CHAPTER II

The man was at the door before she had finished speaking.

“Who’s there?” he called sharply. There was no sound outside save the
splash of the stream and a faint distant rumble.

“Come away from the door! _Please!_ He’s gone; he vanished like a
hoodoo.” The girl’s eyes blazed with excitement. Her breath came as
though she had been running. The man closed the door and slid the bolt.
His tone was reassuring as he suggested:

“The poor chap was doubtless a native who knew the place and thought
he’d get in out of the storm which is rolling up.”

“A storm! Then we must get away at once. Hurry,” Julie urged
breathlessly as she began to clear the table. The man replaced tins and
boxes without answering. They worked silently and swiftly. As the last
dish was put in place a thunderous rumble bumped from hilltop to
hilltop. The wind began to whisper sibilant little secrets down the
stone chimney, the windows rattled an eerie answer. The girl peered out
into the night. There was a crimson streak in the west but overhead the
sky was black.

“We must get away from here,” she persisted.

“Where shall we go? There is no train north until morning. One goes
south at midnight but what should we gain by taking that? I know this
region and I know that there isn’t a house within ten miles and that one
is on the old lumber road which runs through the woods back of this
cabin. I came over it once in an automobile but it would be suicide to
try to walk it with this storm coming. A giant tree is likely to be
struck or uprooted at any moment. I shan’t consent to your trying it.”

“But you don’t mean—you can’t mean that you expect me to spend the
night here with——”

“Not necessarily. I will build up the fire, pile a lot of logs in this
room for you and leave you, if you wish.” A blinding flash turned the
windows to molten sheets. A thunderous rumble shook the cabin.

“Leave me alone with that awful man prowling round? I wouldn’t stay.”

“Then we will make the best of it and remain here. Life is bigger than
conventions, Goldilocks. Had we been caught in this predicament in
France during the war we should have taken it as part of the day’s
work.”

“But we are neither in France nor at war.” The girl’s violet eyes were
black as she defied him. She pulled her soft hat low over her fair hair
and picked up the dog who cowered whining at her feet. “I shall walk to
the next station on the track. If you are afraid you need not come.”

“Julie——”

“Don’t call me Julie! Why, I don’t even know your name and it is only a
few minutes since we met.”

He pulled out his watch. “It is just three hours, thirty minutes and
twenty-seven seconds since you left the Pullman. You might have met me
at social affairs for months and by your own confession not known me as
well as you know me now.”

“You’re right. We are terribly old acquaintances; call me anything you
like, but I am going on. Stop squirming, Sweetie-peach,” she reproached
the spaniel in her arms. As she pulled open the door a flash of
lightning split the sky.

“You are an obstinate silly little girl, but of course I am going with
you. Wait until I bank the fire.” As she stepped outside he refilled the
kettle and threw on some logs. He blew out the candles and closed the
door behind him.

The streak of brilliant color in the west which had supplied a faint
light faded as the man and girl reached the track. A cloud shook out a
few drops of rain and scuttled on. There was a lantern in a chest under
the signal box. With some difficulty the man lighted it.

“We’ll keep to the track, then we shall be in no danger from blow-downs.
Give me the dog. The wind is rising and you will have all you can do to
walk without carrying him. I wish you had a coat.”

“Mine went on in the Pullman with one perfectly good week-end case.” The
voice was the boyishly, friendly voice of the girl in the cabin. The man
drew a quick breath of relief.

“Don’t hurry. We have all the time there is. Take the lantern. This dog
weighs tons. Your ‘Sweetie-peach’ is a snuffling, whining nuisance, but
if I put him down he may get lost and we’ve got to stand by him now.”

With a flash and a crash and a roar the wind furies snapped their leash
and the storm broke. It tore its way through the tall timber on either
side of the road bed, it ju-jutsued trees till they creaked in agony. It
uprooted one which fell with a human groan. The rain descended in white
sheets. The wet tracks glittered like gory snakes in the red light from
the lantern. For perhaps ten minutes the man and girl struggled on.
Then, as with a shriek nine parts demon and one part banshee the wind
flung Julie against her companion, she clutched his arm. She put her
mouth close to his ear as he bent his head to hear what she was saying.

