached the curb. Miss Grand stood directly in his
path, petrified by terror. Like a cat he sprang forward, cunningly
putting her body between him and Grand, making it impossible for the
latter to shoot without imperiling the life of his daughter.

A revolver gleamed in the hand of the man on the steps.

David's wits worked quickly. It may have been that he was inspired.
Instead of attempting to grasp or disarm Colonel Grand, he decided to
let the situation take care of itself for the moment. Neither of the
men could make a move to attack the other.

"Here, I say!" gasped the Colonel. "He can shoot me down like a dog.
Stop him, Jenison! Don't you see I can't protect myself?"

David took advantage of the knowledge that Braddock was unarmed.

"Colonel Grand," he cried out sharply, "if you attempt to kill that
man I'll see that you suffer for it."

"But, damn it, he is here to kill me! I have the right to kill in
self-defense if--"

"Then why doesn't he kill you? He has you in his power. He is not here
to attack you. That must be plain, even to you. Mr. Braddock has come
to see his wife before leaving the city."

He caught the cunning gleam in Tom Braddock's eyes. His heart gave a
great bound of relief. The man was not so mad as to court certain
death by attacking his enemy under the present conditions. Christine's
father was perfectly cool; he was absolute master of himself. Nothing
could be farther from the mind of Thomas Braddock than the desire to
be shot by Robert Grand. It was his one purpose in life to kill, not
to be killed. He realized that he was powerless. Grand could shoot him
down like a dog--an inglorious end to the one spark of ambition left
in him. The workings of Braddock's mind were as plain to Jenison as if
the man were expounding them by word of mouth.

"Before leaving the country," David substituted. The ghost of a sneer
flickered about Braddock's lips. He spoke for the first time,
hoarsely, but with wonderful calmness.

"I came to see Mary," he said. "You'd better go, Grand. I don't want
anything to do with you. It won't be healthy for either of us if we
see too much of each other."

"Stand out from behind my daughter, you coward," shouted Grand.

"Don't shoot, father!" screamed the girl, terror-stricken.

"Go ahead!" said Braddock grimly.

The driver of the cab was looking wildly about in quest of a
policeman. Two women had stopped on the opposite side of the street,
and were staring at the group in front of the Portman mansion.

"Shall I call a cop?" called out the cabby, addressing himself to the
one person who seemed to belong on the premises--Mrs. Braddock.

"No! No! Take them away!" she cried. "That's all I ask of you!"

"Wait!" said Colonel Grand, master of himself once more. "We may just
as well understand each other. I had an object in coming here. It
concerns this man. He--"

David broke in peremptorily. It was time to bring the distressing
scene to an end, if it were possible to do so without inviting the
actual catastrophe. He realized that he would have to act quickly in
order to anticipate the curious crowd and to be ahead of the police.

"Colonel Grand, you have put yourself in an unpleasant, uncalled-for
position," he said. "I am of half a mind to hold you here until the
police arrive. Cabby, I call upon you to witness, with all the rest of
us, that Colonel Grand has drawn a revolver with the design to kill an
unarmed, unoffending man. You have seen everything. Mr. Braddock saved
his life only by--"

"Unarmed!" shouted Colonel Grand. "Why, he is armed to the teeth. He's
after me. He's going to kill me on sight, I swear--"

"What is to prevent him from doing so now, Colonel?" demanded David.
"You are in a position where you cannot shoot. He could drill you full
of holes if that were his intention. Mr. Braddock, are you armed?"

"No," said Braddock. "Do you suppose, if I had a gun, I would be
standing behind this girl?"

"Do you hear that, cabby? Do you, Colonel? Now, I want to say just
this to you, sir; I am going to the nearest police station and swear
out a warrant for your arrest. I can't hold you myself, but I can do
the next best thing. I can land you in jail for attempted murder."

Colonel Grand stared at him with uncomprehending eyes, a sickly smile
on his lips.

"You know better than--" he began.

David cut him short with an exclamation. Then he walked out to the
curb, opened the cab door and coolly motioned for Colonel Grand to
step down and enter.

Mary Braddock waited no longer. She sped down the steps, passing the
slow-moving, stupefied Colonel, and ruthlessly shoved Roberta Grand to
one side, taking her stand in front of her husband, facing his foe.