“I give in. You were right. Let’s go back to the cabin if—we can.”

He nodded approval and shouted back: “We can make it. Hold tight to my
coat. This confounded dog wriggles so it takes both arms to hold him.
Swing the lantern so that it will shine on the track. That’s right! Come
on!”

The gale raged. The rain turned to pelting, stinging hail. After what
seemed eons of time the dim outline of the cabin took shape in the
darkness. The windows glowed softly.

“Oh, we can’t go in! Someone is there!” Julie whispered.

The man dropped the dog and steadied the girl with an arm about her
shoulders as a cold, playful mile-a-second zephyr flung her against him.

“It is the light from the fire, Goldilocks. I piled on the logs. I
thought we might come back.”

As he flung open the door the warm balsam-scented air rushed to meet
them, the fire blazed cheerily, the kettle sang boisterously. The black
spaniel dashed in and shook himself vigorously. Glistening drops sprayed
from his wet coat like sparks from an acetylene welder.

“If only I could do that,” Julie laughed as she looked down at her
dripping frock. The rain had beaten the hair about her face into tiny
tendrils. She shivered and approached the fire. After an instant’s
frowning concentration the man stuck his fingers between two logs in the
wall and produced a key.

“I thought that I remembered where the owner kept it,” he observed as he
unlocked a chest under the window. He pulled out some blankets, then
produced a woolly dressing-gown. “Take off that wet Martharine and put
this on,” he commanded in a tone which proclaimed that he was prepared
to assist in carrying out his orders if necessity arose. A faint smile
flashed behind the weariness in the girl’s eyes.

“Sheathe your sword. I surrender. Of course I will get out of these wet
things. I am not quite without common sense even if my previous actions
so indicate.”

“Good girl. While you change Sweetie-peach and I will dry our wet coats
at the oil-stove in the wood-shed, at the same time we investigate the
fuel supply. When you want us, knock.”

As he closed the door the girl pulled off her dripping frock and spread
it over a chair within the heat’s radius. She stuffed her shoes with
bark which she peeled from logs in the big wood-box. In her heliotrope
slip she crouched near the fire. She let down her hair and fluffed it in
the heat. In an unbelievably short time she was warm to the marrow. She
slipped into the bath-robe which she swathed about her and belted with
the cord. She doubled and redoubled the long sleeves until her hands
were free. Her hair hung in two braids which curled at the ends. Her
cheeks were deeply flushed, her eyes brilliant with excitement. She
tested her shoes. They were still wet. She crossed the room in her
silk-stockinged feet and knocked on the wood-shed door.

The man who opened it seemed to loom above her. He had substituted a
leather hunting jacket for his wet coat. The spaniel bristled and
growled at the girl, then jumped on her in apologetic frenzy. As she
dropped into a big chair near the hearth the dog snuggled into her lap.
Her companion seated himself opposite and began to fill his pipe.

“You look like an ammunition ad,” Julie laughed.

“I wish that I had a cigarette. I don’t smoke them but I suppose that
you——”

“Didn’t I tell you that I was mid-Victorian? I neither smoke, drink
nor—nor pet.”

“What have I done that you should feel it necessary to add that last?”

“Nothing! Not one littlest thing! You have been an angel when it is my
fault that we landed in this mix-up. And it is a mix-up. Aunt Martha
will be horrified and Mother—well, Mother won’t like it much.”

“You have forgotten to mention Jaffrey’s reactions.”

“Billy will think it a joke, just a huge joke. I can hear him chuckle as
he inquires solicitously, ‘You never had any use for that
look-before-you-leap stuff, had you, Marble-heart?’”

“Marble-heart?”

“That is Billy’s foolish name for me. As I told you men and boys bore me
stiff when they wax sentimental——”

“Oh, then there are men in that small town from which you came? I got
the impression that Jaffrey was the only man you knew.”

She flushed pinkly, thoroughly.

“I have met a few at family weddings.” She expertly switched the
conversation. “After this summer I intend to train for a secretaryship,
then when I have learned a great deal I may go into politics.

“Politics in the best sense of the word, of course. I was too young to
do much but knit and serve coffee during the war but the flags and the
music and the marching men set a flame of patriotism in my heart and
mind that mounts higher and higher as time goes on. I want to do
something to help my country.”

“Then keep out of politics yourself and make a home for some embryo
politician which will keep his ideas and ideals up to the mark. You’ve
got the biggest chance in the world right there. Blessed are the
home-makers for they shall inherit the earth,” he paraphrased gravely.

Julie regarded him with eyes of tormenting amethyst. “That remark smacks
of the vintage of ’76. Poor old Rip Van Winkle! Has he been asleep for
the last twenty years?” She abandoned her tone of mischievous
commiseration as she clasped her hands on the dog’s black back and
stared into the red coals. Her voice was grave as she admitted:

“Billy may think this predicament a joke but it isn’t. Do you ever get
into a mix-up that makes you say ‘Darn!’ every time you think of it?”

“I’ll say I do, but I employ a more torrid exclamation.”

A crash shook the cabin. The dog whined and burrowed his nose under the
girl’s arm. Her face whitened but she smiled valiantly at her companion
as she admitted:

“I don’t like being in a cabin between two high pines in a storm like
this. Please talk, talk fast so that I will forget it. Don’t you mind,
Sweetie-peach, Julie’ll take care of you,” she quieted the spaniel as
she stroked his silky ears.

Pipe in hand, knees comfortably crossed, the man leaned back in his
chair and smiled at her.

“What shall I talk about?”

“Anything, everything. Tell me the story of your life. I have told you
mine.”

“It is hardly interesting enough to make you forget the storm, but I’ll
do my best. I am James Trafford, a hard-working mill-owner, the
descendant of that First Trafford who landed in Plymouth with a shilling
in his pocket, sapphires in his belt and a lady under his arm.”

“A lady!”

“To be more exact the portrait of a lady. A regal creature with
sapphires in her fair hair, sapphires at her ears, a great sapphire on
her finger, sapphires fastening her blue and gold bodice and a King
Charles spaniel under one arm.”

“Go on! Who was she?”

“A Duchess evidently, but who she was or what she was to the First
Trafford—we have acquired the habit of capitalizing him—or why he had
her jewels no one knows. After he landed he married a girl who came over
in the same ship. They drifted to Maine, only it wasn’t Maine then—and
he started a mill and after a while lived in a sort of feudal state. His
son enlarged the mill and his grandson abandoned the first building with
its big wheel and started a woolen mill. It was during the middle-age of
the next generation that the first part of the portrait prophecy came
true.”

“Prophecy! Go on! You’ve missed your vocation. You should be a writer of
mystery stories. Your technique is superb. When I am not holding my
breath in suspense my teeth are chattering in apprehension. You are not
inventing a fairy-tale, are you, to help me forget this horrid storm and
that awful man?” She covered her ears with her hands as the lightning
cracked like a pistol shot and the thunder seemed bent on ripping up the
ridge-pole. Trafford’s smile was like a steadying grip of the hand as he
affirmed:

“It is the cross-my-heart-an’-hope-to-die truth I’m telling you.”

“What was the prophecy?”

He leaned his head against the back of the comfortable chair and frowned
up at the roof.

“It is printed in curious old script on the back of the portrait and
goes something like this:

“‘Deep into the dark, damp earth
Bury the sapphires of the Duchess faire,
And after many days they will blaze forth
Attended by three shining knights,
Wealth, Love and Fame,
Full panoplied.’”

“And were the jewels buried?”

“Figuratively. They were sold by a black sheep who is known as the Mad
Trafford in the family annals. The proceeds were used to finance a
copper-mine. His interpretation of the prophecy being, evidently, that
invested in the earth the jewels would insure the success of the
venture.”

“Did they?”

“No. When the investor’s aged father discovered what had been done with
the family jewels he cursed his son and dramatically invoked the spirit
of the Duchess to haunt the steps of the Mad Trafford until the jewels
were returned. The story of the curse spread like fire in dry grass.
After a while men refused to work in the mine—there had been but a few
pockets of copper there, anyway—and to this day there is considerable
superstition in the county in regard to the roaming Duchess.”

“Don’t stop! I’m shivering with excitement. Then the sapphires never
have been found?”