"It isn't necessary for my husband to shield himself behind your flesh
and blood, Colonel Grand," she said, her head erect. "Now, if you care
to shoot, you have both of us at your mercy."

"I came to propose a peaceful--" began the Colonel, baffled.

"Step lively, Colonel Grand!" commanded Jenison. "Permit me, Miss
Grand."

"Don't touch me," hissed Roberta, disdaining his assistance. The look
she bestowed upon her father, as she passed him, was not a pleasant
one. He had promised her a different reception at the Portman home,
secretly depending on his power to force Mrs. Braddock to welcome an
armistice, no matter how distasteful it may have been to her. He had
not anticipated the outcome. Miss Grand accompanied him, meanly it is
true, in the hope that she might gloat over the Braddocks in their
humiliation.

She entered the cab, frightened and dismayed. Her father, still
grasping his pistol, followed her. He cast a defeated, almost
appealing glance at the uncompromising face of the young man who held
open the door.

"You can't obtain a warrant for me," he said nervously. "I have the
law on my side. I can prove that this man threatened--"

"Drive on, cabby," said David relentlessly. "I've taken your number.
You will be called on as a witness. Don't argue! I mean it!"

Muttering excitedly, the driver, without the customary "where to?"
started off down the street. Colonel Grand leaned forward to send a
menacing scowl toward the group on the sidewalk. He smiled
sardonically when he saw that Mary Braddock still kept her place in
front of her husband, evidently afraid that he would fire from the
window of the departing cab. Then he called out his instructions to
the driver and settled back in the seat.

The gritting of Tom Braddock's teeth did not escape the tortured ears
of his wife. She looked up quickly. He was glaring after the cab, a
look of appalling ferocity in his face.

"Come into the house, Tom," she said quickly.

He turned on her with a snarl.

"I won't keep you long," he grated. "I've got other business on hand."
It occurred to him to tender David his meed of praise. "That was
pretty sharp in you, David, staving him off like that. I owe you
something for doing that."

"I knew you were unarmed. You would have had no chance."

They were going up the steps, Braddock between the others. Brooks, the
footman, was holding the door open. He had been a politely interested
witness to the startling encounter.

Braddock seemed to be studying each successive slab of stone as he
ascended. The muscles of his jaw were working. He seemed to have
formed a habit of jamming his hands far down into his coat pockets.

"That was the only chance _he'll_ ever have," was his sententious
remark. No other word was uttered until they were inside the house,
Mrs. Braddock's gasp of relief could not have been called a sigh.

"Thank God!" she breathed, sinking upon the hall seat and clasping her
clenched hands to her breast.

Braddock shot a quick glance up the broad stairway. The surroundings
were strange to him,--he had never been inside the home of his father-
in-law before,--but he knew that Christine was somewhere overhead.

"How's Christine, Mary?" he asked roughly.

"She is wretchedly unhappy, Tom."

"Umph!" was the way he received it, but a close observer might have
seen the flutter of his eyelids and the sharp, convulsive movement in
the coat pockets. "I don't want her to see me," he said.

"She wants to see you--"

He faced her angrily. "No! I've got to take care of my nerves. I can't
take any chances on having 'em upset. See here, David," he said,
lowering his voice and speaking with deadly emphasis, "that talk of
yours about swearing out a warrant for Grand don't go, do you
understand? I don't want him to be arrested. I don't want him locked
up. I want him to be _free_. He'd be too safe behind the bars?"

The sound of a door opening above came to them at this juncture,
followed by the swift rush of feet and the rustle of skirts. Braddock
looked up and instinctively drew back into an obscured recess at his
left.

Christine's face appeared over the railing above. She leaned far
forward and called out in the high, tense tones of extreme
nervousness:

"Father! Is it you? Are you there?"

There was no response.

David, standing on the lower step, permitted his gaze to swerve from
the sweet, eager face of the girl above to that of the man in the
corner.

The effect on Braddock was astounding. Signs of a great convulsion
revealed themselves in his face. His lips were parted and drawn as if
in pain; his eyes were half closed, screening the emotion that groped
behind the lids. It was the face, the figure of a man mightily shaken
by an unexpected emotion. Slowly his eyes were opened. An expression
of utter despair and longing had come into them. Mrs. Braddock was
staring at her husband as if she could not believe her senses.