“No. No information could be secured as to where they were sold. They
were exquisitely set. I am having them duplicated. Mother and I decided
that the restoration of the sapphires would go a long way toward downing
the silly stories which keep cropping up about the royal lady. Except
for the Mad Trafford my ancestors have been decent, high-principled,
hard-working mill-owners. Despotic, perhaps, but honest and just. It is
curious what an influence background has upon one. I’ve seen men plunge
into glittering dissipation, I’ve been caught in what seemed
blind-alleys of temptation but something has strengthened my power of
resistance. Perhaps it was the hand of some God-fearing,
ideal-worshiping Trafford on my shoulder.”

“Your voice gives the impression that you regret the fact that you have
not followed the lure.”

“Then it lies. Perhaps the tinge of regret was because I realize that I
am confoundedly conservative. I should like once to do something unusual
in an unusual way. But I shan’t. As I grow older I shall follow in the
footsteps of my grandfather. What is there about New England that breeds
repression into one?”

“I can’t answer that question because my limited experiences with New
Englanders has been the reverse. Mother was an F. F. from Massachusetts,
Dad an F. F. from California—that makes me Middle West, doesn’t
it—curiously enough the two have exchanged coastal characteristics.
Mother has an irrepressible sense of humor; the world and its problems
gnaw unceasingly at the domine’s heart. I am forever bubbling with
enthusiasm. I’m the original obey-that-impulse! Dad would approve of
you. He claims that when a man resists temptation he is building
character for future generations. Tell me more about yourself. Of course
you were in the service?”

“I am sound and thirty; that answers that question. My father was an
only son. He died when I was a boy of wounds received in the
Spanish-American War. I spent my summers with Grandfather. Before I went
overseas he told me that he hoped that I would carry on the mill, that I
would live part of the year, at least, in Brick House, the Trafford
homestead, that I would help to make the town my ancestor had founded a
factor in good government. But, whatever I decided, everything he had
was to be mine when he got through.”

He leaned forward to rap his pipe on the hearth. The firelight shone on
his fine head, gilded the faint touch of white in his black hair at the
temples. He frowningly regarded the blazing logs as he continued:

“Grandfather lived till I came back from the war, then his heart
stopped. Good Lord, how I hated to take on that mill! I had other plans,
other ambitions, but I was the last of the name. I had to carry on or
the plant would have gone to the scrap-heap. That would have meant
hundreds out of employment.”

“Will you have to keep it always?”

“Your sympathetic tone is undeserved. I like it now. I like my work. I
am proud of the people of my county, a people who have been trained to
overcome difficulties. The war struck a spark in my heart which the
disillusionment of the last few years can’t snuff out. I am deep in
politics. I am a nominee to defeat Cheever, our present state senator. I
believe that he is a tragic example of a brainy college man of good
family gone wrong.”

“Do his constituents think that and _vote_ for him?”

“Of course not. Most of them think him a wonder. The voters are
tremendously excited by our contest. I think that they are trying to be
absolutely fair.”

“Are you friends?”

“We were when I spent my summers here. Cheever is eight years older than
I. He was nominated on one ticket, I on the other at the state primaries
in June. He is a good mixer. I suspect conditions—oh, well, I’m not
talking about that. I shall win this fight on my own merit, not on the
other man’s demerits.”

“That is an excellent policy if your opponent plays fair too. Does he?”

“No. I am convinced that if he could find a thread of evidence against
me he would weave it into a cloak of iniquity. He has it in for me for
another reason than this senatorial fight.”

“Is the other reason a girl?”

Trafford rose and leaned his arm on the slab of granite which served as
a mantel.

“Yes—in a way. Cheever pretends to be in love with my mother’s ward who
has money and an inordinate ambition which I am sure does not stop this
side of the White House. Neither Mother nor I believe in his sincerity.
He knows that but he haunts Brick House just the same.”

“Is she in love with you?”

“Good Lord, no. What put such an idea into your head?”

“Does he think that she is?”

“How do I know what he thinks?”

“You’re wriggling. He does. In that case you had better prepare to fight
him with his own weapons.”