Words came hoarsely, unbidden from the man's lips, spoken as if from
the bottom of his soul after years of subjection and restraint, so
nearly whispered that they came to David's ears as if from afar off.

"Oh! How lonesome I've been all these years, just for the sound of her
voice!"

His wife's hand went out to him involuntarily. He looked at it for a
second, then into her eyes, waveringly, uncertain as to the impulse
that moved her. He suddenly regained control of himself. He grasped
the slender hand in his great, crushing fingers; the sullen, repellent
glare leaped back into his eyes; alert and shifty, he held up his free
hand to command the silence of David. Then, like a hunted creature at
bay, he glanced over his shoulder. Seeing an open door almost at his
elbow, he resolutely drew his wife after him into the room beyond. As
he turned to slam the door with vicious energy, the tense, incisive
voice called out once more from the head of the stairs:

"Father!"

The door banged as if propelled by the added energy of sudden fear.

An instant later, David was dashing up the stairs, three steps at a
time. She had started down. He met her at the bend.

"Not just now, dearest," he cried. "Wait! He wants to see your mother
first."

She clutched the rail, putting one hand out as if to ward him off. The
dread in her eyes went straight to his heart. Her lips were stiff, her
voice was low with anxiety.

"Is--is she safe, David,--is he himself? Oh, I must go down there. I
know I can reason--"

He stopped her gently. "Please, Christine," he commanded. She suddenly
put her hands to his face, and looked into his eyes.

"If anything were to happen to her," she whispered in agony, "I
would--"

"She is perfectly safe," he broke in. "Your father will not mistreat
her." He clasped her hands and held them to his breast. "My poor
darling!"

Her head dropped, her lip quivered. Then she quietly withdrew her
hands and sank to a sitting posture on the step, leaning her head
wearily against the banister.

Ruby Noakes, a discarded wet towel in her hand, came into the hallway
above them. She saw them, hesitated for a moment, and then quietly
returned to Christine's bed-chamber.

David dropped to his sweetheart's side. His arm fell about her
shoulders. She did not offer to remove it, but sat listless,
unresponsive, her eyes lifted to a narrow window beyond which the hot
sky gleamed.

He began by whispering words of encouragement and sympathy, his soul
in every syllable. She was so quiet, so hurt, so forlorn; never had
she been so precious to him as now.

"David," she interrupted, closing her eyes as if through faintness,
"it is so good of you to say these things to me, but--but--oh, can't
you see how impossible it is now? Don't stay here! Go away, David. Do
you think that I can marry you now? It was bad enough before--but now!
What am I that you should take me to be your wife! You must go away
and forget--"

Her drew her head to his breast, smothering the heartbroken cry by the
fierceness of his embrace.

"Open your eyes, Christine! Look at me." She looked up, utter
desolation in her eyes. "Nothing on earth can keep you from being my
wife--nothing! I couldn't give you up. What am I for, if not to
cherish and protect and comfort you? What is the real meaning of the
word 'love'? Husband! What does that stand for? A stone wall between
pain and peril and trouble; that's what it means. And I'm going to be
all of that to you--a stone wall for all your life, Christine. It is
settled. The strongest man in the world is not strong enough for the
weakest woman. I will never cease being proud of the fact that you are
my wife. Don't speak! Lie quiet, dearest. Nothing can change things
for you and me."

"It cannot be, David,--it cannot be!" she moaned, covering her face
with her hands. He held her there, sobbing, against his breast.

Meanwhile Thomas Braddock was pacing the floor of the library almost
directly beneath them. His wife watched him in silence; her eyes
followed the tall, bent figure as it swung back and forth with the
steadiness of a clock's pendulum. He had not spoken since they entered
the room, nor had she moved from the spot where he left her when he
released her hand. All this time she had been holding the wrist he had
grasped so cruelly. It pained her, but she was only physically
conscious of the fact; her mind was not comprehending it.