“Not until I am back against the wall, and not even then. The newspapers
are full of smudged political reputations. There is not much incentive
for the boys growing up to serve their country. The men and women in my
employ are behind me. It’s a heart-thumping sensation to realize that
hundreds of persons are looking to one for leadership; it makes one feel
like an old-time patriarch. I shall beat Cheever with bare hands. I
shall use no brass knuckles or stuffed clubs or defamation though I
don’t trust him. I can’t prove it, I don’t want to—yet, but I believe
him to be tricky, irresponsible.”

Julie laughed up at him with friendly eyes. She applauded softly:

“Here! Here! All you need, Mr. Senator, is a hand thrust into your
shirt-front and you’d be Webster replying to Hayne to the life, only you
are younger and infinitely better-looking than the oratorical Dan,” she
teased. “Is this scurvy politician—— Oh-o-o!”

She sprang to her feet as a crash shook the cabin till its rafters
chattered. Its Siamese twin sent a tree outside crashing to earth and
sent her straight to Trafford. As his arms closed about her she buried
her head against his shoulder. He rested his face against her fair hair
as he encouraged:

“It will be over in a minute, Goldilocks. You are safe——”

The cabin door was flung open and banged shut.

“Good God! I thought that pine would get me!” panted the man who leaned
against the door as though exhausted.

Julie twisted herself free from the arms which had unconsciously
tightened about her. She tried to silence the spaniel who added to the
din without by barking shrilly at the intruder. She stared at the
drenched figure with hat pulled low before she confided in a laughing
whisper which caught in her throat:

“Enter Father B-Bear!”

But her companion was neither looking at her nor listening to her. He
was staring at the intruder. The tense silence sponged the color from
the girl’s face. Her eyes widened in dawning comprehension as she looked
from the man beside her to the man who had pushed back his dripping hat
and stood as though carved in bas-relief against the door. A slow smile
stretched his thin mouth. Trafford reddened darkly as he explained
lightly:

“Cheever, as you see, we have taken refuge in your cabin from the
storm.”

The man took a step forward. His glance flicked from the frock drying
before the fire, to the pile of blankets on the floor by the open chest,
to the girl.

“I’m glad you made yourselves comfortable, Jim. Sorry that I butted in
at an inopportune moment. Had I suspected a rendezvous——”

He bowed with exaggerated formality to Julie. Even her lips went white.
The spaniel kept up a rumbling growl. The significance in the smirking
tone thickened the veins on Trafford’s forehead. He clenched his hands
behind him but his voice was in control as he protested:

“Don’t be a darned fool and turn accident into melodrama, Cheever. We
jumped from the train to rescue this dog who escaped from the
baggage-car and the infernal thing went on without us.”

“Your dog?” Then as neither answered he laughed. “It’s a bully story. I
wonder if your constituents in the clean, anti-mud-slinging campaign
will believe it—I wonder?”

“Believe it! Why should they care anything about it, except as a
humorous incident—unless you—you——”

“Better save your ammunition for the campaign, Jim. You’ll need it,
believe you me. I’ve got you where I want you. I’ve got you there.” He
drew up the fingers of one hand like vicious claws. “You’ve started to
beat me at the polls, you think I’m not a proper person to
represent—oh, I know you’ve made no charges. I have no such scruples.
I’ll give the public to understand that never in my most riotous days
did I indulge in this sort of thing.” His words were muddy with inuendo
as he looked from the man to the girl.

Trafford’s face was livid with fury. “You know that my explanation is
true, Cheever, and by God before you leave this cabin you are going to
admit it.”

Cheever shrugged and lighted a cigarette. “Am I? I wonder. I’ll trade.
Promise to step out of the senatorial fight, make your mother withdraw
her opposition to me, and——”

“Is that all? And if I don’t?” Trafford took a menacing step forward,
his fists clenched.

“I’ll spread a version of this cabin episode that will take the rest of
your life and the girl’s to contradict. You’ve got to choose and choose
quick.”

With a rasping sob which she juggled into a laugh Julie Lorraine caught
one of Trafford’s clenched hands in hers. She leaned her head against
his arm and defiantly regarded Cheever before she smiled up into the
blazing eyes above her and inquired:

“What is all this riot about, Jim? Doesn’t the silly person at the door
know that we are married?”