It was the first time she had seen him in five years. A curious
analysis was going on in her perturbed brain. The change in him! She
could not take her eyes from the haggard, heavily-lined face, so
unlike the blithe, youthful one she had loved, or the bloated, bestial
one she had feared and despised. The coarseness, the flabbiness, the
purplish hues were no longer there. The bulging, bleary eyes, on which
the glaze of continuous dissipation had once settled as if to stay,
were not as she remembered them. Instead, they were bright and clear,
and lay deep in their sockets. The lips, now beardless, were no longer
thick and repulsive. She marveled. This was not the vacillating,
whiskey-willed man she had known for so long; here was a determined
character, swelling with force, fierce in the resources of a belated
integrity of purpose. No longer the careless, handsome youth, nor the
honorless man, but a power! Whether that power stood for good or evil,
it mattered not; he was a man such as she had never expected him to
be.

She was sensitive to one thing in particular, although the realization
of it did not come to her at once, she was so taken up with the study
of him as a whole: she missed the cigar from the corner of his mouth.

He stopped in front of her.

"This is the first time I have ever been asked into this house," he
said, his lips curling in a bitter, unfriendly smile. "Where is your
father?"

"His rooms are in the other end of the house, upstairs. He sleeps till
noon," she answered mechanically.

"Umph!" he grunted, resuming his walk.

"Tom," she said, taking a firm grasp on her nerves, "let us talk it
over quietly. Sit down."

He halted. "I can talk better standing," he said grimly. He came up
close to her. She stood her ground, looking him squarely in the eyes.
"There isn't much to say, Mary. You know me for what I am, and you
know who made me so. He's got to pay, that's all. We won't go into the
past. It's not easily forgotten. I guess we remember everything."

"Everything," she said.

"I'm not excusing myself. I'm past that, and besides it wouldn't go
down with you. You know where I've been, and you must give me credit
for trying to shield Christine a little bit. I took my medicine, and
nobody but you and Grand knew that her father was up there until now,
excepting Dick. I want to say to you, Mary, I was railroaded for a
crime I didn't commit. I was jobbed. He was at the back of it. He was
afraid of me--and well he might have been. I did a lot of rotten
things while you and I were ploddin' along through those last two
years with the show--you know what they were. But it was whiskey! I
took money that didn't belong to me--yours and Christine's, and
Grand's, and Jenison's. I did worse than that, Mary. I sold you out to
Bob Grand--you knew that, too. But I'm going to try to pay up all my
debts--all of 'em, in a day or two. I owe you my ugly, worthless life.
I'm going to pay you in full by ending it. I owe Colonel Grand for
everything I was, for what I am. I'm going to pay him, so help me God.
Don't interrupt! My mind's made up. Nothing above hell can change it.
I came here to ask you just two questions. I want you to answer them.
I'm going to believe you. You never lie, I know that."

"I will answer them, Tom."

He hesitated, his gaze wavering for the first time. "I--I hate to ask
you this first one, Mary," he said.

"Go on. Ask it."

"It's a mean question, but I've just _got_ to hear you say no. Did you
go to England with Bob Grand?"

"No."

He breathed deeply. "That's one," he said.

"Here's the other. Did he give you money to live on, to educate
Christine with, abroad?"

"No.",

"I'll ask still another. Where did you get the money?"

"Some of it from my father. Afterwards I brought suit against you and
Colonel Grand for an accounting. He was compelled to pay into court
all that was due me as part owner of Van Slye's. I had my own money in
the show. I could not be robbed of that."

"I'm glad you did that. It must have been a nasty dose for him."

"His wife tried to make trouble for me. You heard that?"

"I knew she would, sooner or later."

"You knew it?"

"She wasn't blind."

"But how could she dare to think that I--"

"She knew her husband's reputation, that's all. He was careless about
women." His face went black as a thundercloud. "But he's had his day!"

"Tom," she cried, clutching the lapels of his coat, "you shall not
leave this house until you've promised me to do nothing--"

He shook off her hands. "Don't come any of that, Mary. It won't do any
good. He made me what I was, he would have prostituted you. I was just
bad enough to fall, you were too good to even stumble. Then he landed
me in the pen. Maybe you won't believe it, Mary, but I'd stopped
drinking and was earning fair wages--well, I was tending bar in
Chicago. Barkeepers _have_ to be sober men, you see. I had not touched
a drop for nearly three months. The temptation was too strong there, so
I got out of it. Then I looked up Barnum to get a job as ringmaster. I
was going under the name of Bradford. Somehow nobody would trust me.
They knew me. Joey Noakes came through the West with a pantomime show
about that time. He told me you were in Europe. First thing I'd heard
of you, that was, Mary. Then he told me you'd got your money out of
Grand, legitimately, he swore. I didn't believe him. I thought there
had been some shinanigan. I stood it as long as I could, and then I
broke for New York. You see, girlie--I mean Mary, I'd done for you in a
nasty way. I practically handed you to him. You--well, we won't go into
that."

"No," she said, very pale, "we must not go into that, Tom. You sold me
with the show. I--I can never forgive you for that."

"I'm not asking forgiveness, am I?" he cried harshly. "I'm just
tellin' you, that's all. Well, I came down here to kill him three
years ago. I knew you hated him. If you gave in it wasn't because you
wanted to, but because I'd fixed it so's you couldn't very well get
out of it. There was only one way for you to be rid of Bob Grand after
that--and only one man to do it for you. So I came down here to do it.
Ernie Cronk ran across me on the street one night. He began filling me
up with stories of how Grand had also tried to hurt Christine, and all
about how you were living like a princess abroad. I waited until Grand
came back from England, a couple of weeks later. Ernie had got me
clear off my head by that time, nagging me day and night. He tried to
get me to drink, but I was too wise for that. Well, I found Bob Grand
and, like a fool, started in to tell him what I was going to do to him
instead of doing it first. All of a sudden he pulled a gun. I had no
chance, so I bolted. He fired twice and yelled for the police. They--
they caught me in an alley--and I had a gun in my clothes, too. The
next morning he came to see me in the station-house--to identify me,
he said. Then he told me he was going to send me up for highway
robbery--but he was willing, for your sake and Christine's, to say
nothing about the past--or anything. He did swear me into the pen, and
I kept my mouth closed. But, Mary, I am not a thief at heart, I never
was one. Whatever I did that was crooked in the old days was due to
whiskey. It's a habit men have, I know, blaming everything on to
whiskey, but--but, oh, say, Mary, you _know_ I wasn't that sort
of a man when I married you. I was straight, wasn't I? I never had
done a crooked thing in my life. I don't think I'd ever told a lie. I
had a good mother, just as Christine has. But what the devil am I
doing--talking like this!" The eager, rather appealing note went out
of his voice; he almost snarled the bitter sentence. "I didn't come to
explain, or to beg, or to excuse myself. I won't keep you any longer.
Remember, I'm not asking anything of you, Mary,--not a thing. I'm not
that low."

He was out of breath. No doubt, it was the longest speech he had made
in years. Perhaps his own voice sounded strange to him.

"You are not to leave this house, Tom, until you have promised," she
said firmly. All the time he was speaking, she had stood like a statue
before him, never taking her eyes from his distorted face.

"Oh, I'm not, eh? We'll see!"

"What are you going to do to Colonel Grand?"

"I'm going to--" he checked himself. "I'm going to beat him to a
jelly!"

"You mean, you are going to murder him?" She shuddered as she said it.

"No," he said, with grim humor; "I'm only going to help him to die.
You see, Mary, Bob Grand committed suicide the day he sent me up. The
final death struggle has been a long time coming, but it's almost
here. He took a very slow, but a sure poison."

The time had come for the strong appeal. She laid her hands on his
shoulders.

"Tom, have you thought of what it will mean, not to me, but to
Christine?"

"She knows, by this time, that I'm an ex-convict. It won't hurt her to
know I'm even worse."

"She does not believe you were guilty. She always has said you could
have been a good man if you had let whiskey alone. You see, Tom, she
understood--she understands. Isn't it worth your while to think of
her? You are not drinking now. Can't you think of something good--
something kind to do? Must you go to your grave--and such a grave!--
knowing that you never did a really big thing for her in all your
life? Have you no desire to make her think of you as something except
the unnatural beast you were when she knew you best of all? I see the
change in you. Don't you want her to see it? What do you gain by
killing Colonel Grand? He has wronged you, but do you help yourself by
making matters infinitely worse now, so many years afterward? Do--"

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